Buzzy picked up Anna from the airport when she flew home for Christmas break. He waited in the brown four-door sedan in front of the terminal. When Anna approached the car, she could tell her father didn’t recognize her at first. She was thinner than she’d been last summer, and she had a row of hoops running up the side of one ear.
“Get in!” he shouted. All the windows were down. It was December 5 and about seventy degrees outside.
Anna rolled her eyes, opened the back door, and shoved her giant suitcase on top of the newspapers and the empty shopping bag that sat on the seat. She slammed the door shut and got in the front seat. Her father was so erratic—one day smothering her with affection and then today yelling at her to get in the car when the last time he had seen her was the middle of August. Not that she missed his hugs and kisses. They were over-the-top, in her opinion.
“I have a shrink appointment in ten minutes,” Buzzy said, and he roared away from the curb.
“Then why didn’t Mom pick me up?” Anna asked.
“She’s locked in her studio. She wouldn’t open up for me.”
“Are you in a fight?” Anna asked. If they were fighting, she’d rather not be home.
“No, we’re getting along fine. She’s busy. Trying to finish some series of something . . . I don’t know if it’s etchings or poems.”
“Is Portia home?”
“She’s on her way.”
“Where’s Emery?”
Buzzy shrugged, changed lanes, and cut someone off.
“That guy’s honking at you,” Anna said. She put her hand against her right cheek so the angry driver wouldn’t see her. She was embarrassed to be in her father’s dirty, swerving car.
“He’s not honking at me!” Buzzy adjusted the rearview mirror and looked in it. “There’s no one even back there.”
“He’s fucking next to us, Dad!” Anna slunk down low in the seat. Buzzy ignored her and zoomed on.
At the house, Buzzy kept the car running while Anna tugged her suitcase out of the backseat. He opened his door, ran around the front of the car, and gave Anna kisses all over her head.
“I’m glad to have you home, sweetheart,” Buzzy said. “I’ll see you when I get back from the shrink.” Buzzy got back in the car and sped away.
When Anna walked into the house, the lights were off and the orange, nubby curtains were drawn.
“Hellooooo,” she called out. The house was still as air.
Anna stepped past the piles of shoes and books on the stairway and went up to her room. She had the eerie feeling of being in the wrong house. The mod, striped wallpaper Anna had picked out at nine years old remained, but everything else that signified her was gone.
Buzzy’s leather armchair was in the corner where Anna’s blue beanbag chair and record player used to sit. On the bed (no bedspread, only a single white sheet) were stacks and piles of papers and books. The desk held more of the same. The bulletin board over the desk had notices and receipts having nothing to do with Anna.
The room smelled of Buzzy—distinct and profound as any animal smell, musky but clean. Buzzy had taken over Anna’s room.
She had been erased.
Anna went to her sister’s room and saw that it was now Emery’s junked-up room with Portia’s old pink-flowered wallpaper on the uncovered bits of wall. Her sister’s pink desk was pushed in a corner and Anna’s blue beanbag chair sat beside Emery’s dark oak bunk bed. Taped to the walls were maps of Disneyland and Magic Mountain—there was even a map taped on the ceiling over the bed. Along the floor, Emery had lined up his shoes according to height (high-tops to flip-flops) and color (darkest to lightest). It seemed that Emery had tried to create some order within the mishmash. He was searching for an aesthetic, although Anna didn’t think he had quite found it yet.
Downstairs, in the room that used to belong to Emery, was Portia’s bed, properly made up, and the cot that Bubbe and Zeyde had used. (The kids had been told that Bubbe and Zeyde’s annual December trip had been rescheduled for summer, as Louise couldn’t take the sudden accumulation of so many people.) Anna’s old, fuzzy white blanket and patchwork bedspread were folded on the cot with a pile of mismatched sheets from various years. Lined against the wall were cardboard grocery boxes, each with Buzzy’s nearly illegible scrawl on the sides: “Anna’s Stuff” or “Portia’s Stuff.” There was also a giant open crate, like a miniature boxcar from a train, filled with toys and stuffed animals that Emery had given up. Sticking out of the top of the crate was Emery’s sock monkey, Laird. He had loved Laird, carried him everywhere, sucked on his foot. Anna poked at Laird with the toe of her boot. He was brown and shiny, filthy. She couldn’t believe anyone would actually save a thing like Laird.
The room felt small: the two beds, the numerous boxes, and the circus animal wallpaper were closing in on Anna. She noticed that Emery had drawn on the wallpaper animals, giving black ink penises to some, and hanging-nippled breasts to others. The elephant had the biggest penis of all, dragging on the ground like a fifth leg.
“This is disgusting,” Anna said. Like her mother, she was prone to speak aloud to herself. Anna left the room and retrieved her suitcase from the entrance hall. She hauled the luggage into Emery’s old room and plopped it in the middle of Portia’s bed. There was no way she was going to sleep on the cot.
The front door banged open.
“Hello?!” Anna called out.
“Me!” Portia said, and Anna rolled her eyes. How was it possible that her sister was so happy all the time, even when surrounded by the muck and mire of their home and their parents?
“Anna?!” Portia called.
“In Emery’s room!” Anna said.
Portia popped open the door and looked in.
“Dad took over my room as a second office and Emery moved into your room.”
