Shane and Carmen: the Novelization

Chapter 23 The Morning After

Carmen was asleep on the living room couch and didn't hear the front door open or close, but she heard the squeak of a floorboard and knew Shane was standing near the door, trying to be silent and invisible. She didn't know what time it was, but it was daylight, a lot of it.

Without turning, Carmen asked quietly, "Did you fuck her?" She rolled over, sat up and looked at Shane, who stood frozen in the middle of the living room. In a way, the question was simply rhetorical, to get it on the record. In her heart, Carmen already knew.

Shane hung her head. Busted.

Well, that answered that. Carmen stood and went into the kitchen and started making a pot of coffee. Shane walked down the hall to her room, took off her tuxedo jacket, and went to the bathroom to take a piss, and to remove her strap-on, which she put back in her dresser drawer behind her clean underwear. There was roaring in her head, but nothing unusual about that. She had no idea what to say or do. She was exhausted. She'd had maybe an hour of sleep.

When she went back to the kitchen she found a mug of coffee waiting for her on the table. She slumped down in her chair, her hand around the warmth of the coffee cup. Carmen was standing near the sink looking out the window.

"Are you in love with her?" Carmen asked, again quietly.

"No!" Shane insisted. How could Carmen think that?

But Carmen was equally insistent. "Are you sure?"

"Yuh."

Carmen poured herself a cup of coffee.

Shane knew this wasn't over by any means, but she tried feebly to shut it down. "Please, Carmen, I don't want to make this into a big deal." Big mistake. It lit Carmen up.

"You go all the way over to somebody's beach house and you fuck 'em 'til the sun comes up, and you're asking

me

not to make it into a big fucking deal?"

"You were practically coming all over those two Def Jam guys!" Shane shot back.

"That was work!" Carmen said, her anger building. Ah, so

that's

what this was about.

"You were—"

"That was work, and you fucking know it!" Carmen turned and glared at her, but then a thought struck her. Her voice softened. "Are you jealous?"

"No! I'm not fucking jealous." Uh, another mistake. Just leave it alone. "It just made me sad." You should have left it alone, Shane told herself, way too late.

"Oh, you were so fucking sad that you go off and you fuck Cherie Jaffe? Shane, what kind of a psychotic response

is

that?"

"I guess I'm really fucked up in that way."

Carmen didn't say anything, just looked out the window. Her tone softened again, because inside her head she was telling herself to calm down. "Are you hungry?"

The change in tone surprised Shane, whose processing was usually hours behind. Right now she wasn't hours behind, she was days behind. "Yeah. Starving."

"You are?" Carmen's tone was almost ... gentle.

"Yeah."

Carmen went to the refrigerator, sniffling. She took a big cardboard box out of the refrigerator and put it on the stove top. "We've got some pizza."

She took a slice out, but then the anger wave hit her. "You want sausage or fucking pepperoni?" she yelled, scraping off a handful of toppings and throwing them at Shane.

"Fuck, Carmen!" Shane shouted, jumping up and shielding herself from the incoming.

"'Cause, if that's what you want, it's just fucking meat, if that's what you want!"

"Sometimes it is!" Shane blurted out, angry now, too, because the simple truth didn't require any processing, but it was just oh so far on the wrong side of this there was no way out.

"In that case, you should have no fucking problem with me going out and fucking whoever

I

want!"

Shane stared at her. It was a stopper. She had never considered that maybe Carmen would, in fact, ever be the unfaithful one. Carmen fucking somebody else. The idea wouldn't have occurred to Shane in a thousand years, which was completely the opposite of what had made Shane so upset at watching her flirt with the Def Jam guys. And yet it was such a simple idea:

Turn-about is fair play

. It was a rule understood in every childhood playground, yet for some reason it didn't work all that well with adults. If the rules allowed her to fuck Cherie Jaffe, Carmen ought to be allowed to fuck the Def Jam guys, right? Not that it was really ever going to happen. But what about somebody else?

Carmen stomped out of the kitchen, but she was so angry she turned around and stomped back in again. She pulled the chair out opposite Shane so forcefully it made Shane flinch. She sat down and folded her arms tightly in front of her.

"Look, I'm furious for a whole bunch of reasons, but here's a couple of them," Carmen said, looking Shane in the face. "Those guys I was flirting with? Especially Roland, remember him? Shane, those people had

penises

. I don't

do

penises. You

know

that. Did you see the packages they had down the front of their track suits? Roland must have had a whole kielbasa stuffed in there. Did you see him?"

