Vile Men Page 2

  My gaze drifts to the baby, now asleep. Her head’s slumped forward. Her eyes are closed and her mucus-filled nose makes sounds every time she breathes in and out—dazed, dreaming.

  He leans in—the sweet scent of his cologne mixed with perspiration, something new, something worth trying. I set the glass down on the floor. “You have to be quiet,” I say. “You can’t wake her, okay?”

  He’s got a face beyond my league, but he kisses me, eager. His tongue probes past the scar. Warmth settles between my legs. My limbs loosen. My veins run hot, heart throbbing, and I sink back, giving in. This is what everything used to feel like when I first started drinking. No tension, just a black hole to fill with anything.

  “My name’s Ian,” he says, climbing over me on the couch. He stares me down, his big eyes just dark holes with blue edges. He’s somewhere else, somewhere better. He kisses me again, thick saliva in my throat, taking me with him.

  He pries at my clothes, his hands quick, aggressive. He pulls his shorts down and grabs my knees, shoving his dick between my legs. “You’re so fucking wet,” he says. “You fucking like me, don’t you? You fucking want me, don’t you, baby?”

  He wakes the baby. Her cries squeal like the stroller wheels.

  I shut my eyes and smooth my palms over his chest, feeling the rapid pace, the pulsing throbs. Under him, everything else is hard to hear.

  When Marie comes home from work, I sit up straight on the couch, holding the baby, pretending there’s nothing to hide.

  “I met the new neighbour today,” I say.

  “Oh yeah?” She sets her purse down on the table.

  “His name’s Ian. He’s really nice. He showed me his place.”

  She looks at me. My lip itches and I rub it with the back of my hand. I can still smell the sweat on my skin.

  “How was Emma today?” she asks, taking the baby.

  “Fussy,” I say. “I don’t think she likes jogging, the motion of it. I don’t think it does anything for her.”

  At night Ian follows me. He chases me through the dirt trail beside the highway. The sun beats down on my skin. I can barely run, and he tackles me into the sagebrush, the gravel scraping at my flesh. There’s an ant’s nest beside my face.

  “What did your mouth look like?” he asks.

  “I don’t remember,” I say. “My mom never took pictures of me.”

  “It was probably a hole you could slip right into,” he says, his voice hot and eager in my ear. He slides two fingers into the nest and the ants crawl out. I realize he’s naked, that I’m naked. I wince, arching myself against his hard-on. He enters me, invades me, and I gasp, the ants finding a new home in my mouth, crawling inside.

  I wake up in my bedroom. There’s nothing but black outside the tiny window, and I lay there, looking at the shadows, the comfort of them.

  I put the baby in the stroller, her little mouth filled with a pacifier so she’s quiet, non-existent. I walk across the parking lot and knock on Ian’s door. He’s shaved off his beard and his face is marked with little red nicks. His skin looks sallow. He stares with empty blue eyes. There’s a plastic bottle of white powder clutched in his hand.

  I push the stroller inside and lean against the door.

  “I just want to do another line,” he says. “That’s all I ever want to do. That’s all I can think about.” His voice is low, quiet, the way mine used to sound when going out stopped being about blended drinks and partying, when it was solely about the alcohol, its influence feeding my veins.

  “It’s better to talk than to keep it all in,” I say.

  “What does it matter to you?”

  “I was an alcoholic,” I say.

  He stares.

  “It’s still hard, trying not to think about it, knowing it’s not an option. I told myself I didn’t want it to be an option. It just makes everything even harder.” My gaze drops. I step forward, breathing in, inhaling the scent of him.

  His fingers curl around the bottle. “It’s getting worse,” he says. “The first time I did it, I felt like angels were in the walls. They were talking to me, giving me energy and powers. Now the highs never last as long, and when I come down I just, I can’t even do anything.”

