She hides in the hayloft, smiling. She looks up through her overgrown bangs at the high wall of the barn's East side and sees sunlight oozing brilliantly between the weathered boards. She sits curled up in the hay. In the sun-heated barn, it's like a warm and living thing under her, giving and organic.
She hides, but she's not really hiding, because there's nothing here to hide from. It's pretend. This is a primary reason why she likes being in the hayloft. The other is that one could climb to the highest point of the stack and then jump, as if an angel, to the bales below, and not be hurt. They did this last summer, flapping skinny arms, bouncing and giggling and ecstatic, her and Melia's grandkids and the other foster kids.
It is the height of July, and tomorrow is her birthday. She listens to the collective hum of the day - the white noise of farm life: Sputtering tractors coming and going in the far distance, the huge incessantly running barn fan downstairs, the bees that hover in the apiary making nectar.
Slatted light marks her face, and she takes a piece of hay and holds it between her teeth like she saw the older boys do.
Eight years old, on the brink of nine, and she knows that pretending to hide, rather than actually doing it, is a luxury. She breathes in the heady fragrance of the hay and knows that she could be someplace worse.
.
But she knows that it's never safe to stand in public with one's eyes closed, so she looks around.
Her lips are red and full, her face sharply, beautifully androgynous, dark hair cut jaggedly. Her eyes are wide, luminous and brownish-green. "Guys, I'm gonna head over there," she says, and her voice sounds like a boy's, is deep and heavy like caramel.
"Okay. Um, meet us back at the tower in thirty?" Tina asks.
"Yeah, sure," Shane says, not looking at her friend.
As she walks away, she hears their exchange. "Where's she going?" Dana asks.
"Over there."
"Probably looking for some action."
She doesn't know why they think she can't hear them, or maybe they just know she can, and don't care. But it doesn't hurt her. Sometimes it's much easier to let people think what they will. It is a principle that has been central in her life, though the other edge of its sword is isolation.
That, she can deal with. What she dosn't want to deal with is explaining to Tina, Alice and Dana why she suddenly really, really needs to be near the scent of hay in the sun.
The smell is coming from the back of a farmer's truck, a red one, but ironically the same model as hers. He is selling corn and watermelons, and the hay itself. He is sitting on several bales of it stacked up, an old white guy with a green John Deere hat.
"Hi," she says to him. His overshirt is actual red and white gingham, but it's not kitsch. There is no irony in its worn softness, its frayed edges.
"Hello."
"What kind of corn is it?"
"Bread and butter. Sweet. Six dollars a bag."
She takes a used paper bag from the bin and begins scavenging for the best ears of corn, ones without worms. While she does this, she inhales deeply of the hay, eyes closed. She hears faint music playing in the cab of the truck, Patsy Cline or Connie Francis or some such singer, singing about broken hearts.
She thinks again of Cherie, and stupidity, and naivete, and the question that has taunted her since that night. Does love exist?
She's sick of asking that question. It would be easier to believe Cherie when she said it didn't. But she isn't sure.
Fuck it, she thinks, and closes her eyes again to smell the hay. She wants to just sit on the sun-warmed tailgate of the man's red truck and swing her legs like a kid, smelling the hay and feeling the wind in her messy hair.
"How are ya today?" she asks the man.
"Very good. How 'bout you?"
"Fine."
She hoists her full bag of corn and pulls out her wallet. She gives the man a ten. He pulls out a wad of green cash, flips through it with a hand missing a finger, and hands her back four. "Thank you," she murmurs.
"You married?"
She laughs. The question is suddenly ludicrous and she has to fight to stop her laughter, because if not it will keep going for minutes. She has an urge to say "no, but my ex-girlfriend is."
"No," she says.
"You should get married. Married people are happier."
She looks at him, confused. Thinks of Bette and Tina, Tim and Jenny. Cherie and Steve.
Cherie and her.
"Really. Are you?" she asks.
"Widowed."
"I'm sorry."
"Yup. She was a good gal."
"How long were you married?"
"Fifty-six years."
"Shit," she murmurs. She can't even imagine living fifty-six years. "You're serious."
"Oh, yes."
"How does a couple last for that long?"
"Luck." He laughs, wheezing a little. "At least on my end, I dunno why she stuck with me."
