by Maggie Bloom
Marie squints. “Back?”
“To…wherever,” I say with a twirl of my fork, embarrassed about not remembering which country they’ve most recently conquered. “On your mission.”
“We’ve got a new mission now,” Marie says, beaming at her belly. She locks eyes with Duncan, who looks abnormally emotive. “Isn’t that right, dear?”
A bulb of a tear forms in the corner of Duncan’s eye. “Perfectly right,” he murmurs, the tear spilling. “Perfectly.”
chapter 5
EXACTLY ONE important person has ever hailed from Industry, North Carolina, as far as I know anyway: Lex Arlington (at least that’s his stage name). As the legend goes, he began his career in local theater (meaning three counties over, in Guilford), where he honed his craft before launching for the big time: a squalid Los Angeles apartment and a steady trickle of TV spots for soda pop and mini hamburgers. Two years ago, he got cast as a hunky young lawyer on Penal Code 911. Now he’s a household name.
And he just strolled into The Pit.
I’ve heard the rumors of Lex sightings around town, which seem to pop up once or twice a year, especially around Christmastime. But I never imagined I’d be lucky enough to witness one firsthand. “May I help you?” I say in my pleasant, public-persona tone to Lex and his companion, a leggy, sunglasses-clad brunette with a warm, orange glow and Silly Putty lips.
Where the hell is Harvey? He’s missing the biggest thing to hit The Pit since…well, ever.
Lex is athletic and blond, with eyes like freshly mown grass. The irises of a pharaoh. “Didn’t this place used to be a barbershop?” he asks, a hand nonchalantly draped over the handlebars of a Trek Speed Concept 9.5, the most expensive bike in the shop. Maybe now that he’s rich and famous, luxury goods are drawn to him like planets to the sun.
I form my lips into a nervous smile. “I think it did,” I find myself saying, not at all sure this is true.
The brunette laces her fingers around Lex’s and pulls him toward our meager selection of rollerblades, which conjures a wholesome image in my mind of the twosome skating hand-in-hand along a sunny California boardwalk. “Looking for anything in particular?” I ask, following along behind them but keeping my distance.
While the brunette spins the wheels of a sweet K2 skate with her thumb, Lex asks me, “You don’t know who I am, do you?”
This is perhaps the strangest thing anyone has ever said to me. I glance toward the backroom in hopes of spotting Harvey, but he must be bogged down with the monthly inventory. “You’re on TV, right?” I say.
He smiles. “You’re good. You had me going for a minute there,” he says with the same wink he’s employed to melt the hearts of a hundred gorgeous starlets back in Hollywood. “What’s your name?”
I have the weirdest feeling that he should know my name already, like we’re friends through the TV. “Bobbi-Jo Cotton.”
“These should work,” the brunette interjects, dangling a raspberry-colored K2 by its tongue. “Size eight and a half.”
My feet are tiny. Size six. Stumps on a bloated tree. “Okay,” I say. “Let me check out back.” I scurry for the stockroom and, as I pass Harvey’s office door, raise my voice and say, “Hey, Harv, come here.”
I don’t wait for him to answer, my eyes trained like a laser on the neat rows of rollerblades I can see through the door-less stockroom entry. When I reach the K2s, a glad rush washes over me for the fact that Harvey’s made me organize the back-stocked merchandise so meticulously.
But there are no eight and a halfs. I pull an eight and, miraculously, a nine (a size we don’t order too often due to its sluggish sales rate) and spin back out into the hall, where Harvey drifts from his office into my path.
The size nines bang into his arm, then crash against the wall. “Sorry!” I gasp.
Harvey rubs at his elbow and eyes me with confusion. “Everything all right?”
“Come on,” I say, pushing past him. “You’ll never believe…”
Harvey trusts me, no questions asked. With a minimal sigh, he shuffles toward the sales floor, where Lex and the brunette are curled around each other on the extra-deep window ledge, my advertisement for the Yo-Yo race looking childish over their tilted heads, which are poised to kiss.
I clear my throat as I approach. “We’ve got an eight and a nine,” I say in a hopeful tone, “but no eight and a half.”
