Read Online The Dark Path by David Schickler - Free Book Online

house with five girlfriends. It feels like back home.
    On an October Saturday, Mara and her housemates throw a party. I arrive in my poncho. There are sixty revelers crowded into a living room meant for twenty. The Housemartins blare from the stereo, and Mara and some others teach me the drinking game Zoom Schwartz Profigliano. It’s a weird blast of a game, where keeping or breaking eye contact with people makes you drink or not drink . . . but mostly drink. Mara matches me shot for shot with the Jose Cuervo and by midnight, she and I are plastered and making out in the kitchen.
    â€œHold up a second,” she says.
    Leaning back against the counter, she removes her T-shirt and bra and stands topless before me. There are foodstuffs on the counter behind her, so what I see from left to right is: jar of flour, jar of sugar, Mara’s naked breast, Mara’s other naked breast, bottle of olive oil, box of Froot Loops.
    Are you my wife?
I think, looking at Mara.
Are you?
    She murmurs her laugh and we kiss again. Minutes later we’ve abandoned the party and we’re in her upstairs bedroom. We climb onto the upper level of her bunk bed and fool around, holding things at third base. But a week later, on a night after a black-tie ball, she and I are naked in my Copley dorm room bed. I lie on top of her and keep my face buried in her neck as my body finds its way inside hers.
    She grips me close. I crush my hips into hers and kiss her neck and come seconds later. We roll away from each other, both panting slightly.
    â€œOkay,” she says. “Okay.” She has her back to me.
    I wonder whether she was a virgin, too. The waterfall length of her hair fascinates me and I pet it. When it falls to one side, I see a scar at the back base of her neck. The scar has three small bands of raised skin like ridges on a washboard. I run my fingers over these ridges and try to make a joke.
    â€œHelp,” I make my fingers say out loud. “I’m a ship caught in these river rapids. Somebody help.”
    Mara doesn’t laugh.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I whisper, removing my hand. “What gave you that scar?”
    â€œI don’t know you well enough to tell you yet.”
    â€œOh.”
    I go into my bathroom and sit trembling on the toilet.
Wait
, I think.
What? We can fuck, but I can’t ask about scars? Not fair!
    I’m confused, flushed drunk with longing for her, and afraid. I decide that intercourse with her was a one-time thing, a mistake, a sin that will never happen again.
    I don’t see her for four days, but I think of her constantly. On the fourth night, I go drinking with Mason at an underground pub, The Tombs. We have good fake ID.
    â€œYou gonna visit her on the way home?” Mason asks.
    â€œHell, no.”
    â€œDude, you know you want to see her.”
    I drain my mug of Rolling Rock.
David,
I think,
you’re on a path toward solitude, toward God. You don’t need distraction from that.
    Mason laughs. “You’re totally going to her place.”
    â€œFuck off, Mace.”
    We split a pitcher of Sam Adams and then it’s two in the morning, and I’m weaving alone down the O Street sidewalk, or sidewalks, since there appear to be three of them. When I get to Mara’s row house, her front door has been blown open by wind, which she told me happens sometimes. I chivalrously step inside and close the door behind me, because what if some drunk guy saw it open and just wandered in?
    â€œHello?” I call.
    There’s no answer, and this saddens me. I miss Mara. I have to tell her something vital, though I can’t recall what. When I crawl into bed with her, I’ll remember.
    I fumble up the stairs and pause on the landing. There’s one bedroom on the left, another on the right. I enter the latter, knowing that the top bunk in the far right corner holds Mara. I stand squinting in the dark at her bed, trying to make out her