one of those black leather couches they always have in rooms like this, ignoring the advances of the kind of guys that always find their way back here. Her knees were locked, keyless, and she looked at her hands the whole time, in a way that made it obvious that she was trying not to look at me. But she was. The hardest part of watching someone watching me is making it appear that I’m not watching.
It wasn’t the case at the after-party, either, when we finally spoke, after a few hours of doing stupid, arbitrary avoidance maneuvers. Shifting glances, wan smiles, F-14 barrel rolls like in the movies. They were stupid and arbitrary because we both knew what we wanted out of this situation. We huddled in a dark corner, I made a joke, she laughed. It wasn’t funny and her laugh was annoying. This is routine by now. I could bring this ship into port on autopilot, could go take a nap belowdecks. In fact, I probably do. My life is so fucking predictable, my nights even more so.
She’s got a mound of red cocaine, cut with strawberry Quik. They’re all only here because I am too.
The cocaine was largely symbolic. Phenylethylamine (PEA), the chemical responsible for the swooning and feelings of adoration, is structurally similar to cocaine. However, when given the chance, many people choose cocaine over love. I wouldn’t say that’s a bad choice. The endorphins released during infatuation are similar to heroin. OxyContin, “the cuddling hormone,” most often found in new mothers and newlyweds, is like ecstasy; every touch tingles. I think I read that somewhere. Love exists in powder. Love exists in pills. We are all addicts.
My head is swirling when I pass her my hotel-room key, surreptitiously as if it were a promise. It’s passed like taking the new communion. I whisper for her to go wait for me there, and she does. It will be more than an hour before I even leave the bar, mostly because I like the idea of her sitting there, back in my room, bee-stung knees on the bed, waiting. Maybe she’ll go through my shit, take something. Maybe she’ll rethink it all and leave. I don’t care either way. My moral compass is spinning next to the magnet that is all of my desire.
When I finally get back to the room and open the door, she’s sitting there, just as I’d imagined. Knees locked, elbows sharp, the piercing in her chest jumping slightly. She’s nervous, doesn’t know whether to stand as I approach her. We don’t talk. My head is still whooshing, but everything’s slower now, sludgier. I push her back on the bed, kiss her neck, make my way down to that piercing. Her knees unlock. You can pretty much imagine what happens from there.
But now, she wants to talk, sitting up against the head-board, knees drawn tight, smoking that cigarette. This is her confessional. She explains how she ran away to LA or was addicted to OxyContin or something. It’s all the same to me—a fucking red flag emblazoned with the words DO NOT BECOME EMOTIONALLY INVOLVED WITH ME, and this bed is barely big enough for my own baggage. I ask her about her family because it seems to be the kind of question I am expected to ask. She tells me her mother is “a French whore.” She says this as she’s stubbing out her cigarette, showing the tattoo on her lower back. I don’t know how I didn’t notice it before. It’s something written in French, in dagger-sharp script. I laugh, she doesn’t.
“No, seriously, my mom is a fucking French whore,” she says, looking at me with wide eyes, searching for some kind of response. She has rehearsed this, delivered that line in front of a mirror while she put on lipstick. I hate her. I don’t know what she wants from me, so I just roll back over, feign sleep again. She sits there for what feels like an hour, knees up against her chest piercing, then she turns out the light. I don’t know if she’s asleep, but I hear her breathing in short, little sighs. I imagine her chest piercing rising and falling, like ancient Roman empires. I think about her mother, the French whore, who probably isn’t anything of the sort. At least I hope she’s not.
In the morning, as she’s leaving, I get another look at the tattoo on her back. It reads JUSTE COMME MOI.