  “Do you ever think of hurting yourself?” I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  My lip twitches. He watches me rub at the scar. “I tried to cut it open once,” I say. “Marie found me in the bathroom with a knife. I told her there was nowhere else for the bullshit to go. The hole had to get bigger. All she did was cry. She didn’t know what to say. Nobody ever did.”

  His hand starts shaking. The bottle looks like a tiny martini shaker in his grasp, the powder inside like white drink froth.

  “There’s no point taking it out on yourself,” I say. “It’s better when you’re not alone.”

  He pours a bump on his wrist and he snorts it back. His chest heaves in and out. He looks at me, his lips tight, eyes wide, hot. He smiles. Blue Hawaii vacation relief.

  I want it. I want him.

  Marie wakes me up, walking into my bedroom with the baby wailing in her arms. “Where’s Emma’s pacifier?” she asks. “You had it this morning. She can’t fall asleep without it.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe it fell out at Ian’s place.”

  “What?” Her face is blurry in the dark. “You went there again?”

  “I was talking with him. What’s wrong with that?”

  “You’re supposed to be looking after Emma,” she says.

  “I get bored sometimes,” I say. “What do you expect, that I’m just going to sit and listen to her cry all day?”

  Marie groans. “I thought you were done with all this,” she says. “You can take care of yourself now. Why can’t you help somebody else?” She slams the door, but it doesn’t mask the sound of the baby’s colic moans.

  Ian never unpacks. He tells me that he’s started selling his stuff to pay for more cocaine. He’s so high, so excited, stubble on his face. He lets his beard grow back.

  I buy pacifiers. There’s a bag of them on his kitchen counter. The baby cries and I pop one in. Her mouth is so pretty, so perfect. Her lips close around the pacifier and she falls asleep like a normal person. Then Ian does another line.

  Every climb up to his bedroom makes me feel like I’m starting over.

  Blue Hawaii vacation refreshment.

  He doesn’t have a bed. There’s just a mattress on the floor, and it squeaks like the baby’s stroller when he fucks me on it. He’s shaved again. The scabs are thick, dark, like ants are crawling on his face. His nostrils are lined in red.

  The room smells like sweat and bile and aftermath. Sickness. His dick slips in, and he goes hard, fast, deep, filling me until my stomach cramps. His groan echoes when he pulls out, gushing hot all over my torso. He rubs his hands over the sticky white, slides two fingers into my mouth, making me taste him.

  “Don’t you like me?” he asks. “Don’t you want me?”

  He pries my lip up, pinching right where the scar is. “What’s it like, knowing you were born with all the ugly on the outside?”

  It feels like ants are crawling in my veins.

  “It used to be so different,” he says, voice cracking.

  I wince, but I can’t shake him off. He clings to me, nails bearing into my skin like tiny bites that sting all over. His groan echoes, turns into a moan. My lip throbs.

  “It’s never like it used to be,” he says, his eyes turning red, blinking, tears slipping out. It’s like a Blue Hawaii vacation gone awry.

  He’s on his hands and knees, shoulders shaking. His sobs sound stuck in his throat. It’s how my cries must have sounded when I was a baby, when my mouth was still a gaping open mess. I crawl away from him, his sweetness diluted on my tongue.

  I hold my breath, standing at the living room window. The baby’s crying in my arms and I rock her, watching Ian as he bends down over his doorstep, an aerosol can of insect killer clutched in his un
steady hand.

  Marie comes home.

  “Jessica, are you okay?”

  I shake my head, my fingers flinching, the baby slipping. Marie takes her, pats her back. She looks out the window.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. My fingers clench but there’s nothing to hold onto. “I relapsed.”

  Marie looks at me.

  “I’m not going back there. I just wanted to feel like I used to.”

  “What is going on?” she asks.

  I shake my head, tight-lipped. Outside, Ian turns, looking up at the window, at me, nothing but black filling his gaze. I look away.

  Emma wakes me, crying again. There’s blue behind the white sheer of the curtains. Dawn. Marie’s in the living room, trying to soothe the baby back to sleep. She doesn’t notice me.

