Cygnet Page 7

  “Be my guest—saves me having to do it.” When you have no idea what to say, and out of nowhere comes a little one-liner that makes everyone laugh, God should congratulate you. Not that it was even funny, really, but Suzie Q laughs her big-smile laugh and Johnny nudges Jason. It’s been ages since I’ve felt this relaxed.

  “’Atta girl.”

  But Johnny really just wants Jason to open up the box and get down to business. “Did you get any more of those nice Ecuadorian shrooms in?”

  “Didn’t manage it, but I’ve got some High Hawaiians I think you’ll like even better.” He pushes some baggies and brown plastic bottles aside and pulls out a brown paper bag. Johnny opens it quickly with his big, callused fingers and takes a whiff. His eyebrows do a little dance in time with his laugh.

  “Boy, I think you’re onto something with that!”

  Jason takes them through the whole selection—three strains of magic mushrooms, a vial of super-clean liquid LSD, smiley-faced ecstasy tablets, and little jewelry bags of MDMA crystals, tight origami wraps of coke, bottles of Adderall and Dexedrine, Viagra and Cialis he sells individually or buy-ten-get-one-free. They end up with an ounce of the High Hawaiians, half a dozen E pills, and twelve doses of LSD, which they drop onto blotter paper to keep in the freezer for a rainy day.

  Suzie starts laughing as she tries to get the next sentence out. “Last time we got a stash of the Hawaiians, remember that night, Johnny? We got so twisted we were convinced Helen got lost. Went over and rang the bell, popped into her and Nancy’s place and she wasn’t there. Went into the Relic and Rose’s and wasn’t there neither. Looking everywhere, brains all tangled in a tizzy. Spent an hour wandering the north side looking for her before we realized she was helping us look! Remember that, Helen tapping me and sayin’, ‘Suzie, who we lookin’ fer again?’”

  Johnny and Suzie wet themselves laughing (sorry, I shouldn’t say that; I just meant it like a figure of speech). While they’re busting their guts about the light side of memory loss, I remember I have something I meant to return.

  “Hey, Johnny.” It’s hard to get a word in, they’re still laughing so hard. I take the cassettes Johnny lent me out of my bag—six bootleg tapes in dirty plastic cases held together by a rubber band.

  “What’d ya think of them?”

  “Yeah, really good.” They’re bootlegs of old Grateful Dead shows. “I recognized some of the songs from stuff my parents used to play. But the sound quality . . . What, were you recording a show in a sandstorm?”

  I know that wasn’t exactly hilarious but I’m still surprised when no one laughs. I mean, they’re not exactly hard to please. “I only listened to them once ’cause it’s only going to get worse the more they get played.”

  Johnny gives a big duh eye roll and purses unimpressed lips through his facial hair.

  I’m confused. “So,” I go on, a little hesitant. “I digitized them for you. Check your email—you can store the tapes and play the MP3s now.”

  Everything I say seems like I’m announcing another Bush presidency.

  Johnny picks up the bundle of tapes and kind of points at me with them. “Every time I think you’re getting to be a down lady, you miss the point completely.”

  Everyone’s silence pools around me as Johnny’s meaning starts to sink in. That things are supposed to wear out, that it’s not a problem we have to solve, or a process that needs to be stopped in its tracks like something out of a commercial for wrinkle cream that makes looking like an old lady sound like the worst thing an old lady could ever do. Wearing out doesn’t mean something’s broken. It means it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing.

  And that’s how everything is here. Not that everyone feels like you have to grow old gracefully or whatever. Just that everyone’s allowed to do it their own way, but the fact is that they’re getting old—same as me, really. Rose always says that we’re all the same age because we’re all the oldest we’ve ever been. I think that’s her way of helping me not feel left out.

  “Well.” Suzie breaks the silence, hoisting herself up by the back of the seat. “Me and this mean ol’ grizzly best get tonight’s grub on the fire. Jason, you get home safe now, ya hear? Pack the smelly shit up tight. Don’t want no trouble with the Coast Guard.”

  “I will, Suzie. Thanks.”

  “And you, missy, you give that man o’ yers something to eat.”

  “Oh, she will . . .” Johnny does his stupid eyebrow dance and laughs at his own super-awesome joke.

  Gross.

  “Ignore him. Y’all mind how you go. Don’t do nothing what can’t be fixed with glue or a big ol’ smooch.”

