It was as if she had been the one crying. I looked at her and saw what I had expected from Crystal: red-rimmed eyes, a slack, puffy face, clotted hair, blank expression. She wore a ratty bathrobe and appeared to have, possibly, just woken up, despite it being nine o’clock at night. Her feet were bare and her hands were clutching repeatedly at the fold of her pinkish robe, as if fighting to keep it tightly secured. She was mumbling to herself like a madwoman.
Then she saw me and the caul of madness and despair slithered off her face. She lit up, smiled wide, her eyes scrunched in a sort of delirious joy. “You’re here,” she said, then did something she’d never done before. She walked up to me, slipped her arms around my waist, lay her head on my chest, and squeezed me tightly.
“Jeez you guys, get a room.”
I turned my head, not wanting to move any other part of my body while being embraced by the small, frail woman, and saw Crystal approaching, a wicked smile on her face. She thrust a drink toward me. Her own, I noticed, had been adequately topped off.
Her mother let me go and I accepted the drink, my eyes not leaving Crystal’s as I looked for signs of her distress.
“Are you okay?”
She slurped from her glass loudly, studying me. She finally lowered the drink but said nothing. Her mother had moved. Circled around to now stand behind Crystal. She whispered something in Crystal’s ear that I didn’t catch. Crystal, her eyes never wavering, nodded, as if in agreement, then leaned into me and gave a couple loud sniffs.
“Mom’s right,” she said. “You really do stink.”
She looked me up and down, as if just noticing my sweat-stained gym clothes.
“Do you have anything else to wear?” she said, as if condemning me for showing up to a formal event underdressed.
“No…” I said, dumbfounded by the attitude of both women, overrun suddenly by that confused, confined feeling once more. “I came straight from the gym. You called…”
“Oh, that,” she said with a wave of her hand and another gallant pull from her drink. “I’m over that.”
I stood there, stupidly, not knowing what to do next. The television blared at my back. Guns were firing. The drink was cold in my fingers, the perspiration giving it the same texture as a slowly melting, fist-sized ice cube. I wanted to set the drink down. I wanted to get the hell out of there. I wanted to go home, shower, and crawl into bed with a book. But instead I just stood there, waiting to be told what to do next. Confined, I thought, wondering at the context of the word.
“Okay, well, first you need to drink that, because you look like you just ate something gross, or you’re tense, or something.” She eyed me suspiciously, and I had to look away. I was afraid she could see my thoughts, my desire to flee, my sense of being done with her. “Something’s wrong. I don’t know… you’re acting weird. He’s acting weird, isn’t he Mom?”
I looked up, saw the older woman nodding over Crystal’s shoulder.
The Blue Ward was filled with damp abyssal creatures.
The Green Ward had carpet and no visitors were allowed.
A pool table.
“SO,” SHE SAID carefully, as if talking to a child holding a loaded gun, one frightened fingertip on the trigger, frozen with the fear of what they might do next, whether purposeful or by accident. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to have a big sip of that drink, then you’re going to turn around and go into that bathroom. You’re going to take off your disgusting gym clothes and take a hot shower. We,” she motioned to her mother with an extended thumb, “are going to wash your clothes and bring you some clean stuff to wear in the meantime. Then,” she continued boldly, not giving me an opening to counter her plan, “we are going to lay down on that couch, watch a bad movie, and I’m going to rub your back and shoulders until… you… relax.”
If this were a horror movie, this is the part where the audience would be shaking their head in disbelief, am I right? Of course you don’t go into the shower. You put the drink down, politely excuse yourself, and walk without hesitation to your car, where you get in, lock the doors, and drive your ass as far away from those women and that house as you can, never to return. But the thing is, at the time you just aren’t putting it all together. You’re too… involved. You have no perspective. When you’re watching characters on a screen, it’s easy to shout “Get out of there!” at them, because it seems so damned obvious. But when you are in it, when it’s real life, the idea of running seems, well, stupid. Over-the-top. Excessive. Outrageous.
Crazy.
So, I did what I think a lot of men would have done in my situation. I mean, a relatively hot girl in her underwear is handing me a drink, telling me to take a shower so she can give me a back and shoulder massage? There’s a lot there to be argued for. Yeah, of course, it was weird that her mother was sort of lurking around the whole scene. And yes, Crystal was attractive, but sadly not to me, due to her amphibian white skin and nip-and-tucked features, but nevertheless I turned on my heels and allowed Crystal’s cold hands, now pressed firmly into the middle of my back, to push me gently through the open door of the bathroom.
