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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 Twenty-One
June 29, a Thursday
Tonight, after I got home, as I passed Brenna's open doorway, I heard her give a squeal of pain. Her lights were on and she was sitting in the middle of a big pile of clothes with a huge open portfolio in front of her.
"You OK?" I asked.
"Yeah, just pricked myself," she said. "Wanna see what's new?"
"Sure," I said, and walked to the middle of the room and stooped over.
There in the huge open book were thousands of insects. Mostly butterflies, but also spiders, caterpillars, moths. All of them in thin plastic specimen boxes that the portfolio was designed to close over.
In her hand, was one of the little plastic cases, a fairly thick one and sitting on top of it was a large hairy spider, almost as big as a tarantula. It's legs were bent in on themselves in the tight clench of rigor mortis. "This one is a monkey spider. Got it yesterday. The guy sold it to me live. I had to euthanize it myself. The chemical made it crazy for a little while. It was running back and forth in the bottle completely panicked, but it gave in...Hey, you know we can get out on the roof. Wait, I'll go get us beers."
I waited in her room, standing next to a big pile of clothes, looking at the portfolios of insects spread below me.
She came back, but only had one beer. "Nell must have had the other one. She's a major lush these days, it's all the do-gooding. She going to turn into a mushhead if she keeps it up."
The two of us climbed out of her window and onto the slightly sloped roof. A branch from the tallest tree, the one at the top tier of the backyard, swung out almost over us. We both sat Indian style. This bit of roof is at the righthand side of the house and we could see into the backyard of the house next door.
There was a crack and a slurp as she opened the beer, took a long pull, and passed it to me.
"What's up with Gaff?" I asked.
"I don't know," she answered.
"Looked like you knew.”
“He’s nice and has really pretty eyes. He’s kind of a doof.”
“You mean a Gaff, right?” To which, she gave me this look where she raised her eyebrows and opened her eyes really wide.
“Sorry couldn’t help myself,” I said, lowering my head like I’d seen shamed dogs do.
“He’s there.”
“And Rick?” I asked.
"Yeah, Rick. He's so great, so sweet, really likes me, but he has nothing on his walls. You go to his apartment and there isn't a single anything up anywhere. It's like there's this whole side of me, this whole collection of stuff that he doesn't get. Maybe it's even worse than that. Maybe it's like he doesn't even function on that level, like he doesn't need stuff on the walls. But he's so sweet."
“Probably pretty crushed too."
"I know. I don't want to be like that, a crusher."
"Yeah, it’s like the street’s full of furry animals and if you’re going to drive down it, there’s going to be roadkill," I said.
"I knew this time,” she said,” but I did it anyway. In love stories, they always show these nice tidy couples, not the...’roadkill’...not the trail of victims. They get cut from the story for the sake of sanity," she said and took a long swig from the beer. “Like Rosalind in Romeo and Juliet...remember Rosalind? She had this whole game going with Romeo and probably thought that he was hers to do what she wanted with and look what happened?”
"No kidding."
"Do you remember that summer when you tried to kiss me?"
"Oh God, yes." I said and put my head in my hands. "How embarrassing. I didn't think our friendship would survive it."
"I probably should have kissed you back."
"So, why didn't you?"
"I don't know. It was just so out of the blue. I was like, 'we'd been friends for so long.'"
"Doesn't matter now," I said.
'Yeah, doesn't."
She held the beer up like she was going to clink it to mine, but we only had one beer so I put up my fist and she clanked the beer to my fist.
“None of it makes any sense,” she said. “Did you know that my mother’s half Japanese.”
“Yeah, you told me.”
“When you look at her you can kind of tell that she’s part something Asian, but do you know that she never said a thing? Never told me? She wouldn’t answer any questions about it either. It was so weird.”
“Why do you think?” I said.
“Where she grew up, everyone was either a debutante or white trash. There was no category for half Japanese. Plus, it was right after the War. I think that the Japanese were still the enemy.”
“So how’d it happen?”
“I don’t know, but I think that my grandfather got a woman pregnant while stationed in Japan. I think that he brought the baby back. That’s the family rumor. My grandmother certainly wasn’t Japanese.”
The crickets were getting louder or sounded louder and the two of us sat in silence passing the beer back and forth.
“The night my Dad proposed to my mother, she had planned to break up with him.”
“And she didn’t?” I asked.
“She wanted to get married so if he was going to marry her that was more important than whether she was in love with him. She told me that story one night when she’d decided she was going to kill herself. I sat with her in the bathroom and she was holding a gun all night. Sometimes she’d put it in her mouth and I’d say ok this is it and I’d get ready to hear the bang and start to flinch then she’d take it out again.”
“What’d you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“How’d you stop it?”
“I didn’t. I just fell asleep. I woke up on the bathroom floor and it was morning and she was walking around like nothing had happened. I asked her, that morning, I said, 'Mom, are you OK?'
“She said, ‘Of course’ and acted like it never even happened.”
“How old were you?”
“Ten.”
“Yeah, we’ve never talked about it since.”
“Jesus.”
“She asks me all the time, what it’s like to do it with other guys. She’s only ever done it with my father. I tell that I don’t know what it's like just to do it with one guy. But that I can’t imagine not being able to compare guys. You know...which ones know how to touch you and make you come and which ones all of a sudden turn into someone else, become distant or almost brutal...You know what she said? She said that she wanted to know, but that she couldn’t give into that because she didn’t want to feel like a slut...She didn’t mean to be insulting, but isn’t that when you’re the most insulting? They really like Rick. Her and my father. That’s why I think I don’t like him. If they like him there’s something wrong.”
“Hey, what are you guys doing?” Kerran shouted from below. He was standing in the backyard, just behind the house and he backed up far enough for us to see him.
“We’re sort of drinking,” I said, "but we’ve only got one beer.”
“Oh? That sucks.” he said. “I have some vodka. I’ll come up.”
Ten minutes later, he was on the roof too with a bottle of cranberry juice, three plastic cups and a bottle of vodka.
“So what are you guys talking about?” he asked.
“Hurting people,” I said.
“Fuck that,” he said grinning.
“Yeah,” Brenna said, “Fuck that.”
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Darren Kaminsky is a writer living in Brooklyn. He can be contacted at sugarspun @ bigbagoftricks dot com.
© 2005 Me Three
