You Dont Have to Let Denise Know
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DENISE CALHOUN
Swan'due south Pecker
I don't hang with the girls. I don't cruise the mall. I keep my life uncomplicated. I paint my toenails. Love Shack, which the maker describes as a cool, computing coral. I like that. The clarification. Information technology'due south better than the name. It's better than the color. That'due south what I want to be when I grow up—absurd, computing.
I'm from Texas. I escaped this yr. On January 2 to be exact.
I live in Arizona now. My parents sent me to Cottonwood seven months ago for rehab. All the money in the world, they ship me to some unknown twelve-stride ranch. They could have chosen Betty Ford. Hazelden. Promises, where I might take gotten some star spunk. Simply no. Cottonwood. Cheapskates.
When you lot're from Texas, people take ideas. Expectations. Yous gotta article of clothing cowboy boots. Speak with a twang. Accept bleached blonde pilus bigger than Dallas. I have bleached blonde hair, but it'southward more the size of Thou Saline.
I dip a limp fry in ketchup and peer at the guy on the left end of the bar. He's my marking. I like his Sears uniform, the mode his ass pushes against his gray cotton pants. I've seen him in my mother'due south kitchen, squatting in forepart of the dishwasher, bending over the dryer. Hell, she's probably fucked him, or the Texas equivalent.
I know what men desire. This guy's an easy become.
I walk to the bathroom. I let my heel slide off my mule merely equally I get to his barstool. I put my hand on his shoulder for support. His arm reaches around my waist to steady me. Our eyes meet. I apologize, saunter on to the bathroom. He'due south mine.
I pull my curls this way and that as I look into the bathroom mirror. My hairstyle'south a cross betwixt early Marilyn and early Shirley Temple. It speaks to me. I freshen my Butterfield viii gloss and head back to the booth.
Before I can smear another soggy fry with ketchup, the waitress plops a drinkable by my plate.
"From him," she jerks her head in his direction. "Wants to know if he can join you. Looks a little old. Could be your daddy." She raises 1 thick black brow to the tin-tiled ceiling.
I look at him. He's trying not to stare. I meet his gaze. I oral cavity no. But only in case he doesn't get it, I tell the waitress to thank him but let him know that I prefer to be lone. You lot take to brand them work for information technology. They appreciate it more that way.
I open up my book back up and take a bite out of my hamburger. Information technology'southward greasy. He tin can go to a cabin with me, but non until I terminate my burger. A dribble of mustard slides down my mentum. I lick it off.
Of course.
~
I unzip his pants every bit presently as we get inside Sierra Pines Room 122. I rented the room early today and turned the AC on as high as it would go. Frigid and impersonal, the fashion I like information technology.
He pops a push off my blouse he'south in such a bustle.
"Slow down, Pop. Get on the bed and wait for baby." I could really make myself sick if I idea about information technology, just and so my shrink at Cottonwood would probably say that was function of the buzz.
He virtually falls he'south so eager to get his pants and briefs off. I make a point not to await at the briefs. Nothing turns me off faster than muddy cotton knit. His belly's white, like the underside of a good melon, although not nearly and then firm.
"Accept off your shirt, too, daddy. I don't want annihilation to come up betwixt us."
I take off everything but my ruby suede mules and my pink gingham ruffled thong and bra, and then I attain into my bag for a Wet 1 and a rubber.
"What's that for?" He'due south looking at the Wet One.
"You've got to be make clean for baby," I breathe. This guy'due south starting to annoy me. It's better if he keeps his oral fissure shut.
"Shit," he says.
I put one leg beyond his body and pull my thong aside every bit I rub his penis with the Moisture I.
He whimpers.
~
I go to the banking company every mean solar day with Pap. It'southward my favorite role of the day. I habiliment gingham dresses and ruffled panties and petticoats that jingle.
"You're my vintage kid," my mother coos as she lifts me into the truck. She says this all the time.
~
I'm in my T-bird—Daddy gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday, his mode of saying I'g sorry you're not my favorite child (Kamela, Miss Perfect)—with the top down, driving along Highway 89. I left Room 122 and the repairman the infinitesimal I was sure he was comatose. He was one of those guys who wants to sleep with his arm around you. I hate that. Doesn't he have a wife to go abode to?
Information technology'south cool at night hither in the loftier desert. The wind hitting my face feels like witch hazel.
