Break the Skin Read Online Free PDF Page A

joke.”
    “I don’t get it.”
    “It’s ironic,” I said.
    “Okay.”
    And we were. Ironic, I mean. Just like Rose, who had no idea why my shirt was funny, we didn’t know how far we were from the sultry, on-the-make women we were pretending to be. I can see that now. One of us too big, but with a beautiful face. One of us too slight and boyish. One of us, the one closer to “just right,” too rough and hard. Yet all of usas needful and as deserving of romance as any woman, no matter how beautiful, how average, how plain.
    It was a Friday night, the best night because we were all jazzed up and there was a live band, a local group called Helmets on the Short Bus. The front man was a tall, lanky redhead, his hair in dreadlocks, a splatter of freckles across his face. When we came in, he was singing the opening verse of “Stairway to Heaven”—“There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold”—and Delilah stopped walking all of a sudden, her eyes on that man, as if she couldn’t look away even if she wanted to.
    I bumped into her back. “Keep moving,” I told her.
    The wood-plank floor squeaked as Rose came up behind me. “Would you look at that?” she said, and I knew he’d caught her eye, too.
    Finally, we got to a table off to the side, but down front, so I could watch the way that man’s fingers flew over the frets of his electric guitar. They were long fingers, and I liked the way his wrist curved and how he wore that guitar on his pelvis and how he made it talk.
    We ordered our drinks—Jack and Coke all around—and we watched that man. Mmmm … mmmmm … mmmmm. I sat up straight and pushed my shoulders back so if he looked my way, he’d be able to read my T-shirt.
    Don’t get me wrong. He wasn’t a beautiful man, not one of those drop-dead gorgeous men, and maybe that’s why he charmed us so. We could imagine that if the cards fell just right we could have a life with him. He was too tall and gawky, and all those dreads made his head seem too big to be held up by that long, scrawny neck, but Lord, God, those hands and the way they played that guitar and that voice, just enough of a rasp to make a girl think of dark rooms and whispered I-love-you’s. By the time that song really got going, we were love-struck, riding the wave of the guitar solo to its climax, and then falling into that man’s smoky voice, nearly whispering the last line—“And she’s buying a stairway to heaven”—in a way that made us think of his arms around us, rocking us, making us feel cared for and loved.
    It was so quiet as the last note faded away, quiet long enough for it all to seem unnatural there in the South End, where usually you could hear the roughhousing and the loud talk and the sound of the balls clacking together on the pool tables in the back. Quiet enough long enough for everyone to hear Delilah when she said, “Oh, my. My, my, my.”
    Then people were clapping and stomping their feet on the floor, and the red-haired man grabbed the mic stand and swung around to face us. His shirt was open, and the stage lights made his bare chest look so smooth and pale. His jeans were low on his hips, low enough to make me think about what it would be like to unbutton them. A few red hairs in the space between his navel and his jeans looked coppery in the light.
    “We’re Helmets on the Short Bus,” the man said. “Don’t go away. We’ll be back after we take a little break.”
    Delilah leaned over and whispered to us, “That boy better get his helmet on because I mean to rattle his bones.”
    “That’s just lovely, Dee,” Rose said, and I could see she was upset. “That’s real romantic.”
    She got up and started making her way to the ladies’ room.
    “What’s that all about?” Delilah said, and I told her I’d go see.
    The ladies’ room had three stalls, and there was no one there but Rose. I could see the scuffed toes of her Dingo boots under the locked door of the third stall,