Shane and Carmen: The Novelization Ch. 07

She cringed as a big patch came off Veronica's cheek.

"You sure you don't want to try this, Shane? The results are amazing."

"Thanks, but no," Shane said.

"What you don't know about me is that I like intensity," Veronica said. She grunted as the next piece of mud came off, apparently painfully. "When things aren't intense I get bored. And when I am bored I want to kill myself."

The spa tech slowly peeled off more dead skin. Veronica banged her fists against her stomach, trying to ignore the pain. "Motherfucker!" she hissed. She sighed, inhaled deeply. "You know what, Shane? You have potential. You stick with me, kid, and I'm going to help you realize it."

The spa technician pulled off another piece. Veronica grunted. Shane winced, pulling at her own hair, deeply grossed out. "Oh, fuck ... "

A really long piece came off. "Grrrrrrrrrrrryeah!" Veronica yelped. Shane cringed.

That night in Veronica's house, Shane stood in the kitchen making a cocktail for Veronica, who was upstairs somewhere yelling into the phone.

"You're a lying scumbag, and I'm never getting married again --"

"Fuck," Shane whispered to herself. Here we go again.

"-- so I can collect alimony till the day you fucking die! You listen to me --"

Shane took the drink down the hall, through the foyer with its magnificent marble staircase, and up the stairs to Veronica's bedroom, where the yelling was coming from.

"-- you piece of shit. Don't you come crawling back to me the next time you need something produced, because I'm going to tell you to shove it up your ass!" There was a pause. "Fuck you, Marty! Fuck you!"

She slammed the phone down and sat down on the edge of her bed. Shane handed her the drink, a triple vodka martini, four olives. It was Veronica's second one of the evening, not counting the ones she'd had at dinner at Spago. Shane had never eaten there before, and doubted that after the ruckus Veronica had raised, she'd ever in her life be allowed to return there again, absent a blond wig, sunglasses and plastic surgery. Still, Wolfgang seemed to put up with Veronica, and took the veal back into the kitchen, even though there was nothing wrong with it.

Two martinis and a long dreary monologue on the general shittiness of ex-husbands later, Shane got up from her chair and walked into the bathroom in search of something for her blazing headache. The noise level in her brain was up around jet aircraft levels. She rummaged through the medicine cabinet and its dozens and dozens of pill bottles.

"That son of a bitch Marty, ruining my movie," Veronica grumbled in the next room, her speech slurred.

Shane swallowed a couple of pills, and chased them with water. Then she found a bottle of something that looked interesting, and put it in her back pocket.

Veronica sat up in the bed in her pajamas, holding her head and groaning. Her face had red splotches, the result of her spa skin peel. "Never gonna forgive him," she mumbled.

Shane walked over to her and handed her some pills and a glass of water. "Here you go. These should make you feel better in a little while," she said.

"Why don't you take one?" Veronica asked.

"No. I'm not into Xanax. But you had some Oxy in there. Would you mind?"

"Go ahead, take whatever you want," Veronica mumbled. "Take the whole bottle, I can get more."

"Really? All right," Shane said, going back to the bathroom to round up more goodies.

"When you come back, get into bed with me," Veronica slurred after her. "We'll get fucked up and watch Funny Girl. Barbra Streisand movies have always been my tonic when I feel like shit."

Shane returned to the bedroom. "Look, um ... thanks, but I think I'm gonna go."

"No, you're not," Veronica said.

"Yes, I am. My friends need me tonight," Shane said.

" No, they don't—"

"Yes, they do," Shane said quietly but firmly. "Look, I can stay here until you –"

"I'm fucking paying you!" Veronica yelled. "You will stay here until I tell you you can go!"

Well, that did it. "Fuck that," Shane said, turned on her heel and walked out of the bedroom.

"You will do what I tell you to do!" Veronica yelled, scrambling out of bed. "You will fucking watch a movie with me if I tell you to!"

Shane jogged down the grand staircase.

"You'll tickle my back if I tell you to tickle my back! You'll fuck me if I tell you to fuck me!" Shane heard come from somewhere at the top of the stairs. "Come back here!"

But Shane was already gone.

