13
The Chelsea Hotel
=========DANNY==========
Mary's shirt danced up her back and shimmied over her head before sliding down her arms like a waterfall. "You better not be watching!"
"Why would I do that?" I said, reminding her I was not interested in her bodacious assets. I was watching, but because—I don't know why actually—I turned away. Until I heard a zip and a snap and the ruffle of the skinny jean shuffle. Discreetly sneaking a peek over my shoulder, I got a miraculous view of Mary's nearly bare and plump bent over ass as she tugged the pants off her ankles.
And like the gentleman I am, enjoyed the show until Mary scurried off in only her bra and panties, and did a cannonball into the pool. Splashing water onto the side of my jeans.
"Crap! I was too far away!" Mary yawped as she surfaced. Her hair slicked back off her face. She even looked hot with her hair slicked. "Come on, Danny! It's your turn to strip and I'll violate you with my eyes this time!"
"I did not violate you with my eyes."
Mary just gave me a knowing look. So I turned around and started taking off my shirt.
"Nu uh!" she exclaimed. "You have to face me."
"You never gave me a frontal strip tease," I said with my back turned.
"Your nipples are free. Mine aren't."
So I turned around and unbuttoned my shirt. Mary let out a degrading holler. I threw off my Converse, snapped off my jeans, and stood on the deck of the pool in nothing but my blue boxers.
"Danny, you're packing!"
I ignored her and jumped into the pool. Swimming to the surface, I shook my hair like a dog.
"Easy there, Froo Froo," she said, so I splashed her.
"Can Froo Froo be dead already? That's like, the worst name in the book."
Mary started bubbling water with her mouth. "Sorry, Froo Froo."
I went to splash her again, but she ducked into the water. Mary started circling me like a shark about to charge, and that's when I felt her body skim my thigh, giving me an instantaneous erection.
And then, just as I was wondering how I could disguise it under the water, I felt my boxers tug against my skin and slide halfway down my butt. I plunged into the water and swam backwards, nabbing the sides and pulling them back up. Mary was laughing her head off when I bobbed to the surface.
"You realized if I did that to you, I would be jailed."
"Oh, Froo Froo." Mary swatted her hand down as if not to worry. I wanted to kill her. "I'm just having fun. Look. I'll take off mine," Mary said, and so Mary did. After slipping off her panties, she held them up.
"See?" Mary said. "Relax. No big deal." Her voice was gentle and reassuring, but I was far from reassured by anything that this anomaly of a girl did. My eyes inevitably scanned the blur of her naked legs under the water.
"Danny," she snapped.
I looked at her, but couldn't help but notice anything other than the gray panties laced around her fingertips. Dripping, drop by drop, back into the pool. "Don't be so nervous, and don't think so much. Now, before you think anything is going to happen, I'm going to put these back on."
After Mary reupholstered her underwear around her waist, we treaded water and floated on the surface and just talked. Though I couldn't focus on anything other than her naked legs and butt exposed in the water we shared.
"Are you thinking?" she asked from out of nowhere.
"Uh, no."
I scrambled the image of her naked body out of my mind.
Mary's eyelashes, wet and fanned out like the peaks of a crown, fluttered as she looked up at me, the pool-lights brightening her eyes. A half smile crossed her face as the water lapped back and forth, breaking infinitesimal waves against our bodies. Aqua blue triangles like a valley of mountains, rising and falling around us. All that could be heard was the buzzing of the forest and the soft splashes of the waves as they dispersed against the walls of the pool and then sunk back beneath the surface.
Mary's GPS instructions had led us to Winston Woods, a park in the West End of Gilmore Park. The public pool's hours were 8am-6pm, according to the sign screwed onto the post. But anyone with entry-level gymnastic capabilities could easily surmount the fence that surrounded it.
While treading the water, Mary and I entered another staring contest. Something we regularly did when the conversation stopped. When my eyes broke away from hers, I looked down through the water and noticed that under her wet bra (of course I noticed her wet bra), there were a few thin black scribbles on her ribcage. "Is that a tattoo?" I asked.
"Yeah. Wanna see?" Without waiting for my answer, she lobbed her body and raised her arms above her head so I could make out the thin handwriting scrawled along her skin.
