Robin and Ruby (14 page)

Still, she let herself be persuaded by Calvin. Pressured by his constant need to be told he was right. Always right.

When she first started dating Calvin, she liked that he too felt alienated from other teenagers, their so-called
peers
. He was the tall guy in the ratty overcoat, hiding his Nordic bone structure and gray eyes behind messy, greasy, white-blond hair. The one who smoked British cigarettes while arguing over coffee at midnight after a film at the Bleecker Street Cinema. He got easily upset about politics—nuclear winter, Third World intervention, anything to do with Ronald Reagan—and he said the way to dissent was not at the voting booth but through “cultural production.” He reminded her a bit of her brother in his outspokenness, though Robin had a daring side that Calvin only imagined he possessed. He railed against “the new morality” but didn’t seem especially interested in sex, and this was fine with Ruby. She had made it clear she wasn’t ready to go
all the way
, thankful that in this one area, he didn’t put pressure on her. She wasn’t really sure why. She might even give over to her suspicion that he might be gay, if he weren’t so fixated on her breasts.

At Columbia he’d made a couple of short films—“critiquing the seduction of advertising,” he said. She’d starred in a scene for him, sitting on a toilet seat under a single high-watt clamp-light in only her bra and tights, brushing her hair while reciting Foucault. She’d had fun doing it—the whole shoot felt stupid and glamorous—but she couldn’t really defend the film when students in Calvin’s workshop accused him of being pretentious. (And maybe the criticism made an impact. Calvin was now working on a more traditional script, set in the world of downtown nightlife. He hadn’t yet shown it to her, though he’d mailed her brother a copy. She wasn’t sure if she felt insulted by that or not.) She never pointed out to him the contradiction of a so-called anticapitalist living off the dividends of his family’s stock portfolio. The problem with Calvin, she had finally figured out, was that underneath it all he was just a spoiled boy. Unable to pick up after himself, used to having things done for him, always
expecting
. Expecting her to agree with him when he got worked up about a particular topic—and if she disagreed, expecting that she’d eventually be persuaded, or least stymied, by his arguments. It had begun to wear her out. Spending time with your boyfriend isn’t supposed to feel like a battle.

And so last night, she had rehearsed that sentence about needing a lover, but she didn’t say the words out loud. Didn’t want to hurt his feelings. She told herself a weekend down the shore might be a fun vacation. She could ignore the party and play in the surf, like she used to with her brothers when she was little, salt water on her lips, her skin turning pink in the sun.

And that’s what they did, for a little while this morning. She and Calvin went to the beach first. Calvin found parking near the boardwalk in one of those lots where an old retiree in a lawn chair collects the money and keeps an eye on the cars while deepening his lifelong leathery tan. They paid for their beach badges at a wooden stall that reminded her of the one Lucy sat in, in the
Peanuts
cartoons, with her sign announcing “The Psychiatrist is In. Five Cents.” On the sand, they found a spot amid the endless sprawl of bodies—bodies on blankets, in fold-up chairs, under umbrellas or exposed to the sun, baking their oily flesh. Kids ran in every direction, radios blared the local “hits” station, and the occasional piece of garbage—a soda cup or a Doritos bag—tumbled along the sand, sometimes chased by a conscientious bather but often just carried by on the breeze, ignored by all as someone else’s problem. Seagulls whined, circling above garbage pails stuffed with scraps from lunches.

She stripped down to a bikini, black and relatively modest, bought just for this weekend. Calvin told her she looked like Bettie Page. He peeled off his jeans to reveal old, plaid Bermuda shorts underneath. He left his long-sleeved shirt on and sat up, knees bent, a book balanced there.
Eros and Civilization.
She knew Calvin wouldn’t go in the water, so she wandered in by herself. She was cautious, afraid of getting knocked over by a wave—aware of her childhood fear of riptides, of a sudden injury. She kept herself in proximity to a family, a young father and mother wrangling a handful of kids diving in and out of the crashing waves. But when she looked back she saw that Calvin had indeed kept her in his sights, peering out over the top of his book.

