Rocco
When I agreed to be best man, the only thing I was looking forward to was the bachelor party. Women, whisky, cigarettes . . . those three words sang in my head over and over every time I had to deal with Shotgun’s starry eyes, his faraway looks when we were meant to be working but he was daydreaming about Cecilia instead. But now that the night’s come, I find it all strangely numb. I just can’t get into it.
We’re at a club in town, the boys having a whale of a time drinking and stumbling over each other as they try to get to the front row where the strippers dance. There are four of them in all, and three of them are almost completely naked. They look good, I guess. Maybe once upon a time I’d have been up there too, flapping bills at them, hungry for one of them to take the bills with their mouth. But now I just sip whisky, and even that tastes sour.
I can’t stop thinking about the girl at the restaurant, Simone. Simone, for some damn reason, is haunting my dreams, waking and sleeping. Whatever I do and wherever I am, Simone is there, her bright blue eyes watching me, her long blonde hair trailing down her back. I try not to think about her but it’s difficult. The more I promise myself I won’t think about her anymore, the more I think about her.
“What’s got into you, pal?” Beast says, strolling over with a stripper on his arm. The stripper giggles and whispers something in his ear.
“Nothing,” I say. “Go enjoy yourself.”
“Yes, sir.” Beast nods.
I take a step forward, talking so only he can hear. The girl on his arm looks respectfully away. “And stop it with that sir and boss shit,” I growl.
Beast laughs awkwardly. “That was a joke, Rocco,” he says. “And back in the warehouse . . . I just thought you were in charge of the job, that’s all. I didn’t mean anything by it. Scout’s honor and all that.”
I hold his gaze, trying to see a lie there. Part of me wants there to be a lie there. I want a fight, a fuck, something. And yet if I fucked one of these strippers, I’d feel empty. I’d look into her face and see Simone instead, and that isn’t fair. Even strippers and club girls and hookers deserve to have a man fuck them and not the woman in his head. Maybe that’s a fucked-up kind of morality, but it’s mine. Beast isn’t lying.
“All right.”
I return to the corner, sipping the whisky slowly.
Shotgun is on the other side of the room, getting a lap dance from two strippers, an anxious look on his face. Poker Face and Adams forced him to sit down and get the lap dance. I can see on his face that he’s thinking about Cecilia’s touching rule, his hands at his side as he winces every time the strippers gyrate.
I think about the way Simone would feel, her body pressed against mine, or the way her cheeks blushed, how nervous she got when she looked around the restaurant for a minute so she didn’t have to meet my eye. Maybe I’m crazy but I’m pretty damn sure she wanted me, even if she didn’t want to want me. I drain my whisky and make for the exit. Tonight’s not worth it. I’m getting nothing out of it, and worse than that, I’m sucking life out of the room. Nobody should hang around a party if they’re just going to make people ask them if something is wrong, or tiptoe around them.
I’m at the door when Jodi comes stumbling in, a drunken smile on her face, her makeup panda-like as usual. Jodi’s one of my ex-girlfriends, if you can call fucking a woman for a week and then never speaking to each other again ex-anything. She’s about to walk toward a group of strippers who’re pulling on their clothes to get involved in the actual partying—I guess the strippers were just club girls having fun—when she sees me and stops.
“Rocco?” she squeals over the pumping music.
“Jodi,” I mutter.
“Oh my god!” She stumbles forward, trying to hug me.
Any other night, I’d hug her. Maybe I’d even have some drinks with her, end up going home with her. Maybe I’d forget about Simone and her beautiful long blonde hair and her bright blue eyes. Looking at Jodi is like looking at a variant of a club girl, with her short, dyed red hair, her face covered in makeup, her skirt so short that if she bends over I bet I’ll see her panties. She looks at me sideways.
“What’s wrong? Are you leaving?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Why?”
I sigh. I’m not in the mood for this back and forth. I make for the door.
She runs in front of me, blocking it. “I asked you a question, Rocco. You don’t have to be such an asshole, you know. You can talk to me. And don’t worry, I have a boyfriend now. So if it’s about that then you don’t have to worry your big dumb head about it.”
