Rusty Blades (Short Stories 1988-90) by Chad Taylor

Author:Chad Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781311060082
Publisher: Chad Taylor
Published: 2021-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

Girl From Mars

Julie sits with her long brown legs stretching out of the hammock and one toe resting on the balcony edge so that with small twitches she can rock herself back and forth, back and forth in the cool night air, the mosquitoes dancing around her head. The velvet on the old porch sofa is worn thin and lumpy. The staples on the arms have torn my stockings, and my dress is all hiked up and cutting red marks in my back, but from here I can see Julie, so I stay.

‘Michelle,’ she says, ‘Are you awake?’

‘Sure.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Almost four.’

‘We had a good night, tonight.’

‘We did.’

‘How’s your eye?’

I touch the soft bloody bag around my right eye and it burns like chilli sauce.

‘It’s still sore.’

‘I’m really sorry.’

She presses against the balcony with her toes. The hammock swings out and the canvas stretches and creaks. Silence is something cool to me now, like water, and the scratching cicadas deep in the trees like grains of sugar stirred in.

‘Shelley?’ Julie says.

‘Yeah?’

‘I said I’m sorry.’

‘I know. Not your fault.’

‘When I was a girl...’ Julie’s voice trails off and she smiles.

‘What?’

‘...I asked dad if I was magnetic.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I attracted a lot of trouble. The idea really tickled him. He said the only way to stop a magnet was to break it or wait for it to get old.’

‘I guess we have to wait.’

‘Did the taxi driver see me throw up?’

‘He was staring at my face, not yours.’

‘It’s a real shiner, Shelley. Were you crying?’

‘You know I was.’

‘Cry-baby.’

‘I wasn’t crying after Jeff hit me.’

‘I can hardly remember, now. Did you slap him?’

‘Twice. If that taxi driver hadn’t been there...’

‘Don’t even think about it.’

‘My eye hurts, Julie.’

‘You should be sleeping.’

‘I don’t want to sleep, I want to stay out here.’

‘Come into the hammock with me.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘It’ll hold two, easy.’

‘No it won’t.’

‘It’s a double, Shelley.’

‘No. I’m bruised enough tonight.’

‘Dip-shit.’

‘Asshole.’

There are more creaks as Julie shifts over to look at me with her big brown eyes and I giggle.

‘Julie, you look like fucking Bambi.’

‘You look like a raccoon. A raccoon in a very nice dress.’

‘Thank you for lending me your favourite dress.’

‘You look better in it than me.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘No, no. I mean, I’m heaps better looking than you, but you just happen to fluke it in that one dress. Blood and everything.’

‘Thanks – I feel better now.’

‘You do, I can tell.’

‘Bitch.’

‘Bitchier.’ I start laughing again.

‘How’s your eye?’ Julie asks again.

‘Hot.’

And then all of me is hot, not just my eye. I was hot in the bar tonight and I’ve been hot all this month. It is summer and I am burning up. I feel like there is no flesh inside me, and tonight I feel like empty peelings left to crisp up and brown on the worn velvet couch while the wind blows through my hollow belly. My bloody eye is the only wet, living thing about me; everything else is dead and dry.

‘I hate summer, Julie. I really do.’

‘It’s too hot here, I know.

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