Free The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides Page B

beneath our tepid northern sky as though it were the Costa del Sol. We watched them, in stages, turning the color of shoe polish. We suspected Mr. Fontaine of lightening his hair, and the brightness of their teeth grew painful to look at. At parties, wild-eyed girls would clutch us just because we knew Trip, and after a while we saw that they were as distraught at the hands of love as we were. Mark Peters, going out to his car one night, felt someone grab his leg. Looking down, he saw Sarah Sheed, who confessed she had such a huge crush on Trip she couldn't walk. He still remembers the panicstricken way she looked up at him, a big healthy girl renowned for her chest size, lying lame as a cripple in the dewy grass.
    No one knew how Trip and Lux had met, or what they had said to each other, or whether the attraction was mutual. Even years later, Trip was reticent on the subject, in accord with his vows of faithfulness to the four hundred and eighteen girls and women he had made love to during his long career. He would only tell us, "I've never gotten over that girl, man.
    Never." In the desert, with the shakes, he had sicklylooking wads of yellow skin under his eyes, but the eyes themselves clearly looked back to a verdant time. Gradually, through incessant coaxing, and owing in large part to the recovering substance abuser's need to talk nonstop, we managed to cobble together the story of their love.
    It began on a day when Trip Fontaine attended the wrong history class.
    During fifth-period study hall, as was his custom, Trip Fontaine had gone out to his car to smoke the marijuana he took as regularly as Peter Petrovich, the diabetic kid, took insulin. Three times a day Petrovich showed up at the nurse's office for his injections, always using the hypodermic needle himself like the most craven of junkies, though after shooting up he would play the concert piano in the auditorium with astounding artistry, as though insulin were the elixir of genius.
    Likewise, Trip Fontaine went to his car three times a day, at ten-fifteen, twelvefifteen, and three-fifteen, as though he wore a wristwatch like Petrovich's that beeped at dose time. He always parked his Trans Am at the lot's far end, facing the school to spot any approaching teachers. The car's raked hood, sleek roof, and sloping rear end gave it the look of an aerodynamic scarab. Though signs of age had begun to mar its golden finish, Trip had repainted the black racing stripes and shined the spiky hubcaps that looked like weapons. Inside, the leather bucket seats retained idiosyncratic perspiration marksyou could see where Mr. Fontaine had rested his head in traffic jams, the chemicals in his hair spray turning the brown leather a light purple.
    The faint aroma of his "Boots and Saddle" air freshener still clung to the air, though by that time the car was permeated more with the smell of Trip's musk and reefer. The racing-car doors shut with a hermetic seal, and Trip used to say you could get higher in his car than anywhere because you kept breathing in the captured smoke. Every juice break, lunch, and study hall, Trip Fontaine sauntered out to his car and submerged himself in the steam bath. Fifteen minutes later, when he opened the door, the smoke would churn out as though from a chimney, dispersing and curling to the music-usually Pink Floyd or Yeswhich Trip kept playing as he went about checking his engine and polishing his hood (the ostensible reasons for his trips to the parking lot). After shutting up his car, Trip walked behind the school to air out his clothes. He kept a spare box of mints hidden in the knothole of one memorial tree (planted for Samuel 0. Hastings, graduate of the class of 1918). From classroom windows girls watched him, out under the trees, alone and irresistible, sitting cross-legged like an Indian, and even before he got up they could picture the light dirt stains on each buttock. It was always the same: Trip Fontaine rose to full height, adjusted