Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Wanting What You Get ❯ Candy Dip ( Chapter 2 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Ch 1 Getting’ none
The day begins in the middle of the night. Sasuke doesn’t focus on anything except the bass in his hand, the noise in his ears. Kiba is screaming, Deidara failing, and Sasuke is Clockwork. Taking the thing called Music and lines it up with the thing called Time. Every note, a piece of himself, every strung of his chords, a piece of himself. They don’t have a drummer. He’s listening and he’s not listening because what he’s playing isn’t something he’s thinking about, it’s something he’s feeling all over. All eyes are on him. Or at least that’s what he can imagine in his stage blindness. It’s a small room and they’re a big noise and he is the bassist in a queercore band. Sasuke lets out another round of sound engulf the cheering upbeat crowd as Kiba sing-screams, Fuck the man / Fuck the man / I really want to / fuck the man.. Sasuke is pounding his body into the warm glow of the scene before him as his fingers press hard against the chords. And although he’s firmly planted on stage, he knows he is moving hard. This is release, he thinks. Or maybe it’s just a plea for release. Kiba takes the microphone into his mouth and he’s screaming the words. Sasuke throws the chords at them, drenching them in the sound waves, he is making time so loud that they have to hear it. He is stronger than words and stronger than the box he’s in, and then he spots her in the crowd and he falls apart.
He had fucking told her specifically not to come. Not ever. Please don’t come to the shows. I don’t want to see you there. And she had said yes, and it hadn’t been a lie. Of course, it was a lie at some point because here she was, low-and-behold, here was Erika. Sasuke’s fingers are losing their beat and his stage buzz is losing its edge and everything around him goes from crying out to just plain crying. It doesn’t take Sasuke long to figure out that --oh fuck no-- she’s not alone, she’s with some guy, and while she’ll say she’s here to watch him, there’s no doubt in his mind that she’s come so he can watch her. Deidara is playing faster and Sasuke is struggling to keep up. Erika is dancing around, body moving to the beautiful release of melody, word and sound, like Sasuke was making this music for her. And wasn’t that the biggest mistake of all?
Tonight they are the Fuck Offs, although, Sasuke believes it will only survive three more gigs before Kiba decides to change their name again. They’ve already been Porn Yesterday, The Black Handkerchiefs, The Vengeful Hairdressers, and None Of Your Business. Sasuke doesn’t really use his vote, except to veto Kiba’s stupider ideas. (“Dude,” He had told him, “Nobody wants to see a band called Dickache.”) Kiba’s out to pierce the pierced, tattoo the tattooed, and have his way with the messy punk boys who come to their shows not knowing they’ll want to mess around with the guy challenging How big is your cocker spaniel? into the mic. Kiba is from a town in Jersey called Lodi, and that made the best sense to Sasuke, since Kiba is nothing if not an idol in reverse. Deidara Thomas is from South Orange and has only had the ‘h’ in his last name for two months. Sasuke’s from Hoboken. As close as you can get to the city without actually being in the city. On nights like this, he would swim across to get to where he is now, just to get away from reality, from life, from the pain and sorrow your ex-girlfriend has caused you when she broke up with you, but that doesn’t really work when you find her in the same club you're at and you notice you’re bleeding across the stage from just looking at her.
Take the Power / Fuck the Man / Take the Power / And fuck the Man. Kiba is taking the song somewhere it’s never been before: a fourth minute. Deidara looks like he’s about to break out into a solo which is never a good place for Deidara to be. Sasuke moves his feet, turns away from her, to try to pretend she’s not there, which was the biggest fucking joke he’s never laughed at. Finally, Kiba get an energy burst and sends it out to the crowd of bodies. Sasuke, too, gets power of his own and sends them one last lurch of noise before he’s completely engulfed at the matter of the night. In return, the crowd sends them a noise of their own, and he is lost, she is lost. She’s as lost to him as she was the night Sasuke cried and she didn’t turn back to see if he was okay. Three weeks, two days, and twenty-three hours ago. And she’s already with someone else.
The next band is waiting by the side of the stage as the manager orders the Fuck Offs to fuckin' get off the stage. Sasuke can’t say he’s not disappointed because he is. Because the crowd wanted it. Wanted more. Craved it, with all their being. He’s equipment bitch for his band’s gigs, so as Kiba jumps into the crowd to find his most willing admirer and Deidara blushingly retreats to his understanding-but-emo boyfriend, Sasuke must immediately detox enough to get the things in bed for the night. He went from chords to cords, amped to amps. The next band was nice enough to offer Sasuke help with taking down equipment, although he is the only one who can touch them. They were even nice enough to let him help them set up. Getting plugged in the soundboards instead of spending his energy looking for her.
His eye is still used to searching for her in a crowd. His breath was still used to catching when he saw her. His body was still used to hers moving next to his. They were together for six months. It’s over can’t kill that.
Sasuke gives the crowd his back until he can store the equipment and put it somewhere safe. Then comes the time when you can’t keep your back to the audience any longer, since there’s only so long that you can stare at a wall before you feel like an idiot. Sasuke is saved as the next band cranks up the volume even higher and engulfs them all in beautiful chaos. They’re called Are You Randy? and the lead singer is actually singing instead of moaning and Ramoning. Sasuke dares a glance into the crowd and doesn’t see her anymore. He doesn’t see a lot of hers at all --it’s a see of hims pressing and crashing against one another.
I think Erika would really like this band, Sasuke thought. And the fact that he knows this, stabs at his heart yet again because now it’s perfectly useless to him. He’s suddenly glad he didn’t really see Erika’s boy because then he’d think of them naked. Now he only thinks of her naked. Such a vivid memory that it digs and rips and grips his heart with a fiery intensity of a burning thousand suns. He turns away, as if he’s really seen her, and turns to see Deidara and his boyfriend Sasori making-out to the music in a corner-of-the-universe way. Kiba, he guesses, is at the bar, still putting on a show. The crowd is mostly older than them --mainly collage or should-be-in collage kids-- and he realizes he doesn’t fit in. Some of the guys check Sasuke out, giving him a nod. It’s not like he wears a Badge of Straight or anything. He nods back sometimes, when he thinks it’s a musical acknowledgement and not an invitation. He always keeps moving.
Sasuke found Kiba at the bar, talking to a guy about their age who looked familiar in the Type kind of way. When he gets to where they’re standing, Sasuke’s introduced as “the bass god, Sasuke,” and the other guy is introduced as “Sai from Sai.” Kiba thanks Sasuke for being equipment bitch, and from the way the conversation doesn’t continue from there, he knows he’s interrupting. If it was Deidara, Sasuke’s agitation would probably be noticed. But Kiba needs Sasuke to spell emotions out for him, and right now Sasuke was not in the mood. So he just tells Kiba where he left the stuff and pretend he’s going off to search for a clear spot on the bar to summon the bartender from. And once he’s pretending that’s the truth, he figures it might as well be the truth. Sasuke still can’t see Erika, and there’s a small part of him that’s wondering if it was even her in the crowd. Maybe it was someone who looked like Erika, which would explain the guy who didn’t look like anybody.
Are You Randy? stop playing their instruments one by one, until the lead singer croons a final note. Sasuke wishes for their sake the club falls into silence at this, but in truth the air is one-half conversation. Still, that’s better than average, and the band gets a big lunge of applause and cheers. Sasuke claps, too, and notices that the girl next to him puts two fingers in her mouth to whistle old-fashion country style. The sound is clear and spirited, and makes him think of Little League. The girl is dressed in a flannel shirt, and Sasuke can’t tell whether that’s because she’s trying to bring back the only fashion style of the past fifty years that hasn’t been brought back or whether it’s because the shirt is as damn comfortable as it looks. She has very pale skin and pink hair that could stand out anywhere. Even in a sea of teens that think to stand out from the rest of the crowd is the only form of life in this crazy mixed up universe. She’s also sitting on a guys lap almost as if they were together and they almost could have gotten away with it, if the guys wasn’t making out with the guy sitting next to him. Pinky says and does nothing, therefore, she’s as alone as he is. The next band opened for Le Tigre on their last tour, and Sasuke figures this girl’s here to see them. If he was a different kind of guy, he might have tried to strike up a friendly conversation, just to be friends. But he feels that if he talks to someone else right now, all he’ll be able to do is unload.
Sasori and Deidara would probably be ready to go if Sasuke wanted them to, but he was pretty sure Kiba hasn’t figured out yet whether he was coming back with them or not, and he would be an asshole to put him on the spot and ask. So he’s stuck and he knows it, and that’s when Sasuke looks to his right and sees Erika and her new guy approaching the beer-spilled bar to order another round of whatever Sasuke’s not having. It’s definitely her, and he’s definitely fucked, because the between-band rush is pressing toward him now and if he tries to leave, he’ll have to push his way out, and if he has to push his way out, she’ll see him making an escape and she’ll know for sure that he can’t take it, and even if that’s the goddamn truth Sasuke doesn’t want her to have actual proof. She is looking so hot and Sasuke is feeling so cold and the guy she’s with has his hand on her arm in a way that a gay friend would never, ever think of, and he guesses that’s his own proof. Sasuke is the old model and this is the new model and he could crash out a year’s worth of time on his bass and nothing, absolutely nothing, would change.
She spots Sasuke. She can’t fake surprise at seeing him here, because of course she fucking knew he’d be here. So she does a little smile thing and whispers something to the new model and Sasuke can tell just from her expression that after they get their now-being-poured drinks they are going to come over and say hello and good show and --could she be so stupid and cruel? --how are you doing? And Sasuke can’t stand the thought of it. He sees it all unfolding and he knows he has to do something, anything, to stop it.
So Sasuke, this random bassist in an average queercore band, turns to this girl in flannel who he doesn’t even know and says:
“I know this is going to sound strange, but would you mind being my girlfriend for the next five minutes?”
Ch 2 Candy dip
Randy from Are You Randy? insisted the bassist from the queercore band is a 'mo, but Sakura tells him “No, the guy is straight.” Whether or not he was the one responsible for his band's shit lyrics (Fuck the Man / Fuck the Man–what's that trite crap?), she has no idea, but he's no 'mo. There are certain things a girl just knows, like that a fourth minute on a punk song is a bad, bad idea, or that no way does a Jersey-boy bassist with Astor Place hair who wears torn-up, bleach-stained black jeans and a faded black T-shirt with orange lettering that says When I say Jesus, you say Christ, swing down boy-boy alley; he's working the ironic punk boy Johnny Cash angle too hard to be a 'mo.
“Maybe he's a little emo,” Sakura tells Randy, but just because he doesn't look like a White snake-relic-reject like all the other bands, does not automatically mean the guy's gay.
The incidental fact of his straightness doesn't mean she wants to be NoMo's five-minute girlfriend, like Sakura is some sort of 7-Eleven quick stop on his slut train. Only because she's the only loser there who hasn't lost all her senses to beer, dope, or hormones does she have the sense to hold back her original instinct, to yell back "FUCK, NO!" in response to NoMo's question.
Sakura has to think about Ino. She always has to think about Ino.
She noticed NoMo loading equipment after his band's set while his bandmates abandoned him to score some action. She understood that scene. She was that scene, cleaning up everyone else's mess.
NoMo dresses bad, he has to be from Jersey, Sakura concludes. And if Jersey Boy is equipment bitch, he has a van. The van was probably a piece of scrap metal with a leaking carburetor that will likely pop a tire or run out of gas in the middle of a tunnel, but it's a risk she had to take. Somebody's got to get Ino home. She’s too drunk to risk taking on the bus. She's also too drunk she'll go home with Randy if Sakura wasn't there to take her back to their house where she can sleep it off.
She couldn't trust Ino's safety with Deidara or Sasori either, even though they all lived in the same house, they were more Naruto's friends than hers, and that made peachy sense not to trust them. Mello, the guy's lap she was sitting on, had taken off somewhere with his boy Matt, probably striking up an "interesting conversation." Sakura couldn't ask Matt and Mello to give up lip locking for her or Ino's sake. It just wouldn't be right. Which led back to Ino in her drunken state. Groupie bitch. If Sakura didn’t feel Ino being her responsibility, she'd kill her.
This was actually the one place her father forbade her from coming to. Not in the if-I-ever-see-you-here-I'll-ground-you-for-life way, but more in the just-don't-even-bother-okay? way. She could be scoring weed in Tompkins Square Park right now, on her way to a bondage bar on Avenue D, and her dad would applaud with encouragement and thank her for being such a rebellious daughter. (He loved her for that.) Clara, her bitch step mom, on the other hand, would certainly freak. And Sakura hated her for being so damn normal.
But this club, this was the only club in all of Manhattan she was supposedly disowned from due to a bad record deal with Crazy Kent (known as Uncle Kent before the feud that marked him as Crazy). Kent was such an old punk he was around when The Ramones were junkie hustlers first and musicians second. But she loved that about him.
Sakura looked around the club as people swarm past/through/into her like she was a ghost with the inconvenience of malleable flesh getting in their way to the beer. Fuck, she's lost Ino again. Ino's big on Are You Randy? tonight. Which is cool --Are You Randy? don't completely suck-- but Randy himself is big on E tonight and Sakura doesn't want Ino and him alone in a corner somewhere.
Sakura is 5-foot-6 on tippy toes and 6-foot NoMo is standing in front of her, waiting to find out if she wants to be his five minute girlfriend and looking like that lost animal who goes around asking "Are you my mom?" in a kid book.
From behind him she doesn't see Ino but she does see that stupid bitch Erika Tris, rhymes with bris, because that's what she'll do to a guy, rip apart his piece. She's doing her Erika strut with her big boobs sticking out in front of her, wiggling her ass in that way that gets the instant attention of every dumb schmo in her wake, even the gay boys, who seem to be highly represented here tonight.
She's coming right toward her. No No NOOOOOOOOOOO! How did she find out Ino and her would be here tonight? Does she have lookouts with text pagers set up every place Ino and Sakura go on a Saturday night, or what?
Boyfriend to the rescue! Sakura answers NoMo's question by putting her hand around his neck and pulling his face down to hers. God, she would do anything to avoid Erika talking to her.
FUCK! Sakura didn't expect for NoMo to be such a good kisser. But she isn't here to find chemistry, only a ride home for her and her girl. She was also not looking for tongue, but NoMo's waste no time sliding its way into her mouth. But no matter how sweet and delectable his mouth tastes, she has to come up for air sometime. She pushes him back after a while longer. Hoping Erika hasn't seen her and just passed by.
WOW. She feels like she's just been kicked in the stomach by the giddy police. Her insides feel fluttery and her mouth wishes to go back to the place where its just left. Forget about the need for oxygen!
Unfortunately, Erika is standing in front of them, her new slobber victim with her. He is close enough for Sakura to ID him as one of Ino's recent rejects. He's buddies with Sai from Sai, whose band, Sai Does Sai, is scheduled to play next. You're welcome for introducing you to Kent, Sai, Sakura thinks in all the commotion.
"Sakura? Sasuke? How do you, like, know each other?" It's not bad enough that Sakura has to hear Erika's horrible language skills, but now she's being coxed into talking to her! Not a cool way to spend ones Saturday night. Not by a long shot.
She doesn't know why, but Sakura finds herself doing the thing Ino usually does to her victims where instead of taking the hand of NoMo, she places her hand at the back of his neck and scratches the nape softly, possessively, while the bitch watches. Sakura's fingers feel around his messy raven locks and can feel goosebumps rising for his neck. Sakura likee.
And whatever Sakura is doing, it's working because Erika eventually storms off, wet drooling poodle following after her. Phew. That was easier than expected.
Sakura looks down at her watch and finds she has about two minutes forty-five on NoMo's offer still. So she puckers up and gets ready to be let back in to his mouth.
NoMo must have learned something around the little trouble they ran into because he isn't coming back to any mouth-to-mouth contact. Instead, he asks, "How the hell do you know Erika?"
That's when Sakura remembered something very, very important. Erika called him SASUKE. Noooooo. That's him! The Hoboken boy! The guy Erika was dating when she and Sakura went to the same all-girl private school together. The same boy who wrote the songs and poems about Erika. The same boy who every girl wanted to be with at Sacred Heart. He was the one Sakura had just been kissing a few seconds ago… oh FUCK.
But Sakura doesn't bother to answer Sasuke's question about how she knows Erika. She's got to find Ino.
Jumping onto to barstool so she could get a better picture of the club, it's the only way to see over the partygoers, loud music, and flashing lights as she begins the search for her sister-not-sister. Placing her hand on the top of Sasuke's head so she can keep her balance, she can't help to ruffle his raven locks, just a little.
Ah-ha! Found her! She's at some corner with that snake Randy, just to the right of Sai from Sai Does Sai, who is now taking the mic. She doesn't know what song his band had prepared but the lyrics Sai was singing are clearly made up on the spot and have nothing to do with the fast and furious guitar chords: Kiba, go home with me, Kiba Kiba Kiba, I want you to fuck this man.
Sakura jumps off from the barstool, on her way to get Ino, when Sasuke grabs her arm, bringing her into a halt. "Seriously," he says. "How the hell do you know Erika?"
He gives her wrist a squeeze and the ow breaks her focus from Ino and bringing it back to Sasuke, with those dark and pain filled eyes. She hated that look. Knowing that that bitch had broken him. Knowing that he was probably going to hate women and write bad songs about them because one of them broke his heart. He was probably going to become a depressed old fuck before he was of legal drinking age. Don't get her wrong, she wasn't one of those swooning girls in Sacred Heart. Sure she agreed that Sasuke's work was beautiful and deep, but to actually go far as to be with him, that was on a whole new terrain of daisies. She didn't even know who the fuck he was! Although, she did have suggestions for him if they were ever to hook up. 1) Getting a drummer, it's like key, you fucking need one. And 2) If they were to date, could he let the past go? Flow? That was the billion dollar question.
She extract her wrist from his grip and makes to turn and head off towards Ino. But suddenly turns back and places a hand on his cheek, making small soft circles along his jaw line with her index finger.
She says, "You poor schmuck."
Ch 3 The big bang
When Erika passed by Sasuke, it was like his whole world fell to pieces. Bit by bit, wall by wall, every micro matter of his being, his very soul! And there was nothing he could do about it. Like every dimension came crashing down around him. First the first, then the second, finally the third. And the third just happen to be walking away from him with another guy’s arms wrapped around her.
But of course there was a third. And that was time. And although time is a tricky matter, there was an even trickier matter standing next to him.
He’s now left with this girl, this Siren of Mixed Signals, this Sakura. She’s a fuck-good kisser, Sasuke thinks. But she clearly had issues. He asked her how she knew Erika, because that’s leaving him totally confused, and she’s looking at him like he’s this guy she didn’t just start kissing out of nowhere, but then she’s got her hand on his arm in a way that makes him realize he has an arm, and then she’s making to run away, and at the same time looking at him like he’s some Cancer Child.
Then Sasuke takes a hold of her arm and she resists without really resisting. Finally she pulls away, only to touch his face in this way that reminds him exactly of her kiss.
She calls him “you poor schmuck.”
And like some poor schmuck, he’s like, “Why?”
She knows something, Sasuke can tell from her eyes along, but she’s not talking. Instead, she says, “I‘ve got to get my friend.”
“I’ll come with,” Sasuke hears himself saying. Besides, it’s not like he has nothing better to do than to follow a fuck-good kisser around just in case Erika is watching him from behind. Kiba has just jumped up on stage to be Sai’s backup dancer, and Deidara and Sasori are nowhere in his line of vision.
“Tell ya what,” Sakura says. “You give us a ride, and I’ll add two extra minutes on your original offer.”
“Seven’s my lucky number.” And she’s looking at Sasuke like PUH-lease… “But really,” he coughs. “How do you know Erika?”
“I fucked up her Babies in the fifth grade.” She says, not looking sorry in the least. “And that’s the way it’s been ever since.”
“You’re from Sacred?”
“Sacred Heart. Sacred is a name of a church.”
She’s pushing through the crowd now, and Sasuke is following.
“She was just here a few seconds ago,” she says.
“Who?”
“No one. Ino, I mean. Just shut up for a second so I can think, okay?”
Like is he’s quiet she’ll suddenly be able to hear every fucking footstep in the club.
While Sakura is peering around the club, Sasuke makes the idiot move of looking around to see if Erika was anywhere in view. He spots her making-out with her new model. That was it. Sasuke was the old model, and that was the new model. Phases. Fads. Some go in, but they always go out. Like him.
Sasuke turns back to realize Sakura isn’t in front of him anymore, but luckily is a few feet away from him. And the girl she’s trying to pry off someone looks kind of familiar. Not in a Didn’t We Go To Camp Walla Walla Together? way, but more like, Didn’t I Step Over You To Get To The Men’s Room Last Night? The guy she’s locked onto is the guy from Are You Randy? like she’s auditioning to be a pocket on his jacket. And Sasuke can tell he’s about ready to sew her on.
Only his Seven-Minute Girlfriend stands in the way. Saying Ino’s name like they were sister. And Sasuke would have thought that, if Sakura hadn’t already called her a friend. And just for a millisecond, Sasuke wonders if they’re a couple, but something in Sakura’s expression makes it clear that they are friends without benefits.
