Summer in the Land of Skin

by Jody Gehrman

  “Sorry. Want me to go in and find you—”

  “Never mind,” he says as he finds a pack in his chest pocket. “Stupid of me.” He tries to light it but his hand is quivering, so I take the lighter from him gently and apply the flame. He pretends not to notice that my hand is trembling slightly, too. “Man,” Arlan groans, when he’s got his first pull of smoke inside him. “I’m never going to live this down.”

  “Public’s fickle,” I say. “They’ll forget.”

  “Public,” he snorts. “Thank God nobody showed. But Bill won’t forget.” He exhales, squinting at the sky, then covers his eyes with one hand. “Fuckin’ Grady will send me to my grave with this.” He shakes his head and starts to laugh. I laugh a little, too. But now Arlan’s shoulders are shaking to a different rhythm, and though his eyes are still hidden behind his fingers, it slowly dawns on me that he is crying.

  “What is it?” I say, edging closer.

  He leans his head back and bangs it softly against the metal twice. Pretty soon he’s really crying hard, his face contorting with sorrow. I’m so thrown off I just stand there with my arms hanging at my sides. When he doesn’t stop, I put my hands on his shoulders a little awkwardly and pull him toward me, wrapping my arms around him and stroking his long hair with one hand. He lets his cigarette fall and leans against me; soon the curve of my neck is damp with his tears. The feel of him in my arms—his face nestled against my neck, his body shaking—is suddenly, overwhelmingly erotic. His skin is moist against mine; his hands grip my shoulders, his chin presses against my clavicle.

  “Hey, Arlan?”

  Our bodies separate instantly. My veins are throbbing with adrenaline; I feel swollen, hungry, absurd. I turn to see Grady leaning out the door, sunglasses propped atop his head.

  “I’m coming,” Arlan says. He kicks at the ground, his eyes cast down. There is a nauseating, elastic pause. Then Grady lets the door slam shut. Arlan and I look at each other. I want only to feel him again—the heat of his body, the silk of his hair under my hands. “Sorry,” he mumbles. He tucks his shirt in, pushes some hair away from his dark, tear-streaked face. “Don’t know what the fuck’s wrong with me.”

  “A lot of pressure, I guess.”

  He coughs, wipes at his face in a hurried, embarrassed way. “Nobody knows how much I want this.”

  “You’re a natural. You’ve got no worries.”

  “It was different with Danny—I knew we were shitty, so it didn’t matter. But this is all my stuff, and if it sucks—” he searches the air with his eyes “—then I suck.”

  I smile. “You don’t suck. You’re brilliant.”

  “You’ve never heard what I write.”

  “You played for me that one night.” I rub the back of my neck, just to keep my hands from reaching out for him. “Only one song, but it was amazing.”

  “Music’s the only good thing in my life,” he says, staring at his shoes.

  “The only good thing?” I raise an eyebrow. We both know what I’m asking. Do you love her? Do you?

  “Okay…you’re right. There’s Wild Turkey and cigarettes.” The corners of his mouth turn up in the faintest of smiles, but his eyes are still melancholy.

  The combination of cynicism and vulnerability in his face makes me totally sick with desire. He’s still leaning against the side of the building. Before I know what I’m doing, I’ve got my palm flattened against his chest, pressing against him. I want more than anything to lean my whole body into his, feel his hipbones, his torso, his lips melting into mine. Instead we stand there at arm’s distance, staring, electricity passing between us until my whole body is pulsing. I watch him for some kind of cue, but neither of us moves an inch.

  The sound of a woman’s laughter, high-pitched and irritating, comes out of nowhere, startling me. I jerk toward the source instinctively, and see a redhead in jeans passing the entrance to the alley, her arm wrapped around a young girl. The moment slips away. He lights a new cigarette.

  “Where’s Lucy?” he whispers.

  “She left.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “Took off with Blake. I guess they went to some party.”

  He nods, and a tiny muscle in his jaw quivers slightly. I want to ask him how he does it—what keeps him entangled with her no matter how she hurts him, but even in this state, sweating with the effort it takes not to kiss him, I know better. “I guess I should get back,” he says. I nod. “Anna?”

