Domestic Violets (21 page)

Chapter 29

I
need to go
home!” she yells.

I hear her, barely—the Beastie Boys are blaring—but I decide not to say anything. Pretending to be deaf has bought me a moment to think.

Barry from Accounting has taken off his work shirt and is spinning it over his head. Lauren is barefoot—her heels cast aside—and she’s dancing with some guy from another company with a comb-over. A couple of the admins are dancing with the interns who first discovered my press release. And then there’s me, Tom Violet, dancing with a beautiful, too-young girl. She’s grinding her hips into mine and holding my hands and stepping on my feet. She’s laughing and her breath smells like sugar and she keeps looking into my eyes.

“It’s time to go!” she shouts.

“Are you sure? I think I still have like nine more drinks over there on the bar. You can have four and a half of them if you want.”

“I’ve got drinks at my apartment, you know. Four beers and a bottle of white wine that may or may not still be good.”

“I don’t think—” I begin, but then I stop there. Strangely though, this sounds like a full, declarative sentence, as if I’m standing in a bar shouting out one of my most obvious character flaws.
I don’t think!

“You owe me, remember? You got me fired.” She laughs and squeezes my hand again. “Well, indirectly, at least. So, you have to do what I say. There are rules here.”

“Let me get you a cab.” This seems like something that a reasonable man—married, with a child at home—would say and then do.

But she shakes her head, and she’s not smiling anymore. “Tom, I want you to take me home.”

In the cab, speeding toward Arlington, Virginia, I tell her that I’m just making sure she gets home safely. The cabdriver gives me a look in the mirror and shakes his head. I look out the window, and I have no idea where I am. It’s just after midnight and things outside are blurry and I’m not in D.C. anymore—I’ve crossed the river. If I’m just making sure she gets home safely, then why did I just turn off my cell phone? I should turn it back on and check in with my dad . . . but I don’t. Katie’s hand is on my leg. I don’t remember her putting it there.

This is a really bad idea, Thomas
. It’s my mom’s voice-over again, and she’s not happy.
You know why they invented the phrase “the point of no return,” don’t you?

Next to me, Katie smiles and then blows a string of hair out of her eyes. This makes her laugh.

At Katie’s little brick apartment building, which is tucked off a busy street called Washington Boulevard, I give the driver fifty dollars and ask him to hold on a second. Katie has already started a zigzag walk toward the front door, her keys jingling. She looks back over her shoulder. “What are you waiting for, Tom Violet?”

Above me, the streetlights are pulsating. “I’m waiting to come to my senses. That’s what people do in situations like this.”

She laughs again and then she’s walking back toward me, and I wonder if Anna and David Anderson had a moment like this, when any number of things could still happen—or
nothing
could still happen. She plants her feet firmly in front of mine and hooks a finger to my breast pocket, pulling me forward.

“You can come to your senses inside. It’s warmer in there.”

“Katie,” I say.

“Come on.”

Apparently this is all too much for the driver to handle. There’s a revving engine, a squeal of tires, and then the cab is gone, off into the night, eliminating what is left of the illusion of free will.

“Too late now,” she says.

Like her cube, her apartment is small and disheveled. There are empty Diet Dr Pepper cans stacked in a Jenga pile atop an overflowing recycling bin. She kicks off her shoes and pads over to the tiny kitchen, pulling a Brita out of the fridge. I scan her walls, and there’s a picture of Katie and some girls on a beach in their bikinis and a picture of an old lady holding a baby. I feel like I’m spying, like I’ve broken into this place. Flowers, arranged in a dying bouquet, sit on the kitchen table. It’s like the apartments everyone lives in when they’re young, like Anna’s cramped one-bedroom in Dupont Circle when we first started dating. The first time I spent the night there, I got up at four in the morning to use the bathroom and tripped over her ironing board.

Katie sips her water, and I see that she’s wearing a silver ring on one of her toes. “Is this totally weird or what?” she asks.

“Not at all. Lots of people have pictures of old ladies on their walls.”

For a moment she’s confused. “That’s my grandma, stupid. I mean, is
this
weird, you being
here,
in my apartment?”

