Tips on Arguing: Margin of Error

Inquiry:

Ever notice the way that news organizations will pelt you with polling data during an election cycle, and then wonder why the actual results defy the polls? There are a lot of reasons this happens, but one of the most pervasive is due to a misunderstanding about something called the margin of error.

Every survey contains an inherent margin of error that is calculated using methods developed by statisticians. The primary reason for doing this is that survey-takers only talk to a portion of the total population, and they can never be completely sure that those people are representative of the whole group. Some people lie. Some people forget to vote. Others change their minds. And there’s always the possibility that the people you didn’t ask would have given you completely different answers.

Figuring out what the margin of error is in a given case requires some mathematical background. Fortunately, this is often done for us ahead of time, and knowing how to interpret the result is a simple process that takes less than a minute. It’s so easy to do that any reporter who fails to account for the margin of error is practicing shoddy journalism.

So, let’s say that Bob and Carl are running for mayor of Blandeville. The night before the election, a poll of 500 registered voters reveals that 44% are in favor of Bob, and 51% are in favor of Carl (the rest are undecided), with a margin of error of ± (plus or minus) 4 percentage points. Carl must be a shoe-in, right?

Not necessarily. The margin of error shows that any of these numbers is likely to be four percent below or above what the pollsters determined. So, what the poll really says is that Carl’s chances may be as low as 47%, or as high as 55%. Likewise, Bob’s support may be anywhere from 40% to 48%.

Since Carl’s lowest score (47) is less than Bob’s highest (48), Bob may actually be ahead. Nobody who pays attention to this will be surprised if Bob ekes out a victory tomorrow.Don’t be fooled by people who ignore a margin of error. It can make all the difference.

What Other People - Part 3

The third and final chapter.

The drive back was ensconced in silence. Marianne slouched in her seat, resting her feet on the dashboard and pressing her forehead against the window. She didn’t look in my direction, and I kept my own eyes on the road. I was relieved to retreat into the automatic functions of driving. It allowed my mind to wander without confronting the reticent outcast to my right.

My thoughts were riddled with worries and questions. I replayed the scene that was still fresh in my memory, pondering whether I should have watched more closely. Marianne’s previous mood had been a cover, and I had known it. But complacency had lulled my reactions into an impotent haze. Now a sandstorm of ash and cigarettes whirled behind my eyes, clouding my confidences. Joe’s last words repeated like a foreboding soundtrack, and I couldn’t help but feel that they applied more to me than my friend. Although I hadn’t committed any crime, it would be a long time before I could show my face around Ken’s without intense pangs of shame.

We entered Marianne’s driveway and I cut the engine. She still did not move or speak, so I stared out the windshield. The lowest branches of the tree that hung over her drive waved broad shadows in front of me. Black leaves tossed and writhed, dragging the tree-fingers toward the ground. Autumn would arrive soon to sever them. The drained weights would collapse and blow away, so that the newly freed branches could rise tall against the sky once more while they slumbered in peace. If we sat in the car long enough, we might see it happen.

Just as the air seemed to grow crisp with a hint of the northerly shifts, Marianne turned and broke my reverie.

“Am I a ‘bad’ person?” she asked in a firm but colorless monotone.

“I don’t think you are. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.”

She snorted. “Don’t pay me lip service, Emmitt.”

I shrugged. “I’m not. You do some bad things, but so does everyone. I think you’re good, matter of fact.”

“How can you think that?”

I considered this for a moment.

“All that stuff you write and make – what is it you’re trying to create?”

“I don’t know… something beautiful… but it doesn’t make a difference. Everything’s ephemeral.”

“That’s true, I guess.” I gazed once more at the tree. “Anything you create will be destroyed, or fade.”

“I just want to be remembered for something. Something beautiful.”

“Remembered by who? People are ephemeral too. And a long time from now, after you’re gone, it won’t matter to you if anyone knows who you are.”

Marianne shifted uncomfortably in her seat, pulling her shirt down to cover her stomach. “I know. That’s why I can’t do it… Emmitt, I’ve destroyed so many things.”

“So have I. But it’s okay.”

