Young Writers Society

Where our heroine (met in Chapter 2) proves to be a selfish brat.

Where, after several months, she still hasn't decided whether to join the OES.

Royal Heights, at the Southmost point of the City, was very exclusive. It tumbled down the Hills. Movie stars and CEOs lived in its thousand-billions-dollar villas. Doctors, lawyers and other wannabes had invaded the condominiums. They defended their peace and their privacy any way they could, but they hadn’t quite managed to put a damper on the huge parties.

Mike Lynch often made the front-page with the utter madness he got up to in his rooftop apartment, three floors above. Only the week before, a video had gone viral, of his drunken ass swimming with the exotic fishes he had in his pool. Animal welfare organizations were still up in arms. Apparently, chlorine wasn’t so good for clown fishes.

The party I attended was much tamer, even though alcohol and other substances flowed freely. I had partaken of neither, but I was feeling oddly sentimental, a pot-induced sort of contemplative. Maybe it was those beautiful, rich, young people playing out their little dramas, Hollywood-style. The duplex offered the perfect background to their silliness, all sleek white and steal minimalism.

They danced to the age-old tune, the fake, little puppets. They were devoid of self-awareness as they partied, incapable of self-determination. Selfies, not selves, short-lived as butterflies, colorful as an endless mating parade. Desperate attempts, doomed by those fifteen seconds of shelf-life. They could burn as bright as the sun, they were lost in a chaos of facsimiles.

Nobody cared.

Glancing through the crowd, I saw the same nonsensical flatness everywhere. It was Purgatory, a bland, a dull waiting place. I was stuck in limbo, whether it was in my lame fast-food job or in this fancy-ass party.

Real care rang out through this uncaring place, “Why so sad?” The deep voice came again, “Such a pretty angel shouldn’t look so sad…” Turning my head, I saw a man give a much younger woman a thorough once-over. “You’ve got lovely eyes.”

She smiled tipsily, a dimple winking from her left cheek. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re sweet – or your line’s sweet, anyway.”

“A line?” The man mimed heartbreak, a hand on his chest. “You wound me. And here I was, completely blown-away…”

She tittered, on the fence – or in her cups, whichever. But the man’s face was all lazy satisfaction. He had an opening and he was confident he could exploit it. He was going to crank up the charm until the clothes melted off the girl’s body, no matter that she was half his age. She wasn’t all that pretty, but she looked nice enough inside her tight jeans and top. And I suspected that her distress was part of the attraction.

He moved in for the kill, “Eh, listen…”

Oh, but he was a magician with that voice – smooth, then rough, then sweet, then bright with laughter…He could seduce, soothe or stir up entire crowds like the Pied Piper. The voice itself was a symphony, the tone playing up to every emotion known to Man, the words careful brushes of color to a painting.

Too easy, I thought as pink flooded the girl’s cheek.

I made my way through the throng. I sneaked an arm around Sakes’s waist and I kissed him on the cheek. “Won’t you introduce me to your new friend, sugar?”

“Sugar?” the girl silently mouthed.

Her eyes flashed to Sakes. He gaped at her like a fish flailing out of water. She huffed, flipped her hair over her shoulder, spun on her heels and off she went. I admired the goods as they sailed away – stalked away.

My friend buried his face in his hands with a groan. I gave him a sympathetic pat on the arm, but, really, “You look like an angel…” He stiffened up, and I blinked, wondering if I had touched the wrong shoulder. Sakes had worked two decades in construction, until a degenerative shoulder condition forced him into another field. He was just biding his time in Carmen’s crew.

“Why the hell did you do that?” he asked – not the shoulder, then.

I didn’t feel guilty. It wasn’t like I had sold a lie to his angel. It wasn’t like this would have been the love-story of the decade. Sakes was in his forties, a huge black man with the beginning of a paunch and the loosest stance I had ever known a non-Oracle to have about who could tumble into his bed. He could very possibly have an angel and a sugar in the same party.

