Pink Neon On the highway I speed up until Jennifer's hair is standing up in the wind. She tunes the radio to a classic rock station from the city, and I reach down to touch her hand. She looks up to me and smiles, purses her lips as if to kiss me. We've decided to go out of town for the weekend, and while I'm nervous about checking into a motel with her -- she's definitely not old enough to be a wife, or even a lover -- I'm worried more about her parents, what they would do if they discovered the truth. This element of danger is one of the things that makes our relationship exciting. I really care for her, though: she has a sharp wit; I like the slightly cynical tone in her voice when I mention the disparity in our ages; I like the way she gives of herself sexually. We met in the mall near my apartment. She was shoplifting lipstick in a drugstore, amd when I didn't tell the management she followed me out into the mall to thank me. "Haven't you ever wanted to try something forbidden?" she'd asked. I gave her a ride home and she showed up at my door the next weekend. She's not yet seventeen and I'm twenty years older. She seems older, though. She's an only child, and she's been raised with money and good schools, but she doesn't act like a kid. In fact, she seems more an adult than my ex-wife. "What will you tell them?" I had asked her in the early afternoon. Jennifer was sitting on the floor of the living room, packing a nylon flight bag for the trip. "I'm staying with Susie and her folks in Dudley." Jennifer stood and reached down for the bag and raised it, testing the weight. "Don't worry," she said. "What happens if your folks call?" I was sitting on the couch, watching her, wondering what it would be like to be able to spend an entire weekend with her. "Susie's folks have a place on Lake Burge. There's no phone out there," she said. "And that's where they are this weekend." She set the bag down. "Okay. I'll stop worrying." "You better." She sat on the couch by me and leaned back and put her head in my lap. I took a lock of her hair and twisted it in my fingers and pulled it over her eye. I think her hair is longer than when we met two months ago. "We'll have a good time, I promise," she said. The radio station begins to disintegrate into static, and Jennifer turns it off. "Let's just stop somewhere," she says. I look at her and smile. Her head is back and her eyes are closed, and the wind makes her hair look like cotton fibers or dandelion fuzz. "We'll get off the highway at Anderson and find one of those little tourist courts." "Groovy." She reaches into the glove compartment and gets her sunglasses; she puts them on and stares up at the sky, and when I look back at her she has her eyes closed. There is a franchise motel near the exit from the highway, but I drive on past it. On the road leading into the town, there's another motel, a group of buildings surrounded by a matching white stucco wall. The entrance is an archway of brick and stucco. I point to it. "That's where we're going to stay," I tell her. "Just like the fifties," she says, and turns in her seat so that she can watch the motel fall behind. A mile from the interstate, the town is a cluster of small businesses around a courthouse. "This town's been here a hundred and fifty years," I say. "I've always passed it on the highway," she says. "I wondered what it would be like to stop here." There are a few cars parked in front of the businesses facing the square, and a few people windowshopping. On the square a small restaurant is open in a building that also houses a clothing store. "Let's eat," I say. Inside there is a counter along half of one side of the room and booths along the other, with tables spaced between and more tables behind where the counter bends into the wall. We get a booth, and I sit facing the door so that I can see who comes in. I turn sideways so that I can lean back against the wall and stretch out. Jennifer leans forward on her elbows and looks around the room. Her sunglasses are pushed down on her nose, and she's looking over them. A waitress comes over carrying two glasses of water and silverware. She's in her late forties, and wears a white uniform and a red plaid apron. "How are you today?" she asks. "Just fine," I tell her. "We'd like some iced tea and some menus." "Sure enough." She walks away and goes through a door marked "Kitchen" and "Employees Only." Jennifer takes off her sunglasses and puts them in her purse. She picks up the napkin. "Real linen," she says. She unfolds the napkin and presses it to her cheek. I lower my head and raise the edge of the off-white tablecloth to my cheek. "Real plastic," I tell her. Jennifer giggles. "I'm glad you're silly. I like you silly." I take a drink of water. The glass is pebbled plastic. "Can't have that, can we?" The waitress comes back with the tea and menus, which are printed on parchment-like paper with scalloped edges. "We've got a special today. Meatloaf, sweet corn, mashed potatoes and gravy, and peach cobbler. Three ninety-five." I look at the menu, then at at Jennifer. "Sounds good to me. What