Shane said nothing.

"Shane, I'm asking you a question. Did you see the size of the package in his pants? Shane?"

"I saw it," she said, not looking up.

"Shane, I'm not fucking Federal Express. I don't

do

packages, any more than you would. What totally boggles my mind is that you

know

this about me. I can understand people getting all jealous and fucked up when their lover seems to be cheating with somebody else. In a way it can even be kind of flattering that you care so much. I get that part of it. But Shane, if you're ever gonna get bent out of shape about me and somebody, the one you're gonna have to worry about will most likely be some shy, quiet, twenty-something girlie-girl with nice, modest tits and a cute smile. Who knows, she might even look a little bit andro, or maybe not. But no big, strapping butch in a flannel shirt, and most of all, Shane, no real, live, testosterone-fueled, one-eyed trouser snakes. You know I hate snakes anyway, and I can't think of anything more likely to turn me off than some misogynistic superstud with a lance in his pants who thinks he's gonna find a home for it in this senorita's

panochota

."

And anyway, Carmen thought to herself, if I was going to cheat on you and have an affair, you'd never know about it. I sure as hell wouldn't throw myself all over some P. Diddy Wannabe and his posse, not in front of a room full of people, and sure as hell not in front of my lover, the person I've lived with and fought so hard to win and keep and heal. No. If something was going to happen, even you, with your supernatural powers of observation, would never know about it. It would be the stealth fuck of the century.

"The second thing is, yeah, I

was

flirting with them, Shane. I admit that, and if it bothered you I'm sorry. But it's just like they say in

The Godfather,

it's just business, Mikey. By night and some weekends I'm La Pica, the smokin' hot Latina DJ, and it's how I earn some of my paychecks. You already

know

all this, too, but I guess I gotta say it anyway. When I'm up on that stage I wear my hot little booty shorts and my push-up bra, and yeah, I give 'em the booty, and the cleavage, the titty show, and the big smile, and I flirt outrageously, because it's all just part of the act. I bet that you, of all people, wouldn't bat an eye if I was a topless pole dancer stuffing dollar bills in my G-string. But I don't go anywhere near that far, Shane. And no, it doesn't matter to me one damn bit whether my audience is straight or gay, black or white or brown,

gringo

or

gringa,

they all get hot DJ La Pica. I'm an equal opportunity entertainer, and my job is to make people happy by having a good time and dancing to the music. Shane, I flirt shamelessly with 85-year-old men in nursing homes, men who are wearing Depends and haven't had erections in forty years. And that's all it is, just flirting, and it's where my job stops. Nobody touches me, not ever. Whatever they think in their heads, their masturbation fantasies, their jack-off dreams, that's got nothing to do with who I am. But you

know

me when I'm not working, and you

know

that hot tamale up on the stage showing cleavage to the playahs, you

know

that isn't the real me. Don't you?"

Again Shane said nothing.

"Shane? Do you think that's the real me up on that stage? You think I'm a slut? Some cock-hungry party girl? You really worried I might actually D-P two gangstas?"

"No," Shane whispered.

"Correct answer. Now let's switch teams. Have you ever seen me flirt too far for your comfort level with anybody who had a pussy? Shane?"

"No."

"Well, thank you. Thank you for acknowledging that. Now here's the last thing. If you want to run off and fuck some pathetic Beverly Hills Desperate Housewife, go do it, but don't lay it off on me as being my fault, that anything I did made you go do it. Just go fuck her and don't get caught, don't ever let me find out about it, don't come crawling home with her lipstick on your nipples and a hickey on your ass and expect me to pretend I'm blind and can't smell her pussy on your face. Don't come home with AIDS or any other STD you picked up in a toilet stall in a leather bar. If you're gonna do it make fucking sure I never find out about it and I don't catch anything. Am I making myself clear? Shane?"

"Yes," Shane whispered. "But I'm not--"

"I don't want to hear it!" Carmen said.

Carmen got up from the table and started cleaning up pizza shrapnel. There was a glop of tomato sauce on Shane's sleeve. Carmen left it where it was.

***

Later. Shane sat on the back porch steps, smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper when Carmen came out of the house with a large dictionary in her hand. She had changed out of her DJ costume from the night before, and wore a black tank top, black Capri pants, and her funky classic Uggs her mother had given her for Christmas that she loved so much. She opened the book in the middle, turned a few pages and studied a passage.

