Liquids

Chapter 14

SUBMERGING

What with the heavies and the girlfriend, my life has gone seriously downhill since Rig left, and it was already in quite a bad place to begin with. But I need to contact him, so after Marni has gone home, I fire off a text:

Some people came looking for you today.

A video call comes in on my phone almost immediately, and I stare at the stained mud-colored carpet in the living room, letting it ring.

I don’t know what to say to him about everything that’s gone down today.

I was hoping I could get away with just a text, but that’s clearly nonsense.

When I answer, his brown shaggy hair appears, wild around his face.

“Who the fuck was it?” he growls, running his hand over his head. I can see the dirt and grime caked in the crevices of his nails. Okay, so he is on a rig. It looks like he’s propped on a pillow, a plain white wall behind his head.

“A guy named Dean and …”

“Eddie,” he says. “The Marlow boys, those fucking assholes. I’m half-minded to come back and teach them a lesson.”

“Dean hit Marni so I whacked him with a frying pan.”

“You did what?”

“I need to spend more time with Brit at the gym getting her to teach me to fight.”

“Babe, let’s go back to the part where you smacked him with a pan.”

“How about we go back to the fact that he hit Marni? What the hell else was I supposed to do?”

Rig emits what sounds like a low snarl. His screen swings around until all I can see are some strip lights on the ceiling. Then I hear the word “Fuck!” followed by a loud crashing noise.

“Hey, man, what’s going on?” Some other guy’s voice echoes in the background.

Then Rig’s voice says, “It’s okay. It’s okay. Not a problem.”

The phone rights again, and Rig appears, red-faced.

“Is everything all right?” I say.

“You do not, do fucking not, wade in with these guys! What were you fucking thinking? I’ll bet my ass they were armed. Jesus, I need to come back. Hitting a goddamn woman. Those assholes.”

“No, it’s chill, Rig. Honestly, we pulled off a stellar acting job pretending you’d never been here. Marni told them we’d had a one-night stand and that’s all it was.”

I don’t need him turning up again and getting all up in my business. You’d think I’d have learned a long time ago that nothing good comes from getting attached, as the last twenty-four hours have amply demonstrated. Whatever game he’s playing, it’s another shiny thing I don’t really need.

A weird silence fills the other end of the phone. I peer at the screen, but his head’s bent down and I can’t see his expression.

“I’ll fix it; don’t you worry about it,” he growls, lifting his head.

“What are you going to do?”

“Talk to some people.”

“You don’t need to do anything, to be honest. Marni and I have covered for you.”

“Babe.” Now his voice is full of amusement.

“What?”

“These guys have come to the apartment I’ve been living in and done a big dump on my doorstep. I’m going to seek retribution for that. They know it. You know it. I know it.”

I sigh. Fucking men and their territorial bullshit. He doesn’t even live here, not really.

“What else?” he says.

“That’s it.”

“What d’ya mean, that’s it?” he growls, narrowing his eyes at me.

He’s growling at me when he’s been lying to me, has an apartment with someone else, and is involved in stuff that brought goons to my door.

He also made me hope and is fake playing house with me.

It all flares through me, prickly and hot, as my phone bites into my palm.

“I’ve gotta go. I promised to meet Marni in Callahan’s,” I say, and I hang up on him.

Rig has stirred up all these things I was trying to fucking forget.

Are some guys just better at pretending than others?

I look down at the tremor in my hand. Fuck, I need a drink.

I stomp through to the kitchen and dig some vodka out of the cabinet.

Thanks for putting me in a much deeper hole than I was in before, buddy.

And the debt, the awful apartment, the creepy landlord, and the shitty job were quite enough of a hole to begin with.

I sink down at the table, pour myself a shot, and knock it back. The burn is so goddamn satisfying.

The blue cup we were drawing is still sitting on the table, pushed to the back.

I drag a sketchpad and the watercolors out of the stack and get out of my seat and fill the cup with water, then I sit down and swirl a brush through it, flipping open the lid of the paintbox.