"I can't read it. What does it say?" I asked, studying the narrow words on her body dripping with pearls of water.
"The heart will break, but broken live on," she answered.
I must admit that I'm not crazy about tattoos, but I liked Mary's.
"Did you make that up?"
"Are you kidding me? Gosh no, I'm not that poetic. It was something I read on Tumblr and loved it so much I knew I had to have it inked by my tits."
"Hmm," I mumbled. "Why'd you like it so much?"
"Cuz it looks sexy," she answered, and then dove under the water. A short while later, Mary swam to the edge of the pool. "Don't look!"
Respecting her privacy (this time) I turned away, and heard Mary propel herself onto the deck. Afterward, I heard her rummage through her bag, followed by the snap of a towel. She then shuddered, "Eek! I'm cold! Oh, you can look now!" Her feet left behind blotchy wet footprints on the cement.
After following her lead and climbing out of the pool, Mary told me to bust out the Tillard's Estate. Then grabbing two plastic cups out of her purse, which Mary presented as "Courtesy of Wright Bros groceries," I filled both of our cups and we made cheers to the advent of aviation.
"The plastic really brings the fullness out of this one-hundred-dollar Merlot," Mary remarked as she downed her second cup. I was an impatient drinker and had already gone through round two, so Mary filled us both back up to the top. A piece of cork plopped into my cup.
The bottle was a cork-top. I'd seen Mom uncork wines enough times to know what to do, but I'd never practiced the art myself, so I ended up breaking the cork and had to scrape the rest out with my car key. Mary said that we now had no choice but to finish the entire bottle. At this point, I assumed we'd just crash for the night in my car.
"Okay," she burped. "Now you gotta bust out your gee-tar."
I swung back my fourth cup and winced. "Yeah. I was wondering what purpose my gee-tar had this evening."
"Just bust it out." Mary shooed me in the direction of my guitar case which I'd left stacked against the bench. Moths whizzed around the lamppost that stretched taller then the fence, and the constant echoes of the surrounding forest erected a wall of sound beyond the chlorine-steeped oasis of the Winston Wood's public swimming pool.
"I hope you're not expecting me to play anything," I said, as I walked back over. Everything was a little wobbly, but I ignored it in favor of enjoying the drunkenness. With my guitar case in hand, I turned back to Mary. "Okay, now what?"
Mary told me to take it out of the case. So I did. I still didn't know what the point of bringing and uncasing my guitar was, because I had told her several times that I was not going to play it.
So it just sat in my lap and she looked at me until she started laughing.
"You know what I said 'bout how you're supposed to envision your audience in their underwear if you're nervous?" Mary said.
I nodded.
"And you agreed that you would be able to perform if you did?"
"Not entirely, but sure."
Mary unfastened the towel from over her shoulders. "Well, you have your first underweared audience member!" She grinned and I couldn't breathe correctly. "Now perform. And if it's still not working—well, I'm pretty drunk, so I'm gonna enjoy whatever."
I was pretty sure the whole "envision-your-audience-in-their-underwear" thing was supposed to work a tad more effectively if the image was that of your chubby high school principal in tighty-whiteys while you struggled with your first-go at the talent show.
Not literally having the focus of all your sexual longings sitting next to you, swinging her tanned legs above the same shining water that had chlorine-crystalized her hair. Wearing nothing but a wet bra that fabulously honored her perky breasts and a wee little pair of panties you'd already seen wrapped and soaking around her fingers.
I didn't want to, and I wasn't going to, until her wandering eyes fluttered and seized the bright lamplight. And then as I watched how her chin tilting toward the midnight sky made her long and dampened hair float back behind her shoulders, I was pushed to the verge of docility. From there, all it took was one irrefutable whisper:
"Come on."
To slide through her smile for me to start strumming the chords of "Here, There, and Everywhere" by The Beatles.
I finished the song with the pluck of a single note. I was met with Mary's applause. "That was brilliant. Purely brilliant."
Mary kept clapping. I couldn't decipher sarcasm from flattery, and so took a large swig of the half-cup left of red wine, doing my best Elvis Thank you, thank you very much, and shot the wine down the hatch.
"Wow." I winced. "I had to drink to get through my first public performance. Here comes a lifetime of rock 'n roll tragedy."
