Sinners Circle (5 page)

She smiles, leans in and kisses me.
“And
what about
my
bills, Amanda?”

I feel her waist, her tight stomach. I think of her pussy
when I kiss her and I think of the dead girl still in my basement and why I
can’t bring Lilly back home with me tonight. “You’re richer than I am.” I pinch
her nose. “Quit blowing it all up here.”

She laughs, “You
wanna
line? A line
before you head back to work?”

“
Naw
, I’m good. Thanks.”

“Oh, come on!”

She pounds her little fist against my heart.
“
One
!”

“Yeah, OK fine.” I take her to my car, snort a line and eat
her out. Her pussy tastes like condoms but I don’t care. Before I go back in
the store I try and give her thirty bucks but she won’t take it. “Save it. Buy
some groceries and make me dinner sometime.”

I pinch her ass and walk back in fifteen minutes late. Harry
is in his office and there’s no one in the store. I sit there at the till
watching cars go by, looking for any that turn in to the side to pick Lilly up.
I think about spaghetti, big fat meatballs; I wonder if Marcy has a recipe book
for Italian food upstairs. I think about that red dress I bought last autumn
and my cute black Mary Jane flats; I think about wearing them for Lilly. I
think of all these things until I see a car
turn into
the alley beside the store. A
minute later I see the car pulling out onto the highway in front, I see Lilly
looking in her purse and the person behind the wheel is just a figure,
blanketed by shadow.

I try and think about what drink would go good with pasta. I
think about wine selections—but the wine turns to blood. The spaghetti morphs
into
intestines,
and the meat balls—just wads of
rolled human muscle tooth-picked together and burnt to a crisp. I’m not wearing
my red dress anymore, just the dark rush of approximately 5.6 litres no longer
pumping through his or her or my body. Whoever’s blood it is, I don’t care, it
doesn’t matter. Because we’re all so
goddamn evil, none of us deserve to live.

“
Attention customers, this week’s discount is
on all product
price tags marked red. Do you have a special someone in your life you would
like to show a little extra love to? Browse the wide selection of discount
items in the women’s section of the store. This includes beauty, apparel...”
The buzzing voice of the female announcer coughs loud into the microphone.
“...makeup...no wait. All these wonderful products marked down to affordable
price...marked
as
affordable and made
even
more
afford...cheaper than before.
Prices going way down as much as ninety percent on some brand name...”

I pick up a bag of chips, stare
at the cheetah standing on its hind legs, wearing sun shades and
grinning
a mouth full of perfect teeth. I heard on TV once
that lions hunting gazelle will always go for the sickly one. The lionesses
will run down the slowest weakest gazelle and then chew its back until it
drops. Even before its dead, the sick gazelle is devoured by a group of giant
starving kitty cats.

The announcer coughs loud into
the microphone, feeding distortion through the speakers, popping our eardrums,
making us grind our teeth with the buzz shock scrambling through our ear
canals. “Mothers will be glad to hear that children’s grape flavored liquid
Tylenol is now thirty percent off as well as no name chewable vitamins D, C
and...” Another loud cough, I almost bite my tongue.

The bag of chips crunches in my hand, I try
and puff it back up to look normal but I’m stuck looking at the grinning
cheetah with its black glasses and shiny set of perfect choppers again. All the
bright orange food sealed inside a plastic bag. Between another loud cough over
the PA and my left ear popping, the thought hits me that maybe this is how they
get us—the lions I mean. They feed us this orange shit so we can’t move fast
enough to get away, or we consume so much that this crap actually starts
gnawing away at our brains, children with developing cognitive skills are
slowed down by the high doses of preservatives and cheese coloring until they are
too stupid to realize that the very real danger of death is upon them. I look
down the aisle at a woman with an ass so big she could be smuggling a locker
room’s worth of basketballs in her shorts. I put the bag back and wipe my hand
on my shirt. Call me crazy, but I’d rather be a cannibal than a walking sack of
human fat.

