Acts of Credence

Jayne Wilson

10 p.m.
Drunk already. Too cold in my dress, too warm with a jacket.
Alice is in the bathroom with that white daisy still in her hair, and she’s with some guy because they like the same band, and I need to find a reason with this one. Our shirts could be the same color but it’s too dark and anyway that’s not good enough.
I think we’re in the same philosophy class, he says. Pascal’s theology. Kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will believe. Remember?
I don’t.
I like this song. Story-telling died with Cash and Dylan, but Will Sheff could be some kind of Messiah if he wanted to be. I think about saying this to Philosophy Guy, but I don’t think he even knows what he’s bobbing his head to.
He is playing with my necklace and staring at my tits. Whatever, this is a reason. He is a little skinny. I don’t like his cologne. He looks sleazy with his shirt unbuttoned at the top. But he could be cute, and anyway I don’t care anymore. I’ll tell Alice we danced to this song, let that explain.
I finish his beer and say, Let’s go upstairs.
He smiles at me before following.
His hands are cold. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. I almost want to tell him it’s a front clasp, but there’s no point. He seems like he’d be junior-varsity and I don’t think I’d get off on him. I never do. This night won’t be about me.
I push him off then reach down to the top of his jeans. He’s too excited for this. Fucking kid. He says something about his name. I ignore him.
Kneel down and you will believe.
Drunk or sober, men are the same, and when you kneel and unzip their jeans they tug your hair the same way and moan everything but no.

10:31 p.m.
Reggie The Philosophy Guy’s number is on the outside of my hand.
After he zipped up his jeans, he made out with me. I could still taste him in my mouth.
When we stopped he told me he wanted to talk. Junior-varsity error. I smirked and bailed. I fucking hate when they do that.
I am rolling a can of cheap beer between my hands by a table of half-eaten food. The guy standing next to me is hiding his hands in some girl’s back pockets. He looks up at me over her shoulder and smiles. I sip my beer. Bitter-sweet stinging at the back of my tongue, makes it way to my head, and I see Reggie coming down the stairs. I turn and look for Alice.
She is dancing with her bathroom guy and he is looking at her the way all guys look at the girl that’s just fucked them. I take her hand and I lead her away. She smells like vodka, and sex, and even her hair fucking says it – that she was tossed and pinned and groped and felt and thrusted and pumped – and she is so, so gone.
She stops in the middle of the room and raises our hands in the air and she is squealing, jumping.
Let’s dance, Livvie!
She is grinning, clutching my fingers tight. She twirls herself under our arms. I move a hand down to her hip and dance with her as the flower bounces in her hair.

12:45 a.m.
Alice and I in the liquor store. Our apartment is dry and we forgot to swipe beer when we left the party.
She has a handle of vodka under her arm. She tells me about bathroom guy, whose name actually is Guy but pronounced Gee because he’s French but she says it like Guy anyway. She tells me he came too fast inside her.
Don’t you fucking hate that? she asks.
I don’t know, they never come inside me, I say back.
She giggles.
I am starting to sober up. I let her pay for the vodka and a bag of potato chips with the new credit card her parents got her for her birthday.
Guy had rough hands and freckles on his abs, she tells me, and hair gel that came off and stuck to her face when he started to sweat. But he smiled like Lewis, and I think she likes this even though she says it’s about how they have the same favorite band.
I tell her I hooked up with Reggie The Philosophy Guy and how he had hot eyes but was a second-string fucker who couldn’t deal with front-clasps and shouted, Godfuck like one word when he came, and then wanted to talk after, as if I gave head good enough to be fucking wife-material.
She laughs, says, He sounds like a good lay, you should’ve fucked him.

2:33 a.m.
Spilled apple juice on the kitchen tiles, potato chip crumbs scattered like confetti on the heads of the flowers printed on our tablecloth.
Mugs of vodka apple juice between us and Alice slurs, We’re really classy, aren’t we?
I drink then pour the rest of hers in my mug.
Dutch people suck, she says next. And I know she’s gone because we’re talking about Lewis now, and about how he’s supposedly studying economics in Amsterdam but is really studying the history of hash with a girl Alice calls Heidi.
I fucked Lewis once, but Alice doesn’t know about it. Someone was having a party somewhere and somehow we got high and Lewis was there and Alice wasn’t and that’s how simple it was. He wasn’t too bad but he kept putting me in positions I didn’t really like, but Alice must’ve. He fucked Alice later that night. I remember wondering if that made it a threesome in technical terms. Anyway, it’s the closest I’ve ever come to one.
Forget the fucker, he’s an ass, I tell her.
You don’t know him, she says.
I do. Almost as well as she does in missionary or against a wall, but I don’t tell her this because when she’s drunk she remembers that she thinks she’s in love with him.
She reaches for my mug and I let her because why the fuck not, she’s piss drunk anyway, and after she throws back what’s left she pushes her cheek against the tablecloth, her lips parting between the flowers.