“Really?” Portia asked.
“Really.”
“I’ve only been gone three months!”
“We’re out now,” Anna said. “We’re like Bubbe and Zeyde visiting.”
Portia looked down at the bed and the cot pushed side by side against the wall.
“It’s like we’re in a dorm!” Portia said, and she stepped in and threw her backpack onto the cot. Anna couldn’t understand why her sister wasn’t distressed by their sudden, intense proximity. They had rarely spoken since Anna went away to college. Only recently had the girls been exchanging letters. Anna’s letters were usually cartoon strips with drawings of the people sitting around her in the cafeteria eating, or of a group gathered in a closet-sized room passing around a bong. She would write single-sentence captions underneath, things like, “This guy and I made out one night after doing shots at some alky-towny bar near school.” Portia’s letters rarely had drawings, and were mostly detailed character descriptions about her housemates, classmates, and the people she met at the café at the end of her block. Anna’s favorite letter from Portia detailed her friendship with the bearded quadriplegic who spoke by banging the pointer strapped to his head onto a lettered Ouija-like board that straddled the arms of his wheelchair. It turned out he directed porn movies and he spent fifteen minutes one day banging out, “Will you star in one of my films? You’d only have to have sex with my wife and me. And maybe some of her friends.”
But with all the details, the minutiae the two girls revealed, they rarely actually talked about themselves. Portia was, in a way, a stranger to Anna; Anna could only think of her sister in memory: daffy Sally, from Peanuts, or Pigpen, the slob, who would sit on the floor of the family room watching TV and making the most infuriating popping sounds when she breathed. Anna walked to her sister and gave her a quick hug.
“Where are Mom and Dad?” Portia asked, and as if on cue, the girls heard their mother’s wooden clogs tapping against the kitchen floor.
Louise was tending to the dinner she had set to simmer hours earlier.
“Hey, Mom!” Portia said, and she went to her mother and hugged her for a long time. Louise rocked her daughter back and forth, as if she were a little girl, then pulled Portia away and kissed her on the forehead. Of course their mother would kiss Portia first, Anna thought.
“I missed you!” Louise said.
“Did you miss me?” Anna said, and she approached for her hug.
“Of course,” Louise said.
“No, you didn’t. You only missed Portia.” Anna smiled. She figured she better at least act like she was joking.
“Yeah, Mom only missed me!” Portia said, and Louise laughed.
“Come to the store with me,” Anna said, to Portia. She had to get out. Just being in the house made Anna’s mind feel as cluttered and muddled as the kitchen counter.
Anna picked up Louise’s car keys that were sitting on the counter.
“What do you need?” Louise asked.
“Tampons,” Anna said.
“Use mine,” Louise said, and she lifted a spoon to her mouth and slurped the steamy gravy from the pot roast she was making.
“Yours are too big,” Anna said.
“You’ve got a big vagina, Mom,” Portia said, and Louise and Anna laughed.
“Portia, come with me. Mom, I’m borrowing the car.” Anna headed down the hallway toward the front door as Emery came running in.
“Hey!” he said, and he leaned in and hugged Anna. Emery had grown about six inches since she had seen him last. Anna thought he smelled like moldy bread. Louise had written Anna a letter that chronicled Emery’s current interest in taking a pitchfork, standing on the hill-sized compost pile Buzzy had fenced off with redwood planks, and turning the fusty, steamy pile. Maybe this accounted for his smell.
“Emery!” Portia said, and she ran down the hall and grabbed her brother.
“Portia, let’s go. Now. Emery, we’ll see you when we get back.” Portia was slow in everything she did: she moved slowly, walked slowly, said hello slowly. If Anna didn’t push her sister out the door this second, she’d never get her out.
“Can I come?” Emery followed Anna.
“No!” Anna said.
“Take your brother!” Louise shouted, from the kitchen.
Anna was practically running toward the blue station wagon in the driveway. Emery and Portia followed her, jumping into the car as if they were making a getaway.
“Listen,” Anna said, and she tilted the rearview mirror so she could see Emery in the backseat. He was skinnier with his new height, and his voice was starting to crack.
“Listen what?” Emery asked. He scooted up and put his hands on the back of the bench seat. The rims under his fingernails were black as tar.
“Whatever you see me and Portia do, you are not allowed to report to Mom and Dad. Get it?”
“What are you going to do? Rob a bank?”
“Yeah,” Portia said, “what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know what we’re going to do. I mean anything. Anything I do or say cannot be reported back to Mom and Dad.”
“Are you doing drugs?” Emery asked.
“Noble Citizen wants to know if you’re doing drugs?” Portia asked, and she alone laughed. She knew from the letters Anna sent that she was at least doing some kind of drug on occasion.
“Portia, reach into my purse and get me a cigarette, will you?” Anna could hear Louise’s voice in herself when she said that.
Emery jumped in his seat. “YOU SMOKE!?”
Portia handed her sister a cigarette and a lighter, then stuck a cigarette in her mouth, too.
“NO WAY!” Emery said. “You smoke, too?!”
“You smoke?” Anna asked.
“I thought I’d try it during finals a couple weeks ago,” Portia said, “and then this really hot boy told me it looked sexy, so . . .” She lit her cigarette.
