The mom with the abs uses a Zodiac to stalk the dolphins.
After her kids are in bed, after her husband gives her an insufficient cornholing, she drags the inflatable boat to the beach. Puts the oars in the locks, paddles out beyond the breakers, into the open water of the Atlantic. Water splashes and beads on her obsidian wetsuit, shimmers in the moonlight.
She gets aways from shore, readies her speargun. She sets it aside, strips off her wetsuit. A breeze sweeps over the Zodiac. Her nipples stand up and salute. She prefers to do her killing in the nude. Makes it that much easier to masturbate after.
Then she waits. Waits for that telltale ripple in the water. She needs one to crest. Just one. There’s a flutter near the port bow. She slowly hefts the speargun, aims. Waits until that beautiful dark arc – dorsal fin and all – breaks the water. Then her finger mashes the trigger.
THWIP!
The harpoon hits home. Cue the high-pitched keening from the porpoise.
She’s never actually done anything with her kills. Never wanted to. She simply ‘poons the porpoises, listens to their death cries as her fingers deliver a sharp orgasm.
#
The stripper with the braces finishes her shift at Sapphire, drives into the Nevada desert. She keeps an eye on the clock, edges the speedometer to seventy-five. Eighty. Eight-five. Ninety. One-oh-five. Can’t keep the babysitter waiting too long.
A cockeyed, sun-bleached mile marker appears on her right. She mashes the brake pedal. Squeals to a stop. She opens her car door, takes off her shoes.
Her bare feet carry her over the cool desert floor. She steps quickly, gingerly, to avoid the even cooler sand underneath.
Meyer’s waiting where he’s always waiting. At the base of a cactus.
Where she buried him.
She kneels, digs with her hands. Goes about a foot down. Her fingers graze a plastic bag, something long and hard inside.
A humerus. An arm bone. The part between the elbow and the shoulder.
The humerus was once under the ground with the rest of Meyer. But then one day she found it a few feet from where Meyer was buried. A bit of meat still clinging to it, all rotted and stringy. She figured an animal must’ve gotten to it somehow.
In tears, she took it home, gently carved away the meat chunk with a paring knife. Then she soaked the bone in a plastic bucket of soapy water. She found that Dawn worked best for this sort of thing. After that, she put the humerus in a hydrogen peroxide bath for a few hours. When she pulled it out, that bad boy was white as paper.
She took it back to Meyer’s grave, fully intending to put it back underground. Then she noticed the shape of it.
Now: the stripper with the braces removes her jeans, lies on the ground. Balls the jeans up, puts them under her head. She unwraps the humerus, lays it on her torso so that the smooth knob of the ball joint grazes her belly button ring. From the plastic bag, she removes a small packet – an alcohol wipe. She wipes the top half of the bone, particularly the ball joint, waves it around to dry.
She moves her underwear to the side, puts the ball joint inside her. Like dozens of times before, it pops right in.
Moving it in and out, she thinks about Meyer. Her parents. The colony. Then Meyer again. It’s a Möbius strip of things lost.
Grief, she’s learned, is a puppet master best not underestimated. It can get you to do some weird shit.
She rubs a hand over her stomach, her augmented breasts. Beneath her shirt, right between her breasts, is where a tattoo of a heart used to reside. It was delicate. Had a certain Victorian flair to it. The middle of the heart said MEYER DAVID in calligraphic script. That is, before she had it lasered the fuck off. She quickly learned that guys don’t tend to be generous tippers when they see that kind of ink on a stripper.
She comes until she cries.
#
The mom with the abs executes the Plow. The Tripod Headstand with Lotus Legs. The Scorpion Handstand. The Destroyer of the Universe.
The Destroyer, that’s her favorite. Took her months to master it. Longer than the Scorpion, even.
The other women in the mom’s yoga class worship her. They invite her to join their book clubs, join them at Twist for a juice. The mom with the abs declines. Always declines. She took up yoga to focus her mind, her body. Not to make friends.
