Sid was blonde, but it wasn't natural. She'd bleached her hair five months ago and half her head was coarse, dark roots. She picked at them, knotting the hair around her short fingers, and thrust her bottom lip out, sulking open-mouthed.

"You look fucking wasted," said Jackie, who was, in fact, smoking a joint.

That was the thing about Jackie. He never cursed with proper nonchalance. Sid's eyes rolled drunkenly toward him, the whites bulging, the irises hiding behind enormous pupils. Overall the effect was very like cheap film, and Sid would have looked terrific in a rock star documentary, although she couldn't play the guitar.

"You are fuckin' wasted," she told him, and her head lolled limply toward the fogged windowpane. Her legs were the white of a cloud of milk in water; one of them dangled over the edge of the window-seat, and the little bit of fat on the inside of her thigh pillowed to the side. She pulled the leg up alongside the other, yanked against her chest, and twisted her arms up between her breasts and knees.

That was the thing about Sid. She looked so soft sometimes, so creamy and magnetic, that sometimes Jackie forgot that they were just mates and he thought about feeling her up. Her dresses never fit right, and her stockings were always ripped, and she spat acid and sucked on stick candy to get her mind off of cigarettes. "Don't fuckin' touch me," she'd tell him, very angrily and serious, when he was sitting across the room rolling joints and not even looking at her, and then she'd laugh hoarsely and give him a brazen grin and start to pick at her nail polish when he threw paper at her.

So he didn't know if she didn't want him, but he thought it was probably better if he didn't ask.

"Hey, Jackie," she sang, her head rolling toward him again like her neck had no bones in it. "Jackie-baby, Jackie-boy, Jack Sprat ..."

"Shut up, Sid. What'd I tell you about that. Huh?" He hated when she called him Jack Sprat. He was so fucking skinny and she always teased him about it. He wished he was her sometimes, soft around the belly and thighs. His chest sounded empty when he hit it with his fist but she had a round, soft bosom under her vintage frocks. It'd feel great to snuggle with her, he figured, especially when his feet were so damn cold. "You're a fucking chit."

She laughed.

"Jackie, I think I'm going to kill myself tonight."

He closed his eyes, scooting down with his back against the wainscoting beneath the window-seat, and took a long drag. She was always so angry, always wanting to die for some reason, and she loved to get a rise out of him. He squeezed his eyes shut so hard that his eyelashes scratched and he pushed her out of his mind.

Sid began to sing, then, in her grinding breathy voice, only very quietly. He heard her tapping her knuckles on the window, and fooling with the shreds of masking tape stuck there, and he drifted off to the wet sound of her chewing her fingernails.

Sid kicked him. She was missing one of her shoes; thankfully in his drowsy state he only felt a sock foot. He heard wood creaking and she stepped on his ankle a little as she got up, and he opened his eyes and called her sleepily, "Bitch."

She kicked his Ziplock bag of pot across the room, and he sat up, nasty.

"No more of this shit, Jackie," she cried, her mascara running down her face. She didn't look creamy right now, she looked sticky and sick. There were dark holes around her eyes and she needed to wash her face. There were two halves to Sid's face; the top half dark and streaked, the bottom blonde and lipsticked. "It's all shit."

She was holding a switchblade and he thought she was going to stab him, he actually believed that she might stab him. But she slashed her throat instead. The blood rolled out dark and thick and hot and she gurgled, and her eyes got no bigger, because they were already as wide as they could be.

Sid was a redhead, but it wasn't natural. She'd dyed.

%

Angela Coggeshall 2003