Free Hooked by Claire Adams Page A

in a greater
sea of pepper. Orion. That bright,
North star. I pumped a few more smoke rings into the world, remembering
how I hadn’t eaten a single morsel of solid food for an entire winter, only
turning toward cigarettes and protein shakes for life-fulfillment.
    “Maybe if I just had never started eating again, I
could have become a real ballerina,” I muttered to myself, tapping my feet
against the stone. But it couldn’t be that way. It was too late. I was going to
be twenty-five in the next year. It was over.
    And now, I was losing my Molly Says Dance studio. I
was losing my last chance. I would have no money to pay for this apartment, for
anything. Perhaps I would have to divert to no-eating. But I would look ragged,
enraged, and homeless in that stunning portrayal of my future.
    I felt like crying. I was the exact opposite of the
woman I had been the previous evening, when Drew had me up against the window, all of the city beneath my naked frame.
    I was muttering to myself when I heard further
murmurings, a bit of raucous laughter on the other side of my balcony, around
the corner. Someone else was outside. I twitched to the right to try to hear
them more clearly. I certainly saw their cigarette smoke as it emanated over
the balcony and into the city.
    I had never really seen any of my neighbors before,
and I couldn’t align the voice I heard with any given face. I remembered the
Indian man who lived a floor down (who always cooked such delicious-smelling
food). I remembered the college students down the hall who had several raucous
parties. But this voice. This was a man’s voice. I
listened more closely.
    “Yeah. I mean. You should have seen these breasts. Just. Bang, bang, bang—in my face.
I fucked her lights out.” The voice was saying.
    I rolled my eyes. Another group of males discussing
the women they had banged recently. Great. I had come
across the liveliest of all conversations; the dick measuring kind.
    But I continued to listen.
    Another guy chimed in. “Is that that bitch you
screwed a few weeks ago? The one with the tattoo?”
    “That girl was weeks ago,” the first voice said,
washing the other comment away, as if resentful that the other man would even
consider it.
    I raised my eyebrows in great judgment. This man
seemed to really enjoy screwing a lot of women. In my heart, I felt terrible
for all of them—all the women he wooed, all the women he convinced to go to bed
with him. I felt that there had to be a sort of sincerity in bed. Otherwise,
what the hell did it even mean?
    “All right, all right,” the second guy said. “How do
you get so much pussy, anyway? You drug them?’’
    The first voice started laughing. The laugh wasn’t
riddled with any compassion, with any humor. Instead, it seemed rooted in
anger. “Yeah. A lesser man would think it was drugs,”
the first man said sarcastically. Suddenly, I heard tapping feet and the screen
door slam. The pair of men had obviously gone back inside. I felt alone, then,
even as I knew that the two men hadn’t been privy to my presence.
    I looked down at my palms, shaking a bit as I neared
the end of my cigarette. The nicotine was coursing through my veins quickly,
changing me. My brain was rushing from topic to topic. I was thinking, all at
once, about the grand fucking I had done the evening before—how it had
immediately cleared up everything that had been wrong inside me for many, many
years.
    And then; just hours after I left the naked arms of
that most beautiful man, my world had come crashing around me. I thought again
about what Mel had said to me—that I could ask Drew for the money. But the
thought of it actually killed me. I knew I couldn’t; I knew I wouldn’t.
    I was too proud.
    Suddenly, my phone started buzzing in my coat
pocket. I stabbed the cigarette down on the ground and reached into my pocket
to retrieve the phone. It was a text message. I grinned as the name DREW popped
up in the bright light. For a moment, I