Justine

by Forsyth Harmon

  “Word.” Ryan pulled a sandwich-size Ziploc stuffed with weed from the windshield wash bucket. “My house,” Ryan said to me, “after work.” He gave me the address, then turned to watch the other boy count out several twenties.

  *

  Justine wasn’t at the Stop & Shop yet, but Michelle was. She held out two puffy white fists. “Pick a hand.”

  I tapped the right one. She flipped it, spreading her fingers to reveal a tiny key in her pillowy palm.

  “Your very own register key!” She smiled, shaking her left fist next. I obliged, touching her knuckles. In that hand: a yellow, egg-shaped Tamagotchi, just like the one on her key chain. “Congratulations!”

  “Thanks.”

  “You can take aisle four,” she said, pressing a button to activate my new digital pet. It beeped. She turned the screen to me. A round little eight-bit creature appeared at the center.

  “Is it a cat?”

  “It’s Mimitchi,” she said, like that would mean something to me. “You have to feed it and play with it.” She pushed another button. “Otherwise it dies.” She handed me the Tamagotchi.

  I threaded the little key through the key ring. It made me sad. Three years she’d been working here. “Do we have those pine tree things?”

  “What?” She blinked.

  “That hang, you know? From the rearview mirror?”

  “Freshener.” She nodded. She pointed to a rainbow display of them below the windows, above the charcoal. They were beautiful, hanging there in color order.

  A woman with a stack of silver bangles swung a six-pack onto the conveyor. Her perfume was musky. Her long, highlighted curls looked crunchy.

  “ID?” I asked.

  “Ha!” the woman laughed. “You’re sweet.” Tanned skin creased around her mouth. She handed me her license, bangles jangling. The tips of her nails sparkled with rhinestones.

  I saw my biology teacher wheeling a cart down the cereal aisle and took my break a little early so she wouldn’t see me. She had a way of looking at me—concerned, like I was about to cry. I sat at the card table in the windowless cinder-block break room. I had developed a special ritual to make meals last as long as possible, first setting the strawberry yogurt at the very center of the table, then peeling off the foil lid. I scooped out the creamy pink substance in the tiniest possible spoonfuls, wrapping my mouth around the utensil and sucking the velvety stuff from the hard metal, anticipating and even savoring that strange aspartame aftertaste.

  Theresa came in and put a Tupperware in the microwave, the drone and beep interrupting my vigil. She sat down opposite me with leftover lasagna. I didn’t see any gray at the roots of her dark middle part. I scraped every last trace of yogurt from inside the plastic container.

  “That’s your lunch?” she asked, wiping the side of her mouth, orange oil marking the paper towel. She smelled like hair spray. She was practically phosphorescent, her skin like a mirror. Her eyeliner was immaculate.

  I licked the cakier stuff from inside the lid.

  “Honey,” she said, and I tightened. “Have you ever considered electrolysis?”

  “What?” I stuffed the foil into the cup.

  “I mean like for this.” She ran her finger along her upper lip. I touched my face. “I bleach that.”

  “Well, just so you know,” she said, sliding a business card across the table. “I’m not just the manager here. I’m also an aesthetician. I do electrolysis out of my house two days a week.”

  That’s why her face was like that. The mozzarella on her lasagna was starting to harden.

  *

  The afternoon was slow. I wondered where Justine was. I skimmed an article about Michael Kors in Vogue. They said Kors was born “in Long Island,” but you don’t say “in Long Island,” you say “on Long Island.” “On.” At the next register, Michelle read People.

  “Listen to this,” she said. “Earlier this month, rap star Puff Daddy walked free at the end of the trial which could have seen him face up to fifteen years in prison. Combs said the trial forced him to reevaluate his life, as well as drop his Puff Daddy alias. He now wants to be known as”—she started laughing—“P. Diddy.”

  “What?”

  Justine didn’t come in until the very end of our shift. Her eyes were red. I wondered what was wrong with her. She looked at the magazine over my shoulder. A girl in a white bikini leapt across the beach, a red-and-blue-striped towel flying like a cape behind her, cheeks flushed, eyes shining, long blonde hair whipping in the salty sea breeze, her skin radiating a healthy matte gleam.