Her voice grew impassioned for a moment. “No, it isn’t!” She twisted back around to face the window again.

“You’re right. It’s not okay. That’s what I mean. It’s not supposed to be. Things are tough to handle, and they often hurt a lot, but that’s the part that’s okay. It’s how life is.”

“Mark – I should have known this would happen,” she replied, still facing away. “He was always an earthquake, and they never leave anything but damage behind. Here…gone…nothing.”

“It’s how life is,” I repeated. I didn’t know what else to say.

“Life. Do you believe in past lives, Emmitt?”

“I don’t know.”

“Me neither, but I’m starting to. Did you know that I don’t know how to swim?”

“Really? Why not?”

“My parents tried to teach me when I was young, but I refused to go in. Water terrified me. I couldn’t even look at a full sink without freaking out. I didn’t understand it. As I got older, I began having nightmares about it. I would be in what seemed to be a river, in the bluest-greenest waters… submerged. I could see the sunlight above me, somewhere just overhead, but something held me back from it, pushing me down. Bubbles everywhere. Beautiful bubbles of every size would swirl around me, running past me. I’d try to catch them, to grab anything. My chest would be in so much pain – aching and stabbing. But it was never any use. I’d just flail without moving. Then the sun would turn grey – and I’d wake up. It was horrible. I had the same dream over and over, for years.

“Then, one day, my mother and I were in New York City, and we stopped at a fortune teller’s. Before I said anything about the dreams or my fear, she told me I had drowned in a flood on the coast of Indonesia. And before that, I had been murdered in Estonia, also by drowning. She may have just made that stuff up, or gotten her cues from something about me. They do that a lot… it’s a good trick. But maybe she knew something I don’t.

“I’m still not sure about past lives, but if they do exist, then my karma must be pretty fucked up. I must have done some terrible, terrible deeds. It’s the only way I can explain my life now. But I guess that’s just how life is, right?”

Not sure how to reply, I cast my eyes toward Marianne’s house. From the outside, it appeared venerable and historic, a classic colonial accessory on a wooded hillside.

Wooden beams rose from the short front porch to the slanted overhang, where the second floor protruded slightly. Marianne’s living room windows were visible from here, though they were currently cloaked in draperies and obscurity. Inside, lives were led in haphazard styles. Miniature universes were created and tailored to the individuals who inhabited them. Across the street, where ostensibly similar houses stood, were other hidden microcosms. Could a person ever fit into any that was not his own?

“I don’t think you did anything to ‘deserve’ all that,” I said, looking again at Marianne.

“You’ve no clue all the things I’ve done.”

“And you don’t know what I’ve done. I’ve done some pretty bad shit, too.”

She waved my statement away with her hand. “Not as bad as me.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn’t matter. That you recognize it as bad for you, that you’re sorry for it, is the first and most important step to getting beyond it. In this life.”

Now she turned toward me. “But how can I? Nobody else will forget what I do, no matter what. They always remember.”

“Marianne. Some people never forgive. Some things break. But you’ve got yourself. The only person who has to deal with it is you. And no one else can stop you from doing that.” For the first time since leaving the bar, Marianne smiled. A genuine, pleasant smile. Her bloodshot eyes grew crystalline once more.

“You know what I see when I look at you, Emmitt? I see kin.” She moved toward me, gently turning my head with one hand. Her lips met mine, slow and warm. It was comfortable. I felt the tenseness in my shoulders relaxing. And then, in a sea of fluid motion, the embrace ended.

“I cannot walk among the dead,” she said, gathering her purse. “I’m so tired I might pull a Rip Van Winkle.”

“Okay.” I felt her absence already.

“You may not be self-assertive enough yet,” she quipped, opening the car door to the crickets and stray cats outside. “But you’re good at taking care of people. I don’t know which is more important. Still, thank you.”

“What for?”

As she stepped out, Marianne said, “For taking care of me.” She closed the passenger door before I could react. I watched her walk to the porch, fumble with the lock, and disappear, consumed by the deeper blackness beyond her door.

Then I started my car and pulled away, knowing that the next time she called me I would not answer.



#

What Other People - Part 2

The second chapter of a three-part story.

