Shane and Carmen: The Novelization Ch. 08

When Carmen knocked on her door a moment later Shane knew she was busted and there was nothing she could do about it. She stepped away from the door, walked to the other side of her room and looked out the window, putting on her sunglasses as she passed by her dresser. Not unexpectedly, the door opened, and Carmen tentatively stuck her head in.

"Um. I - I - I just saw you out there, and it - I dunno, it looked like you were hiding."

"I'm not hiding," Shane said. The noise roaring in her head was unbearable, 747s revving up for take-off.

"I don't believe you," Carmen said, softly. Shane stiffened. She turned and walked to her dresser grabbing her car keys as she went. She attempted to walk around Carmen, but Carmen snatched the car keys from her hand and tossed them on the bed. Shane stared at her. Carmen couldn't see Shane's eyes and angrily reached up to snatch away the sunglasses. Shane jerked her head away, but Carmen was faster. She yanked the sunglasses off and Shane twisted away so Carmen couldn't see her face. But again it was too late. Carmen spun her around.

"Oh my God. Oh my God. Sh --" She reached up to touch Shane's face, but Shane grabbed her wrist and stopped her

"Shane, who did this?" she whispered. "Who did this to you?"

"It doesn't matter," Shane growled.

"No, tell me! I will fucking kill them!" Carmen said, her voice and anger rising. "Who did this to you?"

"You did it," Shane whispered.

Carmen was stunned. She stared uncomprehending at Shane, while she tried to figure out what Shane was talking about.

"What?" Carmen's face dissolved into a look of anger. After a moment, she said, "Fuck you." She turned and headed to the door. Shane came after her and just as Carmen had the door open Shane grabbed Carmen with one hand and slammed the door shut with the other.

"Wait," Shane begged, her tone changed. "Wait, wait. Look, I'm sorry. That was a fucked-up thing to say. "

Shane released Carmen's arm and looked at the floor, ashamed. She couldn't think, couldn't process. Her chest hurt.

Carmen regarded her. The famed Latina hot temper faded just as quickly as it had come, and anyway, this was Shane, the Shane for whom Carmen would forgive just about anything.

"Well, maybe you meant something by it. Maybe we should just talk and see what happ --"

"No. No. No," said Shane, twisted in the far reaches of her own inarticulateness. "Can we ... can we just forget what I said? Let's go back to being friends."

Carmen took a long minute to answer. "Is that what you want?"

"Really a lot."

They looked at each other. Finally Shane moved, reaching to open the door. As she did she stepped close to Carmen. Their faces were only inches apart. Shane wanted to kiss her so bad. She never wanted anything more in her whole life than to kiss this fantastic girl who made her hurt so much. And she couldn't do it. After a moment, Carmen knew it, too, and turned and walked out the door and down the hall to go wait for Jenny.

***

"We're done for," the first cowboy said. He was wearing a long, white duster, and when he pushed his Stetson back on his forehead, you could see through the dust and grime on his face that he was not very scared about the fact that they were done for. Couldn't care less, in fact. He looked an awful lot like Burr Connor.

"We'd be clear of Barker's Pass by now if you hadn't brought that uppity preacher's daughter," the second cowboy said, full of a reproach that was more banter than anything else. He looked quite a lot like the actor Rod Sebring.

"Popcorn," Carmen whispered, never taking her eyes off the television. Without removing her eyes, Jenny handed the big metal pot of popcorn over to Carmen to take a handful.

"Who you callin' uppity, sidewinder?" the girl asked. She was young, early twenties, and wearing some sort of cloak. She was looking at the second cowboy with contempt while the first cowboy just chuckled at her. This one was ornery as a polecat, all right.

Mark came in the back door, crossed the kitchen, and came into the living room and plopped down on the couch in the open spot next to Carmen.

"Hey, ladies," he said, staring at the movie.

"Oh, hello. It's Mark," Jenny said, glued to the TV.

"Excuse me. Is that how you greet your roommate? What are we watching?"

"We're watching a Burr Connor film festival," Jenny said.

The first cowboy grabbed the ornery polecat, spun her around, and kissed her deeply on the lips. At first she seemed to resist, ever so slightly. Then not at all.

