Sex & Violence (31 page)

***

The next morning, I woke up thinking about Collette. Though I hadn’t dreamed of her, not in a while. It was very Dirtbag Evan to think of other girls with one in my bed, but the truth was that I never really stopped thinking about Collette. The letters to her in my notebook under the bed, next to the gross lotion, the unlucky condoms. I’d written the last letter just a few days earlier.

I sat up, with an idea, but Jordan woke up and pulled me back to her. I almost stopped her, because the idea was so strong, but Jordan had some ideas of her own. So we did hers first. In my bed and on the floor. Also, my tiny shower. She had lots of good ideas.

Jordan’s final good idea was that I should make her breakfast. Do girls always have their good ideas the minute you’ve realized you’ve got something important to do? But since there was nothing in the fridge, I used that as my chance. Got dressed, gathered up the Collette letters. Put on my shoes and grabbed my keys.

“You’re not running away and never coming back, are you?” Jordan asked.

“You’re not going to college and never coming back, are you?”

“Evan …”

“I’m kidding. I’m just going to grab some stuff at the grocery.”

There was a post office branch in Cub Foods, so I slid the notebook into a cardboard mailer, paying extra so it would get there sooner. Then trying not to think about it too much, I dropped it in the outgoing slot.

Layne was in produce, looking pissy. Some idiot had set up the strawberry section wrong. He waved to me, shaking his head, and I waved back. Then I got a cart and filled it up with everything I could think of to eat for breakfast.

Dear Collette,

It’s June. Everyone’s due back to Pearl Lake soon, but until then
it’s weird and quiet. I’m a little nervous to see everyone again but
mostly excited. I thought about contacting you so many times, but I
just can’t. This is my compromise, just text on a page, something that
takes a while to get sent, something you can put down or tear up. I’m
guessing it’s hard enough to forget that shit and that my dumb ass is
probably insignificant in comparison, but I didn’t want to pile on, you
know? I’ve always wanted to talk to you, I guess, even though I didn’t
know why. I don’t know why it’s important that you know all this.

What will you do with the rest of your life? I’ve been thinking
about what I’ll do with mine. There’s no college plans, no good job in
my future. I’m your basic loser at this point. But I don’t care. I’m
wondering if the answer’s in my Uncle Soren’s belief in cycles. That
we grow when other things die. That water rises, then falls. That
circle necklace, the one you asked about the day we first skipped chapel,
was his. My mother gave it to him, but Soren gave it back when she
chose my father.

My dad, of course, was no help on the whole cycle thing. Cycles,
yes, he said, but circles have no exit. What the fuck does that even
mean? Maybe it’s math genius speak for “I don’t want to agree with
my brother.” But this isn’t what I want to tell you.

I’ve never told anyone about the Cupcake Lady of Tacoma. The
first redheaded girl I’d ever touched. She was the first Everything,
actually. Before Dirtbag Evan existed and took over. She managed a
shop called Hey Cupcake! in downtown Tacoma. Some relative of hers

owned it. She was taking a year off before college, and I was fifteen.

She hired me as counter help, but later, when she realized I was a
decent worker, she took me on as a baker’s apprentice.

The Cupcake Lady of Tacoma was very quiet, like me, so we
worked well together. Which sounds terrible—someone preferring
your void over your voice—but once I realized that she wasn’t waiting
for me to say anything, I felt really comfortable there. Just watched
her mix batter and whip frosting, so quiet. A lot of cute chicks came
into the shop, some of them older than the Cupcake Lady too, and
none of them subtle about flirting, even though I wore a goddamn
pink apron that said HEY CUPCAKE! on it. But I had no game to
speak of with girls back then. Every day after school, I went into that
shop that smelled like butter cream frosting and was quiet, but not
alone. The Cupcake Lady didn’t even hum while she worked. It made
me feel calm.

One night we were at the shop late. I had cocked up a special order
due the next morning for someone’s bridal shower, several dozen white
cupcakes. The problem with all-white anything is that it’s just that
much harder to hide any mistakes, and the bride-to-be wanted them
arranged on tiered cake plates where you could see every angle. It was
ten o’clock and we still weren’t done and the Cupcake Lady made us
Irish coffees. To wake us up and amuse us, she said. I’d never had Irish
coffee; I’d never drank any alcohol prepared in a kitchen on purpose
like that.