She hands me her glass of water and I have a drink. It strikes me that this is an intimate gesture, more so than dozens of shared cigarettes and arm punches. She’s so much smaller with her shoes off, and my heart is settling into a steady rhythm in my chest. We’re just talking. It’s going to be OK. I’m just having a glass of water and that’ll be it. In movies, scenes like this begin differently. Characters don’t enter the apartment carefully, hang up keys, and drink from a water purifier. Instead, they burst through the front door pawing at each other, their bodies conjoined at the tongue, stepping on the cat en route to the couch. I finish the glass of water and set it on the table. “Well, you seem safe and sound. I guess I’ll—”

I’m stopped by Katie’s mouth, which has come crashing into mine. She stands on my feet, on her tiptoes, her arms around my waist. At first, my mouth simply doesn’t know what to do, but then it eases into its role, opening and closing in time with hers. Her tongue finds its way between my lips, and her mouth is chilly from the cold water. Our lips pop when she pulls away.

“So, that’s what it’s like to kiss you,” she says. “It’s kind of hot.”

Before I can say anything, we’re doing it again. This time, I’m ready and we kiss like two people kissing in secret, holding and biting. She untucks my shirt and her hands are on my chest and stomach. Bitten off, jagged little fingernails leave grooves of heat across my skin. When we come up for air, we’re in the hallway. She’s guided me here, and I’ve followed. When we break again, the light is different, darker, and we’re in her bedroom. The backs of my knees meet something soft and we’re falling onto her bed. Her body on top of mine is light and hyperactive, moving and grinding against me. I hold her lower back and pull her close to me and she moans into my mouth. I’m hard—without even realizing it—and her hips rubs against me and the room tilts on its axis.

Maybe this is a sign. This is what my body wants, to be here with her in this unmade double bed. Our chemistries are aligned, and it’s not a matter of what’s right or wrong, but simply what
should
be.

“Oh my God,” she says as I kiss her neck. She sucks air between her teeth and giggles. I feel goose bumps at the backs of her arms.

Katie’s shirt comes off in a flurry of elbows, and before I can even take in what I’m seeing, her mouth is on mine again. My own shirt is unbuttoned and I’m struggling out of it, our lips never unlocking—it’s an act of desperation. If we stop kissing, if we take a breath and look at each other, we’ll both realize that this is actually happening and that could very possibly derail everything.

When her jeans and my khakis are discarded onto the floor, she rolls me on top of her. I prop my weight on one elbow and run my hand down her body, and it’s like someone else’s hand, beginning at her clavicle and passing the silky mound of her bra. Her belly button, just a soft crater along the smooth topography of her abdomen, is exhilarating beyond imagination, this forbidden little thing, and I have to kiss it. My tongue fits perfectly into its hollow, and I allow my mouth to explore the honey-colored expanse above the waistband of her underwear.

Her hands knead my scalp, pulling my hair as her body tenses below me. As I move my mouth back up toward hers, I discover that her bra has come off. My tongue finds one firm, candy-shaped nipple and I hold it gently between my teeth. She arches her back and says my name and I have never felt desire like this, like something that hurts.

“I want you,” she says. And then she says it again.

“I’ve wanted you for so long,” I say.

“Really?” she asks, her eyes glazed and sleepy. Her hand is on me, holding me gently over my boxers, and I can hardly breathe. “Do you really?”

I bite the warm spot where her biceps and forearm meet. “Of course.”

“OK. Hold on a minute.”

“What?”

She wiggles out from beneath me and hops onto the floor. Upright, she steadies herself and runs down the hallway into the bathroom. “I’ll be right back,” she calls, and then the door shuts.

Alone, my eyes have adjusted to the low light, and I look around the room for the first time, listening to the hum of water through pipes. A cheaply framed Van Gogh print. A teddy bear wearing a Virginia Tech T-shirt. A pile of workout clothes in the corner. Her corduroy jacket slung over the back of a hand-me-down desk chair. And, on the other side of the room, a bookshelf. And I scan it, because that’s what I do, wherever I am—like a compulsion. Among her uneven collection of mismatched paperbacks and hardcovers, there’s
Bridget Jones
, some Grishams, Stephen King’s best, Kurt Vonnegut, a few female Indian writers who got a lot of press, Alice Munro, David Sedaris, and, of course, Curtis Violet. I fold Katie’s pillow into two halves and sit up, looking at six of his books.

“Hello, Dad,” I whisper.

