Revival House (6 page)

But then, a ray of complete euphoria banishes all thought from my head: Scarlet’s heavily black-lined cornflower eyes alight on my own flushed face. I still want her, the malicious bitch. The corner of her mouth ticks upward in a napalm smirk that coats and scalds my entrails. “Hey,” she says, folding herself onto a wrought iron chair next to mine, stowing her portfolio on the sidewalk beside her pale netted leg.

I do not trust myself to speak. My mouth is full of ice, numbing my tongue. I give her a wink and a nod and hope it doesn’t come across as ridiculous as it feels. I am always so awkward around her. I am indeed awkward around everyone, but she makes me feel like a stork trapped in a teenager’s body, a mass murderer imprisoned in the body of a priest.

“Well, kids,” Four says, standing and straightening his fake hump, “I’d love to stay and converse, but some of us have work to do.” He shoots a scathing smirk at Scarlet. His tour has always been more popular than hers, and he never lets her forget it.

I want to punch him in the mouth, feel the pulp of his lips mash against his crooked teeth.

“Enjoy your romantic lunch, chumps.” With that, Four plugs in his plastic vampire teeth and staggers toward his little ‘Extreme Ghost Tours’ platform a block down the brick walk. Curious looks slide off him from all sides as he cuts a wake through the flood of tourists. A gorgeous young woman stops to watch him, lowering her sunglasses, biting her lower lip. Four doesn’t even notice; he’s used to the attention. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what these women see in him.

Scarlet, unaffected, pulls a cigarette from her pack of Marlboro Lights and hangs it on her full bottom lip. I swat at my jacket pockets, feeling for my lighter. I locate it before she is able to sift through the contents of her enormous purse in search of her own black Bic. I light her cigarette. She thanks me by blowing a thick cloud of yellow-tinged smoke directly into my eyes. It burns, of course, but worse than that, it obscures the image of her angelic face for a brief moment. She slumps back in her chair and glances around, preoccupied.

“I am so beyond stressed right now,” she says in her New Jersey accent, waving the waiter over, ordering a green tea. “I have a project due in three days and I have to work every fucking night. Assuming I can dig up some customers, of course.” She takes another drag from her cigarette. “Unbelievable.”

Scarlet is all about drama. I could watch her theatrics forever.

She works every night of the week, except for Wednesdays and the rare occasion she is unable to entice two or more fat tourists to slink around town with her, talking about ghosts and ghouls. Unlike many of the privileged young adults studying at SCAD, she needs the money to pay her exorbitant tuition. Instead of pursuing a degree close to home, at Drexel University’s Nesbitt School of Design, where she’d won a full scholarship, she’d followed her high school sweetheart to the Hostess City, where she’d gotten thirteen piercings, six tattoos, and changed her name from Amy to Scarlet. She had officially severed all ties with her family when she came to Savannah over three years ago.

Her high school sweetheart dumped her for a lacrosse player from Maryland.

But, she is not bitter.

“I hate this fucking place.”

I clear my throat and look at my untouched slice of mushroom pizza. Orange grease pools on top of the cheese, reflecting sparkles of midday sunlight. I can’t understand how anyone could hate this part of the world.

“I mean,” she says, “it’s so, like... boring, you know?” She exhales a cloud of toxins. “Do you ever miss Pittsburgh? I mean, Pittsburgh is gross, you know, like Midwestern, but, too bad you had to come back to this backwoods shithole, man.” She drops her cigarette and crushes it under her boot heel. I can see the blackheads through the pavement of make-up smothering her nose. My sigh floats away unnoticed.

“Well,” I say, leaning toward her over the table, breathing in her nicotine-tinged scent, “I happen to like it here.” An intoxicated smile crawls across my lips. “Look around you. See how crowded it is? You know how many tourists escape to our fair city every year. Savannah is a temptress. She’s steeped in history. She’s gorgeous, and she’s haunted.” I stare into her bloodshot blue eyes, telling myself she’s playing hard to get, trying to change her mind by sending hot needles of persuasion into her pupils.

