With or Without You Page 13

  “Angel’s having the baby,” she says finally. My throat clamps shut. Nothing in, nothing out, not even the stinking air. Already lightheaded from the drugs, I fall back against the cement. Ow! It’Ow! It’s my head this time. Pounding so hard I feel like smashing it harder. I feel like screaming, “Gustave Monde is a fucking asshole!” but I can’t even raise my head. Mimi crosses herself and takes my good hand, kneeling me down with her in front of the bed. “My little muñeca,” she says, “let’s say something together. Let’s pray for Angel.”

  And because part of my blood belongs to the grandmother I saw only three times alive and once in her coffin, the one who claimed a personal relationship with Jesus, maybe he’ll listen to me, if it isn’t all a bunch of crap like Jack always said. Imitating Mimi, I press my hands together, careful not to disturb the white coils around my pinkie. Mimi’s Spanish tickles the insides of my eardrums, though it’s hard to figure out exactly what she’s saying besides Jesus and Angel. Hey-zeus and Ahn-hel. I want to say something for Angel’s sake, but I’m not sure how it works. I envision Angel’s face, beads of sweat falling as she pushes cannonlike. An eerie feeling sweeps up through my knees, then come the pins and needles. “Please let Angel be okay,” I murmur.

  Mimi takes the back of my bandaged hand and kisses it lightly. Still speaking her language, she tells me not to worry, tells me she’ll take care of me, tells me she loves me, and when I ask what she means she calls me a happy girl, locacita. “Don’t all mothers love their daughters?” she says. Then we commit incest.

  EDIE SAID BOBBY DAVIS HAD A VELVET PENIS. And that wasn’t his best quality. She liked his ringlets of white-blond hair, the way his faded Levi’s hugged his tight ass, how he stuffed the lining of his bomber jacket with bags of sticky green pot and drove a monster Chevy with souped-up wheels, so different from the sleek foreign cars that filled the parking lot at school. But Bobby didn’t go to school. He mixed cement for his uncle’s construction company in Queens. I think that was where he lived. He just came around to buy pot from the Ayatollah and flirt with Edie. They’d hooked up over the summer just before she’d gone off on a teen tour and met a bunch of guys whose names sounded like those foreign cars. Edie’d rated them all on a scale of one to ten for looks, personality, bod. Sergio was her favorite, she’d said. An eight-ten-seven: European guys were skinny and they hardly ever showered. “Here’s the main difference between European and American guys,” Edie’d told me. “European guys smell funkier and their hair gets really greasy, but you’ll never find shit stains in their underwear. They scrub their assholes three times a day. Put that in your book.”

  I’d been jotting down “life experience” phrases in my sketchbook. Edie said they’d come in handy when I stopped scribbling pictures of soap stars and got out into the real world. She had some kind of beef against you from the beginning, only I never realized how bad it was until it was way too late.

  On the show, you and Max were engaged to be married, and the whole town of Foxboro was jazzed up about interracial marriage. This was big stuff. And in your personal life, you were collecting money at shopping malls to help feed the hungry kids they showed on TV. Lots of people were doing it. Just before Thanksgiving you took a trip to Africa with a couple of rock stars to help deliver the food, and at the Emmy’s (your second win) you had tears in your eyes. “We’re gonna keep going until every child on earth has enough food to eat and a warm bed to sleep in,” you said, in your sparkling black dress and high heels. I’d videotaped the whole thing and had been pausing the tape to draw you from stills, even though Edie said you were a hypocrite. Most celebrities were. It was no sweat raising money for starving kids in Africa without thinking twice about starving kids right here at home. But our kids weren’t running around naked with pregnant-woman stomachs and white paste around their lips. I thought you were noble and asked Nancy to write you a check. A few weeks later, you sent a thank-you note that hung next to a few Emmy sketches on my wall.

  Edie said my room was starting to look like an Egyptian tomb, every bit of space covered in words and pictures, whole stories written on the walls. She said it was weird, but that was before she started watching World, too. We spent a lot of time in my room looking at TV and getting high and talking about guys. At the moment we were working on what Edie called my virginity problem. She had me make rating lists of guys in my sketchbook and lectured me on finding opportunity like it was the most important thing in the world. Not that I didn’t want to lose it, I just didn’t want anyone touching me. In pornos it looked so grubby, and I really didn’t see the point. At camp a girl had said orthodox Jews did it through sheets. That sounded okay but I never mentioned it to Edie. She was on a mission.

