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By Darren Kaminsky
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Darren Kaminsky's novel, Sugar Spun Sisters, appears in serialized form every Monday right here on Me Three. The story follows the lives of five twenty-somethings living in Washington D.C. As far as the editors are currently aware, none of these characters work in politics.
Chapter Nineteen
Monday June 27
“How could you not even call to let me know you guys got off? You don’t give a shit about me. You could care less. I hear from you when you want me to hear from you.”
“That’s not true. Things have just been really complicated lately.”
“Things with you are always complicated. If it’s not Bella, it’s Nell or Jean and Brenna. If you’re not in jail then you’re hanging out with jail bait. You’re unbelievable.”
“It’s not like you don’t talk about other guys. It’s always, ‘Derek and I used to hook up whenever we went to a bar together’, or ‘such-and-such guy used to hit on me all the time... Oh? What? He’s in town? I should call him.’ I mean, Jesus Christ, you’ve had, what, like 3 times the number of sex partners I have?
“I’m surprised I had your attention for so long that you remember that.”
“How can you say that? I’ve spent all sorts of time with you, paying attention to you. What about that week we spent together after I got out of jail?”
“That wasn’t a week...That was 4 days and you spent it going to and from the lawyers and the detectives. And I don’t even think we spent a single evening where it was just the two of us. Every night we had to meet up with this one or that one so you could play hero and tell them about what was going on with Nell and the legal case. Tell me something...that book you’re always writing in? Did you put anything in there about me that week? Was there a single paragraph?”
“Come on, that’s not fair. That was a crazy week.”
“You mean as crazy as this week has been? Or as crazy as last week? Or the crazy week you had before that crazy week? Or you mean like next week, which, I’m sure, is shaping up to be a crazy week. I want to know what you wrote about me during that ‘week’ WE spent together?”
“I don’t know...I mean...you know...that’s private.”
“Everything’s private with you. Even our relationship is so ‘private’ that you can’t tell me about it. You mean: nothing, don’t you? You mean that you didn’t write a thing about me, don’t you?”
“Well, that means I didn’t write anything bad...”
“That’s tremendously comforting to know that, when you write about me, it’s likely to be ‘bad.’”
“You’re twisting everything.”
“No, I’m ‘twisting’ nothing. That’s the sorry part. Seeing any of this as a sign that you actually like me would be ‘twisting’ things."
I walked over to my bag and pulled out my journal and thumbed through a couple of pages before finding what I wanted to read....
“Sunday June 18--Woke up next to Dani. Her skin is so pale and her muscles are so defined that she’s like living alabaster, glowing and shimmering. Seeing her breathe seems out of place -- what if you were in a museum and a statue started to breathe? -- but also perfect. If I were to to carve a woman from stone isn’t this what she’d look like?”
“That’s so trite. The male ability to objectify the female body is endless,” she said rolling her eyes, but her tone had softened a bit and she was slightly smiling so that I could almost see the gap between her front teeth. “Read more,” she said.
“Monday June 19--Met with detectives today. They had all my journal books stacked up on the table between us. A feeling I can’t describe, like watching someone holding your liver or other internal organ and knowing that you can’t get your it back, that somehow someone has made it so that your liver isn’t your liver anymore...
“...They started off with some preliminary questions about Nell, but immediately segued into my life, wanting to know about who my closest friends were, if references to music were some sort of code and why there was so little mention of the planning of the protest. ‘Because I had no role in planning the protest,’ I told them. One of them snorted and the other rolled his eyes.
“‘So, this Dani is some girl,’ the smaller, blond one, who looked entirely too delicate to be a cop, said and elbowed his stocky, heavy-jawed companion, who said, ‘Got to say that if any guy took my daughter for a roll under a truck I’d goddamn break his fucking jaw. You could have at least gotten a hotel room. What kind of slut is this?’
“’She’s not a slut,’ I said. ‘How can you say that about someone you don’t know? And I made it all up anyway. I want my grandchildren to read it and think that I was a stud.
“'You mean rather than some pansy-boy anarchist?' the stocky detective said.
“That’s when the lawyer intervened, ‘Enough with the intimidation,’ he said. ‘Let’s get back to why we’re really here...'"
“So you stuck up for me,” Dani said and sat down next to me.
“I tried to,” I said. “It’s not like there was much I could say without them accusing me of being non-cooperative.”
“I know. I appreciate that you tried...you know...to defend my honor.”
“I’m not sure I deserve much praise for that. I think that I’m the one who put your honor at risk in the first place.”
“It was both of us under that truck,” she said and raised her hand up and stroked my hair and my face.
“I know,” I said and leaned in and started kissing her. There was no more talking until we were done and in bed and I felt warm and empty and content, but then, with stroking her and feeling myself against her, was aroused again.
“Do you want to do it again?” I asked her and she nodded and we did.
“I like doing it again,” she said.
“Me too.”
“I’m sure,” she said and we started kissing again and I started to feel heated again and she looked at me and we looked at each other and I didn’t ask that time.
“Um, Nate,” she said afterwards while I cradled her. “We can’t keep...you know...I’m starting to get sore.”
“Sorry, you know, this is kind of unusual. I don’t usually, well, you know that. Does it hurt much?”
“A bit,” she said.
“Was it, um, not, you know, enjoyable.”
“No, it was.”
“Did you...?”
“Almost.”
“Do you want me to, you know...”
“Um, OK,” she said and so I did and she did and I felt better that she had and afterwards we cuddled and my arm fell asleep under her neck and felt like a thousand pins were going through it so that I had to pull it out from under her neck or lose use of it forever, but, by pulling it out, woke her and apologized. She said that it was OK, but she sounded annoyed, but fell right back asleep and I did too.
The next day I went to work from Dani’s and wore the same clothes as I had the previous day which no one seemed to notice. Sometimes at work all the days mesh into one day. One long day for as long as you work wherever it is you’re working. So, it doesn’t surprise me that my co-workers couldn’t determine whether I was wearing what I wore yesterday or what I’d worn the a week ago or even two weeks ago. It had all fogged together.
Chris, the one co-worker who I actually talk to, walked over to my desk and for a second I thought he was going to notice, but instead he leaned on my desk with both hands and said in a low, conspiratorial voice that Jill, our boss, was being leaned on by Mr. Fredricks, her boss, who was being leaned on by a district manager, who was being leaned on by a vice president, to show some spreadsheets and poster designs for the D.C. area marketing plan. The main gist of it being: where was the part I had been working on?
Of course, I had nothing to show because I hadn’t thought about any of it in days so I instantly felt the same type of pressure in my stomach that jail had induced and stayed at work passed seven and still didn’t finish it. Feeling defeated, I rode my bike down Klingle into the early dark of the park and home to find my roommates in the midst of planning our party. I knew more about the party than I did the marketing plan, but who should that surprise?
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Darren Kaminsky is a writer living in Brooklyn. He can be contacted at sugarspun @ bigbagoftricks dot com.
© 2005 Me Three