Jack O'Connell - The Skin Palace

They’re in the backseat of the Buick and they’ve got the top rolled down. It’s the same car Perry was driving on the day they met — a maroon ’65 Skylark that guzzles gas. Last year they dropped a wad getting the floorboards replaced. Now, with Perry’s big news, Sylvia is sure it’s only a matter of time before he starts pushing for a Saab or a Volvo. For all she knows, Ratzinger may have already made the suggestion.

“This is the part I love,” Perry says. So far there are about a dozen parts he loves.

“We’re going down in the elevator,” he says, “and Ratzinger waits for this guy to get out at the garage level, okay? And then he turns to me and he does this clap on the back, and the whole time there’s no eye contact, you know. He’s got his eyes on the floor numbers. And we get to the street level and before the doors open he says, ‘and by the way, there’ll be a little something extra come Fridays from now on.’”

He bites in on his bottom lip and slaps the driver’s seat.

“A raise,” Sylvia says.

He’s nodding at the words. “This is the way these guys work, you know. He never mentions a figure, okay? Just a little something extra, you know. Make me guess. Make me wait for Friday so I can see the numbers.”

“You deserve every dime,” she says.

The Cansino Drive-in is one of the last of its kind in the country. In high school, Sylvia came here a handful of times with a packed carload of forgotten friends. It’s gotten a lot seedier since then. The Buick is parked in the very last row of the lot where asphalt gives way to a scrubby dirt patch that dissolves into full-blown forest. The parking lot is half-filled with teenagers. Lots of pickup trucks with fat tires and skinny girls with blonde hair down to their behinds. The kids all sit in the truck beds around coolers of beer. They smoke cigarettes and make constant trips to the snack bar.

The movie’s sound track is beamed at them over the radio. Those beautiful, ribbed-silver window speakers are long gone, but the white mounting posts they hung from still stand, circles of weed springing up through the posts’ tear-shaped concrete foundations.

They’re half-watching something called The Initiation of Alice. It’s a pretty standard soft-core exploitation job by Meyer Dodgson. Lots of female nudity and beach locations, but nothing too explicit. Upon the screen, a topless coed is admiring her own reflection in an ornate, full-length mirror.

“I spoke with Candice, who got the same pitch,” Perry says, “only from Ford. I knew Candice would be the other one they tapped.”

“I remember. You said Candice.”

“We both figure they’ll run us around the track for a year, maybe a little less. Then they’ll give us the title.”

“Partner.”

“Big day, Sylvia. I want to remember this day.”

“You’ll need some new suits.”

He sits back, lets his shoulders slump a little.

“I want to buy you something, Sylvia.”

“Okay, next movie’s on you.”

His voice goes lower and he reaches over and takes her hand.

“I’m serious. Something nice.”

“A movie would be nice. I don’t need—”

He waves away the thought. “I know you don’t need,” he stretches out the word. “This isn’t about need. Isn’t there something you want?”

She shakes her head, passes him the wine bottle and picks a licorice twist out of its bag.

“C’mon, I want to mark this occasion. If you don’t help me out I’ll pick out something on my own.”

“Perry—”

“Some awful piece of jewelry you’ll keep in the box in the dresser …”

She nods and squints at him and bites the end off the twist. He’s referring to this enormous silver bracelet he gave her last Christmas, which makes her arm look like it just came out of a cast. But she knows the thing cost a fortune and feels guilty every time she opens her drawer to take out a sweater.

She says, “I thought we were going to start saving.”

“We are, believe me. Second check starts the down-payment fund.”

Perry’s all hot for buying a house this year, but Sylvia loves where they live now.

“C’mon, give me some idea. I’ll go out blind and buy earrings. It’ll be scary. Don’t make me do it.”

He can still make her laugh. And he usually gets his way when he’s being funny.

“Okay, there is something …”

He’s thrilled. He does a drumroll on his knees with his fingers and says, “Bingo.”

“I was down in the Zone last week …”

Already, she’s said the wrong thing. Perry hates the Canal Zone.

“Yes,” he says, dragging out the s, trying to prepare himself for anything.

“There was this ad. On a bulletin board in the Rib Room—”

“God,” he says, forcing a smile, trying to make his distaste into a weary joke. “I hate it that you eat down there. I just don’t think it’s healthy.”

She cocks her head to the side, purses the lips a little.

“Sorry,” he says, annoyed with himself for jarring the mood. “Go ahead. An ad.”

“It was a good price. I checked the catalogs. And they said it was in mint condition.”

“A good price on …”

She takes a breath and lets it out, “An Aquinas.”

“An Aquinas,” he repeats.

She nods, not sure whether to get defensive or laugh at herself, like it’s the same old Sylvia and some things never change.

He says, “Another camera?”

“It’s an Aquinas, Perry—”

“What does that make? Four, right? Four cameras?”

“Four?”

“Yeah, four. The Canon, the Yashica, and the Polaroid.”

She stares at him, her mouth crooked like he’s been sarcastic, but still inside the margin of funny. A beat goes by and his expression remains unchanged and she realizes he’s being serious.

“The Polaroid? C’mon, Perry, that’s like a twenty-dollar camera. I just use it for proofs. I just use it for taking note of something I’ll want to do later.”

“A Polaroid isn’t a camera? A Polaroid suddenly doesn’t count as a camera?”

“Okay, forget it,” she says, looking up at the screen as the young woman in front of the mirror starts to rub sunscreen into her shoulder. “It was your idea. You brought up buying something.”

He reaches across for her hand again.

“I meant, like, diamond stud earrings or something, I meant—”

She squeezes the hand and lets it go.

“Diamond stud earrings, Perry? When would I wear diamond studs? They’d clash with the decor down at Snapshot Shack.”

Perry has begun to hate Sylvia’s job. She works in one of those tiny film booths you see at the edge of every mall parking lot in America. To a degree, she understands his feelings. Those little huts are about five feet square. Barely enough room inside for you to turn around. She thinks just the sight of them gives a lot of people a kind of unconscious jolt of claustrophobia. And the particular booth Sylvia works in is even worse. It was built as an enormous scale replica of an old Brownie camera. But she likes the job. Right now, it’s exactly what she wants to do. Maybe it’s this visible lack of ambition, this absence of a career that bothers Perry. Maybe he can’t envision turning to Ratzinger over lunch and saying, “Sylvia? She sells film from inside of a big camera …”

“There’ll be all kinds of places to wear them,” he says. “Believe me.”

“Look, I said forget it.”

His eyes narrow a little. He shifts over to sit next to her. He doesn’t want the night to go bad.

“Okay,” he says, smiling, being indulgent. “Tell me about the …”

“Aquinas,” she says.

“Doesn’t sound Japanese,” he says, putting on a shocked expression.