I don’t grab much. Just some
ready-made blueberry pies, some oranges, a loaf of bread. Even though I know
where they put it, I ask a cute girl with a price gun where the hair dye is. I
drop a box of black into my shopping basket and wait in line. Whether you
choose to or not, in America you
have
to follow the lives of celebrities. Whether it interests you or not, you still
know the basics of who’s who, who’s marrying so and so, and when
what’s-her-face is apologizing for getting caught drinking and driving again.
You know this because you buy bread. Or you buy dish soap or discounted jeans
and you pay for them at the till and at the till is a long rack of celebrity
magazines with carefully placed much needed items you may or may not have
forgotten to buy while browsing. Items like shaving
razors,
double A batteries, tooth brushes and breath mints. These items are of course
the most expensive brand names on the
market,
this is
why they put them here. Impulse spending is the staple of our economy; when you
buy an eight dollar triple blade razor because you don’t have the time to run
back to the aisle where they sell them in bulk for half the price, because you
didn’t remember, because you’ve been stuffing your brains full of that orange
food so the lions can get you, you’re not just adding an extra line of black
ink to your receipt, you’re applying the glue that keeps the economy together.
Besides, who’d want to run back and grab a shaving razor when you just find out
what’s-his-nuts parading on the cover of
People
magazine is the World’s Sexiest Man Alive. But it’s not enough to know who won,
but who
could
have one, so you buy it
so you can argue with your friends about it on your cell phone on the drive
home.

As much as you may like it, or
dislike it, it’s a fact. Your involvement with the rich and famous is no longer
a choice, even if you hide in your house all day reading the Bible and loading
your guns, sooner or later you are going to have to buy toilet paper when the
phone book runs out of pages. So you will have to come here, and you will have
to look at
everyone
of these magazines with yellow
letters that burn into your brain before you can stop yourself from reading
“DIVORCED” or “BACK TO REHAB.”

However, today is lucky. Today,
the ladies in line aren’t pawing over glossy covers with smirking models they
could never look like. No, today the ladies in line are burying their faces
inside a newspaper, mouths ringed like they’re sucking a Cheerio. In between
swiping items across the counter even the cashier is glancing at a copy lying
open beside her. Everyone’s got the paper folded and askew so I can’t really
see what’s on the front. The rack where they keep the local newspaper is empty.
I stand on my tippy toes for a second, look around then back at the empty tray.
I notice there’s a copy crammed at the bottom with the
Wall Street Journal
. I pick it up and flip it over to the front.

“Model/Waitress
Found Slashed In Apartment.”
There’s
a big color picture of her in her high school graduation robes, blonde, pretty
and smiling. Midway through the article are enlarged letters in italic
quotation marks
“...tied to a chair, arms
and legs bound, saran wrap still clinging to her bludgeoned
skull.
Police estimate she was found three days after time of death. The body was
found by a visiting relative, Tuesday.
Family beside itself
with grief.”

Flipping to the second page,
scrolling for some quotations, I read, “We do not understand how this could have
happened to someone like our Kimberly. She was friendly, outgoing, kind and
warm hearted to all those around her. She and her fiancé had lost a baby to
miscarriage last year and it was hard for her dealing with that, but she was
getting better,
doing
better. Kim’s
modeling career had really started to take off, she was going to get married
next month in Florida... our hearts are broken. But we know she is with God now
and this is in His hands. I can’t imagine why any man would want to do this to
our poor little Kimberly.”

Beside the article is a sketch of
a man police gathered descriptions of from witnesses in the building around the
time of Kim’s death. He looks like a fat Mexican traced in pencil.

“Is that everything?”

I look up from the newspaper. “Oh.
Yeah, that’s all of it. Thanks.” I give my best smile.

“Psycho.”

My heart skips a full two beats.
“What?”

The cashier, she points at the
newspaper in my hands, “In there.
What a psycho, huh?”

I look at the paper, back at her.
“Well, whoever it is, they’ve sure got some serious hang-ups with women.”

“Do
these jeans make me look fat?”

Carl and I are sitting in big
uncomfortable sofa chairs outside the dressing room while Alison tries on
clothes. He adjusts his sunglasses and says, “No sweetheart, you look
beautiful.”

She frowns into the full length
mirror in front of her.
“Really?”

“Yeah babe, you look good.”

She turns to me, puts her hands
on her hips and grins, “Amanda, what do you think?”

I take the gum out of my mouth
and just say what Carl says, “You look good.”

Alison turns back to the mirror,
shifting to look at her butt. “Yeah you’re right. I
do
look damn gorgeous.”

I put the gum back in my mouth
and try cracking my neck. “Try those dresses on again.”

Carl slaps the arm of my chair.
“Get your own girlfriend.”

Twirling in front of the mirror,
Alison is putting her hair up, fish facing to make her lips look bigger. She
looks at me in the mirror. “Yeah, why don’t you? I mean you always have some
girl taking
you
home or whatever. I know lots of
girls that like you. You know Trisha? The girl I always work with? She’s
straight but is always going on and on about you. Why don’t you take her out?”