Mary laughed along with me. "Yeah? Think you're gon become famous?"
"Yeah, actually. I do. I am going to be famous. My music's real fucking good."
"How'd you know that you're going to become famous though?"
"I don't really have a reason. I just know it."
Mary grabbed the bottle of wine from me. "Well, not to be a bitch or anything, but what if you don't? Like, become famous?"
She tipped the bottle. A stream of the ruby colored wine poured into her cup.
"Well, that's not gonna happen because it's going to happen," I said, annoyed that she was protesting my dream. I watched her cup slowly fill.
"I'm not saying you're not good. You're like amazing. Like seriously, Danny. I would tell you if you sucked. But sometimes shit happens." Mary tilted the bottle back up, the stream swashed back inside the glass. "And not everyone's dreams can come true."
"I know. I'm well aware." I paused. "It doesn't come for free, you know?"
Mary swigged her wine with a gulp. "What doesn't?"
"Dreaming. Having a dream. It's not a free ride."
She shook her head. "I don't get it."
"There's a price to pay for it—pursuing it, I guess I mean to say. You've gotta sacrifice time and effort, put in a lot of hard work practicing when you could be doing different things. Like, I could have chosen to go to a different college, or university, even, to get a real job. But this is what I want to do. Play music. The price I pay in the meantime is this sort of unhappiness with everything."
"You're unhappy?"
"Well, sorta. Yeah."
"What the fuck does a rich kid like you have to be unhappy about?"
"What?"
"Nothing, Danny. Like, literally nothing. I'm just drunk. Continue speaking."
"Whatever. But, well, like, I sorta believe that, like, the only thing that will make my life turn around is this blurry vision I have of my future. If I didn't want such big things with my life, maybe like a reasonable person, I'd be happy with the small things. But, God. Sometimes I think that if I did anything else, I would be so miserable. And if things don't work out... well, I'll be paying back the time I spent trying to make it in music with regret and disappointment.
"Which is probably the same reason why Buddhists suggest 'letting go' and 'non-attachment.' You can't get hurt or disappointed when you don't want anything."
Mary stared at me with stardrunken eyes. She didn't get it.
"You should get that tattooed on you."
She then went on to show me the tattoo on her foot that read: GMFB (Get Money Fuck Bitches).
I told her that was the stupidest decision she could have ever made and that she's going to regret having that when she's old.
Mary argued that she was living fast, so she was probably gonna die young anyway. It pissed me off that Mary didn't clue in, or care, about what I had to say about my dreams. But sometimes, in favor of enjoying an attractive girl's company, you let those things go.
"It's funny," Mary then said, jumping conversations again. "My dad sort of says the same thing about dreaming."
"Oh yeah? What does your dad say?"
"He would always say to me, whenever I talked about things I thought I wanted to do, that, 'having a dream never paid the bills!' "
"That's not really what I meant...." But I was too drunk and she was too drunk for us to coherently carry on the conversation.
Then upon downing our fifth plastic cup each, in what appeared to transpire before my eyes in one smooth motion, Mary lifted herself onto her feet and dove into the water. Surfacing a few seconds later.
"Play me something."
Mary requested, and so I had to abide. And so as she floated atop the blue sky of the swimming pool, I played my guitar for her. Plucking through a progression of the most beautiful sounds I could will the guitar to conspire. A sad melody woven with minor chords, rendering the one lone major seventh a victory in the soundscape of defeat.
My fingers wrapping the fretboard attempted to emulate in song what my eyes got to see and what my heart got to feel. Praying that within each vibration, set in motion by the release of the strings off the edge of the pick, there would be an underlying reverberation of my heartfelt intentions. I hoped that my song would permeate deeper than the drum of her ear. I hoped that my music, that the passion my music was played with, would resonate deeper. Deeper like within her soul. And somehow that would make her fall in love with me.
"Can you drive me home?" Mary asked a while later, running a towel over her back. Her question stumbled over a few problems.
"Why?" I asked.
"Cuz? I want to go home? It's late?" She wrapped the towel around her waist.
"Uh, yeah...."
"What, Danny?"
"I've been drinking." Talking about drinking made me feel even drunker. The pool deck began to tilt towards me in the sudden consciousness of it.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah?" I mocked. "Mary, I've been drinking. That's illegal."