The instructor, Autumn, approaches the mom with the abs when class concludes. The mom rolls up her mat, secures it with webbed straps. “Hey,” Autumn says. “Great work today. You sure you don’t wanna teach a class? The other ladies are looking at you half the time anyway.”
The mom with the abs smiles politely, shakes her head no. “Nah, I’m okay,” she says. “Thanks, though.”
This has happened almost every class for the past few weeks. Autumn is horrible at taking a hint. Or maybe she’s just really hopeful. The mom with the abs can’t tell which.
In truth, the mom with the abs doesn’t like exercise classes. Can’t stand the pre- and post-class chatting. The class does get her out of her head, though. Which is the point. Which is why her therapist suggested yoga in the first place.
And mastering the Destroyer of the Universe, well, the mom with the abs loves laying claim to that. Makes her feel like she’s in control. If only for a little while.
#
The stripper with the braces loves going to the orthodontist. When she had the braces put on, she had no idea she’d enjoy it so much.
Dr. Andy isn’t much to look at. His blond hair is thinning, inching away from his forehead. He has a pinchable amount of paunch around the middle. He wears ridiculous ties, many of which clash with his shirts. Today he’s wearing a yellow and brown-checked tie with a pink shirt. The stripper with the braces wonders whether he’s color blind.
His touch, though. He hovers over her, inches from her face, his hands lightly undoing the elastic around the bracket on each tooth. He slips the wire out, replaces it with another. He softly hums “Bang a Gong” by T. Rex as it emanates from the speakers embedded in the ceiling. He’s so gentle. So precise.
And his smell. The stripper can’t exactly pinpoint it, and she’s dying to ask him what it is. There’s a bit of Old Spice in there. But it’s not the cologne. It’s not that heavy. A deodorant maybe? There’s something else, too. A body wash, something. But she can only smell it when he’s this close to her. He smells like Meyer.
Her nipples harden. She hopes Dr. Andy doesn’t notice. But she also kinda hopes he does.
Dr. Andy slips on the replacement elastics, works the little plier doodads with the precision of a fine-scale modeler. She imagines him in a cramped little room in a basement, bent over a beat-up card table, gently sliding decals onto the body of a model airplane, still humming “Bang a Gong.”
She looks at his eyes, hopes to catch his gaze. In her line of work, her eyes are just as important as her breasts. She’s learned to say full sentences with a ten-second stare. Dr. Andy’s eyes are a greyish blue, a teensy fleck of black in the left one. But those eyes stay trained on the stripper’s braces, the work at hand.
Which only makes her want him more. She figures there’s a good chance she isn’t the only stripper whose teeth he’s fixed. There’s a good chance he isn’t one for strip clubs, period. She’s never seen him at Sapphire. And she’s looked. Many, many times.
#
The mom with the abs works three days a week at the Candy Kitchen in Rehoboth Beach. Dishes out bags of nonpareils. Boxes of saltwater taffy. Blocks of fudge.
Her kids love smelling her clothes when she comes home from work. They press their little button noses to her taut stomach, breathe deeply of her official Candy Kitchen polo shirt. “Momma Yum-Yum,” they call her.
She hates sugar. Well, that’s not exactly true. She doesn’t hate it. She loves it, truth be told. But it makes her too jittery. And then there’s the crash, which she loathes.
She’s done cocaine more than a few times in her life. Each time felt AMAZING. For about twenty minutes. Maybe thirty. Then she bottomed out. Felt like shit. Sugar has a similar effect. Though less intense. So no sugar for the mom with the abs. Made it easy to get those abs.
The Candy Kitchen gig was her therapist’s idea, too. Another distraction. “It’ll keep your mind on the present,” the therapist said. “The here and now.”
Yet with every sack of gummies she scoops, every parcel of chocolate-covered potato chips she rings up, the past lingers in her mind like dust in an attic – it coats everything, weighs it down, suffocates.
