Earth Angel (21 page)

“That doesn’t seem like you.”

“You don’t know me.”

He shrugged. “Some things I know. Like what your fingers will do during rock-scissors-paper.”

“Don’t bring that up again until you tell me how you do it. It’s got to be a trick. Give me a hint.”

“Why’d you come?” he persisted.

“It’s too embarrassing to talk about.”

“More embarrassing than me seeing how chalk-pale your butt is?”

I stared back at him. “You can see pretty damn well in the dark.”

He pulled the last string of red licorice from the box, broke it in two, and handed me half. “Now, why’d you come?”

I bit off the end of the licorice and chewed. “I’m going through some life changes, that’s all. Selling my practice,
visiting my old house. I’m just looking for my place. Where I belong.”

“You thought your place was Tijuana?”

“No. I thought the kind of person who would spontaneously decide to go to Tijuana might be the kind of person more capable
of finding her place.”

He shook his head. “I’m lost.”

“Look. I woke up one day and wondered why my life wasn’t anything like I’d pictured it would be back when I was young and
planning it. Not that I had a timetable or anything. But I wasn’t even heading in the right direction. You know, I had this
one corny vision that sort of summed up how my life would be. I pictured me and the kids and the husband spending summers
at some lake somewhere with other couples who were our lifelong friends. Our children would play all day together, exploring
the woods, and come back each afternoon with vivid tales of what they’d seen. The women would swim and sail and sneak cigarettes.
The men would fish and drink beer. At night we’d all sit on the porch together sipping homemade lemonade, waving away the
mosquitoes, singing old songs at the tops of our lungs. And we’d cuddle up, each with our own mate, and not be able to imagine
being anywhere else ever.”

David’s face was hidden in the darkness, so I wasn’t even sure he was awake. “Did you summer at a lake when you were a child?”

“I’ve never even seen a lake. I have no idea where that image came from. Movies, I guess. It doesn’t matter. It’s only a metaphor
to tell me my life just wasn’t right the way it was. So I sold my practice and my house and hit the road. A very sixties thing
to do.”

“At least you were willing to do something. Most people wouldn’t have the courage.”

The part about selling the practice and house was a lie,
but the rest wasn’t. The lake, the mosquitoes. That was my life as I’d imagined it. “You know what I miss,” I said. “I miss
45’s. You know, those little records? When I was a little girl I had stacks and stacks of them which I kept in albums. Those
albums were like holy books, filled with wisdom. I miss the time when all life’s problems could be solved by finding the answer
in a Joni Mitchell or Paul Simon song. You know what I mean?”

He nodded. “For me it was Bob Dylan.”

“Or any song with sha-la-la-la-la.”

David crawled over on his hands and knees until he was right in front of me. He reared up like a bear and kissed me.

It was an urgent kiss, his lips rolling against mine in waves like the probing fingers of a blind man. That much concentration
on me made me feel a little lightheaded. I pulled away. He opened his eyes and looked at me. Our faces were six inches apart.

“Are you okay with this?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “It’s an adventure. Like bowling.”

He smiled and kissed me again. He was leaning over me, my knees gouging his hips, so I let my legs fall apart and he dropped
between them. His chest flattened against mine, brushing my breasts in a way that made them tingle. His crotch rubbed against
mine and there was some tingling down there as well.

I tried to block out the grinding of lips, chests, and crotches and think things through. Would this situation help or hinder
my mission to better his life? I couldn’t let anything get in the way of that goal. But it was so hard to think with my skin
flushed and the blood rushing from my brain toward my vagina.

His arms encircled me and lowered me onto the seat. He lay on top of me. My hands slid along the seat and brushed against
something lodged in the crack. Cellophane.
I opened my eyes. I was holding a strip of condoms from Vernon’s briefcase.

David looked at them, at me. We looked at each other a few seconds. The strip of condoms in my hand asked the question we
hadn’t yet faced. How far were we willing to go?

“How much time do we have?” I asked.

“I have no idea.”

I started unbuttoning my blouse. “Okay, this will have to be no-frills sex. Impress me with technique some other time. Right
now let’s just do it before they come back.”