“You’re smoking because a boy thought it was sexy?!” Emery said. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
He was right, Anna thought, but Portia was dumb in just that way.
“I’m smoking so I don’t eat and barf,” Anna said. “But I seem to be drinking more calories than ever, so it sort of evens out.”
“You drink alcohol?!” Emery said.
“You eat and barf?!” Portia asked.
“I’m twenty-fucking-one now!” Anna shouted.
“But eat and barf.”
“Everyone at Bennington does it. We keep a big black Hefty bag in our room and barf in it.”
“Your roommate barfs with you?!”
“It’s no fucking big deal! And anyway, I told you, the smoking helps me not do it!” Portia was such an alarmist, Anna thought. Everyone at Bennington was doing everything: freebasing cocaine, barfing, cutting themselves with razors. Why did Portia have to act like there was something wrong with all this? This was college. Shit happens.
“Fine!” Portia said.
“Fine really? Or fine, and now you’re going to run home and tell Mom and Dad that I’m barfing?”
“If it’s no big deal to you it’s no big deal to me,” Portia said.
“But it is a big deal!” Emery said.
“You can think it’s a big deal, but don’t say anything about it, okay?” Anna asked.
“Okay,” Emery said, and he bounced back against his seat. Anna glared at Emery in the rearview mirror until she was sure he would submit.
Anna drove past the grocery store and the drugstore.
“I thought you needed tampons,” Portia said.
“I needed a cigarette,” Anna said. “And now I need a drink.”
“It’s five o’clock in the afternoon!” Emery said. “And Portia’s not twenty-one. And I turned fourteen only two days ago.”
“Happy birthday to you . . .” Anna started singing and then Portia joined in. They were laughing and singing so enthusiastically that Anna almost missed the turn for Jasper’s Saloon. She had to slam the brakes and skid into the driveway.
“Do you have a fake ID?” Anna asked. Portia nodded but she looked nervous, like she was carrying some Girl Scout ID that might not work.
“Do you have a California driver’s license?” Portia asked.
“No, a Vermont one.” Anna turned off the car, pulled up the emergency break, and tapped an ash out the window.
“Cool,” Portia said.
“But before I turned twenty-one, I had an Alaska driver’s license. They sell them at the back of this restaurant in Chinatown.”
“Chinatown?” Emery asked. “There’s a Chinatown in Vermont?”
“There are Chinatowns everywhere!” Portia said to her brother. “Even Vermont.”
“There’s no Chinatown in Vermont!” Anna said. “There aren’t any Chinese people in that state. Just snow and white people and some Canadians with French-sounding names.” Anna got out of the car. Emery and Portia got out, too. No one locked their door.
“Well, then where’d you get the fake ID?” Portia asked.
“Chinatown, New York,” Anna said. “My friends and I have been taking the train there since freshman year.”
“You never told me that,” Portia said.
“You never asked.” Anna heaved open the heavy wooden door of Jasper’s. From the outside, the bar had always reminded Anna of Noah’s arc: it was built with horizontal slats of shellacked wood, like an old boat. Neither she nor Portia had ever been inside.
Jasper’s was long, narrow, and as dark as a closet. Against one wall was the bar with wooden stools against it. The other side of the room had a row of two-seat tables. No one was at the tables. A smattering of men in plaid work shirts and a couple of coifed smoky ladies sat at the bar. Emery tugged Portia’s arm anxiously.
“I’m too young to be in a bar,” he pleaded.
“We’ll pretend you’re a midget,” Portia said.
The girls sat at stools and Emery stood half-hidden between them.
“Sit down!” Anna snapped at her brother.
“No!” Emery hissed, then whispered, “I don’t want the bartender to see me, and if the police come in, I want to be ready to run.” Anna and Portia cracked up.
The bartender was younger than Buzzy and Louise but older than Anna and Portia. He was appealing in that he had even, smooth features and hair that looked streaked from the sun. He leaned toward the girls across the bar and raised his eyebrows.
“Whiskey sour,” Anna said.
“I’ll have the same,” Portia said. The man turned his back to them as he fixed the drinks.
“What’s a whiskey sour?” Emery asked.
“No idea,” Portia said.
“It’s good,” Anna said. “You can share Portia’s with her.”
“I’m not drinking!” Emery said.
“IDs,” the man said. He slid the two drinks in front of the girls, then reached out a sturdy, veined forearm.
Portia pulled her license from her wallet. Anna whipped her license out from her back pocket.
“Anna Stein and Anna Stein,” he said, looking from one ID to the other. Anna looked at Portia with hard, fast eyes.
“We’re twins,” Portia said, smiling.
The bartender winked, handed back the IDs, and went to the end of the bar to help an old woman who was singing “Funny Valentine.”
“Twins wouldn’t have the same name!” Emery whispered. It was clear he was disgusted with Portia’s lack of insight into this matter.
Anna grabbed the driver’s license.
“What the fuck?” she asked. “How’d you get a real driver’s license?” She was both angry and impressed. A genuine matte, ribbed California driver’s license was so much more masterly than a plastic Alaska license that looked like the IDs you get when you drive a go-kart.
“I used your birth certificate.” Portia took the license back and shoved it in her wallet as if she expected Anna to confiscate it. “Mom sent it to me accidentally when she sent my passport and a bunch of other papers.”
