by Kayla Morse
In the car on the way to the restaurant, Rachel asked me what exactly we were--"were-were" she said, or rather "are-are"--and I said, "If you-you haven't decided that-that for yourself already, then I-I can't help you." What I'd wanted to say was, I know you've never coupled with this kind of genitalia before, but there are some things you're going to have to fucking figure out on your own, but I did not. I did not because there are some things she's going to have to fucking figure out on her own.
Rachel said, "Did you hear about Etienne?" Yes, yes, I told her, I had.
Rachel casually mentioned that her husband probably knew about us. "I sure hope he doesn't kill me before this is over," I said, and she laughed, picked up the phone I hadn't noticed was vibrating and said into it, "We're on our way."
Lance and Sylvianne were already at the restaurant and rose when we arrived. Lance kissed my hand and told me it'd been much too long. Sylvianne dropped her lids and gave me and Rachel a blank stare. "Oh, loves. Who has the drugs?"
The restaurant was one where the famous people are seated strategically and the maître d' can smell the hundreds of thousands you pull a year or the millions you were born with. I'm trying to say it was nice, rich people only.
Sylvianne dropped her lids and gave me a blank stare. "Oh, kid. Your dick hasn't changed as much as your hair, has it?"
I'd cut my hair because Rachel liked it better that way, shorter, so that she could see my ears.
"Have you heard about Elizabeth and Wiley?" Lance asked, sitting back down and placing his napkin in his lap like a poor person.
"No, we haven't," Rachel said.
She loved to answer for both of us. One of her "things." Perhaps she did it with her husband as well: We do.
I had heard about Elizabeth and Wiley. They were a mess. They'd gone to Dubai and holed up with some president-grade hookers and smoked something off and hadn't left their hotel room in a week and a half. The hookers were gone, but they were still there, taking lots of baths, I'd heard. Crying and ordering room service and throwing the food when they didn't recognize it.
"They're buying another apartment in the city. Apparently that merger served Wiley better than anticipated."
"What merger?" Rachel asked. Sylvianne laughed.
"Oh, silent one. Private contract. Happened last year."
Sylvianne put her head down on the table.
"Get the girl some drugs!" Lance cheersed Rachel.
I pushed a bag of assorted pills between Sylvianne's mouth and the tablecloth. Rachel didn't realize it, but her expression adjusted minimally as I did so. The muscles around her lips always tightened a few degrees when I touched other girls' mouths.
"Is this your rucksack?" Sylvi asked.
Lance was about to take a sip of wine when he pulled away his glass half a second from his lips and looked at me and Rachel. "Have you heard about Berlin and Nichols?"
Rachel said, "Yes, yes we have." She shrugged her shoulders and her mouth went with.
I hadn't heard, but now it was too late to ask.
Sylvianne loosed the contents of the rucksack onto her plate and began separating the pills out of the larger pile one by one, a pill of each color. She lined the colored ones up on her tongue into as much of a rainbow as she could muster and let the wine knock them to the back of her throat. I'd always thought she was sexy. Sometimes when she did more drugs than necessary all at once it made my dick hard.
James and Renee arrived. Renee was braless, wearing a sheer top and a black skirt. What Renee lacked in style she made up for in ribs shown. Renee sat down and took one of the yellow pills Sylvi had left on her plate.
"What to drink, what to drink," she said, opening the menu.
"Rachel, you look excellent," James said. I dropped my lids and gave James a blank stare.
"Have you heard about Sasha and Miro?" Renee asked, looking up. I had. Had Rachel? Rachel had not.
"Do tell," Rachel said.
Sylvianne slid one finger over the arc of my thigh, and gave Renee an expectant look. "Good news?"
"Depends who you talk to," Renee said, eyebrows arched, and she and James laughed.
"I wouldn't go that far," Renee said, eyebrow arched, and she and James shared a worn-down exhale. "Sasha had another abortion and Miro said she's done with her even though Sasha had the abortion for Miro because, god, you know how Miro feels about children and how Sasha feels about Miro."
Sylvianne sang, "Que mi-ro, mi-ro," and poured herself another glass.
Lance pressed his knife down against the center of his lip so that puffed bubbles of skin crowded the metal. He used the knife to point at James. "James. James James James. Whatever happened to that girl from the summer home?"
"Oh god, her." James leaned back in his chair. He looked at Renee, who cocked her head and smiled. Renee seemed to enjoy the short histories of summer homes, girls who turned with the leaves. "I'm sure someone at this table has a more interesting story to tell than the one I have about her," James said.
"Go on," Sylvianne said, tapping her fork against her cheek.
"I killed her," he said, and she laughed.
"I drugged her," he said, and she laughed.
"She took up painting," he said, and she laughed.
"What a marvelous girl," Sylvianne said. "Did you hear about Mitch and Trudy?" she asked. Renee, Lance, and I had. James and Rachel had not. "They don't exist! They simply don't. Not even a tiny little bit.," she said. This was true.
"I've begun seeing my ex-girlfriend's therapist," Lance said.
"Shauna?"
"Nikki."
"Emily?"
"Starla."
"Renee?"
"Dr. Gauld." He sighed and looked at a neighboring table. "It's strange, you know. He must know I'm withholding."
"They always know," said Sylvianne.
"Then what's the point?"
"Well, did you hear about Starla?" she asked.
"And Dr. Gauld?"
"And Dr. Laumans."