***

Under the heading of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, Alice had managed to do just that. From Day One, nobody had quite understood what it was Dana Fairbanks saw in Tonya Gaskins, a media relations exec the Friends had all met when Dana had invited them to attend the ceremony giving Dana the prestigious Human Rights Campaign Award. Tonya had latched onto Dana, and before anyone knew what happened, they'd become a couple. That was bad enough, but then, as far as Alice was concerned, it got worse. Much, much worse. Dana and Tonya were engaged to be married. At the last second, Alice declared her long-standing love for Dana, the wedding was called off, wicked Tonya was never seen or heard from again, and Alice and Dana were prepared to live happily ever after ... just as soon as they revealed their relationship, to the world, that is. No one knew. No one, that is, except Shane, who with her spooky intuition had somehow divined that Alice and Dana had done the deed, rubbed uglies. Oh, yes. But Shane could keep a secret. It was just Dana and Alice who couldn't. Thus, word got out, and the Friends had decided to surprise Alice and Dana with a little celebration at The Planet on Saturday night.

It was to this party Shane had alluded when she told Veronica Bloom her friends "needed" her. They didn't, in fact, technically "need" Shane ... but on the other hand, there was no way Shane was going to miss putting in an appearance. And what the hell, there was just no fucking way she was going to fuck fucking Veronica Bloom. Shane walked two blocks from Veronica's house, found a street corner with signposts that identified the streets, and called a cab, which picked her up twenty minutes later and dropped her off at The Planet.

Carmen was the DJ for the evening, of course, as she was every Friday and Saturday night, and was up on the dais spinning CDs. She had Grandadbob's Mmmnn playing, and Jenny was up on the dais with her, ostensibly learning the ins and outs of the DJ biz. But in fact, Jenny and Carmen were just doing the flirtation dance with each other, in front of a hundred or so people who were dancing and having a good time and paying minimal attention to the two hot chicks up on the low stage with all the CDs and sound gear.

"These guys, I heard them at the Troubadour and they're fucking amazing," Carmen said to Jenny, talking about Grandadbob, her voice raised a bit to be heard over the music.

"They're fucking amazing?" Jenny replied, teasing and flirting.

Carmen smiled at her. "Yes. They are. Fucking. Amazing."

"You know what I think's fucking amazing?" Jenny asked.

"No."

Jenny pointed out to the audience. "Watching all those people on the dance floor, and then you can feel them getting really, really hot."

"Mmm. I like that, too," Carmen said, looking Jenny in the eyes. "Yeah. They get hot and sweaty, and ... I love it 'cause you can just feel the crowd and ... "

They turned to each other at the same time, their faces just inches apart. Carmen looked at Jenny's mouth, her nice lips, which looked soft and kissable. Because, face it, Jenny was attractive, cute, gamin, sexy. "And you just feel their energy," she whispered.

Jenny looked like she was going to kiss her, but seemed to remember where they were. She turned away to the sound board. "How do you know which buttons are which?" she asked, both of them knowing Jenny didn't give a damn which button was which. But it gave Carmen the opportunity to come up behind Jenny, wrap her arms around her so she could show Jenny what controlled what. Carmen began to explain the switches and dials, using it as an excuse to rub against Jenny's arms, her own breasts softly pressed into Jenny's back.

"CD player two, which corresponds with the sliding button, channel two," Carmen murmured in Jenny's ear, as if it mattered. Jenny turned and looked at Carmen.

"Should we do it?" she asked.

"You want to?"

"I do," Jenny said. They both knew they were talking on two different levels, only one of which had to do with audio equipment.

"Okay," Carmen said. She rubbed her hand down Jenny's arm, guided her hand to the switchboard to a slider, the one that faded out one song and brought up another. Carmen nuzzled Jenny's neck as she guided Jenny's hand over the slide, bringing up the new song. She kissed Jenny's temple.

Shane stood in the middle of The Planet, looking up at the dais and seeing Carmen, seeing the flirting, watching Carmen's hands on Jenny's arms. Shane felt a flight of buzzards take off inside her stomach, big ones, big fucking condors. The noise roared in her ears, and it had nothing to do with whatever Carmen's CD player was blaring out through The Planet's sound system. Carmen just looked so damn ... desirable. Hot. Sexy. Fuckable. She was wearing one of her DJ outfits, the booty shorts, the spangley top with the bare shoulders. Her lustrous black hair shimmered and bobbed as she moved her head. The big brown eyes, liquid pools so deep you could ...

Fuck. Liquid pools? Shane felt liquid pools, all right. The thing was, she wasn't supposed to. Almost every time she looked at Carmen, the noise got louder in her head, and she felt these pangs in her chest, up on her rib cage, across her sternum. It was like bad indigestion or a heart attack or something, a physical pain from shoulder to shoulder. What the fuck was that all about? How come just looking at Carmen could make your stomach flip-flop and your ribcage hurt? The word "heartache" was supposed to be metaphorical, wasn't it? So why did her chest ache?

