Chapter Three
Downtown State Street is a playground for those without futures and beautiful people longing to expunge their forgotten pasts. As the sun sets, twinkling strings of lights running from building to Spanish Revival-inspired building transport the beachside paradise to a wonderland off limits for most people. Tipsy blondes with impeccable sun-kissed golden skin hold their own against storied drinkers and stoner surfers smelling as if they were the catch of the day. All of that pales in comparison to the stark contrast of the desperate homeless people living off the busiest and possibly most luxurious street in Santa Barbara. Men and women sporting tattered clothing, pushing carts filled to the brim with tattered knick-knacks and holding desperate signs ripped from weeks of wear out in the brutal sun and salty ocean fog. Their faces cry out to passersby without ever uttering a single plea for help. They look as if they have stained their sun-scarred faces with clay and mud, ready for battle on the front lines.
One such character grabbed Lilly’s slender milky white wrist as she and Jacqueline walk past her barrack. Admiring the fairytale like lighting and dreamy Christmas decorations adoring the humming streetlights and restaurant signs, Lilly snapped out of her admiration and tried to ignore the plea, quickly changing topic of conversation with Jacqueline and mustering every ounce of courage not to look down. Her battle proved immediately futile when the man covered in at least three different plaid shirts grabbed her arm and pulled her towards him. Disgusted, Lilly clasped her free hand over her face, trying to ignore the rotting putrid aroma emanating from his skin.
“You girls are dressed too beautifully to be roaming these streets alone. Where are you going?”
Lilly ignored as he continued on licking his blistered lips to provoke an image that would haunt Lilly for years, “I know you have money girly. I’ll leave you alone if you just give me some.”
“Here, Lilly, I have a five in my clutch. Let me see,” Jacqueline desperately cut in, trying to spare her friend.
“I don’t want your money,” he sneered at Jacqueline. “I want your friend.”
“Let go of me or I swear to God I’ll call the police!”
“The cops don’t scare me. They get me every week and I keep landing on my feet. Legalize pot!” he immediately began shrieking changing topics without any indication he just was holding Lilly prisoner.
Laughing behind them, a group of men in their early thirties pat the homeless man and leave a wad of bills in his shirt pocket.
“Easy does it sir,” a man with sandy brown hair spilling into his light gray eyes says. He nonchalantly tosses his head to the side, freeing up the tendrils of wavy hair from his face. “Charlie here is harmless.”
For whatever reason, Jacqueline feels her heart begin to flutter. Nervous and embarrassed, she can’t bring herself to make eye contact with the kind man.
“Are you shitting me?” Lilly squeals over dramatically. “That asshole grabbed me! I’m going to have to wash my arm at least eighteen times before I’ll even pick up food to put into my mouth.”
“I could put something in your mouth for you,” Charlie mumbles off in the distance, walking in the general direction of the fast food restaurants.
“My name is Alex,” he says, hand outstretched to Lilly. “Are you ok at least?”
“Nothing a couple of drinks couldn’t fix,” she refuses to take his hand, smoothing out her halter dress that falls just above the middle of her thigh. “This is Jacqueline.”
Singled out, Jacqueline grows even more nervous Alex can detect her apprehension. Instead, his hand comes out in her direction, placing it on the small of her back.
“Pleased to meet you. Your friend will be fine, let me and my boys buy you both some drinks.”
Mistakenly interpreting Jacqueline’s nerves for fear of her friend’s wellbeing, he ushers her towards the nearest club. Jacqueline brushes him off with her left hand, hoping with every ounce of being to flash her diamond in his face. He doesn’t bite.
“I don’t know,” Jacqueline stutters slightly. “I haven’t had a drink in years.”
“Don’t be such a prude,” Lilly teases, fixated on Alex’s tallest friend with curly black hair and hazel eyes. Her insensitivity towards her friend elicits an uproar of laughter from Alex’s buddies, instantly making her the most popular of the group. Just as Robert did earlier today, Lilly quickly leaves Jacqueline on her own, emotionally.
Alex is a powerful man as far as Santa Barbara’s nightlife is concerned. He quickly maneuvers his group of six past the bouncer’s domineering velvet ropes and into a VIP room prepped with bottle service in the back. Jacqueline suffers all too vibrant flashbacks from her college days.
