CARLOTTA’S JACUZZI by Myles Zavelo
His name was Matthew. Her name was Carlotta. That day was this morning.
Carlotta was the killer that day. Carlotta was Matthew’s best friend.
On a wet spring afternoon. That day was chock full of no mercy.
Carlotta was off, cold. Merciless, murderous. Matthew was the victim. Matthew thought he was the victim. He was simple, pathetic. He thought Nantucket was a country. He was everything you wouldn’t want in a person. Carlotta was using a knife on him. Going for his jugular. Castrating him. Lighting him on fire. Laughing, laughing, laughing.
Carlotta was angry. Upset with Matthew. Embarrassed by him. Beginning to hate him. Still, he wasn’t the worst she had ever seen. She knew that but wouldn’t admit it.
Matthew was still playing dumb. He didn’t want to ask too many questions. Carlotta hated questions. Carlotta always screamed at questions.
Matthew scratched an itch on his jawline.
This was it.
They were skipping class. They were sitting next to each other – driver’s seat, passenger seat – but they were already estranged. She was clinical and relaxed. She acted casual. She acted. She played her role. She seemed to want her money back, but there was never a money-back guarantee.
She couldn’t be trusted anymore. She was pretending she had done this before.
In the car, she was indecipherable to Matthew. She was sealed tight. She had no face. A mystery was happening. She was an unknown subject. An entity. Her red hair lost its red. Her skin was growing pale, paler, much paler. Her teeth chattered, ground, crumbled. Her hazel eyes browned. She was becoming exhilarated.
She whistled “Across 110th Street,” but the radio station wasn’t playing “Across 110th Street.” She was driving, of course. She was driving her father’s old military-green Land Rover. He didn’t know where they were going. She refused to tell him. He stopped asking. He was telling himself different things. It was like a game. Her game, mission, subterfuge.
The roads were sometimes bumpy, but mostly smooth. The car was filthy. There were dried coffee stains everywhere. The glove compartment smelled like an animal had died in it. Matthew was freezing cold, shivering with goosebumps, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to bother Carlotta with an annoying complaint. Matthew was uncomfortable, but on thin ice. Carlotta didn’t appear to be cold. She was a very good driver. Her eyes were pinned on the road, her arms certain, and she wasn’t interested in Matthew’s attempts at conversation.
Matthew tried to avoid eye contact but couldn’t resist staring at Carlotta. Just couldn’t help it. He wasn’t very good at things. He didn’t have a driver’s license; he couldn’t drive. He was worried he would accidentally kill a small child. Oh, my gosh. All that guilt. Some people shouldn’t be on the road. Some people probably shouldn’t live.
Last month. There had been complications. Matthew was partying too much. He was running his mouth. He was running around a lot. He had dropped some screws on the floor. He had spread himself too thin. He was self-destructive. There was an accusation. Of sexual misconduct. Of sexual trespass. Of harm. But it was a fabrication, Matthew reminded himself.
Matthew reminded himself that it was a lie. A terrible lie. A horrible plot. Probably an orchestrated attack against him. Two sides to every story, and Matthew stuck to his. He was sticky.
Really sticky.
That night. Last month. Matthew couldn’t really remember what happened that night.
Obviously, something had gone dreadfully wrong with someone, obviously – and everybody knew, naturally. Things got out as they did.
Lord of the Flies. Children of the Corn. Kids wanted to hurt Matthew. Him, his feelings.
Maybe he should’ve let them crucify him. Maybe they already had.
Last week, he was politely asked to leave a birthday party. Last week, somebody threw an orange at him in the dining hall. He was getting the silent treatment all over town. Wanted posters were plastered around campus. The student body was making a federal case. They were gathering evidence. They were planning an execution.
Matthew had been labeled. It was official. He was a harmer now. He was a predator. A rapist. A monster. And, worst of all, Carlotta had been labeled an apologist. This was guilt by association. This was unfair. Very unfair.
Matthew was radioactive, sure, but there was still some hope for Carlotta.
And maybe Carlotta had to do it. Maybe it was the right thing to do. Her peers would applaud. They would commend her. They had already condemned him.
Matthew possessed some blurry fragments of memory from that night.
