Robin and Ruby (27 page)

“Did it hurt?”

“I guess.”

“You
guess
?”

“Did you bleed a lot?”

“Well…”

“No?” Alice shoots Cicely a look. “Did he put it all the way in?”

“I’m not talking about this!” Ruby stands, drink in hand, and begins to move toward the hallway. She’ll find Chris and they’ll just get out of here, forget about Calvin and her overnight bag, enough is enough—but someone is suddenly right there, nearly crashing into her. The Bloody Mary bobbles in her hand. She looks up and comes face-to-face with Dorian.

“Watch it!” Dorian says, and then, “Oh,
you.
”

Ruby steps away from her, shaking tomato juice off her fingers. “I’m not looking for trouble.”

Dorian stares, blinks, swallows. Her face looks drawn, mouth slack. Small crescents of white show under her irises as if her eyeballs are threatening to roll back into her skull. She wears a long T-shirt that barely covers her panties. Her stick-like legs are splotchy, as if they’ve been slapped.

She steps past Ruby and joins the others at the table. “What’s she doing here?”

“Dodo, be nice,” Cicely says. “Ruby lost her virginity last night.”

“To Christopher,” Alice snarls.

Dorian stares at Ruby and then says without much inflection, “Hooray.” Ruby stands frozen in the doorway, ready for anything. Dorian adds, “Are you going to the kitchen? Can you bring me something to drink? Anything. Anything with alcohol in it.”

“Um, OK,” Ruby says, releasing a pent-up breath. Is this a truce? She turns once again toward the kitchen—and again nearly walks into someone, a guy in a blue football jersey, who has also emerged from the sleeping wing of the house. He must be the one who was with Dorian in the bedroom. Date Rape Smurf.

He mutters, “Sorry,” and keeps moving. Through the dining room, into the living room. He leans over the couch and shakes the guy sleeping there. “Get up, Woz. We’re outta here like Vladimir.”

Ruby carries the open vodka bottle back to the dining room table, with a few plastic cups. Dorian pours a shot and downs it. She doesn’t grimace, doesn’t choke. She simply breathes deeply through her nose and sits up a little straighter.

The two remaining Smurfs leave through the front door. Dorian follows them with her eyes, and then turns to Alice and Cicely and says, “Do you think I’ll get VD from him?”

“He’s kinda the type,” Cicely says. “You didn’t use a rubber?”

“Give me a percentage. Fifty percent chance?”

Ruby sits down again, remembering the press of Chris’s body on hers, the latex that came off inside. How long had he been thrusting without it? How worried should she be? “Have any of you ever—have you had it happen where the rubber comes off, while the guy is still—”

“Fucking you?” Dorian says.

With a kind of awe in her voice, Alice says, “That’s a new one.”

Cicely says, “If it came off and it was, like,
full,
then I’d be worried.”

Dorian says, “Wanna come with me to the clinic? We can get our insides examined together. Female bonding. God, I do not want to have another abortion.”

With each statement, Ruby feels a fissure moving up through her body, like a hairline on a thin sheet of glass, lengthening and fracturing into a delta, a web. A pain in her guts moves with it, expanding.

Alice says, “Ruby, if you’re pregnant from Christopher,
promise me
you’ll get an abortion.”

“Can we change the subject?”

“It’s not that bad,” Cicely adds. “as long you don’t think about what it really
is
.”

“I know how to take care of myself,” she hears herself saying, though the words are muted by the increasing feeling that her body is splitting into pieces.

“That’s a horrible gene pool to pass on,” Alice says. “I felt dirty after he fucked me.”

Smash.
Fragments splinter inside her, and then, without warning, she hears a noise escape up through her throat—a kind of moan like from an injured animal. The three girls stare at her, baffled.

“Why are you all so mean to me? Why?” Her voice shakes.

“No, no, no.” Cicely scurries to her and attempts a hug. “We’re looking out for you. These guys are all users. I mean, they’re our friends, but they’re totally users, too. Only your girlfriends will look out for you.”