3:05 a.m.
We figure out Lewis hasn’t responded to her last forty-nine e-mails so Alice wants to look for another party.
She calls Reggie The Philosophy Guy, pretends she’s calling for me and tells him to bring a friend with a car.
She has a vodka spill on her left tit and she laughs because she thinks it looks like she’s lactating but she doesn’t change. Reggie’s friend notices. His name is Samir. He walks into our apartment with an unlit cigarette in his mouth and the bill of his cap turned all the way up. His fucking bangs are longer than Alice’s and the one eyebrow of his I can see is pierced. I know the type – his parents were yuppies, but he chews vegan gum and his major food groups are eggplants and tofu and he spends all the money in his trust fund to make himself look like he doesn’t have any.
Your favorite band is Joy Division, I tell him.
The Velvet Underground, actually, he says. He already hates me.
I smirk. Predictable hipster fuck.
Alice presses herself against Reggie when she introduces herself to him. He looks at me, holds Alice up by her arm, passes her to Samir, who I’ve decided to call Joy Division. He sits down on the couch with her. He tracks his fingers up her thigh, his black nail polish like a jerky cockroach from far away.
Upstairs? Reggie asks me.
Joy Division is leaning into Alice.
I just want to talk, Reggie says.
Alice breathes into Joy Division’s shoulder.
Fine, I say.

3:33 a.m.
When Reggie follows me into the room he tries to shut the door with his palm without turning around. He fails, has to get a peripheral look at the doorknob before he can close it.
I sit on my bed and slide my arms out of my sweater.
You share your room with Alice? he asks, like he can’t already fucking see.
I shrug.
It’s nice, he says.
And this is just something that people say because the beds are unmade, Alice’s hair is pooling in a corner of the carpet by her bed, and laundry hampers are full. One of Lewis’s shirts that Alice has taken to sleeping in when she claims she has nothing else to wear is strewn across the floor and looks like it could be waving hello to Reggie or trying to flick him off. Lewis left it on the first night he stayed over. He also said that the room was nice then rolled up his sleeves before losing the shirt altogether. Alice had left the door open and I accidentally walked in on them.
You can stay, he told me, if you need to go to sleep.
So I did. His voice came out strained and every time he grunted Alice sighed. I kept my eyes on the ceiling and listened. The second and third and fourth and fifth time I walked in it didn’t matter. No one said anything.
Reggie is still standing by the door. Mine and Alice’s plastic underwear drawers are emptied out in one shit-pile under her desk. He is staring at it. I realize I’m wearing Alice’s bra tonight instead of mine.
He sits down on my bed. I lean back against the wall. He doesn’t touch me. I don’t know what the fuck he wants.
So what are you majoring in? he asks.
Are you kidding? I say back.
He doesn’t blink.
Post-coital hangovers, I say.
He chuckles. Okay, he tries again. Where are you from?
You’re not obligated, you know, I tell him because he is starting to get fucking irritating.
What?
You don’t have to know me. Whatever factoid you pick up isn’t really going to factor into how well you’ll get off, so ask for what you want and just move on, yeah?
The walls are thin enough so that we can hear Alice and Joy Division downstairs subtly moving furniture.
He stares at me and doesn’t move, doesn’t do a fucking thing and I’m about to ask him what the fuck his problem is, but he stands up and unbuttons his jeans and lets them fall. He reaches over, puts his hand on my head and moves me closer until I can tug his boxers down and part my lips around him. He tastes different. He tries to reach down to my jeans. I don’t let him.
Tell me something, he says to me when he’s done. One thing.
I swipe my thumb at the corner of my lips as he jumps into his jeans.
I’ve only let one guy fuck me, I say to him
He chuckles again, shakes his head.
They never believe me.

4:58 a.m.
Joy Division drank too much. He mumbled something like Rock and roll before he vomited in our kitchen sink. Reggie had to carry him back to the car.
I brush my teeth. When I get out of the bathroom Alice is in Lewis’s shirt, smiling into a pillow on my bed with her eyes closed. When she’s drunk she stumbles and lands on the nearest comfortable spot. Most of the time she plays switcheroo with our beds because she thinks it’s funny. I pull my sheets up to her chin and she opens her eyes.
Hi, Livvie! she whispers and I know she’s going to be hung over tomorrow.
Hi, I say. I walk to her open laptop where she’s stopped in the middle of writing another I-miss-you-when-are-you-coming-back-why-haven’t-you-written-me e-mail to Lewis. I delete the draft.
I sit on her bed, push my feet under the comforter.
Wait, Livvie, she coos in the dark. Livvie. Livvie, you’ll sleep next to me, right?
Okay, I say to her.
I trudge to my bed, worm in beside her. She smiles at me in the dark, small and frangible. I can smell vodka and apple juice in the air between us.
Goonight, Livvie, I love you, she whispers to me, mousey and insecure.
Night, Alice.
She rests a cheek on my shoulder and throws an arm across my stomach, Lewis’s shirt grazing a sliver of bare skin between the top of my pajama bottoms and the hem of my t-shirt.
I love you, Livvie, she whispers again.
She is falling asleep, she is so drunk, and when she wakes up tomorrow she’ll toss Lewis’s shirt in the same heap and she won’t mention him until she’s drunk again. The collar of his shirt is tracing my neck, is moving up and down with Alice’s breathing. I close my eyes and clutch the coarse fabric.
She moves her lips to murmur Livvie, hushed and serene.
And I believe.