“Do you realize how many laws you’re breaking?!” Emery asked. Anna and Portia looked at Emery and laughed.
“He’s like the cartoon angel that sits on the guy’s shoulder and tells the guy not to do the bad thing,” Portia said.
“Yeah,” Anna said. “Exactly! Except he needs a little devil-red twin who will tell us to go ahead and do it.” Anna took a sip of her drink. She thought that she was her own who-gives-a-fuck devil. The good angel inside her was an anorexic waif who was too weak to give a voice to anything. That was fine with her. Life was more fun that way. Easier.
Anna huffed as she pulled over the station wagon on the way home from Jasper’s so Portia could vomit. Why did her sister have to be such a lightweight? Louise always said that Portia had a “delicate system.” What kind of bullshit was a delicate system?! Anna thought the girl simply needed to build up tolerance, be braver, buck up. She needed to be more like Otto and Billie and less like Bubbe and Zeyde.
“I think I’m allergic!” Portia yelled as she ran to the soft, plush grass and leaned into the bougainvillea bushes along the front walk of the Smyths’ house. Emery crawled out of the car and stood behind Portia, his dirty little paw rubbing her back. No one was worried about the Smyths’ finding Portia barfing on their lawn. It was clear they were gone for Christmas—there were no cars out and the curtains were closed. The house looked dead.
“Hurry up!” Anna shouted out the window. “Mom’s going to freak if we’re not back in time for dinner.” She wasn’t really worried about their mother, but she was tired of waiting for the lightweight to heave up her drinks.
Portia stumbled to the car. She looked deflated and soiled. Emery opened the door for her, helped her get in, then climbed over her lap and did a flip into the back seat. He was too big for the move, legs and tennis shoes banging against the ceiling.
“You okay?” Emery asked. Anna looked in the mirror at her brother’s tiny face. With his crinkled brow, she could imagine him a grown man with worries.
“Yeah, it’s no big deal,” Portia said.
“I can’t believe you’re barfing from three drinks! What’s wrong with you?” Anna jerked the car backwards out of the driveway.
“I dunno,” Portia said. “That’s what happens every single time I drink.”
“Then WHY do you drink?!” Emery asked. “If I threw up every time I drank Tang, I would stop drinking Tang!”
“But drinking’s fun!” Anna said, and she reached for her purse on Portia’s lap, swerving the car, as she tried to get her cigarettes.
“Watch the road!” Emery shouted.
“Hey, Father Junior,” Anna said, “don’t worry about the road. We’ll be fine!”
Portia took the cigarettes from Anna, pulled out two, and lit them both before handing her sister one.
“This cigarette makes me feel like I have to vomit again,” Portia groaned.
“THEN PUT IT OUT!” Emery said. His eyes were as big and round as his mouth. It was clear he had never before witnessed such imbecilic behavior.
“But I really like smoking,” Portia said, and she laughed and coughed at the same time.
“You know what the best thing is about being in Santa Barbara?” Anna asked.
“The ocean,” Emery said.
“All the hot surfer guys,” Portia said.
“No, dumbasses!” Anna drove half-way up on the curb as she aimed for the driveway. “Oops,” she said. She put the car in reverse and tried landing it once again.
“What’s the best thing about being in Santa Barbara?” Emery asked.
“This town is so fucking small, no matter where you’re drinking, you’re always drinking closer to home.” She pushed down the emergency brake with her foot and cut the engine.
“I guess Otto would be happy here,” Emery said.
“Nah,” Portia said. “Otto wouldn’t be happy here. Too many freaks and weirdos, remember?”
The girls stubbed out their cigarettes in the open car ashtray that was heaped with cigarette butts and ash. Most of the butts had a blot of red on them from Louise’s lipstick. Portia tucked her butt under others so that it wouldn’t be the one to fall off the pile. Anna set hers down and watched as it toppled two other butts onto the floor in front of Portia’s feet. They both stared down at the butts and saw that there were plenty others down there, along with gum wrappers and a balled-up oily paper wrap from a McDonald’s run.
“I hope Mom doesn’t notice that there are a couple of Marlboro butts in with her Camel butts,” Portia said.
“Mom’s such a slob,” Anna said. When she owned a car, there would never be so much as a cellophane wrapper from a pack of gum on the floor.
“Yeah,” Portia said. “You know, I keep my room clean in Berkeley. It’s weird. I’m, like, the cleanest person in my house.”
“Everyone who comes from a messy house becomes clean when they go away to college.” Anna declared this as if she’d already thought it through, had had the conversation a thousand times with a thousand different people, when in fact such insight had only come to her now.
“Does that mean you’re messy now?” Emery asked.
“No. Clean people are always clean people.” Anna got out of the car and shut the door. “But people who come from messy houses are so relieved not to have to deal with other people’s messes that they become clean people. It’s true. I swear.”
As they were walking toward the house, Anna grabbed Emery by the neck of his T-shirt and pulled him toward her.
“Listen, Father Junior,” she said. “Everything we just did is our secret, right?”
“Got it!” Emery said, and he squirmed out of her arms and ran ahead into the house.
“Do you think he’s gay?” Portia asked, and she steadied herself by clutching Anna’s forearm.
“Emery?” Anna tugged her arm away. Everyone in the family touched her too much.
