"Those Soft Parts of Conversation"
Mar. 7th, 2009 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
recordThere's no feeling better than finishing a story. Even if I feel as though this story got away from me, a bit. Get closer to your narrator's consciousness, my writing teacher kept exhorting me last semester. This time, I think I almost drowned in it. It frightens me a little. I can't tell if it's really good or really bad or if it'll get workshopped to shreds. But still, finishing it feels wonderful. Your feedback (even as simple as "I read it;" "I enjoyed it;" "I didn't enjoy it") is welcome. And, for those of you who perhaps don't remember from where I got the plot, I'd be curious to see if anyone picks up on it, or if it matters. Sorry that the paragraphs lost their indent and that the cut is being stupid.
Those Soft Parts of Conversation
When Dahlia arrived at the pizza joint and saw Omar sitting beside Jack, her boyfriend looming over his effeminate friend, something worried her, made her queasy, although she wasn’t sure why. Omar and Jack had been close friends since they'd roomed as freshmen. Their names had become a single utterance, like Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street. But in the past month, there had been some kind of coldness or falling out between them. Since Dahlia and Omar had started dating secretly. They both had strict parents who just wouldn't approve of the match, for very different but equally vehement reasons. Seeing the two together - and they were together in a very visceral sense: they were sitting catty-corner, not at opposite sides of the table - made her want to turn and run out the door.
"Dolly," Jack called, as if she were a moll in a noir flick. He had such a theatrical voice; most of the other customers in the other tables in the dim, spartan room looked up. She liked the attention, although part of her wished, as always, for privacy. She wanted to greet Omar with the same showiness, Jack-level showiness, but didn't touch him. If her father found out...
Omar shamelessly checked out her cleavage in the tight new top she was wearing. She knew she should be annoyed, but she loved when he looked at her like she was a fish in a bucket, gasping breath. She also loved the way he murmured her name. She couldn't get enough of his accent. The end of her name became a diphthong; it made her feel a little noir, herself. La Femme Dahlia. There was something a little edgy, a little dangerous, about it. He'd spoken English most of his life; he'd had an excellent tutor, of course. The only time she'd heard him speak Arabic, he'd been talking to his parents on his shiny black PDA; his face had darkened before her eyes, as though his heritage were a gathering cloud. "I've been waiting so long I almost forgot how your tits look. Look who followed me."
"Right," Jack said, sarcastically drawing out the syllable. "I'm just following you...to my favorite restaurant. Shameless of me. I'm a witheringly obvious shifty-eyed stalker, and I'm sure the restraining orders'll be raining down like lightning bolts any...moment...now."
Everything was too sharp, too in-focus, like the eye of a hurricane. In a brief, panicky moment, imagined what the eye of a hurricane would look like, personified. A disapproving eye, certainly, and maybe with a raised eyebrow like Jack’s hovering above it, demanding to know what exactly she planned to do to defuse this situation. Sometimes she felt like her life was a quiz that she hadn’t studied for. Omar’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the sides of the chair. Suddenly she was sure that Jack was the one who had sat down so close to Omar, definitely not the other way around. They hadn't reconciled; Jack was baiting him, somehow. But with what?
"How's Em?" she asked Jack, hoping she was contriving something close to a genuine smile. She worried that her facial muscles were a little below par. Everyone else seemed able to feign emotions so effortlessly, but when she faked too many smiles, her teeth and cheeks ached until the next day. Omar took her hand under the table, out of sight. She wasn't sure if she was being reassured or chastised for speaking to Jack.
"Fantabulous.” He paused. “I've heard. She's been having all kinds of adventures, isn't that right, Omar?"
“I wouldn't know," Omar said. His pupils were dilated. His hand tightened, like half of a handcuff. Her hand was so much more delicate, more fragile than his. She looked at Jack's hands, nearly hairless with clever, long fingers, and wondered whether Jack and Omar had ever held hands. What it would be like if she and Jack held hands, if maybe they would be more equal to each other. Better suited, better matched. Omar continued, to Dahlia, “Excuse me, allow me to pay, and then we can get out of here."
Omar released her and went to the counter, where the new, bored cashier was quickly pulled aside by the manager, who served Omar himself. Omar always seemed to enjoy that kind of attention, just like Dahlia's father did.
"Omar and his fucking Black card," Jack said. "Hey, Dolly, d'you think he knows Bin Laden?"
"No, but my dad does," Dahlia said. She felt more confident now, facing Jack one on one. Better suited, better matched. She knew she could hold her own, and felt quite proud of herself. Jack was notoriously quick-witted and vicious. But Dahlia was no lightweight herself; despite her delicate features and fondness for frosted pink lip gloss, she was a senator's daughter who'd met, and demolished, opponents far more intimidating than Jack. "Says he loves TV. Can't get enough of The Price Is Right, apparently."
"Remember, have your pets spayed and neutered, just like the infidels after we're done with them, huh?"
She was flitting through a reply at lightning speed, interchanging words and meanings like Scrabble tiles, trying to wrest maximum points and advantage, when Omar returned.
"One heart-shaped pizza for an extremely high-maintenance girlfriend," Omar said. He swept her away from the sparring match with a nudge of his free arm. Dahlia was relieved that she wouldn’t be burdened with getting the last word in. She didn’t want to be blamed for the tension that was sure to get worse.
After they left, she was relieved to see that Omar no longer looked smoldery. Relieved, but perhaps a little disappointed too. She asked, "What, you don't even say goodbye these days?"
"Sometimes I wonder if the rumors are true," Omar said. There was a tinge of pity in his voice. Poor Jack, poor possibly-gay Jack, plagued by rumors, when Omar was just too powerful, maybe too feared, to have to worry about gossip.
