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puddles of love
“Tristan?”
“I’m going to my
sister’s. Her friend Trina is coming to stay with her for a few days.
She’s an exotic dancer.”
“You mean a stripper.
And so what? I doubt she’s interested in 15 year-olds.”
“Maybe so, but I’ve got
a plan.”
“Good luck with that.
See you Monday.”
Tristan fixes himself
his favorite latch-key dinner, half a box of frozen popcorn chicken that
he pops into his mouth still-frozen, like popcorn. He also gulps down five
or six packaged pairs of Swiss Cake Rolls, leaving a pile of clear plastic
wrappers and paper-thin cardboard inserts stained with chocolate. All of
this he washes down with a bottle of Kick, a rare find even in those days.
Back in front of the
full-length closet mirror, Tristan uses a loop of tape to pick the lint
off his black White Zombie shirt. He lifts the legs of his black jeans to
his knees to make sure the dozen buckles on each leather boot are secured,
and they are. He checks his pockets for the essentials: wallet, lighter,
keys, Marlboro Menthol Lights (in a box), cell phone, orange Tic Tacs, and
almost a dollar in loose change. He walks into a half-spray of Cool Water
cologne and he’s ready.
Tristan emerges from
his garage riding his all-chrome GT Predator, a BMX bike with Spin mags, a
Barracuda seat, Dia Compe brakes, Monster pegs, and tire caps made from
real dice. He tries doing a bunny hop off the curb when he crosses the
street, but doesn’t manage to get any air.
Five blocks and seven
minutes take him to the heart of D’Starkville’s business district, a
cluster of two-story brick buildings with window shops and beauty salons
and insurance agents. He waits for a walk signal, trying to cross Broadway
at its intersection with South Noble. The white letters illuminate and
Tristan does his best to swerve around this huge woman, a woman who looks
as if she’d be taller lying on her back, tottering across the street
carrying a swaddled lump of DNA.
When he makes it to his
sister’s apartment complex he chains his bike to the rack at the far end
of the parking lot, making sure to loop the chain around the frame and
through his front wheel. He locks it with one of the keys on his keychain
and makes his way to apartment 1715.
Another key goes to
this front door, but he decides it would be more polite to knock. After a
shave-and-a-haircut his sister Posey comes to the door, and she’s just a
jiggling, tie-dyed jumble of smiles. The living room smells like one of
those stores at the mall that used to be a pet store but got converted
into a toy store and no amount of cleaning could eradicate the smell of
the former tenants.
“Tristan, did I ever
introduce you to my friend Trina?”
“Maybe a long time
ago…I don’t remember.”
“Oh. Well, Tristan this
is Trina. Trina, my brother, Tristan.”
Trina’s sitting in a
moldy recliner smoking a cigarette. If trailer parks were governed by
royalty, she’d be Queen of the Doublewides. She gives Tristan a majestic
wave of acknowledgement and he blushes.
“Trina’s going through
a rough spot right now, so she’s going to be staying with me for a few
days,” Posey says.
Trina nods, focused on
her smoke and an orange kitten rubbing its back on her shin. It purrs, she
coughs, and Posey and Tristan plop down onto the couch, not quite in
unison. The television’s off and the radio isn’t loud enough to be of any
consequence.
All three of them stare
blankly into different corners of the room for a moment, for an eternity,
until Posey’s face lights up.
“Tristan, what’re you
drinking tonight? I’m going to the store in a little bit. Trina wants
Smirnoff Ice. What do you think?”
Tristan strokes his
chin, looking thoughtful but actually just referring to his mental script
from the last dozen times this scene played out. “Vodka and Code Red
Mountain Dew. How much do you want for it?”
She gives her customary
laugh meaning, ‘don’t worry about it’ and rises to fetch her purse.
Tristan taps his boot against the closest leg of the coffee table. In the
kitchen, a chair slides a few inches on linoleum and keys jangle. Posey
takes bounding steps back into the center of the living room.
“Trina, you ready?”
“I’ll just hang out.
Let me know how much those Smirnoffs cost.”
“Oh, Trina, show
Tristan your new tattoo!”
Tristan’s posture
straightens and Trina stands up, lifting the back of her magenta tube top
and exposing the top of a black thong. She pulls her form-fitting jeans
halfway down her left cheek to reveal an ink skinsketch of a unicorn
standing on its hind legs, waving its front ones in defiance. Tristan
tries to find a more discreet way to position himself on the couch.
“That’s, uh, a really
cool tattoo,” he says.