“Yeah. I just get this weird feeling that he’s gay. I don’t know why.”
“He probably is. He did draw penises all over the wallpaper in his room.” Anna opened the front door and rushed inside with Portia stumbling somewhere behind her.
Louise was carrying the pot roast to the dining room table, a cigarette dangling in her mouth. Anna grabbed a trivet from the kitchen, then placed it on the table as her mother waited. The ash from Louise’s cigarette dropped into the pot, melting into the sauce. Louise put down the pot, stuck her finger in where the ash had landed, and quickly swirled it until it had thoroughly dissolved.
“It’s like pepper,” she said.
Anna tried to keep track of where the ash swirl was in the pan. Portia walked into the room, stood beside her sister, and stared into the pan.
“Don’t have a shit fit,” Louise said.
“Who shouldn’t have a shit fit?” Portia asked.
“Your sister! Who has all the shit fits around here?”
“You have shit fits, Mom,” Anna said.
“Why do you think Anna’s going to have a shit fit right now?” Portia looked at her sister. Anna thought Portia’s eyes looked funny, wobbly, and wet.
“She dropped ash into the pot roast,” Anna said. She tilted her head as she tried to remember the ash spot.
“I think Father Junior might have a shit fit over that,” Portia said.
Louise laughed. “Father Junior? Is that his new name?”
“He’s one uptight little poindexter,” Anna said.
“Well, at least he’s over the pot thing,” Louise said.
“So Emery’s hitting the bong now?” Anna grinned. She figured he’d probably die an old man, never having tried pot.
“Of course not!” Louise said. “But he’s fine with the plants in the backyard and he doesn’t leave the room when I’m getting high.”
“What about when you’re shooting up, Mom? Or freebasing?” Portia asked.
“Oh, please!” Louise tittered. Anna looked at her mother’s face, her long center-parted hair hanging in front of her shoulders, and thought it wasn’t hard to imagine her shooting up.
Anna saw herself and Portia as cartoon characters: Anna spinning up dust like the Road Runner as she whirred around Portia, the slow moving, overly mellow Dumbo. As Portia cleared the table, Anna did the dinner dishes, cleaned the stovetop, cleaned the sink, ran the garbage disposal, and took out the trash. Then she asked her mother for the keys again.
“Where are you going?” Louise was lying on the couch, a New Yorker magazine in one hand, a tightly rolled joint in the other. Buzzy had the ironing board out and was watching the news as he ironed a pile of dress shirts. Emery was kneeling on the floor with a giant pad of paper covering the coffee table in front of him. He had an open flat of colored pencils and was drawing a roller coaster that did loops, traveled backwards, and shuffled from side to side. He had shown his sisters the drawing earlier, and had also shown them the thirty or so other roller coasters he had designed.
“We’re going downtown,” Anna said. “Portia’s going to meet up with her friends and I’m meeting up with Alice.” Neither Portia nor Anna had called their friends since they got home. Anna’s impulse was to lie even when it was unnecessary.
“Okay. Don’t stay out too late.”
Anna picked up the keys and Portia started to follow her, then looked back and yelled, “Bye!”
“Where’re you going?” Buzzy asked, as if he had only then noticed his daughters.
“OUT!” Anna yelled.
“To meet friends,” Portia said. She tugged on her sister’s shirt to slow her down. Anna stopped for a second, then pulled away.
“Don’t stay out too late,” Buzzy called after the girls.
Anna drove to Flapper Alley, a disco on State Street near the beach. She parked by the railroad tracks, next to the only gay bar in town.
Portia was wearing lizard-skin pumps she had found in her mother’s closet with a button-down dress shirt, taken from her father’s closet, as a dress. Her sleeves were rolled up, her legs were bare. Anna was already sick of hearing her complain about being cold.
“Hurry,” Anna said, and she took her sister’s hand and pulled her along the dark, gravelly alley. Anna was wearing lace-up flat black boots that looked almost like boxers’ boots, black silk boxer shorts, and a lace camisole top. She looked over at her sister and realized that Portia, with her three-inch pumps, appeared much bigger than she. People often commented on how small Anna was, but she never saw herself that way. She felt enormous: a high-speed giant whirring through a world of lumbering dwarves. She did notice that most people, once they knew her for a while, forgot she was small. This was especially true after her breasts grew in.
When they got to the line up at the door, Anna put Portia at the back, then cut two people ahead, lessening the chance that the repeated name would be noticed. Her plan worked, and they met up again at the long, open stairway up to the bar. It was so crowded inside, you had to move up the steps and through the room sideways, choosing whom you’d brush against as you walked past.
“Do you have money?” Anna had to shout in her sister’s ear to be heard over the throbbing music. “I spent all mine at Jasper’s.”
“This is all I have for my entire Christmas break.” Portia pulled a twenty-dollar bill from her breast pocket and handed it to Anna.
Anna wormed her way toward the bar, checking out everyone near her on the way. The men seemed fully grown, filled out, confident. Her eyes lingered on the ones who stared. It was like clicking through a file cabinet looking for exactly the right thing. Anna could sense Portia behind her like a tucked tail.
“Don’t leave me alone here,” Portia said, and Anna pretended not to hear.