A pickle jar of weed. A half tab of LSD, maybe. A six-pack of Genesee from Powers Market. A leftover bottle of poppers from Life’s Little Luxuries. A poet and dancer and an eightball of cocaine from Philadelphia; an architecture and sculpture student and a couple grams of ketamine from Boston. They shared. Everyone was generous. Executive functioning skills were compromised.
Matthew’s tattoos had glistened in the dim light of her room, had moved around his body. He had stubbed his toe. He hadn’t eaten all day. He had forgotten to eat. His stomach was empty. He saw home in her eyes. He was a one-of-a-kind mess prone to disaster. Her dorm room was neat and tidy. Her palms were pressed against her military-style made bed. She made a face with her face. Her tongue was pierced. Her nipples, too.
“I have an extremely high pain threshold,” she’d said.
Matthew couldn’t say her name. Matthew couldn’t bring himself to say her name.
Her name was Amanda, and Matthew was making a mistake.
“Whatever you did, whatever happened between you two – it’s between you and her and God,” Carlotta had said, in the days afterwards, after that night. Then, she would ferociously change the subject.
Now, back in Carlotta’s car, her nose began to bleed, explosively. She believed nosebleeds meant something. She believed abortions were bad for the soul. Carlotta was funny like that. She grabbed a wad of tissues from between the seats and pressed it to her face and that was that.
In the car, Carlotta said, “The media makes such a big deal about the weather . . . When it’s cold outside, I keep the window open when I sleep, because I want to shiver and burn calories.”
She said, “Life is made up of millions and millions of little homicides.”
She said, “My family is filthy rich. It’s not very hip, it’s just the truth.”
She said, “People with disabilities make me lose my appetite. Did I never tell you that?”
Matthew stared out the window. This was the country. The land was flat and green. He saw roaming cows. The weather was undecided, overcast. The sky was heavy, serious. Matthew wanted to name the clouds. Josephina, Henrietta, Eugenia, Carlotta, and so on.
They were driving down Memory Lane now.
(The road was actually named Memory Lane.)
On unbearably cold nights, under washable wool blankets, they would curl up on her college-issued twin mattress and watch old movies.
(The dorms – white clapboard colonial houses built in the 1920’s and rumored to take just fifteen minutes to burn to the ground – were never sufficiently heated during the winter months.)
On Carlotta’s projector, they would mostly watch the New Hollywood movies. They especially liked Deliverance (they jokingly compared it to the social brutality of their college), McCabe & Mrs. Miller, A Woman Under the Influence, Ordinary People (Robert Redford’s directorial debut), and American Gigolo (“their” “favorite”).
Sometimes, they would rent a pony keg. They would eat peanut butter, jelly, and banana sandwiches. She would feed him when he forgot to eat. They were depressed, but not clinically. They would complain about their sex lives. They weren’t getting laid. They weren’t getting laid enough. They would discuss and disseminate libelous gossip. They were two people in a room taking life as it came. Even if it didn’t arrive very often. Even if they didn’t like what arrived.
In the car, Carlotta said, “I suffer from bulimia nervosa.”
She said, “I used to suffer from anorexia nervosa.”
She said, “I used to suffer from lots of disorders, but I cleaned up my act. What about you, Matthew? Did you clean up your act?”
Matthew probably hadn’t cleaned up his act.
For Matthew, college had been a lukewarm bath, and the end was devastating.
On campus, everything Matthew heard was loud music. Playing in every room, in every corner. There had been a fire. A suicide, too. For a time, the campus bordered on misogyny. Things were violent. Things were not okay. The entire campus was perpetually under construction. The place was disemboweled. It was rumored that the college was going bankrupt. It all felt like a going-out-of-business sale. A mysterious exotic foreign exchange student drifted through campus like a silent lover, touching too many souls at once. To the girls, he was eye candy, and to the boys, he presented a compelling argument for bisexuality. The students channeled rock stars. There were drugs going around. There were parties to attend. Matthew didn’t dare attend these parties. After Amanda, he was scared. Matthew wished he could party. He wanted to leave his dorm room but couldn’t. He was stuck, paralyzed, doomed.
