After Dakota Part 25

"But it's early," he says, facing Claire across his room, arms crossed, eyes locked on the ant farm atop his dresser.

"If your parents come home and you're still up, they won't let me babysit you anymore."

He processes this, perhaps recalling the last time she used it, perhaps looking for holes in the argument. Then he shoots into bed, burying his head under the pillow. Claire pulls the covers up over his plank-straight body.

Downstairs, she dials Ricky's number, hangs up after one ring as planned.

In front of Mrs. Swanson's big bedroom mirror, Claire changes clothes, poufs her hair with the hair spray until it ends up like a giant wig. The first lipstick she chooses is fire engine red, clown makeup. She wipes it off and uses the safe stuff, the color of brick.

A movie star looks back at Claire from the mirror.

She waits on the couch, MTV on at low volume. Videos by Talking Heads and Chicago. A tap at the front door. Weird to see Ricky here, in this house like a character from one book showing up in another where they don't belong. Scout, meet Old Yeller.

"Nice place," he says.

"I got you something." She pulls the Walkman from her backpack.

"No way!" He turns it over in his hands, pushes all the b.u.t.tons even though there's no tape inside. "Man, these people must pay you good to babysit."

Ricky finishes the limp leftover fries while complaining about his dad and flipping through all the channels with the remote control.

He's upstairs using the bathroom when Sting white pajamas, sungla.s.ses, so foxy! dances through a maze of candles on MTV. If Meredith were here, the two of them would be swooning and singing along.

They'd love to be wrapped around his finger.

Ricky's in the master bathroom with the medicine cabinet open when Claire goes up to look for him. "Check this out," he says. He holds a prescription bottle. The room still smells of hairspray.

"What is it?"

"I can't even p.r.o.nounce the name. Says not to operate heavy machinery while using." He pops the top off.

"I don't know if you should."

"What, do these people count their pills?" He taps two out into his palm tiny white pimples. He swallows them, then offers another one to her. "C'mon, it's no fun to be the only one."

After that he's on the big round waterbed, bobbing on the tide. "I've never laid on one of these before."

He pulls her down by the sleeve. She falls while he rises, two people pa.s.sing in zero gravity.

"Maybe we should go back downstairs," she says.

"Calm down already. Why are you being all strange?" He kisses her before she can answer. Their bodies are in rhythm with the waves now. He takes her s.h.i.+rt off.

This could be them in New York. Her and Ricky. A big house with a waterbed.

She'll be wrapped around his finger.

He pulls off her panties, black with the little bow. "It's ok," he tells her, and she realizes he doesn't have protection. "It's ok, I'll be careful."

She fights to keep her eyes open. He's inside her. Raining again outside. A flashbulb burst of lightning through the window, Ricky's face a photo negative.

"Claire?" Donna's silhouette stands in the doorway, backlit by the hall light.

Claire pushes him off. The bed pulls her back in when she tries to sit up. She rolls off the side, wraps herself in the comforter.

"What happened, Donna?"

"I'm scared of the thunder." Her little eyes half open, Raggedy Ann dangling from her hand. "Who's that man?"

"Let's go back to bed," Claire says, leading the way down the hall. She steps on a piece of painful plastic a red fugitive from the Barrel of Monkeys game.

"I had a bad dream," Donna tells her from under the covers. "I was, I was on a airplane that was gonna crash."

"If you go to sleep it'll be all gone," Claire replies. "Nightmares never happen twice. I promise."

76.

Bryce's eighteenth (and final?) birthday dinner at the j.a.panese Kitchen is nice enough other than his continuing failure with chopsticks capped off by a cup of ice cream with a candle, and a birthday song by the waiters than involves a lot of clapping and yelling. The real celebration, the part to which he's been counting down the days, comes after that, when he and Cam drive downtown.

Bryce's first question upon Cam getting into the Dodge, the same first question as every day now: "Gotten laid yet?"

And the same answer: "You'll be the third to know."

Cam has Sat.u.r.day night off both from work and from his new girlfriend just for this. Geoff had his birthday before any of them, which he celebrated by getting a j.a.panese letter tattooed on his arm. Tonight he's not available because he's working backstage at the school play, the musical Anything Goes (or, as he refers to it, "Everything Blows.") "Two tickets, please," Cam says to the man at the theater window, like it's a regular theater. Maybe the rules are different here.

Above them on the marquee: x.x.x.

ADULTS ONLY.

The man sets down a paperback book, looks up at them through thick gla.s.ses. "Show me some ID, gents." They slide their driver's licenses through the window slot with pride.

A huge a.s.s.

It takes Bryce a moment to realize what's filling the movie screen, for the image to go from a fleshy canvas to something recognizable. A woman screams over the speakers. The boys stand at the back, eyes adjusting to the darkness. The theater is spa.r.s.ely populated; single heads dot the landscape with a wide berth of seats between each of them. Cam and Bryce don't want to the be the only "couple" in the place, so they find a row as far back as they can and sit with one seat separating them.

Bryce has seen clips before, brief, tantalizing images in magazines and at Trevor's house on the adult channels (which occasionally come in for a few minutes). Once they got the sounds of s.e.x on TV but only a rolling field of static for imagery; they still sat mesmerized for half an hour. Now there's no static, no worry about the channel cutting out, no worry about a parent walking in. This is the real world: women who want it and aren't afraid to say so, men ready to give it to them.

They watch Summer Camp Girls (which bears little resemblance to any camp Bryce has ever attended) and s.e.xcalibur. Some of the other heads in the audience leave and new ones appear. One head a few rows directly in front of them goes down horizontally and never comes back up, like the guy fell asleep or died.