"Were you happy?"
"Oh yes. Five children, sixteen grandchildren, five great-grandkids."
"That's a lot of kids."
"Yup." He reaches down to brush a bug off his boot. She can see that his neck is very tan, except for a white line where the skin normally furrows. Then he looks up at her, and she sees his eyes, magnified large through his gold-rimmed glasses. There are silver hairs growing from his ears. "Don't worry, darlin'. The right girl for you is out there."
She doesn't believe him, but his sweetness warms her anyway, and when she meets up with the others, she doesn't care that they grill her about having enough corn to feed a small army.
.
Harry lies back like a cat on his three thousand dollar chaise lounge. "What's her story," he asks Clive. He drawls it and seems pleased to be in the sunlight, heightening his feline resemblance.
"I dunno. She didn't talk much. She's from the midwest somewhere."
"She is the very height of blow job lips, man or woman. When did she come here?"
"Young. She was fifteen, fourteen maybe."
"And you two worked together for how long?"
"I dunno. I was... like seventeen when I met her. I think... for like four years?"
"Ah," Harry says, sipping his icy drink. "The college of hard knocks. How much do you think it would take to get her to suck my cock?"
.
The new girl has long dark hair. It's pulled back in a big black barrette. Her skin is very pale. Shane watches as the fourth-grade teacher introduces her and the girl looks like she wants to disappear into the air. Pretty. She's so nervous. Shane knows what it feels like. That was her, two years ago.
She wants the girl to look at her, suddenly wants it so badly, so she can smile and set her at ease. But the girl never looks. Still, she watches her throughout the day. Just in case she looks my way, Shane thinks.
.
Tina's party is sedate, but nice. There is cold beer in a tub by the pool and food on the grill. The music is quiet and every so often the insynchronous rip of firecrackers comes from another yard on the street.
She eats a messy ear of corn, hating the butter on her nose and the way her lipstick smears, but loving that taste, the pop of the kernels between her teeth. It tastes like summer.
Restless emptiness suddenly fills her and she stands up. She puts her plate in the trash and walks inside.
Alice has brought some friends, hoping to get one hooked up with Tina. One of them, a petite brunette, is waiting to use the bathroom.
"Hey," Shane mutters, leaning on the wall next to her.
"Hi." The girl smiles. And when she comes out of the bathroom, she finds Shane there, tasting of butter and beer and feminine lust, kissing her breathless.
As they couple on the floor of what used to be Bette and Tina's bedroom, the girl pushes her down. Her sweet feminine weight presses on Shane who opens her pretty lips to protest, but the girl reaches down to rub her, kissing all the objections from Shane's lips and mind.
.
"Hold her legs," Croft says. She can hear his breathing in her ear, hot and excited. She fights to press her legs together but there is one hand like steel on each skinny ankle.
"She looks like a boy, dude."
"Shut up, Danny." She can tell from the way he makes his words that he's smiling.
She can feel the irritating rub of the brown sofa under her skin, and the hot panic of his weight pressing on her, pressing her into the rough sofa, so she can't breathe.
There is excruciating pain as something inside her breaks and burns.
And then it ended. It must have. Because that's all she can remember.
.
She sits on the table, kicking her legs. It is later that summer, and she closes her eyes in the empty room. She tries to conjure the scent of hay and cornsilk, the feel of the sun, to imagine that she is sitting on the man's tailgate. But with every kick of her legs the paper under her crinkles, ruining it.
Doctor Sweeney knocks, then comes in. "Hi, Shane." She has more lines on her face than she did last she was here.
"Hey," Shane grins nervously. She feels like a twit, slouching in the thin gown, the glorified paper napkin draped over her lap.
"How are you?"
"Hanging in there."
"Still doing hair?"
"Yeah. Still going."
"And you're here today for... your yearly?" She peers down at Shane's chart, flipping backward a page.
"Yeah."
She looks up at Shane above her eyeglasses. "And I don't need to tell you that it's been three years. You haven't been here since oh-one."
"I know." Shane hates this.
"You having any problems?"
"Nope."
"Allright." There is a quiet tapping sound as the doctor notes something on her chart.
"Your vital signs are good, but you're too thin."
Shane fiddles with the big ring on her finger and blows air out of her cheeks.
"I'm just not a big eater."
