Vile Men Read online

  I’m on his couch again, my legs curled underneath me. He sits beside me while I glance outside the living room window at the falling rain.

  “What are you so scared of?” he asks.

  “I feel like you barely know me at all,” I say.

  “There’s plenty I can see on the surface,” he says. It sounds like an insult but it’s not. He touches my face, brushes his fingers over my cheek.

  I look up at him. I share his gaze. His eyes are blue, like his car.

  He’s the guide.

  “I asked you to spend time with me and you came,” he says. “What made you want to?”

  I think of my shoes clicking against the sidewalk. I think of my aching calves, of the sky seeming a little less vast when there was somewhere else to go.

  “It used to be impossible to go out,” I say.

  I tell him everything. I tell him about my parents. I tell him about my apartment. I tell him about Jessa, my only girlhood friend who’s fading away. He listens. It gets late. He gets me blankets from his linen closet and I fall asleep on the couch. In the morning he’s there. We go out for coffee before he drops me off at work.

  My clothes are wrinkled, but they feel comfortable, lived-in.

  Jessa calls me into her bedroom when I get home from work. She’s on her bed, circling her stomach with an unsteady palm. She’s having contractions—four in under an hour. It’s too early. Three months early, she says.

  Her hands shake when she grips my wrist.

  I think of the baby, no longer contained by the walls of her womb, forced to meet the world too soon.

  “It’s not supposed to be like this,” Jessa says. Her voice cracks.

  “You’ll be fine,” I say. She looks at me, her gaze filled with static and worry like when she found me trapped in my apartment and she cupped my cheek and took me away.

  I touch her stomach, my fingers shaking.

  “She’ll be fine,” I say, trying to sound like I know what I’m talking about.

  She doesn’t look like she believes me.

  She’s a tiny thing, breathing ventilated air, barely moving in the incubator. Looking at her, it’s like looking at a picture of a place I’ve been to.

  Jessa’s asleep in the sterile room. Her husband’s at her side, clutching her pale hand, clutching it tight.

  I buy Jessa flowers. They’re white lilies and I write on the card, STAY STRONG in big capital letters that look like the text on my phone when Francis calls, his name appearing over Atlantic City.

  I tell him I need to see him. He offers to pick me up but I tell him I want to walk.

  “From the hospital?” he asks. “Are you sure?”

  He’s far away. Blocks uphill, my heels clicking the whole way.

  His bedroom walls are white like a hotel room. His sheets are blue and grey, tucked neatly under the mattress. Sitting beside him, I shed all my weight against his shoulder. I drape my arms around his neck, my grasp tightening, clinging.

  "I didn't know what to say. I never know what to say."

  "She knows you care." He's talking about Jessa but I'm picturing the baby, swaddled in blankets and incubated warmth.

  Trying, trying, trying.

  "I meant it the other night," he says, his fingers flinching, tracing up my arm. "I'm scared for you sometimes."

  I look at him.

  "I didn't want you to walk all the way here," he says, "but I let you."

  I lean in and kiss him. I try to fall back on the bed but he holds me up. He grips my thigh, his hands shaking, the tremors starting. I don't stop him. He slips his hand under the hem of my blue skirt. He gathers the fabric in his grasp, holding me by the waist as he pulls my tights, his touch caressing over my bare thighs, slipping between.

  "Is this what you want?" he asks.

  His breath caresses my neck, flushes my skin. I kiss him back, heat on my tongue, warmth filling my lungs. My grasp slips up his arms. My fingers cling tight against his muscles, his comfort. I pull at his shirt, showing him my need and my desire, things I've wanted all along.

  Goosebumps flush my skin as he unbuttons my blouse. He slides the fabric down my shoulders. He unclasps my bra and he kisses my chest. His slow caress takes me. He lays me down on the bed, soft covers under my back, warmth circling me. He slips his fingers under my panties, eases his reach inside of me. The tremors fill me. My grasp slips over his shoulders. My fingers curl gently through his hair. He holds me close, pulls my legs around him.

