Dangerous Men Read online

I decided something had to be done, so at our party, I made a fool of myself over Lou. Well, not exactly—I didn’t hover over him or anything like that. Nikki did the hovering. I just went out of my way to talk to every guy there, always in sight of Lou. Most were friends of his, though we had a few neighbors over, too. Men have no faith in their own judgment when it comes to women—they’ll always wait to see what their friends think, and then that’s what they think too. It’s pathetic, really, but predictable as winter. If Mel Gibson started dating fat women, I bet half the men in the country would begin hanging around outside Weight Watchers.

  My goal was protection. Lou was not for Nikki, but by the time she got around to figuring that out on her own, her classes would be down the tubes, along with this whole nursing business. School didn’t even start for another three days, but since it was my idea, I felt some obligation to keep her on track. At the same time, I have to admit, working on Lou was kind of fun, too, if you call shooting a big, conceited fish in a barrel fun.

  About two A.M., things had dwindled down to just me, Nikki, Lou, and a friend of his named Forrest or Tree, something like that—he’d introduced himself to me hours ago and I’d promptly forgotten, and it seemed too late to ask now. Apparently, it didn’t matter, because he answered to Weasel, or just plain Weez, and that fit him better anyway. Weez wanted to go up to the reservoir in Coralville for a swim.

  “I’m up for it,” said Nikki. She looked at me. I shrugged.

  “Weez, you got your truck here?” asked Lou. He had on white jeans (very tight in the butt) and a tank top and a big, silvery wristwatch. Someday, he was going to have that big wallet of his stuffed with money, and he was well aware of it—it gave him a kind of easy confidence.

  “The back’s full of lumber,” said Weez, “and we can’t all fit up front.”

  “Lou can ride with me,” said Nikki. “You guys meet us up there.”

  I smiled and ran a mental checklist of self-defense tactics for possible use in the cab of Weez’s truck. Then I made significant eye contact with Lou, which did not go unnoticed by Nikki. “Sure,” I said. “We’ll see you there.”

  They went out first because I wanted to straighten up a little, and Weez needed the bathroom. In my bedroom, I quick-changed into a swimsuit. I watched out the window in amazement as Nikki started up the bike, then got back off and let Lou take the front position. Nikki slipped on behind him and put her arms around his waist. It was a first. I don’t think anyone had ever driven Nikki’s bike.

  “Ready?” asked Weez, coming back into the room. He wasn’t as ugly as his name—he even looked like a person you could get to like in a freckly, redheaded sort of way, if he’d had a few less beers.

  “One condition,” I told him. “I drive.”

  They were already there, sitting together on the sand, passing a bottle of peppermint schnapps. The moonlight silvered the reservoir, and its gentle, rocking sound was inviting—like a full tub just after you’ve turned off the water.

  Nikki stripped off her clothes to go in, and I could see Weez and Lou staring, though trying to look like they weren’t. Nikki’s body is a little squat, but it’s also really nice to look at, even with the scar from her operation. Solid. With her just getting naked and diving in, I felt a little silly in my Speedo, but I was grateful for it all the same. When Lou took off his clothes, I decided he must not be working that hard in dental school, since it was obvious he spent all his time at the gym. He dove in after Nikki, and the two of them splashed off into the night like a mermaid pursued by a sailor.

  Before Weez and I could even think about following, there were two cops with flashlights waving us over. They shouted out at Nikki and Lou to come back, and while we waited, they checked my and Weez’s IDs. When they finally came back to shore, one of the cops ran his light right over Nikki, very slowly. He told us we were not allowed here this hour of night, and that skinny-dipping was never allowed, and all the time he kept the light on her. I think we were all embarrassed, except for Nikki. She seemed more mad about the interruption than anything else. She stood there glaring at him, even after he finally clicked off the light, leaving her just a grayish moon-ghost like the rest of us.

  Before we went to bed that night, we made a deal. “Look, I guess I ought to tell you,” she said. “I’m kind of interested in Lou.” Yowzer, locked out of Lou’s again, ran through her legs and hopped up onto the arm of our living-room chair.

