Into Thin Air (21 page)

The woman gave her a long critical look. “Well, let's discuss it over Hawaiian iced tea,” she said. “Don't look so scared. It's just tea with a piece of pineapple wedge.”

They sat at a small table in the back. “I'm Valerie,” the woman said. “I bet you can't believe I own this place.” She smiled again and bunched up the sleeves of her dress. “People say I look sixteen,” she insisted. “People wonder how I stay so skinny when I'm around food all day.”

Valerie didn't really ask Lee much about herself. Lee said her name was Sara Lee Rider, but that everyone called her Lee. She said she had been brought up in Oklahoma, that she had come to Madison to go to school but had decided to take a year off instead.

“Well, good,” Valerie said. She leaned on her elbows. “My husband, Roy, gave me this place as a birthday present. You'll meet him. He's a lawyer. It's a real family place. Even my brother eats here.” She told Lee the place changed menus every two weeks as a way to entice new clients. “I like that,” Lee said. “All those different menus.”

“How about you start tomorrow,” Valerie said.

She gave Lee a form to fill out. Lee carefully wrote in her name; she made up two restaurants she said had gone out of business shortly after she had left jobs there. She had no idea where the owners were. For a Social Security number, she scribbled in Claire's birthday and her lucky number, nine.

Lee began settling into Madison. She loved the cold, the way the streets emptied out so that she would sometimes be the only person out in them. She bought herself a huge orange fake fur and hat from the Salvation Army and a pair of leather mittens. She put on red rubber boots she had bought from the five-and-dime and walked with nearly every inch and shape of her somehow swaddled and hidden. Exhilarated, she let the wind push her. Sometimes she walked to Lake Mendota, at the side of the university, and watched the wind whisking the water into waves, until she was so cold she couldn't feel her mouth. Her tongue was too numb to let her form a single word. She'd walk home and draw herself a bath, making the water so hot the steam seemed almost solid. Half-dozing, Lee lay back in the claw-foot tub, singing to herself in a low, tuneless voice, one hand trailing against the cool porcelain side of the tub.

She didn't mind her job. Most of the waitresses were students who sometimes lasted only as long as the next menu change. “I don't know why I ask anyone if they're a student or not. They lie anyway,” Valerie said.

The clientele was a mix of students and working people, and almost all of them treated Lee with consideration and respect, even when she was wearing a Mexican skirt or an Indian sari tossed roughly over one shoulder.

Lee kept to herself at Valerie's. Valerie never got in until the late afternoon. She carried fresh flowers for the green vase by the door. She prowled around, joking with the waitresses, talking to the regulars, and supervising the cooking. She kept trying to start conversations with Lee, who didn't like the intense way Valerie tried to meet her eyes. “You want to go see a movie?” Valerie would ask her. “Roy's out of town and I'm lonesome.” Lee always had some excuse. “Well, another time, then.” Valerie said. “You look like the movie type, that's why I asked.”

Sometimes when she was eating her lunch in the back room, Valerie would come and sit beside her. “You're so quiet,” Valerie said. She'd try to engage Lee in talk, but Lee was so reticent that Valerie finally left her alone.

Every weekend Lee went to the library to look for stories about herself. She told herself it was to make sure no one was on her trail. She rummaged through the papers from every city where she had been, dry panic centering in her stomach. She almost never found anything, and then she'd leave the library feeling queasy and overheated. There was only one time she saw something, a small article in the Philadelphia paper about unsolved cases. They had a picture of a man who found a human skull buried in his backyard garden, but no one knew whose skull it was. They had a picture of a little girl who had been snatched off the street. And they had a small photo of Lee, too, her hair in one long waterfall over her shoulders. It was a picture she had always hated. A small shock of relief shot through her. They had a picture of Jim, too, and underneath it read “Jim Archer, Cleared Suspect.” She had to trail the words with her finger, that's how much she was trembling, and when she came to her daughter's name, Joanna Archer, she got up and walked out of the library.

That evening, at the restaurant, she spilled an entire tray of coq au vin dinners. She gave people the wrong change so they had to call her back, she misread orders and forgot to make up bills. “Are you all right?” Valerie asked her. “You look so funny.”

