Pretty Hate (New Adult Novel) (16 page)

All of the guests stared at Mikey and none of them said a word. No one tried to wrestle the knife away from him; no one made a move to stop him. They simply waited for him to dismember his member with a hand-oiled, French polished, unstained teak and surgical stainless steel cheese knife from Helsinki.

“Do it!” Tommy screamed at Mikey as he slammed his hands on the table. “Finally, do it!”

“I will,” Mikey said as he unbuttoned his red vegan pleather pants.

“Well, here we go!” Tommy said and rubbed his hands together. “Someone call the mohel, we’re about to have a bris up in this motherfucker!”

I laughed and choked on my beer and it sprayed out of my mouth, across the table and hit Sahara in the face.

“Oh my God!” I said as Sahara wailed. “I’m sorry!”

“It’s okay,” Lucia said and picked Sahara up off the table. “Tilda! Towel, please?”

Mikey threw the knife on the table and grabbed a bottle of manually-stomped, moon-cured, tannin-free Cabernet from Madrid and drank it.

“Coward!” Tommy said and turned to me. “He’s been threatening to cut his dick off since ’92 when I took off for Kiev with Linda Evangelista and George Michael.”

“The baby...” I said as I drank another beer and watched Lucia wipe my beer spit off Sahara’s face.

“You just wait Tommy Holderfield, when you least expect it, I will cut my dick off and shove it down your throat so I don’t have to listen to your lispy whine anymore,” Mikey said and sat down.

Tommy hit me in the arm and stared at me with one eye open.

“Seems to me if this queen actually follows through with it, which will be the first time he’s ever followed through with anything in his life,
he
will be the one talking with the lisp.”

“How about I just cut
your
dick off, Tommy?” Mikey said and stared at the knife. “That should finally shut you up.”

“You know I can regenerate!” Tommy said and turned to me. “Jess, I was on a dig in Tunisia in ’97 and was touched by the ancients with the power of regeneration.”

“Don’t listen to his bullshit, Jess. He was touched by the ancients with a liter of mushroom tea and the clap! When I cut your dick off, you will
remain
dickless, Tommy Holderfield!”

“Go ahead, cut it off, I’ll just grow another dick,” Tommy said.

“Then I’ll cut that one off!” Mikey said.

“Then I’ll grow another!”

“Okay, ladies,” Adolfo said, “I’m feeling that you are both getting a little intense. Should we start the dancing?”

“A little intense?” I said into India’s ear. “Regenerating dicks is intense, but cutting dicks off with a cheese knife is fine?”

India snorted and grabbed another bottle of wine.

“Lucia,” Charlie said, “don’t you think it’s time for the dancing?”

“Perfect!” Lucia said and stood from Adolfo’s lap with Sahara. “Mikey, why don’t you make the selection?”

Mikey looked across the table at Tommy and took a deep breath.

“Fine,” he said and brushed a piece of hair out of his face. “New Order,
Temptation
.”

“Baby,” Tommy said as he looked across the table at Mikey, “which version?”

Mikey looked at Tommy and tilted his head.

“Temptation 87
, of course,” he said and smiled.

Tommy gasped and moved his head closer to mine.

“That’s our song,” he said into my ear.

“It seems he’s making amends?” I said.

“Tilda!” Lucia said. “Please queue New Order,
Temptation 87
.”

I looked at India and she grabbed two more full bottles of wine off the table and handed one to me.

“Drink up, buttercup,” she said as she touched her bottle to mine and sighed, “things are going to get odd.”

“Going to get...” I said as the music pumped through the speakers in the dining room.

Everyone around the table bobbed their heads to the music and Tilda took Sahara and trotted out of the room.

Two maids trotted in and cleared the table.

“Leave the booze!” Baron Richter said.

I kept my bottle of wine tipped to my lips as I watched Mikey climb up on the table and dance. Althea jumped up and danced around the table toward the Gypsy guitar player. She grabbed him and grinded against his leg. The music got louder and louder as I looked around. Lucia crawled up on the table and danced with Mikey. Charlie and Tyson stood and started jumping up and down to the music. Mikey reached down and took Tommy’s hand and pulled him up onto the table with he and Lucia. Adolfo jumped up next to Lucia and the two of them started dirty dancing as Baron Richter stared at them and frowned while he drank.

“Beth!” India said. “Come on, Beth!”

India pulled me out of my chair and we danced in circles as New Order’s
Temptation 87
shook the walls of the dining room.

There was a moment, as India and I swung each other around and the music bounced through my body and rattled my teeth, I felt like I floated to the ceiling and watched from above.

There was no sadness and we were free from distress. All of us together, jumping to the same beat, melted into the music and each other.

We were open, savage, graceful, odd, wasted. Beautiful.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I opened my eyes when I heard the music and was curled up at the bottom of India’s bed with my forehead pressed against her metal footboard. I still had the dress on and it was dark and cold in the room. I sat up as the room spun and I tried to adjust my eyes to the dark.

“The song,” I said and leaned against the footboard, “
Cut Dead
.”

“Yes,” India said, “I’m sorry if I woke you.”

I stood up and held onto her bed and I tried to orient myself. I saw her in her long, white dress, but it looked like she was floating above the ground.

“No, I didn’t know where I was,” I said.

