Tampa by Alissa Nutting Read Free Book Online Page B

anyone, to gracefully age. After a certain point, any detail, like the woman’s cheerleader hairstyle, that implied youth simply looked ridiculous. Despite her athletic prowess, the jogger’s cratered thighs seemed more like something that would die one day than something that would not. I didn’t know how long I had before this window slammed down on my fingers as well—with diligence , and avoiding children, perhaps a decade. The older I became, the harder it would be to get what I wanted, but that was probably true of everyone with everything.
    Another jogger lapped my convertible, his face the color of sunburned meat. His chest was sweating the way a fatally wounded stab victim might bleed. A wave of desperation coursed through me that nearly made me jump from the car and run—shorts still around my ankles, buzzing vibrator dropping onto the asphalt from between my legs—to Jack’s window, to rap on it loudly with my fist, then press my buttocks against the glass and turn behind to look at him with one panicked fish eye on the side of my face and offer no command or explanation beyond,
Take me right now, through this window. You’re too young to realize we don’t have much time.
    I stared back into the binoculars, but Jack was no longer in the room—summoned by Father, apparently. I scanned all the frontrooms I could see into for activity, but Jack wasn’t visible. With a sigh I removed the vibrator, placed it into the car’s center cup holder and let its droning buzz fill the vehicle. It was time to flip down the driver’s-side visor and perform a quick check in the mirror. I looked deceptively satisfied—sweating, flushed, rosy-cheeked. “Patience,” I said out loud, “is a virtue.” It was so funny I started cackling. A very unattractive, near-snort of a laugh, to be honest. I found that sometimes it was a relief to do something unattractive in private, to confirm that I’m deeply flawed when so many others imagine me to be perfect. People are often startled by my handwriting; because I’m pretty, they assume everything I do is pretty. It’s odd to them that I write like I have a hook for an arm, just as Ford would be startled to learn I have a hook for a heart. Shitting is good this way as well. Occasionally in college, my roommate would enter the bathroom right after I’d done some business and scream out at the lingering smell with a sense of shock that left me deeply gratified. With her square, Germanic jaw and wide-set shoulders, it was easy for me to picture her hearty dumps—I pictured them to be somewhat orthogonal, favoring the rectangular. But I had a face that denied excretion.
    “Good-bye for now, Jack,” I called. One good thing about returning to the house in sweaty aerobic gear was that Ford had to believe me when I claimed to be too tired. The concession was always that I’d lie down on my side for him and he’d get to lower my spandex shorts to reveal my buttocks, pull down my sports bra so a profile of nipple was showing as well, and masturbate standing above me while I closed my eyes and pretended to have fallen asleep.

chapter three
    Seeing the students’ actualized youth up close made me double
down on my age-preventative spa visits and my purchase of vigilant creams and potions. I cycled through the weeks of the month with oxygenating facials, DNA-repair enzyme facials, caviar illuminating facials, precautionary Botox, microdermabrasion, LED light therapy. To unite body and mind for the best results possible, I always tried to envision myself literally getting younger during the treatments: I pictured my fourteen-year-old self standing off in the distance, waiting for me to come repossess her body; each one of these sessions allowed me to take one step further toward reaching her by turning back the clock a few months. Though often, well-intentioned compliments on behalf of the aestheticians would derail me from such vision quests.
    It was not uncommon while I was