Lullaby for the Rain Girl (25 page)

I pushed the door open slowly.

The wreckage was complete. The tall halogen lamps were lying on their sides. Pieces of shattered dishes glittered in the light coming from the window. Cigarette butts were strewn on the carpet from overturned ashtrays. Beer bottles were everywhere, several of them broken.

Sitting in the middle of this chaos was Rachel.

She looked at me, scowling. Her eyes were hard.

I stepped in, careful to avoid the broken bits of glass in the carpet. I looked into the kitchen, where the cabinet doors gaped. The cabinets were mostly empty, their contents strewn everywhere. Cups, glasses, saucepans, pots. The refrigerator door had swung closed, but not before most of the food had been tossed onto the counter and the floor. Broken eggs ran down kitchen walls. A ketchup bottle had exploded on top of the stove, leaving what looked like blood draining down the oven door and pooling on the floor before it.

I moved past Rachel to Sherry’s and my bedroom. Nothing had been disturbed here, it seemed. But I noticed that Sherry’s clothes had disappeared. There was a note on our rumpled bed.

Ben,

Peter and I are leaving. I don’t know where we’re going yet. I’ll let my parents know where we are.

This has been coming a long time. But it shouldn’t have happened like this. I was drunk and high both. So was Peter. We didn’t think you were here. Actually I thought you’d gone out with Rachel. But that’s not an excuse.

I don’t know what to say, Ben. “I’m sorry” is the most stupid thing in the world to say but it’s all I can think of.

Sherry.

I read it without any particular emotion. When I finished I dropped the note onto the bed and stepped out to the bathroom. Nothing had been disturbed there. Sherry had forgotten a number of her things in her haste to leave.

Finally I made my way to the door of Peter and Rachel’s room. The bed was there, and some of Rachel’s clothes were scattered around. Peter’s file cabinet still stood in the corner, but the drawers had been emptied. Some of the electronic equipment was gone, but some remained; the video camera, for instance, stood on its tripod in the corner. I noticed that it faced the bed.

At last I stepped into the main room again. I sat on the sofa. Rachel was cross-legged on the carpet.

Finally she reached for her cigarettes. She glanced at me, offering me one. I nodded. She lit two and handed one to me.

“They were gone when I got here,” she said finally, in a flat voice. “I was at a movie.”

We sat for a while.

“How did everything...?” I gestured around at the chaos of broken things.

“That was me.”

I wasn’t angry at all. Looking around at the mess I felt nothing.

“If you’d come back earlier,” she said, “you could’ve helped.” She smiled bitterly.

“That would’ve been good,” I agreed.

Silence.

“Did Peter leave you—a note? Anything like that?”

Rachel snorted and gestured at a crumpled piece of notebook paper on the carpet in front of me. I leaned down to it, smoothed it on my knee.

Bye, Babe,
it read.
Sorry the band didn’t work out. Peter.

“Sherry left me one, too,” I said.

“Yeah. I saw it.”

“Did you—know? What was going on? Between them?”

She shook her head. “I kind of suspected. But Peter’s always got other girls anyway. That’s just the way he is. He fucks anything that moves.”

“I didn’t know. About them. The two of them.”

“Well, now you do.”

I watched seagulls cruising the blue sky. I must have slipped into sleep, because by the time I was aware of anything again the light outside had dimmed. It seemed to be early evening. Rachel had moved from the floor to the armchair. She stared pensively into space and smoked.

“So much for George and Mary,” I said finally.

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s from
It’s a Wonderful Life.
Never mind.”

After a while I stood and picked up a few of the bottles and pieces of broken dishes. I got the wastebasket from under the kitchen sink and threw them in. Then I brought out the wastebasket and started tossing things into it. After I’d picked up what I could I wiped off the stove and oven door and counter with paper towels. Rachel said nothing. She didn’t move. I wasn’t sure she was even aware of what I was doing.

It took quite a while, but eventually I had the kitchen and sitting room looking better. All the movement had helped me, a little. When I sat down on the sofa again it was dark outside and I was tired.

“Do you have any idea where they went?” I asked.

“I don’t give a shit where they went,” she said flatly. “Fuck ’em.”

I thought of calling Sherry’s parents, but what would be the point? I considered calling Alice too, but what good would that be? There seemed no reason to call anybody. Sherry and Peter were over eighteen. Legal adults. They were free to go wherever they wanted. There was nothing I could do about it.

