“I’m tired,” Ginger said, in her new, dead voice. “I’m staying in.”
“You want some company?” I asked. It was one of those muggy gray nights that came in July and made tempers short, and everyone was cranky. I’d heard from Conor that Luke and Ray and Raven and Cha-Cha were heading into Manhattan for a boys’ night out; they had tickets for a blues concert in the Village and they were going to crash at someone’s apartment. If Luke wasn’t around, there seemed no purpose in hanging out, smoking endless cigarettes, drinking beers I didn’t want. Besides, I didn’t like Salina; I didn’t like the way she talked to Ginger, the way she looked at me. I never got along well with girls who looked like her, with their narrow fox faces and rabbity jaws.
I caught Liz looking at me with an “Oh, no you don’t” expression and Ginger patted my leg and said, “Thanks, man, but dig it, I really, really want to be alone right now.”
Salina stood up, swinging her ratty shoulder bag like she was ready to slug someone with it. “Oh, fuck you, man, with this Greta Garbo shit,” she said, walking to the door. “You want to be alone? We’ll leave you the fuck alone. Don’t wait up.” She opened the door and we could hear her platform heels clunking down the stairs. We looked at Ginger. “Have fun,” she said, staring at the door her sister hadn’t bothered to close.
“We’re worried about your sister,” Nanny told Salina, once we were in the car. “She hasn’t been herself lately, since the baby.”
Salina lit a cigarette and laughed. “She’s lucky, man,” she said. “She doesn’t know the half of it. I got two squalling brats at home and an old man out of work. Wish I’d known then what I know now.”
“Maybe the doting mother will take out some Polaroids to show us,” Liz whispered to me in the front seat.
Salina rummaged in her bag, brought out a vial, took out two small tablets, popped them into her mouth, and asked, “Anyone got anything to drink?”
Liz reached behind the driver’s seat and handed her a bottle of warm Tab. Salina took a swig, then guzzled the rest and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Ahhh,” she said, and let out a belch. “That’s way better. Now I’m ready to party.”
Nanny wasn’t giving up so easily. “Salina, does she talk to you? I’ve tried, but it’s like she’s—like part of her disappeared or something, man. She’s been acting really weird lately.”
Salina threw her cigarette butt out the open car window. Sparks flew into the backseat, embers cascading to the floor. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “She’s a big girl,” she said, her voice beginning to slide. “She can take care of herself.”
• • •
It was after two in the morning when Liz pulled back up to the apartment building on Gull Lane. She killed the motor and looked into the backseat, where Salina was sprawled, snoring, her mouth open, the fly to her jeans unzipped. “Okay, sleeping beauty,” she said. “We’re home.” The mean part of me wished I had a camera so I could take her picture and leave it by the side of the couch so it would be there when she woke up. I looked up at the third floor, where Ginger’s apartment was. The windows were dark.
Liz sighed. We got out of the car, opened the door, and helped Salina out.
“Wha the fuck,” she mumbled. “Wha the—whoa! Whoa! Where we going, man? Where you takin’ me? The night’s young!” She looked at me, her gaze loose on ludes and tequila, and smiled, revealing a gold tooth I hadn’t noticed before. “C’mon, man. C’mon! I want to truck with yas, man. C’mon! Let’s party. I still got—we could—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Liz said, shoving her up the dark pathway. Salina had been a pain in the ass all night; ordering shots at the lounge at The Starlight Hotel and then not paying for them so that Len became pissed; stumbling around between a barstool and the jukebox, too stoned to read the titles of the songs, spilling change from her purse all over the floor. Finally, Liz, Nanny and I had to drag her out of the bathroom where a long line had formed because she’d fallen asleep on the toilet seat. Thankfully, she hadn’t locked the door to the stall.
We opened the front door to the apartment house, where a naked bulb burned above us on the second-story landing. “Nighty-night,” Liz said, and shut the door. We walked to the curb where the car was parked, but I turned back once.
