Knuckles pressed against her cheek, her sunburn is stretched crispy across her face. Debate rages in the court of social etiquette presiding in her temporal cortex. Will the men move over? She loosens her grip on the wine bottle. The tension from her hand skips up her spine and curls into the nape of her neck. She doesn’t give them a chance to make room and steps off the sidewalk. Bitchy. Unable to revise the scene, she glances at her shoes.
The ground outside the liquor store is carpeted with cigarette butts. Marlboros, Camel Lights, Newports. They cling to one another and the granite curb. Smokestacks leaning against the corrugated metal siding, the men contribute to this ecosystem. She sees the frame from behind. Their eyes on her back, on the bottle: five dollar Pinot grigio. She flexes her toes, embarrassed. Sliding into the passenger side of the car, she tosses the wine in the back seat and shuts the door. She locks it twice.
She fumbles through her bag, collecting a pile of stray gum wrappers. The air in the car is stale and thick on the back of her throat. She rubs a hand across her right knee three times and once down the calf. The hubcap of the car in the next spot is scuffed. Dandelion puffs twirl in lazy tornadoes among the discarded cigarettes. Her gaze moves to her bare legs. Attention out the window might initiate eye contact.
Basking in a patch of freckles on her thigh is a single pimple, angry and peaked. A half glance through the windshield confirms that the men are nodding and laughing in her direction. Swiping the back of her hand under her nose, she checks for sources of humiliation. Her face is framed in the side-view mirror; she chances a lick of her lips.
She captures the pimple with thumb and forefinger.
It swells as she squeezes, head white and bulbous. The first attempt fails. Flushing red, the skin bristles at the invasion. She retreats. Two swipes with her middle finger realigns each eyebrow. She doesn’t notice that she is holding her breath. Her second charge is more calculated, approaching the pore at an angle. In its last opaque moments, the thin skin is the color of sweat-stained undershirts. A rigid snake of sebum and cellular garbage coils against her thumbnail. She exhales, pinching the skin until it oozes only blood.
Wiping her fingers on the side of the seat, she aborts a coy smile out the window and picks instead at an errant cuticle. She hates waiting in the car.