It makes her want to slam her hand in a car door.
#
The stripper with the braces wants to cry when she sees her son, Braeden. Especially when Braeden lays his head in her lap. It’s exactly what Meyer used to do.
One day, the stripper with the braces made a list of the things Meyer and Braeden have in common. It went like this:
- Eyes (brown like really watery mud)
- Curly, dirty blond hair
- Loves playing with my hair
- Fusses when I play with his
- Sore loser (i’m trying to break that habit)
- Doesn’t like mac and cheese (don’t get this. never will.)
- Freakishly strong even though he’s scrawny
- Oddly obsessed with Johnny Cash music
- Horrible liar (but knows it – he hardly ever lies)
- Loves playing pretend
The stripper with the braces felt weird about the last one. Braeden’s version of pretend is not Meyer’s version. It’s Meyer’s version that causes the stripper’s eyes to well up. She hopes Braeden never likes Meyer’s version.
#
The mom with the abs kills dolphins so she won’t have an affair.
Once, she asked her husband, Glenn, to slap her across the face while having sex. Glenn pretended he didn’t hear her. She said it again, louder, annunciated every syllable. He still kept pumping away, didn’t raise a hand. She said, “Fucking hit me, asshole!” He slapped her, but gently. Playfully, even. Didn’t even hurt. Not wanting to push the issue, though, she acted as if she liked it. Glenn smiled, relieved.
The very next day she went out and fucked some random guy who she knew would hit her. The guy had a reputation around town. Liked to fight. Stank like booze. Trent something.
He took her home, fucked her brains out. When she asked for it, he hit her. Hard. Didn’t hesitate. Belted her right across the face. She saw stars. Then he choked her. She nearly passed out.
The mom with the abs never came as hard as she did that night. But she felt so guilty afterward, swore off extramarital sex.
But she still wanted pain. And what better way to get that than to kill something beautiful.
#
After she gets out of the shower, the stripper with the braces drops her towel, stares at herself in a full-length mirror. Her eyes wander over the blonde-framed face and bombshell body that have earned her stupid good money.
She knows full well that looks don’t last forever. Even now, in only her late twenties, she can see the natal beginnings of crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes. Barely noticeable, but still noticeable.
She gets regular offers to do porn – which she’s never pursued, though she has thought about it – and while she still gets offers to do schoolgirl and babysitter porn, the offers to do MILF porn have begun to filter in more and more. Even though MILF porn is a thing, MILF strippers kinda aren’t. That is, unless the MILF strippers in question are in their very early twenties.
So. The clock is ticking. And she knows it.
Later in the morning, she’s laid back in the dental chair in Dr. Andy’s office. He’s wearing a cobalt-blue shirt with a Kelly-green tie. Hums along to “Jailbreak” by Thin Lizzy as he does his usual maintenance routine on her braces.
He finishes, brings the chair back up to sitting position. Her nipples are hard once again, and for a moment, she’s dumbstruck.
In her head, leading up to this moment, she rehearsed different ways to ask Dr. Andy about a career in dentistry while also kinda-sorta flirting with him. In her head, she tried the whole demure damsel in distress routine. But it didn’t feel quite right.
Dr. Andy strips off his nitrile gloves, and she says, “Um, do you think, um, you could. I mean, would you mind.”
He looks down at her, waiting for her to finish.
A voice in her head: Oh come on, bitch. He’s just another dude with a dick. Work that shit!
She stands up – back straight, tits thrust out – and looks him dead in the eye, says, “So look, I like you, and I wanna take you to lunch. My treat. Any place you want. You wanna have lunch with me?”
He fumfers around, says something about having to check his schedule.
“Stop it. Get over yourself and come to lunch with me.” She smiles, puts a hand on his upper arm. “I need some career advice.”
He flashes a nervous little grin. “Okay.”
The voice in her head: Yes, bitch! That is how you do it!
#
The mom with the abs almost runs into one of her kills on the beach. Literally.
