Summer in the Land of Skin

“But—” I protest.

“Hold still, for God’s sake.” She scowls with concentration. “You’ve got to reinvent yourself, or there’s no point.”

“Playing dress-up?” I look up to see the blond singer staring down at us. He is sweaty, and his eyes are lit up from the inside, like lanterns.

Lucinda finishes painting my lips and looks over her shoulder at him. “Hey, Danny. This is Anna. Try not to scare her off.”

“Lovely introduction,” he says. He reaches over, takes my drink in his damp-looking palm and downs it.

“That was hers,” Lucy says.

“I know,” he says. “I’m about to get her a fresh one. She needed a clean slate. Gin and tonic?” I nod. “Lucy? You ready for another round?”

“I’m always ready,” she says. “You know that. Be sure it’s Tanqueray, though—none of that well shit.”

He disappears in the direction of the bar. The place is filling up now. There are swarms of barely-legal types milling around; the girls wear short skirts, the boys wear baseball caps. The air is getting thick with cigarette smoke and a headache-inducing mélange of designer scents. I recall seeing signs in town for a university, and its evidence is here; the girls are pretty, with traces of confidence. They laugh loudly and touch their hair often. The boys drink with grim determination, avoiding eye contact. Fanny’s Barbecue Palace, only minutes ago all ours, is now bristling with the chatty, neurotic electricity of kids recently released from the grip of their parents.

Danny returns with three gin and tonics, sets them down, and remains standing, surveying the room. Soon Arlan and Bill come over and join us, too, lighting cigarettes and carrying glasses of whiskey. Sparky comes over last, whacking his sticks restlessly against his thighs, an empty chair, anything within reach. Finally, Danny sits down. I’m glad; someone that tall is distracting when he’s towering over you. He looks right at me, and I see that Lucy wasn’t kidding about his eyes. The right one is a light hazel, the left is a gray-blue. He just sits there staring, so I start to speak out of nervousness.

“What’s your band called?”

Danny doesn’t answer. He just goes on staring.

Bill says, “Called Buddhist Monkeys. My name’s Bill, by the way.” He thrusts a hand across the drinks for me to shake, which I do. His fingers feel clammy, but his grip is fierce.

“Anna,” I say.

“I’m Sparky,” the drummer tells me. His voice is high-pitched and irritating. He rubs his sticks together like he plans to start a fire right in his lap.

Arlan sits there drinking his whiskey and staring around the room in silence.

“Place is really filling up,” I say. “You going to play another set?” Even before I’ve finished my sentence, Danny’s eyes narrow.

“They’re done for the night,” Lucy says. “There’s another band starting in a few minutes.”

“Really?” I say, trying to suppress my relief. “What kind of—”

“Pussy rock,” Danny says.

“I’m sorry?” I say.

“You like pussy rock?”

“Danny,” Lucy says. “‘Pussy’ is not an adjective, okay?”

At this Arlan chuckles, though he’s shown no signs that he’s been listening until now.

“I just asked her a civil question,” Danny says. He has a faint accent—Canadian, I would guess—and he speaks so loudly, I can hear him perfectly in spite of the adolescent commotion swelling all around us.

“Define ‘pussy rock,’” I say.

“Apolitical, inarticulate ass-wipe. Feel-good, cunt-worshiping cereal jingles. Answer your question?”

“Danny,” Lucy says, whipping around to face him. “If you didn’t bombard every woman with fucked-up pejoratives for her anatomical parts, maybe you’d actually get some.”

“Where you from, Anna?” Bill asks. He has a nervous twitch in his cheek.

“San Francisco.”

“So you’re visiting Lucy?”

“She’s living with us,” Lucy announces, her eyes locked on Arlan across the table. Bill looks from her to him to me with confusion. Arlan just keeps sizing up the room, smoking his cigarette. “I’ve adopted her,” she adds, and smiles at me. Her tiny, adorable teeth seem to glow in the dark.

“Mother Lucy,” Danny says, his voice filled with sarcasm.

“Motherfucker,” she spits out.

“Arlan!” Danny calls. “You want to keep your woman in line?”

Finally, Arlan ends his contemplation of the room and turns in our direction. He looks first at Danny—a quick, dismissive glance—and then at Lucy. His eyes rest on her face and fill with a tenderness so visible I could swear they actually change color. “She keeps me in line,” he says without a trace of apology, “and she knows it.”

