Tina...

 That night I go back and knock on the door finding Tina and her friend Celeste seated on the couch passing a chrome hyphen between them.I will sit down and they will ruffle my hair. They will say that Marge is working seconds and she normally stops at the Bar after work so she won’t be home until around midnight.

When I walk in the door Tina immediately staples her arms around me. She shouts out mt name. She tells me she is happy to see me.

"It was a crazy day, we got on our bikes and road all the way out to Glen Oak park. Then we only stayed there for a couple of minutes and we dared each other to ride out to the mal.”

Tina is like that is crazy. I tell her yeah.

“It was nuts because my buddy Patrick just, and I mean just, got this new twelve speed and by the time we left the mall it got a flat.  Then we patched it up and it somehow got another flat.”

Tina is giggling.

“Well if you rode all the way out to Northwood’s Mall your shoulders must be really sore.” Tina says. She straddles the back of the couch. The next thing I know I feel her finger tips deeply massaging the stump of my neck.

I tell Celeste that I like her name. She offers me the hitter.

“What is it?” I tell them I don’t smoke.

Both Tina and Celeste begin to laugh.

“It’s Chronic, man.”

They are laughing again. They seem to notarize a thumbsize fleck of mold into their pipe but holding it up to lips in snorkel fashion. 

She then passes the hitter in my direction even though I don't smoke.

“Don’t worry,” Tina says, “This will relax you. This will all be good.”

 

                                                                         ***

Dawn and I talk once after Subway.  I tell her about the crazy travels. I tell her about the bicycle sojourn I had with Pat and Tim, Tim, who went to Washington gifted with dawn. Tim who makes sounds like a dog when he gets excited due to an disproportioned Ritalin dosage.

She tells me about Quinn. She tells me about how she is writing poems. She tells me about how she is working on what she describes as a narrative piece.


For some reason I think Dawn and I are somehow together. For some reason I think we have this bond.

I refuse to mention that I have been hanging out with Tina in front of Dawn. Tina with her cleavage. Tina who told me that she can’t stand reading. Tina who smokes weed all day lounges next to the pool. Tina who doesn’t think about her future.  Tina who goes to Central even though she lives in my school district.

"Listen, I was just wondering, I know this sounds crazy, but  I just wanted to know, what are we?" Dawn repeats the latter half of the sentence back into my direction as if perplexed.


"We're human beings here for only a finite and terse period of time."

                                                                       ***

There is a rattle at the door. It is pushed open. Earl enters. He is wearing a variegated shirt with long sleeves that looks like a cheetah dry humping the sun.

The moment he enters celeste pop up and front the couch and flied over to him shouting out his name. She jumps in the air and

Earl sets Celeste down. He comes over and gives Tina a long hug.

“Dave, right,: He says, jutting his hand out in my direction as if he is campaigning for office.

“Nice to see you again,”

Earl looks at the chrome hitter on the couch, says something like I told you girls to quit doing that shit, which spawns laughs. I like Earl. He has a flat top. He is gregarious and articulate. I wonder shy Tina kept dropping the N-bomb the other night when Earl is African American. I wonder if she says that word around Earl. 

 

Earl says something about wanting to go for a quick dip and we head our back towards the pool.

Celeste is wearing denim bibs. Tina is wearing red shorts and a vintage white t-shirt that has Ms Pacman smoking a cigarette while talking about being on the rag.

“Aren’t you girls going to go inside and slip into your bathing suits.” I inquire, rather innocuously.

Celeste begins to laugh.

“No Dave, this how we do it bro.”

 Before I know it Earl is propping off his shirt like he is superman. In one swipe he lower both his short and his boxers.  He is completely naked, his unit dangling from his waist like a scepter. As if choreographed both of the girls let out a scream in unison.  I try not to look. Earl is huge. It is as if his penis were an anatomical pendulum dripping just above the caps of his knees.

 

Earl takes off running.