I drive all the style to Phoenix, listening to No Secrets. I wonder what it feels like to exist held in a man'south hands like a bunch of flowers.
~
Subsequently I got out of rehab, I decided I wanted to stay out hither for a while. My parents idea it was a good thought. The geographic cure, they said. They're so smart. They call back. I know they just wanted me out of their fashion.
I like the high desert. I like the pine trees. I like the horizon.
I like the anonymity.
~
I'g straightening boxes of goblets—fifteen ounces each, 4 to a box—at Dillard's. My humility job. It's all part of my recovery plan. All function of the new me. All role of the understanding I made with my parents to stay here and enroll at the local community college rather than render to Randolph-Macon immediately. I can stay for one year, and then my female parent says I'll have to get back. We'll meet.
Brie is standing next to me, fiddling with her tangerine vinyl flower barrette and yapping nearly Drew, her boyfriend. Even though she's just graduated high school, she'southward ii months older than me. I jumped ahead 2 years when I was in the sixth course. I was excited at get-go, considering I thought I would get to leave habitation and go off to college that much sooner. That was before I realized my mother was going to insist I go to a women's college, her alma mater. (Kamela got to become to RISD. Daddy's girl.)
Brie thrusts her mitt in front end of my olfactory organ.
"See? Information technology'southward merely like J. Lo'due south bling-bling." Hardly, but it is big and lavender. It looks atrocious against her freckled skin and orange nails. She paints her nails every twenty-four hour period. What motivation. What energy. She works too hard for it. You don't take to.
How do these boxes get so dusty? I move to the next aisle. She follows, playing with her "bling-bling." I wonder if bling-bling is hyphenated. I choose hyphenation.
"Nosotros're getting married in Sedona. I'll wear something white and lacy and cut down to here." She touches her waistline.
"Married? You just turned eighteen."
"He's the only 1 for me." She looks heavenward, as if she knows heaven exists above these florescent lights.
"How can you know that? Didn't you say yous'd only slept with three boys?" I finish dusting to stare at her in cloy. When I do, I encounter Ms. Akins, the assistant director, walking our mode.
"Look busy," I warn and render to my straightening.
"I can't believe he asked me to marry him. I'thousand so happy!" She floats to the register.
What an idiot. She'south never even slept with a homo. Doesn't she know boys are every bit easy to snag every bit ants at a picnic?
Jeez. No wonder I don't accept girlfriends. They're as dense as butter.
~
My female parent calls after I get home. I don't choice upward. I prevarication in my Dog's Ear pink sleeping accommodation and let the telephone ring and ring.
~
I solar day, at the rehab ranch, Alicia Jean, a 50-something woman who'd been in twice before, said to me, "How can you know you're a drunk? You lot're seventeen. You lot're supposed to be boozing it up."
The counselor responded—too rapidly—that I had wrecked ii cars on my Christmas break and gotten a pink DUI ticket each time, and that information technology was admirable and mature of me to come out of denial at such a young age.
Alicia Jean sneered.
I think she was right. How can I know? How tin they? I'm too immature to be labeled. I call back the but reason they decided I was an alcoholic is because I borrowed my mother'due south $80,000 sable and left it at Local Amuse. It was never institute. Boo hoo.
But at the rehab ranch they taught me to always look on the bright side, and the bright side is that at least I'grand not at Randolph-Macon.
My female parent and I are having lunch at the Mariposa Room. We consume there almost every Sat. I'm having potluck, which today is craven sautéed in a brandy cream sauce accompanied by glazed carrots. My mother is having fruit salad. She is always watching her effigy. (If I don't watch information technology, no one else volition, she's said a zillion times, and it's very of import to her that people not merely lookout but want her effigy.) The women at the next table are gossiping about a friend who only paid a million bucks for a Jasper Johns. At that place is much rolling of eyes and raising of brows. I want to say I dear Jasper Johns, that their friend'south money was well-spent, but I don't. Instead, I listen to my mother describe her latest lover.
"His easily, child, the things they do." She shivers dramatically. "1 mean solar day, I hope yous have a lover so . . . and so . . . seasoned. He. Is. A. Principal."
Information technology has never occurred to my female parent that information technology might not exist appropriate to tell me, her twelve-yr-old daughter, well-nigh her lovers. She has been telling me near them for years, and allow me say, there have been quite a few. Merely who else would she tell? She has no girlfriends.
