Lindsay Hunter - Ugly Girls

If you let a woman know how much you’ve been looking forward to her presence, you’re dead in the water. Might as well be a skunk, might as well be the janitor. He knew what he needed to do, it was only that he was out of practice. It had been years since he’d been free to lure and catch. He hoped it was like riding a bike. He hoped he’d put on just enough cologne, enough to make him smell like a man but not enough to overtake the dirt and sweat he’d worked up. A girl had once told him she’d been afraid when she smelled his sweat. That was the moment she knew she was done for. Her voice a tickle in his ear, her hair wet with her own sweat. There was always a moment when they met halfway: when his own fear had retreated and when hers had swelled. He had to make room for it. It was like he was the woman and she the man, her swollen fear meeting his growing void. For that second, they were equal.

Right now he and Perry were far from that moment, far from being equal. So much work to be done. But sometimes all that work could come about in an afternoon, and he’d been laying a foundation for weeks already. They were getting out of the car now, he could see Dayna’s bald head and white T-shirt, he could see Perry’s blond ponytail. Neither had an umbrella. The rain was like spittle now, seeming to coat everything, blowing in despite his umbrella and coating his arms, working its way into the cotton of his shirt. His stomach gurgled, something hot surged in his bowels. He had never been face to face with her, but he’d been so with her momma, and he’d been in her room, in her bed. Her underwear was alive in his back pocket, like it had a heartbeat. He felt impatient for her to know him the way he knew her. He raised his thumb to his lip.

Dayna would likely wander off, leave them to it. She was a prideful kind, didn’t want to let on how badly she wanted to watch, how badly she wanted to be the one getting lured. He’d only have to worry about her for as long as the small talk lasted.

They were closer now, picking their way down the path. He was midway up the ledge that looked over the quarry, a width of dirt and roots that made a kind of natural bridge, only there wasn’t no ropes or rail to hold on to. But you had to be an idiot to get too close to the ledge. He’d given himself a good six feet.

Perry’s ponytail swung behind her, her breasts moving ever so slightly with each step, her shirt riding up when she needed to use her arms for balance. Dayna plunged along beside her, her own breasts a sexless shelf, huge and sloppy and heaving. Jamey felt sorry for her. If he was a different man, maybe … but he was who he was.

“Hey,” he called. He unfurled the knuckles at his chin and waggled his fingers in a kind of wave, but kept his thumb where it was. He worried it looked faggoty, or like something an uncle might do, but neither girl seemed to notice, each focused on just getting down the trail and up to him as quickly as she could. A red truck came down the road, followed soon after by a silver hatchback. Neither slowed near Dayna’s car, and if they looked, it was doubtful they could see him up on the ledge, or the girls coming down the trail, especially on a dark day like this. At a glance from a passing car it was just the woods, Jamey knew. You had to slow down, stop even, and be looking for something in order to see anything. The girls were just fifty feet away now. A fart escaped, hot and wet, and Jamey was glad for the open air. He’d never lost control before, he’d always made it to a bathroom with plenty of time. It was something to keep faith in. No use worrying himself into a froth, as his momma liked to say, and having to excuse himself to find a tree or drive off in search of a toilet.

Now they were before him, not ten feet away. “Hey,” he said again. Perry’s ponytail was all wet, as pointy as a dagger. Dayna’s whole head looked dunked, a bib of wet seeping down her shirt. Up close her lips looked wrong, like she meant to draw a clown mouth but forgot to fill it in. He felt that surge of pity for her again. Maybe, if all went right, he could do something for her, too. But first things first.

“Hey,” Perry said. “You Jamey?” Her voice sounded lower than he’d expected, like her momma’s, only without the scratch of too many lost nights. He’d heard her yelling to Dayna before, he’d heard her calling Bye-bye to her momma, but her voice had been higher then, more girlish. Fake. He felt thrilled to be hearing her real voice. He nearly thanked her.

“You’re old as fuck ,” Dayna said. “You ain’t in high school, you fuckin’ liar.”

Of course, he’d been expecting that, too. Before, he hadn’t had to worry so much about not looking young enough, but the years had passed, and he’d gotten soft and pale in jail, eating clods of meat and greens so wasted they’d turned yellow and puddles of what the line cook called congealed : fluorescent jellied desserts with mystery fruit suspended inside them. And the years had passed. Nothing he could do about that. He’d rubbed tinted lotions he found at the drugstore on his face and arms, he’d lifted his momma’s jumbo cans of chili above his head and curled them in toward his face, he’d grown out his sideburns and started combing his hair back. Only those ended up being the trends from before he got locked up, and now he just looked like a man reliving his glory days. A man with a cleft lip and a soft belly and stumpy legs. He could name all his flaws for anyone who asked. Draw a map of them for Dayna if need be. But that could wait.

“I got held back,” he said through his thumb, aiming his answer at Perry. Better for Dayna to get the picture — no one wanted her here — sooner rather than later. “And I’ve always looked old for my age. I ain’t been carded since I was fourteen years old.” He moved his hand up to his hair, raked his fingers through. Shifted his weight to the other foot, so he’d look casual, so he’d look unperturbed by what Dayna had said or what she might say next.

“You get held back a whole decade?” Dayna asked. She smiled, her cartoon mouth in an ugly grin, but her eyes were red, the flesh underneath puffed and veiny. She’d been crying, Jamey realized. All girls, when you got right down to them, were pretty much the same. They all wanted to be the prettiest to someone, they all cried when things got to be too much for them.

“You been crying?” he asked. He tried his best to make his voice sound concerned. “Everything all right?” He knew she wouldn’t want him noticing that, wouldn’t want to talk about it with him most of all. And he knew it was the perfect thing to get her to shut up, to get her to mumble how she was going for a walk, or how she’d be waiting in the car. Or, even better, how she’d come back for Perry after a while. He was betting on that one, betting her embarrassment would send her somewhere she couldn’t see them.

But it was Perry who spoke next. “We just came to let you know we ain’t into you,” she said. “So you can just go ahead and lose our numbers. Stop waiting around by the computer for us to show up. I got a boyfriend and Baby Girl thinks you’re a shithead.”

It was clear she hadn’t wanted to use the word shithead , it wasn’t mean enough. Jamey knew the feeling. What was also clear to him was the wavering in her voice. A girl’s loyalty to her friend would make her say anything, try anything, Jamey knew.

A boyfriend , for example. That had to be a lie. He hadn’t seen her with no boyfriend, hadn’t heard Myra mention it, either. Why would she say it? It was a risk on her part. How could she know how he’d react to it? Some guys might be driven off by shit like that. Not him. He felt as old and wise as a tree trunk. One little chop couldn’t take him down.