  “Carmen Kass.” Justine nodded at the photo. “She just got a DWI. Her BAC was triple the limit.”

  “I don’t need a ride home today,” I said.

  She shrugged.

  *

  I drove to Ryan’s. Garfield Place was all small Cape Cods and compact ranches, with patchy backyards, old barbecues, and aboveground pools. I pulled up to 61: a pea-colored, white-shuttered Cape. I hung the pine tree–shaped air freshener from the rearview mirror. For a second I felt like I wasn’t going in. But then I wondered which window was his.

  “Hello, may I help you?” A serious little girl answered the door in pajamas a few sizes too small. I followed her tangled red head through the living room, which was dim and crowded with a mushroom-colored couch and matching chair with a large brown stain on the arm. I pictured Ryan’s cop dad dozing, knocking over a beer as he drifted into a foggy slumber.

  I trailed the girl into the kitchen, the cabinets a dark wood veneer, the countertops a dull yellow. A window above the sink let in the tiniest bit of light. I stood there and watched her pour a gallon of gin down the drain. It felt like a weird little performance just for me.

  “He’s upstairs,” she said without turning around. I followed the music to Ryan’s room. I put my ear to the closed door and listened for a minute. Layers of fuzzy guitar looped in vague figure eights. I knocked.

  “Yeah.”

  I opened the door. The room reeked of weed.

  “Shut it behind you.” Ryan lay on his bed watching Real Stories of the Highway Patrol. His floor was covered with shirts, socks, skateboards. A stack of Thrasher magazines spilled from a plastic laundry basket. Loose change was scattered everywhere—pennies, nickels, even quarters—along with crumpled receipts, used-up matchbooks, a couple of lighters, and so many roaches. I saw near my foot what was most likely a girl’s black hair elastic, a few bobby pins.

  “This episode’s dope,” he said, gesturing toward the TV. “Calvin Johnson and Doug Martsch talk their way out of getting arrested for possession.” He didn’t get up from the bed.

  “Your sister just dumped a gallon of gin into the kitchen sink.”

  “Yeah, Eileen hates when Mom drinks,” he said. “Hepatocellular carcinoma.”

  “What?”

  “Liver cancer.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “I’d drink too if I was married to the lieutenant.”

  His walls were lined with CDs and cassettes organized with the precision of a retail display. I studied the spines. They were alphabetized: Black Rob, Black Sheep, Black Star—thousands of albums—Ice Cube, Ice-T, Ill Bill, Illmind. I stumbled over a skateboard and sat down by him on the bed. His pillowcases didn’t match his sheets. I felt something under my thigh. It was a book: Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present. I placed it toward the foot of the bed. He flipped through channels. Stephen King got hit by a car?

  “Wait,” I said. Drew Barrymore walked along a dock with a fat man.

  “Don’t you know what this is? The Amy Fisher Story.”

  “I think I heard Joey Buttafuoco’s a wrestler now?”

  “Amy Fisher’s a porn star.”

  “Really?”

  He shrugged.

  “I came for the tape.”

  “I have it,” he said, then turned off the TV and looked at me. My body felt like it was boiling off. He stood, unbuckled his belt, and dropped his pants to the fl
oor. His boxers were white with maroon stripes. He removed his shirt and his torso was pale, ropy, and all cut up. I mean everywhere: cuts striping the insides of his biceps, some raw, some scabby. I wanted to touch him. Something about the cuts made me realize I’d wanted to touch Ryan all this time. He was a real naked person standing there, all cut up.

  I sat forward on the bed and stretched out my hand, but before it could reach him he took my wrist and pushed me down on the bed. The sheets were greasy. He took off my sneakers, my cutoffs—leaving my socks—and lay on top of me. His hair was dirty. I could feel his erection against my thigh, then inside. We looked straight at each other the whole time very seriously, not even blinking. After a while he pulled out and pressed against my pubic bone, coming on my stomach. His heart beat hard against my chest. He breathed heavy onto my neck. His ear touched mine. We lay there for a minute.

  Then he slid off me and knelt on the floor. He grabbed behind my knees and pulled my pelvis to his face. He started out licking. I crossed my arms. Then it was more like he was kissing. My arms fell to my sides. I shuddered, closed my eyes, tried to hide my surprise when I came. Ryan looked up and nodded. He picked a sock up off the floor and wiped my stomach. We put our clothes back on. He handed me the cassette tape. I took it, shaky.