~
I am looking at makeup online. What shall I buy? What names appeal tonight? I dearest adept names. NARS has the best. I add together Night Breed, Heart of Glass, Deep Throat, Fire Down Below, and Rapture to my cart and check out. I have simply picked up three men in the concluding two weeks, and I promise myself I won't take sex again until this makeup arrives.
Limited shipping is available. I click.
~
I think nigh the first night. The first night I held him within me. I knew him—he was an erstwhile higher chum of Daddy'south (non close, non hunting or drinking buddies) and a old lover of my female parent'southward (cursory matter, at least ten years ago). I'd always thought he was devastatingly good-looking. (Nevertheless, I dubiousness I would accept gone later on him if it hadn't been for the Jack. Meet? Liquor is a good affair.) His mom was Italian, his dad Venezuelan. He had one of those "sophisticated" marriages: His wife had moved hither with their three children subsequently two of them had been kidnapped (safely returned after major ransom had been paid). He kept a house (and a mistress) in Venezuela. He was here one weekend a month, and he usually stayed at the 4 Seasons, not at the family swankienda.
I was tagging along with Kamela and an older lensman friend of hers who had only gotten hired at the Chronicle.
I saw him at our second finish (a do good with an older oversupply but an open bar—Mother had given united states of america her tickets, since she was at our business firm in Belize, probably with her lover du jour). He was leaning confronting the bar with an creative person (she had been one of Daddy'due south protégés for a while—draw your own conclusions) and she was stuck to him like newsprint to Silly Putty. Simply he was oh so delectable, and the Jack had bolstered my conviction. I danced, and I made sure he noticed. My moves were seductive, of course. (This knowledge was payoff for all those hours of listening to my mother.) I perused the DJ's selections, picked out "Let's Go It On" and "Spirit in the Night." Foolproof numbers. (Thank you, Mother.) I asked the DJ to throw in something to surprise me. I didn't want to seem the rehearsed seductress. (Another tip from love Mother.) So I "accidentally" bumped into him. I asked him to trip the light fantastic toe. What could he exercise, daughter of an old friend and all?
Marvin crooned, "I've been sanctified." You couldn't slide a steak knife between us.
"Does your mother know what you're upwards to?" Luis asked.
"She taught me," I replied. "And your wife?"
"Touché." Yep, he said that. It was a popular discussion in the romance novels my mother kept hidden in her nightstand, but I hadn't heard it used much.
By the time Springsteen sang, "Honey, let me heal information technology,"we were kindred spirits in the night. All nighttime.
~
It is Fri. I drive upward to Sedona. I wait for sex. I find it.
~
Mother calls. Her kickoff words are "That lazy, good-for-nothing bitch princess!" No how-do-you-do, how are y'all, what did you do today. Her oldest sister, Eleanor, is the lazy, proficient-for-nothing bitch princess. "You won't believe what's she's done at present."
"Howdy, Mother, how are you?" I always try to ho-hum her down when she'due south ranting, usually without success.
"She'south moved into the lake compound. She's not paying hire!"
"So?" My grandparents own five houses at Lake George. They only utilise them for a few weeks each summer.
"Why should she go to stay at that place hire free just considering she's blown her inheritance and refuses to piece of work?"
"You don't work."
"I haven't diddled my inheritance. I invested it. Wisely, little missy. She'south also borrowed more than coin from Daddy. She however hasn't paid back her last loan. Nor the one earlier that."
"What does information technology thing? There's plenty of money."
"She'due south always been Daddy'southward favorite. Always. He fried her eggs every morning when we were kids. He didn't exercise that for me."
"Yous hate eggs," I say.
"He can't say no. He needs to stop giving her money. That'south our money! Mine!"
"Isn't it Nannygoat and Pap's coin? By the way, I'm fine, Mother. Thanks for asking."
"Oh, I'm distressing, precious. How are you, my little vintage kid? How'southward school? How's work? When are you lot coming home? I miss you. Without you lot, there's no one to confide in. Oh, I must tell y'all most Joe. He loves to plate. We've gone through two boxes of Whip-Its in the terminal two weeks."
I breathe. Deep. It'south always about my mother.
~
Buster was the offset human being I fucked. His band played the Junior League Christmas party the year I turned 13. My female parent kept saying to me, those few times she left the dance floor, "They are nasty. Nasty."