After the movies they stop at 7-11 and browse the p.o.r.no magazines behind the counter. The half-awake clerk hands over two copies Penthouse and Oui and the birthday boys are on their way.

They open the magazines in the car before even driving away from the store. "'Dear Penthouse Forum,'" Cam reads, "'I never thought this could happen to me...'" The story: the guy's car broke down in front of a farm, he went to the door to ask for help and who should answer but the big-chested daughter, alone and h.o.r.n.y while her parents were away. Cam and Bryce s.h.i.+ft uncomfortably as their bodies threaten to betray them. If Bryce is the unluckiest son of a b.i.t.c.h in the universe, whoever wrote that letter is the opposite.

Bryce flips through his Oui in bed that night, racing through each page, image overload. Beautiful parts and beautiful faces stare back. Monique. Yaffa. Irina.

His fingers touching these pictures. His eyes.

Yes, you'd be a perfect girlfriend. So would you. I can have you all? Yes, please.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

He feels that the lump is still there but it doesn't matter right now.

Best birthday ever.

77.

"'Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table.'"

Rosemary stands in front of Mrs. Gordon's cla.s.sroom for her poem presentation. She's been too nervous to even practice in front of Cameron.

"'Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-sh.e.l.ls.'"

Before falling asleep at night, in the shower, driving to school, while bored in cla.s.s: these are times Cameron spends building imaginary worlds, population: the two of them. The first thing he needs to work on is convincing her to stay in the U.S. after graduation. She'd have to attend community college since she hasn't applied anywhere here. Not a problem he'll go to UNM until they can transfer somewhere out of state. Together, of course.

"'In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.'"

The next option is him going to school in England. This will show her how dedicated he is not many guys would be willing to do that. Unless British schools have some bias against Americans, like you have to wait until literally no English person wants to get in before they'll consider you.

"'Time for you and time for me And time yet for a hundred indecisions And for a hundred visions and revisions Before the taking of a toast and tea.'"

Which leads to the compromise of him going to school on the East Coast. He doesn't know how long the flight is from, say, Duke University to London, but a lot shorter than from the West Coast. Maybe only a couple hours. They could fly every weekend, or every other, show each other their cities. He'll need to save a s.h.i.+tload of money for all that airfare.

"'Do I dare disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.'"

A more quickly achievable, local goal is to be an official couple. His friends know about them Geoff makes comments about someone being p.u.s.s.y whipped anytime Cameron spends a lunchtime in Mr. Hagen's room for the Peace Club meeting but it would be better if word got around campus. Cameron dating someone in Katrina Kingsley's circle would be a big deal.

"'I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.'"

"I wish you'd let me meet your parents," Cameron said to her at Putt-Putt mini golf, as she tried to hit the ball past the blades of a spinning windmill.

"No, you don't."

He knew when he heard it not to ask again.

"'I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.'"

Look at her. Hair clipped, feet crossed. He could listen to her read the phone book in that accent. The accent's even cute during those late night calls, when her voice shakes with frustration recounting the latest political argument at home (the labor unions or sucking up to Reagan or a dozen others).

"'We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.'"

Applause. He watches his future wife walk toward him and sit down. Whoa. Yes, he just thought that. Future. Wife. He will do anything to make her happy. He will follow her anywhere. His past relations.h.i.+ps suddenly seem like nothing. Less than nothing. The certainty settles on him like cement drying.

Dan McAllister goes up next to butcher a poem by Yeats. Cameron vaguely registers Mrs. Gordon making him take off his baseball cap before starting, but otherwise isn't paying attention at all.

78.

Claire finishes putting on her makeup in the school bathroom, then punches the two pills from their plastic sh.e.l.l and swallows them with a palmful of water. Maybe they're from Ricky's house, maybe they're ones she stole from the pharmacy's cold & allergy section. Claire likes this feeling, the way events seem to happen around her rather than to her, like she's not really present. Like she could almost sink through the skin of the world.

In English, before the effects kick in, the cla.s.s takes one of the ridiculous vocabulary quizzes Claire has aced all year.

Zephyr. Noun. A gentle breeze.

Indigenous. Adjective.

Sammy at the next desk chomps on her nails between answers, as if any of this is difficult. Claire realizes she hasn't kept her own nails up look at the shredded blue paint left over from who knows when.

Mr. Knight has worn a Hawaiian s.h.i.+rt to Algebra every day this year so far. Claire doesn't even notice them anymore, except for today when the colors swirl and bleed together like he's dressed in a living painting.

In P.E., the cla.s.s divides into two lines facing each other on the gra.s.s, then proceeds to kick soccer b.a.l.l.s back and forth for the next thirty minutes. Claire remembers something about soccer trophies but can't pin it down. Kick...kick...kick, watch the black and white spin across the green.

Isabel is absent in Social Studies, or maybe Claire has crossed into a reality where Isabel doesn't exist. The thought of this makes her smile the whole period, not much aware of whatever else transpires.

Mr. Hagen asks her to stay behind after cla.s.s. "I miss the Claire from first semester," he says from his podium when they're alone. "The one I could count on to partic.i.p.ate every day, to always have her hand up."

"Maybe I don't have much to say anymore," she says.

"I hope you haven't let certain people intimidate you in here."

She shakes her head. She should be treasuring this moment of aloneness with him, when he doesn't have to act like a teacher.

"Anytime you need to talk, I'm here. Ok?"

She nods.

"About anything."

She keeps nodding. All she wants to do is get to safety.