small but heavy, and occupied the dark space decisively. A black-and-white scene of dismal resolution, as turbidly underlit as the tapes of a police undercover operation, played silently on the console in front of her. Restless movements, a covey of them, in no way diluted the calcium hardness of her attention. I edged even closer and aimed my beaten eyes.
A girl’s room, scalloped curtains and stuffed animals, the girl sitting on a white canopy bed. She is wearing a loose cotton nightgown. Brushing her hair, she looks into the camera and smiles. Makeup tubes and pots scattered beside her on the bed. She pinches baby fat under her chin, files her nails, swabs her face with alcohol-soaked cotton, squirts white cream into a little round palm, upraised. She smiles again and lifts her nightgown. All the time she looks into the camera, thin mouth rapidly moving, though it is obvious that she’s talking, perhaps singing, to herself; all the time that her sticky white fingers are rippling between hairless lips, sliding back and forth in her rectum.
I was certain, from the moment she entered the frame, that the low-slung woman in the baggy T-shirt was the same one wrapped in cigarette smoke, sitting with her back to me. On screen, the girl’s narrow body disappeared under hers and narrow ankles crossed over her back.
“Touch me and I’ll chew up your eyes,” the decisively placed woman said to me without turning around.
I felt invasive, excited, afraid. I thought of something to say, but what came out was: “I work next door.”
She stood and faced me then, cigarette straight and firm in the corner of a wanly smiling mouth. Her lids were heavy and her hands were down in her pockets as far as they would go, knuckles moving up and down like valves against the denim.
“You look like a real practiced point-shaver to me.”
“Your secret’s safe, don’t worry.”
“There’s no secret. I don’t like men.”
“Me either.”
“That’s not how I mean it.”
“Me either.”
She turned away again, staring at images which I saw now as an abstract shadow play on her tilted face. “And I suppose”—she gave way a little, leaning her weight against the counter edge—“I suppose voyeurism comes with this job.”
Anyway, I worry about her. Three codeine on an empty stomach, no telling what lines she may have crossed. I’m parked by the antenna field, waiting. The sun descends and wind hums across the guy wires. Buses cluster and I look for my friend at the back of the alphabetical loading line. Could she have passed out? Cracked her head on a sink or something? Then I see her drift around the corner. A security man has her arm, but he’s only supporting her, guiding her along. She boards the last bus, takes a seat in the rear. Her head sags and the hive of tight black curls is squashed against the glass. I wait for the bus to pull out. It’s almost dark. Ellen sleeps with mouth open, reading lights burning all around her.
22
“O H, GO ON AND look,” my mother said, pulling me across her lap. “You’ve never seen the ocean from up here.”
Visible through the TV-shaped plastic window was a green swatch dappled here and there with white.
“Can you see the ship? That tiny thing?”
“Mmm-hmm.
I returned to A Study in Scarlet and my hoarded packets of airline cashews. Across the aisle, my sister hissed her exasperation. She was teaching herself to knit. Like me, Carla viewed this Florida vacation as an ordeal, a decree in the guise of a gift. Very recently, in humiliation rather than triumph, she had donned her first brassiere.
We’d never met Mother’s “dear Cordelia,” widowed by a faulty outboard motor, or the twins we would be expected to make friends with. All we knew was that they lived in Vero Beach, had their own tennis court, and never ate meat.
“If this is such a neat trip, then why is Daddy staying home?”
Carla had an unerring instinct for the conversation-stopper.
All we knew was
A girl’s room, scalloped curtains and stuffed animals, the girl sitting on a white canopy bed. She is wearing a loose cotton nightgown. Brushing her hair, she looks into the camera and smiles. Makeup tubes and pots scattered beside her on the bed. She pinches baby fat under her chin, files her nails, swabs her face with alcohol-soaked cotton, squirts white cream into a little round palm, upraised. She smiles again and lifts her nightgown. All the time she looks into the camera, thin mouth rapidly moving, though it is obvious that she’s talking, perhaps singing, to herself; all the time that her sticky white fingers are rippling between hairless lips, sliding back and forth in her rectum.
I was certain, from the moment she entered the frame, that the low-slung woman in the baggy T-shirt was the same one wrapped in cigarette smoke, sitting with her back to me. On screen, the girl’s narrow body disappeared under hers and narrow ankles crossed over her back.
“Touch me and I’ll chew up your eyes,” the decisively placed woman said to me without turning around.
I felt invasive, excited, afraid. I thought of something to say, but what came out was: “I work next door.”
She stood and faced me then, cigarette straight and firm in the corner of a wanly smiling mouth. Her lids were heavy and her hands were down in her pockets as far as they would go, knuckles moving up and down like valves against the denim.
“You look like a real practiced point-shaver to me.”
“Your secret’s safe, don’t worry.”
“There’s no secret. I don’t like men.”
“Me either.”
“That’s not how I mean it.”
“Me either.”
She turned away again, staring at images which I saw now as an abstract shadow play on her tilted face. “And I suppose”—she gave way a little, leaning her weight against the counter edge—“I suppose voyeurism comes with this job.”
Anyway, I worry about her. Three codeine on an empty stomach, no telling what lines she may have crossed. I’m parked by the antenna field, waiting. The sun descends and wind hums across the guy wires. Buses cluster and I look for my friend at the back of the alphabetical loading line. Could she have passed out? Cracked her head on a sink or something? Then I see her drift around the corner. A security man has her arm, but he’s only supporting her, guiding her along. She boards the last bus, takes a seat in the rear. Her head sags and the hive of tight black curls is squashed against the glass. I wait for the bus to pull out. It’s almost dark. Ellen sleeps with mouth open, reading lights burning all around her.
22
“O H, GO ON AND look,” my mother said, pulling me across her lap. “You’ve never seen the ocean from up here.”
Visible through the TV-shaped plastic window was a green swatch dappled here and there with white.
“Can you see the ship? That tiny thing?”
“Mmm-hmm.
I returned to A Study in Scarlet and my hoarded packets of airline cashews. Across the aisle, my sister hissed her exasperation. She was teaching herself to knit. Like me, Carla viewed this Florida vacation as an ordeal, a decree in the guise of a gift. Very recently, in humiliation rather than triumph, she had donned her first brassiere.
We’d never met Mother’s “dear Cordelia,” widowed by a faulty outboard motor, or the twins we would be expected to make friends with. All we knew was that they lived in Vero Beach, had their own tennis court, and never ate meat.
“If this is such a neat trip, then why is Daddy staying home?”
Carla had an unerring instinct for the conversation-stopper.
All we knew was
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