about you, honey?" "Fine." The waitress takes an order pad out of the large front pocket of her apron and writes. I hand our menus to the woman. "You folks travelling through?" she asks. "Yeah. We're going to Memphis," Jennifer says, and tears open a package of sugar. She pours it into her tea and stirs. The woman looks at her, then at me. "You look just like your daddy, here," she says. "Uncle. He's my uncle," Jennifer says. "Not very busy today," I say. "No. Saturday don't get busy till after seven. Then it stays pretty full up until about nine, nine-thirty. We close at ten." "You don't open during the day?" "Sure. Eleven till two, then from five-thirty till ten. Ain't nobody comes in after two." "Good tea," says Jennifer. She sets her tea glass down; there are little drops of moisture on her upper lip. She looks up at the waitress and wipes her mouth with the napkin and lays it down on the table. The waitress stares for a second at the bright red smear of the lipstick against the starched white linen. "I'll have your food out in a sec," she says. She turns and leaves, and as she pushes through to the kitchen, she says, "Two specials, Harry." "Nosy bitch," Jennifer says. "Small towns are like that." I sip the tea and make a face at Jennifer, hoping I look silly. "I forgot the sugar," I say. I look over her shoulder at a man who comes through the front door. He's dressed in clean blue overalls and a short sleeve plaid shirt and wearing leather slippers like Indian moccasins. Jennifer turns around and looks. "A farmer," she says. "It's the country, almost," I say. The man looks at us and touches his hand to his forehead like a salute. He walks around the counter and gets a white porcelain coffee cup and pours from a glass pot at the institutional coffeemaker and sets the cup down on the counter. He returns and takes a seat at the counter and leans on his elbows with his hands around the cup. "He's wearing a Rolex," says Jennifer. "Rich farmers around here." I drink some more of my tea. "Oil," I say. I reach over to the little chromed wire rack and take two packets of sugar, then reconsider and take a third. I tear them in the center and let the sugar drain into the glass. "Looks like you're breaking eggs," Jennifer says. I drop the paper into the square ashtray of blue glass against the wall and begin stirring slowly. "I guess so," I say. "After we eat I want a shower," Jennifer says. "If they have indoor plumbing at the motel." "I'm sure they do." The waitress comes out with our food, huge steaming slices of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. The corn is in little vegetable bowls. I look at my plate. "Dotty, do you think you can eat all this?" I ask Jennifer. She smiles. "I think so, Uncle Don. I'm a growing girl, remember?" The waitress listens and stands, waiting. "Ya'll want anything else, you just holler," she says. "We'll holler," Jennifer says. The waitress leaves and goes behind the counter to stand bent over facing the farmer. He is sixty, perhaps, and his gray hair is cut in a sharp flattop, so he is nearly bald on the sides. His ears are red, and his face and neck are deeply burned to a color that looks purple under the flourescents of the room and the late-afternoon sunlight coming through the front windows. "Eat your food, Uncle Don," Jennifer says. She has a spot of gravy at the corner of her mouth, and the tip of her tongue comes out and licks it away. She smiles and takes another bite of meatloaf, and her tounge comes out again to touch the tines of the fork. "Yes ma'am," I say, and take a big bite of the meatloaf. I exaggerate the size by blowing out my cheeks once my mouth is closed and try to cross my eyes, but I can't. "You look like a fish," Jennifer says, and she giggles. She takes her napkin and holds it over her mouth. "You're sweet when you're silly," she says. When I've swallowed I suck in my cheeks and purse my lips like a fish blowing bubbles. Jennifer throws her napkin at me; it hits me in the face and falls onto my plate. I pick it up and look around, then fold the napkin to conceal the gravy on the cloth. I hand it back to her. "Let's finish and go find someplace to stay," I say. Jennifer starts on the potatoes, mixing the brown gravy with her fork. When we're finished, I pay the check with a credit card. "I hate them things," the waitress says. "It's like money doesn't mean anything anymore." I look at her and wink. "I got a secret for you. It doesn't. It really doesn't." I look at the farmer at the counter, who smiles and nods. At the car I pitch the keys to Jennifer and say, "You drive." She catches them and we get in. On the street she drives around the courthouse in the square. As we pass the restaurant, the waitress is standing outside the door smoking a cigarette. "This place is dead," Jennifer says. A few cars are making the circuit of the square, and three are parked in front of the restaurant when we pass it the third time. "How do we get back to that motel?" Jennifer asks. The woman in the motel office is young, and she has twins, a boy and a girl about seven who sit in