The Last Good Night (13 page)

We drove in silence for a few minutes.

“When you were first born,” Astrid began softly, “people wanted me to give you away. You have to understand, it was very hard for me, with no husband. So I agreed.”

“You gave me away?”

“There was this couple in the country who couldn't have any children. They wanted you. A nurse from the hospital took you to them.”

“I can't believe you gave me away.”

“I couldn't stand it. A week later, I brought you back.”

We stopped at a light.

“He's loyal to me,” Astrid added thoughtfully, looking for the briefest moment at the continental spread of her thighs, her belly in heaps upon her lap. “He's a loyal man.” She turned to me. “I love you,” Astrid said quietly.

She rounded the last corner onto our street. “We've always had each other. Don't ever forget that.” She pulled into the driveway and cut off the ignition. “Come on, sweetie, I bought some cheesecake on the way. I'll bet you're hungry.”

 

T
HE REST, THE
time between then and the night he came to me, was nothing, just waiting, blank.

I'm getting there, getting there despite myself.

It was a Friday night. I sat at the front desk, checking in the
sport fishermen with their big bellies and gold chains with medallions nestled in the coarse gray hair of their chests. Garner was outside fishing leaves, gum wrappers, and dead chameleons out of the pool, scrubbing down the barbecue grills, and emptying the stinking garbage bins of fish refuse and Budweiser cans. Astrid sat beside me, smiling pleasantly at the never-ending requests for more towels, suntan lotion, a phone, restaurant recommendations, for refunds and reservations and postage stamps.

Finally, at nine o'clock, all of the expected guests had checked in and I went back to my room, put on the record player, and began to change my clothes.

I reached into the top drawer and wrapped my bare torso in a royal blue paisley silk scarf I had stolen from the accessories department at Dearfields, wrapping it across my chest like the strapless gown I had seen in
Vogue
. I stared, entranced, at the cleavage this gave me, and then I rimmed my eyes with black Maybelline liner.

Outside of the bedroom, I could hear Garner and Astrid fighting about how we never had any money and whose fault that was.

Their voices faded to a low angry murmur and then the front door slammed.

I painted my lips a deep crimson and sat down on the floor, my head between the speakers of my tiny plastic stereo, blasting the Rolling Stones'
Exile on Main Street
. I didn't hear Garner come in. “You could have knocked,” I said when I looked up from his bare hairy feet and yellow toenails to his face.

“It's my house. I don't have to knock.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to turn that racket down.”

“It's my room.”

“I don't want an argument, just do it.” Garner turned and left.

I reached over and turned up the volume knob on the console as far as it would go.

When Garner came back, I glared up at him, my face flushed. He glared back. Both of us were, for an instant, speechless, caught in the moment, finally caught in it.

He bent over and began to sweep the albums that I had lined up in meticulous alphabetical order into a large trash bag he had brought in. The corners of the LPs poked against the black plastic, ripping it in spots.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“You don't listen to me, you pay the price.”

I rose quickly and grabbed Garner's arm. “Give those back, they're mine.” I pried his fingers until he dropped the records and they scattered about the floor. We both stared down at them, and then back at each other.

Garner suddenly yanked the silk scarf from my chest.

“You look like a goddamned whore,” he said. “Well, I shouldn't be surprised. Like mother, like daughter.”

I froze.

I felt my breasts standing out in the open air, laid open, exposed, Garner's eyes all over them.

And then in a second, his hand was on me too, his callused hand.

Open-palmed, spread-fingered, it fell slowly down from my collarbone, rubbing across my skin, lingering over the small swell of my breast, cupping my nipple, which grew instantly hard and sore as he pinched it.

I did not move.

Garner's hand rested in the shallows just below my rib cage, and then it fell farther, his fingers landing on the top of my panties, grasping them.

He pulled the lace edge down a half-inch below my tan line, where my skin was pale and untouched. The jagged border of my pubic hair curled up into view, black and kinky. His forefinger wriggled into it as a drop of spittle fell from his lower lip.

With his other hand he unzipped his soiled khaki pants and pulled out his penis, purple and swollen. He began to jerk his fist up and down it, slowly and then faster.

