Loose Bearings

*DING* *DING* *Ding* *di-ding*

*ing-ing-ing*

A bell whimpered on its string as a young woman burst inside a liquor store. She shoplifted a pair of red sunglasses then found the second cabinet along the near wall. She plucked an armful of glass 40s and dumped it on the counter.

“ID?” the attendant asked as the woman doubled back. Her arms and stomach glistened from the cold memory of the bottles, bumps pushing the white hairs further from the wet surface of her skin. She summoned a second load from the cabinet and set it on the counter with another jumbled *clack*.

Ten 40s in all- five King Cobras, three Mickeys, two OEs. The bottles stood green and two bleeding shades of gold, ordered like a frame of bowling pins shaped from beach glass.

“ID,” he repeated, the echo reverberating less like a question. She produced it this time.

“Glick, Japonica Alexandria,” the man recited for some humorless reason. “Eyes, brown.” He looked down into her brown eyes. “Hair, brown-” glancing just higher. “-I’d say more blonde.”

“It’s dyed,” she informed him. He studied her roots, then moved along.

“Date of birth… well happy belated birthday Japonica Glick.”

“Thank you-” she stopped and scanned the the man’s button-up, a black and white-striped bowling shirt that read Pin Pusher in cursive red thread above the pocket. Rather than address him that way she settled on another, “Thank you.”

The man scanned and double-bagged the 40s in pink plastic. “You might not know this yet but you don’t have to buy it all the first time,” he said. “You can come back every day the rest of your life now if you want.”

“Still might,” she threatened, scanning the crowded store that was more shelves than walkways, loaded up with every processed food she ever loved. She paid in exact change, swiped the bags from the countertop, and sent the bell ringing again.

She ripped the tag then slipped behind the red sunglasses to smother the bright bullets of sunlight glancing off passing windshields. She shifted the bags to one hand- the collective weight almost sent the 40s crashing down to earth but she steadied herself with two forward steps and a counter-lean. She peeled a skateboard from the store’s stucco exterior then took off down the pavement, her wheels *click*-*CLACK*-ing in and out of the cracks subdividing the teeth of the great grey sidewalk.

She eyed her flickering reflections in a dark gallery of store-front windowpanes- shoulder-length hair cut like wheat, a sawed-off nose, and arching pink lips flanked by the shadows from two hard dimples. She wore a strapless purple bikini top and faded jean shorts she’d cut herself. Whenever she was bored or upset, she singed the strings of frayed denim with her lighter, worming the fabric higher up her thighs. She looked down at her knobby knees and checkered Sk8-His, the dirty white soles gleaming against her griptape like squished bands of moonlight. Everywhere else her skin was evenly-tanned, and not a freckle on her.

She turned and looked ahead. A red light waited, the rusty cross-traffic drizzling by like a mechanical cattle drive. She dug her tail into the ground, labored both bags into her left hand, and kicked the skateboard into her idle right.

She read the meter over her shoulder,

19, 18-

set the bags on the ground and balanced the 8.13 Toy Machine deck upright on its tail, spinning it in wobbly revolutions. She’d boardslid the red face of the Monster clean-off but the script coiling from its mouth still read:

ON THE EDGE OF A NEW CHAPTER IN MY LIFE – A NEW GIFT IS COMING FOR ME AND MARK MY WORDS…

She spat and revisited the meter.

4, 3-

Then looked over the unpainted Indies and 52mm shop wheels plugged with Bones Reds. Her crosswalk yielded; she arranged the bags and pushed between the painted white lines, the glass clinking over the low drawl of gravel.

She rode two more blocks, then cut down the first commercial alley. The breeze blew with the grain here, the sunlight stoking streams of dust and dead leaves, the forgotten matter whipping around in slow, twisting blasts. Workers in white smocks smoked, coughed and avoided conversation. Titanium Exposé tolled from a battery-operated CD player. Japonica found a familiar blue tarp draped from the corner of a dumpster, above a bed of packed cardboard peeking out here and there. She set everything aside and slipped an OE from one of the bags.

“Guy?” she whispered. She saw his shape curling against the cloak of the tarp. “Guy?”

But he didn’t stir. She grabbed a corner of the tarp and scorched her fingers on one of the metal rings.