That day. This morning. The morning of their car ride. About a month after Matthew’s fateful, destructive encounter with Amanda. The blues completely washed over Matthew. He wanted everyone to forget he ever existed. He wanted to fall back asleep. He would rather have been run over by a car. He would rather have been diagnosed with leukemia. He would rather have been someone else. Anyone else.
This morning, Carlotta woke up stone cold. She knew what she had to do. Overnight, she had become unsympathetic. It was formal now. It was personal. As personal as personal gets. Messier than a dumpster fire.
This morning, Carlotta watched Ted Kennedy eulogize his brother, Bobby.
On June 8th, 1968, Teddy Kennedy said, “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”
Carlotta cried this morning. That speech always made her cry. She watched only for that reason. To get in the mood. To get in a mood. Any mood.
This morning. Matthew joined Carlotta for breakfast in the dining hall. He was hungover from drinking alone the night before. Carlotta was hungover, too. She had gone out the night before to a pretty fun party. And, miraculously, no one confronted her about Matthew. It was really nice. Carlotta reminded herself she was having breakfast with a rapist.
She was trying out a new diet. Her breakfast burrito was wrapped in printer paper.
“I’m worried I’m fat,” Carlotta said.
“You’re not fat,” responded Matthew, “but, it’s okay, anyway, because everyone gets fat, eventually.”
Carlotta told Matthew to shut up, and Matthew laughed a soft, skinny laugh.
Matthew tried playing “What’s Worse?” to change the subject.
Matthew said, “What’s worse? A gambling problem or a drug problem?”
Then, from a far corner of the dining hall, someone threw an orange at Matthew’s head again, and he blushed. He had no choice. He was stung. He was stinging. He could only blush.
“C’mon. Let’s get out of here. Let’s hit the road. Let’s go for a ride. Right now. I’m serious,” Carlotta barked, ordered. She was putting on some accent, but it was awkward, mangled, unrecognizable. This comforted Matthew. Carlotta was being vulnerable, basically.
They reeked of breakfast as Carlotta started the engine.
On the way out, they saw the Director of Campus Safety, Kenneth Rosemary, driving his favorite students around in his red convertible, making tracks on the great lawn. They were all laughing, smiling, hands in the air. They thought life was supposed to be a beach. Those people.
“It’s very common for couples to fight on vacation,” Matthew said now.
“But we’re not a couple, and this isn’t a vacation,” Carlotta said.
They weren’t driving down Memory Lane anymore. They were on another road now.
“I’ve never told you these things before,” she said. “We were so close. For what it’s worth, I really did love you.”
“I really hate you now,” she said, “I really can’t stress this enough.”
She said, “These are leftovers, remains, irrelevant details. There’s not much. I’m just trying to take up some space here.”
She said, “I’ve always thought poverty is a great motivator.”
She said, “I’ve always thought politicians and lawmakers don’t truly understand and appreciate the absolute trauma of poverty.”
She said, “When I was a young child, I was sexually abused. My parents were very social people. Parties, dinner parties. People were always coming and going, coming and going. My parents were friends with a man. We became friends. The two of us. This man and me.”
Matthew had just wanted to get a word in edgewise.
Matthew wanted Carlotta back. Her support. Her protection. A shoulder to cry on. A friendship renewed. There had been sleepovers, every now and then. Sixteen times, approximately. She was lonely. She was drunk. He was there. It was an emergency. Nature took its course. He had whatever it took to help her make the same mistake sixteen times. Carlotta had instructed Matthew to not tell anyone.
(Seventeen times.)
“Let’s stop here,” she said, and parked the car on the side of the road, beside a ditch.
Matthew blinked. He found himself standing on a residential driveway. He was standing in front of a big white house. It was kind of a mansion.
Clouds scudded overhead. Matthew spotted the jacuzzi from the driveway. The jacuzzi was unaccountably in the middle of a precisely manicured lawn.
Matthew ignored the house. Matthew tried to ignore the house. It didn’t look like anyone was home. Then, he thought he saw someone behind the windows, but it was nobody. A ghost.
“Whose house is this . . . ?”
“Is anybody home . . . ?”
Carlotta ignored Matthew’s questions.
This was the flip side of friendship, the opposite of affection. This was breaking and entering, technically, because it wasn’t their property. Not their jacuzzi. This was a set-up. He should’ve known better.
