Beyond the Pale Motel Read online

  “Okay, cats and dogs, let’s not get crazy here,” Scott said. “Besides the horrors on the news, how’s it going?” he asked me, pointing at Todd to get on the lat machine.

  “Dash is back tonight.”

  Scott raised his eyebrows. “You sure you want to get sweaty now? Won’t there be enough of that later this evening?”

  “Not the way things have been going unless I play it right. But I gotta work off the jitters.”

  I’d been nervous about trying to get my husband’s attention; now I was thinking about dead girls. As I picked up the first set of weights and smelled the tang of metal, I thought of the girl whose arms had been sawed off, the other without legs. In that moment I was grateful for my own body, which beat with life, especially in Dash’s embrace.

  “Well, just don’t forget how lucky that man is to have you,” Scott said, trying to make me feel better, the way he always did.

  * * *

  Dash, that “lucky man,” and I moved into the bungalow when we got married. He actually carried me over the threshold on our wedding night, into the empty rooms—just the bed and the vanilla gardenia candles and bouquets of pink and white peonies Bree had installed secretly that morning. Dash knew how to fuck; he was big, and hard, and the best I’d ever had, and knowing that he was my husband had made me wetter and more responsive than ever.

  “I think you just set a record, babe,” he said, when I came again.

  Our place was built onto the side of a hill, overlooking the lake, the palm trees and cypress, bougainvillea and oleanders. You have to climb up a steep, white staircase, pass through the thick arches into the courtyard with its ferns, bamboo, and koi pond. Inside, one bed, one bath. No space for a kid, Dash said, but I knew the tiny office where my desk and futon were could be converted if necessary. Wood floors, white built-ins, including a mirror over the fireplace. The fireplace is not safe to use, but Dash lit a fire in it anyway sometimes. Pink-and-black tile in the kitchen and bathroom. Probably lead-based because of how it shines but I didn’t mind. I had once done a whole Love Monster post on the toxic beauty of 1950s bathroom tile.

  Our poisoned bungalow was all I ever wanted, really. When Dash was there, anyway. He’s as big as the Cal King mattress and didn’t even fit in the claw-foot tub. His giant black Docs sat by the front door because we agreed we wanted the floor pristine. We had meditated together every morning and before bed, slipping the cool, clicking beads of the malas between our fingers. My mala’s made of rhodochrosite, pink and marbled, and his is wood. As a teenager I’d used a rosary to help me fall asleep at night, especially during that Dahmer phase, when I couldn’t stop thinking about heads in refrigerators and organs in Ziploc bags. After I got sober and met Dash, Catholicism started making less sense than Eastern religions.

  It was better than drinking, better than cigarettes and caffeine, our meditation practice, our lovemaking, our life. But it had been changing in the last year, a slow decline. I didn’t want to admit it to myself.

  As I headed into the bungalow, our neighbor from down the block ran by in a streak of neon short-shorts and tan skin. Dash and I called her Skipper; she was always running, sprinting, skipping backward, sometimes twice a day, nose, breasts, and butt pert, high ponytail bobbing. Must have been one of those model/actresses that come to this city in droves, I’d thought. Not quite pretty enough to be Barbie; more like her sidekick. I’d almost asked her to dinner once but decided that between Dash’s gigs, our AA meetings, Head Hunter, and Body Farm, my husband and I had enough estrogen in our lives.

  That night I was making him pho with fresh herbs, rice noodles, shrimp. For dessert—freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, which were our favorite. The smell of butter, sugar, and chocolate, and lemongrass, ginger, and jasmine tea, filled the kitchen. When I heard Dash at the door, my heart flipped like a fish about to be reeled in. I wished I hadn’t worn the red dress all day. I should have just put it on after work, but I’d wanted to pump myself up, see if any men looked twice to remind me I was worthy of Dash.

  I called out, “Hi, baby,” waited, counted to ten, trying not to rush to him.

  He came in while I was crushing the garlic, popping the skin with the flat of a knife, and I glanced up and saw that his face looked different, white and still. Black T-shirt and black jeans as always. Muscles defined by pale blue veins. I always felt small around him, which was part of what turned me on. I was really heavy in high school, and even though I’d lost a lot of weight after getting sober, I was still a big girl. But not in his arms.