I drove down the lamp lined Division Street with Marianne in the passenger seat as she rifled through a CD case. She was too drunk. She flipped incessantly, unable to locate the album she desperately needed to play for me.

“You’ll absolutely adore the Appleseed Cast,” she raved for the third time, pausing in her search and subsequently losing her place. “You’ll thank me for this later, I promise.”

“It makes no difference to me,” I replied. I was concentrating too hard on not swerving or crashing to worry about what was playing on the stereo. The current refrain of radio static had been satisfying enough during the past five minutes. I could drown my reeling head in the white noise.

She resumed scouring the pages. “It’s just… I know you like Radiohead… and The National… it’s sort of a cross between…” she came to the back of the case once more. “Goddamnit! I know you’re in here,” she railed at the sleeves full of round plastic. “You’re always here.”

She started over again.

Marianne’s mood had improved significantly over the course of the evening. Her naturally discordant personality continued to shine, but the potentially volatile attitude that recent events could have engendered didn’t seem ready to surface. Maybe she hadn’t had time to fully process the implications of being snubbed. Or perhaps she held tenaciously to the hope that the Mark debacle was only a hiccup on their path to reunion. Whatever the reason, the evening had been noticeably absent of any mention of the ex-boyfriend. Now, we were both placidly distracted by the liquid high of vodka and wine. The promise of beer and song to come kept our spirits elevated as well.

“It’s all right if you can’t find the CD,” I assured her, glancing over. “You can play it for me when we get back to your house. Later.”

“No, no. Now,” she said, not taking her eyes from the pages.

“All right… look, I’m almost out of gas, and I don’t want to have to get it when I’m even more wasted, and tired. Is it all right if we stop at the gas station up the street?”

She waved my comment away with one hand. “Go ‘head. Man’s gotta do yadda yadda.” She flipped another sheet, then stopped and looked up at me. “You, know, Emmitt, you never stand up for yourself.”

“What does that mean?”

Marianne pulled a lipstick from her green purse and stared at herself in the mirror through the darkness. She applied it as she explained. “Whenever anyone suggests anything, you go along with it like you don’t have an opinion. It makes you look weak and indecisive. And I know that’s not how you really are.”

I swerved slightly into the next lane, but quickly readjusted. “I don’t usually care what happens. I’m just sort of there.”

“Sure you care. I can tell, at least when you’re with me. You make comments. Your face always betrays your mood.” She puckered her lips at the mirror, then snapped the cap back on her lipstick.

“You’re saying my expression betrays me? I have a bad poker face?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. You don’t smile when you’re frustrated. Your eyes get dark and far-off when you feel isolated. When you enjoy yourself, you’re more animated.”

“Those are just my moods, though. They don’t always come from what I’m doing.”

Her voice grew consoling. “Sometimes, though, you end up doing things you don’t really want to, just ‘cause someone else does.”

“Sometimes.”

“When you do that, you’re like a washing machine on a spin cycle. Like you can’t figure out where you are.”

“So what?”

Her tone got hard again. “So tell me what you want. Be more assertive.”

“I do tell you, when I have an idea. It just doesn’t happen that often.”

“No,” she countered. “You say, ‘is it all right if I stop for gas?’ You even have to ask permission for that, and you’re the one driving. Don’t do that shit. Say, ‘we’re stopping for gas, bitch. Deal.’”

“Do I have to say it like that?”

“Nah. Say it your way. But be firm. Girls like that.”

“…is that a joke?”

“Don’t ask! Even if I didn’t intend it as one, that’s what it was for you. Just laugh.”

“All right, all right,” I said, feeling harassed. “Ha ha. Happy?”

“Don’t be sarcastic.”

“I can’t help it.” We pulled into the gas station.

“Neither could Nietzsche, and he went crazy.”

“He had syphilis.”

As I opened my door to fill the car, she looked me sternly in the eyes. “And you’ll get it too, if you don’t say ‘no’ once in a while.”

I pumped the gas, the crisp black air of evening sharpening my senses and driving out some of the alcohol’s effects. I thought briefly about what Marianne had said. She was right: I did sometimes let things go that bothered me. It was part of what made me capable of my tolerant friendship with her. But it often led me to uncomfortable situations, or circumstances that inwardly I felt were not excellent uses for my time.