She’s out for her morning run and nearly collides with a group of people standing around near the surf. This is because she always keeps her eyes on the ground while she runs on the beach. Has to. What with the uneven ground and washed-up bits of oceanic flotsam that could easily turn an ankle.
It’s the weeping that gets her attention. She looks up, spots the mullers, darts right, narrowly misses the throng. But then trips over a horseshoe crab shell. She goes down, rolls on the sand. Comes to a stop. Stands, brushes herself off. Finds that, thankfully, nothing’s broken or sprained.
That’s when she sees the dolphin.
Chunks of its flesh are torn away. One flipper is missing. A tiny crab climbs out of its blowhole. The dorsal fin is jagged like something’s been chewing on it. The harpoon still sticks out of the animal’s flank, has slimy strings of seaweed tangled around it.
The bystanders form a crescent around the dolphin. Shake their heads. Tut. Wonder aloud to themselves how anybody could do such a thing. One of them is on the phone with somebody – the police? animal control? – while another weeps.
The mom with the abs knows she should be disgusted. Upset. Creeped out. Something. Staring at the deal animal, at the aftermath of her handiwork, she feels something quite the opposite, though. A tingling. An intense, pleasurable tingling in her abdomen, which courses down, settles between her legs.
She turns, sprints toward home where she proceeds to lock herself in the bathroom and rub one out.
#
The stripper with the braces has a hard time studying. Because Dr. Andy is helping her study, and that makes it hard to focus.
The stripper with the braces never finished high school. Long story short: when she had Braeden, she had to drop out. And now that she’s decided to become a dental hygienist, she needs to go back to school. But in order to do that, she has to get her GED. And she managed to convince Dr. Andy to help her study for the exam.
They sit at Dr. Andy’s kitchen table, the test materials arranged neatly in front of them. He insisted on doing it at his house because he wanted a “distraction-free environment.” Even though Johnny Cash is playing softly in the background. But it’s only because music always helped him study. It’s how he made it through college. And dental school.
Much to the stripper’s chagrin, though, he wants to help her study. Gun to her head, she’d admit that, yeah, she wanted his help studying, but those weren’t her true intentions. Her true intentions were to put the moves on him. But he’s wholly focused on test prep, dodging her hints like a deadbeat dodges the IRS – with complete and absurd dedication.
They review some simple algebra equations, and the stripper puts her hand on Dr. Andy’s leg. Upper thigh, to be precise.
He doesn’t react. Doesn’t even flinch.
The stripper begins rubbing his leg. Gets really close to his dick.
He looks up from the study materials, stares her dead in the eye. “Do you want your GED?”
The stripper’s lips part, but no words come out.
“Do you want,” he says. “Your GED.”
She slowly removes her hand from his leg. “Yes.”
“And you really want to become a hygienist?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yeah.”
“Then you need to focus, and stop with this seduction crap.”
Again her lips part, but only her breath passes between them.
“I’m not one of your marks at the club, okay? I’m a no-nonsense guy who’s in a position to help you attain your goal. Which I’m more than happy to do. And until you are well on the road to becoming a hygienist, I have no interest in dating you.”
She flinches.
“It’s not personal. And I’m not judging you. Or what you do. It’s just that I’ve dated exotic dancers” – exotic dancers, she notes, not strippers – “before, and it always ends in disaster. There’s too much drama, too much nonsense. But you seem different than the others. Like you truly want something more. So I’m helping because I want to help. Not because I want to get in your pants. So if you’re looking for a fling or…whatever, tell me now. Because I don’t have time to waste on more nonsense.” He stares. “What’s it gonna be.”
It’s the kind of brutal honesty Meyer used to hit her with. While it hurts to hear, it’s a good hurt. The kind that gets her wet. “I want your help,” she says. “And no more bullshit, I swear.”
He nods, turns his attention back to the study materials.
“Um,” she says, “okay if I take a quick pee break, though?”
He grins. “Sure.”
