Bitten: Dark Erotic Stories (21 page)

The Girl watching from the ceiling wanted to make the girl below nod and stand and walk out of the diner with him, get into his pickup truck (she was sure he had a truck), and drive out of the desert, past the little spas, past the hotels and gas stations, past the windmills and the billboards advertising retirement communities, golf courses, and strip clubs. It didn’t matter where they were going. Nothing mattered except that he had found her again, sooner than she had ever dared to hope, and now they were leaving together.

* * *

But of course, they were not leaving together.

The man looked over at Girl. He had large, dark eyes and thick eyebrows that met in the middle. He had a full mouth, a mouth of promises, and it smiled at her. Then he got up from the counter—he was taller than she’d realized, almost unnaturally tall, with huge hands and feet—took some money out of his shabby leather wallet, left it beside his empty soda glass and half-eaten burger, and walked out the door, his head bent slightly, his shoulders hunched, making him appear shorter and smaller than he really was, and shy.

She almost followed him. But then Girl remembered who she was. She was a thirteen-year-old desert rat without a real name who had seen three heads in her father’s grotto. Perhaps, like her parents, she was mentally ill. Didn’t the heads prove that? And besides, the man had not recognized her. If what she believed to be true was true, wouldn’t he have known it also? Still, the loss she felt was real. And so was the strange, seemingly unfounded sense of relief; at least, if only for a moment, she had found him again.

John Grayson did know what Girl knew. He knew it in the first moment he turned his head and saw her walk in the door of the diner in a blast of brightness and dust. But he had no way to understand, or even to accept, what he knew. All his mind could absorb at the moment was that he had wandered into a desert diner on his way back home to the city and that there on the stool beside him was a girl with thick dark bangs hanging into her sad green eyes, long thin sun-browned arms and legs and something about her that made him want to drive away very fast and never look back. If the three heads had been able to reveal themselves to him, they would have bobbed up from dark water, blinked their filmy eyes, and said, “John Grayson, have you not learned anything yet, in these two lifetimes? Why do you rush away? Now is your chance. Time runs out.”

But the three heads were not able to reveal themselves to John Grayson because he refused to believe in almost anything, let alone three talking decapitated heads, and so he got into his pickup truck (she was right about the truck—she saw this as she watched through the window, watched him drive away in a cloud of dust) and left her there.

It would be five years before they found each other again. And the heads wondered,
How much have you changed?

* * *

Days before Clarissa died, she called Girl to her bedside.

“Reach under my pillow,” Clarissa rasped through dry lips.

Girl slipped her hand with its birdlike bones under Clarissa’s head. There she found the wooden doll with a painted face and a wig of real hair.

“Keep her with you. Hide her from your father,” Clarissa said. “One day she will help you.”

Girl put the doll on the table next to her when she copied the pictures out of her mother’s art books. She imagined that the doll guided her hand to make such accurate copies of the bony, sad-eyed men and women in the books. Girl put the doll in her apron pocket when she did her chores. She imagined that the little doll gave her strength. Sometimes she imagined that there was less to do in the morning than there had seemed the night before, as if the doll had done some work in the night. But it could also have been Girl’s desire that made it seem that way. Desire and the imagination are powerful things.

But they were not powerful enough to help Girl when the three boys came to the spa that day, a year after her mother’s death. Or maybe desire worked more than one way. There was the conscious desire for the things you wanted—like escape, like John Grayson. And the unconscious desire to be hurt in some way, to obliterate the part that wanted what you might never have.

Girl knew the boys from school: Alby Short, Jeff J., and Jeff K. They were a year ahead of her. Once they’d whistled at her in the hall, jostling her—and when she turned to look, they made puking faces and laughed. The days were getting hotter, and school was out; they were bored, they were high. Girl was cleaning in her cutoffs and flip-flops, her hot hair tied back in a ponytail. The boys were the only customers at the Princess Spa that day. They splashed each other and cackled. Whenever she walked by they whistled and cackled more.

