Sour Candy

Fiction by Jeff Harrell

We’re carrying Mandy out of the bathroom. Me and Rivs. It’s always me and Rivs. We’re all that’s left.

She’s drunk. She’s sloppy-drunk. She’s so drunk she’s unconscious. If we were respectable adults, we’d be concerned about alcohol poisoning. We’d be concerned about vomit aspiration or any of the hundred other little things that can go wrong.

But we’re not. Because we’re not responsible adults. We’re college freshmen.

Rivs has her shoulders. He’s supporting her head in the crook of his arm. I’ve got her legs. God knows where her dress is. She’s been in her underwear since midnight. Matching underwear. Black, with lace on it. She planned it all out.

She just didn’t plan on Cassie.

Rivs is a gentleman, despite what happened earlier tonight. He’s looking over his shoulder, trying not to trip on a bottle or a piece of discarded clothing.

I’m not. I’m looking at Mandy. The way her breasts undulate with every step. The shadow-black thatch of hair visible under her translucent panties.

It’s four months earlier. It’s Thanksgiving. It’s seventy-eight degrees out and the streets are dead. We’re looking for a bar. Rivs is driving. Up Hoover to that fucked-up intersection, then left on Wilshire. Past Crenshaw, past Fairfax. All the way to Santa Monica Boulevard. All the bars are closed.

Rivs is driving. The windows are down. He’s got a cigarette in his left hand, dangling carelessly out the window.

He doesn’t smoke.

“I’m in a world o’ hurt, man,” he says.

I don’t know what he’s talking about.

Mark Rios is the name on his driver’s license. Driver’s licenses. Both of them. The real one, the one from Arizona that he uses to get into football games with his student tickets. And the fake one, the one from Michigan that he bought for a thousand bucks the second week of school. The one that says he just turned twenty-three.

Nobody calls him Mark. Sure as hell, nobody calls him Mark Rios. He’s whiter than I am.

First it was Rivers. Then just Rivs.

“You know what I mean?” he says. He looks at me glassy-eyed.

I have no fucking idea what he’s talking about.

“Yeah, man,” I say. “It’s a pile a shit.”

He takes a drag on the cigarette, blows smoke out the window without inhaling. “Pile a shit,” he says to the boulevard. “Fuckin’ women.”

“Fuckin’ women,” I agree.

All the bars are closed. What the fuck, man? This is L.A. The bars aren’t supposed to close in L.A. They’re always open. That place off Pico by Figueroa, that Mexicali-ass dive bar. That’s always open. That’s where Rivs and I did tequila shots with that actor with the weird-ass name. Whatsisname. The guy from the Bill and Ted movie. And that was at four a.m. on a Tuesday.

That place is closed.

Fucking Thanksgiving.

“Fuckin’ women,” Rivs says, tossing his half-smoked cigarette out the window. “Fuck this shit. We need a liquor store.”

“Yeah,” I say, and I feel like a dork.

It’s an hour later. We’re back in the dorm. Cassie’s room. Seven people crammed into a twelve-by-twelve cube. There’s a movie in the VCR. I don’t know what it is.

Cassie’s on the futon. God, she looks great. She could walk in out of a torrential rainstorm soaked to the skin and still look great.

Not that it ever rains in L.A.

There’s a blonde on the futon with her. I don’t know her. She doesn’t shave her legs. She’s telling everybody she doesn’t shave her legs. “Touch them,” she says. I do, timidly. I run one finger up her calf. Invisible peach fuzz between our skin. She giggles. “Not like that, that tickles,” she says. “Like this.” She mashes her hand down on mine, pressing my palm flat. My hand feels hot and her skin feels cool. I stroke her calf. It feels like a baby’s ass.

I leave my hand there for a minute. I want to keep it there longer. She doesn’t seem to mind. But Cassie glances in my direction and I snatch it away.

Everybody’s there. Katie and Cassie and Rivs and Stutch and Melody and this blonde nobody seems to know. We’re the outcasts, the ones who didn’t go home for the holiday. Cassie’s here because her parents are in Davos. Rivs is here because he hates his stepmonster. I’m here because I can’t afford a plane ticket home, but I don’t want to tell anybody that because I don’t want them to know I’m a scholarship kid. So when somebody asks I just roll my eyes. “Please,” I say. They fill in the blanks for themselves.