I stood completely still, mesmerized, horrified, while the head touched my skin, pulled away, touched again.

He swallowed once, loudly, deeply.

A groan escaped from his throat and a sticky liquid shot out over his hand and onto my belly.

The whites of his eyes shone as he gave my panties one final victorious snap, zipped himself up, and left without saying a word, slamming the door behind him.

I stood for a long time naked in the center of the room, my stomach dripping.

W
HAT DID WE
do? We went on. What choice was there, really?

I sat at the front desk, checking people in and out, I began to cut school, individual classes at first, and then whole days, I kept to myself. I told no one what had happened. My sixteenth birthday came and went with no event. The only person who remembered was Rosie, who called before she left for school that morning.

“Sweet sixteen,” Rosie said and laughed, because that is what we did and because girls like us were never sweet sixteen, not really, maybe no one was anymore.

You go on. But not the same, never the same.

Or maybe that's just an excuse for what happened later.

 

T
HIS IS WHAT
I wanted: for Garner to look me in the eye.

He still hadn't, not since that night.

Sometimes, I could feel him watching me, feel his eyes burn
ing across the contours of my body as I passed him, but whenever I turned around to catch him at it, his eyes were already somewhere else.

At night, I lay awake long past the time I heard Astrid and Garner close their door.

He would come to my room after Astrid had fallen asleep.

This time, I would yell, claw, fight. I would push him away from me.

My skin tingled in anticipation.

But he did not come.

Somewhere, so deep beneath the weariness and the hatred and the shame that it could not be found even in my dreams, there was a certain deflation, even disappointment.

 

T
HERE WERE TIMES
when I wondered if it had ever happened at all, his hands on my breasts, my belly, his penis, wondered if it hadn't been some awful dream, a splinter in my imagination, and it was in those moments of doubt that I hated him the most.

 

T
HERE ARE POISONS
that flood the system, infecting every movement, every view, poisons that cluster and build like a boil, with no place to go, no release. I rarely left the Breezeway's grounds. I did not go to the beach, or to the ice-cream store a mile up the road, I did not go past the motel's carefully demarcated acreage, but like a cat, traced and retraced its perimeter. I rarely went to school. If Astrid or Garner noticed, they said nothing.

I sat at the end of the dock, drinking a Tab in the strong morning sun. The day spread before me, shapeless and silent. I thought of school, of the bell ringing at the end of each class, of
gathering up books, fastening the rubber strap about them, hurrying down the hallway to the next class. But I did not move. I wore a man's large Timex watch a guest had left behind and sometimes as a game I timed how long I went without speaking to anyone, two hours, three.

I got up and fished the previous day's paper from the large garbage can near the barbecue, and sat back down.

The only real news was a report of the first shark attack of the season. A pregnant woman in Stuart had gotten a chunk of her left thigh bitten off. It had required seventy-two stitches. The baby was said to be doing fine, thanks to the woman's quick thinking. She had curled her arms and legs over her bulging belly to protect the baby. “It was just instinct,” she told the reporter.

I folded the newspaper, flung it back into the waste can and headed back to the office to get my cleaning supplies. We were once more without a maid and I was left to tidy the rooms, scour the toilets, collect the stained sheets, vacuum.

 

M
AYBE IT DIDN'T
begin with Garner. Maybe it began here.

I wheeled the heavy canister vacuum cleaner into room 202 and picked up the bedspread, peering underneath. I was always surprised by what guests left behind. Money, stray shoes, rolls of film, used condoms, checkbooks, rusty razors. Pieces of themselves—lost, forgotten, deemed unnecessary. I vacuumed, dusted, bleached the bathroom sink and tub, made the bed, and then carried my supplies to the next room.

Room 203 was occupied by a single middle-aged man, Lewis Harmon, with a great carbuncular nose and ferret eyes who had been at the Breezeway for two weeks. Every afternoon, he sat by the pool in a long-sleeved linen shirt, bathing trunks, white kneesocks and sandals, reading detective novels while he drank
tap water out of a paper cup. I was startled to find him in his room now, perched on his bed, reading.

“I can come back later,” I offered.

“That's all right. I don't mind. Just pretend I'm not here.”