  “I can take her,” I say.

  “Huh?” Marie blinks, looking up.

  “Go to bed,” I say. “I can take her for you.”

  Emma settles in my arms, her cries fading. Her skin’s warm and soft, her tiny infant grasp clinging to my finger. In the daylight, her eyes glisten bright blue. Normal.

  TOURIST

  There’s a certain kind of man who goes for damaged girls. He does the double take when he spots me from across the room. He spies the filtered grey that clouds my gaze and he doesn’t look away. A man like that is a travel magazine in a hospital waiting room. You could go anywhere, see anything, but you’d never want to waste the money. Still, he stares. He smiles lightly. My chest tingles and I want to breathe in deep.

  The things I’d do if I could, but I know better.

  I always run.

  Jessa and her husband are trying to conceive a child. I hear them sometimes, the sound of the headboard hitting the wall, their voices moaning. There’s a picture of a beach above my desk and when I squint my eyes I can see the frame bobbing. Hearing them makes me wonder what will happen to me.

  Their condominium only has two bedrooms.

  Jessa says she wants a girl. I think about a girl lying where I am now on the floor, in the room where she’ll become herself. I wonder what kind of pictures she’ll put up. Most girls hang pictures of boys and pretty pop stars, the things they want and things they hope to be.

  I wonder if she’ll be more like me.

  My parents were told they were going to have a boy but when I came out female they never bothered to repaint the walls. I remember asking my dad for a white bedroom that looked like the hotel rooms in the travel magazines at the doctor’s office.

  “You’re just going to get everything dirty,” he said.

  I remember crying. I remember him putting his arms around me. He said that little girls weren’t supposed to have white bedrooms and it made me feel like I’d done something wrong. He repeated it over and over while he wiped the tears on my cheeks. I wanted to fight. I wanted to kick and scream but I didn’t.

  My girlhood walls remained barren and slate blue.

  Most people appear to be absent when they fall under the spell of routine, their faces bleached with a sullen sense of sadness as their bodies drift from place to place. He walks into the coffee shop with a placid expression. He orders his coffee and waits at the counter, his gaze distant, connecting with nothing.

  Then he notices me.

  I sit up in my seat. My fingers clench but there’s nothing to hold onto.

  The barista gives him his coffee in a disposable cup. He’s a man on the go. He’s older, because they always are. He approaches like they all do. His smile is a ticket to France, but I know the truth, that under the Eiffel Tower is just a bunch of homeless people.

  “You were here the other day,” he says, setting his coffee down. “Same table.”

  I bite my lip and raise my chin. My throat tenses and then I remember his face, his square jawline, his chin shadowed with stubble. He’s going to sit but he doesn’t yet. He drums his fingers over the plastic lid of his coffee cup. I meet his warm gaze. He has a real man’s smile. It’s first class.

  I’m supposed to nod, so I do. In my head I’m frantic. I’m packing, trying to prepare.

  I tug at my white blouse. The fabric’s rough. It’s been bleached so much it almost looks yellow. Discoloured. He unbuttons his wool coat as he sits down and I can’t help but feel under-dressed.

  “Do you come here every day?” he asks.

  “Before work,” I say, already breathless. “It’s somewhere to go. I’m supposed to have some time out, time to myself.” It’s something my therapist used to say.

  “You don’t really look like you’re enjoying it,” he says.

  “My coffee’s still hot,” I say.

  He looks down at the ceramic mug in my hands. My fingers twitch over the handle. My chest goes tight and I draw a breath, curling my toes. I try not to run.

  “What’s your name?” he asks.

  “Angie.” It’s starting, the turbine engine in my ears.

  “Short for Angela?” he asks.

  “I just go by Angie.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Angie.” He pulls his chair closer, shoulders hunched as he leans in.

  I want to pull away. I want to put my head between my knees. I want to kick and scream but I don’t. All I can do is breathe.

