Read Online Third Girl from the Left by Martha Southgate - Free Book Online Page B

whose,” said Sheila.
    â€œFuck. No!” Angela screamed. “You got us an invite to Wilt’s house! Oh my God! And I was just sitting there all crying and shit when you walked in the house. Why didn’t you just tell me?”
    â€œWell,” Sheila said, checking her eyes in the mirror. “I didn’t want to make you all nervous, you know. And you were so upset when I came home . . . I don’t know. I thought it would be a nice surprise.”
    â€œHell, yes,” said Angela. She fussed with her hair, reached out and took the lipstick Sheila extended toward her. “Everybody’s gonna be here.”
    â€œDamn straight,” said Sheila. “Let’s go.”
    They jumped out of the car, their four platformed feet hitting the ground at the same instant. Tossed their keys to the valet, who caught them on the beat. Colors pulsed from inside the house, orange and red and bright pink. They turned their heads toward each other, grinned. Walked in the door.
    According to an article Angela had read in
Ebony
, the soft gray fur of the enormous conversation pit, had been gleaned, along with the fur for Wilt’s gigantic bedspread, from the nose fur of seventeen thousand Arctic wolves. The grayness was covered by brown bodies dressed in every silky shade of the rainbow, and over to the left, on a bed set into the middle of the floor, bodies half-undressed, entangled, flashes of breast and hair, a hand moving. The air was sulfurous with the mixed tang of pot and cigarette smoke. “Freddie’s Dead” pounded out of the stereo speakers, making their flared pant legs vibrate. Hundreds of people talked, embraced, screamed, pulled slowly on joints, and hoovered coke off a low glass table and off the belly of a blond woman who lay on the floor, spread-eagled, her eyes closed, her shirt off, slowly rubbing her nipples as if she were alone in her bedroom. Angela took it all in with the diffidence of the truly high. Then she felt a hand on her neck as she made her way toward the scene. “What’s up, lovely ladies?” Some man she’d never seen before, good-looking but still . . . She needed to find out who he was before she did anything. Her heart hummed in her chest.
    â€œI’m doing all right. This is my friend . . . ,” she trailed off. Sheila was gone. “Well, she was right here.”
    â€œYeah, I saw her go. You’re the one I wanted to talk to anyway.” The smile. The look. The joint offered. The dance begun. He had a name. What was it? Sam or Tony or Reggie or John. This one was named Rafe. They always stood too close. They always looked at her face for one minute and her breasts for five. They always offered her joints and she always took them, inhaling deeply, feeling her head waft away from her body. Her mother wouldn’t have believed she could be so fast, going on the pill so she could fuck whomever she pleased, whenever she pleased, without worrying. Sizing it up. Looking for kicks. Filling her lungs with that sweet smoke and then dancing with him. He smelled good, like some kind of flower. She was so high that it was getting hard to stay awake, but she didn’t want to sleep, she didn’t want to miss this, so when he held the little mirror out to her, the powder heaped in a line, she took the rolled bill gratefully. As soon as she snorted it, she felt the top of her head explode, all light stars inside. In a minute or so she thought she might never need to sleep again. All she needed to do was keep dancing, keep talking, keep feeling Rafe’s lean hips against hers. She felt like every good idea ever conceived. She could see Sheila across the room in the conversation pit and she laughed and waved. Sheila laughed back. She had caught the night’s real prize; her leg was thrown casually across Wilt’s long, long leg as if Sheila found herself hugged up to the world’s most famous basketball