I hesitated, but he nodded his encouragement and went back to his paperback. I bent over to turn on the vacuum. I could feel him watching me as I arched my back and began to move slowly about the room. I glanced over at him and he smiled slightly and turned a page. His eyes were puffy, bloodshot. I turned off the vacuum cleaner, flexing my calves, my butt out, and stretched as I rose, testing it, this new power, trying to gauge its weight and its effect while Harmon watched from beneath his heavy drooping eyelids.

When I reached over to wipe a ring of water stains from the night table, I suddenly felt his hands on my back. Steadily, firmly, they traced my shoulder blades and then inched down the incline of my waist and out again over my hips. The hands stopped, grasped me, turned me around. Lewis Harmon, sitting up with his feet on the ground, pulled me between his legs and buried his face in my chest. I looked down at the top of his head, his coarse hair flecked with dandruff. I felt his lips on my skin, not kissing, but pulling mouthfuls of my flesh in. My hands were on his shoulders, steadying myself. There were no questions asked, no answers given.

He pulled me down onto the bed. I did not speak, did not protest. I looked up into his face, his red-webbed eyes, his slab of a nose, and then I shut my eyes. He untied the straps of my halter top and threw it on the floor.

I helped him slide down my shorts and parted my legs for him.

It would be easier to say that I didn't, but I did.

He smelled faintly of mothballs.

He held me tightly and entered me as I reared up, swallowing my own cry, this is it, so this is it. I felt him go an inch, and then
further, all the way up to where it was black and marshy and uncharted. He was riding me now, absorbed in his own tides.

He bucked suddenly, grunted, and collapsed.

He lay on top of me for a moment and then rolled off. My chest was sticky with his sweat.

In a minute, I heard him snoring.

I sat up slowly and looked at the sheets. I expected to see a lucent crimson pool of blood, but there was none. I bent over and pulled on my clothes.

As I began to tie my shirt, I noticed that Harmon had left a pile of money and his keys on the night table.

My eyes still on him, I reached over, pulled two ten-dollar bills from beneath the keys, and stuck them in my pocket before I quietly left the room.

It was still sunny out, still the same day. That was what I remembered later, that it was somehow still the same day. That, and the burning sore ache between my legs, and the money like a rock in my back pocket.

 

B
ACK IN MY
room, I sat down on the floor and spread my legs. The lips of my vagina were puffy and swollen. I touched them gingerly, testing, examining.

I stood up and smoothed the bills across my dresser, and then placed them in my top drawer.

I did not feel regret or remorse or sadness or shame. I did not feel free. I felt, more than anything, let loose, as if a wall I had not seen before had been shattered and I was spinning from its shards, my own atoms tumbling out and out and out, unstoppable.

I changed my clothes and went back out. I was still washing the weekend's sheets and towels long into the night. In between cycles, I stepped outside and stared at the fireflies, brilliant orange
pricks of light darting about in concentric circles and then disappearing into the air stained with the odor of cheap detergent and lint from the dryer and the musky smell of sex.

 

T
HE NEXT DAY,
Lewis Harmon was again by the pool, reading his detective novel, drinking his tap water. When I walked by, he peered over the top of his book at me. He closed his book, laid it across his belly, put on his sunglasses, and studied me from behind their forest green shield.

That afternoon, I went back to his room.

It was four o'clock. He lay on his bed, fully clothed, waiting for me. The lights were off and the air was faded brown from being trapped inside on such a sunny day.

I closed the door behind me.

“I would have given you the money,” he said.

I shrugged. “You were sleeping.”

He grunted. “Don't steal. Just don't steal. I don't like that.”

This time, because he knew he was going to pay for it, Harmon did exactly what he wanted. He squeezed and pushed me and when he entered me he stuck his fingers up my ass. “Bite my nipples,” he whispered hoarsely, and I did.

I was watching myself, watching him, wondering where he would go next, where I would go.

And then I wasn't watching myself at all. I was inside it.

He rammed into me so hard it hurt, and the pain and the pleasure mixed up in my brain, my spine, my gut. For there was that, too—a darkly hued pleasure. And release, not a release that flew gleefully up into the air, but a release that spiraled down and further down, into some murky swirling bottomless pool where I found myself waiting.

