Pent-Up
Rusty W Spell

Lolly and I liked each other immediately because, as I told her once, we're both the type of people who can't understand why others make snotty comments about restaurants we like just fine. On our first date four months ago we watched a tape she'd recorded of Private Benjamin and from that night, we were content. In previous relationships, the women eventually got fed up with me because I had a tendency to throw fits, get angry at the smallest things. I always ended up throwing dishes and things. "You filthy bitch!" "You goddamn chicken fucker!" That kind of thing.
It's different with Lolly. I never get angry at her. Mostly because she's completely non-confrontational. And I think I need this for a change. Also, she's good about being pretty violent during sex. One night, scissors held to my throat while fucking, I remember wishing over and over, "Just point them to my neck, baby, and stab."
So here I am, my head in Lolly's lap while she watches Tango and Cash, staring at the two bookshelves lined with rainbow-striped Polaroid boxes of recorded-from-HBO movies. We never moved in together, but I spend most of my time at her place. I mainly use my apartment as an office, where I design web pages for a living, though I tend to sleep there since I like to work after midnight and Lolly never stays up past ten since she has to get up early.
"You're going to have to get a real job," Lolly says. "I'm tired of taking care of you." My stomach burns. I'm angry, but I'm excited since I've never heard her say anything like this. I sit up on the couch and speak slowly, being careful, like I'm guiding her through this thing.
"You're not taking care of anyone," I say. I look at her and realize I don't do this enough, don't look at her enough. I'm afraid of eye contact and I hate it when people look at me. But I'm looking at her now, her blonde boy haircut, her horn-rims dangling from her T-shirt, those eyebrows that are always in the angry-look V.
"Do you realize how lazy you are?" she says. "Sometimes when I come in from work you're still sleeping."
"We just have different hours. Mine aren't as conventional." I pop my neck like my chiropractor does, with my hands grasping my entire head. I look at her face again, that little scar on her chin that never went away, the pretty makeuplessness of her Mona Lisa expression.
"You're a boring, typical, excuse-making dickhead," she says. I could slap her easily. I would if it didn't shock me so much, if these months of peace and quiet hadn't made me forget that things like this happen in relationships.
She stands up, pushing me a little to the side, and aims the remote control at the TV, punching it off. "I'll be back," she says, grabbing her keys which make electric jingles in my ears. "I need to go out for a little."
I feel happy when she's gone. It's as if I'm a little boy again and she's my mother telling me she's going to finally get me that Go-Bot I always wanted. I'm not sure if I want her to stay gone forever or if I want her to come back quick. It doesn't matter. I start flipping through the phone book. For only a small moment I try to figure out why I am so thrilled.
*
Lolly took my car, and I can't drive hers because I never learned to drive a stick. I guess she wants me stuck here. I start walking to my apartment, even though it's a long walk from her suburb to the main part of the city. The scenery changes with every step toward home, beginning with my backward glance at her too-white duplex and the old-timey street signs of her neighborhood, until finally there are some uncut lawns and broken shit all over the place and steaming pipes, loud crunch-grinds that sound like samples in a Trent Reznor song. It's freezing out here. Lolly has a fireplace, and if I think about it hard enough I can almost feel it.
I walk into the deserted art museum close to my apartment where my friend Ronnie hangs out, or lives there, I'm not sure. I never looked around for a bed or toothbrush or anything and he and I don't talk much about things like that. It's pretty barren, dirt and pebbles covering the floor, some junk that was the art all over the place. They look like melted car engines. Ronnie's got recording equipment and guitars and things in a circle in the middle of the room. He's a musician. He never lost his pony tail. I sit on the stool next to Ronnie, speakers looming around me. "Hey, Michael. Where's the girl?" says Ronnie.
"We broke up." I always say this. It's a running joke.
Ronnie hands me his green Steinberger, the guitar that's shaped like a boat paddle. "Invent something," he says.
