The One Percenters (6 page)

We talked at the start of the ride. It was very comfortable, and we found we had similar tastes in quite a few areas. Cristen was very spunky, as reflected in her look. She had spiky hair and wore a tight, red shirt. While Jill had been tall and slender, Cristen was shorter with an athletic build. What little hair she sported was a brilliant black, and she had sun-freckles on her cheeks that made her look cherubic. She was a very cute woman. I hadn’t noticed before.

“Ed, do you mind if I ask you a question? It’s a bit personal.”

“Sure.”

“You mentioned that you were married. How long have you been divorced?” I liked Cristen, but I didn’t feel comfortable with this topic yet. I skirted it.

“Eighteen months.”

“You know you didn’t pass out right away, right?”

“What do you mean?” I hate quick transitions.

This seemed a strange diversion from the divorce question.

“Last night, at the club. Seems you made a friend.” She winked at me. I think she expected a question from me at this point, because she sure took her time in chiming in again.

“You don’t remember?”

“No.”

“I think his name was Frank. The house painter?”

“Shit, I don’t remember him at all.”

“I’d have thought you would. You two got along pretty well, I’d say. I mean, he
did
steal a kiss from you.”

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I looked Cristen dead in the eye, or as near as I could while she was driving. The cab was silent.

Now, I have nothing against gays (less competition for chicks, in my mind), but I know what I am, and it’s not gay. I wanted to just say “Bullshit” and end it there.

But there’s always that small part of you. .alcohol does some strange shit to your head. I felt little bugs on my skin. I tried to remember the guy—any guy—from last night. Finally, Cristen laughed loudly.

“Ha! You had to think about it, huh?” I laughed along, but the incident bothered me for a while. Why did I hesitate? What would my delay cause Cristen to believe? I had wondered about her own sexuality. Was this her way of bringing it to light?

Of testing the waters? I was driving myself crazy in her truck. People say we’re all on this big continuum and that there is no man and woman or straight and gay. Fuck. I hate gray areas. It reminds me of that pin: “Bisexuals are greedy fuckers.” It always makes me laugh.

I sat there in silence for a while. I’m not sure why, but Cristen did too. I knew I’d still like her if she was gay, but I also knew I felt uncomfortable at the thought she might think
I
was. It’s a fucked-up world.

I’m telling you, the millennium brought with it a warm wind carrying death on its shoulders. The world just ain’t the same anymore.

Six months went by. I adapted to my new town and took a job editing for a local paper. It paid lousy, but I wasn’t out for money at that point. I needed something to keep me busy. When I interviewed, the man who was asking the questions recognized my name. He began to question me about the murder and then halted himself mid-sentence, embarrassed and ashamed. In the end, I think he took pity on me. It was either pity or guilt. I got the job though, so it didn’t bother me a stitch. Pity’s underrated; it can get you a drink, a smoke, a lay. Nothing wrong with that. No, sir, not a damn thing wrong with that.

Cristen talked me into joining a group that picks litter up off the roads with one of those stabby apparatuses. The guys in the park use them too.

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Personally I think it’s a cool job, cleaning up the outdoors in the comfort of green overalls. You have to respect the people who do it for a living. Altruism is rare, and rewarding only to those with the largest and purest of hearts.

It made me feel good to be outside in the open air, helping the community and all that crap. It amazed me how many people would throw trash out their window—cigarette butts, tissues—even as they passed us while we were working. It was an endless cycle.

People are pigs without the good looks and the brains.

Eventually I did tell Cristen about Jill.

It was a rainy night. We had become pretty good friends by then, considering the relatively short length of our relationship. We were in my apartment after a day working the roads. We sipped wine on the balcony, which is covered by an overhang. I purchased some plastic green chairs down at Arnie’s Home and Garden, and they were practical if not stylish. I tried hanging a dart board on the wall dividing my balcony from the next, but I found that was just a convenient way to lose darts over the railing. Also, my neighbors below cook out a lot. I didn’t want a stray dart to peg their kid in the eye, and have to spend the evening searching for his cornea in the grass.

We were sipping zinfandel—not my favorite wine type, but Cristen liked it, so it was fine by me.

Personally, I don’t think wine should come in shades.

It should be RED or WHITE. There’s too much wishy-washiness in the world today. Paper or plastic. Cash or credit. Buy or lease. Make a decision and live with it, for crying out loud.

We were relaxing, shooting the breeze, but my mind wasn’t in it. I kept looking off in the distance, daydreaming, and Cristen must have noticed it. I broke off mid-sentence and began to cry.

“What’s wrong, Edward?” What’s wrong?

What’s wrong?

It’s a question we all have heard about a billion times, not that anyone ever solves any of our problems.

I am only comforted by the fact that should people stop fucking here and now for the next sixty years, this
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miserable experience would all be over with. But who’s gonna convince the people to stop fucking? It’s like the cat and the mice and the bell.

So I told her about Jill. I told her all that I’ve told you, Doctor. It was a long and emotional conversation.

She was very receptive and listened far more than she talked, and that’s a very good and rare quality in a friend. Yes, she was a very good crisis listener. The conversation ended in a hug, and I remember how that felt. Her body was warm, soft. It wasn’t one of those obligatory hugs with quick shoulder pats and a stiff frame. You know, man hugs. It was heartfelt.

The rain changed direction and was now swooping in on us, but I didn’t care. I don’t think Cristen did either. The rain felt good, natural, primal.

She kissed me. So much for my thoughts about her sexual orientation. This would be a hell of a “favor.” Her lips were soft. Some women don’t have soft lips.

Some have lifeless, rough lips. Lifeless, rough lips are a sign of a woman without depth and are to be avoided.