GodDAMNit, she yelled inside her head.

She retracted her hand and cooled the burn on the cold bottle, watching as the high sun drenched the wrinkled blue tarp. She swallowed, reached back with more care and slipped the 40 inside the hot enclosure. With that behind her, she collected the bags and leafed down the smooth concrete drain at the center of the alley.

Wintertime comes summer you are why it’s happening, the speakers promised as she rode clear to the other side.

She turned down the sidewalk, shoulders already straining from the weight of the bags. She ducked in front of a restaurant and took the crooked shade of a concrete overhang, setting the bags down and shaking her shoulders to loosen the dull aches. Ranchera strings muttered through the cracked doorway around ceiling fans and scraping forks. Japonica planted a foot along the wall and studied the afternoon bustle.

It was the end of the lunch hour of another loathsome Tuesday in Oceanside, CA. The marine layer burned off hours ago and patrons sucked on the blue sky in twos and threes- the crowds ducking out of restaurants to pursue iced coffees, procuring graphic tees by the bagful- dispensing dollars like cleaning out and re-lining their wallets on either side of these transactions kept the sun in the air.

Japonica closed her eyes. Shook her head. These acts forced new thoughts, burying the sad rant she rehearsed with the punchless nuance of a carbon copy 50 pages below the pen strokes. She reopened and imagined it all differently- happy groups trolling along dodging cracks, plastic sandals licking their heels in wandering ovations. Their minds quiet. Japonica watched a kid bite a popsicle; it made her teeth cold but she smiled. She wished she always thought of things this way.

Once her arms felt better, she took off again. She zig-zagged down a few more streets and dragged her foot over the pavement, slowing to a crawl. A man with a skateboard stood one block to the right nodding at nothing, mouthing words to some madness thrashing in his head. His spotter stood at the intersection, a three-way stop before a 10-stair hubba skate-stopped with strung-out metal starfish. A white Honda Accord sputtered past with tinted windows and custom plates that read MUFFINS. The spotter stepped into the intersection, appraised the prospects in either direction, then flipped a thumb to the skateboarder.

Japonica crept closer on her board, stopping short of the sightline of the photographer shooting stills. From here she could see the bottom of the set, a slick concrete pool dyed with blue and seafoam green ribbons where a filmer with a silver VX refined his shot.

The skateboarder tapped his tail three times against the asphalt then broke into a perpendicular sprint. He blazed forward fast and true, hard pushes swallowing the distance between his front truck and the first step. He wound his shoulders, dipped and *snap*-ped his tail on the Bondo’d crack at the top of the set. Japonica watched him turn, flick and tuck. His back foot found the bolts, and he recalled his front to drag the Backside 180 Kickflip around.

He found the concrete with his arms coiled like a rattler. He crouched and his kneecaps exploded; his board shot out and banked off a curb, rebounding into a deathroll down the painted pavement. Elsewhere his head whipped back against the ground with a lonesome *THUD*, his black beanie skidding away like a puck.

No one else moved as the silent seconds piled.

“AGHHHHH,” the man cried, rallying to his feet, collecting his beanie and spiking it back against the ground. The board stopped rolling. “FUCK. Fucking FUCK.”

Japonica looked over to the filmer holding position, the VX always recording. Who’s to say if he was actually that outraged, but she thought it made sense dramaturgically. She set one of the bags down beside her board and started down the steps with the other. The skater’s eyes swelled when he saw her approach. He stripped one of the white buds from his ear and let it dangle from his shirt collar.

“You smack your head on a dictionary down there Bennett?” Japonica asked with an outstretched Cobra.

Bennett squinted and rubbed the back of his head, teasing the frizzy black locks where they sprouted from his skull. He wore skin-tight denim, a black Minor Threat shirt with the sleeves cut off, and hadn’t washed, cut, or combed his hair in 16 months. “Just the concrete,” he smirked.

He checked his palm for blood, finding only cursed lines and watercolor veins. He pressed the 40 behind his head, enjoyed the cold relief.

