Ugly Girls: A Novel (18 page)

“Was that a bottle?” Perry asked. The car didn’t smell like booze, but maybe she hadn’t opened it yet.

“No,” Baby Girl said. “That was a surprise for later.”

The thought of a surprise coming later made Perry feel more tired than ever. Like maybe she should have sent that see-you-later text to Baby Girl after all.

“I’m not up for being out tonight,” Perry said. “Ain’t you tired?”

“Once we get where we’re going, if you want to leave, you can just say so and we’ll leave. Okay?”

Baby Girl started the car, put it into reverse. Perry had the feeling that she’d never met her before, this bald person she was letting drive her somewhere, she looked familiar but Perry had no idea who she was. She was in the car with a stranger.

“You still mad about last night?” she asked. “About what I told you?”

Baby Girl laughed, quiet, through her nostrils. “I’m not mad,” she said. “In fact, that’s where we’re going now. We’re going to meet up with your friend Jamey over by the quarry. He wants to see you.”

Perry was wide awake now. “Are you serious? We’re going to meet up with Jamey?”

“Yep,” Baby Girl said. “He wanted to meet up with both of us, but I figured that was just because he knew you wouldn’t come alone. So let’s go see him!”

Her voice was bright, as sugary as a kindergarten teacher’s. Baby Girl never talked like that. She’d even dropped the accent she’d been using for months, that deep gangsta accent she’d been perfecting for as long as Perry had been thugging with her.

“I don’t want to meet up with him,” Perry said. “I haven’t even been talking to him. I’m meeting up with Travis tomorrow.
That’s
who I want to meet up with.”

“I know you don’t,” Baby Girl said. “But he’s been on our asses. Fucking with us. Let’s go fuck with him. Besides, you might think he’s cute once you see him.”

“Did you hear what I said? I don’t want to go.”

“I told him we’d meet him,” Baby Girl said. “I said we’d be there.”

“If you don’t stop driving us there I’m going to jump out the next time you stop,” Perry said. She meant it, bracing her body, her fingers on the door handle.

“Please,” Baby Girl said, her voice weak, like her throat was too wet. She coughed into her hand and her voice sounded stronger when she said, “I need to show this fucker.”

Show this fucker what?
Perry almost said. Only she knew. It was clear, now, that Baby Girl
was
hurt, she
was
still mad about what Perry had told her in the cell. But she needed Jamey to see that she wasn’t any of those things, that she didn’t care about him in that way, that she’d deliver her own best friend to him just to show him how little she cared.

Maybe this wasn’t a stranger beside her. Maybe this was the real Baby Girl.

“Okay,” Perry said. “We’ll go, but you ain’t leaving me there alone with him.”

“You never know,” Baby Girl said. “Maybe you’ll want me to leave you alone. Maybe you’ll beg for it.”

Baby Girl
wanted
her to go off with him, Perry could see now, into his backseat or farther into the woods, wanted her to act the whore. So it wasn’t just Jamey she wanted to fuck with, abandon. She wanted to leave Perry behind, too, nice and tidy.

“I won’t want that,” Perry said. She wanted to reassure Baby Girl almost as much as she wanted to scream at her. A few drops of rain hit the windshield, as fast and hard as rocks. She was being driven to meet up with that fucking weirdo in the rain, all so Baby Girl could prove to herself that she was right about them, that she was right about the world.

“So what’s the surprise you got under the seat?” Perry asked. She felt her voice getting away from her, loud and angry. “A box of condoms? You can watch since you seem so interested in us falling in love. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

Baby Girl reached under her seat, brought out a gun. Perry recognized it: Charles’s gun, the one Baby Girl kept in a keepsake box under her bed. She held it pointed at Perry’s lap, her finger on the trigger.

“Surprise,” she said, her voice bright again, like it was a cake and not a gun.

“You look fucking stupid holding that,” Perry said. “If you’re trying to scare anyone it ain’t going to work.”

Baby Girl pulled the trigger.
Click
. Perry flinched, her body moving beyond her control. She knew it wasn’t loaded, they’d never been able to find any bullets in Charles’s room, but it was like her brain was separate from her body, and knowing the gun wasn’t loaded didn’t matter at all. Her body seized, she couldn’t move her arms if she wanted to.