She pulled back from the kiss, ashamed. After the conversation we had just completed, I think she felt like she was taking advantage of a vulnerable man. I pulled her back in and kissed her back. It felt good.

No, it felt great. Not great like they do in college, when it’s exciting and new. This kiss was deep, passionate, caring. Jill and I had shared many such kisses. What surprised me though was that it wasn’t just reassuring.

Out there on the balcony, in the rain, it felt right and wonderful.

We walked inside, and she spent the night. I’d have to say that was one of the top five nights of my life, and not because of the sex (or at least not exclusively).

That night, for the first time in over two years, I felt human. I felt alive. I hoped that somewhere, somehow, Jill saw me that night and nodded her approval. I think she would have liked Cristen. No, I’m sure she would have. The next morning I awoke—always a good thing, and I suppose Cristen figured turnabout to be fair play, because she took it upon herself to open up. I know that I can repeat this now, though at the time I swore
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myself mum.

Cristen had been in a long and serious relationship beginning when she was fifteen. It was your typical rebellion affair at the start; basically Jimmy was the perfect type to piss off the parents and bring a little bit of an independent feeling into a young girl’s life.

Eventually though, her motives changed, as she found herself falling in love with the tall, charming James Youngblood. James was eighteen when they’d met at a diner. Cristen had been having a cheeseburger with her friends when he approached her. Well, she took to his charismatic style, and they began to date.

When she turned eighteen, she moved in with Jimmy, against the wishes of her parents. The decision created a rift between Cristen and her folks that wasn’t mended until she was twenty-five. At that time her father fell ill (he has since recovered). Cristen returned home to help care for him, and she and her parents decided that enough water had passed under the bridge and that it was time to put an end to it.

Anyway, Cristen moved in with Jimmy. He had a one-bedroom apartment and drove a truck intrastate.

He was gone long hours, which gave Cristen time to see her friends and take a job of her own. She was still very young, and was not ready at the time to commit most of her time to one person, although she did love Jimmy dearly. Four months after moving into the apartment, she became pregnant. Between the two of them, Cristen and Jimmy actually made enough money to live a decent lifestyle (Cristen had taken her first landscaping job).

Two jobs, two mouths is an entirely different equation than one job, three mouths, however. Together, the couple decided that the timing wasn’t right. Frankly, they were young and scared.

Cristen made an appointment, and two weeks later, well, the baby was nothing more than a moot point and a stain on the operating table. It was at that point that the couple started using birth control. In retrospect, Cristen admitted that they were quite lucky to have avoided pregnancy for as long as they did.

Well, they wouldn’t be so lucky again. Within three months, Cristen found herself pregnant for the
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second time. Now nineteen, she was distraught. The first time hadn’t been so bad actually, but now guilt was beginning to eat at her, as she now felt like murder—I mean abortion—was becoming a form of contraception rather than damage control, if you will. She fought with herself this time over what to do, and the biggest problem was that she found Jimmy to be very unsupportive on the issue.

Cristen wished to have the baby, essentially saying damn the consequences. She didn’t think she could excuse herself two abortions, and she also didn’t want to put her own body through that strain a second time. She didn’t know, too, if the doctors would perform the procedure so soon after the first occurrence, and she was afraid to ask. When Cristen was telling me this, I couldn’t help but think about how very badly Jill had wanted to get pregnant. Now, my logical side realizes circumstances were different for the two women, but the first thought through my mind was one woman’s treasure is another woman’s trash.

The normally reasonable James Youngblood didn’t like the idea of his future being decided when he was twenty-two, and insisted Cristen not have the baby. In the end, fear and simple economics won out over heartfelt emotion and Cristen made another appointment. She found, though, that she could no longer face Jimmy. Two weeks after her second abortion, Cristen broke up with her longtime boyfriend and moved out. She had to work longer and harder hours now, but she felt it was something that had to be done. She feared now that, as a result of the abortions, perhaps she would never be able to bear children when she was ready. Quietly I hoped—just for a second—that this was true. There’s nothing like a good backup form of birth control.

I dismissed that thought immediately, don’t get me wrong. I realized it was a dreadful, awful, horrible thought, but after all that had happened in my life those past few years, I might as well be honest. It truly is the best policy. We can’t control these little thoughts that creep into the recesses of our mind. The human brain is a sublime piece of machinery, but it can also be one
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hell of a monstrosity. Consider the items it has come up with in the past: cannibalism, necrophilia, mustard gas, the guillotine, quartering, disco.

We don’t like to admit these little invasive ideas to ourselves. We try to drown them out. But the taboo and the dangerous thought is a driving force in society, and secretly we all get off a little bit on the thoughts we shouldn’t be having. They are our dirty little secrets, something just for us.

Now it was Cristen’s turn to cry, and my turn to provide the soft shoulder on which to do so. I remember even now that at one point her cheek rubbed up against my arm, brushing tears onto my bicep. There was a window directly behind the bed, and as the sun shone in, the tears glistened upon my arm. I experienced a great happiness at that moment. It was a happiness to be alive.

Here we were, two people crying about our problems, and yet I was thrilled to be alive. Seeing those tears reminded me that, much as we like to hide it, we are all still human. There is a world of opportunity before us. We’re creating our own movie with our own plot twists, and the ending is largely under our control. .

well, all except the final curtain.

That morning, in that bed, I felt vibrant and passionate, and unstoppable. I wanted to play first base for a professional ballclub, and I didn’t even care for sports. I settled for gin rummy. It was Cristen’s favorite. I’m glad I played her game. If I had known she’d be dead so soon afterwards, I would have let her win. I prefer spades myself. It requires just the right amount of thinking. Bridge is a better game, but it’s dying because it requires too long an attention span for the modern world of microwaves and text messaging.