Ino looks like she’s about to say something, when all of a sudden, Kiba and Sai break out into a fucking Orgy cover and we’re all seven years old again. Jumping, screaming, shouting, flailing. They’re all apart of something big, something loud and beautiful, and Sasuke wonders if Erika is apart of it. Because if she is, then in some way they are connected. At least connect through this viable piece of rhythm. Yes, all connect --except Sakura, she’s the kind of statue no one make, of something totally unhuman, unearthly.
“What’s up?” Sasuke shouts over the music to be heard. She turns to him as if she forgot he exists. And if she forgot he was just there, her defenses are down and Sasuke can see something in her eyes. Like if she was, different.
Sasuke decides to change his question. “What’s wrong?” And just like that, whatever it was is gone. But he’s curious. Damn, curious.
“Not a fucking thing.” She says. “And I think maybe our time is up.”
“You don’t need a ride anymore?” He asks because he’s not against spending time with a complicated girl
“Fuck.” The song’s ended but everyone is shouting and Sasuke could barely hear her shout, “Wait right here.”
Kiba and Sai take their bows like they’re already spooning, Kiba curled over Sai’s back as they dip in union. While the guy from Are You Randy? uses his hands to clap, Sakura has hers on either side of Ino’s shoulders, yelling at her, and over the cheers and screaming, Sasuke can’t make any of it out until Ino yells out, “I am not trashed!” which of course means she is, because who the hell else would use such a completely wasted phrase?
The guy from Are you Randy? is starting to catch on and is trying to catch up by catching hold. His instincts totally defeat, because his hand swerve somewhere near Ino’s breasts, which really isn’t the terrain he needs to keep his grounds. Sakura’s yanks his away quickly, and Ino is soon Stumbling in Sasuke’s direction.
Before he even got the 411, Ino’s tilting into him and he’s catching her. Then she’s heaving down, and Sasuke is sure she’s gonna puke all over him. Until she raises her head and says, “You have really ugly shoes.”
Sakura is next to him now saying, “Let’s go.” She leaves him to carry Ino while she’s yelling, “Get the fuck out of my way” to people. It feels as if though Sasuke has something important to say. His heart’s pounding, blood flowing, mind racing. But by the time he’s out of his head and focused enough to use his eyes, there’s someone in their way, and that someone is the girl who took the key to his heart and swallowed it with a smile.
“I need your car,” she says.
For a second, it’s like his mind has forgotten that the word for “What?” is “What?” because all he can do is stare and look at her and think she’s talking to me and that somehow translates into she’s giving me a second chance.
“I need to go somewhere,” she says. “I promise I’ll bring it back.”
He’s reaching into his pockets for the keys. And all he can think of is I’ll come go you, while a voice outside his head is saying, “I’m afraid the car’s already full. No more room for you, Erika. Sorry.”
She grins like a cat who has just swallowed the family canary and those stupid farts don’t suspect their darling Fluffy could have done it.
“Excuse me?” Erika quirks a blonde brow.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t clear. Let me try again. FUCK OFF.”
“I think turning off to fucking is your department, Sakura. Now why don’t you take Drunkzilla here and go find some nice Weezer fans to rock-tease. I’m talking to Sasuke not you.”
And Sasuke is thinking: She’s fighting over me.
But for some reason it is Sakura who is putting her arm around him and into his back pocket.
He’s about to push her away, but then Erika says, “Come on, Sasuke --we’re late and need the car.” And he knows that he’s not apart of her ‘we.’ He’s been fucking exiled from her ‘we.’
“I’m going to find Randy,” Ino decides.
“Hell no, you’re not,” Sakura says, taking her arm from Sasuke’s shoulder ad linking it around Ino’s elbow. Which leaves them in this weird we’re off to see the Wizard pose, with Erika blocking them like the Wicked Witch of the Past.
Finally, she can’t take anymore and says, “You can take him. I only wanted his car.” And walks away with New Model.
Sakura takes her hand from his back pocket and steadies Ino with her full weight. It’s Sasuke’s turn to lead, and he can barely do it. He’s not that drunk or stoned or spiraling high. It’s just that he’s defeated. And that alone is taking his toll on just standing upright. Although, there was one good thing. Him leaving the club with her. He wanted that.
She says good-bye to the club manager and now they are outside. The sidewalk is filled with smokers. Talking or posing their way to ash. Sasuke gets some nods from people he vaguely knows. Ordinarily if Sasuke left the club with two hot girls, there’d also be looks of admiration. Maybe it’s because the clear anger of Sakura and Ino, or maybe it’s because they really so think Sasuke is gay --whatever the case, he gets no more congratulations than a cabdriver does for picking up a fare.
Sasuke can’t wait till his inside. It feels as if though he’s legs can’t hold him up much longer. He’s fishing through his pockets for his keys, somehow wishing Erika would just pop up and greet him. But no, he doesn’t want to go there because he can’t, he won’t. It’s just too much.
They’re at his car now.
“What the fuck is that?”
Sasuke shrugs and says, “It’s a Yugo.”
Ch 4 Blue Monday
From inside, Sakura could very clearly hear Sai and Kiba singing another Orgy song. Blue Monday. Sakura wished she were in there, because despite the night and how it was going, (Sasuke’s fucking car wouldn’t start) Sakura was still craving more music. But she knew she needed to get Ino home. Knew that it would be right thing to do, even though she feels wrong. Wrong for… too many things. From inside Sakura swears her keen hearing is picking up the DJ mixing a sample of Michael Jackson about how Billie Jean is not my lover, the kid is not my son into the groove. How was that possible and why does it sound so damn good and if the Yugo doesn’t start within one second she was outta there. She didn’t really care if she felt a slight ‘ting’ for Sasuke. She would get over it. She knew she would. And if she didn’t, she would have all eternity to sulk. Really, she did have that much time. Sai, Matt and Mello would hopefully understand her leaving the party early. Ah, who cares about him, she thought. He knows where the house is.
“Do you hear that?” Sakura asks Sasuke.
“What? Is the engine starting?” He tries the key once more.
“No. Dude. Listen up, that rhythmic banging inside the club? It’s called drumming. It’s, like, a god.” Sakura plays the drums on the glove compartment of the Yugo. The compartment pops open from her banging and a Polaroid of Erika is taped inside. Blood hell! Sakura takes the picture and rips it out. Then opens the window slightly to throw the shit away and turns back to face Sasuke. “Your fucking band needs a drummer. Get a drummer for your band, guy. Really.”
And just as if Sakura and Ino plan these things out, Ino interjects by saying, “Really,” because Ino is always picking up sentences where Sakura leaves them off. “Driver person. Hey!” She taps Sasuke’s shoulder from behind him. Sasuke looks around to her but quickly turns back around to face Sakura. Such a pretty girl, such rancid tequila breath. Ino wants to know, “Why would you wear such ugly shoes? Answer me, driver person. Please?”
“The shoes go with the car, Ino.” Sakura tells her. “Yugo drivers are required to wear torn-and-graffitied hi-top- Chucks shit on their feet. It’s like a rule. It’s in the manual.” Sakura pulls the Yugo car manual from the glove compartment. A chewed-up wad of gum extends from the manual back to the compartment. Fucking Erika and her Bubblicious. Sakura takes a McDonald’s napkin to rid the book of gum and throws the book into the backseat for Ino’s pleasure.
She ignores the Good Book. “Are you Yugoslavian, driver person?” Ino asks Sasuke. “Sakura, is that why he’s driving us home? He’s the taxi driver, right?”
“Sure,” she tells her. He’ll be the taxi driver once his Yugo-cab will fucking start.
“Is there such an ethnicity as Yugoslavian anymore?” Sasuke asks. “Now that the country’s all broken up? That was some bad shit that went down there in Serbia and Croatia, right? Damn shame.” To anyone else, Sasuke may have looked like he felt bad for Yugoslavia. But Sakura knew better, he wasn’t grieving for that, he was grieving for Erika.
Ino informs them, “I’m part Yugoslavian, you know. On my great-grandpa’s side.”
Sakura tells her, “You’re part Transylvanian, too, bitch. Be quiet. I need to think.” How the hell were they gonna get home? And why should Sakura care all that much about Ino? She didn’t really care BFF style. But Sakura knew it was her fault for what happened then at the club in Trans. Why Ino was what she was. Which led back to what Sakura was. A vam…
NO!
Now was not the time. Here she was in Manhattan, like her dad’s favorite Stevie Wonder song goes: New York, just like I pictured it --skyscrapers, and everything. Shit is suppose to be happening here, not stalled Yugo shit.
Soon enough, Ino is still and quiet. Wow, really? Sakura looks in the passenger-side mirror to see Ino asleep, cheek pressed up on the window glass. Sakura had never seen her pass-out without heaving first. Sasuke and his Yugo may have magical properties, after all. She prayed they would make it to Jersey.
“That’s one problem solved,” Sakura tells Sasuke. She places her left hand on his right hand, which is clutched around the stick shift. “Now, what are we gonna do about this other one?”
Sasuke flinches a bit, then decides to pull his hand away and try the key again. Now why did she do that? Maybe it’s all the alcohol talking. She hasn’t feed tonight and that’s starting to take a toll on her body.
He wants to know, “Why would you fuck up Erika’s Barbies?” and Sakura’s like, Shit, is this the price of the sacrifice for Ino passing out unexpectedly early? --that Sasuke has taken over the melancholy stage that usually follows Ino’s inquisitive one? “I know guys that have sisters and I know that’s some serious business, messing with another girl’s Barbies.” Okay, maybe he’s not being melancholy because his sarcastic smile lets her know he’s back to being standard-issue band-boy irony creature. Damn him that it somewhat makes Sakura want to jump his bones.
A white van barrels down the one-way street in the wrong direction, stopping in front of the fire hydrant directly ahead on the Yugo.
“Oh, thank God,” Sasuke says.
A guy emerges from the van and she right away knows who he is. Not only was he the guy who made out with the non-singing member of Sasuke’s band after their band’s set, he was also one of Naruto’s friends. Not her friend though because they rarely talked. Only, acquaintances. Which was weird considering they should do more talking since they all lived together in the Manor.
Sasori leans into Sasuke’s open window. He tells Sasuke, “Pop the hood and we’ll try to jump-start this baby.”
“Yeah,” Sasuke says, like it’s their routine. “Thanks, Sasori.”
Sakura isn’t appalled when Sasori just looks at her and says, “Deidara could use some help in the van if you don’t mind” like he didn’t even fucking know her. He does. But then again, she didn’t even bother to tell Sasuke that she knew no, LIVED with Deidara and Sasori and Sai and a bunch of other people in a big house because her father was a well known record-label producer and she was, well, rich. No, Sasuke couldn’t and hopefully wouldn’t know that bit about her. Among her other secret…
Sakura shrugs and gets out of the Yugo while Sasori pops the Yugo hood to attach the jumper cables. She steps inside the passenger side of the van and sees band equipment back there. She knew Sasuke’s band had a van! Why didn’t she specify --van, not Yugo, back to Jersey?
Deidara sitting in the driver side of the van says, “Hi. I’m Deidara Thomas. With an ‘h.’” He extends his hand out to her. He knows who she is, and she knows about him, too. Sort of… But whatever, Sakura thinks. This could be the start of a loving friendship. She totally digs guy on guy.
She shakes his hand and says, “I’m Sakura Gnorah. With a ‘g.’ The ‘g’ is silent. Like ‘gnome.’”
“Really?” Thomas says.
“No, not really. I have an ‘h’ too. At the end. Used to be just N-O-R-A but then I had it legally changed.”
“Really?” Thomas says again.
Not really. “Really,” she says. “But I can’t imagine why I am in this van to talk about H’s. What’s up?”
Deidara hands me a fifty-dollar bill. He says, “Sasori and I chipped in. We saw that kiss between you guys.” Deidara was not the singer of the band, but nevertheless can channel the Aretha, not En Vogue, version of a song when he sings out, “Giving him something he can feel!”
“I don’t get it,” Sakura says.
The hood of the van obscures the view, but Sakura and Deidara can clearly hear the Yugo come to life. “No time to explain, let’s just say Sasori and I hate the fucking guts of Sasuke’s ex and we’d like to give him a little assistance with moving on with his life. So, please, take the boy out tonight, see the city, see the backseat of the Yugo, I don’t care, just take our friend out tonight. We’ve decided that we like you better and that you’ll be Sasuke’s salvation. No pressure or anything.”
Flattery could get him everywhere and Sakura is all about salvation right now, but, “Can’t,” she says to him, although she’s really tempted. “Sasuke’s giving me and Ino a ride back home to Jersey. She’s asleep in the back of the Yugo now.”
Deidara says, “We’ve got a mattress in the back of the van. We’ll trade you. We’ll get her home if you’ll take on Sasuke tonight.”
She decides some living is with doing. “Done,” she tells him and slips the fifty into the inside of her shirt pocket.
So they’re settled, and Sakura gets out of the van with Deidara who enlists Sasori to help him transport Ino from the Yugo to the van. But once back inside the Yugo, Sakura doesn’t get a chance to explain to Sasuke the new order of this middle of the night.
Because Sakura has just spotted Randy and Uncle Kent all shaking hands with the new guy who just arrived. Apparently, Uncle Kent’s actual nephew is back from wherever he was and back in Manhattan. And oh fuck, the Evil Ex has just seen her and now he’s at her side of the Yugo and he’s saying, “Hey, baby, you ready to pick up where we left off?”
Ch 5 Guess whose back
Sasuke never thought Jessie would betray him. He’d don’t nothing but love her and treat her right. He’d stood by her side and defended her when people called her trash and said they didn’t understand why he kept her. He thought that meant something. But no. now when he needed her most, she totally bailed. He turns the key and he turns the key and he turns the key and she doesn’t do a damn thing. How alone is he right now? Even his own car gave up on him.
He could be mad at her. But he’s not. He’s mostly afraid. That this is it --terminal. He can work her day and night trying to get a spark, a blink, ANYTHING going from her and she would just sit there and do nothing. He can’t afford to fix her again. If this is it, then this is really it.
He isn’t really paying attention when Sasori and Deidara remove Ino from the backseat. After all the time it took for them to put her back there. But he could understand the impulse to abandon ship.
Sasuke is about to help Sasori connect the jumper cables when this guy Sasuke’s never seen before leans into Sakura’s window and says, “Hey, baby, yous ready to pick up wheres wes left off?”
What. the. fuck?
Sasuke expects Sakura will put him in his place. Tell this damn Yank to take a hike, or to shove it up where the sun don’t shine. But instead, she just looks away. That surprised him more than his car dying on him.
“Baby, I’m back,” the guy goes on. “Hows about yous gets outta dis heap and sayin’ hello?”
Now, it was one thing to try to harass Sakura out of his passenger seat. But to bring Jessie into it is completely uncalled for.
“Can I help you?” Sasuke asks.
He keeps looking at Sakura as he talks to him, “Yeah, buddy. I just gots backs to da States and I’ves beens looking for this lil lady rights here. Can you spares her fors a second?” He reaches in the window, unlocks the door, and opens it. “We’ll be right back,” he goes on. At that moment Sasuke was about to tell Sakura she didn’t have to do a damn thing. But then she clicks off her seatbelt. And Sasuke thinks that’s it, she made up her mind. But she just stays in the car.
“Baby…,” he purrs as he reaches her. “I’ve missed yous so much.”
Sasuke tries the keys one more time. But no dice. That’s when Sasori leans over into Sasuke’s window and says, “Problem here?”
And just like that, the spell she had on her is broken.
“Mick,” she says with a razor dullness to her voice. “You haven’t missed me for one fucking minute in your entire pathetic life.”
“C’mon, baby,” Mick says, leaning into her. Sasuke can sense Sasori is gonna say something, but Sasuke beats him to it.
“Dude, nobody puts baby in a corner. Get the fuck out of my car.”
Mick hold his hands up and steps out of the doorway. “Just giving the lady a choice,” Mick says. “I didn’t know she was already ruining another guy’s life. I hope you have better luck than I did.”
“Asshole,” Sakura mutters.
Mick laughs. “Piece of shit car: five dollars. Value of Sakura’s opinion: three cents. Irony of her calling me an asshole: priceless.”
“Go. Away,” Sakura says.
Sasuke is about to…. do something to the guy if he doesn’t leave, but then hears Deidara from somewhere beyond the hood yell, “Gentlemen, start your engine!”
Sasuke can’t find a way to pray to God or any higher being now. But he is damn well to praying to Jessie. He turns the key in the ignition. There’s a slight catch. And then…
Jessie’s talking to him again. And she’s saying, Let’s get the hell out of here.
“I’d love to stay a chat,” Sasuke says to Mick, “but we’ve got somewhere to be.”
“Fine,” Mick says, shutting the door more gently than Sasuke would’ve expected. Wuss. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. You’re dating the Tine Woman here. Look for a heart, and you’ll only come up with dead air.”
“Thanks for the tip!” Sasuke says with mock cheer. Mick turns to leave but not before glancing over to Sakura one last time. Then he disappears into the club. “Seems like a nice guy,” Sasuke says. Sakura doesn’t respond.
Sasori leans into Sasuke’s window. “Don’t worry about her friend,” he says. “We’ll get her home. You two kids have fun now, you hear?”
“Sure thing,” Sasuke tells him, even though Sakura looks like the only use she has for the word fun is to make the word funeral.
Deidara shuts the hood and gives me a thumbs-up. Then he and Sasori walk hand in hand back to the van, the jumper cables dangling over their shoulders like a boa.
Sakura hasn’t put on her seatbelt yet and Sasuke doesn’t know what that means. So he asks, “You okay?”
“Honestly I have no idea.” She says.
Sasuke puts Jessie into reverse and heads into the street. It’s only then when he sets out into the dark streets that he realizes he has no idea where they’re going.
“Do you want to go home?” He takes her silence for a no because wanting to go home is something you speak up about.
He follows up with, “What do you want to do?”
It seemed to Sasuke that the question is straightforward, but she just keep staring at him with this total incomprehension.
He tries again. “You hungry?”
She looks out the window.
“You thirsty?”
For all Sasuke knows, she’s counting the streetlamps.
“Know any other bands playing?”
Tumbleweed blowing down the armrest between them.
“Wanna watch some nuns make out?”
Is he even speaking out loud?
“Maybe see if E.T. is up for a threeway?”
This time she looks at him. And is she isn’t exactly smiling, at least he thinks he sees the potential for one.
“No,” she says. “I’d much rather watch some nuns make-out.”
“Okay, then,” he says spinning the car down to the Lower East Side. “It’s time for a little burlesque.”
Kiba once told him about a place where strippers dress like nuns and did this tease to “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.” And that was only one of the acts. And since Sakura didn’t seem to mind the queercore scene back at the club, she wouldn’t mind this. Or he thought she wouldn’t.
As they drive across Houston, Sakura reaches over and turns on the radio. A black-lipstick oldie is playing: The Cure, “Pictures of You” --track four of his Breakup Desolation Mix.
“I so don’t need this right now,” Sakura says, but she doesn’t change the song.
“Have you ever thought about their name?” Sasuke asks, looking for conversation in the car. “I mean, for what?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Cure. What do you think they’re the cure for? Happiness?”
“This coming from the bassist for The Fuck Offs?”
“Kiba’s thinking of changing it to The Fuck Ons,” he tells her.
“How ‘bout simply Fuck On?”
“Maybe one word? Fuckon?”
“The Friendly Fuckons?”
“My Fuckon Or Yours?”
“Why is he such a fucking Fuckon?”
Sasuke looks at her. “Is that a band name or a statement?”
“He had no right to do that. None.”
They break into silence a bit before he asks, “Who is he?”
“An ex. The ex, I guess.”
“Like Erika,” Sasuke says relating.
She gives him an evil glare. “No. Not like Erika at all. This was real.”
He pauses from their conversation before saying, “That was mean, you have no idea.”
“Well, neither do you so lets just drop this whole thing. I’m suppose to be showing you a good time.”
Sasuke takes that last sentence as an apology. Because he mostly wants it to be.
They eventually find a parking space on the darker side of Ludlow then head over to the joint where a pink door is facing them.
“Camera Obscura?” Sakura asks.
Sasuke nods.
“Bring on the nuns,” she says.
It’s then Sasuke realizes he doesn’t know what to do. Does he knock or open the door… The answer is given to him in the form of a burly bouncer dressed in a Playboy Bunny outfit.
“ID?” he asks.
Sasuke reaches for his cousin’s license from Illinois, won in an intense Xbox challenge.
Sakura pats her pockets down. Blank.
And just as Sasuke thinks, Oh fuck, she says those exact words.
Ch 6 Secret of all secrets
Oh fuck. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!
Just now, at that moment, in that second, Sakura had just thought of something defining important. She had been lying to Sasuke.
Maybe not to his face directly, but she knew it, she was lying her ass off. And how? By not telling the truth, of course! All this time, from when they were macking-out back at the club, to now, just standing in front of the pink door outside the chilly April night, the wind playing around Sakura’s long pink pair and this Playboy Bunny just staring at her… Wait a fruit, he seemed familiar somehow…
But that was beside the point. The point was that she was lying to a really great guy. Something Erika did… BLAH. But there is nothing I can do, she thought. And that was just the honest to God truth. If not the whole truth. Which it was. Her secret, her life, was just a giant secret that she had to take with her to her grave (and God knows how long that would be!).
Could a vampire really be with a human?