  I breathe in deep, taking in the scent of Atlantic City's boardwalk, the ocean in my lungs. I gasp and I moan. I ride the waves until I'm shaking.

  My phone vibrates on the nightstand.

  There’s a message from Jessa:

  She made it through the night.

  There’s a new sight, my clothes on the floor, discarded. Francis lies beside me. His sheets are wrinkled but they’re soft on my skin, his warmth reaching my side of the bed. I run a hand up his back. He stirs and opens his eyes. He touches my hand and I show him the message.

  “I have to see her,” I say.

  He clings for a moment, but then releases his grasp. “Are you going to walk?” he asks.

  I nod. I kiss him.

  “Be careful,” he says.

  I step out of the bed and place bare feet on the floor. The wooden planks are laid out like a boardwalk, stretching outside, leading beyond.

  GRIN ON THE ROCKS

  She’s a MILF who found me in the dark corner of a bar. She told me I was handsome and I flashed her my charmed smile, the one that usually buckled girls at the knees. Instead she slipped her hand around my arm. She pressed herself close, whispered seductively in my ear. She took me to her house. The next morning she rolled over and asked me if I wanted to rent it from her.

  Now she’s my landlord.

  Now she’s just another woman.

  Now she’s always at my door in her slutty shirts, telling me I owe her money.

  “It’s the tenth, Jonah.” Today she’s wearing sunglasses and my face is reflected in the wide lenses where her stare should be.

  “I’m not stupid,” I say, even though my gaze drops to her chest. Her black bikini shows through the white of her shirt. The deep neckline accentuates her cleavage. Perspiration beads along the tanned flesh of her breasts and slips into the valley between them.

  You are stupid. You are.

  “It’s nearly the middle of the month,” she says. “I have to pay for my kids’ swimming lessons.” She points toward her car where her two daughters sit in the back seat.

  “I just started my new job,” I say. “I don’t even get paid until Friday.”

  She sighs and shakes her head, exaggerating. “So you’re telling me I drove all the way down here for nothing?”

  “Look,” I say, reaching for my back pocket, fingers shaking around my wallet. I dig inside and hand her all the cash I have left. “There’s two hundred here, two-fifty.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Swimming lessons can’t cost any more than that.”

  Her jaw tightens, hard, rigid, sharpening her tiny frame. “I don’t have the patience for this, Jonah. I really don’t. I’m not running a charity.” She puts her hand on her hip, drawing my gaze to the wooden beads dangling from the ties of her bikini bottoms. All I can remember is the way she rocked her pelvis while she was riding me, saying, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, just like my mom used to when she couldn’t handle being a single parent anymore.

  “I’ll get it,” I say. “Like I said, I haven’t even been paid yet.”

  “Next week,” she says, pointing her finger against my chest. “You can bring it to me. It’s too much of a hassle bringing the girls down here.” The end of her fake French nail digs heat into me, right where my heart’s throbbing.

  “Fine,” I say. “Whatever you want.”

  She nods, returns to her car. She tells her kids that she’s in a hurry, that they’re running late, that they’re going to the pool now. She looks
at me before she pulls out onto the street. My gaze slips to the newspaper on the doorstep. The front page features a photo of smiling young girls, bikini bodies burning on the beach, bold black headline announcing: Summer’s Here!

  I flip through the pages but there’s never anything that interests me.

  Most of what Mark knows about me are lies. He thinks that I like the outdoors, that I like the heat. He always works shirtless, mowing every lawn with his defenseless back braised red under the sun. The mole on his shoulder looks bigger, but he says he likes it when the girls stare.

  “The cancer’s getting you,” I say, dragging a bag of grass clippings behind him.

  He shrugs. “Cancer’s gonna get everyone in this kind of heat.”

  “Have you even read about it?” I ask.

  “About skin cancer?” He turns his head. “It’s not even real cancer, man. They cut that shit right off. It’s minor surgery.”

  “You can’t always get rid of it all. It really depends on how deep the disease has gotten into your skin.”

