Woody Evans

From Florida

Katrin stood in a puddle, her knee-high riding boots shining in the morning sunlight, and she shook her shoulders so all the pastel ribbons on her collar rustled like a mane. I fiddled with the snake skull in my pocket, a shellacked city-trinket Melinda’d given me. Katrin got out of the puddle, back into the car, and turned the AC on high. The air was hot, and we were on our way to Hattiesburg from Mobile.

“I’m going to get the flu,” I said.

She put in Bel Biv Devo and turned it up loud. I didn’t like them in 1990 either. I said. “Why don’t you turn that shit off?” We were going fast.

She said, “Don’t you know how important hip-hop is?” Like I was some kind of student and she was some kind of grad student.

“That’s not hip-hop.”

She said, “Let’s just talk then,” and ejected the disc. The floorboard was a bright storm of spent taco wrappers beneath her boots, and she dropped the jewel case by her ankle. “God. We’re not even in Wilmer yet.”

“Thanks for picking me up,” I said. We were coming from the scabby airport; I’d flown in from Orlando.

“You’re driving,” she said. She was kind of my girlfriend. I was old, she was young. She was pretty, I wasn’t. She studied geography; I had given up on ‘knowledge.’ She said, “Did you see Melinda?”

“A little.” Of course I’d seen Melinda. I saw Melinda on the balcony of her apartment, oiling herself with BodyGold Tan, cooing for me to bring her lemonades with gin. I saw her in lots of disadvantageous predicaments and positions, like with her shining pink sex pointed toward me and the TV. She was my boss and I was on retainer as an assistant, which is why I got called into Orlando every couple of months. By Melinda. She bought these tickets. For me. So I would come to Orlando. For her.

Katrin thought she knew all about it. “You fuck her?”

“What?” I looked at her with my surprised eyes. “Baby, I don’t fuck people.”

“Yes you do. You do me.” She was rubbing some kind of weird makeup onto her cheeks in pink little circles that made her look like a cyborg. Glittery circlets. The grey and green trees zipped by, and I was over the speed limit. I put the AC on low again.

“Well, look.” I shifted back in my seat and accelerated. “How would you like it if I moved to Florida?”

She snapped the compact closed and threw it in the back seat. “Just like that, huh?” she said. She held her head back and looked down her sharp nose at me.

“Do you know how much money I make in Florida? I go down there when I’m called, you know, and otherwise I tinker with the website for them. I make too much money. You know all that expensive-ass ouzo you like to drink when you watch wrestling? Where do you think this money comes from, K? It comes from me.”

“So you’re going to abandon me and our way of life.”

“I’m not saying that.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not saying that. And, anyway, what way of life?”

“Don’t be a turd. Answer my questions.”

“Look, I’m not really saying anything. I’m telling you something. I’m trying to ask what you think about what I told you.”

“What did you tell me?”

“Look, we have really got an opportunity here. I mean if I move to Florida. Then there’ll be even more money, see? For us.”

“So you want me to go with you to Florida. What about my life, my degree? I think you should stick with what you’ve got. You make lots of money and you don’t do much work, and that’s ideal. And you don’t have to live there.” She rolled the window down about four inches and her ribbons flew up like cartoon tentacles, in all kinds of colors.

“That’s what I’m trying to say to you. If I don’t move, I won’t have a job anymore.”

“That’s what Melinda said, huh? She gave you this ultimatum.” She sighed. She propped her hand on her forehead and looked like a Man Ray model.

“Yeah. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

She opened the glovebox and took her survival flashlight out, started flicking it off and on at her toes. It had a fold-out blade and a Phillips-head screwdriver on one end. “You like Melinda that much. You do like her enough to mess all this up.”

I didn’t say anything, but, yeah. Maybe that much. I liked not having to instruct a lover. I liked being with a grownup.

I said, “She’s a really great boss, K.”

“Well.”

“Well, fuck this. Because I’m just trying to be nice to you.”

She put her flashlight away, and she crawled into the back seat and fetched her compact.

She’d done her whole face in gold by the time we passed through Wiggins.

Woody Evans has written for Library Journal, Rain Taxi Review of Books, Mississippi Libraries, Juked, Public Scrutiny, 3711Atlantic, and others. A Mississippian, he lives in Texas with his wife. For more of him, visit WoodyEvans.com.