“Are you gettin’ soft on me?”
“I’m not gettin’ soft.”
“Don’t you remember what this is?” Baker’s hand goes to my face. “No feelings, ok?”
I nod sideways.
“What is this? Tell me you remember.”
“This is no feelings. We don’t get involved. If and when one of us catches feelings that’s the end of the sex part.”
“That’s right. This is friends with benefits. Not a relationship,” she says.
“I’m not asking for a relationship. Baker: no. Good friends. Great sex. Totally stable.”
“Are you: stable?”
“I’m totally fucking stable, Charisma. Totally stable. I wasn’t saying anything. I was just saying that from the moment I saw you, I wanted to..”
“Fuck me?”
“That’s what it was, one hundred percent wanted to—in this order—strip you down and fuck you, and be your friend just enough to support the former.”
“And how do you feel now?”
“Same way. Maintain friendship so we can keep on getting better at sex. Blow each other’s minds and shit.”
I rub her panty area with my hand. She smiles, then pulls my hand away and says: “Let’s wait till we get to the house. I don’t want those two listening in.”
A few minutes later we opened the door and said goodbye to Charisma’s aunt and uncle. We left them in their usual position, securely in their chairs, and the two of them waved and heckled us, how the weekend was going to be so much fun and how—wink, wink—if I didn’t get knowledge inside their neice’s panties I was the fool of the universe. That’s the last time I saw Charisma’s aunt and uncle.
Charisma drove us to her new house and parked in the alley.
“Let’s get our strategy straight,” she says.
I look to her. Her arms are straight out, elbows locked, rested inside the circle of the steering wheel.
“I will approach Brooklyn. I will talk with her. You come in beside me. Stay downstairs.”
“What are you gonna say?”
“I’m gonna remind her that this is our house together and we can both have people over, we can both do coke or whatever we want in this house.”
“What if your grandmother is in there?”
“What if she is? I love her but we’re only getting a small amount of money from her disability—a very small amount. Let’s go, ok?”
Inside, Brooklyn sat tapping away at her phone. Baker’s grammy lit up when Baker and I came in the room, the way only babies and old people (and extremely innocent lovers) can. She started talking and I peeled off from Baker, all the while listening to Baker and Brooklyn discussing our return to the house. Also, two dogs 🐕—brown pit bulls—jumped all over me, knocked me down, licked my face and ears and gently bit my hands when I pushed them away.
Brooklyn stayed seated on the couch while Baker stood in front of her.
“I want to have Matthew over this weekend. Just like you’re having Rambuncto over,” Baker said.
“That’s exactly the problem,” said Brooklyn. “This is the weekend Rambuncto is getting released from jail. Today’s Friday. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Saturday is the day. He’s been in there for six months you think I’m gonna deny him this pussy? This slot? What do you want me to do, Charisma? Do you want me to call the police and ask them to hold him for another week?”
“Don’t be stupid, Brooklyn.”
“ ‘Cause I will call down there.”
“Brooklyn, don’t be stupid!”
“It’s just that I was expecting Rambuncto to come to this house when he got out—”
“Have him come over, then!”
“I just don’t think that hmm huum over there is going to rub Rambuncto the right way. He’s been locked up with hard guys—you know how it is in there.”
“No I don’t!” said Baker.
“But you know what it’s like! Don’t argue semantics with me, girlfriend. You’ve been around Rambuncto—you know what that’s like. Please. Baker. Please don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“Ok I know what you’re taking about,” Charisma says.
Brooklyn says: “Thank you. I wish you wouldn’t pretend you isn’t from this neighborhood. Ever since you went to that north side high school, you acts like you is better than all of this—ain’t you, Charisma?”
“I’m not better than you! I’m not. I never said anything to indicate that I thought that.”
“You didn’t have to say it.”
“Brooklyn. Is you supposed to be my best friend or what? My best friend doesn’t talk like you’s talking now. You is taking some shit, girl, sayin’ that shit about me actin’ like I’m better than you.”
