“Oh Ginny, I know you like the giant black ones,” she said, waving a marker in front of Ginny’s face, exaggerating her volume. “Forget all of these skinny pale ones. Didn’t you tell me you liked the feel of the big black ones in your hand? It gives you something to hold on to, right?”
“Oh my God, would you just shut up?” Ginny hissed at Caroline, accidentally knocking a box of permanent markers to the floor, which then scattered like toothpicks into the aisle.
“Spaz,” Caroline said. Ginny and Betsy put down the baskets and the unwieldy poster boards and knelt on the cold, gray-flecked linoleum to collect the pens.
“I need a new mascara and some Tic Tacs. You like spearmint, right?” Caroline said, to no one in particular, and left them to clean up the mess. “I’ll see you at the cash registers.”
“If you have someone announce ‘Clean up on aisle six’ I swear on my life, Caroline, I’m leaving your ass here,” Ginny called after her, but Caroline was already out of earshot. Betsy caught a glimpse of a mud-spattered work boot from the corner of her eye.
“Ladies, you missed one,” said a man with a thick Southern accent, who crouched down to pick up a stray pen and handed it to Betsy.
“Oh, thanks, but that’s hers, not mine,” she said, passing the marker to Ginny. Betsy registered the intensity of his gaze, the way his eye traced the ragged edge of her cutoff shorts, and glared back at him.
“Thanks, and sorry about that,” said Ginny, blushing, as she took the marker from his dirty hand. Betsy recognized the faint whiff of second-day alcohol. She scanned his face, which looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place it. He had a youngish, angular profile, high, sharp cheekbones, and fair eyes. His skin was tan and freckled from the sun. He had deep pale creases in his forehead and around his eyes where he squinted. His hair, brown and long, was shaggy around the collar, and he was filthy, in a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal strong forearms and inky dark fingernails. His jeans were withered and creased like a note that had been folded and refolded and passed between classes. Whether he was dirty in a studio-art way, a “working on my motorcycle” way, or a vagrant way was hard to say. His tan suggested a lot of time spent outdoors, not necessarily poolside. Regardless, he was making Ginny nervous. Her eyes returned to the boots. She had seen them somewhere before, but where? “She can be a handful sometimes.”
“I bet she can,” he said. “Is this yours, too?” he said and passed Ginny the basket with the facial wax, the car freshener, and the hemorrhoid pads Caroline had assembled. Ginny looked at Betsy, pleading.
“Oh God, no, well, it’s sort of mine,” Betsy said, trying to help. “It’s our friend. She thinks she’s really funny. I don’t, uh, well we don’t really need this stuff.”
Ginny grabbed a handful of Sharpies, tossed them in the basket, and dumped the Tucks and the Sally Hansen strips on a low shelf. Betsy could see the color burning in her cheeks.
“Well, you ladies have a nice afternoon.”
Ginny paid for the art supplies with the petty cash she’d taken from the house, crammed the change into her pocket, and stormed back out into the parking lot. Caroline and Betsy followed. The car was blurry in the distance from the infrared waves of rubber-melting heat rising from the blacktop.
“Why didn’t I park closer?” she said with a hiss.
“Hey, Gin,” said Betsy. “That guy. Did he look familiar?”
“Oh good Lord, Betsy, how would I remember that?” Ginny said.
“Yeah, she can barely recognize her own mother,” Caroline laughed.
Ginny tossed the bag in the back of the convertible and sat hard in the driver’s seat and slammed the door. Betsy climbed into the back and Caroline slid into the passenger seat. She handed Ginny a Diet Dr Pepper and offered some Tic Tacs. Ginny shot Caroline an angry look.
“Jesus, I got cherry passion. Sue me! Who knew that you would have a complete hissy fit if you didn’t get spearmint, for once?”
The ignition started on the third try and soon they were back in traffic on 34th Street. Ginny’s warped Violent Femmes cassette was back in rotation, and it crackled and hissed through the tape deck. Hot late-summer air blew Ginny’s long ponytail into knots. Betsy shielded her eyes from the sun, wishing she’d remembered her sunglasses. The vanilla-scented Hasselhoff flapped wildly at his new post under the rearview mirror. The three of them were too distracted, or too irritated, to notice that the stranger in the boots, the one who grazed Ginny’s hand with his when he picked up the marker from the floor, was trailing a few cars behind them on his bike.
CHAPTER 7
J.D.’S
August 25, 1990: Afternoon
Ginny pulled over in front of Schoolhouse with a clumsy jerk and halted.
“Y’all have a good time!” she said. Caroline stared straight ahead, silent. Ginny clamped her hand down on Caroline’s leg with enough force to make her leap an inch off of her seat.
“Yeah, sure. Looks like you forgot your fishin’ pole,” Caroline said with an exaggerated drawl, “but I’m sure you’ll find something to do.”