Birds were chirping. She got naked. She ordered him to strip. His nudity was complete.
This was obviously a family’s jacuzzi. Matthew could see the swimming pool. Just over there. An outdoor sauna, too. An old pair of battered flip-flops. An explosion of nudity. A narrative Matthew couldn’t control anymore. A narrative he never could.
He worried himself. Worried over his fate. His nudity. He worried: would passersby – families, truck drivers – see their naked wet bodies?
She looked like Al Pacino in Scarface. She was bristling. She was serious. She wasn’t kidding. She was going to bury him. She was about to start burying him. This was his situation. Her breasts were a fact. Matthew remembered that he had, in the past, touched them.
“Don’t move,” Carlotta ordered, “I want to talk to you – can you stay still for me, please?”
What if . . . What if a lone truck driver decided to murder them? Matthew wondered. An unmarked white van roared by. The grass shook.
Matthew was in shock. He felt far away from his body. He felt far away from his face. He didn’t know what he looked like anymore. He couldn’t remember. He was in a hot tub, in hot water, but felt so cold.
Carlotta said Matthew was amazing. She said that, when he arrived, he had been amazing. He was a revelation. Exciting. Entertainment. Beer and skittles.
“But,” she said, “you had to open your mouth, and everybody got to know you. You gave them too many opportunities – you told them everything about yourself. You could’ve been silent, you could’ve made it easier on yourself – you could’ve, but you didn’t.”
She said he became greedy, excited, relentless, vulnerable. Too vulnerable. After a while, it wasn’t cute anymore. He tried too hard to be shocking, provocative. That was sad. Just sad. Made everyone uncomfortable. Made a fool of himself. What, exactly, were his intentions?
“I’m curious,” she said, “it’s a small college – what were you thinking?”
She said that people looked down on her for being friends with him. She said she couldn’t afford it anymore. She said that afternoon was the last time they would speak.
She said, “You’re an abuser. You’re fucking creepy. Women are terrified of you. I’m uncomfortable now.”
She said, “I think you’re an alcoholic. I think you have a drug problem. I think you have a personality disorder. I really wouldn’t know. I’m not a doctor.”
She said, “You need help. Real help.”
She said, “And I can’t help you anymore. I can’t keep playing hopscotch with you. It looks bad.”
She said, “My mom survived breast cancer. Once, when my parents were away at a hospital in Cleveland, I was the woman of the house. I was eighteen. I was in charge. One morning, I scolded my little brother, ‘Don’t leave your bong on the kitchen counter – you wouldn’t do that if Mom was here!’ Allison, my girlfriend, was smoking a cigar on the patio – almost ironically – and, I joined – ”
She stopped talking. She got distracted. A swallow flew in and out of nowhere. Insects and deer mingled nearby. Cars slowed down to gawk. Matthew understood that he wasn’t allowed to have reactions anymore. Carlotta continued.
“Anyway, we’re sharing a cigar on the patio, and my brother storms out of the house screaming, ‘Don’t let her smoke that! It will make her vagina taste acidic!’ God, I was so embarrassed.”
Matthew’s head flooded with screaming thoughts, feelings, memories.
Matthew felt the rumble of the jacuzzi pump heating the water.
Matthew imagined distant screams. He realized people get scared.
They get cut up. They scream, scream, scream.
And, finally, she said, “I have the same frame as my mother. She looks like Eleanor Roosevelt. After the treatments, she got huge boobs. My mom says women with broad shoulders look terrible with big boobs. My mom has broad shoulders. Why haven’t you met my mother? Why?”
(It was true. Matthew had never met Carlotta’s mother. Carlotta was Matthew’s only point of reference.)
The jacuzzi was hot. He was boiling. She was nude. Her navel, nipples, broad shoulders. A couple birthmarks. He thought about the facts. His name was Matthew. Her name was Carlotta. She couldn’t be trusted anymore. He tried to calm himself down. With the facts.
Once, long ago, after a student-organized concert, they asked some of the visiting band members – a forgettable group from Brooklyn called Grace Budd – if they would teach them their instruments in exchange for sexual favors.
They were kidding.
This was heartbreaking.
