“ Don’t mind Dean,” I said quickly, trying to smile. “You don’t have to come, Jack. I know it’s last-minute. I’ll talk to Dr. Redwhiler and explain that something came up. You should stay.”
“ I think I should come.”
“ No,” I said, holding my smile. “You stay. For reals. I will call you in a few days. I know I will.”
Jack wavered.
Dean started snapping his fingers. Oh crap.
“ Like my dress?” I asked quickly, for something to say.
Dean slapped the dash and we all jumped. “Is everybody fucking with me today? Because it’s the wrong fucking day to fuck with me.”
Jack gave me some kind of look and slid into the back seat.
“ Jack,” Dean said quietly, “some people are on a schedule.”
“ Yes, Dean,” Jack said. His face was gray.
“ For this last adventure,” Dean said, “we’re going on the road. Get it? On The Road. I’m Dean, that’s Jack. Lorelei, you’re Marylou.”
I’d read that book for a class last semester. I’d been curious because I knew it was Dean’s favorite, and I thought I could get a glimpse into his pathology. I couldn’t. It was all aimless wandering and misogyny.
“ Marylou, you whore,” Dean said. He laughed.
Our white ’88 Chevy Cavalier screeched out of the parking lot, out of Indiana State, and into the endless fucking fields where Dean could do anything he wanted.
I was all business.
With a glance at Jack I knew he wouldn’t decipher, I started on Dean. I leaned close and curled my arm around his neck. I worked his ear with my mouth, always aware of Jack’s face turned toward us. “Dean, baby. Let’s just raincheck this whole thing. I learned some new tricks.”
He pushed me away like I was an overly affectionate dog.
“ Where did you learn new tricks from, whore?”
“ My regular fucking around,” I said, flicking a look at Jack. He was watching me with pity, and something else.
A girl had to do what she could to keep everybody safe.
I crept back to Dean. I knew I looked like the chick everybody felt sorry for, the one with the asshole boyfriend and the raging case of Stockholm Syndrome. “I fucked so many guys last week that I learned new tricks. Fucking is the one thing I’m good at.”
“ You said it,” Dean crowed. “Jack, can you believe this whore?”
“ I can’t,” he said flatly. “I can’t believe her.”
We veered onto the highway, pressing aside traffic and nearly clipping a motorcycle.
Dean watched Jack steadily in the mirror. “So, Jack, you’re saying that Marylou is a liar?”
“ Nope.”
Jack was being strong, and I didn’t want him to be. No one could be stronger than Dean, and there was just no upside to standing up to him. I’d learned that years ago, and I was sorry Jack would learn it too.
“ Let me try to understand, Jack. You can’t believe Marylou, but she’s not a liar?” Dean’s voice was smooth and casual. Building up. “How does that even work, Jack?”
“ I don’t know,” Jack grated. He wanted to glance at me. I willed him not to.
“ Are you… are you surprised to learn she’s a whore?”
Jack was very still. He was thinking so hard I could see the air sizzling above his head.
“ Well,” he said finally, “It’s obvious that Marylou is a whore. But I can’t afford her, so I don’t know if she’s ‘only good at fucking.’”
Dean pounded the steering wheel and roared with laughter. It welled from some ecstatic, unwholesome place inside him. “Now you’re playing, Jack-o. Today’s your lucky day.”
Jack forced a smile and waited.
“ I have complete power over this whore. I know what she wants, I know what she’ll do. Isn’t that right, Marylou?”
“ Yes, Dean,” I said. Because, fuck it, he did.
Dean’s scruffy face was dangerous and knowing. His expression was taunting, as if he had some kind of foreknowledge about what I would do. When a guy knows me like that, it’s Spanish Fly. I’m too damn easy that way, a sucker for confidence, or madness.
“ How about a freebie, Jack? Marylou, why don’t you show Jack your talents? Give him one on the house.”
I forced my face toward Jack’s. I hated that Jack was seeing me like this-usually I was a well-put-together kind of girl, killing my classwork and owning other students in discussion. I hated (and loved) how Dean could make me feel things. I could have either died or come just then. Tip me in one direction or another.
“ Thank you,” Jack said. “That’s very thoughtful.”
“ You heard him, Marylou.” Dean had a twisted smile on his face, like something you’d see through a broken mirror. “Climb in back and do your class project.”
“ What?”
“ Do your homework, Marylou. Get it out of the way before we get to Ohiopalooza.”
I laughed out loud. Half relieved, half frustrated. “Homework, yeah, Of course. Jack, homework- right?”
Jack and I knocked out some very low quality work. Our class together was Criminal Justice, and neither of us could speak our minds how to incarcerate persistent offenders. Not with a hair-trigger persistent offender hanging off every word.
“ I declare that we’re done,” I said.
“ Um…” Jack glanced at Dean’s seat. He didn’t want our excuse to evaporate.
On queue, Dean shouted, “Stay back there, Marylou. You have room to spread out.”
Not really. Lonely toys and a giant duffel bag of scuba equipment occupied half of the back seat.
Jack and I huddled on the other half. Our thighs pressed together, and our shoulders bumped like ice cubes in a defeated alcoholic’s glass tumbler.
“ Fuck, you guys are depressing,” Dean groaned.
My phone vibrated with a text. WTF? I don’t see blueballs happening. Rev him up, ML! You need to go from bore to whore before I fall asleep.
So it was really happening. You want me to make out with Jack?
I will pay you $20, he texted back.
Huh. That was a punch in the gut. Oddly, it was a good punch.
Do I have a choice? I texted.
No.
I gave Jack a severely artificial smile. “Jack, how do you like Ali Katz?”
“ She’s great. Really sexy. You remind me of her. Not the sexy part, though of course you do. I mean are. I mean her hair…”
I turned to him. In the close confines of the back seat, this meant my boob pressed against his arm. I slid my knee up his thigh.
“ Thanks. She’s my most favorite singer of all time.”
“ Really, Marylou?”
“ Oh my God, yes! Ali is so awesome.” I stretched into him so I could half whisper, half nibble in his ear: “Don’t tell anyone, but I would totally be her groupie!”
“ Oh, you would? So I would, too.”
He was wooden and nervous, and he talked like an ESL class, but I knew I was reaching him. A shiver ran through his body. His eyes rolled wildly toward the back of Dean’s head and turned away.
He said, “We shouldn’t-”
“ Louder, Jack,” Dean said. “I don’t care about Marylou, but I want to hear everything you say.”
“ Play along,” I whispered, sliding my leg over his.