I watched my mother trip the light fantastic. We all did. She was 39, and she could have had whatsoever man in the room, she with her white shoulders shimmering like pearls to a higher place her strapless crimson velvet sheath.
I noticed Buster look from me to my mother, time and again. He probably thought I was her younger, shy sister.
Kamela had already left. She hated my mother. Especially my mother's ability to merits the limelight.
My mother glided past the tabular array. "Nasty!" She winked at me.
"It'due south a mean old world," Buster sang.
~
Today, I am working with Merle, the only co-worker I like. She is sixty-three and works full fourth dimension considering her worthless hubby died of a heart attack, leaving her with no life insurance policy, $1,610 in the bank, a leaky trailer parked at Shady Acres, which, give thanks God, she owns outright, and a $223 bar tab. She rarely even badmouths the son-of-a-bitch. She e'er looks at the bright side.
"At least he didn't leave any credit card debt," she says.
~
Kamela (perfect, Daddy'south favorite) and her friends are at the Spanish Flower. I am with them, and we have been drinking Jack in the automobile. It is four a.m. and the clubs are closed. I see Buster. He looks older in the harsh calorie-free of the Spanish Flower. He'southward forty if he's a day. I wonder if the light makes me look older. Most people think I am at to the lowest degree eighteen. Sometimes I don't fifty-fifty have to employ my false ID when I go drinks. I desire to feel Buster's easily on me like a bunch of flowers. I wonder if he will come over. I could tell he constitute me attractive at the ball. I hear Nannygoat'due south vocalism say gentlemen don't speak to ladies commencement. I go over and say hullo. I feel awkward. He invites me to sit down. He's with his band and some women in leopard peel and pleather with enough makeup on to stock the entire makeup department at Neiman Marcus. They look like groupies.
He says he's playing at a festival on the bayou side by side Sabbatum. His ready is at ane p.m. Why don't I come?
"Why?" I ask.
"Luncheon," he says.
~
I am waiting for Pap at the bank. I didn't feel like going inside with him today. I am writing in my diary. Nannygoat gave it to me last calendar month for my tenth birthday. I bear information technology everywhere. I am a writer. Pap is taking forever—he always says hi to everyone. It is over a hundred today, and my thighs stick to the seats. I wish he would hurry. When I plough around to look out the back window to see if he is coming, I driblet my pen behind the seat. I accomplish downwardly to get it and feel a mag rolled upwards. I pull information technology out. It's a porn magazine. Porn! In Pap'southward truck! Nannygoat e'er steers me away from these at the newsstand. What is it doing in Pap's truck? Otie, Pap's helper, must have left it hither. I have never seen anything similar this. Women and men are having sexual activity in trees! In trees! Is that possible? I thought information technology was done in beds or cars or sometimes elevators. (Female parent had washed information technology in an elevator. Several times.) I am shocked. Excited. I proceed one center on the window. I know Pap will be very upset if he finds me with this filth, every bit Nannygoat calls magazines like this. In trees. I never imagined. Isn't the bawl scratchy?
~
I detest plating. Food is food. Sex is sexual activity.
~
We go back to Buster's duplex after luncheon. There are niceties. Beer. Conversation. I respond simply am barely nowadays. I am already in the bedroom. Betwixt the sheets. There are no copse in Buster's apartment. Buster doesn't know this volition be my first time. I accept heard enough from Kamela to know that I may bleed, and he may find out. I masturbated with a twig terminal dark (the bawl is scratchy) and tried to suspension my hymen. I don't think it worked, because I didn't bleed.
At that place is kissing. More kissing. Then the chamber. At last. I am so excited I can hardly stand up. Every pore of my body feels like information technology'due south being punctured. I feel like I'yard wearing a prickly pear leotard.
Buster undresses me, always so gently tongues each nipple. I am underwhelmed. This doesn't feel nearly as proficient as I had imagined, every bit Mother has said it would. Then he licks my vagina. This is more like it. This feels like something magazines are made of. Yep. Yes. Oh, shit. My body feels like information technology'southward made of twine and is fixing to pause apart.
Buster. Is. A. Master.