  Then one cold Saturday night Bobby Davis called and invited her to a party in one of the big mansions by the Sound. He said he would bring a friend for me. Edie was psyched. She was sleeping over, and I didn’t have a curfew. But we had a few days’ worth of World to watch.

  “I’ve got the tapes all ready,” I sighed.

  “So fucking what,” she said, “they’re not going anywhere.”

  “But we had a plan.”

  “Jesus Christ, Lil, you can always watch TV. This is reality. This is a gift. An opportunity. God, can’t you see …” she huffed and threw her head back. “You know, anybody else would have given up on you by now.”

  My throat tightened. I looked up at the glossy black window, which at night reflected my walls. You floated kaleidoscopically, from all angles, begging me not to go. Edie caught me staring. “Are you even listening to me?” she said. “You know, most people wouldn’t give a damn about your life experience. And tell me, if it wasn’t for me, who else would devote even five minutes to your virginity? Tell me, who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Drooping shoulders, a high-pitched whine, she imitated me: “I don’t know … When are you going to take some responsibility for your own experience? Do you want to stay a virgin forever or what?”

  “It’s not that, it’s just …” I stopped myself. How was I supposed to tell her you were more important than anything I’d find outside? Even a de-virginizer. Someone I’d never even met. Our philosophies were totally opposed.

  “What?” she pressed.

  “Huh?”

  “Come on, what’s your excuse this time?”

  “I have an English paper due Monday.”

  “Is that what you’re worried about?” Edie laughed.

  “I haven’t even read the book.”

  “Oh my god, Lil, you putz … why didn’t you say something? I can take care of that. Let me take care of that. We’re going to the party! Yeah!” She threw her arms in the air, then picked up the phone again and asked information for somebody named Jerome Finkelstein. “Toss me a pen,” she said. I did, and she jotted down a number on her palm, then dialed again. “What’s the book?” she said.

  “Brave New World.”

  “Science fiction. That’s cool, that’s my kind of thing, although it’s not really a classic, might be tough—hey, is Susan there?” she spoke into the phone. I walked closer to the closet where she was standing in front of the full-length mirror rubbing purple lipstick from the corners of her mouth as she waited, then perked up. “Hey, Susan, it’s Edie, how’s it going?” she said. “I’m cool. Totally cool … well, except for a little problem I heard you can help me out with …” Laughing, she explained the situation, systematically checking her makeup, running chipped fingernails through her hair, straightening her velvety green skirt over ripped fishnets. Was it a joke, her wearing velvet? Or a reminder? Every time she grazed herself she thought of him. A few minutes later, she hung up the phone. “You’ve got your paper. It’s on the book’s view of sex and reproduction. Sounds cool, right? I almost want to read it myself. She says it hasn’t been used since 1981 and it’s only forty bucks.”

  “Forty dollars?”

  “Well, what did you expect? This is contraband. This is underground econ
omy. Susan Finkelstein is the Ayatollah of term papers. Now, let’s get you dressed.”

  I had on a black turtleneck and khaki safari pants—I looked fine. Edie disagreed. Sizing me up, she said I should at least find a tighter shirt and put on a little mascara, but I refused. Adamantly. She accused me of fighting opportunity before it began, and I said just let me try it my way tonight, if it doesn’t work I’ll reconsider. “Okay … under one condition,” she smiled—I knew what she wanted: Jack’s pot.