a corner of the small office playing a board game. "I live right here," she says. "It's great for the kids, cause I don't have to have daycare." "Where's your husband?" Jennifer asks. "Overseas working on the oil rigs, I guess. He makes a ton of money, but he don't send much of it home." She seems uncertain whether she will ever see him again. She says, "We planned on him saving his pay from the oilfields, then we were going to buy this place." She looks around her. "What little he sends home goes to the bank, and if he don't come home I think I might just buy it myself." She winks at me. "Two rooms or a double?" We've been looking at the postcards and souvenirs in the small lobby: photos of the motel when it first opened in the thirties; views of the Anderson County Courthouse; a cartoon armadillo smiling from behind the wheel of an old pickup--"I'll see you at the mud races," he says in the caption below the picture. "A double with one bed," I tell her, and the woman glances at me, then at Jennifer, and turns to retrieve a key from a pegboard on the back wall. Jennifer is leaned over the counter talking to the little girl, who tells her that her name is Jennifer, too. "You staying more than one night," the woman says, "there's a flea market tomorrow and Sunday down on the Square." "We might go to that. Right, Bill?" Jennifer says. "We're not in a hurry to get back, are we?" "We'll definitely think about it," I say as I'm signing the registration card. "Just drive down to the center to room thirteen," the woman says. "Things'll start picking up later tonight with people coming in from the city for the flea market, but I won't promise the room to anybody till I know whether you're staying." "Anything to do here on Friday night?" I ask her. "Only if you like country and western dancing. And there's a catfish place across the road." "We're tired, now. We'll think about the dancing, though," Jennifer says. The building fronts on the driveway on three sides, enclosing another building with rooms on both sides and a pool that sits next to the front wall of the compound. The room is large, and it faces the white stucco arch of the entrance. Inside the room, Jennifer goes into the bathroom and sticks her head out again. "There's a big claw-footed tub in here," she says. "I'm going to take a hot bath." I go to the one large window and slide a wooden chair up in front of the window and pull the curtains back. The manager's children are running back and forth between the two buildings in the central area of the motel; they're both carrying water pistols, and I hear their filtered through the glass as a series of high-pitched sqeals and echoes, but I can't make out the words. There are a few cars parked in front of rooms. I wonder if the woman will be able to make a living as the owner of this place, then decide that the weekend will be busy. Leigh, my ex- wife, enjoyed flea markets and street fairs, what she called "small-town things," even when they were held in big cities like Memphis and New Orleans. I had gone to a couple in small towns with her before we got married and a few afterwards, but when she started drinking heavily she lost interest. * * * * * In the room I lay on the bed, feeling the texture of the bedspread with my fingertips. Jennifer came out of the bathroom wearing a white towel and drying her hair with another. "You look comfortable," she said. I pushed myself up and propped my back against the padded headboard. It felt rough, and I reached back to touch it, then turned around to look. "They put carpet on the bed," I told her. "How very artistic," she said. She came to the bed and sat on the edge. I reached up and stroked her shoulder. Her skin was damp, still, and I leaned forward to kiss a droplet I found there. "You smell clean." "Thank you." She turned to me and the towel came open and fell to the bed. "Oops," she said. She stretched out on top of me and propped herself up on her elbows and looked down. "I love you," she said. I felt myself pulling away but overcame the impulse. I reached up to touch her face. "Please don't say that." Jennifer sat up and straddled my hips. "What's wrong with it?" "I'm sorry. I just didn't expect it. No one's said that to me since my wife." "Maybe it's time someone did." She got off me and then off the bed. She took the towels and threw them into one of the room's two chairs. She turned around facing me. "Why don't you give yourself a break, Griner?" She began to move around the room, reaching out to touch the lamp on the table by the bed, then going to the mirror of the heavy wooden dresser. Taking her brush from the overnight case on the dresser, she began to brush her wet hair, looking at me in the mirror while I looked at her: at her breasts and the dark triangle of hair at the junction of her thighs in the mirror and at her back and her hips facing me. "I think I want a tattoo," she said to my reflection. "What kind?" "I think a fish. A bright pink fish." Her fingers traced a line from her navel to a place at the junction of her thigh and groin. "Right about here," she said, stopping