  “Jesus, man,” he says, smirking at he points at my sweat-stained shirt. “Go buy some fucking sunscreen if you’re so fucking paranoid.”

  “I’m not paranoid,” I say. “These are just facts.”

  He turns away, pushes the mower up the ramp and into the bed of his truck. “You sound like Cheryl,” he says. “Melanoma’s not so bad if you look at the entire spectrum of cancer.” He twists the cap off his water bottle, chugs it back. “I mean, if I could pick a cancer, it’d be melanoma.”

  I stare at him, prying my sweaty gloves from my hands before clenching my fists tight.

  He’d be better off with no cancer but he’s already tangled up with his wife and his toddler son. Most nights he complains about Cheryl, about how she always has to have her way. Mark says he can never do anything right by her. When his phone rings and an argument arises, I imagine what Cheryl’s voice sounds like on the other end, its piercing sound stabbing my insides, until Mark hangs up again. He’s oblivious. He always laughs it off, makes the same joke about how he probably won’t be getting laid for a while.

  All it ever makes me think about is how much better things used to be, when men drank real drinks instead of the shitty weak beer that Mark digs out from the cooler in the back of his truck. He offers me one but I shake my head.

  “It makes it easier, you know,” he says. “Have a couple and you’ll be drunk enough to finish the work without noticing the heat.”

  I take the beer. I crack open the tab and do what I do best, even though the cold barley taste of pale lager is never enough to calm the burn in my throat. It builds when I think too much. It’s an ache I feel every time I take a breath.

  Mark tilts his can back and takes a long swig of his beer. I remind him that there’s still the back half of the complex to weed and he groans and wipes his brow.

  “You feel like spotting me a couple hundred bucks?” I ask.

  “What?” he asks.

  “Speeding ticket,” I say. “Yesterday afternoon.”

  He finishes the can and reaches for another. “What’s wrong with you, man? This is the third one in two months.”

  I shrug and take another swig, pretending. “It’s a curse.”

  He sets the beer down, reaches for his wallet. “I can’t keep doing this, you know. Cheryl’s going to find out.”

  “Stop being so honest,” I say.

  “You have to be honest when you’re in my position.” He flashes a look, acts like he’s smarter even though he’s the one guzzling the beer.

  I tell Mark that I’ll make it up to him, that I’ll finish the work and he can enjoy his drink. That’s what he does, enjoying his slow decay under the sweltering heat of the sun. He slugs the cans back with hard chugs just like my dad.

  Even the low growl of the WeedWacker doesn’t stop the memory of misery, the crack of the alcohol in his voice. He drank rum exclusively after the divorce, the scent of it hitting my face when he told me about my mom’s postpartum depression.

  “You know, your mom tried to drown you in the bathtub once,” he said. “I saved you. I stopped her. I pulled you out. I fucking do her job while she’s rotting? She couldn’t even get out of bed back then and now all she does is thank Jesus for whatever it is she believes he did. She’s like all of them, you know? They’re all just greedy whores.”

  This house without air-conditioning is an oven in the heat wave. What little relief I feel quickly fades into the void between these four walls. I lay on the couch with the lights off, the windows shut and the curtains drawn. During the day I can’t watch television. I can’t use my computer. I can’t cook, can’t clean, can’t use the dishwasher. The thermostat drifts a little higher whenever I try to get anything done.

  At night it’s easier to go out. It’s easier to seek relief than to let the heat swell inside of me.

  Usually it’s a walk that ends up elsewhere: the pub, the club, spaces where I can feel less alone when surrounded by strangers.

  I sit at the bar like men used to, facing the alcohol, all those cold glass bottles lined up on the wall. The bartender is the only person who ever stares back. The only thing he ever asks is if I want another drink, but sometimes he’ll lean in with a warning, the sort that makes me wonder why the heat brought me here in the first place. He glances behind me and points to the girl smiling from across the room. She walks over and introduces herself, says her name is Bailey or Lindsay or Ashley.

  Her name never matters.