The brunette stands up and Lex leans back, tucks his hands behind his head. I glance over my shoulder at Harvey, whose expression is inscrutable. “Can I help you with something?” he asks the brunette.
I dart my bulging eyes from Lex to Harvey and back again, but Harvey remains immune to my eyeball pointing. The brunette says, “I’ll try the eights.”
I lead her to a rickety Asian-style bench in front of the cash register, where she slips off her rhinestone-encrusted flip-flops (those can’t be diamonds, right?!) and crams her bare foot into one of the rollerblades. I hold out its mate and say, “You can try ‘em on the sidewalk, if you want.”
She gives me a closed-lipped smile that is quite lovely and not the least bit bitchy, as I’d expected. (The tabloids portray all of Lex Arlington’s conquests as money-grubbing trollops.) Softly she says, “Thank you.”
While the brunette ventures out onto the pothole-ridden walk, I pretend to dust the front counter. And I eavesdrop.
“How many’ve you got so far?” Lex asks Harvey.
“Mmm…let’s see,” Harvey says. “Twenty-six? No, no. Twenty-eight, counting Mr. and Mrs. Willard.”
“That’s it?”
Harvey shrugs, his back to me, his frame just wide enough to eclipse my view of Lex. “It’s meant to be an intimate affair. Not more than fifty riders, tops—although the permit covers us for a hundred.”
Lex lowers his voice, and for a few seconds, I’m in the dark. Then Harvey’s voice comes back, bright and bouncy. “Ten thousand?” he says, as if the number astounds him.
Lex stands. “To divvy up as you see fit,” he says. “And another ten for charity. Asthma’s prevalent around here, isn’t it?”
“It is,” replies Harvey.
“So the American Lung Association might make sense. It’s your call.”
Harvey simply nods. “That’s mighty generous of you.”
The brunette struggles with the door, so I rush over and shove it open from the inside. She blows by me, splashes down on the bench and says, “I’ll take ‘em.”
Lex grins at Harvey. “Do you accept out-of-state checks?”
“Sure do.”
“And where are those registration forms?” says Lex.
If I could do a cartwheel, I would. Instead, I say, “Right this way.”
* * *
Brent Flynn is a repeat customer and the only boy who calls to schedule appointments to screw me. I like that he knows my name and brings me little gifts (trinkets from the vending machine at the Bowl-A-Rama) as some kind of reward for when it’s over.
“Hello?” I squeak when I pick up the phone, my throat tense in anticipation of hearing Marie or Duncan.
“Bobbi?” It’s Brent. He’s called enough now that I recognize his voice.
I lean against the kitchen wall and spiral the phone cord around my finger. “Oh, hi.”
“What’re you doin’?”
“Nothing much,” I say. I think about Brent, how he might be a good guy (unlike the rest of the trolls who screw me), how he’s never uttered a mean or degrading word in my presence, how he’s extraordinarily sweet and polite to Melissa, his long-term girlfriend, who’s a virgin and intends to stay that way until she and Brent are married.
“I’ve got my dad’s car until nine,” he says. “Can I come get you?”
Between my legs, a sneaky little humming sensation begins percolating. Even though it’s wrong to keep letting these boys screw me, I can’t stop. Probably I’d have better luck quitting the Milky Ways. “Okay,” I say. If I’m going to give up the screwing, at least I could end on
an up-note, with the quasi-respectable Brent Flynn.
Brent says something I don’t hear due to the way Orv’s just clomped into the house. “Gotta go,” I blurt into the phone and then quickly hang up.
Orv stops in his tracks and stares me down. “Who was that?”
“Huh?”
I slink into the living room as if I’ve been headed there all along, and Orv follows. “Who was on the telephone, Bobbi-Jo?” he persists.
I’m not supposed to get calls from boys, and usually I don’t, with the exception of Brent and, sometimes, Tom. I click the TV (one of those clunky, prehistoric tube sets that looks like an overgrown robot’s head) on and say, “Ruby?”
Orv collapses into the thrift store La-Z-Boy and begins unlacing his work boots. “Don’t lie. You ain’t very good at it.”