  “Hey, baby, you okay?” I put down the garlic, wiped my hands on my fruit-patterned, vintage apron, and went to him, untying the apron strings to show off my dress.

  He kissed me, but it was in a distracted way, eyes open. He was chewing peppermint gum but I could taste the tobacco and caffeine on his lips.

  “What’s wrong, baby?”

  “I’m just tired. Smells good in here.” He moved away a little too quickly, and something fell and shattered inside of me, like when I had dropped my favorite gold shot glass that time. I should have known. Women’s intuition and all. But who wants to know? Delusion is so much more pleasant in the end.

  * * *

  When he finally told me, it was dawn and we were lying awake, sweating, not touching each other. My cat, Sasha, had abandoned her usual post on my pillow. The fan wasn’t cooling the room, just making an annoying sound as it blew hot air around. I wanted an icy-cold gin and tonic more than anything at that moment so I went through the acronym of AA warning signs, HALT: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. I wasn’t hungry. I was tired for sure and very lonely, even with Dash lying there beside me in his underwear. I was angry.

  “What?” I said finally. The word that always preceded our arguments.

  “What what?” He groaned and turned away from me, onto his side. His back looked meaty and pale in the light that was starting to finger us through the blinds.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said.

  Dash sat up with an exhale and rubbed his forehead. “You always think something is wrong.”

  “Well, is it? You haven’t touched me, you hardly ate.”

  “So this signifies a problem? Because I didn’t fuck you after being up for, like, twenty-four hours? Because I wasn’t in the mood for pho? Seriously, Catt?”

  “Just tell me,” I said. I was quietly leaving my body already at that point, everything going numb as I slid out of my skin and observed myself from some odd spot on the ceiling. I looked bloated and washed-out and my hair was tangled. Get up, I told myself. Leave now. Don’t listen to him say it. But I couldn’t move.

  “Okay, fine. You can’t just let anything lie, can you.”

  I don’t want you to lie anymore, I thought. In that moment, even before he said it, everything I had been denying was becoming clear.

  “There’s someone,” Dash said.

  “What do you mean there’s someone?” I just couldn’t move any part of my body. He had met someone? On his trip he’d met someone he liked, that was all. He hadn’t actually …

  “There’s been someone. It’s serious.”

  I doubled over, grabbing my stomach, feeling the layer of fat there. He’d socked me in the gut with two words and I couldn’t breathe.

  “What are you talking about?” I whispered. But my voice was getting louder and louder. “Who did you meet?”

  He wouldn’t look at me.

  The thoughts careened into each other as they fought to get out of my mouth. “Who is she? How long has it been? And you’re telling me now? Tonight?”

  “You asked me what. You always want to know. What, what, what? Okay, I told you. Are you happy?”

  The ice pain in my abdomen flared to heat that spread through my whole body. My heart was pounding like I was on the Body Farm treadmill. “What the fuck? Am I what? Happy? Get the fuck out of here, Dash.”

  He got up and put on his jeans. The belt, decorated with skulls, was still threaded through the b
elt loops, and the heavy metal buckle clanked.

  He pulled on his T-shirt without looking at me. His back was huge, straining the cotton fabric as if it might tear. I realized I would never touch him again. Everything irrevocably over. One of us might as well have been killed in that instant. And it was probably me. My first death of nine. Who was the zombie now?

  When I was in my early twenties, I had a dog I’d found on the street. A gentle beagle-and-pit-bull mix I called Pinkie. I walked and fed her, she slept on my bed. It was good for me, at that time, to have something to take care of, even though I couldn’t care for myself. Then the seizures began. Her body hurtling against the walls, mouth lathering, shit everywhere. Afterward she wouldn’t recognize me, would just growl for a long time. Once, after an episode, she looked at me without recognition. When I reached for her, she bit my hand, breaking the skin, though it wasn’t that deep. The meds they gave me for her didn’t work, the tumor they discovered was inoperable, and finally I decided to put her down. I was drunk. It was raining. I drove her to the vet, who told me I should leave, that it wouldn’t be pleasant to watch. She was still big and strong, nothing seemed wrong to look at her. The vet walked into the back room and she followed him, trotting along, trusting. Sometimes I still dreamed of her bony head, her lopsided eyes, and long, graceful legs.