When she got back to the blanket, she asked him to rub sunblock on her, but he said he didn’t have any, even though she was sure he’d said earlier that he’d packed some, and then they both sulked for a bit. She lay on her back, feeling the sun heating the exposed flesh between her bikini top and bottom. In the sky above, a flock of sea birds flew by in V-formation. An unseasonal migration. A sign that everything shifts and moves, nothing stays in place. She swatted the thought away, squashing the urge to attach meaning—a leftover from the influence of her Catholic Nana, who found “signs and wonders” everywhere, proof of God’s intentions, answers to her prayers. A lot of superstition, or so it seemed now, though back then she saw life that way, too. So she closed her eyes and pretended that she was somewhere more exotic, and that she wasn’t with Calvin. She thought about how she’d have to wait out the rest of the weekend before she broke up with him.

And now, in the hallway, she wonders again why she didn’t just get it over with the night before in New York. Now, instead, her skin feels sunburned and her clothes are covered with beer, and how is she going to get through the rest of this hellish party? Why did she wait? When has waiting ever solved anything?

“Ruby! Right? It’s you? Oh, my God.” She turns around to see a flatchested girl in a pale orange bikini, two tiny triangles of fabric, as if a single slice of Kraft American cheese had been cut in half along the diagonal. Her body is long and lean. She’s nearly as tall as Calvin and has his same thin-boned features. Same shocking whiteness to her hair, though her hair looks clean. So of course this must be Alice. She exclaims, “I can’t believe we haven’t met before!”

“I’ve been here for half an hour,” Ruby says dryly—wondering where Alice has been all this time. “I’m covered in beer.”

“I heard my brother just spazzed out on you. It’s the talk of the party.” Alice holds out to Ruby a brandy snifter with an inch of amber jiggling in its bulb.

“Spaz” suits Calvin, though Ruby could never get away with calling him that. She takes the snifter, which might be leaded crystal—another unlikely object that Alice has brought along for the summer.

“Oh, my God,” Alice repeats. “Come with me.” She pivots and moves down the hall, talking over her shoulder in a jittery stream. “Are you having fun? Do you like the house? We rented last year but closer to the ocean, but it’s totally crazy there, so we decided to rent on this side of Central, but you know it’s too many families over here, so someone’s always calling the cops on us. Nightmare!” She reaches a door and pauses before entering, as if to impart secret rules to Ruby before they step inside. “We’re keeping this room off limits except for me and Cicely and Dorian. They’re the other renters. Have you met them? Cicely is gorgeous, with the biggest breasts you’ve ever seen—she’s probably going to get a reduction, I mean,
I
would if it were me, but I’m as flat as they come, and between you and me I like it that way. I’m a perfect size two. And Dorian’s just a lush, but she’s sweet. I’ve known her for years, we go to Dalton—I mean we
went,
we’re graduates now! Free! We have a bathroom off my bedroom that’s strictly
entre nous. Comprendéz
? I’m not letting all these trashy people, whoever they are, puke in my toilet. Plus, I have like $150 worth of Estée Lauder cosmetics in there, so—”

She pushes open the door, and they enter the room with the coke mirror. “Help yourself,” Alice says. She gestures toward the same group of faces Ruby had barged in on just moments ago. “Attention, all you beautiful people. This is Ruby. She’s from Manhattan, too.”

Ruby waves feebly toward the group, three guys and two girls, a wild-eyed bunch dressed several notches less trashy than the beach bums in the living room and kitchen. The inner circle. She identifies gorgeous Cicely, on the bed in a black-satin Chinese robe, which hangs open, highlighting her remarkable cleavage. She has the kind of trendy, teased-up hair—curly all over, with ironed-straight bangs over her forehead—that defies both gravity and taste. She smiles sweetly and waves at Ruby. Sprawled next to her is a sweaty, red-faced guy wearing a linen blazer over a tank top, wiping a frantic finger across his gums. This guy says, “Fuckin’ welcome and shit.”

There’s a guy next to him wearing only a pink oxford shirt, unbuttoned, a pair of white briefs, and a paisley-patterned necktie wrapped around his forehead.

Necktie Guy sits up straight, legs dangling off the edge of the mattress, thighs spread. He checks Ruby out from head to toe. “Fantastic legs,” he remarks. He then jabs a rolled bill into his right nostril and, in a single, seamless gesture, vacuums up an inch of white from the mirror.