"What, about Em?" She shifted the focus away from Jack – who cares if Jack's gay? she thought. She barely cared if Jack and Omar had been lovers, since she knew they, Dahlia and Omar, Dahlia plus Omar with a little heart around them, etched forever, whether into living tree or cold, ugly concrete, were together now in the closest way any two people could be together. Would ever be together.
"Yeah, he cared so much about Em," Omar said. Dahlia wondered where that sense of smug sarcasm had come from - was what Jack had implied true, had Omar fucked Em? How soon before the first time he'd fucked her? Or had it been after?
"Maybe he did. Probably has a heart of gold, under all that vitriol."
"She told me he'd spend the evenings debating, and batting her hands off him like a girl who's not ready to go past second base."
She sympathized with Jack. She'd probably be just as annoyed to spend evenings with Em, and she was even a tiny bit attracted to Em. Maybe Jack was too, after all. You don't have to like someone to be attracted to them. Sometimes, disliking them even helps.
“They have the base system in Qatar?" she asked. Her mood lightened, her step lightened, even as the sky reddened in sunset. They were almost skipping down the path together, not touching, but so close to her bed…
The next day, Dahlia's father received an anonymous email from an address at the college. Instead of a student name before the @ (for example, dkennedy@), this was from a "reversi," and the campus IT department insisted it was untraceable, opened from a computer lab by someone with some savvy, apparently. Being a senator, her father hadn't opened the email himself, of course. It was a point of pride not to know how to use those newfangled devices. Instead, his bulldog of a chief of staff had barged into his office and thrown a temper tantrum. By the time Dahlia heard all this (she winced and she turned down her cell phone volume), her father was well into a contact temper tantrum of his own. Okay, maybe it wasn't a contact temper tantrum. Maybe it was the age-old battle over whose property Dahlia was, exactly. Infuriating. She belonged to herself, and chose exactly how much of herself to give to Omar.
"Look, Daddy, he's a friend of the family. I've known him for ages. What's the problem?" Dahlia flopped her free arm over her face. The sunrise burned her eyes like she was a vampire. She wasn't at all in the mood to be awake and having an argument. Omar filled the silences on her father’s side of th conversation with derisive gestures and mocking faces. She loved his stubble in the morning, so dark and rough. It matched the hair on the rest of his body, the body that she’d spent hours against.
"Look, what's the worst that can happen? It's not like I'm going to end up moving to Afghanistan and wearing a fucking burqa." She held the phone away from her head until the roar on the other end subsided. "Sorry, a damn burqa. Look, you've been to Qatar. It's nice. It's civilized. I'd be allowed to drive. I'm kidding! I'm not moving there, for chrissakes. I'm in school. He's in school. We're college students! What's the big deal? If I'm wrong about him, I'll move on. I'm not some vestal virgin. It's a figure of speech, Daddy. No, he's a nice guy. He really is. Smart, good-looking. No, not that kind of guy. I've never seen him date anyone, actually. Word on the street was he's gay. I know, right? Yeah, if I'm wrong about him, I guess the worst that can happen is I'll get some fashion advice."
Finally, she hung up. "I think he's angrier about the mixed metaphors than anything else," she said to Omar, with a little laugh that felt like it came from somewhere shallow in the top of her chest. Clavicle? "Says I'll be a creampuff in med school if I can't focus on a quote unquote, simple biology problem."
“You're obviously amazing at, ah, hormonal interactions."
"I'm amazing at a lot of things," she said, and giggled again. "Hey, are you gay? I mean, a little gay? Bi? I wouldn’t mind. I think it’s kind of hot. I mean, you’re obviously not-"
"Obviously?"
"Obviously."
Jack and Em came to see Dahlia, after Omar left, and before she was dressed to go out. She willed herself to seem friendly and casual. Em always irritated her. Maybe it was that Dahlia suspected she was far less stupid than she let on; maybe it was the simple jealousy of the giraffe beside the gazelle. Em entered before Jack, but somehow still managed to be deferential. Decorative purposes only. She led with her rather flat but fashionably nearly-exposed chest. The figurehead on the prow of a Viking ship.
"Hey doll face, want to do a favor for a scoundrel?" Jack seemed a little nervous; how unlike him. She hoped she would get to make him squirm. She had five delicate bruises on her wrist from the night before, when he'd made Omar squirm. Fair was fair.
"I like you because you're a scoundrel," Dahlia said. There wasn't the faintest trace of sincerity in her voice, and she hoped that neither of them would read it into her words. That would be the last thing she needed.
She rummaged through her closet, searching for the perfect pair of jeans. She wanted to move fluidly on the dance floor, like wild horses, so they couldn't be too constricting; at the same time, they had to cling to her curves like scales on a piranha.
"Well, I was thinking you could talk Mr. Right into letting all of us go out together tonight. Like old times."
"I don't want to get in the middle of whatever's going on between you," Dahlia said. Em just stood there, silent, smiling, a yes-man in a Jennifer Lopez outfit.
"Going on between us? Your boy-toy didn't say something stupid, did he?"
"What, admit I broke up your torrid love affair? Would that have been stupid?" She didn't look directly at Jack, so that the “you” could be construed as Em, too; the response might be telling. Why did her conversations always seem to turn out like a chess game? Maybe that's what she liked so much about Omar. Their conflicts were more primal. Physical, not cerebral. He wasn’t a caveman, he just didn’t waste his life ruminating. She wondered if she could just wander into the closet and burrow into the clothes and maybe on the other side, behind the fur coats, would be Narnia.
"Yeah, it would have been stupid. And upsetting. And, furthermore, a lie. Friends don't let friends suck cock, doll face."