"Yes, Miss Jenny over here is going to ghostwrite his memoirs," Carmen said.

"I'm just gonna be his stenographer," Jenny corrected Carmen.

"No way!" Mark exclaimed. "Do you know that I had a Burr Connor action figure as a child?"

"You did?" Jenny asked.

"I did, and I made him beat up my G.I. Joe action figure on a daily basis. Can I have some popcorn?"

Carmen passed him the pot.

"Are you serious? You actually thought this guy, Burr Connor, was tougher than G.I. Joe?" Jenny asked.

"Oh, pfft. Look at him. Way tougher," Mark said.

On the TV the first cowboy was standing on top of a bluff, looking tough.

"This is sentimental claptrap," Jenny muttered.

"How could you possibly call these macho men sentimental?" Mark asked.

"Um, because it's a pretext for telling stories about, like, the purity of male friendship and devotion. I mean, Mark, okay, look at all these films. They're all fucking the same."

"Chick flicks are all the same," Mark countered lamely.

"Okay, okay, you know what?" Carmen said, tired of being in the middle of this. "You cannot tell that theory to Burr Connor. No." She turned to Jenny and pursed her lips. "Kiss. Now."

She took Jenny's face in her hands and gave her a deep, thorough, tongue-involved kiss.

"Thelma and Louise," Mark said, stuffing a handful of popcorn in his mouth.

Carmen ended her kiss with Jenny with a big "Mwah!" sound. She grabbed the popcorn away from Mark. "No more," she said.

"Where's Shane, by the way?" Mark asked.

"Um, I -- I think she, uh, went out," Carmen answered, not actually sure where Shane was.

"Where?"

"I dunno."

"To a club?"

Jenny giggled. "We don't know, Mark." Everyone laughed.

"Yeah," Carmen said, suddenly looking distracted as Jenny turned to her and stroked her hair. "We don't know where the polecat went."

***

Shane waited until the very last parishioner had come out of the confessional booth. It was after nine, and the priest was more than ready to call it a day. He was a younger man in his mid-thirties. He had started to open the door to his booth when he heard someone go into the adjoining booth and pull the door closed. He sighed and sat back down and settled in. There was always one last confession. He was already aware he was missing the first half of the Boston College game, but it couldn't be helped. He became aware that the person in the confessional was crying quietly.

"Take your time," he said softly. "There's a box of tissues there, if you need them." He heard the parishioner -- he was now pretty sure it was a woman -- sniffle and pull herself together.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been ... sixteen years ... since my last confession," Shane said.

The priest sighed silently. Sixteen years. "And what brought you here tonight?"

"Everyone ... wants something from me, and ... I don't feel like I have anything left to give," Shane said. Her voice broke at the end, and she sobbed out the last few words.

The priest waited patiently, then asked, "What have you been giving up until now?"

"Sex. That's mainly what people want. Actually, I ... I don't even know at this point. I don't - I don't - I don't know."

He heard her sniffle again, and knew she was crying. Yes, this one was in a lot of pain.

"Do you feel you have to have sex with everyone who wants it?"

"In church I didn't. I used to, uh, live in a church shelter, so ... "

"When was that?"

"I guess I was 10," Shane said. "And I ran away from my foster family because someone told me my real mom was back in Austin. And she used to go to that shelter when she was trying to get clean."

"Your mother was a drug addict?

"Yeah," Shane said. She found the tissues and blew her nose. The priest waited.

"Have you ever considered joining a church group?"

"No. No. No, no, I don't like groups," Shane said adamantly. "The thing I ... I like about confession is ... you don't have to see the other person's face. And you don't have to see how -- how hurt they are when they realize that you can't be that thing they want you to be."

"You might find that there are people who don't want anything from you," the priest said. He heard the woman make a sarcastic noise. "They just want to know you," he persisted.

"Yeah, I haven't met anyone like that. Anyway, there's nothing to know." And she realized those were lies, and she was lying not to the priest but to herself. This was a bad idea, coming here. It was a bad idea driven by desperation. Silently she opened the door to the confessional, and walked out.

"My friend, would you just consider it?" the priest asked, knowing she might not hear him, but he had to try. He heard her footsteps fading away. And then he realized she had been right: Whatever she was, she wasn't the thing he had wanted her to be.