I was late to Violet’s, as usual. Malcolm stalled me in the kitchen, pushing me into his latest dance steps. “This is the Pick-Pocket,” and looping me back around so the room spins. “No…you know the Pretzel? It starts like that, but then your hand- take mine here, but no, not over your head--- yes, well! It’s like the Texas Twist, but…”
Violet and I. Tequila out of a slim bottle and cokes that grew warm in the lightning as I wove winding through one-way streets and pulled over and over to call home. “This”, Violet says, “is my sorority nightmare. Listen.” I knew us both in high school and can’t believe where we are now. Violet says,” I love our talk.” Labels are not our souls. Does it matter?
“I really want to believe,” she says, “I want to go to heaven.”
“What’s heaven, Violet?”
“I need to believe,” she says.
I called ahead and she said the pantry was only full of celery and peanut butter. I made us sandwiches from a fresh baguette. Thinly spread mayonnaise and pesto, with red onions, melted cheese, grilled chicken, crisp lettuce and plump tomatoes. I packaged them up and brought them in a little brown paper bag with a small tupperware of pineapple and strawberries. We eat on stools, drinking water, laughing too loudly. Violet called a few times before, but Malcolm found me and brought me to her clifftop- the one where we dangled our legs off in the early AM and smoked stolen cigarettes.
After shops, I’m sitting on the side of the road with my head in my hands in the heat. Two buddies and a slut to my left, on a bench, bitching out. the guy nearest has a spiderweb tattoo and a teardrop. Those waists inside were far too small; I could cup them with a single palm. The shops were stained with second-hand wigs and sweaty-haired boys hawking electronic cigarettes, but I was home eventually.
I snap out of impatience and sweat, change into the blue 40s-esque with pale pumps, do up my eyebrows and mouth like a rosebud. The dinner party is underway- full of fireflies and mosquitoes, couscous and fresh fruit and sorbet. I have a tall glass of white wine and my mother watches me carefully under heavy lidded eyes. Peter plucks out blues on the double bass, the boys on piano and saxophone, and Malcolm with my high-hat and snare. He says they aren’t mine, they belong to everyone, but I washed a car to buy those jazz sticks. I record them for 26 seconds and send it to Sunboy. I clean every dish.
Kirsten came back this week, 10 years out of this country. I am disconcerted by age. Mum says, You can’t blame people for their lives. It’s true. Tried to make it work, find some of my old idol in the woman before me, but I was yet a babbie when she left. And in spite of the rich leather and silver and gold-rimmed china and the staff who are condescending to my Irish mother, we are unimpressed. The tables around were full of Ladies Who Lunch and their red-faced husbands, who ordered more unsugared ice teas with a self-assured flick of their wrist. I arrived with a look of leprosy but by the time we returned for more buffet shrimp, barely grilled and marinated weakly in butter and soy, I caught those familiar eyeings of middle-aged businessmen and their anorexic wives trying anxiously to turn back their heads. All the same, consumed too much peanut noodles- blame G for eating peanut butter crackers and then forcing my lips to meet hers.
Two days ago, I twisted spaghetti around a fork and shared bottled rose with Nicole and Coletta. Baby cups, and I chose the yellow one. Snuggled up on couches, small naps until daybreak. Hungrily devoured hours and hours of vampires fucking and biting and killing and copious amount of blood. Slept a few meager hours, and then back to lunch with my mother’s best friends from years ago. So trim and eager still. I had ten minutes, but pulled my hair back tightly, polished those sandals, breathed out the shallow creases in the dress that is the same color as my sheets, the ones we’ve fucked on, the ones on which I have loved you for the world’s worth! I made tea with milk and sugar and we all sat on the porch. I thought about making a summer pudding, with fresh berries. I guesstimated sugar and the double-boiling of blueberries, but there wasn’t time.
Hours into the languishing sun, I sat in the garden and called you. Sunboy. I am listening to the CD you made me in the car. Sometimes I go into the garage and sit in the car and listen to some of the songs. Maman says, That is dangerous. So I drive around and run the gas down and two days ago, I felt my heart wrench when I took a left hand turn, and my eyes considered crying. You very truly have ruined me. We’re all pictures for sad children. All of us.
When I was still hammering out the pornography, Owen brought me hot McDonald’s fries that reminded me of the night before- the night Malcolm drove me home, documentary-style, cursing out cops and talking out shovels and smuggling. Owen reminded me of being in the car moving quickly through the dark, then left the room and fell down the stairs.
The first friend I saw was Tricia. There were three dinners First Year-style, cheese and spring onion quesadillas fried quickly in butter, with apple schnapps that Mother had bought as a soft drink and had been feeding to the children. Malcolm lurching and laughing and making sloppy salad dressing sandwiches. We boiled a pound of edamame with butter and salt, and watched High Fidelity until the next day. In the morning we fried eggs and drank cups of tea. Tricia says, This reminds me.
Today, wiping up blood from my ankles and porcelain cream pumps. What is that? says mother suspiciously. I dance too hard. I have mosquito bites and blisters on the soles of my feet. I like plans about the future, I like laying down tiles with my bare hands, grout under my fingernails. Or I don’t have fingernails, because I’ve watched lots of films by then, recently, and I never notice the slimness of fingers in my mouth in those rooms of space and absence of lights.
I can’t sleep because I’ve read a book about amnesia and I’m worried. The gym in less than four hours. The sun will barely be up when I slip on my shoes and pound out rhythms.
A little girl, all baby face and toddler-thumbed fell face down on the escalator. Her feet struggled above her head and her hair snaked into the moving steps. Violet and I stared, and Mall Rats became heroes.
something which is worth the whole,
an inch of nothing for your soul.
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