Dahlia turned and looked him in the eye. She quirked the corner of her mouth with what she hoped was sophisticated derision. She hadn't learned anything about Omar and Em, and hadn't learned anything about Jack that she didn't already suspect. Oh well. At least he'd given her a great opening. "Guess we're not friends then." She stepped back, feeling the fabric of her shirts brush against her, as though the sleeves were filled with ghosts, beckoning her away. "What about you, Em? Does that make you not Jack's friend?"
"She's my girlfriend," Jack said quickly, before Em had drawn a breath. "Friends and dating are mutually exclusive. Oh, don't look at me like that, darling, you know you like it. You know exactly what this is. And if you don't, you can go infibulate yourself."
Dahlia winced, but Em giggled and made an “oh, you,” gesture. Obviously she didn't comprehend the word, and didn't construe the dismissal (which surely she could understand out of any word inserted between “go” and “yourself”) as anything other than casual teasing.
"But look," Jack continued with a world-weary sigh, "Just talk to him. I can pick him up, let him check out my new wheels.Tell him Em's coming."
"It wouldn't be much of a double date without her and her scintillating company."
Em didn't seem to take offense at this. That was the advantage to hanging out with people you dislike. You can insult them without compunction, and often, without any repercussions, as long as they weren’ too bright. Dahlia was brighter than most people. Maybe not Jack.
"Hey," Jack said, turning to Em. "I have to get out of here, but I'll see you later, okay." Not a question; Jack probably couldn't imagine Em ever disagreeing with him.
“I'm not going with you?" Em didn't seem annoyed, just confused, and she frowned, like she was trying to remember something. Maybe, Dahlia thought, Em was excited to get some time away from Jack. Dahlia certainly would be, if she were Jack's girlfriend, or beard, or whatever Em really was.
"Trust me, you'd be bored." He whispered something to Em, bending close to her ear, uncomfortably intimate. A show, another one of Jack's deliberately exaggerated gestures. She strained to hear, but couldn't. Something sibilant. She broke out in goosebumps and didn't know why.
After Jack left, Em grinned at her. Em looked years younger and degrees warmer. "Okay, girl talk! Is it true Omar gave you a necklace that you're not allowed to take off?"
"He gave me a necklace, but he can't allow or not allow anything at this point, now can he? It's gorgeous, though. Let me show it to you."
When Dahlia and Em arrived at the club before Omar and Jack, she felt energized. Perfect, she thought, a chance to warm up before the main event, and maybe really get him going. As much as she disliked Em, she wasn't an idiot - a little girl on girl action would provide just the right frisson of jealousy and lust to make the rest of the evening with Omar memorable. They were dressed like mirror images of each other tonight; this wasn't the first time it had happened, but it was the first time Dahlia could be sure it wasn't a coincidence. Dahlia let her annoyance bleed into lust as she extended an arm and dragged Em onto the small, but nearly empty, dance floor. A cheesy 80s paean to casual sex had just started blaring.
Dahlia led. She wouldn't enjoy leading all the time, certainly. But there was something so provocative about being on the dance floor, controlling Em's every move, captivating her, all the while knowing that Omar was watching. He'd entered about halfway through the song and was talking to Jack. Neither of them took their eyes off the girls for long, though. Dahlia wondered if Jack's interest was feigned. Certainly, Jack seemed to be watching her just as much as he was watching Em, and possibly more so. Maybe he wasn't gay; maybe the jealousy was over her, not over Omar.
But she stopped thinking as the bridge led into the intense, repetitive chorus, and just moved. She was past the melody, the lyrics. Only the thumping rhythm remained. The shadows, and the angles they etched over Em's body, so much like her own, but smaller, like stretching out your palms to the mirror and feeling something warm and inviting, more you than you, on the other side. Wanting that something, wanting to be it, or just wanting to have it.
She wasn't controlling Em now. She was asking, and being answered. Asking questions more intimate than Truth or Dare, or postcoital confessions. Questions like why Em was with Jack, why Em imitated her, why Em was here at this school, pretending she had so little to prove, pretending she had so little to offer, pretending she was so comfortable with herself, when it was obviously the opposite of being comfortable.
What had Em been like as a little girl? What had Em been like the moment she stopped being a little girl? Was Dahlia the first girl, the first woman, Em had looked at this way? And had Em ever done more than look, ever done more than dance? Because this kind of dancing was just a show, part of the mating ritual done by proxy. Wasn't it? But it wasn't, right now, for Dahlia. This was a conversation she'd been waiting to have for so long, and she hadn't planned on it, hadn't realized at all. And this interrupted conversation would have to wait, because now the song was over, and suddenly she was in Jack's arms. She wasn’t leading, but being led.
Omar and Em joined hands. Em looked unfinished, somehow. Bereft. Like she'd lost her puppy. Dahlia had thought about stepping away from Jack's advance, but Omar had wrapped Em in his arms so quickly, so completely, like Em was a puppet, that she was determined to make him pay for it a little.
The DJ's choice was interesting: a hip-hop cover of the same song that had just played. It was like time traveling, going back and changing the surface, but not the essence, of what was already done. Was this what she wanted to change it to? Jack, instead of Em? Jack, instead of Omar? Surely not. Dahlia and Jack were too similar. Then, maybe Jack and Omar were similar. She was trapped in a house of mirrors.