  “Yes?” I hate how eager-sounding it comes out.

  He opens his mouth just barely, closes it again. “You’re a good friend to her,” he says. And then, softly, conspiring, “She probably doesn’t deserve you.”

  “I could say the same to you.”

  He shrugs. Looks at the door. I’m pleased to hear the reluctance in his voice as he mumbles, “I’ve got to go back in.”

  “Yeah,” I say, unable to meet his eyes. “You better.”

  As the door bangs behind him, I slump against the metal siding of the warehouse and sink to the ground. I am still so charged up, my blood is racing, but I’m also depleted and dizzy. I put my face in my hands and there’s Arlan staring from the dark of my closed lids. I try to breathe steadily. A few drops of rain fall, tentative at first, and then the sky opens up like a faucet. I just sit there, watching the clouds, letting the rain form a tiny pool at the base of my throat and run in rivulets over my skin.

  When Lucy comes in, The Skins still haven’t returned to the stage. The pathetic crowd has long since dispersed, and I’ve started communing with the keg. I’m working on my third pint, and that sweet, bubbly absence of pain has spread all the way to my fingertips when Lucy materializes at my side, bright-eyed and triumphant.

  “I did it,” she says. I nod pleasantly and burp. “I mean it! You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “All depends,” I say. “What are you taking credit for this time?”

  “I saved the day. Just watch—you’ll see.” She smirks and tries to take my beer from me, but I grip it tighter and pull away. “What’s wrong with you, anyway?” she demands. “Where is everyone?”

  “Arlan got sick.”

  “Sick?”

  “Sick,” I repeat, and smile for no reason.

  “Are you drunk?”

  “Maybe.”

  Without warning, a group of eleven or twelve people come pouring in, followed soon after by more. I spot Blake at the door, collecting their money as fast as he can. Before long, there are fifty people swarming into the warehouse, and still more keep appearing: heroin-chic, artsy types in black; ex-ravers in fake fur vests and ponytails; neo-hippies in ragged cords and flouncy dresses. The place is crawling with twenty-somethings. Tattoos flash, pierced body parts are on display—there’s even one girl dressed head to toe in patent leather.

  “Where are they all coming from?”

  “I told you I was working my ass off,” Lucy says. “And look.” She glances around quickly, then tugs a bag from the inside of her boot. It’s full of little white pills with dolphins on them.

  “Hey,” I say. “What’s that?”

  “This—” Lucy smiles at me, her eyes full of wonder, “—is love.”

  “Drugs?” I whisper.

  She bursts out into peals of laughter. Her teeth are shining white, her pupils are huge and black. She’s not afraid of anything, I think. “What are you going to do with all those?” I ask.

  “What do you think?”

  “You’re going to sell—what is it? Speed?”

  “Ecstasy,” she says, and her lips open to the word with voluptuous pleasure. “Best thing since cunnilingus.”

  “Who’d you get them from?”

  “Never mind,” she says. “Here’s the thing—we’re going to get all the cash we need, tonight. So just tell me—are you in?”

  “What if we get caught?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Oh, Anna… come on, are you in or out?”

  I hesitate. The smells of vomit and smoke,
the thick silk of Arlan’s hair flash through me, and I understand with startling clarity what a terrible friend I am. All I want now is to be what Lucy is: vivid, fierce, unafraid.

  “In,” I say. “On one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Let me have one of those.”

  She grins, takes one from the baggie, and slips it between my lips.

  The room is pulsing. A girl with a red lollipop has just paid me thirty dollars for one of my lovely little pills, and we are smiling now at one another, flushed with mutual affection. It occurs to me that money is pure and beautiful—erotic, even—fluid energy flowing from one pair of hands to the next, pouring like a waterfall, splashing negative ions into our ready lungs. I am a goddess, exchanging pure love for pure money, and it’s all the same thing. I offer the girl with the lollipop another pill, and her eyes question me a moment—liquid hazel eyes outlined with glitter—before she willingly produces more cash. I slip the pill into her open mouth, goddess that I am. She swallows, and nods to the pulse of the room, her platinum-blond head bobbing, and I move on.