I watched the numbers rack up on the display, dizzying in their climb. I became temporarily mesmerized by the tick-tick of the screen. Then the hose jerked with the sudden halt of current, and my brain snapped once more back to attention, this time with a new resolution. I would try to consider my own opinions more and speak my mind more often. As long as I wasn’t being offensive, anyway.

I slipped back into the car, and we were off. We pulled into the parking lot of DeNiro’s Bar and Martini Lounge a few minutes later.

Marianne and I weaved our way across the pavement arm in arm. She was worse off than I, but my own balance was too debilitated to correct hers, and instead I stumbled around in the same ungainly fashion. The weekend crowd choked the entrance with coiling clouds of smokers, furiously puffing so that they could rejoin their drinks inside in as little time as possible. As we neared these patrons, the blue-green neon of the sign above cast sickly shadows upon their faces. They parted for us, slow and inept. I looked around, smiling stupidly. I could see the pockmarks and blemishes, the badly handled makeup highlighted by proximity. From inside, the cacophony of a local band emitted regular squeals and thumps.

Directly in front of the door stood Joe, the bouncer, like the chieftain of some wayward tribe. Despite his bulky shape and intimidating gaze, Joe was a friendly guy who loved to discuss philosophy and quantum physics. In a past conversation between us, he had mentioned Hegel, Bohr, and Aquinas in a single breath, leaving me dumbfounded and impressed. Being a bouncer was a secondary passion, something that his body appeared incidentally designed for. He was nonetheless good at that, too, and took his position seriously.

He towered in front of me. “Evening, Emmitt. Marianne.” His bass voice carried over the throng.

“Hey, Joe!” Marianne cried, a little too gaily.

“You guys all right tonight?”

“Sure, Joe. You?”

“I’m well, thanks, but that’s not what I meant. You both look like you’ve had your fill already.”

“Oh, nooo,” Marianne interjected. “Not even close.”

Joe took a long look at her, then turned toward me. “Listen,” he said. “Normally I wouldn’t mind, but we were raided last night. Apparently there was a complaint. Someone drove out of here a little too drunk. We can be held responsible for these things, and we can’t afford to have our liquor license suspended.”

“I know, I know,” I responded.

“I have to pee, Joe,” Marianne beseeched. “Can I please go pee?”

“Look,” he replied, turning to her with a pained expression. “Go to the bathroom. Then come right back to us.”

“He’s my ride,” Marianne snapped. “Where else would I go?” She slid past, into the dusky innards of the bar.

Once she was gone, Joe’s manner became more confidential. “Emmitt, I can’t let you come in while she’s like that. Not tonight.”

I pondered this development. It occurred to me that this could be an opportunity to assert myself, to push a barrier and see where it got me. “Are you positive there’s nothing you can do? Is Ken around? I could talk to him.”

“Yes, he’s here. He’ll tell you the same thing I just did, though.”

“Do you think I can ask anyhow? Marianne’s had a pretty bad day.”

Joe sighed. “All right. Stay with me, and I’ll get him for you. I can’t promise anything.” He pivoted on one foot and opened the door for me. The crashing of the band on one end of the main bar drove itself like a sledgehammer into my skull. Sweat and strong perfumes hung in the air like stalactites. I faltered slightly in my step, following him to a door adjacent to the bar. It read “Employees Only.”

“Wait here a second,” Joe commanded, and disappeared. As the door shut behind him, I caught sight of Marianne careening through the crowd to my right. I waved, and after a moment of hesitation, she understood and came over. Her hair was strewn haphazardly over her forehead, blackish and shiny in the dull red lighting.

“They gonna let us in?” she asked.

Before I could reply, Joe returned, trailed closely by Ken. Ken had a kindly bearded face that matched his disposition. He regularly drank with his customers, or joked around with the staff. When he laughed, his round belly heaved below the band t-shirts he wore. He reminded me of a deposed Santa Claus. Tonight, though, Saint Nick looked as if he’d had to put Vixen down for rabies.