* * * *
Dancing inside one of the cages in nothing more than a bra and frilly panties, Jacqueline rubs up against the bars, kicking and twirling to the crowd’s delight. She pushes her way through the bars of the cage and singles out the most timid looking man in the club – who happens to be there with his innocent girlfriend. Jacqueline pets under his girlfriend’s chin, slams back a shot from the bar and kisses her victim, alcohol spilling out into his mouth from hers. She doesn’t have to look back to notice the girlfriend is disgusted and long gone. Because before she can react, Jacqueline has already leapt onto the bar, singing along with the DJ’s tracks, and calling out to the floor for a dance partner. Before anyone can reply, she kicks her heels, does the splits and then waits for the roar of men waiting to have her. Her sobriety is so far from coherent at this point, she doesn’t even begin to worry about whose bed she’ll wake up in the morning. Jacqueline doesn’t even feel the need to take inventory of the countless drugs whose influence she’ll be under in just a few hours. Better a shameless reputation than years of student loans prohibiting her from being able to purchase her own car later in life.
* * * *
“I guess a little bit of champagne won’t hurt,” she shrugs her shoulders as she gives in to Alex’s offering. Making herself feel comfortable, Jacqueline sinks into the velvet divan and immediately wraps herself in friendly conversation, paying little attention to the number of glasses she’s consumed.
Before too long passes, Jacqueline feels her center of gravity swaying. Her speech seems heavier than it should and she can’t shake the nagging sensation of hair constantly in her face. After several trays of bar appetizers make their way around, Jacqueline keeps grabbing for chips and salsa. After what seems to be a thousand marginally salty chips, she takes a swig of her Corona light and unintentionally slams it onto the table. The drinks collectively consumed have gotten heavier and heavier by the hour, but she has stuck to mainly light beers since the one flute of champagne. The group divides in uproarious laughter and heavy political discussion. Feeling uncomfortably out of her element, Jacqueline excuses herself and pushes her way through the bodies stuffed in the hallway. The room’s sweltering, stale air has created a heavy and unpleasant odor that lingers and seems to stick to her humid skin. Jacqueline’s heel gets caught in one of the cracks between the planks in the floor, causing her to lose some control and topple against the wall. Dragging her hand over the heavily stuccoed walls, she pulls back as her skin catches against a deep smattering of texture. Sucking on her sweaty skin, Jacqueline looks up and feels lost in the sea of drunken bodies. As if God had been answering the prayers she didn’t even know she’d been thinking, out of the cloister of unnamed faces came a refreshing image: Lilly awkwardly dancing in line for the women’s restroom.
“God damnit, there’s never anyone in the fucking men’s room,” she screamed over the heads to Jacqueline.
Lilly was obviously more sloshed than Jacqueline had cared to let herself become tonight. One of her heels was half off and her makeup began to smudge around her eyes. Once in reach of Jacqueline, she threw her arms up and embraced her friend tightly as if the two were estranged friends who’d been searching for one another for decades. Cutting ahead of a few college-aged girls, Jacqueline filed in line and pulled out her iPhone, checking for just one word from Robert. No notifications popped up on the screen. She could hear the girls whispering behind her about older bitches who think they own the place.
“This is so much fun, I can’t believe I haven’t been back here since college!”
“You look like you still could be in college, you whore,” Lilly drunkenly slurred back.
Regardless of how drunk she was or was on her way to becoming, Jacqueline reveled in the compliment. “Really? You don’t think I look like I’m nearly 30?”
“Not with that ass. And seriously, you don’t have a single wrinkle. Are you using anything?”
“No, just sun block. You should get this new stuff they have. Um, it’s, you know, strong so it blocks out both kinds of rays. UV A and the other one.”
“Does that clear up your skin?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I just read it somewhere. I am going to piss my pants if we keep standing here.”
Looking around to see if anyone would notice or care, Jacqueline motioned over to Lilly on her way to the men’s room. Not like she gave a damn, she was well on her way to being happily plastered. “Come on, I’m going to pee in here. No one’s using it.”
The long line of tipsy females looked over in their direction, not with disgust at their actions, but disgust for not having thought of it first. The line quickly divided in half, splitting between both rooms.
Shutting the door, Jacqueline fumbled with the lock. Lilly wasted no time dropping her panties and squatting over the seat.
“Ohmygosh that was necessary.”
Giggling both girls begin gossiping away behind the locked door.
“Ugh, I can’t stand it when they’re out of toilet seat covers. What’s the deal with men anyways?” Jacqueline holds her breath as she bats at the roll of toilet paper. Lessons in patience were never her forte. Frustrated, she pulls at the wheel and frantically scrapes off one sheet at a time. “Ah, fuck it…”
Washing up and retouching their makeup in front of the shattered mirror, Jacqueline gushes over fond memories from college, as if Lilly had been there for every drama-filled second.