She goes to the bathroom, hikes up her skirt – worn for easy access in the hopes that Dr. Andy would take the bait – and masturbates furiously. Comes in record time.
She doesn’t think of Meyer once.
#
The mom with the abs doesn’t regret it when she calls Autumn a cunt.
It’s after yoga one day, and Autumn once again badgers the mom to teach a class. “Just a one-and-done fill-in kinda thing,” Autumn says. She adds that she has to drive up to Philly to take her mom for a chemo treatment because her dad has some prior engagement blah blah blah blah.
The mom with the abs tunes out. She’s been doing that a lot recently. She’s itchy, ill at ease. She hasn’t been able to go on the hunt lately, what with the Dewey and Rehoboth cops patrolling the beach at night. They started doing that immediately after her dead prey washed up on shore. With her being temporarily out of business, so to speak, she hasn’t been sleeping well and has been a bit off, to put it mildly.
The mom’s eyes track around the room, completely avoiding Autumn’s. She says she’d love to but can’t. Makes excuses about having to work, her kids, stuff at home.
Nothing works, and Autumn continues to bore in, saying it’d be a huge help, and she’d give the mom a month’s worth of free classes in return, and “please please please, just this once, everybody looks up to you,” and “the other girls would love it, it’s totally easy. Please? Please?”
“Bitch, I said I can’t do it, and I can’t do it!” the mom says. “This is your problem, so fuck off, and take care of it yourself! Fucking whiny cunt.” She grabs her stuff and storms toward the door, past the small cadre of women who’ve abruptly stopped chatting and watch as the mom with the abs marches out of the yoga studio.
While the mom would admit that she overreacted, she can’t help but grin as she makes her way home. Felt good to be shitty to an innocent.
#
The stripper with the braces calls her sister, Shelley.
On the other side of the country, just as she’s finishing up the dinner dishes, the mom with the abs hears her cell phone ring. She wipes her hands on a dishtowel, picks up the phone, flips it open. “TINA,” the screen declares. The mom with the abs sighs, takes the call.
“Hey, Shell,” says the stripper with the braces. “It’s me.”
“Yeah, I know,” says the mom with the abs. “What’s up?”
“So Thanksgiving is next week,” Tina says.
“I’m aware,” Shelley says. “You still coming here?”
“That’s what I called about, actually. Would it be okay if I, um, brought somebody? Besides Braeden, I mean.”
“What, like a date?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Uh,” Shelley looks out the window, at the dark ocean beyond the pane, imagines her would-be prey gliding just beneath its surface, their slick grey hides displacing water like oil, “yeah, sure.”
There’s a pause. Shelley knows Tina’s waiting for her to ask a follow-up question. She doesn’t want to, though. Doesn’t want to go where that road leads. But she capitulates. “So how long have you known this guy?” she says.
Shelley can hear Tina beaming through the phone before she says, “I’ve known him for a while, but we just started seeing each other. He’s my, um, orthodontist.”
“Oh! Cool.” Shelley hopes she sounds excited. Because she isn’t.
“Yeah, he, um.”
Please don’t say it, Shelley thinks. Please don’t say it, please don’t say it.
“He reminds me a lot of Meyer.”
Shelley closes her eyes, purses her lips. She desperately wants to shut the memory out.
But she never can.
#
The roughhewn walls of the house baffle sound the way a megaphone does. Shelley can hear every sound that comes from Tina’s room. Which, yes, includes Tina’s moans when she and Meyer have sex.
Tonight, though, the bed squeaks, but it isn’t accompanied by moans. “No,” Tina says. “Stop. Meyer, please. Stop. Not without a cond—” Tina’s voice is garbled.
Meyer grunts. “Ow!” A slap. “Stay still!”
Shelley gets out of bed, runs to Tina’s door, rattles the knob. It’s locked. So she kicks it in. The flimsy doorframe makes it easy. The door flies open, bangs against the wall.