At the bar, Anna handed Portia a milkshake-sized glass filled with icy pink-and-yellow swirled slush. “It’s a zombie,” she said. “About seven kinds of liquor in there and enough shots to make you trashed after only one.”
Portia took a sip, then pulled her head back as if she’d been shocked. Anna took the straw out of her own drink, tossed it to the ground, and chugged from the side of the glass.
“Don’t barf,” she said, when she paused for air.
“I’ll try not to.” Portia slurped up tiny bits of the drink. Anna suspected she was letting it slide down the straw and not really drinking it.
“Are you drunk already?” Anna asked, smiling, leering.
“No. But I can feel it already. It’s like a buzzing, fluorescent light’s been turned on in my head.”
“Let’s dance,” Anna said.
The last time Anna saw Portia, she was being twirled by a smooth-dancing guy on the dance floor. Anna watched as each spin pulled her sister in closer and closer. But then she stopped looking because she couldn’t turn her head away from the tall, skinny, surfer dude who was whispering in her own ear.
The next time Anna saw Portia was when she and the skinny dude pushed the bathroom stall door open to find Portia barfing up clean, virtually odorless Slurpee-looking foam into the bathroom sink.
Another stall door popped open and a girl the size of a radio antenna walked out wearing strappy high heels and a flirty dress.
“Gross,” she said, and she left without washing her hands.
Portia remained hunched over the sink. She appeared to be waiting to see if more would come out.
“What the fuck?” Anna said. The girls looked at each other in the mirror. Anna thought that if she weren’t so fucked up, she might be embarrassed by Portia. But now, Anna felt sorry for her. Poor Portia was a boneless blob of a human: couldn’t drink, walked at the speed of melting glass, talked in the slow drawl of a surfer who’d smoked a blunt.
“I got sick,” Portia said.
“I don’t know what her problem is,” Anna said, and she wiped her nose with her palm.
“Coke?” the guy asked, and he held out a vial toward the back of Portia’s head.
“Nobody barfs from coke,” Anna said, and she laughed.
“I know,” Portia said. “But I don’t like coke. It makes my heart beat in my stomach and I feel like I’m getting electric shocks in my jaw.”
Portia turned on the faucet to wash the vomit down the drain. Once it was gone, she rinsed her hands and washed her mouth out, gargling. Anna turned her face to the tall surfer and they made out against the open stall door. Whoever was in the third stall wasn’t coming out—a pair of scuffed black pumps sat in view under the door waiting, watching, still.
“Here,” the guy said when Portia turned around. He lifted a tiny spoon from the vial and held it under her nostril.
“I don’t like it,” Portia said.
“Come on!” Anna said. “Don’t be such a lightweight!”
Portia leaned her head down and took it up one nostril. The guy dipped the spoon again and she took it in the other nostril. Anna and her guy were already kissing again. He had one arm extended, holding the vial out as they stumbled—still attached, still standing—into the stall.
“Thanks for the coke,” Portia said.
“No problem,” the guy mumbled. Anna ironed her lips into his.
“I’ll see you out there,” Portia said. She sounded so far away and small; Anna imagined her as a mouse about to exit through a crack in the wall.
The coke-carrying surfer’s skin was hot. His body was as solid and flat as a sidewalk. And his hands were like giant vibrating paddles roaming Anna’s flesh. Everything beyond her body and the surfer’s body was a blurry, impotent background. Sometimes Anna thought of herself as an appliance. She was never fully operating unless she had the electrical charge of another body plugged into her. When someone was plugged into her, especially when she was high, she found a beautiful, dreamy timelessness where nothing was ahead and nothing was behind. Her life was only in the pulsating here and now: sensation, excitation, elevation.
The guy had slipped Anna’s boxers down to the mucky half-wet bathroom floor and was sawing into her now—a fabulous, wet oblivion.
And then he was out of her. And Anna was cold and the guy was pulling tufts of toilet paper off the roll and wiping his dick like it was a dusty piece of silverware he was about to lay on a table.
“Can I have some?” Anna asked. The guy looked at her and she tried to focus on his face. She liked his nose—it was a perfect triangle. He handed her a few squares, then slipped out to the other side of the beige, metal door.
“I’ll see you outside,” he said, and he was gone.
Anna stood in the stall for a moment and watched as a white, almost-opalescent drip of something plopped onto the floor between her feet. She looked down, saw her boxers like a black hole near her right foot. Anna pulled the boxers up, stopped them at her knees, and then used the toilet paper in her hand to wipe herself clean. She yanked the shorts up the rest of the way, stood in the stall a moment, and thumped her head against the back of the door. There were two girls chatting at the sink—laughing, squealing. Anna tilted her head and spied on them through the crack. They were lithe, long, fresh-looking. Anna felt like a smudge of muck. She didn’t want to walk out and see herself beside them—a dark, viscous stain of cum and sweat and oil.
The girls left, and Anna staggered out of the stall. She paused at the mirror for only a second. She needed to move on, to find the tall surfer, to plug him in again so she could glow and feel powerful once more.
The music was thumping. Anna could hear it in her skin and it gave her small charges, pushed her forward, pumped her up again as she darted through the crowd.