  “I’m sorry,” Dash said. For the first time since I’d asked the final what, his voice sounded human, even kind. This made it worse. I wanted to grab him, tear him back from wherever he was. I was going to be alone. I was going to die alone like my mother. Unless I could get him to stay.

  “Wait, please. Dash. Talk to me.”

  He shook his head.

  “Why?” I screamed. “What did I do? What happened?”

  “It’s not about you and me,” he said and his voice was cold again. “It’s about me. And her.”

  #2

  I didn’t find out who “her” was for a while. If I hadn’t been so scared to know, I would have tried harder. I didn’t want it to be real. Dash had been the center of my existence for almost as long as I’d been sober. What would happen to me if I fully acknowledged that he was gone, that he had fallen in love with someone else? That I would never have his child, or maybe anyone’s child? Would I drink again? Would I perish without my husband’s love to save me?

  In 2002 Bree and I were newly sober and Dash spoke at a meeting. When he was up there speaking, no one could look away. His smile was a sexy grimace and his tattoos mesmerized, like a maze your eyes wanted to follow to their center. Lotus flowers and poetry in Latin curved over his biceps, Aztec symbols inked his neck, a snake slithered up his calf and disappeared inside the leg of his shorts. He told about the first drink at twelve, the first hard drugs at thirteen. Foster homes and fights and beatings. Whole periods of time forgotten. It made my childhood look pretty good in comparison. “It gets better,” he said. “It really does.” That was what I needed to hear.

  Bree insisted on taking me to see his band play at Sound the next weekend. She could tell I was smitten; he was all I had talked about that week. We were both scared of going to a bar so early in our sobriety, and Bree was pregnant, but we vowed to keep an eye on each other the whole night. We parked under the stone bridge and walked along the deserted street, up the dirty stairs, across the littered pass to the club. I smelled alcohol in the air right away, but by the end of the night it wasn’t Jack I wanted.

  When Dash came onstage, I clung to Bree’s firm, little biceps to steady myself. We were too near the speakers. My ears rang and rang; there’d be pain in the morning. I guzzled my cranberry and soda, staring at the way this man bared his teeth.

  “She had a neck like a swan but her tits were fake. There was a dead body in the Sliver Lake. I said, ‘Baby, baby, I’ll keep you safe.’ She said, ‘Wipe that smile offa your face.’”

  I guess it had something to do with an illusion of safety. As if no one would mess with me if I were his. In middle school I’d been bullied by the mean boys more than the girls, who pretty much ignored me. I was like a magnet for the boys’ comments. “Fat ass.” “Zit face.” Sometimes I wondered if the hypersexuality I tried to hide from the world was showing through, so awkward and ashamed of itself that it drew taunts. I touched myself to fall asleep every night and daydreamed about sex in the light. Or maybe it was that those mean boys smelled my fear like dogs do. I hung my head when I walked past them, wondering if they knew my secrets.

  When I lost some weight and my skin cleared up, when I learned how to do my hair and makeup, and dress to flatter my cleavage and calf muscles, I still half expected a surprise attack at every turn. The drinking helped. But now it was gone. Now I needed a mean boy in the body of a 250-pound man more than ever.

  But of course mean boys are just that.

  Once a week we went out for Thai food at one of the late-night places on Santa Monica Boulevard or shopped at the Hollywood farmers market and I made him dinner. Then we had great, famished sex. I wondered why we didn’t see each other more, but he told me he had to rehearse a lot so I left it at that. After a few months we came home for dinner and he was tugging at the button of my blouse when I stopped him.

  “I’d really like to see you more often.” I had been working up to this for weeks, with Bree’s coaching. “I feel like it’s hard to get to know someone just once a week.”

