Perfect Opposite (34 page)

“Come on, chill out, you look so cute... a real little country girl.”

“Screw you!”

We got into Mike’s heap of a truck and headed out to the address where the party was supposed to take place. Since it was Friday night, the roads were jammed with people heading into town and we were forced to crawl along at a snail’s pace. At one moment I looked around at the other cars to find that all the faces inside were turned towards us in amazement.

“Everyone’s
staring at us!”

“Of course they
are. Wouldn’t you?” he started to giggle, “This was a great idea, I’m so proud of myself.”

“I don’t know how I let you talk me into this.”

“Oh come on, relax. Can’t you just go with the flow and enjoy the night?”

“Hardly…” I grunted, smiling inwardly all the same.

The roads descended into complete gridlock as we approached the middle of downtown, and I found myself hoping that by some stroke of luck we might remain stuck for the rest of the night. I settled more comfortably into my seat, lit a cigarette and stared up at the stars in the night sky. The guy in the car next to ours started honking his horn furiously, and I looked down at him amused, knowing that no amount of noise was going to get him there any faster.

Suddenly, a motorcycle edged between our two vehicles and came to a stop, waiting for the lights up ahead to change to green. The rider was only two feet away from me and only the window glass separated us.

When he turned his head towards mine, I felt a knot tighten in my stomach. His face was hidden behind the helmet and only thing I could see was a pair of mist-colored eyes staring right at me.

Feeling like I’d been struck by lightning, I flinched and the cigarette I was holding fell through my fingers. I looked down quickly to retrieve the burning cigarette,
but when I looked out of the window again, the bike was gone.

“Hey!
Everything OK, doll? “

“I thought I just saw.... someone.” I whispered the words, still shocked by the feeling that had come over me. “It’s nothing I gue
ss, just my mind playing tricks.”

“
You sure?”

“Yeah.
” I gave a shrug and fixed my gaze on the car in front.

We finally parked in front of a building downtown and it would have been impossible to miss the place nearby where the party was in full swing. I looked up at the huge windows of the first floor apartment to see the shadow of a giant chandelier quivering across the ceiling and a lot of long white curtains ruffling in the breeze. Music blared from inside, and on the terrace, among other characters, there was a big white rabbit with spectacles talking to Marilyn Monroe, sipping from an oversized glass of wine.

I tried to fix the petticoats that had bunched up around my legs and followed Mike, who seemed to be in his element with his thumbs tucked inside the waistband of his leotard. As he approached the entrance he caused an inevitable uproar among those already present
. It was fun to watch him messing around, inviting girls to touch his muscles or stroke his moustache, laughing along with them as his macho WWF bravado gave way to mirth.

I took a tall glass of something pink and fizzy from a silver tray near the door and hung back
, close to a bunch of people who would have looked at home in Marilyn Manson’s band, trying not to think about the hallucination, or whatever it was I’d experienced earlier. When I did think about it a little more, an ironic sort of laugh rose halfway to my throat. Like a character in another tale, I’d been visited a little late by the ghost of Christmas past.

I wasn’t in the mood to mingle, so I went on exploring the place, going through the rooms and looking around me.
I wondered why any sane person would invite more than a hundred people into their home for no apparent reason. The floor of the apartment was well saturated with spilled booze by now and cigarette ends littered the carpet.

Plenty of time must have passed, because it seemed to me that I could see the nature of the party change before my eyes. On one couch near the window several people of inde
terminate gender seemed to be lying in a heap, fawning over each other in a drunken haze. A glance around the room revealed that several couples were already making out up against the walls, their poses suggestive enough to make me blush. The music had changed too, as cool house beats were replaced by something more industrial and edgy.

I quickly left the room and went on looking for Mike who was nowhere to be seen. I finally caught sight of him, smiling at a bunch of g
irls dressed as Playboy bunnies and decided to make my way over through the crowd.

Halfway there I felt a hand slap my ass so I swung my wicker basket instinctively. It landed hard between the legs of an Arab Sheikh, but sent radishes and other assorted vegetables flying across the room at the same time, not that anyone seemed to notice. I left the sultan clutching his family jewels and took a few more strides towards Mike, realizing too late that I’d hooked some guy with my cane along the way, and that I was dragging him behind me – an angel in nothing but white y-fronts and a dog collar.

“You brought me to an orgy!” I hissed in Mike’s ear when I’d finally gotten rid of my unfortunate baggage.

“Darling, where did you disappear to?” he placed one arm around my waist and clung to me.

“Mike!”

“
Shh...” stumbling, he started to pull me towards the corner of the room.

“You’re
drunk.”

“Me? No.
” he shook his head, hovering over me, “I’m just very slightly out of my head.”

“
Yeah, I can see that...”

“
Oh, doll... I don’t think you do.” slurring his words badly, his face came very close to my own,” Sasha, my beautiful Sasha... I am... Absolutely. Totally. Irreversibly... intoxicated by you.”

"
Completely wasted, that’s what you are.” I took him by the hand and started dragging him towards the door “Come on, I’m taking you home. “

With some difficulty, I managed to get him to sit down in the back seat, then got in behind the wheel and took a deep breath. It was around two o’clock in the morning and the streets were almost deserted, so I decided to put my foot down on the way back. The engine sputtered to life and I turned the wheel, pressing my foot down hard on the gas to move off.