“It's the outfit, not me,” Lee said weakly, smoothing down the French ruffly black apron.

She stopped going to the libraries; she was more careful listening to the radio. She suddenly didn't want to know anymore; she didn't want to think about Jim as a suspect. The image of a baby girl floated up in her head, the name repeated over and over like a slap.

She kept thinking about it. She couldn't eat. She couldn't sleep, and one morning she woke with fever. She didn't have a phone, but she had to let Valerie know she was ill. She struggled up, bundling her orange coat over her pajamas, and walked through the snow to the pay phone. Coughing, she got Valerie, but she coughed so much it took nearly five minutes to tell her she wouldn't be coming in, and then the operator broke in to ask for another quarter. “Where are you calling from?” Valerie said, suspicious.

“A pay phone,” Lee said. “I don't have a phone.”

“Everyone has a phone,” Valerie said, stunned.

“Everyone except me,” Lee said, sneezing.

She managed to get back to her apartment and fell into a deep, almost drugged sleep. That night Lee dreamed that someone was trying to break into her apartment. There was banging on her door, so loud that she woke, her heart wild inside of her. She was in the hazy half state between dream and waking. She still heard the knocking and stumbled up to make sure the door was double-locked, and as soon as she balanced her hand against the wood of the door, she felt the knocking. She imagined Bobby standing there. She imagined Jim or her father. For a moment she imagined a child, and she shrank from the door.

The knocking grew more steady, fine-tuning itself into a pound. “Lee, you're making me scared. You have to open up,” a voice called. “It's Valerie.” Lee opened the door.

Valerie had two large bags gripped in chapped bare hands. She glowered at Lee and let herself in, dumping the bags on the table. “Are you crazy, not having a phone?” she said.

Lee woozily made her way back to the pullout on the floor and flopped down, “I don't call anyone,” she said.

“You called me, didn't you?” Valerie said, “Listen, I'm heating you up some restaurant leftovers. I bet you don't have a thing here to eat, do you?” Experimentally she poked around the cupboards. “Jesus, you have to have more than tea and boxes of macaroni.”

She cooked Lee some sort of a fish stew and then sat on the edge of the bed and watched Lee eat it. Then she cleaned the bowl and swept the studio and settled onto a rocker.

“I'm just going to sleep. You don't have to stay here,” Lee said.

“Does the door lock when you shut it from the outside?” Valerie said. “Because I think I'll just sit here awhile and read.”

“Oh, please, don't do that,” said Lee, Exhausted, she pulled the covers up around her. “Please,” she said, drifting toward sleep.

When Lee woke up, the studio was spotless. In the refrigerator was a pot of stew and two glass bottles of orange juice. Fresh flowers were in a juice glass on the window ledge, pinning down a note. “Phone company coming tomorrow,” it read. “Don't even think about canceling.”

Lee stayed out all that week. Valerie came by every third day, knocking so loudly that one of Lee's neighbors answered the door thinking it was for him. Lee found she liked having Valerie there. She sat up in bed, and the two of them leafed through the magazines Valerie had brought her. When Valerie left Lee felt a little incomplete. She found she missed her.

When Lee came back to work she began eating her lunch with Valerie in the spare back room. “I thought maybe you didn't like me,” Valerie told her.

“Want my apple?” said Lee.

“You can't just be alone in a place,” Valerie continued. “You know any other people? You got a beau?”

“Nope,” Lee said.

“Well, I could fix you up with someone,” she said, and when Lee was silent, Valerie asked if she were carrying a torch.

“You think I am?” Lee said.

“Jesus, what love does,” Valerie said, with a kind of admiration, and then was silent.

“So, did he hurt you or what?” she said.

Lee pushed back her hair. It was growing longer. Just last night she had seen blond picking through the red.

“He was married,” she said finally. “No kids.” She tried to find a face, but all she could see was the small hard headache forming behind her temple.

Lee reached for a cigarette from Valerie's pack, “She was Texan,” Lee said. “From Dallas. His wife, Short blond hair. She used to run a gift shop.”

