Trying the Knot (8 page)

“Hey, guy, wake up,” said the pregnant
teenager. Ben looked away, adamantly disinterested, and she flashed
him a toothy grin, sucked in her belly, and poured him a refill
anyway. “You going to eat that, or just play?” Ben lifted his plate
toward her, and she asked, “Yous guys need anything else, or you
all set?”

“Just the check,” Thad said. The server
slapped the check down on the table before Chelsea could ask for
separate checks, and she turned and teetered away.

“Yous,” Chelsea repeated. “I don’t know why
the proverbial white trash S needs to be added to the end of every
other word around here.”

Ben watched the waitress sashay across the
room as seductively as her bowed legs and pigeon feet allowed. “Too
skinny,” he mumbled. He felt sorry for the fetus inside her. It’s
sure to be born with a greasy spoon its mouth, its only future
entailed working in this dump, or out in the strawberry fields with
the boys.

Ben pushed his coffee cup out of the way and
said adamantly, “I don’t even drink this shit.”

“Really? I drink mass quantities,” Chelsea
said. “Java keeps me alive. I wish there was a way to have it
filtered directly into my veins.”

Mockingly, Ben said, “I bet that means you’re
rilly-rilly busy without enough hours in the day to contact
everyone in your Rolodex.”

“Enough already, Benjamin,” Chelsea spat,
smacking her palm onto the tabletop. “I don’t know why you have to
be such an antagonistic prick all the time.”

Thad shot him a look, and for the sake of
maintaining peace, Ben sat back down and agreed, “Okay, nuf’s
nuf.”

Sensing another argument percolating, Thad
asked casually, “Ben, is Vange still pregnant?”

Chelsea’s jaw dropped as she exhaled
incredulously. “How do you know that?”

“She told me Easter weekend.”

Ben shook his head slowly. With his middle
finger, he mindlessly twirled a spoon around and around on the
table’s sticky, sea-foam surface.

“Ben—

“What?”

“Is she still pregnant?”

“No.”

“And how would you know?” Chelsea asked.

“Because I’m the one who took her to get the
abortion. They sent her away because she was too far along,” he
said reluctantly. “She had a miscarriage. I was the one who took
her to the hospital and stayed with her.”

“Who’s the father?”

“I dunno,” he mumbled.

“Did you even bother to ask?” she
inquired.

Ben continued twirling the spoon and watched
it as if hypnotized. He refused to look up. “I guess I was afraid
the father was me, not that it’s any of your business.”

“Well, it’s comforting to know you were there
for her in her time of need,” Chelsea said condescendingly. She sat
back, folded her arms, and glared accusingly at him. She could not
stop shaking her head or shake the awed expression from her
face.

Loud laughter erupted from the back dining
room, and it echoed in the silence that had descended on them. It
sounded as if the Frat pack were tearing the place down from the
inside out. Their distant charged energy only served to feed the
animosity bouncing between Ben and Chelsea.

“What else aren’t you telling us?” she
asked.

“What the hell are you getting at?”

Chelsea was quiet for a few lingering
moments, and then she said tersely, “Whatever would a girl do
without such a terrific friend as you?”

“Screw you, I don’t have to sit here and
listen to this bullshit. What a hypocritical bitch,” Ben said, and
he yet again jumped to his feet. Guiltily, he burrowed his hand in
the recesses of his pocket and fiddled with the scrap of stationery
he plucked from Vange’s hand earlier that morning.

“You know what’s total bullshit, Benny?” she
asked angrily. She bounded out of the booth and pointed at him. She
twisted her index finger into his chest as if her serrated
fingernail was a bayonet.

“What’s total bullshit, Benny, is you’ve done
whatever Nick’s ever told you, probably since you’ve been eleven
years old, and you’ve hung onto his every word as if it’s gospel.”
Having gathered the needed ammunition from her arsenal of cutting
observations, she repeatedly charged at him with her stockpile
until he withered defeated. “You’ve been his stupid little sidekick
for so long you’ve begun to act exactly like him.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You’re so spineless, don’t even try to kid
yourself into thinking you’re Vange’s friend.”

