Page 26 of Melt With You

Dori remembered, and hoped Bette wouldn’t repeat the statement. That Van was good for a snack, but she’d be hungry again later. If she were destined to be hungry in the way Bette meant, what would her brand new boss do about that? Did Bette have Gael in mind for her in some sort of elaborate set-up? Dori could easily imagine her very first orgy right over one of San Francisco’s famous hills.

Van’s arm slid down her body, and she realized that he’d been kissing Mica during their break. Maybe X really did make you want to love everyone. But what man wouldn’t want to do both of the women seated in the back seat of the big old Mercedes?

Immediately, Dori clarified that thought in her head. The Mercedes might have been old in 2008. But it was sparkling now. She remembered how Gael always had the newest gadgets – like the car phone. She remembered that from her youth, and then she remembered what Janie had said the night after their reunion, when she and her friends had been drinking at the bar that had once been Gael’s Creamery.

He’d sold coke. He’d been busted …

But when?

She settled back against the leather seat, feeling the warmth of Van at her side, and when he offered her a pill, whispering to her how good she’d feel, she suddenly took it. ‘How long?’ she asked softly.

‘About a half hour,’ he told her, nuzzling against her once more. She thought back to a conversation she’d had with a hairdresser once. They’d both been on a photo shoot for one of the big fashion magazines, and Alain was describing the sensation of X, having taken the drug at a party the weekend before. ‘The high was amazing,’ he’d told her. He’d wanted to fuck not only his girlfriend but her best friend who was a Playmate.

‘Don’t you usually want to fuck her?’ a stylist had teased.

‘Yeah, sure. But this time, the girls wanted it, too.’ Alain had gone on to describe the amazing threesome they’d shared. A ménage to go down in history, he’d said.

‘Go down,’ the other hairdresser had teased. ‘Freudian slip?’

Alain had shaken his head. ‘No slips at all. Just unbelievable pleasure.’

Dori blinked as she remembered the story, and wondered what she’d gotten herself into. Or rather, how long it would truly be before the drugs took effect.

On the radio, Rick Springfield’s ‘Jesse’s Girl’ gave way to a blast of heavy sound – The Stones’ ‘Start Me Up’ – and Bette ratcheted up the volume. ‘Next time they come to town, we really have to get tickets. Who knows how long they’ll be around? I mean, those boys are going to be eligible for Social Security soon.’

‘No,’ Dori piped up. ‘They’ll be playing forever.’

Bette didn’t agree. ‘Jagger swore he’d never sing ‘Satisfaction’ at fifty. He’s got to be getting close now. He’ll have to quit soon. I can’t imagine him on stage in those skin-tight clothes much longer. Same as Aerosmith. I’m so glad we got a chance to see them. Dinosaurs like that aren’t going to be around forever, you know it?’

Dori started giggling. She never giggled. This was the X, wasn’t it? ‘Wanna bet?’ she asked, thinking of how hot Joe Perry had looked at the latest concert she’d attended, and how all the girls in the audience had nearly swooned when he’d taken off his shirt. At the sound of her laughter, Bette turned around in the seat again and gave her a funny look.

‘You OK?’

Van blocked her with his body. ‘She’s fine, Bette. You concentrate on the directions. All right? Don’t worry about the three little monkeys back here.’

How odd. He was young. So young. Twenty-four, maybe. But he seemed to be in charge. Why was he wasting his time as a delivery boy and record store clerk? Didn’t he have other aspirations? She tried to ask him, but nothing was making sense. Her words weren’t. Not slurred in a drunken way, but her thoughts were all over the place, bouncing from one concept to another too quickly for her to capture.

As they pulled into a parking space in San Francisco, she finally felt at ease. Euphoric. This was the high she’d been waiting for, wasn’t it? This was the mood Van had been in when she’d entered the car. Blissful. Yet a part of her managed to stay removed. To watch, almost as if from above, as Bette linked arms with her and led her into the club.

Who would have thought this place existed? From the outside, it was a bleak-looking warehouse. Inside, the lights flashed and the music throbbed. The beat was pure techno dance music that Dori had never been particularly fond of, but now she felt her body moving to the rhythm. She couldn’t help herself. The sounds flowed over her, through her, and when Bette started to dance with her, Dori felt as if she were flying.

Bodies pressed all around her. Tight. Sweaty. But Dori didn’t care. The room spun with her. And she was free.

‘You’re feeling it, aren’t you?’ Van asked.

He was right next to her. And when she looked at him, she saw the way he’d looked back when she was sixteen. All right, he looked the same. But she saw him through her own sixteen-year-old eyes, rather than the eyes of a jaded thirty-eight-year-old who had just broken up with the man she thought for sure she would marry. Now, when she gazed at Van, she could see the stud who lifted heavy boxes every day. The flirt who teased her, ‘Wait ‘til you’re legal, kid. The fun we’ll have.’ She’d waited, but by the time she was old enough, she was at college, and thoughts of fucking a delivery boy had been replaced by greater aspirations.

Now, she had no greater aspirations.

None other than fucking him.

She slid into his arms and let herself enjoy the connection. He was hard, had been hard since the car. Maybe he was always hard. She danced against him, feeling as if the lights were part of her, feeling as if her heart was beating to a rhythm that the deejay controlled.

When Van pulled her toward a corner of the room, she followed willingly, amazed, even in her state, to realize that she was graceful, that she could dance her way through the throbbing mass of bodies. She’d been at a Grateful Dead concert once, and had failed in this same attempt. People had been dancing all around her, and Dori hadn’t been able to blend. Instead, she’d gotten stuck at every intersection, playing chicken, not sure which way to go to pass. Trying left, trying right, and ultimately standing totally still and letting the Deadheads swirl on their way around her.

Now she wasn’t fighting the bodies – she was one of them.

She thought of the reunion – a million years and three nights ago. Thought about all of the square-looking dancers, mid-life crises in motion, trying to recapture the emotions of their high school days. Trying to make peace with the differences between who they had wanted to be when they were eighteen and who they’d ended up as now.

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