“And it’s funny, after that I went so crazy down here that my dad made me come home one weekend. And that’s when I met Robert. Too bad he couldn’t come with us this weekend. But then again, I guess we wouldn’t have been here tonight if he didn’t have to fly out to New York.”
Lilly pulled at her eyelid and meticulously applied liquid eyeliner. She used that as the excuse not to comment on Robert’s absence. She had no doubt what “business” he was attending to in New York.
Erupting in laughter Jacqueline remembered something about Robert. “Waaaait, remember when you used to hate Robert when we first started dating?! I almost broke up with him because your opinion was that important to me. But I guess I just fell so hard for him that it eventually sorted itself out. And, you know, I wouldn’t have found my future husband if that had happened!”
With a smirk on her freshly made up face resembling an amateur clown, Lilly cut off her friend midsentence, “That’s what I let you think. I still hate that cheating bastard!”
Instantly aware of the damaging accusation she just let slip, Lilly clasped her hand over her mouth and threw open the restroom door and bounded for the hallway.
“What?! Lilly, LILLY! Get back here. You were joking when you said that right?”
Lilly headed straight for the patio where even more bodies were packed in per square foot. She eventually stopped when Jacqueline grabbed her hand and demanded for her to straighten out what she just said.
“Tell me that was a joke right?”
“I can’t Jacqs. Robert has been sleeping with his secretary. He’s probably with her right now. I didn’t want to tell you and hurt you, I wanted him to come clean.”
Hitting and clawing at her friend with hardly any success, Jacqueline broke out into hysterical tears.
“No, that lying bastard. It’s not true! Right? He wouldn’t do that to me! We’ve been dating for over six years. He has to have an explanation. How do you even know?” Incoherent sentence after incoherent sentence ran into one another and became a sinister downward spiral Jacqueline could no longer contain. Unable to handle the beast she let out of the cage, Lilly headed for the exit in search of a cab to take her back to their hotel.
Jacqueline, on the other hand, was a mess. Right there in the middle of the crowd at 1 a.m., she picked up her cell phone. After a series of unanswered rings, Robert’s voicemail picked up.
Downtown State Street is a playground for those without futures and beautiful people longing to expunge their forgotten pasts. As the sun sets, twinkling strings of lights running from building to Spanish Revival-inspired building transport the beachside paradise to a wonderland off limits for most people. Tipsy blondes with impeccable sun-kissed golden skin hold their own against storied drinkers and stoner surfers smelling as if they were the catch of the day. All of that pales in comparison to the stark contrast of the desperate homeless people living off the busiest and possibly most luxurious street in Santa Barbara. Men and women sporting tattered clothing, pushing carts filled to the brim with tattered knick-knacks and holding desperate signs ripped from weeks of wear out in the brutal sun and salty ocean fog. Their faces cry out to passersby without ever uttering a single plea for help. They look as if they have stained their sun-scarred faces with clay and mud, ready for battle on the front lines.
One such character grabbed Lilly’s slender milky white wrist as she and Jacqueline walk past her barrack. Admiring the fairytale like lighting and dreamy Christmas decorations adoring the humming streetlights and restaurant signs, Lilly snapped out of her admiration and tried to ignore the plea, quickly changing topic of conversation with Jacqueline and mustering every ounce of courage not to look down. Her battle proved immediately futile when the man covered in at least three different plaid shirts grabbed her arm and pulled her towards him. Disgusted, Lilly clasped her free hand over her face, trying to ignore the rotting putrid aroma emanating from his skin.
“You girls are dressed too beautifully to be roaming these streets alone. Where are you going?”
Lilly ignored as he continued on licking his blistered lips to provoke an image that would haunt Lilly for years, “I know you have money girly. I’ll leave you alone if you just give me some.”
“Here, Lilly, I have a five in my clutch. Let me see,” Jacqueline desperately cut in, trying to spare her friend.
“I don’t want your money,” he sneered at Jacqueline. “I want your friend.”
“Let go of me or I swear to God I’ll call the police!”
“The cops don’t scare me. They get me every week and I keep landing on my feet. Legalize pot!” he immediately began shrieking changing topics without any indication he just was holding Lilly prisoner.
Laughing behind them, a group of men in their early thirties pat the homeless man and leave a wad of bills in his shirt pocket.
