by Woody Evans

Muddy sand clung to the seams of the black volleyball. She picked it up when it touched her foot. She had had the newspapers propped just right. Only thing clean was the two-piece this morning, and she had to go, to wear something. Lilly's birthday at the shore. Her scars shining, oiled and aggravated as strips of seared clam.

She held it with her left fingertips, like a basketball star, or like Nicole Kidman. She looked over the top of her paper. Lilly was at her left, talking to a hunky waiter with tiny teeth, who'd come down from the SanGree-ah Hut. Lilly was thirty-eight today, and her damn daughter was with daddy.

There was a guy walking up from the volleyball net down the way, the game on hold. She smelled like lotion and iodine. Only thing clean was the two-piece this morning. Bright red belly scars smiling at the sun, and, god, she wish she'd hurry up and blister or something, even things out or something.

The volleyball guy was right over her. She held the papers over her stomach. He nodded with a smile and picked the ball from her hand. He had big brown arms and a small white chest. He took the ball with a huff or a slight guffaw. When he spun round and ran back to the game, his sunglasses, propped on the back of his neck as they were, bounced and flickered; he was delightful, like a cartoon or a video game.

She pressed her own sunglasses right up and tightly against her face. She looked down the beach to the north, where it went to weeds, a bird sanctuary. Cars roaring by on the steely highway behind. She looked back at Lilly who now had a new drink. She sighed, and leaned back again. She rustled the paper. She felt bloated and sore.

Lilly said have a sip, and passed the cup.

She drank it all down, chugged it, and Lilly hissed. Lilly snatched the cup back and said get me another!

She got an ice-cream headache and mooshed her tongue into the top of her mouth to soothe it.

She just sat there, slid down in her chair, newsprint now stuck to her soft sores, baking in the sun. The clouds rolled in, then out again. Her pain pills mixed good with the alcohol.

Yeah, happy birthday. The hap-thwap of the volleyball game kept going and going on, and kids giggled and a fat dog splashed. Lilly's other friends must have been good and sloshed up there, with the waiters. Lilly, in her stupid flip-flops, must have left her to go join them.

She woke later, good and burnt. Yeah, that bitch let her burn. No more volleyball game either. She got a cab home, sat in a tub of cold water and every kind of aloe lotion she had in the house.

Yeah, and her scars didn't look so pink no more. 

<<>>