Marianne spoke up first. “Ken, you’re not going to kick us out, are you? You wouldn’t do that.”

Ken sat himself on a nearby stool. “Marianne, dear. I don’t have a choice. This is beyond my ability to prevent.”

“No, no, Ken. It’s all right. See, we’re already here.”

“Not yet,” Joe interjected. “You know better.” He moved away from us back to the door, but stayed inside. I knew he was was listening to make certain that his employer’s decisions remained final.

Marianne scowled. “Ken, we came all this way. You know us. You know we won’t cause any trouble. We can stay. Nothing will happen.”

“Marianne, honey, I don’t expect you guys to do anything. But look: I have no way of knowing whether there are undercover police here now. I guarantee that there are cops waiting down the street. I have a full house, and every one of these people is a potential liability. So are you, simply by being here. I can’t take the risk of letting you two become worse than you are. You’re more than welcome, any other time – just please understand that tonight is unusual. It’s for your protection, too.”

“How can you say that? We’re okay. We’ll be careful.” Marianne’s eyes turned to lakes, the banks overflowing. “After all I’ve done…”

“It’s obvious that you’re not okay,” Ken replied. “You’re swaying and slurring right now, as you speak. I can’t.”

Marianne tried a new tactic, but was sobbing slightly between her sentences. “I helped you build this place up, Ken. I told my friends… I helped you, and you’re kicking me out.”

Ken’s belly heaved heavily as he sighed. “Understand, please. I’m very grateful for your support. I respect you, or else I wouldn’t be reasoning with you here, now. You’ll always have a place here.”

“No, no.” Marianne was crying unabashedly. A few curious customers were staring at us. I felt I had to do something, so I touched her on the shoulder.

“We can go somewhere else, or home, or come back tomorrow. It’s all right.”
She shoved me away. “No, we can’t! They kicked us out! We can’t…”

“Listen to Emmitt,” said Ken. “He’s making sense – he knows there’s no hard feelings. We’re still your friends.”

“You wouldn’t do this if you were my friend! Never!” She was practically screaming, and half the bar was watching her. She twisted angrily on her heels and strode towards the door. I ran to catch up with her, but she was outside by the time I could react. I shot a bewildered look at Joe, who was still guarding the entrance from the inside. He shrugged at me and shook his head.

Then, before either of us could stop it, Marianne caught hold of the ashtray, a garbage-can-sized receptacle that sat a few feet from the door. She lifted it off the ground and hurled it at the wall of the building. The smoking patrons yelled and scattered as ash, sand, and butts flew in all directions. A short black girl in a tank top who’d been caught in the spray tore in the direction of Marianne.

“What the fuck – fuckin’ whore!”

“What? What? C’mon!” Marianne turned back around, posturing with her arms thrown in the air. I got to her just as Joe, with his inarguably insuperable force, grabbed the other girl. We pulled in opposite directions as they continued to scream at one another. “…fuckin’ – rip out every one of those extensions!” rang in my ears.

I dragged Marianne away. She was too winded, drunk, and upset to resist much. Behind us, Joe called. “You just ruined it for yourself, you know!” She gave him the finger, then gave up and followed me.

*****************************

What Other People - Part 1

The first chapter of a three-part story...


Marianne and I had a long-standing cyclical friendship; we might not see one another for a few months. Eventually, though, she would always call on me for comfort and company. And invariably I would drive to her house to deliver it.

Marianne’s room reflected her undirected artistic endeavors. The walls had been painted turquoise some time ago. Pasted across them were half finished watercolors, scribbled chunks of poetry, and photographs of models from old magazines. When I would enter, I would see the bed directly diagonal from the doorway. There was a window on each of the adjacent walls. They admitted a skewed, faded sunlight in the afternoon. Natural light always appeared slightly grainy in there, like looking through worn cheesecloth.

Beside her bed was a nightstand perpetually littered with the remains of daily routine: an ashtray two-thirds full with cigarette butts and the blackened wood of burned matches, a stray discarded tissue, a bottle of cold-relief pills. Night-time formula. From time to time, ticket stubs from local shows at dive-bar venues would find themselves stacked lovingly in a corner with the hope for future nostalgia. They would pile, only to be swept into the trash a few months later.

