From Jenny to Mei Ch. 27

"So, beautiful was it?" Philip asked.

"Don't be insensitive, Philip," Ai said.

"I'm...?"

"She's had a rough evening, right, honey?"

Mei grunted in agreement and appreciation.

At that point Philip stood, looked out at the pale yellow/orange light of Okland's worst neighborhoods and slowly drifted away. He didn't have anything constructive to say, felt a bit abandoned by Mei's actions or perhaps inadequate, and moving off was a signal that he knew they needed girl time.

Ai admired the silent way he walked a few feet, as though inspecting some part of the roof, and just faded back inside. But it wasn't just his subtlety she admired. 'How many guys could have two women and keep their ego in check?' she wondered, 'How many could balance the two of us? What guy do I know would be so audacious as to try and fix a girl like Mei? Not that she's a psycho-bitch or anything, she's just damaged and used the wrong tools to try to fix herself.'

Mei disturbed the thought. "Growing up is a bitch."

That wasn't an opinion Ai shared but she didn't have Mei's baggage to lug around. "It can be painful, I suppose."

"Tell me about it. I realized that looking at who you really are can be so difficult that your mind won't let you see it. For so long I was a user but I never saw it that way. I think that first time when he shoved two fingers up my ass and said it was the cleanest place on me was when I first felt it. Either then or that vision I had when... Did I ever tell you about that?"

"'bout what?"

"It was when he first started blackmailing me. I was using my Hitachi, trying to get used to the idea of being his slave and in my fantasy he was calling me all of these horrible things. I came like crazy. Then I saw myself as I guess everyone else did." She took another swig of her Corona. "I cried for hours knowing that it was true. Knowing what a worthless bitch I had been."

Ai offered no sympathy because it wasn't time for sympathy.

"Can people change, Ai?"

"People change all the time."

"Can I change?"

The night had come and the rooftop was lit only by the ugly dirty orange glow covering Oakland. Ai turned to see Mei's solemn face. "Did I ever tell you that my grandmother was a witch?"

Still starring forward, and with no emotion, Mei scoffed, "You don't answer straight questions, do you?"

"Not when there is a better way to answer them, no."

Mei turned her face and looked sideways at Ai. "How did I get stuck with you?"

"I'm the second best thing in your life."

"Bitch."

"Mei Chun..."

"For God's sake, call me Mei already! I mean don't you think we are past..." Her voice faded and her sentence was abandoned with her perception of Ai's motion. Instinct told her what was happening. Intuition informed her that a 'moment' was upon her. And with relief and appreciation her body leaned forward to meet Ai's. She gracefully spread her knees, unconsciously moistened her lips, and felt the expression on her face soften. She accepted the kiss with a heart sore from her revelations and self-pity.

It was the kind Ai knew meant the most to Mei. A soft pressing of pliable, moist lips and a soulful application of her tongue that said, 'I love you,' in an unequivocal way.

Mei moaned.

And when the kiss was finished, Ai sitting back in the camping chair, Mei said, "You've been waiting for me to say that."

"Yep."

"I love you." Her voice broke. "You know that?"

"Yep."

"Like I've never loved anyone ever."

Mei wiped a tear away with the back of the hand holding her bottle.

"Yep."

"Not the way I love him."

"Of course not," Ai quipped, "that would make us lesbos."

##########

Sarah circled the block twice before pulling in behind Philip's car. She most definitely didn't want to be there.

"This is not going to happen by itself," she muttered as she twisted her torso and looked back to parallel park. She backed the car to the corner leaving three spaces between hers and his. "There's no other choice."

She had spent hours in indecision trying to ferret out the ideal approach. Knowing Philip so well it should have been easy but their history together only limited her options without providing a guarantee that her pitch would find him receptive.

It started at lunch with the promise that today she would do something, take at least one determined step forward.

'He'll never go for it. I mean, what's in it for him?'

Her anxiety grew as the hours passed. And, unknown to Sarah, the purpose of her plan began to slowly become subsumed in the mechanics of obtaining it. Her desire for a child became confused into a need for the getting, as though she felt a compulsion to visit Big Sur but during the drive became lost in the vistas from the coast road and wandered in her thoughts until she forgot her destination.

So by the time evening came and she was relieved by the night staff, she found herself crossing the bay only wanting to see him.

