Our Town by Kevin Jack McEnroe Page A

got angry and hot and her voice showed it. Good hot, though. Her skin was crawling with euphoria. She seemed to have gotten today’s pharmacological cocktail just right. So right. But she didn’t know how or why. Too bad. It wasn’t always this easy. She spoke again. This time louder.
    “Don’t fuckin’ bug me right now, okay?” Her eyes were wide, even blacker. Parrot-like, she squawked, “I’m getting ready. I’m figuring out my fuckin’ outfit. And you asking me these dumb questions is only getting in my fuckin’ way.”
    Dale looked up at her and then back down at his drink. His glass was empty. “I need another drink then,” he said, and he got up and left for the kitchen. His dinner jacket remained on the bed, still atop the mirror. Fuck an hour, he wanted another bag. He’d have to stop at his guy’s house before the party. He thought he’d stay out late tonight. Have some fun. Enjoy his youth. I’ll sleep all daytomorrow, he thought. Sleep’s for pussies, anyway. I’ll sleep when I’ve got nothing to do.
    “ GOODNIGHT, MY DARLINGS ,” Dorothy whispered to Clover and Dylan. She’d gotten a nanny—Roberta—to watch the kids for the evening. Dale’s success to this point—he’d already made a few films and just recently booked his first lead!—had allowed for certain conveniences that they were once unable to afford. Roberta rocked in a white-framed rocking chair in the corner. She’d kicked off her shoes. She read a cookbook—Tex-Mex, True Tooth: San Antonio —and flipped the pages slow.
    “Where you goin’?” Clover asked. She was blonde, just like Mama. Pretty eyes and all smiles, too. She shared a room with her brother Dylan, who still slept in a crib with a spinning mobile. Clover slept on a springy twin.
    “We’re going out, baby.”
    “Why?”
    “Because sometimes parents need to go out. Sometimes your daddy and I need some time together. Alone, that is,” Dorothy said and brushed the bangs from out of her daughter’s eyes. “We haven’t been seeing too much of each other recently,” she said, which was true. “Plus, baby, you’re in bed already, anyway.”
    “But,” the little girl said and paused, “I love you.” Clover blinked and blinked. Her eyelids, dewy with sleep, stuck together. But she found the strength to pull them open one last time.
    “I love you more, baby,” Dorothy said and kissed her daughter on the forehead. “More than you know.” Then she squeezed her daughter. Almost too tight.
    Dale, now, was silhouetted in the doorframe. He stood before a standing lamp.
    “We gotta leave.”
    “Okay.” But Dorothy didn’t let go of her daughter.
    “Now.”
    “Okay, okay. Jesus H. Christ.” She let go of Clover and pet her head.Then she walked to sleeping Dylan and pet his face. Then she found sleeping Butchie, underneath the crib, and pulled on his beard. He purred asleep. She stood up and headed for the door.
    “Get Clo back to sleep, okay, Roberta?” Dorothy said.
    “Yes, ma’am. Real soon, ma’am.”
    “We love you guys,” Dale said, fast. “Don’t wake us in the morning,” he said and closed the door behind them.
    Dorothy went to the bathroom another time before the road. When she returned, Dale held the front door open. She walked through and he put on his dinner jacket. Before the door closed, though—
    “You’re not wearing any cufflinks?”
    Dale stopped and looked down at his loose sleeves and sighed, and then went back upstairs. When he returned, two shined shark’s molars encased in platinum reflected off the paleness of his wrists.
    “Finally,” Dorothy said, and smiled. Dale, however, did not.
    DOROTHY ARRIVED AT the party before her husband. After the movie, which was a bore, Dale dropped her off at the Hollywood Hotel and then drove home to pick up a different shirt. The one he’d worn itched him, he said—“You over-starched it, again”—and he said he couldn’t wear it another minute. “Not another