  I led her into my parents’ bedroom, and together we opened Jack’s sock drawer, took out his leather cigar box, and sat down on my parents’ bed. Inside the box was a bigger bag than ever and something else: a tiny orange vial filled with white powder. “Holy shit!” Edie said. “Your parents are so cool.” The last time we’d found a matchbook from a club called Symposium. Edie said it was a sex club. She’d read an article about it in the Village Voice. It said couples went together and traded partners. Some did it in groups. But most men didn’t go with other men, afraid it would make them gay. Women were different, more experimental. They could go back and forth more easily. Edie said that made sense. She said she was going to have sex with a girl someday, and my body temperature jolted. I grimaced and said … I can’t remember what I said, my blood was pumping like molten lava, and then she said something like everyone should have that experience at least once and I felt like she was stripping layers off my skin and she must have sensed something because she added this (and I remember it clearly): “Not that I’m advocating it tonight or anything.” And then I felt really bad for a while and it was that badness swelling back as we argued about Jack’s coke. I thought we should leave it alone. A couple of buds were one thing; cocaine was expensive. But Edie thought otherwise. “Go and get your book,” she said.

  “No way!” I didn’t trust her alone with that stuff for a minute.

  “Then listen to me and listen good: Jack wanted us to find this.”

  I laughed. “Oh yeah?”

  “It’s in his underwear drawer!”

  “Socks.”

  “Same difference. It’s like the first rule of being a parent. If you want to communicate with your child, you check out his underwear drawer because that’s where he’s leaving anything he wants you to find. Everyone knows that’s the first place people look.” My brain was spinning and we hadn’t even smoked. If everyone knew the sock/underwear drawer wasn’t a real hiding spot, then what could looking really tell you about your kid? And Jack … what did it matter? This was his house. Nobody was checking up on him. But Edie said things were different around here. “Your parents don’t act like parents and you’re no normal kid. No offense. I mean, who wants to be normal, but my point is, everything around here works in reverse. Trust me, Jack’s a smart guy. He knows you’ve been looking in that drawer and he still leaves all his shit in there. That’s practically an invitation.”

  Mostly to shut her up, I said okay and cut a few thick lines on one of Jack’s marble book ends. We snorted them with a rolled-up twenty. Edie fell back on my parents’ steely gray sheets and said, “Fucking A!” Her tits, covered in fraying white words—Talking Heads—bobbed up and down. I chewed my lip, but couldn’t really feel it, couldn’t feel anything inside my mouth, and imagined my slack jaw unable to form words, sentences, and why the fuck were we going to a party with demented faces? That’s it, I thought, I’m staying home. I’d lose Edie downstairs, somewhere between the den and front door. It was a big house. As if she’d read my mind, she bounded up and ricocheted from room to room, practically dragging me by the collar. My nose twitched and I couldn’t swallow, but Edie said that would stop as soon as we had a few drinks and helped me put my arms through my coat, saying, “Oh, man, this is good shit, this is really good!” She paced. I followed, and when she turned we collided. “Jesus, Lil! Don’t walk so close.”

  “Everything’s so tight in here.”

  “Let’s wait out front.”

  Outside, my breath fogged in the crisp black night, but I didn’t feel cold. I was riled inside. Felt like jumping out of my skin. I wanted to run down to the beach, run past the swimming pool that used to be Blair’s house, although everything about it was fading. I couldn’t remember where the front door was, how I’d reach under the mat for the key and let myself in. Everything was a big Blairy blur.

  In the distance came the clink of a low-hanging carburetor, followed by a few shouts. Headlights rolled toward us. Edie grabbed my upper arms. “Okay, you ready?” she said, and I nodded. “Trust me, it’s gonna be okay. Just follow my lead, you can do that, you’re a fast learner. And remember, Lil, this could be your lucky night.” She let go of me and waved her arms in the air.Her down jacket rose up over her hips. “Whoooo! Bobby!” she shouted. “Over here!” An old Chevy with dark windows screeched in front of us. Bobby Davis and his velvet penis had arrived.

  We—me, Edie, Bobby Davis, and his six-foot-two, two-hundredfifty-pound friend, Noz—pasted ourselves behind a group of girls who’d been dropped off in a Rolls Royce and slipped inside the huge Colonial house. Market value: a couple million, easily. Nancy would have wet her lips at the prospect of that commission. The foyer had marble floors, life-sized statues, and antique-looking paintings in thick gold frames. Opposite the double front doors was a wide staircase like something out of an old horror movie. A boy I recognized from chemistry class was leaning on the banister, talking to a few people gathered on the steps, the faint echo of a Phil Collins song spilling from a lighted room in the distance. As we passed, a couple of spokes in the banister cracked beneath him, and the boy slipped back. Bobby reached out and pulled him up. Red-faced, he brushed himself off and sneered at Bobby. “You’re welcome, Prince Charles,” Bobby said. The boy kicked another spoke until it broke through the middle like a chipped tooth.

