Eternal: More Love Stories With Bite (7 page)

"You were in Paris," he said. "Since the liberation."

She'd told him this while they'd waited for her knee to heal. "Yes."

"I haven't been there since the 1920s. Is it still beautiful?"

"The war has left its mark," Patrice replied. "But of course it's still beautiful. It's
Paris."

"Then I think I should like to see Paris again. And I think the journey there, while hazardous, could be quite delightful in the right company." How clever Ivan was. How wise. He knew the best thing to do was to pretend her breakdown had never happened. "Will you accompany me, Patrice? When we get to Paris, we'll drink champagne and stay up all night and create no end of scandals. And we'll kill every Nazi we see on the way there."

Patrice straightened herself, smoothed her hair, and took Ivan's arm. Somehow she managed to smile. "You always did know how to show a girl a good time."

Say Yes

Lili St. Crow

That
Friday the party was up in the hills, some ratfaced kid's parents were gone and a whole fake adobe mansion thrown open, throbbing with rave music. As soon as we got there I snagged us a couple of beers from a passing boy with a cooler full of ice and brown glass bottles, and Chelsea and I cased the place.

The hardcores were doing coke in one of the designer bedrooms upstairs. The banister had already been slid down. The punch bowl had probably already been spiked, and when we found the quietest back bedroom there was already a couple sprawled out across the water bed. The guy was a lacrosse star at St. Ignatius, and the girl was from one of the public schools. Nobody we knew. She looked glaze- eyed, her tangled brown hair spread out in a mat, eyeliner dripping down her cheeks. The lacrosse star's naked ass had pimples.

We left them alone and went back downstairs. The huge circular living room had a fireplace and a mass of kids hopping around to the half-assed DJ's attempt at trip-hop coolness. Girls in worn-thin designer jeans and cropped shirts that showed their bellies, jewelry winking. Boys in prep or jock costumes, some in loosened St. Ignatius uniforms. There was a sprinkling of Marys—girls from St. Mary of the Sacred Heart, Ignatius' sister school, instantly recognizable in the blue and green plaid skirts Chel and I also wore, the almost-knee-high socks, the Mary Janes and whatever shirts we threw on at the end of the school day. Some of them still had the Peter Pan collared white button-ups on, but they'd unbuttoned them down and camis peeked out through the top. You could always tell a Mary by the long hair, the healthy scrubbed skin, the clear nail polish, and the neutral lip gloss.

We don't all look alike, but it's close.

Chelsea took a long swig off her beer and rolled her blue eyes. I shrugged. It was as close as she would get to admitting I was right and this was a complete waste of time. We should have gone to the Rose. Yeah, it's an all-ages club and it sucks, but it was better than this.

The music was a loss, so we headed into the kitchen. Big beefy frat-boy types were doing shots off the counter. One of them staggered and put his head down like a bull, the blue fug of cigarette smoke wreathing his head. He looked just about to vomit, so we got an armful of cold beer bottles and retreated.

The patio was almost a complete loss, too. Someone had already been tossed into the pool and was shrieking, and there were two kids throwing up in the manicured bushes. Someone passed Chel a joint, she took a drag. There was a forgotten corner to the patio, two deck chairs sitting lonely under madrone trees. The stars were out, clear and cold though the night was warm, and the first breath of the Santa Anas was flirting with the sides of the canyons and the valley. It smelled like hot dust and chlorine from the pool. The music was too loud to be a comforting heartbeat, but it was close.

"Don't say it." She handed me another beer.

I shrugged again. My keychain had a dainty silver bottle opener, so I cracked both mine and hers.

"We can always leave." Her throat moved as she took a long hit off the bottle and passed me the joint. Even when she was drinking you could see the ballet classes every Mary has to take, classified under "deportment" and graded. It's so fifties, but it's what our parents pay for. "Go to the Rose."

The smoke stung my lungs. I held it for a long time. "It'll be the same there without the beer," I finally said. We clicked bottlenecks and sat back on the deck chairs, legs stretched out, ankles crossed and skirts safely tucked. I watched over the polished tips of my Mary Janes as one of the kids throwing up in the bushes staggered toward the kitchen door. "Jesus."

"I hope this kid knows a good cleaning service." She laughed, and the music started a screeching feedback loop. "Goddamn. Annoying."

