Page 8 of Summer Skate

JESSICA

To reward myself, I lie in the sun on a lounge chair and think about sex.

Not directly and not all the time. It’s more like a train that runs by once or twice an hour.

The sun has dimmed my brain and made my skin feel prickly, extra sensitive.

Plus I’m reading this Miranda July book, and even though it’s mildly depressing (the woman in the book has an affair with a guy who works at a Hertz rent-a-car), she’s pretty into it, the narrator, so I take the day off to transport myself, via July, to what’s happening in a seedy motel room off the side of a highway in California.

I always celebrate when I hit this mark. So this time, I’m celebrating by lying around, doing nothing, and getting hit with a few seconds of bliss on a rolling basis. Who is to say what constitutes a celebration?

Of course, I’m also thinking about how Miranda July has written three movies, two collections of short stories, and two novels. I need to get cracking. Eventually. But July is fifty years old. I am thirty-five. A young thirty-five. We have nothing in common.

I am spending most of my time outside, writing on my covered porch, laptop sitting on my bare legs, the heat from the computer burning the tops of my thighs.

Sometimes I drive into town for a sandwich or to immerse myself in the outside world, but I don’t do that very often, for fear of encountering a parallel parking situation.

At night, I sit on the steps of my house and look at the fireflies, watch as the specks of yellow spark and then disappear into the growing blackness. Aside from the occasional bout of guilt that I swat away like a mosquito, it is a pleasant experience.

Page one hundred and one is looming, but I’ve hit a wall. I don’t know what to say next. It’s easy to set up, to fling your characters into the air, but not so easy to make the acrobatics happen once they get there.

I sit with my laptop and stare into space.

I have nothing. I go into the kitchen and make myself a watermelon margarita, grab my phone from the kitchen table.

I go back outside, lie down on my stomach, untie the top of my bathing suit.

Who’s here to see me? If anyone asks, I am simply taking a break from writing. I am hard at work on my tan lines.

I call Alejandro and we give each other polite recaps.

He tells me that our daughter lost a tooth, but he accidentally threw it out. I tell him about the hundred pages, the swimming, the fireflies.

“You are really living it up there,” he says, and I can’t argue. Because no matter what I’m doing, he’s the one searching the garbage for a tooth.

“I’ll call you tonight,” I say. “You’ll be home, right?” He says he has a work dinner, but after that, yes.

I haven’t been alone like this for fifteen years.

It’s peaceful and easy in a way, to only be obliged to take care of yourself, but I also feel the missing piece, always.

I feel like a body without an arm, searching for something to make me whole but having no idea where to find it.

I am a whole person , I tell myself. The rest of you is just two hours away, give or take traffic .

But I make a lot of calls. I keep people on the phone longer than I should.

I make conversation with the UPS man, the Amazon guy.

I feel relief when the van arrives with my Fresh Direct, and I have an amusing back-and-forth with the driver. I think: Maybe this is something?

I am not supposed to be searching for something outside myself.

But I am searching for something outside myself.

Aside from the luxury SUVs speeding by, my neighbors are the only source of life around me, and thank god.

It’s come in handy. I am writing a book about a group of twentysomethings, and occasionally I’ll hear the chatter of the girls or bros filtering in and out of their house, and I get something that I can include in my novel.

Finally , I think, something I can use .

There is one guy who is always predicting the weather:

“It’s about to rain. I can feel it in my bones. I feel more elastic the past few days.”

There is talk of produce each time they return from the farmstand:

“These fucking berries. Twenty-two dollars for strawberries. Harry’s berries. Who is Harry anyway?”

“He’d better be the fucking head of the Department of Agriculture at these prices.”

I laugh. Jot it down. There is a lot about working out:

“I saw on TikTok that Cialis is actually considered the best pre-workout on the market.”

“Holy shit! It makes sense though. It’s a stimulant. Adderall without the methamphetamine. It gets your blood flowing.”

“Dude, that hot yoga class? The room wasn’t nearly hot enough. Turn the fucking heat up! They got it at 108. Should be 120. I don’t want to do yoga with a bunch of pussies!”

“Who did you think was going to be in a hot yoga class in the Hamptons? It’s rich moms.”

There is commentary on the relative hotness of the girls in town:

“What about the girl who works at Cynthia Rowley? Is she on Instagram? Do you think she’s dirty? She looks like she’s dirty.”

“She wears an anklet. I love a girl with an anklet.”

