I write stories.

I have 98 cents. No more, no less. All I want is a penny. There are a thousand pennies lying all around my room right this minute. I kid you not, I really hate pennies and when I have them I just put them down. My windowsill has at least forty. All I need is one but no, I have a greedy windowsill. Just my luck. I’m not desperate enough to ask. I might be at that point soon though. I swear to god it was not this hot when I left this morning. It has to be over a hundred at this point.
“It has to be over a hundred at this point.” Kevin pushed the hair off his forehead. It sticks to his forehead when it gets hot like this. It’s not his fault; he’s just a big guy so he sweats more. I watch him sometimes. I mean, well, we spend a lot of time together so it’s okay that I watch him, but I have to admit that I don’t look at him, I watch him.
“Yeah, has to be. Goddamn my back’s hot.” He wasn’t wearing a shirt. That’s okay, because we were in the one place around here where it was just fine to not wear a shirt. I double-checked my shoe for money. Maybe I had another penny and it was just hiding.
I think the heat makes it quieter. There are a lot of people out, that’s for sure, but it was too hot to talk. Everyone just sits, or stands, or lies about when it’s hot like this. No chitchat allowed, excusing the occasional complaint about heat. It makes for quiet heat.
My nose itches when it’s hot out. I wonder if Kevin’s nose itches. I dare say if he went to itch it he’d end up with his fingers sliding off his nose. He’s just that sweaty. I think if you wait long enough out in heat like this you begin to see things. That’s why I need that penny.
“Hello there. No. Well it’s gotta be a hundred and ten out here. Still? Well if you do get dressed we could use hoagies. No you don’t have to come. I said you didn’t have to don’t act like I’m begging. No. No don’t do me any favors. Okay bye.” Kevin always feigns interest, this time he decided to roll over half way so that he can pretend he’s looking at me on the phone. I can tell his eyes are closed, even if I’m not watching. I don’t have to watch him to know he’s pretending to look at me. “Jess is up.” That’s all it took for him to roll back over.
I wonder if anyone packs lunch on a day like today. Coolers can’t do much for you, even with ice. I hope someone learns a lesson this afternoon. Oh boy, I hope that family over-there packed tuna. They have that big red cooler. The big red coolers mean business, usually a full meal. Maybe they’ll have warm sodas. That’s a finer way to learn than bad tuna, but with tuna at least I’ll have something to watch.
Kevin’s back. He wasn’t really gone but I feel rather alone when he lies on his stomach. I can never make conversation with him. Sometimes I try but no matter what I say his answer is “What?” Most the time I tell him to forget it, but sometimes I say a string of words that rhyme with my first thought, but generally make no sense. He nods, and that is why I usually say never mind.
“Are we getting hoagies?” He’s gone a step further from closing his eyes to resting his dingy old hat over his face. I just want to flip it off him, maybe he’ll say something other than food this and heat that.
“No, I told her not to bother unless she gets up. My bet is she’ll call in another hour.” He nods, like that means something. I think it means that he’s tired of talking. But I blame that on the heat. It’s been a quiet heat.
Do lips get burnt? I mean sun burnt, obviously you can burn a lip on hot tea or a backwards cigarette. If lips can get sun burnt, Kevin is in for a world of hurt. He says chapstick is for girls. I agree, chapstick is for girls. And people with common sense. I hope his lips burn.
“Are your lips hot?”
“What?”
“Car shore hips a lot?”
“Mhmm.”
I keep seeing little dark dots in the sand and I keep hoping they’re pennies but every time I draw my fingers through it’s a shell. Maybe if I collect enough shells I can sell them for a penny.
Grapes! They brought grapes with them. Oh that’s almost as good as warm tuna, warm grapes get soft and sour pretty fast. Oh little boy don’t eat that. He ate it. How terrible.
“What’s going on?” Kevin rolled over again, but still hasn’t opened his eyes. I guess he heard the kid yelp. It wouldn’t have been so loud, but the heat is just so quiet.
“A little boy ate a grape. I think it was bad, but I can’t say for sure.”
“Why would you yell after eating a grape?” For some reason his eyebrows furrow even when his eyes stay closed. Why is that? Why bother with facial expression if you can’t even bother to open an eye?
“Maybe is was sour.”
“What?”
“Nevermind.”
I have fourteen shells. They’re nice too and I barely had to move to pick them up. How much would someone pay for fourteen nice shells? Sure one could argue that any bum off the street could go pick up some shells themselves. But how about buying them for just a penny? No one ever needs pennies…except for me and only right now.
I think my phone is buzzing but I moved away from it to pick up a new shell. This shell is the mack daddy of all shells. I would pay a nickel for just this shell.
“Hello?” It’s Kevin’s phone. Why do people answer by saying hello as a question? Are they seeing if anyone is there? I’d like to think when I answer my phone someone is there. If no one is there, it isn’t really much of a phone call and if I’m guessing there’s a chance no one is there I’m not even sure if I want to answer it.
“Do you want a hoagie?”
“Yeah, but not tuna.”
“So anything but tuna?”
“Yes. I want a surprise hoagie as long as it’s not a surprise-it’s-tuna hoagie.” That would be a terrible surprise, especially as I specified not hoagie. I think surprises by nature are good. A bad surprise is just unexpected disappointment.
“With anything?”
“Well if the surprise calls for something, get it. If it’s Turkey, add mayo. If it’s Italian, oil.”
“She wants an appropriate surprise.” I can see him rolling his eyes. Why does he assume that because he’s wearing sunglasses it means I can’t see his eyes? It’s the sunniest day of the year and his sunglasses look like barely tinted windows. They’re begging for me to watch his eyes, so I do, and he rolled them. At least they’re open now.