Jack’s eyes burned when his gaze shifted between her and Omar, but she still didn't know whether the fools-gold sparkle was for her or for her boyfriend. She realized it was her turn to be interrogated: just how wanton was she? Just how good did she have to be? Surely, if Omar and Em had-
And how could they have not, the way they were dancing, so familiar, even if Em drooped, sad and lost. Em probably still looked like that when she was fucking. Dahlia had to admit that was rather appealing. And then that image of herself fucking Em became Omar fucking Em; light skin on light darkened, consuming Em, consuming them both. Jack's skin was as light as her own, but when she flickered to the image of Jack fucking Em, it was impossible, and Em became Dahlia, and Jack was just as dark, somehow. Jack was polluting her, corroding her. And she wanted him to, yes, there were no more glances between Jack and Omar, and Jack's expressive face was all hers, lasciviously acting out the ridiculous song with a raised eyebrow or a cruelly curled lip. How could he always be so controlled?
Then Omar came between them. Dahlia felt like she was coming up for air, and then felt like she was being smothered. As they danced, as she let go of all her emotions in a torrent of lust, complicated lust, but all for Omar, always for him, he kept asking her questions, bringing her back to a place of words. Of explanations. Of distance. Of lies. Does she want still him, he asked, and she could answer that without words, and that was still okay. But then he was asking about a necklace, the necklace. No, she's not wearing it tonight, she admitted; she'd meant to, and couldn't find it. But she didn't lose it. Why is he saying she lost it? She had just showed it to Em, for fuck's sake. Didn't he trust her? And he purred, so close to her ear, he asked if she wants someone else like she wants him. No, not like you. None of them are like you. But you still fuck them? Dahlia, oh, he said her name so slow, so lingeringly. Why did you convince them to come tonight, and his voice was so low, it was almost lost in the menacing beat, in the shadows, in the flashes of light. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not-
And then he hurt her, with his words, with his gaze, and finally, with his fingers. It was not the first time he had hurt her, not so much worse than the bruises that already marred her wrist, and it was a little exciting – and still she couldn’t turn off the analysis, as much as she didn’t want to understand - a little exciting that he was doing it in a public place. Public abuse, like public sex. Is it abuse, or is it just an edge a little rougher than she's used to? The edge she was looking for, waiting for, all along? She felt bruises blossoming under his fingers, blood radiating through broken vessels, shattered vessels, and of course they will come back together, they will heal, they will repair, they will be even stronger-
He left. Abruptly. She didn't leave with him, and she felt hollow. Couldn't imagine not leaving with him, not finishing what they had started. She texted him on her way home, not caring that she was still a little drunk (did that explain it?) and shouldn't be driving, much less typing meaningless words, and weren't words what had caused this whole problem? Because it's something deeper than words, she thought, something so dark, bone fragments at the bottom of a well. Something so dark it could swallow her before she even knew she was in its mouth. And maybe she was a little relieved, now, to be spat out. When Jack called and said he'd found her necklace, she didn't understand. But she went to him. This would fix everything. Or maybe break everything. Maybe it needs to be broken to be mended.
The next day, she remembered little more than the phone call, but ended up learning far too much of what had happened next, although she never learned what the hell she’d been thinking. She probably wasn't thinking, that's the point. Later, during Omar’s interrogation, she won't remember when she first saw the forward, or who it was from; she got so many forwards. They were all the same. Forward, what an ironic name, was all she could think. There is nothing afterward. Not anymore.
She dimly recognized the original return address: reversi@....The same person who'd sent the anonymous email to her father, then. Could it be Jack? Who else could have taken those videos? You'd think Jack would be just as incriminated, would be embarrassed at his own performance – yes, the video humiliated her, by showing her doing terrible things that no girlfriend should ever do with someone who isn't her boyfriend, and maybe not even with someone who is. But didn't it humiliate Jack just as much, that he couldn't rise to the occasion? Surely he wouldn't want the world to see. But who could want the world to see something like this?
This wasn't the first time Dahlia had done something slutty. It was the first time there was proof, but only by unhappy accident – maybe her luck was finally catching up with her. She wasn't too worried about her father's reaction. There would be scandal, but there would have been just as much scandal, the time she'd fucked her freshman roommate - always leading, but last night, being led, that was the mistake - or maybe that beautiful shining man at Mardi Gras, who tasted so good that she couldn't help herself, even if maybe she caught herself wondering, the morning after, whether any of her ancestors had enslaved any of his. No, what she was worried about was Omar.
Of course she wanted to see him, to explain, to not have to explain, even if she did hesitate a moment. Her hand trembled on the deadbolt, when she heard how hard and loud he pounded on the door. But she steadied herself and turned the latch. Maybe part of her was secretly looking forward to this. Maybe not to this, but to afterward, when they'd have blisteringly hot makeup sex and they could watch the tide go out together, detached and amused. But detached and amused had never been a role Omar was particularly good at, or interested in.
The blows felt cathartic, at first. A relief, after the words. So concrete, solid. Something to hang on to. She was being bathed in a hailstorm, buffeted, polished. She was falling down a waterfall, and oh, the rocks were so sharp, but she was so clean now. Then she was scared. She went outside herself, watching something unreal, something impossible. Any moment now, she'd wake up. This doesn't happen, not to me. I'm not that girl. Where's the rewind. Where's the do-over. I never meant this to happen. I never wanted-
Do you want to kill me, she asked. Now the words were bubbling up out of her, the words coming between them. He didn't answer, maybe couldn't answer. The dark, wordless thing was bigger than him, and he was bigger than he'd ever been, looming, filling the room like a giant as she shrunk, hiding and not hiding like a child. I'm sorry, she said, and she meant it, sometimes she meant it more than other times, but she was never entirely unrepentant, even at the last moment.
Just leave, she begged, towards the end, even though she really didn't want him to leave, couldn't imagine a bleached, bone-dry life without him, couldn't imagine how empty she would feel. But she didn't understand why he didn't leave. Wasn't that the worst thing he could do? Leave her?