Matthew was flaccid. Carlotta was vicious. She was in control of everything, even his words. She was vibrating now, slightly. She toyed with the jacuzzi’s control panel. He had stopped looking at her. He refused to look at her.
The jacuzzi bubbled. Decades passed. The world turned. The world turned upside down. The world didn’t care. Matthew was startled, murdered. Nervous wreck dying of sadness. Loneliest animal in Vermont. Dead whale decomposing on the beach.
Then, Matthew broke the silence.
“Why did you bring me here?”
“Because, I come here sometimes,” Carlotta replied, “to think . . . ”
“I know the owners – they’re family friends – okay?” she snapped.
“Welcome to the Hamptons,” Carlotta said.
“But this isn’t the Hamptons – we’re not in the Hamptons,” Matthew responded.
“I know,” she said, “but, still, welcome to the Hamptons.”
“I don’t know,” he said, “I wish we could work this out. Can we work this out? Can we?”
“No, we can’t – we cannot. There’s no hope,” said Carlotta. “Just know that.”
“I really don’t want to encourage a false sense of hope,” she said.
“But, Carlotta, I think there’s something wrong with me – I think there’s something really wrong with me. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through.”
“But it doesn’t matter, Matthew – it doesn’t matter,” Carlotta replied sharply.
She was almost mimicking him. Her rage was quiet, conservative. Her face was tight with spite. She was a fresh razor blade.
“But, I love you, Carlotta.”
“Hit me,” said the masochist. “No, I won’t,” said the sadist.
Carlotta had forgotten to bring towels. The house was locked up.
“But I don’t like the way you are anymore. Too many people dislike you now. This is the decision I am making. The sky is blue.” Carlotta’s voice was sort of soaked in pragmatism.
On the ride back, they stopped at a food stand at the side of the road. They bought beer, potato salad, Jamaican jerk chicken. They were ravenous, starved, and wired.
In the car, they ate and drank and started an audiobook. No words were spoken. None were needed. Everything that needed to be said had already been said. That was more or less agreed upon.
Carlotta whistled “You’re So Vain,” but the radio station wasn’t playing “You’re So Vain.”
And, back on campus, minutes after they separated for good, Matthew stole Carlotta’s car. He walked into her unlocked messy dorm room and grabbed her car keys. He couldn’t drive, but he steered like a race car driver. This is that scene in the movie that’s just too crazy to be true.
Matthew’s understanding was confused. His guilt was undefined. He was running away from his brand new predatory status. He was running away from his brand new doubt. He had never wanted to hurt anyone. That was never his intention. He was probably somewhere between guilty and innocent. He was probably guilty of something, but of what Matthew wasn’t sure.
Of course he shouldn’t have been in Amanda’s room. Of course he was under the influence. Of course, of course, of course.
On the car radio, a legally blind woman missed her husband. She wanted what she no longer had. She missed past characters, old relationships, normal situations, surfaces. That made a lot of sense to Matthew. He thought that was perfectly reasonable.
Growing up, Matthew fought a lot with his mother. She cared too much. She loved him so much. They spent a lot of time together. Talking and talking. Sometimes all day. Sometimes all night. Neither of them could sleep.
In the kitchen, at nine years old, he asked her again and again to list all the different countries she had traveled to in her former life. Again and again, she answered, Russia, China, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, and the list went on, because, at twenty-one, she had been the youngest person in history to visit every country in the world. This had been reported in a local newspaper at the time. He was growing up lonely, getting lonelier, and his mother noticed. She is not to blame.
(Everyone always wants to blame their mother; everyone always wants to know where the bodies are buried; everyone always wants to bury their mother.)
His mother shared important information with him. She told him that when old people start eating junk food, it’s because they realize time is running out. She told him that people – people all over the world – run out of time. She told him to start thinking about the things he wanted to do in life, beginning right now. She told him what it feels like to cut a psychiatric hospital bracelet off of your wrist at seventeen. (It feels sexual.)
She told him that fathers try hard to respect other men. She told him that women don’t like men on top of them.
“Just imagine that,” she once said to him, “your father on top of me.”
She told him that none of us are safe. That evil lurks everywhere. All the time.