  

 Celeste lets out a shierk the moment Earl's naked flesh cannonballs into the water.  Before I realize what is happening Celeste has unbuttoned the top of her bibs.  The outfit skids down the white stalks of her legs as if it is wounded.  Her arms cross and form an X near her waist as she reels the drape of her white top up. Both her bra and panties are an off-shade of pink.  Just when I think she is going to get completely naked she runs towards the pool performing a half-swan dive as she hang glides in to the pool.

 

Earl immediately begins to swipe his arm and splash her. They then begin splashing each other, water dancing in front of us,

To my left Tina already has her shirt off. She has stepped out of her sandals as if preparing to step on a scale.  Her bra is a shock of white, a suspension bridge over the lithe curves of her body.

 

She is pinching the copper orb in the center of her jeans. She is stepping out of her clothes when she swivels in my direction.

 

“Join us,” Tina says, with an unassuming smile.

                                                                       ***

“Yeah, your friend Patrick,” Dawn notes again, on the phone  I say what’s wrong with him.

“He really seems like he has issues.”

I tell Dawn that Patrick is my best friend.  That he has always been there for me. That we have always been there for each other. I want to ask Dawn our relationship seemed like it was magical when we were  conversing back stage or traipsing around the mall holding hands. I want to tell Dawn that our relationship seemed like it was serialized in after-school  televised specials with a soundtrack by Depeche Mode and the Cure and all the other new wave bands I have never heard of before. That somewhere there is an audience squinting at us on the antipodal concavity of the lens cheering that we get together,  imploring that everything works outs.

I want to tell Dawn that I’m a little scared entering manual and that if it weren’t for Cross-country and Patrick and in a way even Tim I don’t know what I’d do.

"He's messed up. His trenchant mouth is going to get him in trouble one of these days and he's gonna spout off to the wring person and get slapped."

"He's a good guy." I tell Dawn once again.

"Yeah, for a socially-convoluted misogynist." is all she says.


                                                                            ***

  

We are all splashing each other. We are mostly naked. For a moment we are one. For a moment it seems like this is the apex of this summer, these strangers who get stones and strip and go swimming, these strangers who know absolutely nothing about me yet who have accepted me for who I am.

Celeste pushes Earl to the opposite corner of the pool.

Tina is completely wet.  Her hair is slicked back. She is in her underwear. She seems to be floating up and down as if there is somehow  subtle surf in this lima bean shaped pool.

My torso is stiff. I am clad only in my boxers which are sticking to my thighs. Tina is smiling,

“Come here,” Tina says. She smells just like Andrea. She smells just like chlorine. We are floating together by ourselves, in the southern corner.

Something is happening behind me. In the staccato blur of my vision I see Earl in the corner rattling his tors. Celeste is still making high-pitched sounds as if she is being voluntarily violated.

“Don’t look at them,” She says, Tina has her arms, wet,  buckled around my neck.

Her body feels like nothing I have ever felt before.

Tina has her limbs wreathed around my torso. I am stiff. Both of her hand are around  my neck occluding my sight. She is drilling her body into mine. At first it feels like we are trying to float together as one.

 She is rattling her torso. It feels like she is playing hop scotch on my wet thigh. She looks at me.  I can tell by the way there is a seminally gravid pause in her conversation that she wants to kiss. Something is happening on the opposite end of the pool.  Earl is making cannon grunting sounds and Celeste is bartering the back the same sound only at a higher pitch as if they are playing a game of tennis between octaves.

 I lean forward to kiss Tina. I am thinking of Dawn Michelle.

 I tell her listen. She tells me yeah, I know.

"So you’re a virgin,” Tina says, casually, stating that it’s no big deal, telling me to focus on the albino width of her forehead. And not on the periodic grunts of background. Celeste emitting high-pitched hiccups. In four –four time.

Somehow I can’t help but think that I am, cheating on Dawn. Somehow when my lips bend to kiss her all I taste is the dry resin from the chronic she was previously smoking.  Somehow all my ears are registering is the 4/4 time hiccupping of Celeste on the opposite corner of the pool. Somehow I wasn’t this kiss to be different, I want it to mean something.

