Hale Maree (6 page)

“
A while,” he repeats, as he
pulls into the parking lot of my apartment building.

“
How old are you?” I
ask.

“
Twenty three,” he says,
finding a spot and turning off the engine. Two and three. I could
tell he was older than me, because he wasn’t nervous or goofy, but
I would never have guessed he was five digits older. Then, like it
will change anything, he says, “Well, I’ll be twenty-four next
month.”

It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t have guessed
six numbers older, either.

“
I’ll walk you in,” he
says.

“
You don’t need to,” I say,
but as I get out of the truck, so does he. He does a lingering look
up and down the lot, surveying the cars on blocks, the duct-taped
windows, and the clunkers that haven’t moved off their flat tires
in months. Our parking lot looks like a scrap yard, but I never
noticed it as much as I do now, standing with
tall-dark-and-immaculate Oscar and his scratch-free silver
truck.

“
But I am,” he
says.

“
You’re in more danger here
than I am,” I tell him.

“
You really think that,
don’t you?” The chuckle he adds to it irritates me. We climb the
stairs to my apartment door.

“
Good night,” I
say.

“
Aren’t you going to open
the door?”

“
I will, when you’re gone,”
I say. Oscar’s eyes fix on mine, and I try to hold his intense
gaze, but can’t. I glance away, taking a step back as he takes one
forward, pining me between him and the door.

“
Open it now,” he says
softly. “While I’m here, so I know you got in safe.”

When I don’t move, he adds, “You don’t have
anything in there that I haven’t seen before, Hale. Open the
door.”

I turn away, his breath in my hair and his
cologne in my nose, as I slide the key from my pocket into the
lock. It should be a relief to step inside, but the minute the door
opens, I see two of my gym bags and a paper bag full of my
belongings, heaped on the floor. My dad looks up from his seat at
the table, a half-empty bottle of Jack near his elbow. This is my
Whiskey Drunk dad, even though he shoots Oscar and I a wry smile as
we come in.

“
There’s your stuff,” he
says, motioning to my bags with a sloshing glass. “Go on and
go.”

“
Where do you want me to
go?” I ask.

“
Somewhere else. Anyplace.
Just let it all blow down here. You know. Right, Oscar? Let it all
blow down.”

Oscar walks over and picks up my two bags,
throwing one over his shoulder. I know I shouldn’t rock the boat
with my dad being full of whiskey, but I don’t know what he’s
expecting me to do. I’m not going to just go live with Oscar. I’m
not leaving even the little I have behind.

“
Dad, I’m not
leaving...”

“
To hell you’re not!” he
slams his drink down, and the amber liquid jumps up like lighter
fluid in a fire. “Get out of here! I don’t know what’s going to
happen! But if somethin’ does, what’ll happen to you, Hale? You
wanna know? I’ll tell you. You’ll be livin’ on the street and I’ll
be servin’ life in jail.”

“
I’ll go live with Sher
until you’re out!”

“
You’ll go with this
kid
,” my father roars.
“That’s what you’ll do. You’ll go and do what he says, and you’ll
have a good life, dammit! LISTEN TO ME!”

My father picks up the whiskey bottle by the
neck and throws it. It slams against the wall beside me and
shatters, the whiskey splashing on me, some of the splintered glass
sticking in my skin. I stare at my father as he collapses at the
table, dropping his head into his folded arms. Sobs come out of him
like emergency sirens.

Rick Whoever is dead and this is the only
protection my father can give me—a near miss with a whiskey
bottle—to scare me away.

“
Come on,” Oscar says,
hefting up the paper bag and handing it to me. I take it and follow
him out the door, empty. My father’s wails follow me down the
stairs and trail behind me as I walk toward everything that scares
me most.

CHAPTER
FOUR

I DON’T ASK AND OSCAR DOESN’T say.