“Okay, good for you,” I say.
She lurches forward, gripping my arm. I snatch it away and she follows me all the way to the wall, panting and looking up at me with wide eyes. She’s on something, I realize. “What’s up with you? Don’t you miss me? Do remember these? I bet you remember these.” She grabs her tits, winking at me.
“Listen to me,” I say. “I don’t want you. I’m sorry if I upset you. We had fun, all right? I don’t wanna hurt your feelings or anything like that. But please get out of my way.”
“What did I do wrong? Don’t say something silly about us not being together anymore, because we weren’t together at Shotgun’s thirty-eighth, either, but you were happy enough to fuck me then, weren’t you? Are you saying that was a mistake?”
“I’m not saying anything about the past. I’m asking you to get out of my way.”
“You’ve found somebody else. That’s the only reason you’d push me away. You’re a dog, Rocco. Everybody knows that.”
“Well, maybe sometimes a man gets tired of being a dog!” I snap, stepping around her and walking outside.
I lean against the wall and light a cigarette, blowing smoke rings into the air, or trying to anyway. I’ve never been much good at blowing smoke rings. I remember a kid back in one of the foster homes—they all sort of blur together—who could blow smoke rings like Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movies. That’s where he got the idea, when we were all sitting around watching a bootleg copy of it. He’d buy, beg, and steal tobacco and papers just so he could practice smoke rings. In the end he got so good I could put my finger through the ring before it disappeared. But that was before the big bastard with the mole on his chin found us and whipped the kid so bad he couldn’t sit down for a week.
I toss the cigarette to the curb. I’ll never be able to blow smoke rings like Timmy, no damn way.
I kick away from the wall, about to leave, when I see Cecilia emerge from a taxi, two club girls giggling beside her. I stop in my tracks and watch her, wonder if it’s actually her or if I’m seeing things. Even though I’ve been dreaming about Simone for two days, I don’t jump at the sight of her twin. As she gets closer, I realize it really is her.
“Cecilia!” I call, stepping out of the shadows.
The club girls at her side giggle again. I recognize them vaguely.
“Oh, it’s you.” She whispers something to one of her friends (I hear the word “calendar”) and then turns to me. “Why are you standing out here in the dark all alone? Are you waiting for sweet Mona?”
I swallow, and then choke out a laugh to try and play it off like she’s missed her mark, even if her mark is eerily dead-on. “Is she coming?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I don’t know, to be honest. I saw her when we were all getting the taxis and I begged her to come. Like, really begged. It was pretty sad. I don’t think Shotgun would want to marry me if he saw how badly I embarrassed myself. I even told her she’d be ruining my wedding if she didn’t come. I even tried emotional blackmail.” She shrugs again. “Anyway, see you inside.”
She leaves, her friends following close behind her. Another taxi pulls up and girls climb out, but there’s no sight of Simone. I tell myself I’m being weird just standing here watching the taxis, I should just climb on my bike and go. Instead I light a cigarette and try and fail to blow Timmy-style smoke rings.
By the time I’ve finished the cigarette, three taxis have arrived, dropping off ten women, and none of them are Simone. I toss the butt to the curb and make for the parking lot, telling myself I’m an idiot for hanging around like this. I need to get back to my apartment, put on some shitty TV and get some sleep, maybe watch a movie. Something, anything to distract myself from Simone, who keeps whirring around my head like a tornado.
I climb onto my bike and start the engine, kicking it to life, and then another taxi pulls up outside the club. People in the smoking area step aside as the woman steps out, the sexiest, most beautiful woman most of them have ever seen. Tonight her hair is braided and overlapped so that it sits in an intricate bun, and she’s wearing a skirt which cuts just above her knee, with pale white tights which almost show her legs. She turns to the taxi and says something I can’t hear. Her friend emerges and the two of them go into the club.
It’s like seeing my dreams come to life. I’ve thought about this woman for two days and two nights, unable to get her out of my head. And now I’m just going to go home and put on some TV?
Fuck that. I kill the bike’s engine.