Recovering Maggie Read online

  He knew he was properly drunk when he saw Andie down there in her monkey costume (what the fuck?), holding her hands out while an enormous purple fireball blossomed from her palms; the crowd roared and clapped and he looked around and wondered where the hell he was.

  Not sure of the logistics, but somehow, probably another cab, they went back to Evanston, most likely, and watched live music in a past-capacity Irish pub. The volume was eardrum-bursting, he could barely hear himself above the din, even when he yelled. Titus bought two rounds of Jameson’s doubles, and he and Marta locked arms and knocked them back each time. There was a lot of Guinness. The band that played were old white-haired men in fishermen sweaters and duncher caps; they played fiddles, jugs, bodhráns, flutes, banjos, one wore a wolf-man mask and played an accordion and it freaked him the fuck out. But he danced and danced, and he fucking laughed his head off. Arm-in-arm with Marta they spun and reeled, encouraged and assisted by clapping red-faced locals.

  Now he was in a bathroom at a house that he was sure was off-campus and he kind of thought it was a married couple that owned it, grad students, maybe, friends of Andie’s … No idea how they got there, pretty sure the others had gone home, it was just him and Connor and Andie, and Marta. Marta was in the bathroom with him, Parquet Courts and laughter and good-natured shouting floated beyond the bathroom door, Marta kissed his neck and his hand was inside her panties.

  “Condom,” Marta muttered. Both her hands cupped his cheeks and her lips kissed at his chin.

  “What?” he mumbled, drunk and dry lips sticking together.

  “You have a condom?” she whispered.

  “Mm, lemme finger.”

  When he closed his eyes, the room tilted and rotated, so he hoisted them back open. Marta’s Explorer shorts were around her knees, her white with red dot panties hiked down mid-thigh. His blue wool sweater lay flopped over the lip of a robin’s egg blue bathtub. The bathroom was small, its walls tiled, its fixtures from the fifties.

  His fingers stroked up and down her labia and her hips humped her pussy against his touch. He shook his head. She was soft, slippery, hot to the touch and so slick. He got hard in seconds.

  “Mm, yeah,” she mumbled.

  He said, “Where are we?”

  She said, “Don’t know.”

  His shirt was untucked and her other hand gripped his bulge through his pants now. Her fingers worked his buttons, and he teased her entrance, letting his fingertip sink further in her folds, testing the heat of her core.

  “I can’t,” he whimpered.

  “Condom,” she said again, thinking that was what stopped him.

  He shook his head no.

  “Get one from your brother,” she whined, slipping her hands inside his open shirt and rubbing his ribs and stomach.

  “Not that,” he said. His hand moved up from her labia, fingers pausing to scratch her wetness off his finger on the coarse patch of hair she left unshaved just above her sex.

  “Don’t stop,” she urged, her hands undoing his belt buckle and his button, his hands resting over top of hers, not stopping her but slowing her down. She took it and put his hand in the wet stripe between her thighs. Fly unzipped, she pulled out his cock and stroked it.

  “Oh God,” he sighed, falling back and hitting his head on the wall, sliding and falling against the toilet.

  Marta scrambled to her knees, fell into his lap face first and his cock slipped into her warm mouth.

  Her head bobbed up and down, her mouth making smacking noises around his hardness. He ran his fingers through her black hair, medium length, cut in a bob with a fringe almost exactly like Dora the Explorer. His other hand rolled her T-shirt up to her armpits, and he undid her bra. Her breasts were a smaller cup size, but wide scoops. He palmed them, felt her hard nipples. Maggie’s were about the same size, but her chest narrower so her petite bosom was also narrower, and when she would bend over like this, they hung to a creamy rosebud point. The other hand smoothed her lower back, rubbing on her tailbone, then his fingertips sliding down her crack. He smelled her. She smelled sexy, she smelled warm and aroused. Musky, spicy. Not like Maggie though. Not her scent. It twisted his heart. Still, he slipped a finger inside her. She worked her hips against him for a while and he rested his head on the tiled wall.

  After a while, she rose up. “What’s wrong?”

  “What? …” he mumbled. She gripped his cock between thumb and forefinger, pinching it tight, her other hand stroking quickly. His weakening cock flopped around as she jerked.

  “I don’t know,” he moaned.

  She kissed his neck, pinching him harder and stroking faster. She straddled him, wriggling her hips till her panties rolled to her knees and when she opened them wider, they scrolled to her ankles with her shorts. Now she was over him, her ankles together over his ankles.

  “Come on,” she said, trying to position him where he needed to be though he wasn’t rigid.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Oh God,” she moaned.

  “I can’t,” he said again.

  She got to her knees, scratching at his neck as she kissed his chin.

  He slurred, “I’m engaged …”

  It was punctuated with the sound of her soft kiss lifting off his face. She cupped his cheeks again and looked in his eyes. “You broke it off,” she murmured.

  He nodded, belched in his mouth and turned to the side. “I’m so stupid,” he said.

  “You broke it off,” she repeated.

  He sobbed a few times though no tears came.

