To Run in Circles, Part Two
The first time she had sex was also the first time she ever heard a man urinate. He was an obese truck driver from Oklahoma and it was immediately After. He waddled into the little motel bathroom—she saw the hair on his legs and his lower back, in a V-shape at the base of his spine—closing the bathroom door behind him but only halfheartedly, so it bounced off the latch.
Men pee differently than women do, she mused, reeling her knees against her chest and rubbing her palms against the hair on her own legs. It had been a while since she’d had the chance to shave. Maybe she’d splurge on one of those little pink gas station razors. She shivered, listening to the splashes. Loud, thick. Like he was in there pouring something out of a pitcher. Her thighs were sticky like they’d had glue painted on them with a brush. It squished. She pushed a wad of blanket down there and tried, very determinedly, Not. To. Think. Instead, she blinked up at the ceiling. Blink, blink, blink, blink, blink. They should pay the maid more—perhaps then she’d dust the blades of the ceiling fan. They were thick with grime, spinning slowly, too slow to stir the air but enough to provide a distracting wobble. She heard the flush of the toilet and no sequel-ing rush of the faucet. Mr. Splash came back out, scratching his belly sheepishly. She didn’t Look.
“Are you okay, then?” he asked while pulling on his pants. He’d laid them across the chair, protecting the crease. Pretty fastidious for someone with a tongue dyed tictac orange.
“Yup.”
“I didn’t—you’re not, y’know, you’re not hurt too—“
“Nope.”
“Good. Good. I’m glad. I, uh, appreciated this.”
“Yup.”
He took a minute to button his shirt. Glancing up at her, then back down. “You sure you’re okay? You look a bit—“
“Fine. Thanks. I'm fine.”
“Okay.”
He wasn’t so bad, she thought. He’d bought her breakfast in Gainesville and lunch in Lawton, and at this point, she wasn’t undervaluing the luxury of eating twice in one day. For free. This, all of this, had actually been her idea. It really had. But it had come to fruition so quickly. An hour ago she’d been fumbling with the brochures rack while he paid for the room and when the clerk started giving her the stink eye he’d put a protective hand on her back.
“So you, uh, you—I’m going on to Kansas City. I’ve gotta check in here pretty soon. I could take you as far as that. If you really need me to, I mean. They don't really like me taking passengers but I could—um—“ He was trying so hard to avoid saying, ‘want a ride?’ She almost laughed aloud. And he was right; it would have sounded a bit too HBO. She couldn’t stop a smile from playing around her lips, although the way he seemed worried she’d want to keep traveling with him helped cut the mirth.
“No, thank you,” she told him.
Perhaps the smile put Mr. Splash at ease. He put his wedding ring back on.“I really like your hair, by the way. I don’t know if I told you that alr—“
“You did.”
“Oh. Well. It looks real pretty. Different, y’know. With the—“ he flicked a finger towards his own nonexistent locks as if she wouldn’t know what he was referring to— “white?”
“Yeah.”
“Suits you.”
“Thank you." He seemed to be having a lot more trouble looking at her naked than he had minutes ago. She resisted the urge to wrap a sheet around herself, enjoying his discomfort more than her own.
“Well,” Splash said, flushing all the way to the collar of his shirt. He started to take a seat on the corner of the mattress but shot back up. “Well, I just wanted you to know how much I appreciated this, Mary.”
“Marie,” she corrected. “Thank you, Ed.”
“Marie,” he repeated. “Really appreciated it. And I’d like to, y’know, help you out—“
He shifted his weight, dug his hand into a back pocket in the way they’d both been waiting for him to do. He retrieved it, the hefty afternoon promise—a roll of twenties bound up in an orange scrunchie. Worth punchin’ a nun, her father would have said, though for a man who thought lightly of punching his own wife this was not an immeasurable fortune. It was, however, worth doing a lot of things besides assaulting the clergy. Mr. Splash started to set the roll on the bedside table but, perhaps deeming this too cliché, was forced to approach the bed again. She plucked it out of his pink, puffy fingers.
