The Bitch Posse (24 page)

Of course it’s more than wine waiting for her there. She knows she’ll be doing cocaine with him too, and somehow it doesn’t seem to matter. She just wants to blot everything out and erase Rennie Taylor the teacher-whore, the student-abusing rapist teacher-slut, and while Wren Taylor the coke-snorting washed-up writer doesn’t sound much better, at least it’s someone else. She’ll get laid and messed up and then she’ll feel better.

Maybe she’s regressing or something. Back at Stanford she couldn’t
go through guys fast enough, and when she got rejected from the writing program, that was when she opted for the teaching credential at San Francisco State. Then she started edging toward naughtiness, pushing it farther, sex with student teachers, sex in random, public places, the town square in Mill Valley, the football field at Tam, under the Golden Gate Bridge at Fort Point, half-hoping to get caught. That was when all the knife stuff started too.

Someone whales on the horn as she drives past the San Mateo Bridge exit. The haze thickens.
Rennie, you’re thirty-three years old, you’re too old to be acting this way.
Man, she’s spiraling, how long has it been since she felt this low?

She knows when.

To press down the thought she turns on the alternative music station. Something sad’s happened to “alternative” music since she was in high school. It all sounds the same now. She misses the old stuff, like the Pixies’
Doolittle,
one of the greatest albums ever made, no one makes stuff like that nowadays. But of course thinking that way just proves she’s an old woman.

From the speakers bursts another one of those songs that’s played so much it can hardly be called “alternative” anymore. “Bubblegum Punk,” Bay calls it. As she zooms past a VW bus, it comes to her with a thud. A good portion of the kids who are listening to this music weren’t even
born
when all her high school shit happened.

And the grown-ups they don’t ever want to be like, are people like
her
.

At once she feels dreadfully, horribly, terribly old, and she snaps off the music.

She speeds up more, and in an instant she’s pulling off in Palo Alto, driving past the Stanford campus (her old haunt, she spent many long nights there crying over Rob, the only thing that burned away his memory was sex with someone else, she hadn’t made many friends and of course she wasn’t in touch with Amy and Cherry by then, but she
did get laid a whole bunch of times, and graduated with honors). A few more turns and she pulls onto Puck’s street. He must be making a shitload of money off his books to afford to live here, because the housing market’s even worse than it is in Marin. In Palo Alto, especially the nicer parts like this street, shacks on postage-stamp lots are going for a million and up.

She pulls her Beetle into the driveway. In front of her windshield floats a swallowtail butterfly. It hovers for a moment, then like a knife blade cuts upward and out of sight.

Rennie slides out of her car, and a magnet pulls her up the brick walk. Puck’s house is a sweet yellow bungalow, the one she wishes she had. Hard little green fruits weigh down the branches of a plum tree that bends over a big front porch, and pale pink climbing roses cling to the freshly painted white columns. Obviously Puck has a hired gardener.

A black, speckled bird with a few spikes on its head perches on the porch rail. It’s not a wren, those are brown. A sparrow? No. It’s a starling.
I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze, I cannot get out, said the starling. . . .

Where the hell is that from? She searches her memory banks for books, plays, poems. Shakespeare, maybe? Rossetti? Who else are her favorites? Shit. Her mind is a blotto, blacked-out blank.

The starling flies away.

It doesn’t matter. Nothing does.

She walks up the porch steps and presses the bell, and for the first time she’s thinking this might have been a mistake. But then Puck answers the door, and he’s not even wearing a shirt, and his hair’s falling across his face in that little fuck-me way he has about him, and she forgets everything she was thinking about. “Wren, Wren, I thought you’d never be here. What made you change your mind?”

She slips inside and doesn’t answer. The house is dark and smells of cigarettes. Two glasses of white wine sparkle on the dining room
table, on either side of a crystal vase spilling with purplish roses. He says, “You brought your book, I hope?”

There is no book,
Rennie thinks but doesn’t say. “Actually, no, I was hoping we’d just have some fun.”

And this is the old Rennie, the saucy cheeky spicy sexy Rennie. She gives him a wink, and he says, “Girl after my own heart,” and hands her one of the glasses. “Russian River Chardonnay, the best.” They clink and the wine disappears as they stare at each other over the rims. When they’re finished, he goes to a drawer in the sideboard and pulls out a small beveled mirror, a couple of crisp fifty-dollar bills, and a razor. It clicks, that’s why there were so many razors around Cherry’s house, they were for her mom. . . .

