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Monday, 19 September 2005 |
by
Doug Rennie
Two girls sit in a downtown coffee shop called
Sacred Grounds. Outside is rain, but the cafe is warm. They sit at a
glass-topped table and talk, hands wrapped around foam-topped lattes.
One is fair-skinned, blue-eyed, her blonde hair tied in a pony tail.
She is dressed in black stirrup pants, red-and-green argyle sweater
over a white turtleneck, calfskin tassel loafers.
Her name is Courtney, or maybe Missy or Lauren, and she lives in a
fourteen-room house with 150 feet of lake frontage. She takes precise
sips from her cream-colored mug. Between sips she talks animatedly to
her friend, a larger dark-haired girl in jeans and a handknit sweater
of medium blue and rose and yellow in a Southwestern pattern. A $300
Dooney & Bourke purse hangs from the back of her chair. Their talk
is of school activities and friends. So, like, the juniors throw a
party for the seniors and they, like, take a few kegs up the hill and
like party all afternoon, says the blonde. The dark one nods and blows
gently across the top of her cup. How funnnn, she says. Yeah, the
blonde says. The dark one nods again. Ummmmmm, she says. Pony tails
eyes open wider. She leans forward. Deb is, like, having this party at
her place Friday night. Judy and Teri and, like, everyone is going to
be there. Her parents are going to be over on the coast. The dark one
looks up from her latte. She smiles. How funnnn, she says. They talk
another twenty minutes. Boys, classes, parties. How boring school is.
How hard it is to find cute guys who are nice. Dances. Shopping. How
funnnn. Graduation, college, marriage, kids. Ummmmmm. Dark hair says I
gotta pee. She gets up and walks away. Pony tail stares out the window.
At the heavy rain, the leaden sky. Her face darkens. What is it she
sees? May’s prom she will not attend? Losing her virginity a month
later to a boy she will never see again? Her sorority house at
Pepperdine? Or is it the man she will marry whose face she stares at?
Humming to himself as he fires bullets into the heads of their two
young daughters, then moves the black revolver’s muzzle to his own
temple twelve years from now? |