“Kind of like you,” I say, dropping my eyes to the low-cut low-rent lacey V of her neckline, the white tops of her breasts are melted crème fraîche in the shadow of the awning. My heart ricochets around my ribcage, forcing all the air from my shrunken smoker’s lungs. Gorgeous and haunted, both are good things. I’d known Scarlet for nearly two years, and although I’d worshipped her since the day we met, this is the first time I’ve ever said anything even remotely romantic. It is exhilarating. Even though she doesn’t reply, wears a dour expression, I want to jump up on my chair and whoop and holler.

I’d probably fall and injure myself, which would only magnify my foolishness, so I remain seated.

I risk leaning a fraction of a millimeter closer to her.

She smells of smoke and body odor. I wonder how often she bathes. Not often enough for this climate. But, her blue marble eyes find mine once more and I shudder. My heart stops. She drives me mad. Her flaws only make me want her more. A vivid fantasy blows through my head. One of knocking her from her chair, pinning her down, and ravaging her in front of all the passing tourists.

“Would you... would you go out to dinner with me?” I blurt.

Understand, I do not converse with women much. Just Scarlet. And customers, of course. I’ve never been in love with anyone. I have had a dozen or so crushes, but nothing ever came of them. I never really felt anything more than a passing lust for anyone. Not until I met Scarlet. And I’d never, ever had the nerve to act on that love until now.

Never in all eternity do I expect my feelings to be returned.

And they aren’t.

Scarlet’s eyes flick up to a passing waiter. “Like a date, you mean?” She laughs that musical chuckle I cherish and I want to vomit. Or punch her in the flabby pierced face.

“Well, I don’t have much free time, you know,” she says.

Our waiter finally brings her tea and the spell is broken, just like that.
My
spell, in which she is not really involved anyway. She’s thinking about getting off with Four. I know she is. I can hear her thoughts.

The whore.

She orders a slice of pizza with pineapple and we sit in silence, looking everywhere except at each other, until her lunch shows up.

Hydrogen, helium...

“So,” she says, through a mouthful of pale slick cheese, “tell me what’s going on with Exley & Sons.” The sight of the food churning in her perfect mouth, a wet gummy lump, turns my stomach. I look away. “You think of anything to make yourself millions yet?” She laughs. A particle of cheese or sauce or something flies onto my sleeve.

Yeah, that’s it. Laugh. A slow burn pumps from my heart to my trembling extremities.

...lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen...

“Um...,” I sigh. “Business, yes... I have a few ideas, I suppose.”

She has the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen. Matte black lipstick has a tendency to make one’s teeth an ugly yellow, but not Scarlet’s. Her teeth are whiter than any I’d ever seen. I wonder what kind of toothpaste she uses, which dentist she sees.

I want to know what it might feel like to slam those glowing teeth right out of her fucking head with a rusty pipe.

“Oh, my God. Do I have something in my teeth?” she asks, staring at me with wide stupid pale blue eyes. She closes her lips and runs her tongue around behind them, holding a hand in front of her mouth.

...oxygen, fluorine, neon...

“What? Oh, no,” I say. “I was just noticing how... um, white your teeth are. Sorry.” I study the bricks beneath the table. Oh, how to interact with women. If only Four could teach me that bit of magic. He always has girls flocking around him. He is slovenly, ill-mannered, from what the Internet says, a ‘geek,’ and for some reason, irresistible to women. Such a cruel trick of fate, the DNA lottery.

I’m sorry for your loss, as we say in the business.

“Oh, yeah, I’m just lucky that way, I guess. I’ve never even been to the dentist. Huh, I can’t believe I never told you that.” She examines the remainder of her pizza. “But, I mean, like, why go if nothing’s bothering you, right? It’s all a big fucking scam, the yearly exams and all that. It’s some kind of, like, big government conspiracy— you know, getting people to create more personal records and shit so they can, like, find you if you ever kill anyone.”

Scarlet is just a hair paranoid. Or stupid. Everything is a ‘scam.’ She loves conspiracy theories and other such idiocy. It does work well with her ghost tour business. But, creating spooky drama out of something as innocuous as getting your teeth cleaned? Outrageous.

