Cashmere | excerpt from Twin Palms
by AG Latham
“So, what’s with all the mirrors?” Nancy asks, smoke billowing out of her nose and mouth. It stings her eyes as she looks around at the hundred or so tiny mirror fragments scattered over the living room walls—rhombuses, hearts, exclamation points, comic kabooms. She catches sight of random parts of herself in them: a sunburned shoulder, an ear poking through greasy, dirty-blond hair. She laughs nervously, worried she might have said something wrong. To take the edge off, she gulps her beer and passes the joint to Bruce.
“Just an art project I’m playing around with,” Jodie remarks. “It’s a trip, you know? How you can never see things all at once. Reality hits us in bits and pieces.” She looks at Bruce, who nods absently.
An art school dropout, Jodie grew up in San Marcos but lived in New York for nine years. My best years, she told Nancy on the short walk to their keen limestone ranch-style house, two blocks south of the laundromat. She took classes at NYU and the Fashion Institute, did some gig modeling, and worked as a bartender. It was good fun and great money, and she still woke up every morning wishing she were back in the city. Jodie’s expression went from wistful to dead serious as she forbade Nancy to marry her high school sweetheart, even if he got down on one knee in a crowded restaurant and begged, even if he stood to inherit money from his oil baron grandfather. Bruce chuckled good-naturedly at that. Jodie talked the good talk, but it was Bruce’s laugh that made Nancy’s body, tense and rigid since she’d stood frozen in the middle of the street, finally begin to soften, to feel like her own again. Unblocked, her blood rushed to her body’s extremities, warming her from head to toe. She was surprised to find it wasn’t cold out. Not cold at all.
She wasn’t planning on coming in. They had offered to walk with her to the house, get their car, and drive Nancy back to her motel. But then Bruce invited her in for her a beer, and Jodie insisted. Nancy was thirsty, so thirsty, and as she drank, she found herself leaning against the cool white fridge in their spacious, yellow-tiled kitchen, telling them about how she’d been living with her boyfriend until that afternoon, when she’d caught him in bed with a girl barely out of high school. The story rolled off her tongue as if she’d lived it—she was good at stories. Her boyfriend was sorry, he kicked the girl out and begged Nancy to stay, but she was so infuriated she decided to leave that very day. That made him mad. He stood blocking the doorway to their bedroom and wouldn’t let her take anything, but she managed to get out with her suitcase and some clothes, half of which were now gone. She had no car and no life left to speak of in Corpus Christi, so she’d hitched her way to a scuzzy motel off the I-35 frontage road and would hit the road again tomorrow. She was headed up to Arlington, where an old friend was waiting. Taking both Nancy’s hands in hers, Jodie insisted that Nancy look through the trunks of clothes from her New York days, when she wore a size two. Keeping the trunks around was pure masochism—Jodie would never be nineteen again—but she didn’t have the heart to throw them out. The clothes were mostly designer pieces, and some were worth money. Nancy probably weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, and after the day she’d had, she should take what she wanted.
Sipping her beer and looking around the sparsely furnished sunken living room, Nancy wonders where Jodie keeps her New York trunks. Maybe in the bedroom? She thinks to ask but stops herself, not wanting to seem impatient. Instead, succumbing to the weight of the day, she sinks into the deep, whiskey-colored leather chair kitty-corner to the matching loveseat. It’s similar to the armchairs in Grams’s motel office, but the leather is so unfathomably soft it will probably never crack, never wear down enough to show the spidery patchwork of white seams beneath the surface. After a few minutes in its cool embrace, there is no part of Nancy that wishes to be anywhere else.
Nancy’s never worn cashmere, but this is what it must be like, this feeling of being softly cradled and slightly buzzed, inhaling whiffs of cognac and vanilla and new carpet. As she sips her beer, it hits Nancy that that’s what Bruce and Jodie are—cashmere. They breathe different air. But it isn’t just the money; it’s New York, it’s art school, it’s little mirrors everywhere. It’s being dead ringers for Stevie Nicks and Don Henley. It’s Hall and Oates crooning from stereo speakers mounted high up on the walls, in all four corners, surrounding them with sound. It’s the little baggie of white powder spilling onto another tiny mirror, as if these were any old things found on a coffee table, a stained tea cup or a bowl of pretzels.
