Lindsay Hunter - Ugly Girls

And his name was Jamey. And he lived just doors away. And Perry hadn’t come home when she said she would.

“Jamey, that’s right,” Myra called out behind him.

Jim hated her, it was a fact that he knew should have shocked him but instead landed as flat and quiet as a feather. Hated her for stopping short when it got too hard, like how she was too lazy a mother to know her daughter was in real trouble. Hated her all the more for the fact that he’d loved her, had once loved to watch her sleep, back when he didn’t know she couldn’t fall to sleep without a drink in her. Be that Myra again , he felt himself think, and then realized that was the same as wishing to be blind.

The woman still held the photo out, her arm trembling, either because she was scared or because she’d never had to hold her arm out for that long. “I’ve got the day off,” Jim told her, “and I’ll leave right now and drive around and look for your boy. I’ve got some ideas. You just go back and wait till you hear from me.”

He shut the door before she could ask him how or why or what, and he’d had to put a firm hand on her arm in order to get her to move back so it could close. There was no tautness to her skin, it was all give. Her insides had taken over, this raw meat of a woman, and for a moment he felt bad for Jamey that he had to live with such a creature.

“Why’d you tell that woman you’d do that?” Myra asked him.

But his moment of sympathy had passed. He watched out the window until Jamey’s mother had gone back inside her trailer, then he left without answering Myra, left without even pulling the screen door shut behind him.

PERRY SWITCHED BUSES, got off, and walked five blocks. Travis lived in a house amid a clump of other houses. A bona fide subdivision , a word she always thought meant “fancy,” but people had toys and tires and old bikes and old men in lawn chairs in their yards just as much as they did in the trailer park. Travis’s house was white with red trim and no shit in the yard, but no flowers either. Just scorched-looking grass and a gravel driveway, no car parked there, which she hoped meant they could be alone. I’m going to have sex with him , she thought to herself as she walked up to his door. She always said it to herself just before, partly to shock and partly because she couldn’t believe it, not truly, not until it was actually happening. She tried to picture it: the weight of him, shirt on or off? Off. His hot mouth and cold fingertips, it was always that way. Their feet tangled … feet, Jamey’s feet.

She was having a hard time getting truly excited. I’m going to have sex with him. It wasn’t doing the trick. The feet, the fall, always there at the edge of her vision. She was at his door now, staring at her distorted reflection in the brass door knocker, and she reached out to herself, knocked three times.

And then there he was. Easy as that, always so easy, she had to remember. Wearing a white T-shirt and gym shorts, his calves tanned and hairy. And he was barefoot, which thrilled her despite herself, it made it seem like they were familiar that way.

He squinted one eye closed, the hallway dark behind him, the sun at Perry’s back. “Hi,” he said.

“I’m going to have sex with you,” Perry said. The words came so easily, like ice cubes tumbling into a glass.

He pulled the door open, stepped aside to let her in. “Do you want something to drink?” he asked. She wondered if he hadn’t heard her, if she’d even said it out loud after all. He had closed the door behind her, both of them in the dark hallway now, and as Perry’s eyes adjusted she could see that Travis’s mom was the type to fill the walls of her home, as Myra would be if she could nail anything to that wood paneling in the trailer. On the wall nearest her there were a dozen framed photos, each photo holding at least five people, as if Travis’s mother needed even her family photos to be filled up. Behind Travis were shelves holding tiny glass figurines, some identical to ones Myra had. Was every adult obsessed with these things that couldn’t be touched or handled or loved in any physical way? Maybe this was her attraction to Travis, maybe this was why they understood each other. Their mothers were nurturers of dumb shit. As Travis led the way into the kitchen she took a tiny glass dolphin and put it in her pocket.

In the kitchen the refrigerator held curled drawings, more photos, a years-old calendar from Jiffy Lube, an assortment of magnetic pens. Perry wanted the tiny calendar but left it where it was, and felt a weird pride in it.

“All we have is orange juice,” Travis said. “Or I guess water.”

“Hey, show me your bedroom,” Perry said.

“I don’t want to,” Travis said, quickly, like he’d had it in his head and was just waiting for his cue.

“Is it dirty or something?”

“No. Well, yeah, it is, but that’s not why I don’t want to show you. Let’s just watch TV or something instead.” His voice was cheerful, too bright, like he was forcing himself to stay calm.

There was that weird pride again, that feeling like she was maturing, doing something adult. “It’s okay if you’re a virgin,” Perry said. “It’s not a big deal, trust me. I’ll tell you what to do.” She had never had to beg like this.

“I’m not a virgin,” he said quietly, and Perry knew it was true. He wasn’t a virgin, and he didn’t care that his room was dirty, he just didn’t want her to be in there. She’d never cared all that much when people at school called her a slut, she’d always been able to get what she wanted anyway, but maybe Travis did care. In his work uniform he seemed so much like an adult, so beyond high school, but here in his gym shorts and bare feet it was clear he was just a kid, they were both just kids, and he didn’t want to be another notch on her belt, or whatever that saying was Myra always used.

But why let her in, then? Why not just shut the door in her face? Why kiss her back at the Denny’s, why agree to let her come over today? And then it came to her. He felt sorry for her. Felt sorry for the poor trailer park slut with the ugly friend. He probably thought she’d feel thankful toward him for letting her in despite what she was. Was probably waiting for her to thank him for allowing her her dignity. Instead she reached behind and up her shirt, undid her bra one-handed, watched him watching her breasts release and fall. By now she knew how to take off her shirt and her bra all at once, and she did it now, letting them fall into a twisted clump by her feet.

“Come here,” she said, but he already was, bending to pick up her clothes, holding them up against her front, looking down at his feet. He had a black toenail; Perry had seen it when he’d first come to the door, and in her experience that meant he was physical, had dropped something heavy on it, meant he was a man. “No,” she said, and pushed her clothes back to the floor.

“No,” he said back to her, and tried to bend again for her clothes, but she was quick, she had her mouth on his and her body pressed against him before he could stop her. And he was kissing her back, there was no doubt, he was holding her to him and his fingertips weren’t even cold, and it was then that Perry felt the tears in her throat, felt how she’d almost died a little when it seemed like he was going to turn her away, felt how maybe she loved him, maybe she deserved love despite what had happened with Jamey, despite everything that had happened, despite herself.

“Please,” he was saying, and Perry answering him, “Yes, of course, yes,” only his hands were pushing instead of holding now. “Please stop,” he was saying, pulling away from her, backing up until his back was against the refrigerator, a magnet dropping to the floor.