He puts his penis within me. He shoves. Fast. Faster. Hard. Harder. I scream. Loud. Louder. Buster must think I like this because he keeps going. I scream and scream. I think about the neighbors. Will they hear me over Junior Wells? Shit. Volition the police come? Volition my parents find out? Volition my female parent really exist and then pleased I accept a lover? Oh damn this hurts. Will he ever terminate? I attempt to push him away but he patently thinks this is part of the game. I try to speak but cannot make my voice come out in coherent words. Merely screams.
"You like it crude, huh?" he gasps as he ruts.
This is not what I expected. This is not what I expected at all. I am being gouged. I can see why the twig didn't work. Damn shit piss fuck.
I wait at the clock on his nightstand. I count the seconds. I two iii. Surely he volition end before long. Four 5 six. How long can this go on? I am dying. I am dying in a strange homo's bed. Will information technology make the paper? 9 ten 11. When Grampy died, it fabricated page one. He was 90-ii. In his sleep. Shit. Fifty-3 seconds later, he falls on me, heavy, deflated. He rolls off, reaches for his Marlboro Lights.
Buster tin't find his lighter and goes to expect for it. I pull the sheet over my head. I desire to sink into the bed like water.
When he comes back, he pulls the canvas aside, leans downwardly to kiss my belly.
"Sheee-itt. Blood! A virgin? Shit. Human being, you lot shoulda told me."
Men are so stupid sometimes.
"Would you have fucked me if I had?"
"Hell, no. You're probably jailbait, anyway."
"Yep, well."
He takes a long drag off his Marlboro. I spotter the fume ring float to the ceiling, then lean over for the Alone Star on the nightstand.
"Well, I am 1 grateful bounder. Give thanks yous, Piddling Willie Slow-Mitt."
"Huh?" I probably sound dumb, just haven't a clue who Lilliputian Willie Slow-Hand is and what he has to exercise with losing my virginity. There was certainly zip wearisome most Buster's penis.
"Willie was the bass player in my first ring. He taught me ya got ta lick 'em earlier ya stick 'em. That part was good. Correct?"
"Yeah."
"Good." He blows another smoke band. "I don't want you scarred for life. The balance'll be meliorate next time. I'll make sure. I got my tricks."
"Next time?"
"Next Saturday?"
I eat the last of the Lone Star, sentry Buster blow another fume band.
"Was Little Willie Irksome-Hand his real name?" I had to inquire.
~
I went back Saturday. Buster proved to exist a primary. I know my mother would agree.
~
I am working with Brie today. She and the boy have purchased a house, with the help of the moms and the dads.
"Information technology's and then cute." She makes beautiful 2 syllables.
"We picked out paint concluding night." She reaches into her pocket, hands me a scrap.
"The third i downwardly," she says.
A pale yellowish. The name is perfect. Cornerstone. Only the kind of color an oh-honey-y'all're-and then-big-you-make-me-experience-and so-proficient kind of daughter would pick out. The kind of girl who believes in ring-on-my-finger-happily-always-later on. The kind of girl who decorates her paint chips with big blood-red ink hearts. Stable. Solid. Totally deluded.
"You go, girl," I say. She doesn't catch my sarcasm.
~
"Well, I have known yous since you were a pocket-size male child," Carly croons.
The peak is downward and I am speeding along U.S. 60. I have a canteen of Veuve-Clicquot (hyphenated) in the ice chest and a Dixie cup and I am happy. The wind is Body of water Breeze for my soul.
"All the same have the center of a small boy, when you lend it out far too much . . ."
It is Saturday dark, there's a instance of Veuve-Clicquot in the trunk, and a bundle of Moisture Ones and a six-pack of Naturalamb Kling-Tites in my pocketbook, my mother is twelve hundred miles away, and I don't accept to be dorsum at work until Monday.
~
Luis calls on Midweek. I do not selection up.
~
Luis calls on Thursday. I do not choice upwardly.
~
Luis calls on Saturday. I do non pick up.
~
Luis calls on Monday. I selection up. He's in Phoenix on business concern. Why don't I come up downward?
I'll see, I say.
Call me on my cell, he says.
~
How do you agree a agglomeration of flowers? I pick up three bunches of peonies at Safeway to come across if I tin can figure it out. When I get domicile and take off the cellophane cuffs, I hold them several different ways. Close to the blossom. Non correct. I am choking them. I try the middle of the stems. Impersonal. I grip virtually the ends. They seem free. Too gratis. Lax. Unstable.
"Hold me in your hands like a bunch of flowers,"Carly sings.