On the loveseat beside Jodie, Bruce leans his head back. His Adam’s apple juts out like a knot on a tree. The way he smokes is to raise his face to the sky and suck on the joint hands-free, inhaling two or three times before letting the gray smoke waft to the ceiling. Coughing, Bruce plucks the stub out of his mouth and passes to it to Jodie, who shakes her head as she scrapes a plastic card through the small mound of white powder on the little mirror atop the coffee table.
“I’m good,” she says and points the card at Nancy. “I’ve got plenty here if you want. It’s nothing like the stuff you get in New York, not even close. But at least it doesn’t make you want to raid the fridge.”
Bruce smiles and pats his wife’s stomach. “What’s wrong with raiding the fridge now and then? You won’t care once you’re eating for two.”
Jodie snorts a long line and then freezes, her eyes snapping shut. Then they blink open like a bud in bloom, and her prim-looking mouth spreads into a smile. “That day can’t come soon enough.” Her voice is wistful. “Then I’ll have an excuse. Chicken pot pie. Cherry pie. Pumpkin, pecan. Pie, pie, pie.”
Nancy sucks down the dregs of her beer. Bruce, noticing, goes to the kitchen for another. Nancy’s never done cocaine and wonders if she should try it since it’s here, and she’s never one to say no to a new thing, even if it’s not the good stuff from New York. But she’s heard it makes you jittery, even a little crazy. She doesn’t want them thinking she’s crazy.
Her eyes wander back to the walls.
Jodie notices. “What do you think? It’s cheesy, isn’t it? I’m not an artist.”
“No,” Nancy replies, “I think it’s really cool what you’re doing. When I try to picture what I actually look like, I can’t. Not really. It should be basic, right? You should just know.”
Bruce, coming back into the living room, opens a Coors and holds it out to Nancy.
“I don’t think so,” he says.
Nancy takes the cold bottle. “No?”
“Mirrors give us the illusion that we know ourselves, but aren’t we just looking at ourselves in reverse? Seeing the opposite of what everyone else sees? Like, when I look at you, I don’t see the same Nancy that you see.”
“Yeah?” she asks, wondering how it is he sees her. Whether he notices the ugly brown mole on her cheek she wishes she could peel off. The girl-sized breasts that pale in comparison to Jodie’s. Bruce is looking at her intently, his eyebrow raised a little, the way Mike used to look at her when she’d just said something dumb. What was that thing she had just said about the mirrors? Was he calling her dumb? God, she was tired.
“I don’t know,” Nancy stammers, looking down at her beer. “I just mean, it’s hard when you don’t know if you’re seeing things right. Cause, I mean, how do you know if you’re seeing things right?”
“Yeah,” Jodie says, nodding. “That’s exactly it. Have you ever noticed that just when you think you’re starting to get someone, really get them, they become someone else entirely?” Jodie narrows her eyes at Bruce, who puts up his hands.
“Why are looking at me like that?”
“God. It’s like you’re in my head,” Nancy says, laughing. She’s thinking of Mike, who sometimes knew what she was going to say before she said it. Maybe that’s why he changed his mind about loving her. She’d been predictable, she’d bored him, she’d allowed herself to be blindsided. Never in a million years did she think he’d be capable of turning his back and shutting the door in her face, not after all the months he’d spent crafting clever ways to get at her, to lure her out of her window and into his bed. To him, it was all fun while it lasted.
Back on the loveseat, Bruce leans forward, planting his elbows on his knees. He runs his fingers through his dark curls. “If we can’t see ourselves the way we are, and if we can’t see each other clearly, how can we trust ourselves to know what’s real? And yet we always insist: this is reality. This is what it’s like.”
Nancy blinks. “Right. That’s it. God.”
