Dark End of the Street

At least Perfect knew who she was. She didn’t pretend to be an adoring wife, a concerned mother, or proud girlfriend. Perfect Leigh was Perfect Leigh. One hundred and twenty pounds of pure feminine power. She didn’t need a mask or a label. She felt her power and was damned proud of it.

Two black men carrying silver serving trays passed her. One just growled his approval, “Mmm-mmm.” A fat white man in a suit and crooked baseball hat licked his lips, and quickly looked away. Two fraternity boys passing a flask between them about fell over themselves as she recrossed her long legs and looked at her watch.

Her hair fell in loose curls over her head, styled and bleached back to platinum. Cost two hundred bucks and the outfit pushed the hell out of a thousand. She deserved it. Sometimes you had to give yourself a little present every once in a while, to let yourself know you were doing a hell of a job at life.

This time eight years ago, she’d just left Clarksdale after winning the Coahoma County Cotton Queen contest. Then, the possibilities were limitless: sleep with the county judge (a fat-necked man who owned several local gins), go to work trying to bring tourism to a dying downtown, or make some high-dollar bucks stripping in Memphis.

Her mother didn’t seem to care as long as her daughter finally got famous and ended up on one of her soaps. She always pointed to Soap Opera Digest in the checkout line of the Winn-Dixie and said, “Your beautiful little face will end up right there.”

But her mother didn’t know how the world worked. She hid behind a sickeningly large rack of Disney movies and a jelly jar collection of famous cartoon characters. Hell, she named her daughter Perfect because of a stupid mistake. She told Perfect when she was a kid that she’d heard the name in this Rolling Stone song. Said it went, “I saw Perfect-Ly at the reception, a glass of wine in her hand” and that’s not even the way it went. It was, “I saw her today.” How the hell did she hear Perfectly from that?

When Perfect finally heard the song, she was already in high school. Some dorky pothead made her listen to the real version in his crappy van airbrushed with Viking scenes. When it was finally confirmed that her mother was an idiot, her world changed.

She had thought her name was for a purpose, and that it would lead to greater things. But when that didn’t make sense, she thought maybe her whole life would follow into the septic tank. So a couple months later, after graduation and the whole Cotton Queen thing, she ended up moving to Panama City Beach and taking a job at a wacky golf course and bar that featured wet T-shirt contests every Wednesday.

That’s where she met this grifter named Jake, the man she’d lost her virginity to at the Flamingo Motel. Within two weeks she’d moved to Biloxi and he began teaching her about faking out old folks as bank examiners, working Pigeon Drops on rednecks at check cashing businesses, and trying out the Sweetheart Swindle on horny old men who had loads of cash.

She was a natural, Jake said. Of course, he loved everything she did. But she was good. Even as a child, she knew just little changes in mannerisms could make people react in a whole different way. Like that one time when she was at summer camp and started speaking in an English accent telling everyone she was a baroness. Everyone, including several counselors, believed her until one called her mother and spoiled the fun.

But she’d learned from Jake that it was more than the voice. It was the eyes and the shoulders and the way you held your hands. “Everybody wears a mask,” Jake said one night at Wintzell’s in Mobile after they took a bank president for two grand. “Everyone is an actor. See that man? He’s the hard-working father. See that woman? She’s the loving granny who spoils those kids. And him? That man is the funny guy that everyone loves to know ’cause he don’t know shit about himself. See?”

And she did see. Jake showed her all of them. He showed her every species that existed in the world. Probably would have married that smart bastard, too, if he hadn’t tried to cross Levi Ransom and disappeared into the parking lot of a Sears.

But she grew to love Ransom, too. Or wear the mask that loved Ransom. It was self-preservation and truly a tribute to that ole boy Jake. He would’ve appreciated it.

As the P.A. system started droning out today’s roster from the stadium, Perfect looked down at the wonderful slickness of her new nails. The sounds of The Grove coming back into her ears as the heat from the fall sun baked the red hood of her Mustang.

“Start talkin’,” Ransom said. She looked up and there he stood all weathered and styled like Kris Kristofferson with his shoulder-length gray hair and whiskey-soaked voice. He dressed more like a golf pro than the head of a bunch of good-ole-boy cutthroats. Wrinkled linen shirt, blue trousers, and loafers without socks.

“I want in,” she said, biting off a stray cuticle. “I want that man.”

“Get over it.”