"Okay, we're talking monogamy. It is a noun. And it is the condition or practice of having a single mate during a period of time--"

"I get it, Carmen," Shane said.

"Wait a minute, I just want to make sure you and I both know what we're talking about here. Um. Oh. Listen to this." She began to read from the book. "'Monogamy is common among birds.'"

"That's great, because I love birds," Shane said. She knew she was just going to have to endure this.

"'It is the practice of having a single mate during a period of time,'" Carmen read. She closed the book and set it down on the picnic table on the back porch, next to their barbecue grill. "Does that mean anything to you?"

"I'm willing to try," Shane said.

Carmen bit her lip and slowly turned away. That made Shane angry now herself. She stood up. "Is that not enough? I'm willing to try something that doesn't come naturally to me? And that I don't understand, but I'm willing to try it?"

"Um, hm, right," Carmen said, picking up a small fire extinguisher they kept on the deck next to the barbecue grill. "Birds, Shane. I'm talking about a goddam fucking bird, asking you to be as civilized as a goddam fucking bird."

Shane looked at the fire extinguisher in Carmen's hands. "Don't," she said, as Carmen began to gently shake up the fire extinguisher.

"Really? Don't do it?"

"No."

"I shouldn't do it. It's wrong. It's completely irresponsible--" She hit the lever and sprayed Shane with a huge cloud of dry chemical powder. Shane yelped and tried to crouch out of the way. Carmen stood there laughing as the cloud dissipated. Shane stood motionless like a nicely snowflaked beignet, glaring at Carmen. Had the fucking woman lost her fucking mind?

Just then Alice came through the house and came to the back door. "Knock, knock," she said, standing in the doorway. Carmen turned to her. "Hi!" she said, warmly and friendly, like nothing whatsoever had just happened.

"Hi, weirdos," Alice said, regarding Shane covered in the cloud of powder and the fire extinguisher in Carmen's hand. "Still trying to get her to quit smoking?"

"Ah, ya know," Carmen said. "Just a little talk about monogamy."

"Oh. Yeah," Alice said, as though that explained it all. "Yeah. One of those."

Shane spit powder and dust out of her mouth. "A fucking expert," she said angrily. Alice's mouth puckered. "Didja know birds mate for life," she asked Alice.

Alice thought about that. "Hey. Do you know anything about bats?" She looked from Shane to Carmen.

"Bats? Bats, bats, bats, bats," Carmen pondered. "No."

"Too bad," Alice said, "because I got bitten!" She turned her head to the side, revealing bite marks on the side of her neck.

"What?" Carmen laughed. She went to Alice and looked at the marks. "Oh, my ... ." She remembered now that last night Alice had introduced her date, a pretty, dark-eyed woman, a bit Goth, whose name Carmen didn't remember. Rita? Uta? Kata? Something like that.

"Don't be jealous," Alice said.

"My god!" Carmen laughed, looking at the bite mark on the side of Alice's neck.

"Okay, but don't laugh, because I could really be one of the undead, like, in two days."

"Al!" Carmen laughed. Shane looked at Alice like she'd lost her mind, as Carmen had, and it had become contagious.

"And do my eyes look a little black?" Alice removed her sunglasses as Carmen laughed again. "I'm serious."

"No!" Carmen said. "Come on, Al. You got embraced."

"Sure did," Alice said demurely, batting her eyelashes and grinning.

"No," Carmen giggled, "it's called a vampire's embrace. There's these lesbian vampire Goth cults. So what they do is they pick a victim, they take 'em home, seduce 'em. Fuck 'em bliiiiind--"

"And how!"

"—and then they bite your neck."

"It was the best sex I've ever had. In my whole life," Alice said. "I came, like, nine thousands times." She looked at Shane, who looked at Carmen. "Ya hear that, Shane? Like, nine thousand. Orgasms."

"Fantastic, Alice," Shane said, with all the enthusiasm characteristic of the Undead.

"And then I threw Dana out when I got home."

"You threw Dana out?" Shane asked.

"That point-of-sale promotional cutout? The foam core silhouette?" Alice moved her hands as to show a human shape. "She's gone."

"Congratulations," Carmen said.

"Thank you." She paused and looked at Shane and Carmen. "So, I'm gonna go to the Sleater-Kinney concert tonight, with Uta. Are you guys coming?"

"I don't know," Shane said pointedly and looking at Carmen to see if the Smokey the Bear Fire Prevention effort was still in effect. "Are we?"

"Only if you manage to clean up your act by then," Carmen said.