And now she was there outside of that ugly building of his thinking about that tuft of hair below his belly and the way he used to lazily stroke his fingers across both nipples as she rode him. She sat erect behind her wheel remembering the way he used to look at her and the power he gave her. She remembered canceling appointments so she could be fresh for him and never regretting the lost income. And she remembered that afternoon meeting after he had gotten out and her failure to tell him then how she had never really loved another man. "Had I just said it at the beginning," she whispered. "Had I just said the words, 'I love you, Philip'." Then, since the mind is so good a self deception, she told herself that it wouldn't have worked, that he would have seen her as a money grubbing whore.

She got out of the car, knowing she was in terrible shape and that he would see her as the desperate woman in a headlong leap toward middle-age. Still she strode toward his beat-up door.

'Push it.' She willed herself forward already knowing she would not. 'Push it!' Her steps slowed as she approached, eyes fixed on the bell that leaned off its mount on the cracked brick of the entrance. 'Push the goddamn door bell,' she screamed to her muscles.

Part A of her mind refused to relay the command to her hand while part B pleaded with it to show some courage. 'He loved you once,' it said.

'Once, maybe.'

'He'll do this for you, for old time's sake if nothing else.'

'I won't be his pity fuck!'

'And whose pity fuck do you want to be?' That thought caused a physical pang to pinch her diaphragm.

'I don't need a man.'

'Don't start this again; you don't want some random bastard's child.'

'Sperm banks are there for a reason.'

'For losers. He has everything you want. He's a good man.'

'He's stupid.'

'Only you think so. Let go of that ego. Fucking crawl to him if it'll work.'

'He has pride.'

'Stop stalling! Ring the fucking doorbell!'

She pondered yet again. The broken doorbell hung from its wires like a limp dick and she turned and walked back to her car. "I'll text him," she muttered and slid behind the wheel. It was an action the A section of her mind could manage.

'Hi,' she punched into the keyboard. It was the most forward approach she could muster but it looked lonely and pathetic under the history of previous messages they had traded.

"Fuck it," she sighed and hit the send button.

She stared at her phone, both dreading and needing his reply. She fumbled for a cigarette. "Why am I doing this again?" The blue smoke answered with its billowing soft cloud. "Right, to get knocked up."

No reply.

"Babies are overrated. Stinky little noise boxes. Clawing little life suckers. Time-draining money pits, selfish little mewling leaches. Who wants a kid?"

A truck rambled by raining pebble rich dust over her car. "Motherfucker!" she screamed out of her open window. "Motherfucking, goddamned..."

Her phone buzzed and the rock truck was forgotten as she saw his reply.

'Hey, sweetness.'

He had always called her that, at least after they started fucking. The first few times she thought it was a way for him to demean her, a pet name contrived to make her his object. Then she realized that it was his expression of how he felt. "You're sweet to me and I feel sweet around you," he had once told her.

The text caused a tear to form, one she brushed away.

'What's up?'

Instantly her resolve crumbled. 'Not much, just sayin hi.' It was so much easier to type the lie.

'Hi :)'

She stared at the screen trying to squeeze emotional meaning from his two letter answer. 'Was that a mocking smile?'

Moments past. Nothing would come to her troubled mind. And with no further reply from him and no idea what to write next her brain seized.

'Are you ok?'

Her tears plopped on the screen and rolled down to be spread in a horizontal line by the rim of the phone case.

'I'm fine.'

She discarded the phone into the maw of her bag and started the car. With each yard's distance from him she felt better, more validated and secure. She didn't need Philip and his money. She didn't need a child to ruin her life. And as she ignored the third phone call that she knew was from him she felt more empowered and justified in her determination never to ask him to be her child's father.

##########

Mei thought as Ai stayed silent. She wondered where crickets and frogs could find a home in the city and what loving someone like Ai meant. And as though she were following some preprogrammed routine, the quiet tears began to leak from her eyes.

"So tell me about the witch," she said, wiping her cheeks with the back of her sleeve.

"I'm not sure," Ai said, knowing the tears were a sign that Mei would be receptive, "what the Chinese think about witches, which for us Vietnamese is a totally different concept than the Disney kind. For us they are a mix between psychologist, doctor and cat." Ai had one sandal flopping against the heel of her foot and took another sip. "What do Chinese think of cats?"