“You don’t have to. You carry ‘round them books—big ass books—actin’ like you be readin’ that shit..”
I steal glances at Brooklyn. She’s skinny (to the bone) and today she’s wearing a blue thing that wraps around her ass, a ripped wife beater and her legs are bare. My eyes follow them up from her toes to her crotch. I find this strange thing happening: I’m thinking: not only has Charisma let herself go, but Brooklyn looks naturally thin, and I’m imagining pulling her into a side room somewhere in this house and ripping her clothes off.
“..when I know you ain’t ever read more than 50 pages of that motherfucker in your entire life. Has you, Charisma?”
“What book are you talking about?
“I don’t know! You’re the one who’s fucking reading it!!”
“Brooklyn, can me and Matt move in here for a few days so he has a place to stay for his trip. That’s all I want. Just let us stay here and have some fun for Friday, Saturday—Sunday he leaves. Do you really think we’re going to disturb Rambuncto that much?”
“I don’t know, Charisma.”
“You act like Rambuncto is a bull in a fucking china shop!” Charisma says.
“There you go again,” Brooklyn says.
“There I what again?”
“There you go, usin’ them college phrases. You never talk like this when Matt’s not here.”
“Yes I do!”
I look Brooklyn up and down, this time not making any secret of it.
Brooklyn looks at me the same way.
“What kind of pants are those?”
“The Champion” I say. “I got these here before I went to California.”
Brooklyn smiles at me. Charisma catches her. Charisma puts her hands on her hips and looks at me.
“Those are nice.” Brooklyn stands. She comes over to me. “Go!” she tells the dogs. “Go now. Get out of here!! Charisma? Will you take these animals out of my house?”
Charisma doesn’t move.
“Matt, this is Brooklyn. Brooklyn, this is my friend Matt. We met at the north side high school you were taking about.”
“Oh, is this the—” Brooklyn talks through her cupped hands “—fuck buddy you were telling me about? Yes? Yes? Baker here says you two have had a thing hooked up since high school, is that true?”
“Don’t answer that,” Baker says. She comes in and drags me away by the hand. “Stay away—that’s a message for you, dear Brooklyn. If I didn’t have sham friends, I wouldn’t have any friends.”
“There she goes again,” Brooklyn tells me. “She never talks that way except when you’re around.”
“Brooklyn shut, the, fuck, up! If I didn’t have bad luck I wouldn’t have any luck. Call that high class, girl. It’s called an expression.”
“It’s called an idiom,” I say, regretting immediately that I said this.
“Oh right,” Brooklyn says. “An idiom. What college did you go to?”
“OU. But I dropped out.”
“Is that supposed to make you more like us?”
“I don’t care how alike or different you and I are. I came here..to fuck..and to do cocaine.” I looked at Charisma’s grammy as I said this. She looked away from me at the television, which played Jeopardy! on silent with the captions. “Is everyone ok with that? Everyone else knows this is my agenda? A well-spoken agenda, if you like. I need a break from film school,” I said, aware of how these words separated me from those around me, something Charisma’s grammy would interpret as the start of a conversation but which Brooklyn took as another sign of how out of place I was.
“Grammy, don’t worry. We’re going to use the attic,” Baker says. “Tell me you two are settled.”
“Oh we’re settled,” Brooklyn says. “Just as long as your lover of the week doesn’t butt heads accidentally with Rambuncto.”
“I’m not going to butt with anyone,” I say.
“I know you think that,” Brooklyn says. “But you never know. Rambuncto..locked up for six months with all sorts of animals..learning new tricks..avoiding getting fucked up the ass with the hard cocks of worser offenders..unable to sleep at night..hoping someone will rescue him..waiting to see me whenever I can get away..getting jerked off not under a table but out in the open where everyone..guards..other visitors..inmates salivating over his cock stuck up like one of those little beasts from Alien.”
I gave that time to indicate that I had heard what she had said.
Then I said: “Brooklyn?”
And she said: “What?”
And I said: “Where’s your baby?”