Ben smirked bewildered. “And you are? When
did you start giving a rat’s ass?”

“I don’t care, not one iota, and I never have
– but you, you did! So, why didn’t she make any effort to call you,
her wonderful, caring friend before she swallowed a fistful of
pills?”

“You’re insane,” Ben said casually, and he
turned away and scuffled toward the bobcat-topped exit.

“That’s right, call me crazy and leave, but
why the hell didn’t she call you when she was trying to kill
herself, you outright unmitigated asshole?” she yelled after
him.

Trembling violently, she wished the
taxidermied feline would spring to life, leap from its eternal
perch and dig a hole through his chest cavity. No doubt, the feline
would discover a black hole where his soul should be. Watching him
amble across the lawn to his motorcycle, she felt Thad’s arm wrap
around her shoulder. Ben straddled and started the bike. He did not
bother to look back, which only upset her further. With Ben no
longer in her crosshairs, she collapsed against Thad as if having
completed a marathon. Drained of energy, she shook uncontrollably
as he continued to support her lightweight frame. He was unable to
guess what she kept stashed away, stewing inside her for so long it
erupted with such volcanic fury.

“He’s such a smarmy cretin bastard,” she said
out of breath. She held onto Thad while avoiding the glassy dead
eyes of a mounted sturgeon hanging on the wall. “He makes Nick look
like a saint.”

Nick leaned forward with hands clasped on a
chair alongside the bed where Kate slumbered contentedly. Her black
hair fell away from her flawless olive skin. Drug-induced sleep
whisked her so far away from worry she looked more beautifully
unaffected than ever. Nick found the faint snoring noises she made
when especially exhausted endearing because it undermined her
taken-for-granted perfection. She was not the most beautiful woman
he had ever laid eyes on, but she possessed a presence that
demanded attention.

They had spent the past couple hours in Ginny
Norris’s guest bedroom, surrounded by Laura Ashley floral patterns
tangling their way across the walls and drapes. The whole house was
decorated in such an overly done boudoir fashion it almost made him
blush with embarrassment.

The Norris’ had divorced so amicably Ginny
retained the house and restaurant. She had encouraged her husband
to build The Lounge on a lark, but folks speculated it was part of
her strategically planned scheme to ditch him. Nick was doubtful
the flighty, carefree and sexy middle-aged woman could have
possibly been so deliberate and calculating – that was more her
daughter’s style. Chelsea was indeed her mother’s Doppelganger.

Ben once confessed to Nick that Ms. Norris
employed his services to satisfy her most intimate needs. The only
time Nick was ever jealous of his oldest friend had been during
Ben’s detailed descriptions of his endless sexual encounters with
his employer. They joked Chelsea would cardiac arrest if she ever
learned a quarter of her mother’s frisky exploits with the lounge
bar tender. Nick wondered how such a fun-loving, healthy woman
could have given birth to a daughter so frigid and uncompromising.
Lying in the guest-bedroom, Nick imagined what it would be like to
have a simultaneous encounter with both mother and daughter. Sexual
fantasies stimulated his interest only for so long, before he
became frustrated by even their remotest possibility and the
challenge to consummate his desires grew too overpowering.

As he stroked Kate’s luxurious hair, he
noticed a trickling pool of drool winding its way over the florid
pillow. He spent the entire morning by her side, and he mulled over
the innards of their seemingly perfect relationship. He and Kate
had experienced so many soap opera twists and turns on the way to
the altar, it was almost unbelievable they were to be married
tomorrow.

After dating on and off throughout high
school, they broke up their senior year when she became wise to his
philandering ways. Four years of constant make-ups just to
break-up, compounded by her fiercely guarded virginity, was more
than his teenaged patience could withstand. Nick subsequently dated
her best friend Chelsea for a while, and he hoped Kate would hate
him with such passion she would never again entertain the notion of
being his girlfriend. To his dismay, coupling with Chelsea only
succeeded in making her more competitive and even more determined
to win him back; it was not until Evangelica seduced him at a
senior year Christmas party that he successfully broke Kate’s
heart. Curiously, it was not until Nick simultaneously “cheated” on
Kate while dating her best friend that she took ultimate
offense.