Meyer’s on top of Tina, his hand clamped over her mouth. His shirttail barely covers his ass. He moans, shudders, his buttocks flexing. Tina’s bare legs are spread, her socks still on her feet. Tina looks at Shelley, her eyes wide. Meyer looks at Shelley, too. But he’s just plain frozen.
Shelley leaps at Meyer, barrels into him at full speed, knocks him off Tina.
Meyer stumbles, stumbles, falls toward the window, crashes through the thin pane of glass. There’s a soft thud outside, and then nothing. Crickets. An owl hoots.
Tina, her bottom half bare as the day she was born, minus the socks, hurries to the window. Shelley joins her, peers down.
Meyer lies on the ground below, his limbs twisted. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t make a sound.
“Baby?” Tina says. “Baby?!” She runs out of the room, fast as her naked legs can carry her. Shelley glimpses a glossy, milky line running down the inside of Tina’s thigh.
Shelley follows, scrambles downstairs, out the front door after Tina.
Tina kneels next to Meyer, shakes him. His head rests at a disquieting angle. “Baby!” she says. “Baby, wake up!” She puts her head to his chest. “Oh shit.” Shakes him some more. “Baby!”
Shelley kneels, too. Takes Meyer’s limp wrist in her hand. She drops it, puts two fingers against Meyer’s throat, just under his jaw. Nothing. She pulls her hand away.
Tina looks at her sister.
Shelley licks her dry lips. “He’s dead.”
Tina begins to cry, pushes Shelley. “Why’d you do that?!”
“He was raping you!”
“No, he wasn’t! We were,” Tina sniffs, “whaddaya call it. Roleplaying.”
“That was not roleplaying,” Shelley says. “You. I mean. I heard you slap him.”
“Not hard!” Tina cries harder, throws her arms around Meyer’s body. Cries into his torn, dirty shirt.
“We need to get rid of the body,” Shelley says. “I mean, if the elders find out. We. Mom and Dad. We’ll be shunned.” She doesn’t fear God, but she does fear the elders. Luckily, their parents, the elders, and the other adults in the colony are out of town at a Bible retreat.
Still sobbing, Tina nods. She knows that Shelley’s right. Hates that Shelley’s right. Hates Shelley, period.
They find a tarp, roll up Meyer’s body in it, muscle it into the bed of their father’s pickup. They both sweat and grunt. Tina cries. But perseveres.
Shelley finds two shovels, places them in the bed next to Meyer’s body.
Then they drive into the desert to bury their sin.
#
Even now, as Tina prattles on about the many shining attributes of Dr. Andy, Shelley can see the desert. Hear the sand grind under her sneakers.
Whiff her own sweaty funk as she pierces the ground with the metal spade of a shovel. Wince at the burning in her muscles as she scoops out mound after mound of gritty earth.
Hear her and Tina’s grunts as they pull Meyer’s wrapped body out of the truck bed, drag it to the hole, heave it in.
Smell the evacuated piss and shit from Meyer’s body waft up when it hits the bottom of the grave.
Feel Tina’s tears soak into the shoulder of her shirt as Shelley holds her close, not even bothering to tell her it’ll be okay because it won’t.
Taste the tepid but clean water they drink from a bottle of Poland Spring passed between them on the ride back to the colony.
“Shell?” Tina says. “You still there?”
Shelley opens her eyes. “Yeah, I’m here.” But she isn’t. Because she’s a million miles away, thinking about a past she desperately wants to kill. A past that Tina desperately wants to resurrect. It’s exactly what turned their lives upside-down.
#
Months after Meyer dies, Shelley one day uses the bathroom while Tina’s taking a shower.
“What are you doing?!” Tina says from behind the clear plastic shower curtain. “Get outta here!”
“Calm down, I just gotta pee.”
“So hold it! Or go outside!”
“What’s your problem?” Shelley says. “We do this all the ti—” She stops, notices Tina’s posture. Tina’s got her back to Shelley and is crossing her arms over her midsection. Shelley pulls back the curtain, turns the water off. “Tina, turn around.”
