A teal romper, silver bangles, white sandals, miniature clutch, iPhone. Was she dressed for bottle service and got lost in HEB? Her olive skin was made up like one of those braying MTV sweet sixteen princesses, but she was a white hot supernova, in produce. She looked like an Egyptian heiress, and her sloped nose and chocolate curls carried with them a kind of flippant sexuality that must have been maddening to all the boys she's strung along.
She sees me staring at her ass. I duck back into my avocados, searching for a tender egg.
At 11:47 on a Tuesday night, HEB on Parmer and Mopac is an open air flesh market. There's a short Mexican number in Dairy deliberating on cream, dirty pink flip flops and gray yoga shorts that rise just high enough to see a red cheek crease. She catches me smiling at her as I pass by, and she smiles back, though her boyfriend does not, who's emerged from Cereal holding a Cookie Crisp. Perhaps to prove a point, he wraps one arm around her belly and does a slow grind, and then throws the Cookie Crisp in her basket. When they get home, he'll smoke two bowls, play video games for an hour, they'll fuck, and then he'll fall asleep as she goes on about commitment. I keep moving.
Oh, now this one is for me. She's fingering a Central Market Peach Salsa jar like a scrotum, turning it over with long, pale fingers. She's unbelievable. Translucent, blue-eyed angel. In a violent flash I imagine the life we'll have - painfully hip and white, plaid scarves during the winter, coffee in the morning with the crossword and we'll take our pups down to Town Lake, Pecan Street Festival, IPAs at some East Side dive with all the other indie stars, Marlboro Reds and that sloppy, uncomfortable couch sex, do it again the next day if we've got the money, which we do but we'll live like we don't. She's a perfect, pale angel. I move closer, I'll get the salsa, and her, and we'll start, but she turns away with purpose and I've lost the courage to do anything at all. That's just fucking pathetic.
I need El Milagros now though.
Some of these girls have a female companion or two, or what appears to be a boyfriend, but many do not - many are shopping alone, and that fact is enough to push me, regrettably, into philosophy. I start imagining with some effort the complex webs that constitute our lives, and the way it often feels like we are floating to no end, but that everyone else is floating too. What a ghostly image; thousands of spirits in gowns, floating to and fro in the darkness, unspeaking, unchanging, unhappy. Just as my philosophy has slumped my shoulders ever downward, a bell rings:
"Awesome tattoo! I love those colors!"
Of average height and physically unassuming, this girl had broken my clean observational silence. I was now engaged, and unsure, but hopeful.
"Thanks! Southside Tattoo on Congress, that's the place. If you ever are looking. Chris Gunn is the man, good stuff. Yeah, thanks."
"Cool. Yeah, I've got a few, thinkin' about another."
A few? She and I are in bed, and it's Sunday morning and we're blissfully unmotivated, and maybe we've just woken up, and she's on her stomach, and I rub my hand across her faded lower back butterfly flower, impetuous youth, I say, Remember when you said you wanted another one? She won't remember at first, but then she perks up, and right there on a lazy Sunday morning we've had ourselves a moment.
"You should do it! Southside is the place." This unassuming girl smiles and heads out of Medicines into Shampoo. Sleeping pills and corn tortillas and a few avocados, I'm out of here. Just another hopeful little ghost floating in the darkness.
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