  “Hey,” she said, and she scratched his hair above his ear.

  “What is wrong with me?” he said.

  “Sit up,” she said.

  “Such an idiot,” he sobbed.

  She fell against him and leaned with her palms together around his neck and on his shoulder. “Andie said you broke it off.”

  “I did.”

  “Are you engaged?”

  “She cheated on me.”

  “Bitch,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “She’s not a bitch.”

  Marta sighed now, exasperated, disinterested. “Get her back,” she said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s my fault.”

  “What’s your fault?”

  “She cheated.”

  “You made her cheat?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he moaned. “She’s so amazing. She’s so pretty and she’s so smart …”

  Marta said nothing, but she lay against the wall as he did, bringing her knees up, she worked her thumbs into her panties and shorts and began to pull them up her legs.

  Max said, “She’s going to go to law school …”

  “Good for her,” she said.

  “Going to go with my best friend.”

  Marta paused, shorts pulled part way up her thighs. “That who she cheat with?”

  He nodded.

  Marta said, “She cheated with your best friend?”

  He nodded again.

  “Yeah, sure, she’s not a bitch.”

  “I’m going to marry her,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” he said, slipping his hand down to his pants pocket and finding his phone.

  She said, “Connor told Andie she broke your heart.”

  “She did,” he said. And then he showed her a picture. “Look, this is us.” It was a picture of him and Maggie together, sitting on a couch at school, a selfie taken as they studied, became distracted, and started to get frisky with each other. Both of them wore big smiles.

  “She’s pretty,” she said.

  “So pretty,” he said. “So smart. She can play the cello.”

  “That’s good,” she said, her hand feeling around, finding her purse and dragging it over.

  “No, I mean she could play in an orchestra. And she paints. Oh, you should see her drawings. She’s amazing …”

 
; “She sounds amazing,” Marta said, rooting through her purse and finding a packet of gum.

  “She is. I’m so stupid.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Only a bunch of bullshit,” he cried, his words close to unintelligible.

  “What did you do?” she repeated, her voice higher.

  “I’m such a fucking liar,” he said, and he fell against her.

  She said, “Everybody lies.”

  “But somebody’s gotta be the best at it,” he murmured.

  She pet his cheek, hiked an arm around him and hugged him to her shoulder, offered him a stick of gum.

  “Look, look,” he said, showing her the phone again, taking the gum but holding on to it. “She wants me back. Look what she texted me …”

  On the screen were Maggie’s sweet pleas for him to talk to her, Please, Max, tell me why you’re so mad, whatever it is I’m sorry, we can make it right … He’d ignored them. Cherished that they were sent, but let them go unanswered …

  He said, “What am I going to do?”

  “I don’t know. What are you going to do?”

  He turned to her. She had a lovely face, a dark complexion and almost jet black eyes. “What do you want to do?”

  She sighed, looked away, said, “I wanted to have fun tonight.”

  “We had a lot of fun.”

  “I broke up with my boyfriend too.”

  He asked, “In Portugal?”

  “He’s from Portugal. He goes to LSU.”

  “He cheat on you?”

  “I don’t share with strangers,” she said, not looking at him but smirking. Her pallor had faded, and she looked waxen.

  He lifted his head and looked in her eyes, and she looked in his, holding a serious expression until she started laughing.

  He said, “We can still have fun.”

  “Can you keep it up?”

  He shook his head no. “Too much … Too much whiskey … Want me to use my hand on you?”

  With her lips pursed, she looked at him seriously for a moment, her eyes narrowing, head swaying. She mumbled, “No, hold my hair, I think I’m going to be sick.”

  3

  The Dean

  Sunday, October 29th

  It was impossible to concentrate, but she studied for the LSAT, regardless. Study guide open, she lay on the fluffed white duvet, elbows on the king-size bed, chin in her palms. Behind her, gray October light streamed in from Fountain Street, Downtown Providence, coming through the hotel room’s narrow window and casting the shadow of her head over the page she had read about three times now, yet to comprehend it.

  One-forty-five now in the afternoon, so what was even the point?

  The book closed with a wallop, breezing her hair from her face. He would be here soon anyway, and maybe she was wrong, but he could hold his hand out and hoist her from her mire. While she’d waded out into it unwittingly, or at least carelessly, they shared a primordial kinship and perhaps, just perhaps, he would have insight to navigating its dangers.

  And with that thought came a double rap on the door. Early, of course.

  Off the bed and crossing the suite’s polished black floor in bare feet, she adjusted her top and the waistband of her tights, watched her reflection in the hallway mirror, pausing to see if her eyes showed tracks of tears. She sniffed and dabbed at the corners with her ringless ring finger. Just a little puffy.

  Lever turned swiftly, she pulled open the door, a bright energy meant to chase away the somber ghosts seeking to drag her down over the last twenty-four hours. She even smiled though Ken saw through its façade; he’d grown up in the same household.

  “Maggie,” he said, head tilted affectionately, cautiously, prepared for her façade to quickly crumble; for her to collapse on the hotel room’s threshold, given the high emotional tension of her under-the-bed phone call.