For a few beats, they just stared at one another, long enough for him to raise an eyebrow. For some reason, she found it difficult to say thank you again. Impossible. She couldn’t squeeze the words out. They came up her throat and stayed there, jammed, a rancid bile on the back of her tongue. So instead, she nodded sociably, holding her knees a bit tighter, and eventually Mr. Splash bumbled his way out the door.
She dropped the money roll like something burning and thrust her legs over the side of the bed, almost launching herself off. She went to the bathroom, determinedly not making eye contact with the object in the trashcan, that strip of like wet snakeskin. The mirror was out of the question. There was something else she wasn’t making eye contact with, a whimpering creature in the back of her mind, someone she couldn’t afford to be anymore. Her stomach hurt, like menstrual cramps but sharper. She took a washcloth off the rack, stiffened to rigor mortis from too much bleaching, and stepped gingerly into the tub. She felt brittle, meaty. Was it always like this? Spinning the water dial—the cold, because the hot wouldn’t turn, she scrubbed and scrubbed—the same way she’d cleaned her hands after David. The shower head peered down at her, an alien creature with some twenty rheumatic eyes.
She was about to unwrap the soap, the little square left on the counter with the bottles of shampoo the size of her pinkie. Maybe she’d splurge on some body wash, some conditioner. Yeah. And then--then the thought struck her, like a cold chunk of hail. No. No way. She tripped her way back out of the tub, leaving footprints and concussion-sized puddles on the floor. Naked she back to the bed. Where was the money? Where was it? She ripped back the sheets, a jungle pattern, green with flecks of red. There—she caught the roll up, tore off the horrid scrunchie (yet another 90’s germ left floating through the world when it got sneezed off the production line). She unfurled the bills with shaking, damp fingers. Spread them out, pinching her lips to halt the quaking. Her eyes stung, and no amount of blinking would get them to stop.
The top bill, just as she’d seen, was a twenty. But the rest—warped from their long-curled pose—were wrinkles ones. George Washington gave her thirty philandering smirks as he slid from her fingers. Her knees spasmed. They wanted to sit and never, ever stand. She put her hands on her thighs and pinched the skin, felt pain slither up her spine.Not one for talking to herself (people who heard voices in their head couldn’t afford that eccentricity), she nonetheless found herself addressing the empty air. “No. Please. Fuck. I mean, fuck. You liar. You liar. You liar!” Her voice broke like a plate thrown at a wall.
Where was her bag? In the corner. Where were her pants? By the foot of the bed, underwear tucked inside. Her shoes, with socks, tucked inside. Where was her sweater? By the pillows. Where was her bra? No, forget it, forget it, she didn’t have time. She didn’t tie her sneakers, she didn’t zip the jeans, or buckle the belt. No time no time no time. She pried apart the slats in the vertical blinds and squinted through, but there was nothing to see from there. She flung herself at the door, out the door, against the metal railing with rust the same color as the cinnamon carrots her mother would bake. She leaned over, gripping the metal so hard she'd later find metal flakes under her nails.
The tops of cars and the maid’s cleaning cart. Two kids trying to steal from the vending machine. The laundry room. A stray cat licking something off the wall. Rows and rows and rows of doors. Pizza delivery girl. And the highway and there—there!—was Mr. Splash, lumbering back across the street to the IHOP. He walked straight to his truck, looking neither left nor right and certainly not back to the motel.
“Ed!”
Nothing. He kept going.
“Hey!” She meant to scream it, she really did, but something sat on the word and squished all of the strength out of it. “Hey!” She tried again, but now she was thinking.
And unable to stop.
What did she think she was going to do? Chase him down and quibble about the money he’d promised her—or, at least, implied? How did one go about screaming at a man who’d underpaid you for sex? Was there a way to win that argument? She wasn’t exactly in a position to threaten—
Well.
Actually.