"Are your periods regular?"
"Unfortunately."
"Still only coming every other month?"
"Yeah."
"And... your last lab work was good. But that was three years ago. First date of your last period was May twenty-first?"
"Yeah." Two days after Provocations. She remembers the dual ache of mind and body.
"Painful periods?"
"No more than usual."
"Where are you working?"
"Um, in West Hollywood, a salon called Lather."
"Cool. Go head and lie back." Shane does, hating it. She scootches her ass down low on the table, anticipating the doctor's next order.
"So, what else are you up to these days?"
"Just hangin' out."
"Here's the speculum. You have a girlfriend?"
"Did."
"Did? What happened?"
Shane is glad that the woman is doing her thing down there in vagina land, peering at whatever she peers at, so she doesn't see the tears in her eyes.
"Didn't work out."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Thanks," she mumbles. She breathes through her mouth, tilting her head back sharply and willing the tears to run down the back of her throat.
.
Later she lies in her airless apartment, thankful that her roommates are out at Twat, doing whatever Twattish things they do before the heavenly gates open.
Both windows in the bedroom are open but no air seems to move through the room.
Soon, she thinks, I'm gonna move out of this hole. She is making more than enough to afford it. She has for almost six months. And she's been saying it for months. But here she is.
Her cell phone rings. She reaches a naked arm out to the pocket of her pants, sees that it's Alice calling. She quiets the phone and drops it to the floor.
She wonders what Cherie is doing right now.
It's a delusion. Love like that does not exist.
She remembers, and she curls up into herself and cries brokenly until the sun goes down.
.
The next day she stumbles into the Planet, cursing the heat and the fact that the truck needs a new muffler.
"Hey," she slips into the seat next to Alice.
"Morning. How are you?"
"Good." She ignores Alice's dubious look and says "What'sup?"
Alice sighs. "Did you ever have sex with one of your friends? I mean, like cross that line into something else?"
Now she has Shane's attention. Shane is staring at her with her lips slightly parted.
"Why?"
"I'm just wondering about the dynamics of that."
"Yeah, I guess."
"Did it ruin the friendship?"
"Sometimes. Sometimes it doesn't. Who are you mackin' on, Al?"
Alice stares straight ahead and sighs. "You don't know her."
"Okay, so what's the problem?"
"She has a boyfriend."
"Maybe she's not into women."
"Oh, she's definately into women."
Shane stares at her with wide eyes. "Please tell me you're not talking about Jenny."
"What? Oh, god, no!"
"Well, have you told her how you feel?"
"Sss...orta."
"Huh? Whaddya mean, sorta?"
"I kissed her."
"Yeah?"
"Yes."
"Did she kiss you back?"
"Oh, hell yeah." Alice sighs.
"Go for it. Go get her." Dana enters the Planet and Shane waves and smiles slightly, lifting her head in greeting.
"Yeah," Alice says, with an undercurrent of fraught anxious sarcasm that Shane doesn't find at all unusual.
.
It takes forever to blow-dry the porn star's hair. It's long and thick and Shane's skinny arms start to ache.
She hears someone mention her name. She looks up at the front desk, and in that second hope spears her heart. She doesn't know why. It comes out of nowhere. There's no reason why she should hope to see Cherie walk in the door. A million reasons why she shouldn't.
A glimpse of blonde hair reinforces that feeling, causing adrenaline to shoot through her body.
But it's not Cherie, it's someone else. Shane nods and smiles but the smile doesn't reach her eyes.
When the porn star's hair is dry she runs her fingers through it. "I'll be right back," she mumbles, and goes to the store room. She pulls a bottle of dry hold off of the shelf and brings it back to the station. She squirts a palmful of the stuff into her hand, then slicks her fingers together. The tight muscles on her forearm are aching from a long day of blow-drying and the sensation, when comblined with the slickness on her fingers, takes her back.
How many years ago today was I administering hand jobs? She remembers certain aspects of it. Being on her feet for a long time. Sometimes she just longed to sit. Always aware of where she kept her knife, always careful that her breasts were bound. The worst was the waiting, standing there and looking fetching. It was hot. Or cold, depending on the season. It was mind-numbingly boring. She could feel her brain cells dying, and there were only so many ways to count cars.