There, she admitted it, even if it was to herself.
She was a vampire.
And she wasn’t ashamed of it or anything. Not in the least! But she did try to take care of herself. Humans Against Vampires or HAV were an underground team of vampire slayers that, of course, slayed vampires. And even though half the population of Manhattan, New York didn’t believe in such things (which just comes to show to Sakura that humans are less than smart) there was still a few that did. And even those few were a threat because it only took one vampire in one of their little sick demonstrations to get people to pick up their pitch forks and torches before everyone knew the truth. That’s actually what was going on. Even as she was with Sasuke on this maybe-but-maybe-not date. Humans had stated to get serious, take action, they had enough, they were fighting back. Something was wrong, they suspected vampires, and they were out to get the truth. Fangs and all. They didn’t have solid concrete proof. Hunches, were all they had. But still… Sakura regretted not staying home where she knew she would be safe. It was all Ino’s fault!
Which somehow brought her mind back to Sasuke. Sasuke was a great guy, she admitted that much. But did she really want to be with him as his girl? Eh… she wanted her options open. Maybe travel the world. Travel to Australia where she would fall in love with a pretty surfer boy that had a pretty-looking name like Ndgijo.
And now she was losing it because that Playboy Bunny bouncer really did look like someone! Oh fuck.
Oh fuck? Did she say that out loud? She’s trying hard to focus on Sasuke and the Bunny, but her mind just keeps rearing back to her vampirism.
And now, for some strange reason, she felt like saying to him, I can change! I can change! like she was Saddam Hussein in the fucking South Park movie.
She just couldn’t say it enough, oh fuck.
“Sakura?” the Playboy Bunny bouncer responds to Sakura’s pronouncement of oh fuck, which was no small relief because she doesn’t have her fake ID with her. When your father was a big-time well-known head of a major record label, it tends not to be of any use in most clubs in Lower Manhattan
“Toni?” Sakura says. S/he grabs her in a hug. S/he was one of the few who knew about Sakura’s secret. And that was only because s/he was one as well. “Still working on that demo?” She had to ask. It was a dedication to the Spice Girls!
S/he pulls out a CD strapped inside the bushy tail at her back. “Just finished it! Will you pass it on?”
“Sure,” she says, hoping Sasuke won’t interrogate her on it later so he could use her to pass on demos to her dad.
“Go right on over to the VIP area,” Toni says, “I’ll make sure your drinks are on the house.”
“I don’t drink,” she reminds Toni.
“Oh, live a little,” s/he says, bumping her at the hip. “Miss Straight Edge, bend ’round the corner for once in your life.” Toni turns to Sasuke. “Illinois? Twenty-three years old? Give me a fucking break. But have fun kids.”
S/he gives Sasuke a playful slap on the ass as they walk in and Sasuke doesn’t react like Mick, who would have pounced back at a drag queen daring to touch him. Instead, Sasuke laughs and turns back around to return the gesture on Toni’s ass. S/he gives him a butt shimmy dance. “I like this one, Sakura! Big improvement. Good egg.”
As opposed to what --nasty, fermented egg, the kind Erika passes off?
They get to their table and already see a couple of nuns making out to “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” on stage. She even chuckles a bit at the thought of her and Sasuke in a three-way with E.T. In the low glow of the neon lights, she can truly appraise Sasuke. She admired his vintage gas station attendant jacket with the name “Salvatore” stenciled under the Texaco logo, and that reminded her of her cousins from Italy. Which kind of dampened the mood a bit. Just a smitch.
Sasuke waves thanks in Toni’s direction and says, “Nice seats your friend hooked us up with. I have to admit, between your drunk girlfriend and your Yugo-insulting ex-boyfriend, it’s a relief to see you have some nice friends.” He winks at her and her stomach flutters. He then tells the cocktail bunny who approached their table to please bring them drinks with little umbrellas in them, they don’t care what, they’re from Jersey, they won’t even know the difference anyway. He says to please make sure the drinks are of virgin variety.
He turns to her and says, “I don’t drink. I’m pretty straight edge. Hope that’s not a prob.”
She was about to answer with, “It’s no prob. It’s a freakin miracle.” But instead she does this weird yes/no head-bob.
Then he says, “Want to tell me about it?” once the bunny has hoped away.
“About what?”
“The Ex?”
Is this what happens on dates? You kiss before you’ve met, then talk about why your previous relationship failed? She was stumped. The only guy she’s ever dated and kissed was Mick, and that was because she was afraid to get too close to too many humans (unless you count food-suppliers, which she didn’t). And also Becca Weiner at summer camp (long ago when she was still living in London) when Sakura was thirteen, which also didn’t count.
She really wanted to forget about Mick, so instead, she said, “I can drive a stick shift.” Because she knows Erika couldn’t.
“So you’re saying you can drive Jessie back to Jersey tonight, assuming she’ll start again?”
“Who’s Jessie?”
“My Yugo.”
“You have a name for your Yugo? Please don’t tell me you’re one of those guys who also names his dick.”
“Unfortunately, I’ve yet to find the perfect name for mine, so it’s in this netherworld of nameless identity right now.” Sasuke glances down at his crotch, then back at her. “But if you think of a good name, let me know. We’d like something a little exotic, like maybe Julio.”
Was her nose bleeding? Thank God for low lighting in the joint!
Sasuke adds, “Kiba wanted to name our band Dickache. What do you think?”
“Sorry, I’m stuck on The Fuck Offs. Catchy. The sales at Wal-Mart will love it.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the next act on stage. Two of Toni’s soul sisters were doing an onstage grind to Britney Spear’s “Toxic,” making the previous nun performers seem like… well, nuns. Sasuke stands up and offers her his hand. She has no idea what he wants, but what the hell, she takes his hand anyway, and he pulls her up on her feet and then presses against her for a slow dance and it’s like they’re in a dream where he’s Christopher Plummer and she’s Julie Andrews and they’re dancing on the marble floor of an Austrian terrace garden. She presses her head against Sasuke’s T-shirt and she knows then and there that she’s in big trouble because something dangerous is happening.
She’s falling for him.
She shivers at the thought and in response, Sasuke takes his jacket off and places it around her shoulder. She feels safe and warm and from the vibe of the jacket, she also feels fairly certain that the original Texaco Salvatore was a good family man, with perhaps a prosperity for wearing his wife’s panties and betting his kids’ college money at the track, but otherwise a pretty solid dude.
Sakura instantly wakes up from the dance dream when the audience applauds the end of the stage performance and Sasuke feels pressed too close against her without the music going. Sasuke/Salvatore/Christopher Plummer/lovely dancing-partner man can’t be real. Better to end the dream before it became a nightmare.
“Why are you so fucking nice?” Sakura asks, and shoves him away. “I gotta pee.”
She runs away, towards the bathroom. A few people are in line, but a snap of her fingers from Toni and the line disperses.
She doesn’t really have to pee. She has to think. Why was Sasuke here with her anyway? She admitted to being beautiful and attractive, but she guess it had something to do with her vampire nature. All vampires were beautiful and just drop dead gorgeous (no pun intended). But was that it? Was that why Sasuke was hanging out with her? Poor guy, he really was a schmuck. He was liking someone who wasn’t really human, and he didn’t know why.
She stepped inside the bathroom as the previous occupant leaves, but doesn’t sit at all. GROSS. Instead, she reads the graffiti that covers the wall next to the toilet.
Jimmy gives good head. Climb Ev’ry Mountain, indeed. (Illustrated.)
Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible. --Pebbles
You’re the one for me, fatty. --Manny
I want it that way. --Backstreet Boys (Also illustrated, much more lewd than the Jimmy picture, and finer drawing skills.)
Claire, meet me on the Rivington in front of the candy store after the show. You bring the Pez. You know!
Psst --Sitting on the john and wondering when this night will end? Answer: NEVER. Where’s Fluffy, unannounced show, TONIGHT, after the von Trapp massacre, before dawn rises. Be there or be square, ayyyy……
There’s no date on the wall but Sakura can clearly pick up the fresh sent of the black-marker. Sometimes it was cool being a princess of the night. She was curious whose executive decision it was to name to toilet “the john,” anyway? But could this show be tonight? She only fucking worshiped Where’s Fluffy. They could make her forget about everything, how she wanted to go home and crawl under the sheets and hide, and that she wasted her youth on some dick, Mick, and that she was on a date with a really great guy and she’s given him more mixed signals than a dyslexic Morse code operator. Not to mention she was, well, dead.
Does she dare show her face back at the table to Sasuke? After what a dick she made of herself?
DICK! Did she really ask Sasuke if he had a name for his dick?
But no matter how down she’s feeling, she vowed herself this: to change into a better person, or forever spend her days roaming the earth as a young beautiful old fart.
Picking up the Sharpie that was dangling from a string attached to the bathroom mirror, she scribble her contribution to the graffiti trail on the wall:
The Cure. For the Ex’s? I’m sorry, Sasuke. You know. Will you kiss me again?
Splashing on some cold water, not even making sure to check in the mirror if she looked okay because of vampire nature, (this she thought totally sucked!) she took a deep breath, ready to go out there. She was new, changed, for the better. Not for Mick or anyone else. But for once, for herself.
Ch 7 Taking a liking
Sasuke is doing everything right. And it’s getting the exact reaction. And that was like a miracle to him.
He’s a little mesmerized by the nun on the left, who is playing the acoustic guitar for “Edelweiss” and twirling her pasties at the same time. And yet, somehow, Sasuke manages to get up from his seat and get Sakura out of her seat. He knows exactly where to put his hands and where to put her body and just like that they are locked together in a moment, and it is, remarkably, the exact right thing for the moment to be.
He’s not used to this.
He doesn’t even notice when the music stops because he’s so lost in his own music. The beat scratches to a still and right turns wrong. Sakura pushes him away and spits out the word nice, then runs to pee.
He watches her go. Tony/Toni/Toné acts as her fairy godmotherfather, waving a Playboy Bunny air freshener in the air to part the crowd around the Laydies’ Room (as opposed to the Laddies’ Room, which seemed, from the exasperated looks of the people in line, to be currently occupied by a “busy” pair). The nuns on stage are now parading in what Sasuke imagined to be edelweiss.
This should divert him, but his mind keeps returning to a simple, scary fact:
He is liking Sakura.
He is liking the way she is friends with Playboygirl Bunnies. He is liking the way she knows how to drive stick. He is liking that he has to earn her smiles and laughs. He is liking the way she kissed him. He is liking that he can throw any kind of sentence at her without worrying it’s too out there.
He could easily start to obsess-slash-stress about the whole situation in front of him, but luckily another diversion soon joins him at the table. It’s Tony/Toni/Toné, dressed now as a priest. Or rather, he’s dressed as a woman dressed as a priest.
“I’m on in ten minutes,” she says, to explain the costume change. “Is Sakura still powdering?”
“She’s the lulu of the loo.”
“Fabulous! Now us girls can chat.” She takes a seat across from Sasuke and asks, “How long have the two of you been the two of you?”
Sasuke looks at his watch. “About an hour, including transportation.”
Tony/Toni/Toné whistles her appreciation. “That’s four times as long as any of my relationships have lasted.”
“Well, this one might not be setting any new records.”
“No!” Tony/Toni/Toné suddenly exclaims. “I saw the two of you canoodling. You’re a regular Johnny Castle.”
Sasuke has no idea who Johnny Castle is, but he definitely approves of the name.
Tony/Toni/Toné places her palms together and looks at Sasuke with kindness that has no sexuality. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Yes… No… I don’t know.”
“How long has it been since your last confession?”
Sasuke looks at him right in the eye and answers, “Three weeks and three days ago, I guess.”
“And what was that confession?”
“ ‘I love you.’ ”
“That’s a serious one. And how was it received?”
“Vow of silence. And chastity, until the next guy came along.”
“So what do you have to confess now?”
Sasuke says, “I’m confessing that I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”
“What is ‘this’?”
Being open. Being hurt. Liking. Not being liked. Seeing the flicker on. Seeing the flicker off. Leaping. Falling. Crashing.
“Sakura. I don’t know if I’m ready for Sakura.”
Tony/Toni/Toné smiles. “There’s no such thing as ready. There’s only willing.” She reaches over and puts her hand on top of his. She’s not making a pass at him --she’s trying to pass something on. “I have all the proof I need. The proof is always in the dancing.”
Her gaze drops from Sasuke for a second. Sasuke follows her gaze to see Sakura emerging from the Laydies’ Room.
Tony/Toni/Toné stands up from her chair.
“One more thing?” Sasuke asks her. She raises an eyebrow. “Who’s Sakura’s dad?” The eyebrow slants even higher it’s practically perpendicular to her eye.
“You really don’t know?” she asks. He shakes his head. “That, is brilliant.”
Sakura isn’t looking over the table, so Sasuke decides to check his wallet, to make sure he has enough money to pay for their cocktease cocktails (virginity sullied only by the umbrella’s reputation). But of course when she gets to the table, it looks like he’s itching to pay the bill. He quickly shoves his wallet back in his pocket, only it gets tangled on its own chain and Sasuke ends up spewing Washingtons all over the floor. He swoops them up before she sits down again, which only bumps his slightly lower on the spaz scale. Especially because it’s now he remembers they’re being comped, so he didn’t need to take his wallet out in the first place.
“You look refreshed,” he says. Then he can’t help himself adding, “Everything okay? Was it something I said? Or was my Johnny Castle impression no good?”
She twinkles at Johnny Castle.
Thank you Tony/Toni/Toné, Sasuke thinks.
“Look,” she says, raising her Tina Colada, “I owe you a kind of explanation. I know you probably think I’m horrid bitch from the planet Schizophrenia, but I’m seriously not trying to mess with your head. I’m just messing with my own head and somehow you got dragged along for the ride. I think you’re a great guy and that’s what fucking scares me. It’s easier when the guy you’ve been with is a jerk or an ass because then you know where you stand. Right now I’m thinking of ten different things and four of those things have to do with you. If you want to leave right now and forget my name and forget what I look like, I wouldn’t blame you in the least. But what I’m trying to say is that if you did go I would be sorry. That’s it. You can go now. Or we could stay for Where’s Fluffy when Toni’s set is over. I think they’re playing a surprise gig here tonight.”
Then, finally, she takes a sip of her drink.
A gulp, rather.
And Sasuke takes a deep breath and says, “My jacket looks good on you.”
She puts the glass down. Stares at him. And he thinks, Fine, I’m a freak.
So be it.
“No,” he goes on. “It does. And if I left, you’d probably want to give me my jacket back. And if you did, I wouldn’t be able to put it on, because the whole time I’d be knowing how perfect it fit on you. How even though the sleeves are ridiculously too long and the collar is all fucked up and for all I know some guy named Salvatore is going to come in this very club in two minutes and say, ‘Hey, that’s my jacket’ and strike up a conversation and sweep you off your feet away from me --even though all those things are true or possibly true, I just can’t ruin the picture of you sitting there across from me wearing my jacket better than I or anyone else ever could. If I don’t owe it to you and I don’t owe it to me, I at least owe it to Salvatore.”
There. He’s said everything he wanted to say without actually having to use the words please stay.
“Pick up you drink,” Sakura tells him.
He does.
She clinks the glass against his.
“Cheers,” she says.
“Salud,” he replies.
“L’chaim.”
“Top o’ the morning to ya.”
“Sto lat.”
“May the road rise to meet you.”
…and they go like this, until Tony/Toni/Toné appears onstage to purr the filthiest “Do Re Mi” that Manhattan has ever seen.
A few people look at them every now and then. Sasuke guesses some of them know Sakura. He’s the mystery. Or maybe he was the nobody. Either way, he doesn’t care. If he was just The Guy With Sakura, that’s cool. Right now, that’s all he wanted to be.
All the other things he is --they’re too complicated. He can feel them lying in wait, planning their return.
Ch 8 Grind house
“So say we’re at the Motel 6 on the other side of the Lincoln Tunnel and we’re having that threeway with E.T. Who gets to be on top and who gets to be on the bottom?”
This question actually escapes her mouth and she’s happy it did.
Sasuke answers, “NO-brainer. E.T. can’t take the heat and goes off to the motel vending machine for some Reese’s Pieces, and hopefully doesn’t get caught in the crossfire of some crack deal gone bad while he’s out there. I mean, really, Sakura, Motel 6 off the tunnel? Couldn’t we class it up a little?”
The stage acts were all over and the nuns have converted to stage hands as they transformed the set for the next show. They’ve hit the jackpot because Where’s Fluffy is most certainly going on next after the stage is converted. Sakura recognizes some of the people who are streaming into the club and she knows they’re following the same yellow brick road. Mainly all were the tattooed bad-ass punks she saw in Crazy Kent’s joint. Crazy Kent was there himself, and she just hoped Mick hadn’t decided to follow up on him or hadn’t gotten word about the band’s performance.
Or maybe prayer wasn’t necessary and her moment of clarity was real and true and Mick was not a thought because she was wearing this jacket that says Salvatore and she was deep into this night with this Sasuke person and she was having occasionally really, truly pornographic thoughts about him. Only, where did Sasuke go?
He said she wore his jacket better than he or anyone else ever could. So why isn’t he going for an encore Johnny Castle performance? If Ino were with her, she would give Sakura her Patience grasshopper speech. But right now Sakura didn’t need a lecture, she needed a fucking lifeboat because the ship between her and Sasuke was quickly sinking, probably courtesy of her and the trying-too-hard conversations. She had come back from the bathroom, they had virgin drinks along with toasted clinks, but she seemed to have made the ultimate mistake. She tries to learn something about him, (which wasn’t what you were suppose to do?) delve deeper, and now she’s getting sucked down fast into the vortex of Awkward First Date.
“So where do you live?” Sakura asks him, even though she knows. Just to say something. And because E.T. tanked, and How long have you been a band? and Are you guys serious or just fucking around? got her only Since the dawn of time and No, we’ve only been rehearsing together since freshman year, spent every fucking dollar we made at minimum-wage jobs to support this band, but no, we’re not fucking serious. Don’t get Sakura wrong, she was all for sarcasm, but sometimes it was tiring, especially when it was near morning and she thought they were finally getting somewhere and she might as well be taking a nap at this point. Sasuke was so with her just a while ago, but now without the diversion of a stage show, they were just… blah.
“I live in Hoboken,” Sasuke says.
“College?” Sakura asks.
“Haven’t figured that one out yet.”
Brick. Fucking. Wall.
These were the times Sakura considered breaking her straight-edge vow. Beer most certainly would help this situation. It probably couldn’t make it any worse. If anything, she think it would help a bunch.
Basic quiz-show format isn’t working out, so Sakura takes inspiration from the divine beings that have performed on stage this night and decides to sing the next question, all fake Julie Andrews shit operetta style: “Care to name a few of your favorite things?”
His half smile creeps back. “Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby ice cream, original Tiffany stained-glass windows at random houses in Weehawken, my iPod. And a hot-oil massage from Kate Winslet.”
She rested her case.
Did DJ Irony plan to spin “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” by The Smiths right now to appease the crowd, or was it just coincidence?
Sakura decides to take one last shot. Come back to Mama, Sasuke, she thought. You can do it.
“Last moment of true happiness you experienced?” She asks him.
“Sometime before three weeks, three days ago…”
And he’s gone again. Ohhhhh……..
The air suddenly is growing hot and Sakura notices Sasuke watching the door. She knows what’s going on. He’s scared Erika will show. Why wouldn’t she show? Where’s Fluffy is her fav band. And that piece of 4-1-1 takes Sakura back to the days when Erika, Ino and herself went to Sacred Heart, an all girls private school. In those days, Erika wasn’t much of a bitch because the three were really tight and close and, well, friends. They hung out, and underneath the blond hair, the big tits, the long legs, the tight skirts, Sakura could tell Erika was the type of person who had your back, no questions asked.
Of course, back then Erika didn’t know about Sakura’s and Ino’s secret, nor does she know now and Sakura knows it is for the best. She was only a vampire for the past 900 years with a father who is president of the Vampire Council and was a very important man in the human/music industry. The girl who was motherless and almost died when another vamp tried to turn her and then rape her. The girl whose roommates are just the wonder fullest people anywhere. The girl has traveled all over the world. The girl whose entire life/family was revolved around vampires. The girl who never let anyone inside without her saying so. She felt as though she was a secluded person, and she hated seclusion. HATED it. Maybe that’s why she decided to change for the better? Yes.
The Smiths song ends, and even in all the commotion and motion up in the club, Sakura can clearly see --with help from her super vampire vision-- that it’s Sai wrapped inside the arms of the singer from Sasuke’s band. Kiba, was it? They’re standing against the wall, locked in one of those deep soul-enjoined kisses that can only cause observers of the kiss to have a crisis of deep, soul-searching envy.
Sasuke finally laughs out again. “That’s our Kiba!”
As their mouths disengage, Kiba plucks a strand of hair from Sai’s face and twirls it through his fingers. With his other hand, Kiba waves hello to the exasperated line of laddies.
Sakura points out, “Damn, even from here, you can see the smile on his face.” Or could she only see that because of her amazing sight?
“Kiba’s the reason our band doest have a drummer.”
“How’s that?” And just like that, they were going again. Thank you, Kiba, she thinks. You stud, thank you.
