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Show Moon - 238 When I wake up the next morning, I touch my breasts. They're sore now, a little swollen. It's time to find out, and I make an appointment with a doctor in Woodstock for the next day. The boys go out, just as they always used to do, never saying where. I'm alone with the girl, who sits in my mother's rocking chair facing the cold fireplace. "What's your name?" I ask her. She spins the chair around to face me as if she's startled, the rungs nearly tipping onto her bare feet. "Lisa," she says, "but sometimes they call me "Space." "Space?" She flips her hand outward, gives a self-deprecatory shrug. "You know, for spacey." Then she pulls herself up tall, stretching up her slender neck. "I'm a burnout," she says as if this is a title of distinction. I don't quite know where we can go from here, but I feel compelled to try. Her face is heart-shaped; her nose is upturned and faintly sprinkled with freckles; her eyes are fringed with thick black lashes. Irish beauty, a kind I've always envied. But up close, I see she isn't as young as she first appears. I like to know the stories of people I envy in order to learn that they are not so different. So I say to Lisa, "Tell me about yourself." She laughs, shrugs again. "In what way should I tell you? Should I tell you in order? And if so, beginning when? Or do you want merely the highlights? The good parts? The endings?" I'm attracted to these signals of a lively mind. "Tell me what's important to you." |