I folded my hands behind my back. I’m innocent. It gave him pause. If Sakes was an artist with his voice, I was an expert at body language. Eyes were key. Eyes pleaded, and charmed, and burnt to cinders, and pierced right through lies and pretenses. I added a little lip tremble – to no effect.

“But I always call you sugar.” His eyes narrowed. The master recognized a mere imitator. Damn, but Sakes was impossible to bamboozle… “Alright, alright…” I dropped the pretense. “You’re supposed to drive me home.”

He crossed his arms. “You, darling, are terminally selfish.”

“Yes,” I admitted easily, and kissed his cheek again. “But that’s why you love me.”

He snorted, but a little smile slipped under his defenses. “Damn if that’s not true…You aren’t drinking?”

“Not yet.”

He poured me a glass of peach juice. “Now, let Uncle Sakes weave his spell. You can score another ride back home.”

He left me standing there alone, glass in hand. I felt a little stupid. I wasn’t in the mood to mingle. Colleen’s fashionable crowd sometimes amused me. Tonight, I had only tagged along in the hopes of getting laid.

I stepped out onto the terrace for some air. Meryl, Colleen’s college friend, didn’t allow people to smoke inside the apartment, so there were small clusters of people puffing and shivering outside. I made my way to a vacant spot by the railing. The view of the City was breathtaking.

I had precious few happy memories of my childhood, and they were too painful to hold close to my heart all the time, but they occasionally popped up.

Back when I was little, before everything went South, we used to travel East every Summer to Grandpa and Grandma’s small seaside villa – picking up seashells on the beach, swimming and fishing. The house probably smelled of cabbage and of old people. I wondered if the same old-fashioned stripped wallpaper still peeled off the wet walls of my bedroom. My brother Danny had once written his name over my bed – the brat, he used to hate sleeping on the sofa. I could still picture Mom scrubbing off the letters, a cigarette dangling perilously from her lips as she lectured us.

What I remembered most was the drive back home, every year at the end of the break. Danny had inevitably fallen asleep before we arrived, but I just would never have wasted my once-a-year opportunity that way. It had felt like time stretched ahead like the freeway, the sky turning pink, then grey, then black over our head. There had been a sense of discovery as we crested the last hill and the City appeared. It was like opening a treasure chest. Then, we plunged down into this other starfield.

So many hopes, so many dreams…I missed it – not the hopes, not the dreams, I missed the illusion that I had a universe as vast as space ahead of me.

There is nothing now. The City was just a city.

“You’re drinking, or you’re thinking?”

I smiled, glad Colleen was intruding on my moping around. I let her voice wash over me. Where Sakes’s voice was a precise instrument, Colleen’s was rough cloth, warm and down-to-earth. I raised my glass. “Both.”

She leaned against the railing next to me. “That’s always dangerous.”

Her hair tumbled over her face, and I could see nothing of it, but those black eyes sparkled at me. Her bare arms were long and slim, old burns and calluses on her hands belying their slenderness. Colleen usually seemed to take much more space than she did, especially in uniform. She just burst out of it with her big breasts, big hair, salient features and fiery temper.

My eyes paused on the dimple in her shoulder, then took in the red number she wore. It was both sexy and whimsical. It suited her. Colleen was my age. A buxom brunette with long legs, she had surprisingly simple tastes and a surprisingly harsh stance on whose bed to tumble into – as I well knew. I had nudged her toward mine as hard as I dared, and she had yet to rise to the bait.

“Considering that it’s only juice, I think I’ll take my chances.” I nodded to her dress. “Your creation?”

Colleen had studied fashion in college and was putting together her first line of clothing. Like Sakes, she had only wound up crew members in our Mexican-themed burger joint by accident. They weren’t trapped in it the way I was, suffering through endless Purgatory. It was only a starting block for Colleen, a waiting place for Sakes. That’s what I had seen in the first days of our friendship, Scrying with them as my focus: hopes.

“Like it?” Colleen did a little spin for me. The dress’s intricate layers fluttered, and, for the time of that spin, she was a little girl living out her princess dream. “I call it Petals.”

