Son of a...
She forgot to unplug the iron. Figures. For all of these neuroses, one might think she would remember the basics: phone, keys, wallet...iron. The classic P-K-W added an I in Laney’s case—for one, because she used the iron every day, and also just because she liked reciting the acronym “pee-kwee” in her head. The sounds were pleasing to her. If she’d only focused on the actual meaning of the acronym instead of just musing on how fun the word sounded, then maybe she’d have remembered.
Immediately, in her mind, a summer blockbuster movie reeled—her studio apartment in flames, her cat—wandering around looking in vain for an exit—slowly becoming totally engulfed in flames. Laney could almost hear the groans of her cat resulting from being burned alive as she turned the car around to head back to her house.
Nope, nope, nope. Negative, cyclical thinking. Negative, cyclical thinking.
She was only about 10 minutes away from the house when she noted the I in her mnemonic device, so it wouldn’t put her too far behind to go ahead and turn around. It’ s not as if she was looking forward to arriving at her destination anyway—what’s another 20 minutes?
Her driveway was cumbersome because it was too small. The house was old and in disrepair. She maneuvered her decades-old economy car into the space and put it in park. Pulling the emergency brake, even though she didn’t even reside on a hill, she thought it impossible to be too careful.
Inside the house, she looked around. The living room was in disarray—remnants of the party-turned-brawl that had occurred there the night before. She hadn’t had the strength to clean up after that night. If she didn’t have to walk through the room to get to the rest of the house, she’d have avoided the living room altogether.
She turned down the abbreviated hallway that barely qualified as such and into the empty doorframe into her bedroom. Years before, her fiancé had taken all of the inside doors off the hinges and donated them to the Habitat ReStore. She’d just gotten out of treatment, again, and he was just looking out for her. At least that’s what she told herself.
She’d often considered getting new doors, but had never made it priority since these days she lived alone, and no one ever came over—the last unexpected visitor she’d had was the wellness check he’d ordered on her two weeks after he broke her heart and after she sent him some texts that suggested that maybe she needed some help.
And while she did need help, that particular evening she had no intention of going through with anything. At least not that night. She answered the door and assured the officer that she was fine and asked the officer if he’d actually looked at the texts. When the officer said he hadn’t, she used the opportunity to tell him that the idea of her making any kind of threatening text was so ludicrous and that her mental health was, at the very least, normal—and the officer left confused as to which side of the story was true, but was convinced that her ex was taking things a bit too seriously when it came to the concern over wellbeing. She was fine. He was overreacting, possibly out of his own egoism and a personal belief that he was going to drive her to suicide.
Narcissists.
Of course, the iron was unplugged, after all. This, she surmised as she looked at the prongs of the plug lying on the floor underneath the ironing board. Considering the possibility that her brain was only trying to stall the inevitable, and that perhaps she knew all along that the iron wasn’t plugged in, she turned toward the doorway and paused—realizing that this was the last time she’d look upon her home.
The days prior were filled with throwing away and burning things she didn’t want anyone to find. Journals were doused with lighter fluid and burned in a bucket. Videocassettes and tapes were also doused with fluid and flame. Carefully selecting and cautiously searching, she diligently destroyed everything in her possession that could possibly share a secret.
There was a shoebox of photos at her brother’s house, up in the attic with a few of her things left with him between moves years ago. While the photos were old now, she wouldn’t want them to fall into the wrong hands, but at this point it was too late. If she showed up at his house unannounced it might raise some suspicion. Plus, seeing her nieces would assuredly cause her to pause and perhaps even cancel her plans. Knowing this, the shoebox would be the only evidence, and it might be years before it was discovered. Her brother probably didn’t even remember the box was up there.
She turned and gave the bedroom one last glance—her feelings of fondness toward nearly anything were gone at this point, and then she remembered the cat.
Bouncy was probably out chasing squirrels at this moment, something he did every day while she did work at her computer. He was a good cat. More emotionally available than his feline contemporaries, he had been a solid companion to her for the past five years. Well, as solid a companion as a cat can be.
