Ronnie drove home pondering their relationship. Maybe she’d given up the honey too early, didn’t make him work for it, not that it should be something to work for. If he can have his cake and eat it too, why invest more into this relationship than he has to? Maybe things would have been different had she not gotten pregnant. Now there was a thought that kept her up nights. Always led to the big question: Are we really happy together? And then an avalanche of doubt would fill her mind with sorrows.
Is Calvin going to be a good father? Will he leave me? Is he going to have an affair?
She hoped desperately that Calvin wasn’t capable of these things, but he was a man after all, and in his twenties, probably the most selfish time in a man’s life. He wasn’t the type to use her for companionship and sex, not the type to ditch her after the kid was born like so many deadbeat boys do—a man wouldn’t walk out on his child. Then again, she might have wool over her eyes.
Men are from Mars, she heard her mother say.
Maybe she shouldn’t just hand her body over to him tomorrow like every night she stayed over at his apartment. Maybe she should play hard to get. Maybe that would bring his feelings out. Stupid to think about when she was pregnant. Why play games when they’ve already conceived a child? It wasn’t like she didn’t enjoy the sex. As far as she was concerned, it was an important part of a loving relationship.
And then there was the slut that lived next door to Calvin. Why Ronnie was worried about Celia, she didn’t know—well, she did know. Knew perfectly well that it was irrational jealousy. Ronnie was tall and lean, had a nice figure and a pretty face. She dressed moderately, but not conservative. If done right, a little cleavage went a long way. Celia, on the other hand, dressed like a whore and wore far too much make up, not to mention her reputation. One rumor was that she had sex with a man in an empty dumpster back in high school; another was that she’s had just about every VD except for HIV.
As much of a slut as Celia was, Ronnie had this fear that if she didn’t give herself to Calvin, he could just saunter next door and get what he wanted.
Calvin wasn’t that kind of guy, but that didn’t mean her mind could rest easy. As long as that bitch lived next door, and as long as she batted her clumpy eyelashes at him and cooed his name as he walked by, Ronnie would have a feeling in her gut like sour bile and writhing earthworms, an uncertainty that would gnaw at her.
As Ronnie pulled into her driveway (at twenty-eight, she still lived with her mother), she decided she would have to wing it and see what happened tomorrow. It was easy to tell herself to play hard to get, but could she? Sex was hardly a disappointment except for those few times Calvin was so excited that he only lasted a few minutes. She got nothing out of that, and he was always mildly embarrassed, but the other times they made love were legendary. He made her feel things in her body no other man has done before.
She walked into her house smiling, said hello to her mother, who was watching CSI Miami, and then went to her room.
She couldn’t wait for tomorrow evening.
Chapter Seven
Calvin felt bad about going to the Hall of Hell without Ronnie, not that she would have had any interest in going with him anyway. It was the little white lie he told her about working that bothered him. He was a believer in building a strong foundation to make a relationship work and here he was lying about some place called the Hall of Hell.
After calling a cab Calvin paced his apartment waiting for it to pull up outside. He hated waiting around for anything. Made him nervous, and worse was the guilt trip he struggled with. Was the Hall of Hell even worth it? What was he chasing anyway?
He looked out of his street-facing window. No cab. He went into his room, eyed the blank videotape sticking out of his VCR like a rectangular tongue. Death’s Door.
An overwhelming impulse to push the tape into the VCR and hit the PLAY button tickled Calvin’s mind. He didn’t want to watch the video, at least he didn’t think so—not on a conscious level at least. Yet seeing it there sent comforting waves through his body. It was like comfort food for the mind, or sitting in a favorite recliner. Death’s Door was, for Calvin, like a football highlights real to a coach.
A honking from outside fractured Calvin’s dazed reverie. A shiver ran up his spine when he let go of the videotape still hanging out of the VCR. He couldn’t remember walking across the room and preparing to push it into the machine.
The horn honked again. Calvin went back into the living room and poked his head out of the open window (there had never been screens in any of his windows). He hollered to the cabby, “I’ll be right down.”
“Meter’s runnin’,” came the response, almost too muffled from street noise for Calvin to hear. Of course the meter was running. Calvin expected no less. The definition of “cabby” in the dictionary shows an illustration of a leech with a five o’ clock shadow.
He grabbed his jacket, slapped his back pocket to make sure his wallet was there (check), and did the same with his front pockets to be sure he had his cell phone and keys (check, check).
Outside, Celia sat in the green plastic chair next to her door directly across from Calvin’s apartment. She had her lips on a cigarette, taking a drag like sucking smoke out of a leprechaun’s prick. She raised her eyebrows as she exhaled.
“Where you off to?” she asked.
Calvin had his back to her as he locked his door.
“Gotta work late tonight,” he said over his shoulder.
“No shit, huh. Not dressed for work.”
Nosey bitch.
Calvin didn’t have anything to say to Celia. He wasn’t beholden to her. Fuck her. What he was doing was none of her business in the first damn place.
“You going out to a club or something?” she asked as Calvin began to descend the stairs.
“Gong to work,” he reiterated.
“If you’re going to a club or something, I want to go.”
Calvin didn’t even respond to that one. He had a cab with a running meter out there on Madison. He wasn’t going to have a conversation with the town slut while fattening the cabby’s wallet.
As soon as Calvin stepped into the cab, the cabby said, in a heavy Middle Eastern accent, “The meter has been running since I put car into park.”
“Yeah, I know. Take me into Lakeside. Go Second Street to Wintergardens, ’kay. That’s the fastest route.”
“You telling me the fastest route? I’m the taxi driver. I know how to get where you want to go. Don’t have to tell me.”
Calvin wrinkled his brow as he looked at the cabby in the rearview mirror. “Okay, whatever, man. Let’s get a move on. I’m not paying you to sit here and chew me out. I’ve had cabbies drive me in a freaking circle when they could have taken a straight shot, you know.”
The driver shook his head. “Not me. I take you there the fastest.”
“Cool. Let’s go.”
The cab took off. Calvin eased into the seat, idly watching the dealers and winos on Madison Avenue. They walked around like they needed a cane or suffered from scoliosis. Central casting for extras in a zombie film, most of them. Calvin had to admit that he’d been getting tired of living in downtown El Cajon. It had always been bad, but the place was going downhill on greased axels.
He caught a glimpse of the driver looking at him from the rearview mirror. The cabby’s eyes looked away as soon as Calvin met them with his own. They were the eyes of the dead. The driver was a corpse. An old one by the sickly sweet odor of decay that filled the cab. From Calvin’s vantage he could see the man’s right hand clutching the steering wheel. It reminded him of the cover of the 80’s horror flick House, all gangrenous and rotten.