What you really need to stay away from is braces. Now that is something worth worrying about. Wearing that much metal on your teeth, you’re like a radio station. Every one of your thoughts goes out to anything with an antenna— cars, houses, TV stations, cell towers, cell phones.

“Anyway,” she says, “tell me your big get rich quick ideas.” She’s considering going out with me. I can tell by the rise in her voice, her less guarded cobalt eyes.

I sigh, replaying my best friend’s reaction to my mildest business idea in the theater of my head. Of course, over the past two years, we— Four, Scarlet, and I— joked around a fair amount regarding the ghoulishness of our respective businesses, however, I am unsure as to how she will react to my new twist on postmortem photography. She is, after all, a PETA supporter. If she does not approve of testing lipstick on bunnies, what will she think of me playing with deceased humans? She isn’t a vegan, though, so maybe it would be okay to tell her.

Besides, what have I got to lose? Only a very remote chance exists of her agreeing to a date.

“I am going to specialize in multi-media presentations,” I say, watching a bird peck on a nearby bench.

“Like, what, videotaping services or something?” She leans forward, pushing her paper plate to the side, peering up into my face, like she’s my friend or something. I have to look. It would be rude not to.

She is close enough for me to kiss.

Or bite her lips off.

With a trembling hand, I brush that lock of pink hair out of her eyes. It is so soft. I wonder what it smells like. Lilac? Lavender? Head & Shoulders? Smoke? Sweat?

She recoils into her chair looking violated, as though I invaded her personal space and molested her. She doesn’t have boundary issues like I do, the fraud. Her retreat is just another manifestation of her deflecting my awkward semi-romantic advances, of course. Her loss. I will soon have my own successful business while she’s living in some underpass wiping her fat bottom with her worthless SCAD diploma.

“Sorry,” I say, feeling like a rejected child. I stack my plate on top of hers and take a long drink from my sweating wax cup. I wish for the ground to open up and swallow my chair. It does no such thing. I know she hates me. Or just doesn’t like me ‘that way.’ Her thoughts pierce my heart, or whatever part of our brains that enables us to feel love. And, oh, it hurts.

She leans back toward me, looking embarrassed, attempting a smile. She knows what I’m thinking, that I’m injured by her insensitivity.

Too late.

Hydrogen, helium, lithium...

“Anyway, um, what were we talking about?” I say, feeling heat in my cheeks, pain like a bullet in my brow. “Oh, yes, the multi-media presentations.” I clear my throat. “No, I’m not planning to tape services. This would be more like a, a tribute to the decedent. Something their loved ones could remember them by.” I look into her clear foolish blue eyes. “One last hurrah, if you will.”

“If you will,” she says, mocking me in a deep voice. She laughs. I don’t know whether to be hurt or amused.

She makes me feel inhuman, alien. Just like everyone else. Like I said, emotions were never something I’d had the luxury of experiencing until I’d met her.

“Come on, Caleb, fucking spill it, man. It’s just little ol’ me. We bullshit all the time.” She grabs my wrist in her sausage fingers. My usual placid mask must have taken on a pinkish hue. “You look embarrassed, dude.” She continues smiling at me, as if she hadn’t just killed me. Then she creases her brow and stops smiling, looks worried. The moon passing in front of the sun, my own personal eclipse. “Why don’t you want to tell me?”

“I...”

Of course I don’t want to tell you, bitch.

But, I’ll play nice. For now.

“This isn’t bullshit this time. I am not entirely sure how to explain it.” I am unaccustomed to withholding information from her. She’d become almost as close a friend to me as Four. Only I never wanted to fuck Four and he never said no to a date with me. Part of me wants to tell her everything, but most of me is afraid. Afraid she’ll think I’m insane. Or dangerous.

I just may be.

Does she know what I was thinking about her fat milky throat at that very second? Why isn’t she running away, tripping over her wrought iron chair, abandoning her art?

“Explain what? The ‘one last hurrah’ thing? Okay, yeah...?” She looks as though she’s assigned the issue a whole new meaning. It has become a matter of trust and confidence.