There was a hill behind the house, the house we always rented with the bridge over the stairs to my room. The room with the pink curtain, the blow up cactus and a window that opened up to the expanse of the living room. She would come over the bridge and visit me, she always wanted to stay in that room. Out on the hill behind the house, she pranced around in her little blue polka-dotted dress, green wellies, and nothing else, she had refused underwear. Wisps of her unruly strawberry blond hair tied back, she was always ready to put on a show. It smelled of wet grass. Lifting up her dress, she revealed a bare bottom and her svelte little legs cut off mid-calf by her mud-splattered boots.
The surf worked me over and over again sucking in the salt water. He was bearded then and broad, he fished me out of the water. Lifting my wet body up by my underarms. Spitting and giggling, rubbing my eyes a bit, “Do it again!” He hurled me, like a light-weight javelin in a field competition, a javelin wearing a ruffly green onepiece and clear blue jelly sandals.
Her tan legs were shapely. She let me rub the scars on her knees when she put me to sleep at night. My small fingers grazed them, the raised seams, the pinker patches of skin. She would tell me stories about those scars. “Remember France,” she would say. She had come to France with the family one April. Running with the baguette sandwiches, she missed her step, the Nebraskan hit the cobble-stoned street with a hard smack. Blood dripped slowly spreading along the stones. Small cuts on her knees and palms were red, wet, and dirt filled.
His worn hands worked the apple over. Slicing and dicing with his Swiss knife. It was a procedure. Lopping off pieces of skin, manipulating the fleshy parts, detailing the figure and form. Watching him was sobering. His hands working. First, the eyes, then the nose and mouth, sometimes ears, he often added wrinkles for wear. And as the sculpted faces sat finished, the flesh of the apple would brown like they were aging, aging much like his own worn hands.
The establishment had a dingy feel. Stucco walls and muted hues of oranges and reds, like a true, rustic cantina. It was unlit and hot. Sweat saturated sundresses and linen dress shirts. They brought us sangria in clay pitchers, administering the blood red drink with a wooden spoon. The tapas, small and savory, were satiating. Outside the loud bleating of bustling city streets pulled back at us.
