All Your Pretty Dreams (12 page)

“
We’ll think about it,”
Jonny began. This was a common request, unfortunately. For some
reason everyone liked to see the accordion vibrate.

Audri pushed the man
upright. “Bugger off.” He lurched away. “Never negotiate with
drunks and morons.”

Lenny came by, shaking
hands. It was a decent crowd for Red Vine, at least forty people, a
good chunk of the voting population under 50. No sign of Margaret
or Ozzie or Loreen. A handful of senior citizens. The college
students had come, desperate for entertainment, no doubt. They were
dancing and drinking. Wendy and a bunch of high school kids were
sneaking cigarettes in the woods.

“
You’re going to play
more, aren’t you?” Lenny asked earnestly as he hugged Audri.
“Things are just getting started.”

She made a face over his
shoulder. “Okay, Mayor, no free feels tonight.”

They quit about ten-thirty,
having run out of songs. Lenny hooked up his laptop to the mixer
and cranked up some tunes. He ordered them to “Party on!” The older
people had cleared out but the students— mostly girls in clumps,
preening and lip-glossing— and local teenagers began to jump and
shout. Bottles appeared from pockets.

Jonny sat on the edge of
the stage, tired but content with the way the evening had turned
out. He had forgotten that he could play the accordion more or less
by ear, picking out chords and tunes from memory. Amazing, really,
what the brain retains. Even his thick brain. He even sang a little
back-up for Audri. How could he have forgotten how he enjoyed this
music? How had he squelched that part of him that felt totally at
ease on the stage, playing that wicked squeeze box, smiling at
girls? He wouldn’t think about Cuppie, or those dead
years.

He straightened his back
and stretched, watching Wendy and Zachary wiggle like monkeys. She
seemed to have recovered from the shock of their parents’
rift.

A girl he didn’t recognize
stopped in front of him, folding slender arms across her chest.
“I’m not sure James Brown would approve,” she said.
“
Shout
on the
accordion?”

He laughed. “Probably
rocking and rolling in his grave.” He leaned back, appraising her.
Not someone he knew but familiar. A high school friend, forgotten
all these years?

“
She’s good. Your
girlfriend.” She arched her eyebrows toward Audri who wriggled next
to Lenny on the dance floor.

“
I just met her tonight.
She is good.” He stood up. This girl wasn’t from around here. She
must be one of the college students. She had boyishly short blond
hair, accentuating her dark eyes. She wore a tight pink t-shirt and
low-slung jeans that fit well. She had a sweet smile. It’d been
awhile since he thought that about any woman. He blurted, “You want
to dance?”

She took him by the hand
into the crowd, closed her eyes and began to dance. Watching her he
felt the beat of the music and let himself relax. He wasn’t
performing now, just a dancer on the floor. He couldn’t take his
eyes off her. Who was she?

She opened her eyes and
smiled at him. Halfway through a song by Nirvana he introduced
himself. She only nodded, with a mysterious twitch of an eyebrow.
“What’s your name?” he asked.

Her squint was cold. For a
moment she stopped dancing. He had the impression she was going to
walk away. She looked away and began moving with the beat again.
When the song ended he almost asked her again but thought better of
it. She didn’t walk off, just stood there, her cheeks pink, her
upper lip damp. She dug her fists into her back pockets. He felt
tongue-tied. He wasn’t used to meeting women. He felt fifteen
again,
again.

“
Nice evening,” he said
lamely.

“
Cooler than some.” Before
he could think up a reply she turned to him. “Do you think your
friend will make a good mayor?”

“
Um, yeah. He’s got new
ideas, and stuff.”
Think, man.
“The mayor has been in office too long anyway.
It’s time for some new blood.”

“
He seems very
energetic.”

Lenny was talking to some
of the teenagers, waving his arms around like an Italian. “We went
to high school together. But he came back after
college.”

“
And you
didn’t?”

“
No. I mean, I like Red
Vine and all. It’s a nice town.”

“
Not too many jobs, I
bet,” she said. He nodded. “Where did you go to
college?”

“
In the Twin Cities,” he
said, making it vague as always. He wasn’t ashamed of his technical
degree, but it was nothing to brag about. “You?”

“
Illinois.”

“
Oh, you’re here with the
bee study then?”

She squinted at him again.
Her lips tightened into a frown. Had he met her and didn’t
remember? Was she playing him? He didn’t like the coy act.
Just say your name
. It
reminded him of Cuppie, of hypocrites and liars.

“
I cut my hair.” She
touched the back of her neck and rolled her eyes up at the tent
roof before saying in a whispery voice, “The Queen Bee, at your
service.”

Jonny took a step back. Now
he could see. The girl with the black pigtails and hat. She’d cut
her hair. No cargo pants. The same tiny mouth, he’d just never seen
it turned up before. And her eyes looked bigger, sparkly. That
college girl who sneered at him, who was plain unpleasant. Who
called the cops.

“
Oh. Sure. I didn’t—” He
felt himself backing away from her. He tried to keep his expression
neutral but he felt his jaw drop. He looked around for Lenny, for
somebody, but they had all drifted away. He was trapped. “Sorry.
What’s your name again? Your real name.”

She wiped her bangs off her
forehead. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, turning away. He’d never
seen her out of those baggie pants and lug boots. She looked good
from the back.

“
Wait. It’s Isabel, right?
Sorry, come on—” But she kept walking, out into the starlight. The
crowd closed behind her.

“
Who was
that
?” Lenny appeared,
also watching her backside disappear through the crowd, humming
appreciatively.

“
That, my friend, is the
Queen Bee.”

“
But she has black
hair.”

“
Had.
” He clapped Lenny on the back. “Great party, man. If all
these people vote, you’re going to slaughter Norm. Thanks for
bringing Audri. She rocks.”

