Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [68]
She’d left the vest open in the middle. I could see the ridges of her ribs smoothing into her flat belly, the hem of her jeans. Under the dim light from the rafters, the hat shaded her eyes in a pool of darkness. She struck a pose, her hands on her hips.
“So would you buy my magazine?”
I nodded.
“Hey! For my community service project, how about we send these photos to Mr. Beck? Maybe it’d spice up the morning announcements.”
“Really, you should talk to the kindergarten teacher. She’s not that—”
“Let’s just get these shot,” Mandarin said. “This thing’s scratching my skin, and it reeks like a steer corpse. Hurry up.”
I aimed the camera at her and peered through the viewfinder. It was hard to see, but I snapped a photo anyway.
“There’s not enough light in here. Maybe we should go outside—”
A sudden clatter interrupted me. We jerked around in surprise. A deformed monster eclipsed the light from the open barn door: Mr. Householder, his arms piled with farm equipment.
“Who’s there?”
Mandarin and I glanced at each other. There was nowhere to hide.
“Hey! What the hell’re you kids doin’ in my barn?”
Mr. Householder’s angry face hit a shaft of light from the rafters, and he dropped the equipment he’d been carrying. He was short, with a pregnant-looking gut and eyes like pink candies set in pockets of dough.
I backed into Mandarin. She grabbed my shoulders and repositioned me out of her way. “Nothing much, sir,” she said. “We were just admiring your taste in fashion.”
“Why the hell you got my things on? Those’re my rodeo clothes! They’re special.” He took a step forward. “Take ’em off!”
Mandarin didn’t budge. “They can’t be too special, seeing as how they were stuffed way in the back of this dirty-assed barn.”
“Take ’em off this minute, or I’ll call the cops!”
“Oh gosh—you’ll call the cops? What’ll you say? ‘Help, police! A teenage girl’s stole my crusty old vest and hat!’ What’s your problem, anyhow? Who died and made you king asshole?”
He took another step, and his eyes focused on Mandarin’s face.
“You’ve got to be shittin’ me. If it ain’t Mandy Ramey! I shoulda known by that filthy trashy mouth a’yours.”
My jaw dropped. But Mandarin wasn’t fazed. “I might talk trash, but at least I don’t stink like I rolled in a dump.”
“You got no right to talk back to me! I know all about you, Mandy Ramey.” Mr. Householder smiled darkly. “And I know what you are, too—nothing but a tramp, a cheap baby whore. Ain’t that right? Easy as pie! Everybody’s had a piece. You even came on to my boy.”
His boy? Dale Householder worked for the sanitation department, and his belly was even bigger than his father’s.
“In his wet dreams,” Mandarin said through clenched teeth.
“And he turned you down flat. He knowed where you been. Wanna hear a little secret?”
“Fuck you.”
“I used t’be friends with your daddy,” he went on. “We was great friends back in the day, before he went and screwed up with that hoity-toity pretendian from elsewheres. I was there for him when she reappeared out of nowhere and left her big mistake behind. Guess she thought she was too good for him—and for you.”
“Fuck you!” Mandarin screamed. “My mother’s dead.”
She yanked off the hat and vest and flew at him like a furious harpy, hurling the vest at his gut and knocking him backward into a pile of scrapped wood. Mandarin scooped up her shirt and stood over him, making no effort to cover her naked breasts. “Go to hell and die, you sorry bastard.”
She spit in his face.
Then she ran for the door. I glanced at Mr. Householder, who flopped around on the barn floor like a half-crushed bug, swiping the saliva from his eyes.
“Who you callin’ a bastard, huh?” I heard him holler as I sprinted after Mandarin. “Huh? I ain’t the one whose mom’s a whore!”
When I burst into the light, Mandarin was already halfway down the grassy slope, heading for the thicket of ash trees by the river. So much for her tar-caked lungs. I finally caught up with her at the edge of the irrigation canal, not far from the rusty old car carcass. Her naked back was to me, and her shoulders were