“You’re not looking out for me—”

“Here, here, here,” Alice says, pouring a shot of vodka and giving it to her. “You need to numb your feelings. It’s too much to handle, I understand.”

Ruby takes the cup and downs the shot and it’s awful, the worst taste in the world, and it stings her insides as if invading open wounds. Alice grabs Ruby’s Bloody Mary, plucks out the cucumber and the bell pepper and the orange wedge and the lime, and slides it over to her, and Ruby, sniffling, just drinks the whole thing down, coughing wetly when she’s done. Her nose is runny, she’s a mess all over again, leaking.

“I admit, I was a bitch,” Dorian says. “But I don’t believe you, that you’re a virgin. That you were. I’m sorry, I just don’t.”

“What does it matter to you?” Ruby sniffs. “What if I wasn’t?”

“I’m just an honest person,” Dorian says. “I promote honesty.”

“You weren’t?” Alice says to Ruby.

“What?”

“That’s why you didn’t bleed.”

Ruby stands up and pushes back from the table. “Not everyone bleeds.” That’s true, isn’t it? She’s heard that, hasn’t she?

They keep talking, Alice, Dorian, and Cicely, about penetration and bleeding and virginity, about her and her night with Christopher, but she can hardly hear them beneath the noise emanating from deep inside her, a humming vibration, a kind of aftershock that is both sound and sensation moving along her nerves. Something’s happening to me, she thinks, and then she looks up and sees that Chris is standing in the doorway.

He looks at her and says, “You weren’t?”

“What?” She can barely register his presence. How long has he been there? What has he heard?

“Last night wasn’t your first time?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So you were? Or you weren’t?”

“Why does it matter?”

Dorian says, “I knew it.”

There’s something wrong with him, she can see it in his eyes, but she can’t put her finger on it, and then Benjamin walks in and he looks absolutely crazed, his mouth flapping, teeth grinding, and she realizes that they were doing coke together.

Ruby shoves Chris out of the way and runs down the dark hallway. Where’s the bathroom, where is it? She tries a door—it’s a closet—then another. Someone is coming up from behind her, maybe it’s Chris—no, it’s Cicely, who follows her into the bathroom.

“Leave me alone,” Ruby says, and then a wave rises up inside her, all the churning water beneath that cracked icy surface, it’s rising up like an ocean wave. She snaps up the toilet lid, leans forward, and out comes a wash of tomato-red vomit.

She hears the door close, and then feels Cicely pulling her hair off her face, and she’s grateful, so grateful for this small kindness, as another wave lets loose, and then another, her body rejecting the pressure she has subjected it to. Releasing the poison. It’s as though her entire being has fallen into pieces, and everything old and ugly is forcing its way out.

R
obin follows Calvin toward a cluster of three shabby houses, the rundown rentals on the block. The nearest one has a few longhaired boys hanging out in front on lawn chairs, glassy-eyed dudes in baggy shorts and tie-dye shirts, staring at the street as if waiting for something to appear. Does anyone still wear tie-dye? Then he sees that one of the shirts features a Grateful Dead logo on it, and it all makes sense. One of them raises his hand, less a wave than a signal. He pulls himself from the chair and ambles over, zeroing in on George and addressing him with, “Hey, brother. What’s doing with you?”

George takes a step backward, checking the guy out. He’s got a few blond dreads pulled back with a rubber band, and long stick arms and legs poking out of torn-up Army-issue shorts. The guy shifts his weight from foot to foot as he talks and swings his limbs like a rag doll shaken by the wind. “Brother, just wondering if you might know how to set us up with some ganja?”

“What are you,” George asks, “a cop?”

The guy huffs out some surprised laughter. “Most definitely not.”

“But you think I’m a dealer?”

“Naw, man. It’s not like that. Just looking for some kind bud.” He gestures toward his buddies. “We’ve got lots of brew, if you wanna swap.”

