Summer in the Land of Skin

“How’d Arlan end up in this band, anyway?”

“He’s not a self-promoter. He’s an artist—way more than these shitheads—but Danny’s the one with enough ego to get gigs.” She closes herself into a stall. “You should hear Arlan play alone. He’s a genius.”

“Yeah,” I say, studying my deep red mouth in the mirror.

She flushes the toilet and reappears. “What do you mean, ‘yeah’?”

“I mean, yeah, I bet he is.”

She looks at me for a moment before washing her hands.

Later, when we’ve had too much to drink again, and the pussy rock band plays a song with a beat that echoes through your chest, a song that makes you feel foolish and alive, Lucy drags me out on the dance floor. The place is now packed with sweaty students, wriggling and rubbing up against each other like frenzied fish. At first I just sort of wobble from one foot to the other, painfully self-conscious. But then I close my eyes, forget about the room and find the rhythm with my hips. I move without thinking to a night one summer when my parents threw a party; I can taste the air, heavy with the smell of grass, and I can hear their instruments coming together magically. My little-girl body flings itself from side to side, caught up in the waves of their frantic laughter, their strumming and banging and singing.

“You dance like you’re on Ecstasy,” Lucy says into my ear.

My eyes open, and the room is back, with its pool players leaning against the walls, coolly appraising. I see Arlan sitting at the table, smoking, watching.

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“It makes people want to have sex with you,” she says, not smiling.

“Oh,” I say. “Wow.”

“Don’t act so naive, Anna,” she tells me, and now her face softens to a teasing smirk. “It’s not convincing.”

I keep moving, the frenetic beat of my parents’ music still pulsating in the back of my mind. I tell myself, as an experiment, Everyone here wants to have sex with you. It makes me smile and rotate my hips with more insistence. I tell myself, Even Arlan wants to have sex with you, but that makes me feel guilty, so I push it out of my mind. I tell myself, You’re the Sex Queen of Fanny’s Barbecue Palace, and this makes me laugh softly as I spin, gazing up at the dark, grease-stained ceiling.

I wake on the black leather couch, an old quilt tossed over me, and my mouth tastes like it’s been stuffed with sand. Out the window, lit by a streetlight, a huge maple lets its branches be tossed by the night wind. I lift my head and peer into the kitchen: the digital clock on the microwave reads 3:12. A leaf releases from the maple and flies recklessly against the windowpane—a kamikaze mission—one sharp tap against the glass before it disappears. I close my eyes and envision it plummeting the two stories down, careening with breakneck speed into the sea of dewy grass below.

I can feel my psyche winding itself. It is the familiar beginnings of insomnia: brain blossoms at the wrong hour, in the dark, like a transplanted jungle flower.

I get up and cross the room, wrapping the quilt around my shoulders. The air is chilly, suffused with the yellowed scent of the old house. A gust of wind rattles the walls; more leaves tap themselves to death against the window. I study the guitar cases leaning against the wall. There are two there—one is the electric Arlan played tonight. I wonder if the case next to it is for the crushed Gibson. I look over my shoulder, across the hall to their bedroom. I can just make out the faint wheezing sound of someone snoring. Very carefully, I lay the guitar case on the floor, undo the brass latches and lift the lid. It’s a Martin D-28—the exact model my father had. I run my hands over its polished surface, thick with lacquer, and I imagine I can smell its long, patchwork history—all those years spent in bars and living rooms and bus stations, pressed against laboring bodies, stroked by so many fingers. My hands are shaking as I lift it very carefully out of its case and carry it back to the couch.

I haven’t held a guitar in my arms since I was eleven. The cool feel of the body curving against my thigh is at once familiar and strange. I stretch my fingers into a G-chord and touch the strings tentatively, strumming just loud enough to bring back a rush of memories. I play the first couple of lines of “Folsom Prison Blues,” humming softly. I think of Danny’s heroin, and I wonder if this is how it feels—warm, dark relief spreading through your veins.

“You play?”

I jerk my head up to see Arlan in the doorway, little more than a shadow. I can actually feel the thumping beneath my breast against the rosewood.

“I’m sorry,” I mutter, getting up to put it back. The guitar knocks against the coffee table and I curse under my breath.

“Sit down,” he says. I do. “Don’t worry about it.” He crosses the room, yanks the window open, and props it up with what looks like a towel rack that’s been ripped from the wall. I’m wearing only a big T-shirt Lucy lent me, probably Arlan’s. The wind comes through the open window and I pull the quilt around my legs. He sits and lights a cigarette.

“So, you play?” he asks again.

“I used to, when I was little.”

“Lessons?”

“My dad taught me,” I say, trying to make my voice sound casual.

“He plays?”

“Played.” I’m glad it’s dark enough that he can’t see my face. “He’s dead.”

I wait for a response, but there is none, just the orange glow from his cigarette, and the faint sound of breath as he produces a ghostlike puff of smoke. After a while, I play a couple of chords very quietly. My fingers seem to remember. “Where’d you get this guitar? It’s gorgeous.”

“Some old guy sold it to me,” he says. “It’s probably worth three times what I gave him, but he was in a hurry to unload it.”

“Play something?” I ask.

He hesitates. “Lucy might wake up.”

“Just softly?”

He listens a moment to the silence. “I guess she’s out.” I cross the room to hand it to him, being careful not to bang it against anything this time. I am aware of my bare legs, my naked breasts under the soft, thin T-shirt. Our fingers touch as he takes the neck from me. I go back and sit on the couch again, shivering, and fold my legs under the quilt.

“Cold?” he asks.

“A little.”

He stubs his cigarette out in a coffee cup and closes the window, taking great care not to let it slam shut. “You want another blanket?”

“I’m okay.”

He glances across the hall to their bedroom door before he eases the old Martin onto his knee and checks the tuning. He takes a pick from the case. Then he sighs once in the dark, and very quietly, with fingers so precise and nimble I long to see them in full light, he begins to play. He starts quietly, and I have to lean forward to hear the notes, but as he gets going, the melody hits the air loud and clear. It’s a sad, old-sounding song. He doesn’t sing, but his hands pull stories from that guitar: blue, tattered tales set in some humid place, full of whiskey and moonlight, black stockings, trains and smoke. I close my eyes and lean back against the cool leather of the couch. There is nothing like this. I want to sit here forever.

“What was that, anyway?” I ask when the song is over.

“Oh, I was just messing around,” he says. He puts the guitar down, gets up and takes a bottle from the freezer. He pours himself a drink. I think he’s embarrassed. “You want a drink?”

“No thanks.”

He sits back down and stares out the window. He doesn’t look at me when he says, “Trouble sleeping?”

“Yeah. You?”

He nods, still looking out the window. There’s a long pause. “Sometimes,” he says, “I’d give anything to sleep all the way through to morning.” We listen as the wind rattles the house, and more leaves tap against the window. He tilts his head in the direction of the bedroom. “Lucy sleeps like a baby, every night. She sucks her thumb.” I giggle softly. “I don’t understand people who can sleep like that.” He stares at the bedroom door.

“What do you do?”

“What?” He looks startled, as if he’d forgotten I was there.

“When you can’t sleep. What do you do?”

“I don’t know. Smoke. Play guitar. Drink. You?”

I pause. “Look out the window, mostly,” I say. “Soothes me. Watching, I mean.”