Page 36 of Mr. North
Nine
Beth
T he day my father died, I was in Los Angeles visiting a friend. Specifically, I was in Long Beach at an aquarium. I was hurrying through the exhibits because I’d skipped breakfast and I was starving, trying to reach the cafeteria as quickly as possible, when my cell phone started ringing in my bag. I was going to ignore the call, but Sarah, a friend from high school who’d moved out to California to do the whole wannabe actress thing, told me I should get it. When I saw it was David, I nearly threw the phone back into my bag all over again, but Sarah had insisted. I picked up, and I received the news from my brother that would change my life forever. I remember how blue the water inside the tanks was. How lazily the fish swam from one side of the glass to the other. The quick flashes of silver from the more energetic, tiny fish that swarmed in great balls closer to the surface of the tanks. The aquarium smelled of cleaning products and pretzels. That dry, chemical, paper smell from printed leaflets, and the overpowering saccharine smell of ice cream. I remember staring at Sarah, the faint lines at the corners of her eyes fading as she slowly stopped smiling, realizing that something was wrong. I recall every last detail with a kind of precision that only comes during a momentous event. I’ve had so few moments like that in my life, but as I head home back to my apartment, the subway rocking me from side to side, I know this will be one of them.
The sharp, floral smell of perfume the woman next to me is wearing. The sound of the tinny music escaping a guy’s headphones on the other side of the carriage. The heavy, weightiness that has settled into my bones, deep down, and the ache that seems to be throbbing everywhere along with it.
Today, I slept with a man I’ve fantasized about for years, and it was mag-fucking-nificent. He’s so very different to the party boy Lothario I daydreamed about years ago. He’s mysterious, and he’s private. So serious and demanding. I close my eyes, losing myself in the memories of his hands on my body, and I can’t cope anymore. I feel like I’m on fire, so ridiculously turned on that I almost have to get off the line three stops early so I can walk the rest of the way home to clear my head.
I shut my eyes, let my head lean back against the wall of the carriage, and I do my best to zone out instead. These memories are better saved for when I’m alone, when at least ten people aren’t looking at me, wondering why I’m so red in the face and I can’t stop fidgeting.
My phone starts blowing up the moment I get service. Text after text from Thalia come flooding in, mixed in with a couple from David, but I don’t read them. I’m too utterly blissed out and in my own little world right now, and David’s weird band messages coupled with Thalia’s one million questions about Raph are too much for me to worry about right now. I just don’t want to ruin my good mood, and it’s guaranteed to happen the moment I start reading. I arrive home, I make myself a coffee, and I sit myself down on the couch with my text books, ready for a night of studying.
An hour zips by and then another. Just before eleven, a loud hammering rings out inside my apartment, and my brother’s voice makes its way through the door, scaring the shit out of me.
“Beth. Beth, open the damn door. We need to talk.”
I almost trip over my own feet in my haste to get to the door. I fling it open, glaring at David, hissing at him. “Shut up! What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you trying to kick my door down in the middle of the night? Damn it, David, just shut up already. You’re gonna piss off the neighbors.”
My brother braces himself against the doorjamb, leaning his body into the apartment. “I don’t give a shit about pissing off your neighbors, Beth. Why haven’t you been answering your phone?”
“Have you been drinking?” I fire back. His eyes are bleary and bloodshot, and there are dark circles beneath them. He gives me a tired sideways look, pushing past me into the apartment.
“No. I’m hung over. There’s a difference.”
“Wow. Mom would be so stoked to see you right now,” I quip, swinging the door closed. “Her only son, reeking of stale whiskey and hollering at people in hallways.”
David slaps both hands against his chest in mock horror. He grins, laughing under his breath. “Me? You think she’s ever going to give me shit again after what she’s probably seeing of you on the news right now?”
“The news? What are you talking about?”
