The Spider Inside by Elias Anderson Page B

easy.”
    “Well, thanks again for the ride, Jen.”
    At the casual use of her given name Carmex visibly
brightened a little, like someone who has been given a small and unexpected
gift.
    “Sure. Maybe we can get together some time? Have lunch?”
    “I’d like that,” Cherry said, being honest but at the same
time wondering if she would be able to eat with that thing staring her in the
face. She got out of the car and bent again, waved through the window, and
watched as the tail lights receded in the early morning light that still held
more than a little of the darkness within it.
    Cherry turned and looked up toward the second story of the
apartment complex. It looked like Everest from where she was standing. She
sighed deeply and walked toward the stairs, going up them quietly so as not to
wake anyone, wondering if the fucking elevator would ever be fixed.
    She wanted more than anything to just plop on the couch and
smoke that joint she had waiting for her, but first she had to get washed up.
    She never wore much makeup, but what she had on she now
washed off, dried her face, and looked back in, under the brutal halogen
honesty of the lights.
    She still looked okay , she supposed. But she really
needed to slow down. This was just supposed to be a party, not her fucking
lifestyle. The whites of her eyes were bloodshot, the skin beneath them dark.
Bags, she thought. I have fucking bags under my eyes. Along the line of her jaw
on one side and also on her forehead were the beginnings of a break out,
nothing major, not yet, anyway...but it could become a real problem if she
wasn’t careful. Right now they were just faint red marks below the first layer
or so of skin, and could go either way. She could take care of herself and do
her best to get rid of them, or she could keep doing what she was and end up
with some charmingly demeaning nickname like Pizza-face, or something.
    She could also see where lines were wanting to form...the corners
of her mouth, the corners of her eyes. Right now if someone passed her on the
street, they would probably think, hey, she don’t look half bad for a thirty
year old.
    “But I’m only twenty-two,” Cherry said, softly, to no one.
    Something had to change. She would go to the store tomorrow
and stock up on some fresh fruits, vegetables, that kind of thing, spend the
day just on her own, even if Jim did call. She’d stashed away enough for a
couple bumps tomorrow, mostly so she could get some cleaning done, but after
that she needed a break. She might just go ahead and save what she had for
later, anyway.
    Instead of sitting on the couch like she normally would
Cherry drew herself a hot bath and smoked the joint in the tub. She soaped up a
sponge and washed and washed her neck where that hand had been, at the same
time imagining the vapors from the bath salts soaking into her skin, cleaning
her pores, washing her away. When she was a little girl, she and her mother had
gone on their one vacation. This had been the only time Cherry had ever left
the state of California. It was one of her earliest memories, so she had to
have been around four years old. They’d been in Mexico, where the waters of the
impossibly blue postcard ocean were clean and clear and warm. Cherry remembered
burying her legs in the sand on the beach and laying there as the ocean came up
and slowly lifted the warm weight off her.
    “Careful,” her mother had said, acknowledging the biggest
wave to come up yet, soaking Cherry to the neck. “Or you’ll get pulled in.”
    Her mother had meant to caution her with this, or maybe
scare her. Instead, that little girl in the pink bathing suit and oversized
purple sunglasses had fallen in love with the idea. Not with the idea of
drowning, she just thought of being chosen by the ocean, to be taken away and
brought out to the warm sea to live with the dolphins.
    Cherry thought of this now, as she bathed. She thought of
waves lapping up out of the ocean and erasing her a