Carolyn and I are sitting in the car just outside the grocery store with a bottle of sparkling red grape juice. My parking job is awful (I came in the wrong end of the aisle), the weather is gross, "1979" is playing, and I haven't bothered to turn the car on all the way since the empty light has been on for almost twenty miles. "Carolyn, we're really sad," I tell her as she passes me the bottle.

"Why? Because we're out of it?" Carolyn had her wisdom teeth out on Monday, and I've been having the worst week of my life. (And I'll justify that statement by explaining that I'm inexplicably depressed and therefore a bit melodramatic.) We've spent the afternoon wandering through GAP Body at the biggest shopping mall in town in an effort to spend some of Carolyn's giftcard, but neither of us are in the mood to be accosted by after-Christmas sales or the dressing room mirror. We've hardly said anything that qualifies as communication besides "Are you okay?"

"I dunno," she says, chuckling. "I feel pretty cool."

I take one long, stinging gulp and pass the bottle back to her. "I think this is the most uncool I've ever felt in my life." People keep passing us in the parking lot on the way to their cars, and hardly any of them notice that we're there with our four dollar bottle of grape juice, and I feel kind of invisible. "I feel like I should be on the phone with Lester Bangs or something."

"And I've met you," she says, lighting up. "You are not cool."

"Even when I thought I was, I knew I wasn't," I say. And then: "'Cause they make you feel cool! But they are not your friends."

"These are people who want you to write sanctimonious stories about the genius of the rock stars, and they will ruin rock and roll and strangle everything we love about it," she says, word for word. We even know the cadence of it.

We wait a few moments, silent, drinking, and a woman in a purple shirt and high heels gets into the car in front of us. Her hair comes to a perfect line above her shoulders. "She's rich," I say. "You can always tell because it looks like they've had their hair cut like, two seconds ago. I bet she gets it cut once a week."

"Would you have sex with her?" Carolyn asks.

"No," I say, without thinking. This is the way we judge people we don't know. Really it is a question that asks for a gut instinct. It's a question that says "Would you claw your eyes out if you had to spend time with them in a room with only a paper clip and a few matches?" Or "If I handed you a baseball bat right now, would you bludgeon this person to death without feeling guilty?"

"Except look at her car," I say. It's white and dirty, an old model. A Toyota.

"Yeah, that's weird," Carolyn says.

"Maybe she's not rich."

The woman pulls away as Carolyn passes me the bottle again. I hold on to the neck with one hand as another woman in a white car pulls in to the same space. She has fuzzy hair that is short, curly, and badly highlighted. She's wearing a white tank top. "That kind of tank top makes the upper arms look like genitals."

I laugh.

The woman gets out of the car after reaching for her purse. "Oooohhh," I say. "Minus ten." The top is tucked in to jogging-suit pants. They make the woman's body one formless lump of exercise clothes. "Look at what's in the backseat of her car."

Carolyn laughs and reaches for the bottle. "What is that?"

"Plastic organizing tubs. Wow."

"What the crap." We're silent for a few minutes, the Pumpkins still playing. When we get to "Stumbleine," Carolyn says, "New music?" and I start the car.

As we pull out of the parking lot she asks if I want any more grape juice. "Nah," I say. "You finish it."


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