Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 21:54:13 -0500
From: inabelljar@gmail.com
Subject: Hot Palms (Part Two) by AUDRINE VICE

A photograph of the sky overhead, libertine palms leaning whimsically in
and out of the light in exaggurated swings, looked like a tourist
ad. Cropped out was the ground below, breathing wavering heat, fallen palm
fronds dying in a crisp on the absorbent black ground. Digging through her
purse for a small tube of sunscreen, Tess squinted in the relentless
sunlight, the rays reflecting off the pavement and onto her skin, flushing
it a painful pink after only fifteen minutes outside. She fumbled with the
almost-empty bottle, twisting it like toothpaste, then dropped it in
resignation. With a heavy sigh, she returned again to the jumbo-sized
garbage bag, sticky with heat, and a poker (she didn't know what janitors
called them, and didn't want to ask) meant for stabbing trash. Feeling the
sweat in her shoes--why did I wear heels today?--she gently slid her feet
out and placed them under a bench by the gym doors. The parking lot ground
scorched her soft arched soles, a welcome distraction from the task at
hand.

Lazily tying her snowy mop of hair into little ponytails, she wondered why
she was incapable of getting away with the occasional rebellions she dared
to pursue. The phrase be good, or be good at it came to mind. Guess I'm not
either. A hearing in the principal's office that morning had dealt her two
weeks of community service, spent cleaning the campus grounds for two hours
a day after school. She would've gladly taken more hours if her sentence
had been delayed to a cooler month, but her timing had landed her here, on
a day when she had not dressed for the job, hairsprayed and sheathed in a
fitted mint-green minidress and white summer pumps, now abandoned in
defeat. She stabbed soda cans and crumpled-up quizzes resentfully,
fantasizing about cold water and deodorant, making the job as angry and
forceful as it could be. Gradually, the soft odor of her own rosy perfume
began to mingle with the smells of the parking lot and grime work; she
tried not to breathe through her nose, but through her mouth tasted the
oily thickness of exhaust. A car was running across the lot, a blue Jeep
that she vaguely recognized, but couldn't place whose boyfriend it belonged
to.

Curiosity and boredom tickled her senses, and she designated an organized
litter-stabbing path to route her by the car. A female hand released a
cloud of smoke out the window involuntarily, as if the parked driver were
almost asleep. Tess watched the smoke curl into the humid atmosphere and
vanish, remembering the joint, the odor, the taste of paper in her mouth
while she nervously inhaled, watching three boys' six eyes, am I doing this
right, am I doing this right, okay, they're smiling. This feels good. Her
first joint, the opposite of perfume, the opposite of cheerleading
practice, ten minutes after. You ever smoked up before? Meet us by the
dumpster. Too stoned lying on the hot pavement, shoes half-off, shirt
unbuttoned, giggling, to hear the bell, to think about class, to see a
school counselor coming towards the dumpster to investigate loud
laughter. Too stoned to care. Watching the lady-hand in the boyish car
deposit another cloud, she missed the joint that burned her squeaky-clean
record and was finished so fast.

Ten yards from the car and feeling strangely voyeurstic, she wondered if
the girl saw her, if it was really a girl, with her chain-link bracelet
clanking against the door whenever she ashed. A bare neck and a tight brown
ponytail bent forward, visible through the back windshield, jiggling a
radio dial. Tess imagined the air-conditioning and shivered at the
mirage. The smoke smelled good; her ex-boyfriend smoked sometimes, and she
never asked for one, afraid to crack her ingenue shell, the
I-haven't-tried-it novelty (or pretense) assumed of the pom-pom platinum
sweethearts on squad. Every trash-poke brought her eyes back to the car,
stabbing cans loudly, trying to make the face turn like a child playing
games for attention. She stopped, staring long and hard, then tip-toed
sheepishly to the tinted window and tapped.

"CHRIST! WHAT--"

She looked so much like a photograph that Tess didn't look away until she
realized what it was--a shirt wrinkled on the seat and a tanned torso, hard
unforgiving abdomen, navel threaded with metal. Ribs, four-count, propping
up two of the softest, most apple-like breasts she'd ever--

Well, I've never really seen many, besides my own. Quick thought, memory
flashes, looking away blushing in the cheer locker room, or her best friend
at age 12, didn't mind being naked in front of anyone. Her mother said that
changing clothes in front of others was crude, even "intimate
acquaintances," a lady guarded her most useful assets with fervor. She
realized that aside from her own A-cups, delicate and translucent, swollen
around fingerprick nipples the color of a rutabaga, she couldn't recall the
appearance of anyone else's--

"You mind letting me put my shirt on here?" Jeri growled, jaw jutted
forward, nipples hardened in fight-or-flight response, her rich pimento
skin goosebumped. She watched Tess snap to attention, as if preparing to
lead a cheer, her black-brown eyes huge, lower lip wandering to find a
word. Jeri snorted in half-amusement and pulled her shirt on, then crossed
her arms, still watching Tess, who had awkwardly leaned against the hood,
facing forward, adjusting the hem on her dress, but not before Jeri caught
her own glimpse, and then she recognized the narrow curve of the ass under
the Manatee uniform. Already on guard as she could be, Jeri relaxed
slightly in her seat. She didn't know she could turn around yet, so Jeri
didn't tell her, watched the glare bounce off the silver class ring, the
skinny fingers, gently caressing her own body as she adjusted her dress and
fidgeted, unaware. Jeri honked her horn, sending Tess bouncing off the hood
with a squeal, and laid back laughing. Like playing with a puppy. What did
she want?

Disgruntled, Tess slouched over to the passenger side and opened the door.

