The Fortunes of Indigo Skye (32 page)

I rub the canvas fabric of the deck chair
cushion with my palm. Finally I go inside, to my own room, that's all white and
smells unopened. I prepare to sleep in the sixth place I have laid my head, and
I feel lonelier than I ever have in my life.

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15

"I told him, we are
not
waiting around
all day for rides from him. I'm just not. So he's having the car place send over
a car. We can just give them your credit card number when they get
here."

"MY credit card number?"

"Well, Indigo, come on. There's no way he's
paying for us to have a car here, and you know, we do get to stay here on the
company account."

"Fine. You're right."

"You've got plenty of money. Don't be cheap."
This should bother me maybe, but it doesn't. It feels like my share. There is
this house she's invited me to. A glimmering pool outside. Melanie socks my arm
playfully. We're hunting for breakfast in the fridge.

"I still can't believe you got a one-way
ticket," she says.

"Why? Maybe I'll want to stay. Maybe this is my
place too."

"Well, then the car lease is a good idea. I
told him to get it for the summer, is that okay? Since that's how long we'll
have the house? I thought maybe you could drive me down to school. If you decide
you want to stay, you can go from there."

"Perfect," I say. And it feels closer to
perfect today. The house is bright, and you can feel the ocean urging
possibilities. I'd just forbid myself to think about Trevor and home. I'd use
some mental flyswatter, smack away any slightly buzzing thought.

"There's nothing to eat around here," Melanie
says. And she's right. Well, there's food, but there's nothing to
eat.
This is food

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for decoration. There's a package of pine nuts
that cost more than a good breakfast at Carrera's, and a wedge of cheese that
was more expensive than three packages of the pine nuts. There's a cellophane
bag of dried figs in a designer bow, and a glass container of anchovies. It's
impressive, but lacks the general requirements of actual food--nourishment, say.
"We can stop somewhere on the way to the beach," Melanie says.

A few moments later, the doorbell chimes and
two car lease guys poke their heads in our front door. Sitting outside is a red
Porsche with the top down. I laugh. "You're kidding, right?" I say.

Melanie gives me a big smile. "They're going to
need your card and your license. Dad's taken care of the rest."

I fill out forms in triplicate, no doubt giving
the Porsche company my firstborn child if I scratch the car. Melanie is dangling
the keys on the end of her finger. "No way," I say. "If I just paid to use this
thing, you're Skipper and I'm Barbie."

The car is brand new. This all feels pretend.
Melanie gets in and so do I, and I try to figure out how to get the parking
brake off. I hunt around down by my legs and feel up the dashboard, like a
seventh-grade boy on his second date. "I just felt up the dashboard," I say to
Melanie, and we break up into the nervous, hysterical giggles of people doing
something they sense they shouldn't. I finally spring something loose, and the
car starts to roll backward.

"Indigo!" Melanie shrieks.

"Would you relax, for God's sake."

"The landscaping!"

"It's fine! These deserty plants are sturdy!
This is the land of the sturdy plants." I give the accelerator a little tap and
it roars, a big
VROOM!
like a cartoon car. It always cracks me up
when

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sounds actually sound like the word used to
describe them. A cat, for example, never says "meow." But occasionally a dog
will really say "arf" or "woof" and this car actually says "vroom." Things are
looking up. Maybe last night was mere homesickness, over now. Trevor would love
this car, but I'm not thinking about Trevor.

I hear the click of Melanie's seat belt. We
sort of lurch forward and back, and then forward again as I figure out the
gears. There's a bit of a
reeech!
and we leave behind a skid of black and
we are off.

"Oh my God," Melanie says. "Oh my God."
Melanie's hands grip her seat.

"You are so overdramatic sometimes. Tell me how
to get out of here."

Melanie just gapes, her mouth a black open half
circle, like some hole on a miniature golf course. She points. I'm starting to
like this a little. It's way better, let me tell you, than driving one of these
things around the living room floor with Barbie and G.I. Joe. You can feel this
car's power right under your hands, and in the way the seat curves around your
butt. It's
there,
ready to do your command. This thrum of energy ... You
can feel the possibility of speed. I bet it can go
fast.

"Holy fuck, Indigo, SLOW DOWN!"

"Take a laxative, Mel. God. I was just
seeing."

"There's a speed trap here. Lots of people have
lost their lives here. What's that guy with the movie-star hair? Jimmy
Dean."

"That's a sausage."

"Jim. James, okay? And what's that other one.
The guy, the rock guy. Jim Morrison. Right here."

"You only have to worry if your name is Jim," I
say.

"All kinds of Hollywood people, Indigo. My
point is, the

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road's dangerous. You always see those wreaths
and things here."

I know she's lying. Melanie's mouth always gets
obvious sewn-up stitches in the corners when she lies. Her mouth looks like any
hem my mom tries to sew without using the Sewing in a Tube. "Liar," I say. I
point at her.

"I am not. Keep your hands on the
wheel!"

"Mel, we're going to the beach, right? And the
beach is supposed to be fun and relaxing. Anyway, where is 'the beach'? There's
beach all over the place."

"Yeah, but nobody goes
here.
Just keep
going, and you'll see it off to the left."

Melanie is right. There it is, and my stomach
gives some kind of lurch of dread. No, more like a LURCH OF DREAD. I don't know
what I was picturing--maybe Dad's beach, where we could rent some snorkeling
gear, and swim in the waves and make fun of old guys in Speedos. This is a whole
different game; I can tell before I even make my twentieth circle of the parking
lot to find a place for my car. My car, by the way, isn't so special here. I see
several of them, in various colors, most of them red, though, just like mine. A
red Porsche here is like a black suitcase at the airport. Music blares from a
couple of canopy tents on the beach. Perfect bodies play volleyball, reach for
that serve. Only a few people are actually in the water--most are propped on
half chairs or stretched on mats or towels. There are no little kids, no old
people. Only perfect bodies and more perfect bodies holding plastic cups and
laughing and jostling each other so boobs jiggle and liquid spills from
cups.

