Beyond the Pale Motel (11 page)

Carlton undressed and lay on the bed watching me where I stood by the window that overlooked the streets below. I didn't have a scarf with me to soften the light. Maybe I should turn off the lamp? His cock was standing straight up again. “Take off your panties,” he said.

I slipped them off from under my black satin, fifties-style dress, then started to unbutton it.

“No, leave the rest. Come sit over here, eh?” He took off his glasses; he meant sit on his face. I climbed up onto him, lifted the skirt of my dress, and eased my wetness down over his lips. He licked me gently, then harder, sucking softly on my clit as if it were dainty candy. I was worried my ass would suffocate him, but he seemed happy, stroking his cock in rhythm to my bounces.

“Now take out those big tits.”

I unbuttoned my dress and undid my bra. He flipped me over so I was on my back and he stared at my breasts while he continued to touch himself. “Such nice big, soft titties,” he said. Then he pushed up my skirt and slithered down so his mouth was on me again while he jammed his pelvis into the mattress. After I came, gasping for what felt like my last breath, tears sliding down my cheeks, he lay on his back and I lowered myself onto his legs and put him in my mouth.

“Do it sitting up. With your legs spread so I can see your pussy.”

I did this, too.

Then he said, “May I please ask you to do something else?”

I waited. It was the first time he'd asked, although his commands had been spoken in the same rather refined tone, as if he were telling me to bring him iced tea.

“Can I put my toes in your pussy?”

I just felt confused, not even that shocked. It had seemed to come out of nowhere. I might have agreed.

But then he frowned. “My wife never lets me do that either.”

Your what-the-fuck?

“She lives in Canada with her boyfriend but she visits me twice a year. We sort of sequester ourselves for that time and do yoga and meditate. She's deeply spiritual. If I'm seeing someone, they have to understand I won't be available at all for that time. It's just this thing we do. She's coming next week, actually.”

“I'm not feeling so great.” I skittered away from him, clutching my belly, suddenly aware of the way the flesh rolled there. The queasiness congealing in my gut was as much about me as him. Why had I done this? “I need to go now.”

He eyed me coldly and put his glasses back on. “Okay, I was just being honest. I'm sorry if that bothers you. She's my soul mate and she left me for another man. Do you know what that's like?” Behind the coldness I recognized raw hurt.

“Actually, I do,” I said, pulling on my clothes, sucking in my belly to tug up the zipper on the side of my dress. Adding to the humiliation, it caught my flesh with tiny metal teeth. Maybe he would tell me to stay. I might have stayed.

“She says she still loves me but she's not attracted to me. It's very painful.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “Really. I have to go.”

He stood up, naked, facing me. He was still hard. “Why are you upset? Because I have a young, thin wife who's a yoga teacher? Because I see her twice a year?” His voice was louder now, almost, maybe, somewhat desperate. “It's not like you're in love with me or anything. Are you? You're not in love with me or something, so why should you care?”

I shouldn't have cared. I just wanted to let him fuck me again. But he was obviously in love with his young, hot, spiritual yoga-teacher wife; I couldn't even pick up my meditation beads anymore. And that crazy psychic said that Carlton had killed me in another life.

I stumbled to the door, holding my shoes. “It's okay. Sorry. Thanks. Thank you. I'll get a cab home.”

The hall smelled of air coolant and fried food. The red-and-gold carpet scratched under my feet. Ghosts wept in the mirrors.

After I got home and went to bed, I dreamed Carlton and I were walking around in a dark cavernous store filled with china and glass figurines of women that kept shattering into shards in my hands. The store seemed to go on forever. Finally we found a door. Inside there was a dark room with pedestals everywhere. On each one were red-veined white marble statues of naked female body parts. Feet, legs, torsos, breasts, heads.

Then I was one of them—just my head and nude, limbless torso balanced on a pedestal.

In the morning, I called Shana and told her about Carlton.

“You didn't drink, did you?”

“No, we were at Bar Wire and he was, but I wasn't tempted even. But why did I sleep with him? He could have been anybody. He could have been the Hollywood Killer.” (In spite of what the psychic had said, I was sure this wasn't true.) “I make myself sick.” (This was true.)