Her vision darkened, reddened - again those blood vessels were bursting; asphyxia, petechial hemorrhage, her pre-med internal narrator blithely informed her. Couldn't she have a more sympathetic companion in her last moments than an imaginary friend from a textbook, and a boyfriend who loved her too much, wanted her too much to leave her, to find someone who deserved him? Her vision darkened into a starry night, and as the stars flickered and extinguished, she wondered if this was best. Now he never could leave her. Now she would haunt him forever.
Those Soft Parts of Conversation
When Dahlia arrived at the pizza joint and saw Omar sitting beside Jack, her boyfriend looming over his effeminate friend, something worried her, made her queasy, although she wasn’t sure why. Omar and Jack had been close friends since they'd roomed as freshmen. Their names had become a single utterance, like Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street. But in the past month, there had been some kind of coldness or falling out between them. Since Dahlia and Omar had started dating secretly. They both had strict parents who just wouldn't approve of the match, for very different but equally vehement reasons. Seeing the two together - and they were together in a very visceral sense: they were sitting catty-corner, not at opposite sides of the table - made her want to turn and run out the door.
"Dolly," Jack called, as if she were a moll in a noir flick. He had such a theatrical voice; most of the other customers in the other tables in the dim, spartan room looked up. She liked the attention, although part of her wished, as always, for privacy. She wanted to greet Omar with the same showiness, Jack-level showiness, but didn't touch him. If her father found out...
Omar shamelessly checked out her cleavage in the tight new top she was wearing. She knew she should be annoyed, but she loved when he looked at her like she was a fish in a bucket, gasping breath. She also loved the way he murmured her name. She couldn't get enough of his accent. The end of her name became a diphthong; it made her feel a little noir, herself. La Femme Dahlia. There was something a little edgy, a little dangerous, about it. He'd spoken English most of his life; he'd had an excellent tutor, of course. The only time she'd heard him speak Arabic, he'd been talking to his parents on his shiny black PDA; his face had darkened before her eyes, as though his heritage were a gathering cloud. "I've been waiting so long I almost forgot how your tits look. Look who followed me."
"Right," Jack said, sarcastically drawing out the syllable. "I'm just following you...to my favorite restaurant. Shameless of me. I'm a witheringly obvious shifty-eyed stalker, and I'm sure the restraining orders'll be raining down like lightning bolts any...moment...now."
Everything was too sharp, too in-focus, like the eye of a hurricane. In a brief, panicky moment, imagined what the eye of a hurricane would look like, personified. A disapproving eye, certainly, and maybe with a raised eyebrow like Jack’s hovering above it, demanding to know what exactly she planned to do to defuse this situation. Sometimes she felt like her life was a quiz that she hadn’t studied for. Omar’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the sides of the chair. Suddenly she was sure that Jack was the one who had sat down so close to Omar, definitely not the other way around. They hadn't reconciled; Jack was baiting him, somehow. But with what?
"How's Em?" she asked Jack, hoping she was contriving something close to a genuine smile. She worried that her facial muscles were a little below par. Everyone else seemed able to feign emotions so effortlessly, but when she faked too many smiles, her teeth and cheeks ached until the next day. Omar took her hand under the table, out of sight. She wasn't sure if she was being reassured or chastised for speaking to Jack.
"Fantabulous.” He paused. “I've heard. She's been having all kinds of adventures, isn't that right, Omar?"
“I wouldn't know," Omar said. His pupils were dilated. His hand tightened, like half of a handcuff. Her hand was so much more delicate, more fragile than his. She looked at Jack's hands, nearly hairless with clever, long fingers, and wondered whether Jack and Omar had ever held hands. What it would be like if she and Jack held hands, if maybe they would be more equal to each other. Better suited, better matched. Omar continued, to Dahlia, “Excuse me, allow me to pay, and then we can get out of here."
Omar released her and went to the counter, where the new, bored cashier was quickly pulled aside by the manager, who served Omar himself. Omar always seemed to enjoy that kind of attention, just like Dahlia's father did.
"Omar and his fucking Black card," Jack said. "Hey, Dolly, d'you think he knows Bin Laden?"
"No, but my dad does," Dahlia said. She felt more confident now, facing Jack one on one. Better suited, better matched. She knew she could hold her own, and felt quite proud of herself. Jack was notoriously quick-witted and vicious. But Dahlia was no lightweight herself; despite her delicate features and fondness for frosted pink lip gloss, she was a senator's daughter who'd met, and demolished, opponents far more intimidating than Jack. "Says he loves TV. Can't get enough of The Price Is Right, apparently."
"Remember, have your pets spayed and neutered, just like the infidels after we're done with them, huh?"
She was flitting through a reply at lightning speed, interchanging words and meanings like Scrabble tiles, trying to wrest maximum points and advantage, when Omar returned.
"One heart-shaped pizza for an extremely high-maintenance girlfriend," Omar said. He swept her away from the sparring match with a nudge of his free arm. Dahlia was relieved that she wouldn’t be burdened with getting the last word in. She didn’t want to be blamed for the tension that was sure to get worse.
After they left, she was relieved to see that Omar no longer looked smoldery. Relieved, but perhaps a little disappointed too. She asked, "What, you don't even say goodbye these days?"
"Sometimes I wonder if the rumors are true," Omar said. There was a tinge of pity in his voice. Poor Jack, poor possibly-gay Jack, plagued by rumors, when Omar was just too powerful, maybe too feared, to have to worry about gossip.
"What, about Em?" She shifted the focus away from Jack – who cares if Jack's gay? she thought. She barely cared if Jack and Omar had been lovers, since she knew they, Dahlia and Omar, Dahlia plus Omar with a little heart around them, etched forever, whether into living tree or cold, ugly concrete, were together now in the closest way any two people could be together. Would ever be together.
