I took four girls roller skating. The sun was scorching and it seemed like a good day for an indoor activity. My daughter had been to a birthday party at a rink not too far away and remembered the name. We drove down the coast, my youngest scrolling the radio for good tunes. Ed Sheeran is big at the moment, as is a song about having scars, being beautiful, and not starving yourself. I have mixed feelings about songs like this but it has a good beat.
The rink was located behind a hardware store next to an abandoned lot scattered with broken glass and old tires. Two black crows perched on barbed wire. I turned off the radio and parked the car. “Is this the place?” I asked my daughter, skeptically.
“Yup!” she grinned, “Come on, guys!” My girls and their friends bounded towards the entrance and I locked the car twice.
The place smelled like feet and meat pie. An older woman in a black t-shirt featuring a brand of beer informed me that this fine establishment was cash only. There was no register.
We took off our shoes and stood on chalk outlines of different sized feet, like a crime scene for eight pairs of murdered shoes. Two men leaned over the skate rental counter and stared at our group, four girls and a mom. “Disappointed husband, you reckon?” the skinny one with the eye patch said to the other. It took me a second but then of course, I realized, he thought they were all mine.
“He loves having four girls,” I responded, glancing over at the kids who looked back at me, dumbfounded. “And so close in age too, we’re very lucky. Can we get our skates?”
The skinny one with the eye patch asked if I was Canadian, a question I get a lot in Perth, presumably with the intention of not offending Canadians. “No, American.”
“You think Trump’s gonna get the job done?” I didn’t know what job he was talking about, nor whether Trump would get it done.
The larger man with the muscular arms and bright blue eyes chimed in. “It’s that electoral college that’s the problem.” Perhaps I had misjudged this one.
A Justin Bieber song came on and the girls carefully shuffled their way over to the rink. I put our shoes in a cubby, laced up a pair of old, moist, brown skates, and joined them. There were about ten other kids skating and a few moms watching, drinking soda and looking tired. The lights were dim and multicolored. One bulb was blinking arhythmically. It felt like a David Lynch movie.
After an hour of skating and falling down, we changed back into our shoes and the girls ran off to find cold drinks. I plopped the skates back on the counter, one pair at a time. Eye Patch, alone now, said, “American, huh? Do you have any Aussie in you?”
“No.”
He rested his elbows on the counter and put his palms together. His one eye stared at me. “I can fix that.” His skin had the same worn-out condition as the skates, and he was sweating profusely.
“That’s a really lovely offer thank you, but I’ll pass.” I escaped and found the girls waiting patiently near the slushie machine.
We sat outside and slurped our raspberry-flavored drinks. “That guy was creepy,” my daughter said between sips.
“Totally. And he thought we were sisters!” her friend rolled her eyes. The four of them howled with laughter, their mouths stained bright red.
I laughed too. And the laughter was a protective shield, a bulletproof sleazebag force field. The girls tossed their empty cups in the trash and ran to the car. On the way home, we saw a helicopter patrolling the shoreline, looking for sharks.