The Girl in the Flammable Skirt_ Stories - Aimee Bender [31]
The red-haired guy’s name is, of course, Patrick.
Before he wakes up I run to the bathroom to see what I look like, and I actually look pretty good. Flushed and fuck-able. I go back and he’s still sprawled out on the bed and I fold my body back into his and think about how I want to look to him when he wakes up. I want to be sleeping in a casual sexy way, to make him want me again.
I remember, especially in high school, I was so good at this kind of fake-out. I rehearsed thoughtfulness, I appeared carefree—and how many guys did I trick? As I sat there, hair tucked behind my ear, supposedly lost in a book, thinking this exact monologue, rereading and rereading the same paragraph, waiting for them to see me and want me, caught in this image of myself as a reader. What about staring at ants, wanting to seem close to nature and whimsical? What about staring into space, wanting to seem expansive, trying to find the thoughts that would fit my self-portrait? I fooled so many guys! I was found mysterious so many times, oh that girl, we don’t know what that Susie thinks, and all I’m thinking is what do I look like, and all I’m thinking is that I own their thoughts.
Curled into Patrick, I end up falling asleep again anyway, and when I wake up he’s across the room. I run my finger over the titles in his bookshelf and find a photo album. It’s pretty heavy but I lift it into bed and start flipping through it.
“Patrick,” I say, “who’s in these pictures?”
He’s sorting through videotapes maybe because he wants to watch something. He glances up.
“Friends, old girlfriends, you know, photo album stuff.” The morning light is on his back and he looks pale and beautiful.
“So who’s the most important girlfriend of all these people?” I ask. I can see several women in the pictures, and they’re all attractive which makes me feel both good and bad.
“What do you mean the most important?” He has a yawn in his voice, but I think he’s faking.
“You know, the one you really loved.”
He walks over to me, leaving a pile of videotapes, and flips through the stiff photo album pages fast, and then I know he knows the order really well and that he likes to look at his photos and it makes me want to glue myself to his body.
“Here,” he says, pointing. There are a few photos of a brunette with short hair and a big, smiling mouth, Patrick and the brunette at the Grand Canyon, Patrick and the brunette taking a self-timer picture so that their faces are distorted and their noses look huge.
“That’s the one you loved?”
He nods and leaves the room. He leaves the videotapes all over the floor. I study the girl. She does not look a thing like me. He doesn’t come back in for a while, and then I hear the rustle of the newspaper and I know I’ve lost him for at least an hour. I pick up the phone and call my sister Eleanor. She’ll be up early on a Saturday morning. She has nothing else to do.
“Hello?” Her voice is lower than mine, and sounds like the voice of an older woman.
“Ellie, do you think I should cut my hair short?” I’m naked and I stick my legs up into the air because they look the best that way, all the skin slides up and creates muscles.
“Susie, whatever.” Eleanor is always depressed. Eleanor is fat.
“I think I’m tired of the way I’m looking. Do you want to go shopping with me? It’s early, but maybe later on today?” I love to go shopping with Eleanor because in contrast I look so great in everything.
“I work,” she says.
“Is Mom there?” I ask.
“Yeah, do you want to talk to her?”
“No,” I say, “but will you ask her if she thinks I’d look good in short hair?” There’s a pause while I hear Eleanor ask the question like a good big sister. The tiredness in her voice should make me feel bad but it doesn’t. What it makes me want to do is go take a karate class