The Ram (24 page)

Peach freezes, not sure if she should wake her or if now is the time, if she should do what she needs to do to Nell, here in Blaze Lounge. It is the best place to carry out her task, but leaves much to be desired in terms of privacy. She turns her head skyward and tries to bring a map of the stars to her inner vision, imagine them shimmering in the cosmos outside the club.

“Now?” she asks the universe out loud, her eyes shut, her heart thumping. “Shall I do it now?

“He’s not an asshole,” Nell answers and Peach’s eyes fly open to see the woman lifting herself off the toilet and shuffling to the sink. She doesn’t flush her urine and her shorts remain around her legs until she turns on the tap and looks down to see them binding her movements.

Peach was expecting this, had heard of cases where people on Ambien actually sleepwalk, have conversations and do high-functioning activities like driving. But they’re mentally asleep, unable to remember what they’ve done. And when she found out this bit of information, she was hopeful the dancer would experience this loss of memory. She needs Sev to experience it, too. Her plans depend on the strength of a forced, chemical slumber.

Nell reaches down to tug up her shorts and falls doing so, pitching forward and to her left. Peach can see her wobble but does nothing to stop the accident. The stripper’s head passes dangerously close to the side of the sink. An inch or so closer and she would have cracked her skull as she fell. But she’s fine, just slightly confused in a jumble on the floor.

That’s when Peach takes a breath and moves to help her up, thoughts of the woman’s head opening up like in her dream, at the back of her skull, a mouth of red poised to argue about Peach’s actions. She reaches her arms down to the woman and she climbs Peach’s frame to get back on her feet. As she does, Peach’s hand comes into contact with the woman’s bare ass and she lets it stay there for a moment.

“You like it, don’t you?” Nell says to Peach and then moves into Peach, her eyes sleepy, her mouth pursing into a bow.

Then a knock sounds at the bathroom door, then three sharp raps, and Sev’s voice is yelling through the locked wooden door.

“Get out here, Nell,” he screams. “Come choose who you want to fuck.”

73 Riley

After watching the women take off for the bathroom, Riley felt Sev abruptly unlatch himself and noted his staggered-stepped march to the bathroom hallway in pursuit. Unwilling to let the prospect of winning Nell go, he followed the poet to the door of the women’s toilet.

Sev pounds away at the wood, calling for Nell to emerge while spewing random quotes from Keats and Byron.

“These two are from Keats,” he hollers, puts all his girth against the door. “
My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you.
And this one.
I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest!
”

Riley looks to the bar and to the bouncer speaking to a cluster of underage boys, but no one moves to halt the commotion. The poet keeps knocking, his fist turning purple from the impact and his face twisting into layers of wrinkled flesh.

The door swings open and Sev rears back to keep from falling forward, his bulk held aloft by the door. Nell comes out first and flails out with her arms, pushing Sev away from her trajectory and stumbling toward where Riley stands a few feet away.

The other woman starts out the door but Sev, his weight unmanageable with whatever drink and drugs he’s had, crashes into the woman as she enters the hallway. They go down together, Sev’s mass covering her delicate frame.

And then Nell is on Riley, her face pressed against his throat, her torso squirming as he leans into her. She mutters something he can’t make out due to the panels of long hair near her face, obscuring the sound of her inebriated mumbling.

“Come again?” he says and moves the hair away so he can look down at her face. Her lips droop slightly and her mascara is smeared across her eyelids.

“Let’s go,” she says again. “I want to get out of here and get on all fours.”

And then she reaches between Riley’s legs and rubs the meat of her palm against his privates.

He grins.

74 Peach

The poet’s weight is crushing her. She wriggles to get out from under him but his bulk and height pin her down. His limbs are slack and uncontrolled. He moves like a snake, exactly what she considers him, inching his torso forward just enough to line his face up with Peach’s. Sev gives her a wink, his lid slow to move over his eyeball. He smells like the piquant scent of juniper berries turned to gin coupled with cigarette smoke. The combination of odors makes her think of the night she lit the fireworks downtown. She is close. Too close to let the weight of someone so clueless immobilize her.

