Page 10
For a moment I had to convince myself I had seen what I had seen.
“What I was thinkin‘,” he continued, gulping some more of his beer and not waiting for me to respond, “is I might have the woman I love tattooed with the rest of it. Then, whenever we stood naked together, we would have the whole song between us. Huh?”
He looked at Mother darling and then at me and burst into laughter.
“Look at her face, Kay.”
Mother darling did, and then she laughed, too.
“Let’s call the boys and tell them to come over earlier. We want to get this thing goin‘.”
He looked at me again and sang, “My heart will cry for you.”
Then he put his arm around Mother darling and went out to the living room to call his fellow musicians.
If anyone’s heart’s crying, I thought, it’s mine.
Before the musicians arrived, I left the apartment to explore what looked like it would be my new neighborhood for some time to come. Down on the lower level, in front of the apartment closest to the street, I saw a girl who looked about my age, with licorice black hair tied in a ponytail. She was sitting on a lawn chair and seemed to be singing to whatever was coming through her earphones. She wore a T-shirt with the sleeves torn off to her shoulders and jeans. I thought the T-shirt was splattered with red paint, until I drew closer and saw the red dots were all connected to form a pair of lips. Underneath it read, Don’t Give Me Any Lip.
When we made eye contact, she took off her earphones.
“Quien esta usted?”
“Excuse me?”
?
?I asked you who you were in Spanish. That’s what I’m doing with these earphones, learning Spanish.”
“Oh.”
“So?”
“What?”
“So who are you, or is that a secret?”
“My name’s Robin Taylor,” I said, making sure to leave out the Lyn. “My mo… sister and I are staying with a friend for a while.”
“Quien?”
“What?”
“I thought you might have figured it out by now. Who? Quien? Get it?”
“I don’t speak Spanish,” I said sharply. I was just going to keep going, but she leaped out of her chair.
“Neither do I. That’s why I’m studying it.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to run off to Mexico and live on a beach and drink tequila and not care what time it is, ever,” she vowed. I guess I looked pretty skeptical. “I am!” she insisted. She looked back at the front door of her apartment. “I’m tired of my stepmother telling me what to do, what to wear, what to eat. My father never says anything. She’s got him wrapped around her you-know-what.”
This time I smiled.
“Quien esta usted?” I asked, and she broke into a wide smile.
She had a round face that made her dark brown eyes look too small. Heavy boned, she looked a good twenty pounds overweight. It gave her a more matronly look, especially with her big bosom and wide hips. I imagined that when she said her stepmother was telling her what to eat, she was trying to get her to lose weight.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10 (Reading here)
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 154
- Page 155
- Page 156
- Page 157
- Page 158
- Page 159
- Page 160
- Page 161
- Page 162
- Page 163
- Page 164
- Page 165
- Page 166
- Page 167