“We used to have a drummer. The guy killed, he was so good. Then Kiba ‘turned’ him.” At the word ‘turned,’ Sakura swore she was going to come out and confess to Sasuke that he was actually on a date with a living-dead. But he continued before she could say anything. “The dude didn’t even know he liked boys before--”
“Oh, he knew.” Because they always do, whether or not they’ll admit it. She thought of her brother, Lelouch, her many roommates, and other friends she had that were fantabulous frazzy.
Sasuke shrugs. “Could be. But Kiba brought him out. And once the closet door had swung wide open, the poor guy wanted a boyfriend. Kiba had just wanted a conquest. Especially one who had been the All-American high school track star.”
“Kiba is a slut?”
“That’s our boy.”
Kiba is trailing Sai by the hand now, and they’re snaking their way through the club and over to Sasuke and Sakura’s table.
“Nice show.” Sakura tells Kiba.
“Wasn’t it?” Kiba laughs. Sakura couldn’t blame Sai or the ex-drummer. Kiba was a fucking babe. And although Sais was too, a vampire, she could tell right away that he wasn’t just after sex, Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. He was after what she may be after with Sasuke. That is, if she could get him going again.
“FUCK! You heard about the Show? Where’s Fluffy! WHERE’S FUCKING FLUFFY!” He plays mock drums on the table and Sasuke lifts his eyebrow at Sakura and yes, they’re back in the game.
And then their ref sashays to their table like the beauty queen s/he is and addresses Sasuke like they’re old sorority sisters: “Girl, be a dear and help me with some of this stage equipment, will ya?” Sasuke jumps up to his feet like he’s been waiting for Toni’s salvation all along. Good--maybe Toni could share some PMS elixir with Sasuke and send him back revived.
“WHERE’S FLUFFY!” Kiba pats her back and then raises his arms like he’s Rocky. “WHERE’S FUCKING FLUFFY!”
Exactly. This was the kind of reaction she expected from Sasuke when she told him about the show. Where’s Fluffy was only the best punk band ever, and they actually sang, not like other fucking pop-punk goof-offs who only wailed.
And they were also going to help determine whether there was really anything to salvage between herself and Sasuke. It would all come down to the mosh pit.
The mosh pit never lies.
Ch 9 Robotz music
Sasuke thinks things are going well. They’re volleying words back and forth. Everything Sakura says, he has something he can say back. Because their words are clicking into each other to form sentences and their sentences are clicking into each other to form dialogue and their dialogue is clicking together to form this scene from this ongoing movie that’s as comfortable as it is unrehearsed.
He knows she’s holding back a bit. He knows she keeps shooting him questions so he won’t get too close to her answers. That was fine. Who was she, really? Fuck if he knew. But he does care. Yeah, he’s starting to care.
The place is now crawling with a lot of the tattooed scene kids and Kiba is so completely Kiba and ramps himself over to them to lead the WHERE THE FUCK IS FLUFFY? cheer. Tony/i/é comes over and wants Sasuke to help with some on-stage gear. He looks at Sakura and almost asks if she was going to miss him while he’s gone. But he doesn’t want to push it.
Sasuke thought it was pretty cool being in the realm of Fluffy. Even though all he was doing was checking if the mics worked. He’s testing 1-2-3 and testing FUCK-SHIT-COCK and the crowd is looking at him with this unanimous wish that he’s get the fuck off the stage, and if it weren’t for the presence of a glowering man in a Playboy Bunny pose watching over him, Sasuke might be having a head-meet-bottle moments. And it would be almost worth it. It wasn’t often you shed blood for one of your favorite bands.
And suddenly, Sasuke thought back to the time when he had told Erika about them. She hadn’t heard about them and she was skeptical that she would like them. But the very first song they played, “Dead Voter” and she was a goner with no coming back.
“You have to stop that,” she had said when they went to the sixth show. He screamed, “What?” she screamed back, “You have to stop that,” and Sasuke screamed “What?” and she told him. “You’re still here. You have to go farther than that.” And at first he didn’t get it, but then he realized that she was right; he wasn’t giving himself up to the music. But once he heard the next song playing, “Creeper Of The Heart,” he lost all control, becoming one of the many beings that were there to sacrifice everything for a being so great it couldn’t be suppressed. And he was grateful for that. Still was.
And he was gone gone gone… “Wake the fuck up!” someone pressed up against the stage says. Sasuke realizes that his hands have fallen idle. Like he can’t think of Erika and do anything else at the same time. Which is such a lie.
He finishes the connections. The mics are ready for the assault to come. Tony/i/é nods and dims the light. Sasuke heads off, but not before he catches the nod of Even E., Fluffy’s drummer. He smiles and nods back, then presses back into the crowd. He’s lost track of Sakura, lost sight of where their table used to be. All the tables have been shoved aside now.
Fuse: lit.
Fuse: burning.
Ready.
Set.
Explode.
The guitars rampage. The drums batter. Owen O. snarls bastardizations at the world.
Sakura. She’s ten feet away. Not looking for him or for anything else. She is in the middle of this conflagration and she looks entirely alone.
It scares him.
He recognizes it.
He is hearing Lars L.’s baseline. It screams that time in an angry machine. Music is an angry machine. Everyone is an angry machine.
Sakura. Just make your way to Sakura.
Kiba is in his way. He tries to maneuver around him, and he responds with a fevered shove. Sasuke shoves back. Kiba catches Sasuke’s shoulder too hard and he spins out. He stumbles. He bodychecks Sakura.
She doesn’t laugh. She just throws herself right back at him. Slam and retreat. Then he slams and retreats. They’re suppose to be smiling and they’re not smiling. Sasuke throws his whole body at her, no distance now, her face so close it’s almost a blur.
“What the fuck?” she yells, and it’s not him she’s speaking to.
The music blares even harder, and for the first time Sasuke realizes that he and Sakura are apart of a whole thing and yet they’re their own thing. A part of something big, and they’re in the center of it all. Like connecting pulses at the wrist. Like connecting stars in the sky. So amazing, so unbelievable, and yet so right. Oh so right. They’re not crashing as much as they’re combining. Into one being, one mind, one soul, one…
Could they really? Only one way to find out, Sasuke thinks.
He finds her lips and he makes that kiss and she’s pulling his hair and he’s got the fabric of her jacket bunched in a fist and it’s nothing like talking and it’s right there and they’re taking it and taking it and taking it.
Lars L. launches straight into “Take Me Back, Bitch” and Sasuke flinches and Sakura sees it and he knows he’s screwed.
Now, Sakura yells, “What?” and it is a question for him. And then she says the hardest question of all --the one that takes so much hurt and balls to ask-- which is “Why did you stop?” and the music is too loud and Sasuke’s body is being battered from all sides and he’s yelling “I CAN’T TALK TO YOU HERE” and she screams “WHAT?” and he’s right in her ear and yells “NOT HERE” and then “I CAN’T TALK.”
Her hands find his hands and they slowly leave the chaos behind them.
She looks around, then gets him into a small room to the side of the Laddies’ Room. It’s the size of a closet, and it’s dominated by a lime-green couch in front of a big mirror. Sasuke expects Sakura to look at him mischievously, but instead she looks determined. She keeps hold of his hand and launches herself into him, squeezing and grappling and kissing him so hard his lips can barely kiss back.
“You,” she says, her hand now leading Sasuke’s hand over her breasts and her free hand gliding over his chest. And it’s getting hot in that small room, and she’s feverish and she’s kissing him and his mouth is opening and her hands, her tongue, her hips are exploring. But her eyes aren’t as adventurous. And Sasuke doesn’t know if she’s trying to pull him back or pull him in or just plain trying to pull. If this was desire, he wasn’t clear what it’s a desire for. He’s aroused --so fucking aroused-- by the heat of it. Her hand is pressing Sasuke’s hand against the wall, and the other hand is under his shirt, rising up to his neck, then starting to go back down. And down. And her fingers have found his trail and his hands both press the wall. The heat of it, the fever of it… the look in her eyes is unsmiling and Sasuke just wants it and Sasuke just can’t do it and she’s reaching down and down and as she touches him there Sasuke is about to explode and he wants her to say something, even his name, but she doesn’t and suddenly he can’t. She kisses him again and strokes a little and this time Sasuke’s really not kissing back and he’s got to stop it before something happens. He pushes away from her.
Why did you stop?
He doesn’t want her to say it again. But it’s there in her face.
“Did you see her?” she asks. And at first he wants to ask who. But then he knows, and he says no, and he asks, “Did you see him?”
She turns ten degrees away from him, back toward the noise, and answers yes.
Ch 10 Getting’ over
The mosh pit didn’t lie. Like she knew it wouldn’t.
She tells Sasuke, “Yes.” He thinks Sakura means, Yes, she saw Mick. She didn’t see Mick. She did see Erika though. She thinks it will be easier if Sasuke thinks it’s Mick she saw instead of Erika. That way he can blame it on her and her hang-ups.
WHY AM I SUCH A FUCKING LOSER? She screams within herself.
Sakura races out of the closet room, slamming the door behind her with her foot, pleased by the snarl of, “OW, THAT FUCKING HURT!” she hears from Sasuke’s side of the door. She knows Sasuke needs some time to himself to get his parts in order. She has some time to do what she needs to do.
She had it all wrong. All fucking wrong. Maybe Kiba had slipped something into her drink? What had possessed her to make the first move? She never did. The human male mind was an interesting thing. Because every time, they would make the first move, they would fall for her, they got their blood sucked. But now she felt the tables were turned, and with it, her life-force. Slowly, she could feel it slipping through that Sasuke’s guys big, strong, manly hands. SHE HAD IT ALL WRONG! She was the vampire, therefore, it was only safe to say that she should have the upper hand, with the Glamour and all, she could easily make Sasuke fall in love with her, and if she wasn’t feeling him, she could just as easy let him go, maybe turn him into a mini buffet before she did. But she just couldn’t. There was something inside her saying, He’s one of the good guys. Don’t you feel guilty taking advantage of him? Even just a little? Guilt? How long had it been since she felt bad about taking advantage of a human for her own pleasure? One, two, five, six centuries? More?
She was with him. Lips puckered, music blaring loud so she wouldn’t have to think about it, darkness surrounding them warm. Perfect. Except it wasn’t. With her excellent vision, she saw Toni frisking Erika, and Sakura knew the window of opportunity was about to slam shit, uh, shut. Sakura was nothing if not determined, so it wasn’t her hormones leading Sasuke to the closet room for a second shit --SHOT. No, it was worse, it was plain stupidity leading her, taking a hold of her. And for a vampiress in her status --wealthy, royalty, heir to the Vampire President-- that was low.
She didn’t bother with foreplay. She lunged right in like she Mick after too much Manischewitz Passover wine. Sasuke was still raw, but she was goddamn ready to thaw and prove she wouldn’t leave him cold. And she thought she did prove that, she meant she had him, at least she thought she did, she meant he responded, sort of, at least she thought he did, or maybe what she thought was response and mutual attraction was merely the fact that he was a guy, and an Elmo doll could accidentally graze it and it would respond. But the moment passed so quickly and if she was being honest, she knew it only half responded and barely that because Julio probably knew it was Sakura calling.
She was so ashamed of herself.
She could feel the heat branding her face, and making her hateful. She hated everything, she hated time, she hated this night, and if she only hadn’t met God in person that night when all of the Underworld had a meeting to discuss about that century’s “time to expose vampires” thing, she would have said he didn’t exist and would hate him too.
She even hated Where’s Fluffy. Her former favorite band, now destined to be remembered for the rest of her life as the band she was listening to when she went down like the Titanic. She hated Ino for being passed out when Sakura really needed to talk to her. She hated Mick for all the times of No, touch it this way and You’re doing it all wrong, because now Sasuke, her first shot at redemption, knows it too: she had no fucking idea how to do any of this. Like God takes these beings at creation and divides them into subsets: Group A gets the hot looks, sex appeal, and lots of action with natural ease (Ino); Group B is the makeover prospects who will figure it all out and eventually get their action (Erika); and Group C is the rest of the poor schmucks (Sakura) for whom God has decided, You’re on your own. Don’t expect much. Maybe he did that intentionally knowing she was a vampire? After all, he was their biggest fan at seeing large wooden stakes shoved into their chests and decapitated heads.
She kind of hated Sasuke, too, but there was someone else higher on her list, someone she hated more that Saddam Hussein and any asshole named Bush combined, hate more than that fuckhead who canceled My So-Called Life and left her with a too-small boxed DVD set that does not answer the questions of whether Angela and Jordan Catalano ever did it, or if Patty and Graham got a divorce, or if there really was something to all that lesbian subtext between Rayanne and Sharon. She needed to fucking find that other person and kill that other regret.
But not now. NOW she needed to thrash to the divine intervention of sound that was “I’m Living on God’s LSD,” Where’s Fluffy’s cover song. And for one minute of that two-minute song, she was lost to hate because she was lost to Owen O. and Even E. and Larls L. because they were G. Gods, and every bone in her body new it.
But when she sees the fists waving in the pit and she sees a live person being passed around on the extended arms of the crowd, and even in the poor lighting Sakura couldn’t miss Her. Erika is the crowd-surfer, taking her shot to get passed to the front of the stage and hopefully get ushered backstage.
And Sakura was back at hate.
Sakura parts the crowd like she’s fucking Moses and in seconds, she’s in the middle of the mosh, and it’s her turn to propel Erika forward to the stage, and instead of letting her legs pass over her upturned palms, Sakura grabs for her feet instead and Erika falls to the ground and the crowd doesn’t care, they’ve gone on to someone else being passed around and Lars L. is pointing at the new victim and nodding YES to the security goons.
Erika stands up from the floor, then holds her hand against her forehead. “THAT FUCKING HURT!” she yells at Sakura and only if she had also snarled “OW!” like Sasuke could Sakura hate her more. Sakura grabs Erika’s hand from her forehead and pulls her through the masses. Sakura doesn’t bother to say “bye” to Kiba and Sai, watching them leave from the periphery of the slightly opened eyes of their French kiss.
Once they’re outside and Sakura can breath again, she says, “Why?” to Erika, but actually she’s shouting “WHY?” because her ears haven’t adjusted yet to the lower decibel.
The girl in front of Sakura was the reason she couldn’t break through to Sasuke and she wanted to know why.
Erika leans against the building wall and rubs her eyes. “I’m so fucking tired,” she says. “And you don’t fucking have to yell.” Erika slides her ass down the wall and falls to the ground. She rests against the building, hugging her knees, her face pressed into her knees.
Sakura sits down next to her. She asks again, “Why?” and Erika says, “Sasuke?” ad Sakura says, “Yeah.”
She looks like she’s going to fall asleep. Her eyes flutter and she almost looks likeable. But then she opens one eye at Sakura. “Are on a fucking date with him or something? Do you like him?”
“Yes,” Sakura says, because she doesn’t want to lie, and then “Not really,” because she doesn’t want to lie, and finally, “No,” because she doesn’t want to lie.
“Did you tell him about me?” she says.
“No, I didn’t tell him,” Sakura says. “Why did you do it anyway?” Sakura doesn’t know which why she wants the answer to --why Erika cheated on him, or why she let him go.
“I’m hungry,” Erika states, and Sakura has to agree, “Me too.” they both stand up and start walking.
They walk to the 24-hour Korean grocery across the street, and it’s like some primal instinct because they both go right to the cookie section and Erika opens up a bag of Chips Ahoy and Sakura opens a bag of Oreos and they are chomping in the aisle, and the owner at the counter is like, “You have to pay for that!” and Erika and Sakura are both like, “WE KNOW!”
Erika takes a swallow and says, “It’s like this. I met Sasuke. And I wanted him and I had him but he didn’t want to let go, and he was such a fucking great guy, I couldn’t let him go, even if there were other guys in the picture.” She sticks her thumb inside her mouth to remove a piece of chocolate chip stuck between her teeth. But then it got to this point where he’s making college choices based on me, ready to turn down all these fucking great schools because of me, just because he said ‘I love you.’ Well, instead of letting him get hurt later and thinking he had lost something he never had, I decided to take the brutal route. He said, ‘I love you,’ I said ‘It’s over.’ And I know it must feel awful saying ‘I love you’ to someone and having that someone not say it back. But, I’m just eighteen, about to move to the city for school, start my life. I want fun, not ‘I love you’ serious shit.”
She takes this time to wolf down another cookie.
For once in Sakura’s life, she was speechless. She had just eaten her 13th Oreo in under five minutes. When she does speak, she says, “You have to tell him why, Erika. He deserves to know. And he’s gonna be damaged goods until he does know.”
So she had a lifetime of loneliness, and she was cool with that. She always knew having a human with her at all times would be consequential. That’s why they only made good food sources, not companions. No, scratch that, all wrong. Her older brother, Lelouch, was much of a vampire as she was, and yet, he had a great man by his side. Human. And that’s when the hurt came back.
“You’re wearing his jacket,” Erika says. “He never lets me wear his jacket.”
Erika is the cause why Sakura had gone hell and back so she has no problem letting Erika pay for her Oreos. Sakura leaves her at the counter, fumbling for her wallet. Sakura was ready for bed. Even though bed for her meant when the sun came up, but she had enough to last her a lifetime. No pun intended.
Sakura heads for the door, but not before saying, “Be more careful next time, bitch.”
Erika doesn’t look up from her wallet and just lifts her middle finger at her. “Okay, bitch.”
Sakura has just enough money for a cab ride back home. Yay. She looks onto the street in search of a cab but sees Sasuke instead, leaning against a telephone booth outside the grocery. Nah.
She’s done with this. D-O-N-E. Time once and for all to kill the beast, she thinks.
She walks over to him and marks the sign of the cross from his forehead to his chest to each sides of his heart, In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Sakura. Then she caresses that cheek of Sasuke’s one last time, because she wants one last touch, she deserves it. She tells him, “You are absolved.”
She walks away, placing her pinkie and index finger inside her mouth to signal a cab, all alone on the tough streets of Lower Manhattan, but protected by the sacred shroud of Salvatore upon her shoulders.
She’s fucking keeping Sasuke’s jacket.
Ch 11 FUCK April
Fuck her, Sasuke thought.
Fuck her for getting in that cab. Fuck her for fucking with his mind. Fuck her for not knowing what she wants. Fuck her for dragging him into it. Fuck her for being such a fantastic kisser. Fuck her for ruining his favorite band. Fuck her for barely saying a word to him before she left. Fuck her for not waving. Fuck her for taking off with his fucking jacket.
Fuck him.
Fuck him for always getting himself into situations like this. Fuck him for caring. Fuck him for not knowing the words that would’ve made her stay. Fuck him for not knowing what he wants. Fuck him for wavering. Fuck him for not kissing her back the right way. Fuck him for getting his hopes up. Fuck him for not having more realistic hopes. Fuck him for giving her his fucking jacket.
Fuck.
If Sasuke hadn’t stayed those two extra minutes in the dressing room, staring at the mirror, as if his face would suddenly tell him the answers his mind didn’t already know. If he’d been able to push though the crowd instead of get mesmerized by its melody of right. If he’d seen her in that grocery before she got to the door. If he’d said something when he saw her coming. If he’d manage any of these ifs --would have he been able to avoid the inevitable fuck-up, the full-force fuck-off? His pride shut him up, his hurt shut him down, and together they ganged up on his hope and let her get away.
To go back into the club alone means defeat. To stay outside looking at the taillights of her cab means defeat. To go home and pass out means defeat. To sit right down on the pavement and stare at the curb means defeat --but it’s the defeat that’s closest, so he sits down and starts tracing the edge of the sidewalk.
Foot in mouth, stomped all over, kick me kick me kick me, he thought bitterly.
It’s Ludlow Street, so the shoes that pass by him are all somewhere between hip and porn. Neon colored sneakers, vixen pumps, stiletto boots for men and women.
I didn’t let her go, she went. Its not my fault.
She did it.
She could undo it.
This is feeling so fucking familiar.
Why do they even bother? Why do they make themselves so open to such easy damage? Is it all loneliness? Is it all fear? Or is it just to experience those narcotic moments of belonging with someone else? Sakura, didn’t she know it was as simple as the way she dragged him off the dance floor? She didn’t have to make out with him to get him there. And now Sasuke knows this. And now he can say it. And now she’s gone.
It was his fault, wasn’t it?
Fuck this.
Fuck this wondering. Fuck this trying and trying. Fuck this belief that two people can become one ideal. Fuck this helplessness. Fuck this waiting for something to happen that probably won't ever happen.
“Oh, Sasuke --what did she do to you?”
Sasuke looks up, and it’s funny. Because he swears it’s Erika standing over him looking sympathetic. It’s like being on one of those TV shows where the dead mother comes back every once in a while to talk. Impossible, but right there when you’d most expect her.
“Erika,” Sasuke says, because he can’t think of anything else to say.
She shakes her head, brushes off a spot of pavement, then sits down next to him.
“Where’s Sakura?” she asks.
He shrugs. “Probably three-quarters of the way through the Lincoln Tunnel.”
“She never could take it,” Erika says, pulling out a cigarette, then handing the lighter to Sasuke so he can spark it. “Never. Put her on the spot and she’ll refuse to admit the spot is there. This one time, we were all going skinny-dipping. No big deal. But right away, I can tell that there is no way Sakura’s gonna do it. For a while she goes along with it. But when it’s time for us to strip and get in the water, she disappears. Walks like two fucking miles back to her house without saying a word. The next day, she doesn’t even pretend to act sick or anything. Doesn’t try to explain it all.”