"Juice me in to all those effects pedals," I say. He does and I start playing something which I hope doesn't sound like the brand of guitar-wank played by guys who sit in music stores. But it probably isn't, since I never learned to really play, which helps. Ronnie likes it. He likes me. When he first started closing his eyes while I played, it made me feel weird and angry because I hate it when people appreciate music in front of me. You want to tell them to get a room.
He's still closing his eyes as he reaches over to hit record on the tape deck. We've been recording the things I play, something he started a few weeks ago without saying anything about it. What I'm playing now sounds like slow-motion pigs being burned. When he hits stop it's time to stop.
"Something must be up with you and Lolly," he says. I just nod. He looks at me like he wants me to say something, which is a rare look.
"I keep saying you and I should get a place together instead."
"I'll get back to you," I say.
*
I'm at my apartment. I have a few web pages for clients, but I load up my own instead. I've started making these pages which contain everything about myself I can possibly think of. The part I'm working on now is simply a list of all the items in my computer room. "Swingline brand stapler. It's two shades of grey and old, metal, heavy, could kill someone. Says on the bottom that Swingline is in Long Island City, New York. This is Model 401." "General Electric tape recorder from the early 1980s. It's got a three-digit scrolling counter, like old gas pumps, and a pause button you slide instead of push. Half inch by quarter inch microphone, `condenser.' Model 3-5152A."
I used to not have a page for myself, but now it's gotten ridiculous, even to me. I started off making one for Lolly, thinking she would like it, but she said, "I don't want people to know all that stuff about me," so I took it off and started making mine.
I hear a key in my door and know it's Lolly. She walks into the room smiling, with some woman following behind her. "This is Nat, Michael. Remember Nat?"
"I've never met Nat," I say.
"Course not, but I've talked about her. From college. We were roommates. I ran into her at Lando's."
"I normally wouldn't be caught dead there," Nat says, "but some of the girls from the office wanted me to have dinner with them there. They like it." Nat's tall, older than us, looks all right in a sickly skinny sort of way. Her hair looks like Halloween wig hair.
"What were you doing there, Lolly?" I say.
"Getting away from you, remember?" she says and kisses me on the cheek. She's doing this to keep peace around Nat, to throw me off by joking. I can tell she's still angry. She leans against me in my chair and acts as if she's going to sit in my lap, but I grab her hand and rub it like I want her to stay where she is.
"I hear you're a computer whiz, Michael," Nat says.
"No, I just design web pages."
"Could you do me one?" she says.
I look up at Lolly and smile, the smile I give when I think something sounds even vaguely sexual. Lolly hits the back of my head with her free hand. I grab it with my other hand and I'm in this back-arching position with my arms contorted. It hurts, but I don't move.
"Sure," I say. "I'll do you one. It'll cost, of course. This is a real job, you know."
Nat looks around the room. I have posters all over the wall of bands I don't know. I have a place on my page where I tell unsigned bands to send me their posters. I like how they're all different from each other, and especially from real bands' posters, like they're not at all connected to the world. "Lolly was telling me how you two are the perfect couple," Nat says. "It makes me sick."
"I make Lolly sick," I say.
"Michael..." Lolly is trying to laugh it off.
"I have to use the bathroom," I say. I stand up and leave the room.
*
Lolly opens the bathroom door and watches me pee. "Hey," she says.
"You left Nan in there to fiddle with all my stuff."
"Nat, not Nan. And no one needs to actually fiddle with your stuff anymore since it's all on the internet."
"Uh-huh." I zip up and wedge myself between her and the sink and wash my hands. Lolly looks at me in the mirror.
"You mad at me?"
"You're not a nice person," I say.
"I deserve that." She's not just trying to keep peace for Nat anymore. She wants to go back to normal. It's too late for me now. "Want to come back home now?" she says.
"I want to stay here and finish up some work."
"I'm sorry I made you mad. Kiss?"
