Vernon God Little

I just sound like I have no desire left to impress anybody, but in this new depression a curious thing happens. A life thing. What happens, I think, is that we establish a real kind of contact, like in a movie or something. She just saw me make a complete asshole of myself, and she knows I know it. And it's as if she relaxes some, and I relax along with her. Like the horse stopped having to do math on stage. It accidentally makes me genuine, I guess, and exposes me as an ole fuckaway dog, all beat up to hell. She leads me quietly into the mall, respecting the swirling ink of trouble, and other people's tears, around my soul.

'So what's up, you dirty boy?' she teases on the escalator.

'Shit, I don't know where to start.'

'I'll drag it out of you.' She slips her dry little hand into my bunch of wet finger-meats, and coaxes me through the crowd. 'We'll check for my cousin, then maybe grab a juice, get private.'

A juice. Grab a private juice. What a woman. I watch her neat little buttocks stretch the fabric of her skirt, left, right, left, without a panty-line in sight, not to the naked eye. I'm so fucken in love with her I can't even picture her panties.

We reach the lingerie store, where all this hard-core, shiny kind of underwear is displayed out front. I'm not so interested in all that burlesque kind of stuff, to be honest. Simple cotton bikinis for me, like a girl wears when she doesn't expect you to go there. I look around at the women in the store. You can tell they fucken pray for you to go there.

'I don't see her,' says Taylor, craning over the displays. 'Typical. You want to go talk? I'll understand if you don't…'

'Sure, but you'll have to keep some pretty heavy secrets. I'll understand if you can't.' Girls just love secrets.

'Whatever.' She wrinkles her bitty nose. 'Like, I don't need to know where the bodies are buried or anything.' She flashes her teeth, and walks me to a fancy-looking cafeteria across the concourse.

'Hell, there's no bodies or anything,' I say.

As she docks her ass onto a barstool, I notice she's not totally airbrushed after all – a couple of her teeth are crooked, and you can detect a recent zit under her make-up. I melt like a wad into Kleenex. She's so fucken real, so here.

'So, like – are you guilty?' she asks.

'Nah, I don't figure.'

'Is it, like, robbery or something?'

'Murder.'

'Eek,' her face crumples like she just stepped in puke. 'Don't you think it'd be better to, like, stay and fight it out?'

'Nah, the way things're stacked, I have to disappear awhile.'

Her eyebrows scrunch in sympathy. What I realize as I melt into her syrup is that I have to steer talk away from the slime, and start to build a platform of excitement to tempt her along. Order tequilas or something, kiss her on the mouth.

' Tay,' I frown, 'this might seem sudden, but – I have to ask you something real important.'

Her face stiffens, like faces do when there's an incoming choice of shit. Right away I know it's the wrong approach.

'Cash?' she goes. 'Like, if you need a loan…'

A waiter turns up. 'What can I get y'all?' Taylor and my eyes take a moment to separate.

'I'll have a guava licuado,' she says.

'Uh – make it two,' I say. Tequilas my fucken ass. After the waiter leaves, I try another angle. 'Heck, Tay, I'm being real selfish here – I didn't even ask how you're doing…'

She rattles both my hands. 'You're killing me, like,

God. I'm just here, finishing this thing, I tried out for TV but didn't get casted yet – just like, whatever, you know?'

I smile, and suck warmth from the moment to mold into a platform of romance. Then she flicks back her hair and drops her eyes.

'And I'm seeing this doctor, can you believe it? He's an older guy, obviously, but I'm like sooo in love – he's the reason I'm shopping today, him and my cousin's new man are such panty-pooches.'

I start to hear her through a distant echo-tunnel, you know how you do. Then Mom's voice scurries from my mouth.

'Hey – wow.'

'God

, I can't believe I just told you that! Anyway he drives a Corvette, like an original Stingray whatever, and in November we're doing Colorado for my birthday…'

'Hey, wow.'

O-so-soft-and-gentle-on-your-skin Fate now makes me die squealing for every pixel of her being, and with each turn of her smile, every token of how remote my dream is from her mind, I fucken die knowing this is barely the germ of an infection for a thousand miserable deaths.

Then Taylor stands off her stool, and waves up the concourse. 'Hey, there's my cousin – Leona! Loni!' she calls. 'Over here!'

Jesus fuck. It's Leona Dunt from back home. I don't know if Lally's with her. Fuck. I explode off my stool, snatching up the backpack. Leona stands posing by the lingerie store, she hasn't looked over yet. 'What's up?' Taylor asks me.

'I have to run.'

'But – what were you going to ask me?'

'Please, please, please, don't breathe a word of this to Leona.'

'You know Leona?'

'Yeah, please.' My Nikes fire me onto the concourse.