David got up, locked the van doors, and pulled off his clothes with impressive efficiency. I just yanked and wriggled until
I was naked. I bundled my clothes and tossed them on the floor. “You’re not doing all this just so you can see me put my socks
back on, are you?”

He kissed me again. His hand slid between my legs. I didn’t need any priming, I could feel drops running down the inside of
my thighs. I tore open a condom packet and slid the latex over his penis. He looked at me with a questioning expression. What
position would we do and where? On the floor, on the seat? Front, back?

I turned away from him and leaned over the seat, my backside facing him. He didn’t hesitate. He got directly behind me and
nudged my legs apart. I felt his penis poke me as he tried to find the opening.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s hard to feel with a condom.”

“No problem,” I said. I reached down between my legs, grasped his penis, and guided it into me. When I released my hand he
gently moved forward and his penis slid deep into me. He began to rock back and forth and the van started rocking, too. I
hoped the two Mexican hotel guards weren’t watching. What the hell was I doing? I’d never had sex in a van before. And, except
for oral sex on Tim when we were driving to San Francisco once, I’d never even had
car sex. I tried to remind myself that this was all in the service of a higher cause, to redeem what Tim had done. But as
David’s fingers dug into my hips, as he began slamming into my buttocks, as I laid my head on the cracked vinyl car seat and
felt his penis ramming into me, I knew that was a lie. I liked him. I liked what we were doing. And I liked me liking it.

David lifted me up so that my knees weren’t even on the floorboards. His hips slapped my buttocks with each thrust. Usually
I was a crock pot when it came to orgasms, slow cooking that required patience and lots of time. But right now I was a stir
fry, flash-heated and smoking. I dug my toes into the floor and wriggled against him. He pounded faster and faster until I
thought I heard the pounding echoing inside the van.

“Mr. Payton! Mr. Payton!” It was Kyle’s voice and Kyle’s pounding on the back of the van that froze us. We were both slicked
with sweat and panting like prizefighters.

“What is it, Kyle?” David said.

“Fight! Big fight! Hurry.”

We jumped out of the van and ran after Kyle. Getting dressed had been a frantic jumble of grabbing and tugging. A couple of
times David and I had fought over the same item of clothing. My underpants were stuffed in my jeans pocket. My socks were
back in the van, kicked under the seat. I tucked in my blouse as we ran.

David limped as he ran but he managed to keep pace with Kyle, both of them a few feet ahead of me. At first we were running
toward the hotel where the hookers were, but Kyle made a sudden left turn and we all dashed past the hotel and bar. The two
Mexican men from the hotel watched us run without comment. I guess after seeing me running naked through the street they weren’t
going to be surprised by anything we did.

I was still a little disoriented from interrupted sex. I’d
been maybe four thrusts from orgasm when Kyle started knocking, so most of my blood was still heavy in my pelvis. It seemed
odd to me that the two times I’d had sex since Tim’s death, neither was completed. I felt sexually jinxed.

I heard the shouts as we rounded the street corner. Boys hollering, “C’mon. Do it. Hit him. He’s a pussy.”

Kyle led David down an alley and I followed ten feet behind. At the far end of the alley, Vernon and some other boy were facing
each other with fists held out in front of them. Vernon’s nose, cheek, and chin were smeared with blood that was bubbling
from a broken nose. The other boy was bigger, Stu’s size. I looked around for Stu but didn’t see him.

The crowd of seven or eight, as well as Vernon’s opponent, were all kids from the States, some with university sweatshirts.
There were no girls. There hadn’t been a punch thrown since we’d arrived, despite the encouragement from the others.

“Quit dancing and hit him, Mike,” one kid said.

“Yeah, Mike, I’m outta beer.”

“Fuck you,” Mike said without looking at the boy. He kept his eyes on Vernon.

Mike and Vernon slowly shuffled in a circle, their fists up, their eyes wide and scared. Mike didn’t look mean. Probably Vernon
had let loose with a wisecrack when Mike was a little drunk. Both boys looked sober now. Vernon glanced over Mike’s shoulder
and saw me running toward him. That seemed to startle him and suddenly he launched an attack at Mike as if he wanted to finish
this fight before I arrived. He swung his fist into Mike’s chest, without any effect, then threw the other fist into Mike’s
stomach. Mike whooshed out his air and hunched forward, at the same time grabbing Vernon in a headlock and pulling him tight
against his hip. Vernon pushed at Mike’s beefy arms, tried pummeling him in the back, but Mike was too strong. He tightened
the headlock and Vernon’s legs buckled.