The third girl—this must be Dorian—is the crimped-haired brunette in the pink bikini who Ruby saw shrieking through the living room. Dorian whacks Necktie Guy on the arm—it’s not clear to Ruby if the swat is because he took more than his share of the coke, or because he paid her a compliment. Maybe the latter. Dorian addresses Ruby through a sneer: “What brought you and your
fantastic legs
to our party?”

“I came with Calvin.”

“Calvino?” says Necktie Guy. “Where is he?”

“I left him in the front room,” Ruby says, “after he totaled his beer all over me.”

“That explains the wet look,” Dorian says. “For sure.”

Ruby forces a smile, as if the spill were merely a bother and not a public humiliation. As if Dorian wasn’t being rude but just clever. In her gesture is an attempt to conjure the blasé sophistication she knows runs through the veins of this crowd. Since moving to Manhattan, she’s been surrounded by kids like these. Adopting their nonchalant manner is a way to blend in, especially when you don’t have the money they do. Besides, she
does
have nice legs—her mother says her legs are her best feature—but she doesn’t need any coke-wired guy getting all worked up about them. Not in front of his girlfriend. Not here, not now.

But Dorian isn’t done with her yet. “
Calvin
,” she says, rolling her eyes. “He’s so tedious.”

“
You’re
tedious, Dorian, especially on coke,” says Necktie Guy. “You should stick to drinking.” This sounds like an insult, but Dorian lifts her mouth to his and they commence a particularly wet tongue kiss.

“Is Calvin your boyfriend?” This comes from the third boy in the room, speaking from the corner, where a sunny window behind him casts him in silhouette.

Ruby senses that this guy been silently watching her all this time. She stares back toward him, wanting a look. After she says yes, he drops his gaze.

From the bed, Cicely points a finger at Ruby and exclaims, “Oh, my God! You’re the virgin!”

Dorian breaks out of her kiss and exclaims, “You
are
!”

“Well, I mean,
God
—” Ruby stammers, feeling every bugged-out eye in the room home in on her. “I guess someone’s been talking to Calvin.”

Alice says, “Calvin tells me
everything
.” She is standing at a wall-mounted mirror examining a tiny blemish on her face. She meets Ruby’s eyes in the glass, her face fractured by a hairline crack running down the center. “We were just involved in this entire
discourse
about how there were no virgins at this party.”

Linen Blazer says, “And then a fucking virgin walks in and shit.”

Ruby raises the brandy snifter as if to toast them all—another bit of nonchalant fakery—then gulps down the contents. Her tongue swells and her throat constricts. She really is an inexperienced drinker.

“Leave her alone.” It’s the boy silhouetted in the corner again.

He stands suddenly, and she gets a quick look at him. His hair sticks out on top and runs below his ears, nearly as long as hers and dyed the same black. His sleeveless, scarlet T-shirt bears the logo of a band she likes, the Clash. He wears tight, knee-length shorts cut from black jeans. He wears black socks and black boots. Between shorts and socks is a strip of pale skin. Then he scurries to the bathroom and slams the door behind him. His gestures are jittery—he’s probably been doing coke with the rest of them.

“Ruby!” It’s Necktie Guy, raising his voice to command her attention. “You mean to tell me that Calvin hasn’t—”

Dorian interrupts him. “I wouldn’t give my cherry to Calvin.”

“Neither would I,” says Necktie Guy, through a burst of satirical laughter.

“Ewww—” Dorian whines.

“What’s so bad about Calvin?” Alice asks.

“Oh, you know, he’s just so…
Calvin,
” Cicely says. Snuggling up to the guy in the linen blazer, she says, “I couldn’t
wait
to get rid of my virginity.”

He throws an arm around her and says, “A big fuckin’ thank-you for that.”

“I’m so sure you’re fucking
welcome
, Nick.”

Alice, frowning into the mirror, says, “I sometimes wish I had my virginity again. I gave it away like a hundred years ago—”

“To my brother,” Dorian screeches. “Slut!”

“That’s right. I lost my virginity to your brother, and you’re like totally insulting mine. In front of Ruby.”

Ruby feels like a soft, small toy batted around by enormous paws in a room filled with cats. They’re only playing, but at any moment they might pounce, their sharp claws piercing her skin. Her eyes dart to the bathroom door. Why didn’t she go in there while she had a chance? She places the empty snifter on a dresser and wipes her beer-sticky hands on her shirt.

“Refill?” Alice asks.

“What I really could use is something clean to wear.”