Angel took the bottle. “I’ll drink any chance I get, mainly because I never get any. Two kids put a crimp in your style. You have to be a grown-up all the time.”
“Hey, next week’s sign for the salon! Don’t put a crimp in your style!”
“I like it. Maybe you should try to get a job with that advertising agency you worked at while you were at college-”
“Out of business. I called before I left Bruce.”
“Ah, and so we arrive at the night’s topic,” Angel said. “Why you left. What happened? He’s got another girl?”
“Nope.”
“You’ve got another guy?”
“I never!”
“He works too much?”
“I don’t mind that. He’s trying to gather a nest egg for both our sakes.”
“Mom’s driving you nuts with wedding plans?”
“Yes, but no.”
“So tell, before I slap you silly out of frustration.”
“I went off sex.”
“What?”
“I can’t make love with him anymore,” Brandy said. “So how can I marry him?”
“Criminy, Bran. This is serious. Is he kinky? Does he want you to wear rubber strappies and a head thing with studs or something?”
“No. He’s a little-old-fashioned. That’s one big reason I fell in love with him, you know? It’s simple with him. Roses, candles, naked bodies, beautiful music. All the love you want when you want it. You know, Angel, he’s my real love. That’s why this is so hard.”
“Well?”
“Let’s just say it’s me.”
“Did you see a doctor?” Angel asked, really concerned. “Maybe you could take testosterone shots or something. I’ve heard they make you horny.”
“You’re the geezer. You’re closer to running out of hormones than me.”
The flap over the door to the tent came loose in the wind and Angel got up to tie it back down. “Here I come out in the night and I’m forced to drink wine and eat chocolate and listen to insults from my punk sister. Life so sucks.” She walked back over to throw a log on the fire just as two faces peered out from inside the orange tent about fifty feet away-a yawning girl with long black hair and a man, unshaven and ragged-haired but a muscular hunk nevertheless. He said, “Get a fire going, woman,” but in an affectionate, relaxed voice.
Brandy and Angel broke chunks of chocolate off their Ghirardelli bar as they watched the girl next door pile sticks haphazardly into the fire pit. She saw them watching and gave them a wave. They waved back. She started to sing. “She sounds like a sick cat,” Angel decided after they had a chance to listen for a few seconds.
“I did see a doctor a few weeks ago,” Brandy said a few minutes later. “A head doctor. He was such a dork. I felt like he didn’t take me seriously.”
“Bran, don’t you love Bruce anymore?”
The wine hit, or something, because Brandy started crying then, big jagged sobs. “That’s what really stinks. I love him as much as ever. I just don’t want him to, like, touch me.”
“Have you told him?”
“Are you kidding! I can’t hurt him like that!”
“Aw, Bran, go on, cry awhile. Here, have some more wine.” And that was about it, Brandy polishing off the rest of the bottle and crying and saying she loved Bruce, who must be a quickie Dickie, that was Angel’s instant speculation, but she was going to wait awhile to tell Brandy.
They went to bed shortly after, just as the fire next door got hot. After another half hour or so, loud music started up at the next site over. They peeked out, seeing a boom box and two floppy figures dancing by the fire.
“How nice for them,” Brandy groused, “but isn’t the routine you dance first, then crawl into a sleeping bag together?”
“Oh, ease up. It’s amore.”
Campers from across the way got involved at this point, telling the couple to please turn the music down. They did, and a temporary hush descended upon the campground. Then a motorcycle with an engine like a 747 pulled up. The biker joined the couple. The music went up again, as did, after some time, the voices. Back and forth, something about money paid out, money owed, money not paid out, love and sex and other personal realms. Angel and Brandy listened avidly. Other campers complained again, but gave up when the boisterous campers ignored them. After a good half hour of arguing, a fistfight started between the biker and the camper guy.
“You goddamn lying, cheating, scum-sucking piece of-” Thwack.
“Where do you get off coming here with an attitude like that? Phoebe chose me, Cody, not you. C’mon, baby.”
“Phoebe’s been two-timing them,” Brandy guessed. “I think the one who spent the evening tucked into the tent with her is named Mario.”
The thunk of a fist contacting skin was followed by a shoving match.
“Round Two, I guess,” Angel said wearily. “Well, we were warned. Should we do something? Get the ranger?”
“A hundred people are listening to this. Someone else will get him eventually.”
They sneaked a look through the netting, hiding in toward the edges.
“She looks scared,” Angel said. “You know what? I don’t like the way this looks at all. We should do something.”
The studly camper, Mario, shoved by Cody, the biker with long hair, landed against their tent, almost crushing Brandy’s leg. “That’s it,” Brandy said, as he lurched back to the fray. “I’m going for the ranger!”
“They’ll see you,” Angel said. “I don’t want them to know anything about us. Use your mobile phone and call.”
Brandy dug around in her bag while the fistfight escalated into a free-for-all just a few feet from their tent. Incoherent screams and cries rent the night. Only Phoebe made any sense at all.
“Help!” she screamed. “Help!”
After the ranger came to bust it up and Cody thundered away on his bike, things settled down at last, the dogs quit howling, and the kids stopped crying, but now neither Brandy nor Angel could sleep. They lay in their bags for the next couple of hours checking their watches and chatting quietly.
“I have to pee,” Brandy said.
“So, enjoy. You know where the bathroom is.”
“Come with me.”
“What?”
“C’mon, Angel. Don’t make me go alone. Remember that story Sam told about the night the bears came to your cabin and broke into that refrigerator you keep in your garage?”
“There was only one bear and he was dinky.”
“Sam said that dinky bear knocked the refrigerator over, broke open the door, and ate all the frozen meat. When you came out in your nightgown to scare him off, he chased you across the yard. You screamed, too.”
“Oh, chill, Brandy. I haven’t heard a peep from anything or anyone since the ranger came.”
“Please? I’m scared.”
They pulled on flip-flops and sweaters, examined the road carefully for shadows, and stepped outside into the stinging-cold night. Brandy waited for another latebird lady to finish washing up, then used the bathroom in private while Angel stomped the concrete to heat up her toes, keeping a watch outside for bears or strangers or anything at all, but the dark made it hard to see much except lights reflecting off the lake in the distance. Hard to believe they were right in the middle of the city of South Lake Tahoe.
“Gag me,” Brandy said, when she finally came outside. “It smelled like vomit in there. That poor woman partied too hearty for her own good.”
“She did look terrible, except that I loved her hair,” Angel agreed. “Should have stuck to chocolate and wine like us, huh? No ill effects, except maybe that we’re jumpy as little bunnies.” They walked through the darkness toward their camp.
“Wait!” Brandy whispered suddenly, putting a hand out to stop Angel. She pulled her sister back toward the side of the road.
“Is it a bear?”
“Shh!”
“Let’s go. You’re not three years old anymore. No need to be so damn scared of the dark.”