Issue 9 1/2 - August 2008 - Prose

Tan Lines by Paul Heatley

I wander down to the beach. It’s warm and clear and cloudless, bright blue sky and burning bright ball of sun and I’m sweating under my jacket and the sands are covered in bathing bodies, stretched out and lithe and in every shape imaginable: big, small, fat, thin. I roam amongst them, hands in my pockets, head low. I’m out of place in jeans, jacket and boots; they’re all in swimwear, though none are swimming. It’s all about the flesh; showing off as much as you feasibly can without getting actually naked. I find a space next to a girl, roughly my age, in a blue bikini. I sit down next to her. She’s bronzing, but retains white lines on her shoulders and back, and low on her hips where her suit has kept her covered. I look at her out the corner of my eye and she’s lying on her stomach and she’s wearing sunglasses and staring out at the sea. It’s not as clean as it looks.

“Hi,” I try, smiling in a manner I imagine to be warm and inviting.
Idly, she glances at me, a thin eyebrow arching over the lens of her wide sunglasses. “Hello.”
“It’s a nice day,” I try. I’ve always had difficulty talking to people. Not just girls; people in general. 
“Mm. Yes. Very nice.”
I can see droplets of sweat on her top lip and brow. I keep waiting for her to ask me why I’m wearing a jacket when it’s so warm, but she doesn’t. She licks away the sweat around her mouth. She seems to be waiting, impatiently, to see if I’m going to say anything else.
“So what’s your name?”
That eyebrow comes up again. I keep looking at her tan lines. Her body is so brown; those pale, white streaks are so out of place. “Sophie,” she says finally. She waited so long I had a feeling she wasn’t going to tell me. She draws it out again before she asks me, “Yours?”
“John,” I tell her quickly.
She smiles, faintly, a slight twitch at the corner of her lips. She lowers her head down onto her arms and her face is still turned towards me, but her eyes are closed. If I look hard enough I can see her lashes clamped tight together through the tinted glass. The small smile remains on her face, but there’s nothing in it. Like a painted line with a slight curve at the end. I look at her tan lines again, brazenly this time. She isn’t going to notice.
So white. White flesh on brown. They look out of place, but as if they won’t be there much longer. Her straps have been purposefully pushed to the side; her bottoms have been rolled down for her tan to creep closer and closer to her crotch. I wonder, fleetingly, if she is shaven down there. It strikes me, without question or doubt, that she is. She is shaven and her skin down there is as white as that on her back and around her waistline.
The brown skin encroaches upon the white, encompassing it. I stare long and hard and I’m sure I see her tan moving, spreading out, covering her body. Her tan lines are getting smaller; disappearing.
How long have I been staring at her?
I look at her face. Her eyes are open and her barely existent smile has gone. The painted slash is long and thin and straight and stern. Her brow has furrowed, the metal joining of her glasses cutting into the crease of her bunched skin. She’s looking at me, but I can’t – and don’t want to – read her hostile emotions. I look away from her. I look down in between my legs, start counting grains of sand. 
I suddenly become very aware that my hands are still in my pockets. Casually, I take them out and put them down by my side and grip at handfuls, let it run through my fingers, trailing away. It drops straight down; no breeze to carry it. 
“Well…goodbye, Sophie.” I get to my feet and she doesn’t reply and I turn and walk away and I look back over my shoulder and she isn’t watching me; her face is again turned towards the sea. I lower my head, dusting sand from my hands and take my time leaving, almost stumbling away in the shifting beach. I look back at her from time to time, her blue swimsuit easily seen, and her tan lines flash bright behind my eyes.
Oh dear Sophie – you were to be my salvation.

