Summer in the Land of Skin

by Jody Gehrman

  Lucy and Lorna both light up cigarettes immediately.

  “Mom needs money? Is that it?” Lorna’s voice is raspy, harsh.

  “Jesus, Lorna, we just stopped by, okay? I haven’t even talked to Mom.” Lucy glances at me, then, as if suddenly remembering I’m there. “This is Anna,” she says, nodding at me. Then she turns back and faces the girl, and with her cigarette clenched in the side of her mouth, she mumbles, “My sister, Lorna.”

  “Nice to meet you, Lorna.”

  She gives me a look. “Whatever,” she says, running her long pink nails through her hair and turning back to Lucy. “Just—why are you here?”

  “Why are you being such a bitch?”

  “I don’t hear from you for months and now you pop in for a—”

  “Anna wanted to see where you work,” Lucy says. “No big deal.”

  Lorna glances at me with more disdain than ever. Her mouth is so twisted with anger, I can hardly see the prettiness there anymore. “Slumming it?”

  “Get off it, Lorna.”

  “No, you get off it, Lucy!” They’re both smoking furiously, now, puffing at one another with their eyes squeezed into tight little slits.

  Lucy shakes her head in disbelief. “Forget it, okay? Just—”

  “Get out of here, then!”

  “We’re on our way!” And Lucy stomps off toward the truck.

  I trail behind, feeling ridiculous. I glance over my shoulder and see Lorna there, watching us. Her fierce red hair glows in the neon light from the Déjà Vu sign, and her face looks old, withered, though she couldn’t be more than twenty-five. She glares at me and crushes her cigarette under her platform shoe, twisting her ankle back and forth again and again.

  It’s half-past eleven when we pull into a shopping center parking lot and ease up to the window of the espresso shack. There is a teenage girl with acne working there; her hair is cut very short and dyed blue. She has that pasty, gloomy look that so many people in the Pacific Northwest cultivate. It’s at least an hour’s drive back to Bellingham. We’ve agreed to get doubles and stay up all night.

  “Two double mochas,” I say to the girl. She has the eyes of someone who will come to a bad end. “One with whip, one without.”

  “Tell her I want cinnamon on mine,” Lucinda says, and lights a cigarette.

  “The one with no whip—can you put cinnamon on that?” The girl nods, but I can see that we’ve crossed the line of reasonable requests, from the way she bangs around inside her little shack and takes her time about getting us our drinks.

  She hands us our order at last, and Lucinda sighs with something like relief when she takes her first sip. I take a tentative taste, sipping through the hole in the plastic lid—the whipped cream is cool and it tames the heat of the sweet, chocolaty coffee. I cradle the paper cup between my thighs as I drive. We get a little lost, but eventually we find I-5 North and accelerate to eighty on the nearly deserted freeway. I can feel the race of the caffeine hitting my system. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, I feel happy.

  “My sister used to work at Wal-Mart,” Lucinda says, staring out the window so I can’t see her face.

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t know which is worse, really.” She takes off her shoes and presses her bare feet against the dash, contemplating her toes. “My mom lost her house at the casinos. She’s there almost every night.” I try to read her voice, but it is monotone, a simple recitation of facts.

  “Huh,” I say.

  “She lives in a trailer.”

  “Who, your mom or your sister?”

  “My mom,” she says. “My sister lives with this disgusting guy who’s fifty years old and thinks he’s Don Johnson. God. He wears pink shirts unbuttoned down to his navel and a stack of gold chains. He tried to touch my boobs once. I kneed him in the balls.” I chuckle at this, but she just keeps staring out the window at the darkness whirling past. “I didn’t really,” she says, after a long pause.

  “You didn’t really what?”

  “I didn’t knee him in the balls,” she says impatiently. “I can’t do that to people. When I see how much they need something, I end up feeling sorry for them—even if I hate them. It’s an involuntary reaction.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I see what you mean.” I’m not sure I really do see, but the moment is too fragile to withstand debate.