I flip through the stations until I land on one of Orv’s favorite shows: Swamp Loggers. As borderline poor as we are, we still manage to squeak out the thirty bucks a month for satellite TV. “I have no reason to lie,” I proclaim to a symphony of chainsaws and earth movers. “We have a study group for Biology. I’ll be gone an hour or so.”
“Who’s ‘we?’ ” Orv asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Me, Ruby, Brent, and…I forget the other kid’s name.”
“Where’s it at?”
“Ruby’s house. You can call her mother, if you want,” I bluff.
Orv’s eyes widen as a mud-caked guy on TV is nearly pancaked by a runaway load of timber. “How’re you gettin’ there?”
“It’s too far to bike,” I say, baiting the hook. “Either you can give me a ride, or…” I pause as if I’m awaiting his response. “…or Brent can pick me up.”
Out of the side of his mouth, Orv says, “How long’s he had his license?”
I shrug, even though Orv is now staring past me in a TV daze. “At least six months,” I say with confidence.
“Be back by ten.”
* * *
I don’t need a psychiatrist to tell me why I treat my body like a trash heap. I’m not an idiot. What I am is a sucking hole of neediness with an utter lack of boundaries and an underdeveloped conscience.
I ease into the passenger seat of Mr. Flynn’s late-model sedan (the nicest car I’ve ever been screwed in) right in our cruddy driveway. Brent gives me an uneasy grin and reverses the car into the street, but he doesn’t clear the lawn before Denise comes barreling alongside us, clutching my lead brick of a Biology text.
“Hang on,” I say.
Brent stops the car and I power down the window.
Denise skids to a stop. “Gosh, Bobbi,” she says in the most exasperated tone she allows herself, “you forgot your book.” She hands it to me with a shallow huff.
“Oops.” I lay the tome across my knees. “Thanks.”
“Hi, Bret,” Denise says, leaving out the n in his name, like half the student population of Industry High. Denise works with Brent’s mom at Welcome Home (well, sort of, since their shifts only overlap by fifteen minutes). Mrs. Flynn has the day shift, and Denise is perpetually on graveyard.
Brent leans over and squints at her. “Hey.” I swear I can feel his pulse quicken, as if he expects us to be caught.
The only “sex incident” Orv and Denise are privy to is the time Harvey caught Noah Rice screwing me in the janitor’s closet. They went even more ballistic than real parents would have (or so I assume).
“Did you get any dinner?” Denise asks me. “I made Tuna Helper.”
“That’s all right,” I say. “We’re gonna have something at Ruby’s.” With a polite smile, I try to suggest she’s overdoing the mother thing. After all, if Marie didn’t care to fill the role, why should Denise (who’s only a few years older than me) go to such trouble?
“Okay,” she says, sounding disappointed. “See ya later, then.”
Brent pops the car back into gear, and I shoot him an apologetic eye roll. Then, for the ten minutes it takes to get across town (to a secluded spot a block away from the Greyhound station, down a blind alley where no one will bother us), I quietly ponder whether I’m about to break one of my steadfast rules: no screwing friends. I’ve never thought of Brent as a friend per se, since he’s out of my league on every parameter imaginable (looks, brains, money, respect), even as a potential pal. But maybe our relationship—if you can call it that—is changing.
It’s not like I keep track or anything (honestly, I’m afraid to know the total number of lewd acts or the even the running tally of boys), but I think Brent’s screwed me ten or eleven times, every one of them in this long-forgotten alley.
He kills the headlights as we round the corner, and we coast the last fifty yards in total darkness. Finally the car stops and the engine shuts down. And that tiny voice in the back of my mind starts wagging its finger.
I kick my shoes off.
“You ready?” says Brent.
I unzip my pants and tug them down, freeing a leg and leaving my underwear bunched around the opposite ankle. Brent strips off everything but his t-shirt. I recline the seat as far back as it will go and open my legs, and then he climbs over.
* * *
I’m pretty sure Harvey is gay, but I don’t plan on asking him about it. It doesn’t matter to me. Quite a few folks around here still get riled up over that sort of thing, though, so it’s probably wise of him to keep his private life…well, private.