She feels like screaming at herself,
All that’s behind you, Rennie! It’s over!
And she hopes cocaine makes you forget stuff because she needs to forget her whole awful day, smash down her curiosity about what-ever happened to Amy Linnet and Cherry Winters, her fuck-up with Paul, the voice mail from the San Francisco State professor:
Bayuni Henares has brought some things up to me that are very concerning
. . . . Not only is it all over with her and Bay but now she’s not a master teacher anymore.

Oh, Lord and praise Jesus, he’s gotten the cocaine from somewhere and is cutting lines. Rennie picks up one of the fifties and watches him do his first because she’s never actually tried cocaine, mainly because of Marian, and shit, there it is, her past popping out at her again, no matter how hard she’s tried to tie it down. Puck closes his eyes and takes a long, slow draw, the sharp inhale piercing the silence. The powder disappears up the shaft of the rolled-up bill as he slides it along the mirror, and Rennie tries to memorize the process, step by step. When he looks up, a tear blinks at the side of his eye and he rubs it away. “Your turn, Wren.”

She leans over and snorts a line into each nostril. The texture’s
rougher than she expected, finely ground glass spiking her nasal passages in a million different spots. Her nostrils burn, the flames sear into her sinuses,
how strange, my nose is on fire,
but it’s that good kind of hurt, the kind that quickens her heartbeat, forbidden glamour, gritty naughtiness, it’s so unspeakably great, like a knife slicing across her belly, and a thrill twangs between her legs,
oh, I’m being so bad.
She holds her nose for a minute while her eyes tear up, then she swallows.
Jesus, it tastes like crap.

The air sizzles and an ocean roars in her ears. She spins up into the sky like Dorothy in her funnel cloud, and just like that she’s in Oz. Is it possible to feel your own pupils dilating? Everything’s brighter, the roses are a million shades of purple, shades that have no names, subtleties of color no one knows about but her. The walls are breathing, Puck’s chandelier glows with neon light, every part of her is ready to burst. Everything tingles—her arms her legs her neck her scalp—oh, God, she has never felt this good. She can’t wait to get her clothes off and jump into bed with him, and her hands are doing stuff she’s not aware of apparently because she’s already unbuttoned her blouse. He whistles. “Man, Wren, you want it bad. . . . ”

The words are a slap, but she ignores it. Instead she pulls him to her, kisses him, opens her mouth almost immediately. She’s dizzy, in a race car that’s about to spin out, and something braces in her like panic, but she pushes it aside so she can speed into oblivion. The only thing that matters now is getting him into bed with her. She whispers in his ear, “Bring the wine.”

Puck takes the bottle and the glasses from the table, leading her upstairs, the shiny crisp hardwood floors, the saturation of color on the walls, here plum, here beige, here green, and the bedroom’s a sea blue, perfect. He sets down the wine and grabs her ass in both hands, kissing her hard. As he leans her over the bed, he’s peeling her blouse off her, swaying her, weighing her down until she falls onto the mattress. He seizes her wrists and presses them together over her head, landing a
bite on her neck, an odd sort of bite that lingers long after his teeth leave her skin. She laughs, fights her wrists free and unhooks her bra. He envelops her breasts with his hands, skimming over them in intricate patterns he must have learned from somewhere because it’s absolutely perfect. Even when he’s moved his fingers away, he’s still touching her, phantom caresses that linger, intensify, bloom with heat. “Oh . . . ” she breathes. He presses his lips to her nipples, and so strange, the kisses radiate outward from the spots he’s touched until warmth has spread over each of her breasts.

“I told you we’d have fun. . . . ”

He slides off her pants, and the cool air on her skin shocks her, sending a ping of sensation through her whole body. Then he pulls off his own jeans and suggests a blow job, which is a little disappointing since he’s not offering to reciprocate, but that’s okay, it’ll still be fun.

She gives him an extra nice one, slow until he wants it fast, with lots of lips and tongue. Heat radiates from the swirl of hair blossoming from his crotch, and she’s sweating in a jungle; rain forest insects buzz in the shadows. As she’s speeding up and slamming down on him again and again and again, her nose starts to run, and it’s the most annoying thing you could imagine, this tiny drop clinging to her nostril, damn, fuck, damn, what to do, it’s not like you can sniff it back when you’re giving a blow job, so she just lets the drop fall onto him, but he doesn’t seem to care, pushing harder and faster and groaning, and she wraps her tongue around him and sucks even harder and more urgently, and everything doesn’t matter at all anymore because it’s all a haze of perceptions that are way too magnified, the inside of her mouth for example feels like someone’s scrubbed it with a wire brush, and
hurry up, Puck, hurry up, this is getting boring, come on, I don’t have many more tricks left,
and finally he comes with a shudder and whispers, “Aah, Wren, perfect.”

