Lunatic Fringe (5 page)

“
I’ll introduce you
around,” Blythe said, looking along Lexie’s gaze to the groupings
of women dotted across the lawn. “But first, what do you want to
drink?”

Lexie pointed at the beer bottle that
had pressed cold against her skin. “That works for me.” Blythe gave
her shoulder a squeeze of acknowledgement and strode off into the
crowd.

With Blythe distracted,
Lexie resumed her scan of the faces at the party. Hazel, wearing
nothing but a smile, bounced in a steaming hot tub, dazzling the
two blushing, swimsuit-clad freshmen with her. Mitch flirted with a
pretty brunette who held an empty plate at the barbecue. All
through the yard, girls lounged, eating food from each other’s
plates and laughing. Looking at all these women, Lexie was
astonished to realize that there were no men there at all. Lexie
hadn’t been expecting, nor hoping, to meet men, but she had never
been in a space without male presence, either real or implied. None
of the conversations she overheard involved boyfriends or male
crushes; no one even referenced male professors, even in dry
complaint. There was a significant lack of regard for, or even
attention to, malekind. Lexie wondered if this was by design, or if
it was just a natural side effect of having so many women in one
space.
Out of sight, out of
mind
, she guessed.

How strange that, in all
her eighteen years on the planet, she had never been among a group
of people in which there wasn’t at least one man. Well, there were
public restrooms, of course, but that was circumstantial and so
fleeting as to be meaningless. Having a single father didn’t help.
Lexie had been raised in a world in which men were everywhere,
their presence nearly inescapable, while nearly devoid of the
presence of women. She had never been invited to a slumber party--
though she would have invented an excuse to say no even if she had
been; there weren’t even locker rooms in her high school. Where she
came from, women did not lead book clubs or athletic teams, stage
all-female versions of
Hamlet
, or organize all-women’s
canoeing trips. She was never even a Girl Scout, a fact she took
pride in: her father had taught her to be a better outdoorsman than
those cookie-hockers ever would, merit badges be damned.

“
Hey there.” Lexie turned.
A tall woman held a celery stick like a cigarette. She nibbled at
the ends as she spoke, her voice low and even, as though she had
plenty of time to kill.

Lexie choked on a response. Her jaw
seized and her eyes froze for a long moment, unable or unwilling to
remove themselves from the woman before her. Never before had Lexie
seen a woman who looked like her. She wore her hair in a fluffy
corona, a halo of soft black suds held back from her broad forehead
with an eggplant-colored wrap. Her skin was the color of walnut
heartwood, with flecks of darker freckles sprayed across the bridge
of her nose. She stood a head taller than Lexie, all smooth swishes
and spindly appendages indicating a normal-shaped girl who had been
stretched. Her rib cage dipped into a narrow waist, then flared out
to full and sturdy hips that made the girl look like a sexy
teaspoon. The woman’s full, tawny lips spread into a smile as Lexie
gaped.

“
Hey,” Lexie blurted,
relaxing onto one hip in a failed attempt at
insouciance.

“
You alright?” The girl
spoke slow and easy, a hint of bemusement in her voice.

“
Oh, yeah. My mind was just
. . . wandering,” Lexie said, meeting her eyes.

The girl squinted at her. “I’m Renee.
Bloody Mary?” She held her drink out as a means of
advertisement.

“
Blythe was just getting me
a beer . . .” Lexie started, but when she turned toward the house,
she noticed Blythe holding court with a group of girls who had
short-stopped her on the way to the kitchen. Brief snippets of
their conversation--something about the politics of
pornography--drifted over to them.

“
Oh. Well. A Bloody Mary
sounds great.”

Renee led the way inside. The front and
back doors of the house were both wide open, allowing swirls of
fresh air to dance their way through the main room. A pillar of red
plastic cups balanced high on the kitchen counter. Renee went to
work cracking ice, pouring vodka, and shucking celery. Her arms
flexed, slim and strong. Lexie leaned against the counter, admiring
Renee’s lithe hands working at their tasks.