  We pass exits to various suburbs. We pass shopping malls and fields of vegetables and the lights of a reservation casino—gaudy, pink, blinking promises of luxury and riches to the sad, desolate freeway. There is nothing to say the rest of the ride home, so I drive in silence through the trees and past lakes, until the Bellingham exits begin, and we take ours, then make the left turn toward home.

  CHAPTER 6

  Lemon Cookies

  Lucy and I get up on Sunday morning around eleven. We stayed up until four watching old movies the night before, so we’re both groggy. We go to The Horseshoe and we hang out there for a while, trying to wake up. Lucy works on an article for Pulp while I try over and over to compose a simple postcard to my mom: Hi, Mom, just wanted you to know I’m fine. I put my pen down and sit there for twenty minutes, studying the haircuts and summer fashions all around me. I erase what I’ve written and start again: Dear Mother: I know you’re worried, but don’t be. After three hours, I’ve erased so many times, the postcard starts to disintegrate. I turn it around and see that the photo of Puget Sound is now sporting a tiny but conspicuous hole near Orcas Island. I throw it away.

  Everything here is so far from my mother; even the cigarettes at Smoke Palace smell different from her familiar Virginia Slims. I can’t believe how good it feels to get away from her. Even if she does want the best for me, escaping her grasp is like a cool blast of bracing wind on a hot, humid day. I’ve tiptoed around her neurotic silence for as long as I can remember, and it’s tainted everything between us. I’m not ready to let her know where I am.

  When we drive up to the house, Arlan is out on the porch with somebody I’ve never seen before. The day is turning cloudy and the air suddenly smells like rain. Driving by, I can only make out their basic shapes—the stranger is sitting on the wide, flat railing. Arlan is slouching in one of the gutted chairs.

  “Who’s with Arlan?” I ask, as we turn the corner to park in the back.

  “Don’t know,” Lucinda says. “I thought he was painting today.”

  We get out and walk down the gravel path toward the front porch. The stranger leans back over the railing and turns toward us. When I see his face—green eyes, dark blond hair, a couple of days’ stubble on his cheeks—I somehow know who it is.

  “Grady!” Lucy screams. She runs directly to him and almost knocks him over with her hug. I climb the porch steps slowly. “When did you get back?” she asks.

  “An hour ago. Earlier than I’d expected.” He looks up at me. “Hi,” he says.

  “Hello.”

  “Grady, Anna. Anna, Grady,” Lucinda says in a rush; this formality clearly annoys her.

  He reaches out his hand. His fingers are cold.

  “Grady just got back from Argentina,” Lucy says, putting an arm around him. “He’s trying to be the Brad Pitt of South America.”

  “You’re wicked as ever,” he says, messing up her hair. I notice his shirt has a huge anarchy symbol splashed across the chest. “She’s a compulsive liar,” he tells me, nodding at Lucy. “Keep that in mind.” Lucy elbows him. “Arlan was just telling me about you.” His eyes sparkle at me, teasing. He has the skin and the bone structure of a Calvin Klein model.

  “Really?” Lucy says, her smile going stiff. “What was he saying?”

  Grady pulls Lucy to him and squeezes her affectionately. “Nothing important, little vixen. God, you’re nosey, aren’t you.”

  Arlan picks up his cigarettes from the arm of the dilapidated chair and says, “Come on. Let’s go get drunk.”

  We go to the Ranch Room, a rundown little bar tucked inside a diner where they sell chocolate ba
rs, lottery tickets and cigarettes near the door. The walls are covered with fake wood paneling and the bartenders pour the well drinks with such heavy hands, you can get stumbling drunk for six dollars, tip included. After we order the second round, I excuse myself to the bathroom, and Lucy follows. I wait until she ducks into one of the stalls, and then I look myself over; there is something vaguely humiliating about primping in front of Lucy, who is incapable of looking less than stunning and therefore requires no adjustments.

  “Remember,” she says, talking over the sound of her pee hitting water. “Whatever you do, don’t tell him how cute he is. Your best shot is ignoring him.”

  “Why do you assume I’m—?”

  “Look,” she says, emerging from the stall and washing her hands. “Grady’s just like every other guy. If he thinks you’ve got a thing for him, he’ll bolt. If you look like you’ve got better things to do, he’ll be banging down your door.”