"Can I have a smoke?" The words came out involuntarily, like in a dream,
the driver now clothed and more recognizable for her holey metal-band tank
top than for her body. Jeri. The half-mexican, the "dude," (as cheermates
called her) JROTC kid, the only girl in the program, and defensive about
her place there, for that. She saw her, once, sophomore year, with a
light-skinned black girl, tennis player, in a car in the parking lot, same
car, maybe. One on the other, legs strewn around, the seat moving back and
forth. Tess was still taking the bus then, and was the only passenger who
caught the view, staring boredly out the window, then jerking her head to
stop staring, never able to forget such an occurrence at Miller in the
early morning. The tennis player graduated, moved to California, and she
never saw them together again.

Jeri was holding a cigarette across the seat, questioningly, waiting to see
if the sunburned, miserable-looking princess was going to grace her with a
presence in her car. Tess opened the door and slid in gently, disappointed
to feel very little cool air, just the smell of smoke and the hot glow of
summer car interiors, and Jeri's direct gaze, critical, amused, winning. In
groups, she had never felt any kind of inferiority to someone like Jeri, a
burnout, the antithesis of all the fiber of her strata, the Sunday mornings
poolside drowning themselves in Stoli, the expected hair appointments, the
gracefully scripted college applications. She was going to Furman, school
of her supposed dreams, and knew that asking Jeri about college would be a
wasteful question. She wondered why the money went to hair appointments,
not cigarettes, just as temporary and probably more fun. She wished she
knew how to take the first puff without embarrassing herself.

Jeri grabbed the cigarette from her and rapidly lit, stealing a first puff,
then stuck it in Tess's mouth crookedly, causing Tess to giggle and then
cough violently, taking a moment to clear her throat before trying far too
gracefully to smoke. Jeri took her in without letting her know, without
admitting to herself what she was doing. Maybe four inches shorter,
5'4. Soft like bleached lambskin everywhere. Lips small but thick, somehow,
eyelashes fluttering as she watched herself inhale carefully. Her dress
strap sliding down over the tiny sharp bone at the peak of her
shoulder. Jeri wondered if girls like this had a formula for looking
strangely packaged even when disheveled.

"You got it out of your system now?" Jeri's eyebrow jumped inquisitively.

"What?"

"Your first cigarette," in mocking congratulations. Tess suddenly thought
of a woman crooning "It's a girl!"

She opened her mouth to argue, embarrassed, but realized that people like
Jeri called inexperience and naivete where they saw it. She quietly sipped
the smoke, beginning to sweat, the car, the weather, or Jeri, she assumed
all three, self-conscious. Jeri seemed to make her entire identity spill
out onto her face like a caricature, dumb cheerleader, silly girl. She
glanced back at Jeri's chest and envisioned it once more, bared,
uninhibited by the cruelty of expectations. Enough tits for three
girls. She felt guilty. Maybe not, but she had enough, more than Tess did.

The deejay filled thirty seconds of their tense silence contemplating the
weather before a song began. Tess didn't recognize the station, but felt
familiarity when Jeri turned up the volume again. The White Stripes. All
the dough I give you Holly, you spend on pain pills.

"I like this song."

Jeri turned her head, watched her for a moment, like a newscaster waiting
for the delay on their headset, then smiled, unexpectedly. Tess took
another puff, easily, as if proving that she could, and the smile faded
slightly, replaced by a look of quiet interest and mild disbelief. She
coughed again, and Jeri rolled her eyes with a goofy grin. "Nice try."

She shrugged and inhaled again, blowing it out her nose, then turned and
looked at Jeri, who tossed her dead butt into the back seat and slung her
bare feet out the window. She felt like an adult in a tailored suit,
watching a child eat chocolate cake and play with fingerpaint, with nothing
but envy for reasons she didn't understand. For the first time in two
months, she didn't want to think about Furman. Needing to occupy herself,
she fiddled in her dress pocket for a lipstick. She felt Jeri getting bored
with her as she smoothed her lips into a flat pink. All she would get for
her birthday: more lipstick, more dresses, a cheer sweatshirt, cupcakes,
over and over and over. Maybe Jeri would give her some alcohol, or maybe
Jeri would give her nothing, but she didn't want to see what her friends
brought her, with fake excitement, as if all her birthday weren't a
carbon-copy. Eighteen.

"I, ah, well." She preemptively fingered the door-handle for security. "My
birthday is on Sunday, I'm having a party, on Saturday. Night." She felt
self-indulgent, and clarified. "Do you want to--"

The jaw jutted again, Jeri halted her with just an expression.

"Seriously?"

"Well, yeah, of course, I mean.. it's at my house, and it'll be fun, lots
of beer, and cake, my parents are out of town at a resort--"

This time, she stopped herself on purpose. Why was she asking? The answer
seemed an obvious no, if not because of social castes and required high
school cruelties, then because of the unfathoming expression of apathy on
Jeri's face, bringing all those things back to Tess's mind in a vengeful
rejection. Her fingers pulled the door-handle and she forced herself back
into the heat wave, her stomach feeling oddly empty. Feeling Jeri's eyes
following her, she gripped the edge of the car door, standing now on the
hot coals of the parking lot, and glanced back, pained.

"Thanks for the offer."

Jeri reached for the handle and closed the door for her, rolling up her
windows in denial, quickly craning her neck out the window to see the
white-hot road before reversing and swinging around the curb and out of the
school lot. Tess was planted, still holding the cigarette, long burned
out. She watched the car turn and proceed to an intersection, as if she was
trying to learn something from it, the ground grating on her toes. She
needed her shoes. An hour of cleaning left. An unexpected breeze whipped
through her hair and hemline, pulling her back to punishment, suddenly a
relief, the smell of exhaust still hanging like a solid in a trail.