  “Thanks,” I said, hovering at the door.

  “Shut it behind you.”

  I ran out past Eileen. “Bye.”

  She didn’t look up from the TV. She was watching Jeopardy!

  When I stepped outside, I saw Ryan’s mom pulling into the driveway. All I could think was I had sex and she had cancer. She heaved a grocery bag out of the back seat, offering a weak smile. I gave a weak wave.

  I slid the tape into the deck and sat in the car for a while, listening, looking up at his window. I had sex with Ryan. There was no condom. He just stuck it in there without even asking. Sex with Ryan was different from sex with Matt. With Matt, sex was less like doing and more like watching, like I was observing other people having sex. The main thing was whether or not it would look good from the outside. Like was it good enough to be in a movie? What was the best facial expression? What percentage of the time did I keep my eyes closed versus open? When Ryan touched me, it was like he just touched me. I felt his actual hands on my actual body. We were real human beings having sex for three minutes. Of course, I’d never tell anyone. Ryan was a dirty, drug-dealing cutter. But I loved every second of it. It might’ve even been the best thing I’d ever done in my entire life.

  There was only one book about Marcus Garvey in the Huntington Public Library: Black Moses. It was olive green and wrapped in a shiny clear plastic jacket. Garvey was on the cover in a military uniform, looking very serious, wearing a huge, impossible hat I didn’t understand—it looked like bagpipes.

  I fell asleep listening to the tape that night.

  SIX

  The Stop & Shop back lot was almost empty. The streetlamps wore halos. My thighs stuck to the hood of Grandma’s Escort, it was so humid. Justine inched closer to me, our hips touching, bare legs stretched out side by side. I rested my heels on the front bumper, angling my toes down so my calves looked longer. Justine fiddled with my hair, braiding then unbraiding it in places. Her fingertips brushed my neck. A bead of sweat slipped down my sternum. Airplanes made cane-shaped contrails in the dim sky: takeoffs and landings at Islip, LaGuardia, Newark, JFK.

  Chris balanced his camcorder on the hood alongside Justine and me. The boys skated around stray shopping carts, recording tricks on video. Ryan popped the tail of his board, hovered, spun the deck 180 degrees, landed with a slap, rolled back around, did it again. He wasn’t graceful like Chris. There was an abrupt, ropy energy to his movements that threatened the unexpected.

  After one particularly deft spin, he caught an edge and fell flat on the asphalt. He examined his palms; they were cut. He walked toward me, and I wasn’t sure whether it was a hurt knee or just his low-slung pants that made him limp. I hopped down and rooted around the glove compartment. Grandma had Band-Aids. Ryan smirked but laid his hands on the hood. I peeled a bandage from its plastic backing and brought it toward his bloody palm, slow and shaky, like leaning in for a kiss. I thought of the other cuts on his torso.

  “Yo!” He brought up the hand like a stop sign. He leaned into the car and edged up the stereo volume. It was the tape he’d made.

  “Once again, my friends,” he rapped along, “Long Island.”

  Chris put a hand to his ear and held out the other arm like we were at a luau, rolling his hips to the beat. It was gorgeous.

  Ryan gave me his hand back. I held it in mine, dusted off the gravel, and laid down one Band-Aid, then another, pressing the sticky ends into his skin.

  “Do you know who this is?” He had a hangnail.

  “De La Soul,” I said.

  “Stakes Is High was their first critical triumph in seven years”—he offered me his other hand—“since 3 Feet High and Rising.”

  “Critical triumph,” Justine mouthed into her mirrored compact.

  Chris swung his arms with the music. He went up on alternating toes. He grabbed the brim of his Yankees cap, shifted it forty-five degrees. His shirt rode up, exposing a tan slice of hip. I tried to imagine him and Justine naked. It would be like pressing plastic dolls together.

  Ryan raised a finger in the air like he could touch the sound, snaked his head to the bass. “Freeport, Uniondale to Long Beach,” he sang along, “to them girls out in Huntington.” He smiled at me. I was surprised he’d even registered that I went to Huntington High School.