She found her sister dancing with a shirtless guy. His body was ridged, taut, sinewy. He was mouthing the words of the Kim Carnes song that was playing, snaking his arms around, fingers pointing alternately at himself and at Portia. Anna couldn’t bear standing there alone while her sister was uniting with someone who looked like energy and strength. She flipped around, scanning for her bathroom lover. He was at the bar, leaning on one elbow, the first finger of his free hand hooked in the back belt loop of a girl with brown hair as thick and shiny as a waterfall. Anna felt a chill screaming inside her. She felt her body shredding away like burning newspaper. And then she saw someone new. A boy with eyes like cameras on her. He moved closer and closer, bouncing with the music.
“Hey,” he said, and he placed a hand on Anna’s hip.
“Hey,” Anna said, and she waved her pelvis toward him.
“Wanna go to the beach?” he asked. “It’s so fucking hot in here, I need a swim.”
Twenty minutes later Anna was naked, breaststroking along the shoreline with the new guy. It was so dark out the water looked like ink. The guy appeared as a splashing shadow. Most of the bar crowd had tumbled out to the beach at two a.m. when drinks were no longer served. Anna saw the people more by the sounds they made than any outline she could decipher. Echolocation, Anna thought. Portia was probably out there somewhere with the shirtless guy she had been dancing with.
Anna’s guy snatched her foot mid-kick. He pulled her toward him in one water-ballet motion. Anna’s legs wrapped around his waist—he could stand, but it was too deep for her—and he plugged himself into her, as if they both knew that that was the single purpose of their union. Anna wanted to pull her head back and see what he looked like—she remembered he was good-looking, but couldn’t recall a single feature.
Anna slipped out of coitus and, with her legs still knotted behind the guy, she lowered her back like an ironing board against the water. She squinted and focused.
“How old are you?” Anna asked. It seemed like an age might help bring his face in focus, might fine-tune the details she couldn’t make out.
“Eighteen,” he said.
“Me, too,” Anna lied, and then she did a sit up so she was upright once more. Anna kissed the boy and he slipped inside her again as if she were the nesting spot for his dick; penis memory. It wasn’t hard to cleave together but it was hard to create friction, as there was nothing against which either of them could gain purchase. So they fucked like sea turtles—weightless, without thrust—until they drifted closer to the crowd, at which point he pulled away, took Anna’s hand, and led her to a dry, flat rock underneath the base of the old pier.
“Why don’t we go on the sand where it’s softer?” Anna asked. The boy’s hands seemed to have multiplied. He was somehow touching her everywhere at once.
“Too sandy,” he mumbled, and he pushed his mouth against hers. “Lie down.”
Anna lay down for a second, then sat up. The rock felt as jagged as glass against her back. She and the boy traded positions so that he was on his back and she was straddling him, holding on to his dick as if it were a stick shift.
“You’re so sandy,” Anna said. She hopped off, got down on her knees, and tried to brush the grit off his dick. Even when she was high, Anna still had the impulse to clean.
The boy grunted and tried to nudge Anna on top of him again.
“What is this?” Anna leaned closer and tried to see what was growing on the sides of the boy’s dick. She was thinking of tide pool creatures: a sea cucumber with tiny crustaceans all over it.
“They’re scabs,” he said. “I got them from jerking off too much.”
“Really?” Anna laughed, and mounted him once more. She imagined all his tiny scabs scraping against her insides and cleaning her out, like a bottle brush.
Anna could make out the murky form of people approaching, but she didn’t slow down until she heard her sister’s voice.
“Anna!”
“What?”
“We gotta go!”
“Who’s with you?”
“I’m Tim! I love your sister!”
“You don’t love me!” Portia said. “Anna, let’s go.” They were close enough that Anna could see them now. She dismounted the boy and he ran off. The night was so dark it looked like he had actually dissolved.
“Patricia, you are the love of my life,” the guy said. Anna and Portia laughed.
“I’m Portia, not Patricia,” Portia said.
“Man, and I was already comin’ up with all these nicknames for you based on the fact that your name’s Patricia.”
“Do I look like a Patricia? What are the nicknames?”
“Patty O’ Furniture, Patty Wagon, Party Patty, hamburger Patty, Pitty Patty, Patty in my mouth—”
“And everyone’s cumin’?” As soon as Anna spoke, she remembered she was naked, but didn’t really care.
“Yeah.” Tim laughed.
Anna’s guy was suddenly back. He held both their clothes. It looked like he was on his way to do laundry. He tossed Anna her clothes and then he put on his own.
“Can we give Tim a ride home?” Portia asked.
“Buddies left without me,” Tim said.
“Yeah. Anyone got any coke?” Anna asked.
“I know where we can get some.” Anna’s lover buttoned his jeans and reached a hand out for Anna.
Anna drove, swerving on the road so much that the boy grabbed the wheel a few times. Portia was in the back seat with Tim. All the windows were open. Strings of Anna’s hair darted in front of her eyes, then away again. The boy directed them up the hills, to a Spanish-style house that had a wrought-iron security gate in front. It was four-thirty in the morning. Anna cranked down her window and the boy reached across her and finger-punched the buzzer.
“Yeah,” a scratchy voice came over the speaker.
“Joe, it’s me.”
“Me who?”
“It’s Roy, you fucker!” Roy gave the finger to the speaker box and the gate slowly swung open, bouncing a bit before stopping. Anna was glad he had said his name as, even in her current fucked-up state, she was aware that they were too deep into it for her to ask.
