Shorter Stories from The Avocado Grove - Working Title Pink and Short Part II

My playlist is a mix of pop country tunes.  You don’t seem to mind.  I pretend various stages of bored, looking down at my shoes or watching the door.  I understand the living room is back.  And we aren’t teenagers.  I tell you about the fairways in Dhubai.  “A reward, for being a top seller.” 

“I’m having a party, lipsticks, eye shadow palettes, shoes.”

“Shoes?”

“I’ve never been any place fancy like, what did you call it, Abu…”

“Dhubai.”  And I fill in the rest – what you don’t say about the girl stuff you never end up selling.  And in a way, you act like a cheerleader – the audience I don’t have, and I tell you all about the ways to market the make-up and shoes in your living room collecting all that dust.

“Rumor has it you’ve got three tickets in your pocket for this dance.”

It isn’t you that asks.

She’s a pretty blonde from middle school, the one I met when I got the nerve to go outside.  Her name is Pal.  “I’m the coolest, in the whole place.”  It’s the kind of thing you say when you eat too much sugar (like – the extra large slices of cake and scoops of vanilla ice cream, the way you say after when you sit on my couch and turn your Oxford shirt into an off the shoulder style, “Want to check out my butterfly’s teeth?”  The buttons in the front look stressed as if they might pop off.  It’s like we are high and forgetting significant facts, like I forget Ally and you forget what’s his name.