“What’re you listening to?” she asked. Anytime Bennett shot something he played one song on repeat until he got the clip. One time she watched him film a two-trick ledge line- Back Tail Fakie, Switch Front Crook Shuv- listening to London Dungeon that took 140 minutes. A week later when the song came up on shuffle in the filmer’s car he just got up and left; no one saw him again for three days.

“Sabbath,” he answered. Her eyes narrowed; he specified: “The Thrill of it All.”

Six-minute track, she measured. Maybe he’d learned something.

He flopped down onto the curb lining the walkway, a slope of brown shrubs and thirsty beach grass rising at his back. He peeled the 40 from his head, twisted the cap, and glugged straight down to the label. The sight still startled Japonica; she’d been around the same people long enough to watch everyone renounce everything, but it’d only been six months since Bennett broke edge. And after seven years of Sharpie’d black X’s and grave proclamations, she didn’t figure on ever watching this.

“Right on fuc-king time,” he belched.

Japonica sat down beside his free ear. “Good stick,” she said.

“First one I committed to. Catch was wrong but my heels are still bruised to shit from skating The Gap.” He took another plug from the 40 and gasped. “Can’t go around trying for nothing.”

Japonica tasted a draft in the air like a mouthful of bong water; she looked up to find the photographer and spotter slinking down the steps to join the filmer, all six eyes coarsened by the pink bag’s promise. She extracted three more 40s and dispersed one to each.

“Lemme see it,” Bennett insisted. The filmer set the 40 down, dropped to a knee, and flipped out the screen on the VX. Everyone crowded in over his shoulder.

*THUD*

“Jesus,” the filmer remarked as he snapped the screen shut.

“It’s good teaser footage,” the still photographer argued. No one disagreed. The audience for their video didn’t warrant any teaser, but after the Ride the Sky trailer dropped earlier that spring, they each independently decided they needed one.

Japonica realized she still held a 40. “You guys ask me to grab five-”

“Japonicuhhhhhh,” a man shouted as he streaked down the steps. She felt a pull on the back of her bikini top and heard a *snap* in the front. She caught the split cups falling from her breasts and squeezed them hard against her chest.

The man, Skinny (a pretty useless hanger-on), knew immediately what he’d done. “Oh shit,” he said. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Well that may be true- but you did do it,” she decried.

“C’mon, you know I didn’t try to… I’ve snapped that strap back there a thousand times.”

“You have.” She looked down over her sharpened tendons and bleached knuckles clutching the halved purple top. She eased the pressure some, made sure the fabric didn’t budge. “I’m sure that’s unrelated to what happened just now,” she concluded, feeling the boys’ eyes peel away from her chest anytime she confronted the next set.

“Here, I’ll give you mine,” Skinny resolved, stripping and balling up his white tee. The resolution had a perfume like a wet ashtray.

“I’ll pass.” She read the sideways time on the filmer’s wrist as Skinny shrugged and slipped back into the tee now creased like tinfoil. “Look, I’m trying to make a movie. I went out of my way to buy you jerkoffs beer, just go get me a shirt.”

Skinny didn’t love the idea but knew Japonica was their most accessible friend of beer-buying age, the single human resource his summer depended on most.

“All right,” he stammered. “All right.” He grabbed a board resting in a front feeble on the curb and climbed the steps in twos. He stopped and turned at the top. “What kinda shirt?”

Japonica’s face collapsed. “A t-shirt.”

“Yeah, but what-”

“I promise I do not care,” she said. “And buy it fast.”

-

Bennett’s head stopped swimming and everyone reset. Japonica asked if she could do something for them but they said no, that’s all right now. Before all that happened, Bennett had the bright idea to empty a backpack which she flipped and wore across her chest like a bargain bin bulletproof vest. She felt like a doofus but rallied herself back into plain sight beside the still photographer anyway. On Bennett’s next two tries he kicked out as soon as he made the catch, exercising the indecision pounding the back of his head.

The three after tries were more violent sticks. Everyone shouted encouragement he couldn’t hear over the metal swarming in his ears. He peeled his shoes off, squeezed his heels, and buried his head between his knees. Japonica doubted whether she’d see another try today but sure enough Bennett wobbled back up those steps. He rolled to the end of the block, right at the strip of ocean stewing beneath the depthless blue horizon. Apartment buildings loomed over him from either side, but there was no shade in the shadow of the residences. Japonica whisked sweat from her brow and watched it splatter and stain the sidewalk. The spotter checked both directions then flashed Bennett a thumb.