“Should we make sure she gets in okay?” I asked. “Those stairs—”
“‘She’s a big girl,’” Liz mimicked, putting the car key in the lock. “She can take care of herself.” She opened the car door, then slammed it shut again, locking it. “Fuck it,” she said wearily. “Let’s go for a walk on the beach.”
It was darker down here by the Lanes, more deserted; I was used to Comanche Street and the streetlights near the ticket booth and the lights of The Starlight Hotel. The night air was cooler but still suppressed, as though waiting to release a secret. Above us, the sky was blue-black, the fingernail moon hanging from a cloud. We left our thongs by the ticket booth at the entrance to the beach and walked barefoot down to the water. The waves licked the hem of the shoreline, tickling our ankles.
I liked it best with Liz when we were alone together. It’s not like I’m a lezzie or anything, it’s just the times when I trust her most. She’s different in front of people, like: for my birthday she bought me a silver bracelet from Drury’s Jewelers in town, engraved “Friends forever,” with the date. It made me cry, it was so beautiful. But a couple weeks later, when we were hanging by the trash cans at Eddy’s, she announced, “Did everyone see Katie’s piece-of-shit sweater, looks like it was made by refugees from the School for the Blind?” It’s the way she is, and I know in her heart, Liz loves me. But sometimes, when we’re with other people, it’s like she left me for dead.
“You ever think of getting away?” Liz asked. We were walking fast, splashing through the foamy water. This end of the beach was empty, silent, except for the sound of the crashing waves.
“Sometimes, sure,” I said.
“I don’t mean, like, a vacation,” she said. “I mean, like, forever, man. Permanently.”
“Sometimes, yeah,” I said. “I just don’t know where to go, you know?” I thought of finally telling her about Luke, about leaving Elephant Beach if we had to, but I wasn’t stoned enough to forget who she was.
“Wyoming, man,” she said. I looked up startled, but Liz didn’t notice. “You know, I saw this spread the other day, one of my mother’s magazines, this whole, like, ranch spread in Wyoming, it looked so cool, so—it was just the sky, right, and these beautiful horses. I don’t know, man, I never felt that way before, looking at pictures of other places, you know, like I just wanted to jump into the picture, just be there right now. Something different, different from—from here, this life. I mean, don’t you ever get, like, fed up? Like, sick of everything?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I do. Lately more than—”
“But you were always the lucky one,” she said, and this time I was beyond startled. Liz was the personality, the one everyone wanted to be with. “It’s like you don’t know where you come from, right? It’s like a—a total mystery, man. You don’t know what’s in your blood. You could turn out to be anything. Anything on earth.”
I laughed. “So could you,” I said. “So could anyone.”
Liz sighed sharply. Even over the lapping waves, I could hear her intake of breath, sounding like it hurt.
“You okay?” I asked.
She lit a cigarette, staring into the darkness. There weren’t any stars out. Above us, the moon fell in the sky.
Liz turned, abruptly, in the opposite direction. “Let’s go back,” she said over her shoulder. “It’s late, it’s dark, I have to be in early tomorrow.”
• • •
We went to see Ginger a couple days later, to make sure Salina had gotten up the stairs alive, but she had already split back to Port Richey, cutting her stay short. Ginger didn’t seem
too upset about it.
“Your sister’s a pisser,” Liz said, crossing her eyes to show she wasn’t serious.
Ginger smiled bitterly. “Yeah, man, she’s a gas. Did she tell you about the time she and Del, my oldest sister, went up and down the street, knocking on doors, telling people that our parents died and they needed money to bury them so they wouldn’t have to lay in Potter’s Field?”
We looked at her. When she wasn’t high or drinking, Ginger looked very young. Younger than seventeen, that’s for sure.
“And then they took the money and bought up some glue, just pots of the shit, man, it stunk up the whole apartment, and they went on a sniffing spree,” Ginger continued. “Yeah, she’s a real pisser.” Ginger shook a cigarette out of the package of Kools on the rattan coffee table.
“Since when do you smoke Kools?” Nanny asked.
