Good Enough

Saturday, even in rain, the races are the only place to go where everyone more or less looks just like me. Earl picks me up around noon and we do the drive thru at Arby’s for curly fries, cheddar melts, and large Cokes. Earl is my bestest friend. We still call each other that, even though I can feel how stupid it sounds to everyone except us. Earl’s real name is Pretty but God save you if you ever call her that for she is a hornet at heart and will sting just as easy as kiss you, believe me. She’s like an alligator: no soft parts, only hard, resistant flesh that will not stand any form of tenderness.

We are both 20, born one month apart in the very same hospital. Earl theorizes we slept in the same little bed at the hospital and that’s how we became friends later in life.

Earl and I went stag to our junior-year prom, both of us decked out in matching dresses her sister sewed for us from fake satin we bought at Clothworld. Purple, with some black lace fringing the hem. We wore our old black lace Madonna gloves from junior high and did each other’s hair. I managed a haphazard french twist in her dark hair and she made my dishwater blond shag into little coils. My mom took pictures with my old LeClic and Earl and I both felt really good, like how you feel when you’re on the cusp of understanding everything and you’re pretty sure it’s all going to be a nice surprise.

So we went and no one we hung out with was there, even though the locker talk had been all bravado the week before; heavy metal dudes making declarations of rebellion, how they were going to show up in jean cut-offs and tuxedo t-shirts, their middle fingers held high in salute to the principal. We only encountered the people we had in classes all our lives but never knew past the grades where clothes and cliques became the dividing line between us and them. They stared at us and finally we left after half an hour. I felt numb and half insane and Earl said nothing. She drove an El Camino back then and it rumbled so loud and deep that, unless there was something important to say, it was better just to wait. I felt as though one of us should say something, but she revved the engine and took all the corners harder than usual. Her face was blank, but I remember how I could see the muscles in her jaw working, tried to imagine the pressure between her teeth as she rhythmically clenched them. She dropped me off and I went inside and I remember how the house smelled of burnt vegetable oil. I went into the kitchen and ate a stray curl of bacon abandoned on the table and the next Monday the rumor was that Earl and I were S&M dykes that went shamelessly to prom together holding hands. One girl stated that she saw us tongue kissing in the bathroom.

Earl drives south, past pet shops, small-time hardware stores, a number of fast food chains beckoning with $1.99 specials and plastic toys with moving parts. Curly fries are best eaten right away, so we are quiet as she maneuvers the Montego through the cityscape.

The racing strip is right outside of town. It’s just a big ring of dirt with flimsy, aluminum stands that few people actually use since everyone prefers to socialize around the track. All the fights are there, too. Once, I saw Earl fight a girl twice her size and win by the simple yank of a ridiculously long earring. It’s amazing what will make people crumple.

Earl pulls into the lot and we get out. I shake a few curly fries off me and bend to the rearview mirror for a once over inspection. Not too bad today. I’ve got on my best Levi’s and my old Dokken concert-T that everyone always “ooos” over. It’s a classic. Mint condition.

There are lots of mangled rock concert t-shirts here, most with the arms cut off, some with holes punched through, all of them faded from black to gray-brown. Ozzie, Metallica, Iron Maiden. It’s so post-nuclear war, but I guess that is the idea. Men wear them to pieces and somehow it always looks good, even when a guy hasn’t got much going for him to begin with, like say his teeth are snaggled and his eyes are too close together. There’s something tough in the torn; something animal yet admirable. So they dress like it’s a code. Some girls do it, but only the fit ones can pull it off; the rest look like street walkers. I have never tried it.

Earl sees Steve and John and waves them down. I am already flushed before they are near us because John reminds me of Tommy Lee Jones a little. His gaze is very still, constant. He has that same smile, the one that creeps like a jungle cat slow up the side of his face. I adjust my posture, one leg slightly in front of the other.

I see that Steve and John are towing John’s younger brother around, a despicable drowned-rat looking thing that insists on being called “Tucson.” “Jeffy,” Earl said once, “you don’t even know how to spell Tucson.” But Jeffy won’t let it die, it’s his sole cause and primary campaign. It’s starting to catch on, more by his robotic repetition than any true respect for his feelings.

Steve and John don’t even get a “hi” out before Tucson starts. “Hey you fuckin’ scags, how they fuckin’ hangin?” We say “shut up” in unison and slap at him. It’s a kind of greeting the two sexes worked out some time around junior high, at least in our crowd. An insult, a “shut up,” the obligatory slap and tickle. One of us is getting the short end of the stick.