Melody’s in the Reserves. She’s bitching about the war. “We’ve been bombing Iraq for three months,” she says. She starts to cry. “People I train with are going over there and they’re going to die, they’re going to die for fucking Kuwait. Who ever heard of fucking Kuwait, anyway?”

Stutch puts his arms around her and she gets quiet. Everybody goes back to laughing at the movie. It should be weird, but it’s not.

It’s five in the morning. Cassie’s alarm clock is blasting red digits all over the room. The TV’s on the fuzz channel. Stutch and Melody went back to her room to fuck. Katie stumbled off back to our dorm. I should have walked her back. Her room’s six doors down from mine. She asked me to walk her back, but I didn’t, because I didn’t want to leave.

I can’t stop looking at Cassie.

The blonde’s head is on Cassie’s shoulder. She’s snoring. Rivs is laughing at her, his eyes squinty in the dim light. Cassie keeps shushing him, but he just keeps laughing.

I discover that I’ve stood up. I don’t remember doing it.

Cassie reaches out and grabs Rivs by the sleeve. She pulls him into her. I start to look away. But then they do this sort of dance that I can’t really follow, and now the blonde’s head is on Rivs’ shoulder and Cassie’s standing next to me and I think Rivs is trying to look down the blonde’s shirt. I don’t blame him. They’re choice.

I’m walking out, tripping over shoes and bras and shit. Cassie’s holding my hand, leading me down the darkened hall. I don’t remember taking her hand, or her taking mine. I don’t remember who started that.

We’re at the elevator. I push the button. We stand there in silent darkness for a couple thousand years. Neither of us says anything. The bell rings and the doors open; light spills out into the hall.

She’s smiling at me. It cuts through me like a laser.

“G’night,” she says, slurring just a little bit.

Her cheeks are pink.

She laughs. I don’t remember doing anything funny.

She’s touching my chest.

“Your sweatshirt’s inside out,” she says, and it’s true. I feel the fuzzies with my hand, then I’m feeling her hand with my hand. I run my thumb around the nail on her index finger.

She takes a handful of sweatshirt and pulls me into a slow, lazy hug. I can feel her tits against my chest. I don’t know where to put my hands. Her cheek is warm against mine.

“G’night,” she whispers into my ear.

The bell rings again and the elevator doors slide closed. Everything goes dark.

It’s the first week of January. I’m in the first-floor lounge in Webb Tower. I’ve got a textbook on my lap. Introduction to Statistics. It’s open. I’ve been staring at it for an hour. I haven’t understood a word yet.

Every time the door opens, I look up.

Eventually the sun starts to go down. The lobby faces west. Sunlight comes blasting in. It’s in my eyes. I should turn around the other way so I can read, but I don’t.

The door opens again. She’s silhouetted in the dying sun. She’s got a duffel over her shoulder. She looks like she hasn’t slept in a week.

She’s beautiful.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, her flip-flops flip-flopping on the tile floor.

I hold up the book so she can see the cover.

“No, I mean, what are you doing studying here?” she asks.

I wanted to see you, I don’t say. I just shrug.

“Come on up,” she says as she heads for the elevators. “Tell me all about your holiday while I unpack.”

It’s Sunday afternoon, the third week of January. But it’s an L.A. January. It’s seventy degrees. The grass is green and soft under my back, watered into submission at great cost to the Board of Trustees. Cassie’s next to me, her back against a tree. She’s studying psychology. I’m studying her.

She listening to Depeche Mode on her Discman.

“How can you listen to that stuff during the daytime?” I ask. She doesn’t hear me. I poke her thigh, soft and cool under her shorts. “How can you listen to that stuff during the day?”

“I like it,” she says.

“Don’t you have anything … you know. More upbeat?”

“It’s not like you have to listen to it.”

I scooch closer to her, until my shoulder is pressed into her ass.

“Now I do,” I say. “Pick something else.”

She pops out the CD, puts in Alphaville. I can hear just enough leaking out from around her headphones to bop my head along.