When I stopped at the first set of lights I pulled the ridiculous wig off my head and threw it behind me, where it may or may not have hit Mike. I glanced over my shoulder to check up on him once a little later, hearing him mumble something incoherent. Besides looking totally out of it, I
was pretty sure that he’d survive.

“Just like a teenager…” I commented under my breath as I found myself turning the truck into our street.

I parked near to the entrance to our house, as close as I could get to the door, which meant taking the truck up onto the sidewalk. Cursing my luck, I realized that Mike was now asleep and it took all my strength to get him out of the back and support his weight. With difficulty, I tried to maneuver the semi-conscious yellow wrestler towards the door. He wasn’t especially big or heavy, but he was still getting on for twice my size. His weight almost got the better of me a few times, which would have left us both in a heap on the ground, but I stuck with it and eventually we reached the front wall of the house, which supported him a little as I rummaged around in my bag for the keys.

Suddenly, I got a really strange and powerful feeling that I was being watched and quickly raised my head to the night air, but the street
looked deserted. There seemed to be only long rows of dark cars as far as the eye could see and, in the middle of the street, a single sheet of newspaper carried by the breeze.

Great.
I’m getting paranoid again.

I put the key in the lock then pushed the door open, helping Mike through it in a last show of strength.

Rather than let him drop on the kitchen floor, as I might have done, I guided him straight through to his bedroom and let him flop down on his bed. I was just covering him with a blanket, when he reached his hand out for mine and pulled me back towards the bed.

“Don’t go.
” he whispered and raised himself enough to bring his face close to my hair, “Stay here with me tonight.”

“
You are such a…” I felt his lips touch my neck and stopped speaking.

At first I was too shocked to
say anything, but as soon gathered my thoughts, I jumped up, moving nimbly back towards the door.

“Mike, I...”

“I know... I know how it is. But he’s not here, is he?” he reached a hand out to me again and looked me full in the face through bleary eyes.

“Don’t do that. Please, just... don’t.
” I bit down on my lower lip and looked away towards the kitchen.

“I’d never leave you, you
know?”

“You’re so out of
it, you don’t even know what you’re saying.”

I turned one hundred and eighty degrees and left the room, pulling the door firmly closed behind me.

Thrown off balance, I made my way up to my own room to change into some yoga pants and a sweater before going back down to the kitchen, dragging my costume behind me. A glance in the direction of Mike’s room revealed that his door was still shut tight, so I felt relieved as I pushed the outfit back into the sack. When that was done, I went through to the living room to light a candle and sit up on the ledge of the bay windows, staring down the length of the deserted street outside, my head resting against the glass.

Mike’s drunken performanc
e had unsettled me and I hoped that in the morning it would all be forgotten. The fact remained that he had been acting a little different lately. I was conscious more than ever that he’d been taking every opportunity to hug me or get up close. I hadn’t thought much about it at the time, feeling the brotherly affection that I did, but perhaps I’d been wrong in thinking we felt the same way about it. If that was true, I didn’t like these new developments at all. I didn’t want to face losing my friend now that I’d found him.

I looked down at the yard outside the window, then up at the clock on the wall of the living room. Three o’clock. Stretching out on the window ledge, my feet up against the frame, I lit a cigarette and tried to blow smoke rings, but I was no good at it.

The lights in the house opposite ours went on and off occasionally, and I was surprised that anyone else would be up this late. I stubbed out the cigarette and was about to get down and go to bed when a lonely figure out on the street caught my attention.

Nothing more than a silhouette, he was mostly enveloped by the darkness, leaning against a fence outside a house
across the street, his hands deep in his pockets. I squinted to try to make out more, and when the lights flashed on again he did come into focus.

My heart started to thump in my chest as I heard the sound of my own deep breathing. The ashtray near my hand wobbled and then fell to the floor, shattering into pieces against the hard wooden floor.
Without thinking I jumped down, not caring about the broken glass below, and ran through the kitchen and out onto the street in my bare feet, leaving the door to clatter shut behind me. I stopped in the middle of the driveway and stared at the ghost before me. My hands shaking madly, I was struggling to breathe, feeling like my heart would soon explode in my chest.

Pushing away from the fence, the man started walking towards me and kept on coming until we were only a few feet apart. I raised my hands to my face and covered my cheeks,
unbelieving.

“Princess...” he whispered in a hoarse voice and reached his hand out towards me.

I backed away a little in the darkness and almost fell, feeling my ankles twist underneath me.

“No... I’m losing my mind.” I whispered and
turning, ran back towards the house.

As soon as I got through the door, I slammed it hard behind me and leaned back on it, letting my body collapse on the floor.
Completely confused, I buried my head in my hands, a tempest raging in my mind.

Even though it seemed like I’d been there for just a few minutes, the next time I raised my head it was morning and I was still at the foot of the door. A kitchen door sprang open, and the next thing Mike was running towards me.

“Sasha?”

“Yes?” I said, looking at the cold tips of my toes, noticing a red scratch that curved down to the sole of my right foot.

It was hard for me to recognize my own voice, which sounded almost pr
eternaturally calm and composed.

“What are you doing on the floor, doll?”

I turned my face to Mike, who was looking at me with confusion written all over his features. He seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second before sitting down next to me to place a gentle hand on my knee, tentatively, as though he might be afraid to touch me.

”Sasha?”

“He’s outside. I saw him.”

“Who is?”