“I’m not gay.”

Carl takes off his sun glasses,
rubs the lenses with his shirt, holds them up to the light on the ceiling and
says, “Lesbian then.”

“I’m
not
a lesbian.”

He puts his glasses back on.
“Yeah, and I’m Jesus Christ. Have you ever even
slept
with a guy?”

“No. So?”

He laughs, slaps both hands on
his armrests. “Then
there
ya
go! You are a
lesbian
.”

“
Naw
,
I’m not a lesbian. I just...I fuck girls.”

A woman comes out of one of the
dressing rooms, her hands over a ten year old girl’s ears. She shoots me a
scowl and I flick my tongue at her.

Alison keeps fish facing in the
mirror. “Well, maybe that’s why they like you then.”

“I have no idea.”

Carl takes off his sunglasses
again and looks over at me. “Hey, how is that even possible anyway? Like, how
the hell does a girl
fuck
another
girl?”

Alison turns around and frowns at
him. “
Carl
!”

He laughs, “Hey you can’t tell me
you’re not wondering the same thing. Seriously, Amanda, how’s it done? I’m
curious. Like with dildos? Because fingers don’t count, guys do that with girls
all the time, but that’s not
fucking
.”

She walks over to Carl and kicks
his knee. “Moron! Anything with the word
sex
in front of it
is
sex! Like, oral
sex, anal sex...”

He rubs his knee and bats at her
bum. “
Phone
sex? Does that mean phone
sex counts too? Because it doesn’t, that’s just masturbation.”

She wanders back to the mirror.
“Yeah, but that’s
not
what I mean...”

“Well, what
do
you mean?”

“I don’t know. But...”

“Tell me then,
how
does one girl
fuck
another girl without a penis, huh? How’s that done exactly?”

She shrugs, looks at her shoes.
“I don’t know. What are you asking me for? I’m not the lesbian here. Amanda
is.”

“I’m
not
a
lesbian
!”

Carl put his sun glasses back on.
“Fine you’re not a lesbian then, whatever you are. Now,
how
do you fuck girls?”

“Me? Gee, that’s a little
personal, Carl,” I laugh.

“How does a girl have sex with
another girl? I’m not judging you, I’m dead fucking curious is all.”

I drum my fingers on the arm
rests, look at Alison looking at me; I look at Carl looking at me. I smile.
“Well, it depends really. I think if whatever the two women are doing together
causes the other to achieve orgasm through mutual affection,
then
yeah, that’s sex. I can’t tell you exactly how every couple does it. I mean,
there are heterosexual couples in the world that make love to each other in a
multitude of ways. Think about the man who struggles with erectile dysfunction,
the wife may do something to him that causes him to come without him ever
having entered her. And no amount of saying so would deter them from calling
what they do ‘making love.’ But I wouldn’t go so far as to make that sexual
handicap a comparison to two women having sex with each other, because unlike
the man who can’t get a
stiffie
to pound into his
wifey
, women do all sorts of things while in bed to
exchange pleasure. It’s very typical of
masculine thinking to discredit and cast away the idea of women having sex
without penal penetration and labeling it as invalid. I think the satisfaction
without
cock,
the idea of contented lesbianism
disrupts your male ego and fucks with the concept of the penis as sole pleasure
tool.”

“So...what?
Dildos then?
You guys use dildos then right? Fuck, you
know
that shit doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes sense, Carl, because it
feels
good
to be penetrated. Our
pussies where made to be filled with something, just like dicks were made to be
pushed
into
something. If not dildos or fingers, what should we be
putting in there?
Naw
dude, saying lesbians using
dildos is pointless is to say that gay men aren’t really gay either. Because a
gay man still fucks a hole, it’s a
man’s
hole,
but it’s
still
a
hole
. And just like a pussy it’s tight and warm, or it can be loose
and baggy, like I said,
just
like a
pussy.”

He takes his sunglasses off
again, absent mindedly cleaning the lenses with his shirt. “So...
how
do dykes fuck?”

Alison shakes her head. “Carl,
you’re a hopeless asshole.”

“No I’m
not
I’m just curious is all. A lot of people wonder the same thing.
If asking is a problem, then clearly there is something shady about the whole
thing.”

