Patricia Wants to Cuddle Read online

  Also by Samantha Allen

  Real Queer America

  Patricia Wants to Cuddle

  Samantha Allen

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2022 by Samantha Allen

  Zando supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, uploading, or distributing this book or any part of it without permission. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for brief quotations embodied in reviews), please contact [email protected].

  Zando

  zandoprojects.com

  First Edition: June 2022

  Cover design by Evan Gaffney and artwork by Richard A. Chance

  Interior design by Aubrey Khan, Neuwirth & Associates, Inc.

  The publisher does not have control over and is not responsible for author or other third-party websites (or their content).

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2021953081

  ISBN 978-1-63893-004-4

  eISBN 978-1-63893-005-1

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  For Alexa, the knife in my heart

  Margaret Davies scrubs and scrubs but she knows she’ll just have to refinish the deck.

  At least the spot where she found the dead sheep this morning. Not that she could recognize the animal at first. The poor dear had been bludgeoned and torn to shreds, hopefully in that order.

  By the looks of it, the sheep had already bled into the wood for hours before Maggie, mug of breakfast tea in hand, rounded the corner and spotted the rotting shape outside the sliding-glass door. The sight could have ruined her morning, but one only gets so many mornings, or at least that’s what Kathy always said. So when Maggie found the sheep, she simply sat down at the table, sipped her tea, and watched the sated flies buzz against the glass before standing with a sigh to gather tarp, brush, and bucket.

  The faint glint of an ear tag under the rising sun was how she ended up identifying the creature: not one from her own flock, thankfully—it was from her neighbor’s farm down the road. But it didn’t matter whose it was. What mattered was where it had been placed. Everyone on Otters Island knew it had been a bad summer.

  What remained of the sheep’s wool was stained a deep, almost black shade of crimson except for two perfect white rings around its bent and broken hind legs. The front limbs were missing. Typical, Maggie thought, when she noticed their absence. The face had been brutalized to the point that it was no longer a face, really, just a bloody snout protruding from the carnage.

  First Maggie rolled the ewe—it was female; she could tell that much—onto the tarp, wrapped it up, then dragged it down the deck stairs, the carcass thumping sickeningly against each step. Crows waiting in the surrounding firs had already discovered the body by the time Maggie finished vaulting back up the steps—two at a time, to keep limber and stave off osteoporosis. Kathy would have been proud, always begging Maggie to go on those long walks she took out to the overlook, where you could see Canada on a sunny day. But Kathy’s mornings ran out last year.

  At least her wife hadn’t died like this sheep, suddenly and violently, although perhaps she would have preferred that to chemotherapy in Anacortes.

  On her hands and knees now, rubbing the cedar deck furiously, her left arm aching from the friction, Maggie can do no more. Animal removal will come by later in the day. Word will spread from there. The only decision to be made is when to restain the wood. No point doing it so late in the season, when the rain will just reverse her labor. Then again, waiting until April will mean being reminded of this grisly scene all fall and winter long.

  But that was the point, wasn’t it? To be reminded.

  [One]

  CatchChat.com

  TRexDerickson • 9.18.19 • 10:20 PM

  OK, Catchers. I know it’s taken me longer than usual to bring you your week nine spoilers but I finally have the scoop on the Final Four. My source in production says the remaining contestants are currently en route to Otters Island, Washington. (Remember how I told you back in July that they were going to film the penultimate week in Japan? Well, I guess they finally looked up the cost of airfare to Tokyo! Now they’re going somewhere that has more sheep than people.)

  Anyway, I can now reveal that Glamstapix “co-founder” Jeremy Blackstone—a.k.a. America’s most eligible bachelor *rolls eyes*—sent home mommy vlogger Rebecca Patton and pharmaceutical sales representative Zoey Sykes during the week eight Elimination Event in Sacramento. That means your official Final Four are: Christian influencer Lilah-Mae Adams, fashion vlogger Amanda Parker, auto show model Vanessa Voorhees, and HR rep Renee Irons.

  I’ll post a new thread the minute my source comes through with more Elimination details, but if I were you, I wouldn’t expect any surprises. Amanda and Vanessa are still your frontrunners this season, like they have been since week two, but I hear Jeremy may be leaning toward Vanessa heading into the finale.

  There’s only one complication: production was apparently counting on Vanessa to be the villain in the final edit, so if Jeremy does end up proposing to her, they’ll have to switch things around. But my source says it’s NBD. Villains have won The Catch before. Gretchen from season four had a hit-and-run on her record and she still pulled it off, remember?

  CatchTheseHands • 9.18.19 • 10:22 PM

  T-Rex! I knew you would never abandon us. Some people were starting to think you had gone extinct (pun intended) but no way were you going to leave us in the dark when they’re about to wrap filming. Thank you for these spoilers, but also I’m #TeamAmanda so I kind of don’t want to believe you about Vanessa being the top choice.

  GlamstaRicks • 9.18.19 • 10:24 PM

  I’m just glad Lilah-Mae isn’t making a late-season surge. Anyone else get serious Children of the Corn vibes from her Glamstapix videos?