  By the time The Skins come back on stage, I’ve forgotten all about them. So has everyone else. The room is packed, the grill is smoking, and people are buying hamburgers like they haven’t eaten in years. It’s such a pleasant surprise when Arlan steps up to the mic and says, “Well, better late than never,” and a riff pours out like honey from his fingers, slow and thick, each note clinging to the last. For a moment, the crowd seems stunned. Then a roar rises from the teeming bodies, like some prehistoric god moaning with pleasure. I turn in time to see Arlan smile. It’s a small, beautiful smile, full of childish pride, and it makes me ache for him. Then Grady comes in with the drums and Bill starts in with the bass and Arlan’s fingers start to fly up and down the neck of that Martin like he’s possessed. The whole room starts to writhe.

  Behind the picnic table, Lucy flips a burger and smiles across the room at me. This is it, I think. The summer everyone waits for. If I make it through this alive, there’s no turning back.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Penny Guy

  After the Fourth, I know just how treacherous I am for staying at Smoke Palace. As soon as I felt the weight of Arlan’s body and smelled the smoke in his hair, I knew how desperately I wanted him. How can I look Lucy in the eye without feeling vaguely criminal? She’s taken me in, confided in me, shared her coffee, booze and secrets like we’re sisters. How do I repay her? By lying on her couch and dreaming of her boyfriend’s body every night.

  I don’t know what other people mean when they say love. I have my own definition, though it’s not very precise. The only person I’m sure I loved was my father, mostly because when he died it felt like something was being ripped from my intestines. All other bonds, in contrast, seem illusory and tenuous by comparison. I know I never loved Derek; his eyes were too close together, his hands too indecisive. I’d like to say I love my mother, but how can I when the thought of her voice makes my stomach cramp painfully? Sometimes I think I do love Arlan, especially when he plays the slide; what Arlan has is sadness, and that’s what I’ve learned to equate with love.

  And Lucy—sometimes I think I love her too. Except I don’t want her the way I want Arlan. I can’t imagine our bodies together, molding to one another, or when I try to imagine it, I only get so far. It’s not simply that we’re both women—girls—whatever. It’s that Lucy has a cruelty I’m afraid of. She’s too scary to think of having sex with, whereas Arlan’s so magnetic that most nights I can think of nothing else.

  A few days after the big bash, I make up my mind to approach Bender with some news. While our foray into drug dealing didn’t, as Lucy had hoped, make us “richer than God,” it did give us enough to pay rent through the end of August and still have enough left over to live on for about as long. It also provided me with the opportunity to forge a little deal with Blake Charles. In the throes of his high, with his pupils so huge I thought they’d never contract again, I convinced him easily to rent Bender and me the workshop next door to the warehouse.

  It’s a perfect little space—I’d wandered into it by accident while searching for a bathroom, and immediately the vision washed over me: Bender and me, hunched over a nearly finished guitar, with the scent of lacquer filling our heads and sunlight leaking in through the high, filthy windows. Blake let me have it through September for a ridiculously paltry sum of forty dollars. I was pretty sure my share of the Fourth money would more than cover the cost of materials, at least for one guitar, and Bender had already admitted he still had his tools. After we finished one, I figured we could sell it and reinvest. I hadn’t planned too far ahead, but I knew we had a start. We did if Bender could be convinced to give it a try, that is.

  I find him sitting on his boat, with the late-morning sunlight rendering his silver hair almost white. He is, to my surprise, smoking a large, rather soggy-looking cigar. When he sees me, he pulls the cigar from his lips so rapidly it seems he will actually try to hide it; just as quickly, though, he puts it back in his mouth and puffs defiantly. “What’s cookin’, Medina?” he says, as he gets up to unlock the gate.

  “I thought you quit.”

  “I’m not a quitter,” he says.

  “So I see.”