Erika hadn’t said those many words to Sasuke in four weeks --no, more than that.
Sasuke doesn’t know whether he can touch her. Reach over those two or three extra inches and let his hand fall on her arm. Fell what that’s like again.
“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t get fucking moony on me, Sasuke. Because if you do, I am out of here faster than Sakura. Get it?”
He nods.
“Good.” Erika lets out a smoke signal. “I don’t want to talk about us.”
You never did, he thinks.
They sit in silence for a second. She takes a drag. She’s cinematic and he’s a fucking sitcom. The silence doesn’t bother her at all, but it’s freaking him the hell out. So he finds himself doing something he vowed he should never again do. He throws “I miss you” into the breach. It even feels empty to him. Like he wasn’t saying it to the right person.
“Don’t start that again,” Erika says. “It doesn’t prove anything except that I don’t feel the same way.” Another drag and turns an ear towards the club. “They sound kick-ass tonight. Damn, I should have slept with Owen O. while I had the chance. I would have been closer to whatever teen-movie starlet gets to him first. I just hope they don’t name their daughter after a fucking fruit.”
“April,” Sasuke says.
“What?”
“April. You said you wanted to name our daughter April.”
Erika shoots Sasuke a curious look. “Did I? I don’t know if it’s sweet or scary that you remember that.”
Sasuke finds the courage to ask, “Aren’t sweet and scary the same thing to you?”
She grins a bit at his insight. “Maybe. Sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
More smoke towards Sasuke’s way.
“Erika, I-”
“Do you like her?”
“What?”
“Sakura. Do you like her?”
“Can you like someone who confuses the hell out of you?”
“All the fucking time.”
“Did I confuse the hell out of you?”
It was really just a question, but this time Erika is annoyed, flickering her cigarette at him so ashes scatter on his shirt.
“Shut up, okay? Enough already. ENOUGH. Yes, you confused the hell out of me. Because not only can you not let go, but you don’t even fucking realize that the thing you’re holding on to isn’t even there. You think I hurt you? Well, I could have hurt you so much more.”
“How?” Sasuke has to ask.
“By telling the truth, Sasuke. I thought you’d see it. But I had no idea how completely blind you could make yourself. And yes, I could have just come out and said it. But you were so fucking vulnerable that I could never do it. And then I hurt you anyway. But fuck, Sasuke --you needed to be hurt. You needed to have the truth kicked into you.”
“It’s more like a stabbing than a kicking,” Sasuke tells her, just so she’ll know.
“For me it’s a kicking,” she replies. “But whatever. The subject of us is through. The subject of you and Sakura is not. Let me give you some advise. She’s a runner --she’ll run away every time without saying a word. But here’s the thing --you’re not a runner. And deep down, I think Sakura is tried of running. She just feels like she has to.
“I’m through with you for tonight,” Erika says, standing up. “Find that other fuck-up and have fucked-up children together. Don’t name them after fruits or months. Be original and just name them like children.”
“But she’s gone,” he says.
Erika snorts. “Sasuke, Sakura’s not gone. She’s clearly someplace. All you have to do is find out where she is.”
“Any ideas?” He asks.
“Nope,” she answers, walking away. “You’re on your own.”
He lets her leave. He watches her walk into the blast of music blaring from the open door of the club.
Then he looks back to the sidewalk and tries to map the possibilities.
Ch 12 Trippin’
Sakura was still hungry.
Maybe because food did nothing for her. It only sat in her stomach like a boulder. Only blood cured her hunger. But unless she wanted to cause an accident on the road while trying to take a bite from the driver than she would have to wait until she got home.
The stale Oreo she was munching on in the cab, with the cookie part soggy instead of crisp, the white center near-gelatinous --like a room temperature ice cream sandwich-- was brilliant, but not coming close to the thick coppery texture of blood she had come to know and love.
“Are we going or not?” the taxi driver asks Sakura. They sat through five rotations of the light at Houston and West Broadway while she decided where she wanted to go. The driver was putting up with her uncertainty because he was hopeful she wouldn’t follow through on her threat to either be driven to Jersey or file a formal complaint if he gave her any shit about leaving the city.
“Where to, lady?”
I DON’T FUCKING KNOW! She thought.
She could only process two rational thought. (1)She wanted more stale Oreos from the Korean grocery, and (2) she didn’t want some stupid fucking guy to be the reason she stopped liking Where’s Fluffy. She needed to erase the memory of her favorite Fluffy song, their gay rights anthem “Lesbian Lap Dance,” from being her last memory of the band, the song they were performing when Genius Girl decided to take Sasuke by the hand for some lap-dance action of their own. She needed to get back to that fucking club.
“Back to Ludlow,” she tells the driver.
The driver sighs, shakes his head, then pulls an illegal U-turn across four lanes of traffic from where they’d been idling at the curb. He turns up the radio volume, perhaps hoping he will not hear Sakura is she should change her mind again. How a former second-string player on the Kazakhstan soccer team came to be driving a graveyard-shift taxi in Manhattan and listening to Z100 instead of the standard 1010 WINS (all news, all depressing, all the time), which Sakura had always assumed to be the one cardinal rule of taxicab radio etiquette, she didn’t know. Everyone had a story.
Vintage Britney sings from the pop radio station; she knows about toxic. Sasuke must think she was toxic. Not stopping her when she shoved him into the closet, or when she left him to get into the taxi. He didn’t even wave good-bye.
The cab was careening down Bowery, whizzing by the cab where earlier that night Sasuke asked Sakura to be his five minute girlfriend, then made her like him, then looked right at her and made a public declaration with those magic words --”FUCK-SHIT-COCK”-- that left her no choice but to make a play for him. She remembered seeing Crazy Kent at the Where’s Fluffy show, long after those five minutes had expired. Kent would only leave his club for someone else to close up shop if…
“STOP!” Sakura shouts at the driver over the music. She’s where she needs to be.
The driver slams on the brakes so hard Sakura tosses her cookies --truly. From the other side of the plastic divider, the driver yells, “WHAT YOU WANT ANYWAY, LADY? WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU?”
Mick was across the street, ushering the last party-goers out from the establishment. His shirt was off while he swept the sidewalk. Sakura remembered Mick’s chest. All lean muscles, too scrawny, too vegan. She remembered her hands on Sasuke’s chest. She liked touching Sasuke. He had something to grab on to. She wanted more.
Three times she tried to get out, and three times she wound up sitting back down.
“What’ll it be? Are you gettin in or gettin out?” the driver asks.
She finally snaps. “Lighten Up, Motherfucker.” She bet Where’s Fluffy are playing that very backlash song that very moment. Sucked that she was missing it. Sasuke’s fault.
In a flash, the driver turns around to face her. “You want to sit in this cab and decide where to go, I don’t care. It’s your money.” He points to the meter, still running. Time was always fucking her over. “But I’ll tell you what I tell my five daughters when they get fresh. This is a gentlemen you’re talking to, not a casting director for The Sopranos. Watch your mouth or get out of this cab.”
“Okay. Sorry.” Not really. She could break the guys neck before he knew what was coming. But she did bet he was a really nice dad. She bet his daughters made him his favorite foods from Kazakhstan and nagged him about getting his prostate checked regularly. “But could you at least change the station?”
“Deal.” The next station is playing “I Fall to Pieces” by Patsy Cline. Sakura has no choice but to cry. And she realizes her mistake. She’s crying out blood tears! Thankfully, the driver hands her a box of Kleenex from the front without turning around and she quickly dabs at her face as he asks “Want to tell me about it?”
“Boys are idiots,” she tells him, still clearing her face. If she was a horrid bitch from the planet Schizophrenia, it’s because boys made her one. “I hope you don’t let your five daughters date them.”
“I try not to,” he laughs. “I try.”
She asked the driver to turn his headlights off while they idle at yet another curb. She didn’t want Mick to see her in the cab before she she’d had time to figure out what she wanted to do.
The last time she saw Mick was also at Kent’s club, before Mick left to wherever. She was curious why he came back, but getting out of the cab to ask --Why did you come back to Manhattan?-- may be more of a waste of time than the meter she was allowing to run through her time and money while she sat in the backseat. Why did anyone come here? Mere words defy that answer. The question was too big.
Whatever he had come back for, it wasn’t for Sakura. But if he did, he was even stupider that her. How was it that two people with near-perfect SAT scores could have so little intelligence when it came to each other?
Patsy’s finished falling to pieces, and now it’s Merle Haggard’s turn to taunt Sakura from the radio. Tomorrow is already here and she’s truly feeling Merle’s bittersweet song. She shouldn’t, but she does. She still wants Sasuke.
She should have trusted him.
A new gush of ruby tears are streaming down her face and this time, she doesn’t bother with the Kleenex. She could always snap the drivers’ head like a twig if he said anything. That’s how depressed she was.
Fuck him. Fuck her
Happy endings only happen in massage parlors. Not in real life. Merle Haggard knew it, and so did Sakura.
Okay, so there was something she knew she wanted. Borscht. Even though she knew human food did absolutely nothing to the vampire hunger inside her, she wanted just to feel human for once in 900 years.
“Could you please turn the light back on?” she asks the driver. She directs the driver to the 24-hour Ukrainian restaurant in the East Village.
“Good choice,” the driver tells her. He’d been watching Mick sweep.
Sakura considered taking a catnap for the short drive over but her chest is ringing. What the fuck? She forgot she was wearing Sasuke’s --she meant her-- jacket. She reaches into the chest pocket to pull out a crumpled ten-dollar bill and a small, flip-up cell phone that had a photo-booth sticker of Erika on it. Sakura hadn’t imagined Sasuke to be the cell phone type, but then she remembered, Erika gave it to him last Christmas. When Erika wanted to keep tabs on a boy, she meant it. She had told Sakura so when they were “friends” at Sacred Heart that damn all girls school.
Sakura removes the Erika photo sticker from the phone and places it on the city map beneath the taxi’s back plastic divider, above the Empire State Building image, in a position so that the building appears to be giving Erika the finger.
She didn’t know if she should answer Sasuke’s phone. The name flashing read “tHomas.” She knew it was Deidara immediately.
She felt like a terrible person. She had let two sort-of-strangers take Ino back home. She really didn’t know Deidara and Sasori well enough to call them her “friends.” That was Naruto’s job. For all she knew, Deidara and Sasori were a couple who killed people, the Ted Bundy and Aileen Wuornos of the garage-band New Jersey punk-rock scene. But she should fret. She may have been wrong about Sasuke being attracted to her. But Deidara and Sasori were good people… vampires… whatever. They would see to it that she got home safe.
She answers. “Deidara? Is Ino okay?”
“Finally!” he says. “Yeah, she’s still asleep. Seems happy. Keeps mumbling something about cartoons and Krispy Kremes in the morning. But I’ve been trying to call Sasuke for the past hour. didn’t you guys hear the phone? Sasori and I got lost coming off the parkway and then, er, we got distracted at the rest stop. We’re sitting in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. I have no idea where we are.”
Damn two hot guys and their mutual attraction to one another. She tries to talk Deidara through it, to figure out where he is, but he confuses her, and she’s lost all over again. The driver slams on the brakes. Sakura thinks they’re near St. Marks Place now. “Give me that,” the driver says, pointing to the phone. Sakura likes that he was law-abiding and doesn’t try to use Sasuke’s phone while the vehicle was in motion.
Sakura hands him the phone and the driver talks to Deidara, figuring out where he was and how to get back home in Englewood Cliffs, then hands the phone back to her. “Here, Deidara wants to talk to you again.”
“Hi again,” Sakura says into the phone.
“She hears Deidara giggle. “So how is it going? How was the date with Sasuke? You love him, right?”
“It’s been great. We’re getting married.”
“Really? Can I talk to him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I have no idea where he is.” She clicks off the cell.
They made it to the restaurant. “You coming in?” Sakura asks the driver. “Borscht and pierogies are on me.”
He smiles at her. His daughters must have some really nice family portrait from Sears hanging in their house, she thinks. “Thanks, but I’m a working man. Got to keep working. You keep the Kleenex, though.”
She takes the Kleenex box out of the car and gives the driver her hundred-dollar bill, the whole of her emergency cab money her dad placed in the secret crevice of her wallet. She only had enough for something to eat and a ride back on the bus back home, so she’ll have to hang out in the restaurant for a couple of hours until the bus services are running again.
A crazy lady stands at the restaurant entrance, holding a Chock full o’Nuts tin can, the Wicked Witch of the Stank. She eyeballs Sakura, zeroing in on her chest area. She tells Sakura, “Salvatore is looking for you.”
Sakura reaches back into the jacket pocket for the crumpled ten-dollar bill. She donates Sasuke’s tunnel money into the witch’s can.
“No, he’s not,” Sakura assures her.
Ch 13 One-liner
Life fails. Songs don’t.
He’s on the curb. Taking it all in, including the nothing. Where he is, how he is, who he is, what he’s not.
It starts to come to him.
on Ludlow
the world goes so slow
all the things I don’t know
closing in
on Ludlow
the sidewalk shadow
keeps pleading don’t go
but you won’t hear
Louder.
WHO WILL APOLOGIZE FOR HOW WE ARE?
WHO WILL NAVIGATE WHEN WE’VE GONE THIS FAR?
ANSWER ME
ANSWER THIS
ANSWER ALL THE QUESTIONS THAT
I’M TOO AFRAID TO ASK
ON LUDLOW
YOU LET ME KNOW
AND I LET YOU GO
AND WE WERE WRONG WRONG WRONG
ON LUDLOW
THERE’S A SHADOW
THAT LETS THE TRUTH SHOW
AND WE WERE WRONG WRONG WRONG
NEVER AGAIN
IS WHAT I ALWAYS SAY
NEVER AGAIN
IS WHAT I AL WAYS SAY
Take it back down.
on Ludlow
it’s just a stone’s throw
from where we could go
to where we are
on Ludlow
find me on Ludlow
on Ludlow
find me here…
“Dude! That’s pretty kickass!”
Kiba slaps Sasuke on the back and sits down next to him, his hair is a ball of dance-induced sweat, the moisture making his shirt making it even smaller than when the night started.
“You’re no in there for Where’s Fluffy?”
“Nah. Needed to take a break. You think it’s easy being the cutest damn underage lead singer on the queercore scene? I can’t work it all the time, man.”
“Where’s Randy?”
“Who?”
“Randy.”
“Hu h?”
“From Are You Randy? You were, uh, with him before?”
“Oh! You mean Ted! He’ll be out in a few. Wanted to dance off the last song. Isn’t he high voltage?”
Kiba’s got his mischievous, smitten gleam in his eye, so Sasuke nods in agreement. Sometime Kiba only has the mischievousness, and none of the smittenosity --that’s when Sasuke usually worries about the other guy’s heart. But when Kiba gets bitten by the swoony bug, Sasuke then knows it isn’t just sex that he’s after.
“So where’s Erika?” Kiba asks.
“Inside. Why?”
“I dunno. I figured you two would be together.”
“Kiba… Erika and I broke up like four weeks ago.”
“Fuck! I totally forgot. Sorry, man.”
“No prob.”
Kiba looks at Sasuke for a moment then smacks his forehead.
“Wait! There’s another girl tonight, isn’t there? I saw you, like, groping.”
“You could say that.”
“I just did!”
“What?”
“Say that. I could, and I did.”
This, for Kiba, was what usually passes as a genius.
Now he puts his arm around Sasuke, snuggling in. He loves to do that, and Sasuke never really minds. It’s not sexual so much as comforting.
“My poor straight-edge straight boy,” he says. “Nobody should be alone on a night like this.”
“But I have you, Kiba,” Sasuke replies, trying to lighten things up.
“Ain’t that the truth. At least until Ted comes back.”
“I know.”
“You know what it’s all about, Sasuke?”
“What what’s all about?”
“It, Sasuke. What it’s all about.”
“No.”
“The Beatles.”
“What about The Beatles?”
“They nailed it.”
“Nailed what?”
“Everything.”
“What do you mean?”
Kiba takes his arm and puts it right against Sasuke’s, skin to skin, sweat on sweat, touch on touch. Then he glides his hand into Sasuke’s and intertwines their fingers.
“This,” he says. “This is why The Beatles got it.”
“I’m afraid I’m not following…”
“Other bands, it’s about sex. Or pain. Or some fantasy. But The Beatles, they knew what they were doing. You know the reason The Beatles made it so big?”
“What?”
“ ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand.’ First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song written because they nailed it. That’s what everyone wants. Not 24-7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche or a blow job or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold you hand. Every single successful love song of the past fifty years can be traced back to ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand.’ And every single successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding. Trust me. I’ve thought a lot about this.”
“ ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand,’” Sasuke repeats.
“And so you are, my friend. So you are.”
He closes his eyes, fingers still folded into Sasuke’s. Even Kiba’s breathing is rock ’n’ roll, full of kicks and sputters. Sasuke angles his head on top of Kiba’s. they sit there for a second, watching traffic go by.
“I think I blew it,” Sasuke says after a moments silence.
“With Erika?”
“No. With Sakura. With Erika I didn’t have a chance. But tonight, with Sakura --it might’ve been a chance.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“So what are you gonna do about it?’
“I don’t know --sulk?”
Kiba removes his hand from Sasuke’s and squeezes his shoulder lightly instead.
“You’re damn pretty when you sulk,” he tells Sasuke, “but in this case, I think a more active course might be advantageous.”
“Where the hell are you getting these long words from?” Sasuke has to ask.
“You, stupid. ‘If you act courageous / it could be advantageous / to make me act outrageous / all over your blank pages’ --did you really think I was, like, learning these songs phonetically?”
“ ‘My love ain’t hypothetical / or pronounced for you phonetically / so it might just be heretical / if you don’t love me back,’” Sasuke quotes back in return.
Kiba nods. “Exactly.”
“Where do we come up with this shit?” Sasuke asks. “I mean, where do these words all come from? I sit here on this sidewalk and they just appear to me.”
“Maybe they’re always there and you just need to live enough life to get them to make sense,” Kiba says.
Someone whistles a birdcall behind them. They both turn, and there’s Ted just out of the club, shining like a diamond under a spotlight. He’s keeping a respectful distance, but Sasuke can tell he’s waiting.
“You gonna go hold his hand?” Sasuke asks Kiba playfully.
“Hell, yes,” Kiba says, sitting up. “Don’t get me wrong --we’re totally going to make the beast with two backs tonight. But if we do it right, it’s going to feel like holding hands.”
There’s no way Ted could’ve hear them. But when Kiba walks over to him, Ted offers him his palm. Sasuke watches them walk down the street, hand in hand. Sasuke doesn’t think they notice, but their legs are in perfect rhythm. Before they round the corner, they both turn as one and bow a goodnight to Sasuke.
He’s on his own again. He decides to check his messages… and realizes that not only has he lost his fucking jacket, but he’s also lost his fucking phone. So many indignities and Sasuke starts to feel indignant. But that’s nothing compared to trying to find a pay phone on Ludlow Street at three or so in the morning. He walks back all the way back to Houston before he finds one on the corner of a deli. The receiver feels like it’s covered with pond scum, the dial tone seems to be coming from North Dakota. The first three quarters are returned to the drop slot. Sasuke was about to lose his shit entirely, but then the next two quarters stay put and the volume button amps things up enough that he can actually hear the call start.
Sakura answers on the fourth ring.
“Who the hell is this?” she asks.
Sasuke knew she would answer but, still, he’s dumbstruck.
“Is Sasuke there?” he finally asks.
“No,” she says. “He’s out defeating a minor threat. Do you want to call back for his voice mail?”
It’s like he can’t help it. He’s absolutely falling back into conversation with her.
“Can I give him a message?” he asks.
“Do I need a pen? Cuz if I do, you’re so fucking out of luck.”
“No. Could you just let him that he totally blew it when he let Sakura get away in that cab?”
There’s a pause. “Who the fuck is this?”
“And could you let him know that I’m really fucking relieved that he has finally unshackled himself from that Erika bitch?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“And could you pass on the message that it’s not enough to be sitting alone on a sidewalk writing a song for a girl if you can’t have the guts to at least try talking to her again?”
Another pause. “Are you serious?”
“Where are you?”
“Veselka. Where are you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “I’ll be at Veselka soon. In the meantime, can you pass on my message?”
He hangs up before she can reply.
Ch 14 Bathroom business
That was rude, hanging up on a person like that.
Sakura refuses to believe that call just happened. She’s tired she’s hallucinating.
Just in case, she goes into the bathroom, splashes some cold water on her face to wake the fuck up, fingers through her hair to make it looked tousled in an attractive way but not so attractive that it looks like she tousled because she cares what it looks like, and reaches down her shirt to rearrange her boobs. Salvatore looks the other way.
When she gets back to her table, it’s heaped with food: the bowl of borscht, half a dozen pierogies, some kielbasa. The blintzes should be following soon. What could she say, she was craving meat bad. She could save the leftovers for the witch lady or some other homeless person.
She digs in like she hasn’t eaten real food in days. Well, she hasn’t… not really. Blood didn’t really count. She thinks she has borscht dribbling down her chin when she manages to look up. He’s here. Holy shit.