“You need to call me and Bree every day,” she said. “And a minimum of three meetings a week. I've been way too easy on you.”

*   *   *

After the meeting Shana had to leave so I went to fellowship at Planet Pie alone, and the writer guy from the other day was there. He came over to my table and introduced himself. Dean Berringer.

His handshake was firm and his brown eyes crinkled at the edges when he smiled. “I appreciated your share the other day, Catt,” he said. Five o'clock shadow, bushy eyebrows, a male smell. I missed that—burrowing into Dash's armpit. A place to forget the world. “Sounds like you've been through a lot.”

“What about you?” I asked.

“Nothing too dramatic. I'd been sitting at my desk for way too long, stuck on this part of my book, and I knew I had to be with my people.”

“You're a writer?” Feigning ignorance.

“Yeah, if you can call it that. In this town you're not really unless it says
screen
in front of it.”

“In some places it has to say
of actual book
after,” I said.

“Yeah, but they don't acknowledge me in New York. So Cal surrealism. Indie press. Postpunk LA.”

“Still,” I said.

“And you?”

“I just cut hair.”

He removed his hat to reveal a receding hairline, not like Cyan's and Dash's but getting there at a slower pace. “Can you do anything with this?”

“Leopard spots. Tiger stripes. Zebra.”

He put his hat back on. “I was thinking more along the lines of a magical potion to make it grow back.”

“It looks sexy on you,” I said. “I like bald men. High testosterone or something, right?” I was out of breath again like in the meeting, sweating through my turquoise nylon blouse.

“I'd like to take you out after a meeting sometime.”

*   *   *

I bought his first novel at Bookgarten, the only remaining local indie bookstore (they also sold garden supplies in order to make ends meet).
The Eurydices
was about a sculptor named Owen Orr whose wife dies of a brain tumor. Grief stricken, he becomes involved with his models, all of whom resemble his wife in some way. One of the women accuses him of raping her. All the women are part of a cult and they tear him to pieces in the end.

The book was well written and with its shock value made me forget everything else. Bree was always surprised that I could watch and read the scariest things, even alone by myself at night. I needed the book and movie monsters to chase away the ghosts in my head.

*   *   *

Dean Berringer wore a faded pink T-shirt with a skull on it. The skull had black roses for eyes. The whole thing, even the pink and the roses, only added to his masculine look. I thought,
Uh-oh.

“My name's Dean and I'm an alcoholic.”

“Hi, Dean.”

“The reason I'm sharing today is that I've been kind of disturbed by something.” He frowned and rubbed his forehead. “I'm a writer and the book I've been working on is similar to what's going on in the news, with that Hollywood Serial Killer thing. I realize this is just coincidence, but it is really upsetting to me; I can't stop thinking about it. The guy in my book kills women and cuts off their body parts to construct a female zombie. Like these women they keep finding. I mean, the body parts. I mean, I write horror, I've been writing it for years, but nothing like this has ever happened. I guess it would be worse if I wrote and published the book first, but I don't know. Like it was some copycat killing that I started. Anyway, thank you for letting me share.”

Even as I tried to suppress a shudder, I knew I wouldn't skip the coffee date we'd made. If anything, I wanted to talk to him more. As if he might have some insight into what was haunting all of us.

*   *   *

“So I appreciated your share,” I said when we were seated at Jack and the Bean.

He nodded and ran his thumb around the rim of his coffee cup. “Thank you. I wasn't sure I should say anything.”

“That's kind of the deal, I guess. I mean, so they tell me.”

“So they do. But I'm glad you decided to have coffee with me anyway.”

We sat looking at each other, without speaking for a moment. Then he said, “I just wish I understood the relationship between my book and that freak out there.”

“Collective unconscious, maybe? You picked up on something, I guess. I liked your first book, though. I'm going to write it up for my blog.”

“It's pretty dark. Although I suppose after my share you would know that about me anyway.”

“Dark can be good.” I squinted at him, the sun light hitting my eye line as the sun edged lower in the sky. “It helps me forget my own shit.”