The stems hurt my paw.
~
Luis calls again on Tuesday. I don't reply. Please phone call, he says. Please come.
~
I go to an AA coming together on Wednesday. Just in case Mother asks if I've been when she calls. I don't speak.
~
Luis calls on Th. I pick upwardly.
"Are you coming?" he asks.
"Does the bed have posts?"
"You can handcuff me," he says.
"We'll run into," I say.
~
Luis calls on Friday. I pick up.
"Did you shave your chest?" I inquire.
"Done."
"Become an extra room for me?"
"Yes."
I hang upwards. He's too sure of me.
~
Luis calls Sabbatum morning earlier I leave for work. I am not going to pick upwards until he says, "If it's easier, I can drive up."
I grab the phone.
"No. If I see you lot, I want a real date." Liar, liar, pants on burn down. I just don't desire him in my house.
"I thought you were above dating."
"I'll call yous when I get off."
I hang up.
~
I don't know why I am waffling. Luis has been my lover since I was 15. I want to go. I don't. I want to. I don't. I know I'll go in the end.
~
Luis opens the door on the first knock. He shoots correct through me. Through every fucking pore.
~
Nosotros disagree over where to get for dinner. I want to become to Rumbling Fork, but Luis knows the owner and fears being recognized with the girl of a friend.
"I am the daughter of a friend," I say.
"Merely I don't look at you that way."
"It'southward been years since he worked in Houston. He won't retrieve me."
He wants to go to Mary Elaine's, merely I don't desire to wearing apparel up, and information technology seems too hoity-toity, anyway. Mother and I go in that location when she visits. We compromise and get to a Mexican eatery south of town. Information technology'due south perfect. The dialectic is existent. It exists. May God bless you, Hegel. (It was Hegel? Mother is the philosophy whiz. Simply I'm well-nigh certain it was i of the H guys.)
I am good and exercise not social club a margarita with dinner. But when Luis is eating his flan, I wave downwards the waiter and order one.
"Rehab?" Luis asks. "Money down the drain?"
"Rehab," I say, "is never money downward the drain. I was sober two months, and expect at all I learned."
"Thirty grand dollars for two months of sobriety? And what did you learn? Exactly?"
"That rehab is never wasted money, that I should always wait on the bright side, and that I'm too immature to know if I'm an addict."
"They said that at rehab?"
"Non exactly. Anyhow, they just sent me there because they like the drama. Gives them something to talk about at cocktail parties. Y'all know, our trouble child."
"And the two wrecked cars?" Luis asks.
"Stone-cold sober people wreck cars. By the fashion, Pops, I'm having some other one."
We get dancing at some club on the elevation floor of an office edifice. Luis and I accept not danced in public since the benefit, when we both knew fucking was inevitable. They are playing crummy music, new shit. I detest information technology.
I drag Luis into the stairwell.
"You know these doors lock automatically. We'll have to walk all the manner downwards. Thirty flights. We can't get out until nosotros're back on the start floor."
"Yous're in adept shape," I say. I sit down on the stairs and brace one Virgin of Guadalupe cowboy boot on the metallic banister and the other on the physical wall. "I drove xc-eight miles. Deliver."
Nobody delivers meliorate, to paraphrase one of Carly's weaker songs. Shit. I wish someone would.
~
We cease for drinks at the Biltmore bar on our way back to the room. I have ii martinis. I am then drunk when we get dorsum to Luis's room that we fuck straight. In the bed. No restraints. No toys. I even allow him osculation me. As I fade into sleep, I am vaguely aware of Boz Scaggs singing "You Don't Know What Love Is."
Thank God.
~
Sunday, we swallow French toast in bed and read the Times.
Luis asks when I am going dorsum to Randolph-Macon.
"Never."
"Will your female parent allow that?"
"I have some money, you lot know. And UH has a decent artistic writing program."
"Information technology's harder for the states to see each other if you're in Houston."
"Nosotros could come up out of the closet. Although the illicit nature of our affair no uncertainty hikes the excitement."
"Why don't you go to Stanford? Or Johns Hopkins? They both have good programs."
"I don't have that much money."
"I'll pay."
"I'd be your kept woman? Oooohhhh. Be still my eye," I say sarcastically as I peruse the ideals column. "Would I have to be faithful?"
"Just don't tell me near any indiscretions."