Sasuke doesn’t speak at first. He just sits down and butters a piece of challah toast. Between swallows, he asks, “How many fucking people did you order food for anyway?” He takes a sip of Sakura’s Coke, belches, and repeats her last words back at her. “ ‘You are absolved’? What the fuck did that mean?” He sounds hostile but he’s got that fucking half smile laced onto his lips.
Sakura is determined to sulk, but the truth was, she wanted to lick him all over. She cannot believe he’s here. She wants to do truly nasty thing to him. With him.
She tries to sound blasé. “It means, we meant under kind of strange circumstances and spent a few kind of strange hours together, but just because I made an asshole of myself doesn’t mean you have to go all Nice Guy and like try to push our whatever-it-was any further. Anyway, we don’t even know each other and we’ve never been properly introduced--”
Sasuke interrupts her by extending his hand, slick with traces of butter. “I’m Sasuke,” he says. “I’m from a swingin’ little hood called Hoboken. Where’s Fluffy were my fav band until tonight. I write songs. I was dumped by a wildebeest but I’m working on getting over it. And you?”
Sakura shakes his hand, trying hard not to smile. She didn’t owe him the pleasure. “I’m Sakura,” she says. “From Englewood fuckin’ not-swingin’ Cliffs. Where’s Fluffy were also my fav band until tonight. I love songs that are written. I dumped a wildebeest and he dumped me and it’s been this endless miserable spiral, but I’m also getting over it.”
“Hi, Sakura,” he says.
“Hi, Sasuke,” she answers.
“Can I have my fucking jacket back?”
“No.” She deserved some reward for her rejection.
“Why?”
“Because Salvatore wants me to have it.”
“He told you that?”
“He did.”
“But what if the jacket didn’t really belong to Salvatore? What if it wasn’t his to give to you? What if it really belonged to his evil twin, Salamander, who only had Salvatore’s name stenciled on so people would mistake him for his good twin and then Salamander would be free to carry on with his nefarious mission in life?”
“What nefarious mission would that be?”
“You know, world domination, that whole thing.”
“World domination is exhausting and cliché. People ought to just focus on being individual responsible citizens of the earth instead of assholes. And you can tell that to Salamander next time he comes asking for his jacket. Tell him me and Salvatore are starting our own new world order. It’s called the Chill the Fuck Out and Let the Girl Have the Jacket movement.”
“Will there be T-shirts and pins for this new movement?”
“Probably. We’re looking into luggage insignia as well, maybe even some corporate product endorsements from Nike or IBM.”
Sakura doesn’t even realize she is laughing, or even moving, until Sasuke takes a strand of hair that’s fallen in front of her face and tucks it behind her ear and for a second she feels her breath on his arm. They look into each other’s eyes and there is possible forgiveness, and togetherness, and rejoice.
There is a silence. Then, “Why did you leave?” he asks. Why did YOU stop?
“National security emergency. Salvatore and I got beeped. Turned out o be a false alarm.” Why do you think I left, beautiful moron? She thinks.
And they’re at a stalemate. They eat.
“Where are your friends?” Sakura asks, remembering not to ask Where are my roommates instead because Sasuke has so much to learn from her. O, so much. Sasuke must have found her only so he could get his fucking pone back. Sakura’s sure his boys will be rolling through any moment to retrieve him, probably steal her blintzes.
Sasuke says, “Kiba is with Ted.”
“Ted?”
“You know, Ted from Are You Randy?”
“There’s no Ted from Are you Randy? There’s Randy and a bunch of other guys, none named Ted.”
“Then who’s Randy?” Sasuke asks.
“The guy who was trying to get with Ino!”
“Who’s Ino?”
“For fuck’s sake, who’s TED?”
“They guy Kiba hooked up with!”
“That’s SAI. From Sai Does Sai.”
“Oh,” Sasuke says. “I get it now.” He draws a map on the paper placemat on the table. “Kiba’s with Ted, who’s also Sai, but he’s not Randy, who wanted Ino, who I guess is the girl in the back of the van with Deidara and Sasori?”
Sakura places her hand over his. “YES!”
It’s like she’s shared another dance with Johnny Castle, and she hopes she doesn’t wake up from this dream if it is a dream. She pinches his thigh to check, and he leans over to her, and they’re both smiling in anticipation and their eyes are meeting and something Sakura thinks very natural and sweet is about to happen, except…
A Beast stands over their table. It points at Sakura. “I need to talk to you. Come into my office.” Erika whips around and heads towards the bathroom. Sakura is amazed that even with her thick black roots peeking through her platinum-blond hair, the eyeliner and lipstick on her face smudged from the night’s adventures, her eyes bloodshot from fatigue, she still manages to look hot. It’s so wrong.
Sakura stands up and sees what the bitch wants. Erika is peeing when Sakura walks in. Erika wasn’t the type of person to care about privacy. But Sakura closes the door behind her anyway and says, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I lost my date and I knew I would find you here, borscht bitch. I need cab money home. I figure you owe me. Fifty bucks ought to cover a gypsy cab back to Jersey and a Starbucks run.” She wipes, stands up, flushes. “So can I have it?” She shoves Sakura aside to wash her hands at the sink.
“How do you figure I owe you?”
“You know, I’m giving you Sasuke.”
“Are you really?” because Sakura wants it to be clear once and for all.
“I really am,” Erika says, applying a fresh coat of lipstick. Sakura believes her.
“I think I really like him,” Sakura says.
“He likes you, too. Just don’t name your children after months or fruits. Promise me.”
“What?”
Erika turns to face Sakura. “Are you going to give me the fifty bucks or not?”
“Don’t you think Sasuke is worth more than that?”
“Bitch, I’m not trying to quantify the value of a human being. I just need to get home. And don’t cry poor because I know you have some secret stash of emergency money tucked in some pocket.” Erika leans over Sakura and , honest to Allah, frisks her. “Jesus, you’re stacked! Why do you hide it under these huge shirts all the time?”
Sakura had thought she used her emergency money when she gave her secret stash to the cabdriver who got her here, but then she remembered the fifty-dollar bill Deidara gave her earlier to take Sasuke out on a date intended to free the boy of Erika’s ghost. So much for that fund.
Sakura shoves Erika away and reaches inside the inner pocket of her flannel shirt. She hands over the fifty-spot. “Thank you!” Erika snaps, then turns to leave, but Sakura pulls her back.
“Erika?”
“What, bitch.”
“Do you think I’m doing this all right?” Sakura extends her arms wide like she’s talking about the whole world.
“I saw the two of you kissing. Seems like you knew what you where doing to me.”
“But…”
Erika sighs, loses her gum to the wall behind her, presses Sakura up against the wall, and her face leans in close to Sakura’s. She says, “Kiss you partner’s upper lip.” She kisses Sakura’s upper lip, softly, gently. “That’s yang.” Her lips move down. “Kiss you partner’s bottom lip.” She kisses Sakura’s bottom lip, more urgently. “That’s yin.” She pulls away but her left hand is now under the back of Sakura’s shirt, pressed against the small of her spine. “Start by opening all your chakras, like that.”
Sakura doesn’t say anything, lips still parted. She doesn’t know if the lesson is over.
“Or, you can try this one.” With both hands, Erika pulls Sakura’s face to hers. She sucks Sakura’s upper lip between her lips, and then her tongue is in Sakura’s mouth, caressing the middle area between her upper lip and gums. Sakura hadn’t even noticed that area before. “That’s the frenulum,” Erika says when she’s done. “That little connective tissue inside your mouth. It’s a Hot Spot. You can use that one on Sasuke, you have my permission. I don’t think I ever used that one on him so it’s not like you’d be copying me.”
Sakura still doesn’t move. Now she knows she’s dreaming.
Erika says, “Or you can be inventive. Go on. Try me.”
Was she for real? Nonetheless, Sakura tilts her head at an angle and leans into Erika’s face. Sakura places her hands on Erika’s hips and presses up against her. Slowly, Sakura kisses her upper lip, yang, sucks her lower lip, yin, but instead of following up with tongue, which Erika’s mouth really seems to want, Sakura returns to her upper lip and gives it some gentle bites.
Erika pulls back. “Nip kissing! Good instinct, Sakura. Gotta be careful with that one, though. Only do it with a partner you trust. Those teeth can get dangerous with the wrong person.”
When Erika mentioned ‘those teeth,’ Sakura was scared she meant her fangs. Quickly swiping her tongue over her canines, Sakura mentally sighed in relief.
“How do you know so much?” Sakura asks Erika.
“Hello, bitch, I can Google sexual techniques just as well as you could if you wanted. It’s not rocket science here.” Erika turns to leave but pauses and looks back at Sakura. “But, Sakura?”
“Yes?”
“Get to know him first. You two aren’t the one-night-stand types. You’re all sensitive and shit. don’t go too fast.”
And she’s gone.
From the open door, Sakura sees her breeze past Sasuke on her way out. She says, “I told you that you’d find her someplace! Good job! And good lick with that one. You’re gonna need it. I almost feel sorry for you.”
Sakura feels less sorry for Sasuke now. Maybe he’s not some poor schmuck. She now knows how he got so whipped.
Ch 15 Break the fuse
While Sakura and Erika we’re in the bathroom together, Sasuke tried to distract himself by coming up with a list of things that could be worse than having your vehement ex drag your current she’s-so-frickin’-cool girl away from some cubicle camaraderie (or conflict). He come up wit the following:
Having your pubic hair trimmed with garden shears.
Having your pubic hair trimmed with garden shears by a frat guy who’s had 12 shots Jägermeister.
Having your pubic hair trimmed with garden shears by a frat guy who’s had 12 shots Jägermeister during an 8.6 earthquake.
Having your pubic hair trimmed with garden shears by a frat guy who’s had 12 shots Jägermeister during an 8.6 earthquake with lite jazz playing.
Sasuke had to stop there. It was just too horrifying.
It was amazing how little he trust Erika, considering that trust was an essential ingredient to love.
Best case scenario:
She was saying, “Really, he was just too good for me, and I always felt like he could do better…like with a girl like you. And, man, is he hot in bed.”
Worst case scenario:
She was saying, “There was this one time, we were flipping through the channels, and he stopped on Pocahontas, and the next thing I knew, he had a total hard-on.” (Erika wouldn’t mention where her hands were at the time.) “And man, he is one lousy fuck, in more ways than one.”
Deep breaths. He’s taking deep breaths.
The waitress probably thinks Sasuke is the worst kind of perv, because he can’t stop staring at the bathroom door.
Finally, it opens, and Erika come out alone. And Sasuke’s first thought was What the fuck have you done to Sakura? Were is she?
But Erika isn’t staying long enough to be asked any questions. She just pushes past the table, yelling at Sasuke, “I told you that you’d find her someplace! Good job! And good luck with that one. You’re gonna need it. I almost feel sorry for you.”
And all Sasuke could think to say was:
“thanks.”
But he doesn’t say anything else. He lets her leave. And for the first time, he thinks this is what some cultures call progress.
Sakura’s looking a little flustered as she comes back to the table, her face flushed, her pulse clearly up a notch or two.
“Are you okay?” Sasuke asks her.
She nods absently. Then she looks at him and their conversation starts back up again.
“Yeah,” she says. “She just needed some money.”
“And you gave her what she wanted?”
“I guess we have a lot in common, don’t we?”
“She’s a fucking force of nature.”
“She certainly is.”
“But to hell with her.”
Sakura seems a little startled. “What?”
“I don’t know what she said to you, and I probably don’t want to know. Just like I don’t want to know why you ordered all this meat, or where you got your flannel --not that there’s anything wrong with it. That’s not what I want to know.”
She steals a piece of kielbasa and, before putting it in her mouth asks, “So what do you want to know?”
A lot of questions run through his mind, but he answers with, “Why me? You knew me before tonight, didn’t you.” And that last part wasn’t a question.
She chews for a second. Swallows. Drinks some water.
“That’s what you want to know?”
“It seems like a place to start.”
Without hesitation, she says, “All the girls at Sacred Heart had it big for you. Erika would always pass around the mix tapes and love letters you made for her. So every girl was already head-over-heels from the first song, “Love Knows No Boundaries” to the last song. Sorry, I can’t remember the name of it. Anyway, I, on the other hand, had better things to do. Like trying to ignore…” She didn’t say Mick’s name, but Sasuke got the point. “So when you asked me to be your five minute girlfriend, I honestly didn’t know it was you. I was just out to have a good time tonight. But I know that from the moment we kissed, there was something.”
Sasuke was in awe. But instead of coming out with something stupid like, “Really? You knew me that long?” he instead said, “ ‘March Eighteenth.’”
“What?”
“That’s the name of the last song I made. I mean, it doesn’t really have a name. I can’t believe you remembered it.”
“I loved it.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
They sit there until Sasuke says, “It wasn’t really about her.”
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“It was about the feeling, you know? She caused it in me, but it wasn’t about her. It was about my reaction, what I wanted to feel and then convinced myself that I felt, because I wanted it that bad. That illusion. It was love because I created it as love.”
Sakura nods. “With Mick, it was the way he always said goodnight. Isn’t that stupid? At first, over the phone, then when he dropped me off at my house or when we spent hours drifting off to sleep together. And he always made it seem like a wish. It was just probably something his mother always said to him. A habit. But I thought, This is caring. This is real. I could just erase so many things. That simple goodnight.”
“I don’t think Erika ever wished me a goodnight.”
“Well, Mick sure as hell didn’t inspire me to write songs.”
“That’s too bad,” Sasuke says. “Mick rhymes with almost everything.”
Sakura thinks for a second. “Shit, prick, hick, dick, sick…yeah, too bad.”
Sakura’s phone rings and she pulls it out of her pocket. She looks at the screen and mumbles, “Ino.” Sasuke sees she’s about to answer, and finds himself saying, “Don’t.”
“Don’t?”
“Yeah.& #8221;
Another ring.
“What if it’s an emergency?”
“She’ll call back later. Look, I want us to take a walk.”
“A walk?”
Ring número tres.
“Yeah. You, me, and the city. I want to talk to you.”
“Are you serious?”
“Not as a rule, but in this case yes.”
Ring.
“Where will we go?”
“Wherever. It’s only” --He looks at his watch-- “Four in the morning.”
Pause.
Silence.
Voice mail.
Sakura bites her lower lip.
“Thinking about it?” Sasuke asks uneasily.
“No. just thinking about where to go. Somewhere nobody will find us.”
“Like Park Avenue?”
Sakura tilts her head and says, “Yes, like Park Avenue.”
And then she utters a word Sasuke never in a zillion years thought he’d ever hear her utter:
“Midtown.”
It’s ridiculous, but they take the subway. Even more ridiculous, it’s the 6 train they take, the most notoriously slow local in all of Manhattan. At four in the morning, they’re on the platform for a good twenty minutes --the time it would have taken them to walk-- but Sasuke doesn’t mind the delay because they’re talking all over the place, hitting peanut butter preferences and favorite pairs of underwear and Erika’s occasional body odor and Mick’s body hair fetish and the fate of the Olsen twins and the number of times they’ve seen rats in the subway and their favorite graffiti ever --all in what seems like a single sentence that lasts the whole twenty minutes. Then they’re in the weird fluorescence of the subway car, sliding into each other when the train stops and starts, making comments with their eyes about misbegotten drunkards, business-suit stockbroker frat boys, and weary night travelers that share their space. Sasuke is having a fucking good time, and the amazing part is that he realizes it just as it’s happening. He thinks Sakura is getting into it, too. Sometimes, when they slide together, they take a few seconds to separate. They’re not to the point of deliberately touching again, but they’re not about to turn down a good accident.
They get out the subway at Grand Central and walk north on Park. Completely empty, skyscrapers standing guard up and down the avenue.
“It feel like we’re in a canyon,” Sakura says.
“What freaks me out is how many of the buildings still have lights on. I mean, there have to be thousands of lights in each building that are left on for the night. That can’t be very efficient.”
“There are probably still people working. Checking their e-mail. Making another million. Screwing someone over while they sleep.”
“Or maybe,” Sasuke says, “they just think it’s pretty.”
Sakura snorts. “You’re right. That must be it.”
“Does your dad work around here?”
“No. He’s all about downtown. Yours?”
Sasuke looks far into the distance as he says, “My parent died when I was seven.”
Sakura stops walking and looks at Sasuke with solemn eyes. “Sasuke, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
“No worries.” She wants to ask how they met their last moments of life, but she doesn’t and they start walking again. “Are your parents together?” Sasuke asks her. It’s hard to talk about parents, seeing as though he lost his in a freak accident, but he wants to show Sakura he’s not bothered by it. Much.
“Uh,” now it was Sakura’s turn to look off elsewhere. “Yes and no.” Sasuke shoots her a raised eyebrow. “You see, my mom died when I was little. But my dad remarried. Married almost two years now.”
They sit down on the edge of one of the corporate fountains, watching the headlight show of passing traffic.
“Sucks when parents remarry,” Sasuke says. “Just makes everything awkward, you know?”
“Yeah, I know.” Sakura truly knew. Ever since her father married Clara, she was nothing but a pain. Luckily, her dad was very understanding.
Seconds of silence pass until Sasuke joked by saying, “Hey, sexy, come here often?”
Sakura gives him a small smile. “Yeah. I know I’m so bridge-and-tunnel --for as long as I’ve been able to catch the train, I’ve been sneaking into the city to go to Midtown. Hang out with the bankers, merge some mergers and acquire some acquisitions. The whole thing just reeked of sex and rock ’n’ roll to me. Can’t you feel it in the air? Close your eyes. Feel it?”
Sasuke does close his eyes. He hears the cars passing from all over. He hears the building yawning into space. He hears his heartbeat. Then he has this momentary fantasy that she’s going to lean over and kiss him again. But enough time goes by for him to know this isn’t going to happen. When he opens his eyes, he finds her looking at him.
“You’re cute. You know that?” she says.
He has no idea how to respond. So it hangs in the air until he finally says, “You’re just saying that to get me to take off my clothes and frolic in the fountain.”
“Am I really that transparent? Fuck!”
“We could go break into St. Patrick’s instead,” Sasuke suggests.
“With our clothes off?”
“I’d have to keep on my socks. Do you know what kind of people touch the ground there?”
“I’ll have to say ix-nay on the athedral-cay. I can see the headlines now: ‘RECORD EXEC DAUGHTER FOUND PLAYING PORNISH PRANKS IN PATRICK’S. “We thought she was such a nice Jewish girl,” neighbors say.’ “
“You’re Jewish?” Sasuke asks.
Sakura looks at him like if he’s just asked her if she was really a girl.
“Of course I’m Jewish.” Among other and otherworldly things, Sakura kept to herself.
“So what’s that like?”
“Are you kidding me?”
Did he look like he was kidding her? “No,” he says. “Really. What’s that like?”
“I don’t know. It’s just something that is. It’s not something that’s like.”
“Well, what are your favorite things about it?”
“Like the fact that there are eight days of Hanukkah?”
“Sure, if that means something to you.”
“All it really means to me is that I was slightly less bitter about not having a tree when I was a kid.”
“So what about the real things?” he asks. He wants to know more.
“The real things?”
“Yeah. Try.”
She thinks for a second. “Okay. There’s one part of Judaism I really like. It’s called tikkun olam.”
“Tikkun olam,” Sasuke repeats.
“Exactly. Basically, it says that the world has been broken into pieces. All this chaos, all this discord. And our job --everyone’s job-- is to try to put the pieces back together. To make things whole again.”
“And you believe that?” Sasuke asks, not as a challenge, as a genuine question.
She shrugs, then negates the shrug with the thought in her eyes. “I guess I do. I mean, I don’t know how the world broke. And I don’t know if there is a God who can help us fix it. But the fact that the world is broken --I absolutely believe that. Just look around us. Every minute --every single second-- there are a million things you could be thinking about. A million things you can be worrying about. Our world --don’t you feel it becoming more and more fragmented? I used to think that when I got older, the world would make so much more sense. But you know what? The older I get, the more confusing it is to me. The more complicated it is. Harder. You’d think we’d be getting better at it. But there’s just more and more chaos. The pieces --they’re everywhere. And nobody knows what to do about it. I find myself grasping, Sasuke. You know that feeling? That feeling when you just want the right thing to fall into the right place, not only because it’s right, but because it will mean that such a thing is still possible? I want to believe in that.” There. She said all that. Not even knowing until she was done that she was actually talking about her life. Her world and how difficult it would be to let Sasuke go when the time came. The world was broken alright. And she had made it happen.
“Do you really think it’s getting worse?” Sasuke asks. “I mean, aren’t we better off than we were twenty years ago? Or a hundred?”
“We’re better off,” she said, because she had seen the world a hundred years ago. She’s lived it, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. “But I don’t know if the world’s better off. I don’t know if the two are the same thing.”
“You’re right,” he says.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, ‘You’re right.’”
“But nobody ever says, ‘You’re right.’ Just like tat.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She leans into him a little then. Not accidental. But it somehow feels like an accident --them being there, this night. As if she were reading his mind, she says, “I appreciate it.” Then her head falls to his shoulder, and all Sasuke can feel is her fitting there. He looks up, trying to find the sky behind the building, trying to find at least a trace of the stars. Then when he can’t, he closes his eyes and tries to conjure up his own, glad that Sakura’s not reading his mind just now, because he doesn’t know how he’d react if anyone knew him like that. As they sit in that city silence, which is not so much as silence s light noise, his mind drifts back to what she said.