“
So, you got a girlfriend?”
Renee asked, not looking up from the Worcester sauce--which was the
same deep brown as her eyes--as she silently counted the drops that
fell into the glass. Lexie studied the spout of the bottle as each
tiny drop eked out, certain that as the next drop fell, the right
response would pour from her lips as well. But the last drop was
stubborn and Lexie’s voice, too, stuck in her throat.

Renee cocked an eyebrow. A half-smile
nudged at her cheek, making her look feline and all-knowing.
Lexie’s ears turned hot, her blood pressure rising with her
shame.

“
Boyfriend?” Renee
goaded.

Lexie shrugged, resorting to
communication via mute gestures.

“
Okay then,” Renee said,
shoving the completed cocktail into Lexie’s hand with a flourish
and a smile.

Lexie peered into the cup. The smell of
the drink made the hairs inside her nose twirl like sand eels. The
celery stalk stuck out at a jaunty angle, its leafy end busheling
over the rim of the glass. A small plastic sword held two fat
olives that stared up at her through the red juice like amphibious
eyes peering from beneath a pool of blood. Lexie had never drunk
before, not really. She had shared a beer with her dad once in a
while, but beer wasn’t a real drink, just alcoholic soda. This was
a cocktail, the kind that came with fancy living rooms, high-class
conversation, and women who looked like Renee. Lexie stared at the
concoction, willing herself out of her dislike of tomato juice in
that very moment. Renee leaned the heel of one hand on the
countertop and placed the other expectantly on her hip.

Lexie took a reluctant sip. The thick,
peppery taste swelled her salivary glands, a shock to her
esophagus. Perspiration dewed at the nape of her neck and her
sinuses flared open in protest. Halfway down her throat, it felt as
though the caustic fluid switched directions and followed her spine
straight up to her brain. A cough fought against her throat, jaw,
and good sense for release, the air rushing out her nostrils making
her sound like an impudent horse. She forced the
diabolically-willed cocktail down her throat. Only once the fluid
was safely ensconced in her belly did she remember where the hell
she was, and she theatrically fanned her face, partially as a joke
for Renee’s benefit, and partially because her head actually felt
aflame.

“
Wow,” Lexie choked through
half-breaths.

Renee smiled and slapped Lexie on the
shoulder. “Atta girl.”

“
Hi, Mitch.” Lexie stood at
the barbecue, empty plate in hand, a fresh beer in the other, to
soothe her shocked taste buds.

“
Hey, Sexy Lexie. What can
I getcha?” Lexie’s ears grew hot at the nickname, but she forced
herself to focus on the food. The spread was impressive: three
different kinds of burgers, a variety of sausages and hot dogs,
marinating mushrooms, and some fancy-looking shish
kabobs.

“
Wow. Um. How about a hot
dog?”

“
Turkey, Tofurky, or
Seitan?”

Lexie stared blankly, confounded by the
riddle. Finally, she conceded. “What?”

“
Good answer. One hot dog,
coming right up.” Mitch threw a few dogs on the grill with a
flourish that she seemed to reserve solely for culinary activities.
She took a swig from her beer bottle, which wore a foam cozy
declaring, “Riots Not Diets.”

Lexie found Mitch more relatable than
any of the other girls she had met so far. Her aesthetic was
familiar, her mannerisms reminiscent of Lexie’s father on his
better days. Yet an obtrusive distance seemed to linger between
them.

As Mitch plopped a toasted bun and
glistening hot dog onto her bamboo plate, Lexie blurted the
question that niggled her brain. “Hey Mitch, can I ask you
something?”

“
Go for it,” Mitch
answered, monitoring the various calculations and countdowns of the
grill.

“
Something about using the
word ‘she’ to describe you feels odd.”Attention still on the grill,
Mitch gave a half-smile, her dimples digging creases into her
cheeks. Lexie breathed easier.

“
Okay,” Mitch said. “Was
there a question in there?”

“
Oh . . . um, yeah. So, do
you prefer ‘she’?” Lexie took a big gulp of her beer. “Because ‘he’
seems more . . .”

Mitch’s smile widened to a toothy,
round-cheeked grin. “You can call me anything you want,” Mitch
said, sliding the steel spatula under a burger and flipping it. The
fire hissed and flared. “As long as it ain’t ‘Nancy.’”

