Pardon Me For Moonwalking
by Patricia Q. Bidar
We weren’t much more than halfway to Bill and Lila’s place at the Russian River when the drugs kicked in. I asked my boyfriend Rocky how he was holding up. “Colorfully," he said, each syllable a separate word. He’d taken the lion’s share of the mushrooms. He was also the only one with a driver’s license.
My brother Bill and his wife Lila were away for the weekend. Our job was to gather eggs their chickens had lain. Bill had told me fresh blue corn cakes and orange juice awaited us. We should help ourselves to the yellow squash, purple carrots, and heirloom tomatoes in the big raku bowl on the table. These words were talismanic against the littered sidewalk/public transport/soul sucking day job sameness of our days. The three of us — me, Rocky, and his work friend, Dawn — had jumped at the chance to leave the city. We'd had just enough money for gas, drugs, and a rental car, so long as we refused the insurance.
The psilocybin had leached the moisture from my eyes. I thumbed out my contact lenses. Everything was a smear of light and color. Lounging in the back on a pile of clothes she’d pulled from our bags, Dawn rhapsodized about the sky in her squeaky, babyish voice. “That’s pretty, Dawn,” Rocky said. “Real pretty.” He reached back, gave her bare ankle a squeeze.
At last, we turned into the dark yard. The three of us seeped from the dusty car. The redwood needles gave the ground a springy feeling under my bare feet. The country! That smell! My lungs felt cherished by the night air. Through the windows, yellow light illuminated Lila’s huge Hopi sand paintings on either side of the stone hearth. That food was going to taste great.
The spare key was right where Bill had said, under the raccoon statue. The trouble was, it didn't work. We all tried. I worried aloud the key would snap in the lock.
"Bastards!" Rocky growled, jamming his hands into his armpits and hopping from side to side. Any sign of trouble always brought out the New York cabbie he’d been before coming west.
"Guess we break a window," Dawn squeaked. Her eyes were slits. Dawn was always suggesting big moves like this, but she never made anything happen. Mainly she just talked about the 40-Watt Club, back home in Athens, Georgia, and how she’d once partied with the B-52s.
Rocky’s olive face was slack. I discerned the vulnerable skull beneath. “Maybe Rue and Angel have a spare,” I ventured.
Bill and Lila weren't the only city couple who had moved to the Russian River. Rue and Angel, we knew fairly well. A slight blonde, she had once been a boxer. Her ring name was "the Tattooed Angel." Rue was a wild, loud country girl with a gap between her teeth.
We humped back into the rental car. On the passenger side window where I’d stuck them, I spied my withered contact lenses. I popped them into my mouth to soften them up.
Rue and Angel’s place was next door to a seedy putt-putt golf course, the one with the giant lavender dinosaur in front. A party was in full swing. A couple of dozen women lounged, danced, or sprawled on the back deck. Inside it was heated up, windows fogged. Hazy warm colors. The Indigo Girls warbled from the speakers. I desperately needed to pee. I barged through the festivities in my department store punk regalia and bare feet.
"If it's yellow, let it mellow," a printed sign above the toilet read. "If it's brown, flush it down. If it's red…" I don't remember what you were supposed to do if it was red. I put my contact lenses in my eyes with a minute sucking sound. I knew enough not to look at my reflection.
Back in the living room, Rue spotted me. “Straight girl alert!” she screamed, waving a CD. It was Michael Jackson’s Thriller album, old even back then. When I asked about a spare key, she fake-pouted and shook her head.
That was when Angel appeared. She was dressed in a ribbed white undershirt and those Dolphin shorts, ocean blue on one side white on the other. Her slim arms were covered in color. In slow motion, butterflies batted their wings. Snakes undulated. It was one of the most beautiful sights I had ever beheld.
I tried to remind Angel that I was Bill’s sister. No words emerged. And then we were dancing, and it was all right, velvety and warm. Angel held her wrists above her head, prettily swiveling her hands. “Smooth Criminal” blared from the speakers.
Then I did it: began moonwalking like Wacko Jacko, bare feet catching on the carpet. Of course, I fell. The music continued, but the conversation did not.
“So, are you okay?” someone said at last.
“Ahyeah! Definitely!” I hollered, heaving myself up. “Pardon me! Pardon!” Away from the Tattooed Angel, away from the dancing, out the door and down the ramp into the cold air.
Rocky and Dawn lounged against the rental car, trying to look casual. Dawn’s thumbs were in Rocky’s belt loops. I could smell his cologne.
It couldn’t have been more clear: they’d just been kissing. I shook my head for more time than made sense. Then I stopped. “Need to go back to the city,” I said.
“This is horseshit,” Rocky returned darkly.
“We could steal some inner tubes and float the river until daybreak,” Dawn offered, not bothering to open her eyes.
Their words hung in the chilling air. A few yards away, Rue and Angel’s patio lights swirled. It had been warm inside. It would be so easy to simply return. Moonwalk back — smoothly this time — making it clear my lame moves had been a joke.
I could hear us breathing. Our exhalations visible like those of farm animals. Something felt cool and soothing between my toes. I looked down. I’d stepped on a banana slug.
“You’re up.” Rocky threw me the rental car keys, so hard they bit.
Patricia Q. Bidar is a native of San Pedro, California with family roots in New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona. Her stories have appeared in Wigleaf, The Pinch, SmokeLong Quarterly, Sou’wester, Little Patuxent Review, and Pithead Chapel, among other places. Apart from fiction, Patricia ghostwrites for progressive nonprofit organizations. She lives with her DJ husband and unusual dog in the San Francisco Bay Area and tweets at @patriciabidar. Visit Patricia at www.patriciaqbidar.com.