I took a long draft. It slid cold down my throat. I hate the taste of beer, it's yeast in a bottle. But it was chilly and would give me a buzz. "Did Jenny get her results yet?"

"Not yet. And no period." Chel sucked in her cheeks. "Poor kid."

"Well, everyone knows how Marty is." I shifted uncomfortably on the deck chair. Thank God Chel had told me about him in time. When I'd moved here, I'd thought he really liked me.

That's the way he is with everything female, though. At least, everything female he thinks he can get his meat into. But he's a popular Iggie. His dad's in plastics or something. Bought his Junior a red convertible. It was like every cliché about midlife crisis come to life and projected onto a hapless kid.

"And she
was
voted Most Likely To Graduate Knocked-Up, If At All. In our highly unscientific personal poll." Chel giggled and so did I. It was nasty, but satisfying. Like nachos. We finished off the joint in companionable gossip, and the familiar soothing blanket of warmth spread all through me.

That was when she saw him. "Oh, wow. Hold
everything."

I looked up, across the frothing mass of the pool. More kids had jumped in, clothes and all. And someone, of course, had poured dish soap or something in it, so great opalescent banks of bubbles crawled toward the molded-concrete rim.

It was just like every other party this year.

Except for him.

He stood by the French doors to the dining room, flung wide open to let in the night. He wasn't tall or even very cute. Here you've got to be blonde, snub-nosed, long-legged cheerleader material. Like Chel.

He had dark curly hair like me, more actual curls than my just-waves. Dark eyes and perfect
olive
skin. Normal face,
nice
and
regular, nothing
out
of the
ordinary.

But there was something about
him. He
stood
there like
he
had all the time in the world, his sneakers placed carefully and his shoulders relaxed, hands in his pockets. A simple
white
button-down and jeans,
his
hair
mussed
and a
thin
gold necklace with a
small
white pendant nestled
just below
the
hollow
of
his throat.

He was looking right at us.

Chel drew in a short, sharp little breath. I knew that sound. The cat
had
just found her
next
mouse.

I
looked away quickly, studying the soap
foam.
Where was it
all
coming from?
The
kids weren't thrashing around enough for all of it.

Jets, I decided. Or whatever
they'd
put in the pool to make the bubbles.

"He's looking right over here." Chel had a good
sotto voce,
her lips barely moved even when she had to be heard over the thumping music.

We had lots of
practice in class.
St.
Mary's
is strict. But there are ways of getting around
it,
especially if
the
teachers think you're
a
brain. It's hard treading that line between smart and popular. You have to choose one or the other. Chel had the
pop
covered, I
settled for doing all our
home
work and tagging along.

The sheen on
the wall
of bubbles looked
sick.
Like a slug-trail.
I
took another long draft of beer. My stomach was sour. So was the rest of me. The feedback was beginning to give me a headache. Thank God it cut off just then, replaced by another pounding beat. Even the windows were flexing. It was a question for the ages: could the Eternal Dude make a sound system so loud even His eternal windows would shatter?

Betcha they wouldn't cover that in Theology class.

"Oh God, do I look okay?" Chel wanted to know.

"You look fine." Just like usual. She looked like a California dreamboat. And it poured off her in waves, hot interest. I could tell we were going to be replaying this all night. We'd probably go for late-late fries and milkshakes at Druby's and then to her house, where I was technically supposed to be staying the night. We'd get in about 3 or 4
a.m
., get ready for bed, and then lay in her room giggling and talking about this very moment until she fell asleep. Because if I fell asleep she would poke me. "You look hot."

"I should've changed."

We hadn't changed because she'd been all in a hurry to hang at the mall and then zoom to the party. As a result we were part of the unbuttoned-dress-shirt-and-camisole crowd. "Schoolgirl is hot this year," I muttered.

"Schoolgirl's always hot." She shifted a little bit. I could tell she was raising her chin, because her mother was always on her about it.
It takes years off your age in photographs, sweetheart. Stand up straight.

He must've been getting closer. The bubbles climbed up. In two years I'd be graduated, I'd go to whatever college would have me, and Spring Break would happen in Cancun or something. There would be shit like this all the time.

I hunched my shoulders. Took the last long six-swallow burst of beer, and was faced with the decision to belch like a linebacker now or in five seconds when the guy got to us. I chose now and stifled it with a ladylike hand. Chelsea about had a fit, trying to laugh with her chin up and her posture okay while lounging in a deck chair with kiped beers.