  They walk us out, stand on the porch, and wave goodbye.

  Next stop is the Oceanic. Frances has an easel set up on the porch, painting the sunset. Which is appropriate because if you think about it, really good sunsets always look like really bad paintings of sunsets.

  I look out at the view as well. I think my mother’s hand is moving across the sea, smoothing it like a sheet, like my hair or my forehead. She’s thinking about me. Right now. I can feel her thinking about me.

  The medical setup here is pretty spontaneous, and Jason’s part of it. It’s not chaotic; the doctors and nurses just do what they think they need to do when situations arise. The equipment is sparse, used, ordered off the internet or obtained through connections in the last places they worked before Swan. Most of the pharmaceuticals come from the internet, ordered in bulk and sent to a shared post-office box in Portsmouth. And Jason’s the only non-Swan with a key.

  Gretchen and Jason hug and she starts talking to him right away, about one of the Swans who’s just come back from Boston and his final round of chemo. She doesn’t seem to have seen me. I know she has a thing for Jason. Whether they ever did anything, before I came or whatever, I never asked, and he never mentioned. Neither did Rose, and if anyone would have known, she would. Anyway, it’s none of my business. It’s not like he’s exactly my boyfriend. He’s more like a period, something that happens to my vagina once a month. No, that’s mean. I’m just trying to say I don’t feel possessive about him, that’s all. He’s a friend, an imaginary boyfriend at best. My life is way too fucked up for anything serious anyway, and he never, like, pops out to Swan for a visit. Obviously. But maybe this time he could stay. Just sleep over, I mean. If he feels like it. No big deal.

  “Mind the cat, dear,” Gretchen says to me out of nowhere. While I’m still trying to process what she said, I actually do trip over the cat and only just catch myself before my chin hits the floor. Gretchen and Jason help me up—it feels like being confused is making my body heavier, and it’s weird when something simple like getting up becomes a three-person job. Sexy, real sexy. Whenever Jason’s around I become the clumsiest person in town, which is saying something.

  It’s Germaine, the obnoxious little monster Joanna brought back from the Bad Place last month along with the new defibrillator machine. It looks like a toy tiger, almost cartoonishly orange with black stripes, and it turns to growl and hiss at me through its squashed face with one wet fang poking down out of one side of its mouth. They say that contact with an animal reduces blood pressure; I hope it works for the Wrinklies better than it has for me.

  Hit the nail on the head with the name; that cat’s a Germaine if I ever saw one. Luckily, before I asked why they didn’t get a kitten instead of Snaggle Tooth here, I realized exactly why. We don’t worship youth here, cuteness is not a virtue, inexperience isn’t an excuse, naivete is tedious. I almost tell the Rose-voice in my head, Yeah, yeah, I get it. Not a kitten. A cat.

  “You okay?” Jason asks.

  “Yeah. Just embarrassed.” I try to whisper so it can be between us, but it doesn’t work and Gretchen kind of giggle-coughs. At the doorway to her office, she takes the package of pills and potions Jason brought over, places it on her desk, and locks the door behind her. She’s really pretty.

  We climb the stairs and go past the Duchess’s room.
Clack, bleep, suck, drop.

  “How is she?” Jason asks.

  I start to answer but Gretchen gets there first. I guess he was actually talking to her, anyway. I mean, why would he ask me when her doctor’s standing right there?

  “Nothing from her for ages, I’m afraid. She hasn’t got long.”

  “I’m sorry.” He sounds like he really means it. And I know he does. That’s one of the things I love about Jason. He’d rather be silent than say some stupid bullshit he doesn’t mean, or ask a question he doesn’t care about the answer to just to make noise. Jason’s not afraid to be quiet.

  A couple of doors down from the Duchess is Ernie’s room.

  “Jason, my main man!” Ernie always calls him that.

  “What’s up, Ernie?” They do a complicated little dude handshake and Ernie pulls a newspaper off the table next to his window so Jason can put down his case and start the tour through this week’s selection.

  When I first met Jason, I suggested that it would make things easier if everyone just met at the Psychedeli to buy gear instead of making Jason do the whole circuit of Swan. But even all the way out here, the Wrinklies still think it makes sense to be discreet. And anyway, old people really like house calls.