“What are you doing, freak? Turn the water back on!”
Gently, Shelley puts a hand on Tina’s shoulder. “C’mon, just.”
Tina hangs her head, slowly turns. Lets her arms drop to her sides. Rivulets of water run down her body, cresting at the slight convex bump of her stomach before continuing downward. Her boobs, which were a medium A-cup at best, have swelled to a small B.
“Oh my god,” Shelley says. “Is it Meyer’s?”
Tina, gaze still pointed downward, nods.
“You gotta get rid of it,” Shelley says.
Tina begins to cry softly. “I can’t, Shell.” She sniffs, looks down at her belly, rubs it in a slow, circular motion. “It’s all I have left of him.”
“Once people find out, though.”
Tina nods, sniffles. “I know.”
After that, they keep Tina’s secret as best they can. But there’s only so much overalls and oversized sweaters can hide. Soon, their parents find out.
They give Tina an earful, of course. Deride her as a jezebel, a whore. Tell her that she and her child will be granted a special place in hell. Then they demand to know who the father is.
Tina lies her ass off, says Meyer found out she was pregnant and took off. It breaks Tina’s heart to disgrace his memory like that since he would’ve never abandoned her, but she figures it’s better than the truth. But the lie only makes things worse. After all, when Meyer initially “disappeared,” Tina claimed not to know what happened to him or where he went. So not only is she a jezebel, she’s a liar besides.
As pissed as her parents are, they don’t tell anybody. Not their friends and certainly not the elders. Instead, they tell Tina to leave and never come back.
Shelley sees this coming a mile away. She gives them a prepared speech about sticking together as a family, the power of forgiveness, how Jesus would never turn Tina away. When none of this makes a dent in their parents’ resolve, Shelley antes up with an ultimatum: shun Tina, and Shelley walks, too. Either lose both children or neither.
Much to Shelley’s surprise and chagrin, their parents, without hesitation, tell her, Fine, go. “And take your whore sister with you,” their mom says.
Shelley and Tina leave. Take a bus to the only major city nearby: Vegas. Check into some shitty motel a few blocks from the Strip. The next day, Shelley begins brainstorming job ideas. Her first thought? A titty bar near their motel. “We can’t do that,” Tina says. “God wouldn’t—”
“God hasn’t done a fucking thing to help us,” Shelley says. “So God doesn’t get to have an opinion. Besides, youdon’t have to do anything. I’m gonna work there. You just rest and get ready to deliver that baby.” Shelley doesn’t add that there ain’t no way a titty bar is gonna hire a nine-months-pregnant girl, anyway.
Though she isn’t thrilled with her plan, Shelley sucks it up and goes to work at the titty bar. It can be gross and demeaning, sure, but there’s one enormous silver lining: the money’s ridiculously good. It’s so good that by the time Braeden is born, they have enough money to move into a decent apartment.
Tina is nursing Braeden late one night when Shelley comes home from work. She drops her purse on the floor, plops down on the couch next to Tina, exhales heavily. She takes Braeden’s tiny foot in her hand, rubs his little toes with her thumb as Tina nurses him.
“How was work?” Tina says.
Shelley gives her standard response: “It is what it is.”
She smells like the other strippers she works with, that strawberry-smelling crap they spray themselves with. Her face and sinewy arms are bedaubed with specks of body glitter from using the same poles and stage as the other dancers. Her heavy makeup is still caked on.
She used to beeline right to the bathroom to clean up after work. To scrub herself of all remnants of the club, which she couldn’t wait to get off her body. Lately, though, she collapses on the couch first. Then eats dinner. Then showers. Maybe.
Shelley’s exhausted, and Tina knows it. Looking at her sister covered in things she loathes but still not complaining while all Tina has to do is sit home and take care of her son, Tina curses herself for ever resenting Shelley.
“I made that chicken and broccoli casserole that Mom makes,” Tina says. “There’s a plate for you in the fridge.”