  Inhale, exhale. It’s a routine.

  I always wanted to be a road map, a girl who danced on a table and then let all the men explore. Behind closed doors, opening up, they’d become a piece of land to conquer. Girls like that have the allure of Las Vegas. It’s the same thing every time but men always want to go back. What happens there stays there.

  I’m more like a guided tour. I give a hint, a glimpse, but then a man tries to push past the blue velvet. He runs his hand up my thigh and I grab his palm with shaking fingers.

  All he gets is a chance to snap a photo that looks worse than the one in the travel guide.

  Jessa’s been rubbing circles over her stomach ever since the test she bought came out positive. Her stomach’s flat and normal, but she still comforts the hidden life inside while we sit in her doctor’s waiting room. She says she’s nervous and I tell her I’m nervous for her, even though I know that’s not what friends are supposed to say. There’s a stack of magazines on the waiting room table. The one on the top is called Destinations. There’s a picture of a French vineyard on the cover.

  I think about telling Jessa my big news. She holds my hand, her fingers tight, the only grasp I can trust. She flinches when she’s called in.

  “I’m so excited,” she says.

  “I thought you were nervous,” I say.

  Everybody in the waiting room looks up. They look at me and not at Jessa. They look at me like I’m lost. Jessa asks if I want to go with her, but I shake my head and stay in my cold plastic seat. I pick up the travel magazine and flip through the pages. I rub at my stomach, nothing inside but an ache that builds, as I look at all the glossy pictures—all the places I’ll never visit.

  He calls in the night, his name darkening the picture of the vineyard on my phone:

  FRANCIS

  “Hey, Angie.”

  The beach on my wall is shaking again. Now that Jessa and her husband aren’t trying, they’re making love. Their moans still sound the same. I pull the covers over my head and shield myself with the darkness and the silence, save for his voice in my ear.

  “This a bad time?” he asks.

  I shake my head even though he can’t see me, the weight of the duvet bearing down on top of me. I clear my throat. “I’m okay,” I say.

  “Do most men wait a week before they call you?”

  “No,” I say before swallowing. “I don’t know.”

  He laughs gently. He’s not mocking, but I feel mocked.

  He asks me how work was. He asks, “What’s your favourite kind of bread to make?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do,” he says.

  I hesitate. “I like cinnamon buns, the kind with the raisins.”

  “I should come in an
d buy one, right?”

  “Maybe,” I say.

  “How about we get one right now?”

  “The bakery’s closed,” I say.

  “We’ll go somewhere else,” he says. “Somewhere open.”

  I can hear Jessa’s husband, his grunts echoing. I pull the covers tighter around me. I don’t ever want to leave.

  “You up for that?” he asks.

  I’m not, but I have to be.

  I walk with heavy steps, the heels of my Mary Janes hitting the pavement, sounding like the headboard against the wall.

  Trying, trying, trying.

  The sound becomes comforting, hard throbs filling empty streets, echoing skyward. I pull my coat around me to recreate the effect of the duvet, of my bedroom. There are no stars above, just black like the ceiling.

  My steps echo across the parking lot. The only place open is the grocery store he wanted to meet me at. I sit on the bench outside and wait. It’s like waiting for Jessa’s doctor to call her in, only without the travel magazines.

  He pulls up in his Accord. It’s blue like my bedroom walls.

  “You haven’t been waiting long, have you?” he asks.

  I shake my head and he walks up, puts his hand on my back to guide me into the store. The only cinnamon buns come packaged as a pre-sliced doughy rectangle of six in a flimsy plastic container. They aren’t pretty like the fresh ones at the bakery. They’re slathered thick with icing, but he buys them and we sit outside on the bench, the container between us. He picks out a bun, and peels at the coiled dough.

  “This is different,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say. My shoes click against the pavement as my legs swing back and forth, and I catch him looking down, his gaze tracing over the definition of my calves under white tights.