Jowita Bydlowska
GUY
a novel
To no one.
PART I
1
THE BEACH IS FULL. IT IS ALMOST ALWAYS FULL THIS TIME of day. There are cars parked on the sand, some with their hatchbacks open, sudden buffets of beige and white food – the food of the people who come to this beach. The food of people who grow large and soft: children with apathetic eyes, women with chafed thighs, men with rolls of flesh over their hips.
There are Fours and Fives everywhere. Their eyes flick over my face, flick away. Flick back again. I love them for it, but the nerve. It’s the media, the music videos. Every wannabe Britney Spears thinks she is Britney Spears. But if you were to stick the actual Britney Spears on this beach with no handlers? After a few hours she’d be violently pink from the sun, and her thighs would be as chafed as every other girl’s here. Unhandled, she’d be burping up yellow Cheetos. She’d deteriorate from a Seven to a Four just like that.
A Four walks by, looks up from her phone. Small lips, big nose. Small breasts, a belly.
“Hey,” I say. I’m feeling generous. Bored. And it’s a lovely evening.
“Hey?” she says.
“Great dress,” I say. “It looks really good on you.”
“Oh, thanks,” she looks down at the dress. She blushes. It’s a simple one: on you. As if I’ve seen her in other dresses. As if I were familiar. She will now hope I am familiar. Me being familiar alleviates the suspicion. Why would I be talking to her? On you. Her eyes big and hopeful. The dress is roomy, like a tent. It’s a dress that hides things, thighs. The dress is pale green.
I don’t ask for her number. I won’t ask for her number. I’m suddenly tired. Not tired. I want to keep on moving. I smile and say, “Have a good night, gorgeous.”
Her mouth opens, “May I pet your dog?” she says. “Please?”
“Sure,” I say. I do admire nerve. She thinks she’s a Seven, at least.
She bends down to pet the dog. A wave of spasm zaps through the dog’s body. Pleasure. The girl’s back is covered in purple stains of old acne.
“Our neighbour had a –”
Dog like this, or something. I look over to the boardwalk. The boardwalk shops are a chaos of hues. It’s a landfill of flip-flops and inflatable seahorses. And plastic sunglasses and plastic pails. And dripping ice cream and the sticky fingers of children, fingers that like to reach for the dog, like the Four here.
I snap the leash, the dog’s head snaps. “Have a nice day,” I say.
I walk away. I don’t turn around to see if she continues standing there, but I’m sure she’s still standing there. I imagine soon she’ll dislodge herself from our encounter, go back to her fat husband named something like Steve or Dave – Steve or Dave who will always remain confused as to why they had a horrible fight on their way back home to Dinktown, South Carolina, or wherever they’re from – somewhere close by, as Steve/Dave is a nervous driver. Was it something he said?
I head toward the edge of the water. The sun is behind us, giving the ocean an orange tint. The sand is white during the day. Now it’s deep yellow. Later, brown. Everything looks very nice. Everyone takes a picture with their phone. There’s a grating beat of trance music in the distance.
A Two walks by. I turn to watch the back of her. You rarely see a Two, especially in a bikini: this one is a fluorescent green contraption that refuses to contain the body. Bits of her escape between the strings – an accordion of flesh. Her mouth is open, an enlarged-tonsils mouth. The one next to the Two is at least a Five. She turns around. She has a sweet face with bugging out, slanted eyes. Long, full lips. She’s even odder-looking than her friend. She grins at the dog. Then it clicks for me. Of course. They must be on some kind of field trip. Short-bus field trip.
I pull the leash. The dog looks up at me. When he looks at me like that, I imagine he’s winking at me. So I wink back at him. I bend down and pat his black head, sharp, black ears above a white face. A wet brown nose and blue, not brown, eyes.
My eyes, like the dog’s, are blue. Women love my eyes. There are a lot of other things about my face that women love, I’ve been told. I have good cheekbones. My mouth with its corners curling up a bit, a wide smile.
Then there’s the rest of me. A strong, well-defined body. Lean and muscular. You might think: athlete. No tattoos, no scars except for a pale line on my shin from a bike accident. Tall enough, the third-tallest boy in class. Caucasian. Dark hair. Slightly tanned. A nice dick, seven-plus inches, cut. Shoe size, eleven; chest, forty-two regular; waist, thirty-four – an eight-inch drop. The neck, sixteen-point-five. Perfect proportions. But we’re not shopping for clothes here, so all of this simply means I look good.
Presently, I get to the end of the sandy patch where there’s a small shack, a beach eatery. It serves “healthy smoothies.” This is a euphemism for thick, mud-green liquid. Brutalized fruit and veggies. Protein powder. A sticky, sugary taste in your mouth.
I’m not here for the smoothies.The real reason I’m here is because the smoothies are the perfect girl snack. The place is swarming with girls. Sunburned, giggly girls that come from the beige inns. Or from the cheaply built beach houses. Or they come out of the hatchbacks of their parents’ cars. Giggly, jiggly girls determined to atone for last night’s beer and pizza with sugary mud. Girls keen on shedding their parents’ white-food values. Girls promising their growing belly bulges that they will eat better from now on: smoothies, water, grass.
There are a few tables outside the shack and a couple of smaller tables inside where there are computers. Girls in their cheapo beachwear squirm around screens watching videos of the latest pop sensation, whoever it is – lately, $isi. The smoothie cups sit empty, abandoned on the window ledges.
Today, there’s the usual throng of girls gathered around the computer screens. $isi’s latest hit, “Brokenhearted,” bounces off the walls. There’s a coconut smell of tanning oil in the air. The girls sweat and vibrate with excitement. The song has a cocaine line of a hook. I remember a producer saying that a song is a success if you can’t imagine you could ever stop listening to it. But then you run out of your high, and only $isi can give you the right fix again.
And only people like me can give you $isi.
I have a sudden image of $isi tiptoeing to a bathroom. We’re in a hotel. A dark room, a vast white bed, me in it. She is holding herself between her legs. There’s sunlight cutting through the slit in the curtains. It divides the carpet in a straight, bright line, $isi’s brown feet turning white as she steps through it. She says, “I always thought that was a cliché, sleeping with people to get ahead in life.”
“You feel used?”
She turns toward me, “Not at all. Make me a star.”
I can’t see her after staring at her feet, at the bright line for too long. Everything – her face – has vanished. Then it all comes back slowly, the contours of her face. Small and narrow, a mouse face. The clamped mouth. She looks like a child pretending not to be a child. But she is no longer a child. I’m not her downfall; I am her saviour. I will make her into a star.
I do make her into a star.
I line up behind a Seven and a maybe-Four and a solid Three.
There’s some problem with the smoothie machine. Panicked bustling behind the counter.