King. Tanya Chapman
of the picture but still able to see the chick out the corner of my eye. She is too busy being swept off her feet by King to notice that I exist – so much for my powers of mind control. King doesn’t mean to do it, but chicks just dig him. He’s honest-to-god picture-book beautiful and, to top it off, he has this cool lopsided grin that’s completely cowboy. He’s a chick magnet. The broad sitting on the floor is hardly even bothering to play caps.
I’ve been staring at her staring at him for ten whole seconds. Ten seconds is a long time to be staring at someone. She’s still doing it. Still. I’m wearing my big army boots and I think about how easy and fun it would be to just take a couple of steps over there and kick. But then I think of Sissy and how upset she would be, so I just walk away.
I go over and talk to some people I haven’t seen since last time we were here. We dare each other into a line-dancing contest, this being a country bar and all. Some old-timey song starts up and we stand in a line in the middle of the dance floor. No one knows what the hell we’re doing, but we have this whole fabulous routine. Step, step, turn, clap, one foot out, then the other foot out, turn and begin all over again. Sissy is right in the middle of things yelling out the moves and getting everything wrong. Spiney leans against the bar and pretends he doesn’t know us, which is pretty hard because Sissy keeps yelling, ‘Come on, Spiney – you taught me this one!’ We dance the song and then we start over. By the second time through, everyone is busting a gut they’re laughing so hard.
I’m caught up in step-step-turning and realize that line dancing is the best thing ever invented. The song ends and everyone looks at one another and starts laughing all over again. We all bow and curtsy and the guys act like old-school cowboys tipping their pretend hats and hitching their jeans.
I come out of a twirl and focus my eyes. King and the caps girl are standing now and she has her arm around his waist. King is talking to someone else and balancing a beer bottle on the open palm of his hand. He’s acting like he doesn’t notice.
Sissy sees me and stops smiling as she follows my eyes over to King. She walks towards me quickly. She has her quiet voice on because she knows that big trouble could start right now. She grabs my arm and steers me out of the bar, my army boots half dragging along the floor.
Sissy hauls me to the parking lot. ‘You can’t do that, Hazel. No matter what the world hands you – ’
‘I really don’t care about the world right now, Sissy. I care that that chick is in there hanging off King.’
‘If you give in to the bad vibes then you will be in a territory where only bad will – ’
‘Okay. Okay. Let’s just get the hell out of here before I see her again.’
‘There you go, Hazel. Take the situation into control and deal with it in a positive way so that – ’
I stop listening because I’ve decided to go to the quarry. A swim in the quarry is always a good fix. We find the Duster and hop in. I know I shouldn’t drive after so much beer, but goddamn I love it. I take paths through fallow fields. The tall grasses brush against the car windows and we roll them down to stretch out our arms and feel the damp, dark tops. The night air swirls in and around us and takes away the smoke and stale beer smells left over from the bar. We don’t even turn on the radio.
When we get to the quarry, we strip down, throw our clothes on the hood of the car and run to the edge of the highest cliff. The gravel bites against my feet and wakes me up. Moonlight hits the limestone of the quarry on all sides, making it glow silvery white. I curl my toes against the side of the cliff and look down – I can’t see a thing. Somewhere below us is water.
I look over at Sissy and stick out my tongue. She grins back and I put my finger to my lips. ‘Shhhh.’
We jump.
Falling through the air in the dark is one of my favourite things to do. There’s a point in your fall when you think that there’s nothing below you. Maybe you’ll never hit the water. Maybe you’ve already hit and you’re dead. Then, just when you believe that it’s all over, you land. All of a sudden you’re alive, and whatever was getting you down is gone.
The force of the fall pushes me deep, and I let myself torpedo under for one powerful moment. No one knows how deep the quarry is. There are rumours of Mafia cars, dead bodies and stolen treasure hidden in this water.
A million bubbles swirl around me. When you jump from great heights you have to use bubbles to orient yourself because you can get confused and swim the wrong way -deeper instead of up. I follow the bubbles straight to the top, burst through to the air and take a deep breath. And there’s Sissy grinning.
Then Sissy and I float. We are really great at floating. We can float forever. Naked floating combined with blind jumping can take away any trouble in the world. My ears are underwater and I can hear Sissy’s muted words, her voice echoing softly between the limestone walls of the quarry. Sissy’s voice, when you don’t really have to listen, is a beautiful thing.
I came home in a great mood but now everything is wrong again. I’m walking around the trailer singing angry songs at the top of my not-so-puny voice, and I don’t care who in this unglamorous place I wake up.
I don’t make up words for songs very well when I’m drunk or angry, and now I’m both, so I’m singing ‘What the hell is going on?’ with ‘It’s all wrong, it’s all wrong’ as the chorus. Pretty stupid.
King’s not home. That’s what made everything bad again. I want to go back to the quarry, to be anywhere except here. I want to talk to Old Joe so he can tell me that something good will come out of this. But I can’t think of a damn thing that Old Joe or anyone else could tell me to make this stupid situation even close to okay. I find King’s guitar and take all the strings off, which is super-bad because it bends the neck. I twist the tuning heads and hear the notes go flat and then flatter and then wind themselves down to just plain noise. I look around for more destruction, but there’s nothing else I can think to touch that would piss him off more. So I sit and try not to cry like a silly little girl.
I try not to think of King and the caps girl in some field somewhere doing god knows what. The more I try not to think about it, the clearer the scene becomes. I can practically hear every word they’re saying from wherever they are.
I have to chill out, so I figure that this is as good a time as any to water the flowers. I go out to the back of the trailer, turn on the hose and get the spray gun. I think of the caps girl. I can’t help it. I try to remember if she’s pretty, if she’s prettier than me. I think of King playing caps with her and the one time I saw him look at her. I try to analyze his face. But there is nothing in my memory. Their features turn into expressions that I can’t figure out, knowing glances that I never saw. I wish I wasn’t so drunk so I could remember if the looks really happened. Then again, I’m glad I’m drunk and wish I was drunker because the fact, the real fact, is that King isn’t here -again.
I even went for a float first, and I still beat him home. That’s a lot of time to play with, especially on a drunken night. I yank the hose to the front of the trailer and think violent King thoughts. I stand in the middle of the lawn, press the trigger on the spray gun and start weaving in a too-drunk-not-drunk-enough circle.
And then there’s the top of King’s head popping out of a patch of waist-high flowers. I have the gun spraying right against his chest, and he’s soaked.
His voice is sleepy. ‘Hey, Hazel, hey, what are you doing watering at this time of night?’
‘I heard it’s better to water at night.’
‘Yeah, I think I heard that too.’
I haven’t turned off the gun or moved my aim. The water is still spattering full blast against his T-shirt. He must be sitting in mud by now.
‘Why don’t you come over here?’
‘Because it’s wet over there. And I don’t want to wreck my dress.’
So he stands up and walks right into the water