“So we have sex and she says it’s spiritual and amazing, you know, but it’s just E-love. Sex on ecstasy just fucking bonds you, except she’s never had sex on E before so it’s new to her and she thinks this is chemistry. Yeah, it’s chemistry, it’s fucking lab chemistry. So now we’re rolling and I love this part, this is where the head-fuck gets deep
“Then it just became a question of how little could I do and still have her want me? It became a game and I stretched it out for months Little by little I pulled away, real small stuff like I stopped kissing her, wouldn’t hold her after sex, never went down on her. No foreplay, no talking, it was just fuck her and go to sleep, like when I’m done, we’re done. I wouldn’t even kiss her when she’d cry. I’d roll over with my back to her, and I swear I’d just be lying there, grinning in the dark. She’d sob for a while then finally she’d go to sleep. The next morning I wouldn’t say a thing, act like nothing happened. I know, cold, right? But you know what?”
“What?” Sean asked nervously. This is who she ended up with after him?
“She’d call me that night, want to come over, act like nothing ever happened,” Brian said, incredulously. “And I’d always blow her off, wouldn’t call her back for like a week! I’d wait for the voicemail to pile up and she’d get panicky, thinking it was something she’d done. I’d be out with the guys and we’d brag about who has the craziest phone messages from a woman, who can string some bitch along the longest, right? And there was no question, I won. I was the king of this, I had proof right here. I’d save the messages and play like a dozen of them to everybody, and they’d start with her all sweet. ‘Hi, it’s me,’ became annoyed, like, ‘Hey, where have you been?’ and then she’d get concerned, ‘Are you okay?’ and finally, after a week, it’s, ‘I’m sorry you’re so upset at me, I miss you, please forgive me.’ She didn’t even know what she’d done to make me disappear but she was already begging me to take her back! The next time I’d see her, and I’d always wait like at least a week or two, she’d apologize to for being such a basket case, and promise it’d never happen again!”
“Jesus…”
“I know! Totally fucked up, right?” He was on a roll now, and his dark eyes flashed. “But here’s the thing: If a woman thinks she’s worthless, if she’s been dumped by enough guys and her self-esteem is that low, she’ll excuse anything to keep you. I was so under her skin, she was dependent on me like a drug, she was hooked just like a junkie and she’d put up with whatever she had to.”
Brian was grinning hard now. He’d never had an office job, never made serious money, kept getting fired, and had the shittiest credit of anyone he knew, but in this one sport, he was a champion. “Here’s the secret, and I know it’s so fucking wrong, but the worse you treat them, the more they want you. It’s totally fucked up, but the sooner you understand that, the better off you’ll be. I’m telling you.”
Sean was quiet and let Brian’s story sink in. He was colder now, inside and out. The van hadn’t stopped once and they still had no idea where they were going or why. The back of his head was throbbing from where he had pounded his head into the van wall to try and get someone’s attention. He looked over to his left and saw the blond guy’s eyes were still closed, though he wasn’t slumped over anymore.
“Hey, look at him,” Sean whispered to Brian. “Is he awake yet?”
“Hey, buddy! You awake?” Brian barked.
Blond guy’s eyes opened, suspiciously, like he’d been awake and listening to them for a long time.
“Yeah, Brian,” he sneered. “I’m awake.”
“How do you know my name?” Brian accused.
“You and your pal, Sean, have been using up all the fucking oxygen in this van for the last hour or two, that’s how, genius.”
“So who are you, asshole?”
“The name isn’t Asshole, it’s Frank.”
“Do you know why we’re here?” Sean said flatly, now a good cop to Brian’s bad cop.
“We must all have something in common, right?” Frank smiled. “I’ll save you two some time: I’m a trader for Pettigrew Dean and I live on the Upper East Side in the city. I’m forty-one, single, I don’t gamble, I don’t owe anybody money, I don’t deal with the mob, I don’t have a criminal record, I don’t go to the Alibi, although I own some property in Fort Greene and Park Slope, and I don’t read Star Trek novels…”
Frank was kind of enjoying this.
“… And, oh yeah. I know her too.”
The air in the van went ice cold as Sean’s eyes shot quickly to Brian, then back to Frank. This was seriously fucked up now.
“I heard all about you guys.” Frank narrowed his eyes at Sean. “The time she brought a glass of fresh orange juice and a clean towel to you as you were stepping out of the shower and you just walked right by her. That fucking slayed her. She never forgot it.”
Sean crumbled at the memory; he’d never told anyone about that. He felt nauseous.
Frank turned to Brian. “And you? Yeah, she told me all about you and how you twisted her inside out like a game. How cold you were, how you used her for fun and then fucked her over. She didn’t see anyone for almost a year after that, she just holed up in her apartment and didn’t go out. Did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t know that,” Brian admitted quietly, as the bravado slid off his face like he’d been caught by his mother. He leaned back, away from the light of the van’s harsh bare bulb. It never occurred to him that there would be real dam-age. Everybody played hard, it was part of the game.
“Yeah, guess not,” Frank said coolly, his pale hair and pale eyes seeming to soak up the light. “Did you know she six different anti-depressants that year? Did you know she started having a hard time leaving her apartment? Did you know she thought everything was her fault, that she was a terrible person? She thought there had to be something wrong with her for everyone to keep treating her like this, right? By the time I met her, she was so fucking fragile, I thought I’d break her if I held her hand.”
Frank was furious now.
“How did you meet her?” Sean asked quietly, staring at the floor. Was that blood?
“At a dinner party.” Frank’s voice quieted at the memory. “We were sitting next to each other and she was just starting to go out again, but she was so gun shy, she was really having trouble talking to me. It took an hour to even drag a conversation out of her. She couldn’t function at all, so I asked her about what she did, and then we talked about movies, cool flea markets, what we were reading, all kinds of stuff.
“I liked her,” Frank recalled, moving his head from side to side. His neck was cramped from leaning over for hours. “She seemed sweet and, I don’t know, textured in some way. She wasn’t glossy at all and I could tell by the way she hunched her shoulders and shuffled when she walked that something bad happened to her, she’d been thrown away. She seemed really hurt and tired when she finally told me about it all. It made me furious, and sad, like, how dare they? How dare… you?