"Yeah, he cared so much about Em," Omar said. Dahlia wondered where that sense of smug sarcasm had come from - was what Jack had implied true, had Omar fucked Em? How soon before the first time he'd fucked her? Or had it been after?
"Maybe he did. Probably has a heart of gold, under all that vitriol."
"She told me he'd spend the evenings debating, and batting her hands off him like a girl who's not ready to go past second base."
She sympathized with Jack. She'd probably be just as annoyed to spend evenings with Em, and she was even a tiny bit attracted to Em. Maybe Jack was too, after all. You don't have to like someone to be attracted to them. Sometimes, disliking them even helps.
“They have the base system in Qatar?" she asked. Her mood lightened, her step lightened, even as the sky reddened in sunset. They were almost skipping down the path together, not touching, but so close to her bed…
The next day, Dahlia's father received an anonymous email from an address at the college. Instead of a student name before the @ (for example, dkennedy@), this was from a "reversi," and the campus IT department insisted it was untraceable, opened from a computer lab by someone with some savvy, apparently. Being a senator, her father hadn't opened the email himself, of course. It was a point of pride not to know how to use those newfangled devices. Instead, his bulldog of a chief of staff had barged into his office and thrown a temper tantrum. By the time Dahlia heard all this (she winced and she turned down her cell phone volume), her father was well into a contact temper tantrum of his own. Okay, maybe it wasn't a contact temper tantrum. Maybe it was the age-old battle over whose property Dahlia was, exactly. Infuriating. She belonged to herself, and chose exactly how much of herself to give to Omar.
"Look, Daddy, he's a friend of the family. I've known him for ages. What's the problem?" Dahlia flopped her free arm over her face. The sunrise burned her eyes like she was a vampire. She wasn't at all in the mood to be awake and having an argument. Omar filled the silences on her father’s side of th conversation with derisive gestures and mocking faces. She loved his stubble in the morning, so dark and rough. It matched the hair on the rest of his body, the body that she’d spent hours against.
"Look, what's the worst that can happen? It's not like I'm going to end up moving to Afghanistan and wearing a fucking burqa." She held the phone away from her head until the roar on the other end subsided. "Sorry, a damn burqa. Look, you've been to Qatar. It's nice. It's civilized. I'd be allowed to drive. I'm kidding! I'm not moving there, for chrissakes. I'm in school. He's in school. We're college students! What's the big deal? If I'm wrong about him, I'll move on. I'm not some vestal virgin. It's a figure of speech, Daddy. No, he's a nice guy. He really is. Smart, good-looking. No, not that kind of guy. I've never seen him date anyone, actually. Word on the street was he's gay. I know, right? Yeah, if I'm wrong about him, I guess the worst that can happen is I'll get some fashion advice."
Finally, she hung up. "I think he's angrier about the mixed metaphors than anything else," she said to Omar, with a little laugh that felt like it came from somewhere shallow in the top of her chest. Clavicle? "Says I'll be a creampuff in med school if I can't focus on a quote unquote, simple biology problem."
“You're obviously amazing at, ah, hormonal interactions."
"I'm amazing at a lot of things," she said, and giggled again. "Hey, are you gay? I mean, a little gay? Bi? I wouldn’t mind. I think it’s kind of hot. I mean, you’re obviously not-"
"Obviously?"
"Obviously."
Jack and Em came to see Dahlia, after Omar left, and before she was dressed to go out. She willed herself to seem friendly and casual. Em always irritated her. Maybe it was that Dahlia suspected she was far less stupid than she let on; maybe it was the simple jealousy of the giraffe beside the gazelle. Em entered before Jack, but somehow still managed to be deferential. Decorative purposes only. She led with her rather flat but fashionably nearly-exposed chest. The figurehead on the prow of a Viking ship.
"Hey doll face, want to do a favor for a scoundrel?" Jack seemed a little nervous; how unlike him. She hoped she would get to make him squirm. She had five delicate bruises on her wrist from the night before, when he'd made Omar squirm. Fair was fair.
"I like you because you're a scoundrel," Dahlia said. There wasn't the faintest trace of sincerity in her voice, and she hoped that neither of them would read it into her words. That would be the last thing she needed.
She rummaged through her closet, searching for the perfect pair of jeans. She wanted to move fluidly on the dance floor, like wild horses, so they couldn't be too constricting; at the same time, they had to cling to her curves like scales on a piranha.
"Well, I was thinking you could talk Mr. Right into letting all of us go out together tonight. Like old times."
"I don't want to get in the middle of whatever's going on between you," Dahlia said. Em just stood there, silent, smiling, a yes-man in a Jennifer Lopez outfit.
"Going on between us? Your boy-toy didn't say something stupid, did he?"
"What, admit I broke up your torrid love affair? Would that have been stupid?" She didn't look directly at Jack, so that the “you” could be construed as Em, too; the response might be telling. Why did her conversations always seem to turn out like a chess game? Maybe that's what she liked so much about Omar. Their conflicts were more primal. Physical, not cerebral. He wasn’t a caveman, he just didn’t waste his life ruminating. She wondered if she could just wander into the closet and burrow into the clothes and maybe on the other side, behind the fur coats, would be Narnia.
"Yeah, it would have been stupid. And upsetting. And, furthermore, a lie. Friends don't let friends suck cock, doll face."
Dahlia turned and looked him in the eye. She quirked the corner of her mouth with what she hoped was sophisticated derision. She hadn't learned anything about Omar and Em, and hadn't learned anything about Jack that she didn't already suspect. Oh well. At least he'd given her a great opening. "Guess we're not friends then." She stepped back, feeling the fabric of her shirts brush against her, as though the sleeves were filled with ghosts, beckoning her away. "What about you, Em? Does that make you not Jack's friend?"