Just then Carmen looked up, out onto the dance floor, saw Shane standing there. Saw the hurt look on Shane's face. Made eye contact. Shane had seen the kiss, hadn't she? Carmen's face lost its happy smile, showed pain. Pain and guilt. Jenny was nice, but it wasn't Jenny's neck Carmen had most wanted to nuzzle. It was somebody else. She watched Shane swallow hard, turn, walk away, start walking toward the door. Shit, shit, shit!

Shane ran into Alice and Dana just outside the door, just coming into the big party.

"Whoa, Shane. Where you going?" Alice asked.

"Look, um ... I gotta go but everyone's inside, so go for it. Go for it."

Shane left, Alice and Dana looking at her retreating back and wondering what the hell that was all about. They were in their own little world, though, so they took each other by the hand and went inside.

"Ready?" Alice asked. She and Dana took deep breaths, clasped hands, and walked out onto the dance floor. Suddenly a spotlight fell on them, and Carmen cut the music and picked up her microphone. "All right, everyone! If I can have your attention, please, there is a happy new couple in the house," she announced. "Give it up for ... ALICE AND DANAAAAA!"

Everyone in The Planet clapped and cheered as Alice and Dana stood in the spotlight, grinning and blushing like ten-year-olds. Alice saw Bette, Tina and Jenny at the side of the room, all smiling and applauding.

Carmen's voice came over the PA system. "Alice and Dana, this one's for you." The song, Where Do I Begin, the theme song from the movie Love Story, began to play, Shirley Bassey laying it all out from the great Away Team mix.

"Aww! They're so cute together!" somebody in the crowd said.

"Thanks, Carmen," Dana called out, to some laughter around the room. She led Alice out to the middle of the dance floor, both of them blushing. "Congratulations!" someone shouted out, and another woman said, "They're so gorgeous together!" Alice grinned and blushed even deeper as Dana puts her arms around her. They began to slow dance, and few moments later the music picked up a beat. After a minute, the spotlight went off, and they finished the dance surrounded by other swaying, dancing women in the anonymity of welcome darkness. At the end of the song, in a dark corner out of sight of most of the crowd, they shared a tender kiss.

***

Carmen's DJ gig ended at 1 a.m., and Jenny stuck around, helping pack up her stuff and put away all the DJ equipment for the night. Carmen gave her a ride home, and when they got there, Jenny invited her in for a glass of wine.

"Let me go change," Jenny said, leaving Carmen in the kitchen with a bottle of pinot noir and two glasses. There was a bowl of strawberries on the counter, too. Carmen took one, hulled it, and ate it. Jenny returned, wearing a pair of baggy shorts and a skimpy T-shirt. She poured herself a glass of wine as Carmen hulled another strawberry and put it in her mouth. But she didn't eat it; she kept it between her lips. She backed against the counter as Jenny came toward her. Jenny came in close, kissed her, kissed the strawberry out of Carmen's mouth and into her own. Carmen hopped up backwards onto the counter, pulling Jenny up with her, kissing her madly as Jenny settled into Carmen's lap, knocking the bowl of strawberries into the sink. Neither one cared. The kiss was long and intense.

Shane came down the hall from her room and walked into the kitchen, followed by a pair of blond twins wearing only the skimpiest of underwear. Shane, who was dressed, stopped cold, surprised. "Uh, hi," she said.

Jenny and Carmen broke the kiss awkwardly. Jenny didn't seem to mind too much, but Carmen felt as guilty as a shoplifter, and looked it.

"Um," Jenny said, hopping down off the counter.

The twins couldn't have cared less about who was necking on the kitchen counter. "Hey, what about beer, do you have any beer?" one of them asked Shane.

Shane opened the refrigerator door, and looked in. "No."

"Maybe we should get some pizza," the other twin said.

Shane pulled out a bottle of vodka from the freezer. "No. Fuck the food. No way. How's this?" she asked, brandishing the vodka.

"Yeah," the first twin said.

"Okay," Shane said. The roaring in her ears had suddenly started when she'd come into the kitchen and seen Carmen kissing Jenny like that. "Goodnight," she said to them, adding, "Come on," to the twins. She led them back down the hall to her room.

"What was that?" Jenny whispered to Carmen when Shane and the twins were safely out of earshot.

"I don't really think I wanna know. You know?" Carmen said. The mood had been demolished, and Carmen knew it. All it took was for Shane to walk into a room to make Carmen remember the feelings she'd been trying so hard to submerge all these weeks.

"Maybe we should call it a night," she said to Jenny. "Let's just take a breather. And we can ... visit it again, in ... the cool ... clear light of day."