Ginger struck the match. For a minute, her freckles looked like they were on fire. She dragged very deeply and then gazed out the window, toward the ocean. “I needed a change,” she said. She didn’t say anything else for a while. Liz and Nanny and I looked at one another. I wondered if she was missing the baby, or thinking about him. “I need a change,” she whispered, still staring out at the ocean.
• • •
It’s gotta be hard for her,” I said as we walked up Starfish Avenue to Comanche Street. “You know, first the baby, then Allie flipping out like that.”
“He treated her like shit,” Liz said.
“But he dug her,” I said. “You could see it, when they hung out together. At least sometimes.”
“Do you always have to be such a fucking Pollyanna?” Liz asked.
Nanny snorted. “Someone has to, when you’re around,” she said. It was true. Liz had always been the lippiest of the three of us, but lately her sarcasm was beyond borderline; it was just plain bitchy.
“Ha! Look who’s talking,” Liz said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nanny asked.
Liz laughed. “‘What’s that supposed to mean,’” she said. “You treat Voodoo like shit. You’re mad at him all the time because he’s not that asshole Tony Fury. Why he puts up with it, I don’t know.”
“Oh, that’s deep, man,” Nanny said sarcastically. “That’s really intense. You’re just jealous because Cory what’s-his-face wouldn’t know you were alive if you weren’t balling him on a road show down Sunrise Highway—” Nanny stopped then, her eyes wide. She realized she’d gone too far.
Liz’s face was tomato red; for a minute she looked like she might cry. And then she tossed her hair backward, away from her face. “At least he knows I’m a woman,” she said. “Not some stupid little girl who can’t—”
“How’d we get here?” I said. “We were talking about Ginger. Why are we all on each other’s cases now? It’s too hot for this shit, let’s just give it a rest—”
Liz put up her middle finger. “Give this a rest,” she said, and strode away from us, the bow on the back of her halter top bouncing against her skin.
“What is with her?” I asked. I was upset. I never liked the look of a retreating back.
Nanny shrugged. “Something to do with Cory the great squeeze, I’m sure,” she said. She lifted her hair off the back of her neck, twisting it on top of her head. “I shouldn’t have said what I said. But it’s true, Katie, you’ve said so yourself, and sometime she’ll have to know it, too.”
• • •
Jesus freaks were few in Elephant Beach. They were a ragtag group that had taken over the abandoned yarn store on Sea Grove Avenue and made it into a church of sorts; the name, Holy Light of Heaven Spiritual Sanctuary, was etched in charcoal above the burglar bars on the broken windows that faced the street. Some of the kids from the Dunes, the rich part of town, dabbled in Jesus during senior year, the ones who weren’t following the guru Maharishi and flying to India on their fathers’ credit cards. They’d walk the halls at school flaunting their newfound spirituality, dressed all in white, looking like deranged brides with their ethereal gazes that never met yours and their phony smiles that always seemed crooked. There were Jesus freaks working at Nature’s Choice, the tiny health-food store on Buoy Boulevard that always smelled of rotting lentils; they’d smile and smile and tell you that Jesus loved you every time they rang up a purchase. (Liz once pointed out that although they worked in a health-food store they always looked pale and sickly and emaciated while at the A&P, where the food was supposedly laden with chemicals and pesticides, everyone looked ruddy and well fed and healthy.) When you walked by the Holy Light of Heaven Spiritual Sanctuary, it was usually dark and you couldn’t see in the windows. Sometimes, you could hear singing that was supposed to sound joyous but often sounded flat and toneless because the church couldn’t afford an organ or even a beat-up piano to accompany the hymns. Around town, every once in a while you’d come upon a sign hanging on a tree or a telephone pole, painted in crooked block letters that read “Jesus Wants You,” or, simply, “Jesus.” Members of some of the real churches in town complained at the council meetings that it was a sacrilege, but were told that the police would have to actually catch someone in the act of putting up a sign to take action, and so far, that hadn’t happened. When those church people took it upon themselves to take down the signs, others would almost immediately spring up in their places.