Alby Short yelled, “Hey, Girl!”

She stopped what she was doing and looked at him.

“Is that really your name?”

“Is your name really Short or do they just call you that?”

She had no idea what made her bold on the rare occasions she was; maybe the doll in her apron pocket? Was it boldness or something else?

“Fuck you,” Alby grunted.

“I think the girl needs a little talking to,” Jeff said. She wasn’t sure which Jeff it was.

“I’ll show you how short I am,” Alby said.

Girl turned and started toward the office. Caleb was out that day. She didn’t know when he’d be back.

The boys got out of the pool and hung towels around their necks, put on their sneakers.

They followed her; one of the Jeffs blocked the door.

“I heard there’s some kind of secret building here,” Alby said.

“Yeah, we want to see it.”

“I can’t show it to you. It’s for private parties.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what we had in mind,” Alby Short said, nodding to the Jeffs. “Fuckin’ do it!”

The Jeffs grabbed Girl and pinned her arms back. One slapped a pruney hand over her mouth.

Alby took a ring of keys from Girl’s pocket. As he did, the wooden doll fell on the cement and rolled away.

“Which one?”

Girl tried to bite at the hand on her mouth.

“Well, we’ll just have to try them all.”

The boys forced her to the entrance to the grotto that was marked Private, and Alby tried a few keys before one fit. The Jeffs pushed her down the slippery stairs to the side of the pool. The rotten egg smell she knew so well smacked her in the face and made her gag for the first time.

The Jeffs pushed her down on the rock floor as Alby unzipped his pants, took out his dick, as he called it, and shoved it in her mouth.

They left her there, in a pool of vomit, as her eyes searched the empty water.

She got up, washed her face, and cleaned everything with her head held back so as not to drip more blood on the floor. When Caleb got home, she told him she had fallen because she was even more afraid of what he might do to her if he found out than of what had occurred. For days, her eyes kept searching the water, looking for the heads.

A few years later, just before Girl changed her name and left the desert for good, she searched for them one more time, but they did not appear.

* * *

JADE AND JOHN

John Grayson saw Jade first, lit up on stage with a long, dark wig swinging to her waist. She had on a red satin cheongsam slit to her hip and new stiletto heels that she still couldn’t move that well in. Her eyes were made up like a cat’s under the bangs of the wig, and her lips shone. The men couldn’t see she was trembling; she had learned to hide it pretty well. Bell had been giving her lessons, and if she just lost herself in the music, she did okay.

John Grayson saw her ass and her legs and her hair and her small breasts under the tight dress. He saw her huge green eyes and full mouth. She made him hard right away. But he felt something more than desire and more than the maudlin longing to take her home and care for her. What he felt was recognition. He knew things. The way she leaned forward when she talked to you, gazing intently at your face, what her voice sounded like, how she smelled, the way her hip bones would feel in his hands. And, like that time in the desert, he wanted to turn and leave, but this time he couldn’t. He wasn’t as strong anymore. Looking at all that death had made him less immune to life than he thought.

He sat down near the stage and ordered a beer. She was taking off the dress now. It fell away easily when she plucked apart the Velcro closures. Underneath she wore a red bra and G-string. She looked vulnerable this close; he wondered what her voice sounded like. And he could tell she’d noticed him, or maybe she was just good at making the men feel seen, but she didn’t seem that sophisticated. There was something awkward about her that he liked. Like a fawn. Up this close he could tell her thighs were shaking. But she was fierce, too; she was someone who had survived something.

