Hot Pink

  CRED

  The funny thing about Kelly’s body was the way it appeared to weirdly bulge above the puss area whenever she wore clothes, but then was fine (flat, smooth) once she got naked. (This might more accurately be described as the funny thing about Kelly’s pants, seeing as it had to be the pants that caused the bulge. And yet the pants were normal, Levi’s five-oh-whatevers, so it wouldn’t be the way the pants were made that was funny, but the way the pants fit her body. Unless it was a funny way she wore the pants, i.e., maybe they would have fit just fine if she didn’t pull the waist so high or low, or—it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the way her overpuss area bulged or seemed to bulge when she was clothed, but then didn’t bulge or seem to when she was naked, was… funny.) Cort didn’t know whether to think of this as a gift or a curse, though. On the one hand, the bulging overpuss area was off-putting, and that kept, he assumed, any number of other dudes from hitting on Kelly, which, for Cort, meant (most likely) a more grateful girlfriend in terms of how she fucked, not to mention less competition. But on the other hand, was Kelly THE ONE? Because if Kelly was THE ONE, then hey, great: no downside to a seemingly bulging overpuss whatsoever. If Kelly was not THE ONE, though, and Cort would, eventually, be moving on, then couldn’t dating her hurt his chances with other girls later? Might not other girls, later, remember him as the guy who’d settled for that girl with the overpuss out to there, and thereby fail to feel flattered enough by his interest in them to give him a shot? And even if, with his native charm (he had a way with words), Cort could overcome that particular hurdle, might not a longer-term girlfriend, at some point further along in their relationship, find herself incapable—upon recalling Kelly’s (seemingly) bulging overpuss—of accepting Cort’s assurances that she was as attractive as she wanted to be? (“He says I’m not fat, but what does he know? His last girlfriend weirdly bulged above the puss area!”) Or, worse, might not the new girlfriend choose to let herself go (split ends, rough knees, dimpled cellulite, etc.), believing that Cort, who had, after all, dated someone with a (seemingly) bulging overpuss, wouldn’t mind? Well… sure. Of course. Sure. All kinds of retarded stuff could happen, thought Cort, but that was only the scratched-up lousy side of a coin whose shiny nice side was all the cred he’d get from girls for going out with Kelly despite her unfortunate overpuss bulge. And if it did turn out that Kelly wasn’t THE ONE, and that Cort had been suffering the overpuss bulge for a smaller payout than real true love, not only would that land him in the black, karmically, but these cred-giving girls would be all over him, knowing he would never say anything, or even think anything, about their bodies to cause them any feelings of insecurity, because, as he’d have demonstrated by dating that girl with the weird bulge above the puss area, Cort wasn’t shallow.

  IMPORTANT MEN

  As he approached me on the sidewalk, I noticed the important man had the kind of face that would look exactly the same with or without a mustache. He was carrying a black-lacquered cane with a diamond-studded handle and I envied him his cane. I imagined thumping my fingertips against it, the sound that would make, and flipping it upside-down to make believe it was the letter L. If the cane were mine, I would pretend it was a long-barreled pistol with a diamond-studded grip. I would holster it in the elastic of my jockey shorts and have friends. When I came across a friend, I would pull the cane out of the holster and point it, say: “Gotcha.” I could do that as many times as I wanted, and it would never stop being a good joke. I would be what they call “a character.” People would want to see more of me. They would say of me, “That character! Always with the cane he pretends is a pistol!” and exchange intimate glances with one another, then wave the whole thing off with both hands and decide to lunch together. “Lunch?” one would say. “Let’s,” would say another.

  The important man continued in my direction, until he was right in front of me. I made myself sideways so he could pass. My fingernails grazed the button on his epaulet. “Pardon,” he said, and he was walking away.

  Just like the last one.

  “Come back,” I said.

  He waved me off and sped his pace. I went after him. I walked beside him. The heat was unbearable that day. I was sweating.

  “I have something to ask you,” I said.

  He said, “What’s that?” but he kept walking, like he was scared of me, like I had done something wrong or something dangerous. I was going to ask him if he ever imagined his cane was a pistol, and then say, “Me too,” and we would have something in common. But I knew that would scare him and I didn’t want that to scare him so I said something I thought was scary so we could both be scared together. I said, “The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!” and made a movement with my shoulders like I would hit him, and he flinched. That was when another man (bearded) came along. This second man owned the hat shop that we were standing in front of, but he was not wearing a hat and he said to me, “What the fuck? Who the fuck?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I was ashamed to look at him. I looked at the display window. It was full of breastless, earth-tone mannequins in bowlers and derby hats sitting in folding chairs around a square table, one on each side. There were playing cards affixed to their hands by means of an invisible adhesive, probably the quick-dry liquid variety. There wasn’t a single thumb between the four of them and this second man expected me to pretend they were playing poker.

  “Who the fuck?” the second man said again.

  I imagined he knew I didn’t understand him and that was why he said it the second time. I think he gave up on me after that.