The guy is sort of cute in a sloppy, dirtbag way, the kind of kid you see playing hacky sack outside the dorms, eating breakfast in the middle of the afternoon, sleeping in lecture hall. Robin knows a few of them from the drama department who build sets and work on the lighting board, wealthy white boys with dreads. Trustafarians. They’re harmless. But the look in George’s eyes is neither amused nor familiar. His gaze hardens and he pushes ahead, telling Calvin, “Come on.”

The Deadhead calls after them, “No sweat, man. Have an excellent day.”

Robin can see the tension in George’s shoulders and back, his entire torso defensively coiling into itself. A pang of protectiveness hits him. He’s dragged George into this mess, through this long day of insults, where everyone is projecting something on to him.

On the front porch of the next house, a guy, not wearing a shirt, sits astride a beer keg, talking on the phone. His shoulder is bruised, a yellowy purple blotch on alabaster skin. There’s something sexy about this. The boy gives Calvin a nod of recognition, and mutters into the phone, “Calvin just brought over more fuckin’ people and shit.”

They have to step over the cord to get into the house. Following Calvin through the screen door, Robin feels a rush of something uncomfortable crash over him, a blindsiding wave. It could be fear, it could be sorrow, it could simply be a sense of being overcome by the unknown, but it has everything to do with trying, and failing, to connect his sister to this derelict place, which smells like spilled beer and spoiled food and looks like it’s been vandalized by thieves. When he calls the cops, they’re going to take one look around and want to arrest someone.

A tall, twitchy blond girl approaches them, her hands wrapped in yellow rubber gloves. “We found her, we found her.”

“You found Ruby?” Calvin asks, and the girl, who must be his sister, nods.

“Is she OK?” Robin asks.

“She’s in the bathroom.”

“Where? Let me see her.”

“Alice, this is Ruby’s brother,” Calvin says.

Alice covers her mouth with one yellow paw. She looks away from Robin and shakes her head as if she doesn’t want to say anything more.

Another guy, with coked-out eyes and finger-in-the-socket hair, steps up alongside her. “So you’re the notorious gay brother.”

“Excuse me?” he says.

The guy turns to George, who stands behind Robin, his arms crossed, legs firmly planted, and asks, “And who are you?”

Calvin answers quickly, “This is George. He’s the brains of the operation.”

“Actually,” George says, “I’m the muscle.”

“So Calvin brought the A-Team?”

“What’d you just say?” Robin asks, feeling his patience stretched—for George’s sake, as much as his own—feeling himself ready to snap if someone doesn’t direct him to his sister.

“Hey, Frizzy,” George says, taking an intimidating step forward. “Pipe down.”

“A joke. Can’t anyone take a joke?”

Robin says, “They always call it a joke after they insult you.”

This guy rolls his eyes, muttering what sounds like “Eat my shorts,” to which Calvin says, “Come on, Benjamin. Don’t start anything.”

Robin lets out a slow breath. He’d been wondering, for a single sickening moment, if this guy was the mysterious Chris.

Alice remains in front of them, shaking. She points toward the back of the house, saying, “Bathroom,” and adding, “I am so, so sorry.”

“Why? What happened?” Robin asks.

Alice sticks a finger in her mouth.

Robin marches past a dining table, where a skinny girl is pulling an oversized T-shirt over her knees as if made modest under Robin’s glare, and frizzy-haired Benjamin nibbles on a fingernail as if he might chew it clean off. Like the bruised boy they passed on the front porch, these two might be good-looking if they weren’t so sleep-deprived and haggard. Everyone here looks older than they are, as if they’re already ruined by life.

Down the dimly lit hallway, Robin spies a scrawny boy in black knocking steadily against a closed door, repeating Ruby’s name in a soft, plaintive voice. So this is Chris. It takes all the will Robin can muster not to shove him to the ground, like he did Douglas.

“I’m her brother,” he announces.

“Oh, hey.” Chris squints at him. “I can see the resemblance.”