I walked toward the dress and the cold. I realized the window was unshuttered and wide open. She sat on the window sill with her feet dangling outside.

“Whoa,” I said as I stuck my head out the window and looked down.

“Sit next to me,” she said and moved over to make room.

“Okay,” I said and took a deep breath as I sat on the window sill and hung my feet outside.

I rested my head against the window casing and held onto the shutter as I stared at her.

“What time is it?” I said.

“Four-ish,” she said and looked at me.

“What’s going on? You’re crying and playing the song.”

India looked down at the ground and shook her head.

“I was just thinking that it’s nice to have a friend,” she said and wiped her face.

“Yeah,” I said, “it is nice. So why are you hanging out a window eighty miles above a stone patio?”

“Devon broke up with me, Beth,” India said and looked out at the beach. “Four days ago. I was too embarrassed to tell you.”

“India, I’m so sorry. I’d hug you, but I can’t let go of the window.”

She looked at me and smiled.

“What happened?” I said.

“Same thing that always happens...they don’t love me and I think that they do. He said, simply:
I’m not feeling it
. How is that even possible? That someone can break your heart with those five silly words. What does that even mean,
I’m not feeling it
?”

“Yeah, I don’t even know if it’s grammatically correct. And you think that they’d at least have the decency to say
I am
instead of
I’m,
right? I mean, take the fucking time.”

“I don’t know, Beth,” India said and chuckled. “How can I be feeling
it
, if he is not?”

“Stephanie says that when we are in love, something happens to our depth perception and we get tunnel vision. We don’t see the things we should and are too busy looking at the things we should not.”

“All these games, Beth. All these games are exhausting,” India said and stared at the patio below us.

I listened to the music and closed my eyes.

“You know what I love about this song? I love that line,
you’ve got me chasing honeybees
. That’s what it feels like, doesn’t it? When you’re in love and you want so bad for him to love you, it feels like you’re running around trying to capture all these things, right? Why did he say that, what does that look mean, why did he write that? And all you want is for him to look at you and say it, to
declare
it, to you and everyone:
I love you
. That’s all you want.
I love you
.”

“That and for him to mean it if he does say it,” India said and closed her eyes and shivered.

“Yeah, that helps.”

“Why is it so hard, Beth? Lucia said that humans are meant to love each other and that it is our destiny...our fate. Is it me? Is my blood bitter?”

“If that’s the case, you and I have the same bitter blood, my friend. Maybe we were touched by ancient phallus sculptures from Tunisia in a past life. So, like Tommy with the regenerating dick, we’ve been cursed unlovable by the ancient penis Gods.”

India looked at her feet and shook. Tears streamed from her eyes and ran down her face. She looked at me and took her hands off the window sill and shook her head.

“India? What’s wrong?”

“Please...” she said as she sobbed and rocked back and forth.

“India, stop!”

“Is it true?” she said.

I pried my hand off the window casing and reached out and gripped her arm as I dug my fingers into the shutter with my other hand.

“Calm down!” I said. “You’re going to take us both over the edge.”

“Tell me it’s not fucking true!”

“What? The regenerating dick curse?”

“Unlovable! Am I unlovable?” she said as she scratched my fingers and tried to make me release her arm.

“India! It was a joke,” I said and looked down as we teetered on the edge of the window sill. “Stay still!”

She clawed at my hand as she rocked back and forth on the sill. Her entire body was wracked with tremors as she sobbed. She kicked her legs back and forth and I wondered if she was having a seizure of some sort. As I was about to release her arm and let the girl fall where she may, she stopped kicking her legs.

“India! It’s not true, I was making a joke,” I said and inched closer to her. “Just listen to the song. It’s okay.”

She stopped moving and I reached down and picked up the remote control to her docking station and turned the music up. Her body stopped shaking and her shoulders slumped a bit as she relaxed. I moved closer to her and our legs touched.

“Okay?” I said and stared at her.

She looked up at me and shrugged.

“Can I put my arm around you?”

“Yes,” she said.

I put my arm around her shoulders and we stared out at the ocean and watched the waves come in. I wished on the moon that my heart would calm down because I felt like it was going to explode in my chest.

“The moon,” I said as I looked at the water and breathed in and out through my nose, “it lights everything up. I love listening to those waves.”

“Winter moon,” India said and nodded. “It’s a sad moon.”

“It’s fitting for us, huh?”

She turned and stared at me and nodded.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I get terrified.”

“Me too,” I said and sighed. “I was scared to come here.”

“Are you sorry you did?” she said and turned her head away from me.

“God, no. This is the best thing I’ve ever done.”

“You haven’t done much,” she said and smiled.

“Yeah, but it really is. I mean, your family is--”

“Insane?” she said.

“Well, different, but in a good way. They’re free, India. They do whatever they want. I like that.”

“It’s not how the real world works, Beth. What you see is an illusion.”

“They’re alive. No one is screaming about money or eating ketchup sandwiches or losing their homes. You don’t know what that’s like, India.”

“Beth, I’d rather live under a rock, than an illusion. But like my mother, I lay my head on the illusion because it’s more comfortable than the rock.”

I closed my eyes and inhaled the cold, damp air from the Atlantic and listened to the waves rolling in and out as
Cut Dead
played on a loop.

“My mother blew the guy from the electric company once,” I said as I stared at her.