  CatcherInTheSky • 9.18.19 • 10:25 PM

  Just because she’s a Christian doesn’t mean she’s creepy, GlamstaRicks. I know it’s cool on this forum to hate on the religious contestants, but it’s getting old.

  GlamstaRicks • 9.18.19 • 10:26 PM

  Umm, I’m a Christian? My problem isn’t her religion, it’s her spouting that prosperity gospel garbage all over social media. Jesus wants you to love people, he doesn’t want you to get rich quick selling leggings to your old high-school friends.

  CatchMods • 9.18.19 • 10:30 PM

  Moderators here. Let’s all be mindful of the forum rules about discussing contestants’ religions. T-Rex dropped spoilers in here 10 minutes ago and we’re already having to delete some comments.

  DexIsMyZaddy • 9.18.19 • 10:35 PM

  So the Catch is going to pick the tiny blond girl with the perfect tits. Shocker.

  Renee

  The plane hits a bit of turbulence and Renee Irons can’t help but picture it going down, the oxygen masks falling from the cabin ceiling like discarded party favors, the screams of the other passengers sounding high and shrill, as though anything could stop the flame from consuming them all in the end. Some people think it would be an awful way to die but the only terror lies in the waiting—the minute or so it takes at high altitude for your oxygen-deprived brain to give up on self-preservation. When the jet slams into the ground, death comes too quick for it to hurt.

  “Trash?” the flight attendant asks, walking down the aisle one last time before the descent, jarring Renee out of her grim reverie. “Trash? Trash?”

  The man with frosted tips twenty years past their expiration date says it like a question, but as he draws nearer to the Catch girls, Renee hears his tone become a touch more declarative.

  “Trash? Trash? Trash.”

  To be fair, Renee has made the same association before. Reality show contestants aren’t unlike the two half-empty bags of pretzels Renee throws out as the flight attendant walks past her row: mostly air, empty calories consumed rapidly and forgotten just as fast.

  That includes Renee, too, she supposes. Maybe she’s read more books than the other girls, but whenever she catches herself feeling superior, she remembers she made the same choice they did to come on this show. Whoever they were before, they’re heading to the same place now. Ultimately, they’ll all be flattened into pixels and LEDs, reduced to the stuff of sorority house small talk and boxed-wine-fueled internet debates.

  Amanda fidgets in the seat to Renee’s right, brushing her middle-parted strawberry blond hair out of her face before dropping her hands to her lap. Some empty pretzel bags are prettier than others, Renee muses, catching herself staring at Amanda’s nose. She tries to decide whether she was born with it, or whether a surgeon had shaped it into a perfect button, though the answer isn’t important, because it’s cute either way.

  “Here we go!” Amanda chirps, turning to face her, smiling through a bump. “Two more weeks!”

  “Well, for half of us,” Renee says.

  Amanda tightens her seatbelt around the waist of her purple floral-print leggings.

  “Oh, girl! I’m sure Jeremy’s taking you to the finale. Did you see the way he was staring at you back at the airport?”

  Gross.

  Ye
s, Renee had noticed Jeremy’s leering back at the gate. This is partly why she half-wishes that one—or both—of the jet’s engines would fail, although if she’s being honest with herself, those thoughts long predate her time on this stupid show. The other girls might like the lust in Jeremy’s gaze. A few years ago, it would have made Renee feel wanted, too. Desire can be such a heady substitute for self-confidence. But she’s trying to stop searching for herself in the eyes of others—especially the dead eyes of a greasy-haired gym junkie.

  Amanda is still eyeing her expectantly, as if she’d just missed the part where Renee gushed about the Catch. The light turbulence of the plane nosing down saves Renee, mercifully, from having to lie.

  “Have you ever been to Seattle?” she asks Amanda instead.

  A question for a question. It’s a strategy that usually works when Renee wants to hide how she’s feeling. Most people like talking about themselves more than they even realize. Renee knows she can get away with only doling out tiny, diet-size slices of herself in her few friendships if she just keeps her interlocutors talking. That’s how none of her coworkers back in Tampa know her birthday or her alma mater or that her favorite food is steak frites, and the evasion always works unless the person you’re talking to—

  “No, have you been?” Amanda asks.

  Damn it.

  Renee hadn’t pegged her for the curious type.

  “I’ve only been once,” Renee offers, “but I thought you would have come here for a fashion event at some point?”

  “A fashion event in Seattle? What, like a raincoat runway walk? A North Face show?”

  Amanda throws her head back and laughs at her own joke. Renee would never tell anyone, and she can barely admit it to herself, but she finds that squeaky giggle sort of charming. The sound of it makes the insides of her elbows feel funny, like they used to back in high school when her history teacher would announce a pop quiz and Renee had forgotten to do the reading.

  Amanda probably never did her reading. She looks like the kind of girl who would have copied off of Renee. And Renee would have let her.

  The plane tilts down at a steeper grade, then banks right. Through the window just past Amanda’s face, Renee can see the Seattle skyline come into view, a thousand white lights blinking against the inky night, construction cranes like enormous glowing crosses filling the few empty spaces between buildings.

  “I don’t know,” Renee says, unthinking, distracted by the sight. “I think you’d make a great puffy-vest model.”