By now David, Kyle, and I were pushing through the ring of boys. I went straight for Mike, grabbing his arm and yanking. It
didn’t budge. “Let go. You’re choking him.”

“Butt out, lady,” someone in the crowd yelled.

I pulled at Mike’s arm.

“This is none of your business,” Mike said to me, oblivious to my tugging.

“Let ’em fight,” someone else shouted.

I ignored them and focused my stare on Mike. Mike’s eyes were extremely bloodshot. He wore contact lenses. Could be the preservatives
in the lens cleaner was affecting him. Also, he had a thick treestump neck and was wearing an Oxford shirt buttoned all the
way to the top. It looked tight. If his shirt collar was even half an inch too small, it would restrict blood flowing to the
brain, impairing the retina. I shook off the diagnosis and quietly said, “Let him go, Mike, or I’ll hurt you.”

The crowd of college boys laughed and whooped, but Mike just looked at me, his arm still tight around Vernon’s head. “I’m
not afraid to hit a woman,” he warned.

“I’m not afraid to kick your balls from here to Los Angeles.”

“Don’t do it yet,” David said. Suddenly Mike, Vernon, and I were flooded with bright light as David hefted his camera onto
his shoulder. I hadn’t even noticed that he’d grabbed the bag. He squinted through the lens and gestured with his hand. “Okay,
Grace, start kicking.”

“Hey,” Mike said, startled. “Who the hell are you?”

“
Eyewitness News
. If you guys hurry this along I can get it on television by morning.”

“Shut that camera the fuck off,” Mike said.

A couple of Mike’s friends started to move menacingly toward David. David swung the camera toward them as they approached.
“Don’t be foolish, boys. This equipment is insured. I don’t care if I have to smash your skulls with it.”

The boys stopped moving.

David turned the camera back on Mike. “Anything you want to tell your folks back home about college life?”

Mike released Vernon’s head and shoved him to the ground. Vernon sat there gasping. “Asshole,” he said to Vernon. “Watch your
mouth next time.” Mike started back down the alley and the rest of the crowd went with him.

I stooped beside Vernon. “You okay?”

He nodded, then croaked, “He was a pussy.”

A
COUPLE OF DAYS AFTER THE
T
IJUANA TRIP
I
WAS SURPRISED TO MEET
David’s girlfriend. She wasn’t at all what I would have expected, had I been expecting anyone. If I’d had to pick who I thought
was David’s lover out of a lineup of women, she’d be the last one I’d select.

It was two days after Mexico when David called. I was sitting on my motel bed teaching myself “Kodachrome” on the guitar and
munching through the final crumbs of a two-pound can of peanut brittle. The fingertips of my left hand were sore from pressing
on the strings, but I was proud to see calluses finally forming over the dried blisters. My drapes were open so I could watch
the old man tossing sunflower seeds into the tree. Still no sign of the mystery bird, though.

I hadn’t really expected David to call, even though he’d insisted on my phone number when I’d left him at the curb in front
of his house after we’d gotten back. When I’d recited my number he hadn’t bothered writing it down so I figured he was just
being polite. Why should he call? I’d pretty much acted like a fool, running bare-assed through the streets of Mexico, banging
away with him on
all fours in the back of a van (I even had a little cut on my knee from the floorboards). I was like the frat slags we used
to give the righteous feminist glare at in college, the ones who wore “Party Hearty” T-shirts. All I needed now was a butterfly
tattoo on my ass and beer-coaster earrings.

Still, I hadn’t been idle. I’d phoned around to get estimates from a few places that sold water heaters, but there were a
lot of questions I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know how big David’s old heater was, so I didn’t know how much bigger the new
one should be. I was asked about copper piping. I was asked about water line replacement from the meter to the house. I was
asked about concrete slab leaks. “You interested in the environment?” one man asked. “You want to conserve our natural resources?”
“Sure,” I said, sensing a sales trap. “We’ve got solar heaters,” he said. “Sun does all the work. Saves you money and helps
the planet at the same time. What more could you ask for?”