Melanie is twisting and adjusting various
triangles of her bikini, which is suddenly revealed, her shorts and top having
been whipped off with record speed and shoved down onto the

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floor of the car. I realize that my tank suit
is Quaker and nunlike for this place. My insides creep, attempting to make a
retreat that I'm unable to make. I'm not a prude, but this is NOT my place--
everyone here is posed and styled and has put a great deal of thought into what
they're wearing. Here, my slightly wobbly ass is weird and out of place. It
wants to go home, where it's normal and even appreciated.

I start wondering when we can leave before I'm
even out of the car. I want to protect the self-esteem of my imperfect body, and
so I keep my shorts on. Melanie is striding over to a group of people, oblivious
to the fact that the sand, sinking over the edges of my flip-flops, is searing
hot.

"Desiree? Is that you?" she squeals.

"Melanie?" A girl with waist-length brown hair
hugs Melanie, and looks at my shorts. "Aren't you hot?" she asks. "I have an
unsightly rash," I say.

Melanie gives me the
God, Indigo!
eyes.
"This is Indigo," Melanie says. "And Desiree. We knew each other from last
summer."

"And Glenn," Desiree says. No one is named
Glenn anymore, but Glenn doesn't know that. He comes alive at the sound of his
own name, same as Freud when he hears the can opener. He lifts his head and
strides our way, ditching the guy he's talking to in order to join
us.

"Your dad has the record company," he says to
Melanie. He has brown, shaggy hair, a tattoo of a jet on one arm.

"Yeah," Melanie says, even though it isn't
true. Her mouth doesn't have the little lines, though.

"Why are you wearing your shorts?" Glenn asks
me. Obviously people here are entitled to rudeness.

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"Why do you have an airplane on your shoulder?"
I ask. Glenn pats his own arm. "Oooh, that's my baby. I can't bear to be away
from her for one minute. So I put her picture here."

"That's your plane?"

"Fuck yeah, it is. My Learjet 60."

"It's your dad's, Glenn," Desiree
says.

"You don't know what you're talking about," he
says. "It's mine. Is your car yours?"

"It
is
mine," Desiree says.

"Well, it's
mine,"
Glenn
says.

Mine, mine, mine. I'm getting a headache
already.

"Great to meet you, but we've got to head out,"
I say.

"Real funny, Indigo," Melanie says. "Let's get
something to drink."

"We've got beer over there," Glenn says. He
points to one of the tents, where there are coolers and tables of food. "Cold
beer makes me hot," he says. He sticks his tongue in Desiree's ear, and she
swats him.

"We'll be right back," Melanie says. We head
for the tent. I feel like she's George in
Of Mice and Men,
while I'm the
retarded Lennie, following along. "That Desiree is such a bitch," she says.
"But, God, did you see Glenn? I've had a crush on him for three
summers."

"Glenn?" I look at him. I try to see what the
big deal is. Trevor appears in my mind. I try to force the thought away, but it
insists. My heart squeezes, lurches with ache. No way does Glenn have Trevor's
sweet eyes or smile or arm muscles that could lift you right up and spin you
around. I flash on a Trevor memory, the time we were at Pine Lake, looking at
the trees; when the light made you sense that promises could be held in your
hands.
Why

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do you feel like your heart could break when
the hills turn pink and the trees turn yellow?
Trevor asked.
Why do you
feel every joy and sorrow and goodness and beauty and past and present and every
perfect thing?
I banish the thought. I don't want to think of Trevor right
now, at least the good parts of Trevor. I can't move into a new, bigger life,
dragging my old furniture.

"Why do you say 'Glenn' like there's a
question?" Melanie asks.

"He's got a plane tattoo on his arm." Leroy's
tattoos are ART. This is advertising copy. "He's got a
plane."

"So you've got a crush on his
plane."

"His father is a big shot at
Universal."

"Do you think his father's hot too? I don't get
your point."

Melanie blows exasperated air out her nose. She
rummages around on the table of food for something to eat, but this looks like
her dad's fridge, part two. Tortilla chips that are different colors. Olives,
goat cheese. Various bottles of sauce but nothing to put it on. Melanie sticks
her hand in a bag of chips and crunches, and then I do my Lennie routine and
follow her to the volleyball game in progress. She seems to know these people
too, and Glenn is playing, so she joins in and jumps around and squeals and
holds her hands in that clasped-together way that means she's ready for the ball
to come to her. Anytime it does, Glenn shoves his way in front of her and
attacks it, like a pig after a corncob.

It is my general policy not to play sports in
public, as it is against Section Five, Paragraph Three, in the humiliation
clause of my personal contract. I once played a game of softball at a school
picnic, and I can still hear the laughter. And hey, any

250

nonathlete is doing a public service, because
an athlete craves an audience like a guy with new sunglasses craves a
mirror.

So I watch the volleyball game until I can't
stand it anymore. Okay, I saw the perfect bodies, let's move on to something
more interesting. Great spike, whoopee. A spike like that could change the
world. My life was forever changed by witnessing it.

"Mel!" I shout. "We're gonna be late!" Okay,
true, we have no plans, but this seems better than shouting that I am officially
bored out of my skull. Melanie either doesn't hear me or pretends not to. I cup
my hand around my mouth and try again, and she gives me the look a Doberman
behind a chain-link fence gives the mailman. She obviously is having a great old
time with Glenn, who acts like one of those asshole guys who has big-titted
women reclining on the mud flaps of their trucks. You wonder how another woman
could raise a man like that. His mother should be ashamed.