“So. This thing we call reality. What is it, really? What are the rules?” He pauses for a toke, and Nancy’s heart beats like a drum in her ears. Does he expect an answer? She gulps her beer.
“No rules,” Jodie says, wiping at her nose. “Fuck the rules.”
Bruce passes the joint across the table to Nancy, who holds it to her lips. But the cherry has gone out. She thinks about asking for a light but holds back. She’s already having enough trouble keeping track of the conversation.
“I mean sure,” Bruce is saying, “it’s easy to say fuck ’em. But that doesn’t mean other people aren’t going to try to make you follow their rules. Those who got religion say they’re handed down by God. Those who got politics say they’re written in the law books. But it’s those who got freedom—that’s who you want to listen to.”
Jodie snorts. “Got freedom? Tell me one person who’s free, and I’ll listen to them.”
Nancy looks at her beer uneasily. “I am. I mean, I want to be.”
The bottle is almost empty, and she’s starting to feel lightheaded. Leaning forward, she passes what’s left of the joint back to Bruce.
“Fuck, man. Don’t we all!” Laughing out loud, Bruce drops the roach in the ashtray. “But then when we try to be free, try to buck the rules, we end up in the Manson family. We end up in Jonestown.”
“Poor sheep,” Jodie says, shaking her head sadly. “Lambs led straight to slaughter.”
Bruce leans back, drapes his arm over Jodie’s shoulders, and kisses the sunny top of her head. “What happened to the days when you could just drop out of the mainstream scene without getting sucked into a cult passing itself off as a religion? You got your Hare Krishnas now, your Jains, your Children of God. Problem is, there are plenty of people out there who believe in something bigger and don’t feel compelled to call it God. We just don’t have a place. We don’t have a community. All we have is—” Bruce sweeps his hand across the coffee table, over the roach in the ashtray, the white lines, the half-empty bottles sitting too close to the edge.
“It’s not so bad,” Jodie remarks. “I mean, it’s bad. But you know what? It makes me feel free. I mean, look at us right now. We could do anything we want. We’re all,” throwing her head back, raising her arms, “free.”
Bruce tickles her under one arm. “Free to be you and me, babe.”
Jodie jerks her arm down and elbows him swiftly in the ribs. He mock-recoils, and Jodie turns her gaze on Nancy.
“Do you have a spiritual practice?”
Nancy shrugs and looks up at the ceiling, as if an answer might be written there. She remembers lying in bed, her body awash in color and sound, head buzzing with vibrations from another dimension. Soundtracks, Abraxas, On the Corner, Paranoid, A Saucerful of Secrets. They flung her to far-out places, gave her glimpses of a reality she couldn’t touch from where she was standing but had always known was there, pulsing on another frequency, just out of reach.
She brings the rain/ Oh yeah, she brings the rain.
But these weren’t places she went alone; there was Mike, lifting her up and out until the needle bumped dead wax. Then he’d go thumbing through his crates of albums, stroking the spines, breathing them in, nostalgic. She was almost jealous of them, of the way he held them up to the light, tipping them out of their sleeves just so, caressing the rims with his thick, course fingers, the fingers of a man.
Jodie and Bruce are looking at her intently, and Nancy shakes her head. “I guess, no. I don’t want a guru. I don’t want to follow a man around for the rest of my life.”
“I like this kid,” Bruce says to Jodie, his voice like honey. She smiles absently as he rises from the loveseat, crosses toward Nancy, and perches on the arm of the leather chair she might as well call home. She can’t help feeling warm all over in the spotlight of his eyes.
Nancy looks down at the immaculate cream-colored carpet. “I’m not a fucking kid.”
“Oh. We know.” Bruce beams at her, and Nancy feels a familiar warmth and wetness between her legs. “We know that, don’t we J?”
Nancy takes another swig of beer, and then another. Bruce scoops his body in toward her, his right hip pressing into the wide, cushioned armrest. Leaning across the back of the overstuffed chair, he lets one arm drop behind his head. His breath smells sweet, like malt. Nancy glances at Jodie, sprawled out across the space her husband left behind, dress hiked up above her knees, watching them.