“What about him, then,” Valerie said, but Lee just shook her head. Valerie sighed. “Lots of fish in the Madison sea,” she said. “Let me know when you're ready to bait a hook.” She laughed, tossing her cigarette, still lighted, right into the sink.

One night Valerie invited Lee to dinner to meet Roy. “You'll love each other,” she said.

Valerie's house was large and sunny and filled with green plants. As soon as they walked into the front room, Roy came out to greet them. He was small, fair, and balding, and he lit up when he saw Valerie. “Well, I'm so happy to meet you,” he told Lee, but he kept watching his wife.

All that evening he kept following Valerie around, whispering things to her that made her burst into laughter. He flopped her braid between his fingers, “So, Lee, you keeping my Valerie in line, I hope?” he said. He smiled conspiratorially at his wife. Lee felt like an intruder. The two of them made her feel restless. She went into the kitchen for water, and when she came back out, they were kissing, standing in the center of the living room, Roy's hands travelling up and down Valerie's spine. Lee stood perfectly still. She felt a twist of desire so acute it nearly doubled her over, and then she walked carefully back into the kitchen for a moment.

She braced herself against the sink, then got herself another glass of cool water. There were lots of men in Madison. Students, professors, people who worked in the city. Everybody didn't have to be Bobby, she told herself. And everybody didn't have to be Jim. She could be careful. She could be certain not to make the same mistakes.

“Hey, you ready for dessert?” Valerie said. She was leaning in the doorway, beaming, Roy behind her.

“Ready,” said Lee.

6

Lee knew who Andy was the moment she set eyes on him. He looked almost exactly like Valerie, mirroring her black curly hair, rangy build, and blue eyes. Valerie introduced Lee to him. “Meet my star brother, finally back from California, He doesn't look like a judge with that gold earring and long hair, does he?”

“I do too,” he said, laughing.

“He puts away traffic offenders,” Valerie said, smoothing her brother's tablecloth. “He condemns countless couples to matrimony every Wednesday and by appointment.”

“It's a living,” he said to Lee. He was smiling at her, but as soon as Valerie moved away, his manner changed. His head dipped. He began studying the menu. “Just give me another minute here,” he said.

“Take an hour,” Lee said, annoyed at being dismissed. Brusquely she began waiting on another table, explaining to a businessman why the lobster that evening was so expensive, and by the time she was finished Andy was already lazily picking at a salad another waitress had delivered.

She began to watch him, at first because he was really the only constant customer in all her working nights. She could gauge time by him. She knew her shift was half-over just by seeing him sit down, always immersed in a book she could never quite catch the title of. And she knew she had only another half hour left when he stood up, fanning bills onto the table. He was always alone, and although he always talked to Valerie, and sometimes even joked with the other waitresses, she could glide past him with a tray of flaming cakes and he'd never lift his head.

Once, Lee noticed he left his book. She was about to call out to him but suddenly found herself crouching down by the table and picking it up, curious about the title. John Cheever. A collection of short stories she hadn't read before. Behind her she heard another waitress reciting the theme desserts. It was midwest week, and everyone was dressed like milkmaids, with broad pocketed white aprons and daintily flowered skirts. “Cheddar cheesecake,” the other waitress said. “Apple brown Betty. Chocolate cupcakes.” Lee slid the book into the pocket of her apron.

That night she stayed up until one in the morning reading Cheever. She was careful not to crack the spine of the book, not to stain a single page with a sip of the orange juice she had fisted in one hand. She didn't know why, but the pleasure of reading his book was much keener than if she had gone to the bookshop and bought her own. It felt secretive; it felt somehow dangerous.

In the morning she wandered into the kitchen where Valerie was. “Well, look what I found,” she said. “Someone'll claim it,” Valerie said. “Just leave it by the reservation desk.” When Andy ambled in that evening he did, looking pleased and grateful. He leafed through the pages.

She watched him reading other books; she waited for his easy carelessness, It was impossible, but the books he left always seemed to suit her mood somehow. A night when she was sluggish, he left a collection of H. P. Lovecraft that chilled her awake. Once, when she was in need of cheering, he left a dog-eared copy of
Catch
-22.