A Field Guide to Deception (22 page)

Read A Field Guide to Deception Online

Authors: Jill Malone

Tags: #Fiction, #Lesbian Studies, #Social Science, #Lesbian

BOOK: A Field Guide to Deception
4.08Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“Well, now that you've worked out my problems, what do you propose as a fix?”
“Take a class. Go study German or Early American History—”
“—Or Art History,” Liv laughed. “You're sending me back to school? That's your cure?”
“Yes, that's my cure: education.”
“My god, you're a recruiter, and people worry about lesbians.”
Drake laughed, a coarse throaty sound. “You know, I'm really not kidding.”
“I do,” Liv said. “I get that. There was a time, you know, I intended to get a doctorate and teach English Lit. I went to school for a while back east.”
“I didn't know that,” Drake said, watching Liv closely. “And then?”
“It all kind of crumbled. I didn't last a year.”
“What crumbled?”
“Everything. School, me, everything.”
“Liv, you need to work on your storytelling.”
Liv grinned, and then said, “I met a girl my first month there. I was twenty-five and thought I knew everything. Sometimes I miss that—that cockiness, that conviction. I met this girl and she could have done anything, I would have allowed anything. I was mesmerized by this girl—she fucking shook me. You know? I felt sick all the time. I couldn't study, cut my classes, followed along behind this girl like her shadow.
“It went on like that for ages. Fall semester my grades were abysmal, and it didn't matter. I didn't care. And then, over Christmas break, I climbed up to her apartment, walked up five flights, she let me in and her eyes were red and her nose, and she said she couldn't see me anymore. She said she'd met a guy and she was pregnant and she couldn't see me anymore.
“I didn't even argue. I just stood there, not arguing, and then I went away. Down the stairs and outside and walked through the entire fucking city until I came to a bridge and then I tore off my shirt and cut a star into my arm. I cut until I couldn't see my arm or the knife for all the blood.”
Liv laughed cheerlessly, unable to look at Drake. “I dropped out before spring break. I stayed out east for a while, picked up work with a crew, but I couldn't focus. I kept having accidents. I got a glove caught in a jigsaw, and shot myself with a nail gun—right in the
boot—and fell off a scaffold. Last fall, I came back here.”
“And the girl?”
“I never saw her again. I left her apartment that day, and that was the last time.”
“What about the woman you're with now—Claire—what about Claire?”
“Hey, if you want to know something, just ask.”
“Am I prying?”
“You know you are.” Liv thought of Claire, and her own grief surprised her. She and Simon at the kitchen table, silent, waiting; Claire had wandered away from them. “Claire's preoccupied.”
“With the café? That's not hard to imagine.”
With the café, yes, that too. “What about you? Are you seeing anyone?”
Drake stretched her legs beneath the table, shook her head. “No one.”
“When was the last time?”
“Oh, I had this coming. I see that now.”
“No avoidance,” Liv chided.
“Never in life. The last time was eight months ago—strictly short term, needs based, nothing more. I miss it, sometimes, the mess of being with someone else. It's not good for me to have things my own way all the time. Just encourages me to be difficult.”
“Do you need encouragement to be difficult?”
“Would you like another drink?” Drake asked. “Liquor might help you be forthright.”
“The last time I was out, I was in a bar fight.”
“Are you serious?”
“Quite serious. I hit a woman in the head with a beer glass.”
“Maybe soccer league is the thing for you after all.”
“She hit me first.”
“Of course she did. I'm not judging.”
Liv nodded at this. It was true; Drake didn't judge. “Did you always want to teach?”
“No, no, I wanted to be a painter. I worked for years—and I mean
worked—in my studio for hours everyday. I thought desire could make it happen. But I never produced anything that wasn't mediocre. It broke my heart not to have any talent. I have a great appreciation for art, and an absolute inability to produce it.”
“Appreciation is nothing to sniff at.”
“Who's sniffing?” Drake asked. “You are an unusual woman.”
“I want more of those mini ahi burgers.”
House music—acoustic and soulful—and the bar lights moody, Liv tapped her cigarette pack on the tabletop as the phone rang. Bailey didn't answer the first few times Liv called, but finally picked up. It was just midnight.
“Hello?” Groggy, disbelieving. “It's midnight.”
“I know. It's still early. You should come out.”
“Liv?” And then, “Come out where?”
“Zola. The food is superb. And the drinks; she pours like a sailor.”
“My god, you're drunk.”
“Bailey, I'm going to need a ride. Drake too. Even sober, someone else should drive for her.”
Liv started laughing, and closed her phone abruptly.
“What did she say?” Drake asked.
Liv looked at her phone, and kept laughing. “She's on her way.”
Bailey hadn't bothered with her contacts, but came upstairs tucked into her coat, her jeans expensive and worn to good effect, her glasses librarian. She paused, several feet from the table, well in view of Liv and Drake and shook her head like a disappointed parent.