Bruce reaches down and strokes Nancy’s cheek with the back of his hand. She looks away, and he dips into his shirt pocket and lifts out a pack of Camels with a red Bic lighter wedged inside the plastic.
“I’d say I’m pretty stoned at this juncture, aren’t you?”
He lights a cigarette and smokes it the regular way, holding it between his index and middle fingers.
Nancy shakes her head, and the room starts to spin. “No,” she says. Then she laughs. “Okay, maybe. A little”
Jodie sighs and drapes her slender arm over her wild blond waves. “I’m high as a kite. I want to dance.” But she makes no move to get off the couch. Instead, she turns toward them, smiling, her right breast rising out of the loose crisscross bust of her dress. Bruce moves his free hand to Nancy’s knee. Her body hums like an engine, and she keeps a curious eye on his fingertips. Where will they drift to next? The way he touches her feels practiced, not that she minds. Mike’s touch was the same. She imagines Bruce touching the knees of other girls huddled in this very same chair in the very same way, long skinny legs draped over the armrest, eyes peering up at him, taking note of his body—a lean, supple body that makes you forget to breathe, a body keenly aware of itself as it inches closer, seeking what it already knows it can have. Nancy tilts her head, and all at once Jodie’s tiny mirrors explode with light, like newborn stars. She wonders briefly what the pot is laced with, but she has the wherewithal not to ask and risk seeming her age. Besides, the effect is beautiful. Who is she to argue with beauty?
Jodie is gazing at them across the table. Nancy looks up into Bruce’s searching eyes, the softest, palest blue, not sharp and bright—not Mike’s. Their attention makes her feel dazed, illuminated. It makes her head spin. She hardly knows them, but she wants to breathe them in like air.
The stars all around them are no longer stars—just mirrors. Now, she is the star.
Isn’t that what she wants? Does it matter?
What matters is probably someone else’s story.
*
It starts with the red silk dress. It’s the first thing Jodie pulls from the trunk at the foot of the massive bed, a California king. She sets it on the bed and comes around behind Nancy, lifting her tangled mass of blond hair and plucking loose the knot of her halter top, quick and deft. Nancy holds the top to her chest for a moment before letting it drop down to her waist. Jodie takes her halter in both hands and slides it down over Nancy’s jeans. Then she reaches around her to unbutton them for her. That’s when Nancy remembers she doesn’t have any underwear on. She no longer owns any underwear. And suddenly, Nancy is naked, and the red dress is on the bed next to Bruce, shirtless and beautiful, a black feather boa wrapped around his broad, sun-kissed shoulders. He picks up the red dress and rubs the silk between his fingers before holding it up to his face.
Nancy doesn’t know what to do with her arms or her hands. She hugs and un-hugs herself. Jodie snaps the dress out of Bruce’s hands and lifts it up over Nancy’s head, and then Nancy is all particles of light, a phoenix on fire in the full-length mirror on the closet door. The light glints off her like firecrackers, and she has to squint her eyes. She can’t quite see herself, but the way they are looking at her makes her feel as if she could say anything and make it come to pass.
“Take it off me,” she says, and they do. Bruce comes toward her slowly as Jodie peels the deep slit across her thighs. He takes the thin straps in his hands and pulls them until the fibers snap, then pushes them down over her arms, her hands. The air prickles Nancy’s nipples, and Bruce warms them with his tongue. Right when her skin starts to melt, Jodie pulls him off her and pushes Nancy onto the bed. She takes off her own clothes, then crawls toward Nancy on hands and knees until she is on top of her, straddling her. Jodie’s body is perfect and smooth as a Playboy centerfold’s, her full breasts pale as pearls. She presses them against Nancy’s, her heart beating against Nancy’s skin. Nancy could come right now—she’s never been with another girl, and the electricity between her legs is almost too much. Handily, she flips Jodie onto her back—Nancy is used to men—and as she comes up onto her knees, Bruce grabs her hips and presses himself against her from behind. His breath is in her ear and on her neck. Nancy turns toward him, running her hand along the soft tip of his hard cock. When Nancy plants her mouth on his, her skin explodes in goose pimples. His hands are on her back, on her ass. Cold hands, thick fingers, freshly clipped nails.