“I just want to protect her from that douche,” he gets out, a line of drool escaping his mouth and landing on Peach’s nose. She brings her hands up to try and wipe it away but can’t get past his head.

“I get it,” she sighs, “but he’s not the one she needs protection from.”

Sev’s eyes widen and after a moment, she can feel the man growing hard, his penis pressing into the softness of her upper thigh. His face contracts and Peach wonders if he’s experiencing a moment of lucidity from the sleeping pills.

“I know you want her. You go down on her and I’ll write poetry while I mount you from behind.”

Peach curls her lips back and turns her head to escape the man’s eyes. “You’re no poet. You’re a snake. And though I don’t know much about literature, I do know a lot about mythology. And in the end, you lose.”

“Lose what?” he says and Peach can feel his body going slack on her, the vigor in his pants subsiding. She uses the last of her resolve to press up hard and shift under him. After a couple tries she finds the right angle of escape and rolls free of his body. She gains her feet and looks down at the man. He doesn’t move at all and she hopes he’s finally passed out.

She walks stiffly, quickly back to the bar, not wanting to run and make others suspicious or nervous. She picks up her fleece jacket and her purse and then looks around for Nell and Riley. She sees them, at the door, passing the bouncer who thinks nothing of the limp stripper draped around the shoulders of a man who’s not her boyfriend.

“No,” Peach says to the room and she must decide whether or not to make a scene, to get the woman away from the man. But in the end she knows she can’t chance getting in the man’s face and taking away his prize. If she does, he’ll remember her for sure. Remember how he hit on her weeks ago. And then she’ll be etched in his mind.

That can’t happen. Not yet.

She watches them open the door to the night air, the headlights of a car in the parking lot blinking on and off, its alarm sounding into the dark.

75 Riley

He props her up against the side of his Nissan so he can open up the passenger door and help her inside. He’s having problems seeing straight, the world a blurry, haloed mess, but even so he knows the dancer is completely blitzed. This doesn’t deter his objectives though; he’s determined to have her, no matter the circumstances.

She does a little dance against the metal of the car, her eyes shut, her tube top riding up her back from the friction of rubbing against the vehicle.

“You know I had a dream about you last night,” Riley slurs, “and I took you in it. We were in a river having sex. And I knew it had to come true, the sex part. That getting you, coming here, this all leads to my new life and the new me. It’s beginning, sweetie.”

Nell continues to slither against the car and she works off her shoes without bending down. Her pelvis tilts forward and she runs her hands over her bare stomach. He nearly lands on his ass when he stoops down to pick up her footwear. Riley crawls back up her legs, pausing to lick a kneecap, strappy heels hanging off his thumb. He regains his equilibrium and waits for her to say something.

When she opens her eyes they don’t focus on him or anything close by. They stare off into the middle distance, her lips slightly parted.

“It was my birthday a few days ago,” she says, still dancing. “I’m so old. Twenty-five! People centuries ago were grandmas by my age. Or at least pretty close to being grandmas. They weren’t swinging around metal poles. No way. But I’m the birthday girl. That’s what Sev has been saying all week, calling me ‘Birthday Girl Nell.’ And I’m an Aries.”

He cocks his head and puts his hands on her squirming hips. “That’s your zodiac sign?”

She nods yes and keeps rambling. “I’m a perfect Aries. I’m fiery and bold and someday I could totally be a leader. My sign is the ram. A sheep. It doesn’t make sense, though. Sheep are animals meant to be killed or shaved or herded. They don’t rule the world. I wonder how many grandmothers have ruled the world?”

She nuzzles up to his body and Riley’s face, usually red from drink, turns a deeper scarlet from excitement and the promise of sex. Some ill-remembered Bible quote comes to mind about the meek and being like lambs and inheriting the planet. He can’t recall the gist of it well enough and doesn’t care to stumble through a lame rendition of it with Nell. He has something more appropriate to say in response.