He tapped his tail against the ground in three even bursts then broke for the staircase. The board bouncing in his grasp, the soles of his white Rowley Squares rising and falling to a disappearing rhythm- the tail soon striking the concrete like a headless matchstick until the four wheels found the floor. He shot his leg forward all the way and swung it back to attack the ground, foot curling behind him in a session of stringy, planeless waves. He hit a speed he couldn’t top but still swung the scraping pendulum to maintain. He hopped his feet into position and scratched his slanted front foot against the griptape just below the bolts.

The goofy-footed rider screamed toward the set above the machine gun fire of a loose bearing. As he neared the edge, he wound his shoulders to reveal a tear in his shirt framing a crying blood orange of a pavement burn. He snapped his tail and the shutter on the camera *cli-cli-clicked*.

His front foot flicked, body looping in another agonizing backside rotation. Halfway around his back foot caught,

shadow dragging over

every

groove

in the pale grey staircase.

He motioned his body the rest of the way, recalling his front foot over the bolts to button the Backside 180 Kickflip. The concrete reached up and smacked his wheels; Bennett squatted deep to parry the blow, dragging his hand over the polished concrete in a plea for motion…

Before rising up and rolling down the pretty pavement.

Sonofabitch, Japonica smirked. The filmer, spotter, and still photographer all raced down the steps after Bennett. Japonica thought to chase too but heard a sound swelling over her shoulder. She turned and found Skinny skating down the sidewalk holstering a big folded shirt and a bigger apology.

“Don’t be mad,” he begged.

-

Japonica collected beer money, split the remaining four 40s between the bags, and scrambled to the movie theater. Shedding some of the carried weight jabbed her movements with new impunity, which she exercised skipping ollies over garbage and knifing through tighter gaps in the foot traffic. Skinny gave her no more than what she’d asked for, a sail of a t-shirt sagging all the way to her kneecaps. The torso of a big-breasted woman in a stars-and-stripes bikini posed on the front to eclipse her own lesser features. Skinny claimed it was the only shirt he could afford and the one size they had, and she didn’t challenge his word.

She ollied up a curb and watched the white back of the mission-style movie theater widen. Close-cropped palm trees cast shadows across the pavement that crawled up the building in crooked streaks; she passed through the strips of shade in purple flickers. Three women stood waiting down the block in front of a mosaic sunrise surf mural that looked like a beer label.

“Nice tits,” Heather said as Japonica scraped to a stop in front of the women. Heather was the centerpiece of the group, wearing six months’ worth of wristbands from the House of Blues and SOMA side stage mostly. She wore an RVCA tank, sand-colored Rainbows, and washed-out skinny jeans that looked sewn to the skin. She shouldered a bag that read JUMP OFF A BUILDING. Her hair was longer and blonder than Japonica’s but it wasn’t any competition between them.

Japonica shrugged. The two frontrunners on either side of Heather- that’s Isabella on the left with the red hair and Hazel, the brunette on the right- stood with folded arms. Scanning the three-body spectrum there weren’t many physical differences to remark upon.

“Change of plans by the way,” Heather informed her. “We’re watching Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”

Japonica’s face twisted. “What’s that?”

“New Woody Allen movie,” Hazel cut in.

“You know Woody Allen,” Isabella asserted. “Remember we watched Manhattan?”

“Di-ane Keaton?” Hazel reminded her. “Meryl Streep?”

“The trailer looks good,” Heather mercifully reasoned. “And Woody’s not in it which is a casting coup for any sex comedy.”

Hazel and Isabella nodded. Senior year of high school the three of them had taken Cinema as Lit for their English requirement; Japonica’s parents made her take the bible class. She liked going to the movies but not in the learned way the other women did, and it was isolating when they got together like this.

“What happened to Pineapple Express?” Japonica asked.

“C’mon Japonica,” Heather reasoned. “We’ll watch Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and if we wanna watch Pineapple Express after that we’ll just hop.”

What could she do? She was cornered by Auteur Theorists with their minds pointed at the sun.

“All right,” she surrendered.