"They live half in this world and half in the other world."

"Right, us too. So granny, whom I never met... my dad's mom. She was a witch, a fertility witch, or shaman, or sha-woman, I guess."

"Of course," Mei said with a sigh of dejection, "makes perfect sense. Probably the hottest witch in the county, right?"

"That's what they say, but mom never said there were any others."

Mei looked at her. "You know, that explains a lot."

"Hmm." Her hum wasn't an acknowledgment and it wasn't a question.

"No wonder he fell for you, like, instantly."

"It wasn't instantly and you should have seen what a wreck I was. I couldn't stop playing with myself after my first time here. I mean, having him watch me get wrecked by that machine he built for you, and the way he shoved his dick in my mouth as I came. God," she recalled with a wistful sigh, "it was awesome."

"I bet."

"Are you meowing, little kitty?" she kidded, referring to her warning earlier in the evening.

"Get back to the witch story, biǎo zi (bitch)."

"Change is what we do."

"Witches?"

"No, people. Granny might have been born with a special nature but she chose to become someone who used her gifts like that."

"Fertility. How did that work?"

"She had potions, which, if you think about it is just another word for medicine."

"Sounds way cooler though," Mei said with a smile and offered Ai her right hand.

"Way cooler." Ai took it in hers and scooted her chair closer. "And I think she did her clients, the couples that came to her. Like one then the other."

"Granny was bi?"

"Dad won't say but I read her diary, or, like, medical notes or whatever. My reading of Vietnamese isn't that good but her notes about Mrs. Vu squirting with the pressing of her internal spigot seems pretty clear to me."

"Cool. What a great gig. So it runs in the family."

"I guess," Ai said, knowing Mei meant being a whore. "So at some point she changed from being a girl that could have lived a life of a princess, marrying somebody important, to living her life to help others."

"I'd have liked meeting your granny."

"Me too."

"So that's what I should do?"

"You should do what's in your nature."

"And what is that?"

She squeezed her hand in a reassuring gesture. "You have a sweet side, Mei."

"I like when you call me Mei."

"I know."

"So be sweet? That doesn't sound like a life plan."

"It does to me."

"So be sweet to Dr. K?"

"Yeah, I guess. As long as you're learning something."

"And be sweet to Philip and you and Karla and Markèta too? Be everyone's sweet little slut?"

"Could be worse," Ai observed. "And don't forget the kids."

"The kids," Mei said as though she had forgotten Jerome and the other children at the center.

"You're a good person, Mei."

"I'm a whore," and then with regret realized what she had said. "I'm sorry."

"You know, Mei?" Mei looked at Ai not knowing if she were going to get another slap. "I never once thought of myself as a whore."

"You weren't."

Mei let a few moments pass by. "You were a witch."

"Exactly."

"With a capital B."

They drank more in silence with Mei picturing Ai casting spells over an iron caldron and Ai imaging Mei as an escort.

When Philip returned the girls were somber in their drunkenness. And with Philip on his computer chair Mei began the second part of her odd confession. It was noteworthy for its plan description absent adjectives or emotion, one where she told the details of her revelation about her father and her newly revealed need.

"I could have told you," Ai said.

"Then why didn't you?"

"That's the kind of thing you had to see for yourself."

"Are you angry, Philip?" Mei asked.

"Yes, in a self-indulgent sort of way."

"Can you save up a good beating for me?" she asked as a way to lighten his mood. He grunted a weary reply that she took to mean, 'You're not worth it,' but Ai knew to be one of resignation. She was sure that Mei would win the absolution she wanted from him, that he would beat her and make her cry. She also knew Mei's transformation would not come cheap for any of them and hoped that she was worth it.

They put her to bed half an hour later, Mei having fallen asleep in the camping chair. They made her comfortable then went to sit on the living room couch together in a casual embrace.

"You did an admirable job hiding your jealousy," Ai said when the leather stopped squeaking.

"Maybe I shouldn't have. Maybe I should have sent her home again. I have a pound of hot metal slowly burning in my chest." He pulled Ai to sit more comfortably. "Kissing. Did you hear that? She kissed him and said 'daddy'."

Ai resisted the temptation to comfort.

"She fucked him, Ai. It was," he snorted a snicker of humiliated jealousy, "beautiful."

