Page 31 of Pieces of Ash
“Themodel,” she says, her tone straddling impatience and wonder. She takes an indignant step toward me. “She was the Christie Brinkley of the 2000s, don’t ya know!”
As if.Christie was a glorified swimsuit model. Tig modeled top-drawer Parisian and New York couture.
“Huh.”
“Come on! Ya know who she is, don’t ya? You’ve heard of her!”
I shrug my shoulders and shake my head. “Sorry. I’m not much for fashion magazines.”
“Well, you’re a dead ringer for her,” says Maude, squinting at me as she takes another long drag on her cigarette. “Hey, what did ya say your name was?”
I didn’t.
Think fast, Ashley.
“Christie,” I answer in the same snotty tone that Tig used when she wasn’t in the mood to deal with people.
“Ya don’t have to make fun of me,” pouts Maude.
I cross my arms over my chest and sigh like I’m bored even though my heart is racing inside.
“Bitch,” says Maude, gesturing at me with the bright orange end of her cigarette. “I hope your ride doesn’t show up.”
I watch her head to her car, hating it that I had to resort to one of my mother’s crappier behaviors to get rid of her after she’d been kind to me. I wish I could yell, “Sorry!” or “Yes, I’m Tig’s kid!” or “You were right! Let’s be friends, Miss Maude,” but I can’t. I’ve made way too much of an impression as it is.
Her car peels out of the parking lot a moment later with her middle finger jabbing through her window in my direction, and I am left alone, waiting for Gus’s headlights to brighten the darkness around me.
Luckily, I don’t have to wait long.
A cream-colored Lexus screeches into the parking lot a moment later, the wheels kicking up gravel and dust as it stops beside me at the ticket booth.
I start laughing, my whole body shaking with ripples of giggles, tears streaming down my cheeks. I let my backpack slide off my shoulders, down my back, and onto the gravel. I run to the driver’s side of the car, my arms outstretched, my body pulled, like a magnet, to his.
“Lil’ Ash!” he exclaims, running to me from the passenger side, his voice a beloved mix of California sun, urban Black, and proud homosexual man. “Come here, girl!”
I am enveloped by Gus’s arms, the smell of his cloves and cologne making me sob as he wraps one wiry arm around my waist and cups my skull with the other, pushing my head down on his shoulder.
“Baby doll,” he murmurs near my ear, his voice gritty with emotion, “what on God’s green earth are youdoinghere?”
Gus’s car is big,but it feels small since he’s climbed into the back seat beside me, keeping his arm around my shoulders and his hip pressed against mine as Jock, whom Gus called P.C. when he asked him to drive, sits alone in front.
“What’s P.C.?” I ask, thinking that Gus has never given a flying fig for political correctness.
“What? You don’t see his crown? His goddamned ti-ar-a? He’s my Prince Charming, baby doll. After an endless parade of queer frogs, I finally kissed a fairy prince.”
Jock glances up from the wheel, catching Gus’s eyes in the rearview mirror, and the look they share is so intimate, my stomach clenches with longing. I don’t have the slightest idea ofhow it would feel to be loved like that, but there isn’t a cell in my body that doesn’t yearn for it.
“He’s being generous, Ashley,” says Jock, and for the first time I realize he has an accent.
“You’re English?”
“Yes. My mother was English. My father was American. From here actually. Vermont. They divorced when I was small, and I grew up in London with my mum.”
“You left London for…here?” I ask, looking out the window at…nothingness.
Jock nods. “I have dual citizenship. After 9/11, I moved to the States to serve. Marines.”
“Oh,” I murmur, quickly putting together that Jock, a half-American gay man, served in the military. “Wow. That couldn’t have been easy.”