She’d left enough food for him to last at her house a week or more—that is if rats or something else did not make a way into the kitchen through the dog door, which Bouncy waltzed in and out of with a sort of pride that was half alley-cat and half king-of-the-jungle. This house also belonged to Bouncy, so he’d be back, and he’d wonder what was up if she wasn’t home for a while. The instincts in him would take over after a few days, and he’d eventually either find his way out into the neighborhood again, just as he had years before he called 502 Cranberry Lane home...or at least she hoped he would. She loved Bouncy, and for a while, his love and her love for him was enough to get her through the days, but that period of time ended months ago—when she started planning her trip.
When she gave up.
Walking back toward the living room, she could still smell the vodka spilled onto the carpet by those kids at the party she threw for herself. That had been a mistake, too, (obviously) but at this point she didn’t care anyway and it was all a big ole whatever at all times.
It's all over soon.
The vodka happened, the party happened...Greg happened because she'd just happened to take her old Toyota Camry to the car wash to vacuum it out and wash it to make it easier for whoever ultimately was going to sell the car.
She could have dealt with that herself, of course, but she didn’t have the energy. She figured washing it and giving it a good vacuuming would be good enough.
One more thing.
_____
Yesterday, at the car wash, she'd noticed two little speedy imports huddled by the industrial hosed canisters she’d need to access after she washed the car. They looked to be in high school. As she pulled into the wash bay, she smiled a half-smile as she remembered what it was like to be that age. So much possibility. Before life became just a simple series of deaths.
As she was brushing the Camry with soap, from behind her sunglasses she caught a glimpse of them looking her direction. She added more change to the car wash and looked directly at them—one of the boys, and yes, he was a boy, looked her squarely in the eyes and smiled.
She smiled back.
In her nostalgia, when this boy smiled at her, she felt seventeen again. And it felt good. It felt so good, and it just magnified her own loneliness to her. Driving the resolve. Yep, it's time.
So it was no surprise when she finally pulled the Camry over to the vacuum that this boy smiled at her again. Both the boys were outside of their cars now, checking out each other’s engines and other modifiers that boys add to their import cars. She didn’t know anything about that.
“You looking to score?” Eye Contact Boy asked as she walked around to take the hose from the vac canister.
Only relatively stunned by this question, and also a bit flattered, she responded only with, “Huh?” thinking this would be a chance for Eye Contact Boy to decide he’d perhaps asked a stupid question and replace the words with different choices.
Nope.
“Do. You. Want. To. Buy. Some. Weed?” And by this point, his grin had grown to a full-fledged smile, and she could see the mischief in his eyes. Still living inside her nostalgia, she smiled back.
“You’re not even old enough to buy booze,” she casually observed, thinking this might be a way to divert this path she was having a hard time resisting at this point.
“You’re not wrong. How about we make a trade?”
“What makes you think I even do drugs?”
“Weed isn’t drugs and I think you know that,” as he openly accepted this moment to banter and play the salesman. “Plus, you’re wearing birkenstocks, I see that Phish sticker on your back glass, and is that a Dave Matthews CD in your passenger seat?”
ECB stood up on tiptoes from across the vacuums and looked at her seat.
“Yes, yes it is.”
And it was. Under The Table and Dreaming. Such a good album.
“Okay, you got me,” she chuckled as she said it, realizing this was a dangerous moment.
What if these kids are working for the cops?
What if this is Carrie: the Adult Version?
What if these kids just want some beers?
“So, about that trade,” he was fully approaching her now.
She looked at him. Eye Contact Boy was just over six feet tall, wearing a flatbill cap, skate shoes, dark jeans, and a baggy Thrasher t-shirt. A bit of a uniform for those car types of a certain age.
The trade was this: she’d buy them some booze and exchange it for some weed of the same amount. She’d hadn’t sought to purchase weed in years, but for this weird span of time at this car wash, she was anticipating getting her smoke on (What do the kids call it these days?). She was also hopping and hoping to look cool for these boys.