“Ah, yeah. Me too. Anklets are hot.”

I make an amazed look at nobody. Sometimes I’ll hide near the hedges so that I can hear better. But I don’t have to do that often. Most of the time, they’re yelling.

Today, two of them are playing some game on their front lawn. It sounds like a cross between tennis and wrestling. I hear the smack of a ball being hit, along with a lot of grunting and sweaty bodies slapping against each other.

And then I hear shouting, followed by the distinct sound of two people falling through my hedges.

I prop myself up on my forearms, then, realizing that I’m basically topless, rush to tie my bathing suit behind my neck. I watch them as they get off the ground, dust themselves off.

“Wow. Sorry!” one says to me. The other is lying on the ground, examining his wounds. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

I laugh. “I’m startled. Are you okay?”

The top halves of their shirtless bodies are all scratched up.

“Can I get you a Band-Aid or something?” I get up from the lounge chair. “I’m sure I have Band-Aids . . . somewhere.”

“What’s a Band-Aid?” one says. “I haven’t put a Band-Aid on since I was eight. You gotta let the cut breathe, babe.” He points at me, with a look of warning.

I smile. “Okay, well then I have nothing to offer you.”

They look me over. “Are you sure? You got any iced tea?”

I look down, thinking. “No, but I do have watermelon margaritas!” I raise my eyebrows at them, hopeful.

“Sold!” one says. The other nods silently.

I am thrilled. Company ! I rush to the kitchen. I go inside and open the fridge, take out my pitcher.

“I’m Jack,” the taller, louder guy says. “This is Scott.” Scott doesn’t say much. Jack is his representative.

I pour them two glasses. “So what are you guys up to over there? I can’t tell. Is it . . . football?”

“Spike ball.”

“Spike ball?”

“Fastest growing sport in America.”

“Okay. What is it?”

“It’s a game where we hit a ball at a net with our hand and try to kill each other.”

“Sounds civilized.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a writer.”

“I used to date a girl that wrote about beauty products for Instagram. Well, she mostly talked about them. But she wrote her own captions . . . I think.”

I smile. “I write books.”

“You’d better watch out for that AI,” Jack says. He is, again, pointing at me.

I laugh. “Great tip. Thank you. I will.”

He goes on: “Scott here is a big reader. He has the entire Hemingway collection in his room. He’s reading one right now. Which one are you reading again, Harps?”

“ To Have and Have Not ,” Scott replies.

I wince. “Personally, I think Hemingway is a little overrated.”

They are stunned silent.

Suddenly, it occurs to me that I now have a direct line. I can ask them anything. They won’t say no. They’re holding my glasses.

“Actually . . . While you’re here, do you mind if I ask you some questions? I’m writing a book that involves people around your age. I could use some intel.”

Jack lies down on a lounge chair. “Fire away.”

“Tell me about a typical night out in college these days,” I say, and they launch into some stories.

I ask: “And what if you meet a girl you like? Are you texting her right after, the next day, or what?”

They tell me how Instagram has taken over, that nobody gets a girl’s phone number anymore. Texting is obsolete. It’s all about the DM.

I say, “But it must be strange to look somebody up on Instagram, to know all these details about their life before you actually get to know them? And you haven’t even gotten to know ‘them,’ per se. You’re just familiarizing yourself with their online persona.”

“But that’s key!” Jack insists. “That’s how they want the world to see them!”

“It’s tricky, though . . . ” I say. “Because then you have to separate their exterior versus interior life. You have to figure out what specifically is broken inside of them that is causing them to post this or that. You have to ask yourself: Who is this for? What message are they pushing? In my day, that was harder to figure out. You had to go on at least three dates before you knew what was deeply wrong with a person.”

They give me a dazed look. Jack says, “I just want enough information so that I can enter the zone cleanly.”

I laugh. “Okay. Last question. For now. Why is there only one expensive car in your driveway?”

“That’s Carter’s. He’s drafted and signed, whereas we’re just drafted.”

I’m tempted to ask them more about Carter, but I don’t.

“Tell us about your glory days,” Jack says. “I bet you were all sorts of trouble.”

“No. No. Nothing crazy. I never really liked rebellion for the sake of rebellion. But I liked to try things, to explore, to test the limits . . . I was always a bit of a flight risk, had a flair for the dramatic, wasn’t so interested in being tied down . . . ”

The quiet one speaks up. “And now?”