John has no problem with eye contact. “How’ve you been?” he asks me, and I understand how a wave might feel thrashing suddenly against my body, though I’ve never been to the ocean.

“Okay. How’ve you been?”

“Good. Pretty good.” Then the smile, Tommy Lee Jones, jungle cat. It all starts this notion inside me that maybe he could go for me, maybe.

We migrate around the social scene, everyone around us carrying plastic cups of beer and paper plates of hot dogs or those nachos with the jalepeneos scattered liberally across the top. I’m already hungry again. I can taste the tang of jalepeneo, smell the fizz of Pepsi under my nose. Earl isn’t as ravenous as I am, generally. She eats when the thought occurs to her, but it isn’t the kind of love affair like I have.

The races have begun. All the racers have sweaty heads and dirty palms. There are no spiffy racing gloves or jumpsuits here; only jeans and t-shirts and the occasional helmet. The cars gleam prettily in the sunlight. They’re bright orange, blue, red. You’d have to press your nose against each pristine paint job to see the fine abrasions of day-to-day use. Few fingerprints, no deep scratches or nicks. The drivers wear the dirt, bear cuts across their knuckles and forearms.

The track owner isn’t a consistent enforcer of the rules, but posts them dutifully in full view of everyone should anyone decide to sue. No deliberate tapping, rear-ending, wrecking, No spitting, No fighting: you get the picture.

The lights go green and the volume rockets past any pansy-ass roar, straight to an earth-cracking sound that makes the ground shudder and the babies look up in terrified surprise. There is a great deal of hooting and hollering but it sounds canned, like it’s coming from a radio hidden under a blanket and turned low. Earl howls with the rest of them, grabs her ring and middle fingers with her thumb and shoots the sign of the devil to the sky. I clutch my elbows and stand with my legs apart. According to my shadow, I almost look thin standing this way; my legs stretch high to my hips, ankles delicate in this dark reflection.

If you’re not standing too close to the track you can see a race pretty well, unless the wind is up. The dust flies, chokes the air with a dry, brown fog that sticks to sweaty skin and collects in the corners of your eyes. The drivers tear around the track, kicking up dirt the whole way, competing for small cash prizes from the day’s admission sales. They don’t do it for the money, they do it for the freedom to make their souped-up cars growl and shriek and shake at the limits of endurance. They do it for those pretty, blond girls who hang around the track and smile shyly until one gets a driver cornered behind the gray-painted, shanty bathrooms and turns into lion-eyed Lita Ford with leather whips and sweaty language.

I’m low on cash but Earl doesn’t mind spotting me for nachos. She makes sure to eat a couple even though she is not hungry. Earl understands this will make me feel better about mooching. She’s not a hugger, she never signed her notes LYLAS (Love Ya Like A Sis), and she certainly never called anyone “honey” or “sweetie,” but she has a side of her that is something like the warm spot a ray of sunshine will leave on the floor after it has moved on.

I hide out by the rickety emcee booth to eat and watch out for any sign of John. I spot him close to the track, watching the 6th race with his hands jammed deep in his pockets. He’s wearing old Levi’s and to me he is standing tall and sleek like Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive. Remember him in blue jeans, a black jacket and all wet from running through the tunnels? How he stood with his legs apart and his face very, very still? John has that “way” about him sometimes. Not a lot, but enough to make me look away, catch my breath a little.

I rejoin Earl to watch the races and do the social scene until her hairspray has given out and my nose is pink with sunburn. I can see John over by the snack stand surrounded by a web of women. One won’t stop stroking her hair, another is standing directly in front of him with her hands on her hips, one is taking a ridiculously long time to smear lip gloss over her shiny-wet lips. I can see John shifting from one leg to the other, he’s obviously nervous and I suddenly understand that the women are loving it, as I would if I had that kind of courage. Even with all the cool, calm and collected he has stored up within him, John is shy with these women.

I keep hoping to catch his eye, thinking maybe I’ll wave to him, but he is completely distracted. The hip-girl has moved closer. I decide to forget about it. It’s like watching a Lexus cruise down the street, gleaming and dreamy looking with all that glass and chrome and curves. Even the word is too slick for rough girls like me: Lexus. It’s luxurious, succulent, sexual without the seediness like the cars I’ve known: El Camino, Datsun, Matador. You can look at the Lexus. You can certainly look at it.

