The sun was gone now and The Boardwalk lights flickered on. Shrieks from the roller coaster reached all the way to the cliffs. The screams were always louder in the fog. Shrill at the first drop and then quickly fading, as if the riders plummeted straight down a rabbit hole. Nora could sometimes hear them in the dark of her room. She followed the route in her mind, and like the passengers whose hips slid from side to side on the rattling train, Nora would sway in her twin bed, her heart pounding.
She had to lie down to lace up the front of her jeans, which were meant to look like sailor pants. Zellie was digging a straightened paper clip around the bowl of Ruby’s pipe and up the draft hole. She smeared residue along the length of a cigarette and then lit it. “Wear the batik skirt, it makes your ass look good.” Zellie passed the cigarette, then rifled through the pile of clothing on the floor. “Can I wear the raspberry angora?”
“It’ll be tight.”
“Exactly!”
Nora slipped the skirt on and turned sideways in the mirror, ran her hands over her hips. She’d seen her mother do this exact thing, stand in front of a mirror saying, “This is relaxed,” letting her stomach pooch out, then sucking it in tight and saying, “and this is held in.” Nora sucked her stomach in. She shouldn’t have eaten so much today.
“I look fat.”
“Yeah, right.” Zellie slipped out of her shirt and pulled the sweater over her head. It was tight and it would never look that good on Nora. After tonight, Nora would give it to her. They stood before the mirror together, Zellie taller and blond. Nora liked the way her own hair curled and her small waist, but she would kill for nice boobs. If she and Zellie were blended together, they would be so foxy. She squeezed back into her jeans and relaced the front with a rainbow-colored shoestring. Both girls bent over and yanked brushes through their hair, then flipped their heads back and forth a couple times. Nora stroked a lip-gloss wand over her mouth.
“Your house tonight, right?” Zellie was already dialing home. “Mom . . . Fine . . . I’m sleeping at Nora’s . . . I said fine . . . I dunno, the movies . . . how early?” She took a drag off the cigarette and blew the smoke out the side of her mouth. “What? . . . Bounce? . . . I know what it is . . . Okay. Bye.” She hung up and stared at Nora. “My mother needs Bounce.” And they burst out laughing. “My mother has been doing laundry for sixteen years.”
“Bounce,” Nora said in her springiest voice and she laughed and felt at ease because now the evening had a theme, a private joke. If she felt uncomfortable, all she had to do was turn to Zellie and whisper, “Bounce.”
Nora left a note for Ruby.
At the movies. Zellie is sleeping over.
Love, N.
They plucked more plums to eat on the way. The fog never did come in and the first stars made pinpricks of light in the clear dark sky. The girls passed clapboard homes and cottages. Wavering blue light and the smell of cooking onions seeped out windows toward the street along with bits of the evening news, the clatter of dishes, “I’m in the kitchen,” someone practicing piano—the loose connections of family in the hours between dinner and bed. Nora had the feeling of swimming past all that life on the inside.
“I’d want to live there,” Zellie said, pointing to a dark house. “Everybody’s out doing their own thing.”
“There’s mine.” Nora pointed. Tiny lights illuminated shrubs on both sides of a straight path to a porch, like guide lights on a runway. A tabby cat perched on the rail, lazily flicking its tail, watching them through slit eyes. There was something solid, inviting, about the house that made Nora shiver. The porch light glowed off the doorknob, as if the house could hardly wait for someone to wrap a hand around it. “Wouldn’t you love to come home to that?”
“You are so weird.” Zellie pointed to the window boxes. “Those are plastic flowers.”
“Maybe they went to Europe and they didn’t want the plants to die.”
“Europe’s not so great.” Zellie lobbed a plum pit into the hedges. Zellie tossed off statements like that all the time. As if her family vacations, family meetings, family meals, family code words, family outings were nothing compared to the freedom, the laissez-faire child-rearing Ruby claimed bloomed from her complete trust in Nora.