  “Well, stop the presses.”

  “And I think he likes me, too.”

  “Sister, he’s a man. Of course he likes you—he wants to jump your bones. After what you showed him tonight, he probably thinks he can.”

  “I saw how you were looking at him, and I saw how he looked back.”

  “That’s my point.”

  She scratched Yowzer between the ears and the cat responded by rolling onto its side, and falling backward onto the cushion of the chair. “I just want you to stay out of it.”

  “All right, then,” I said. “But I want you to promise me that you’ll put schoolwork ahead of everything else, including Lou. You need to establish priorities. I’m not attracted to Lou at all. I’m just afraid for you—I want this to work for us both.”

  She smiled. “I knew we could straighten this out. I’d hate to have to compete with you, Kare. You’re too damn cute.”

  I could feel myself flush. It took a lot for her to say that, I knew.

  “I wouldn’t want to compete with you, either,” I said.

  School was hard on Nikki. We went to all our classes together, spent evenings in the library going over problems for chemistry, memorizing terms for psych. Sometimes she’d get frustrated and storm out of the house, get on her motorcycle and take off for parts unknown, cranking the engine so high it practically screamed. But it seemed to work—she’d come back relaxed, calm, and ready to begin again. I was proud.

  It had been over a month since the night at the reservoir and it seemed to me that things had gotten normal enough. Nikki was at the gym running when Lou came by the apartment, looking for Yowzer. I told him I hadn’t seen him.

  “He’s been missing for a whole day,” Lou said. “I’m a little worried.”

  “Did you call the animal shelter?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Nothing. Hey, I was thinking about going out for Chinese food. Would you like to come?”

  I’d already eaten, but it was just some frozen stuff. I was prepared on all my classes. “We can’t let Nikki know,” I said. “She’d be furious. It takes her a lot longer to study than me, and I don’t want to rub it in.”

  At the restaurant he talked on and on about the people in his class—who was going to be successful and who wasn’t, where the best markets were for a new dentist, the advantages and disadvantages of different types of practices. Every now and then, to emphasize a point, he’d reach over and touch my hand, and each time, I’d withdraw it. But somehow, the last time he did it, I didn’t, and his settled gently over mine like a thick, warm glove.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  I realized that I had not followed anything he’d said for the last few minutes, and I tried vainly to retrieve something from the air. “About what?”

  “The Mercedes versus the Jaguar.”

  My opinions on cars were solely the result of listening to Nikki, and I thought how it should have been her, not me, having this conversation. “German cars are a little clunky.”

  He grinned. “Exactly what I think. Efficient and solid, but no spirit. It’s why they lost the war.”

  I felt suddenly guilty. I had betrayed Nikki, in a way, just by coming here with him, even if, as I knew for a fact, he had no chance at all with me. All right, he was kind of cute, but he was also a jerk—just look at the way he treated his cat. I tried to take back my hand, but he held on, fixing me with those big, dark eyes of his.

  “We have to go,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  I should have just gone home, but I let Lou talk me into
stopping over for a nightcap, and then there was this uncomfortable moment when he kissed me and I couldn’t decide what to do exactly. I didn’t want the kiss, but on the other hand, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I kissed back and we sort of hugged each other and rocked back and forth in the middle of his living room to an old Steely Dan album.

  We’d both had a good bit to drink at the restaurant, followed by some of this cinnamon schnapps he had, but I really wasn’t prepared for what happened next, which was that he lifted me right up off my feet, just scooped me into the air like in some forties musical. Three seconds later, I was floating on his water bed and he was over me, nuzzling my neck. He was like a fire I’d poured kerosene on. I thought, Oh, so this is how it happens. And then I thought, Well, I did give him the impression, after all. Meanwhile, he was grinding away above me like a cement mixer.

  “You’re crushing me,” I said. “Really.”

