Seven Women: An Erotic Private Investigation

Chapter 5…

“At least I have money,” she adds, pulling wadded bills from her pocket, along with several paper clips, two stamps, and someone’s business card.

Cara reaches for the business card. “A temp agency?”

“Yeah,” Amelia answers.

“But you have a job.”

“Who knows for how long, with all the cutbacks in the schools. I’m not even making very much as it is. I was thinking of moonlighting, filing, or word-processing, bring in some extra money, or maybe finding a full-time job through temping, one that pays better than a teacher’s salary. And if I get laid off, I’m going to need to find a job really fast.”

“Let’s not talk about jobs and money,” Sheila says. “That shit depresses me.”

“Tell me about it,” Amelia says, and smiles. “There was a problem with the payroll checks once. They were over a week late. I was really stressed. My rent was due, I barely had any food, and I didn’t have a dime. I was ready to walk the streets and make a quick fifty.”

“You don’t mean that,” Lisa says.

“I don’t, but think about it. How far would any of us go if it came down to immediate survival?” She straightens out the bills on the table. “All for this green paper. I hate this green paper.”

“Really, let’s not talk about money,” Sheila says.

Tasha nods. “Let’s not.”

“Sorry,” says Amelia.

Sheila says, “Not that I’m hurting right now, thank the lucky stars, but there were times I was really destitute and I’d rather not remember those times.”

I know that feeling. I sip my drink.

“Anyway,” Tasha raises her voice.

“Anyway,” Sheila says. “Enough of that.”

Silence as we drink.

“So,” Cara says to Lisa, “how’s the new book coming along?”

“Sluggishly,” Lisa says, “but I’m getting there.”

“What’s it about?” I ask.

“Sex, death, sex, and love,” Sheila says, “isn’t that what any good book is about?”

“Isn’t that what everything’s about?” Cara says. “Movies, plays, music — you name it?”

Lisa says, “They’re categorizing it as ‘romantic suspense.’ They’ll sell it in grocery-store stands and chains. Just like my last one.”

“Actually, it’s rather good,” Tasha says. “It’s genre, but quality genre. Lisa fleshes out her characters nicely; you really get to know them. That’s the charm of her work.”

Sheila laughs, touching my ex-wife’s arm. “You’re supposed to say that, hon. You’re her editor.”

“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it,” Tasha answers. “I have to edit some real crap sometimes. And I do mean crap, the romances and mysteries, but they bring in the bucks, so who cares if they’re crap?”

“You accept crap?” from Amelia.

“They’re not my acquisitions. As an associate editor, I sometimes get dumped with excess workload from the senior editors, or if an editor leaves and the orphaned books are disseminated around the office, I have to take one.”

“I think that would be a cool job,” Amelia says. “Sitting around the office all day reading books.”

Tasha laughs. “I hardly ever read anything at the office. I’m on the phone, in meetings, checking galleys, talking with the marketing crew. I do all my reading at home. Nights, weekends. Hell, I’m always on the job. It seems like the only time I ever really get out is these weekly Thursday night get-togethers.”

“Maybe you need a man in your life,” Cara says.

Awkward silence. Tasha sips her drink. Cara looks at me, flushes.

“Don’t we all,” Sheila says.

“Except Leonard,” Amelia says.

“Except Leonard, of course.”

“You have a man,” Cara says to Sheila.

“I don’t ‘have’ anyone,” Sheila says. “You may try to possess someone, but you never really can. It’s like we’re all a bunch of birds in a dark room, flying into each other now and then, but never flying in the same direction with some other bird. We just keep flitting about looking for an exit and some light. It’s ridiculous. But I could go for a new relationship right now. An affair, a fling, something to get some excitement back in my life. Because the excitement is gone with Roy — Roy is my boyfriend,” she says to me—“and I’ve been thinking about calling it off.”

Lisa says, “Two weeks ago you told us you and Roy went to a hotel room and messed around like crazy and you loved it.”

“That was two weeks ago,” Sheila says. “And yes, we did fuck our brains out, and yes, I did love it, but it was shallow. It didn’t mean anything.”

“Does it always have to mean something?” Tasha asks.