We drive through town to the enormous
mansion where I first saw him. He leaves me in the truck, but takes
the keys and disappears through the front door. I listen to the
tires settle into the gravel as I rub dabs of my own spit on the
tiny wounds that came from the shattered bottle. Luckily, there is
no glass in my skin, no cuts that need attention. I have enough to
worry about already, as I stare at Oscar’s empty seat and wonder
what the hell I’m going to do next.

He returns quickly, flipping down the
tailgate and shoving in another two bags. When he slides into the
driver’s seat, he does look a little surprised that I’m still
sitting there, but it’s not like I have anywhere to go. My insides
feel caved in, but I won’t let one tear slip out of me. I don’t
have a phone, I don’t have any money, and I’m screwed. The deal is
done. My father sold me out with a busted whiskey bottle. I get
that I’m at Oscar’s mercy now, and I figure it’s just better to be
quiet, and wait for a moment that I can take advantage of.

“
How are you doing?” he
asks.

“
Seriously?” I say with a
frown. “I’m doing ‘trapped’ like a champ.”

He puts the truck in drive and even though I
assume we’re enroute to either a hotel or an all-night wedding
chapel, I don’t bother to ask. But he still tells me.

“
We’re heading out to my
father’s beach house. It’s a beautiful place,” he says.
So
, I re-phrase it to
myself,
we’re going to a free
hotel
. I try to play it cool inside my
head, but the thoughts of what will probably happen at his father’s
beach house, keeps scurrying through my mind, their sharp claws
digging into my growing anxiety. It doesn’t matter how good-looking
Oscar is, he just looks like a rapist to me now. I stay frozen on
my seat.

“
You don’t talk much,” Oscar
says, when we’ve driven far enough that I don’t recognize anything
anymore. The suburbs are fading to countryside, covered in
trees.

“
I don’t know you,” I say.
“What’s there to talk about?”

“
Let’s start with the easy
stuff. Tell me all your favorites. Colors, movies, food? What do
you like?”

“
I like to be at home,” I
tell him. “My favorite is not being married to strangers, and I
don’t care about movies. I actually know how to read
books.”

“
I like books.”

“
Books aren’t Playboy
magazine articles.”

“
Where did that come from?”
he asks. The tone in his voice reminds me that I don’t know who he
is at all and have no business talking to him like that. I remain
frozen, my head twisted toward the window till my neck aches.
“Hale, this is going to be a lot harder on both of us if either of
us decides not to try, so how about we start again?”

“
I don’t know what you want
from me,” I say. Thank God, my voice doesn’t crack as I say it, but
at least it feels like I’ve taken the elephant off my
shoulders.

“
Okay, good, I can answer
that,” Oscar says. I keep my eyes out the window. “I want you to be
a loyal wife. I want you to cook for me, and keep up our house, and
I want you to be good in bed.”

There is a playful smirk in his tone. I
almost gag.

“
You’re a pig,” I say. I
don’t care if he shoves me out of the moving vehicle. He just
laughs.

“
Because I want you to be
good in bed? That’s a problem?” He laughs again. “Don’t you want
that from me?”

“
I don’t want anything from
you,” my voice cracks this time, a big jagged crack right down the
middle. Oscar’s laugh suddenly cuts off.

“
Wait,” he says and all I
can think is
here it comes.
And I’m not wrong. “Have you ever been with a man
before?”

When I don’t answer him, he clears his
throat.

“
My favorite author is
Steinbeck,” he begins softly.

#

Oscar fills up the silence by telling me
things about himself. He loves movies, especially comedies, and he
tells me he was vegan for a week, but it didn’t work out. He says
that although he doesn’t own any shirts or cars, or even a room in
his house that is yellow, it is still his favorite color. I don’t
want to care, but I listen to every word he says, because his voice
soothes me somehow. When he tells me about the music he likes, he
turns on the radio and, eventually, it takes over the whole
conversation. I’m almost disappointed when he stops talking, but I
finally lean my head against the headrest, close my eyes, and drift
off to the sound of a nightclub piano.

“
Hale?”

There’s a hand on my arm, a voice I don’t
recognize, and a truck all around me when I jolt back to
consciousness.