“Easy does it sir,” a man with sandy brown hair spilling into his light gray eyes says. He nonchalantly tosses his head to the side, freeing up the tendrils of wavy hair from his face. “Charlie here is harmless.”
For whatever reason, Jacqueline feels her heart begin to flutter. Nervous and embarrassed, she can’t bring herself to make eye contact with the kind man.
“Are you shitting me?” Lilly squeals over dramatically. “That asshole grabbed me! I’m going to have to wash my arm at least eighteen times before I’ll even pick up food to put into my mouth.”
“I could put something in your mouth for you,” Charlie mumbles off in the distance, walking in the general direction of the fast food restaurants.
“My name is Alex,” he says, hand outstretched to Lilly. “Are you ok at least?”
“Nothing a couple of drinks couldn’t fix,” she refuses to take his hand, smoothing out her halter dress that falls just above the middle of her thigh. “This is Jacqueline.”
Singled out, Jacqueline grows even more nervous Alex can detect her apprehension. Instead, his hand comes out in her direction, placing it on the small of her back.
“Pleased to meet you. Your friend will be fine, let me and my boys buy you both some drinks.”
Mistakenly interpreting Jacqueline’s nerves for fear of her friend’s wellbeing, he ushers her towards the nearest club. Jacqueline brushes him off with her left hand, hoping with every ounce of being to flash her diamond in his face. He doesn’t bite.
“I don’t know,” Jacqueline stutters slightly. “I haven’t had a drink in years.”
“Don’t be such a prude,” Lilly teases, fixated on Alex’s tallest friend with curly black hair and hazel eyes. Her insensitivity towards her friend elicits an uproar of laughter from Alex’s buddies, instantly making her the most popular of the group. Just as Robert did earlier today, Lilly quickly leaves Jacqueline on her own, emotionally.
Alex is a powerful man as far as Santa Barbara’s nightlife is concerned. He quickly maneuvers his group of six past the bouncer’s domineering velvet ropes and into a VIP room prepped with bottle service in the back. Jacqueline suffers all too vibrant flashbacks from her college days.
* * * *
Dancing inside one of the cages in nothing more than a bra and frilly panties, Jacqueline rubs up against the bars, kicking and twirling to the crowd’s delight. She pushes her way through the bars of the cage and singles out the most timid looking man in the club – who happens to be there with his innocent girlfriend. Jacqueline pets under his girlfriend’s chin, slams back a shot from the bar and kisses her victim, alcohol spilling out into his mouth from hers. She doesn’t have to look back to notice the girlfriend is disgusted and long gone. Because before she can react, Jacqueline has already leapt onto the bar, singing along with the DJ’s tracks, and calling out to the floor for a dance partner. Before anyone can reply, she kicks her heels, does the splits and then waits for the roar of men waiting to have her. Her sobriety is so far from coherent at this point, she doesn’t even begin to worry about whose bed she’ll wake up in the morning. Jacqueline doesn’t even feel the need to take inventory of the countless drugs whose influence she’ll be under in just a few hours. Better a shameless reputation than years of student loans prohibiting her from being able to purchase her own car later in life.
* * * *
“I guess a little bit of champagne won’t hurt,” she shrugs her shoulders as she gives in to Alex’s offering. Making herself feel comfortable, Jacqueline sinks into the velvet divan and immediately wraps herself in friendly conversation, paying little attention to the number of glasses she’s consumed.
Before too long passes, Jacqueline feels her center of gravity swaying. Her speech seems heavier than it should and she can’t shake the nagging sensation of hair constantly in her face. After several trays of bar appetizers make their way around, Jacqueline keeps grabbing for chips and salsa. After what seems to be a thousand marginally salty chips, she takes a swig of her Corona light and unintentionally slams it onto the table. The drinks collectively consumed have gotten heavier and heavier by the hour, but she has stuck to mainly light beers since the one flute of champagne. The group divides in uproarious laughter and heavy political discussion. Feeling uncomfortably out of her element, Jacqueline excuses herself and pushes her way through the bodies stuffed in the hallway. The room’s sweltering, stale air has created a heavy and unpleasant odor that lingers and seems to stick to her humid skin. Jacqueline’s heel gets caught in one of the cracks between the planks in the floor, causing her to lose some control and topple against the wall. Dragging her hand over the heavily stuccoed walls, she pulls back as her skin catches against a deep smattering of texture. Sucking on her sweaty skin, Jacqueline looks up and feels lost in the sea of drunken bodies. As if God had been answering the prayers she didn’t even know she’d been thinking, out of the cloister of unnamed faces came a refreshing image: Lilly awkwardly dancing in line for the women’s restroom.
