I would so much rather cry. I would so much prefer this if I could just start bawling and screaming here in the street. Maybe I could pretend to be so fucking crazy that someone would call someone else and then that second person would come with an ambulance and I could act so crazy that they’d have to take me somewhere with a green lawn and give me a shower and put me in a straight jacket (which actually sometimes seems like it might be comforting, if a person had a little bit of choice in the matter) and I don’t have a wallet or even underpants on, so no one would be able to tell me to go home, and then eventually someone would see me on the news and be like, “Isn’t that Megan?” and then Randy would feel like an asshole and I would get to go live with my parents for a while and it would be a judgment free zone because everyone would be a little bit afraid of me, but they would finally see that I was a person worthy of their sympathy. If I threw myself down on the street and started screaming like a freak in my jammies then people would see, and then it would be all right, you know? You know? You know?
“You know?” she whispered. “You know?” She whispered it while she looked at the palms of her hands and walked back to her apartment in the apocalyptic green light, wondering what she could do to convince people that she was crazy (therefore a victim) and not an asshole (therefore just an asshole).
“Where were you?” asked Randy.
“It’s so fucking dark in this shithole,” said Megan.
“Where were you?”
“What a dump. Hey what’s that from?”
“What?”
“What a dump,” she said.
“Ok, fine, don’t tell me where you were.”
“I was just outside, ok? Sorry if I don’t feel completely comfortable treating you like my mommy and reporting to you about everywhere I’ve fucking been, ok?”
“Oh, is that you treating me like your mommy? Because I just thought that was being a courteous normal fucking person. I mean, you walk out of the fucking house in your underwear, of course I’m going to wonder, Oh, where is she?”
“I’m in my jammies, not my underwear.”
She got a beer out of the fridge and drank it.
“Are you serious?” asked Randy.
“I guess that really depends on what you mean, doesn’t it? Do you think it’s a sign of a serious person to drink a beer at eight forty-five in the morning? Because I guess I think that makes it seem like I’m not really taking this very seriously.”
“What do you mean, this?”
“You know,” said Megan. She gestured vaguely to the apartment with her beer can.
“Oh my god, you’re being so dramatic and corny right now I could shoot you,” said Randy. Megan stood at the window with her back to him and finished the can of beer. “If someone else did this and I told you about it, you would make fun of that person.”
Megan felt like her guts and bowels and all of that stuff were dangling over a pit. She needed someone to help her, obviously, but instead here she was, staring out of the window with her guts and anus dangling and swaying back and forth over a pit like a big pair of balls. Vulnerable as balls, too, and potent as balls, too, she thought, and then felt like a pretentious baby and started crying there in the glowing green spot near the window of her otherwise dank and dark and depressing apartment and she said, “I hate you,” in a way that would maybe be difficult to decipher, and since Randy was already fed up and practically over it, he didn’t take the time to figure out what she’d said, which was ultimately maybe for the best.
“I’m going to take a shower,” said Randy. “Help yourself to some coffee.”
She turned and put her back against the window and, yeah, she definitely felt like an overdramatic idiot, but at least well, whatever. “Fucking asshole,” she whispered. Fucking asshole.
She looked at herself in the bedroom mirror to determine whether or not a shower was necessary and decided it was not. She took off her jammies and used them to wipe the sweat from her asscrack and armpits, then she put on clean underpants and dug out her shorts which were, alas, too small, but would still button. She looked at that silly fuck in the mirror, did a royal bow, and said, “Fuck you, too.”
She cleaned the apartment. It was a way to divert her nervous energy. She went on a walk. She waited for it to be night.
FOUR
Jillian was either going to throw up or have diarrhea, her body hadn’t decided which yet. It was nerves. Although, maybe nothing would happen. That was possible. She thought about it while she paced around her apartment. She had four T3s left. She could take them and then maybe they would help her calm down long enough (though they were the last, the very last) to come up with a plan.
“God, I wish I were hit by a deer,” she said.
I would break my arms, Jesus, if I thought it would deliver me from this situation. Jesus, what can I do, what do you want me to do? You’ve kept me safe before and I trust that you will keep me safe now, or if you punish me, then it’s for all the right reasons and things will be better after the punishment than they are now. But I also know you won’t ever, you would not ever hurt a kid, and that’s all I’m trying to do, is to not hurt my kid, and I would do anything, you know, I really would, I would break my arms if you would just tell me how to get out of this.
Jillian dug her small fingers into the flesh of her arms and shuddered the word “fuck.”
“Fuck,” she said.
She resumed pacing. Her mouth became dry. After a few rounds of her apartment, she began to feel some kind of a release, which she interpreted as the beginnings of a divine intervention, but it was really an adrenaline crash and some dizziness from walking circles.
THE GOLDEN HOUR came and Megan and Randy walked to the BBQ. A few times Megan punched Randy in the arm as hard as she could and Randy said, “Don’t you fucking do that. Don’t you fucking do that.”
“Why are you such a fucking asshole all of a sudden?” she asked.
“I’m surprised you can’t think of anything more interesting to say to me than that,” he said.
“I guess my mind is too clouded with disgust.”
“Oh, you’re adorable,” said Randy. “Hey, look, here we are. Hey, have fun tonight.”
“You dick.”
They walked to the backyard through a wooden gate. They walked down a gangway. Megan could hear it before she could see it. That stupid fucking tinkle or twinkle or whatever it is that a party has. That buzz, that hateful buzz. There were grills and torches and street lamps back there and as soon as they were spotted, Tiffany or Kimberly or whoever she was, came over and hugged Randy and said how much she loved the website. Great, thought Megan. I hate everyone here. She tried to find the beer, and it didn’t take long. She drank in solitude, like some kind of disgusting shithead. “Doctor, how do you pronounce this l-e-p-r-o-s . . . s . . . y?” Three or four beers she drank just standing by the cooler alone. She tried to think about the movie Sid and Nancy and how cool it was, sometimes, to feel kind of nihilistic and self destructive and a little “fuck the po-lice,” but. “Alas,” she whispered. “Alas, alas, alas.” She lit a cigarette. She’d bought her own cigarettes so she wouldn’t have to be beholden to Randy in any way tonight. She rehearsed announcing that she would be happy to sleep on the couch. A girl she sort of knew from school was looking at her from across the party. The girl walked over.
“I’ll hang out with you for a while if you give me a cigarette,” said the girl.
“Uh, sure,” said Megan. “But the cigarettes are free to you, if that’s what you prefer.”
“No, I’ll hang,” said the girl. She must have been one of those “It’s always good to have a new experience” people.