Somebody sits down next to me. I open my eyes. It’s Rivs, big and goofy as always. He’s got a girl with him. Bottle-black with skin the color of milk and way too much eyeliner. I met her at a party once. We got taquitos together in the middle of the night. I try to remember her name.

Rivs says he and Mandy — that’s her name, Mandy — have been watching the war on TV. We talk about that for a while. There’s going to be a protest at the Federal Building on Wilshire on Saturday. He volunteers to drive, which makes sense ’cause he’s the only one of us with a car. I don’t really want to go, but I say okay anyway, because it seems like the thing to do.

And because Cass says okay first.

Rivs asks if either of us have any food. I don’t. Cass says she doesn’t, but I know she’s got half a bag of Twizzlers on her desk upstairs. The dining hall’s not going to be open for another half an hour. Rivs whines.

I close my eyes again. I lazily run one finger up and down Cassie’s knee. Hoping she doesn’t notice. Hoping she does.

It’s Valentine’s Day. Well, it was. Now it’s a quarter after midnight on the day after. It’s Friday. I’ve got class in eight hours. I don’t care. I already know I’m going to skip it.

Cassie’s on her futon, on her side, her knees pulled up, her psych textbook next to her. She’s not reading it. We’re talking. I don’t know why we even bother to study together. We never study. We just talk.

“I think he’s got a crush on me,” she’s saying.

“Brad?” I say.

“Chad.”

“Whatever.”

“I think he’s got a little crush.”

“Well can you blame him?” I mumble, and suddenly everything gets quiet.

“What did you say?” Cassie asks me.

“Nothin’,” I say.

“Tell me,” she says.

I tell her.

She thinks about it.

“Sounds like somebody else has a little crush on me,” she says.

“For fuck’s sake, Cassandra,” I say. “Everybody’s got a crush on you.”

I can feel my face getting hot.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” she says.

I shrug.

“Is that why you wanted to be with me on Valentine’s Day?” she asks. She’s got this smirk that just makes me crazy.

“Shut up,” I say, trying to hide the flush in my cheeks.

She reaches out and tucks a stray hair behind my ear.

“For real,” she says. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“How was I supposed to tell you?” I ask.

“Well, not tell me tell me,” she says. “But you know. Act on it. Why didn’t you?”

I shrug. I’m still not looking at her.

“Was I supposed to just grab you and kiss you?” I say.

It’s her turn to shrug. “Maybe,” she says.

“You would have kicked me in the balls.”

She shrugs again, and even I can see the absurdity of this.

“Maybe not,” she says.

I look up at her for the first time in several long minutes. She’s looking right at me, right in my eyes. She’s not shy, and she’s not embarrassed. She’s not awkward or clumsy or ignorant. She’s everything I’m not.

I discover that I’m leaning forward. I don’t remember doing it.

My nose touches hers. She’s still staring me right in the eye. She isn’t blinking, and she isn’t pulling away.

I tilt my head. My nose slips past hers. I can feel her breath on my mouth now.

“How does this feel?” I whisper.

“Exciting,” she whispers back.

I feel like my heart’s going to explode.

I lean in.

Her mouth is hot and sweet.

It’s two in the morning. Her alarm clock is blasting red digits all over the room.

She rolls me over onto my back, her hands on my face, her mouth in mine. She sits up, starts pulling at buttons and zippers.

I take her hands by the wrists, pull her back down to me. Roll her over, pin her to the futon. I’m kissing her neck, her jaw, her chin. I’m kissing her mouth, and she’s kissing me back.

Her hands go to my belt.

I whisper in her ear. “I’ve never” –

“I know,” she says. “It’s okay.”

It’s dawn. The California sun shines through Cassie’s window and paints a butter-colored parallelogram on the wall.

She’s dozing, her chin on my collarbone, her arm around my chest.

I’ve never seen anybody look so peaceful. She looks like I feel.

I spoil it. I lean down and kiss her lips. Her eyes flutter open, and she’s smiling at me.

“Good morning,” she says, stretching like a cat. “Did you sleep?”

“Not really,” I say.

“Why not?” she asks, suddenly concerned.

“Because I didn’t want to miss a minute.”

She grins at me bashfully, and it’s brighter than the morning sun.