I see her pleading face in the mirror. I turn around. Yeah, I want to kiss her. I close the bathroom door and lock it, probably a manic look in my eyes. Lolly's smiling like she's nervous. I put my hands around her neck and jaw and close my eyes, giving her a deep kiss, and I'm leading her across the bathroom. Her legs hit the back of my three-days-dead-cat litter box and I keep pushing, making her step into the litter I never changed. I open my eyes and realize how silly she looks, standing there, shoes in the box, eyes closed, panting heavy.
I leave her there, go to the computer room, and whisper to Nat that I'd like her to come back to my place later that night, that I'm bored of Lolly. I leave my place and drive in the dark for a few hours, listening to nothing but engine and wind.
*
I know Nat won't come, but I'm sitting here like she will. I'm in the dark of my living room, a few strong-smelling cinnamon candles burning, the little heater cranking out the noise, sitting in my big brown vinyl chair. Everything's brown in here, too brown, and I hate it. I'm pent-up. I open the mini-desk beside the chair and take out the gun I keep there, load it, flip it around in my hand, rub it across the bottom of my nose.
At three, it's Lolly at the door. She doesn't look tired like I would expect at this hour. She starts in: "Nat told me what you said to her. She didn't want to tell me, but she told me. What's your problem, Michael?"
"I don't like it when people tell me what I need to be doing," I say.
"Get over it."
"No, because I want you to understand. I put up with you and I love you, but I'm not you and you'll have to get over that." I sniff at what I'm about to say. "You called me boring. You're boring. Pop in Protocol, pop in Time Bandits, pop in Sister Act 2. Jesus, Lolly." I'm standing now and she's dropping her twenty-five coats all over the couch. She looks like a boxer.
"You suck, Michael. What are we really fighting about here? Would you have fucked Nat? Did you really think she'd show up?"
"I wouldn't fuck anyone named Nat. I won't fuck you either. What are you doing in my house anyway? I told you I had work to do." I almost laugh aloud at saying that.
"I hate you like this," Lolly says. "Explain what's your problem or I'm leaving and not coming back."
I look down and my gun like I'm not interested in her. "Whatever, you sloppy cunt," I tell her.
Lolly picks up a 8x10 picture of us and throws it at me. The frame's glass would have hit me in the face if I hadn't ducked. I put the gun down on the desk and stand up, moving toward her so I can stop her from throwing anything else.
"God, I need music, noise, something," she says. She jumps up and turns on my stereo, presses play and an older recording I'd made at Ronnie's starts up, really loud brutal guitar. "Now pick up the gun and come get me," she says. I'm barely able to hear her over the music.
"Hush. Sit down."
She starts taking off her clothes and she pushes me to the floor by my wrists. I'm surprised at her strength. She begins stripping me. "What are you doing, Lolly?" I say.
"Shut up."
"I'm kind of tired of this, honey."
"Shut up!" she screams and puts the heel of her hand to my nose like she's ready to jam it. The music is hurting my ears, she's turned it up so high. But then I start liking it all. I'm getting dizzy, the movement of the room in start-stop circles, candles flickering like in hell.
"Finish taking those off," she says, pulling at my clothes, and she goes to get the gun. She sits on top of me and holds it out to me. "To the heart," she says. "Hold this to my heart and fuck me."
I do what she says. I'm doing all the work now, but she's in charge. "Do it, baby," she says.
"Yeah..."
"No, do it."
"I am doing it!" I say.
She takes one of my hands and presses it to her throat. She takes the index finger of my other hand and puts it around the trigger. "This. Do it... do it... do it please..." She's crying now.
I drop the gun and pull her into me. We're sitting up now. I begin crying with her. The tape clicks off and all that's left is super-loud hiss, perfect white noise drowning out everything else. I can feel us shaking together. We're holding on for life.

Rusty W. Spell <mailto:rwspell@netdoor.com> hates guns. Some say he hates plots. He likes recording hit songs, writing prize-winning stories, and staying young. His fiction has appeared in The Monthly Bulletin, Product, and The Raleigh News and Observer; he is also an editor for Emerging Voices Online. This is a rare, accidentally-noir story, and his first appearance in Plots With Guns.