Then it hits him.
“Maybe we’re the pieces,” he says.
Sakura’s head doesn’t move from his arm. “What?” she asks. And Sasuke can tell from her voice that her eyes are closed.
“Maybe that’s it. Wit what you were talking about before. The world being broken. Maybe it isn’t that we’re suppose to find the pieces and put them back together. Maybe we’re the pieces.”
She doesn’t reply, but he knows she’s listening carefully. For once, he feels like he’s understanding something for the first time, even though he doesn’t know exactly what it is yet.
“Maybe,” Sasuke says, “what we’re suppose to do is come together. That’s how we stop the breaking.”
Tikkun olam.
Ch 16 Circus cherry blistex
Sakura and Sasuke have fallen silent again but it’s not the uncomfortable type. It’s the way it’s suppose to be. The way the earth smells after a downpour, the way a match smells after you put it out, the way the sun hits vast oceans and the saltwater wafts up to your nostrils and as you about let release take over you think ‘Hey, this is pretty nice.’ Like that.
But Sakura is greedy to learn more about this Sasuke that she can’t take the silence anymore, even if it a nice one. She could just as easily ready his mind to figure out what he’s all about, like she had done earlier. But she figured that she wouldn’t get the same respond if she just asked instead. So, she figures, the way to find more about him is to tell him more about her. So she informs him, “I get my flannel in the men’s department at Marshalls.”
“My mom loved that store,” he said.
“You mom was smart.”
She was. Will he tell her more about his mom?
As her mouth is talking about fucking Marshalls, her mind is compiling all it knows about Sasuke. Trying to put together what makes up this guy.
So far:
Straight-edge guy who survived a six-month relationship with Erika. Bassist in a queer core band, promising lyrics. Can get profound in the matters of tikkun olam. And he’s a fucking great kisser --but one who said NO to the no-strings-attached sex that was basically offered to him by an idiot girl in a closet at a Where’s Fluffy show a couple hours ago, and yet somehow he still manages to pop up at Veselka for her later which she thought that was a pretty sexy move; but then he didn’t make a move on her on the 6 train when opportunity and ambience were just so converging as the lights dimmed and the train lurched their bodies together. What was she suppose to do with this guy?
As Sakura leans her head on Sasuke’s arm, she can smell him up close and personal without the club haze of beer and smoke, and he smells faintly of either cologne spritz or like he had an aromatherapy massage at some spa before the night started, which strikes Sakura as a disturbingly high-maintenance scent for a punk boy. His scent sends the pieces in her mind together, into finally making sense of him.
She may have to issue a reaction to Randy from Are You Randy?
Because there is just no way this Sasuke guy is one hundred percent straight.
And as if to prove her suspicions, Sasuke takes some Chapstick from his jeans pocket and rubs it on his lips. Sakura is a Blistex whore herself, so it’s not the Chapstick that alerts her; it’s the cherry flavor.
If he turned out to be gay, Sakura would be furious. They get all the good ones! Or maybe the simple diagnosis of either hetero or homo is misleading. Maybe there’s just sexuality, and it’s bendable and unpredictable, like a circus performer, which Sakura used to want to be, and hey, that could have be a good option worth pursuing if she wasn’t a vampire. Turns out animals know when you’re different from the living and freak out. But she was a vampire so that wasn’t gonna happen. She’d love to be bendy like a circus performer. Maybe Erika would come see her show sometime and Sakura could find out more about her groupie bitch skills.
Wherever Sasuke’s sexuality lies (lays? --whatever, same diff), the bottom line was: This Sasuke guy was too good to be true. He writes amazing songs. He was fucking cute. He was damn smart. And damn sensitive. He was given her more adventure and confusion in one night that she’s ever had in her ENITRE lifetime. He heart is aching again, scared, because she wants to know EVERYTHING about him. Even the sentimental bullshit.
She’s wondering if he shares her feelings that the Where’s Fluffy track “Hideous Becomes You” is the most beautiful love song ever, and she’s already told him about tikkun olam, which seems like such a random thing but was really sacred to her, and she was thinking if they name their first son Salvatore, that’s not the name of a fruit or month, and lots of not 100% straight people procreate, right?
In confusion to her thoughts, she’s lost, and what she thought was Sasuke and her enjoying a life of “high,” have apparently been mistaken for terrorists. Building security men have come out to give them their marching orders --to anywhere that’s not sitting at the fountain in front of their building.
They stand up and walk, heading west. Maybe Sakura wasn’t the only one trying to figure out shit, too. Sasuke says, “Your dad, the record company executive who’s all about downtown. Is there a reason you haven’t told me his name? Would I know who he is?”
“You would,” she says. She needs to first determine which way Sasuke swings before she finds out if he’s getting to know her just so he can pass on a demo.
He lets the name issue drop. “You must meet a lot of famous people.”
“Maybe when I was younger.” Total lie. VAMPIRES DON’T AGE. “We went to festivals and concerts all the time. I’m lucky, I have met a lot of incredible artist with Daddy throughout my life, some of them legends.” She was about to go into detail about meeting Elvis Presley back in the 70’s, but something told her to keep her mouth shut. “But something I figured a few year ago is it’s better not to get to know them. Because if I didn’t get to know them, then I could still enjoy their music, without knowing all their problems and addictions and whether “Blue Monday” was actually from New Order, The Cure or Orgy.”
“That’s why I like Where’s Fluffy so much. They’re not like that, not about the whole star trip.”
“Maybe not, and I hope I don’t disillusion you, champ, but Lars L. is a total junkie, Owen O. is a raging alcoholic, and Evan E.’s just plain crazy. I know --my dad tried to sign them up.”
Sasuke shoves against her side playfully. “You’re not disillusioning me. You can’t look at the band members and not know that. I mean, have you listened to the lyrics of ‘High Is Better Than Low’? Cuz it’s not about Evan E.’s love of stiletto Manolos.”
Damn, Sasuke knows designer shoe names. Bad sign.
Sasuke adds, “But that’s what I love about punk music. It has a sense of humor about itself, doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. It’s kickass funk with a heavy-metal edge, but with a conscience.”
Good recovery.
“Wanna know my secret desire?” Sakura teases. She’s not gonna tell him the truth, because that involves his blood.
Sasuke turns to her and lifts an eyebrow, like an old-time movie star. She’s pretty sure he doesn’t tweeze or wax, but he does have suspiciously beautiful eyebrows… “Of course I want to know,” he says.
“I would like to be the person who comes up with song titles, especially country music ones.”
“What’s your best one?”
“ ‘You Stole My Heart and Left It for Roadkill,’ ” she tells him. “Go ahead, feel free to come up with some lyrics.”
As they approach Seventh Avenue, they both automatically turn south, and Sakura realizes they never discussed where they were going to go after Park Avenue. But like when they held on tight through the mosh, Sakura was sure they were gonna stay together.
Her cell phone is ringing and it says Daddy-O and she has to take it, that’s a rule for out-all-night adventures. “Do you mind?” she asks Sasuke.
“Go ahead,” he says. Sakura stands under a building awning as Sasuke steps away to the curb to give her privacy, which she really does need because her dad was a total Spaz-o-tard, though she’s unsure where his good manners land him on the sexuality meter.
“Hi, Daddy,” Sakura says into the phone. “What are you doing in Manhattan? I thought you were in England with Clara until next month.”
“Yeah, well, I decided I just couldn’t be away from my little Sugar Diamond! My little Princess of The Night! My little Moulin Rouge! My--”
“Couldn’t take being with Clara another second?” Sakura smirked as she picked at her fingernails.
“Oh GOD YES!… but don’t worry! I’ll be gone before you get home. Which brings me to… you okay? I’ve got a motley crew assembled here of two band guys and an inebriated Ino, but no Sakura.”
“I’m okay, Dad. Maybe I’m even great?”
“Are you going to tell me his name?”
“No.”
“Are you going to be home soon?”
“No.”
“Are you ever going to obey a command of mine again?”
“No.”
He sighs. “Please be careful.” Sakura decides he’d probably rather not know she was standing in Times Square in the early hours of the morning with a boy who she’s only known for a few hours. “Naruto and I will take care of everything here. Naruto’s making Deidara and Sasori scrambles eggs with blood on the side. Nice kids.”
“Daddy?”
“Yeah?”
“I think I made a mistake with Mick following me here… somehow.”
“No shit.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“I’ll tell you what you can do. Dump his ass! and get with the guy you’re with now. You know, let him get in your pants for once. Let loose! Free the tiger! Besides, it’s a good thing you didn’t mail that sympathy shit letter to him when you had the chance, huh?”
Sakura should be grateful that her dad looks out for her. But instead, “YOU HAD NO RIGHT! THAT IS LIKE A PERSONAL INVASTION OF PRIVACY! AND IT’S A FEDERAL OFFENSE TO TAMPER WITH THE MAIL!”
He chuckles. “Too fucking bad. Don’t be home too late.” And he hangs up on her.
Maybe her dad was a fuckin’ corporate hippie, but she really loved that old bastard.
Sakura can’t think if what her dad did because the skies have suddenly opened up and it’s a hellacious downpour, but what is Sasuke doing? He’s dancing a jig at the curb, his arms outstretched, his face tilted upward to receive the splash. Joyful.
She doesn’t tell Sasuke her call is finished. Instead she just watches him. A while ago when she looked at Sasuke, she felt inspired by the line from the Smiths song playing earlier at Camera Obscura, the strip joint, where Morrissey sings about how what she asked of me / at the end of the day / Caligula would have blushed. She doesn’t care about whether Sasuke was straight or gay or somewhere in between. She was thinking she would like to dance in the rain with this person. She would like to lie next to him in the dark and watch him breathe and watch him sleep and wonder what he’s dreaming about and not get inferiority complex if the dreams weren’t about her.
She doesn’t know if Sasuke and her are going to be friends or lovers or if he was going to be Will and she was going to be Grace, which will be disappointing along with boring, but whatever they were going to be to each other, it can’t be --it won’t be-- just a one-night-stand thing.
This, she knows for sure.
Ch 17 Breathless, baby, breathless
Singing in the rain. Sasuke was singing in the rain. And it was such a fucking glorious feeling. An unexpected downpour and he was just giving himself into it. Because what the fuck else can you do? Run for cover? Shriek or curse? No --when the rain falls you just let it fall and you grin like a madman and you dance with it, because if you can make yourself happy in the rain then you’re doing pretty alright in life. As the first drops fall, she’s still on the phone and he’s watching her talk and she’s just the most amazingly complicated thing, trying on all these expressions at once --yelling angry when she’s clearly happy, then pretending to be listening when she’s really watching him in the rain. Then she puts the phone back in Salvatore’s pocket and walks over to him. He doesn’t know why they say the sky is opening up when it rains --like the sky has been holding back all this time, and this this was its release. And he looks at her and she looks at him and it’s like everything just opens up. He was feeling the raindrops drench his clothes. He was feeling the hair fall down in his eyes. But he was also feeling this lightness and she was so fucking beautiful the way her mouth was uncertain about whether or not to smile. They we’re on the edge of Times Square with its beacon of lights and they we’re swaying as the sky was opening, and he reaches out for her to be his dance partner and she accepts. So that leaves them on the sidewalk, his arm around her body. She presses close --was just staring at him-- and even though Sasuke doesn’t know what the question is, he definitely knows the answer. So he says “This,” and leans in and he kisses her right there on the edge of Times Square, the way people kiss good-bye on the street, only this was more like a hello. This.
Sasuke opens his mouth and Sakura opens her mouth and it was like she was breathing through him. And her body was wet and it was right against his and he wants, he wants, he wants. She pulls back for a second, her eyes filled with laughter and her eyes with seriousness, another question. But before Sasuke can answer her question, she places her hand on the back of his neck and presses her body tighter against his and his presses even tighter back. The people around them --not many, and certainly not many sober-- are looking at them, and Sasuke can’t help but look around a bit, and he gets an idea. He tells her his idea and takes her hand in his and they do that thing where you weave your fingers together, here is the church here is the steeple, and leads her into Times Square and under the lights and past the marquees until they get to the Marquis. Two other people share their ride in the glass elevator, but they get off at the eighth-floor lobby. Sasuke asks Sakura what her lucky number is and she tells him, so they go to that floor. There was nobody in the halls and best of all there was no hallway music playing, and Sasuke doesn’t see what he’s looking for and then he finds it, but Sakura can’t wait and she’s putting her hand under his collar and feeling the skin from his shoulder to his neck and this was so damn hot for him that he forgets where they were going for a second and he just makes out with her right there in the hallway, out of sight of the atrium and the glass elevators, but still careful not to lean against any doors because that might wake up the tourists inside. Instead they press against the wall and she runs her hands over Sasuke’s chest then at his belt she goes back up to his neck. His hands travel her shirt and her breasts and they are damn soaked and damn ready. They kiss for about five minutes more and was a damn good kisser. Kissing his upper lip and then his bottom lip. Sasuke echoes her --kissing her upper lip then bottom lip. Then she tries to do something with her tongue that doesn’t quite work, and after she gives up on the tongue thing, Sasuke can tell she was relaxing a little more. She was losing herself, and Sasuke loved all the more that she’s not trying, she’s just doing.
Sasuke steers her a little down the hall until they were in front of a room that said ICE. She laughs and he says, “C’mon,” because where else were they suppose to go? And the room wasn’t that cold. She says, “You can’t be serious,” and he has to agree that he can’t be. He wasn’t. He says, “I’m just really into you,” and then he kisses her and she finds the light switch and turns it off, and then they’re just lit in Pepsi-can colors and it was like they’ve finally found this other kind of conversation, this conversation in gestures and pulls and pushes and breaths and grasps and teases and glimmers and rubs and expectation. “Are you okay?” he asks, and she says, “Are you?” And Sasuke says, “Yes, I am.” He was more than okay. This was a great conversation.
God, I like her so much.
“Let’s get you out of some of those wet clothes,” she says, pulling at his shirt and stumbles with some of the buttons and Sasuke doesn’t know what’s come over him but he starts tickling her and that pisses her off, but she’s laughing, and gasping, and laughing, and holding it back. He guesses so the guests won’t hear. She finishes with the buttons and takes off the shirt. Sasuke takes his jacket off her shoulders and she does the strangest thing --she pulls back for a second and folds it neatly, puts it almost reverently on the floor. Then he peels off the wet flannel then the white T-shirt underneath. Sakura runs her fingers through his hair, neck, shoulders --he found out she really liked his neck a lot-- then chest and followed the trail of hair that disappeared beyond his jeans and belt. Sasuke had never, ever felt such desire. She takes the belt off, hitting the floor. She then unbuttons the top button of his jeans-- only the top button. And he reaches over to her jeans and unbuttons the top button-- only the top button. And Sasuke asks again --”Are you okay?” and this time she says yes. She says she’s more than okay.
They kiss again like it’s a form of clasping. Not like they were in the club trying to prove something. No, this time, they have nothing to prove, nothing except that they were not afraid. That they were not going to think too much, or stop too much, or go too much. Her hands trace down the zipper line and he says, “Slow.” Because it was not a rush.
Sasuke was nervous as fuck, vulnerable as anything. He can feel his chest shaking. She embraces him so her arms are behind his back, then lets her hands wandering down, across that line, under his jeans, under his boxers. He wraps his arms around her, then one hand glides over her breasts, then between them, trailing down and back around. They entangle.
The ice machine hums, then comes to life, making them stop for a moment.
“What are we doing?” she says.
“I don’t know?” Sasuke replays.
She leans in, her wt pants squarely on his and says, “Good answer.”
He wants to kiss her without counting the seconds. He wants to hold her so long that he gets to know her skin. He wants, he wants, he wants.
Her hands slide to his hips. Her thumbs hook around his waistband.
Lowering.
Lowering.
He gasps
Ch 18 Busted weather
When did Sakura’s life get so good? Was it when she agreed with a kiss to be Sasuke’s five-minute girlfriend, or when she found out that her vampirism wasn’t something to hold someone like her back?
His heat --her heat-- their heat-- almost made Sakura forget about how she was still wet from the downpour, seeking refuge in the darkened ice room of a fucking Marriott with the Pepsi sign lit up, and she was without a doubt really into Sasuke because she was a Coke drinker, meaning she could take the Pepsi Challenge and fucking could smell the difference without bothering to distinguish the two tastes in her mouth. And speaking of which, she thought his lips tasted good, his moist skin tasted good, everything about him tasted delicious. Now that his shirt was off, she realized he did not smell like aromatherapy or cologne, it was probably the air freshener Toni sprayed over everyone at the bathroom back at Camera Obscura. This Sasuke, the bare-chested one, the heavy breathing one, the kind one, the sexy as hell one, he smelled musky and lovely, bathed in night rain. And Sakura couldn’t get enough of him.
She got it --he was straight. She believed. Hallelujah! And! Amen! She owed the big guy upstairs a huge hug the next she saw him.
He pulls her back up so their lips meet again, and her mind is swimming, and her hands are lost with her entire brain, but even with her mouth covering his, he is able to work just fine. Sakura finds out Sasuke is definitely a breast instead of thigh man. His hands, slow, caressing, teasing, not Mick-pillaging at all, and she can feel her chest straining to high attention, wanting more more more. Then Sasuke’s hands move away and she wants to murmur, No no no, come back, hands, but her mouth is too busy occupying his. As Sasuke’s hands fumble and smooth over her back, clearly looking for a bra strap to unclasp, her lips can’t bear to pull away from touching him to tell him, Honey, it’s a front clasp-bra.
Her lips go on a downward slope, from kissing his mouth, to his chin, his neck, --which she had to discipline herself to nip not bite-- moving south to his chest. His hands give up on the clasp issue and move on to fingering through her hair, and she wonders how he knows that having her scalp lightly massaged like he was doing was this unbelievable turn-on to her.
Sakura’s mouth pulls back and she gets up on her tippy toes to place her mouth against his ear to whisper into it what she wants to do to him, and strangely she uses the polite words instead of the nasty ones, and he whispers, “Really?” like maybe they should slow down and take things one at a time. But his quicken breath tells her he’s curious for some test-driving, too. So she responds with a “Really.”
Her brain officially leaves the ice room, as if to say, I can’t watch. You know better.
She has him in her hands --wow, who ever knew she was ambidextrous?-- and her hands are feeling, feeling, feeling, and she can hear his breathing. Heavy yet slow.
“Sakura.” It was cold in the room, but her name coming from him set her on fire.
Her tongue blazes his trail, moving down toward the motion of her hands but not quite there yet; her accelerated heart rate slows down the paces of her hands. She wanted this, so much, but was afraid of doing things wrong. Sure she had done this many times over her years of living, but for once, that didn’t matter, didn’t matter because she felt nothing for the other guys. No, they were meals, playthings. Sasuke, he was on a whole different playing field. He was actually a potential to go far. And with a human, no less!
“Sakura,” Sasuke whispered again, and she hoped that with him, there was no wrong way. Her heart was pounding pounding pounding and her mouth wanted to go there but her head turned upward first, wanting to make contact with Sasuke, but in the florescent light, she sees his eyes are closed, so she speaks instead, and says, “Tell me. Guide me.” His eyes open for a moment and catches hers and through the machine glow, she sees gratitude in his, and in her hands his response is even more affirmative, and okay, here she goes.
Why, hello, Julio!
But some motherfucker had turned on the lights in the room and it’s not even like she wants to die of embarrassment. She wants to die from wanting this to happen and who the hell could be so inconsiderate as to ruin her fucking moment?
An old couple stands at the entrance to the ice room. The woman was dressed in a quilted robe and cheap slippers and looks just like Sakura’s great-aunt Hildy in Boca who hated Sakura because she said that Sakura had a potty mouth and because one time Sakura made the big fucking mistake of admitting that the brisket her grandma made was better than Aunt Hildy’s. The man is dressed in boxer shorts and a T-shirt and, holy fucking shit, he was wearing those sock suspenders around his calves that Sakura was pretty goddamn sure were museum fashion artifacts. His face was crumpled and ancient, like he could be E.T.’s great-uncle, and he’s carrying an ice bucket. What the fuck did these geezers need ice for at this hour?
Their gray heads needed a moment to process the blue sight.
“Oh,” Great-Aunt Hildy clone finally says.
“Oh, my,” her husband says.
Sakura was imagining how Sasuke and herself must look to Aunt Hildy and Uncle E.T. right now, in the Polaroid snapshot of their hopefully near-senile dementia minds. Sasuke: shirtless, pants still on but zippers and boxers down, his hands pressed against the back of the Pepsi machine. Sakura: moist hair disheveled from Sasuke’s earlier scalp massage, wearing wet pants with the top button unfastened, and also shirtless except for the black lace bra on her bosom, just settles into kneeling position. B-U-ST-E-D.
Sakura hoped Aunt Hildy noticed how carefully she folded Salvatore’s jacket. That had to count for something.
The silence went on for an eternity, until Sasuke glanced over at Aunt Hilda and says, “Would you be a dear and shut the light off again on your way out?”