As she drove to the liquor store in her sparkling Camry, she sniffed the air in the cab and realized that the bag of smoke she now had in her glove compartment was dank, and she wished for a moment she hadn’t just cleaned her car out.
If I get pulled over, I’m toast.
Still not convinced these kids weren’t narcs and that every car behind her was actively following her with intentions to haul her ass to jail forever, she picked up the list of booze ECB had given her—the exchange seemed fair. He didn’t ask for more booze than the ganj (they called it ganj at the festivals in the early 2000s, she thought) was worth, and at this point she was fine with the arrangement.
(It should be noted, perhaps sooner than this point, that this was a manic day for Laney. On a day less manic than this, she would have never engaged in such behavior, especially during the depression that had marked every single second of her prior six months to this very moment.)
“So, what are you going to do with this?” she asked as she handed the bag over to ECB back in the car wash lot.
“Uh, drink it,” he almost asked as he took the brown paper into his own arms. He took his sunglasses off and punctuated his statement by adding, “Captain Obvious,” to the dialogue.
Yeah, but where? She asked herself, and without even realizing, also asked it aloud.
“Are you offering?”
“Maybe I am, and maybe I am not.”
“Are you a cop?” He looked at her with skepticism.
“Are you?”
They looked at each other for what felt to both of them like half an hour. In reality it was closer to thirty seconds: for two people trying to discern if the other is a cop, time is intense.
ECB’s expression softened as did her own.
“You can come party at my place. It’s small, but you could party there. At least I’d know you didn’t die from this booze I bought you and have some kind of neglect or like manslaughter charges on me when you drunkenly drive yourself into a bridge tonight or something.”
What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing?
“Dude, are you for real?” ECB looked taken aback.
“First of all, I am not ‘dude,’ I am Laney; and secondly, yes, I am for real...dude.”
“Well, I’m not dude, either. Greg.” He stuck out his hand, which Laney found to be adorable and endearing for this young man nearly twenty years her junior—the same young man who just traded her a bag of marijuana for alcohol also just extended a hand to shake.
Maybe this is okay.
But it wasn’t okay, and the whole reason Laney even invited them over was because absolutely nothing was okay, hadn’t been in months, and she was trying on the persona of someone who doesn’t give a fuck about anything. She had never been very good at this, but these actions impressed herself as being quite reckless and therefore succeeding in her goals to abandon care for anything—because at the end of the day, none of it mattered anyway.
The plan was already in motion at this point.
ECB/Greg entered the apartment and introduced his friend as Travis. Laney invited them in as she also noted headlights already lining the street with people the boys had called on their way from the car wash to the Cranberry Lane.
Within 45 minutes, the house was packed with children Laney assumed were no older than eighteen at the maximum, and probably with a median age of about 16.2. Vodka shots were flowing into little, disposable shot glasses—courtesy of some girl they called Jumps who showed up during the second wave of partygoers.
There were probably 20 people in the house. Even though Laney had named her bedroom and the guest room both off limits, she realized that a few different couples had used them to make out. She just hoped none of these girls would get pregnant at this party.
ECB sat on the counter in the kitchen and helped distribute the shots and drinks to the other attendants so as not to run out of alcohol too quickly. He also had, in a black tactical backpack, a ziploc bag of weed that was enough to fuel the party two or three times over. He kept joints rolled, and when somebody came in with blunt wraps, he started rolling blunts. The sweet smell of weed and white grape tobacco permeated the room and everyone felt the effects.
Laney didn’t jump out of her nostalgic haze until well after 1 a.m. when she was stoned out of her mind—he leaned in to kiss her, and she didn’t lean away. He was so young, and he liked her. He probably didn’t actually like her, he probably just liked the idea of an older woman—she knew that at a certain age, that had a certain appeal to certain young men.
It wasn’t until after she’d pressed her lips to his and felt the slip of his tongue slightly into her mouth that she escaped her manic haze. His hand was within millimeters of her breast when she stopped him.
“We can’t do this. You’re a minor.”
