JORDACHE AWOKE IN DANNY’S ARMS.
Morning light was streaming through the window. She didn’t remember falling asleep; it had sneaked up on her the way sleep did, taking her away to slumber like a thief in the night.
She remembered what had come before, though. That had crept up on them both, and although it had been something with its own momentum, Jordache had found herself letting go, finally letting it happen. She was hardly virginal by anyone’s definition, but with Danny, taking it slow — stalled traffic slow, so far — had felt prudent.
Men lost interest once they nabbed what they were after.
She rolled halfway, careful not to disturb Danny on the other half of the cramped, quasi-queen-sized bed in the tiny trailer bedroom. His always affable, usually laughing eyes were closed. Without them, he looked like a different person.
Great. Now you’ve really fucked up, Jordache told herself.
But then another voice inside said that she hadn’t fucked up at all. Another voice — a naive voice, certainly — seemed to think that maybe now, because of this, he’d be with her forever.
Jordache blinked. Sat up. She remembered she was naked but was amused to realize she’d left her socks on. They were little low-rise things that vanished inside sneakers, but somehow they’d survived her feet’s departure from those shoes. Survived the romp. Survived despite Danny’s tendency to mock people for things like … well … like having sex with their socks on.
She pulled on a huge shirt — one of Weasel’s, far too large even for his tall frame. She’d never noticed it before, but a distinct scent of Weasel struck her as the fabric slid into place. It was the difference between him and Danny that made her nose know it. Weasel had had a working man’s smell. Danny smelled more like soap and clean living. It wasn’t that either was good or bad. They were just different.
Jordache stood, wondering why the hell she was thinking about scents at all.
Probably latent regret. Probably her own baggage, sure that Danny would change like her ex had. Her brain was comparing one guy to the next, certain in its way that they were two links in a never-ending chain of meaningless encounters.
Probably her mind continuing to expand as it had been, too. It was so strange. She wanted to read more. She was more curious. Danny had talked a bit about that last night, oddly enough. They’d discussed “neuronal plasticity” — a phrase he almost seemed to have just picked up from a word-of-the-day calendar, given his careful enunciation. The discussion was almost a lecture, as if he’d just learned it and wanted to tell her how true it was. How the brain, if it had a good enough reason to do so, could adapt in ways that were practically mind-over-matter, no medical intervention required.
It’s not the drug. It’s your brain.
But Jordache had a hard time believing that. She knew what she felt. She also knew, throughout all of yesterday, what she’d feared. The panic of having to step down had only been compounded by Danny’s silence in response to her texts. But as things turned out, he’d only been playing. Refusing to respond so he could appear at her door and surprise her.
Dirty trick.
But it had worked. She’d been so happy and so in love with her eleventh-hour savior, she’d fucked his face off.
Jordache snickered at herself in the silent trailer. It was a crude way to put it — more defenses rising into place. There was no need for that now. She’d broken their stalemate by giving it up. Now it was up to Danny.
Jordache stood then padded lightly into the bathroom.
When she looked into the mirror, she saw Weasel standing in the shower behind her.
Jordache spun around so fast, she nearly fell. She stood with her back to the sink, chest heaving gigantic breaths, heart having gone from baseline to hummingbird in half a second.
The shower was empty. Of course. Weasel didn’t live here anymore. Technically speaking, Weasel didn’t even live anymore. He was either dead in the old way or dead in the new way, but definitely one or the other. She’d watched the clarifiers take him away. Once, obsessively watching Bobby Baltimore’s hunting show for a sign, she’d thought she’d seen him. Only once. But he was probably still out there somewhere, worse than deceased, shambling along as a ghost of himself.
Not in her shower.
Not influencing her ideas about Danny right now. Not planting subversive thoughts in her head. That was Jordache, and Jordache alone.
She turned back to the mirror, heart still racing. And of course the reflection behind her showed all clear.
Guilt. Not for Weasel’s sake, but all on her own.
You’re not a slut. You’ve known Danny for half a year. Six whole, sex-free months.
Jordache’s eyes closed, like a taunt. Opened. And of course, she was still alone in the bathroom.
Danny is a good man. He takes care of you. He might even love you. And he still will, even now, even after we crossed that last line.
Looking at the empty shower, where the second-long, early-morning, foggy-headed hallucination had been.
Weasel was a piece of shit, and I’m not sorry he’s dead. Or undead.
Weasel’s real name had been Quincy, which was why he’d taken on a nickname so eagerly, even as unflattering as it was. He drank hard and, like most of Jordache’s in-a-prior-life boyfriends, had good moments and bad. She’d spent much of their time together fucked up, lying on one floor or another, waiting for the room to stop spinning and start making sense. Sometimes, Weasel hit. Sometimes, he wanted to have sex, and Jordache didn’t precisely not want to but was too high to consent or refuse. In those cases, Weasel’s whims won more often than not.
After Weasel, Jordache’s appetite for mind-altering substances had left her. She’d finally found herself clean, sober, and (she thought) in with a good man. Things would be different, and thus far had been. She had her temper and her trailer, but with those skins shed, she could be someone else.
No more lost days.
No more bad boyfriends.
No more regrets.
She thought of Danny.
But instead of seeing Danny in her mind, she saw a tall man on a bluff somewhere full of rocks and dust, his hair blond, his frame wide, his eyes still blue, well past the point at which they should have decayed and fallen from his skull.