"She's my girlfriend," Jack said quickly, before Em had drawn a breath. "Friends and dating are mutually exclusive. Oh, don't look at me like that, darling, you know you like it. You know exactly what this is. And if you don't, you can go infibulate yourself."
Dahlia winced, but Em giggled and made an “oh, you,” gesture. Obviously she didn't comprehend the word, and didn't construe the dismissal (which surely she could understand out of any word inserted between “go” and “yourself”) as anything other than casual teasing.
"But look," Jack continued with a world-weary sigh, "Just talk to him. I can pick him up, let him check out my new wheels.Tell him Em's coming."
"It wouldn't be much of a double date without her and her scintillating company."
Em didn't seem to take offense at this. That was the advantage to hanging out with people you dislike. You can insult them without compunction, and often, without any repercussions, as long as they weren’ too bright. Dahlia was brighter than most people. Maybe not Jack.
"Hey," Jack said, turning to Em. "I have to get out of here, but I'll see you later, okay." Not a question; Jack probably couldn't imagine Em ever disagreeing with him.
“I'm not going with you?" Em didn't seem annoyed, just confused, and she frowned, like she was trying to remember something. Maybe, Dahlia thought, Em was excited to get some time away from Jack. Dahlia certainly would be, if she were Jack's girlfriend, or beard, or whatever Em really was.
"Trust me, you'd be bored." He whispered something to Em, bending close to her ear, uncomfortably intimate. A show, another one of Jack's deliberately exaggerated gestures. She strained to hear, but couldn't. Something sibilant. She broke out in goosebumps and didn't know why.
After Jack left, Em grinned at her. Em looked years younger and degrees warmer. "Okay, girl talk! Is it true Omar gave you a necklace that you're not allowed to take off?"
"He gave me a necklace, but he can't allow or not allow anything at this point, now can he? It's gorgeous, though. Let me show it to you."
When Dahlia and Em arrived at the club before Omar and Jack, she felt energized. Perfect, she thought, a chance to warm up before the main event, and maybe really get him going. As much as she disliked Em, she wasn't an idiot - a little girl on girl action would provide just the right frisson of jealousy and lust to make the rest of the evening with Omar memorable. They were dressed like mirror images of each other tonight; this wasn't the first time it had happened, but it was the first time Dahlia could be sure it wasn't a coincidence. Dahlia let her annoyance bleed into lust as she extended an arm and dragged Em onto the small, but nearly empty, dance floor. A cheesy 80s paean to casual sex had just started blaring.
Dahlia led. She wouldn't enjoy leading all the time, certainly. But there was something so provocative about being on the dance floor, controlling Em's every move, captivating her, all the while knowing that Omar was watching. He'd entered about halfway through the song and was talking to Jack. Neither of them took their eyes off the girls for long, though. Dahlia wondered if Jack's interest was feigned. Certainly, Jack seemed to be watching her just as much as he was watching Em, and possibly more so. Maybe he wasn't gay; maybe the jealousy was over her, not over Omar.
But she stopped thinking as the bridge led into the intense, repetitive chorus, and just moved. She was past the melody, the lyrics. Only the thumping rhythm remained. The shadows, and the angles they etched over Em's body, so much like her own, but smaller, like stretching out your palms to the mirror and feeling something warm and inviting, more you than you, on the other side. Wanting that something, wanting to be it, or just wanting to have it.
She wasn't controlling Em now. She was asking, and being answered. Asking questions more intimate than Truth or Dare, or postcoital confessions. Questions like why Em was with Jack, why Em imitated her, why Em was here at this school, pretending she had so little to prove, pretending she had so little to offer, pretending she was so comfortable with herself, when it was obviously the opposite of being comfortable.
What had Em been like as a little girl? What had Em been like the moment she stopped being a little girl? Was Dahlia the first girl, the first woman, Em had looked at this way? And had Em ever done more than look, ever done more than dance? Because this kind of dancing was just a show, part of the mating ritual done by proxy. Wasn't it? But it wasn't, right now, for Dahlia. This was a conversation she'd been waiting to have for so long, and she hadn't planned on it, hadn't realized at all. And this interrupted conversation would have to wait, because now the song was over, and suddenly she was in Jack's arms. She wasn’t leading, but being led.
Omar and Em joined hands. Em looked unfinished, somehow. Bereft. Like she'd lost her puppy. Dahlia had thought about stepping away from Jack's advance, but Omar had wrapped Em in his arms so quickly, so completely, like Em was a puppet, that she was determined to make him pay for it a little.
The DJ's choice was interesting: a hip-hop cover of the same song that had just played. It was like time traveling, going back and changing the surface, but not the essence, of what was already done. Was this what she wanted to change it to? Jack, instead of Em? Jack, instead of Omar? Surely not. Dahlia and Jack were too similar. Then, maybe Jack and Omar were similar. She was trapped in a house of mirrors.
Jack’s eyes burned when his gaze shifted between her and Omar, but she still didn't know whether the fools-gold sparkle was for her or for her boyfriend. She realized it was her turn to be interrogated: just how wanton was she? Just how good did she have to be? Surely, if Omar and Em had-
And how could they have not, the way they were dancing, so familiar, even if Em drooped, sad and lost. Em probably still looked like that when she was fucking. Dahlia had to admit that was rather appealing. And then that image of herself fucking Em became Omar fucking Em; light skin on light darkened, consuming Em, consuming them both. Jack's skin was as light as her own, but when she flickered to the image of Jack fucking Em, it was impossible, and Em became Dahlia, and Jack was just as dark, somehow. Jack was polluting her, corroding her. And she wanted him to, yes, there were no more glances between Jack and Omar, and Jack's expressive face was all hers, lasciviously acting out the ridiculous song with a raised eyebrow or a cruelly curled lip. How could he always be so controlled?