  “X Games!” Chris shouted. He tossed his skateboard into the trunk.

  Ryan and Justine both bolted for shotgun. He beat her there. She slapped his forearm. He pulled the door closed fast, just short of catching her hand in it. We drove to Ryan’s house. He gave me directions like I’d never been there before.

  “You read that?” He gestured at Black Moses on the dash.

  “Started it,” I lied.

  He paged through the book. Justine wrenched it from him, pulling out the envelope I’d stuck inside, my first paycheck. She tore it open like it was addressed to her.

  “$116.28.” She dusted my cheek with it.

  “It should be at least—”

  “Taxes.”

  That much? I pulled into 61 Garfield just before Ryan said “here,” and he narrowed his eyes. Eileen was there, cross-legged on the big mushroom-colored easy chair, lit up blue by the TV screen. Chris ruffled her red hair, but she didn’t acknowledge him. We plodded downstairs to the basement, which was furnished with another TV, a pool table, a sooty velour couch, and a mini-fridge. Dusty old soccer trophies lined one of the baseboards.

  Ryan switched on the TV, got a beer from the fridge, slumped on the couch, and lit a bong. Chris racked a rainbow of pool balls into a triangle. He leaned across the table for a break shot like a cat about to attack. Justine twirled her cue like a baton and tossed it into the air, dislodging one of the drop ceiling tiles.

  “Yo!” Ryan shouted, not taking his eyes off the TV.

  I settled down next to him. He tore open a bag of Lay’s, took a handful, passed the bag to me. I shook my head. He gave me the bong instead. I took a hit. The water bubbled. I felt myself relax, my shoulders lower, my jaw unclench. My reflection changed in the TV screen: face lopsided, cheek melting, pulled by the knot of tension in my neck. My mouth sloped down from left to right, a sideways line. I scooped a fistful of potato chips, shoved them into my mouth all at once. They tasted insane. I felt the fat flood my system: little yellow triangles traveling through my intestines and flowering outward, forming lumpy colonies above my knees. I was so high I was sure Ryan could hear my heart beat.

  A person named Tony Hawk kept trying to land a 900, a skateboarding trick no one had ever done before. Chris stopped to watch, using his cue like a cane, weight on one foot like a classical statue. Hawk rode up one side of the half-pipe, then the other, gaining speed before flipping two full
airborne somersaults, then losing the board, landing on his knees.

  “Stoops!” Ryan shouted, throwing an empty beer can at the screen.

  Hawk had ten tries. He attempted the trick again and again, each time failing to land on the board, sliding down the steep half-pipe slope on kneepads. He fell again on the tenth attempt.

  “Stoops!” Justine echoed Ryan. The eight ball flew between Ryan and me, not far from my head, narrowly missing the screen.

  “Jesus, Justine,” Ryan said without turning around.

  They gave Hawk one extra chance. That time he landed the trick. Fans crowded around the half-pipe and hoisted him over their heads. We took bong hits.

  “I just focus on something and I have to do it,” Hawk told the cameras. “I’ll either get hurt, taken to the hospital trying it, or I’m gonna make it.”

  Justine perched on the couch arm beside me. She draped her long arm around my shoulders. “Drive me home, Alison,” she whispered into my neck.

  “I’m too high.”

  She ran her hand through my hair, seized a tuft, and yanked it hard. Chris gestured toward the stairs.

  “Let’s go to Nina’s,” she said, following him up. “She’s having people over.” I heard the door shut behind them.

  Ryan nodded at me. He took off his pants, boxers, and socks, leaving his T-shirt. I knelt down and did what he wanted. It took a while, my jaw got sore, it tasted like when you chew on a balloon. But it was satisfying to satisfy someone.

  He got up, put his boxers back on. I followed him upstairs. Eileen was gone. I thought we’d go to his room, but he opened the front door and motioned me out.

  “Night,” he said.

  I heard the door lock behind me. The lamp across the street flickered. Crickets chirped. A truck drove by. There was a slug in the driveway, thin mucus trail flashing after it. I started the car. Ryan’s tape was still playing—a hip-hop version of “I Shot the Sheriff.” The light switched on in his window. I drove home.