  Every girl comes wrapped in the same little dress, a flimsy tube of fabric that clings to her curves. Her hair’s coiled up in hairspray, her presence covered in it, glitter and gloss and sexual aggression. She slips her hand over my arm and slithers her way in. I’d love for this to never happen, for me to be the gentleman instead of the idiot whose gaze always slips to her tits.

  Little Sluts, my mother used to call them.

  This one, she asks me what my name is.

  “Matthew, Mark, Luke.” I draw a breath and turn back to my drink. “What does it matter, really?”

  “It’d be nice to know who I’m talking to.” She stands there and I look at her again. I try to make eye contact because the last thing I want is to lose control. My heart throbs in my ears and my fingers cling too tightly to my glass.

  “I’m not interested,” I say. It’s the easiest way to put it, the easiest way to spurn her advance without causing a scene.

  “Asshole,” she says, lips puckered aggressively around the last half of the word. They’re glossy pink, like melting plastic. Her steps waver backward before she turns altogether, retreating back to her table of friends.

  I return to my drink, the cold gin unable to tame the sound of her behind me, telling all of her girlfriends that I’m a real piece of shit.

  Because you are, aren’t you?

  I walk home, taking the pedestrian walk on the bridge. There’s a girl coming from the opposite direction that makes me forget about the riverside breeze against my face. She’s in regular clothes, in jean shorts and a shirt, but then I notice the shade of her lipstick and I can’t help but clench my fists.

  She notices. She makes eye contact and then she tenses. She keeps walking, her footsteps clicking on the sidewalk. She pulls her bag close to her chest.

  I stare for too long. My jaw clenches and the girl looks away, breaks the connection as he passes.

  Every flash of lipstick is a moving target, a trick. She’s a lie, just like all of them. Her coiled locks slip over her shoulder. She walks faster, tightening her grasp into the strap of her purse. I bite my tongue; bite down while the words flood my skull.

  One day you’ll stop falling for it.

  One day you’ll spread her cancer.

  One day you’ll feel so much better.

  If she didn’t want the attention, her lips wouldn’t be so red.

  My dad used to take me grocery shopping before my mother had full custody. He’d buy discounted microwav
e meals and stack them on the conveyor. He’d gawk at the covers of the magazines in the checkout line.

  “Looks kind of like your mother, doesn’t she?” he asked, pointing at one of the covers.

  The woman had my mother’s dark hair and brown eyes, but her whitewashed skin looked ghostly against her bloodstained lips. He pulled the magazine from its metal slot and flipped through the pages to the full spread of the model that was supposed to be my mother, sprawled out half-dressed the way people never did in real life, her eyes lined in dark lashes like stingers that threatened to pierce my face if I leaned in too close.

  My dad nodded and smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “Just like her, right?”

  Mark is like any other married man, slipping into a white plastic chair on the patio with a selection of empty cans beside him. Cheryl tries to rub his back while their son screams and pulls at her leg. She rolls her eyes and shakes her head, passing a glance at me before I get the chance to swallow the steeping flood she triggers in my chest.

  I retreat to the inside, where most of Mark’s birthday guests have retreated. The house’s air-conditioned chill smells of fresh paint, of excess and excuses, a farce of a real relationship Mark seems to think he has. I only planned on staying a short while, and I’m the only one without a drink. Watching the girls makes my smile emerge. They’re all strangers in the white light, outside of their comfort zone.

  The trick is picking the right one.

  She’s the girl who stumbles into the crowded kitchen for a wine glass even though the bottle she’s carrying is already half-empty. She sets it on the counter too hard. She digs through the cupboards, preoccupied, unaware of her place until I grab her attention.

  “I don’t know if you even need a glass at this point,” I say.

  “Probably not,” she says, “but it helps to keep up appearances.”

  She chooses a glass and nearly knocks it over when she goes to pour the wine. I put my hand down over the base, holding it steady. This close, the fake floral scent on her neck coaxes me to flinch when she offers me the glass. The red inside is deep and dark.