Within an hour, Danny is asleep in his seat. His chin tucks into his throat, and his head, with its shock of white-blond hair, sways side to side every now and then, like there’s a breeze nudging it. I can see the very beginnings of balding at the crown—a hairless spot no bigger than a quarter.

He awakens occasionally and disappears for several long trips to the john, and each time he gets up, the other guys shoot each other glances. I wonder if he has severe digestive problems or narcolepsy or something.

“Danny’s a junkie,” Lucy whispers, as we cross the bar toward the bathroom. “In case you haven’t noticed.”

“I wondered what was wrong with him.”

“Pisses Arlan off,” she says. “Sometimes he’s so fucked up he can barely play.”

“How’d Arlan end up in this band, anyway?”

“He’s not a self-promoter. He’s an artist—way more than these shitheads—but Danny’s the one with enough ego to get gigs.” She closes herself into a stall. “You should hear Arlan play alone. He’s a genius.”

“Yeah,” I say, studying my deep red mouth in the mirror.

She flushes the toilet and reappears. “What do you mean, ‘yeah’?”

“I mean, yeah, I bet he is.”

She looks at me for a moment before washing her hands.

Later, when we’ve had too much to drink again, and the pussy rock band plays a song with a beat that echoes through your chest, a song that makes you feel foolish and alive, Lucy drags me out on the dance floor. The place is now packed with sweaty students, wriggling and rubbing up against each other like frenzied fish. At first I just sort of wobble from one foot to the other, painfully self-conscious. But then I close my eyes, forget about the room and find the rhythm with my hips. I move without thinking to a night one summer when my parents threw a party; I can taste the air, heavy with the smell of grass, and I can hear their instruments coming together magically. My little-girl body flings itself from side to side, caught up in the waves of their frantic laughter, their strumming and banging and singing.

“You dance like you’re on Ecstasy,” Lucy says into my ear.

My eyes open, and the room is back, with its pool players leaning against the walls, coolly appraising. I see Arlan sitting at the table, smoking, watching.

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“It makes people want to have sex with you,” she says, not smiling.

“Oh,” I say. “Wow.”

“Don’t act so naive, Anna,” she tells me, and now her face softens to a teasing smirk. “It’s not convincing.”

I keep moving, the frenetic beat of my parents’ music still pulsating in the back of my mind. I tell myself, as an experiment, Everyone here wants to have sex with you. It makes me smile and rotate my hips with more insistence. I tell myself, Even Arlan wants to have sex with you, but that makes me feel guilty, so I push it out of my mind. I tell myself, You’re the Sex Queen of Fanny’s Barbecue Palace, and this makes me laugh softly as I spin, gazing up at the dark, grease-stained ceiling.

I wake on the black leather couch, an old quilt tossed over me, and my mouth tastes like it’s been stuffed with sand. Out the window, lit by a streetlight, a huge maple lets its branches be tossed by the night wind. I lift my head and peer into the kitchen: the digital clock on the microwave reads 3:12. A leaf releases from the maple and flies recklessly against the windowpane—a kamikaze mission—one sharp tap against the glass before it disappears. I close my eyes and envision it plummeting the two stories down, careening with breakneck speed into the sea of dewy grass below.

I can feel my psyche winding itself. It is the familiar beginnings of insomnia: brain blossoms at the wrong hour, in the dark, like a transplanted jungle flower.

I get up and cross the room, wrapping the quilt around my shoulders. The air is chilly, suffused with the yellowed scent of the old house. A gust of wind rattles the walls; more leaves tap themselves to death against the window. I study the guitar cases leaning against the wall. There are two there—one is the electric Arlan played tonight. I wonder if the case next to it is for the crushed Gibson. I look over my shoulder, across the hall to their bedroom. I can just make out the faint wheezing sound of someone snoring. Very carefully, I lay the guitar case on the floor, undo the brass latches and lift the lid. It’s a Martin D-28—the exact model my father had. I run my hands over its polished surface, thick with lacquer, and I imagine I can smell its long, patchwork history—all those years spent in bars and living rooms and bus stations, pressed against laboring bodies, stroked by so many fingers. My hands are shaking as I lift it very carefully out of its case and carry it back to the couch.