“
She does, doesn’t she?”
Lenny sighed, searching for Audri in the crowd. The music had begun
and Audri was dancing with a high school jock. “She’s not into
me.”

Everybody had love
troubles.

“
What’s going on at your
house? Your parents splitting the sheets?”

Jonny shrugged. “Drama.
Lots of drama.”

——

Isabel walked at the edge
of the dark woods back into town. Scents rose from the forest
floor, piney and deep with moss and mushrooms. Off to the right,
between wild roses and sumacs and cattails, the lake stretched
black as ink, rippled with stars.

She kicked the rocks on the
road, glad she’d walked instead of driving back with Terry and
Kate. She’d had enough driving today, back from Chicago through
pastures and pig farms, along streams and maple woods. Time to
think about her family, about what she was doing here in
back-of-beyond, about her dissertation. But apparently she needed
even more time to figure out what was what in her life.

The reaction from the
students— about her new hair, new clothes, and ditching them for a
day— more than made up for the time lost. She smiled now, still
enjoying Alison’s shriek of envy at her sandals, how the girls
pawed through her new stuff, demanding to know what was happening
in the city. It was fun to shock people, to make them wonder who
she really was. If she’d known it would be this much fun she might
have done it earlier.

Fun
. She would never have used the word in relation to ‘field
study’ or any of the last six or seven summers of her life. She’d
always worked, sometimes three jobs, until she took off for Europe
last fall. Even in Barcelona she worked when she could, waitressing
and picking up customers as an off-the-books tour guide. Neither
was fun. Was she changing, or was it just a new hairdo?

She had talked to Jonny,
grabbed his hand. Danced! Would the old Isabel do that?

The Elks Lodge loomed
ahead, every blade of over-fertilized grass standing at attention,
silvery blue, like a rolling ocean. A car slowed next to her. The
guy running for mayor poked his elbow out the car window. The black
singer sat beside him, head back on the seat, eyes
closed.

“
Give you a lift back to
the Rainy Days?” Lenny asked.

“
No thanks. I’m enjoying
the clear skies for a change.”

“
Oh, ha. Funny.” He hit
the gas. They roared off, red lights streaking across the
dirt.

A joke. Just trying to be
light and fluffy. She was bad at it, obviously. Should she practice
telling jokes, risking humiliation until someone got her humor? It
would be cool to make people laugh, to be somebody who knew how to
charm. She thought about Jonny, how he got it right off that she
was teasing him about James Brown.

Only when he didn’t know
who you were.
When he realized she was the
same jackass he knew from the motel, the person who’d been rude
about the accordion, who had called the police on his squeeze box,
well, she’d seen that look in a man’s eyes before. Still, it hurt,
because he seemed different.

She shook herself, willing
away the pain. She would be gone in a month and never see him
again. Maybe he was just surprised. Jumping to conclusions, just
how things progressed with Alec and Luis. No, she made him step
back and say,
whoa
. Be realistic, Iz. Those other boyfriends? Silly
infatuations.

She plunged her hands into
her pockets.
Be rational. You’re an
academic.
She was just alone out here (not
lonely, that assumed she was looking for somebody and she wasn’t)
and he— he smelled good.

That was all.

——

The house was quiet when
Jonny got home, lights off. On the porch he stopped to listen. Not
a peep from the thespians, hysterical or otherwise. Friends,
spouses, and offspring had moved on.

He sat down on the stoop.
Would his parents divorce? Was the small-town bliss myth finally
bust? Well, he had bust it wide open himself. Didn’t his parents
have the right to be happy? Hadn’t he told his mother that he was
in charge of his own love life? He owed them the same
respect.

In the sky, the stars swept
over the lake with a twist of sugary cloud. Cicadas sang in the
trees. Margaret’s roses released perfume. Like most places Red Vine
was full of secret heartache and false cheer. Keep an even keel, an
unfurrowed brow. Never speak an ill word. No one wants to hear
about your problems. You don’t want to hear about theirs. You have
all you can handle. Better to pretend you don’t have any, that the
world is just the way you want it. It made life easier for everyone
around you. If not, exactly, for you.

Orion, high in the sky, his
knife and belt of stars, stood out, one of the few reliable
constellations. What was he doing here? It only reminded him of
those mindless days at Hormone High. And gave Cuppie the idea that
he wanted her back. Hiding from his job? He liked it, mostly. The
future? Was he afraid to find out what it held?

Maybe he would be alone.
He let the thought roll around his skull. He felt his lungs fill,
his heart flutter in his chest.
Alone.
He had never lived alone. The
bachelor, they would call him, with a wink perhaps. He might never
find anyone who met his ‘lofty new standards,’ as his mother chided
him today in her rage. Her view was if you chose badly once, if you
rejected what you had, you had no right to expect love, much less
happiness.

Maybe she was right. Jonny
pictured himself taking waitresses and flight attendants to dinner
and finding them all too Cuppie-esque. Or up a rung, hooking up
with lonely stockbrokers and flinty lawyers out for a quick romp.
And never really connect. Never
mate
again— except in the animal
sense.

He rubbed his eyes,
exhausted from the long day. What if he never found anyone? He
sighed aloud. Face it: You will live. Plenty of people led
meaningful lives without true love. He would be happy with whatever
came his way. He wasn’t built for anything else, and if that made
him shallow, then so be it.

That decision, to be
happy, to not dwell on the past, made him feel free somehow, free
to follow his heart in matters that had nothing to do with romance.
That was over-rated. Look where it got his parents. Look where it
got
him
. No, he
would take a giant leap and do something that would probably make
him look like an idiot. Something that he wanted to do so much it
scared him. Like go back to college or build a grain bin house.
Like divorce the hometown girl who had once been a perfect match.
Like live alone and be happy.