“Isn’t it, though?”
Posey echoes.
Posey shuts the door
behind her, leaving the horny teenager and the young woman of questionable
moral-standing in dead silence. He pulls out his cigarettes and sets the
box on the table and lights one, all with exaggerated hand motions.
“How old are you?”
Trina asks.
“Sixteen. You?”
“Twenty-two. So you’re
what, like a sophomore?”
“Yeah. It sucks. Posey
says you’re a dancer?”
“I was for a while. I
just spent a couple weeks in the hospital, so I don’t know if I wanna go
back to it.”
“What, were you sick?”
Trina laughs and rises
from the recliner, stretching her arms over her head. A few minutes pass,
and Tristan can hear a toilet flush and some water running, all muffled by
walls not much thicker than cardboard.
“How much does like, a
lap dance usually cost?”
“Oh it depends. Usually
it’s like twenty bucks, but the club takes half and you might get the rest
in your paycheck.”
“Do you get like, nasty
stinky guys who want lap dances and you can’t say no?”
“Stop.”
“How much does a
champagne room cost?”
“Really, stop.”
“Fine,” Tristan takes a
dejected final puff of his cigarette and smooshes it into the glass
ashtray. He sizes her up, this caricature of an attractive woman sitting
just a few feet from him. Her hair is too dark, her eyes are too blue, and
her teeth are too white to be real. He takes a deep breath and exhales.
“What if I wanted to,
um, buy a lap dance?”
She laughs. He
grimaces, waiting for rejection.
“And how much would you
pay me?” she asks in a half-joking tone.
“Fifty dollars.”
“Okay.”
He sighs, getting ready
to light another cigarette in one of those better-luck-next-time throes of
defeat, and then it registers.
“Wait, did you say
‘okay?’”
“Yeah. Let’s see that
money.”
Now she’s standing in
front of him, he fishes his Super Mario wallet out of his pocket and finds
three crisp notes totaling fifty dollars. She reaches out to take it,
exposing an arm littered with scars and track-marks.
“Take everything out of
your pockets and move this coffee table a little,” she says.
She tucks the money
into her pocket in a fluid, dainty motion and walks to the stereo to find
a fitting radio station, one of those pop music stations everybody hates
and nobody can object to. She finds one and turns the volume up.
Trina stands at the far
corner of the room, facing Tristan and running her hands from her breasts
to her thighs. She starts undulating to the beat and pulls her tube top
over her head. With her arms hidden and her hair hanging from her
inside-out collar, in that vulnerable moment of transition, she is
beautiful.
With calculated,
mechanical gyrations she flows, slithers across the room. Tristan winces
from the gaze of those predatorial eyes. Her silver belly button ring
takes the focus off her pink bra, until she’s got one arm behind her back,
unhooking it. Tristan doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, all in anticipation
of this one vision, this nexus of his existence.
The bra flies off
toward the recliner. Two limp breasts flop out, with nipples the size of
the condensation rings on the coffee table. Tristan can smell the nudity,
and his face is frozen in a wide-eyed sublime grin, as if to say to the
world ‘From this day forward, I renounce the act of blinking!’
If you take that
expression and multiply it by a factor of ten, you will understand his joy
when she slides her jeans off and starts waving her nudity around just
inches in front of his face.
She’s standing between
his legs, hands planted on his shoulders, lowering herself in measured
contortions until she’s hovering just inches over his crotch. Tristan
looks down, hoping she doesn’t notice his eagerness.
The orange cat gives an
ear-splitting shriek as if stepped on and Tristan’s mother stands in the
doorway, framed by moonlight like some holy warrior out to slay hellhounds
by the dozen. Tristan peels his forehead from between two sweaty dangles
of flesh and looks down at himself again, hoping his black jeans will keep
his secret until he can wash them.
“Tristan, get in the
car.”
She grabs an extra set
of keys from next to the door and follows him from the apartment, slamming
the door behind her.
Back in the car and
slouched in the passenger seat, Tristan avoids his mother’s gaze.
“I came to get your
sister’s spare keys because she locked herself out of her car at the
store.”
She turns onto
Broadway, turn signal-a-clicking.
“For starters, you’re
grounded. I don’t know how long yet. And you can forget about going back
there for awhile.”
Tristan stares at his
reflection in the side-view mirror, lit every few seconds by a streetlight
passed under. He looks for some change, some tangible proof of his
transition, but there’s nothing except a smile.
(c) 2005 jordan baugher
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