“Maybe the important thing is the ramming,” he says and snickers at his own joke. He runs a hand up her inner thigh and then points her to the open door of the car.

“When I was a tiny baby, I had no one,” she says apropos of nothing. Her head rolls around on her neck before she turns on her bare soles and climbs into the SUV. Her body falls onto the backseat and she goes fetal, tucking her heels against her ass.

Riley slams the door when all her limbs are inside. Winning is at hand. The woman mutters something else through the glass. Something about the numbers on his license plate but he doesn’t ask her what she’s on about. He’s headed to his own door, his own seat, his own success.

76 Peach

The white Nissan nearly backs over Peach. She notices when the car turns and lurches forward, that Nell is slumped in the backseat, her head barely visible, and Riley sits upright at the wheel. He’s close to it, like the steering wheel is his intended lover, and he clutches it with both hands. She watches them go, fighting back the urge to cry out.

A cluster of robins chirp as they dip low in their flight over her head. They land in a ratty poplar near the parking lot. Except for a solitary robin which takes post on the sign for Blaze Lounge abutting Main Street. It holds one of its legs high, bent at the joint, and trills out a series of calls in Peach’s direction. It is too dark outside for her to see the mass of cherry-colored feathers on the bird’s belly.

She looks up, to her friends overhead, and finds fortification in the glow of the stars. The lights of downtown obscure them, but she knows they’re up there and they’re rooting for her.

“I won’t give up. Not after coming so far,” she says to them and then gets in her Honda and peels out of the lot after the escaping duo.

She follows behind them for a time, not wanting to get too close though she figures Riley is too drunk to know he’s being tailed. She considers calling the cops and reporting him drunk driving, but then she realizes there are only a few hours left in the day and involving the police would be the worst proverbial fuel to throw on the fire. They would likely detain Nell for questioning and Peach would be no better off.

The Nissan stops at a red light in a four-way intersection. But instead of staying behind the pair, Peach makes a crucial, calculated decision. She flips into the right lane and heads up 9
^th
Street, a curving boulevard which takes her toward the Boise Train Depot and the neighborhoods sprawled across the Bench.

She gets there just as he’s pulling down shades over the west-facing front windows flanking the entrance. This time the sign is illuminated and she can clearly see the words
Crucible Tattoo
in white lettering. She turns off her ignition and stares at the word “crucible.” She knows the word has many meanings, but she only thinks of it in one way now. She envisions a sturdy bowl used for melting down metals. A crucible is subjected to fire time and time again and remains solid and strong.

The tattooist comes out the front door and squints at her sitting in the car. When she pushes open her door, he shakes his head and walks back inside. She follows him until he holds his ground just inside the doorway, preventing her from entering the parlor.

“You’re not my appointment. No way you’re getting a tattoo.”

The man wears low-riding jean shorts in the cool of mid spring and Peach can see a shock of colorful ink winding down the left side of his neck and down his shirt. It’s a visage she had memorized, at the beseeching of the stars. She was glad she had looked into the man. It had made her decision to turn away from her pursuit of Riley and Nell a bit easier.

She puts her hands in the air and then presses her palms together.

“Please,” she begs, “it’s super simple. And if you had another appointment that didn’t show, take me instead.”

“Where’s it go?” the man asks.

“What?”

“On your body.”

“Oh,” Peach replies, the feeling of panic manifesting as roiling bile in her stomach. “On my head.”

She moves her hands to the bloodstone pendant around her neck and asks for its energy to help her now, more than ever. Confidence. Self-esteem. Power.

“I ain’t cutting your hair and shaving your head, girl. Put me an hour in before I get to inking and there’s a house party I gotta hit before sleep. Hell no.”

Without thinking, Peach lets go of her pendant and reaches up to the long hair on her head. She pulls at it roughly and the wig comes away in her hands. She holds the strawberry-tinged blond hair at her thighs and its strands cling to the static of her long dress. The skin of her head tingles in the cold and she reaches up to touch the sharp, half-inch growth of flaxen hair reaching stiffly to the sky.