“You definitely want to move out of my way now.” Chris does so, and Robin takes his place at the door. “Ruby? It’s me. It’s Robin. Will you let me in?”

There’s some shuffling and mumbling from inside. The toilet flushes. Then the door pushes open just a crack, and a girl peeks out.

“Hi, I’m Cicely.”

“Great to meet you, Cicely.”

She seems to register the edge in his voice, seems to take this as a cue to let herself out. In a tone that reminds him of hospital nurses speaking in bone-chilling euphemism, Cicely says, “It’s been a little bumpy in there.”

He steps forcefully into the bathroom, closing the door behind him, banishing Chris to the hall with the click of the lock.

She’s on the floor, at the base of the toilet, her arms wrapped around her stomach.

She’s not moving, and for a moment he isn’t sure she’s breathing. Then, from beneath her limp black bangs, her glassy eyes seem to fix upon him. She wipes her lips with a finger.

Robin catches his breath. Good. OK. She’s OK.

Her clothes are splashed with what he hopes is water and not puke. He doesn’t even want to think about the soiled floor she’s sprawled upon. There’s nothing resembling a clean towel anywhere. He’s disgusted to find her like this. How did this happen? How could she let herself? But then she says, “It’s
you
,” and there’s a lilt of wonderment in her voice that completely dissolves his fury.

“Yeah, me.” His throat constricts, emotion caught there, hard to swallow. He helps her sit up.

Miraculously, there’s a fresh roll of toilet paper on the back of the tank. He wraps a soft, thick wad around his hand, dampens it in the sink, and pats down Ruby’s face. She feels warm and dry, almost feverish. “You need some water.”

“I haven’t had any.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re so sick.” The plastic cup in the toothbrush holder has about a inch of brown liquid in it. He dumps it into the sink. The frayed end of a cigarette butt spills out, joining the other cigarette butts already dissolving against the porcelain like dark, tiny worms. He rinses the cup, doing his best to scrub it out, even without soap, then fills it. “Don’t sip,” he tells her. “Gulp.” He looks at her throat as the water passes into her. Sees her start to revive. He feels in this moment more clearheaded than he has all day, all weekend, maybe for even longer than that: The ability to help someone clearly in need seems to organize all the confusion of the world into simple, identifiable tasks.

From somewhere in the house comes the sudden noise of a scuffle. Voices are raised, chairs scrape the floor, something crashes into something else. Calvin is shouting. Chris is shouting back. Then George’s voice breaks in, commanding, “Hey! Hey!” and there’s an abrupt, loud, hollow thud that could be the impact of a body against a wall, followed by a piercing scream from one of the girls.

“What’s that?” Ruby asks.

“Don’t worry,” Robin says, though he hopes it’s Calvin beating the hell out of Chris.

“I can’t stay here with these people,” she says.

“I’m with George. We have his car.”

“We have to…” She mumbles words that he can’t make out, but when he doesn’t respond, she clears her throat and repeats,
“We have to go to the grave.”

“OK,” he says. “One thing at a time.”

“Did I tell you ’bout the last time I went to Jackson’s grave?”

“I don’t know, Ruby. Can we talk about this later?”

She bobs her head in apparent agreement, though he sees some complicated pain in her eyes, some unexpressed emotion passing across her face. Then she says, “Chris.”

“What about him?”

“He needs me.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“He
does
. You don’t understand.” One hand on the lip of the sink, she pulls herself up, shaking off Robin’s hand when he tries to help.

Their eyes meet in the mirror, and he sees so clearly what Chris had just noticed, how much they resemble each other. There are traces of each of their parents in both of their faces, arranged in different proportions. They’ll always have this similarity, this undeniable bond that marks them as brother and sister. And then he sees that there’s a tiny bite mark above her collarbone, and another scratch on her neck, a little pink welt, and he feels himself pull away from her, resisting that bond. Maybe she notices, because her expression changes, too. She comes to alertness, steeling herself against him. So she’s serious about this boy. It doesn’t make any sense to Robin, because if it weren’t for Chris, would she even be in this state right now? She’s acting against her own interests, he’s sure of it, which means that right now he simply knows better than her. It’s a feeling that’s more parental than brotherly.