"Danny, people do it all the time."
"Well, I'm not doing it."
Mary tilted her head to the left, squeezing all the water out of her hair like a wet rag, and then fiddled it into an elastic band.
"Like, you're actually not going to drive me?"
"No."
"Christ, Danny, it's not a big deal."
"Christ, Mary, it is."
"Holy shit, I'll drive." Mary readjusted her bra before leaning over to pick up her bundle of clothes. Her cleavage rolled through regardless of her effort.
"So are you driving me, or what?" she asked again, looking up at me. The fullness of her breasts was unfavorably titillating.
"I will when I sober up."
"You're not shitting me? Danny, like—" She stopped, stood up, and searched for the words. In the end, she just shook her head and then in a demanding voice said, "I need to go home. Now."
Nothing was going to budge my refusal.
" 'Kay. Give me your phone. I'll call somebody else, I guess." She held out her hand to receive the phone. I didn't budge. "Jesus Christ, Danny. Will you let me call someone? What's the flipshit matter with you? Stop being so goddamn selfish. Seriously! Holy Christ! You're being such an asshole! You're acting like you're freaking twelve. Seriously. Danny. Wait—are those tears?"
Mary chased me to the edge of the fence, persistent in her accusation.
"I don't want to drive. Okay?"
And just when I thought she would understand, Mary asked again for my phone. I slapped it into her hand, pushed myself off the rusted chain-links, gathered my shit, hopped the fence, and then walked to my car. Once inside, I looked back at the pool. From under the moth-covered light, I watched her like an actress on stage under a spotlight, repeatedly typing on the phone and holding it to her ear as she tried several numbers. I turned the key in the ignition just enough to activate the stereo and played The Gaslight Anthem.
Watching her made me think of how actors strive to be holy liars. It boggled my mind to think of how people can be big enough lunatics to dedicate their entire lives to lying. How awful. Musicians strive to be as honest as possible.
And then, as I began nudging my head into the steering wheel, massaging out the tightness, I heard two taps on the window.
"I'm not driving."
"I know."
I turned down the volume so Mary wouldn't hear the song.
"Can I come in?" she asked; her voice deadened through the window.
With my forehead against the steering wheel, I nodded. Mary opened the door and slid in next to me. A moment passed before I turned to look at her. The curved bow of Mary's cheek took on a blue polish in the dashboard light, and whatever little brightness was saved flowed over to detail her wide-set eyes. And then the light slipped off her face all together as she laid her head on my shoulder.
"I'm sorry," she said, after a long silence. The Gaslight Anthem on the edge of inaudibility.
"Who's coming to get you?"
"I told them not to come."
"Why not?"
"Whom are we listening to?" she asked.
"The Gaslight Anthem."
"I like them."
I turned up the volume. We crawled into the backseat and pushed the front seats up as far as they could go. Transforming my vehicle from a car to a home. The sprawl of outdated digital dashboard lights put me in a spaceship. One from some seventies movie. And there, in a deserted parking lot in East-Central Jersey, we floated in outer space. Mary never officially apologized. Apologies were instead substituted for a late tender night in a cramped backseat, so uncomfortable it made the thought of having sex impossible, but still, we sat so close. The heat of her body was warmer than I could have imagined as we cuddled and listened to my favorite music. Then, with the lift of my finger, I silenced an already silent night for a lyric I needed Mary to hone in on.
"I love that," Mary said, after Leonard Cohen grumbled through the Chelsea Hotel that, "We are ugly, but we have the music."
=========Author's Note===========
Thank you for reading this chapter of "Some Place Better Than Here"!
Writing this book certainly wasn't easy by any means. It was an honest-to-God from the bottom of my heart labour of love. And so, if the writing has touched you in anyway, please share your thoughts in the comments or vote on a chapter that you particularly liked!
Sharing a little bit of love back really helps me grow my platform as a writer so I can continue to publish great works for you and I both to enjoy !
Also, if you enjoyed SPBTH please check out my latest project "The Roar of Andora," a explorative fantasy that will be told over a three-part anthology.
https://www.wattpad.com/611263651-the-roar-of-andora-book-one-prologue-the-boy-king
Thank you for reading "Some Place Better Than Here"!
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