  “You are so sexy,” he mumbled. I realized that clothes were coming off, in particular, mine. “Hey,” I said. “Hey, hey. Whoa there.” I was suddenly scared. Lou’s body felt like it was made of steel and hard rubber, and it wasn’t going away.

  From where we were, we couldn’t hear Nikki. Probably, she’d knocked a time or two. The door was open anyway, so she just walked in. When she came into the bedroom and figured out what was happening, she was on Lou in a second, bringing his arm up behind his back in a position that could have easily broken it. At the same time, she bit his ear right through.

  He howled. I slid out from under him and got to my feet, shaking, vaguely afraid she might come after me next. She held Lou down a bit longer and I felt completely miserable, because this was the guy she’d been lusting after ever since we got to town, and now I’d ruined things permanently. There was blood all over my neck from Lou’s ear, and when Nikki let him up, I could see some on her mouth, too, which wasn’t real attractive.

  “Your cat’s upstairs,” she said. Both Lou and I stared at her. Nikki had on a short black skirt, heels, and a white cotton top open to the third button.

  “Come on, Kare.” She took my hand and led me out of there.

  Back in our apartment, Yowzer was on the kitchen counter working on a bowl of milk.

  “Look, Nikki . . .” I said, but she interrupted me.

  “Would you do me a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Redo this makeup?”

  It was after midnight, and we certainly weren’t about to go anywhere.

  She had a little smear of Lou’s blood dried on her chin that made her look like a kid who’d been eating chocolate cake and getting it all over. Looking closely, I could see what she meant—she’d used a foundation that was far too dark for her, then put a healthy application of rouge over that. She’d skipped her eyes entirely. The effect was odd—like someone interrupted in the middle of getting ready for a night at the opera.

  In the bathroom, we used cold cream, then washed and dried her face, first with a complexion soap, afterward with some witch hazel. I applied a lighter foundation. We’re both pretty pale skinned, though I tend to get blotchier. Nikki’s skin color is nice and consistent, and it’s amazingly soft to the touch, much softer than mine.

  “Close your eyes,” I said.

  She looked at me suspiciously. “What for?”

  “Liner.” I held it up.

  Her lids flickered as I ran a delicate stroke just at the tip, not so much as to be really obvious, but enough to draw attention to the eyes, make them seem bigger. Then I put on a little mascara to fill out and lengthen her lashes. I gave her a hint of rouge, working it in with my fingertips in gentle circles. I put a bit of powder on her nose to get rid of the shine.

  “We just need to decide on a lipstick,” I said. “I’ve got about twenty to choose from. You could even go black if you want to be really outrageous.”

  She looked at me oddly. “I want to look pretty, not like an old banana.”

  I showed her my lineup. “I’ve got this new stuff, ‘Lasting Kiss,’ that’s supposed to hold up for days. I haven’t tried it yet, but you can eat with it on, sleep with it, work out, go swimming.”

  “That’s perfect,” she said. “Something that will last.”

  I put it on her, then put some styling gel in her hair and fussed with it for a while, though it was still so short that there weren’t a lot of options. When I was finished she stood and turned to see herself in the mirror on the door.

  “Oh, man,” she said.

  “Wait.” As a final touch, I put a dab of Rive Gauche behind each of her ears. “‘Darling Nikki,’” I said. We used to play that Prince song all the time, back at the house, before she went off to St. Mary’s. I put my arm around her.

  She really did look beautiful, and I suddenly remembered that when I was about five, she’d tried to do this same thing for me, in Mama’s bedroom, except that since she really didn’t have a clue, I ended up looking like a circus clown.

  I saw myself in that mirror, my blouse looking like I’d just come from a shift at the meat-packing plant, my hair all messed up from tussling with Lou, and there’s Nikki, my creation, looking prettier than I’d even imagined she could. Turning, she brought her face right up against mine and kissed me. At first, I was scared—I thought about those gangster movies where you get kissed and then you get killed, and a part of me tensed and waited for the knife to come plunging in. I closed my eyes.