  “I can’t believe you came for me,” she said, managing to complete half the sentence before her throat constricted her voice to a mousy squeak.

  “Oh, Maggie,” Ken said, coming to her and gently holding her arms just above the elbows as her stifled tears veritably streamed from her. “Hey, hey,” he said quietly.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said, turning away from him. “I’m sorry, Ken.”

  Ken let her go and stepped into the vestibule, turning and closing the door, slinging off the shoulder strap of his travel bag and settling it on the floor under the mirror. She led the way, and he followed, the two of them coming together in the suite’s living room area; two rigid geometric couches and a low square table, glass on steel.

  Ken stood like their father, feet shoulder width apart, hands on hips, index fingers hooked over his tricolor canvas belt. Only, unlike Martin, Ken’s expression showed warmth and care, as uncomfortable as his body language may seem. Then she was abruptly self-aware of her own body language: bare feet together, arches touching, one big toe squeezed over the other, forearm folded across her stomach, hand gripping the opposite elbow.

  She snorted and pulled her lips into a sheepish lopsided smile.

  “What? …” he said, his eyes brightening.

  “We are so awkward.”

  “What do you mean?” he said, but slipped his hands in his pockets and slouched a little.

  She could be fun and happy Maggie when she was in Vermont, far from Rhode Island, safe with her Max and her Cole, but Ken was a reminder of how it once had been.

  “You held me at the door.”

  He nodded, brow lowering with concern.

  “Could you do it again? … Hug me?”

  His expression softened and his hands slipped out of his pockets. “Of course,” he whispered.

  They came together cautiously, her with her arms up on her chest, loose fists under her jaw, and with, at first, a diffident clutch, his hands in the middle of her upper back. Nothing was said for a long time, and eventually they pressed together warmly and their stiffness dissipated.

  “It’s nice,” she said.

  “It is,” he agreed, and felt comfortable enough to run his palms in easy circles between her shoulder blades. “Tell me what happened.”

  She sighed deeply first, preparing herself, said, “I’m an awful person.”

  He chuckled once, answered, “No, you’re not, Maggie. You’re one of the sweetest people I know.”

  “Then you don’t really know me.”

  Some time during the night he’d peed his pants. The cold crotch of his khakis clung to the insides of his thighs.

  On his back now, he stared at the ceiling. Coffered, white-painted wood. It was a good chance that he was in Connor’s dorm. The room vibrated. When he closed his eyes it spun. So now he rolled, getting himself onto an elbow. When he had the strength to lift his head, he looked around.

  Connor’s room, thank God.

  He was on the floor. Above him, hanging over the side of the bed, he saw bare feet that he recognized as his brother’s. He tried to stand, rolling onto his stomach, but found his arms bound together by the sleeves of his shirt and sweater turned inside out. He wrestled one arm free, pulled them off and tossed them out of his way.

  It was a struggle, but he managed to get to his knees. The curtains were closed, but they were sheer, leaving the room lit in a pale, hazy brume. One foot underneath him and lifting up to stand, his stomach lurched. Head pounding, he doubled over and rested his forearms across his thighs.

  “Holy shit,” he breathed. He could feel his heartbeat in his eyeballs.

  On the bed, his tall brother lay sideways, his feet hanging off the edge, arms folded up with a pillow underneath his messy ginger hair. Curled up on the pillow at the head of the bed was Andie, still in her monkey costume, its springy tail pressed up against the headboard. Her feet were bare, and the cowl of her monkey hood pulled down around her neck revealing she had thick chestnut brown hair. He stumbled to the bed, looking to join them, then saw a comatose body laying on the floor on the far side—just a pair of calves and feet. Recog
nized them as Marta’s.

  There was no denying he would vomit, and he needed to get out of the soiled pants, so he reeled backward, throwing a hand out to steady himself against the wall, practically fell into the narrow bathroom Connor shared with the dorm room on the other side. With maladroit hands he worked his belt off, zipped his fly down, unbuttoned his pants, climbed out of them turning them inside out, pulled his underwear down too, and dropped to his knees in front of the bowl. Didn’t even take the insertion of a finger before he threw up a mess of hot Vietnamese food, beer, and whiskey. Instantly better. Except for the pounding headache.

  Above him he reached clumsily, hand searching then finding a towel that he hoped belonged to his brother, snatched it from where it hung, got to his knees and tied it around his waist. When he put his hand near his face, he caught the very strong smell of Marta’s pussy and it made him groan with regret. On his feet, stumbling away from anxious thoughts right now he crossed the bathroom, listing as he went.

  As he opened the door, intending to search for his travel bag and find some clean pants, he came face-to-face with Connor. His face told the story: looking to make a deposit in the toilet just as Max had done. Max laughed, Connor didn’t. Max gave him berth and closed the door behind them as his brother stumbled and fell to his knees and vomited into the toilet.

  Max leaned his bare back on the cool wall across from the toilet and slid down till he sat his rump on the tiles, arranging the towel to cover himself. He watched his brother’s back as he coughed and spit and retched. When he ceased, he groaned an echo into the bowl.