Jade saw John Grayson when he sat at the edge of the stage watching her as if there was no one else there. She didn’t know right away if he was the man she’d seen in the desert five years ago, but the feeling in her chest was the same. Warmth spreading through her heart and into every vein. She moved closer to him. Bell was always telling her to get closer to the edge, but she was usually scared she’d fall. She forgot about that. She moved closer to the man in the cap and danced for him. She turned her back and unhooked her bra, turned around with her hands holding the cups and let her breasts fall out, tossing the bra aside and lifting her hands above her head. She crouched down so she could see his face better. She’d been looking for that face for years, maybe longer than years. His eyes drifted down her body, then looked back into her eyes, then back down as she spread herself open for him, so close he could smell her perfume and sweat. She parted her lips and leaned even closer, seeing the shadow of scars on his cheeks, the stubble on his chin. It was him. He was close enough that he could have reached out and touched her trembling leg. Her calves strained from the stress of her shoes. Her ankles wobbled slightly. She tilted her head, looking at him. Other men were noticing. It was the first time she’d really danced like she meant it. The lights made a purple aura around her. John Grayson had a hard-on, and it wouldn’t let him run away.

After the second show, she came out in her jeans and without the wig. Her hair was damp with sweat, slicked back so her eyes looked even bigger, even with all the makeup scrubbed off. You could see the freckles across her nose. There was something boyish about her; it was hard to imagine her up on stage in the G-string. He was still in the same seat, hunched over. She cocked her head toward the door, and he got up and followed her.

In the lot she stopped and turned to him. The security guard was watching.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“My name’s John. Grayson.”

“Hi, John Grayson. I’m Jade. Do you come here a lot?”

“First time,” he said. “Sort of. I had to do some work here.”

“I just started working.”

They stood and just looked at each other. The guard hitched his pants up and started over.

“I’m not supposed to talk to the customers,” she said. “Meet me at the bar across the street.”

* * *

It was a small room with hardly any space for the band in the corner. A string of Christmas lights hung over the bar. When she walked in, he was already at a table. It was brighter here than at the Tinderbox, and his hat was off; she saw his acne scars, the dark circles under his eyes. She slid into the seat and threw her bag over the side.

“Hey,” she said. “What’s up?”

“Can I get you a drink?”

“Beer. What you have. Please.”

He went to the bar and brought it back to her.

“You don’t look old enough to drink.”

“I’ve got ID.”

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“How do you know I’m someone you should be having a drink with?” he asked.

“I know.”

“How?”

“Your eyes.”

“What about them?”

“I just know.”

He nodded and took a swig of beer. “It’s not safe for you girls right now. You should be more careful.”

“Okay, you want to know? I recognized you.”

John Grayson looked up from his beer. He had a strange, somnam-bulant expression on his face. Jade’s hands stroked her bottle. She crossed and uncrossed her legs. She was wet, and it wasn’t from the heat.

“I saw you once before,” she said. “When I was a kid. Or, anyway, you look like this guy.”

“I have that kind of face,” he said.

“No you don’t.”

“So you trust me because you think you saw me before?”

“I did see you before. Why are you so worried about me?”

“I’m a forensic photographer.”

Jade shivered and rubbed her arms.

“Are you cold?” he asked. “Do you want my jacket?” He had one of those brushed-cotton zip-up ones. Dark blue. It looked soft.

“No, thanks. It’s just … that’s creepy. And why—”

“It’s a living.” He scowled a little now.

“No, I mean, it’s cool. It’s just not the best pickup line. I mean, if that’s what you were trying to do. I don’t get why you told me that then.”

“I recorded what happened to those girls at your club. My friend Washington’s the detective on it. It’s the most brutal thing I’ve ever … I came out tonight because I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I hope they find that fuck … “

Jade said, “John Grayson, I think you have been looking too long at death.”

John Grayson looked up at her. In that moment the sleepwalker expression was gone.

She followed him to his apartment. Before they left she had used his cell phone to call Bell from the bar to say she was going out, might be back really late. Bell questioned her for a long time, but Jade kept saying, “It’s okay. I promise. I know him. He’s cool. Really. You’ll tell Shadow I’m okay, right?”

“Be back with the car by morning. And be safe.”

He was much more nervous than she was. As they walked in, he said, “I hope you don’t do this too often. I mean, it’s not safe around here.”

“I’ve never done
it
before.”