Mitch plopped another perfect, juicy
dog onto her plate, smiling as though in on some joke that remained
a mystery to Lexie.

“‘
He’ is cool. Thanks for
asking, Lex,” he said. Lexie smiled and turned to go. “Hey,” Mitch
said. “Is it okay I called you ‘sexy’?”

Lexie smiled and nodded as she walked
away, a full plate in hand. Talking with Mitch was easy. Now to
brave a sea of conversations that she had no idea how to
navigate.

She’s tougher than Pendican,
but the reading list is way more interesting. Like
Bornstein-interesting, not Dworkin.

I can’t believe my sister
and I grew up in the same house. She actually voted Libertarian
last year, can you believe that nonsense?

I think I’m just going to
shave my head. If you can’t do it in college, when can
you?

This town is so fucking
tiny, I want to kill myself. You can’t even get a decent goddamned
burrito here. I can’t wait to get back to LA for fall
break.

The steel drum group meets
every Friday at the Union. If you’re really good, they’ll put you
up front, but I’m still learning, so I have to work my way
up.

The clamor of words rattled in Lexie’s
head. She weaved a path to the only quiet part of the yard, where
an empty lawn chair idled in the shade. On the way, she passed by
two girls cuddling on a blanket, a cloud of lavender smoke
lingering above them.

“
Hey,” came a slow, low
voice from the blanket. “What’s your name, stranger?” The red-eyed
girl lounged on the ground, a blown-glass pipe resting atop her
curved belly. Her hair was knotted in blonde dreadlocks that
splayed like Medusa’s snakes from her head.

“
Lexie.”

“
Like
Alexandra?”

“
Alexis,” Lexie corrected
with a small grimace.

“
I’m Corwin,” the girl
replied, her speech muffled as she pressed the green glass pipe
against her lips and flicked her lighter. The other girl draped
herself across Corwin’s belly. She was dark-skinned and buxom,
wearing a flimsy black sweater-vest that struggled mightily to
contain her generous breasts. The girl’s brown eyes narrowed as she
watched her girlfriend share a smile with Lexie.

“
I had a cat named Alexis,”
Corwin said, puffing tiny clouds of purple smoke from her
mouth.

“
That’s rude!” the other
girl said, slapping Corwin’s chest.

“
What’s rude?” Corwin
laughed and coughed at the same time.

“
Saying that a girl you
just met shares her name with a cat!”

“
Why is that
rude?”

“
It just is.”

Corwin shook her head and rolled her
eyes, her dreadlocks shaking.

“
I’m Sharmalee,” the other
girl said, flitting her fingers in a half-hearted flirt, like a
child beauty queen who understands the basic motion but not the
purpose. Her long, black hair draped in loose, thick waves across
her shoulders. Her skin was the color of incense and rolled like
smoke over her ample figure. She smiled perfunctorily at Lexie,
then turned Corwin’s chin back toward her and kissed her fully on
the mouth. Lexie took that as her cue and continued with her lunch
to the lone lawn chair.

The day dwindled into late afternoon.
The rest of the freshmen excused themselves to go home or to the
library while they still nursed healthy buzzes. Lexie claimed her
lawn chair and ate, the hot dog putting only a small dent in her
hunger. She watched Hazel cling to her position in the hot tub,
unwilling to sacrifice her nudity to the chilly air. Though no
taller than a fourth-grader, Hazel was shaped like a Vargas girl.
Lexie looked away when she realized she was staring.

Mitch had been working the grill since
Lexie’s arrival, and after delivering a plate of veggie dogs to
Hazel, spa-side, he seemed finally satisfied that every woman was
fed beyond her wont. He reclined in the hammock with the last of
the microbrews to enjoy the end of the final summer
barbecue.

Jenna walked barefoot among the tables
in the yard, stacking the dirty plates and cups in her arms amid
the weak protests of the other girls, who insisted the housework
could wait and that she should relax. Jenna shooed their protests
away with a wink and a smile. Clearly this was a familiar patter to
the girls. Lexie wouldn’t be surprised if the same routine happened
every time they entertained. Jenna’s teal skirt flowed about her
like cloud cover, a cherubic smile curving her lips.