“Such a charmer,” she says into my neck.

I reach out with my toes to grasp hers. She squeezes back.

“What time’s your class?” she asks.

“Eight, but I’m skipping it,” I say.

“You shouldn’t,” she says.

“I am,” I say.

“Good,” she whispers.

It’s the last week of February. I’m back in Cassie’s room. We’re studying again. I can’t concentrate. I haven’t been able to concentrate for a week and a half. What is this? Is she my girlfriend? Was it a one-time thing? What does it mean?

I flip through my stats book, but I don’t find any answers.

“What is this?” I ask, not meaning to speak out loud.

“What’s what?” she says, not looking up from her notes.

“This. Us.”

She’s got a pencil in her mouth, gnawing on it. She drops it. It hits the paper and rolls onto the blanket. She pushes her glasses up her nose.

“Come here,” she says.

I don’t find any answers there either, but for a while I stop caring.

“So you and Mandy, huh?” I say this to Rivs around a mouthful of taquito.

“I dunno,” he says, passing me the bottle. I take a drink, washing down bad Mexican with cheap vodka. I’m a regular United Nations of vice. “It’s just … I dunno.”

We’re in his suite. His roommates are gone for the weekend, off to Palm Springs or someplace. We’re on his couch watching MTV and talking as men do.

“Yeah,” I say, thinking myself a font of wisdom. A lot’s changed since Thanksgiving. I get it now. I understand. I understand how a woman can get inside your head and fuck you up. I understand it all.

“It’s like,” Rivs begins, then stops. He starts over. “It’s like she’s really into me, you know?”

“Yeah,” I say, even though I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s like for anybody to seem like she’s really into me.

“She always wants to hang out, and she’s always … you know. You know, right?”

“Yeah,” I say again, repeating the lie.

“But it’s like … I dunno,” Rivs says, and his words seem very wise to me.

“Fuckin’ women,” I say, holding out my taquito.

“Fuckin’ women,” he agrees.

We tap our taquitos together in the ancient toast of men who just don’t get it.

It’s St. Patrick’s Day. It’s a Thursday night, but the university might as well just come right out and cancel all Friday’s classes, because nobody’s going. We’re all going to be as hung over as possible.

Katie’s showing me how to make a kamikaze. She’s making it ghetto-style, about equal parts vodka and sweetened lime juice. We pour it into squeeze bottles. It looks like Gatorade.

The party’s in Rivs’ suite, and Rivs’ suite is in Marks, all the way across campus. We have to provision up for the journey.

We drink half our kamikazes. Then we realize we need to make more.

By the time we make it downstairs, the buzz is carrying me along nicely, nicely. There’s a party. There’s a party and I’m going. My friends will be there. Rivs will be there, Rivs that king among men, that brother I never had.

Cassie will be there.

Katie and I stumble across the campus making way too much noise. She dares me to pee in the fountain. I do, then I dare her right back. She chickens out. I make clucking noises at her all the way across the athletic field.

We get to Marks, only we can’t get in, because our keys don’t work here and nobody’s answering Rivs’ phone. We yell. He’s on the twelfth floor; he doesn’t hear us, but it seems like everybody else does. A dozen kids are screaming down at us to kindly shut the fuck up.

We laugh so hard we fall down.

Finally there’s movement inside. Somebody’s coming out. We slip inside and sprint for the elevators. We hum “The Girl from Ipanema” on the way up, and it cracks us up again.

The party is completely off the hook. There are so many people in Rivs’ suite you can’t even make it to the bathroom without tripping over somebody. There’s a drinking game around the coffee table, one with rules too complex to follow. I sip on my kamikaze and watch.

Cassie’s here someplace. I don’t know where. I’ve lost track of her. Not that I was trying to keep track of her. Just that … I dunno. Fuckin’ women.

The door opens. Mandy’s here. God, she got all dolled up, this blood-red party dress that, I have to admit, looks pretty good on her. She comes in waving a bottle in each hand, and one of the bottles is half empty, and I’m pretty sure the rest of it’s in Mandy.

The party churns and circulates. I finish my drink, find another one. Finish that one.