Anna pulled the car up the driveway and parked with the front bumper resting against the bumper of a sturdy, low sports car. Joe came out in boxer shorts, black dress socks, and no shirt. His body was shadowed with muscles; there was no hair on his chest but his legs were nearly black with fur. He leaned in the station wagon window.
“Nice car,” he said, and he grinned.
“No one has any money,” Roy said, “but we need some coke.”
“I’ll give you each a line,” Joe said, and he opened the door and held his arm out for Anna.
“My brother,” Roy said.
“My sister!” Anna said, and she pointed at Portia and lost her balance so that she went, knees down, onto the tiled driveway.
“Fuck.” Joe chuckled and picked Anna up.
Joe, Roy, and Anna were chattering like a bunch of mating birds. Blood dripped down one of Anna’s knees from where she had scraped it on the driveway; every few seconds she stopped talking, bent over, and licked her wound. In her peripheral vision she felt her sister sitting there, right beside her, with Tim, like two lumps on the couch.
“Do you love this house?” Anna said to Portia, trying to pull her in from her spacey orbit. Anna looked around at the Mexican and African carved sculptures, the black-and-white poster-sized photos of children with dinner-plate-sized eyes and dirt on their faces, the furniture that smelled new but looked lived-in. The half-gallon bottle of tequila on the table.
“What do you call this style?” Anna felt like she was shouting from inside a glass block. No one seemed to hear her.
“Celebrate Poverty?” Portia said.
“Celibate poverty?” Tim said.
“Line?” Joe held a small silver straw out to Portia and nodded toward the two pencil-length thin lines spread on the polished rock coffee table. Portia passed the straw to Tim, who passed it back to Portia, then gathered her hair in the back. Anna thought of herself and her Italian roommate at Bennington each holding their own hair back while they barfed in the black plastic trash bag.
Portia leaned down and took half a line in one nostril and the other half in the other. Then she handed the straw to Tim, who did the last line.
“I hate this,” Portia whispered to Anna.
“Why?” Anna thought her sister stupidly and ignorantly rejected some of the greatest pleasures in life: cocaine, runny cheeses, Dijon mustard.
“It feels like my muscles are going to burst out of my jaw.” Portia turned to Tim. “Do you hate this?”
Anna leaned down, licked up a drip of blood from her knee, then sat up and did a shot of tequila to wash it down. She shifted in her seat so her back was to her sister. Portia’s total lack of virility was pathetic and embarrassing. Luckily, Anna was so high she didn’t feel embarrassed for long; time had suddenly accelerated and she was instantly ten moments past her embarrassment.
Anna opened her eyes and saw she was arm wrestling with shirtless Joe. She wasn’t sure how it started but she was certain that’s what she was doing. Her bony elbow was grinding into the stone table. Roy was the referee.
“Winner gets another line!” Joe said, and he punched Anna’s arm to the coffee table.
“Again!” she said, and she slid off the couch and propped herself up on her knees. She wasn’t sure if her sister was still in the room. After uncountable lines and many shots of tequila, her vision had closed in like a curtain and she could only see three feet directly in front of herself.
“Yes,” Anna said, although she wasn’t sure what question had just been asked of her. She was fully plugged in. Anna had done enough coke to silence all the dithering, piddly, bullshitty little squeaks in her brain: the squeak about being inadequate, the squeak about not being pretty, the squeak about not being cool enough.
She and Joe and Roy were in the master bedroom that had a bed as big a boat. And the bed was rocking like a boat, too, as she and Joe and Roy rolled from one end to the next. The brothers had arm-wrestled for her—a match that ended in a tie. Together, they were a mess of flesh and muscle; Anna could not find the outline of either brother. She looked at an arm, a hand, a knee, and didn’t know whose it was—it could be hers, even, as the lights were dim and everything was muted and gray. If she could roll like this forever she would, Anna thought. This was the highest form of living. It was an endless, glorious, body-charged freefall.
And then Portia was there, standing in the doorway as stiff and hard as a broomstick.
“I’m going home,” Portia shouted.
“You’re going home now?” Anna sat up, fully naked, and stared at the upright line that was her sister. What was wrong with this girl? Did she not enjoy fun? Did she not think that these were the two hottest coke-holding guys she’d ever seen? Was she a moron?!
“Join us!” Joe said.
“Call me in the morning if you want a ride home!” Portia turned and vanished. Anna was glad—getting rid of Portia was like taking off her collar and leash. She was totally free now.
Anna opened her eyes to the bright daylight. Her body was throbbing, as if she were a single, purple bruise. She looked to her right and saw the sinewy, naked body of . . . Roy. Yes, Roy. She was almost certain of it. On her left was Joe.
Joe opened his eyes. He sat up and stuck a hand on Anna’s breast, which lay fallen to her side. “Coke?” Joe asked.
Anna blinked. Yes, she thought. She felt exposed in the daylight, as if her skin were made of cellophane. “Yeah, sure,” she said.
Anna followed him, naked, downstairs to the living room.
“You doing any?” Anna bent over the line on the stone table, her bare ass raised toward Joe.
“Nah,” Joe said, and he put his hands on her hips and motioned forward.