“It can be meaningful to fuck your brains out. The sex was great. But it happened two weeks ago. I should dump Roy, but I don’t want to until there’s someone else in the picture to take his place. Jesus, listen to me. I’m getting too old for this. I need to marry someone.”

“That’s cruel,” Amelia says.

“Getting married?”

“What you said about Roy.”

“I know, but that’s me. That’s who I am. I don’t like being alone.”

None of us do, I think.

“The problem is,” Sheila continues, “finding a new man.”

“There are men everywhere,” Cara says.

“But the majority of them aren’t ones you want to jump in bed with,” Sheila counters. She nods toward the bar. “Like that man there. He has a nice profile. He has a nice build; I like the way he wears his suit. I like the tint of gray in his hair; it gives him style in a Richard Gere-sort of way. Look at the way he stands: He looks confident, and he looks like he’d be a good fuck.”

“How can you know that from one look?” Lisa asks.

“I don’t know, but I’m usually right. I’m not the type of person who finds men in bars, even a nice place like this, but I’ve had my eye on him for the last five minutes. If I had another drink in me, I might go over there and talk to him.”

A blonde in a dark, low-cut evening dress comes up to the man Sheila is talking about. We’re all watching. The blonde kisses him, they laugh at something.

“He’s taken,” Cara says.

“Yes,” Sheila says. “And don’t they seem comfortable with each other, as if they’ve been together for a long time?”

“They’re probably married,” Amelia says.

“I don’t think so. He has a wedding band, but she doesn’t.”

“Observant,” Tasha says.

“You think he’s cheating on his wife?” Amelia asks.

“He could be separated from his wife,” Cara says.

“Then why would he wear the ring?” Sheila says.

“Well, even if he is cheating on his wife,” Amelia says, “why would he be wearing the ring?”

“Maybe she knows,” Lisa says, “and doesn’t care. Some women like to be with married men. There’s a certain thrill attached to doing it with someone who’s taken. Also, it’s safe. No ties. Just sex.”

“That’s what worries me about getting married,” Sheila says. “I don’t think I could be faithful forever. Sooner or later, I’m going to meet someone. Maybe just a one-shot deal. But sooner or later I’m going to sleep with someone behind his back. What a dreadful thing to admit to yourself,” she adds.

“Or you could have a threesome maybe,” Amelia says. “Then there are no secrets, it’s out in the open.”

“The age of swingers is over,” Cara says. “I think it was over before we were even born.”

“It died in the early eighties, really,” says Sheila. “You can’t do that sort of thing anymore.”

I think of Veronica.

“Very few people are faithful anymore,” notes Lisa, dipping a finger into her wine glass, then sucking on it. “Take my father, for example. He was always having affairs.”

“And you knew?” Amelia says. “Did your mother know?”

“She knew. The family knew.”

“Did they get a divorce?” from Tasha.

“No. They’re still together.”

Cara says, “Your mother knew he was having affairs, but she stayed with him?”

“She loved him. Still loves him.”

“That’s love?”

“Yes — you don’t understand,” Lisa says, sounding frustrated. “Just because my father did that didn’t mean he’d fallen out of love with my mother. Things are better now. He’s not chasing women anymore; at least I don’t think he is. There was a time when I thought they would divorce. There was a lot of turmoil. My parents were fighting, and sometimes physically, not just with words. There was a time I thought I would go crazy. Maybe I was crazy.

“I was eighteen. We’ve all been through those confusing years, the mid- and late teens, where you don’t know what’s going on, you don’t know what the world is. You think the world is going to come down on you and sometimes it does. I was drinking a lot then. My father was — is — a drinker, and there was a well-stocked bar in the house. I guess I was drinking too much, too. Alcohol was such an easy and good way out. I called it The Warmth. I loved the way it first hit you, got into your blood stream, went to your head, numbed you all over. I don’t drink like that anymore — I keep to wine — but then I was into the hard stuff, gin and bourbon, anything strong that could get me bombed, and bring me The Warmth. I had that romantic notion about alcohol and writing. I was only writing poetry back then, and like most young women writing poetry, my idols were Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.