 

“Hey, I know you want to kiss, but it’s like, there’s this person named Dawn. She’s about your age. Actually she’s a senior at Richwood's.”

 

Tina inquires if she is my girlfriend or something.

“That’s just the thing. We were like really close. I was in this play earlier this summer only I was the antagonist and I was really smitten over this one girl, Anastasia, and the next thing I know I just can’t stop talking with this make-up lady and we really hit it off.”

Tina looks back at me.

“So, you have a girlfriend.” We continue bobbing up like a buoy with genitals. Celeste is making sounds like she is in labor. I try not to think what they are doing.

I try not to think what could happen to me. 

“That’s just the thing. I’m not really sure I know what we are. I really want to kiss you only part of me feels that I would be cheating on Dawn Michelle if I did.

Tina says Dawn Michelle. I tell her that’s her name.

Tina has demure eyes the color of Neptune. Her limbs press into my body.

Her hair is slicked back. Her brow is the size of an IMAX movie screen.

 The center of my body is sprouting. It feels like an odalisque.  I am almost paralyzed.

I can see Tina’s rose-petal nipples through the top of her bra. Behind us Earl and  Celeste continue making noises that sounds like someone is trying to stick an oversized foot into a very wet athletic shoe.

Tina plants one finger on my lip as if telling me to shhhh.

 Tina then tells me to fuck her.

  I swear she calls me Charlie.

She says fuck me, Charlie.

 

 

                                                                        ***

 

“Maybe we can meet sometime next week and just chill like old times. You can read to me your poems."

Dawn says that she is supposed to meet Quinn for coffee next week.

“Well then after you meet Quinn for coffee. Maybe we can just go out and you can pick me up and we can go back to the mall and walk around or maybe we can go to the park and just hang out.”

I almost feel like begging. I almost feel like asking dawn why she doesn’t want to hang out with me anymore.

“Okay,” She says slowly, “Give me a call Tuesday. My class will be over after that and I would love to see you Dave.”

“Kay,” I say, excited, hanging up the phone.

 

                                                                ***

 

I am curious I try looking back. Tina tells me not to look back.

“You don’t need to know what  they are doing. Just look at me.” There is something comforting and almost maternal in the lilt of her voice.I can see her nipple through the damp fabric of her bra. It is like they are looking back at me

 

Her limbs are pretzeled and lock around the body of my body.  She is tugging me close.

Somehow the only thing that occurs to me is that Tina has never seen me with my glasses on.

Her arms are wreathed around my neck.  Her breath tastes like warm Resin. Somehow our torsos are welded and have become one geometric integer, a calculus of the hidden polynomials embedded in the breath of time.  Just as we are about to kiss, the moment it feels as if our bodies are involuntary shifting in the aquatic pond of realty dual cone-shaped  dome lights flood into the driveway, skirting through the slats of the privacy fence that is the pool.

“Fuck!!!” Tina adds, aloud, stating that she must not have stopped at the bar that long.

"What?" I add, thinking it was something I was doing. From behind me I hear both Earl and Tina caroling into the chorus of fucks.

"Marge is here. She must have left the bar early."

“Fuck fuck fuck !!!!”

Tina says something about Marge probably calling the cops again if Earl is spotted on the property  Earl high tails it towards the fence door that leads to the alley. He is still naked running with a little wobble, his hands cupped over the center of his body as if trying to thwart a penalty kick. I step out into the alley still running in my boxers, running home, running the alley between Ayres and Sherman after pedaling my bike out to the mall realizing only when I reach the top of the stairs that it is locked, going back down the alley, finding my pants along with my keys and my wallet carelessly flung over the privacy fence. Earl shorts are damp. The top is sticking to the fence like a white flag. I look around. He is nowhere in sight. I leave them where they are, damp and crimp, hanging like a tassel on the edge of the fence.

When I open home my mom looks at me and asks me why I am all wet.

 “I ‘ve been swimming,” I tell her.

 My lips are blue. I can’t stop smiling.

 

I go upstairs.

For reasons I can't explain I need to talk to Dawn.