  Ernie takes some Swan Silver for his glaucoma and Jason throws in a couple of mushrooms just to be sweet. Joanna says a bong hit’s the only thing that works for her bad back and her arthritic ankle. Louise just likes getting high and goes in for a range, from her cut of the island crop to the ethically murky South American blow. Then she asks what everyone else has picked up so far. When Jason tells her that Johnny and Suzie bought some E, she adds two hits to her order and starts sending Suzie a text message as soon as she’s said goodbye to us.

  Gretchen shows us out and says goodbye in this really head-tilty way, which I’m not sure is flirtatious or condescending, or maybe I should check my head and stop being so goddamn paranoid.

  Halfway down the steps, Jason gives the hand-holding a second attempt, sliding his palm against mine, lacing our fingers together, giving my hand a little squeeze. “Any luck?”

  He means finding my parents.

  “Tommy, the friend of theirs who said he’d ask around—I called him every day last week and yesterday he finally answered his fucking phone. Then it took me five minutes to explain who I was and what I was calling about. Then he was all, ‘Oh, right. You’re that kid. You wanted your parents to call you?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah,’ and he’s all, ‘I don’t have their number no more but I can ask around.’ Totally fucking forgot.”

  Jason makes a tsk noise and rolls his eyes.

  “But he gave me another of their friends’ cell-phone numbers. Mia. She was nice enough. Said she saw them about six months ago, trying to get the deposit together for an apartment in Pittsburgh.”

  “Why Pittsburgh?”

  “Got me.”

  Just then three blond Swans, Grace, Agata, and Ruth, pass by on their daily run. They’re the types that go all out, sports bras and spandex shorts and proper running shoes that look like they were designed by NASA. They wave and say hi to Jason and me and leave us in their dust.

  “Anyway, maybe if they’re trying to settle down somewhere, they’ll get in touch.”

  Jason stops and pulls me into a hug. He’s trying to comfort me. But something about it just makes it all hurt so much worse, and I catch my face starting to sting and I can’t let myself, I can’t let myself get started now, because if I do I’ll have another goddamn ocean gushing out of my face, and that’s the last thing I need.

  Sometimes when people hug you, it’s really sweaty, or your bodies don’t fit together very well and there’s something weird about the bend of your arm or where your shoulder has to go. But Jason is perfect; I mean, he’s not perfect. We are. We fit.

  I pull away. “I’m feeling pretty optimistic, actually. I don’t know—I just have a feeling they’re going to call. Soon.”

  “How long are you gonna wait?”

  “It’s not like they’d just leave me and never come back. They’ll call.”

  Jason doesn’t believe me. Not in a mean way. He just doesn’t pretend he knows that everything’s going to be fine.

  “I just can’t leave until I know they’re okay. If I split, they won’t know how to get in touch with me and I won’t have any way to contact them and then that’s it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I don’t want to talk about it anymore. “So, who’s left?”

  “Nick’s got a half O coming from the island yield.”

  “My fan club. Great.” I’d hate to see how uptight that guy would be without his ration of weed.

  “At least it’s on the way back to your place.”

  At least there’s that . . .

  Jason knows how Nick feels about me, so he doesn’t press me to go in with him. I settle in a patch of tall grass and woody daisies in what’s left of my backyard and wait for him. He joins me a few minutes later and takes a couple of beers out of his backpack, staring at the view with a skeptical look in his eyes. It’s a look that says he can tell something’s different but he can’t put his finger on it. He opens the bottles with his lighter, hands one to me, and then lights the joint he’s been keeping behind his ear.

  “How are things in Rye?” I ask him.

  “Bobby got locked up.” Bobby is Jason’s older brother.

  “Shit. How long for?”

  “Don’t know yet. Some dick must have snitched, ’cause they busted into his house just after he got a shipment in. Two kilos, uncut.”

  “God. I’m really sorry.”

  “It’ll be his first conviction, so it probably won’t be for too long.”

  We sit and sip our beers in silence for a while. Jason finishes his and opens another. The sky is changing color, like caramel cooking, moving from a pale, clear day into a sweeter, richer twilight. I lean against Jason’s chest and stare into the tall grass. The sound of the waves breathing mixes with the bugs and bees, the crickets and gulls. Jason finishes his second beer. I’ve forgotten about mine.

