Dixon drives. Andrea attends to the beachside drifters pushing shopping carts along the sidewalk. She calls them “Cajuns.” She likes how it sounds when yelled. Cajun! She likes that the drifters have no idea why she chooses this, of all things, to yell. She and Dixon drive past a restaurant that sells only hot dogs, past a giant rocking chair made of cockleshells, which you can pay to sit on. Cajun! Andrea wants to throw something. A ripe pear, a stuffed animal maybe, something not too hard.
Dixon is excited. He sings along with “Afternoon Delight” on the radio, smiling without smiling, something in the squint of his eyes. Andrea isn’t bothered by his singing—his voice is soft, nonintrusive, nearly pleasant—but she finds herself waiting for him to stop. In a few hours she has to
babysit for her brother. She thinks: Something has always just happened or is about to happen. Nothing is ever happening.
She is nineteen, Dixon, twenty-four. He has red, tightly curly hair, red eyelashes, red hair on his arms, his chest, red hair all over, except on the top part of his legs, which is shaved. He is training to be a tattoo artist by practicing on his thighs, covering them with flames, leaves, wings, cartoon
characters, hearts, crosses, squiggles, spirals, and other meaningless designs. When she first met him there were freckles and soft red hair on his thighs. Now it’s a mess, a tattoo stew. He is wearing shorts and if Andrea looked away from the street and at his right leg, she would see a purple tiger paw
pulling scratch marks across his thigh.
A man pulling two clear plastic bags steps into the crosswalk. “Cajun!” Andrea yells. The man jerks his head forward, then sidelong like a fish extending for a worm, hooked.
He has to practice on somebody, Dixon tells her. He is singing again, to a song that goes, “I want it,” over and over—it being, Andrea guesses, sex. Dixon is excited because they are going to see a building he wants to turn into a tattoo studio. He drives exactly thirty-five miles an hour. He thinks the streetlights are timed so that if you maintain
the speed limit you won’t get any red lights. Every few blocks he’s proven wrong.
Early this morning, they were naked in his bed. “Maybe you could allow me your right shoulder,” Dixon said, tracing a finger along her clavicle. Andrea told him that at the end of August, on their first anniversary, she’d let him tattoo a small roman numeral I on her thigh. She’s mad at herself for saying it. She doesn’t want a small roman numeral I on her thigh. It seemed reasonable when they were naked. Anyway, it didn’t satisfy Dixon at all. “I need practice,” he told her. “I’m running out of room on my legs. All I’ve got is my arm.” They pull up next to a stucco two-storied shop with dry-rotted awnings and a for lease sign on the front door. It used to house, Andrea can read in the dust and sand collecting on the torn-off window stickers, The Fun Shack. The building looks slightly nonplussed, as if someone has just asked it a question. “Look inside,” Dixon says. “Imagine chairs and artwork on the walls. A big dog walking around.” He sprints across the street, kneels to one knee, and holds a camera to his face. Andrea waits for the flash’s wink, but it doesn’t come. The sun is shining.