“All right?” Heather asked. Japonica smiled to make her feel better. “Now gimme one of those 40s and I’ll show you how to drink it.”

Japonica passed out the first two Mickeys to Heather and Isabella. She grabbed the third and reached to make the transfer with Hazel but the bottle slipped through their fingers.

Time slowed. Japonica’s eyes dropped;

there it goes.

She didn’t feel shame until it exploded against the pavement like a shell cased with foaming beer and green glass shrapnel. She apologized on instinct:

“I’m sorry.”

They all stepped back to avoid the pool carrying shrinking shards to its outer banks. Japonica looked up. She expected her own apology but Hazel remained silent.

“It’s okay,” Hazel finally decided, kicking beer off her sandals one foot at a time. I didn’t apologize to you, Japonica clarified inside the safety of her skull. I apologized because it happened.

“We’ve still got time to go to a liquor sto-” Heather started before Japonica interjected:

“No, we don’t need to do that. Just have mine.” Japonica passed Hazel her OE; she could hear the qualms percolating in Hazel’s brain about the variety of 40 she was stuck with as she offered the bottle. But in the end Hazel accepted, her resentment not souring to the stage of refusal. “Put some hair on your chest,” Japonica winked.

But what about- Heather started shaping her mouth. Japonica already had an answer for that too:

“I didn’t really feel like drinking anyways.”

There wasn’t a whole lot more to say. The women stuffed the 40s to the bottoms of their bags as the group shuffled around to the ticket window. Heather bought Japonica hers for the trouble, and the foursome took seats starting from the aisle in the row fifth from the screen in Heather-Hazel-Isabella-Japonica order.

The theater was humid and Japonica’s armrests felt like chewed gum. She peeled her feet from the sticky ground one after the other in footsteps to nowhere. The trailers were all uninteresting. At one point she heard the *clink* of bottles as the women convened in a quiet toast. Isabella offered Japonica a sip but she whispered, “No thank you.” Then the movie started.

- - - 45 MINUTES LATER - - -

DOUG: “We ran into some friends from New York, got a chance to spend some time with them, which was great.”

VICKY: “Uh, yeah, a little too much time.”

DOUG: “Oh, you're just angry because they beat our brains out at bridge.”

I’m out, Japonica decided.

Hers was the inside seat, and she dodged all six knees to maneuver herself and her board into the aisle. Once she got there, Heather grabbed her forearm.

“I’m just going to the bathroom,” she whispered.

If Heather wondered why she needed her skateboard to do that she didn’t ask. Japonica looked over and saw a boy pissing on the Emergency Exit door. She left the theater through the lobby.

-

The fresh glow of the afternoon singed her eyes like they’d been dipped in grapefruit juice. She slipped behind the red sunglasses and after a few blinks everything became all right to look at again. She stepped onto the board and the sidewalk sloped toward the coast so that was where she went. It was too early to watch a sunset but the light was skewing toward that end, the sky a richer blue, the breeze a salty chill.

Japonica approached a mumbling street-corner fanatic handing out pieces of printer paper reading: WELCOME TO HELL. The ground was littered with the invitations, and she pushed through the colorless void leaving twin tracks of dirt on every gleaming sheet in her path. The man offered her one but she refused.

“BREAK YOUR LEG- I HOPE GOD MAKES YOU BREAK YOUR LEG RIGHT NOW,” he prayed. She rolled off the curb into the street. “BREAK- GET RUN OVER YOU SONOFABITCH.”

She reached the coast and settled on a bench just south of the pier. People fished from folding chairs up there, their rods posed against the wooden railing, the naked lines catching light and swaying with the current. The surf broke like a fist and bobbing heads disappeared below the surface to dodge the foaming wrath. The yellow sand was covered in towels and bodies leaving thousands of imprints that had never once lasted.

“Don’t you have someplace better to be?” a man asked her, taking a seat on the far end of the bench. She knew his voice.

“Better than the beach?” she asked.

“I mean this bench.”

She looked over at Guy, slouched deep against the bench, the slivers of slider sandals pushed out and stacked one on top of the other. He wore a pair of faded back boardshorts, and a big green and yellow dashiki that rippled over his frame like a rolling field of daffodils. He sucked on the orange filter of a Marlboro Red, the smoke swelling in front of his face until he exhaled and lowered the cigarette. A thin film remained.