“Oh shit!” Baby Girl said. She shoved the gun back under her seat, laughing. “Look how you jumped, and you even knew it wasn’t loaded! Just wait until that fucker sees it. You think he’ll shit himself?”

The accent was coming and going now, Baby Girl forcing out her laughter so hard that she was heaving. It took Perry a second to realize she wasn’t laughing no more, her heaving wheezes turning into short barks, something she’d never heard from Baby Girl before. She was crying now, her face all wet, the sobs coming out as forced and unwanted as coughs. “Oh shit,” she kept saying. “Oh shit, oh shit.”

The rain was coming down hard now, the sky dark above them and darker where they were driving to. Perry reached over and flipped on the wipers.

She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d talked to Jamey. She didn’t give a shit whether he liked her now, didn’t care if he wanted her. It had once seemed so important. Perry had never been ugly, not a day in her life. Knew if she wanted to she could have whoever she wanted. Sometimes she even caught herself posing just so for Jim, hoping he’d take in her curves and she’d see in his face that she was right: everyone was a starved animal. Even Baby Girl.

Even herself, she was starting to see. She was as raggedy as the whores in that cell, raw for the power she had over whoever. She was fucking tired. With the windows up the air was too close in Baby Girl’s car, she could practically smell the salt from her tears. She was sick of all of it, wanted to wake up in the morning knowing she wouldn’t be sneaking out her window for a long time, maybe ever again.

Unless it was to see Travis. The thought of tomorrow, of him, felt like a promise. This rain would eat shit and the sun would come out and she’d kiss Travis again. And she’d have made things right for Baby Girl, made peace between them so they could go their separate ways for a while.

“Okay,” Perry said, after Baby Girl had quieted. “Let’s go set that fucker straight.”

She didn’t have any idea what setting him straight meant. Maybe just showing up would be enough. And she didn’t know why she had to say anything at all. Baby Girl, through the gun and the tears and everything, had kept driving, and they were already there.

JAMEY SAW THEM DRIVE UP,
he’d been watching awhile, watching until the shineless brown of Dayna’s car appeared every now and again through a break in the trees, until he could hear the engine, until they had slowed and were pulling onto the short white shoulder and parking. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but the sky was still dark, and he stood under the umbrella he’d bought on the way over. Black, so he’d look mysterious. But maybe he should have just stood in the rain instead. It was tougher. When it came down to it, though, he just couldn’t risk what it might do to his hair, how it might make his clothes cling to his fleshy body.

He felt sick, like he might need to use the bathroom, but that always happened when he was excited. He knew he wasn’t an attractive man, but he’d had women before, women nearly as pretty as Perry, and he knew what he had to do to seal the deal.

He’d have to present himself like he knew his flaws, had spent a long time feeling awful about them, but had made a brave kind of peace with them. He’d have to keep his thumb over his cleft, his curled knuckles on his chin, like he was trying to come off a deep thinker, only Perry would probably see that he was actually trying to hide his deformity. Every once in a while he’d have to move that hand up to his hair, run his fingers through, so she’d see that he cared about his appearance. He’d raked a comb through his hair over and over before getting out of his momma’s car, to make sure his hand wouldn’t get caught on no knots. His other hand he’d have to keep loose at his side. Empty. So she could see he didn’t have no designs. So she could see how relaxed he was, how far from making a fist. Only what with the umbrella, he did have something in his fist, but no matter, he couldn’t see how she’d have a problem with that. He’d have to have mud splatters on his jeans cuffs, on the tips of his boots, so she could see he was a workingman, a man with a life outside of her. And he’d have to nod at her, say
Hey
, keep his distance, let her come to him. Some girls were huggers, but he didn’t figure Perry for one of them, and even if she was, he’d let her put her arms around him, he’d keep his own arms down and wait it out.

If you let a woman know how much you’ve been looking forward to her presence, you’re dead in the water. Might as well be a skunk, might as well be the janitor. He knew what he needed to do, it was only that he was out of practice. It had been years since he’d been free to lure and catch. He hoped it was like riding a bike. He hoped he’d put on just enough cologne, enough to make him smell like a man but not enough to overtake the dirt and sweat he’d worked up. A girl had once told him she’d been afraid when she smelled his sweat. That was the moment she knew she was done for. Her voice a tickle in his ear, her hair wet with her own sweat. There was always a moment when they met halfway: when his own fear had retreated and when hers had swelled. He had to make room for it. It was like he was the woman and she the man, her swollen fear meeting his growing void. For that second, they were equal.

