The Devil You Know (11 page)

“I got your number from Rhonda,” he said. “We met at the party this weekend.”

“I remember,” she said. She had seen the picture Lauren took with her cell, and begged her to delete it. Her eyes looked they were pointing in two different directions.

“I wasn't sure if you would,” he said and chuckled.

She waited for him to apologize for making her sick.

“I want to know if you'll go for dinner with me this Saturday.”

“Really? Uh, I guess so,” she said.

“I'll pick you up at seven,” he said. He took her address down. “See you then,” he said. “Wear something nice.”

Cynthia, like most of her friends, had never gone on what could properly be called a date. It seemed to her like something her grandparents or the teenagers in
Archie
comics did. People hooked up with people at parties and either ended up going out with them or not. For her first real date, she tried on about five outfits, and decided on her dark skinny jeans and grey silk top and her black boots.

Kyle pulled up to the house in a new red Mustang, a total douche-mobile, but a decent car. Her last boyfriend hadn't had a car at all, which made things difficult. Cynthia didn't have her license yet, and she wasn't in a hurry to get it. She'd failed two driver's tests already, and on her second try, had nearly run over a Dalmatian that darted in front of the car. The test itself seemed to turn her into a bad driver, even though she had plenty of experience behind the wheel. One older boyfriend she'd gone out with for a while was such a drunk that she'd nearly always end up driving them both home from the bar in his little Toyota pickup. But she liked being the passenger and not having to worry about getting drunk or paying for gas. A good fake ID and no license was a good combination for a seventeen-year-old.

“You look nice,” he said.

“Thanks. I like your car,” she lied.

“Yeah, you like cars?”

“I like going places in them.”

He drove fast, which wasn't surprising. They went to The Keg, where Cynthia had only been on her birthday. They both had steaks with shrimp on top, and garlic mashed potatoes, and the salad bar, and a basket full of bread. After dinner, Kyle ordered a Crown Royal on the rocks. Cynthia panicked and asked for the only liqueur she could think of— crème de menthe. Her mother had been on a kick of pouring it over vanilla ice cream for dessert.

Kyle laughed at her choice. “You like that stuff?”

“Sure—gets you drunk while it freshens your breath.”

He smiled.

“And it tastes good when you barf too,” she said, snorting.

He frowned.

“Sorry.”

They talked about her high school a bit, people he might remember from when he'd been there. He'd graduated five years before, but he knew her friend Kayla's ex-boyfriend Justin. He knew that the French teacher was a drunk, but he hadn't heard that he and one of his students had run off together. He told Cynthia that he worked for a landscaping company, but his hands didn't look rough or dirty. He didn't ask her what she wanted to do after high school, to her relief, since she had no idea.

In the parking lot of the restaurant, he took her hand and nodded across the street at the neon sign of the Lakeview Motor Hotel. “Want to get a room for the night?”

She grinned at him, but his face was serious.

Cynthia nodded. She liked it when people were clear.

She looked at the maps and brochures in the dusty display rack while Kyle checked them in. It was strange to look at pamphlets for Marineland and Niagara Falls as a tourist might. She tried to imagine being someone from far away, deciding to take a vacation and then deciding to take that vacation here, of all the places in the world a person could choose.

Kyle wasn't much of a kisser; he pressed too hard and pushed his pointed tongue into her mouth. His body was as hard as his mouth, but that was different. He had a smooth chest and his butt had those little dents in the sides and there was a line of muscle where his abdomen turned into his narrow brown hips. Naked, he looked like an underwear model or one of the firemen on hermother's calendar. Cynthia lay beneath him as he fucked her and wondered if he'd be better the next time. Maybe he wouldn't press so hard on everything. Of course, she considered, there might not be a next time. Checking into a hotel on your first date could either be the beginning or the end. It didn't really matter either way. She wondered if he'd want her to be his girlfriend. She had been trying to take a few weeks off from guys, but it wasn't easy. They just kept popping up, and she never said no. She thought about sex while she examined her fingernails over his shoulder. She'd never understood how she was supposed to hold off from sex, and found it bizarre how some of her friends could go out with someone for weeks without it. How did that work? Once Cynthia started making out, she didn't understand how to stop. Where was the line? Was the line determined beforehand, or during? She understood how a person might not feel like having sex, but couldn't think of a time for herself that it had seemed worth stopping. It was, at the very least, an interesting experiment. Or just something to do. What else was there to do, once everything had been said?