I haven’t held a guitar in my arms since I was eleven. The cool feel of the body curving against my thigh is at once familiar and strange. I stretch my fingers into a G-chord and touch the strings tentatively, strumming just loud enough to bring back a rush of memories. I play the first couple of lines of “Folsom Prison Blues,” humming softly. I think of Danny’s heroin, and I wonder if this is how it feels—warm, dark relief spreading through your veins.

“You play?”

I jerk my head up to see Arlan in the doorway, little more than a shadow. I can actually feel the thumping beneath my breast against the rosewood.

“I’m sorry,” I mutter, getting up to put it back. The guitar knocks against the coffee table and I curse under my breath.

“Sit down,” he says. I do. “Don’t worry about it.” He crosses the room, yanks the window open, and props it up with what looks like a towel rack that’s been ripped from the wall. I’m wearing only a big T-shirt Lucy lent me, probably Arlan’s. The wind comes through the open window and I pull the quilt around my legs. He sits and lights a cigarette.

“So, you play?” he asks again.

“I used to, when I was little.”

“Lessons?”

“My dad taught me,” I say, trying to make my voice sound casual.

“He plays?”

“Played.” I’m glad it’s dark enough that he can’t see my face. “He’s dead.”

I wait for a response, but there is none, just the orange glow from his cigarette, and the faint sound of breath as he produces a ghostlike puff of smoke. After a while, I play a couple of chords very quietly. My fingers seem to remember. “Where’d you get this guitar? It’s gorgeous.”

“Some old guy sold it to me,” he says. “It’s probably worth three times what I gave him, but he was in a hurry to unload it.”

“Play something?” I ask.

He hesitates. “Lucy might wake up.”

“Just softly?”

He listens a moment to the silence. “I guess she’s out.” I cross the room to hand it to him, being careful not to bang it against anything this time. I am aware of my bare legs, my naked breasts under the soft, thin T-shirt. Our fingers touch as he takes the neck from me. I go back and sit on the couch again, shivering, and fold my legs under the quilt.

“Cold?” he asks.

“A little.”

He stubs his cigarette out in a coffee cup and closes the window, taking great care not to let it slam shut. “You want another blanket?”

“I’m okay.”

He glances across the hall to their bedroom door before he eases the old Martin onto his knee and checks the tuning. He takes a pick from the case. Then he sighs once in the dark, and very quietly, with fingers so precise and nimble I long to see them in full light, he begins to play. He starts quietly, and I have to lean forward to hear the notes, but as he gets going, the melody hits the air loud and clear. It’s a sad, old-sounding song. He doesn’t sing, but his hands pull stories from that guitar: blue, tattered tales set in some humid place, full of whiskey and moonlight, black stockings, trains and smoke. I close my eyes and lean back against the cool leather of the couch. There is nothing like this. I want to sit here forever.

“What was that, anyway?” I ask when the song is over.

“Oh, I was just messing around,” he says. He puts the guitar down, gets up and takes a bottle from the freezer. He pours himself a drink. I think he’s embarrassed. “You want a drink?”

“No thanks.”

He sits back down and stares out the window. He doesn’t look at me when he says, “Trouble sleeping?”

“Yeah. You?”

He nods, still looking out the window. There’s a long pause. “Sometimes,” he says, “I’d give anything to sleep all the way through to morning.” We listen as the wind rattles the house, and more leaves tap against the window. He tilts his head in the direction of the bedroom. “Lucy sleeps like a baby, every night. She sucks her thumb.” I giggle softly. “I don’t understand people who can sleep like that.” He stares at the bedroom door.

“What do you do?”

“What?” He looks startled, as if he’d forgotten I was there.

“When you can’t sleep. What do you do?”

“I don’t know. Smoke. Play guitar. Drink. You?”

I pause. “Look out the window, mostly,” I say. “Soothes me. Watching, I mean.”

He considers this in silence. “Well, then,” he says, after a while. “I’ll get out of your way.”

“Don’t be silly,” I say. “This is your house.”

“No, I’m taking up the window seat. Go on. It’s all yours.” He puts the guitar away and carries his drink toward the bedroom. I’m tempted to ask for another song, but somehow I know better. “’Night,” he says, pausing in the doorway for a moment.

“Good night,” I whisper.

When he’s gone, I lie back down on the hard couch and pull the quilt up to my neck. I reach between my legs as I listen to his body moving quietly in the bedroom. I imagine him taking off his sweats, sliding into bed next to Lucy. I envision his hands carefully moving to her breasts, see his dark fingers against her white skin, and I breathe in time to the memory of those same fingers plucking songs out of the darkness. When I come, I bite down on the edge of the quilt to keep from making noise. Then I lie there, sleepless but not restless, staring at the branches swaying and rocking, throwing shadows on the walls. I listen to the cryptic Morse code of the maple leaves against the window. The message behind their urgent tapping is anybody’s guess.