“I’m eighteen. I’ll show you my ID.”
He pulled out his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans, and when she looked down, she could see his teenaged erection despite the baggy jeans.
This is hard. She chuckled at the double entendre of this phrase and uttered That’s what she said in her own head. This made her laugh out loud.
“Is something funny?” he posited as he unfolded the trifold and produced his driver’s license.
This is a kid’s license.
She examined the photo. He was so cute in his picture. She could tell he had made special effort to look fly or something similar to fly (seriously, what do the kids say) on the day he received it. This was endearing to her for whatever reason, and she found herself being drawn in once again.
“So, anyway,” he fumbled with his billfold as he spoke. “I’m eighteen. I’m totally an adult. You can trust me. It’s just a party, anyway. I wanna fuck an older chick. I-d-k how much porn you watch or whatever, but--”
She cut him off: “Jesus, Greg.”
Is this happening? Is this happening? Is this happening?
“What?”
“Are kids these days all so...I don’t know...horny? And, like, addicted to porn?”
He laughed and shrugged his broad, muscular shoulders as he ran a hand through his hair and put his hat back on...backwards this time.
With a smile he approached her again to kiss her.
“No. I don’t think this will work. You literally just said you only wanted to fuck me and that you only wanted to fuck me because I’m a lot older than you.”
ECB looked around the room, scanning carefully, as if he could find what to say plastered on the walls.
After quickly gathering his thoughts, he spoke. “Look, I’m into you. I don’t fuck anyone I’m not into. Period. And I can and have fucked a lot of people I want to. Tonight I want to fuck you. This is your house, but this is my party."
Laney noticed how proud he looked as he said it, almost like he'd looped his thumbs into invisible suspenders to show off the blue ribbon that had just been pinned to his chest: Best Party Everrrrrr
"I want to fuck you at my party. Tonight’s been a good night, Laney. Don’t you agree?”
He kissed her cheek, and she felt manipulated.
Then she thought of all the episodes of Law & Order she’d seen where the “adult” in the situation had said they were seduced by the minor and how the courts totally laughed at this notion because adults always have the upper hand.
Adults always have the upper hand.
Yeah, but he's 18...right? Consenting adults, right?
Why does any of this matter right now?
Within 24 hours, this is a nonissue.
“Greg. This party was a mistake, and I know that. Buying you booze was a mistake, and I know that, too. Kissing you was a mistake, obviously, and you have to also realize that.”
She paused.
“So...also, obviously...doing anything else other than what has already happened will assuredly be a mistake, and I think I’ve checked enough boxes on my list tonight.”
“Your list?” Greg’s interest was piqued for the moment.
The list had been provided by a mental healthcare provider at the center where Laney used to have group therapy. The list contained behaviors that were considered reckless and therefore were to be avoided at all costs.
(Especially during a manic episode, which Laney was inclined to have and even occasionally fully indulge.)
“Nevermind. Anyway, the point is that this,” as she gestured this between the two of them, “is a bad idea and we should quit while we’re only marginally behind.”
_____
They all left, of course. They didn't say goodbye, of course. They didn't clean up, of course. None of that mattered, of course.
_____
Laney walked through her house and straightened the pillows on the couch. She did the dishes. With exuberance she vacuumed the floor. She knew none of this mattered to anyone except to her. She found purpose in it.
She made sure Bouncy's water was full.
She made her way to her bedroom. Looking around, she gathered a few items from her dresser and placed them on the nightstand. The room smelled like Axe body spray and vodka...just remnants.
Phone... Keys... Wallet...
And during the last full, life-giving breath Laney would ever take, she glanced toward the iron.
No grand reflection, no flashes of life: just the iron.
And that was it. Yep.
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ESP
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Hijo de un…
Se olvidó de desenchufar la plancha. Cifras. De todas estas neurosis, uno podría pensar que recordaría lo básico: teléfono, llaves, billetera... hierro. El clásico P-K-W agregó una I en el caso de Laney, por un lado, porque usaba la plancha todos los días, y también porque le