Some Place Better Than Here

Chapter 11: California Dreamin'

"Ooh!" Mary exclaimed through the speaker. "What have you written about me so far?"

"How do you know I've written anything about you?"

"Because you're a romantic, artsy kinda guy who's falling in love and is good at writing. So you've written something about me by now."

Her self-indulgence could've been off-putting, and I didn't even want to figure out what her very bold claims about my attraction to her meant—but she said I was a good writer, so yeah.

"Yeah, Mary. This is the most romantic shit I've written yet, I hope you like it." I started making up words on the spot:

"She got an ASS, oh yeah, she got an ASS. If it's flat—we give it a PASS—oh yeah, she got an ASS!"

"That was marvelous."

I murmured in agreement. "Yeah, your personality has really won me over, if you can't tell."

Mary was fabulous at the idea of flirting. While on the phone, all I could think about were the highlights of Mary's eccentric mood-swings. One day a kiss. The next, I'm told to "eff off." And then an hour after that, when she randomly combs my hair, I'm suddenly handsome?

Then she claims I'm falling in love.

At one point in our phone conversation Mary told me to "hold on," and the line went flat. She picked up and asked if we could transfer our hangout to the next night. Naturally, there was a dip in my mood, but I played it cool. With my vibrant social life and having to do things like call LACM, I was so busy.

"You slept with her?" Max's voice jumped a thousand decibels in the midst of folding rags the next day at work.

"Shh!"

"Okay. Okay." He descended into a shout-whisper. "You slept with Mary?"

"I did not sleep with her. She slept over."

"In your room?"

"Yes."

"In your bed?"

"Yes."

"You're telling me that Mary slept in your bed, and you did not sleep with her?" Max's bafflement at my lack of sexual lasciviousness was equal to mine.

I almost felt stupid when he worded it like that, so I rolled my eyes.

"Well, yeah. I want to respect her and take it slow." Which was mostly true, anyway. Max dropped his hands, mid-fold, onto the plywood countertop with a loud thud that sounded like it snapped something important holding the table together.

"Take it slow? Dude. She willingly crawled into your masturbated cum and pube-filled sheets. Believe me. She was not in the business of taking it slow. Whatever taking it slow means."

I let Max rave on about how sexually clueless I was. What Max didn't know was that she was locked out of her house and that I'd insisted on giving her the bed, with clean sheets. Thank you very much. Even when I started to tune Max out, focusing all of my attention on the task of folding the steaming mountain of rags that had begun to fog the window portal to the bright and green world outside, I couldn't help but wonder—What was I to Mary?

To avoid sounding like a girl—and inviting harassment from Max—I did not tell him that Mary and I did, in fact, kiss the night before in The Alley. That Goddamn kiss. Maybe Mary did like me? And then somehow, in the measly forty-eight hours that I had known her, I did something wrong? Mary was a mood pendulum. One moment, yes, the next, no. And wouldn't making a move on a girl I offered refuge to in my house be considered rape? With everything classified as sexual harassment nowadays—I wasn't really sure, as a guy, if you're even allowed to make a move on a girl. Jesus, Mom had gotten more intimate with Mary when she hugged her bye.