Inky colors. I start painting some lines with a deep hue, dropping water to make them spread, watching it seep into the paper.

I draw my hand, then the old dried grasses that have been sitting, dusty, on the windowsill for years.

My breathing evens out, and the apartment is quiet.

The next time I look at my watch, it’s 6 p.m.

I’ve been settled here for ten years, and it’s been perfectly okay.

Not the best life, but not a terrifying one either.

I might want to leave, but I have a mountain of debt, no money for a deposit, and my credit is shot.

I can’t move. Rig just jerked me back into realizing how far things had slid.

I’m not going to let them get that bad again.

I need to forget about him and his large hands and his dreams. I grew up at the bottom of the heap.

Why am I hoping for something else? I put my brush down, grab my coat, and head out the door.

When I slide into one of the red-seated booths in the bar, Marni is already nursing an almost empty glass of wine, a generous amount of makeup not hiding the swelling on her cheek.

“Been icing it all day,” she says morosely into her glass. “How am I gonna pull looking like this? I’ve been googling how long it takes for injuries to go down, and it’ll be days. Guys will take one look at me and think I’ve been beaten up.”

Usually, Marni can put a positive spin on anything like a pro. “You have been beaten up.”

She rolls her eyes at me. “Obviously. But no one’s going to sleep with me looking like this.”

“A few days isn’t bad,” I say, switching into confident friend mode for a bit.

A guy appears at the end of our table carrying a bottle of wine and a wine glass. Oh fuck, what now?

“I was told to bring you this.”

I glance around. It’s quiet tonight. The normal regulars. Alan is sitting on a stool propping up the bar with a pint. Reg, the old timer, is in his usual corner. A punk I don’t recognize is by the jukebox trying to find something other than Perry Como. He’d never buy us wine, no way.

“Who’s it from?” I ask.

Marni grabs the bottle out of his hands. “Who gives a fuck, Carl? No one in their right mind turns down free booze.” She gives the guy a simpering smile. “Thank you.”

The guy places the extra glass down in front of me, and my eyes scan over her red face. She’s actually quite drunk.

He holds up his palms. “Genuinely not sure who it was from, ladies. The bartender said it was a gift to you two girls.”

He walks away. Ladies. Girls. Ha!

“Marni, you numbskull; it could be from Marco! Though God knows why he’d be gifting us alcohol. The last thing you want is to be owing something to someone like him.”

Her eyelashes flutter as she looks away. What is going on between her and Angelo?

“If he gifted this, then he’s an asshole for not saying anything. I’m not going to be beholden to some hood over a fuckin’ bottle of wine.” The top’s already been unscrewed so she pours a huge slosh into her glass then mine. She picks hers up, grinning, and clinks my glass. “Bottoms up.”

I knock back a slug. After a day like today, I need it. “I didn’t even tell you the best bit about today.”

Her lips part. “What the fuck else happened?”

“Rig’s girlfriend visited.”

Marni’s eyes go round. “You are fucking kidding me!” She slams her glass down. “He has a girlfriend? People have kept that goddamn quiet. All I’ve heard about him is that he fucks anything that moves. She must have the patience of a saint.”

I wince. The alcohol has loosened her filter. But she’s not wrong. I knew that was his reputation the first night I slid into his booth. Too late to start caring now.

“She said they’d been a couple for five years and thinks they still are. He said he’d been in a relationship a long time ago that lasted a couple of years, but that it was over.”

“So … which one is true?”

“I have no idea. But get this: She said they have an apartment together, and not to trust anything he told me.”

“An apartment!” she shrieks.

“Shh.”

“Why don’t we know about her? Who is she?”

“Someone named Sadie. Marge mentioned her, but said their relationship was on and off. Apparently, she lives in Carbondale. That must be where their place is.”

“Is the apartment thing true?”

“You can check, but it costs money.”

