— C’mon.
I locked my hands around Everett’s waist, tucked my head onto his shoulder, and listened to his flathead growl, to police devils whining like sirens, the wind ripping my hair, wishing the ride would wind up somewhere anywhere different from a crummy Florida bungalow with a weedy patch of grass enclosed by a chain-link fence. The windows were dark when we arrived, and Momma’s car wasn’t in front. A yellow streetlight buzzed overhead and the moths were out in force.
— Thanks, I said, climbing off the bike.
— Somebody ain’t always going to be around to protect you, said Everett. You aware of that?
— Yeah, I guess.
He stared at me gravely — he was the only one of Momma’s boyfriends who looked me in the eye and not about a foot, foot and a half lower.
— You know I bought into that custom parts shop over in Jacksonville?
— Momma told me.
— Whyn’t you come on up? I’ll give you a job in sales. You can stay with me ’til you get a place.
— Everett! I batted my lashes. I didn’t know you cared.
— Least there’d be somebody looking after you. You ain’t doing nothing here you can’t do there.
— You serious? I don’t know anything about bikes.
— Ain’t that much to know. It might give you a chance to get your bearings.
— I’ll think about it. I swear I will.
— Don’t think too long. We need people now. He gunned the engine. You’re a smart girl, Louie. How come you treat yourself like you do?
I started to tell him my name was Elle, but it didn’t seem important right then.
— I got self-esteem issues, I said.
Momma slept in the next morning. There wasn’t anything to eat in the house, so I walked down to the convenience store and bought orange juice and pancake mix and made myself breakfast. After that I cleaned the living room, straightened the furniture, removed fast-food cartons and ladies’ magazines and empty diet pill bottles, and vacuumed the rug. It was still a slum furnished with sprung sofas and patched easy chairs, but I felt accomplished. I watched TV for a while, surfing through a mix of get-right preachers and cartoons. Long about one o’clock I heard the toilet flush.
— Don’t look at me, said Momma, coming into the room, carrying a glass of juice and wearing a robe with a design of winning poker hands. She closed the blinds all around until the room was half dark and plunked herself down in the recliner.
— I must look terrible, she said.
I wanted to tell her she was a female version of Dorian Gray’s portrait, because whenever I saw her, I saw myself in about twenty years, but she would have asked was this Dorian some boy I was fooling with. Actually, she was a pretty woman yet, despite the pills and booze.
— You could at least lie to me, she said.
— You look fine, Momma.
A sigh. What’d you do last night?
— Nothing. I ran into Everett.
— Did you tell him I wanted him to call?
— Forgot.
— Jesus, Louie!
— Elle, I said.
— What
I turned up the volume on the TV.
— Here! Let me have that. She pointed at the remote. There’s a real good movie on. We can watch together.
The movie had started. It concerned two girls in a nuthouse — they didn’t appear to like each other and took lots of meds. I tried not to relate it to my home life.
— That Angelina Jolie’s so pretty, Momma said. I wish I could get my hair like hers.
The telephone rang.
— Can you grab that?
I answered and a mellow voice said, How you doing, sugar britches?
— It’s for you. I passed Momma the phone.
— Hello. She sang the word.
After a few seconds of giggling and going, Uh-huh, uh-huh, Momma got up and said to me, I’m gonna take this in the bedroom. Fix me a piece of toast, sweetie. Okay?
I showered, put on cutoffs and a T-shirt, and went out, walking down the middle of the street barefoot, seeing how long I could take the hot asphalt before I had to hop onto a patch of grass. The parked cars were thousand-dollar shit boxes with smeared windshields that made the reflected sunlight look dirty. Every house was the same sort of rat hole; some had Tonka toys and Big Wheels half buried in the yellowish grass. A kid in a diaper stared at me from a doorway, holding an empty Coke bottle in his grubby fist, the TV jabbering in the gloom behind him. It was the fucking Third World.
The guys at Toby’s would sneak me out a beer in a paper sack, but I didn’t feel social and went to the park instead — a scrap of shade with some big azalea bushes and diseased palms and a fountain that gurgled like someone dying. I sat on the retaining wall, digging at a sand spur I’d picked up in the pad of my foot. Ants were scavenging a squashed beetle on the sidewalk. A gleaming black car with smoked windows breezed past. Two women talked in front of the grocery store, both shielding their eyes from the sun, as if saluting each other. A tabby cat emerged from under an azalea bush and stared at me with moderate interest.
— What’s up? I asked.
Nothing, bitch, he said in cat language, and walked off, his tail straight up, showing me his ass.
The black car again — it slowed and stopped beside me. The window rolled down and Johnny Jacks peered out. I wondered how a loser like him had copped such a sharp ride.
— What’s your name? he asked.
— Now that would have been a terrific follow-up question last night. Did it just occur to you?
No response.
— Are you on a holy quest? That would explain your minimalist style. You must be focused on prayer all the time, right?
Nothing.
— Do I still smell nice? I asked.
He tipped his head back — his nostrils flared. Dial soap, he said.
My detectors started beeping. Momma’s favorite movie was
— Okay, I said. Good-bye.
— Let’s go for a drive, he said, climbing out of the car.
— Are you crazy? Fuck off!
I moved away along the wall.
He came after me, and I said, I’ll scream.
— Why? I mean you no harm.
The words “I mean you no harm” weirded me out even more — he seemed to have learned his English from a phrase book.
He stepped close, and I felt heat streaming off him. Please, he said.
— Leave me the fuck alone!
I crossed the street, glancing behind me to make certain he wasn’t following, and nearly got splattered by a panel van.
— Hey! What’s your problem? The driver stuck his head out. Your life not worth living?