  “Should we go in?” He sounds shy. For some reason I find that really—I don’t know—exciting maybe. I lead the way around back and up the two steps to the kitchen door.

  “That step’s still broken.”

  “Yeah, I keep forgetting to have someone look at it.”

  People say weird things when they’re about to have sex. But it’s not like you can talk about what you’re about to do. The fact that you’re about to do pretty much the weirdest thing that people do can make everything seem really bizarre.

  Jason starts kissing me as soon as we’re through the kitchen door. I don’t know whether to call the kisses hard or soft—maybe they’re both, like a cock, like the way they make me ache and strain and gush in my underwear.

  I go into my room first and he follows but doesn’t close the door all the way, so I have to go back and push the door until it clicks. He looks at me as if to ask why, what’s the point, since no one is here. And I pretend not to notice.

  He takes his shirt off and then pulls my face to his with both hands. Right away I start to heat up. It’s amazing and really uncomfortable at the same time, like what I want is going to overwhelm me, make me lose my grip, lose control. Part of me starts to wish he would just leave.

  He puts his right hand under my shirt and cups my breast and kind of strokes my nipple with his thumb in this way that he does, with the perfect amount of pressure like some kind of nipple engineer. (Wait, what?) He starts moaning a little and I do too while we kiss, and it’s nice, like we’re singing to each other, some song only we can hear. Low and almost growly, like dinosaurs singing to each other. I don’t know what that means but that’s what it makes me think of. He’s hard now, and so am I, I guess, if that’s what you call it.

  Then he steps toward the bed and I step backward, and we start taking each other’s clothes off, unfastening belts and buttons, pulling down zippers, and tuggin
g on belt loops. As we finally collapse on the bed, instead of fumbling with the hooks on my bra, he pulls it up over my head intact. It’s uncomfortable and my boobs flop out in a super-not-glamorous way. It makes me wonder if he’s got a girl on the mainland with much smaller tits than mine. Not that I care. It’s not like I’m his girlfriend or anything. I have no right to be jealous, and I’m totally not.

  I scoot further onto the bed and we both pull down our underwear. Looking into his eyes is really just a way not to have to look at his hard-on, this weird, awkward thing.

  Jason’s kissing my breasts and I take the opportunity to reach into the bedside drawer and pull out a condom. I put it on him quickly and then I lean back for the moment when he . . . enters me. I read it put like that in a collection of erotic short stories a friend and I snuck down from her parents’ bookshelf when we were kids and now I can’t get it out of my head. Strange. Accurate, but too precise. Every time I have sex with some guy there’s always that moment when he enters me, like I’m a goddamn eighth-grade essay contest.

  I’m pretty worked up and he slips in easily, back and forth, building up friction, burning more and more. He sighs, like he’s never been more comfortable in his whole life. It’s this deep “h” noise and he makes a pretty stupid face with it. I realize I must be making stupid faces too; I try to soften my grimace into some kind of smile. I pull my head back, press my crown into the pillow. I love this. I love it. I match his “huhs” with “ahs.” When he goes deeper my voice gets higher, in volume and in pitch. Sometimes because I think I should, but sometimes it just comes out.

  He starts going faster and I brace my hips against the force. He seems to like it and lets his head down, kissing me, and we sing into each other’s mouth again, weird singing, fucking mammal dinosaurs. I try to bring my mind back. I’m here, fucking my imaginary boyfriend, and it’s amazing. He’s got a good cock. Not too big, but better than that one time when I went out with a jock. The first time we fooled around I found out why he’d chosen pole-vaulting instead of running track or doing the high jump or whatever. We were naked and, you know, just fooling around, and then I noticed this weird look on his face. It took me ages before I realized that he was fucking me. I mean, I couldn’t even tell. Just by the look on his face. But, like, he didn’t ask or anything, and I was so shocked that I didn’t know what to do. And just when I got it together in my head enough to tell him to stop—and keep in mind this is taking place over the course of seconds, like, three or four seconds—he pulled out and came on my stomach. I avoided him for a few days (mostly I just didn’t go to school) and then broke it off. We were too different. He was a jock, all set with a college scholarship and everything, and I was just the weird new girl who read books all the time and never talked to anyone. He shrugged it off but I could tell he was hurt. I had an abortion six weeks later. Hitting him up for his half of the money was just too much hassle. The first time of many I’ve blown all my savings on a pointless mistake.