I WANT TO STAY

by Carol Harris

In the bare, dry, threadbare bone whiteness of a beach apartment, the sounds of Miles Davis' trumpet stuttered cool and muted, and hung in the warm breeze like blue teardrops. Sitting on the faded yellow couch under the window overlooking the sea, Marilyn Jaeger felt very alone. Combined with the music were the sounds of Bobbie Randall fumbling in the tangle of knives and scissors in the utility drawer, looking for a can opener, and the sound was a cold and dissociated one.

Marilyn had only known Bobbie for a few hours and although Bobbie had told her that they were to stay together, that this was it, the final thing, the permanent setup, Marilyn was wary and afraid. Afraid her parents might yet decide to find her and would turn her up even down here in Hermosa Beach, the last place they would decide to look logically-afraid of the scene when they did, afraid to go back, yet knowing deep down that she was being a fool to worry, that she hated them and didn't want them, that she'd walked out on a bad situation and into a good one, and that to worry about them was to let them ruin her life even when she was away, free, here, with someone

20

she was beginning to love. She was twenty, anyway. She didn't have to go anywhere, not even if they wanted her to. That idea calmed her. It was so easy, so simple.

Bobbie walked in from the kitchen, carrying two cans of beer. Clad in faded blue denims and a long-sleeved wool shirt with a small black dragon over the pocket, she looked absurdly like a fourteen-year-old boy, one of the surfer boys who rode skate-boards with flexible, furious precision on the sidewalks of Culver City, instead of the savage-voiced, city-ravaged blues singer who wore tight, straight black dresses and sang, till her scrawny frame shook with the effort, about men she would never love and whom she could only imagine, gripping the microphone till, through the smoky air of Rick's Jazz Showcase one could see her knuckles whiten and her bigsad eyes fill with tears.

"I just never can find the frigging can opener." She set one of the cans of beer on the black lacquer coffee table in front of Marilyn, and sat down on the couch with a sigh. "Isn't that Miles Davis a genius? Did you ever hear anything so beautiful?"

Marilyn smiled. "I never liked Miles