  “Asshole!” Noz said. “I hate these motherfuckers. What the fuck are we doing here?”

  “It’s a party,” Bobby said, and steered us toward the brightly lit room. A giant chandelier hung sloppily from the ceiling and heavy curtains with velvety swirls covered part of the windows, exposing patches of the black night like illicit skin. It made me think of my mother, how she’d always leave the outdoor shower in the Hamptons before realizing her towel was too small. Edie pulled me further into the room, where some girls from school huddled in tiny cocktail dresses, a mushroom cloud of cigarette smoke rising above them, and it looked like something I’d seen on TV, one of those parties you were always showing up at, even though you preferred staying home. This was good practice for me. Phil Collins repeated the same line over and over again. You had to be really famous to get away with that kind of crap. One of the anorexia girls dropped a cigarette butt and crushed it underneath the heel of her shiny leather shoe. It smelled funky, like burning hair. Looking down, I noticed the carpet was covered with cigarette burns.

  “We need those drinks,” Edie said, and pointed to a few people sipping green liquid out of long glass goblets and munching on what looked like pieces of sushi.

  “And sushi,” I said, entranced, mouth watering. “I love sushi!”

  Grabbing me by the elbow, Edie counseled: “Never eat at parties. It makes you look desperate.”

  “What?”

  “Trust me.”

  We left the ballroom for a dark cavern with leather couches and walls smothered in books. A group of guys wearing dinner jackets and loaded with gold jewelry sat around a table playing poker like the old men at Palm Court. One of them smoked a cigar, a rich-boy gangster type. “Welcome, ladies,” another one said. I think he was in my math class. “Are you the hookers?”

  “In your dreams,” Edie shot back, and we quickly left, continuing on into a huge open space off the kitchen where we found the food and drinks and Noz stuffing pieces of sushi down his thick throat like Godzilla swallowing an entire town.

  I pointed at him. “He’s eating.”

  “It’s different for guys.”

  “Yo E-D rhymes with V-D!”
Noz shouted across the table. “B-D’s been looking for you. Says we’re supposed to meet him upstairs in the executive suite, whatever the fuck that is. You want some raw fish?” He dangled a piece of tuna in front of her face and it looked like a tongue, his tongue, only thinner. Sniffing it, he said, “Smells like—”

  “Hmmm, let me guess … pussy?” Edie grabbed the piece of fish and flung it in the air. It stuck to the ceiling, then plopped onto a girl’s bare shoulder. She flicked it like a fallen leaf, a bug, a minor nuisance that barely interfered with her monologue.

  Noz smiled. “Hooo-sah!”

  Edie reached into the punch bowl and filled a couple of goblets with green liquid. While her back was turned, I sneaked a piece of salmon from the table, dropped it in my mouth, and swallowed before she finished pouring and handed me a glass. “What is it?” I asked.

  “Who cares?” She chugged hers, then waited for me to do the same. We refilled and drank a few more glasses with Noz, before following him through the kitchen, where a couple of people held pieces of sushi over the blue flames of a gas stove, toasting the rectangles of fish, rice and all, like marshmallows. The smell was worse than the burning rug, but they glowed beautifully. Little electric rainbows. I wanted to hold one in my hand, feel it ride down the back of my throat, hot. How was Edie not hungry? We hadn’t eaten in hours. A clock on the microwave said five, another one on the wall said nine, and I wondered if either hour was correct and which would get us out of there faster. But we descended further inside, climbing a steep staircase off the kitchen and making our way down a long, dark hallway, floorboards creaking beneath our feet, toward an echo of music and laughter, golden triangles of light. Edie called it the VIP room, and I imagined you and me being ushered into a Hollywood club together. People turned their heads, shouted your name, grabbed at our clothes. You took my hand. Stay with me, Lillian.