That's not my life anymore. This is my life. But sometimes it feels the same. She looks up at herself in the mirror.
Sometimes she thinks she looks like a freak, eyes too wide, lips too lush, jaw too strong, somewhere between boy and girl. Sometimes she has no clue what other people see in her. She just knows that they want to fuck her.
She digs her slick hands into the woman's hair, running from root to end, wiping away the detested product.
When the woman leaves, she locks herself in the bathroom and scrubs her hands, even though she has another customer and will just have to do it all over again.
.
She has no workout gear. Doesn't even own a pair of sweatpants, but that didn't stop Tina from coaxing her into a hike up in the hills. She feels faintly ridiculous in her battered tennis shoes and loose pants, braless nipples indenting the black wife-beater.
Tina is driving them up the winding road at the feet of the Hollywood sign. They go as far as they can, then park, and walk the rest.
"So how are you doing, Teen?"
"I dunno."
"Me neither."
Tina looks at her. She's been vaguely aware that Shane has undergone a crisis parallel to her own, but it's been hard to see beyond herself. Shane's cool composure and tendency to hide feelings didn't help, but Tina realizes that she has been myopically selfish, and to her that is no excuse.
"What happened, honey?"
She blows the jagged bangs from her face. "Fucking Cherie Jaffee happened."
"You really cared about her."
"Yeah."
"Wanna talk about it?"
Shane relates the story, for some reason skipping the bit about the conversation at the CAC. Somehow that seems too insensitive, when at that very same time and place Tina was undergoing her own trauma, one that changed her life far more than Cherie damaged Shane's.
Now they are walking up a dusty hill, on a trail full of footprints. The haze seems to burn more than the sun would. Shane is out of breath. Too much cocaine, not enough aerobic exercise, she thinks.
"I'm not surprised," Tina says.
"Huh?"
"I always knew you'd fall sometime."
"What?"
"Shane. Your heart is too big to just be a player. It doesn't shock me that you fell in love."
She closes her eyes for a pained second. "Sure as fuck shocked me."
"You haven't contacted her?"
"We had one conversation after Steve threatened to kill me. She told me that she'd never felt so alive as when she was with me, but that she was living in a world with mansions and money, and did I actually think she was going to give it up to live in some rank little love nest with some assistant hairdresser who barely had her foot in the door?" she spits it out in a choked rush, and her voice doesn't sound like her own.
"Shane! She said that?" Tina's eyes practically ooze compassion and Shane feels guilty for burdening her.
"She said that." The tears are there but Shane just lets them fall. She hasn't let anyone see her pain, and she figures one person won't hurt. And if it has to be someone, then it might as well be Tina.
"Time out," Tina says. "Come here. Let's sit down."
So they sit on a bench overlooking the valley. Tina rubs Shane's back, hand moving in soothing circles over her shirt. "I'm so sorry, sweetie."
Shane wipes each eye with the back of her hand. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to unload on you. You have your own shit to deal with and it's ten times more major than mine."
"Hey," Tina rubs her bare arm. "It's okay. I'm sorry I've been so absorbed in this Bette thing that I didn't notice you were hurting."
With that Shane loses it, sobbing. Tina pulls her to her side, and holds her until the tears stop. It's all she can do, because her own eyes are watering, tears that flow slowly, sadly, as opposed to Shane's violent sobs. They sit like that for a while, until Shane withdraws and wipes her eyes and retreats back behind her dignity. Face red with tears and embarrassment.
"Sorry for being such a lez. If you tell anyone that I lost it like that I'll kill you."
Tina just rolls her eyes. "Give me a break, Shane. You're as entitled to mourn your losses as anyone else."
.
She is having a bad fucking day. Roommate number two turned off the alarm clock so that she overslept, on the morning she was supposed to do Brad Pitt's hair. Therefore she rushes to Lather without her morning shot, and the caffiene withdrawal is starting to plant the seed of a headache in her head, a real motherfucker of a migraine that makes lights dance in front of her eyes.
Her hair is unwashed but that doesn't matter much. She throws on some red lipstick and eyeliner and runs out of the house.
Plus, she forgot her shades, so when she sees Cherie Jaffee coming down the street toward her, she can't hide.
Cherie is shopping, already loaded up with several bags, sleek and sexy in red Prada, the lines of her body torturing Shane.