  “Can I get you anything?” He offers me the lawn chair—by now, I’ve come to think of it as mine—and takes his usual seat atop the ice chest. “Beer?” He gestures with his Budweiser. “Tomato juice?”

  “No thanks,” I say. “I can’t stay long. I’m going to the lake later with a friend.”

  “Ah. So you’re just stopping by?”

  “I’ve got news,” I say.

  “Sounds ominous,” he says.

  “I found us a shop.”

  “A shop?”

  “A place to make guitars. And I’ve got a little money now—for materials.” He stares at me blankly and takes a swig from his can. I prattle on. “You said you still have your tools— I figured that’s the biggest expense, so we’re lucky you kept those. The shop is perfect. It’s got lots of natural light, plenty of space. I already paid for it—we’ve got it through September. I figured we could—”

  “Whoa, now. Slow down.”

  “We could just build one guitar, you know, for starters, see how it goes—”

  “Medina.” He looks at me with those searing blue eyes, and I bite my lip. “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “What could be the harm? I’m not asking for any big commitment—just do one guitar, let me help out…. Would it kill you?”

  “Listen,” he says. “I haven’t done shit for seven years, okay? You think I can just start again because you want me to?”

  “It would be good for you—”

  “Good for you, you mean!”

  “Good for both of us,” I say, my voice dropping to barely above a whisper. He looks out at the water and stuffs the cigar between his lips, puffs a few wads of smoke into the air. The smell is sweet and dirty at once. Without knowing quite why, I pull Shiva from my pocket and hold him in my lap, speaking without looking up. “My mom sold her sax and her harp and all of Dad’s guitars a couple weeks after he died—she listens to light rock stations now. She’s never even talked about him all these years. I came here because—I don’t know—it wasn’t right. And you do the thing he loved most….”

  “I used to—”

  “You’ve got to miss it!”

  “There’s a lot you don’t get, Medina.”

  “Like what? Tell me.”

  “Sometimes things happen, and you just—” He works his lips without sound for a second. “The things you once loved become…unbearable.”

  “But why? Rosie told me you were the best—better than Dad, even. She said you loved guitars.”

  “But I’m done, now.”

  “How can you be? Don’t you crave it?”

  He crushes the beer can between his fingers. “Sometimes, you just lose the—”

  “What?”
/>
  “The desire. That’s all.” His hair, standing at unruly attention, makes me want to cry, suddenly.

  There’s a long silence. A flock of seagulls circles above us, cawing into the bright blue sky, screeching and flapping, riding the air currents, oblivious to our misery.

  “What happened to you?”

  He looks at me for a moment, then flings the cigar overboard impulsively, as if it suddenly disgusts him. “Life,” he says.

  “Did you miss my dad?”

  “I do miss him,” he says. “But your dad and I parted ways long before he—well—”

  “Killed himself,” I say firmly.

  “Right. Before that.” He twists the empty beer can with both hands. “There was other stuff, too.”

  “Like what?”

  “My wife. I told you about that.”

  “She left.”

  “Right. Took off with some Realtor. Johnson or Jarvey or something.”

  “So that was it? Your wife leaving?”

  “No,” he says, his eyes distant, almost dreamy. “That wasn’t all of it.”

  “Just tell me,” I say quietly.

  He scoffs, tears the beer can clean in half. “Frankly, I don’t see the point. We’ve all got problems—no use crying about it.”

  “Look, I came all the way up here, I live on someone’s couch, I compromised myself in any number of ways to get us a workshop, which I’ve already paid for.” I’m surprised at the sudden hostility in my voice. “If you’re going to sit around drinking Budweiser instead of teaching me to build one lousy guitar, I deserve to know why.”

  “I don’t owe you anything, Medina.”

  “All I’m asking for is—”

  “I didn’t invite you up here—why would I?”

  “So you want me to leave?”

  “You expect me to be grateful to you? I’m supposed to jump up and down because some little shit wants to waltz down memory lane?”

  “Fine! You want me to go? I’ll go!” I stand up.

  “You’re acting just like your mother, you know that? She couldn’t take no for an answer!”