The only indication of real care or retained interest was a green pencil case that always ornamented the tabletop. In it were the pens and pencils, stencils and smudgers that would spawn sketches and page-long strings of words that related to one another only in her mind. All were to be deposited in hordes of notebooks to be seen only by her and a few privileged friends. I felt lucky to be among this set. The work was inspired, of genius quality. It lacked just one element: direction.

Oftentimes Marianne would have some of her notebooks strewn like leaves on her bed. On this occasion, I found her poring over several volumes from the year before. A half-finished bottle of cheap chardonnay stood at attention on the floor beside her. I sensed from experience that these facts in tandem were a bad sign, but when she glanced up and saw me, her crystal blue eyes widened and a wily, happy grin spread across her face.

“Emmitt!” she cooed ecstatically.

I closed the door and walked over to the bed, leaning over to hug her. “Don’t get up,” I said, and sat on the edge beside her.

“I wasn’t going to,” she replied.

“You knew I’d come over to you.”

“That’s how you are.”

I nodded, appreciating her remark, then picked up one of the stray journals. Occasionally she would ask me to read passages aloud to her. It was difficult but fun to try and match my voice to her words, to discover the emphases and pauses as I searched through them for the first time. She didn’t ask me to read today, though, and after a minute of silence wherein both of us glared darkly at the writing in front of us, I put my volume down.

“How’ve you been?”

“I’m already drunk. What time is it?” She squinted at the alarm clock on the other side of the room. “Almost six o’clock!” She leaned over me, pulled the wine from the ground, and took a swig. Her wavy red hair fell back against her shoulders as her neck distended to imbibe the alcohol. She handed it to me. I took a couple of swigs as she said, “He called me last week. All the feelings came back.”

“Who?”

“Mark! Mark, that lusty interloper. He said he was ready to love again.”

Mark lived outside of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the heart of Amish country – a five-hour trip from our southern Connecticut lives. Consequently I’d never met him. Marianne had told me all about him, though; their relationship as she perceived it, and why they had split up. She’d shown me pictures. He was a tired-looking mid-twenties guy, a pasty man with short black facial hair and dark eyes. All of this detail failed to coalesce into the emotional fervor I wanted to feel over this conversational development. It was her world, not ours. All I could do was observe it.

“That’s good, then, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s the fault line of an earthquake. He shakes the world with his empty space.” She grabbed the wine back from me. I picked up another notebook, rifled through, and stopped on a worn page that featured a blurred black-and-white profile of Marianne with one eyebrow raised, looking cynically amused. The photograph was pasted beside a jumble of scrawled partial thoughts that began, “My reflection does not believe in your actuality.” I glanced back up between scanning the page.

“So, something happened?”

“He ruined me. It’s his problem this time, not mine.”

“I thought you said he was ready to love you again.”

She threw her arms up. “He said he was ready. He never knew what he wanted. Like an earthquake.”

“All right. What happened, then?” I took the wine from her, finishing it in one long gulp.

“He called me last week, and everything was grand as a piano. I was supposed to meet him at the train station today. I got my mom to pay for it, even after she complained. ‘It’s okay,’ I told her. ‘It’s for true love this time.’ She couldn’t stop me after that. You can’t stop love. You know what true love is, don’t you Emmitt?”

I smiled, then frowned at the weight of subsequent memory. “Yes, I know what it is.”

“It’s non-recyclable plastic!” she cried, her voice bouncing off the walls in hollowed assertion. “It’s gone, gone for good now. I can’t get hold of him.” Her eyes sparkled in blue flame.

I tilted my head imploringly. “He won’t answer his phone?”

“I tried. What does he want from me? Every hour for the past two days.” She held up two long, nail-bitten fingers. Spatters of chipped polish tinted the tips a deep violet. “Even in the middle of the night. It was a trick.” She met my eyes gravely with her own. “To drive me crazy.”

I decided not to pursue this line of thought further.

“You know where he lives. Why don’t you show up at his doorstep and give him a good thrashing?”

