Footloose.
Sunday January 18, 2009
I saw the pop star downtown again today. I was going to pick up dry cleaning when I looked out and saw her climbing the big stone steps up to the railroad trestle by the Old Spaghetti Factory. It looked like she was unbuttoning her blouse.
By the time I’d found a parking space and run back to the trestle she was up on the railroad tracks. Her blouse was discarded at the top of the steps, a slash of white against the dark, mossy stone. I scooped it up. She was a little ways down the tracks, sitting on one rail, unlacing one of her knee-high soft leather boots. You dropped this, I said.
I know, she said, and she kicked off the boot and left it drooping on the tracks. She stood up barefoot wearing only a tiny pair of carefully cut-off jeans, legs gone right up to the crotch, waistband gone with the beltloops riding low on her swelling hips, back pockets ripped away, all the edges soft and feathery white threads leaking from pale distressed denim. She was looking down and down the long curl of her belly, blond hair tangled in the breeze, her hands busy with the fly of her shorts. Took me a moment to figure out what she was trying to do.
Need some help? I asked, and she looked up with that dazzling smile. I left the blouse with her boots.
The shorts were held shut with a big gold safety pin and her fingers were slipping as she tried to squeeze it enough to open it. I took hold of the pin which was warm and tried to squeeze it open myself but had to grab her shorts for purchase. My fingers clutched between the feathery white remains of the waistband and the brown bare skin of her belly. The backs of my fingers scratched by rough gold curls.
I thought you shaved, I said. It was in that magazine. The pin popped loose and pricked my thumb. She grabbed my hand in hers which are surprisingly small and sucked the blood from my thumb, her blue eyes impishly mischievous, and somewhere far away I heard a train whistle blow. That was then, she said, and let go of my hand. She danced away down the tracks, tugging the shorts over her hips and letting them fall down her long, long legs. I’m shooting a video! she cried.