CHAPTER 4

Caliban

It’s strange, I know, but I don’t really think about what I’m doing until Tuesday. Thursday the Gibson got smashed, Friday I became Queen of Fanny’s Barbecue Palace, Saturday I retrieved my things from Gottlieb’s and left a note: Have made new arrangements—Anna. Tuesday morning I awaken sitting straight up on the couch, afraid.

The weekend is lost in a haze of gin and secondhand smoke—I’ve never consumed so many drinks in my life, nor spent so many hours in smoky bars. There was the smack of pool balls, the rattle of ice cubes against glass, the torturous seduction of Arlan’s guitar late at night. Lucy and I went to the lake again, we shopped for bras one day, we went to coffee shops. We are suddenly enmeshed in a baffling intimacy, a rhythm of lives interwound, as if my nightly return to their couch were a state as natural and inevitable as the movement of stars.

Still, there are more secrets here than understandings. Where they get their money, for example. Arlan paints houses—that much I’ve figured out. On Monday morning he pulled away in his station wagon, wearing paint-splattered clothes and a baseball cap. Lucy mentioned having recently lost her job at a Texaco station when she refused to provide her boss with the lurid details of her sex life. She’s now stubbornly, willfully unemployed, and I get the feeling this is her status more often than not. Her main interest is the ’zine she puts out every month, a low-budget one-woman operation she calls Pulp. In it she blends feminist parody with National Enquirer–type headlines: “Serial Killer Claims He Saved the Planet from Blood-Sucking Sluts,” or “Confessions of a Mutant Abortion Survivor.” I’d pored over the back issues Sunday night when I couldn’t sleep. The writing was good, the humor morbid and clever. I find it hard to believe this girl barely graduated from high school.

There have been allusions to Arlan’s wealthy grandmother, but other than that, I’m left to assume that they live off Arlan’s occasional painting jobs, and Lucy’s even more occasional month-long stints at gas stations, head shops, ice-cream parlors—whatever takes the least energy. The ’zine, though widely distributed, is nothing but a financial drain, and Arlan’s band gets paid mostly in drinks. Lucy and Arlan don’t live in gluttonous luxury, but I know the expenses must add up: there are the cartons upon cartons of cigarettes to buy and the endless nights spent in bars, drinking heavily, feeding the pool tables with quarters and tipping the bartenders lavishly in moments of giddy, drunken humanitarianism.

But it’s not until Tuesday morning, the fifth of June, that I wake up startled by my own couch-inhabiting role in the Land of Skin. The money from Rosie and my own savings won’t last long in this environment; in fact, after gas, Gottlieb’s room, and all the drinks this weekend, I discover I’ve spent five hundred dollars already—almost half of the paltry stash between me and selling my body on the corner of Garden and Walnut. The air of mystery around my hosts’ financial situation only adds to my general queasiness. I’ve got to figure out what I’m doing here.

In this state of semi-panic, still befuddled with the aftermath of last night’s gin, I eject myself from the terminally firm couch, throw on jeans and toss down a cup of coffee. Lucy and Arlan are giggling in the bedroom. The sky is filling with low, billowy rain clouds. I decide it’s time to face Elliot Bender again.

I had hoped I might find him in plain view, but when I arrive, there’s nothing except the late-morning sunlight breaking through the clouds, washing over the peeling paint of the old boats and the gleaming white fiberglass of the newer ones. I listen to the sound of waves lapping and ropes stretching tight, metal bits clanking against masts, the sides of boats knocking softly against the docks; it makes me a little sleepy. A pelican hovers over the bay, its wings balanced perfectly on the light breeze, then free-falls recklessly into the water. I giggle as it splashes—there’s something so slapstick about pelicans.

“What are you laughing at?”

I turn to see Elliot Bender heading in my direction. He’s got a grocery bag in each arm and a Mickey Mouse ski cap on his head.

“There you are,” I say. “I was looking for you.”

“It’s your lucky day—here I am. Could you—?” He hands me one of the grocery bags and unlocks the gate. “You hungry? I’ve got pork chops in here somewhere. I myself was planning on a Slim-Fast shake, but I always provide solid meals for guests—the four basic food groups all in attendance. You look skinny. Do you eat?”