I got up and went to the refrigerator, found some ham and cheese that hadn’t been tossed out. There was bread. The mustard jar was tipped on its side on the floor but hadn’t broken. I made two sandwiches.

She glanced up at me as I held the little plate before her. She opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it, and took the plate. She munched morosely on the sandwich.

I thought of turning on the TV—Peter had left that, and the VCR; like his file cabinet, they must have been too big to fit into his car. Would he come back for his things? I wondered. Or was it possible that some of the remaining items actually belonged to Rachel? I didn’t ask. We sat quietly. I turned on one of the newly standing halogen lamps to a low level of light. We sat a while longer, finishing the sandwiches.

After some time I went to our—now my—bedroom, put Sherry’s note away in a drawer, and dropped down onto the bed. I stared at the dark ceiling for a while. I could hear traffic passing by in the distance.

Rachel turned off the lamp in the main room and I heard her using the bathroom. Then she went off to their—now her—bedroom.

The apartment was very quiet. I glanced at the clock beside my bed: it was midnight. Then it was one o’clock. Then two.

I didn’t hear her coming. Perhaps I was dozing. She just suddenly seemed to be there, next to me. We were both still wearing all our things. She lay next to me for some time. I could hear her breathing.

Later, a few minutes or an hour, she turned to me in the bed. She pressed her face against me, her fists clenched against her chest. I slept a little, groggily.

Finally she moved a bit and I heard the rustling of clothes. When she lay down again it was with her bare shoulder pressed against me. I could see her outline in the darkness. She had nothing on. My need was suddenly overwhelming: I stripped away my clothing, sat up on the bed facing her. She opened her legs. I plunged in, immediately shocked at how different it felt with her. She was smaller in every way, tighter, harder. Her smell was unfamiliar: muskier than Sherry’s, earthier, raunchier. We didn’t look at each other. She lay there, eyes shut, while I stared vacantly at her hair on the pillow. Other than our genitals banging together, we didn’t touch. It went on a long time, not the long time of great lovers, but of two people assuaging some unnamable hunger: the act was intensely physical, practically violent, as if we were not only pleasuring ourselves but trying to somehow hurt Sherry and Peter at the same time, vicariously assaulting them, raping them by proxy. How tiny she was, tiny yet fiercely strong. She lay scowling, occasionally grunting or sighing, her hips bucking under me.  Sweat covered us. I grew tired, thirsty, short of breath. Finally we slowed, then stopped. Neither of us had come.

I rolled to her side again and lay there trying to calm my breathing, which had become ragged, uneven. I was shaking. Glancing over at Rachel I saw that she was, too.

We lay there a long time, on top of the sheets, both of us on our backs, close but not quite touching. Our shivering subsided.

Finally light began to redden the bedroom window. I could hardly believe that it had been twenty-four hours since I’d been sitting on the beach, staring at the surf—it felt like centuries. But at the same time it felt like seconds.

At some point as the room grew lighter our hands brushed each other. One finger hooked with another. Then two. Finally, loosely, our hands slipped together. I listened to her breathing, calm now. After a while we raised our clasped hands together and studied them. Like everything about her, Rachel’s hand was small, much smaller than Sherry’s. I felt I could crush it in my own if I wished; but I didn’t wish. I felt suddenly protective of her, wanting to shield her from any more harm. I squeezed her hand gently. She squeezed back. Finally we moved together: our hands traced each other slowly, delicately.  The early morning breeze touched us through the open window. She sighed. I sighed. We investigated each other’s bodies, our fingers moving as explorers’ on a map, seeking. Her strong shoulders, her little breasts, her belly, her hips, her thighs, her feet. Her hair. Her back and bottom.

The room was bright when we moved into each other again. It was quieter this time, gentler. We embraced tightly. We still made no eye contact. But I watched as Rachel squinched her eyes shut, her face screwed up in what some might have taken for anger, and at last she bared her teeth and grunted twice, three times, and let out a long sigh, the tension in her face dissolving to something like peace. Her eyes opened then and she looked at me for the first time, her expression soft and stupefied, like a child waking from an exceptionally deep sleep, uncertain of where she is or how she got there. She touched my face and then wrapped her arms around me. I finished then, so intensely that it was almost painful. I heard myself cry out.

We gazed at each other in the summer morning’s light. Finally, for the first time—the last step of this long night of the soul—we kissed. We kissed for a long while. At some point I realized that Rachel was weeping softly. I was too. We kissed each other’s tears and fell asleep in each other’s arms.