her fingers and outlining the fish with her forefinger. I could imagine it there, and I thought about the tattooist's vibrating electric needle as it inscribed her skin. I had an instant when I envied him his job and wondered what it was like to draw on a human canvas. Her hand with the brush still worked its way over her head and down and through the hair which barely reaches her shoulders. Her hair is always darker when it's wet, going from sandy blond to a soft auburn. "Doesn't that hurt?" I asked. "Susie has a tattoo on her breast. She said it wasn't too bad." She stopped brushing and laid the brush on the dresser. "I think I need a haircut," she said. "I like your hair. I like it that way." "Just a trim, maybe." "Just don't shave your head." I like her hair the way it is. "Not me. I thought about that in the ninth grade, but my mom found out what I was planning." She sat on the edge of the dresser. "Some things are so juvenile." "What about a tattoo?" "That's for you, Griner. I want a little fish to remember you by." "Maybe you'll change your mind." "I'd better change my mind before I do it." She walked toward the bed, then stopped at the window and pulled the curtain aside slightly and looked out. "It's just getting dark," she said. "It's one of the things I hate about the spring and summer. It's daylight for so long. I used to get confused about it I was a kid." "I know what you mean," she said. She let go of the curtain and turned off the light switch by the door. I got up and started undressing. "Let me do that," she said. I lay back down and closed my eyes and felt her hands on my tennis shoes and socks, and she touched my calves and reached down and kissed the tops of my feet. I had to raise my hips so that she could drag off the jeans, and I sat upright when she started on my shirt. When I was naked she straddled my hips again and lay forward on my chest and kissed my eyes and forehead and mouth. Then I was inside of her, and she was making little noises in her throat, and then I started crying. "You're crying," she said, and her tongue was on my face kissing the tears away, and then I was thinking of my ex-wife, and then I forgot her, and soon there was just the now of it--the girl was here in this motel room, in this small town, and I wanted to get a camera and take her picture naked in front of the stucco arch of the motel with the twin children of the manager playing behind her. "A pink fish," she was saying. "In a bright neon pink, like some of those you see in the pet stores. Pink neon," she said. * * * * * I woke up early, but Jennifer was already up. I opened my suitcase and got my bathrobe and put it on. I heard water running and went to the bathroom door. "What are you doing?" "Taking a shower, silly," she said. Her voice was muffled, distorted by the running water. The bathtub was encircled by an oval hanging shower curtain, and a pipe came up from the end of the tub to near the ceiling. Someone had installed an adjustable water massager instead of a regular showerhead, and I imagined the water throbbing against her skin. I had taken a good look at the shower in the night when I got up to go to the bathroom. I had risen quietly to keep from waking her, and stood in front of the bowl trying to be quiet, but when I'd gotten back, she was sitting half upright, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles. "You're noisy when you pee," she had said. We had lain awake and listened for the sounds of the building, but all we had heard was the whisper of the air conditioner against the wall under the window and the occasional far-off whine of a truck changing gears on the interstate, and once before I fell asleep again, we heard a locomotive horn travelling across miles. "When I was little and used to stay with my grandparents, I'd listen in the night for the trains," I had told her. "They were miles away, but on really clear nights you could hear them." "Why do they blow the horn out in the country? There aren't any people on the roads at night, are there?" she asked. "Not many. I always hoped they blew the horn for me, but Grandfather Parsons said it was for the deer and the stray cows and the hobos to hear. And sometimes he'd tell me that it was just because the engineers had a lonely job late at night and they wanted the whole world to know how they felt." "That's a nice story," Jennifer had said. "The only time we ever went to the country was when my parents took me to camp in the summers. Then we'd stay on the interstate until we got to the exit for Brookville, and we'd drive right through the town to the camp on the other side." "I didn't go to camp," I said. "We didn't really have the money for it, and my mom's parents had the farm. My father's father lived in the city and he never had too much time for me." "Didn't he have other grandkids?" "Just me. My father was an only child, and so was my mother. And I was an only child." I had rolled over toward her and put my arm around her shoulders. Her skin felt cool and dry, and I could feel goosebumps on her breasts rising against my arm. "I liked it on the