David slumps down into the armchair, picking up what remains of a half eaten sandwich I made earlier, stuffing it into his mouth. “Oh, this is priceless,” he says around his mouthful. “You’re so fucking oblivious. Turn on the TV.”
A jolt of panic fires through me. He sounds so confident. So smug. He knows something. Something about me, and he’s enjoying this way too much. I flick on the TV, bracing myself.
“Pick a news channel. Any news channel,” David says breezily.
I scroll until I find one. The female anchor on the screen is reporting on a shooting that’s taken place in Brooklyn. David scowls, obviously upset that the woman reading from the teleprompter isn’t talking, for some reason, about me. He doesn’t need to sulk for long, though. The next image that scrolls up on the top right hand side of the screen is of me. Naked. My breasts blurred out. Hands planted against a pane of glass, a look of pure ecstasy on my face as Raphael North kisses and bites at my neck from behind. My body jolts and my mouth opens, my eyes shuttering closed, and it’s obvious from the movement that Raphael has just thrust himself inside me. I remember the moment vividly. It felt like my brain was melting out of my ears. I’ve never seen my face during sex, though. I never knew I’d look like…that .
I sink down, aiming for the edge of the couch and missing altogether, my ass hitting the rug instead. “Oh…no. What the fuck? No . No, no, no.”
“Oh, yes ,” David counters. He points at the TV, chewing. “If you keep watching for another minute or so, they actually show that part. You were nodding a lot. I’m no good at lip reading, but they had an expert on one of the other channels who was. They said yes was the only word that came from your mouth for about twelve minutes. They said the stuff that came after that couldn’t be repeated on national television.”
“What the…fuck? How ? How did this happen?” The video clip is still playing in the top right corner, even though it’s obvious Raphael and I are having sex. Intermittently, our bodies will be blurred out as we shift around, to avoid showing anything too graphic, but the movement alone, the expressions on our faces, the sweat on our skin…it all tells a very damning tale.
The news anchor is talking, one eyebrow arched coquettishly, a smirk at the corners of her mouth, but I don’t hear a word she says. My ears are filled with a high-pitched buzzing sound that seems to go on and on forever, rising in frequency, until it sounds like goddamn screaming. I can’t understand…
We were in his fucking penthouse! That’s, what, the seventy-third floor? The Osiris Building looms over every other structure for a mile in every direction. How could anyone have captured a photo of us, let alone fucking video ?
David says something. Laughs. He flicks the channel over to another news show, this time some shitty, cheesy entertainment type show that sensationalizes absolutely everything, and boy are they going to town. Four people sit at desks, two on either side of a large screen. They keep pausing the video at intervals and zooming in on either Raphael or me. Thankfully they seem mostly interested in Raphael, though they point out my birthmark on my collarbone, and they say something unfriendly about my ass when Raphael shoves me up against the glass so my butt cheeks are crushed up against the window.
“Ohhhh. Sorry, little sister. That’s gotta sting.” David gets up from the couch, rubbing at his temple. “Hey, do you have any Tylenol? This headache is getting out of control.”
I don’t breathe a word. I don’t breathe a goddamn thing.
My career is over. It’s over before it’s begun. A sex tape scandal before I’ve even taken the bar, for crying out loud. A small, hopeful voice whispers in my ear: Maybe they don’t know who you are. Maybe no one will recognize you. I’m not even done forming the thought when my driver’s license flashes up on the screen, my address blurred out. My name and date of birth are there for all to see though, plain as day. My fucking driver’s license? How the hell did they get a picture of my license? Lord, I’ve been meaning to change that picture for years now. The photo looks like a mug shot; my eyes are wide, like I was caught off guard, and my head is cocked at a weird, barely noticeable angle that makes me look like I’m struggling to answer a question.
“Not doing you any favors, huh?” David quips. The guy sitting on the right of the television screen is making fun of my tousled hair. He uses a laser pointer to highlight my birthmark again, as another still shot from the damning video takes over the whole screen.