“Ladies, you will now buy me a drink. One drink. And while I have my drink, you will both have coffee and two glasses of water. Then we will all go home.”
“Drake, this is Bailey. Bailey, Julia Drake. I'm finishing her
attic.”
“A pleasure,” Bailey said to Drake. “Are you celebrating something, or is this dire drinking?”
“Dire
and
celebratory,” Drake said. “We're working on contradictions.”
“I can't remember,” Bailey said, helping herself to the rest of Liv's drink, “the last time I was out.”
“The bar fight, wasn't it?” Liv asked.
Bailey stared at Liv, horrified.
“She hit Liv first,” Drake said.
“Well, that's true,” Bailey allowed. “And she was a big meathead mother fucker. It could have gone either way.”
“Oh, I like her,” Drake said.
“Told you. Drake is a professor of Art History, Bailey. She thinks education will save me.”
“Not save.” Drake said, flagging the server. “Fix.”
“She thinks,” Liv amended, “that education will fix me.”
“You're broken?” Bailey asked.
“Bailey, we're all broken.”
“I wish,” Bailey said, “that I'd been in on this conversation four hours ago.”
“I like you in glasses,” Liv told Bailey. “I never see you in glasses.”
“Two coffees and four waters,” Bailey told their server. “And I'd like a cape cod.”
“Do you work tomorrow, Bailey?” Drake asked.
“Yes, I'm working lunch. No doubt the garbage disposal will clog any number of times, and I'll have to make a few phone calls to our contractor. Liv, you're starting to look like a hippie. I can't remember the last time your hair was long enough to curl.”
“I'll probably shave it this weekend.”
“Off?” Drake asked.
“All off.”
“Don't worry,” Bailey said. “She looks beautiful with a shaved head. Her eyes are larger, if you can imagine that.”
Drake looked back and forth at the two of them. And Bailey said,
“Where's Claire tonight? At home with Simon? I keep telling my housemate that's what she can expect. Nights at home with the baby, nobody sleeping, and nobody having sex.”
“What does she say?”
“Nothing. She just puts my hand on her belly. And, to be honest, it's a remarkable argument. When she's on her back, her whole fucking abdomen shifts back and forth like he's trying to break out. He gets pissed, apparently, because her spine's hard. I've never seen anything like it—his arms and legs and head pushing up through her skin. It's creepy and amazing and kind of hypnotic.”
“So the boyfriend is going to marry her?”
“I don't know what he's doing, but she's having the baby.”
Their drinks arrived, and Bailey's eyebrows arched a sip in. “I do love this drink.”
They dropped Drake first; waited as she walked up the steps, waved, let herself in.
“What's her story?” Bailey asked.
“Drake?” Liv wanted to smoke, but Bailey had quit, and wouldn't abide cigarettes any longer. She tapped at the door. “Dude, I have no fucking idea.”
“Those boots were killer.”
“Yes, they were.”
“Are you going to fuck her? If you are, will you breakup with Claire first? I don't want any more fucking drama from you two. Done with the drama.” Bailey braked suddenly for a yellow, tossed both of them against their belts.
“I'm not going to fuck her. What's the matter with you?”
“Right. Tonight was just a social outing with the woman you work for. Haven't you done this already? Don't you ever get tired of this story?”
“Bailey, you're yelling at me. Why are you yelling at me?”
“Because you're going to fuck that woman, and the fallout is going to be a big nasty mess. And I don't want another mess. Claire is a little
ragged even without something like this.”
Along Government Way, a raccoon slunk into the underbrush. Liv checked her pack of cigarettes in her coat pocket, exhaled, said, “Claire is a little ragged. That is true.”
Bailey glanced at Liv. “What's going on? What's happened?”
“I don't know. Something. I'm sure something happened, but I have no idea. She just stopped talking. There's the café, and nothing. Nothing else exists.”
“I think that's true for me too. I'm consumed with the café. We bought the place, and everything else disappeared. It can't go on forever, though. We'll find a balance—get a rhythm—when we figure out what the fuck we're doing. We'll normalize. We have to.”
“Oh good. I'll just wait here, shall I?”
“What's the matter, Liv? Are you feeling neglected? Is that what tonight was? Another woman to focus her attention on you—fix you. You go through women like tampons. You're killing me with this shit.”
“You're yelling at me again. Stop yelling at me. I haven't done anything. I didn't even flirt with her.” She reached over and turned the heater off.
“Yeah, clearly she was having a miserable time.” Bailey turned it on again, lowered the setting.

Other books

We All Fall Down: The True Story of the 9/11 Surfer by Buzzelli, Pasquale, Bittick, Joseph M., Buzzelli, Louise
Heat Wave (Riders Up) by Kraft, Adriana
In the Blood by Sara Hantz
The Great Destroyer by Jack Thorlin
The Staying Kind by Cerian Hebert
A Novel Death by Judi Culbertson
A Field Guide To Deception
You must be logged in to Read or Download
CONTINUE
SECURE VERIFIED
Close X