  Still watching the mannequins, I made a thinking face to appease him. Then I started thinking. I thought: They do not have ears and they do not have hair, yet their hats do not fall over their eyes—there must be adhesive. I thought: But a liquid adhesive of the kind affixing the cards to the hands would, if used on the heads, irreparably gum up the fibers in the hats and ruin their potential to be sold well. No, I thought, a liquid adhesive would not be appropriate at all, and therefore the mannequins must have strips of adhesive tape between their heads and their hats, and these strips must be looped into O-shapes. Oh, you’re stupid. You thought you were smart, but you’re stupid, I hate you. There is double-sided tape for sale at stores. There is the law of parsimony. Nothing need be looped into O-shapes—not when both sides adhere with equal potency. You should have thought of that first, but you are not elegant.

  The second man said, “Go,” and pointed me across the street.

  I crossed the street and straddled a construction horse. I watched the second man talk to the first. They spoke like friends. The second man set his hand on the shoulder of the first man and the first man leaned on his cane toward the second man and soon they were laughing. When they laughed, I could see the steam of their gasps converging. I thought: Maybe they don’t know each other at all and the second man is the greatest salesman who ever lived, is selling the first man a hat without the first man even knowing that he is being sold a hat. I thought: I wonder if they notice the way their steam is converging. I wonder if the second man does but the first man doesn’t, if knowing how to foment this convergence is one of the secrets to being as great a salesman as the second man. Convinced of it, and convinced that the second man, despite his canelessness, was important, possibly even more important than the first, I set out to find someone to mingle steam with. This is not as easy for me as it is for others. It is not as easy as it should be.

  I walked a block and found two men talking. I approached the younger one and said, “What the fuck? Who the fuck? Who the fuck? Go.” It didn’t work.

  JANE TELL

  This puffy-eyed woman with a bluish dewlap used to order three mugs of coffee at a time every weekday morning at the Highland Park Denny’s. When servers gave her looks or told her that refills were free and unlimited, she’d answer at a volume that begged overhearing, “I have trouble waiting.” One time I was seated in the booth beside her
s and I noticed a white, rectangular pill lying on its side next to one of the mugs. I was all but certain it was a bar of Xanax, a top-three favorite, but I couldn’t read the markings. The woman caught me squinting, and I could see by the way that she pinkened and slouched that she thought I was judging her. What did I care? I guess I cared a little. I said, “Is that a Xanax bar?” Then she started talking fast. She didn’t love Xanax. It allowed her to sleep well and made her less anxious, but the trade-off was fogginess and boring thoughts, and her boredom made her sad, so she’d chug down coffee till her brain started firing, but then she’d get anxious all over again and require more Xanax. “Unfixable,” she said. I nodded sympathetically and looked her in the eyes and, before I’d even gotten the French toast I’d ordered, she’d said she’d gladly trade half her sixty-count bottle for a quarter ounce of weed to anyone who’d take it.

  My cost on a quarter was just thirty dollars, and Xanax bars, at that time, went for six apiece, minimum. It was nonetheless dim to consider the offer—I didn’t know her—but middle-aged women seemed harmless to me, and I’d been selling marijuana since my freshman year of high school without any trouble.

  We settled our bills and went to her minivan. The bull’s-eye on the SuperTarget sign across the strip mall flickered, and the woman, eyes averted, digging around in her purse for her keys, asked me, “Can I feel your muscle?”

  She had to be fifty-five, sixty years old. I bent my arm and felt stupid about it. Her fingers, which she’d managed to get into my jacket and under the sleeve of my T-shirt, were icy. “You’re strong,” she said. “Do you want to smoke with me?”

  “No,” I told her.

  Whenever I smoked marijuana, I’d stare, and whatever I’d stare at would seem important. All images became imagery, sophomoric imagery, the symbolic meaning of the non-symbolic things on which my eyes fixed wholly independent of their actual functions. Cigars not just cocks, but primal cocks—the primal cocks of the patriarchs. The last time I’d smoked pot was a year before; a girlfriend had convinced me I could like it again, like I’d used to in high school. When I woke at my desk a few hours later, the new scrolling message on my monitor read IMAGISTIC METAPHORS HEMORRHAGE ANALOGIES WITHIN THE CLUTCHES OF MY HEAVY HANDS. Before I could delete it, the girlfriend saw it, took hold of my shoulders, and told me, “That’s trippy plus also creative,” then detailed the ways it was trippy and creative, and I counted off a week before breaking up with her. In short, marijuana made me hate everything, but I’d long since quit explaining even that to anyone. Most people, when you tell them you’re not into their vice, they either assume you’re afraid or don’t like them. If you’re selling them the vice, they know you’re not afraid. Those few who do take what you say at face value see you’re different from them, which undermines trust. And my bags were light—I made ten “eighths” of every ounce. If someone ever pulled out a scale, I’d be fucked.

  Still, I could have said more to the puffy-eyed woman to nice up my “No,” and normally I would have—I’d have said I had an exam in an hour, or was heading to my parents’ house to drive them to the airport—but I didn’t feel like lying. That muscle-squeeze had siphoned off my will to accommodate. Nice wasn’t in me.