There are girls at this party. Pretty girls. Hot girls. A surprising number of them are trying to talk to me. I don’t know why. I chat with them for a minute, then move on to the next room. Kitchen to dining room to living room back to kitchen again, making the orbit. Always on the lookout. Always looking for Cassie.

“Where’s Mark?”

That’s Mandy. She’s standing in the middle of the living room, yelling at the top of her lungs. I can still barely hear her over the stereo.

“Where the fuck is Mark?”

She never calls him Rivs. I don’t know why. We all call him Rivs, all his friends. She calls him Mark like she’s on the outside looking in. Or like she’s trying to make us feel like we’re the ones on the outside.

The bedroom door opens. Rivs comes out. As he closes it behind him, I can see Cassie. She’s in his bedroom. I only see her for a second, but I can tell. She’s been crying.

Rivs takes Mandy by the elbow, takes her off to a corner.

A girl comes up to me. She’s talking to me. She’s got fuzzy yellow hair. I can’t see around her. I take a step to one side and put my foot on another girl’s leg. She grabs me around the knee and pulls. I fall on top of her and she’s laughing like a maniac.

That’s when I hear the door slam. I look up. Mandy’s run into the bathroom. Rivs is standing there looking like he’s just been kicked in the gut.

I know how he feels.

It’s … fuck, I don’t know what fucking time it is. It’s late. Everybody’s gone home. Everybody but the four of us. And Katie, but she’s passed out on the couch, drooling on Rivs’ pillows.

Rivs is standing by the bathroom door, knocking on it. Every once in a while he calls Mandy’s name. She doesn’t answer. She’s too busy puking her guts out.

I don’t remember much. Mandy came out of the bathroom with her makeup smeared and started drinking everything. By midnight she was in her underwear dancing to the Cure on the coffee table while everybody cheered her on. Nobody noticed that she was crying. Every time she swung her head around tears went flying.

Rivs tried to play host, but he kinda sucked at it.

I told some girl to fuck off. I felt bad about that after, but only a little.

Then I discovered the party had broken up. I didn’t remember anybody leaving, but they were all gone. All but us.

Rivs is still standing by the bathroom door, looking and sounding more and more pathetic.

I don’t want to, but I do it anyway: I go into the bedroom.

I push the door open. Cassie’s sitting on Rivs’ bed. She’s been crying. Her eyes are puffy and red. She’s been wiping her face on the sleeve of one of Rivs’ ruggers. Mascara and snot are caked on it.

God, she’s beautiful.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey.”

She tries to smile at me, but it doesn’t really work.

“How’s it going?” I say.

She laughs. It’s bitter and dry. “Not that great,” she says hoarsely.

I come sit next to her on the bed. She scooches over to make room.

We don’t say anything for a minute.

“When?” I ask her in a small voice.

“About a week ago,” she says. She wipes her nose again.

I contemplate this.

“Do you love him?” I ask.

She sighs like it’s the end of the world. She puts her head on my shoulder. “Shit, I don’t know,” she says. Then, very very quietly: “Maybe.”

I don’t have anything to say after that. I just put my arm around her shoulders. Like a brother, or a best friend.

She cries a little more, then she stops.

Eventually she gets up and leaves. She doesn’t say anything to me, and she doesn’t say anything to Rivs.

We’re sitting on Rivs’ couch again, like it seems we always are these days. Katie’s curled up on the other end. Rivs is drinking Jack Daniel’s straight from the bottle.

He coughs, sputtering booze. He groans. “I’m in a world o’ hurt, man,” he says.

Katie stirs momentarily, snuggles the pillow.

“You know what I mean?” he asks.

“Yeah, man” I say. “Pile a shit.”

Finally Rivs decides enough is enough. He puts his shoulder into the bathroom door and pops the lock. Mandy’s on the floor in her underwear, unconscious. The toilet’s a horror.

We pick her up. Rivs takes her shoulders. I get her legs. We carry her out of the bathroom, around the corner and into the bedroom. We’re going to put her on Rivs’ bed and let her sleep it off.

Rivs is a gentleman. He’s just trying not to trip.

Not me. I’m staring at her translucent black panties and the shadow-black thatch of hair beneath them and thinking about what I’ve lost.

Copyright © 2007 by Jeff Harrell. All rights reserved.