I realize with a pang of guilt that I haven’t eaten a solid meal in ages. By the time I get ready to answer, though, he’s already forgotten the question.

“Well hey, look at that—it’s my friend, Caliban the Pelican. You can tell it’s him because he’s got that crazed, half-monster look. Hey, Cal! How’s the fishing? Ah well, that’s the trouble with pelicans, they’re always so awkward when you try to engage them in conversation.” He disappears below deck. Something crashes to the floor and I hear him cursing. “Will you hold on a minute?” he calls. “I can’t even walk and chew gum at the same time. I’ll be out in two seconds.”

I unfold his lawn chair and sit facing the bay. He’s certainly in better spirits than I found him in last; maybe that was just a fluke. Caliban lands on a nearby boat and eyes me suspiciously. He does seem to have a crazed gleam in his eye. I wave to him, but he continues to watch me with a look of distaste.

“I don’t think Cal likes me,” I yell to Bender.

“What’s that?”

“Cal. He’s looking at me like I’m regurgitated slime.”

“That’s a good sign. He loves regurgitated slime.”

In a moment, Bender emerges with a can of tomato juice in one hand and a can of Budweiser in the other. “What did you say about the pork chop? You want one?”

“No thanks.”

“You want something to drink?” I nod, and he tosses me the juice.

“My father used to drink tomato beer,” I say. He looks at me for a moment, then nods, but says nothing. “You ever have that?”

“Fantastic,” he says, “A can of Bud, a little Snappy Tom.”

“Did my dad turn you on to those?”

“I taught him the damn recipe!” We both drink from our cans and look out at the water. “Summer’s moody around here,” he says. “Like San Francisco, only more rain.”

“I kind of like it,” I say.

“Gets old.” A mosquito lands on his forearm. He smacks it dead with his big, leathery palm and smears it on his pants. A faint, feathery line of blood appears there. “Not much work in Bellingham,” he says. “College kids snatch up most of it.”

“Yeah?” I say, feeling the panic I woke with swelling anew in my belly. There’s an awkward pause.

“Surprised you’re still here,” he says finally. “Thought you’d be back in San Francisco by now.”

“No. I’m not going back there.”

“Really?” He raises an eyebrow. “Why not?”

A big, gray-bloated cloud slides in front of the sun. “Because.” My voice is plain and quiet. “I was dying there.”

“Oh yeah?” he says. A small, mean twist creeps into the corner of his mouth. He dents his beer can slightly with his thumb. “What was it? Rush hour? Cost of living?”

“No,” I say.

He chuckles, but any warmth or humor is now obscured by the dark glint in his eyes. I think of an obese wolf. “Listen, Medina,” he says. “You’re young, okay? You’re healthy. You got nothing to worry about. You don’t know shit about dying.”

“When you’re in the sixth grade and your father blows his brains out, you learn something about dying pretty quick.”

To this he burps softly.

I shake my head and stand up. “Obviously, this is a waste of time. I was hoping you could take a momentary break from guzzling Budweiser to show me a few things.” I’m confused. The tomato juice tastes acrid in my mouth, and the tiny, nagging headache I’ve been fighting all morning starts to invade the better part of my brain. It feels like there are bees rattling around in my skull. “I guess you never gave a shit about my father, or you wouldn’t be treating me like—”

“Cut the pathos, okay?”

“—like a four-fingered leper!”

Silence. Caliban crashes into the water somewhere to my right, but I don’t look. I keep my gaze leveled on Bender.

Slowly at first, and then with more speed and rising volume, Bender begins to chuckle. Within seconds, he is laughing openly and hysterically, wiping his hand over his face and shaking his head.

“What’s so funny?”

“A four-fingered—” His face convulses, and his voice is choked with laughter, making it impossible for him to speak. When he catches his breath, he tries again: “Leper—” But he’s racked with giggles, holding his gut with one hand, jiggling his beer with the other. “Oh, man! You got that from Chet, didn’t you. I haven’t heard that in twenty-five years!”

He’s right. I hadn’t realized it until now, but that was one of my father’s expressions. “I—guess so,” I say. I sit again, trying to regain composure, but his laughter is infectious. I find myself fighting a sheepish grin, and once that’s taken over, giggles start rising up out of me like air bubbles.