~
I phone call in sick Monday. We practise not leave the room.
~
I inquire Luis to handcuff me Monday night. When he enters me, my torso turns into a wire cablevision that stretches all the way to infinity.
~
I wake up Tuesday, depressed. It is four a.thousand. I realize I have not even opened the door of the room Luis got for me. "Spirits in the dark. Oh, you lot don't know what they tin do to yous." Shit. I accept to get out. Immediately. Without waking Luis. I catch my skirt, undies, Virgin of Guadalupe boots, the commencement shirt I see, and my pocketbook. I don't even dress until I'm outside the door. Everything is replaceable.
I arrive dorsum to Prescott in time to make the 6:30 a.thousand. AA meeting at Yavapai College. When the leader asks if anyone has less than 30 days and wants to be best-selling, I raise my manus.
~
Luis calls Wednesday, Th, Friday, and Saturday. I do not pick upwardly. I know he has to be in D.C. Wed through at least Monday. By and so, I'll exist out of boondocks. He'll exit me solitary later a week or so, anyhow.
~
Friday, when I deposit my humility paycheck, I get a cashier'southward check for x thousand dollars and transport it to Merle. I enclose a letter proverb information technology'southward from the Slaves to Dear Foundation, and that our goal is to assist brand the lives of working widows more pleasant.
~
It'south Sunday afternoon, belatedly, and I am driving from Springerville to Clifton when I become stuck behind a truck pulling a trailer filled with funfair swans. I am annoyed—the driver is riding his brakes down the mountain. But the swans are and then gaily painted, I have to smile—the females have apricot polka-dotted dresses and huge periwinkle bonnets. The males have aqua jackets and red superlative hats. As I pull out to laissez passer, ane female takes flight. She bullets in front of me. I screech to a stop, just as something black lands on the seat next to me. I selection it up. A beak. I wait for the truck to stop. It doesn't. I outset driving again, blowing my horn. The truck finally pulls into the parking lot of the Golden Shutters Motel.
An older man gets out, walks back to run across me.
"You lost a bird back at that place," I say.
He rubs his chin. His wedding band glimmers in the sun. He'southward very handsome, teak of skin and hair, with eyes the colour of oxypetalum.
"I can go back and assist you find it, if you similar."
"That's awful sweetness," he says finally, nevertheless rubbing his chin. "Simply I can't become back."
"Why?"
"I can't go back. Merely I'll buy you dinner for being so nice. The enchiladas are skilful here."
"Sure," I say. I never dreamed I'd get lucky so early.
He tells me he works for a carnival, and he'south on his mode home. Hasn't been in that location in a month, and he misses his married woman when he's on the road. Can't wait to run into her. I flirt madly. I tell him I've been driving since nine. I'k tired. I think I'll go a room. He's welcome to share it. He says no, hasn't slept with some other since he got engaged xx-one years ago. Doesn't intend to start at present. Doesn't mean to offend me if that wasn't what I had in mind, mind you lot. I'chiliad stunned. I tin can't even retrieve of annihilation to say. He pulls out his billfold and flips to a flick. "Here she is, a existent beauty." She doesn't wait similar anything special, just your average middle-anile Revlon redhead who's had a couple of Twinkies too many. He finishes up, insists on getting the check, "seeing as how you're so nice, and I appreciate that."
"I thank you lot kindly," he says from the door. "Drive safe, hear?"
I have another cup of coffee. I'm still in shock. A faithful human. Is this possible? Peradventure he just doesn't like blondes.
I think of my mother. Luis. Randolph-Macon. I won't go back.
~
Back in the T-bird, I make full a paper cup with champagne, skid Carly into the CDplayer ("Nosotros can never know about the days to come"), fluff my curls, coat my lips with Butterfield 8. Then I see the swan's pecker on the seat beside me. I finger it. It's rough, dented, and the edge where information technology separated from the trunk shows naked balsa woods. I open up the glove compartment, slide information technology nether my old ratty copy of Play It every bit It Lays and the Kling-Tites.
I turn s, heading for Clifton. But as Carly sings "The river doesn't seem to finish here anymore," I U-turn. The residue of the swan is back in that location somewhere, beakless and battered. I've got to observe her.
Contributor's notes return to height
Source: https://blackbird.vcu.edu/v14n2/fiction/calhoun_d/swan_page.shtml
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