“When I look back on that period, I try to find the point when I told myself things had to change, that I had to stop drinking so much. I think the pivotal moment — and as a writer I guess I’m always looking for pivotal moments — is the night my parents really started to fight and I ran away, not really ran away from home, but ran away from the fight, ran away from it all, because I knew that if I stayed there I would lose my mind completely. I was napping in my room, and I heard them yelling at each other, the same sort of stuff, but with an edge — it was worse this time. I’d been drinking. I jumped up from my nap, hearing my parents yelling at each other from the other room. ‘I know,’ I heard my mother say, ‘I know for a fact that this time, this time—’ and I heard my father say, ‘You don’t know anything.’ His voice was calm. ‘You’re letting your imagination get to you, your insecurities—’ he said, and then my mother screamed, ‘Goddamn you, I know!’ and I heard glass breaking, and then the sound of flesh on flesh — but who hit who? — and there it was again, my mother screaming, my father grunting, and again I heard the sound of glass breaking.

“I ran out of my room and saw my parents on the floor, as if they were wrestling, my mother’s lip bleeding, my father’s face scratched, and I saw my father raise his hand and hit my mother. He said, ‘You bitch, you bitch.’ I thought this was a nightmare. I couldn’t believe they were being violent with one another. I shrieked and slammed my fist against the wall. My parents stopped and looked at me, with my hand bloody and swollen. My father looked embarrassed and quickly moved away from my mother. I could tell he was drunk, and so was my mother. I was shaking. I thought I was going to combust, just blow up, get rid of the hellish thing I called my life.

“‘Go back to your room, honey,’ my mother said. My father wouldn’t look at me; he straightened his hair and said for me to do as my mother said. I screamed, ‘I can’t take this bullshit anymore!’ and walked out of the house. Well, I ran. My mother yelled ‘Wait, wait! Lisa!’ but I ran to my car. I had this little Honda Civic at the time; I got in, slammed the door. The keys were in it, I always kept the keys in it. I know that was a dumb thing to do, but I did a lot of dumb things back then. I started my car and drove away.”

Amelia says, “Sometimes you just have to do that, you have to get into your car and drive away. I’ve done that.”

“I didn’t know where I was going,” Lisa says. “I wound up driving to the beach. I parked the car. I went walking in the sand. It was windy — too much wind — my hair was tangled all over my face. A guy in a VW was yelling at me from the parking lot. ‘Hey!’ he was saying. ‘Hey!’ I ignored him. ‘Hey, sexy!’ he called to me. I went back to my car. I looked in the glove compartment and found part of a joint. I lit it. It wasn’t good pot, but I never liked pot that much anyway. Eva, my best friend at the time, had left it in there. I found some change in the glove compartment and knew I had to call Eva. I got out, went to a phone booth on the boardwalk, and called her. I heard loud music in the background, lots of guitars.

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘what’s up?’

‘Things suck,’ I said.

Eva said, ‘I’m supposed be working on some stupid paper for my government class. I don’t think I’m ever going to go to college. Where are you? Outside? I hear sounds.’

“‘The beach,’ I said.

“‘Really?’

“I told her about my parents and she said, ‘Oh, that does suck.’

“The guy in the VW drove by me again. He yelled, “Hey, you! Hey, sexy!’

“‘Cruise over,’ Eva said, ‘I know about this party.’

“The guy in the VW yelled, ‘Hey, sweetness! Hey, honey!’”

I find the way she tells her story fascinating, with so much detail. But Lisa is, I remind myself, a novelist.

“I told Eva I would be there and ran to my car, afraid of the VW guy. He followed me from the street to the freeway. He was closing in on me from behind, flashing his brights. I started to drive fast. I swerved through traffic and lost him as I exited onto another freeway to get to Eva’s. I could hear his voice in my head: ‘Hey, girlie. Hey, sexy.’

“All over Eva’s bedroom walls were posters and cut-out ads of male models: dark skin, rippling abdominals, shapely chests and arms, chiseled chins, slicked-back hair, blue and green eyes. ‘Of course,’ Eva always liked to say when she pointed at them, ‘this isn’t what you really get in a guy.’”

Unconsciously, I sucked in my gut, then stopped when I realized what I was doing.