There were no plastic flowers at the party house. These parents had left for just a few days. Nora followed close behind Zellie. She hoped Randall wouldn’t show up and whisk Zellie off, at least not until Nora found someone to talk to. It was awkward being alone in the center of so many people. Three clans populated the front porch: the smokers, the talkers, and the kissers. Nora knew she was a member of the first and she patted the pack of Winston Lights jammed into her waistband. She recognized people from school but no one she knew well enough for her to say hi first, so she drifted past, her hand ready in case anyone greeted her. The Stones’ “When the Whip Comes Down” bellowed from washing-machine-size speakers just inside the living room. Music vibrated up from the floor into her stomach and throat as if she were nauseated. A black leather couch, its chrome arms glinting, held three too many people. As Nora and Zellie walked by, a boy thrust a corn dog toward Nora. She waved it away and then yelled over the music, “No, thanks. I’m a vegetarian.” It sounded ridiculous. She was a vegetarian because she liked the way it sounded when she told her mother and her mother’s friends, as if she believed in something besides men and fun.
Someone clicked off the overhead light and draped sheer scarves over floor lamps as Nora and Zellie weaved through knots of dancers toward the keg in the kitchen. White tiles covered the walls and ceiling; there were enormous stainless steel appliances, everything was sleek and hard, bright and loud, and the room reeked of pot and fast food. Der Wienerschnitzel wrappers littered the counters. A girl with black bangs unwrapped corn dogs she took from a greasy brown bag and loaded them onto cookie sheets. She said, “Voilà,
et
voilà,” again and again while wrappers spilled to the floor.
“Hey, ladies. Can I buy you a drink?” A boy with a foam mustache held the keg nozzle toward them. He sucked at his upper lip and revealed a wispy blond mustache underneath, then gestured toward the corn dogs. “You should have seen the guy at Wienerschnitzel. They had to get the manager to unlock the freezer.” He handed them each a cup. “Pretty righteous . . .”
Zellie smiled and Nora asked where the parents were.
“Mexico.” He smiled with protruding lips, either imitating Mick Jagger or still protecting his lips from long-gone braces.
Another boy was taking jars out of the refrigerator and dumping them into one bowl—mayonnaise, relish, three different kinds of mustard, ketchup, and Major Grey’s Chutney. “For our feast,” he said to the corn-dog girl. This party had been under way for some time.
At the kitchen table, people slammed back shots of Jose Cuervo and sucked on grapefruit sections. A boy with hairy knuckles and a golden retriever smile held an eggcup full of tequila out to Nora. She leaned against the doorjamb and drank it down like it was a job, like taking out the trash. She’d tasted her mother’s tequila and orange soda. Ruby and her girlfriends drank them summer afternoons, greased up with coconut oil, sunbathing nude in the backyard with an Indian bedspread flung over the clothesline as a gesture toward privacy. Nora kept her eyes closed to hide the tears that sprang up with the alcohol burning down her throat. The same boy pressed a grapefruit section to her lips. She smiled around it, bit down on the flesh. When she opened her eyes, Zellie and the boy had grapefruit smiles as well, and heat lit up her insides. They tossed the peels onto the kitchen floor with the wrappers and corn-dog sticks. He grabbed their hands, pulling them into the living room. Someone’s sweaty back rubbed up and down Nora’s arm. She let herself half dance, half be bounced by the crowd. “Bounce!” She yelled it twice before Zellie heard her and laughed. The boy heard too and he started bouncing and all three of them did and then it spread across the room like a wave and everybody bounced to Mick Jagger singing “Lies.”
They danced through three more songs before Randall popped up, wrapped his arms around Zellie, and she was gone.
Hairy Knuckles, whom Nora recognized from somewhere, brought his lips to her ear. “Beer?” he yelled and she nodded. He filled their cups in the kitchen and returned to her with a handful of tiny pickles and a corn dog, the stick between his teeth like the stem of a red rose. They leaned against a speaker, watching the dancers, watching their beer jiggle along with the bass line. Nora ate pickles from his cupped hand, and when he held out the dog, she took a bite, swallowed it down with beer. It tasted bad, like wet rye bread and sugar, but when he held it out again, she took a second bite.
A joint came by and he put the lit end in his mouth. He blew evenly and a turbo stream of pot smoke came off the back. Nora leaned close, held her lips in a tight O, and breathed it in until she couldn’t hold any more. Then they switched and she felt the heat of the cherry just above her tongue as she blew into Hairy Knuckles’s mouth. It was mean, thinking of him as Hairy Knuckles. She was glad not to have to stand alone now that Zellie had found Randall. She stared at him, pleasant brown eyes, thick eyebrows, and no pimples. His front teeth overlapped at a jaunty angle, like someone tipping a hat.
