I couldn’t breathe easily, because his stomach was on my stomach pushing the air out. Marxy sat on me once when we were wrestling and I forgot how heavy he was.
I asked if he could get up off of me, so that he wasn’t so heavy. “I can’t breathe very well.”
“This is the way that we do it first,” he said. His face turned to me and I could smell his mouth, which was hot and made me feel like I was being trapped in a room.
He put his hands next to me and looked down. His face became red.
“What?” I asked him.
“Nothing.”
I tried to hold his face. “Marxy, what’s going on?”
He got off me and I saw the condom was falling off. “It’s not working like it should.”
“We can just kiss,” I said. “And start from the beginning.”
He balled up his fists and pressed them together until the knuckles cracked. “I don’t want to have to start from the beginning.”
I sat up. “Stop yelling.”
He took out another condom from his bag. “This isn’t working,” he said again, turning so that he was not facing me. “This isn’t working.”
“Is it on?”
He was trying to rip open the condom package.
“Marxy? Is it ribbed? Because mine is ribbed and it feels better.”
“Stop talking.”
It was getting cold from the air-conditioning in the room so I put my shirt back on. I waited for him to get the condom on. I was watching him hold his penis. When he turned around the condom wasn’t properly stretched out. It looked like a silly thing hanging from his penis, and even though I didn’t mean to I laughed.
“Are you laughing at me?” he said.
“Sorry,” I said. “You just said you practiced a lot but then did everything wrong. We could get carrots from room service. I can show you how to do it.”
He took the condom off with a loud snap and threw it on the ground and said we weren’t going to have sex anymore. “I don’t like the way you’re being mean,” he said.
“I’m not being mean. But you said you practiced and then didn’t know what to do and didn’t want me to help. If you didn’t know, you should have told me.”
He crossed his arms and said he wasn’t turned on anymore and that nothing was sexy. “I want to leave,” he said. “I want to go home.” Then he went to pick up his phone and I got to it first. “Give it. I’m supposed to call when I want to leave.”
I held the phone away from him and jumped on the other side of the bed. “Grown adults don’t call their mothers during sex,” I said.
“We’re not having sex,” he said. “We’re finished and you’re being a shit-heel villain, Zelda.”
“And you’re being a baby. Fine. Take it.” And I threw the phone onto the bed between us and told him I had to go pee and to do whatever he wanted.
* * *
I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. My makeup had smeared. I wiped my face and heard some of the Grendels, coming from the other side of the shower curtain, where they liked to hide.
“Shut up,” I told them, taking a deep breath.
The Grendels like when things screw up and people get hurt, and I knew I had hurt Marxy. There was a knock at the bathroom door and AK47’s voice asked if I was okay.
When I came out, Marxy’s mother was in the room and helping him get dressed. She held his shirt up for his arms to slip through.
“It’s okay,” Pearl said. “Just put this on.”
“Are you leaving?” I said.
AK47 took my arm. “You probably want to put on some pants,” she said, and I realized I was still naked and didn’t feel sexy anymore, just stupid. She handed me my underwear and I put them on. “What happened?”
“He was getting angry and was having trouble with the condoms and I wanted to help. He didn’t want help and couldn’t get it on properly. And it looked silly and so I laughed and—”
Pearl told me to be quiet, holding Marxy’s pants for him to step into and pulling them up to Marxy’s stomach. “You can button it yourself,” she said. Then she took some Kleenex and picked up the condoms and stretched them out. “Not broken,” she said. “So there’s that.”
Crumpling the condoms up, she threw them in the trash.
“I didn’t mean to laugh at him,” I said. “Marxy, I didn’t mean to laugh at you.”
AK47 picked up Marxy’s socks and handed them to Pearl. “Here. I think these are his.”
It felt like the world was happening around me and I was not a part of it anymore. Pearl and AK47 said quiet things to each other, while Marxy stood behind them. When I tried to go around to talk to him, AK47 held me back and said, “Just a second, okay?”
Pearl and AK47 talked, and every so often they got even quieter and tried to look at me without making it look like they were. I wanted to apologize to Marxy and tell him I was sorry for laughing about the condom not staying on. He stood in the corner and stared out the window and then started walking in place. I tried to get his attention and wave to him, but he kept walking and walking, like in cartoons how someone who thinks a lot goes back and forth and ends up walking themselves into a deep hole.
And then Pearl said they had to go and she led Marxy out of the room.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Marxy as he walked by. They went out and shut the door. “I didn’t say anything that bad,” I told AK47 when we were alone. “I just thought it looked silly. Why is he so mad?”
“Men are weird about their private parts. It’s not your fault.” She sighed. “We knew this might happen.”
“He kept talking and it was nothing like how it was supposed to go. But having sex and making love is like water, not stone,” I said, which is what one of the magazine articles I had read on the Internet said about being a good lover.
“It never goes the way it’s supposed to, Zee. It’s something you learn.” She put her arm around me and put her head on my head. “Tomorrow’s another day.”
chapter twenty-two
We went from the hotel to AK47’s apartment. AK47 wanted to take some time to figure out what to do next, and also to get me into fresh clothes. Because we had told Gert we were going to a movie, she sent a text telling him we would be a bit late coming home, that we were going out for some dinner after.
While she texted Gert I tried calling Marxy from my own phone. Pearl had told me not to, but she wasn’t in charge of me or my legend. I wanted to tell Marxy that even though our first try having sex didn’t work, that I wanted to try again. AK47 told me that everyone’s first time is weird, to not feel so bad.
“I feel like a fuck-dick villain,” I told her. “I have let my fair maiden down.”
And she put her hand on my shoulder and told me it wasn’t my fault. “It’ll be okay,” she said.
Nobody answered the phone the first time I tried calling, so I kept pressing the button for redial and let it ring. The answering machine came on and I told it that I was Zelda and that I was in love with Marxy and I was sorry for whatever happened.