An Ass Out of You and Me

Copyright © 2007 by Tim King

Goucher College Fiction Workshop

All rights reserved







An Ass Out Of You And Me



By Tim King



I swarmed like a hive of bees down the street to Susie’s apartment. What I had just seen was unspeakable. There was nothing good about it. It was disgusting and wrong and the worst part was that it was completely believable, completely within the realm of reality. That’s probably what had me so pissed about it.

I hadn’t even bothered to call her. The moment I realized it was her, I slammed the laptop shut, threw on clothes, and walked across the street to the rows of clone apartments to find her. Although I didn’t really check the time, I could tell I had made my way over much faster than usual. I had even forgotten to smoke a cigarette on the way there.

When I knocked on the door, Rachel answered. She was wearing a huge sweatshirt with tube socks and her curly molasses-brown hair was bed-headed. I obviously had woken her up with the pounding.

“Osmond. Hi,” she said in her monotone voice. Her eyes were much smaller than usual. She looked better when she had glasses on.

“Where’s Susie?” I asked.

“Yeah, nice to see you too,” she drawled, closing her eyes. She turned around, cigarette held between her two slender fingers like a flower petal, and walked back towards her room, a trail of smoke following her like she was the yellow-brick road. As she moved, I noticed her oversized sweatshirt was covering boy boxer-shorts.

“Oh, do come in,” she added sarcastically. I wasn’t put off; she more or less always sounded like this.

“Thanks. I didn’t wake you up,” I said, closing the apartment door behind me. It wasn’t a question.

“No, I was just closing my eyes and breathing heavily under my warm covers, having hallucinations and drooling. But no, you didn’t wake me up or anything.” She flopped onto the bed, sucking her cigarette as she did so. I lit one up myself.

“So where’s Susie?” I asked, putting the lighter back in my pocket.

“Not here,” she said, smoke following her sentence. She looked like a dragon. She crossed her curvy legs. They managed to seem very long despite the fact she was just over five foot.

“Is she at work?”

“Doubtful.”

“Library?”

“Probably. She said she had a lot of research, and you know she has to keep her scholarship.”

Susie was always the studious one. “Do you know which library?”

“Why don’t you just fucking call her?” Rachel asked, sitting up and giving me an incredulous look. Her eye shadow from the night before clung to the under-lids of her eyes, amplifying how much they matched the darkness of her hair.

“I want to talk to her face-to-face,” I explained, sitting down on the beanbag chair across from Rachel’s bed. Her room smelled like something else besides cigarettes. Something fruity. Opium?

“Why?” she asked. “I don’t believe you. You walked over here, walked all the way over here without calling to check if she was even here, just to ask her a question? Or talk to her in person, whatever?” Rachel snorted and pulled her hair back from the side of her face.

I nodded, eyebrows raised in annoyance. I looked away at the sunlight sneezing softly through the semi-slit blinds.

“Bullshit,” she decided, and uncrossed her legs and pointed her healthy tan knees at each other. “I think you just wanted to see me.”

I rolled my eyes. I really had not planned on getting tangled up with Rachel at the moment.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, putting the cigarette out in an ashtray. There were several scattered throughout the room. She leaned forward and put on her glasses, which lay on the nightstand next to her. They were visibly smeared.

“I saw something involving Susie,” I started to explain. “Something really fucked. Something really…really just fucked up, and I have to talk to her about it.”

“What did you see?” she asked, completely alert now, the hint of a smile tugging at her smarmy lips. Her eyes shone like a first-grader’s.

I sighed, wondering how best to explain. I finally got up and walked to the bed and sat down next to her. My hand reached over and stroked her hair behind her ear. She closed her eyes and breathed in and sighed. I leaned over and started sucking on her neck, taking in her familiar cigarette shampoo sweat smell. She shuddered and her hand rolled over my hips, the border of my pants and skin. I unzipped my fly and she knelt on the floor in front of me, smiling and taking off her glasses.