“God damnit, there’s never anyone in the fucking men’s room,” she screamed over the heads to Jacqueline.
Lilly was obviously more sloshed than Jacqueline had cared to let herself become tonight. One of her heels was half off and her makeup began to smudge around her eyes. Once in reach of Jacqueline, she threw her arms up and embraced her friend tightly as if the two were estranged friends who’d been searching for one another for decades. Cutting ahead of a few college-aged girls, Jacqueline filed in line and pulled out her iPhone, checking for just one word from Robert. No notifications popped up on the screen. She could hear the girls whispering behind her about older bitches who think they own the place.
“This is so much fun, I can’t believe I haven’t been back here since college!”
“You look like you still could be in college, you whore,” Lilly drunkenly slurred back.
Regardless of how drunk she was or was on her way to becoming, Jacqueline reveled in the compliment. “Really? You don’t think I look like I’m nearly 30?”
“Not with that ass. And seriously, you don’t have a single wrinkle. Are you using anything?”
“No, just sun block. You should get this new stuff they have. Um, it’s, you know, strong so it blocks out both kinds of rays. UV A and the other one.”
“Does that clear up your skin?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I just read it somewhere. I am going to piss my pants if we keep standing here.”
Looking around to see if anyone would notice or care, Jacqueline motioned over to Lilly on her way to the men’s room. Not like she gave a damn, she was well on her way to being happily plastered. “Come on, I’m going to pee in here. No one’s using it.”
The long line of tipsy females looked over in their direction, not with disgust at their actions, but disgust for not having thought of it first. The line quickly divided in half, splitting between both rooms.
Shutting the door, Jacqueline fumbled with the lock. Lilly wasted no time dropping her panties and squatting over the seat.
“Ohmygosh that was necessary.”
Giggling both girls begin gossiping away behind the locked door.
“Ugh, I can’t stand it when they’re out of toilet seat covers. What’s the deal with men anyways?” Jacqueline holds her breath as she bats at the roll of toilet paper. Lessons in patience were never her forte. Frustrated, she pulls at the wheel and frantically scrapes off one sheet at a time. “Ah, fuck it…”
Washing up and retouching their makeup in front of the shattered mirror, Jacqueline gushes over fond memories from college, as if Lilly had been there for every drama-filled second.
“And it’s funny, after that I went so crazy down here that my dad made me come home one weekend. And that’s when I met Robert. Too bad he couldn’t come with us this weekend. But then again, I guess we wouldn’t have been here tonight if he didn’t have to fly out to New York.”
Lilly pulled at her eyelid and meticulously applied liquid eyeliner. She used that as the excuse not to comment on Robert’s absence. She had no doubt what “business” he was attending to in New York.
Erupting in laughter Jacqueline remembered something about Robert. “Waaaait, remember when you used to hate Robert when we first started dating?! I almost broke up with him because your opinion was that important to me. But I guess I just fell so hard for him that it eventually sorted itself out. And, you know, I wouldn’t have found my future husband if that had happened!”
With a smirk on her freshly made up face resembling an amateur clown, Lilly cut off her friend midsentence, “That’s what I let you think. I still hate that cheating bastard!”
Instantly aware of the damaging accusation she just let slip, Lilly clasped her hand over her mouth and threw open the restroom door and bounded for the hallway.
“What?! Lilly, LILLY! Get back here. You were joking when you said that right?”
Lilly headed straight for the patio where even more bodies were packed in per square foot. She eventually stopped when Jacqueline grabbed her hand and demanded for her to straighten out what she just said.
“Tell me that was a joke right?”
“I can’t Jacqs. Robert has been sleeping with his secretary. He’s probably with her right now. I didn’t want to tell you and hurt you, I wanted him to come clean.”
Hitting and clawing at her friend with hardly any success, Jacqueline broke out into hysterical tears.
“No, that lying bastard. It’s not true! Right? He wouldn’t do that to me! We’ve been dating for over six years. He has to have an explanation. How do you even know?” Incoherent sentence after incoherent sentence ran into one another and became a sinister downward spiral Jacqueline could no longer contain. Unable to handle the beast she let out of the cage, Lilly headed for the exit in search of a cab to take her back to their hotel.
Jacqueline, on the other hand, was a mess. Right there in the middle of the crowd at 1 a.m., she picked up her cell phone. After a series of unanswered rings, Robert’s voicemail picked up.
1 comments:
I'm ready for Chapter 4!!
Post a Comment