Part 18 (2/2)
”Is Calvin here?” Ruby asks.
”That's a fine question,” Benjamin says.
”He's f.u.c.kin' looking for you and s.h.i.+t,” Nick says.
”He's been looking for you all night,” Alice adds. ”No one knew where you were!”
Ruby feels her stomach tighten. ”I called this morning. Someone picked up the phone.”
”You called here?”
”I asked for you by name.”
Alice says, ”It was probably one of the Smurfs. We were invaded by Smurfs, an army of trashy boys dressed in blue. There was Jack Daniel's Smurf and Pizza Face Smurf-”
”And Loverboy Smurf,” Cicely adds, ”Last seen with Dorian.” She motions with her head toward the bedrooms.
”We'll call him Date Rape Smurf,” Benjamin says.
”Some girl answered the phone,” Ruby offers.
”f.u.c.kin' Smurfette,” Nick says. Ruby notices that he's got a bruise the size of a postcard on his shoulder, as if he's fallen or been punched. Then she thinks of the scratch on her neck and reflexively pulls her hair forward to conceal it. She suddenly thinks of Dorian's clothes, discarded last night. In a parking lot. Where was was that? that?
Alice reaches her arms wide. ”The Smurfside Heights Varsity Football Date Rape Army! They totally stomped all over our lovely house. What about my security deposit? No one else is leaving until this place is spic-and-span!” Alice waves the squirt bottle like a wand, its nozzle dribbling onto the carpet. ”I repeat. No. One. Leaves. No. One. Leaves.”
Ruby says, ”I just want to get my stuff from Calvin.”
Cicely looks up from the table. ”I'll help you, Alice.”
Alice says, ”Do a little blow, you'll get your energy back.”
Chris says, ”Ben, how much have you you done?” done?”
”It sounds like criticism when you talk that way. Come on, Christopher-have one for old times' sake.”
”Old times being yesterday,” Alice says, shooting a daggered look at Chris. ”Ruby, let me make you a drinkie.”
”I drank enough yesterday for the whole summer.”
”But I went to the A&P and bought all the fixings for b.l.o.o.d.y Marys. You know, there are tons of vitamins in the tomato juice, plus celery, orange slices, olives, and green peppers. It's liquid salad! Wait-do we have any vodka left?”
Alice runs to the kitchen, Ruby calls out after her, ”Make mine a Virgin Mary.”
”That's appropriate,” Cicely says with a giggle, as Nick, at her side, chuckles along with her.
”Is it?” Benjamin asks. ”Still?”
Ignore them. ”If Calvin doesn't come back soon,” she says, ”I'm going to have to go. We don't want to drive in the dark.” ”If Calvin doesn't come back soon,” she says, ”I'm going to have to go. We don't want to drive in the dark.”
”Relax,” Benjamin says. ”Pull up a chair.” He kicks at the chair next to him and sends it tumbling backward with a thud onto the carpet.
Chris lifts it up and sits down, a simple gesture that Ruby can't help but find worrisome.
”That's better,” Benjamin continues. ”We can entertain each other with stories of our evenings. I'll start. Let's see, after we last saw you, I brought Dorian back here and held her hand while she puked in the toilet.”
”I'm sure you completely did not,” Cicely says. ”I was the one who stayed with her.”
”In my mind I was very helpful,” Benjamin says. He turns to Ruby. ”OK, now your turn.”
His face, even in its amped-up state, still manages to convey such pleasure, such gloating, that she finds herself saying with a kind of spiteful pride, ”It's none of your business where we spent the night.”
Benjamin tsk-tsks and shakes his head in exaggerated disapproval. ”I sense a new alliance here. I smell...consummation.”
”Don't push it, Ben,” Chris says. He adds, ”Ruby, we can wait out front if you want.” But he reaches for her, pulling her onto his lap. She sits stiffly, his thighbone a hard shelf under her rear end, wis.h.i.+ng she had listened to him back in the hotel room, that they had skipped the house and just gotten on the road.
Alice reappears carrying a tray of pint gla.s.ses slos.h.i.+ng red liquid, each topped off with so many wedges of fruit and vegetables they could be tall, whimsical Easter bonnets. ”This one's yours,” Alice says, handing a slippery gla.s.s to Ruby. ”I made it weak. What should we toast to?”
Cicely says, ”To Ruby being safe and sound,” and there's something so sincere in the tone of her voice that Ruby finds herself going along and clinking her gla.s.s with the rest of them. She's suddenly aware that her mouth is watering, ravenous for sustenance. The drink, it turns out, is loaded with vodka.
Benjamin raises his gla.s.s again. ”To the last American virgin.”
”Ben, I want to talk to you,” Chris says. ”Ruby, give me a minute, OK?”
She nods as Benjamin, with a theatrical flourish, rises from the table and disappears with Chris down the hall toward the bedrooms.
Alice turns to Nick. ”Shoo. Time for girl talk.”
”Like I f.u.c.kin' care?” he says. Ruby watches him stumble, s.h.i.+rtless and bruised, into the living room, where he rummages behind the couch and finds a telephone, receiver off the hook. He wanders onto the front porch with the phone in hand, stretching the cord to its limit. She watches her chance to call her parents slip out the door with it. Another delay.
She reluctantly takes a seat. She gulps the b.l.o.o.d.y Mary, vodka and all. Girl talk is not what she needs. What she needs is to get out of here, quickly. What she needs is to turn back the clock a few hours to place the calls to her parents that she failed to make. And then on top of that the irony of sitting here waiting for Calvin after having blown him off all night! She feels the liquor p.r.i.c.kling her belly. Maybe it will actually help her hangover. Hair of the dog. She's heard her mother speak of that.
Alice leans close and asks, ”Did you? With him?”
”I don't feel comfortable talking about it.”
”You did!”
”That's between me and-”
”Poor Calvin,” Cicely says.
”He's going to be crushed,” Alice adds.
Ruby chomps at a celery stalk. The crunching reverberates inside her skull, drowning out the chatter, for a moment.
”It hasn't been working out,” Ruby says, was.h.i.+ng down the celery with another gulp. ”I don't know what he's told you, but things between us-”
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