  “Interesting theory.”

  “Reality,” Lucy says. “Not theory. Sex is always an act of hostility.”

  “You need your own talk show,” I say.

  Lucinda takes out her lipstick and applies it. After a moment’s consideration, I say, “Can I borrow that?”

  “Grady hates makeup. The only girl I ever saw him fall for was this plain Jane hippie chick with hairy armpits.”

  “I see,” I say, taking her lipstick from her. “So I’m supposed to go ungroomed because this guy you’ve picked out for me has a filth fetish?”

  “Don’t be so hostile. I’m only trying to help. When was the last time you got laid?”

  “None of your business.” I apply a coat of lipstick and hand the tube back to her.

  “There’s my answer,” she says.

  Watching Grady Berlin, I try to imagine that he likes his women dirty. He is almost eerily polished, himself. In spite of his slightly messy, crookedly cut hair and his stubble-shadowed cheeks, there’s something too poised about him to pass for grubby. He and Arlan are sitting side by side, and I’m struck by their contrast. Arlan is somehow weatherworn; he reminds me of driftwood. He sips from his whiskey and Coke with a face that is sometimes bright-eyed, juvenile, and then suddenly goes ancient without any transition. Grady is cosmetically perfect—but he’s not sexy, somehow. He doesn’t have Arlan’s complexity. He smells like soap and tells stories like he’s rehearsed them in front of a mirror.

  “Anna’s from San Francisco,” Lucy says to Grady. He and Arlan were talking about Felonious Monk, and the announcement is weirdly timed, but we’ve all had enough drinks to overlook the non sequitur.

  “Really?” he says, and turns to me. I nod and sip my drink. “Which part?”

  “I grew up near the Haight,” I say.

  “Wow!” he gushes. “That must have been wild. Are your parents total hippies?”

  “Sort of. I don’t know. Not anymore.”

  “How’d you end up in Bellingham?”

  “I wanted to learn a trade,” I say. “Or something. It’s hard to explain.”

  “She’s here to kill her Dad,” Lucy says, giggling.

  “Lucy!”

  “What? Grady’s cool. He’ll understand.”

  “I had personal reasons for coming here,” I say.

  “Murder?” Grady suggests. He and Lucy laugh.

  “So, did you get any more acting gigs in Argentina?” Arlan changes the subject and I look at him gratefully. Lucy and Grady laugh harder.

  “Grady’s going to be a Bolivian porn star,” Lucy says, and rattles the ice in her glass. “They’re going to make him fry doughnuts naked.”

  “You guys are never going to let me live that down.” He leans back in his chair and addresses me with his eyes; I can see he is happy for a new audience member. “These two have heard this story—I regret the day I let it slip—but it’s rude not to tell you, so I will. A couple years ago, I was visiting Bolivia, and some guy approached me in a market, talking up a storm. My Spanish wasn’t very good, but I could get the gist of it—he wanted me at some audition.” He takes a drag off Lucy’s cigarette. “I did some acting in college,” he says. “Nothing much. But I thought, ‘Hey, here’s my lucky break!’ So I go to the ‘audition.’ God. It’s in the back room of this absurd little pastry shop, and the first thing I see is this naked woman shaving her—you know, not her legs—”

  “Cunt, pussy, beaver,” Lucy chimes in. “You have to practice, Grady, just say it—”

  “Anyway,” he says, giving her a look, “needless to say, it wasn’t exactly high art they were engaged in.”

  “So did you do it?” I ask.

  “Jesus, no—talk about performance anxiety! They waved big bills around, and I considered it for about two seconds— I was flat broke—but I couldn’t go through with it.”

  “Oh, come on,” Lucy says. “It’s so exotic! Arlan gets hard just hearing about it.”

  Arlan just flicks his cigarette at this.

  Grady turns to me with a prim mouth, folding his hands in front of him like a schoolgirl. “They think I’m an exhibitionist, but I’m really very shy,” he says unconvincingly.

  “Yeah, right,” Lucy says. “You’re shy and I’m a virgin. You want to see shy, check out Anna. She blushes if you say her name, even.” They all turn and look at me, and just like that, I feel myself going red. “See?” Lucy laughs, triumphant.

