Break the Skin (4 page)

I bumped into her back. “Keep moving,” I told her.

The wood-plank floor squeaked as Rose came up behind me. “Would you look at that?” she said, and I knew he’d caught her eye, too.

Finally, we got to a table off to the side, but down front, so I could watch the way that man’s fingers flew over the frets of his electric guitar. They were long fingers, and I liked the way his wrist curved and how he wore that guitar on his pelvis and how he made it talk.

We ordered our drinks—Jack and Coke all around—and we watched that man. Mmmm … mmmmm … mmmmm. I sat up straight and pushed my shoulders back so if he looked my way, he’d be able to read my T-shirt.

Don’t get me wrong. He wasn’t a beautiful man, not one of those drop-dead gorgeous men, and maybe that’s why he charmed us so. We could imagine that if the cards fell just right we could have a life with him. He was too tall and gawky, and all those dreads made his head seem too big to be held up by that long, scrawny neck, but Lord, God, those hands and the way they played that guitar and that voice, just enough of a rasp to make a girl think of dark rooms and whispered I-love-you’s. By the time that song really got going, we were love-struck, riding the wave of the guitar solo to its climax, and then falling into that man’s smoky voice, nearly whispering the last line—“And she’s buying a stairway to heaven”—in a way that made us think of his arms around us, rocking us, making us feel cared for and loved.

It was so quiet as the last note faded away, quiet long enough for it all to seem unnatural there in the South End, where usually you could hear the roughhousing and the loud talk and the sound of the balls clacking together on the pool tables in the back. Quiet enough long enough for everyone to hear Delilah when she said, “Oh, my. My, my, my.”

Then people were clapping and stomping their feet on the floor, and the red-haired man grabbed the mic stand and swung around to face us. His shirt was open, and the stage lights made his bare chest look so smooth and pale. His jeans were low on his hips, low enough to make me think about what it would be like to unbutton them. A few red hairs in the space between his navel and his jeans looked coppery in the light.

“We’re Helmets on the Short Bus,” the man said. “Don’t go away. We’ll be back after we take a little break.”

Delilah leaned over and whispered to us, “That boy better get
his
helmet on because I mean to rattle his bones.”

“That’s just lovely, Dee,” Rose said, and I could see she was upset. “That’s real romantic.”

She got up and started making her way to the ladies’ room.

“What’s that all about?” Delilah said, and I told her I’d go see.

The ladies’ room had three stalls, and there was no one there but Rose. I could see the scuffed toes of her Dingo boots under the locked door of the third stall, the one by the window, where someone had written on the sill with a Magic Marker, “Don’t wish ill for your enemy, plan it.”

I tapped on the stall door. “Rose, it’s me.”

She was sniffling, and I knew she’d been crying and was trying to stop in hopes I wouldn’t notice.

“What do you want, Laney?” Her voice had that little cry quiver in it.

“Just checking on you. You all right?”

She flushed the toilet. Soon the stall door opened and she stepped out, a hard set to her eyes that told me she meant business. “Someone ought to tell her,” she said, and then she scrunched her mouth up like she
could barely bring herself to call Delilah by name. “Dee.” she said. “She carries on like a whore.”

“Oh, you know Delilah. She’s just cutting loose.”

“Like that man would ever have any interest in her.”

Rose brushed past me and turned on the water at the sink. She looked at herself in the mirror, leaning in close, checking to see, I imagine, if her eyes were puffy from the crying.

I ducked my head and traced my finger over the letters written on the sill. “He’s something, isn’t he?” I said, and it was a brave thing for me to say on account of if Rose didn’t think that red-haired man would have any interest in Delilah, then she’d probably hoot at the idea that he might take notice of me. I got up the nerve to lift my head. “Isn’t he, Rose?”

She glanced at me in the mirror, and for just an instant her eyes opened wide and I could see the light that man had left in them. Then she looked away. She stood up straight and tugged at her crop top. She folded her arms over her bare belly, probably wishing she’d never worn such a thing, a heavy gal like her. “Men like him,” she said. She bit her lip, trying to find the words to say next. She pulled a couple of paper towels from the dispenser and dried her hands with angry, jerky movements. “That man,” she said. Then she wadded up the paper towels, stuffed them into the trash can, and stormed out, leaving me to fill in the rest:
That man is wonderful!

