Pleasure Unbound

A group of three ate on the patio. It rained on the other side of the overhang. They laughed and smoked cigarettes as if they were at the Wilshire Country Club, not Westonwood. They were my age, more or less, with smooth skin and trim bodies. One girl saw me and waved me over. I stood in the doorway.

“Fiona Drazen,” she said. “Heard you were here.”

They all looked at me. I waved. Their faces seemed familiar. The girl in question had her bare feet curled on the chair and a lit cigarette in the fingers that rested on her knee.

“Hey.” One of the young men, with tight curly hair and a knowing slouch, raised his hand to me. “Good to see you again.”

I didn’t know him. Had I fucked him? Was I supposed to remember? I couldn’t even remember the last two days.

“Hey.” I nodded at him, then the rest.

The girl’s shirt buckled under her crouch, and I saw the curve of her breast. I remembered her. It had been a weekend in her mother’s timeshare -two days in an ocean of skin. I barely remembered their three faces from that party. Karen. Karen Hinkley. Her mother was a producer.

“Ojai,” I said. “Fuck, man. What a weekend.” “It was…” She rolled her eyes as if at a loss for words.

“Beautiful,” I finished for her.

“Damn,” said the guy with the curly hair, “we should do it again.”

“Yeah.” Karen nodded to a boy with blond hair who couldn’t have been a day over fifteen. “You gotta come this time.”

Everyone concurred except me. I couldn’t bear another minute. I didn’t know why.

“Nice and quiet here,” I said.

“Christmas,” Karen said. “Everyone gets sprung for a couple of days. Except I don’t want to go home to look at the buffet. Gross. After New

Year’s, there’ll be a line for the tri-tip.”

Too-Young shook his head. Curly Hair laughed. Warren. That was his name. Warren Chilton, son of the actor.

“I’m going inside,” I said. “Call me when we’re all out of here.”

There was agreement, but no discussion about whether or not I would serve time, even though my situation must have been public knowledge. People like us didn’t serve time. Even the suggestion meant that my lawyer wasn’t connected well enough.

I wasn’t hungry, so I drifted into the common room, where the TV screen showed nature in all its high-definition glory. It was compelling in its own way. I sat on the grey leather couch and watched, staring at daisies fluttering in the breeze. I felt too weak for a walk. Frances had given me a cocktail of pills for the headache, some of which I recognized, and they dulled the pain and the brain.

I’d stabbed Deacon. What would make me do such a thing? What could he have done? Beat me? I laughed to myself because beating me was what he did on any given day. I rubbed my eyes as if I wanted to erase the lids and see what I’d done.

My body tipped a quarter of a degree when someone sat next to me. I glanced toward my right. He had short-cropped hair and pink lips, and he smiled and blinked slowly. I could fuck him. No reason not to, besides the no touching rule and Deacon, who wasn’t dead. I’d betrayed him enough already.

“Bellis perennis,” he said, tilting his head toward the nature show. “Common daisy, often confused with their more tightly petaled family members, Arctotis. You’re Fiona Drazen, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Jack Kent. Carlton Prep. I was a year below you. You were a celebrity even then. What are you in for?”

I didn’t have a chance to answer before a nurse came close, and Jack pointed at the TV.

“Arctotis stoechadifolia, nearly extinct in its native South Africa, and now a weed pest in Southern California,” he said.

“Attempted murder,” I said when the nurse passed, “but I don’t remember it.”

“Car?”

“Knife.”

“Wow. Trust you to do it big.”

I wished I remembered this guy half as much as he remembered me. “No, wait. I remember you,” I said. “Nerd.”

“Not unfuckable, I think. But yeah.”

“What are you in for?”

“Being an embarrassment, unofficially. But officially, bipolar disorder.”

“Picked up in a manic phase?” I asked.

“Totes manic. I came up with a new way to process ricinus communis in a hundred forty-seven steps. No one in their right mind could get past the seventy-fifth.”

“Why did you?”

“Because I could. And the high? Woke out of it with my underwear

full of jizz.”

I nodded. I knew how he felt.

“You voluntary?” he asked.Content protected by Nôv/el(D)rama.Org.

I shook my head. The flowers changed from yellow to pink.

“Fifty-one-fiftied?”

“Yeah. I supposedly tried to stab a cop. Resisted arrest. Turned the knife on myself. Yada yada. I’m screwed.” “Who’s your psych?” he asked.

“Chapman.”

Jack puffed out his cheeks and released slowly, an expression of overwhelming sympathy.

“What?”

“Hardass.”

“Really? Seems nice enough.”

He shifted on the couch until he faced me, one leg bent on the cushions, the other with toes tensed against the floor. “It’s his job to be nice. Listen. Do you want out or in?”

“Out, of course. What person in their right mind would want to stay here?”

“The question kind of answers itself. But if you want out, you have to do it in the seventy-two-hour window, six therapy sessions or shit gets indefinite. Like, they keep you in thirty-day increments and revisit, and it gets less and less likely you’ll get out unless your parents start making a stink. In my case, they won’t, so I can stay as long as I want.”

He didn’t look at me for the last sentence, as if he couldn’t bear the shame. I didn’t blame him. I’d be ashamed too, if I had any.

“I’ll convince him I’m sane.”

Which meant I’d face charges. If I convinced him I was nuts, I’d be stuck in Westonwood with their no-touching rule and scheduled meals. If I faced charges, would I get to see Deacon? Or would I just be out and arrested and as separate from him as I was in the hospital? Only he knew what happened. Only he could say what I’d done and hadn’t done.

Staying in, staring at a flat screen of flowers with bars on the windows between Deacon and me, wasn’t going to cut it. I had to take my chances with the real world, which meant no more tantrums. No more attacks on the doctor or anyone else. For the next two days, I would be a model citizen.