She squeezed her muscles inside, like she'd read in
Cosmopolitan
, as he came inside her, and it occurred to her that she hadn't told him she was on the Pill.

They slept on and off, waking up and talking for a while, then fucking again. In the morning, she felt sore and overrubbed. She looked at his body as he dressed. He was sexy, probably the sexiest guy she'd ever been with. She wondered if this was how men felt looking at women.

He saw her watching him. “Get up, lazy,” he said, smiling and pulling off the sheet, “and let's get some breakfast.” While she found her underwear and pulled on her jeans, he chopped up a couple of squat lines on the glass-topped desk and motioned her over. She tried to look cool doing hers.

They ate in the hotel coffee shop. He had steak and eggs, and she had silver dollar pancakes and a side order of peameal bacon, which she barely touched. Her legs jiggled under the table like a little kid's.

They listened to the Howard Stern Show on satellite radio as he drove her home. When she gathered her things to leave the car, he put his hand on her thigh and said, “I had a good time.”

“Me too,” she said.

“Can I call you again?”

She grinned. “Uh-huh.”

Kyle called Cynthia sometime after eight every Wednesday night to make plans for the coming Saturday, the only night of the week they spent together. The call was always short, and they never talked on any other night, not even a text. He picked her up at her parents' house in his Mustang, and was always on time. He didn't come to the door, just gave one brief honk, even though she could hear the car's engine from about three blocks away. It made her father angry.

“Is this friend of yours ever planning to come to the door like a goddamn human being?” her father asked, as Cynthia put on her jacket.

“In my day, a boy had to come in the house and talk to a girl's parents before he was allowed to take her out on the town,” he said as she took her keys from the bowl on the counter.

“Oh please, Kevin,” her mother groaned from her spot on the sofa. The coffee table was covered in her scrapbooking supplies. She was working on a page about her trip to Vegas last year with a group of other moms. Cynthia had seen the pictures: embarrassing shots of middle-aged women in ill-fitting club clothes. Yellowed teeth and muffin tops. Umbrella cocktails and too many accessories.

“I'm staying out tonight, so don't expect me back,” Cynthia said.

“Oh don't worry, we never do,” said her mother with a dismissive wave, a martini-shaped sticker on the end of her ring finger.

Every week, they went out for dinner and drinks, and then to a hotel. Fucking and drugs, breakfast and home. Kyle paid for everything and decided everything. The restaurant, the hotel, what beer to buy. One week he surprised her.

“Where do you want to go for dinner?”

“Oh! Um, okay. Do you like curry? How about that Indian place near the mall?”

“I'm not eating any Paki food.”

She laughed, but his cheeks looked warm. “Ohhhh-kay then,” she said.

“It stinks, is all. I just don't like the smell and when you eat it, you smell—”

“Let me guess, like a Paki?”

He took her to the new Chinese buffet place instead. They had everything, not just Chinese food, and it was all you could eat. Cynthia was going to make a joke about all the waitresses being white, but thought she'd better not. She didn't want to spoil their night out.

That night, in the hotel room, he sat down on the bed and handed her a small velvet box. Inside was a delicate gold chain with a gold cross pendant.

“Wow. This is really nice,” she said.

“Do you like it?”

“I do.” Cynthia had never considered herself a religious person, but the necklace was pretty. She took it from the box and had Kyle fasten the chain around her neck. “Thank you.”

“I want you to wear it and think of me, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, and kissed him.

Lauren sent her a text just before lunch on Thursday.

did u knw kyle is a totl dealer??

r u high?