She swallows and runs a hand over her mouth. “You’re welcome.” She spreads her legs, and he licks her belly and thighs and his tongue
skates across her pussy, yes, oh please! She raises her hips and moans, closing her eyes as desire rips holes in her flesh. His mouth’s leaving tracers of sensation everywhere and this is going to be so goddamn great, the best ever, yes, yes, God, yes! His tongue swirls everywhere, even places where it’s not, she can’t wait, she’s in a dream, she’s going to cry it’s so good, oh this won’t take long at all, not at all. . . .

All of a sudden he stops, resting his head on her thigh.

She opens her eyes. “What?”

“Wren, I’m so burned out. Let’s just take a break and do this later.” Now she’s annoyed.
This is what I came down here for?
And the coke makes it even worse because it’s like she’s standing at the wall behind the orgasm, and she wonders if whether she snorted more something great would happen. Who the fuck cares? “Fine then, I’ll be right back.” She goes downstairs and sucks in some more cocaine, and yeah, she does feel better. But unfortunately, when she comes up he’s asleep, so she just downs the wine, turns on MTV, and pours herself another. It’s too much, this wired feeling, she needs to be drunk.

Energy patters through her, and it’s very urgent that she walk all of a sudden, so she paces up and down the length of the bed. It’s too goddamn hot in here. She opens a window and the cool evening breeze shuffles in, but that’s even worse, she feels naked and fat and like a raw chicken with goose bumps all over her skin. When he wakes up stuff’ll be better, when he wakes up he’ll make her come.

She closes the window.

It’s still too goddamn hot in here. She finishes her wine, watches the blur of images on MTV, and lets the music fuse into her body like hot lead.

She doesn’t know how long she’s like this, in his bed. They do fuck a few times, although he never goes down on her as promised, and she walks by the refrigerator numerous times but doesn’t eat, and day
washes into night washes into day, and she’s wired, high, cresting on the top for so long she’s barely aware of what she’s doing and how much time has passed, and once in a while he reaches for her nose and lets her sniff a bump right from his fingernail, he must have it stashed all over the house, and again, again she spreads her legs, again, again he fucks her, then they sleep for a while, fitfully, and he presses some more cocaine into her nostrils from the web between his thumb and forefinger, grabs her head and inches it down his belly, and she blows him again, she’s dizzy, she’s lost track of how many times, he comes and shudders and pulls away and rolls over and says nothing, and it doesn’t matter that he won’t eat her out, she’ll feel better if she just has some more cocaine.

Where is it? Where? Where did he get it from? The bedside table is clean and neat and empty and out of the pages of
Architectural Fucking Digest.
Damn, shit, fuck. Not a grain of coke in sight. Of course Puck’s sleeping now, and damn it, there must be more downstairs, she needs some or she’ll fall into a pit, she needs some more cocaine, now, downstairs,
right now,
downstairs,
as in this very minute,
downstairs, downstairs, downstairs, that’s where she’ll go.

She floats into the dining room and cuts lines and sucks them in, rubs her nostrils shut like an expert. Then she walks back upstairs, and since he’s spent or asleep or passed out or in some kind of a stupor maybe she’ll just get herself off, and after she goes to the bathroom she tries to make herself come but she can’t break through the wall, damn, why is she on the crest of orgasm all the time, it’s fucking in-sane, and she glances in the mirror.

Her eyes are webbed with red. Blood trickles from her left nostril and dries to a crusty smear on her lips. Her sinuses are screaming like the worst infection she’s ever had, and her eyes feel like someone’s thrown gasoline in them. Bees have crawled inside her nose and are stinging away, and her hair’s tangled, clotted, sticky. It’s the middle of the fucking afternoon and she doesn’t even know what fucking afternoon
it is, and Rennie Taylor is wired on cocaine and just gave the millionth blow job of the weekend to a younger man she barely knows. She touches the stain on her lips.
I’m bleeding? Me?
And maybe she’s fucked up her nostrils forever, maybe she’ll have to go see her doctor, maybe she’ll never breathe right again, maybe she’s picked up some disease from him, maybe the burn and the stinging and the pain will never, never, never go away.
Oh, my God.
A good old sobbing jag wells up deep inside her, but she’s so dry and brittle that tears can’t fight their way to the surface.
I’m so fucked up I can’t even cry?