You okay?
he mouthed, and she shook her head no, because just then, she felt incredibly dizzy. He led her outside, where the cold air felt fresh and clean on her face and she could breathe deeply. They stood beside a night-blooming jasmine. He plucked a flower and held it beneath her nose.
“I’m Nick.”
“You are not,” she said, trying to focus on the white blossom.
“Okay?” He cocked his head to the side like he was trying to figure something out. “Who am I then?”
She burst out laughing. “I’m Nora.”
He smiled cautiously. Clearly he’d never seen
The Thin Man.
“I know.” He said he remembered her from school, though he had graduated last June.
“Do you go to college?”
“Community.” He asked if she’d ever been to another party here. She shook her head no and saw two white blossoms and two sets of brown eyes bobbing before her face. The jasmine smell was sweet and strong.
He threaded his arm through Nora’s. “Let’s walk.”
She asked if he had a dog named Asta and he still didn’t get it, but he listened to her laugh and didn’t seem to mind that she had her own joke. They shared a cigarette, and her head swam.
“I think I’m pretty drunk.” She leaned against his shoulder.
He smiled with his eyes as if he had all the time and shoulder space she would ever need. “Hey, don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got you covered.”
Nora thought,
Hairy Knuckles is so nice.
She stumbled on a crack in the sidewalk and he caught her by the wrist, and then wrapped his arms around her so she fit right into his damp armpit like a jigsaw-puzzle piece. He kissed her neck, said maybe they should rest in his car, and then they were right next to it and he was helping her into the back seat and shutting the door. They eased back onto the seat, facing each other. He kissed her again with slack lips, and Nora felt as if she could tumble right inside his mouth.
I am kissing Nick. Nick Knuckles. Nick Knuck.
And she kept saying that over and over in her mind while they kissed and she felt the ridge of his crooked teeth against her gums. She thought about a time in the future when they’d be eating lunch together and she could tell him how she’d called him Nick Knuck. She would tease the hair on his fingers when she said it. Perhaps even plant a row of kisses across all five.
Nick’s tongue gently explored her mouth. She tasted grapefruit in front of other flavors, corn dog, smoke, tequila, and something else, something lush and warm. She wondered and worried over her taste, thought of her diaphragm, left at home between her mattress and box spring, and how she wanted to have a lot to tell Zellie later. Nick pressed against her and she felt herself pressing right back, facing him in the dark, her legs tangled with his, his hand reaching beneath her sweater; he tried to jiggle down beneath her waistband. She sucked her stomach in and felt, at one and the same time, regret and relief that she’d worn the tight jeans.
“I didn’t expect this,” he said softly.
She wasn’t sure what Nick meant—the luck of meeting her, or the inconvenience of her pants. A seat belt dug into her back and she was acutely aware of where she was—alone with a boy in a car.
He kissed her again, more deeply, and his hand worked its way down toward her ass. The jasmine smelled sweet, and Nick’s weight felt good. Over his shoulder, the windows fogged, and Nora believed they had done that together. No one passing by would see them inside. She had wanted this to happen to her, though things weren’t exactly as she had imagined—they both still had their shoes on. But the air in the car was warm and thick as blankets. Nora untwined her arms from his neck and unknotted her pants. She loosened the rainbow shoestring and peeled her jeans down. As she revealed them, her hips and legs glowed in the amber light. Her thighs looked supple, firm. Nick never took his eyes off her, determined and grateful. Even in the time it took to get the jeans off, she didn’t change her mind.
It was after. Back at the party, with wrappers now strewn across the living room carpet and the music blaring. It was when Nick looped his finger through the shoestring in her pants, pulling her toward him, that she changed her mind. She’d seen gestures like that, a slap on the ass, a tweaked nipple, a man pinching a cigarette from between her mother’s lips and putting it to his own. Those gestures, like Nick’s finger wrapped in her shoestring, were flip, cavalier, possessive. Her mother flourished under them. When Nick held his beer to her lips and said, “Drink up, baby,” she felt something rise inside her that she didn’t want to swallow away. He smiled at her with his crooked teeth, only they didn’t look jaunty anymore. They looked as if they were crowding toward an exit.