Right now he and Perry were far from that moment, far from being equal. So much work to be done. But sometimes all that work could come about in an afternoon, and he’d been laying a foundation for weeks already. They were getting out of the car now, he could see Dayna’s bald head and white T-shirt, he could see Perry’s blond ponytail. Neither had an umbrella. The rain was like spittle now, seeming to coat everything, blowing in despite his umbrella and coating his arms, working its way into the cotton of his shirt. His stomach gurgled, something hot surged in his bowels. He had never been face to face with her, but he’d been so with her momma, and he’d been in her room, in her bed. Her underwear was alive in his back pocket, like it had a heartbeat. He felt impatient for her to know him the way he knew her. He raised his thumb to his lip.

Dayna would likely wander off, leave them to it. She was a prideful kind, didn’t want to let on how badly she wanted to watch, how badly she wanted to be the one getting lured. He’d only have to worry about her for as long as the small talk lasted.

They were closer now, picking their way down the path. He was midway up the ledge that looked over the quarry, a width of dirt and roots that made a kind of natural bridge, only there wasn’t no ropes or rail to hold on to. But you had to be an idiot to get too close to the ledge. He’d given himself a good six feet.

Perry’s ponytail swung behind her, her breasts moving ever so slightly with each step, her shirt riding up when she needed to use her arms for balance. Dayna plunged along beside her, her own breasts a sexless shelf, huge and sloppy and heaving. Jamey felt sorry for her. If he was a different man, maybe … but he was who he was.

“Hey,” he called. He unfurled the knuckles at his chin and waggled his fingers in a kind of wave, but kept his thumb where it was. He worried it looked faggoty, or like something an uncle might do, but neither girl seemed to notice, each focused on just getting down the trail and up to him as quickly as she could. A red truck came down the road, followed soon after by a silver hatchback. Neither slowed near Dayna’s car, and if they looked, it was doubtful they could see him up on the ledge, or the girls coming down the trail, especially on a dark day like this. At a glance from a passing car it was just the woods, Jamey knew. You had to slow down, stop even, and be looking for something in order to see anything. The girls were just fifty feet away now. A fart escaped, hot and wet, and Jamey was glad for the open air. He’d never lost control before, he’d always made it to a bathroom with plenty of time. It was something to keep faith in. No use worrying himself into a froth, as his momma liked to say, and having to excuse himself to find a tree or drive off in search of a toilet.

Now they were before him, not ten feet away. “Hey,” he said again. Perry’s ponytail was all wet, as pointy as a dagger. Dayna’s whole head looked dunked, a bib of wet seeping down her shirt. Up close her lips looked wrong, like she meant to draw a clown mouth but forgot to fill it in. He felt that surge of pity for her again. Maybe, if all went right, he could do something for her, too. But first things first.

“Hey,” Perry said. “You Jamey?” Her voice sounded lower than he’d expected, like her momma’s, only without the scratch of too many lost nights. He’d heard her yelling to Dayna before, he’d heard her calling
Bye-bye
to her momma, but her voice had been higher then, more girlish. Fake. He felt thrilled to be hearing her real voice. He nearly thanked her.

“You’re old as
fuck
,” Dayna said. “You ain’t in high school, you fuckin’ liar.”

Of course, he’d been expecting that, too. Before, he hadn’t had to worry so much about not looking young enough, but the years had passed, and he’d gotten soft and pale in jail, eating clods of meat and greens so wasted they’d turned yellow and puddles of what the line cook called
congealed
: fluorescent jellied desserts with mystery fruit suspended inside them. And the years had passed. Nothing he could do about that. He’d rubbed tinted lotions he found at the drugstore on his face and arms, he’d lifted his momma’s jumbo cans of chili above his head and curled them in toward his face, he’d grown out his sideburns and started combing his hair back. Only those ended up being the trends from before he got locked up, and now he just looked like a man reliving his glory days. A man with a cleft lip and a soft belly and stumpy legs. He could name all his flaws for anyone who asked. Draw a map of them for Dayna if need be. But that could wait.