Sylvianne's eyes lost focus and her lids began their struggle. We could hear her brain behind them, cha-kunking upward like a noisy elevator in an old building, fueled by that window display of pills plop-plopping into her stomach acid, firing off baby alka-seltzer bubblettes. The fizz manifested itself in a burp and she was slow to laugh.
"I once had an analyst who could read my mind," Rachel said.
"Well that's no fun," James said.
"The sex was great, though."
The sex was great, though, I mouthed into the rim of my glass before swallowing. Sylvianne burped again.
"Oh god, don't look now. Behind you," Lance averted his eyes from Renee, "At one o'clock, no, midnight--"
"Noon," James said, hiding his face in his menu.
"Noon o'clock. It's Nichols."
"You weren't even in the Cold War," Sylvianne said, taking another sip of wine, spilling a little onto her plate.
"What's she wearing?" Rachel ducked low to the table, catlike with elbows bent and spine sloped.
"She wouldn't come over here," I said, hopeful.
"She is--Fuck! She's coming over. Oh, goddamnit." Renee pressed her nose to the wine list.
"Why would--"
"Well look who it is," Nichols said, tapping the stitches on the left corner of her mouth with a couple of red fingernails, the five on her other hand wrapped around the back of Sylvianne's seat. "Hey, lover." She kissed James on the mouth.
"Hello," James said--an attempt to be both sensual and indifferent. I saw cool desperation. "Who are you with?"
"Who am I with? That's always the question." She laughed. "Who are you with?"
"Friends."
"And this?" She tapped a red nail against Sylvianne's back.
"A tranny I picked up on the West side."
Sylvianne tried to lower her lids but her eyeballs up and disappeared.
"I'm with Etienne," Nichols said. She smiled at me, closed-mouth. I felt a stitch burst somewhere on my insides. "That is who I'm with."
I looked past her to their table, which was empty.
Sylvianne's head dropped back against the space between Nichols' ribs. She fit, for a moment, perfectly, until she lolled to one side and lost the groove.
Nichols pulled Sylvi's head up by the bangs so that it hung slack in the middle and taut at the ends like a hammock. "I'm not sure this one is breathing anymore."
Sylvianne's eyelids twitched in an unsuccessful attempt to reopen.
"Sometimes I ride the subway without makeup for fun."
Nichols pulled Sylvi's head back by the bangs--
"I'm fine. FINE."
Nichols pulled Sylvi's head back by the bangs--
Her forehead was full of sweat, eyelids straining against grip and gravity. Nichols set Sylvi's head down on the appetizer plate.
"She's fine. FINE," Renee said. Nichols looked at me again and smiled. Once, after we'd had sex, I sat on the toilet for 10 minutes discovering each slivery clump of flesh tucked under my fingernails, marveling.
"Have you heard about Sophie and Ellis?" Nichols asked.
"Isn't Sophie sober now?" I asked.
"What does that mean?" Renee asked.
"Only over the counter."
"What about Ellis?" James asked.
Nichols looked around the restaurant. "You never know who's in these places. Ellis is out of the country. His father got him out. He killed a boy, some teenage party promoter. Very messy."
"How'd he kill him?" Lance looked skeptical.
"A number of blunt objects. A bust of Benjamin Franklin among them."
Lance stared at her for a moment after she finished speaking. "Nichols, you look different."
"I got my eyelashes extended," she said. "Makes a world of difference. And you'd think telling people about it would diminish it, but no. Eyes listen so much more closely than ears."
"I want red wine, right?" Renee asked James.
"Stop by, come say hi to Etienne." Nichols hip-swiveled her way back to her table in an effort to avoid the swarm of chairs and purses, seat backs and handbags.
Sylvianne stayed on the appetizer plate.
"I'm surprised she's out in public," Lance said, gesturing towards Nichols' table. We turned our heads to get another look at her ass but she had disappeared and the table remained empty.
"Did she look good?" James asked, depressingly earnest.
Renee cocked her head at him. I inhaled to bury the comment I'd been on the verge of making. Of course she looked good, but the restorative surgery must've drawn lines we couldn't see.
"It is what it is," Lance said into his menu.
Big purple ones that ran ragged beneath her red dress.
"Guess who I saw at 99 last night?" Rachel said. Rachel, who had told me she would be with her husband all evening.
"Who?" James asked.
"Courtney." She dropped the word and let it sit on the table. Renee gasped.
"Courtney?" Lance repeated.
"Courtney," she said, again dropping it and letting it sit.
"How'd she look?" James asked.
Rachel was enjoying this. Perhaps she had gone to 99 without me just so that she might have this dinner moment of spotlight gossip. She waited a moment. She raised her eyebrows. She looked at Renee, then at James. A bit of yellowy foam slid out of Sylvianne's mouth and pooled onto her plate.
"Great. She looked great."
"No kidding."
"Yup."
With her information released, gobbled, Rachel's power deflated. She had a sip of wine, adjusted her hemline. Courtney--she was old news. Oh yeah, Courtney? Rachel saw her at 99 last night, last week. Rachel, at 99, all alone. The sex was great, though. What's next? What are we ordering? How was the sex? Has anyone else considered the thick, knotted scar tissue beneath Nichols' Herve Leger?
I realized I'd been talking out loud. For a moment, the table quiet like a storm surge. Renee smiled. --Did you hear about Rachel and Sidney? Abrupt. Ball of flames. Everyone stopped and stared. And there was a dead girl on the plate next to them the whole time! Etienne saw it all. I know.--
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