Maraschino
- May 18, 2022
- 2 min read
by Zoe Contros Kearl
The palms leaned heavy in the drought of endless summer. We ate an expensive seafood lunch at a restaurant J Lo frequents. Late afternoon, we walked Santa Monica. Dipped feet and ankles into jagged cold Pacific surf. Back home, Rafe rolled cigarettes next to the pool while the Irish Setter puppy, still new to all this, chewed at the plants growing alongside the wall. Spitting gnawed pulp. You, on an adirondack chair playing solitaire, me in the grass, reading about J. Robert Oppenheimer, white sands, time.
There was the iconic view: the hills and a sort-of-sad skyline. A seedy walk of fame. I dropped to my knees to kiss Diana Ross’ Hollywood star. Mouth to stone. Just a little tongue, don’t tell. Low-rise stucco apartment buildings covered in flowering bougainvillea, whites and reds and purples and pinks. An apricot. The sky turned a deep blue and it stayed chilly, not cold but too cold for June, and then an encompassing dark, without stars, settled over the freshly cut lawn.
Past dusk a dark-haired girl, lithe and white toothed and a little angry, made a series of jokes in the churning hot tub. We all laughed. Her body glowed angelic amidst the underwater sconces. After, we took a car to a nightclub in downtown LA. Loud and white-tiled, speaker to eleven, repeating, Hannah Montana Hannah Montana Hannah Montana. You handed me a glass of vodka, kissed me hard, and the liquor burned like I imagine absolution might, or at least having to say the confessions before and I was all lit up. Above the bar a neon sign read, in Russian, “I WISH YOU WERE HERE.”
Zoe Contros Kearl is a queer writer and editor raised in Texas and based in rural Vermont. Recent writing can be found in Entropy, Hobart After Dark, Neutral Spaces, Kenyon Review, Expat, Rejection Letters, and elsewhere. ZCK currently serves as Nonfiction Editor for American Chordata Magazine.
