He woke to the sound of the phone. The sun was up, but he didn’t know if it was morning light or afternoon sun. He answered. An inquiry: was the pool house available?
“No,” Randall said, his voice weathered and foreign-sounding to himself. “I’m no longer accepting guests.”
A Cold Girl
by Kelly Shire
Cathedral City
At seventeen, Jessie knew a few things. Like if you knew a guy and pictured a sweaty scene of the two of you tangled in the dark, chances were good that he’d already beat you to it. He probably imagined his own version, and in X-rated detail, back when you were stalled out on how good his forearms looked in his white dress shirt with the rolled-up sleeves. Nick, for example: though he was her cousin Mia’s boyfriend, she caught him looking at her since she arrived two weeks ago. And she thought about him, plenty. It was hard not to, with them all living under the same roof in Mia’s tiny apartment. She tried not to stare when he came out of the shower after work, a towel wrapped around his waist to walk from the bathroom to the bedroom he shared with Mia.
So, she didn’t feel guilty lying in her sofa bed at night and conjuring up scenarios with Nick, scenes of kissing and rubbing against each other, her hands braced on his golden arms. In her visions, the room was always dark except for a row of white candles in the background, and she was dressed in something filmy and flowing, something that made her look like Stevie Nicks as she wafted into the room. And it was always late, very late at night.
Compared to Palm Springs, the town that was its immediate neighbor to the west, Cathedral City was a poor relation, an awkward middle child, the last kid picked for the team. This was also how Jessie had always felt whenever she stood beside, or thought about, her older cousin, Mia. Mia and her family lived in Cathedral City, but to Jessie, her cousin had always seemed like Palm Springs: more popular, prettier, and desirable.
Jessie wasn’t exactly poor, but she’d grown up in a small bungalow up in Santa Clara. Though her parents’ house in the pricey Bay Area was worth more money, Jessie didn’t understand that. All she knew was that Mia’s parents, her aunt and uncle, owned a sprawling Spanish-style house in the south end of Cathedral City, up in the hills in a neighborhood called the Cove. Jessie had grown up having to swim in her town’s public community pool; Mia had grown up with her own shimmery turquoise pool (with a hot tub!) right outside her patio door.
Jessie was staying with her cousin for six summer weeks in Mia’s cramped apartment in Cat City (as she called it). The first time she’d walked in the front door, Jessie had been shocked at the size and overall run-down state of the place. Mia’s dingy apartment sat a few blocks north of Dinah Shore Drive, one of those long desert streets named for celebrities nobody younger than a hundred could remember. It had only one bedroom, and thin kitchen cabinets painted white that felt sticky to the touch. The floor tiles were white too, but looked gray, and a lot of them were chipped or cracked.
For the first time in her life, Jessie felt like she might be richer, and maybe even smarter, than her beautiful cousin.
Jessie’s mom, Rose, a divorcée immersed in the first stages of a new affair, had arranged the trip to get her out of the house. Jessie lobbied hard against it, but in the end, Rose had prevailed. “Between the pool and all those tourist spots, you won’t even have time to miss your friends,” she swore.
Jessie wondered now exactly what tourist spots her mom was talking about. Everything her mom had ticked off on her fingers was actually located in Palm Springs: the huge water park, the tram that ferried visitors up to the top of the San Jacinto Mountain, even the cool vintage Camelot theater that showed indies and midnight movies. Cathedral City had a franchise miniature golf and arcade park, and a fancy movie theater, but what town didn’t have that stuff? There was literally nothing to do every scorching summer day. Mia’s apartment complex did have a pool, but it was an unshaded, basic rectangle that was usually crowded in the late afternoons with rowdy Mexican kids — real Mexicans, not a watered-down half-Latino mix like herself and Mia.
Both only children, they were the closest things either had to a sibling, though separated by five years and raised in different halves of the state. With her glossy dark hair and striking light eyes against her olive skin, Mia had been popular with boys from the sixth grade onward. Jessie couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t compared every aspect of her looks against her cousin’s — a hopeless game, since they looked nothing alike. Jessie had white skin that resisted tans, brown eyes, and a cloudy mop of hair. She was curvier than Mia, though. Her chest formed a buoyant shelf beneath the T-shirts she’d learned to wear a size too small, and the rounded curve of her hips filled out her jeans in a way that made men on the street lift their eyebrows and turn to watch her pass.
What Rose hadn’t counted on in her plans for Jessie’s summer was Nick. Walking into baggage claim at the Palm Springs airport toward waiting families, Jessie spotted her cousin, standing beside a lean guy with a trim beard and shaggy dark hair. She ducked behind a businessman and swiped on a fresh coat of lip gloss. Mia hugged her, then introduced Nick as her live-in boyfriend.
Jessie thrust out her hand to Nick. “Hey, I’m Jessica. Nice to meet you.”
“Nick Vitale,” he said. Jessie watched the ropy muscles in his arm flex as he gripped her hand. “Mia’s told me a lot about you. Nice shirt,” he added.
Jessie plucked at the front of her black T-shirt, emblazoned with a picture of Jim Morrison. She’d cut out the standard neckline and turned it into a deep V-neck. “The Doors are my latest obsession,” she said. “Three months ago, it was Neil Young.”
“You should’ve been out here a few years ago, when he played Coachella.”
“Don’t you mean OldChella?” Jessie teased.
“Ouch,” Nick said, pretending to flinch.
Mia hooked her arm around Jessie’s shoulders in affection and looked at Nick. “See, I told you she’d be cool,” she said, cocking a perfectly plucked eyebrow.
Jessie smiled at Nick, and then, wider, at her cousin. “I’m totally cool,” she nodded. The three of them laughed together.
It began like background music, a song playing in a restaurant or grocery store that you’re not even aware of, until you really listen and it’s one of your favorite songs, and your attention is pulled away from the chitchat at the table, with the checkout clerk, your focus snake-charmed into this one faint melody, these words you cannot help but mouth and even sing aloud. So it was with Nick. Jessie was first aware of her stomach, the way it tightened and churned before Nick was due to return from work, the way she caught herself freshening her lipstick in the bathroom mirror, for what? At first, it seemed Nick thought of her only as Mia did, just a punk kid, until his winks and glances behind her cousin’s back began to accumulate, and soon enough she couldn’t stop thinking about him. And somehow, Nick seemed aware of her new realization; his winks and looks accelerated until the air bristled when they passed each other in the short hallway and cramped U-shaped kitchen.
How did he know? Jessie decided that Nick must’ve heard it too, the hum, the background music that tugged at her attention; heard the way his name reverberated deep in her chest like a thick bass groove; saw how she bit her lower lip not only in witless seduction, but to keep from mouthing his name and singing it aloud.
Nick was one of two bar managers at the strip club over on Perez Road; strip clubs, at least, were something you couldn’t find in Palm Springs. It was one of the only topless clubs in the entire Coachella Valley, so Nick was gone a lot; his work shifts meant that sometimes he was home by early evening, and sometimes he didn’t come home until after two a.m. Sleeping on the pull-out couch, Jessie tried to always be awake when he came in, but most nights he crept in after she’d dozed off and she never heard a thing.