She stared down at the green comforter wrapped around her legs. “I just can’t. We don’t work like that.” This was her way of saying that she was too afraid, of telling me her true feelings without being overtly sincere. I scrunched my forehead in contemplation.

“What are you going to do, then?”

“Get more drunk.” She smiled again, though pain glistened at the edges of her lips. “Do you want to do some karaoke tonight?”

“If that’s what you want,” I said, “then you know I’m up for it.”

Karaoke had been a tradition between us since we’d both been old enough to drink legally. It was available on any given night at a nearby bar. We had come to know the owner, Ken DeNiro, and much of the staff by name. We would coax each other into going, pick songs for one another to sing, and make asses of ourselves without concern for the aesthetic opinions of our audience. It was exciting, blood-boiling to be under the bluish spotlight, above and in front of tipsy, personable spectators. They couldn’t laugh at your lack of skill for fear that you might respond in kind afterward. I was always willing to go. It was enough to be up on that stage for a few minutes.

Marianne’s smile widened. “Kick-ass. Let’s find something to drink in this place before my mother gets home.” With a flourish of her hands she bounced up lightly off the bed, kicking to let the legs of her checkered blue pajama pants down, and straightening her green tank-top. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and I could tell. But I could also tell that she didn’t care if the vague outline of her nipples was obvious. It was a nonchalant suggestive gesture, to hold me in suspense without the slightest intention of acquiescence.

We went into her kitchen. The blinds had been pulled on the windows, and trees obscured what little light might have come in from the outside. A lonely lamp affixed to the wall above the kitchen table gave what orangey illumination it could muster. While Marianne set to work searching through the cabinetry, I sat on a wooden chair under the dusky light. A small stack of newspapers and magazines was heaped in one corner. I flipped through the headlines.

“Get this one,” I said, stopping on a chance page. “Senate Candidates Fight Perception.”

“Perception of what?” she called from where she was, head buried deep in cereal boxes and cooking oils.

“I don’t want to know,” I replied. “It’s funnier to me if they’re fighting perception in general.”

“Isn’t that two-thirds of their job anyway?”

I continued perusing, and presently she appeared beside me with two bottles – a pinot grigio, and a recently opened bottle of Grey Goose vodka. “These will do for now, don’t you think?”

I looked up at her. “Wine’s pretty popular ‘round here, huh?”

“Oh, don’t underestimate the wine,” she mocked. “It’ll get you where you’re going without you even knowing.” She sauntered over to the sink and grabbed two large, plastic cups.

“That’s the thing. I like to know I’m there,” I retorted.

Marianne crouched down, getting very close, until I could see the tiny lines that fanned from the corners of her eyes. “Don’t underestimate the wine,” she repeated. I smelled the drug on her tongue, promoting itself through her. It was sweet and sterile. She shoved one of the cups into my hand.

“Look at this,” she went on, sliding one of the fashion magazines in front of me. She drew it open at a few randomly chosen pages, finally stopping and pointing at a brunette model, coquettishly teasing the second button of a black Theory shirt. The woman was standing, legs apart, and leaning comfortably to one side so that her hip was more defined.

“Clarisse is not happy, Emmitt.”

“She looks pretty happy to me.” I snuck a look back at the page. A smile graced the model’s face, as I’d suspected.

“No, she’s not. I’ll tell you why.” As if there was no more to the discussion, Marianne leaped from her chair and galloped barefoot back to her room. She emerged seconds later with a small, fat book. She dumped it on top of the magazine with an already chosen page on display.

In the photograph before me, a young Japanese girl sat on a concrete step. She was clad in a bright pink two-piece dress, with pink stockings and pink shoes. Her long black hair was smoothed and tied back in three places with pink ribbon. She was holding a small pastel yellow parasol. The text next to her stated that she was thirteen years old. The girl wasn’t smiling.

“Yumi’s happier,” Marianne stated defiantly.

“Why’s that?”

“Clarisse has to wear and do what other people tell her to. Yumi does not.”

“But Yumi’s not smiling.”

Marianne lit a cigarette over me and took a drag. “Of course not. Being thirteen sucks for everybody.” Shutting both books with a smack! she walked off again. “I have juice in my room. C’mon.”

*******************