  Renee feels instantly stupid and daubs away the light sweat forming on her forehead with a napkin. Amanda has already turned to stare out the oval window at the city below them. She may not have even heard.

  Anyway, Amanda is the kind of girl who can swim straight through compliments hardly noticing them, like a guppy floating downriver. Maddening how that only seems to make her more beautiful.

  “I think I see the Space Needle …” Amanda says, her face still glued to the window.

  Renee is left by herself to listen to the cacophony of final descent: seatbelts clicking into place, tray tables locking into position, a waking baby crying somewhere in the back. She quickly scans the cabin of the plane, glancing at the young couple holding hands in the row across from them, and giving a polite but dutiful smile to the older woman next to her who’d joked that she always chooses aisle seats because her bladder is the size of a walnut now. Is this all there is waiting for Renee? Love, maybe, and then decay? Her body catching up with the rot in her brain?

  Renee turns back toward Amanda and tries to drown out the noise, watching over the other girl’s shoulder as the plane descends, slowly—too slowly—and lands not with a fireball but with the dull thud of tires on tarmac, the earth insisting that Renee spend another day on its surface.

  Vanessa

  The musky sea air is a welcome reprieve from the cloud of Chanel Chance that Vanessa Voorhees has been inhaling ever since she and Amanda piled into the back of the same SUV at Sea–Tac. After living with a gaggle of girls for two months, she isn’t sure how much more estrogen she can take.

  Shivering, she stares out at the blackness. The others, jet-lagged and weary, had trudged upstairs to the warmth of the heated passenger lounge once the rented fleet of Catch cars were all loaded onto the ferry, but Vanessa wanted a moment alone here on the vehicle deck before joining them.

  Before her is a rusted rail and beyond it, a moonless abyss. Huge halogen bulbs housed in hazy plastic casings cast a bilious yellow pall over the concrete but fail to illuminate the darkness. Her inner ear and the sound of the 4,000-ton vessel pushing through the waves are her only clues that the boat is even moving. A look around confirms that apart from the Catch cars, there’s only a smattering of Jeeps and old Subarus parked on the deck. Very few people make the late-night trek to this island, shocker.

  The eerie surroundings are more than worth the time away from Amanda’s yammering. Maybe upstairs she has found a local who’s interested in hearing about the difference between Glamstapix’s Glimmer feature and ClickClack’s Bursts, but Vanessa would much rather stay here and enjoy the dully roaring, reassuring constancy of the churning water.

  Still, it would be too creepy to stay down here for long if it didn’t smell so nice, like sweat and salt, like her guy friends back home in Denver—a lot like Jeremy, come to think of it, sour and sweet.

  God, she loves how he tastes. Vanessa wishes she could be burying her face in his neck right now instead of heading toward yet another empty hotel-room bed. Hopefully she doesn’t have a roommate this week. Back in Sacramento, Becca tried to make her stay up late and do DIY gel manicures and Vanessa wondered if she had died and gone to hell.

  Only two more weeks, she reminds herself.

  Then the other girls will be back home hawking subscription boxes on social media while Vanessa and Jeremy fuck each other in a dozen different countries, and preferably as close to the equator as possible. This boat really is freezing. It’s not like any of them would even know what to do with the eponymous Catch if they, well, caught him. Lilah-Mae probably wouldn’t even blow him, not that the beauty queen is anywhere near as innocent as she pretends to be.

  Vanessa leans out over the railing and tries to let her eyes adjust to the darkness.

  Soon, she can make out enormous shapes, monoliths hovering in the middle distance, titans lying in wait. Looking closer, she sees that they are cliffs, coastal ones, dotted by hundreds of trees emerging from the crags like bony fingers reaching for the stars. The water slapping against the hull of the boat sounds as though it’s trying to climb its way up the deck. And there, skittering between the gray lines of the trees, Vanessa can swear she sees something—a shadow, an animal?—scurrying along the cliffside nearest the ferry.

  She leans out farther over the railing, away from the yellow light of the vehicle deck, to keep tracking its movement. What is it?

  A cougar? A wolf ?

  The cold, corroding steel bar between Vanessa and the sea presses into her abdomen as she leans farther. She can almost identify the thing.

  Maybe a bear?

  With a jolt, the hulking vessel lurches starboard. Vanessa feels her feet slipping as her center of gravity bends over the rail, toward the darkness, toward the water. She yelps as her toes lose purchase on the concrete.

  Her pupils dilated now, she sees frothy white caps eager to swallow her. She flails, trying to bend her arms back at an unnatural angle to grab the railing before she plummets into the cold expanse below.

  “I’ve got you.”

  The man’s voice sounds close behind her, and then an arm around her waist pulls her back down onto the deck, which a moment ago was as calm as a cruise ship but is now rocking like a duck boat on a stormy day. In the course of a second, Vanessa’s racing heart halves its pace. She takes a step away from the railing for good measure, then turns to greet her rescuer, only to find herself looking at an almost cartoonishly handsome man in his midfifties, his skin nearly wrinkle-free thanks to a readily apparent Botox regimen, his eyes green, his smile bleached-white, and his hair silver-dyed-brown.