Water is still running in the bathroom, and I can hear Katie moving around, opening and closing drawers. Five paperbacks and one hardcover, each worn, creased, and read. I could recite the important passages from all of them, and I remember where I was the first time I read each one. When I was younger, I used to wonder why my dad couldn’t just control himself. I wondered how he could give up so much—like my mother and me—for what seemed like so little. I understand it now, and I understand how he could forget me in that department store and leave me to drift alone among the clothing and Muzak. The world outside of this lovely girl’s tiny bedroom feels vague at best, like something from the distant past.

When I turn away from the shelf, I’m startled to see myself. In her full-length mirror, I look drunk and somehow too old for this bright duvet cover and these cream-colored walls. My cock is absurdly hard, lifting my underwear into a tent like a prop. I try to push it down, but it springs back up, ridiculous.

Beside the alarm clock there’s a framed picture that’s been turned upside down. I pick it up and look, even though I’m already fairly certain what it’s going to be. Katie and Todd the Idiot are smiling. They’re wearing Nationals T-shirts and holding big ballpark beers. They’re young and sunburned and in love with each other. While I was kissing her belly and hipbones and forging ahead blindly, Katie must have reached over and flipped it, the very beginnings of regret already creeping in through the haze.

I look at Curtis’s books again, side by side, and then I look at myself. I think of Allie and Anna, and I’m suddenly ashamed of all of this. My pants are on the floor—one leg turned inside out. My shirt is hanging from the bedroom doorknob somehow. One of my shoes is under the bed. The other is upside down under her jeans. I’m half dressed before it dawns on me that Katie’s been gone for a long time.

“Katie?” I say.

I walk down the short hallway to the bathroom and knock lightly. “Katie?”

When there’s nothing, I knock a little harder and say her name again. The force of my third try actually opens the door a crack. The only sound is the faucet, blasting away into the porcelain sink.

“Are you OK?” I say, pushing my way in. Steam, like smoke, has fogged the mirror. At first, what I see is frightening, and I immediately imagine the worst. But then, it’s OK. Naked, aside from her pink and blue underwear, which is now stretched delicately between her knees, Katie has fallen asleep on the toilet.

I take a towel from the wall. Her body, which moments ago was all I wanted in the world, is obscene now. I drape the towel over her shoulders. “Come on, honey,” I say.

“What?”

I help her to stand, but can see that she’s asleep on her feet. I look away as best I can as I carefully pull her underwear back up, securing it in place with a little snap of elastic.

“Todd?” she says, her eyes closed. “Todd, I’m sleeping.”

“I know. Let’s just get you back to bed, OK?”

“I got too drunk. Are you mad at me?”

“It’s OK,” I say, tucking her hair behind her ear. “You didn’t do anything wrong at all.”

“Please don’t be mad at me. I’m so stupid.”

Back in her room, I ease her into bed. I should dress her, at least put a T-shirt on to cover her breasts, but that feels like even more of invasion now, so I pull the sheets up to her shoulders instead. She’s just a girl. She’s someone’s daughter, and someday she’ll be someone’s wife. As I watch her sleep, I know that she deserves better than any of this. Her lips part and she begins to snore gently. Tomorrow she’ll wake up hungover, embarrassed, and confused, and that’s all my fault. She’ll wonder what happened and she’ll wonder where I went. If she’s lucky, she’ll never see me again.

“Good night, Katie,” I say. And then I kiss her smooth, perfect forehead.

Chapter 30

A
guy can get
a cab pretty easily in D.C., provided he doesn’t look like Hannibal Lecter. This is not the case, though, once you cross into the Commonwealth of Virginia. Frankly, I’m not even sure what a commonwealth is. It’s 1:15 a.m., the streets are horror-movie silent, and I’m loitering outside a shady 7-Eleven drinking a Big Gulp and trying not to draw attention to myself. Leaning against a brick wall, I’m replaying the last hour in my head over and over again. The nerve endings in the palms of my hands still remember the texture of Katie’s skin. I can still feel her hair across my face and there’s the taste of her mouth, sweet and cool and completely new.

I look at the clock on my cell phone and wonder if it’s too late to call. Of course it’s not. The guy I want to talk to lives on a different timetable than the rest of us. And besides, he deserves a semidrunk dial. The bastard has been ignoring me.

Brandon Ross answers immediately, and it sounds like there’s a continuous car accident occurring beside him. “Tommy!” he yells. “What’s up, brother? Isn’t it Late Night in Married Land?”

“Where the hell are you?”

“Book party. These things always run late. One of my writers has a memoir out this week. I
think
it’s a memoir. That’s how we’ve packaged it anyway. It’s pretty good. Usual stuff. Teenage druggy. Uncle Bobby touched my boobies. I danced because I hated myself. Cha-ching.”