“Suits you. I’d look…fluffy in it.”

A great laugh rolled out of her. “More dress than you.”

“What’s the joke?” Meryl asked, materializing at her elbow, a glass of red in one hand, a blunt in the other. “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, too hyper to listen. “Is that juice you’re drinking?!”

“Yeah.”

Meryl was capable of conducting a three-way conversation all by her lonesome. She had so much energy bottled up in her, occasionally bursting out. That fire seemed to have burned her body down to the bone, until she was all sharp angles and smiles. I had long concluded that those bright white teeth were on display, not so much because she was thrilled, but because she was starved.

How could someone who could afford anything enjoy so little? Coffee and red wine seemed to be her main sources of subsistence. She wasn’t a gourmet. She didn’t sleep around. She was very social, but never listened long enough to enjoy people. And, though she professed an interest in fashion, she wore her clothes like a coat-hanger.

“But we’ve got everything. Red, white, scotch, rum, vodka…Uh, what else? Cider?”

Nobody could ever fault Meryl with being a less than welcoming hostess.

“I don’t drink,” I told her.

Meryl’s brain froze, then she blurted, “Like, never?”

I nodded.

“Is that a Trancer thing?” she asked.

Now, Colleen froze. “Trancer” wasn’t a polite term to use in mixed company. Rather than being offended, however, I was amused. For once, I wasn’t the one with the giant foot in my mouth. I tended to blurt out whatever was on my mind. Sometimes, it was hurtful, or rude, or hurtful and rude.

“No,” I replied, deadpan. “I’m allergic.” Colleen spluttered. “Gives me hives.”

Meryl’s eyes widened. “No?!! I’ve got a friend who is, like, allergic to chocolate,” she rushed to reassure me.

“Who is allergic to chocolate?” a girl asked.

Clear blue eyes looking up through frizzy hair, she had an indolent smile that plumped out her full lips and the lush curves of someone with no starvation problem. I liked that she was even smaller that I was, but it was her sexy confidence that made my body sit up and take notice.

“You’re hogging the blunt,” she told Meryl, a hand on her hip.

Meryl blinked, confused at the change of subject – oh, the irony…

“Sorry.”

The stranger planted the smoke between her shiny red lips and grinned. When she offered it to me, Colleen declined, and the girl made a face.

“Who’s that?” she asked. “Your mom?”

“I wish,” I retorted.

Colleen and Sakes were the only people on Earth who cared. I wasn’t about to get embarrassed of them.

“You’re chill,” the stranger slurred, puffing some more. “Even if you’re a girl scout.”

I wondered who she was trying to impress. Colleen almost choked on her drink – it reflected my feelings, exactly.

“I’m definitely not a girl scout,” I replied evenly.

“You just don’t play with fire, uh?”

Colleen started coughing wine while Meryl patted her on the back. I managed to keep a straight face. “I’ve got nothing against either fire or smoke.”

And to close the subject before she became more annoying than she was sexy, I kissed Miss Rich-Girl-Plays-Ghetto. It was a light, an exploratory kind of kiss. She was into it. She even blew a little smoke in my mouth before I pulled away.

“Not bad.” She licked her lips. “You taste good, Brownie.” The vein running up her neck was playing a rapid tattoo. She took another long pull and reached out, trailing a finger over the inked skin peeking out of my collar. “Is that ink?”

Her soft touch, the decisive way she pulled on my tee-shirt fed the warmth in my belly. I tilted my head to the side. “Wanna taste it?”

She hesitated, then, accepting both silent and explicit invitations, she pressed those sinful lips to the edge of my tattoo, and she licked it. I shivered.

Oh, yeah, game on…No way this could end anywhere but in bed.

“Yummy.”

She licked her lips again.

“Eh, you’re wasting good smoke,” Meryl complained, rudely interrupting our little dance.

Good. Let’s cut to the chase.

“I’ve got twelve tats,” I whispered in the stranger’s ear. “Give her the smoke and come taste them.”

To know what Carlin has been up to, read Chapter 4.