Off the beach I roam the grey streets, somehow even more depressing in the harsh sunlight, submerged in shadows. A car drives past me filled with teenagers and they’re all wearing caps and they’re all looking at me and they have the music turned up so loud they can’t talk to each other. In the back seat, one of them, the one right next to the window, makes a gun out of his fingers and aims it at me, one eye closed, cocking back on his thumb and blowing air out through his pursed lips, gunning me down. The car passes and I continue walking.
It’s warm even in the shadows. I keep my hands in my pockets and my eyes on the pavements, strolling along. I don’t walk in a straight line; I find it more interesting to shuffle side to side, almost as if I’m drunk. I eventually find a field and I lie down in it and keep my hands in my pockets and stare up at the sky and I spot a solitary fluffy cloud, carelessly drifting across my line of vision. I think of Sophie and her tan lines.
I lie on the grass for a long time, my face burning under the unprotected glare of the sun. The cloud disappears. I think about tan lines on other girls, not just Sophie, and how I’ve never really noticed them before. The white strips of flesh stay in my mind and I think about how her breasts would be that white, imprinted in the shape of her bikini top. What colour are her nipples? Any of their nipples?
I stare at the sky and nothing happens. After a while, it starts to darken and I get up and begin to move again. I pass by the beach but the people are all gone, save for a few dog-walkers, one of whom is throwing a Frisbee. I don’t own a dog. I stand for a little while and I watch them, my hands never leaving my pockets. I stare across the sea at the darkening sky and the lower sun and the stretching shadows. Soon, the stars are twinkling. I close my eyes, standing still, and think of a girl in a blue bikini with imperfectly perfect tan lines. I trail the shape of her garments with the tip of my finger. With my tongue.
Solemnly, I grit my teeth and open my eyes and stare at the cold ground and slowly turn and walk away. The dog walkers are gone, and so is the Frisbee, and Sophie left a long time ago.

I walk through streets and I pass a house with the lights on and music playing loud and screams of delight issuing from within. The doors and windows are all open and I can see inside, no curtains, and bodies are swinging and swaying from side to side, dancing and kissing and laughing and enjoying themselves. I try to smile, to feel as if I fit in amongst them, but I can’t; I don’t.
A car pulls up onto the driveway, so fast I think it’s going to crash straight into the garage, but it stops in time and the three occupants get out and hurry inside carrying three blue bags, bearing alcoholic supplies. They enter the house and a cheer goes up and no one closes the door. I stroll up the pavement and step inside and no one notices me. I walk through the house, looking around, inspecting the ornaments on top of the fireplace that have thus far avoided damage. I look at the framed pictures on the wall. The most predominant, the one I am drawn to, is of a family of four; aging parents with proud smiles and proud hands resting on the shoulders of their children: a boy and a girl. Both are probably all grown up by now, and I wonder which one is having this party. Maybe it’s both of them.
I go upstairs and pass a bathroom that shrieks vomit at me through the open door, though the light is off. I hear giggling in the bedrooms and squeaking springs. Someone bumps into me and apologises profusely. His hair is wild and lank and he shines with sweat and he tries to offer me a pill. I smile and shake my head and walk past him, my hands curling to fists in my pockets.
I leave the upstairs, feeling almost like a voyeur, and I descend the stairs one at a time, a hand briefly leaving its refuge and trailing my journey upon the rough wallpaper. I stop at the foot of the stairs and look around. The people – all their faces are so brown, so happily tanned. Their teeth are so white. They all look so perfect and healthy. I shake my head and fringe drops into my eyes, distorting everything. I leave it there.
I look at the girls and I think about their tan lines. All of their tan lines. A pale girl sits in the corner. She’s wearing glasses and she’s laughing at the boy talking to her and her hand is on his thigh. He must have told a good joke. She’s still laughing. She’s so pale. She is one long tan line.
I lean in doorways and against walls and watch them get drunk and dance to music I don’t recognise. I see people look at me, some with curiosity, others with that same expression I saw upon the face of Sophie down at the beach. Hovering outside a doorway to what I assume is a bathroom, I hear two people – male and female – talking.
The female says, “There’s a weird guy walking round the house. You might wanna go check him out. I don’t recognise him.”
The male laughs. “I don’t recognise half the people here!”
“Yeah, but this guy looks…different. I don’t know. Strange. You’ll have to see him for yourself. You’ll know him when you see him.”
“He’ll be harmless. Relax.”
“Just go take a look, okay? He’s looking round the place and he makes my fucking skin crawl. Maybe he’s a burglar or something?”
The male sighs and, defeated, utters a “Fine.”

I think they’re talking about me – it’s a description I’ve become accustomed to – so I turn and leave the house, leave the sweating atmosphere and into the cold chill of night; so suddenly cold it stabs me hard in the back of the throat and sinks deep into my chest. I walk away from the party and I tightrope along the kerbs, staring down at the bright white stones. One long, almost unbroken line. The tan lines of the pavements and the roads.
The night is quiet and smells of trees. I go home. I think about killing myself. I won’t do it. I never do.