“Sounds great. Listen, I was wondering. Have you had a chance to check out my manuscript yet?”

Brandon starts laughing. “Your manuscript? Sweetie, you sent it to me like twenty minutes ago.”

“Oh. Well, yeah, I guess it hasn’t been that long. I’m just kinda—”

“Wait. I’m sorry. That was bitchy. Vodka makes me insensitive. I actually have it on the fast track. My hot intern checked it out and said it was solid. He just put it on my desk yesterday. I’ve gotta get through a few things tomorrow and then I
promise
, I’m on it, OK?”

“You’re not sticking me in the slush pile are you?”

“Bitch, please. The slush pile’s for ugly people. I’ll read it ASAP, and then we can chat about it at the Pulitzer awards dealio. Scout’s honor. We’ll talk, get some drinks, then maybe we can make out a little.”

“We’ll play it by ear,” I say.

“Cheer up, Thomas. You sound depressed. I’ll see you in New York.”

With my BlackBerry back in my pocket, I try to calculate the odds of Brandon actually reading my manuscript before Curtis and I go to pick up his Pulitzer. Then I wonder what “solid” means, and who in the hell Brandon’s hot intern is. Does “solid” mean good, or does it just mean it won’t be a complete waste of Brandon’s time? I should have asked more questions. Why am I so afraid of looking uncool?

“Hey, man, you got any change?”

A homeless guy has shuffled up to me from behind the Dumpster. Normally, I’m on the move when I see homeless people, which makes it easier to ignore them. Now though, I’m pretty much just standing here, and so I dig in my pockets and give him a handful of random change.

“Thanks, man. God bless.”

We stand there for a while, side by side. He smells like fish and leather and his eyes are bloodshot, and I wonder if his path to this point in his life has been anything like mine. I’m in nice khakis from a department store and a Ralph Lauren shirt, but, at the end of the day we’re just two out-of-work guys outside a 7-Eleven in the middle of the night in a country that’s teetering on financial ruin.

“What’s so funny?” he asks.

I hadn’t even realized I was laughing. “Nothing. It’s just been a weird day.”

“Tell me about it, man. Days just keep getting weirder around here. But it’s gonna be all good soon. Obama’s gonna be on the case, making shit happen.”

The Excursion arrives then like a battleship docking. The pavement actually shakes from the rumbling of the Ford V8 engine. It’s bigger than the parking spot, dramatically so. The homeless guy and I shield our eyes from the blazing headlights.

“I gotta go,” I say. “My ride’s here.”

“Shit, man. We getting invaded or something?” If he says anything else, I don’t hear it because Gary honks the horn. This couldn’t be less necessary considering I’m standing five feet from his front bumper and we’re actually making eye contact through the windshield.

“Hiya, Tommy!” He looks both happy and wide awake even though I know he was dead asleep when I called him a half hour ago. After four long rings, he answered not with “hello,” but with my mother’s name.
No, Gary. It’s me. It’s just Tom
.

“Hey, Pop. You mind cutting the headlights? I think my eyes are melting.”

“Oh, sorry. So, you need a ride or what?”

“I sure do.”

I love Gary for a lot of reasons, one being that when I called him, he didn’t even think to ask what I was doing in Virginia in the middle of the night by myself. He just knew that I needed him.

He opens the door and hops down out of the truck. “OK, but give me a second. I wanna get a soda, too.”

I talk Gary through the best legal place to park, which, at this time of night, is about six full blocks from my house. And then together, each of us finishing the last of his large soda, we walk slowly through my neighborhood.

“How about that one?” he asks, pointing at one of the most beautiful houses in town, a white, half-brick monster with a garage and a perfect black fence around the garden.

“Three point five,” I say.

“Christ almighty. And it doesn’t even have a real garage.”

When Gary’s in Georgetown, he likes to look at the big old houses and have me tell him how much they’re worth. I don’t know, of course, especially now that their values are plummeting as we speak, but I deliver my answers with authority, and Gary gets a kick out of it. A young couple walks by, hand-in-hand and drunk, on their way back toward campus. I envy them and their wonderful lack of complication.

Gary shakes his icy cup and sips at the bottom for remaining soda. “So, remember what I was telling you before, about my big gesture?”

I tell him that I do, but, the truth is, I kind of don’t. My brain feels like it’s been cleaned out and everything moved around. Something about a skywriter.