Jodie flops onto the foot of the bed near the trunk and jabs a key into the baggie of cocaine. Bruce pulls away, and she holds it out to Nancy. Nancy covers one nostril with her finger and snorts. It burns a little going down, but it feels good almost instantly. She doesn’t even mind the bitter drip in the back of her throat. Jodie, smiling, returns with more. Nancy takes what is offered, then collapses onto her back, and suddenly Jodie is on top of her. Nancy’s erect nipple is in Jodie’s mouth, and her fingers are wet and warm between Jodie’s legs. Bruce lies still, watching them. Jodie moans with pleasure. Nancy thrusts her fingers harder, and now Bruce’s face is between Nancy’s legs. Nancy forgets to move, and Jodie rolls off her, sighing. Bruce climbs on top, wedging himself between Nancy’s thighs. It’s not so different from how it always feels. But there is Jodie, watching them, not two feet away, biting her lower lip and touching herself. Bruce moans, sinking deeper inside, and Nancy can’t hold it any longer. She bursts open and open and open, shuddering, moaning in a woman’s voice that is not yet her own, not completely.
When Nancy quiets down, Bruce slips out of her and into Jodie, another practiced move. Now it is Nancy’s turn to watch, but neither of them lasts much longer. Within minutes, they collapse, and Bruce rolls off Jodie with a heavy sigh, his left arm falling like dead wood onto Nancy’s stomach.
Nancy tries halfheartedly to stifle a yawn. The red numbers on the digital clock read 2:59 am, and that is the last thing she remembers before the nausea hits. She wakes suddenly and, one hand over her mouth, rolls off the bed and rushes to the hallway, desperate to find a bathroom. Luckily, it is light out, and she finds it almost immediately—it’s the first the door on the right, the one with the little clay mermaid hanging from a nail. Nancy pushes the door open and flings herself onto the sea green tiles in front of the commode. She gags twice, but nothing comes.
Half a minute later, a foul river gushes from her throat. Her body heaves as she gags, and when she can finally breathe, a sickening steam rises up from the bowl and smacks her in the nose. Then it starts all over again. Nancy hovers above her body, watching it purge itself until it is exhausted and empty. All too soon, she is back inside herself, gasping for air. When she can swallow again, her throat is like scorched earth. Moaning, she reaches up to flush and wipes her mouth on the back of her arm. She doesn’t notice the tears streaming down her face until she feels them, warm and voluminous, on the back of her hand.
“Jesus, are you okay?” Jodie asks, making her jump. Nancy’s whole body spasms, and now she is gagging all over again. Jodie puts a hand on her head, then withdraws, and Nancy doesn’t know or care if she is there at all. It’s unbelievable that there is anything left inside her. She remembers her Biology teacher saying the human stomach is only about the size of a fist.
“You’re not pregnant, are you? You barely had anything to drink.”
Nancy gags one last time and lies prone and silent, her cheek flat against the cool green tile. Sweat covers her like water, and it’s easy enough to imagine she’s at Grams’s motel, just in from swimming.
Bruce stands in the doorway in plaid briefs. They’re pale blue, like his eyes. He sidles past Jodie and lowers himself to his knees beside Nancy. He rests his hand on her hip.
“Hey, baby,” says. “You sick? What’s happening?”
The tears are coming harder now, and she curls into a ball. The floor is too cold suddenly. Too green. It smells like antiseptic. It makes her sick to smell it. She closes her eyes, and Bruce wraps his arms around her, scooping her in close. He is warm as a blanket just slept in, and he doesn’t smell like anything at all. Jodie paces, her bare feet making soft sticking sounds, like snails being peeled off a fence.
“You gave her too much of that shit,” Bruce says to Jodie.
Jodie stops pacing. She takes a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of the drawer beside the sink.