“You wash up,” he says, heading back into the hallway. “I’ll deal with Chris.”

As he makes his way toward the kitchen he hears sobbing.

Alice stands near the refrigerator, weeping into Cicely’s chest, as the larger girl runs a comforting hand through her hair. The other boy is there, the coked-out nail-biter. When he sees Robin, he announces, “All hell just broke loose,” with just enough of a wicked smile on his face to send a shiver down Robin’s spine. His eyes dart to the dining room, where the shirtless boy is picking up chairs that have been knocked over. There’s a
National Enquirer
spread open to a headline reading “Rock Hudson’s Secret Life.” A rolled ten-dollar bill rests on top of it. A spattering of Bloody Mary gives the place the look of a massacre.

“Where’s Chris?” Robin asks.

Alice breaks from her wailing. “He’s never allowed back here again!”

Cicely adds, “Calvin kicked him out.”

“What the fuck kind of party is this?” Robin asks. “Someone should call the fucking cops on you.”

Alice’s eyes go wide. “They’ve already been here once.”

“When?”

“In the middle of the night.”

“Did anyone happen to tell them that my sister was missing?”

Alice leans back into Cicely and resumes her sobbing. Cicely shakes her head reproachfully, glaring at Robin.

The nail-biter says, “Your sister sure knows how to stir up trouble.”

“Don’t say one fucking word about her,” Robin answers. “Not a word.”

In the living room, he finds George sitting on the couch alongside Calvin, who is applying pressure to his nose with a bloodstained dishrag. “I don’t think you broke it,” George is saying. “Keep the pressure on.”

“It hurts,” Calvin says.

“I want to take my sister home,” Robin says, stepping closer to George.

“To Manhattan?”

“No, I think to Greenlawn. For starters, anyway.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be back at work tomorrow?”

“I can’t think about that right now,” Robin says, though what he’s thinking, and what George likely realizes, too, is that if Robin doesn’t show up, he’ll be fired. Probation violated, end of story. A chain reaction of consequences tumbles forth from there: no rent money, no way to stay in Philly without a job, no more living with George.

He says, “I can’t let any of these boys drive Ruby home. No way.”

“It’s cool, I get it,” George says.

“So you’ll take us?”

George nods. “I’m with you.” There’s sweat on his brow, the sheen of whatever effort he just expended.

Robin puts his hand on George’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about all of this. I’m sorry I keep having to find reasons to say I’m sorry.” He feels himself just barely holding back everything tender he wants to express. This is no time for emotion, here in this room, amid this chaos.

From behind them, Calvin’s voice: “I think it stopped.”

Robin pivots to see him standing, his nose crusted in blood, a smear of crimson on his cheek. And then he sees that Calvin is staring across the room. At Ruby.

She stands in the hallway, pale and quiet, a ghostly version of herself. Her eyes dart about nervously.

Calvin stares at her. “We gotta talk, Ruby.”

“My bag is still in your car,” she says.

“Come with me. I’ll drive you back to the city.”

“I can’t go with you.”

“Why not?”

Robin steps between them. “Ruby, I don’t want you leaving my sight. George is driving us back to Greenlawn.”

Calvin throws his arms wide, raises his voice melodramatically. “So that’s it? ‘Get my bag, Calvin.’ And then I just sit here bleeding? Ruby, where the fuck have you been? With that guy? That maniac? What the fuck?”

Robin says, “Calvin, don’t push it.” But he sees that Ruby hasn’t flinched, even in the face of this outburst.

“I apologize,” she says.

“Great. That’s fucking great. I’m sorry, too, Ruby, I’m sorry I ever got involved with a bitch like you.” He spins around, almost a full rotation, as Robin had seen him do back at the bar, his frustration like an involuntary spasm. “You, too. Fuck off, Robin.”