(five) Ladies' Choice

(five) Ladies’ Choice

The boys rolled over the short, matted carpet of the roller rink seating area and lined up in front of the pop machine, feeding quarters and dimes into the slot and reaching their hands through the plastic door to retrieve the little 10 ounce paper cups filled with super sweet Coke. They chewed the crushed ice and crumpled the cups, banking them off the carpeted wall into the trash can at the end of the snack area.

The boys were buzzing not only from the caffeine but also with expectation of what they knew was coming. At exactly half way through the skating period, the remaining four boys--Alex and Scott were ejected for fighting and were probably next door getting eggrolls and Hot and Sour soup served by the fawning, plump Chinese waitresses at Liu’s Palace--skated passed the sign that read “No Food or Drink Beyond This Point” into the bench area on the skating floor that ran between the cinderblock wall emblazoned with large silhouettes of skaters of various ages and an iron handrail. This was the place where all the cool kids smoked. This was the place where you sat to be watched. This was the line up from which most of the girls chose their skating partners for:

“Ladies' Choice”, the voice blotted out the last strains of Van Halen’s “Running with the Devil”.

“Ladies' Choice. All men off the floor. ”

Eddie sat on the wood bench sucking on beginning of a second straight cigarette, his posture loose and relaxed. Morris was at he end of his first and Richie and Jake split one between them, both aping Eddie’s manner in a sickly deferential way. No matter how hard they tried, a twitchy hand or an unconsciously bouncing knee belied their performed Cool.

Girls skated awkwardly by in clumps, pointing toward the bench. Occasionally, one would slide from the pack, point at one of the boys on the bench and curl her finger toward her with an unpolished sensuous charm, at times seductively ambiguous, other times ungracefully desperate. The equally desperate boy would duck under the iron rail and skate into position next to the girl, arm around her waist, face bent to her ear. Jake assumed that the conversation between the two would probably be an endless riff of complements from both sides:

“How’d you get your hair to feather that way?”

“Those Sergio Valentis look great on you”

“You’re one Stone Fox”

“You’re one Macho, Macho Man”.

Then the girl or the boy would switch positions and skate backwards so they could look at each other better and get closer. Some of the other more classless boys would purposely fall, pulling the girls on top of them in a cheap move planned not only to look chivalrous by breaking her fall but to cop a feel while doing so. Some of the couples would slowly drift into the middle of the floor, stop and begin to make out, dry hump or otherwise simulate sex. Then the whistling gnome in the John Deere hat and the threadbare blue vest would skate through and make them ‘Keep It Moving’.

A small herd of girls from Royal Oak, most likely--not one of the boys recognized them as belonging to Clayton-- skimmed by. One of them, a shorter, brunette with light freckles scattered across her plain face and under her deep brown eyes, broke from the covey of giggling girlflesh and steered toward the boys’ spot on the bench. Eddie rose slightly in his seat, prepared to accept the girls offer, tossed his butt to the floor and rolled one of the wheels of his skate over the coals. He started to stand as the girl held out her hand. On his way up, he froze in his place.

Her tiny bracletted hand was pointed right at Jake.

Jake took the shrinking cigarette from Richie. Richie nudged him and he looked up.

“You.”, said the little rollerchick.

“Hunh.”, Jake puffed out the smoke he was holding in his mouth and handed the butt to Richie. Jake knew that the girl was not talking to him, but he listened intently anyway.

She smiled into Jake’s blank face, “Yeah, you. Brat.”

Jake blinked twice and turned just in time to see Eddie sink back into his seat. He was confused. What exactly was happening? What did the girl want? Morris and Richie were looking at Jake with such glee as if they had been chosen as well.

She wants you, you sad fuck. Not Mr. I’m-so-fucking-cool-I-piss-ice-cubes Eddie. You. Now get the Hell out there and make all these assholes jealous.

A smile spread across Jake’s face. In one smooth motion he went from a seated position, under the rail, to standing beside the brunette.

“Ladies' Choice”, echoed one final time through the hall and the opening piano phrase of “Desperado” by The Eagles began to drift from the speakers. Jake threw a glance back at the boys lining the bench as he made his way into the enflux of paired skaters. Morris and Richie were smiling broadly and Eddie was looking, arms crossed, toward the mirror at the end of the rink.

* * *

“Jodi”.

“Hunh?”

“My name’s Jodi”, she smiled into Jake’s broad face. “What’s yours?”

“Jake. My name is Jake”.

“Like The Blues Brothers”, she laughed.

“Exactly”, Jake said.

