“Are you going to fuck him again?” I asked.
She said, “How do I know who I’m going to fuck anymore?”
I jumped at her and slapped her. There was blood at her mouth. I wanted to taste her blood. I wanted to do something horrible, to remind myself I was real.
Chapter 13…
“I used to be a bouncy twenty-two-year-old,” Amelia says, “but now I’m not so bouncy.”
“Resiliency is the first thing we lose,” Sheila says.
“I was twenty-two when I met The Astronaut,” Amelia says.
“Astronaut?” Holly says.
Tasha turns, looking at the entrance. I know she’s wondering if Slater might come back, and I’m wondering the same thing. “Listen,” Tasha says, “we’ve been here for a long time.”
“We’re always here,” Cara says.
“I know, but do we always have to sit in the same place and same bar?” she says. “Why don’t we move about? It’s a big city. Since we’re being different and have Leonard on our hands, we might as well be different and go somewhere else, maybe several other places.”
“Like bar-hopping?” Holly says.
“Yes.”
“Hmm,” Holly looks around, “we could go somewhere more exciting; this place is kinda dead.”
“What do you think?” Tasha asks them all.
“Where will we go?” Lisa says.
“Plenty of places,” Sheila says.
Amelia says, “Is Leo coming with us?”
“Well,” I look at my drink.
“Only if he wants to,” my ex-wife says. “If he doesn’t have anything important to do.”
“Not really,” I say, and I know this isn’t the answer she wants, but I’ll be damned if I’ll give in to her subtlety. “I don’t have anything to do.”
“Do you want to bar-hop with the girls, Leeeeeooo?” Sheila says, giggling. “Be one of the girls?” She laughs. “I’m sure there are more stories to hear tonight; maybe repeats of stories already told.”
“I have to go to the bathroom first,” Lisa says.
“Me, too,” Cara says.
We all get up from the booth. My knees crack, but it’s not audible. I’m getting old.
Chapter 14…
“It’s such a crowded city,” Amelia says, looking out the window.
I’m sharing a cab with Amelia, Tasha, and Sheila. We’re crammed in. I’m at one end and Amelia is at the other. Sheila is sitting next to me. Her perfume is expensive and strong. I like the way her hair smells.
There aren’t any places near that seem interesting. Sheila suggests a place none of us have heard of. It’s a few miles uptown. In the cab behind us are Holly, Lisa, and Cara. I wonder what they’re talking about.
“Amelia,” Sheila says.
“Yes?”
“You mentioned an astronaut several times before,” Sheila says. “Are you saying you did a real live astronaut? Like one who went to the moon?”
“He called himself The Astronaut,” Amelia says, “and we went beyond the moon. He went all over the galaxy.”
“Girl, you’re funny.”
“No, really,” Amelia says. “I met him right after I decided to run away. Drive away. I had to take David back to his car, of course, but I couldn’t go back home. So that was it. It’s what made me go and leave, take that car and drive away because I knew right then and there that no matter how much I needed or wanted someone to be a part of my life, to be in my life, no matter what, maybe it was best that I go it alone. The loner: little ol’ moi. The drift-girl. The old maid, sure. I didn’t care. All I knew was that I had to get the hell away, far away. And look at me! There I was, driving and driving! I was taking the highway east. I was heading away from the city and into the mountains, the desert, I guess I was going to try and find myself. I was driving, and suddenly there were all these swirly lights around the car. Eeeks! Oh my, oh my! I woke up and I was — inside a UFO.”
Tasha and I look at each other.
“We’re here,” Sheila says, and she brushes a hand across my leg, my upper thigh really, very delicately, the nails glancing across. She looks at me out of the corner of her eye just as Tasha looks over at Amelia, Amelia who is looking out the window and saying, “There are a lot of UFOs out there.”
Chapter 15…
“It’s loud,” Amelia says.
It’s not exactly a bar that Sheila takes us to. It’s a club, rather large but not crowded. Loud music. Well, we’re here, and the seven of us take to a table. Sheila moves her body, erotically, to the music, but Amelia jounces, she’s somewhere else. Tasha looks uncomfortable; she’s never been one for clubs and loud music. From our table, we can look down on the dance floor, look up onto the dance level above us. There are some people gyrating away. A waiter comes by, in a tuxedo no less, and takes our order — most of us have mixed drinks, except Lisa, who sticks with wine.
The drinks come and we drink and try to talk, but it’s hard over the music: we have to repeat our words and shout.
“Hey, Leonard,” Amelia says.
“Yeah?”
“Wanna dance with me?” she asks.
“Sure.”
*****
So I’m dancing with her, and yes, I’m a little drunk, but that helps the matter all the more. There are bodies around us and I can fell their heat. I wish I could tune into Amelia, disregard the other dancers and pick up on her heat, her mind, her past, and her UFOs. There’s something about her I can’t place, something odd and distant, and yet when I look at her, her eyes closed, arms up, her body moving almost spasmodically, a if ritually, to the sounds pounding, about us, she seems like any other woman out to have a few drinks and a good time, not the person I heard tell the story of two men and the despair of disconnection. I wonder if strangers in this club look at us and think we are a couple, if they try to make quick judgments on our past and future and muse: Oh, there’s a couple. I’m misguided, however, as we all know that strangers, as we ourselves are strangers to others, never give most people much thought.
I’m lost. At some point we go back to the table and I finish my drink. Tasha and I have a brief exchange — her small eyes under that dark hair — and then I’m back on the dance floor, this time with Sheila, and I’m surprised because I don’t know how I got here, but there I am, again.
We’re dancing closer, Sheila and I, compared to the dance I had with Amelia. Sheila is taller than Amelia, and fuller about the body, and she emits a different air, a sexual air, and the undeniable smell of attraction; or, at least, a perfume that turns me on. I start to wish I hadn’t had so much to drink. In the switch from a fast to a slow song by the club’s DJ, I excuse myself to go to the bathroom.
I don’t realize, at first, that Sheila has followed me in.
The men’s room is empty except for a guy at a urinal. There’s a tap on my shoulder, I turn, almost scared, for who’d tap me here? — and see Sheila. She puts a hand on my chest, hard, pushes me toward a stall, impels me in, joins me, closes the door, locks it. She smiles.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Don’t be dumb,” she says, reaching into the pocket of her blazer.
“We’re in the men’s room,” I say softly.
“You can’t be that goofy,” she says.
I’m not. I’ve seen women in men’s rooms plenty of times, but when I was younger, at concerts, and clubs, when women would come in with a man, go to the stall to do coke and other things— And how stupid I am, yes, as I see Sheila bring out a vial of cocaine from her pocket: small, perfect, something I’ve seen before, like the night between Tasha, Veronica, and I.