Leopoldine Core - When Watched - Stories

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On the day of their drive, Peanut sat waiting on her stoop. She wore a sheer, ratty T-shirt tucked into dark denim shorts and white tennis shoes without socks. Beside her feet sat a large straw bag with a rope strap.

Peanut had lived in the same apartment on the Lower East Side since childhood but in the last year, the building had changed hands and since the sale, it kept morphing. First, all of the stone floral ornaments were torn from the facade and then, after months of misguided upscaling, the building wound up looking like a pizza chain with pretensions. Cheap wrought-iron handrails led to a yellow wood door that was often greasy with oil. “It’s very Epcot,” Frances had sneered the first time she came over. “Sort of a suburban take on urban.”

Peanut considered how she might appear waiting on her stoop, bent over her marble notebook, legs crossed, big tortoise sunglasses between forward-falling hair. She smacked a mosquito on her calf.

• • •

Frances pulled up to the curb in her olive pickup truck, one arm out the window. She had a skinny, creased face and center-parted Jesusy hair that she kept dirty to darken the gray. “Hey,” she said, her voice tender and smug at once.

In the car, Peanut smiled madly. The two held each other and made out greedily for a bit. Then Frances looked nervously out the window, adjusting her black horn-rimmed glasses.

“Oh, come on.” Peanut rolled her eyes. “Relax.” Her voice had a fluty underwater quality, a subtle echo chamber.

“You come on. You’re a sweet little bunny and I’m this gnarly old man. I mean if someone wanted to murder one of us to make a point, they would murder me.”

Peanut pointed to a couple of old women sitting on a stoop across the street. They were staring. “Those two absolutely want to murder you. Look at them.” She chuckled. “It’s like they don’t even care that we can see them.”

“They want us to see. They want us to know what they think of us.”

“Right.” Peanut tipped her head onto Frances’s shoulder. “That I’m some victim.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well you’re the old pervert, right? But I’m considered this, like, idiot child with daddy issues. Even your friends treat me like that.”

“Like you have daddy issues?”

“Like I’m an idiot. They don’t really,” Peanut paused, “ engage me. I mean, the level of inquiry is low . Like, if we get dinner, they pretend to be talking to both of us, but they’re making eye contact with you the whole time. And then you and whoever just wind up prompting each other’s monologues. It reminds me of being at dinner parties with my parents as a kid. Back when I was three feet tall and really was invisible unless I was being bad.”

“God. You have to tell me when you feel like that.” Frances pinched Peanut’s midsection affectionately. It was a measuring pinch. A butcher’s pinch.

“Okay.” Peanut sat up in her seat and remembered that she was angry at Frances. “Or maybe I just shouldn’t go. I mean out with you and your friends. I’m not interested in winning anyone’s approval.” She opened a greasy paper bag full of broken cookies and scones from the bakery where she worked. “You want?” She put the open bag between their seats.

“No. I’m starting to look like a skeleton with a watermelon around its waist,” Frances smirked and then dug her hand into the bag, lifting out a crumbly cookie half.

Peanut laughed and poked Frances’s hip. “I like it.”

“It? That’s great. So it exists.”

“Oh darling, stop. Anyway, I only took this stuff because it was free. I’m actually pretty revolted by sweets at this point.” Peanut began rummaging through her straw bag and pulled out a CD book covered with peeling stickers. She flipped through the plastic pages.

“Can we not listen to the Smiths,” Frances said, steering back onto the road.

“Why not?”

“His voice is so endless and droning. It just makes me sad.”

“That’s the whole point.”

“Well, it doesn’t speak to my sadness, it produces sadness.” Frances reached back into the paper bag and felt around. “What are these hard pieces?”

“Scones. They’re sort of awful.” Peanut settled on a Gram Parsons compilation and Frances nodded approvingly. “Tell me about your trip,” Peanut said in a soft, guarded voice, sliding the CD in. “Dark End of the Street” began to play.

“We stayed at the grossest Motel 6. There was this place next door called Safari, with a big sign listing everything inside. It said, ALL NEW LIVE GIRLS, RIB EYE, BEER GARDEN. I loved that it said all new live girls. Like, we killed the ones that were here yesterday. They’re in the dumpster. These are the new ones.”

“What’s a beer garden?”

“I don’t know. I think of fat men rubbing beers dangling from tree branches on their naked stomachs. Of course the place was really dark. And the parking lot was full of cars.”

“That’s so sci-fi. Every man a little king,” Peanut said excitedly. “You should’ve gone inside.”

“I know. I wanted to.”

“You would have managed to somehow have a great time. You’d have met some amazing woman,” Peanut said mockingly.

“Yeah and we would have had the most amazing conversation. While she was giving me a lap dance.”

Peanut pulled the visor mirror down and stared at her face. “Have you ever had a lap dance?”

“I’ve had opportunities. At Esther’s fortieth there were strippers but I resisted. Something about the idea of tons of people watching me get a lap dance.”

Peanut imagined Esther under the grinding pelvis of a stripper. She was a rather conceited woman with close-cropped red hair and a birdlike face. She had once strolled over to Peanut at a party and pointedly asked if she was committed to pushing Frances’s wheelchair when the time came. Peanut had been too stunned to say the deepest thing she felt in reply, or even to take a swing at Esther. Instead she had said in a puny voice, “Yeah,” her eyes cast downward. “Of course.”

“I did go to this place called Debbie Duz Donuts. Spelled D-u-z,” Frances continued. “I was in my thirties. All the waitresses there were topless, so me and Esther thought it would be fun. But it was this sad, boarded-up place and all the women looked really grouchy. We were like a couple of mice ordering our donuts. It was like we were supposed to pretend there weren’t tits in front of our faces.”

“That sums up my whole high school experience,” Peanut said morosely. She tilted her face at different angles before the mirror, assessing each pose. “You know your nose never stops growing. It just gets bigger and bigger your whole life.”

“Sort of the toenails of the face.”

“That’s funny.” Peanut stuck her arm elbow-deep in the paper bag. You and me, Gram Parsons sang mournfully, at the dark end of the street. You and me. They rode past shouting boys on bikes. The sun passed behind a black cloud and one hot spot bled through.

“Do you want any more?” Peanut asked and put the hard edge of a scone into her mouth.

“No. I’m turning the corner toward disgusting.”

“Anyway it really freaks me out,” Peanut said, chewing. “Already my nose is a little witchy and I like that. But in like ten years it’ll be casting the shadow of a small building.”

“I love your nose. You would look all wrong with a small nose.”

“My nose will always be a little closer to you. Like if I kiss you, it gets there first. It’s like a dick.”

The two laughed and were quiet. Peanut resumed her state of contempt almost immediately. She hated herself for being so pleasant and pledged not to laugh again. We’ll pay for the love that we stole, Parsons cried, and a red-lettered sign whipped by. ARRIVE ALIVE. DON’T TEXT AND DRIVE. The words glowed in Peanut’s mind. She set the greasy paper bag down between her feet in a quiet rage, the effect of which was oddly pretty. Frances looked over admiringly from time to time. Peanut looked her best when she was pissed. She took on the neat poise of a killer.