“
Whoa, hey, we’re here.”
Oscar’s voice is still all mellow and soft. I fell asleep, but now
I feel more exhausted than refreshed, and more freaked out than
not. I rub my eyes and look out the window to see the place he was
talking about.

While I wondered if Oscar’s beach house
would be a mansion on stilts in the sand, it isn’t. Instead, it is
a cute little bungalow set into a clearing in the woods. There are
no streetlights, but a floodlight on the screened-in, front porch
illuminates the entrance. When I step out of the truck, I can hear
the waves somewhere close, licking the shore.

“
Come on in,” Oscar says,
walking past me with most of our bags slung across his shoulders. I
follow behind him, through the screened porch that smells a little
musty and into the cabin. And I immediately feel like I’m at home
in the kind of home I’ve never had, but the one that would make
everyone feel at home, no matter who they were or where they came
from.

There is a braided oval rug on the floor, a
rocking chair, an easy chair, and a couch. The walls are gray-blue
slats; the ceiling and trim are white. A staircase leads upstairs,
but there is a turn at a landing, so all I see is the wall. To the
right is a bathroom door and, to the left, the kitchen. It is a
rectangle space with an old stove and a double washtub instead of a
regular sink.

Running across the ends of both the living
room and kitchen, is an entire wall of windows, with a windowed
door at the kitchen end. A dining room table is stretched across
the middle, overlooking the dark shadows outside. Oscar flips a
switch and exterior floodlights illuminate a sandy shore only a few
yards away. I can make out the ripple of the waves lapping up onto
the sand.

Oscar puts down our bags and comes to stand
beside me.

“
What do you think?” he
asks, and I’m suddenly even more aware of him than before. He’s a
little taller than me, and his body seems to be sending radioactive
waves right through me. I tingle beside him and flex my fingers to
make it stop. I try to flex
everything
to make it stop, but the
fizzy tingle slips lower in my stomach.

“
It’s a nice place,” I say.
It sounds absolutely stupid. A place like this, where you can walk
in and feel like you’ve belonged here all your life, is not a
‘nice’ place. But this place also belongs to Oscar and his father,
who both expect me to agree to give up my life in order to bury
their mistake. I quiver with the tingles and Oscar blows out a
small laugh.

“
Cold?” he asks.

“
No.” I say.

“
There’s probably nothing to
eat in here. We’ll have to grab some things tomorrow in town. But
if you’re tired, there’s a bed upstairs.”

I’m exhausted, but I don’t know what he
means by ‘a bed’. Does he mean there’s only one? Of course, he has
to; he must be. He might still think we’re getting married, but
even worse, he knows I’m stuck out here in the woods with him. I
force my brain to stay alert. I walk over to the couch and sit
down, but it doesn’t help me to stay alert when the cushion is so
incredibly soft that it feels like I’m drifting in the soft palm of
God. My eyes flutter shut, but I force them back open just as Oscar
turns around.

“
I’ll grab everything out of
the truck,” he says and I nod, but the minute he steps out the
door, I can’t keep my eyes open one moment longer. Not
one.

His arm is sliding beneath me and, for a
second, I actually think I am little again and my father is
scooping me up for bed. He pulls me to him and then a scent hits me
that fires off alert centers in my brain. Sandalwood. Apples.
Sandalwood. Apples. My father never smelled like sandalwood or
apples. I scramble to place it as my eyes pop open, and my mouth
follows right behind. I scream in Oscar’s face, and he dumps me
back down on the cushions. I scuttle up the arm.

“
It’s me!” he shouts. “My
God, I think you blew my ear drum!”

“
Don’t touch me
then!”

“
I was going to put you up
in bed, so you wouldn’t wake up with a crick in your
neck!”

“
Maybe I want a crick in my
neck!” I shriek. Oscar throws up his hands, like he’s trying to
show God that he tried. He’s given it his all and I’m
impossible.

“
There’s a bed upstairs, if
you want it,” he says. He crosses the room to the sunroom door that
leads outside and I’m a little surprised when he doesn’t slam the
door after letting himself out.