“Well, it’s all systems go. Your mother’s gonna be blown away. Got it all planned out for this weekend. Things really come together fast when you start throwing money at a situation.”

“That’s great, Pop,” I say, even though it sounds more than a little ominous.

When we walk into the house, Hank leaps up from the couch where he’s apparently been waiting. He yelps and wags his tail and smiles up at Gary and me. I catch him in mid air and hold him so he won’t wake the whole house, but it doesn’t matter. Although it’s nearly 2 a.m., Curtis and Allie are sitting at the kitchen table, wide awake, playing Connect Four.

“Hi Daddy and Grandpa Gary.”

“Allie, what are you doing up?”

“Grandpa Curtis and I have
in-som-nia
.” She sounds the word out slowly with great care. If I were a betting man, I’d guess that Allie heard Curtis roaming the house and came to investigate. When he’s late into a book he works at odd hours, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in a while. I make a mental note to become a better father. My daughter’s life the last few days has been very much like the beginning of an
E! True Hollywood Story
.

“Looks like you two have been having fun,” says Curtis.

“It’s been a long night, Dad.”

“Well, apparently it has indeed. You got an interesting message this evening. Maybe you’d like to do some explaining.”

“Oh God,” I say. “From who?

“Whom, Tom.” he says. “From
whom
.”

I generate a quick list of possible callers. Katie? Darth Gregory? A lawyer? Ian? The police? Curtis pushes the blinking button on our little answering machine. “When Allie and I returned from Johnny Rockets, we heard this.”

From the very first word, I know that it’s no one I know. It sounds like a telemarketer.

“Hello, this is for Tom Violet. I’m Andrew Brown from the
Washington Post
. We’re considering doing a piece on your dismissal today. Your press release caused quite a stir this morning when it came up the chain from Business. We couldn’t do anything with it, obviously. Your company would have sued us into the Dark Ages. But it definitely got a lot of us over here talking. Very funny stuff, actually. Really timely. In light of who your father is . . . well, let’s just say we’d be interested in talking with you.”

My family and I listen to Andrew Brown’s contact information and then there’s a click and some robot noises from the machine.

“Who was that, Daddy?”

“What did you do, Tom?” asks Curtis. “Did you . . . write something? Something funny.”

“Yeah, hilarious. It got me fired.”

“Fired?” says Gary. “Oh no. Tom, you didn’t say anything about that.”

“Pop, don’t worry, it’s a
good
thing.”

“Good? How can being fired be
good
? You been watching the news?”

He’s the only person in the room with a real job, and, apparently, any sort of grasp of reality. But before I can explain the inner workings of the Death Star, the answering machine makes another click and another beep, and then my wife is talking.

“Tom? Are you there? Anyone?”

“Mommy!” says Allie.

“Oh,” says Curtis. “She must have called during Allie’s bath.”

“Well, I guess you guys are out,” she says. “I just wanted to say . . . good night, I guess. I miss you.”

Both of my dads look at me. Anna’s voice is strained and tentative. She sounds scared even. I ignore them and curse myself for not getting voice mail on our home phone like everyone else in American younger than seventy.

“I’ll be home tomorrow night. Hopefully not
too
late. Tom, maybe we’ll get some time to talk before you and Curtis go to New York. I want to talk to you about your b—” She stops herself, but, of course, she was about to say “book.” “I just really want to talk to you, Tom. OK?”

“Mommy sounds sad, Daddy.”

Gary touches the top of Allie’s head. “No, baby. I’m sure she’s just fine. Don’t worry.”

But Curtis is well aware of what a woman sounds like when things have gone wrong, and he frowns at me over the Connect Four board.

“Say good night to Allie for me, OK?” says Anna. “I’ll see you guys soon.”

“Good night, Mommy!”

With a click, a hum, and a beep, Anna’s voice is gone.

I want to go upstairs, lie down, and not wake up for a month. I want today to have never happened, or yesterday for that matter—or the day before that. I want everything to be the way it’s supposed to be.

Gary pats me on the shoulders. “You know, if you need to, you can come work over at the dealership. We could find something for you to do, no problem. We’re always looking for good people.”

I consider myself in one of his Ford polos, selling Explorers to people in Virginia. Part of me—most of me even—wishes that could be me. But it isn’t.

“That’s the problem, Pop. I don’t think I’m actually that good of a person.”