We are ready to go, Earl only needs to say good-byes and talk to someone about doing some work on the Montego. I spot a man moving towards me from the corner of my eye. I turn to see him only as he sidles up and places his wiry arm around me. I can smell him; the strange, spicy odor of exertion, dirt, and tight spaces. He smells like my soul. Of course he is here. I should have known it. He volunteers for the pit crew some weekends. I knew that. I knew that.

There is dirt between the cracks in his face. His shirt is an old, blue button up turned sleeveless workshirt with a couple of judicious rips and grease smears. His jeans are almost white with age, paint stained and torn at the knees. His sneakers are Salvation Army surplus. I am in his clutch and people are starting to look. “Hey there,” he says mildly, “hey there.” I can smell beer on his breath and I can feel the little corrections his body makes as he tries to keep his balance. I pull away, looking furtively for John. He can’t see this. Please don’t let him see this.

“You ashamed to be seen with me?” The man’s voice cracks a little and he holds me tighter.

“No. No, I just meant for it to be only that one time, though. Okay?” I am nearly whispering and I can feel hot tears filling my eyes. “Okay?”

He is looking at me closely. The last time I saw him was in moonlight. His heavily tanned skin did not reflect the shine as mine did, pale and blue in the night. I remember how close he seemed to some other reality, almost believable, or believable enough. Good enough. I remember the goose flesh that rose like a wave washing all over my body when he reached towards me, brushed my neck. Now, I cannot even remember his name.

***

The thing is, I never intended to be this person. I really did mean to graduate and find some other reality; something with an ocean view and no grease monkey loving under the ghost moon light. Instead I fill the hours of my days in a dead end DQ job, chocolate stained and sweating amidst the pristine whiteness of ice cream.

I will never make love to Tommy Lee Jones. I am almost okay with that.

In my dream I see him strutting his hotsex self and wonder if he’s mean, does he hit, is he warm and smooth in bed or more like a devil full of cruel pinches and sugar shifting surprises. I figure him half angel, half devil; a hurricane all around me as I sit sunning myself in the Eye, watching all that darkness and power whirl and shriek above. Of course in this dream, I am someone not-quite-myself. Nastasia Kinski, perhaps; the forbidden fruit all wrapped up in a thick snake, the sheen of its skin tight against me. You remember the poster.

So I dip the waxed cups under the shake maker, watch the chocolate swirl into the vanilla ice cream and trap myself in this honey love fantasy where Tommy Lee Jones loves me exclusive-like and all the paparazzi can’t get over how fucking beautiful I am. This is after my TOTAL MAKOVER, like on Sally Jesse Raphael when everyone is so supportive and the Best of the Best come to save you from yourself and your twenty-ounce can of Aquanet. They’d snip, cut, swath me in designer labels and suddenly I’d appear (a bright light and sexy music to announce this arrival) thirty pounds lighter and glowing like suddenly this inner light that had been hidden for so long was revealed to the world. They would say, “My God…” They would say, “My God” and nothing else.

Instead the chocolate keeps churning and the customers keep bugging me for the fucking “crunchy cone” and I swear I’ve never heard of it. I just deliver the chocolate dip, caramel, butterscotch, pineapple, strawberry. Our bananas are never very fresh, but the customers keep clamoring for Banana Splits so I give it to them and try to ignore the sour looks that pass over their faces. They hate what I have given them, but they never send it back.

Some days I think maybe he’ll just stroll up and order a Peanut Buster Parfait. Maybe he’ll say, “Peanut Buster Parfait, Buster” and we’ll all laugh like hyenas, except he’d see that light, that inner light that no one has ever seen in me before. He would see it because we’re destined for one another. He’d be wearing a baseball cap, a blue one probably, and he’d carry me back to his rented Lexus, place that cap on my head, and tell me he was somehow drawn here, he did not know why. I can almost smell the tears in his eyes as he tells me this. I would press my nose against his weathered cheek, smell his skin and the wetsalt essence of him. I can smell him now.

I have never told anyone about these thoughts, not even Earl. Earl would never understand about Tommy Lee Jones. Hell, I know even Tommy Lee Jones wouldn’t understand. Deep inside, I know the man lives his own life in a place far removed from my reality. I know this. But I burn, I burn throughout the night. I sweat through dreams of this devilangel with dark eyes that nearly touches me and vanishes, along with the rest of it. The cars, the lights, the money, the redemption. Don’t tell me about redemption.