“Who is it, Alec?”
“Yeah, he says he doesn’t know what you mean but he’ll get you an Italian.”
“Tell him not Italian because then the surprise is ruined.”
“What if he gets you Italian anyway?”
“Then I’ll be surprised.”
Last time I got a hoagie out here a seagull ate half. Well he didn’t eat half, he just flew away with half. I’d like to believe that he brought it home to his family, a real breadwinner. Bread-cheese-lettuce-turkey-mayo-winner, that is.
“Tell Alec to bring a penny.”
“What for?”
“I need a penny.”
“You don’t have a penny?”
“I have several pennies, I need one more. Can you just ask him? Tell him I have shells to trade.” Again, again with his rolling eyes and his sweaty forehead. I just want to wipe the sweat away and throw off his sunglasses.
“He says he heard you and he’ll bring a penny, you can keep your shells.” I’ll give him a shell anyway, out of good measure. But not the big one, this mack daddy is coming home with me.
The red-cooler family is digging in for more. Some people never learn. Ah, the father figure seems to be the bravest of them all. I suppose they know it was a bad idea, but desperation leads people to do some crazy things. With any luck they kept things simple with peanut butter and jelly. As anti-climactic as that would be, part of me is rooting for them after that grape incident. They’ve been through enough. Oh dear, well I can’t tell what is was but it sure did go bad. Perhaps the bread-cheese-lettuce-turkey-mayo-winning birds will swoop in. Surely those sandwiches aren’t as tasty as my long gone hoagie half. Another day, another sandwich, I suppose.
“Would you pay a nickel for this shell?”
“mm grmb nah.” I think he said he doesn’t know. There are two scars on his back, pox scars. I imagine if I were to take a paper-hole punch and press it into his back it would look something like that. They’re so perfect, why do pox make such nice circles? Kevin has one on his cheek. When he first meets someone he always rests his hand on that side of his face, or finds some reason to cover it with his fingers. I think that’s the only reason I noticed it, I had to know what he was hiding. It was a little bit of a let down, I was hoping for a prison tat of a teardrop.
I think my nose itches because it’s burnt. I put sunscreen on, but I rubbed it in. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a lifeguard who legitimately left the sunscreen on his nose without rubbing it in. I wonder if I did find a lifeguard like that if he’d be upset when I ask to take his picture. I think I’d take it anyway.
The umbrella ladies next to us just shook out their towels, probably one of the ruder things they’ve done today besides gossiping about their neighbors. I wonder if why they don’t watch their neighbors, I mean really watch. It’s one thing to look over and catch a philandering husband bring a floozy to an empty summer home next door, it’s different when you watch close enough to realize she’s the Cavanaugh’s daughter from two blocks up. People watchers notice, people just skim.
My phone’s buzzing, I’m almost positive it’s my phone this time. I wish I knew where it was, that would make life so much easier.
“Hi. What’s that now? What do you mean you fell out of a three-story window?” Kevin isn’t listening. “No sorry I was talking to someone else. Are you out of bed yet? Okay well you don’t have to worry because Alec is bringing the hoagies. No we already told him what we wanted. Okay well there are leftovers in the fridge. I don’t know, mac and cheese? Well then add more cheese. It’s too hot to talk I have to go.”
The red-cooler family father is choking down warm sodas. I’m sure anything tastes good after warm something sandwiches. Maybe if I’m lucky they’ll try another grape or two. How hot would it have to be for their grapes to ferment? I suspect now that the inside of their cooler is nothing but a heat box; they could toss it into the sun and wait to find out. I’m not so sure that the red-cooler family’s agenda fits to my fancy.
I bit my fingernail clean off yesterday and now its far too short and useless. I only care because I have an itch like something terrible and yesterday my lone-long nail did the trick just fine. Now I have a whole bunch of short stubby nails trying to do the work of one good one. I should have weighed the pros and cons before submitting to my nail-chewing vices.
I have seventeen shells. It’s hard to find more shells without standing up; I’m impressed I even found two more. I think the big one I have here counts as way more than one, but I don’t want the other shells to feel like they’re not worth even a penny so we’ll just call it seventeen.
I’m really cooking now. Even the umbrella ladies have quit gossiping. Just when I thought nothing would stop them, the quiet heat shushes the un-shushables. I believe that means we are reaching dangerous temperatures out here.
Surely Kevin’s lips are burning. I almost feel like they’re red, redder than usual, but I think that’s only because I want it to be true. Maybe if I waited til he went to sleep I could put chapstick on them and he could pose as a rational thinker. I don’t think he’d like that though, maybe he thinks rational thought is for girls, too. There goes his phone.
“Alec is here, he says he wants to eat inside.”
“Did he bring me a penny?”
“Did you bring her a penny? Yes, he has the penny.”
“Alright let’s go.” Packing up is a lot harder to do when you spent the day snagging a new sunburn to cover the old one. My shoulder skin hurts, definitely not something I’ll ever get used to. The red-cooler family left, I missed their departure while digging for shells. They left their warm soda cans in the sand. What a thoughtful way to say, “Up yours, hot beach.” Because blaming the beach is a lot easier than admitting you messed up a packed lunch.
“Are you sure you don’t want chapstick?”
“What?”
“Bar glue chore new won’t brunt maps lick?”
“What’d you say?” His eyes are open now that we’re inside, which usually means I can’t get away with my rhymes.
“I asked if you wanted me to give you some chapstick.”
“Yeah actually my lips are really hot. Can you burn your lips? I mean other than like on hot tea or something?”
“I think so, but it’s a lot less severe than the wrong end of a cigarette burn.”
“I’d hope so, that was terrible. Do you have your chapstick?”
“Yeah but it melted.”