  He dropped to the couch, kneading his fingers, squinting up at me. Sasha sat watching us from behind the door with her psychic green eyes. She still didn’t trust Dash.

  “It’s not like I’m seeing anyone else,” he said. “I rehearse a lot. And I go to meetings.”

  “Maybe we could go to one together sometime,” I ventured. My body had already attached to him and didn’t want to let go so soon. I knew that I’d back down and continue to see him on his terms if I had to.

  “I go to SLAA. You know what that is?”

  “Sex and Love Addicts?”

  He nodded. Sasha sat there, still watching. “Yeah. I’ve been going for six months. It really helps.”

  “Like, what?” I asked, my heart pounding through my thin shirt. “Porn or prostitutes or…”

  “I haven’t been active in six months,” he said. “I think it’s better if we don’t talk about it too much.”

  I looked down at my hands, wishing I’d gotten a manicure. The black polish was chipped, the skin was dry.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Are you okay?”

  I didn’t know.

  “Maybe I should go?”

  “Yeah.”

  That night I cried when he left, imagining that even if we got through this, he would cheat on me with groupies or, at the very least, fantasize about porn stars when we fucked.

  The problem was that I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I began to imagine him with other women—girls with giant breasts, tiny waists, tan, shaven skin, shiny hair reaching to asses that could almost fit in his hand. These thoughts made me come hard, but I always dissolved into tears with the last clenchings, humiliated by my own mind.

  A few weeks later he called me, we went out for dinner, he said, “You’re the one I want to see now, babe.” It didn’t take much.

  While he was inside me, I saw him in my mind with a goddess girl covered in tattoos. Dense, richly colored peonies and butterflies on her arms, a tiger’s face on her ass, the cleft of its mouth inked along her crack. In my mind I sat chained to a chair, naked, legs spread. I was watching them, unable to touch myself.

  I think we finally got married because he needed someone to care for him and I needed someone to feed, which was its own kind of hunger.

  * * *

  Two weeks had passed since Dash had left with only a small bag of his things. The drapes in the bungalow caught on fire and continued to burn steadily. Daggers shot out of the showerhead. Spiders nested in my hair and formed a web over my mouth and eyes. Sasha lay on my stomach, batting at the web, trying to make things better. On the TV, toddlers seemed to
be continually falling out of the sky, caught, if they were lucky, in the arms of strangers who happened to be passing by. Pomegranate seeds were infecting people with hepatitis. In a crime drama a serial killer with dashing cheekbones prepared gourmet meals with human meat. I wondered if the Hollywood Serial Killer looked like a Hollywood actor; how else had he been able to lure Mandy Merrill and Adrienne Banks? My mala sat by the bed untouched, even though it would probably have helped me to meditate; Dash had taken his beads with him. The only thing that got me out of the house was Bree, who told me I had to use work to get my mind off Dash, and Scott, who told me I had to sweat for the same reason.

  Being at both Head Hunter and Body Farm was awful though. Since Dash had left, men that made me uncomfortable before now made my skin slither, and Big Bob, with his vapid eyes and too-bleached teeth, and Stu, salivating like a necrophiliac over pretty murder victims on TV, made my skin want to crawl off my bones.

  My husband had left me feeling dismembered, but Mandy Merrill and Adrienne Banks actually had been.

  “They were both so hot,” Stu said at Head Hunter, while he pawed through a gossip magazine featuring the Hollywood Serial Killings.

  “Can you stop talking about those murders, Stu,” said Bree as she buzzed his head. “We don’t need to hear it.”

  “So many women come here to get famous, and they have a better chance of doing it by getting killed and chopped into pieces.”

  Bree and I exchanged a glance in the mirror above his head.

  Shut the fuck up, Stu.

  If he wasn’t Bree’s most regular client, I was pretty sure she’d have thrown him out right then. I was ready to do it myself if he said another word.

  The only thing that really got my mind off things was Skylar.

  The first time Bree brought him into Head Hunter after Dash left, Sky hugged me for a longer time than usual. “You’re going to take me to baseball tryouts next Saturday, right?”

  “Of course. It’s on the calendar. There’s nothing I’d rather do.”