The irony was that Ginger was led to Jesus by the skeevy-looking stranger who’d shoved her into Mitch’s arms that night in front of The Starlight Hotel. He’d sought her out a couple of days later, when he saw her walking off the beach, her tee shirt and cutoffs plastered to her body after she’d gone swimming fully clothed. Ginger hadn’t lost the weight she’d gained when she was pregnant and thought she looked too fat for even a one-piece bathing suit; her peach-colored tee shirt clung to her chest and darkened her nipples. The stringy stranger caught up to her by the ticket booth and began apologizing. Ginger had no idea who he was or what he was talking about. “It was the night I fell from grace,” he explained, in a voice that sounded surprisingly sweet. “I had closed my heart to Jesus and opened my mouth to liquor after abstaining for nineteen solid months. Jesus forgave me, all right, but how do I forgive myself?”
“How the fuck should I know?” Ginger asked, moving past him, bumping against his bony shoulder.
“Sister,” he called after her, and later Ginger told us there was something in his voice that made her turn back and really look into his eyes.
“My name is Casey,” he said solemnly, holding out his hand.
“I’m Ginger,” she said, and they stood together, talking, until the sun lowered and the waves relaxed and the beach became almost empty as everyone trailed past them to get home in time for dinner.
They started hanging out together and we realized why Casey looked familiar: he and several other Jesus freaks shared a house at the corner of Skylark Lane, right up the street from Eddy’s. The Jesus freak church farther uptown hadn’t anything even remotely resembling a rectory, and rents in the Trunk were always cheaper than anywhere else, except where the blacks and Puerto Ricans lived. Casey and the rest of the freaks had moved into a worn and weathered yellow bungalow that badly needed painting; there was a side yard, unusual for the Trunk, enclosed by a chain-link fence, where nothing grew except mud-streaked crab-grass. There were sheets on the windows instead of curtains and the windows were filmy with grime. Counting Casey, there were seven people living in the house, and a baby who would crawl through the yellow grass in the yard seemingly unsupervised. You’d rarely see any signs of life during the day, but at night, they’d come out and sit in a circle on the parched patch of lawn, bowing their heads, mumbling things that no one could hear. We’d see them on Sundays, piling into a dirty white van parked in front, on their way to the Holy Light of Heaven Spiritual Sanctuary, where Casey was the new preacher.
Ginger had never met anyone like Casey. He never pressur
ed her or preached to her privately, but he asked if she’d like to accompany him to evening prayers some night and, curious, she said yes. She went with Casey and the rest of the Jesus freaks to the deserted barge by the bay, where they made a circle with their hands locked, their eyes closed (though Ginger said she opened hers when she thought she heard the clamoring of water rats in the hold below). “It’s such a rush, man,” she told us, after, her eyes shining. “It’s like—even the air smells better after, like purer, you know?” Ginger started spending more time at the crumbling yellow bungalow. Sometimes, she and Casey would walk down Lighthouse Avenue and cross the street, licking vanilla fudge ice-cream cones like fifteen-year-olds out on their first date.
“It was the drinking that made him act so ugly,” she defended him, when we started asking skeptical questions.
“Cat was born ugly,” Mitch said out of the side of his mouth, watching Casey come out of Eddy’s carrying two sugar cones covered with sprinkles. It wasn’t just his broken teeth and pockmarked skin, either; Casey and his disciples didn’t look spiritual, like Father Donnelly or the Sisters of Sodality, who lit the incense every morning at St. Timothy’s Church. They looked like people you would be scared of if you weren’t in a familiar place. They looked like the guys who ran the Ferris wheel on the boardwalk in the center of town, with their pointy studded boots and faded jean jackets, huddled in the abandoned arcades with their heads down and their collars turned up, cigarettes dangling from their lips, managing to look tough and frail at the same time. You could just imagine the needle falling out of their arms. The girls they hung around with were like a flock of fragile birds, hunched and furtive-looking in their thrift-shop dresses, always glancing over their shoulders as though they thought someone was following them. We asked Ginger which one was the mother of the baby, and she said the baby’s name was Elijah and he belonged to everyone. “Isn’t that beautiful, man?” she said, her eyes shining. She ignored our smirking, our scornful laughter.
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