Kit could not begin to address these questions, aloud or even to herself. Her cheeks and chest fired up and she found her glass of water on the table and drank it all down as a distraction. She was almost fifteen, and the dreaded Change was happening. For a few months, her chest had burned and prickled, and there’d been a marrow-deep pulsing in her thighs and knees. She was stretching and warping and growing dark hair everywhere. She looked and felt like a werewolf.
“Aw, sweetheart,” Red said, and bit her knuckle in regret. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you with my big mouth. But you don’t need to be ashamed of those things, not at all.” She squatted and dropped her weight on her high heels, wobbling a bit, probing Kit with eyes encumbered by long nights and heavy mascara. “I bet it’s not so easy to be you right now. I remember what that feels like. Everything’s confusing, no one hardly talks to you straight. Even with all those women in the family I still didn’t understand sex until I was plumb in the middle of it.”
Kit could see straight down the front of Red’s shirt, crowded by her breasts, full and tan, like two buns, risen, baked, and buttered. Breasts, and all they brought with them, were a beautiful but unwanted burden Kit was not ready to carry. Even though it embarrassed her, it was nice to be spoken to this way, like these matters of the body weren’t so frightful. It stirred up a desire for a female friend. A sister, maybe. Someone she could talk to about things that were too private for Manny.
Red pulled a pen out of her purse and found a square of rolling paper on the table where Kit sat. “Let’s make a deal,” Red said, and scribbled something on the translucent swatch. “You have a question, I’ll answer it best I can.” She held out the note, her nails lengthening her fingers by a solid inch. “This is me. You call or swing by whenever you need to. Wait, strike that. I work ten at night till three in the morning, so don’t come knocking till after noon. I gotta get my blowie sleep.” Then she winked. Kit smiled and folded the note into her pocket. She considered the offer seriously, brightened by the possibility of confiding in someone. Red smiled, her lipstick faded now so you could see the true outline of her lips. Thin, younger in their natural state. Kit did not know if she could follow through but was comforted to know she had the option.
Manny came out of the bathroom in a puff of steam, hair combed back, wearing a blue satin button-down, bell-bottom jeans, and a huge oval belt buckle studded with gemstones. Kit noticed the wrinkled bend in the leather four notches away from where Manny had fastened it and imagined the fat cat rancher he must have stolen it from. Could he have slipped it off undetected? She was glad she hadn’t voiced this thought aloud when she realized the man must have been naked when they stole his belt.
“My father always told me no good ever came of two women alone in a room together,” Manny said. “What are you two conspiring about?” His attempt at humor didn’t quite conceal a strain of jealousy. He looked at Red stretched out on the bed like she shouldn’t be there.
“You’re not gonna make me party alone, are you?” he said.
Red rolled her eyes. “I came to work. You wanna get loaded, fine, but don’t drag me into it. I aim to get paid today.” At this she pulled a tiny emery board out of her clamshell purse and began to file away an invisible snag. Manny sat on the bed across from Kit’s seat at the table.
“How about you, Kitty Cat? Wanna try something fun?”
She didn’t like his tone. He seemed different, like he was on another plane shouting through an opening. She shook her head.
Red reached over and slapped him on the hand. “Leave her alone, you! She’s just a kid.”
Manny snatched Red’s hand and twisted it around her back. She winced, unafraid and not struggling. He huffed at her ear, as if holding back some bigger action he must have known the situation did not call for.
She broke free and clasped her purse shut. “I’m calling it off. You’re too high, and I’m not in the mood anymore.” She turned to Kit. “Sorry, sweetie. Gotta fly.” She took a Dr Pepper on her way out and hooked the door shut behind her with the toe of her boot.
Gelled strands of Manny’s hair had fallen into his face. “I don’t know what crawled up her butt,” he said. Kit hated the way his eyes lost focus when he was high.
“I thought she was nice,” Kit said.
“She’s a slut, don’t forget it,” he said. “I work with her because she’s good. She’s smart and determined and I like that. But don’t you listen to her. I won’t have you ending up sucking some good ol’ boy’s willy for scratch.”
Even though she had liked Red, Kit was relieved to hear him insult her. Kit knew she had no rights to Manny, but she had felt something for him, a fever she couldn’t name. Sometimes she fell asleep in a chair in front of the television and felt him slip his fingers under her ribs and the pits of her knees and carry her like a treasured thing to her bed. There was a loosey buzz, like a wind fluttering the down on her skin; an urge to press against him, to clamp down so hard she left a mark where her arms had been.
She would be fifteen soon and had felt the warm coils of her own desire, especially in the twilight before she woke up each day, but there was nowhere to put it, no one to fumble around with to sharpen the blade of her wanting. Real sex, the actual mechanics of it, seemed so base and humiliating, something people did out of weakness. She had the unfortunate memory of having walked in on the Machers one time, Fran bent over the bed, Paul heaving himself into her rippling, sunburnt behind. The room had smelled of incense and deli meat, and she could hear the frantic flapping of his balls. If that was sex, she was happy to abstain.