Irish coffee made me chatty. I sat on the counter while we waited 
out the oven, and I just started complaining. I’d never done that before, but the Cupcake Lady just listened while I kept knocking shots of
whiskey into my cup.

I was telling her about everything in the world that bugged me.

The idiot kids at my school. The stupid way customers acted all sinful
about eating our cupcakes. That I had no mother and that my father
was never home and that I ate from takeout menus seven nights a
week. How my dad looked at me funny when I told him I liked baking
stuff.

The Cupcake Lady sat beside me on the counter. Put her arm
around me. That’s the way it goes sometimes, Evan, she said. Sometimes the elevator, sometimes the shaft.

In my whiskey haze I kissed her. The Cupcake Lady froze, but
then she kissed me back, which was pretty amazing to me at the time.

Pretty amazing to me now, actually. Then the timer went off, and she
jumped down to pull the cupcakes out to cool. Then she set the timer
again. And we kissed, while the cupcakes cooled, her face red as her hair.

When the timer went off, she handed me a bag of butter cream
frosting, and we got to work. Once we finished frosting everything,
she sent me to her office in the back, where she kept a sofa if she had an
early morning or a late night. I thought that maybe she didn’t want
to deal with me anymore, that she wanted me to sleep it off. She was
an adult; I was a dipshit high school kid. I wanted to say I didn’t mean
it, that I’d go home.

But then she was there, saying, Shh, Evan. It’s going to be all
right. This won’t last forever. It feels that way, but it won’t. And then
there was sex, but I’ll spare you the awkward details. I can barely 
stand to think of what a dumbass I was myself. I mean, the whole
thing was so different from other times I’d been with girls, and not
just because I was a virgin. Probably my mouth was dropping open in
shock, but she never acknowledged my dumbassery in any way. When
it was over, she told me to sleep. But I couldn’t. I just wanted to keep
touching her. Finally, she told me to go home and I did. I walked
all the way home, like a billion blocks in the dark, but I didn’t care,
because I was so happy. Not just because of sex. Because of how she
listened. Because I loved her and knew she loved me too. Because who
would put up with my virgin idiocy otherwise? This was my excellent
life, then: selling cupcakes in the front of the shop, sleeping with her in
the back. Getting paid on top of it. What a dumbass.

The next time I came into work, she barely acknowledged me. I
thought maybe she’d act different when we were alone. But that night
when we closed up, she wouldn’t even look at me. I thought I was
maybe fired. It was terrible. I mopped the floors with tears in my eyes
like a little boy. I considered making a big show of quitting. Leaving
my pink apron on the counter, stalking out. Daring her to fire me. All
sorts of dramatic scenarios. But I was too pussy to even talk to her. We
just went back to quietly making cupcakes. A month later, we moved.

Yes, I know why she didn’t fire me. Why she was embarrassed.

She knew what she did was wrong and did it, anyway, but I was too
dumb about love to get that. It wasn’t the sex part that bothered me,
though I will never, ever forget how that went, especially the parts
where I was a shaking, drooling idiot. What sucked was how she was
good to me for no reason and then suddenly not. I felt like a dumbfuck.

So small. When we moved, I was glad to escape.
 

This story compares to yours in no way, Collette. Don’t think I’m
trying to say I know how you feel. But it brings me, circling back—

ha-ha—to my Uncle Soren. I used to imagine Soren as some kind of
freak, someone you’d see mumbling in an alleyway or hopping freight
trains, but it turns out he’s a pretty cool, smart guy. Still, I’m not sure
life goes in a circle, like he thinks. But when I bother to pay attention,
it seems like there are patterns, at least, things that match up. So
here’s a shitty thing that happened, and I’ve told you for no reason.

Beyond you’re a girl with red hair who was good to me, for no reason.

And then a shitty thing happened to you. But I hope people will be good
to you too. I don’t know what I plan to do for the summer. Or my life.

The only thing that really sounds good now is going to Story Island
and reading through Barrett Archardt’s old books. If I read anything
interesting, I’ll write and tell you about it.

Later, Evan