So many things she has wanted to tell her, all these months, about how wrong she was, about how callously she'd misjudged what Shane feels for her. Cherie sees her and her eyes widen a bit, then she looks away.
Shane keeps walking, anger rising hotly in her chest, eyes full of pain. She shows it all to Cherie, not holding a thing back. As they draw closer she doesn't say a word, but she doesn't take her eyes from Cherie's face. Look at me, you bitch, she thinks. Look and see what you've done.
And Cherie does. Sees her anger and disgust and resonating above all, her pain. Cherie's eyes widen and she looks ill. Their eyes lock and Shane projects everything.
I fucking love you, Shane thinks.
Then she turns away, walking coolly by.
.
Brad Pitt reminds her of Henry, and that is not a good thing, especially on a day like today.
Henry was the oldest of Melia's grandchildren, and came to stay on the farm for the summer Shane turned twelve. Everyone loved Henry, especially Shane. He had the same joking nature and sweet eyes. He took her seriously, lending her his books, taking her on long walks. It took all summer, but she grew to trust him implicitly.
Then one night in August, he stole into her room and raped her, his hand clamped over her mouth.
More than any other event in her life, that ruined her. Because she had seen no indication that Henry would do that. Because she had trusted Melia, trusted her for a little over four years. And after that, Melia sent her away.
.
Shane pushes the memory away and feels herself start to float. She looks at herself as if from above, thinking holy shit, I'm doing Brad fucking Pitt's hair. She floats as if in an inpermeable bubble, numb, for the rest of the afternoon.
That night she goes out with Alice and Dana and gets so drunk she can barely walk. Then she has sex with two women in the bathroom, roughly and wordlessly, one right after the other, hunching, bucking, humping, straining for some kind of release in the hot friction of their frottage. She comes with each one, but it somehow isn't enough to fill her up.
Then she runs into one of her conquests, a frail redhead from five months ago. She lets her take her home, and spends the night writhing under her. The redhead straps one on and fucks her, and the whole time, caught between arousal and nausea, she tells herself this is nothing like that. Nothing like it at all.
.
She walks into the hushed chill of the library. The smell of books and time reminds her of the one place she was encouraged to thrive.
Henry did her a big favor, at least that's what she told herself at the time. After Melia's farm she hit the foster care jackpot, landing with the headmaster of the Los Cruces Preparatory Academy and his wife.
They put her in therapy and encouraged her to trust. She didn't stop barricading the door with her dresser the whole time she was there, but when Leo sat on the balcony with her talking about books, or Kate told her stories of her travels, she was almost happy.
He encouraged her to take A.P. classes and she squirmed. He told her she was more than capable of doing it and she balked. "I'm no brainiac," she hissed.
Leo merely raised an eyebrow at her. "Bullshit," he said.
More out of curiousity than anything, Shane acquiesced and with his help she was immersed in Shakespeare and Calculus and Physics and Aristotle. She excelled under his tutelage. Kate taught her how to paint. She didn't feel happy and she didn't feel safe, but every day she was learning new things and life had a new sense of wonder.
That summer during the break, high school students came to the dorms for a scholarship program. Shane was no stranger to sex, even the consensual kind. She had fooled around with a half dozen girls and one boy, even going as far as kissing and oral sex. But Therese was something different.
Shane saw her lounging by the pool, her dark brown skin glistening. That was the summer Shane grew hips and breasts, barely, but she did nonetheless. She remembers sitting at the edge of the pool in her little blue bikini, combing out her long wet hair, hoping Therese would notice her.
That was a summer of heat and fevered, ecstatic coupling in every niche of the campus. They met in the laundry room, in the stairwells, even one time hidden under Therese's bed amid dust bunnies.
That was an amazing and empowering summer. Shane realized that she controlled Therese, that for her kisses, her touch, Therese would do almost anything. She was at risk of getting kicked out of the program. Shane, on the other hand, had nothing to lose. Here she was, this scrappy little thirteen year old foster brat, but this voluptuous sixteen year old was at her beck and call. For the first time in her life Shane had power over someone, and its hit was wild and potent as cocaine.