“Just fucking ask the asshole. Jesus Christ! Men.” She takes another swig of wine. “Why are they always such a disappointment? If he’s been leading you on, I’ll fucking kill him.”

She’s loyal like that, Marn. My chest warms. “I talked to him earlier about those two guys who showed up today, but I didn’t tell him about her visiting.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I want to see his face, read his body language, when I tell him. I want to know if he’s been lying to me all this time.

” That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway.

All this time. I want to snort at myself.

It’s been like, what? Six days in total?

And no, I’m not putting it off because I’m burying my head in the sand.

“I don’t know how you do that, hold something like that in. I’d have had to call him immediately and scream at him.”

“Revenge is a dish that’s best served cold,” I say, as I curl my nails into my palms.

I’ve got a nice little buzz going on by the time I head to the bathroom an hour later. I do my business and shimmy my panties up in the stall and turn to flush the toilet when I hear the main door open.

“Rumor has it he shacked up with that slut who was with Dave. You know those two who always hang around together and sleep with anything that moves. The blonde one was at the bar earlier.”

“Oh God, the loud-mouthed one … Mandy or something?”

“Marni.”

“That’s the one. She’s the worst. All over guys like a rash. Like they’d want to put their dick into something that’s been everywhere.”

“Her friend’s an alcoholic. Dave’s mad as hell. Vodka all over the apartment, he said. And he said it was a pigsty, too. He started seeing her thinking he’d straighten her out.”

My hand rests on the flush handle, not moving. I don’t remember Dave being annoyed about my drinking. He fucking drank more than me, the asshole. He was only too happy to get hammered and pass out in bed afterward.

“Why would Rig shack up with her?”

“I think it was all a rumor she put about to make it appear like she wasn’t as frumpy and old as she is. Like she could pull someone like him.”

What’s that saying about eavesdroppers never hearing anything pleasant? And I’m thirty-five, not a hundred and three! Fucking busybodies. What business is it of theirs? I flush the toilet, straighten up, and step out of the stall.

“Ladies,” I say.

I stand next to one of them by the sink as I wash my hands. She shifts on her feet as her friend digs around in her bag, eyes down. I grab a towel, taking a long time to dry my hands. The girl who was rooting in her bag starts doing her makeup in the mirror.

Rig wasn’t wrong about how we’re viewed in this town.

You can kid yourself that no one knows, but in a place this small everyone’s sticking their nose in your business.

Whatever’s going down with all the women Rig’s got trotting around after him, and Sadie in particular, nothing good is going to come out of it for me, that’s for sure.

Marni got beaten up, I whacked a dangerous guy, and now we’re on the radar of the town’s worst assholes.

Who knows what could happen next – are they going to torch my apartment like they torched Rig’s trailer?

And when I head toward the door of the bathroom, I can’t even come up with a decent parting shot.

After we finish the bottle of wine, Marni persuades some guy to buy us another one, and we’re reeling by the time we leave the bar.

It’s a shorter walk to my place, and I’ve been on my own since Rig left, and I keep wandering from room to room like an idiot as if I’m looking for something that’s missing.

I dream about his endlessly wide shoulders in my shower, and curling into him in bed.

Dammit, I need some company, and fuck, maybe it’s no bad thing to have someone with me in the apartment. Safety in numbers and all that.

“Come and crash at my place,” I say to Marni.

She can hardly stand, and I’m not much better, but between us we lurch our way home.

It takes forever to climb up the iron staircase because we both have to keep sitting down.

Once we’re in, she staggers into my bedroom and collapses face down on the comforter.

I manage to take her shoes off and get her legs straight on Rig’s side of the bed and I cover her with a blanket.

Then I stumble around, digging out the T-shirt of Rig’s I stole without him noticing, and slide under the covers.

And I’m no longer angry or even sad; the wine has washed it all away.

I just need to stay away from him and not get sucked in again.

It’s not like that’ll be hard given he’s away working on the rigs most of the time.