farm, though," I told her. She moved against me, trying to slide under the sheet a little; when she moved I reached down to bring the sheet up to cover her shoulders. She lowered her chin to my arm when I had replaced it on her chest, and her hand rested on my stomach, and I began stroking her lightly. "I've never ridden on a train, before," she said, and then she was asleep. I had remained still but awake for a time, envying the ease with which she could sleep. I've always found it difficult to sleep in a strange place. In the French Quarter during our honeymoon, Leigh and I had drunk hurricanes in the cafes and clubs the first night. When we were back in the hotel we made love and giggled about the man with the guitar who had offered to sing us a song for a dollar, and I had given it to him, but the musician swore he didn't know any of the songs we requested, so the three of us had walked drunkenly for a block down Royal Street singing "Buffalo Gals." At Jackson Square we had left him and then we just stood under the front portico of The Cabildo and sang it softly together in a light, warm spring rain. But after Leigh fell asleep, I had sat up and tried to will myself to sleep, but my mind contorted itself into imaginings about the future and I had spent the next hour sitting on the commode with the seat down, reading all the tourist brochures we'd picked up during the day. The second time through them I had started to feel tired and returned to the bed, but then the alcohol returned to make me feel restless again, and I had shifted position so often that Leigh had awakened startled. She started to touch me, but I tried not to respond. In the morning she hadn't remembered my indifference. We had sat on the balcony of the room and watched the early morning residents going to work, and somewhere a trumpet played a sad, lilting melody that sounded alternately nearby and far away. * * * * * "I'll be out in a minute, okay? You don't need to get in, do you?" "No. I'm fine," I say to the door. I go to the window and pull the curtain aside. The sky is dark with rainclouds, and the first drops of rain are showing on my car. I go to the bathroom door and knock. "It's going to rain," I say. "I don't think they're going to have their festival today." The water stops running, and I hear the soft, scraping sound of a towel against her body. "That's all right," she says. "Let's go somewhere else. We've got two whole days." "I'll get cleaned up and we can take off," I tell her. The door opens and she comes out wearing a short silk robe, towelling her hair. "I won't be long," I say and go into the bathroom, closing the door behind me. I start running hot water into the tub, then turn on the cold and sit on the edge with my hand under the stream. I take off my robe and lay it on the toilet seat. Once in the tub I sink down in the water until only my face is out of the water and I move my head back and forth; my hair flows against the white porcelain like seaweed. I get up and let the water run from my hair down my back, and I reach over to the back of the commode for Jennifer's shampoo. When my hair is soapy I lean back again and move my head, feeling the foam of the shampoo adhering to the side of my face. When I've soaped myself I stand up and step out long enough to go to the sink for my razor and shaving cream, then get back into the tub and spread the foam over my face. I shave by feel, running my fingers through the lather to find the whiskers and carefully following the fingers with the razor. I sink down when I'm finished and rinse myself, then press the lever for the mechanical stopper with my big toe. I feel the water level beginning to lower and shiver as the cooler air hits my skin. Jennifer's sitting on the bed wearing matching light blue panties and lace bra when I come out of the bathroom. "Maybe we could stay another night," she says. "I kind of like it here." "I thought you wanted to see some countryside." I take off my robe and drape it over a chair and rummage in my suitcase for underwear. "We could stay, though," I say. Jennifer turns around halfway and gets both pillows and leans them against the headboard and slides back until she is sitting upright. "We could walk around town and look at the people," she says. "Whatever you want." I go to the bed and sit down, then reach out and put my hand on her ankle and stroke it softly. "Is there something wrong?" "I just don't want to go home. Ever," she says. "We've got until tomorrow afternoon. And I didn't really think you wanted to stay for the festival." "I don't. I'm sorry if I'm being difficult." She leans forward and puts her arms around my neck and kisses me. "We could take the room for another night and just stay in the room," I say. "Just us. We could go out for hamburgers and turn the air conditioner up and stay in bed all weekend." Jennifer giggles into my neck. "We could do that," I say. I think again of her with a tattoo, begin to see myself as a co- conspirator with her, getting away with something that we shouldn't be doing, and I smile and kiss her on the cheek. =finis=