“Can you skate backward?” Jodi asked. Jake shook his head back and forth, his center-parted hair falling across the sides of his forehead. The fact that he didn’t know how to skate backwards was a black mark of shame, a hole in his character. This was a social faux pas, an embarrassment, like not being able to lead while dancing or not knowing where the salad fork goes in a table setting.

Jodi took action, moving in front of Jake. She wore a pair of orange-red hip-hugging cords that flared below the knee. On top she wore a tight, peach-trimmed cream-colored T-shirt with an iron-on transfer of Shaun Cassidy grinning from between her blossoming breasts. To Jake, the atmosphere surrounding him seemed to throb and hum. He suddenly wanted to stand behind something taller than waist-high and drink something very cold. However, stuck in the middle of the parquet in a mass of sweating, moving moistness, he was unable to do anything. He breathed in the humid air deeply and rode the feeling.

She was from Royal Oak. Her cousin, the blonde girl grinding her crotch into an eighth grader Jake’s sister use to babysit, was Dana Cortez, a girl from Jake's school. Jodi loved unicorns, rainbows, Donna Summer, The Bay City Rollers and all things Shaun Cassidy. She smelled like her mother’s Charlie perfume and very sweet Sprite.

Jake was taken by her almost uncanny resemblance to his next oldest sister. Not Kay, the one who smoked like a fiend and couldn’t get enough of crossword puzzles, but Denise, the one who changed her clothes between ten and twelve times every schoolday morning before she ran out the door to the cherry-red 1974 Firebird where her boyfriend Dean was waiting to take her to her last year of high school.

Jake thought that while Jodi did resemble his sister, this was definitely not his sister. Denise had long lost her interest in Holly Hobby figurines and rainbow colored unicorn statues. She was a modern, sophisticated woman. She traipsed off to the latest AC/DC or Aerosmith concert or stayed out late watching horror movies at the drive-in; the tales of which would take up most of the next morning as she told them to Jake over a big bowl of Cap’n Crunch, or his arch-nemesis Jacque La Feet, cereal. With nauseating detail she would explain what little plot there was and gloss over some of the more intricate deaths. Jake would listen attentively, soaking in the choppy, disjointed narrative and filling in the gaps with his own imagination. Occasionally, when she was in a good mood, Denise would convince Dean to take Jake along. Jake was the only one of his group of friends to have seen John Carpenter’s classic Halloween twice on the big screen. Jodi wasn’t a fan of horror movies, even though she lived right down from the Oak drive-in where, if she wanted to, she could walk into her back yard, climb on to the roof of her garage, and watch any number great horror movies, free of charge.

Jake looked into Jodi’s eyes and smiled.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just...the light off the mirrorball makes your hair look red.”

“Do you like it?”, she said, tilting her head down and casting her eyes up into his face. She had all the moves down right, but they seemed a bit like mime to Jake. He had seen his sister Denise do this a hundred times to Dean and each and every time brought with its saccharine charm a sick vomitous feeling to his throat; it was calculated, insidious, manipulative. Now, on the receiving end, he could see it’s power; coy, playful, and warmly inviting, yet still with a slight hesitance that showed it’s mechanical nuances. It was more a representation of flirtation than actual flirtation.

“Yeah. It looks Foxy”. Jake winced at his use of this word. He knew that foxes were dirty little woodland creatures that Englishmen killed for sport and in no way resembled the budding woman in front of him. The comparison made little sense to Jake. He thought maybe the phrase alluded to the female’s imminent wiliness. Jake was raised in front of a television to believe that coyotes were wily not foxes. But, Jake knew the term for girls not blessed with the delicate features of a Hummel figurine, or those who were deemed physically repulsive were called “Coyote Ugly”. This meant that if you had the sad misfortune of waking next to one with your arm trapped beneath their head, you’d probably chew it off to escape the risk of waking the hideous beast. However, in Jake’s estimation, the coyote was far and above the fox in grace and beauty; silhouetted against the full moon’s glow, howling its doleful lament into the indigo sky, voicing its plaintive report to a listening God. Meanwhile, the fox ate rats and stole eggs from hapless chickens, perhaps killing them in the process. The coyote may not have been the best looking species of Canus family, but he was resourceful; the fox was nice to look at but sneaky and self-centered. But, regardless of the awkwardness that this paradox imparted to his delivery of the complement, the girl blushed a healthy translucent pink. And, she smiled deeply, the kind of deep dimpled smile normally scene on joyous babies. Jake tried to grasp at an explanation of the emotions that were coursing through his body like caffeine, but when no answer came near the truth, he relaxed into the confusion and marveled at its wonder.