4 real! kayla sez justin knws ok lies hes wierd tho and u nevr hang wit us on sat nites anymore

sorry. c u at lunch k?

luv u u knw

i knw

At lunch, Cynthia promised Lauren that she'd bring Kyle out the next Saturday, since it was already after they'd made their date for the week. “You'll see—he's really nice. He gave me this,” she said, pointing at the gold cross.

“Yeah, that's totes your style.”

“Don't be mean.”

“Okay, but I just want to know. Why does he only go out with you on Saturdays and then not talk to you for the rest of the week?”

“I don't know. After all, you'd think that'd be a dealer's busiest night, right?”

“Okay. Forget it. How does Tyler feel about this, anyway?”

“Stop trying to force-feed me Tyler. It's not going to happen.”

“Why not? He sooo loves you.”

“Because he smells like an old towel and I'm already dating someone else. God!”

“Well, I'll make sure he doesn't get the invite for Saturday then.”

“Thank you very much.”

Cynthia knew Kyle liked her red hair, so she hennaed it every other Friday afternoon to really bring out the colour. She mixed the green-brown powder into a coarse sandy paste, packed it onto her head, and tied a grocery bag tightly over it. She'd leave it in for a couple hours, even while she ate dinner, which her father thought was disturbing. It got hot under the plastic, and sometimes she'd sweat and it would mix with the henna and run down her forehead. Then she'd have to scrub the brownish red border from around her hairline. But it was all worth it when he wound his hands up in it and lifted it off her neck and bit at the pale flesh of her freckled shoulder.

“So fucking gorgeous,” he said. She loved it when he said that.

Another Saturday night, another hotel room. This one was funny because it was kind of seedy. The television and the telephone were both bolted to their tables, which made her laugh, and there were iron-red stains around the drain of the bathtub and the sink, which was more gross than funny. Cynthia looked at the stains on the stucco ceiling as he thrust into her. He pulled out and motioned her to turn over. She flipped onto her hands and knees and braced herself with a pillow. But he took his cock and pressed it against her anus. She leapt forward and smacked her head on the headboard. “Hey!” she said, rubbing her crown.

“Hey what?”

“Well, um, you surprised me there.”

“You don't like that?” he teased, shaking his penis at her.

“I, I don't know. I don't think so.”

“Why not? Have you ever tried it?”

“I don't need to try something to know I don't like it,” she said, inching away and gathering an edge of the sheet.

“That's not very open-minded of you.”

“Neither's not eating curry.”

“Baby, those are two things that should never be in the same conversation.” “Can we just go back to doing what we were doing?”

“Sure. You want a little more coke?”

Back at it, he kept a thumb pressed against the hole, and she shuddered. The coke helped her feel a bit better about it, but she'd never want a dick in there. She knew this was a thing for lots of guys, but that was just disgusting. After he was done, she hustled to the bathroom and put it out of her mind. She turned the taps on and brought herself to orgasm quickly by watching herself in the mirror. Kyle had never made her come, but so far no one had. Cynthia was okay with taking care of it herself, and she didn't like to offend by saying anything.

Cynthia's lips were turning numb, which made the application of fresh gloss a sloppy affair. She made faces at herself in the bathroom mirror of the Pumphouse. She pursed them at her reflection and made farting sounds, all to delay her return to the table, where things were not going well. Kyle had been surly all night, and Cynthia's friends were obviously sizing him up unfavourably. Cynthia had been working her way through the cocktail list to steady her nerves, and now they were all jumbled up together in her stomach, Bloody Caesars careening off raspberry shooters and a bunch of buffalo chicken wings floating around in the brew. This made her laugh, thinking of whole chicken wings bobbing around in her stomach like little boats. She swayed back to the table.

“What took you so long?” asked Kyle, not looking at her.

“I had to take my chicken-wing boats out for a spin. Here chicky, chicky, chicky…”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“S'nothin. Doesn't matter.” But she kept laughing and snorting.