"We should go back over there," Clara said.

 

She was in her bra and underwear leaning over an antique dresser cutting out lines of coke. I was in the bed naked.

 

"I'm gonna have another one. You want one?"
"No."
"I can't cum if you can't," she said.
"It's the coke," I said.
"I like the feeling of the cum shooting in me. That's why I had my tubes tied. I don't have to worry about it and I can just feel that cum shooting up into me all I want."

 

She took a long snort of the drug. It made me sick to hear the sound. Her back was very skinny and the bones of her spine were visible like a reptile's. We had not gone into Tips. I had tried to kiss Clara again and she said she had the key to Clyde's place and that we should go there and fuck and get it out of our systems. So there we were. Clyde's place was a mess. The sheets were dirty and I could feel their grit on the sweat of my lower back. There was art all over the walls hung indiscriminately and mixed with photographs of naked women collected from a decade of magazines. It smelled like cigarettes and onions.

 

"Clara," I said. "What happened in that car wreck?"
Clara straightened up and turned around. She looked surprised.
"You really want to know?" she said.
"Yeah."
"I was driving," she said. "Not him."
She came over and sat on the edge of the bed.

 

"We were driving home from the bar. Jerry was wasted like always. I wasn't too bad. He was being an asshole and so I was pissed off and driving too fast. We lived way out in the country, you know, at his folks' old farmhouse... I need a cigarette."

 

I passed her one from the bedside table. I don't know why I asked about the crash. As soon as I asked I wished I hadn't. Clara's voice sounded sad and clear, not at all like how she normally sounded. She smiled, remembering something.

 

"I don't even know exactly what happened. I looked over at him. He was talking shit to me about how I didn't trust him and his eyes were closed and I wanted to fucking kill him. When I looked back I was over the yellow lines. I jerked the wheel, hit the gravel somehow and then we were in the ditch. I guess we hit an approach. I can't remember that part. I just remember the feeling of the car dropping out from under me and then being upside down and trying to get out. Jerry was gone. Like just vanished. And I was trying to get out of the seatbelt but it wouldn't let me go. God it was so fucking weird. He was just gone."

 

Her cheeks hollowed out as she sucked on her cigarette.
"I'm sorry I asked," I said.
"Don't be. Nobody ever asks. Poor Clara."
"Poor Clara."
She looked me in the eyes and she had the angry look again.
"Yeah right," she said. "It's all such bullshit."
She got up and pulled her dress on.
"Let's go back to Tips," she said.
"Did you find Jerry?"
"Yeah I found him. I found him and he was dead. I walked back down the road to an old farmhouse and told them what happened. I never even said Jerry was driving. My Dad took care of everything. He was great."

 

Her voice was totally hollow. It was the first conventional lie she'd told me but I could tell it was a leftover from a life so full of them they had ruined her. She looked at me and I know she wanted me to hold her but I could not do it. I sat there naked in the bed smoking. I had no comfort to give. We are all crabs in a bucket.
"Let's get out of here," I said.