Then Omar came between them. Dahlia felt like she was coming up for air, and then felt like she was being smothered. As they danced, as she let go of all her emotions in a torrent of lust, complicated lust, but all for Omar, always for him, he kept asking her questions, bringing her back to a place of words. Of explanations. Of distance. Of lies. Does she want still him, he asked, and she could answer that without words, and that was still okay. But then he was asking about a necklace, the necklace. No, she's not wearing it tonight, she admitted; she'd meant to, and couldn't find it. But she didn't lose it. Why is he saying she lost it? She had just showed it to Em, for fuck's sake. Didn't he trust her? And he purred, so close to her ear, he asked if she wants someone else like she wants him. No, not like you. None of them are like you. But you still fuck them? Dahlia, oh, he said her name so slow, so lingeringly. Why did you convince them to come tonight, and his voice was so low, it was almost lost in the menacing beat, in the shadows, in the flashes of light. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not-
And then he hurt her, with his words, with his gaze, and finally, with his fingers. It was not the first time he had hurt her, not so much worse than the bruises that already marred her wrist, and it was a little exciting – and still she couldn’t turn off the analysis, as much as she didn’t want to understand - a little exciting that he was doing it in a public place. Public abuse, like public sex. Is it abuse, or is it just an edge a little rougher than she's used to? The edge she was looking for, waiting for, all along? She felt bruises blossoming under his fingers, blood radiating through broken vessels, shattered vessels, and of course they will come back together, they will heal, they will repair, they will be even stronger-
He left. Abruptly. She didn't leave with him, and she felt hollow. Couldn't imagine not leaving with him, not finishing what they had started. She texted him on her way home, not caring that she was still a little drunk (did that explain it?) and shouldn't be driving, much less typing meaningless words, and weren't words what had caused this whole problem? Because it's something deeper than words, she thought, something so dark, bone fragments at the bottom of a well. Something so dark it could swallow her before she even knew she was in its mouth. And maybe she was a little relieved, now, to be spat out. When Jack called and said he'd found her necklace, she didn't understand. But she went to him. This would fix everything. Or maybe break everything. Maybe it needs to be broken to be mended.
The next day, she remembered little more than the phone call, but ended up learning far too much of what had happened next, although she never learned what the hell she’d been thinking. She probably wasn't thinking, that's the point. Later, during Omar’s interrogation, she won't remember when she first saw the forward, or who it was from; she got so many forwards. They were all the same. Forward, what an ironic name, was all she could think. There is nothing afterward. Not anymore.
She dimly recognized the original return address: reversi@....The same person who'd sent the anonymous email to her father, then. Could it be Jack? Who else could have taken those videos? You'd think Jack would be just as incriminated, would be embarrassed at his own performance – yes, the video humiliated her, by showing her doing terrible things that no girlfriend should ever do with someone who isn't her boyfriend, and maybe not even with someone who is. But didn't it humiliate Jack just as much, that he couldn't rise to the occasion? Surely he wouldn't want the world to see. But who could want the world to see something like this?
This wasn't the first time Dahlia had done something slutty. It was the first time there was proof, but only by unhappy accident – maybe her luck was finally catching up with her. She wasn't too worried about her father's reaction. There would be scandal, but there would have been just as much scandal, the time she'd fucked her freshman roommate - always leading, but last night, being led, that was the mistake - or maybe that beautiful shining man at Mardi Gras, who tasted so good that she couldn't help herself, even if maybe she caught herself wondering, the morning after, whether any of her ancestors had enslaved any of his. No, what she was worried about was Omar.
Of course she wanted to see him, to explain, to not have to explain, even if she did hesitate a moment. Her hand trembled on the deadbolt, when she heard how hard and loud he pounded on the door. But she steadied herself and turned the latch. Maybe part of her was secretly looking forward to this. Maybe not to this, but to afterward, when they'd have blisteringly hot makeup sex and they could watch the tide go out together, detached and amused. But detached and amused had never been a role Omar was particularly good at, or interested in.
The blows felt cathartic, at first. A relief, after the words. So concrete, solid. Something to hang on to. She was being bathed in a hailstorm, buffeted, polished. She was falling down a waterfall, and oh, the rocks were so sharp, but she was so clean now. Then she was scared. She went outside herself, watching something unreal, something impossible. Any moment now, she'd wake up. This doesn't happen, not to me. I'm not that girl. Where's the rewind. Where's the do-over. I never meant this to happen. I never wanted-
Do you want to kill me, she asked. Now the words were bubbling up out of her, the words coming between them. He didn't answer, maybe couldn't answer. The dark, wordless thing was bigger than him, and he was bigger than he'd ever been, looming, filling the room like a giant as she shrunk, hiding and not hiding like a child. I'm sorry, she said, and she meant it, sometimes she meant it more than other times, but she was never entirely unrepentant, even at the last moment.
Just leave, she begged, towards the end, even though she really didn't want him to leave, couldn't imagine a bleached, bone-dry life without him, couldn't imagine how empty she would feel. But she didn't understand why he didn't leave. Wasn't that the worst thing he could do? Leave her?
Her vision darkened, reddened - again those blood vessels were bursting; asphyxia, petechial hemorrhage, her pre-med internal narrator blithely informed her. Couldn't she have a more sympathetic companion in her last moments than an imaginary friend from a textbook, and a boyfriend who loved her too much, wanted her too much to leave her, to find someone who deserved him? Her vision darkened into a starry night, and as the stars flickered and extinguished, she wondered if this was best. Now he never could leave her. Now she would haunt him forever.
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Date: 2009-03-08 07:09 pm (UTC)