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{phone tag} etkin camoglu Hello? He says. I peg him for thirty with a five o’clock. The kind of guy who graduated from an Ivy and wears those high top sneakers underneath his dress pants and polo. Plus a pencil thin tie. He works in a big open office space on the West Side Highway. Does the computer programming graphics thing for an industry start-up. What industry? Any industry. The kind that hooks him up with sweet happy hour cocktail parties filled with celebrities in fashion houses in honor of the birthday of DJ Dash. That’s the kind of guy that says HELLO with a question mark and a cute curt twang. His name is Chad or James or Anders. I like Anders the best. Hey I found your phone, I think, on the sidewalk, by school, I say. I’m the kind of girl that you’d never know has a tat of a vine around her thigh that shows off her lean legs with one red rose bud that looks like it twitches if I flex my leg muscles the right way on a sunny day. Course, they make us wear tights to school, black ones that can’t be see through at all, at all. Or Mr. Lee points to us as he walks the hallways, an invisible measuring tape at hand to call out, lower that skirt young lady. Mr. Lee has spider vein fingers and laser eyes that zap out any sex we have. How is it that he ever just got engaged? To what shrew I don’t know, says Marla, my best girl. He can’t even have sex I bet. Just turns out the lights at night chanting pure thoughts and kisses his virginal bride on the forehead after reading from his new wave bible about sharing your light. At least that’s what he reads to us in Religion. Share your light, share your light, generosity and sisterhood. Yawn. Marla, my best girl, doodles Mr. Lee in her bible column. Mr. Lee in a speedo or naked except for a cowboy hat, or something hilarious like that. That so, doll? Where you at? He says. I tell him I’m right outside my school. And never mind the Long Island that came in just there. I know he’s from New England. Polo’s, lacrosse, and he sips bourbon when he’s home with his folks for Christmas. Me? Mom says as long as I tell her, its cool. The tat? She ooed and awed. Says it becomes me. That’s the way with Mom. Always saying things but I love her still. Just don’t get banged up is her thing. That’s the way she says it too. Don’t be popping babies under my roof using my pay check, she says. She doesn’t care a damn either if we drink all her wine when Marla comes over. Mom always dozes off with her nightcap around nine, Minx and Trinx at her feet. Those big Siamese whores snore as loud as a tractor. But Mom’s out and we blast Hot 97 to try new moves. The wine makes our cheeks red in the long mirror on my door, and we’re two hot girls. Sometimes we call in when DJ Dash is on and ask for the new Lil’ Kay, ‘cause that makes me hop, the way Marla puts it. One of these days we’re going to wait outside the studio and force our way in if we have to, cause that Dash is hot damn, the way Marla puts it. That right? Hey, doll, you just wait there a bit, okay? I’m going to come by, okay? You stay where you are, okay? He says. He hangs up before I can ask. I figure he means he’ll call his phone, obviously. I sit down on the bench that faces our school on the other side of the street. Most of the girls are out by now, a few little tots trailing out with the nannies. It’s getting cold and I swing my legs to make the blood flow and rub my hands and wish I’d remembered the mittens. But that’s okay. At least I’ll look all red flushed cute like I do with Marla when we dance DJ Dash. Lil Kay all up in it with her ray and the tray of Bacardi and Champagne spray. I can hear the beat now and in my mind I’m getting real low down to the ground like those girls do on MTV in the dark club when you take one hand in front and just bend, bam. One day we’ll get to DJ Dash and show him. Marla makes me pinkie promise and swear. I can’t wait to tell Marla too, about Anders. Anders Anders Anders. Maybe he’ll even invite me to his cocktail party as a reward for finding his phone. Anders Anders Anders. It rolls off the tongue real smooth kinda like the way I imagine his tongue to be, like the way that the mirror feels all slick and slidey, a water slide. Marla and me practice Frenching when Mom’s real good and asleep. Imagine its Mr. Lee, ewww, Marla jokes in between breaths and now thinking of that I can’t help but laugh and try not to laugh too loud like a crazy lady on a bench. What would Anders think? No. I gotta look real cute and cool when he cones by. Like this with my legs crossed, back all straight, hair smoothed. The phone rings. It’s him! But when I pick up there’s no one. But he’ll know who I am. I’ll know who he is. This is the way these things work. This is the way love works. Like the way that Marla says when we’re older and in college people just can talk to each other because there is no one around to tell them otherwise and annoying stuff like that. Things just fit. Mom says, don’t you go believing those foolish love fool lies they pump into your head in Romance Novel class. You got one chance and one chance only and you better not fuck it up getting knocked up and turning into a down right dirty whore. No miss. Not after all that money I put into you and your school. No missey. Don’t you go slutting around on me. But I know Mom, she’ll like Anders. She’ll see the way I do that he’s the chance, he’s the chance I got. Like fate put us together right there through this phone. Doll? It’s you right, the sweet girl who got my phone? He’s got on a big North Face bubble coat, black. His face is a small pale face, like a potato that goes down to a pin to a slit. The slit sticks out of the coat and when he sits down next to me the coat goes bloop, like it oozes into him. I can smell him too and it’s not Polo or Burberry but a weird damp smell like when Mom washes Minx and Trinx and they shrivel up, all that fur, all that mad fur sunken down. But this isn’t Anders at all. This is the wrong place, the wrong person, he must be confused. No. My no comes out all small and I know that he knows that I’m lying but I try not to cry because now I can feel him come closer to me and the bubble starts to puff out and rub against my arm. And the cold now is much colder and I wish that Marla was here because Marla would know what to do. Then I hear his voice warm in my ear, feel his breath dig deep into me. Don’t you say no to me girl. I know your stupid rich girl games. Don’t you go and cry for Daddy now neither. Daddy’s gone. Daddy don’t care neither. You just follow me now, all good and quiet. That’s right. See that car there, that SUV? That’s right, that’s where I been watching you. You’re cute too you know. Got lucky with you. Not one of those fat bitches you got as friends. True, you a bitch too, but now you’re my bitch. That’s right. You wipe back those tears. That’s right, that’s right. No more crying for you. He opens the door and makes me sit on his lap in the back seat. There is a driver in front and the car starts to go and I want to scream but there is no air, no atmosphere, no light. And when he pushes me down to the floor and opens his pants, I know that Mom’s there watching. Now a whore, a whore, she hisses. But I don’t cry. I know that Anders will be there waiting when I get back. He’ll wait forever. Anders in polo, Anders who takes me in his arms and I can even smell the way his hair is. Like sweet mahogany, like college, like something out there that means love. |