She glanced at her bare hands, her fingers clenched to whiteness around the railing. Considering. Maybe...
No, she thought. Never. She’d never do that again.
--or call the police. And here was a greasy thought, adhering to the lining of her skull like spaghetti noodles to the pot: had he actually underpaid her? Had he truly? After all, he’d gotten the motel room. How much had that cost? And she could stay in it all night. She could stay at least til check out time. There were free cookies and coffee in the main building, free vending snacks if she followed those kids’ lead.
Virginity—oh, god—aside, was she any worse off than she’d been before? Really? Fifty dollars. She could add that to the three dollars she had tucked in the lining of her shoe. Fifty dollars and a place to sleep with an actual lock. Fifty dollars and a shower just to listen to some grunting in her ear, to stare at a freckled, fat shoulder and dirty ceiling blades. Just a bit of soreness and the knowledge that she’d set down a piece of herself she couldn’t pick back up. Was it worth it? Was she?
Mr. Splash was backing his truck carefully out of the parking spot now. He guided it out of the lot and headed towards the highway. He used his blinker; he came to complete stops at stop signs and an extra one to wave a jogger across the road.
“Hey,” she said. But she didn’t even say it this time. She mumbled it. Her mother would be ashamed. Hay is for horses, young lady.
“Hey yourself,” offered a voice to her right. A few doors down. Young, lanky man in artfully ripped jeans cupped his hands around a slim lighter and a slimmer smoke. He put the former back into his jacket pocket and looked her up and down and up again. Slowly, cheerfully. Taking inventory. When he smiled she saw both incisors. “How're you, then?”
She stormed back into the hotel room, hooking the chain and twisting the lock until she was certain it wouldn’t go any further.
But, because she was learning to be a practical person, she’d taken a moment to smile at the man first. To push her hair back and respond—“I’m just fine.”
It was like driving on the interstate, she thought. Like driving on the interstate and the car in front of her had abruptly stopped. Even over the squeal of her own breaks she knew what was going to happen, knew it. It was coming on too fast to be changed.
And because she had just answered her question, she walked calmly, measuredly back to the bathroom. She knelt before the toilet, lifted the lid—touching the germy porcelain as little as she could get away with. And then she leaned forward and let her stomach heave until she was completely, completely empty inside.
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This was after, of course. It would never have been an option before. After New York, after The Statue, after The Professsor and those glorious days at the school.
It was after Control.
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Hello again! Hi! **bouncing cheerfully, waving** You know, I had absolutely forgotten what this feels like. To get caught up in a story with familiar characters, a familiar setting. To feel words come burbling out of your fingertips as if they were just waiting there, waiting for you to put the pen on the paper. I'm in the middle of other writing projects, but it's Just. So. Easy. to fall back into this world. I'm remembering exactly what I loved about fanfiction. The sense of community, of support. People tossing a story back and forth like a ball, weaving new patterns out of the old--and the and the absolute joy of having your version validated. I'm sleep deprived and rambling; please forgive me. I sound like a nut.
Anyway about this chapter (which, happily, did not take four years) --Part two will slide into Rogue's point of view, dealing with some of the events prior to her meeting our favorite clawed Canadian. The site has been doing some peculiar things to my paragraph spacing--I'll try to go back in and fix whatever I need to.
Anyway about this chapter (which, happily, did not take four years) --Part two will slide into Rogue's point of view, dealing with some of the events prior to her meeting our favorite clawed Canadian. The site has been doing some peculiar things to my paragraph spacing--I'll try to go back in and fix whatever I need to.
Chapter End Notes:
I hope this was worth the time you put into reading it. If you went so far as to click this story at all, I'm grateful, and if you actually made it to these end notes I'm beside myself. Thank you, thank you so much. I appreciate all the people willing to pick this story back up after so many years of dust had collected atop it. A special thank you to those who went out of their way to show their support. Your generosity is astounding; thank you for making me feel like a strong writer again.