Something Wicked (14 page)

I don’t know how it all happens, but Fortune drives me home and we end up messing around in his black BMW E 36 with tints and blackout grilles. He blasts 2Pac on his sweet boomin’ system. I feel the vibrations in the seat. He apologizes for the apparently indecent sound quality. “I got a blown sub and I’m gonna put in a Pioneer 500-watt ten-inch Fosgate,” he says. I have no idea what he’s talking about.

We pull into the parking lot out back of my building for a while. We don’t have sex because I have my period. His phone rings a thousand times, and he answers it no matter what we’re in the middle of doing. His conversations are the same: “Yeah.
Right. Twenty. Fifty. Yeah.” And I know he’s dealing, which makes me like him even more, because it means he’s got a brain.

“See ya, babe,” he says when we’re done, giving me this most luscious kiss.

“Yeah. Later,” I say, shutting the door. Then he pulls away, without giving me his number.

I go up to my room, lie in bed, and think of him. I think of his lips. His hair. His smooth skin. His biceps. His thighs. His fingers.

I feel sort of guilty about Michael, but part of me wants to hurt him for leaving me. And when he comes back, I want him to think I moved on so he’ll be jealous and see how good a catch I really am. But for tonight, even if I am drunk, I feel happy, and it’s just so delicious to fall asleep with the thought of someone else for a change.

Twenty-Seven

Uncle Freestyle and I talk about the craziest things. Sometimes I really love him. He comes over every Monday night to watch football and we usually go out on the balcony at halftime and blaze. It’s like our own little counselling office.

I tell my mom that I don’t have to go see Eric, that Freestyle is just as good.

“That’s insane,” she says. “That man has no capacity for moral guidance. Look at his life.” She’s talking about his three kids with three different women. And his smoking pot. And his endless art projects that never get started. And his long string of home repair jobs.

“He says pretty smart stuff.”

She looks at me in disbelief. “That’s because you’re a kid. You think everyone sounds smart.”

“No I don’t.” I want to say I don’t think
she
sounds smart. Or her friend Crystal. Or my CYC at school. But the thing is, Freestyle
is
super smart. When he was little, he skipped two grades. He got kicked out of high school, but he can play Jeopardy and get every question right. He’s the one who taught me how to smoke poppers and to blow out the smoke
through a toilet paper roll stuffed with Bounce sheets so my mom won’t smell it. And he’s this amazing painter. His stuff is so good, it could be in galleries.

I look carefully at my mother, thinking there must be more between them that I don’t know. “Why do you hate him so much?”

She rolls her eyes. “We’re related. That’s what brothers and sisters do—they hate each other.”

“Bradley and I didn’t hate each other.”

“No.” She smiles warmly. “You didn’t hate each other. You were too young. You probably would have later, though.”

When I tell Freestyle out on the balcony that he should be a counsellor to teenagers, he says he’s got enough problems of his own, that he wouldn’t want to sit around and listen to other people’s issues all day. To make conversation, I end up telling him about my weekend. I always tell him what’s up with my friends, and which guys I’ve been with. He doesn’t like hearing about the sex that much, but he doesn’t get all fatherlike about it. This time I tell him about Fortune.

“He’s black?”

“No, he’s orange. Yeah. So?”

He shrugs his shoulders.

“What, you from the Dark Ages? What’s wrong with a black guy?”

“Nothing.”

He annoys me a little. How can he be so cool yet sometimes so ignorant?

“You on the pill?”

“Yeah. Sort of. I have this thing in my arm. Mom made me get it.”

“Good.” He switches his tone. “So, why do you think you’re with so many guys?”

“I’m not with ‘so many guys,’” I say defensively.

“Enough guys …”

“I don’t know. Yeah, maybe. But once you start, it’s like, ‘Why not?’” Then I tell him what I always tell Eric:“It just feels good.”

“Well. Hell! Yeah! Of course! Lots of things feel good. But that doesn’t mean you have to always do it. Sure, sex is excellent, hot … but it doesn’t mean you screw every guy you see.”

I get pissed at him. “I don’t!”

His silence is his objection. It pisses me off. If we were done our joint, I’d go back in. I fold my arms and wait for him to pass me the last bit.

“What do you think the guys say about you?”

“What do you mean?” I ask, knowing full well what he means.

“You think they respect you, or do they think you’re trash?”

I laugh.

“No, I’m serious. You think they talk about you?”

I shrug my shoulders.“I don’t know.And I couldn’t care less if they did.”

“You would if you heard what they said.”

I start to get angry.“How do you know what they say? What do you know?”

“I know guys. I was your age, and I’m still a guy. I definitely know guys.”

“Well, I don’t fuckin’ care what they say. I do what I want to do.”

“Well, I’ll tell you this: they don’t respect a girl who’s with everyone. They might be nice to your face, but they say shit to each other about you. And I don’t see any of them wanting to be your boyfriend.”

Now I get really mad. “Shut up.”

“I’m just saying it like it is, Melissa.”