It’s her turn to say “Oh, my” now, but bless her heart, she does flick the light switch off, but not before shooting Sakura one parting look, and she swore in that last lingering second, she saw that the woman recognized her hunger because she’s felt it at some point in her life, too, and the woman winks at her before they’re gone and Sakura feels confident that Auntie and Uncle have truly gotten some bang for their buck on their New York City vacation. Sasuke and herself could become goodwill ambassadors for the city now that the porno shops on 42nd Street are gone.
Must make mental note to contact mayor.
Darkness is returned to the two, but the moment, the heat, is over. Because Sasuke speaks in a normal voice instead of a whisper, and says, “Maybe we’re not ready for this yet?” His sentiment is serious --and right-- yet somehow they’re laughing, too, laughing at the absurdity of the situation, and maybe laughing with relief that the absurdity allowed the situation not to go further than it did.
Aunt Hildy must have sent Sakura’s brain back into the room where she had let it wander because Sakura was reaching for her shirt and for Salvatore as Sasuke put his shirt back on. She couldn’t believe how grateful she was to get caught. It’s true she wanted Sasuke, but with too many stops and warning signs, there was no rush. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day. But if what Sakura’s dad had read to her as a bedtime story when she was smaller, then Rome really could have been built in a day if the Romans were…nah.
They’re dressed again except their clothes are still damp and they’re still laughing except they’re also kinda making out against the ice machine and he bumps her in just the wrong way and ice pours out from the machine onto the floor, all over them, it was now a fucking avalanche and all they could do was laugh harder and run away.
They’re kissing in the hallway again, against the wall.
They’re kissing in the glass elevator again. They ride it up and down, up and down, still kissing. Outside the elevator, time is going on, but inside, it had stopped for them both because they’ve got their own schedule: kissing, giggling, probing, breathing, talking, wanting, hoping. Liking.
The elevator door dings opens on the ground floor and they’re greeted and escorted out by hotel security and Sakura suppresses the urge to snap their heads lightning fast because that would take away from the giddy feeling she felt with Sasuke now. Instead, they decide to ditch security and run towards the open air.
So Sasuke and Sakura headed outside, holding hands, still giggling, still wet from the earlier rain and the sweat of their earlier encounter(s)(s)(s). they were giddy because dawn was here, they were at the center of the world and the center of their universe, and spring was here and the air smelled wet and clean.
“Where to?” Sasuke says, and Sakura says, “Home.”
They first needed to find Jessie the Yugo and find their way of that island.
Sakura has so much to do. Lose Mick. Princess vampire responsibilities needed attending. Sasuke to know. Sexual techniques to Google.
Playlists to be created. After sleep, of course. She was thinking of calling it “(T)rainy/Dreamy” and it would be all the dreamy songs with either the words rain or train in the title because he was so beautiful in the rain and one day, she would like to make love to him on a train, just not the Chicago El like the scene in that ’80s movie Risky Business because that was way hot but seemed so unhygienic; no, they will take a cross-country train trip with their own cabin berth with proper sheets like in an old black-and-white movie and Sasuke and she will call each other “darling” and read books aloud to each other at night while the train rolls through the Plains. Off the top of her head, she was thinking her “(T)rainy/Dreamy” playlist for Sasuke will include “I Wish It Would Rain” by The Temptations, “Train in Vain (Stand by Me)” by The Clash, “It’s Raining” by Irma Thomas, “Blue Train” by Johnny Cash followed by “Runaway Train” by Rosanne Cash--oh, she was good!--, “Come Rain or Come Shine” either by Dinah Washington or the Ray Charles cover --tough call, she’d decide later--, and she would cap the mix off with “Friendship Train” by Gladys Knight & The Pips because that was what it was all about in the end, right?
They’re walking down Seventh Avenue and she doesn’t know if they’re going to the subway or walking all the way back to the Lower East Side or what and she doesn’t care.
“Sasuke?” Sakura says.
He lifts her hand he’s holding to his mouth for a quick kiss. Then, “Yeah?”
She tells him, “What just happened there? I have to tell you something.”
He stops walking and he doesn’t drop her hand but his grip loosens a little and she can see in his eyes that he’s thinking, Now she’s going to tell me she has herpes, or worse, She’s going to deny any of this happened at all. Sakura can almost see the beads of worry on his forehead. “What?” he whispers.
She looks him square in the eye, takes a deep breath, solemn, and just lets it out. “I’m pregnant. I don’t know if it’s your or E.T.’s.”
This time, she doesn’t try to hold back her smile. It was gonna come out whether she liked it or not. She chose to like it.
Sasuke doesn’t hold his back either. He pulls her to him, tight. He’s laughing, but part of her wants to tell him to stop because that part of her is leaning against his chest and thinking, Shit, this is not funny, because I could seriously fall in love with you.
Ch 19 The race -n- call doll
When is a night over? Is it the start of sunrise or the end of it? Is it when you finally go to sleep or simple when you realize you have to? When the club closes or when everyone leaves? Normally, Sasuke keeps these kinds of questions to himself. But this time, he asks Sakura.
“It’s over when you decide it’s over,” she says. “When you call it a night. The rest is just a matter of where the sun is in the sky. That has nothing to do with us.”
They keep walking down Seventh Avenue, where most of the city is still asleep through the dawning of the day. Night-shift cabdrivers slow down when they seem them, but then speedup when they see them holding hands, the way they aren’t in a rush to be anywhere.
Sasuke is exhausted. It was even too exhausting to keep denying that he was exhausted, so he lets the weight fall on his bones and his thoughts. He was so fucking tired, and most of his energy was being spent on wishing that he wasn’t. Sakura, on the other hand, was perfect.
“I love this light,” Sakura says. The city tinted as pink in waking as it is in orange and blue when it falls to sleep.
They’re both a mess. Their hair drying out in every which way. His six-in-the-morning shadow. Their disheveled clothes, still looking post-lust no matter how hard they try to shevel them. (Okay, they don’t try all that hard. They’re proud of them.)
“Sakura,” he says, “I have something to ask you.”
“Sure,”
“It’s really personal. Is that okay? I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“Don’t worry, if I don’t want to, I wont.”
“Okay.” He pauses for a second, and Sasuke can tell she thinks he’s serious, which amuses him to no end. “Here goes. Sakura?” He pauses again.
“Yes, Sasuke?”
“Can I…um…”
She was getting annoyed. “What, Sasuke?”
“Could you possibly…maybe…tell me your last name?”
Without a beat, she says, “Hilton.”
“No, really.”
“Hyatt?”
“Sakura…”
“Marriott? Or how about Olsen? I’m the triplet they never fucking acknowledge.”
“I see a resemblance.”
“Fuck you. It’s Haruno.”
“Cool.”
“ ‘Cool,’ as in you know who my father is now?”
The thought hadn’t even occurred to him.
“To be honest,” he says, “even with the last name, I don’t know who he is. I guess I don’t follow that kind of stuff. Is that okay?”
“You have no idea how okay that is,” Sakura answers. “Now…I’ve shown you mine, so you show me yours.”
“Uchiha.”
“You’re from the Uchiha clan?”
“Yep, with the exception of O’Leary.”
“You’re Irish?”
“Not really, like in a majority way. My grandfather just happened to win the last-name lottery. I’m really Irish-British-French-Belgian-Italian-Salv-Russian-Danish. Basically, the Euro should have my face on it.”
Sakura raises her brow. “So you’re a Euro mutt?”
“With the possible exception of Luxembourg.”
“Good to know.”
They angle over to Sixth, then to Broadway.
“And can I get you phone number?” Sasuke asks.
Sakura pulls her hand out of Sasuke’s to reach into Salvatore and take out his phone.
“Here,” she says, handing the phone over. “It’s already programmed in.”
He knows it’s totally uncool to do it, but he asks, “Do you want mine?”
“Call me,” she says. And when he doesn’t do anything, she adds, “Right now.”
So he opens up his phone and checks out the directory. He sees Sakura’s added some commentary of her own --Erika’s number is now labeled That Bitch. Sakura’s, however, isn’t under Sakura. But when Sasuke sees Salvatore’s name, he knows who he’s calling.
He dials. The ring springs to life.
“Hello?” she answers, not two feet away from him.
“Can I please speak to Salvatore?” he asks.
“I’m afraid he can’t come to the phone right now. Would you like to leave a message?”
He looks at Salvatore now, and he realizes that he gave him up a long time ago, that in his mind he’s already hers.
“Tell him I hope he likes his new home,” Sasuke says.
Sakura looks at him. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Thanks.”
They both hang up and hold hands again. They walk through Union Square, enjoying one another’s company. They pass the Virgin Megastore, the Strand, the old Trinity Church. They walk down Astor, past the skate-punks’ cube, over to St. Marks Place, where club goers stumble through daylight. Down Second Avenue until they reach Houston. Sasuke can tell Sakura’s somewhat tired. Maybe not as tired as he is, but a bit “not here” zone, either.
When they get to Ludlow, Sasuke remembers the song he began to write, in an hour that seems like weeks ago now. Could so much really happen in one night? The song was never really over, but now he thinks he has the ending --he doesn’t know how he’ll phrase it, but it will involve their returning, it will take in the strange pink light and the Sunday-morning quiet. Because the song is them, and the song is her, and this time he was gong to use her name. Sakura Sakura Sakura --no rhymes, really. Just truth.
He shouldn’t want the song to end. He always thought of each night as a song. Or each moment a song. But now he was seeing they don’t live in a single song. They move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending. It was an infinite playlist.
Sasuke knows Sakura would love for him to sing her the song, right there on Ludlow Street. But he’ll wait for the next time. Because he knows there will be a next time. He was looking forward for a next time the minute he met her. Throughout the night, he’s been looking forward to next time, and the time after that, and the time after that. He knows this is something.
He can see Jessie sitting safely at the curb, ready to take them home.
“We’re almost there,” Sakura says.
He stops them. They turn to each other and kiss again. There on Ludlow Street. In the new day.
His heartbeat accelerates. He was in the here, in the now. He was also in the future. He was holding her and wanting and knowing and hoping all at once. They were the ones who take this thing called music and line it up with this thing called time. They were the ticking, they were the pulsing, they were underneath every part of this moment. And by making the moment their own, they were rendering it timeless. There is no audience. There were no instruments. There were only bodies and thoughts and murmurs and looks. It was the concert rush to end all concert rushes, because this was what mattered. When the heart races, this was what it was racing toward.
Ch 20 Jump for truth
Sakura could keep the jacket, she could keep the jacket, lalalalalalalala, Sasuke loved her, or at least really like her, lalalalalalalala, Salvatore and her were so happy, the jacket would only be dry cleaned, no inferior detergent shall ever besmirch it, lalalalalalalala.
And now here they were back in Jessie. Yugo! Lalalalalalalala.
Sakura was sitting in the passenger seat next to Sasuke and it was just like before when they sat side by side in his car, except not. She was no longer vague as to whether she wanted to spend her time with this person, in this “vehicle,” but Jessie, like before, has doubts about whether to allow her to be Sasuke’s Girl, --Sakura suspected she was jealous-- Jessie, once again, is not starting. Sasuke turns the key and floods the accelerator and even says a couple of prayers, but no, Jessie ain’t putting out.
Sasuke stops the key motion and turns to look at her. “Shit,” he says.
Sakura can’t help but laugh at the sights of him. Rumpled clothes, his hair spiked from the rain and the mad earlier rummage of her hands through it, eyes glazed over from the fallout of lust and fatigue, jaw jutted in frustration with Jessie. She tells him, “You look like that Where’s Fluffy song, ‘You Have That Just Fucked Look, Yoko.’”
“Oh, be still my heart, Sakura,” Sasuke says. Then seriously he says, “Kiba claims ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ is the ultimate song because it captures the essence of what every pop song is really about, what we really want --simply, I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” Sasuke takes his right hand from the stick shift and clasps her left hand. “I think Kiba might be on to something.”
“I hate The Beatles,” she states. “Except for that song ‘Something.’ Now that’s a fucking love song. And John or Paul didn’t even write it. George did. George was the shit. But The Beatles as a whole? Completely overrated.”
Sasuke drops her hand. He looks at her as if either she’s just had a mental breakdown, or he’s about to have one. “I’m gonna pretend I never heard that.”
Musician boys and their Beatles love --what are ya gonna do? Sakura leans over to place a make-up kiss on his neck. Then she asks, “Did you really write a song for me?”
“Yeah. But it’s not finished. And don’t ever speak of The Beatles with such condescension again or I may never finish it.”
“So do I get to hear it, even the unfinished version?”
“No.”
“Never? Or just not now?”
“Just not now. Don’t be so greedy.” He knew her so well already.
He turns the key again. And again and again and again. “Shit,” he repeats.
“What are our options?” Sakura asks.
“Well, we can try to find someone to jump her. Or we can just leave her here and find our way home on the train and worry about Jessie after some sleep. I could come back later today with Deidara and Sasori to jump her. Or, you know…I could just admit that Jessie has broken my heart for the last time, and give her away to charity already.”
Poor Sasuke, Sakura thinks. Erika broke his heart. Jessie broke his heart.
She whispers in his ear, “I promise I well never break your heart.” Because without a doubt, she will fuck up many things in this whatever-they-have-here, but that, she will never do.
“Uh, thank you?” Sasuke whispers back.
Sakura was probably close to stalker territory again, so she decides to shut up. Then he leans over and places his hand around the back of her neck and pulls her to him to kiss her again. She tries the tongue thing again, the yin, the yang, the sucking and pulling, and this time he finds her frenulum all on his own, and check them out, they’re starting to find their rhythm with this. Sakura’s chakras feel very, very open and Jessie’s windows were looking very, very steamed.
But she pulls away because if they didn’t stop this already, they were never going to get home. “Tell you what, Sasuke,” she says. “You keep trying to coax a start out of Jessie, and I’ll go into the Korean grocery and see if anyone in there can help us.”
She steps outside the car and some bum is singing “Ride Like the Wind” against a wall and she gives him her very last buck to stop. She goes inside the store, where she was suppose to be finding someone to help the with jumper cables, but she was really standing around debating whether or not to just call her dad --or better yet, his assistant-- and ask for a call to be placed to a car service to come get them; that method had gotten Ino and her home on may occasions. With one phone call, she could make this so easy for herself and Sasuke. And if she’s not placing that call as she stands there with her teeth chattering in the freezer section, she wasn’t sure if it was because she doesn’t want Sasuke to think she was a princess or because she was trying to buy more time with him. Because the last thing she needed was for him to figure out that she was really a princess. Just not the kind he would expect.
Sasuke asked for her phone number, but he never said when he was going to call her. They’ve only known each other for a few hours, yet they’ve, um, gotten to know each other pretty well she would say, so she would hope it would at least be implied that they were going to see each other again soon, but he never said when. And she didn’t like waiting to find out.
Sakura pulled her phone from Salvatore’s pocket and reviewed the call log. She see’s Sasuke’s number. She debates whether to assign a name to his number. If she committed to that, then she will truly be heartbroken if he never calls her gain; her heart will knot each time she uses the phone and sees his name in there. She would probably end up having to trash the phone entirely. But what the hell, they’ve gotten this far, so she decides to go for it. She considers assigning his number the name NoMo, but suspects that would really piss him off. Salvatore’s babydaddy would take too long to get in there. So she just keys in Sasuke. So simple. So sweet. And she calls him.
“Did you find someone in there with jumper cables?” he asks, hopeful.
“Didn’t ask anyone yet. So, like, if you’re going to call me, can you let me know when that would be?”
“You’re not leaving me room for the element of surprise.”
“I hate surprises.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Listen,” she says seriously. “Did Erika ever call you from the backseat of your car wile you were driving? Cuz she learned that from me. That bitch wasn’t always the teacher, you know.”
“Erika who?” he says, and hangs up. And Sakura was glad she programmed his name for keeps.
Sakura really hopes Sasuke has money on him because she was truly using the very last of her dough now, paying in quarters and dimes and pennies for another bag of stale Oreos, whishing it was a warm bag of O positive blood instead, and as she shoved the coins to the counter person, she shouts, for all the store to hear, “DOES ANYONE FUCKING HAVE A CAR WITH JUMPER CABLES IN HERE OR WHAT?”
No response. At least she gave it her best shot. Before she returns back to the car, she listens to the voice mail Ino left earlier in the night. “Sakura? Sakura Sakura Sakura,” she sings in a whisper, like a lullaby. “Deidara and Sasori said you were on a date with their friend! That Sasuke guy was cute, even if he did wear ugly shoes. And you must really like him if you’re not answering this call, because I know you, and I know you know I am calling you. And I guess all I want to say to you is, you’re always taking care of me and even though it was kind of weird walking up in a dark van with Deidara and Sasori in the parking lot of some fucking 7-Eleven, I’m also glad you’re taking care of yourself instead of me for once. And I hope you’re having a great time, I really do. And tomorrow afternoon when I am hung over and cursing at you for abandoning me, you just play this message back, okay, bitch? Love you.” Sakura smiles and saves the message.
Sakura goes back to Jessie. “Sorry, fella,” she tells Sasuke when she gets back into the car. She offers him a stale Oreo.
“I hate Oreos,” he says, and now it’s her turn to say, “I’m gonna pretend I never heard that.”
Sasuke steps out of Jessie to open the hood. While he’s inspecting the engine, Sakura inspects the notebook of CDs laying on the floor. There’s the usual suspects in there, Green Day and The Clash and The Smiths, yeah, but there’s also Ella and Frank, even Dino, some Curtis Mayfield and Minor Threat and Dusty Springfield and Belle & Sebastian, Vaginal Creme Davis, Billy Tipton, Marlon Riggs, and Valie Export and as she flips through his musical life, getting to know him through his tastes, she acknowledges that she must be multi-orgasmic. This Sasuke guy may never call back after all, but he’s her fucking musical soul mate. Sakura takes his portable boom box from the backseat and programs a wake-up jam.
Sasuke steps back inside the car. “That’s it,” he says. “We’ve got to figure out another plan to get home. Jessie’s going nowhere.” He pulls out his wallet. “And of course I have no money left. But I do have a MetroCard! I’m so sorry, Sakura.”
She wasn’t, because his words have made her think of her favorite Le Tigre song. She mumbles, “My! My MetroCard!” and Sasuke picks uo the song by answering with a call of, “OH FUCK / Giuliani,” and they both finish with, “HE’S SUCH / A fucking jerk!”
“Let’s just leave Jessie here for today. I’ll figure out what to do with her after some sleep. If we hop the A train to Port Authority, I know a guy there who drives the early morning van service to Hoboken. He’s in Pretty Girls named Jen, the hardcore screamo band from Jersey City --do you know them? Anyway, I know he’ll give us a free ride, and once we get back to Hoboken I can take a friends car and drive you home. So all we have to do is get to the A train. Though I’m not sure I have the energy to walk all the way to the A train. You?”
At this point, they’ve completely forfeited a night’s sleep so they might as well wake the hell up and enjoy this brand-new day. Sakura responds with a single word: “BEASTIE!” she hits play on the CD player, and like that, Sasuke and her are singing along together wailing out “I like to party, not drink Bacardi” and just all-out grooving to “Triple Trouble,” because they’ve got the Beastie funk and it’s damn pleasant and getting louder and louder as they rock Jessie. Sasuke is head thrashing and Sakura is head thrashing and together they were Johnny Castle meets Johnny Rotten via DJ Sakura caffeine jolt. And they were awake, and alive.
They make the long walk to Canal Street --or rather sprint there-- and they’re holding hands and laughing and kissing and sing-shouting, “Mommy’s just jealous it’s the BEASTIE BOYS,” and like that they’re there and they’re skipping down the steps into the station. Some spray-painted graffiti on the wall asks, Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Lamentations 1:2 and she thinks, NO, Lord, whoever the hell You are, this is not nothing to me. This counts. Like, she could see herself being one of those tourists in Chinatown and she could buy a shirt that says, “I Survived the All-Nighter” or “Sasuke & Sakura Went to the Marriott Marquis and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt,” as if the experience never happened without the T-shirt to prove it.
Sasuke slides the MetroCard through the turn slide and they hear a train approaching and it was early Sunday morning so she better hurry because who knew how long it would be before another train came through. He passes the card to Sakura but when she tries to slide it through, the machine reads Insufficient Fare, because Sasuke must have just used the last value of the card.
“Fuck!” she says.
“Fuck!” he says.
Sasuke puts his hand on the other side of the turnstile. He says, “Don’t worry about it, just jump over.”
She hesitates even though she knows her wavering could cost them the approaching train. If she makes this jump, then this was real, he was real. She will have broken the law for him and that will bind them together forever, outlaws, like Bonnie and Clyde. And look how that worked out for them.
“C’mon, Sakura,” Sasuke says. She hears his urgency, and once again, she thinks, Oh, poor Sasuke.she meant, she thought she was basically a cool girl, but she could also be a pain in the ass. She knows this. It was like he had no idea what he was setting himself up for. She should just call the car service for herself and let Sasuke go. After all, who ever heard of a vampire being whipped by a human?
“Sakura?”
If she did this, it would be like jumping into the middle of the mosh pit. Dangerous. Exhilarating. Terrifying. It was only a fucking turnstile, but what is she didn’t make it to the other side. Some people never make it out of the mosh alive.
The deafening screech of the train brakes announces the train is in the station.
Sasuke says, “Are we in this or not?”
To throw herself into the breach of their great divide will be a leap of faith.
She grabs hold of his warm hand. Deep breath.
Ready.
Set.
Jump.