"Yeah, Shane, you really should quit smoking," Alice said.

"Mm-hmm" Carmen added.

"It's gross." Alice said. Shane stared at them.

***

After Alice left Shane went into the house to shower off all the fire extinguisher powder. She stripped off her clothes in the bathroom and climbed into the shower. She felt like shit. She felt like crying, something she almost never did. She knew she'd fucked up, and she felt horrible about it, but the right words just couldn't come out. Maybe there were no right words. She stood under the shower, letting the water beat down on her head. She felt so miserable she did start crying.

Carmen came into the bathroom to get some aspirin out of the medicine cabinet. She'd given herself a headache over this thing, but she knew the headache was the least of her problems at the moment. What was she going to do? Had she gone too far?

This whole "cheating" thing. Monogamy. Being faithful. So far as she knew, no one had ever cheated on her before ... but then, most of her previous relationships had been, well, unconventional, to say the least, although being a lesbian had nothing to do with it. Lucia had been sleeping with Pablo all along, but she made no bones about it and Carmen not only knew about it, she had watched them from her window. If anything, Carmen had been the one who was cheating, she had been the one who had helped Lucia cuckhold Pablo. And she had known at the time exactly what she'd been doing, she and Lucia. So she was a fine one to talk about being faithful.

Then there was Sister Rosario. Talk about being unfaithful.

Madre.

She had helped Sister Rosario cheat on an entire international religion. She had helped her cheat on the Pope. On God herself.

Had she simply expected too much of Shane? God knows, Shane was just about the least monogamous woman on earth. Was it unfair of her to have expected something different from Shane? Was it unrealistic? Shane had slept with a thousand women, for crying out loud; was it simply insanity on her part to think Shane would suddenly change into something she wasn't, and had never really ever been? Maybe the fact that Shane had gone eight months faithful to one single partner had been more miracle than anyone had a right to expect. And what was this thing women had with Bad Boys (even when the Bad Bois were andro girls)? Why did women think they could "fix" these Bad Boys, change them, "cure" them? Sometimes even a Mayan jaguar goddess wasn't enough help to keep somebody's zipper zipped.

"Carmen?"

Carmen looked into the bathroom mirror, and saw Shane looking at her through the transparent shower curtain. Water streamed down Shane's face, but Carmen could still see there were tears there, too. Shane looked so miserable. So beaten down. So full of hurt.

"Yeah?"

"I made a mistake," Shane whispered, and then her voice broke. "And I ... I can't say that ... it won't happen again ... without being a fuck-up and a liar." She turned and parted the curtain to face Carmen directly. "But I want to try." Carmen looked at her, listening to the sorrow in Shane's voice. "You're the first person I want to make that ... I want to make that promise to."

Carmen turned and looked at her. She felt the pain in her own heart seem to ... change. She could see Shane was hurting, hurting so bad.

Carmen walked to the tub and looked into Shane's eyes. What she saw there was remorse. Sorrow. Carmen felt her own heart finally melt. She reached down, pulled her top off, kicked off her Uggs, unfastened her bra, dropped her pants and panties. She stepped through the shower curtain and enfolded Shane in her arms.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry," Shane said, crying, as Carmen cried, too.

***

When they got to the Sleater-Kinney concert there was no sign of Alice, but that didn't mean much of anything, not at first. They switched their cell phones to vibrate, and went in to find their seats. During the opening number, Shane felt her phone vibrate and looked at the caller ID. She ignored it, but a moment later it vibrated again. When she looked she saw a text message had come in: "@ CedarSinai w Dana. Ver sic. Come quik."

"I gotta call Alice," Shane whispered to Carmen. "They're at the hospital." She was gone and hurrying up the aisle to the lobby before Carmen could ask what was up.

In the lobby near the bar Shane called Alice's cell.

"Hey, what's going on?" Shane asked.

"It's Dana," Alice said. "She's really sick. When I went to pick her up she was on the floor, and I had to call the paramedics. They took her to the hospital, and I rode in the ambulance with her."

"What happened to her?"

"I don't know. They're still trying to figure it out. I think it has to do with that procedure she had the other day, maybe some reaction to the drugs or something."

"Is she conscious? What did she say?"

"She was mostly out of it when I got there, and then the paramedics put this oxygen mask on her, and she couldn't talk, and when we got to the hospital you know how it is, you have to wait outside while they all rush in and do whatever. So as of this moment I still don't know. But can you guys come over? I hate to ask you, in the middle of the concert, but I'm really scared—"