“Really?” Shelley says. “You hate that stuff.”
Tina shrugs. “It’s not so bad. Besides, it’s your favorite,” she says. “And from now on, you tell me what you want for dinner, and I’ll make it.” A pause. “At least until I can find a job.”
Shelley grins. “Can’t argue with that.” She sits back, shuts her eyes. “Any idea where you wanna work?”
“Um, is the club hiring?”
#
Tina continues to ramble while Shelley pads into the living room, opens the sliding glass door. She steps out on to the deck, which overlooks the beach.
A stiff breeze whips her hair across her face. She pulls her sweater tight around her. Her eyes roam over the beach to the water beyond. A Dewey Beach Police truck slowly rolls across the sand. Its side-mounted searchlight sweeps the beach, the ocean. Still searching for the maritime assassin.
Even with her, ahem, “hobby” on hold, she’s kept it together for the most part. Especially after the Autumn incident, which, surprisingly, helped quite a bit. But now, with Tina yapping about this Meyer analogue, that all-too-familiar itchiness digs its claws in, squeezes hard.
Shelley turns away, steps back inside. Eyes a small box on the kitchen table. Her eyes trace the sunshiny Candy Kitchen logo on the box top. Inside is a little less than a pound of chocolate fudge. She brought it home for her kids. Not something she does often. She just thought they’d enjoy a little treat. And she never allows them to have much at a time anyway. Only a small cube for each of them after dinner.
She finishes her call with Tina, hangs up. Sits down at the kitchen table. Lays her cell phone next to the fudge box. She puts her elbows on the tabletop, massages her forehead. She stops, pulls the box toward her, opens it slowly.
The smell wafts up. Thick. Sweet. Luscious. So much more noticeable when it isn’t competing with the hundreds of other scents at the store.
A white, flimsy plastic knife lies next to the dark confection. Shelley licks her lips. Cuts off a tiny sliver. Tweezes it between her thumb and forefinger. She pinches it flat, pops it in her mouth before she can think twice.
She holds it in her mouth. Lets it melt. Savors it as the chocolate coats her tongue and teeth. “Fuck that’s good,” she exhales. She cuts another piece, eats it. Then another. And another. A fifth, a sixth.
The sugar zips along the entire tangled roadmap of her nervous system. Makes her body feels like one big sparkler. Or, better yet, a fuse. The sugar makes every single moment a hold-your-breath-cuz-hear-come-the-fireworks! sizzle of excitement. And like a fuse, there’s gonna be the inevitable snuff-out. Only this’ll be less of an explosion and more of an implosion. She should go do something to try to offset it. Go for a run. Practice yoga. Fuck Glenn, maybe.
Instead, she gets up, leaves the house. Goes to find Trent what’s-his-name, who’ll be more than happy to murder her vagina while whacking the dark thoughts out of her head.
She walks up Houston Street toward Route 1. Stops when a wild rabbit crosses her path. It stops, too, and sits on its hindlegs in the gravel driveway of a ranch-style cottage.
Dewey and Rehoboth are full of rabbits. They’re all over the fuckin’ place.
She lunges at it, and it hops away, but its efforts to escape prove futile. Not even a rabbit is faster than the mom with the abs. Especially when she’s all hopped up on sugar.
She snatches it up, cradles it. The rabbit thrashes a bit, then calms down. The mom with the abs strokes its ears, its back.
And then she begins strangling it. The rabbit emits an ear-stabbing cry as it struggles to stay alive, much like the dolphins did.
Her nipples go rock-hard, and her crotch gets very warm very quickly. When her sinewy hands crush the rabbit’s tiny windpipe and the keening stops suddenly, she comes.
She returns home all drowsy and sex-drunk. Dead rabbit still in hand. Not knowing what else to do with it, she puts it in a plastic bag, pops it in the freezer.
With the present on ice, she’s able to freeze out the past. She sleeps better than she has in months.
END