  She kissed like a boy, though not like Lou, who’d made it feel like some kind of athletic event, or even like Troy Gray, who was much more romantic, but always seemed to be putting on an act. It was Troy’s brother, Graham, I thought of, that gentle urgency, as if somewhere deep inside a door had been thrown open behind which there was more heat and light than you’d ever imagined. About a million thoughts ran around in my head, voices shouting how this was weird, unnatural, dangerous. I wondered if it was even happening at all, because with my eyes closed, it could have been anybody, really, and maybe I wasn’t here and this wasn’t Nikki I was with. Her hard, strong body was pressed up against mine, her mouth tasting vaguely of mint and toast, and she was kissing me, and I was kissing back. Somewhere in the distance, a train whistle blew.

  After a while we stopped and just held each other. She ran the back of her hand up and along the side of my neck. I found the scar on her shoulder from the operation, ran my fingers along its contour and almost cried.

  “Are you mad at me?” I asked.

  “Hell,” she said. “I’m not mad.” She gave my neck one final kiss, then went to the refrigerator and got a beer. “I’m just trying to figure out what happens next.”

  “What do you mean? Next is our psych test. And you’ve got chem next week, don’t forget.” I sat down at the kitchen table, suddenly aware that I was sweating.

  “I don’t think so, Kare. I’m going to travel, I guess. I’ve got my loan money, and there’s still time to get a partial tuition rebate—I checked. I hate to let you down like this, but I’m just not nursing material. I mean, imagine me in one of those white uniforms. ‘Excuse me, sir, but it’s time for your medication.’ Hell, I’d be awful.” She shook her head and smiled. “You go on without me.”

  “But what will you do?”

  “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

  I cleaned up and got ready for bed. I knew she was probably right, the nursing college wasn’t looking at much less than a 3.0 for admission anyway, and Nikki’s chances of getting that were slim. Even so, I felt pretty bad. Yowzer was prowling the counter, taking an occasional lick at the empty milk saucer, so I gave him some more, then went to my room and lay down. I could hear Nikki doing things out there, the television on softly to one of those program-length commercials.

  It was as if my emotions were this big tangled ball of yarn, and while I could follow a thread for a few inches, I then lost it entirely. I wondered what she’d hoped would happen’ this evening. Thinking about her outfit and makeup just made me feel sadder. I thought about the
coach at St. Mary’s and wondered if what I’d done to her was just as bad.

  After a while, the door to my room clicked softly open.

  “Hey, Karina?” she said. In the light from the living room that silhouetted her in my doorway, I could see she’d changed back into jeans and a T-shirt. “You want to go for a ride?”

  It was October, and the air had a crisp chill to it, but not so much that it didn’t feel good against your face, and it smelled like autumn. I held on tight around her waist, the heat from the engine warming the inside of my ankles, watching the boxy houses zip past us in a long ribbon. I leaned into turns when she shouted for me to, but other than that we didn’t talk, we just rode. We went out past a trailer park, then turned onto a road that had a lot less houses on it, where she cranked the engine and popped us up into another gear. It almost felt as if we were flying.

  Soon we were out near the reservoir, and I thought maybe we’d stop there, but she kept on. About a mile further, she turned up a driveway, and at the end of it killed the engine. I heard an owl whoop in the distance, as if announcing our arrival. The stars were bright and clear against the sky, and you could see the Milky Way, too, woven like pipe smoke among them.

  We were in front of a house, or rather, a house-in-progress. It had been framed out, and there were floors, but that was about it. I followed Nikki up a plank that served in the place of stairs.

  “I figure this is going to be the kitchen,” she said. “Stove over here, fridge there.” She ducked through what was going to be a wall and into a larger area and held her arms out, demonstrating. “Living room. One hell of a view, too.”

  Looking down through the trees, I realized that we were only about twenty yards away from the lake, which lay out in the moonlight like an enormous, flat, black stone.

  “Here you’ve got your master bedroom,” she said, moving on to another area, “also with a view. Over here I figure is a guest room, or maybe a study. What do you think?”