# # #

Later, in the evening, I toasted some frozen waffles in the kitchen and brought them into the bedroom for us to share. We sat cross-legged on the bed, naked, facing each other.

“Thanks,” she said, a forkful of waffle in her mouth. “And thanks for the sandwich, too. Before.”

I smiled a little. “We haven’t got much else left in the house.”

“Mm. We can go shopping.”

“Do you have any money?”

“Some. I’ve got a hundred dollars in the bank. What about you?”

“A few hundred. We won’t starve tomorrow. But we can’t afford to stay here for long.”

“No, I know.”

“If we give notice, though, we’d have a month. The last month was paid ahead.”

“Let’s do that, then. That should be enough time.”

“Yes.”

We ate. I had a surprisingly big appetite; I wound up heading into the kitchen again and scrounging around for something. I found some hard red apples that had been on the floor earlier, but didn’t seem too damaged. I brought them in. We reclined on the bed together, shoulders touching, fingers entwined, munching away.

“These taste really good,” she said.

“They do, don’t they?”

“The waffles, too. Just great.”

“I think so too.” There was something about the moment, the room, the atmosphere that made our humble repast seem far more than it really was. It wasn’t just a meal. It was the beginning of a future. We both sensed it. Our heads touched, softly; she took some of my hair in her hand.

“You need a haircut, hippie boy,” she said.

I chuckled. “Come on, Rachel,” I said. The name “Rachel” felt strange in my mouth, though I’d said it many times before. But I’d not said it to
her,
the Rachel I knew now, my bedmate, my lover. I’d said it to a roommate. It was a completely different sensation.

“Well, you do. You know, that stuff was tickling my face when we were doing it.”

“Well, be that as it may...”

She grinned and kissed me on the jaw. “What do you want me to call you? I can’t call you ‘Ben.’ Everybody calls you Ben.”

“Well, there’s Benjamin.”

“Benjamin. Benjamin and me.” She thought about it. “How about Benji?”

“That’s the name of that dog in the movies.”

“I know. You’ve got enough hair. It’s appropriate.”

“Ha ha.”

I reached over and tickled her belly. She shrieked and kicked like a child, her legs swinging wildly in the air. She pushed at my arms.

“Stop,” she cried, twisting and writhing, “or I’ll do something bad!”

“Like what?”

Grinning, she grabbed me by the balls and squeezed—not enough to really hurt, but enough for me to feel it.

“Ow! Hey! Okay, I give!” I held my hands back.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“You
really
sure?” She squeezed a bit harder.

“Yes! Yes!”

“Okay, then.” She let go and patted them softly. “Don’t make me get rough with your guys. I like your guys.”

“They like you too.”

“I noticed. Well, I’ll think about it, Benjamin. Hm...Benjamin and me. Benja-me. Benja-me-me.” She grinned. “Sounds good. You and me together.”

“Well, it’s better than ‘hippie-boy.’”

“Ha.” She nestled her face against my chest. “Benja-me-me it is, then. I’ve christened you. You’re officially mine. And don’t you forget it.”

# # #

Of course it was ridiculous. Of course it was too fast. Of course we were both in shock, grabbing at the nearest life raft that presented itself. But that only made it more intense. Everything I’d previously disliked about Rachel Blackburn suddenly became attractive, crazily so: her body, so unkempt and dirty and wild; her raunchy smell, part sweat, part cigarette smoke, part—at least in bed—vagina. Even her pinched little face, dark-featured and snub-nosed, almost pig-like, became something I wanted to touch and kiss and stroke forever. She seemed to feel the same about me. Like most young lovers, we found ourselves with a decided reluctance to put on our clothes. We slept together, showered together, made love—though “made love” is a feeble expression for the ferocity of what we engaged in. Not once in those first twenty-four hours did we so much as mention Sherry or Peter’s names. Though in real time they’d only just left us, by the time kept in my heart, they seemed fast-fading figures of another age. Rachel was my reality now, my present, my future. There was nothing else.

We quickly discovered a sexual compatibility that was astounding—so much so that I found myself wondering why I’d stayed so long with Sherry O’Shea, who now seemed slow, sluggish, timid, though as a partner she’d always been quite enough for me before. But Rachel was fast, hard, brutal. She grabbed and pulled and scratched. It was simply
different
with her. Sherry and I had made love; Rachel and I, for want of a more elegant word, fucked. I would be left with bruises, abrasions. Her thighs would be chafed. It didn’t matter. That was part of us, part of us together. It might have been frightening if it hadn’t been so completely joyous.