"She..." Ai began then regretted speaking.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"I tried to rationalize it. To stay calm and nonjudgmental."

"I saw that."

"But it's not like I can ignore it."

"Philip." Now was her time to speak. "Blame yourself first." She moved to lay back on the arm and look at him. "If there is blame left over than put it on her, and on me."

"You?"

"It's true. I didn't discourage you and maybe that's what you needed. Maybe you're not strong enough for this. Perhaps I should be playing a different role. The injured girlfriend, one telling you that you don't need that two timing slut. But really, I wouldn't be convincing."

"What are you talking about?"

"Who picked her to blackmail?"

"I did."

Ai remained silent and hoped he would draw the conclusion himself.

"I feel like a total asshole but I'm going to tell her to keep... keep..."

"Fucking her daddy?" Ai said as though she were lancing a boil.

His glare wasn't painful to Ai. It didn't disturb her in the slightest. It was anger at himself she saw misdirected at her.

"Thank you for phrasing it just that way."

"You're welcome."

"Maybe she needs the connection. Needs to work out this father thing," he said, reaching down and lifting Ai's feet to his lap. And although he thought he had delivered the line with confidence he felt as though he might either vomit or cry, the former being infinitely preferable. He had convinced himself that he had control of his jealousy, that he could master it, until Mei had spoken the word, 'beautiful'.

He had nothing at all against the old guy at the clinic who had fucked his girlfriend. In fact, the idea of Mei calling him 'daddy,' while he fucked her from behind was vaguely erotic in a third person sort of way.

It was Mei's desire that he wanted, the skip in her heart as she flushed with excitement. The whispered endearments, however expressed.

She had sex with two dozen men before him and Ai quadruple the number, and yet he felt no jealousy for past lovers; he knew because he had searched his heart for it. Had he his preference, of course, he would have met them as virgins, but in this day virgins were as mythical as unicorns. It was the now that he cared about.

Yet the cold hard fact was that Mei was fucked up. She was damaged, and whips and humiliation had their limits. If in her mind she needed to fuck her father's memory into dust and Doctor K was able to do that more effectively than himself, then it was his duty to allow it to continue. 'Therapy,' he convinced himself. 'It'll be a kind of totally fucked up therapy.'

Ai had known what his decision would be but let him talk it through. And as he squeezed her instep with his left hand and drew his fingers along a kidney shaped wet spot at the edge of her thigh with his right, she said, "You're her daddy too, you know."

He grunted.

"Don't be a baby. Rehabilitation is ugly. You had to know that before you started all of this."

He didn't reply, preferring to look away from her.

"A lot of hurt feelings have got to come out of that girl and unless you're careful, and cruel when you need to be cruel, it's going to hurt a lot more than hearing her call an old man daddy."

"Thanks, coach."

"You're welcome. It's not that she doesn't really care for the guy, even as a symbol, which is what I hope it is. And I expect it is. If my dad ran out on me when I was nine I'd be shacking up with an old man."

"You are."

Ai giggled at the truth of his quip, delivered with a boyish smile.

"Can I call you daddy?"

"With my dick inside you, you can call me anything you want."

"That's sweet. You know that's how I'm feeling right now?"

"Like I'm your dad?"

"Yeah, but don't be gross. Dad the dad sort of dad is way different than the 'fuck me daddy,' she's talking about."

"I should hope so."

"Guys don't really understand girls, do they?"

He raised his eyebrows at the stupidity of the statement.

"You're the 'hold me close and protect me' sort of daddy. The kind where warm fuzzy feelings come from. The kind that makes those feelings grow into something more powerful, that get the juices going and end with screaming orgasms of pure love and turn girls into whimpering little kittens."

"But you're always like that."

"I meditate on how you love me," she said in a different, more demonstrative tone.

Statements like that no longer caused him to think twice. He accepted what she said without question. What did, however, keep occurring to him was how he'd never known anyone like Ai.

"Sorry we had to postpone your surprise," he said after a few moments.

"Eh, don't worry about it. She's more important."

The word 'she's' caught his ear, chosen over 'her problem' that was more important. "Why do you say that?"

"Which of you would not leave the flock to search for the lost sheep?"

"That's Luke."

"Yeah, he's my favorite of the fab four. The bible has lots of really pithy one liners like that. Little jewels. I paraphrased but it's true, right? Mei's your lost lamb."