Which she also tried that fall, long after Therese had gone home. She had two vices that year: the blow and Sara Mitchell, a lithe brunette two years her senior, whom she deluded herself into believing she loved. She studied hard and played hard. At one point Kate and Leo convinced her that she was Harvard bound, and though she didn't believe it for a second, she wasn't feeling so bad about her future. Those were heady days.
Then one day Kate opened the door of a supply closet and Shane and Sara fell out in a tangle of naked limbs and the smell of sex. And that was that. Shane was out.
Fine with her, she lied to herself. That was the end of the foster home ride, she decided. No more being the stupidly passive ball on the roulette wheel of the system. She ran away from the new home after one night, taking a hundred bucks from the mother's purse, and she caught a Greyhound to L.A.
The foster mother wrote off the hundred and started to hide her money better. She was shocked when she received a thick envelope full of fives and tens with no return address, adding up to a hundred dollars exactly. A small note, scrawled on the back of a gum wrapper said "Sorry. Shane."
Her first stop in L.A. was a crack house. She readily found work as a drug mule after spending a few nights on the beach in Venice. Her boss was a blonde amazon named Lolita, who was terse and straight and to the point. Lolita didn't fuck around, and there was something refreshing about that. Shane had no illusions that what she was doing was safe. But the fact that Lolita was straight up to a T, gave her an unusual sense of security. As long as she did her job, she would be okay. And she was.
Shane spent those days running around L.A., body hidden in loose pants and a big gray hoodie, hiding her big eyes and big lips and long legs. She learned now to walk so that no one fucked with her and talk like she could fuck someone up. People assumed she was a boy, and she let them.
For the most part, she was unscathed. She was arrested for possession with intent to sell, but she was smart enough to keep her mouth shut and demand a lawyer, and the cops fucked up anyway, forcing them to let her go. That ended her drug running career, at least for the forseeable future.
You can stay here if you pay rent, Lolita said.
She eyed the boys on the strip, their cool struts, their tight pants, their heavy bedroom eyes and their cool stares. They seemed, to her relatively naive mind, more in control, to have it easy compared to the female hookers who paced the streets in stilettos and leather, pretending to smile and cajole. So, she made a choice and cut her hair. And for the next few years, bound her chest and walked with a sock in her panties and gave approximately 5000 hand jobs.
She once tried to imagine how much spooge that was. She tried to envision it at night when she was camped out in a room with six guys, and couldn't sleep. She came up with a figure of about fifty gallons before sleep finally overtook her.
.
She sits on the beach, feeling rumpled and stale in her sleeveless white button-down and dirty jeans. The air coming off the water is cool and she hugs her legs tight to her. The sun is just rising and she stares numbly out at the water, fingers bent below her lips. Her veins race with the residue of coke and vodka, and her eyes are smudged black with stale mascara.
She remembers the boardwalk in Venice, hanging out with her friends. That was back when she still lived with the headmaster and his wife. They hung out and made out and got high all day during the spring break. She remembers getting into a fight with Sara, walking away while Sara yelled "Shane, you fucking bitch!"
She walked for several blocks, fuming. Not noticing the woman behind her. Finally she stopped and flung herself onto a bench. Then she saw her.
"You're Shane?"
"Who the fuck are you?"
"Were you born on July nineteenth?"
"Why? Yes. Who are you?"
"Holy shit. I'm your mom."
She stared open-mouthed at the woman. She didn't look a thing like her, except around the mouth. The woman was very plain, dark hair pulled into a ponytail. She was thin with a big belly, way too big for the tight pants she wore.
"You're my mom?"
"Yeah."
"Why the hell did you give me up?"
"I didn't. They took you away from me."
"Why?"
"I was in jail."
"What for?"
"Assault and burglary."
"Nice."
"Fuck you. You look like you landed in a much better place anyway."
"Lady, you don't know a fucking thing about where I've landed. Who's my father?"
"I dunno."
"Do you have any other kids?"
"No. After you I couldn't have any more."
"Good," she said, standing up. "I don't want to see you again."
She never even asked her name. Never knew it. Human services sealed their records. She just got up and walked away for good.
.
She gets up now, gulls squawking in a riot above her. She gets up to go home. I've got to stop living like this, she thinks. I've got to heal myself somehow.
She stands in the farmers' market, turning and looking for the source of the scent. It wafts by then fades, and she wants to stand there, eyes closed, and let its sweetness taunt her.