“I wouldn't guess you'd feel that way. From looking at you.”

I asked him why and he touched the sleeve of the gauze blouse I'd borrowed from Bree. “Flowers everywhere.”

I shrugged. “It's my friend's. She made it. And flowers can be dark.”

His eyebrows went up. “Really?”

“Yes. Poisonous ones. Psychotropic ones. Carnivorous.”

“Right. Well spoken.”

“I did my senior thesis at UCLA on death in Los Angeles literature and music,” I said.

“Very impressive. Didion, West, Chandler, the Doors?”

“Exactly. And also Eve Babitz, Steve Erickson, Janet Fitch, Bret Easton Ellis, X, Tupac.”

“To Live and Die in L.A.”

“That's the one.”

“Mmmm. So the flower is darker than I thought.”

“I was goth in high school,” I said, fake-scowling at him. “Don't mess with me.”

“Duly noted. Which school?”

“Fairfax High.”

“You're a local. More creds for your thesis.”

He was from upstate New York, had gone to Harvard, lived in Boston, came here when someone optioned one of his books for the screen. He'd gone through a bad divorce after his professor wife had an affair with one of her grad students.

“Fifteen years younger than her. They just had their first kid.”

That was his wound, and I realized those bloody rips were the things that made me fall in love with someone more than poetry or music or strength or beauty ever could.

“Tell me, if you don't mind, it might be too personal. But what you are trying to forget?” he asked me. “Something to do with your share at the meeting?”

“It's a longish story.”

“I have all night.”

It was if we were touching—our conversation had that kind of energy, a rush back and forth between us.

We stood at the curb. I'd walked to the café but Dean had a red Triumph and he asked if I wanted a ride home. I put on the helmet; he fastened it under my chin. I slung my leg over the seat, pressed against his rippling back. Hot skin beneath the T-shirt, broad chest; my legs clung to his hips. Books and bikes; we really might as well be fucking already.

He was going too fast. The wind whipped against my face burning my lips and cheeks. I bent my head down behind his shoulder. My eyes stung. We ripped the air, we tore it up like silk. I thought,
Fuck you, Dash. Look at me now, you asshole. Check me out, Jarell. Carlton, you fucking toe-sucker.

Dean held my hand as we walked up the stairs to the bungalow. He kissed me soft on the mouth and then we were entwined and then his hand was on my ass and his pelvis was against mine and I didn't have to wonder about his cock.

“I should go,” he said. Then, more softly: “Should I?”

I shook my head, thinking of the dark in my home. The Dash-less dark. The bumps in the night. The Hollywood Serial Killer harvesting lithe limbs of his victims. How they were alone when he got them, no daddies or husbands or boyfriends to protect them.
That's why boyfriends are a good idea.
Dean Berringer might write horror but I doubted he was dangerous in any way. “Come in.”

I opened the door and we stumbled into the living room as if we were still drunks. Sasha darted away into the shadows like a phantom cat. I led Dean to the couch, where we fell on top of each other, kissing, kissing, kissing. Soft lips, strong teeth, a tongue somewhere in between the pressure of the two. Dean's fingers slid down between my legs pushing into me; I bucked up against them. I had tears in my eyes from excitement, and mild fear, not sorrow, not love, I told myself, like the tears I used to get as a child listening to scary stories at slumber parties, and I blinked them back so I could see him better in the dark. His eyes glittered black with light from the streetlamp. He had lines in his face, was probably nearing fifty. I found myself wondering if he wanted children. I would have let him fuck me without a condom if he'd asked. But in my bedroom he took one out and dutifully put it on. I hated the rubber between us; I wanted to feel him come into me. He spread my legs and put himself inside, pushed his pelvis so that he couldn't go any farther. More tears came to my eyes. It hurt a little. I wanted that hurt, wanted to erase the debacle with Carlton. Wanted to erase my five years of marriage with each thrust. And Jarell, too. Maybe, weirdly, especially Jarell. We'd only been together a few times, I reminded myself. It had been only about the sex. And I had ended it. In my head there had been potential, but only in my head. Was this thing with Dean something more?