Jenny looked at Carmen. She knew what was going on. Everybody knew what was going on in Carmen's head. Everyone knew who Carmen was attracted to. She slowly walked over and stood in front of Carmen. She reached up and gently tucked a loose strand of hair behind Carmen's ear. "I understand," she said. She kissed Carmen on the cheek and went down the hall to her room. Carmen, weary, feeling guilty and confused, let herself out and drove home.

***

Shane sat in a chair by her dresser, smoking a cigarette. On her bed one of the twins was already naked, having her tits licked and sucked by her sister. Twins like these two were hard to find. Really hard to find. Shane had only ever fucked twins one time before in her life. This could have been -- and should have been -- a landmark evening. Nympho lesbo incest-loving teen twins, only 19 years old. Christ. This was like Halley's Comet, something that would only come around in the average lesbian's life once every eighty-six years. And all Shane could think about was the roaring noise in her head. That, and Carmen.

The naked one looked up at Shane, just sitting there like she was paralyzed or something. "C'mon! Play with us!" she begged Shane.

Shane didn't answer. She leaned forward, opened the top drawer of her dresser, removed a small vile, tapped out a pair of lines of Veronica Bloom's crushed oxy. She took out a small straw, leaned over one of the lines, inhaled.

"C'mon! Play with us, Shawn!" the naked one said again. Her sister's head was buried in her pussy.

Shane leaned back in her chair. "It's Shane," she said.

"Shane, come here!" the naked one begged.

"No," Shane said quietly, closing her eyes. She waited for the buzz, waited for the noise to calm down. Waited for the thoughts about Carmen to go away. Oxy was a painkiller, right? Maybe it could take away this other kind of pain.

***

Jenny slept in late. When she woke, she walked down the hall to the bathroom, peed, washed her hands, splashed water on her face, and returned to her room. She was putting some lotion on her legs when there was a quiet knock on the door.

"Come in," Jenny said, expecting Mark. It was still way too early for Shane to be up, most especially if Shane had been up all night ménage-a-trois-ing the twins. But it wasn't Mark, it was Carmen, who stood in the doorway looking hangdog and apologetic. "Hey," Jenny said, surprised.

"Would you say that this is the cool, clear light of day?" Carmen asked.

"Do you want to come in?" Jenny asked.

Carmen closed the door and sat on the corner of Jenny's bed. "Um ... I've been trying to figure this out," she began.

"Mm-hmm?"

"I don't know why ... I left last night," Carmen said. "I really wish I hadn't."

"I think because you like Shane," Jenny said quietly.

"I'm not someone who falls for fucked-up, unavailable people," Carmen said, as much to herself as to anyone else in the room. But she had done exactly that, fallen hard for a fucked-up, unavailable woman.

"I don't think that we really have a choice in the people that we fall for, Carmen," Jenny said, rubbing lotion on her shins.

She might have added, "Look at me and Marina," but it wasn't necessary. Carmen looked so unhappy and so sorry that it made tears well up in Jenny's eyes. She tried to blink them away, but through them saw Carmen start to slowly unbutton her shirt and drop it to the floor. Then Carmen unbuttoned the top of her jeans. She reached out and put her hands under Jenny's armpits, lifted her and threw her gently back on the bed. Carmen crawled up on top of her on her hands and knees, straddling Jenny's hips. Jenny raised one hand, ran her nails slowly and gently down one of Carmen's arms. Carmen responded the same way, then, running the nails of her right hand down Jenny's left arm. Jenny put her fingers on Carmen's belly, ran her nails down, got to the jeans, ran her nails slowly down the zipper of Carmen's fly. Carmen reached and put her fingers on the base of Jenny's throat, and ran her nails downward slowly over the bra part of Jenny's pajama shift.

Suddenly, Jenny slapped Carmen's arm, hard. It was foreplay, but it was also anger. Anger at being rejected. Anger at being left alone last night. Anger that she wasn't the object of Carmen's love, anger that Shane was. Anger that Shane was hopeless, a lost cause, and would never reciprocate. Anger that Jenny was so sexually attracted to Carmen, though she wasn't in love with her. Anger that she was horny.

Carmen reacted to the slap with stunned silence. She looked down at Jenny below her. Then she slapped Jenny back, just as hard. Jenny showed no reaction; she just slapped Carmen's arm again, harder. Carmen slapped her back, harder. Jenny moved to strike her again, but Carmen pinned both her wrists over her head. Jenny struggled, but Carmen was a little bigger and a lot stronger. A tear ran down Jenny's cheek. Carmen just looked at her. After a moment, Jenny felt the strength go out of Carmen's grip as Carmen lowered herself down on Jenny's chest. Jenny could have pulled her hands loose, but she didn't try. Carmen just laid there with her head next to Jenny's.