She told him about Ronald Reagan. She mythologized and demonized Reagan. She called Reagan a fascist. A fucking fascist. She said Reagan had been just as bad as Hitler.
She told him about a summer party she once attended in the Hamptons, at the height of the Reagan eighties. Some frat boys were freebasing cocaine on the beach. Trying something new. One of those boys was his father.
“Wow,” she commented to a friend at the time, pointing at them, “Take a look at the chemical warfare over there – it’s so pathetic.”
“I love you,” his mother once said to him, when he was small, “I love you so much . . . I’m in love with you.” She used to tell him he was her best creation. Her masterpiece.
A work of art.
Matthew’s mother comes down to that. The rest of Matthew’s life comes down to this.
Matthew drives to Carlotta’s family home in East Hampton. He’s never been here before. He guesses the alarm code correctly. (Her birthday.) He crawls into her pink bathtub but doesn’t run the water. He doesn’t take a bath. He ignores the jacuzzi behind the porch. He’s not her. He’s not like her. He didn’t hurt anyone. And, even if he did, he doesn’t believe it. You couldn’t make him believe it. Not even if you tried. It’s just not true.
Matthew thinks Carlotta owes him an apology. A grand apology. He thinks she should be locked up for this. He needs something to change her mind. He still needs her to hold on to.
Matthew feels so close to his life. He worries that something really wrong has happened. He worries that it’s true, what they say, about him. He worries that it’s true, what they say: that the hurt hurt. But that can’t be true. No, that’s not true. No, no, no.
Matthew thinks about a big secret. He thinks about oranges. He thinks about fruit. He starts talking to himself. He catches himself talking to himself. He stops talking to himself. He starts and stops crying. He feels ageless. He shivers. He drinks a glass of beer. He’s thirsty, but not hungry. He’s exhausted. He’s without a clue. What he really needs is a big injection of love, reassurance.
Matthew’s father lives in Mexico. His parents had a modestly unhappy marriage. Matthew had a modestly unhappy childhood. It wasn’t perfect. Not by a long shot.
Matthew notices a framed early childhood photograph of Carlotta on the fireplace mantel. That picture will remain in front of Matthew for the rest of his life. Matthew falls and melts into Carlotta’s bed.
In Carlotta’s bedroom, in Carlotta’s bed, Matthew listens to the ocean. His mother is out there, somewhere. He wraps his arms around himself. It’s peaceful. If he had options, choices, some cash on hand, he and Carlotta would smoke some hash in an urban park, and she would make a little smile. Never let anyone tell you there are no options. Some people probably shouldn’t live.
He could make her smile. They could be happy together. They could love each other. They could trust each other. He didn’t remember anything. He never stole her car. He never loved her. Has he blown things out of proportion?
This is an obituary. The truth. A version of the truth. It doesn’t matter, Matthew.
Matthew. Twisted by life. Bent by guilt. Not an angel. Still a person with a pulse.
Okay, basically: Matthew didn’t know when to stop loving Carlotta unconditionally, but Carlotta knew when to stop loving Matthew unconditionally.
In his dreams and nightmares, people mutter rapist as they pass Matthew on the sidewalk. Then they turn the other way. They cross the street.
In his dreams and nightmares, his father’s best friend, Daniel Michael Gage, limps into Matthew’s childhood bedroom, starts tickling him, and refuses to stop. Whenever Matthew attempts to escape his hands, Daniel Michael Gage pincers the nape of his neck and redeposits him into the bed. Daniel Michael Gage sticks his tongue deep in Matthew’s ear. Matthew screams for help. The scream comes out wrong.
A whole childhood is wiped out. A little rascal is sodomized. A pig gets what a pig deserves. Daniel Michael Gage fucks Matthew so hard, for so long, he repeats the fourth grade.
And who would believe Matthew? Who on earth? Who?
In her dreams and nightmares, Carlotta becomes financially independent, makes remarkable friends, attains total artistic freedom.
In the morning, Matthew sleeps in. He doesn’t want to get out of bed.
Her bed.
And, if he could, if it were possible, he would do it all again.
All of it. Everything. One more time.
Please.
Myles Zavelo’s writing has appeared in The Harvard Advocate, The Southampton Review, Joyland, Muumuu House, New York Tyrant, and Maudlin House.