I scratch my arm. “Yeah, I hear
what you’re saying, but isn’t it a little awkward to be asked how you fuck? I
mean wouldn’t it kind of give you the creeps if some old man came grabbing at
the back of your t-shirt when you and your girlfriend are walking through a
bookstore holding hands and says to you ‘Excuse me, I don’t mean to be rude
but, how do you two have sex?’ You know what I mean?”

“Bullshit, because: A) you don’t
have a girlfriend, and B) nobody has ever done that.”

“True, but when I’m holding the
hand of a girl I’m fucking, the way they look at us, it’d be better if they
just came out and said it.”

Carl shakes his head.
“Lesbians.
You guys are so goddamn dramatic.”

“For
Christ sakes
, I’m
not
a
goddamn
lesbian
!”

He
puts his sunglasses on again and laughs up at the ceiling. “Oh right,
right
, you’re not a lesbian. You just
never fuck guys.
Just chicks.
Gotcha!”

Alison laughs, slaps her knee.
“How is that then?”

“How’s what?”

“How’s it you’re not a dyke but
you refuse to sleep with men. Isn’t there some sort of thing against this in the
gay community?”

“I’m not
in
the gay community.”

“What?”

“I said, I’m not...”

“Yeah yeah, I heard that. I just
don’t know what the hell you’re getting at with this.”

“Well to be honest, I just don’t
see the point?”

“In being gay?”

Carl takes his glasses off, rubs
them on his jeans. “Me neither.”

Alison turns back to the mirror
and wiggles her hips a little. “Don’t you have any lesbian friends?”

I take the gum out of my mouth.
“Jesus, look, I just don’t see the point in marching up and down the street once
a year screaming about my sexuality. It’s sort of
tacky
if you ask me. Yes, it’s nice for some I guess, to have their
sexuality made public but in my opinion, walking around Main Street your body
covered head to toe in glitter, waving a plastic pride flag in everyone’s
faces, it’s just a confirmation of the deep insecurity most homosexuals have.
Narcissism and the need for attention
is
so embedded
in the gay culture that it’s sewn itself into the fabric of
pride
. I know I like women, and I’m not
ashamed of it. But I am still my own person and my sexual preference is not
who
I am, but just another part of
myself. I mean, I really love Coca-Cola, does that mean I need to march in a
parade for it?”

Carl puts his glasses back on.
“Well, if you really hate Pepsi, then yes. You do.”

“Look, all I’m saying is, I like
girls but I don’t have to make a spectacle of myself because of it. I’m not
ashamed to show whoever it is I’m screwing public affection, but...”

“You don’t do that. I’ve never
seen you do that.”

I pinch Carl’s arm. “That’s
because all the girls I sleep with are idiots. Anyways, I just don’t see the
goddamn point of parading around like an insecure nobody who needs the
attention of strangers to feel special, is all.”

He grins. “Me neither. Why would
a guy ever want a hairy beast ass man when he could have a soft little piece of
ass and big firm
titties
inches from his face when
he’s
fuckin
’ her?”

I shrug.
“Beats
me.
Maybe it’s just the unrecognized need to love
yourself
.”

Alison taps the waist of her jeans.
“I’m
gonna
get these.
And those.”
She points to the dressing room at a pile of clothes we can’t see but watched
her carry in.

Carl unties and reties a
shoelace. “You
gonna
get the vest too, babe? You
should. I liked it.”

She nods, looking distantly at me
in the mirror. “Yeah, I might.”

He does it to the other shoe,
too. “I liked how it made your boobs look.
Gave me wood.
I liked that.”

I crack my knuckles and think
about buying a new cardigan one of these days. The one I’ve got now, my
favorite gray one, it’s got blood on it and I can’t wear it anywhere except
around the house. I’d hate to get drunk, forget I’m wearing it and answer the
door when the Jehovah’s Witnesses come knocking, asking if I’d like to go to
Heaven. “
You done
shopping, Alison?”

Carl stands up, walks into the
dressing room where all of Alison’s clothes are heaped on the bench. “Yeah, you
done, babe? I
wanna
go get some more
blow
. Fucking fluorescent light in here is driving me nuts.”

As she gathers up armfuls of
fabric, Alison calls out behind her, “How is it you have no other lesbian
friends?”

Carl walks out, scratches his
head, “Yeah, why’s that? Don’t you lesbians need some sort of tight knit group
to support your
lesbiansness
? You know, give one
another the heads up on other potential dykes...”

My head hits the back of the
chair so hard I can feel my eyeballs bouncing around in their sockets. “I’m
not
a goddamn
lesbian
!”