Tropical music played on the airplane as they landed in Phoenix. Jagged mountains and tall palm trees came into view. Palm trees? Inside the airport, across from the luggage bins, a skinny girl stared at Debbie in question and Debbie looked back at her. She approached Debbie and smiled. She held out her arms.
"You're so skinny! You look like a different person!" Debbie said. Her friend smiled and squinted.
"You won't be needing those," she said of Debbie's long, leopard print jeans and black Izod sweater.
Carlotta drove along the cactus lined freeway. Mountains covered with tiny bushes stood against the freeway.
"You're so skinny. What did you lose...twenty pounds?"
"Forty," Carlotta said. She still liked to eat a lot, but she worked out and excercised alone at home.
She drove past uniform sets of apartment complexes on empty streets. Two story, low, small windows, secluded decks.
"I don't know if you feel like doing anything, but we could walk around downtown Tempe," Carlotta said.
"Yeah," Debbie said as she gnawed on her apple from the airplane stewardess. They sat in her calm, neat apartment of two years. The blinds were drawn to shun the Arizona heat.
"The apartment where nobody lives," joked Debbie.
Delicate mist fell gracefully from the awnings of the outdoor cafe. It was a beautiful day, hot and breezy. The air was pure. But, by August, these sidewalk cafes would become unbearable, the misters a necessity. The girls sipped on fruity drinks. Debbie commiserated over the agonies of smalltown life.
The girls strolled across the Arizona State University campus. An ornate, trellised, sunken entrance way guarded the library.
"There is nothing like this back home," Debbie said. "Nothing."
"At one time, you could just walk in," Carlotta was saying. "Now, you have to go underground to get inside."
A whole new entrance had been created for the campus library. But it was beautiful. Debbie stopped to admire it.
"Oh, isn't that dumb?" Carlotta's mother said at the dinner table that evening.
They relaxed over barbecued chicken, rolls, salad, and shrimp stir fry. Fresh oranges could be plucked off the trees in Carlotta's parents' back yard. Carlotta's cousin, visiting from Boston showed them the rocks she had collected while residing in the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
"How long are you here for?" Carlotta's father asked Debbie.
"I'm not sure...I'll stay if I can find a job!" she proclaimed enthusiastically.
"Are you going to rent a car? What arrangements did you make with Carlotta?" her mother asked Debbie. She gave her five fresh tangerines to take home. Carlotta's father said he would pick oranges for her later.
"I don't feel like it right now," he groaned.
"I would gladly pick 'em," Debbie said. "My parents would love that. I could ship them."
Unlike her parents' home, wine coolers and sodas were passed around the dinner table.
"Wanna go out later? What type of place are you in the mood for? Meat market or the type of place where you sit and talk?" Carlotta asked her.
"Doesn't matter," Debbie said.
MEAT MARKET
Diane changed into a long skirt and peasant blouse. Debbie wore black jeans and a pink, sleeveless, high-necked top with pearl necklace. Hopelessly Connecticut, she thought. Each time they saw a cactus on the side of the road, through the car windows, both Diane and Debbie giggled and pointed.
"I would miss them if I didn't see them," Carlotta said of the cacti.
Outside, they walked past a row of motorcycles in the balmy Arizona night.
"Don't lean against them," Diane warned them. "Not even one."
"I need your ID," the young bouncer told Debbie.
"I just flew in from Connecticut!" she shouted.
She emptied the entire contents of her purse on the ground. She presented her Connecticut ID.
"Sorry. It's the state law," he shrugged.
Her dance partner held up his arms in a round, all encompassing gesture. He was miming the words, "the sun" in the song to which they danced. The hot Phoenix sun. He tried to teach her "The Pretzel" but the floor was too crowded. Girls in denim shorts danced around them.
"You have so much energy," Carlotta said. The jet lag had not touched her yet.
"You look like you're having fun," Diane smiled.
When she returned from the dance floor, Diane said, "I love to exploit men."
"Wanna dance? It's AC/DC!" Debbie's partner exclaimed.
"No," she said. She was tired of dancing.
"Oh, come on! It's AC/DC!" he shouted.
"No!" Debbie insisted.
"But it's AC/DC! Wanna go outside for a minute?"
"No!"
"OK. Fine," he said and stalked away.
"You heartbreaker," Carlotta said.
A fight broke out in the bar. A cold shower sprinkled Debbie's back.
"We had a beer bath!" Diane told Carlotta's parents later.
"A christening," Carlotta said Sunday afternoon.
Debbie wandered outside by the pool. She felt white and flabby in the revealing black and red bikini. Shouts rose from an unseen neighbor's house, across the desert. The Suns were beating the Lakers this afternoon. Hot from the sun, Debbie sank her white body into the bright blue waters of the pool. When she climbed out, her skin immediately froze. She grabbed a towel. Drowsily, she wandered into the living room. She hesitated to sit down in her wet clothes.
"Oh, don't worry. Everything dries," Carlotta's mother explained. "There's no humidity. That's why you're cold."
"Oh, oh, those Seminole winds..." the band crooned at Fibber's Restaurant and Saloon that night.
"My mother would love this!" Debbie exclaimed, as she watched the two-steppers dancing to the country music.
"She's going to move here. I can just see it in her eyes," Diane said.
"Oh, I'd love to get a job here," Debbie said wistfully. "I know what song this is!" she bought a Fibber's tee shirt from the waitress for her mother. She spoke of the trials and tribulations of living at home; of the sad country music on the car radio when her mother drove.
"It sounds like you need to get away from your parents," Diane said.
UP NEXT: Desert Botanical Gardens.