When I came out of the ladies’ room, I saw Rose at the end of the bar, her hands pressed against it, like she was hanging on to keep her knees from buckling and sending her sliding down to the floor. I saw what she was taking in, the sight of Delilah and that red-haired man getting cozy on the stage. He was talking to a bowlegged little man with a derby hat on his head, a man of an age somewhere between Delilah and me. The red-haired man had his arm around Delilah’s shoulders, and she was leaning into him, her hand flat on his naked stomach, as if they’d been an item for years. She laughed at something the red-haired man said. Then he plucked the derby hat from the bowlegged man and set it
on top of her head. She held it in place and came up on her tiptoes to give the red-haired man a kiss.

The bowlegged man scratched his head. Then he turned away and got busy repositioning mic stands, even though they probably didn’t need to be. I knew he was one of those men who made himself feel important by attaching himself to a band, making it seem that he was part of it, when really all he did was fetch beers, fiddle with mics and amps, and peddle T-shirts like the one he was wearing, a black T-shirt with a giant red bike helmet on top of a little yellow school bus.

Rose had seen enough. She was on her way out the door. I didn’t know whether to follow her or to stay. I felt the same pain in the heart that I imagine she felt when she saw Delilah with that man, a man we’d all taken to but it was Delilah who’d been bold enough to claim him.

She called to me. She took off the little man’s derby hat and waved it over her head. “Laney,” she said, “come meet my fella!”

Maybe it was my first mistake in the whole chain of events that would soon follow—to put on my best face and go to Delilah, to leave Rose to walk back to the trailer by herself. I took a glance out the plate-glass window, and I saw her on the sidewalk looking back toward the door, hesitating just a moment, hoping, I imagine now, that I’d be coming out soon to check on her. If I’d been a better person, I would have, because I knew what it was to be on the outside looking in, to feel lost.

I turned away from her, and maybe that’s when she decided her next move, or maybe it came to her later, after Delilah said, “Rose, that spell worked. You sure as hell brought me a man.”

His name was Russell Swain, but he said everyone called him “Tweet.”

“Like Tweety Bird,” Delilah said, and then she did something I couldn’t believe. I’d never have had the nerve. Not in a million years. She put her hands on his back and turned him so he was facing away from me. Then she lifted up his shirt, hooked her finger in the waistband of his jeans, and tugged them down just enough so I could see the tattoo of that cartoon bird on his left hip. “How do you like that?” she said.

All I could think to do was to ask him a question, one that didn’t have anything to do with that tattoo, or how Delilah had so quickly discovered it, or the fact that I was looking at not only his hip but to be more to the point, the swell of his butt, and I was finding it hard not to stare. “How come you’re called Helmets on the Short Bus?”

He tugged his jeans back up, and Delilah smoothed his shirt down. “I used to drive one,” he said. Then he told me how he drove one of those little buses for special-ed kids, the kids who had to wear helmets so they wouldn’t bang their heads on something and hurt themselves.

“That’s mean,” I said. “Calling your band that.”

He seemed genuinely hurt that I’d think that. “No, no, no. You don’t get it. We’re not being mean. Those kids frickin’ rock!” They liked listening to him sing on those bus trips, he said. He’d get them all bobbing along to something like Ween’s “Waving My Dick in the Wind.” That was the one that got him fired. He shrugged his shoulders. “Go figure.”

“Spilt milk,” I said.

“Ancient history.”

He gave me a sheepish grin. Now he was jockeying cars for the Ford dealer in town, running trades to other dealers in the Tri-State and bringing a vehicle back in return. The band played gigs at clubs in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri while they waited for their big break.

“Yeah, and when’s that going to be, you think?” I surprised myself with how forward I was. It was easier now that I knew he’d fallen for Delilah. I could be a smart-ass if I wanted. What’d I care if I pissed him off? “When pigs fly?”

“Laney!” Delilah said.

“It’s cool.” He shrugged his shoulders again. “Who knows, Laney-Girl.” Just like that, he gave me a nickname, something better than Little Bit, or ’Lil Sis, and I fell in love with him again. “It’s a long way to the top,” he said.

I couldn’t help myself. I took a big breath and belted out a little of the chorus from that AC/DC song, the one about the hard road to the
top playing in a rock ’n’ roll band: “If you think it’s easy doing one night stands / Try playing in a rock ’n’ roll band.”

