Three

"John Wayne, heya!"

"Not right now!" he yelled from the kitchen.

With one foot on the stairs I told Carla that Roger was still on the phone.

"Who's he talking to?" she whispered even when she didn't need to.

"Some Alaskan chick he met online."

"Really?"

"Nah."

She slapped me on the shoulder. "You're such a dick."

"You hungry?" I asked as we walked up the stairs.

"No," she said. Of course I knew she was going to say No. She's always been real fixated, one of those ambiance people. So when she's in the mood for something, she's not in the mood for anything else. Goal-oriented. Aggressive. Reminded me of her dad, or of what little I knew about him. But before all this, before she cropped her hair short and bleached it and gelled it and got trendy bags under her eyes like Sharon Stone's and wore sweaters to keep her skin from tanning, she was less predictable. By less predictable, I mean schizo.

There were good days and there were bad days. She was real sweet, sincere—on the chubby side, a chubby Spanish chick who wrote poetry about The Streets, even when she lived (and still lives) in the suburbs of Los Feliz, right by Griffith Park where all the houses're manors with a front yard large enough for three houses off my block and half a mile long driveways that ended in automatic front gates with guards out front. So The Streets she often wrote about was actually my neighborhood. She embraced it. Even the smell of the alleys and the texture of cracked sidewalks where people had fingered "I love Jose" or "BLOOSH" right before the cement dried, dried blood or paint, the unkempt public grass, pigeons, Our Lady of Guadalupe on liquor store walls, groups of guys with shorts down to their ankles, the paranoid Asian people, the sound of Salsa music, of couples yelling. Her poetry all sounded the same, always starting with the word "And" and ending with the words "life", "me", or "break", and even if someone had told me all the poems sounded the same when we were still going out, I wouldn't have been able to tell back then because I was too into her. I especially liked lines with my full name in them.

She was a chubby Spanish poet, wild curls, vague nose, big thighs for a girl her age. I loved it all. She had an alright laugh, too.

But just as there were good days there were bad days. Her psycho moments. Sometimes those moments lasted for hours.

"You just think I'm fake," she cried once after sex. I don't know why she always thought I thought she was fake, but she did. She always cried after sex. She'd beg, even blackmail me into doing it, and she'd still cry afterwards and put words in my mouth: "You don't really think I'm deep or intelligent, do you?"

In all truth, I'd never mentioned anything like it. Because it didn't really matter. I probably wouldn't have even thought something like that anyway even with the world telling me so. Poets are deep, man.

"I hate you, Roman. I hate your guts. You don't know how lucky you are."

I remember thinking to myself: Make it stop. I knew she was going to tell me I was priveleged to be poor, that somehow I knew more than she did just because I heard gun shots every now and then and had to work to get my car. But none of that shit really matters. "I know I'm lucky, Carla." I said. "I have you."

"Don't leave me, Roman!" she flung herself at me in a way that made me feel gross and uncool for letting her.

"I won't leave you," I lied as I kissed her hair. "Now stop all this thinking and sharing your thoughts crap. I hate when girls think and have opinions."

She squealed a high pitch laugh and told me I was a pig.

I thought of this, of her calling me a pig, and then of her calling me a liar two weeks later, then an asshole in front of her friends at lunch a month later, a son of a bitch just this Spring. Here she was, undressing. Skinnier now, sort of in a sad way, a sad kind of skinny like poodles without their fur. And even when I was already up, I didn't want to touch her.

"You left your Techno Ballads mix CD here, too," I said.

"Remind me to get it later," she said without facing me. Outside my window my neighbor's curtains were shut, but I still knew what was going on.

I slouched in my computer chair.

She turned to me, breasts exposed, panties still on, with dark eyes and a smile I've never seen before from her. I didn't recognize this Carla in my room and I didn't want her. And not wanting this skinny, cynical sex addict made me feel stupid because when you're young and a guy this kind of shit is all that matters--wanting it, really wanting it that sometimes you have to let yourself go just to get it, and when you can't get it your pride hurts.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Come here and give me a blow job," I said. I didn't even smile or laugh. She wanted me to objectify her and I didn't mind doing it.

"No," she said and turned away. She crossed her arms over her chest and tucked in her chin.

I swiveled in my computer chair, I frowned. I felt sick inside, even as the words traveled up my throat like grape-sized prayer beads: "What're you here for, then? Why did you take off your clothes?"

"God, do we have to be so adult about this?" she snapped. "What happened to being naive and in love?"

"You tell me," I sniveled a laugh. "That was taken away from me five years ago, and I don't really care for it," I said boredly. I could hear the tone in my voice, already shifting into Bullshit Gear, how stupid it sounded. That part of me that I actually admired stepped out of my body, floated into a corner of the ceiling, and watched.

"What?" she demanded again, except this time with narrowed eyes. "Five years ago, what are you talking about?"

She looked out of place and ridiculous standing by my bed without a bra on, wanting to talk about my childhood. Her face was a mixture of concern and annoyance, something I've seen before on T.V.

I shot up out of my chair, raising my voice in response to her annoyed concern. "Man, look at this shit." I walked over to my book shelf. "You see that bottom row? Read those in fourth and fifth grade," I said as I squatted by a copy of Gulliver's Travels. I stood up and indicated the middle row crowded with more dog-eared books, knowing she was looking but not really seeing. "Sixth grade I read these. You know who gave me all these books?"

"No," she bit back tears. Her nostrils dilated.

"A friend of my cousin's. She was eighteen when I was twelve. You know what she liked to read?"

"What," Carla swallowed.

"Jane Austen. Hemmingway. Richard Wright." I walked up to her. "Carla, she held my erect penis, in her hand, when I was twelve years old and told me I could be Nick Adams if I wanted to. Do you know what that means?"

"No." Carla set her jaw.

"Well, neither did I," I said.

She blinked. Tears rolled down out of the corners of her eyes and her mouth twisted up before opening. She mumbled: "You never told me." Her voice quivered with hope and betrayal. "If I'd known, I would've--"

"Would've what," I cut in. "Look at you. Who the hell are you? British Underground? Neo-anarchy? Do you sit in a groupie van all day? And you're the one wondering what all this adult crap is about? Man, you tell me!"

Carla pursed her lips and shakily gathered her clothes in a bundle. She hugged them to her chest, shielded my eyes from dark nipples, soft, untanned skin.

"I'm leaving," she said.

I went and opened a drawer and held out her panties. "And your mix CD,"

"I'll get that later," she said as she defiantly snatched away her Betty Boop underwear right out of my hand. She looked up at my face with wounded, fearful, adoring eyes, so I grabbed her by the arm, tugged her to me, and I kissed her. We bumped teeth but the kiss was so hot and violent and gross we weren't going to let our aching gums stop us.

She took a step forward and accidentally stepped on one of my toes. I pushed her back and books fell off my desk. She tried to hoist herself onto me by wrapping a leg around my waist and it hurt my back like hell.

We fell asleep a foot away from my bed, on heaps of Rick's and my dirty jeans and shirts, where I'd pounded her so hard I thought my pelvic bone already cracked. In a brief moment of being half-awake, I had to roll off her and uncurl my body, which rocketed pain through my spine. I fell asleep again rubbing the old, dull thrum in my ribs feeling a bit satisfied.

But don't get me wrong. I make up shit all the time. The book shelf thing just seemed to be one of my more memorable half-lies.