“I didn’t have anything to wear to the party,” Lisa continues. “So we hunted through the jungle that was Eva’s closet. We were the same size, pretty much. We stripped to our underwear — I didn’t have a bra — I’d left the house without one — and we stood in front of the full-length mirror on her wall. Call it ‘Portrait of Two Bodies.’ We mixed and matched various fabrics, pranced and strutted. Eva was really skinny; she was bulimic, never took in a decent meal, but of course thought she was fat. ‘I’m fat,’ she’d say, patting the white skin on her flat stomach.

“I decided on black slacks, knee-length boots, and a red blazer, with just a bra underneath,” Lisa says, looking a bit coy. “Eva went with a black bodysuit and gray overcoat.

“The party was in the valley. I didn’t know any of the people. Eva really didn’t either, but that never bothered her; she was quick with the friendly chat and the glad-to-meet-you smile. It wasn’t in me to be so gregarious. I said hi to people I didn’t know and felt dumb. I went to the makeshift bar to get a drink. A strong drink. I needed a drink. I finished it and got another, then another, and another, all within an hour. I figured, Hell, it runs in the family, right? I saw Eva off in a corner talking to a guy in a nice jacket. She still had the same drink she’d started off with. I kept drinking. Somewhere along the line, I got to a phone and called my mother. I saw Eva in her corner pressed between two guys in nice jackets. I think I may have been on my seventh drink by this time. My mother answered the phone.

“‘Mommy?’ I said.

“Her voice sounded worried: ‘Where are you?’

“‘This place,’ I said, ‘a party.’

“‘I was worried about you,’ she said.

“I told her I was with Eva.

My mother said, ‘Your father left, I don’t know where he went.’

“I asked, ‘What’s going on between you two?’

“‘This time I caught him,’ my mother said. ‘I surprised him with Tammy, a girl he hired at the store—’ She stopped, then added, ‘I probably shouldn’t be telling you this.”

“I couldn’t believe,” Lisa says, “how matter-of-factly she told me this. It made me hot in the chest. My own father, cheating on my own mother! I knew he was doing this before, though, so why should I be surprised? Why should my mother be surprised? I wasn’t listening to what my mother was saying; her voice was soft, she was going blah-blah-blah.

“I felt strange. My mother said ‘Lisa, are you okay?’ but I just hung up the phone. I got a refill, a stronger drink this time. The music at the party was getting too loud. There were so many people, so much laughter, talk, talk, giggle, giggle. Eva stumbled over to me and said she said thought some guy put something in her drink; she said she was tripping, seeing trails and little dragons all over.

“‘Happy happy,’ Eva whispered.

“One of the guys in the nice jackets grabbed her arm, pulled her to him, and kissed her. Eva laughed and said, ‘Oh, hiya!’ and I just figured she was having a good time.”

Lisa sips her wine, says, “I met this guy there. I don’t know where he came from. ‘Smile,’ he said to me. He was tall, he smelled nice, and he was older — not that much older, but — but anyway, I looked at him and said, ‘Huh?’

“‘You have a scowl on your face,’ he said. ‘Smile and make it go away.’ So I did.

“The next thing I know, he was kissing me, this smiling guy, and he had his hands under my blazer, and he was touching me, my breasts, my stomach. He was kissing my lips and eyes, saying nice things to me. I touched his crotch, I felt him, felt something warm, and I was thinking of Eva, but I knew Eva was with some guy, too.

“And then we were walking away. Walking out of the house. Bye-bye party. I leaned into this guy I didn’t know because I was having trouble walking.”

Listening to Lisa talk, I fall into the trance of her story. I don’t know if it’s me or her. But I see myself as the man, the stranger, she is with. I know I am he. I want to be him. I’m with her at the party and she’s drunk, so I take advantage of this; I’ve been with younger women like her, who get drunk, and so I make my move. I kiss her and she doesn’t object. I touch her and she doesn’t object. My hands are under her jacket. She has smooth warm skin. She is touching me. I don’t live far from here so I take her away from the party, I take her home. She’s drunk; I have to help her walk. Home isn’t too far. I’ve done this before. And as Lisa talks, I see it all so clearly, the two of us: I am this man, because I’m all men.