By graduation, their circle of friends had
become too incestuously peculiar, and Nick hoped never to see the
any of them ever again. But of course fate would have it otherwise.
He and Kate happened to bump into one another around a bonfire
during the annual Portnorth Limestone Festival during their junior
year in college. He walked her home, and they sat in the Little
League Baseball dugouts until dawn talking. Once again, they found
themselves together and were an item ever since. Initially it was
strange because during their prolonged separation, they both
matured into adults, and he had never known her to be so
adventurous and forthcoming.

Although Kate never really severed ties with
Chelsea, her rift with Evangelica only grew deeper over the years,
as their lives traversed dissimilar paths, even after they became
stepsisters. Nick suspected the real reason Kate begrudged Vange
was because she had openly slept with him, whereas Chelsea never
staked that claim out loud. He could not understand this feminine
over-sensitivity. It made no sense to hold a grudge over anything
as mysterious and natural as intercourse. Petty jealousy was just
one of the things he found unnecessarily attractive about the
female species.

Poor Kate, Nick thought, she had been through
too much in the past year. First, her mother died of an extended
bout with cancer; moreover, she had failed to share the
inevitability of her prognosis. Kaye Hesse’s death messed over
Kate’s younger brother, Jack, so badly he spent the duration of her
funeral in the hospital recovering from alcohol poisoning. When
Kate’s father subsequently remarried, he failed to share with his
children the depth of his relationship with of all people, the town
floozy Evangelica’s mother.

Understandably, Kate had not taken the news
of her father’s union very well, and Jack once again freaked out.
He hated Kate for being so far removed from their nightmare
homestead. No matter how often Nick tried to get close to the
misguided youth, Jack resisted. His resentment seethed below the
surface of his intense animosity. Also, Jack’s penchant for getting
into trouble put an unwarranted strain on Nick and Kate’s
relationship.

More often than not, Jack found himself
clashing with local authorities. Last autumn, he was suspected of
having set a vacant building ablaze, and this spring his prom
date’s car collided with a deer. She died on a lonely country road,
and he was pulled from school in order to spend time in a mental
health clinic, where he perfected the intricate art of
self-mutilation.

“He’s a cutter?” Kate asked. “What does he
cut?”

“Himself,” Nick had to explain.

When life became as bad as it could get,
Kate’s grandfather keeled over dead on Easter Sunday. Sparing her
from yet another bout of depressing sadness, he insisted she skip
the funeral and vacation in Cancun, Mexico.

Kate’s family was not the only ones who
wallowed in stress-inducing antics. Nick’s parents obtained a
secret divorce, although they continued to live together, and his
sister Nanette changed her name to Tristana after striking up a
long distance love affair with the editor of the local newspaper,
the Portnorth Porthole. His sister’s sole purpose for setting foot
in town was to humiliate her family.

Presently with Vange in a coma and Thad
knowing about their tryst in the bushes, life had become rather
complicated. Nick wished for expeditious removal from the present
turmoil, and he hoped Kate’s cousin had sense enough to keep his
mouth shut. Certainly, Nick thought, Thad would never intentionally
do anything to devastate Kate’s fleeting moment of happiness.

He kissed her cheek, wiped the drool from her
chin and whispered, “I love you so much.”

Nick thought it a wise idea to check around
town to make sure his groomsmen had not cut too wide a swath of
destruction, and he gently abandoned Kate on the bed. While he was
out and about he intended to drop in at the newspaper office to
have a well-meaning chat with his future cousin-in-law, Thad
Feldpausch.

He never especially understood Thad’s
alienating remoteness or pathological indifference. Nick always
secretly suspected him of being gay, especially after the
half-serious proposition he once tossed his way. “If a body is just
a body, Nick, then why not have sex with every body?” The blunt
remark threw doubt on Nick’s past assertions Thad was merely
harmless and an inexperienced novice.

Nick gave Kate a final kiss goodbye, and he
could not help but smile when he noticed her thick ankles. It was
one more of her little imperfections he found hopelessly
endearing.