We’re quiet for a bit. I’m too mad to talk and he’s probably trying to find a way to end a pathetic conversation on a positive note. I consider telling him about Michael, but it would only be for me to prove a point. And in the end I know I’d regret it, ’cause he’d just get pissed about how old he is and get all worked up about wanting to go find him and kick his ass.

“I’m just saying, Melissa, that there’s a reason you’re doing it.” His voice changes to this caring tone. “And if you have sex with so many guys—”

I contest, “Not
so
many!”

He lights a new joint and passes it over. “So, anyway, the question is, what do you think you get out of it?”

“Now you’re really sounding like my counsellor,” I say, taking the joint and inhaling.

I stand there awhile, staring at the red embers and thinking about it. He’s right. Damn, he’s smart sometimes. There must be something more. I don’t do it to get a boyfriend, like Shayla does. And it’s not like I don’t feel pretty enough to get a guy so I have to be a slut, like Allison. So what is it?

“I guess I like that I’m good at it,” I conclude, not really satisfied with my own answer. I turn and look directly at him. “Why do
you
like it?”

He laughs and then lights up a cigarette.“I never said I liked it.”

“Whatever. You have three kids.”

He doesn’t respond, so I let it drop. Like me, Freestyle has a short attention span, and once he’s done with a topic, it’s done. He turns and looks in through the window to check the TV. “Those goddamn cartoon beavers on those commercials. Are they faggots or what? Let’s go in. It’s cold out here.”

Twenty-Eight

I usually take the codeine pills from work, just two or three a week. Just enough to keep me going on the boring Saturday and Sunday afternoons when I’ve partied all night and want to crash the next day. I can never really sleep. Not fully, because the E or the coke or whatever is still pulsing in my blood. So I put on a DVD, close the curtains, get under a bunch of blankets on the couch, and pop a pill.

The pills don’t make me feel high, just
cozy
. And it means I don’t have to worry about my mom, hungover in the next room with whoever she’s with. Or about my neighbour screaming. Or about my friend Sid knocking on the front door with a pocketful of weed and a hard-on in his pants.

I watch a cockroach creep across the table. This place is a dump. I should clean it. Michael’s apartment was a dump too, but he’s a bachelor, so that’s different. His place looked just like the guys’ places where I hang out on the weekends: messy, clothes on the floor, old pizza boxes stacked under the kitchen table, empty beer bottle boxes by the back door. Except he had books. Lots and lots of books, everywhere.

I liked picking up his shirts and folding them in a pile, even though I hate doing the same thing in my own house. My mother and I have fought endlessly about my laziness. At home, with my own stuff, I just don’t care. But at Michael’s, it’s like I wanted to clean the bathroom and take out the garbage and remove the bins from the fridge and rinse them down. It’s insane. I became a cleaning lady when I was at his place. Not because it disgusted me or because I wanted him to be impressed, but I think because I just wanted to take care of him. And that’s such a weird feeling, I can’t explain it.

I hear Scott’s voice inside my mom’s bedroom. They’re fighting. Their voices are somewhat muffled, but I can hear enough to know that Scott is pissed off about something my mother did, probably something stupid. Scott puts my mom straight. He doesn’t let her dick him around. She needs that. Someone strong and reasonable.

“I’m not your prisoner!” she yells, storming out of the room. She’s wearing a tight pink tank top and my blue boy short underwear that hangs loose on her.

“Hey, I’ve been looking for those!” I shout from under the covers, only to be drowned out by Scott’s bellowing voice.

“Then don’t have strange numbers on your phone! If there are no strange numbers, then you wouldn’t have to look!”

My mother storms back to the bedroom doorway. “I have friends, you know! I’m allowed to have friends.”

“Not if you’re fucking them, you’re not!”

Oooooo! I pull up the blanket to hide my smile. He’s totally right. Smart man. My mom does have fuck-friends. Everyone knows this. She’s a classic hustler, only she’s a woman. She tells men what they want to hear, gets what she wants out of them,
and plays them off against each other. Even
she
calls herself a

cougar.

“Go to hell!” she shouts.

“Do you mind?” I shout, because I don’t like her being such a bitch to Scott. “I’m trying to watch a movie!”

My mom turns her head to the mound of blankets on the couch and sees my blazed eyes looking out. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.” She pauses a moment and does a double take, like she knows I’m in a medicated daze, but then she heads back into the room and closes the door behind her. The shouting continues. I turn up the volume so loud the TV vibrates and tickles my ears, and I start to laugh.

That night, I make a point of saying something to my mom about Scott, because, despite my sleepy fog, I actually worried about them all day. It seems I’m always worrying about my mom, and I’m getting real tired of it. Worrying when she’ll break. Fall apart. Fuck up. Get drunk. Get depressed. Crawl into her cave to hibernate because things are getting rough, leaving me to take care of everything.

“Don’t screw this up, Mom,” I say to her after she gets off the phone from talking to him, seemingly like everything is fine again.

“What does that mean?” she asks defensively, ready for a fight.

“Nothing. Just don’t go all crazy or get him jealous.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she snaps.