The pack rested on the bench beside him. “Can I have one of those?” she asked.

He squinted and stared. “Thought you quit.”

“I’m not starting,” she claimed, looking from him to the pack. “Just chippin’.”

He peeled back the lid and offered the pack. She pinched a Red and slipped the stock between her lips, using the burning end of his to light it. She dragged twice and blew out a mouthful. She leaned back and watched Guy summon a brown paper bag from beneath the bench. He reached inside and raised the bottle enough to reveal what appeared to be the OE she’d left him earlier.

“Got no forensics but I concluded this was yer doing,” he said.

She leaned closer and studied the golden cone emerged from the bag. “Never seen that 40 in my life.”

Guy lowered it back inside then twisted off the cap. The bottle gasped. “Suppose you don’t care to split it with me then.” He took a shallow plug.

“Maybe just this once,” she said. He passed her the bag. The paper was dry to the touch and the warm carbonation shocked her throat like a boiled jellyfish. She coughed and bounced a fist against her chest.

“My grandmother drank warm beer when I was growing up,” he said. “Never kept any in her fridge. Just her preference I guess but I’d be surprised to learn a good reason why.” He dragged on his cigarette then shrugged through the smoke: “Too late to ask her now anyway.”

She took a better plug, then passed him back the bottle.

“So what’s got you blue?” he asked, twisting his smile. “Another awful day in the prime of yer life?”

“Oh, it wasn’t so bad,” she answered, tapping ash down to the sidewalk. She raised the cigarette back to her lips and paused. “You ever feel like you’re just not good at anything?”

“Mmmm,” he grunted. “Maybe I did used to. But I don’t wonder good or bad much anymore.”

They listened to the gusts of wind and crashing waves and when there were none, they heard the hollow buzz of other people's situations. The man glugged a few times from the bottle.

Eventually, Japonica confessed: “Well I’m- I don’t know. I’m not talented. I’m not cultured. I’m uninteresting, I’m-”

“Etcetera, etcetera,” Guy interjected.

She looked at the ground and raised her eyebrows, creases climbing up her forehead.

“I remember how you feel,” he said without passion.

“But you never feel that way anymore?”

“No, not much these days.” He passed her back the 40. He folded his hands behind his neck and let his elbows fold down near the crease in his chest. “And I’m no better than I’ve been.” He looked over at her. “Just lost some of my aspiration is all.”

“I still have all of mine,” she said. “Just nothing to do with it.”

“Yer often doing something,” he countered.

She took a drag from the cigarette and washed it down with a big swallow from the bottle. She set it down between them and returned right to the cigarette. She said: “Yeah but nothing… I don’t know, defining. Nothing memorable.”

“It’s not every time good to be remembered,” Guy reasoned. “And I haven’t met many people picked what they’re defined by. They can try- but I’d rather be nothing before a try-hard.”

She heard a girl scream on the sand. The scream came right from where she looked and the girl shot to her feet and started spinning in circles. The spinning slowed until she collapsed and screamed again.

“You see the sun right there? Hanging there like that?” he asked. She sure did. “Well depending on which way you’re facing, this way or that-” he pointed a thumb behind his shoulder. “-you could be looking at it there twice tomorrow. And the next day and the next and the day after that.” He smoked the cigarette down to the filter then side-armed it across the sidewalk. “So start doing something!” the last smoke slipped through his teeth. “Or do nothing, or do just what you are.”

“I could write my whole life again tomorrow,” she realized. She looked at her cigarette. She could return to it one more time if she wanted, but dropped it down at her feet instead. The embers coughed and she squished the orange tip. She twisted her foot back and forth then studied the black smear left on the pavement. She squinted behind her sunglasses and looked over at him with her head titled sideways. “But I probably won’t.”

He nodded. “So, I wouldn’t waste more breath on things you choose to do or don’t. Life’s enough about that where you don’t get a say.”

He lifted the beer and took a deep pull. When he set it back down the bottle drawled quietly through the brown paper mask.

“This thing’s nearing empty,” he said. “You wanna go get another?”