  “Really?” said the woman.

  “Really,” I said.

  A throaty, clogged sound joggled her dewlap. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s really okay. I understand I’m disgusting. I’m old. I disgust you.” Tears cut trails through her blush and powder. She did disgust me. Her weeping was cunning. She was cueing me to tell her she was young and attractive. What she wasn’t doing, though, was backing out of the deal.

  The summer I’d worked for him, cold-calling prospects, my father, an insurance man, had more than once warned me, “Brusqueness doesn’t help anyone’s sales.” About that he was right, but the distinction between not helping and hurting was, I was thinking there in the Denny’s lot, a pretty big one, at least when it came to selling drugs.

  The flesh-colored tears clung to some fuzz along the woman’s jawline, then trembled, elongated, and splatted on the pavement. After three or four splats, she saw she’d failed to cue me.

  “You’re cruel,” she said. “A cruel person,” she said.

  I watched the wet spot widen on the pavement.

  “A cruel person,” she echoed. She had had this conversation before. The big distinction between then and now, apart from my being an entirely different human being, was that the last guy had insisted he was not a cruel person. She couldn’t figure out what to say to him at the time, but as she’d driven away from him (I could see her chewing her waxy lower lip, jerking her head in tiny, neck-cramping nods), she’d come up with a retort that she’d hoped to use the next time—this time. But I’d fucked it all up for her by failing to protest against the accusation, and now she was stuck repeating herself. “A very cruel person,” she said. “You’re cruel.” By the seventh repetition—by then she was whispering—I started, despite my disgust, to feel bad for her, guilty for repelling whatever small victory she needed to save the face she’d lost the last time.

  “Hey, look,” I said. “I’ll have a cigarette with you.”

  “Only because you feel sorry for me.” She said it through her teeth.

  “Do the cruel,” I said, “feel sorry for the crying?”

  “No,” she said. “I guess they don’t.” All at once, she stopped her crying. “You’re a strange kid,” she said. “You’re clever,” she said, and, tagging my shoulder with a friendly open palm, she told me, “Have your ciggy while I roll up a j-bird.”

  Her minivan’s interior smelled of scented kleenex. She pulled a sleeve of papers from a cassette slot in the console and slipped her body sideways through the space between the seats, her forehead smearing across my jaw as she ducked and contorted toward the bench in the back, where the windows were tinted. “Sorry,” she said. I stayed shotgun and pulled two “eighths” from my jacket. I emptied one baggie into the other and handed both back to her. She rolled a small joint and licked it shut, her tongue long and coffee-stained, and fired up her lighter. She said, “Should I call you when I get the refill?” I told her my number and she repeated it back to me while writing it down, then continued to write, singsonging, “For wee-eed.” Once she’d finished her joint, she tapped thirty pills from an amber bottle into the empty baggie I’d given her, and drove me to my car, ten spaces away. Just like that, I’d made a hundred and fifty dollars.

  Fifteen minutes later, traffic-stopped for something, the dunce got arrested for possession. The next day, detectives came by with a search warrant (quiet suburb, bored police force). I’d been waiting for a pizza to be delivered, and I opened the door without checking the peephole. My drugs were stored in my box of comics and there was no way to flush them—I was made to sit in plain view on the couch—and there was no way the cops would fail to check the box, so I told them where to look, thinking my willing cooperation might minimize damages. I told them that, too.

  “In your dreams,” one said. “This ain’t some movie. We don’t like you, and that haircut.”

  “It’s a real stupid haircut,” another one said.

  They trashed my beanbag, sifted the styrofoam filling for pills. Then they dumped my comics out of their dust bags, ripping the covers off both my mint-condition Lobo #1s—my first investments. At age twelve, I’d bought two so I could eventually sell one and still have my cake. The purchase occasioned a fight between me and my father. He didn’t like the idea that I saw comics as an investment in anything other than my “imagination.” From then on, I had to use my allowance to buy them, and my collecting behavior ended pretty quickly, and all for the better—my father’d been right. Lobo #1 was a huge bestseller. There were thousands of them in plastic dust bags with cardboard backings, in cardboard boxes in closets. The last I’d checked, they were worth less than half the price on their covers.

  The cops found the Xanax and three “eighth” bags—luckily all I had at t
he time. The lawyer my father hired—old friend, deep discount—had me check into a six-week outpatient rehab program at a clinic in Highwood. They all knew I was faking, except the psychiatrist, Dr. Manx. I’d had Manx as a professor during the previous semester—Behaviorist Methodologies: An Introduction—and he liked me. He told me it was clear to him that I was angry, and that I suffered from chronic stress. In court eight weeks later, I pled guilty to misdemeanor possession, the lawyer argued I was a benzo and marijuana addict, and Manx said I used drugs in order to manage my anger and my stress.

  I was a “self-medicator,” Manx told the judge, but I was twenty years old, my whole life ahead of me, and now I was clean.