He joined me on the last line, and even without a mic, our voices soared over the noise of the South End.

When we were done, I realized that people had stopped talking and were looking up onstage. Delilah’s mouth was open, like she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “Jesus, Laney,” she finally said. “I had no idea.”

Now it was my turn to shrug my shoulders. I felt the heat creep into my face. “I guess I can sing a little.”

“A little?” Tweet said with a laugh. “Laney-Girl, you could sing with this band any day. Better get your helmet on.”

I wanted him to mean it the way Delilah did when she said she was going to rattle his bones, but I knew he didn’t. He said it the way a big brother might goof with his little sister, and there I was again, ’Lil Sis, and I was sorry that I’d sung those few lines and let my secret out: I could sing, not just singing-in-the-shower kind of sing, but flat-out touch-your-heart, rock-your-world kind of sing.

Some people clapped their hands together, and pretty soon everyone was clapping, and I knew they were clapping for me.

“Hell, damn,” a man said. “That little girl can sing!”

I turned to the people sitting at the tables, and I didn’t know what to do next.

Then another man shouted, “Darlin’, I don’t know about your tits”—he was talking about my T-shirt—“but you sure got a pair of lungs.”

I couldn’t believe how much it stung to hear him say that—to shout it out for everyone to hear. As much as I wanted to believe I was tough, there was still that Little Bit inside me that could hurt more than I thought possible. I felt the ache come into my throat, and I knew if I stood there much longer, I’d start to cry. I wasn’t about to let anyone see me do that, so I took a bow, a grand, sweeping bow. Then I lifted my
arm and folded in all the fingers except the pinky and the pointer, and I gave the crowd the devil horns, and they all went wild, shouting, “Rock ’n’ roll! Rock ’n’ roll!”

That’s when I jumped off that stage, made my way to the door, and stepped out into the night hoping Rose was still there, but she was gone.

A goth girl came out of the South End. Her face was pale with a heavy layer of white makeup. Her eyes were lined with black, her lashes painted with mascara. She’d drawn thin black coils from the corners of her eyes onto her cheekbones.

“I saw what you did in there,” she said to me. “I got it, sister.”

“Got it?”

She held up her hand and gave me the devil horns. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t tell.” Then she leaned in, and before I knew what she meant to do, she kissed me on the mouth. “Worship him,” she said.

“Satan?” I said, and I swear this is true: I felt a shiver go up my spine. The girl laid her hand on my cheek. I wanted to look away from her, but there was something in her eyes that made it impossible. Something about the way she looked at me as if she understood exactly who I was.

I WALKED BACK
to the trailer and left Delilah to do whatever it was she was going to do with Tweet. It was a nice night, one of the first warm nights of spring, and I didn’t mind being alone in the dark, walking down Whittle past the B&L Liquor Store and the Sudsy-Dudsy Laundromat and over the railroad tracks into our neighborhood, that part of Mt. Gilead everyone called “Bird Town” on account of the poultry house. I didn’t even mind its stink, a smell of scalded feathers and old meat. What little breeze there was came out of the west and pushed that stink a little farther away, a little closer to Route 50 that ran out to New Hope, where, although I didn’t know it that night, Tweet rented a house at the edge of town just off the highway. His house and another one were out
there by themselves as if they’d been picked up by a windstorm and set down some distance from everything else in town. A cornfield stretched on from those two houses to my mother’s place and the other homes that started New Hope proper. “Small world,” she’d say eventually, and I’d agree.

We lived in small towns in a part of southeastern Illinois that was mainly farmland, where the same families went on through generations, but, as I’d point out to Mother, there were all sorts of ways that people could cross one another’s paths.

That night, as I walked into the trailer park, I couldn’t get that goth girl out of my mind and the way she’d kissed me on the mouth and called me a sister of Satan as we parted. I’d never even known she existed, and all of a sudden there she was. Things could get crazy like that. Even in a small town like Mt. Gilead. Who knew, until we walked into the South End, that Tweet was out there on our horizon? And that little bowlegged man with the derby hat. Who knew about him, and whether we’d all end up meaning anything at all to one another, but there we were, coming and going in this town where hearts full of longing came together all the time because, when you got down to it, we were all looking for someone—anyone who would make us feel less alone.