When I left, he slipped a twenty-dollar bill into my back pocket. I felt his hand, fingers spread, slithering into my tight
jeans, slipping around my ass, cupping it, leaving the money behind, slithering out.

 

W
HEN
L
EWIS
H
ARMON
checked out five days later, I had eighty dollars in my top drawer. I liked looking at the bills, smoothing them out, folding them, counting and recounting them. I did not think of spending them, of new clothes or nights out. It had nothing to do with that at all.

 

A
WEEK LATER,
I sat on the gate by the parking lot, swinging my legs back and forth, watching the Jensons' car drive up. It was a Sunday afternoon and because the next day was a school holiday, it seemed the perfect time for Rosie to spend the night. It was her idea. I had tried to avoid it, but here she was.

Rosie jumped out of the car, clutching her overnight bag as she said goodbye to her mother. Mrs. Jenson chatted briefly with me and then drove off, leaving us alone by the side of the road. I hadn't seen Rosie since the last time I was in school two weeks ago, and we were both suddenly uncomfortable with each other.

“So,” Rosie said.

“So.”

I glanced more closely at her. She looked exactly the same. I wondered if I, too, looked the same to her. I couldn't believe that Rosie, so earnest and so vigilant, would not see a change, would not smell it, sense it, suspect it. But if she did, she gave no sign. I was relieved and disappointed. “Let's drop off your bag,” I said.

We turned and headed through the courtyard. “Not bad,” Rosie remarked. I followed her eyes to the palms, the pool, the
boats bobbing by the docks in the tranquil water. It looked impressive enough.

We went inside where Astrid and Garner were sprawled at the living room table surrounded by piles of loose papers trying to figure out how much tax to pay, or not to pay, on the room rentals. They both looked up briefly to say hello and then returned to their work.

“What do you want to do?” I asked Rosie.

“I don't know. What do you want to do?”

“How about the beach?”

We changed into our suits and headed down the road lined with motels and citrus stands to the public beach. I had never been a hostess before, and I felt responsible for the lawns, for the cars on the road, for the day itself.

We continued along the shore until we came to a deserted patch of dunes, where we spread our towels across the slight incline and lay down. Rosie, whose skin never tanned, scrupulously covered herself with a gooey white suntan lotion.

“I have news for you,” she said, as she settled back and closed her eyes. “It's about Lydia Warner.”

“What about her?”

“You ready? Her mother came home and found her in bed with Barry Johnson. They had all their clothes on and everything, but isn't that the grossest thing you've ever heard? I mean, with his skin, yuck.”

I nodded up into the sun. “Which would you rather do,” I asked, “lick Barry Johnson's face or have to eat that entire bottle of suntan lotion standing naked in front of homeroom?” It was a game we used to play, offering up options of disgust.

Rosie stuck out her tongue and pretended to lick the lotion's cap and we both broke up, meeting inside the sound of our own laughter once more, grateful to find each other there. Eventually, the laughter drifted off and melded with the soft steady crash of the waves and then we listened to that.

“Don't your parents care about you missing school?” Rosie asked.

“Not really.” The truant officer had called a few times, but Astrid just told him I was sick and never mentioned it again.

“Aren't you worried about catching up?”

“I haven't really thought about it,” I answered. School, classes, bells, were another thing that had faded, a story from the past.

“What do you do all day?”

“I don't know. Stuff. There's always things that need doing.”

“But you're going to go back, aren't you?”

“Eventually.”

“I sent away for college catalogs,” Rosie said. “I am going to try California after all. U.C.L.A. looks good. Or maybe Berkeley.”

I said nothing.

In a little while, I turned on the transistor radio we had brought and we listened to the new Led Zeppelin song and then the news. President Ford, who was gearing up for the coming election, had taken a tumble on a ski slope in Utah. I followed the report closely. Lately, I had gotten into the habit of listening to the radio late at night, skipping around the dial looking not for a better song, but for the news. I looked forward to the time each day when I could close my door and listen to the announcer's voice in my dark shadow-infested room, gleaning the facts, storing them up, welcomed evidence of a world beyond my own.