  “God,” Grady says, in a soft, mocking voice. “That’s amazing. You could join the circus with that trick.”

  “Stop,” I say, covering my face with my hands.

  “Beet Woman,” Lucy says.

  “From female to vegetable in seconds!” Grady and Lucy join in mutually hysterical laughter. They tip their heads together drunkenly.

  Arlan looks a little bit bored; his eyes move around the room slowly. I follow his gaze, trying to see what he sees. There’s a jukebox flipping selections mechanically for a girl in a checkered halter top as she slips quarters into its slot. I study the fake wood paneling on the walls and the moose head watching us with dusty glass eyes. The aging waitress races from table to table, her face worn and angry. In the corner is a bent twig of a man, maybe sixty or so, drinking shots with soda chasers. Arlan’s eyes catch on mine for a moment.

  “We could use another round,” he says, twisting in his seat to flag down the waitress as she flies past us.

  It’s two a.m., and everyone is looped. We’re walking back toward the house, making slow progress. Lucy and Grady are singing a Patsy Cline song at the top of their lungs. Arlan’s a couple of paces ahead of them, while I stay behind, watching their hair reflect the yellowish glow of the streetlights. The buoyancy of the gin I’ve consumed turned to gravity an hour ago. The bubbles of the tonic were lovely and sparkling when they were in my glass; now they just make me burp.

  For some reason, I’m thinking of Roddy McNair, the quarterback I dated in high school for two weeks. He was physically flawless. He had that rare sort of skin that only got more enticing when he overheated; his cheeks turned ruddy in patches along his Slavic cheekbones, and sweat dripping from his hairline only made you want to press your palm flat against his forehead to feel the heat and moisture gathering there. He had a habit of sticking his fists under his T-shirt and rolling them against the fabric—it was a jock thing, and it made my pulse race every time he did it. I gave him my first blow job. I was awkward and timid, afraid I would hurt him or slobber too much. The penis amazed me, seen at such close range; the surface was nearly translucent, and the veins beneath were so blue. It seemed to me that nothing so naked should be allowed outside the body—it was an internal organ that had escaped, sheathed with only the flimsiest membrane of baby-soft skin.

  “What are you thinking about?” Arlan is suddenly beside me.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Just—nothing.”

  Grady and Lucinda are still singing. “I see a weeping willow, crying on his pillow, maybe he’s crying for meeee…” Lucinda stops walking and screams, “Wake up, you assholes!
” She has her face turned to the dark windows of the brick apartment buildings lining the street. “We’re all going to die!”

  A man leans out from a pocket of light on the third story and yells, “Shut up, bitch!”

  “Who’re you telling to shut up, you cocksuck—”

  Grady cups his hand over Lucinda’s mouth and yanks her forward along the sidewalk. “Lucinda,” Arlan says softly, shaking his head. He shoots me a sideways glance. “This isn’t really your scene, is it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You drink slowly. You don’t smoke. You don’t blurt out every little thing that comes into your head.”

  “Anna!” Lucy screams as soon as Grady has removed his hand from her mouth. “This man is silencing me! I’m being oppressed!”

  “Shut up, wench,” Grady says. Lucy punches his arm, and he punches her back. She howls.

  “I’m used to not fitting in,” I say.

  Lucy jumps on Grady’s back and he falls over. They lie sprawled near the sidewalk, laughing up at the stars.

  “That can be a good thing,” Arlan says.

  “It’s mostly lonely.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

  When we get back to the house, I discover that Grady lives upstairs, in the apartment with the turret. Lucy tries to talk him into staying the night, but he says he’s had enough of sleeping on floors and couches after three months on the road. One minute the four of us are out on the porch, and then suddenly Arlan and Lucy have disappeared, leaving me standing there with Grady in awkward silence.

  “Well, good night,” he says, backing away from me, and I see the steps behind him, but it’s too late, he’s already falling back, his face alive with surprise in the moonlight. He stumbles but somehow rights himself, landing on his feet on the third step, agile as a cat. “That’s right,” he says. “I meant to do that.”