“Bonjour!” I say in my best French accent as I stride into The Pit, buoyed by the first decent day of sophomore year. If anyone had snide comments to lob at my head today, I must have surreptitiously dodged them. Plus, I’ve been off the Milky Ways for thirty-six hours and going strong.
Harvey is behind the counter, wearing a frazzled expression and tapping the retractable end of a ballpoint pen on a legal pad: click-on, click-off; click-on, click-off. He doesn’t seem to notice me approaching.
I halt in front of him and say, “What’s happening?”
He clicks the pen twice more before looking up, and when I catch a glimpse of the curled, ink-whiskered edges of the legal pad, I understand why his brain is in knots. There must be ten sheets worth of haphazardly scribbled names and numbers and dollar signs. “Need some help?” I inquire.
He slaps the pen down on the counter. “This damn race has just…” When his gaze hits mine, he finally registers my presence. He shakes his head. “I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew, so to speak.”
I spin the legal pad my way. “What’s wrong?”
The bell over the door signals a customer, causing Harvey to lower his voice. “Since Lex Arlington put up that prize money and turned the Yo-Yo into a charity ride, I’ve been fielding calls from every corner of the state. I can hardly keep track of the entrants and pledges, let alone wrangle with the town over new permits.”
“Forget about this,” I say, clasping the pad to my chest. “I’ll have a spreadsheet whipped up in no time, color-coded and everything.”
Harvey’s eyes crinkle. “Maybe tomorrow you can man the fort while I twist some arms at town hall?”
“You got it.”
I leave Harvey to deal with the potential customer, a guy in his mid-twenties with a cockeyed baseball cap and saggy pants, while I fire up the old desktop computer in the office. I get halfway down the second page of data before I spot something odd and unexpected: the name Duncan Cotton. My father has entered the Yo-Yo and claims to have collected three hundred and fifty dollars on behalf of the American Lung Association. I force my fingers to tap out his name, in the column for adults, aged thirty-one to forty-four. (Harvey’s divided the race into heats, each vying for a portion of the ten-thousand dollars in prize money; the other ten grand, along with all the pledges, goes to asthma prevention and treatment.)
The next name on the list is Mario Smith (isn’t there always a Mario Smith?), but I can’t bring myself to type it through the tears that sting and blur my eyes. As I rake a yellow, number-two pencil over my father’s name, a tragic factoid whacks me: I
was born on March twenty-first, the same as Duncan, and still he doesn’t find me worthy of love.
chapter 6
I’M STARTING to think the “old wives” might be right, because ever since I gave up the Milky Ways, my acne has been receding. The scars, on the other hand, are stubborn reminders of the old, weak me.
It’s taken Tom’s leg more than six weeks to heal, but finally his doc says he can get back on the BMX. I hike the front steps of his house and ring the doorbell, which I somehow missed the last time I was here, even though it’s shaped like a bullfrog. If I didn’t know better, I’d figure the kitschy thing was one of Wilma’s macramé projects gone wild.
The door jerks open and Tom smiles. “It’s about time,” he says in a tone that sounds like a joke but also kind of serious. I guess if I’d been caged like a grizzly for so long, I’d be itching to scale some trees too.
“I got a charley horse,” I say. “Had to pull over.”
He chuckles at my goofiness, shuts the door and accompanies me down the steps. Once we get situated on our bikes, an eerie flash of déjà vu hits me. “You sure you’re okay?” I ask. “Maybe you should wait another week. Or two.”
He glides into the road. “Why? You afraid I’m gonna beat you?”
I chug along behind him, just like before. “Well, excuse me for caring,” I say with a mock huff. “See if I bother doing that again. Oh…and there’s no way you’re beating me.” It feels nice to say something cocky and know that 1) maybe I actually can beat him, since he’s injured and all, and 2) even if I don’t, he won’t rub it in my face.
“We’ll see about that.”
Like Tom planned last time, we make the rounds from Pebble to White Sands to Boardwalk and back again. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. “Whew,” I say, grinding the Schwinn to a halt at the intersection of Pebble and…whatever cross-street this is, which I have no ability to discern based on the lack of signage. “What’s that? Eight miles?”
