THE ART OF SECRETION

It started as a dare but became more than that. Became a knife. A scalpel. A fine, thin blade we took to one man–and so to all those men, and the women who orbited them with their L’Eau d’Issey-sprayed wrists and Diana-rolled hair.

January. Nineteen eighty-eight. I wore hot pink under hot gallery lights, shimmering like a halo around the hottest act in the room: him. By August, I’m in red-hot curls, drinking tequila sweet and sour as sugar-crusted crumble.

Shona and I play detective, visitors and schedules noted like tides. We leave before noon on a Saturday, Shona driving fifty on the long straight road out of town. No need to draw attention. We pass low white buildings weathered with stains under dirty white skies, desert clouds with just enough rain to cry.

“Pick up will yer,” she says, fluffy dice swinging from the mirror. A pair of sixes bump together as she pulls up to the lights. “Scratching, like you’ve got nits.”

A wide intersection stretches before us like a runway, flat streets that drive straight into the desert. “Who says I don’t?” I say, getting my whole hand under the wig, drawing my nails along