“I wasn’t the one giving her beer and pot all night.” She points down at Nancy, an unlit cigarette in hand. “Not that it’s on us. She should have told us she was fucking pregnant.” Jodie puts the filter in her mouth and fumbles with her lighter. Then she stops what she’s doing and squats on the floor, her face almost level with Nancy’s. Her breath is like sour milk. “I know what morning sickness looks like.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Nancy moans. “I’m taking care of it.”
Bruce, wincing, glances over his shoulder at Jodie. She rises, trembling with anger.
“Do you know how fucking hard it is to stay pregnant?” Jodie jams the filter back into her mouth. “How many times we’ve tried, only to—?” Flicking the lighter, she throws a dark look at Bruce.
Nancy groans. Jodie, hands cupped in front of her face, flicks the lighter again and again.
“Honey, calm down.”
“Don’t honey me,” Jodie says through clenched lips.
“Just go back to bed,” Bruce says softly. “I’ll handle this.”
Jodie raises an eyebrow. Her mouth falls open. Nancy glares up at the unkempt woman with the frizzy hair—clearly a bleach job—and beady red eyes. Her robust breasts are flattened beneath a too-tight camisole. Nancy can’t believe how turned on she’d been by Jodie just a few hours ago.
“You think you’re free?” Jodie sneers at her. “You think you’ll be free if you get rid of your baby? You think you won’t regret it for the rest of your life?”
Bruce stands up and swivels around. “Come on now, she’s just a kid.”
“She’s not a fucking kid. Ain’t that right, Nancy?”
Nancy turns her head away. She wants to cry, but she won’t let them see her. She won’t let this woman get inside her head. She can’t. It would be the end of everything.
Bruce sinks down beside Nancy and says he is sorry, he is so sorry. Jodie throws both the cigarette and lighter onto the floor and storms out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. The lighter clatters and slides past Nancy’s face, missing her by a millimeter.
Bruce rocks Nancy gently, stark naked in his arms. Then he stops and looks down at her with pity in his eyes. Nancy’s stomach turns, but nothing comes up. She shivers against him, knowing he will be gone soon, and she will be alone again. But for now, they are here on the floor, skin-to-skin in a puddle of golden light from the east-facing window.
Whatdidyoudo,his eyes are saying to her. Whathaveyou done?
“Don’t worry about me,” she tells him, her voice small and hoarse. “It’s like I said. I’m taking care of it.”
Bruce raises his eyebrows. Then he leans down and kisses her forehead, as if she were a sick, sad, lost little child.
“Come on,” he says, lifting her chin with his finger. He tries to smile, but his eyes aren’t in it. “Let’s get you dressed, and I’ll drive you back to your motel.”
*
The television is on in the living room, but Jodie is nowhere to be found. Nancy is dressed in a pair of tight jeans and a white T-shirt printed with the Parallel Lines album cover, which Bruce insisted she take from Jodie’s trunk, and she feels almost like a person again. Her stomach growls, loud enough for him to hear, and he offers to make her some toast and coffee—it’s all they have. Jodie doesn’t like to keep much food in the house.
“Hey, didn’t you say you used to live in Austin?” he asks, opening a white cabinet. Nancy glances over at the television. There’s a news program on. She hasn’t heard a word of it, but there on the screen are the neon sign, the palms, and the pool—her pool. The camera pans over Grams’s office, the soda machine, the unmistakable flat, grey rows of rooms. The rear end of the Sunnyside café and the entrance to the trailer park are decked out in police tape. A woman talks into a microphone, and behind her, blue and red lights flash on a white mobile home, its aluminum siding and prim flower boxes spattered with what looks like blood.
AG Latham lives in Oakland, California. She holds an MFA in Fiction from San Francisco State University, where she teaches in the College of Liberal Arts and the College of Business. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Epiphany, Greensboro Review, Chariot Press, and other journals. She has been recognized with the Wilner Award for short fiction and The Dillydoun Review short story prize, and her story “Combustion” was adapted for a short film by Quiet Lightning. She is currently at work on a collaborative audiodrama in partnership with Independent Arts & Media and a debut novel.