Lake Overturn (42 page)

The absurdity of the situation finally sank in. Wanda turned to the girl. “Who are you?” she asked.

“Hank?” whimpered the girl, hitching herself toward him a bit and running her hands nervously over her belly as if it were a crystal ball. Wanda could see that she was a good way into her second trimester.

“Answer her,” Hank said. “You don’t gotta be afraid.”

“I’m Misty.”

“What the hell are you doing in my house?” Wanda said.

“Could ask you the same damn thing,” Hank said, still smiling.

“What do you mean? This is my house.”

“Your name on the lease?”

Wanda allowed her knees to buckle and she sat in the chair. It
was
his lease. Where would she go, to Randy and Melissa’s? No. She had sworn to them, no more surprises.

“What do you want, Hank?” she asked. “Money? I don’t have any.”

“I don’t want yer money,” he said.

“Then what?”

“Wanda, I don’t want nothin’ from you. I don’t want
you
or nothin’
from
ya.”

“Hank!”
Misty said. Hank continued to smile menacingly at Wanda, so Misty turned to Wanda. “He wants his place back. He needs it. We’re gonna have a baby.” The girl’s head was shaped like a pear, with a black ponytail springing up where the stem would be. Her bottom lip, painted a shade Wanda had seen labeled “coral” at the drugstore, hung open insolently, in invitation to the fight, although her puffy, dimpled hands still shielded her belly. The gash of her mouth seemed to have been cut into her flesh in a permanent frown.

“I’ve lived here three years. This is all my stuff. You can’t have it.” The obvious nature of everything Wanda said allowed her to say it softly.

“We don’t
want
your
stuff
,” Misty said with a disgusted shake of her head that caused that bottom lip to jiggle. “We want Hank’s place back. He’s been lettin’ you live here—”

“Lettin’ me live here? Look,
Misty
, you obviously don’t know jack shit about this situation, so you better just stay out of it.”

“I’ll beat your ass if you keep talkin’ to me that way.”

“Hank never even moved in here. He went to Chandler, and I moved in. I paid the rent. I got the furniture. This is all just plain crazy.”

Hank snuffed a disdainful kind of laughter. “I don’t know what you girls’re arguin’ for. There’s nothin’ to argue ’bout. I live here. Have for most of the past week. Case closed.”

“Where’s all your stuff, then, Hank?” demanded Wanda.

“Here and there.”

“I thought you had a place in Chandler.”

“Didn’t work out.”

“Well, you can’t live here.”

“You just don’t get it, do you, Wanda? I
do
live here. It’s you that
can’t live here
.” He yanked Misty’s hand out of her lap to hold it and leaned back into the couch in a tense display of ease.

“So, I guess I better call the police,” Wanda said.

“Exactly,” said Hank. “I was hopin’ you’d say that. Can’t wait to show ’em my copy of the lease.”

Wanda felt tears rising. “And what’ll you do when I come take away all the furniture?”

“Jump for joy,” Hank said, scowling. “It stinks. Like you.”

M
ONA
L
ISA
F
ONDUE
was Eula’s one and only “nice” restaurant. It occupied a converted nineteenth-century blacksmith’s shop, which had, for the last twenty years, housed one after another nice restaurant that failed. The last one had been an Old West–themed restaurant, for which they had done an extensive build-out with fake storefronts on the walls (“Last Ditch Saloon,” “General Store”) and balconies hanging over “Main Street,” the large dining room. Stars and a large crescent moon glowed on the ceiling. These decorations proved so expensive that the restaurant for which they were made had quickly gone broke, and Mona Lisa Fondue, which served fondue and other French specialties, inherited the incongruous interior.

From the balcony, which Jay had reserved specifically when he called over a month ago, long before he worked up the nerve to ask Liz, the two could see dozens of pastel-clad couples. “Oh, look,” Liz said. “Joel’s wearing a top hat. Oh my gosh! And he has a cane!”

“What a dork,” Jay snorted. “Why isn’t he with Christine?”

“She’s Nazarene,” Liz answered.

“Right.” Dancing was forbidden in the Nazarene church, so its kids attended “prom alternative,” a banquet.

They fell to silence.

“Knock, knock!” Troy Whitehead stood at the balcony’s entrance, holding closed the lapel of his butter-yellow tuxedo. One of the members of Winston’s and Jay’s gang who had joined the boxing league, Troy had a tiny Band-Aid over a scrape on the bridge of his nose. “Am I interrupting anything?”

“No, come in!” Liz said, obviously relieved.

“My date’s boring me, so I thought I’d come up and offer you a little . . .” he looked from side to side, though there was clearly no one else on the balcony, and opened his jacket, “. . .
fire water
.” A deep inner pocket held a bottle of whiskey.

“Oh, I think we’re doing all right,” Jay said.

“Well, if you need me, I’m ’round the corner by the hitchin’ post.”

After going over Liz’s plan for the summer (an internship at the
San Francisco Chronicle
) and Jay’s (“Oh, I think I’ll go somewhere new for a while, maybe Seattle, see what happens”), and briefly discussing Abby’s situation (“Her mom’s not doing well”), the two found they had little to talk about. Liz cleared her throat, and Jay adjusted the napkin in his lap.

Then Liz let out a nervous, breathy laugh.

“What?” Jay asked.

“You know what I’ve never been able to figure out? The roller rink. Why the roller rink?”

“Oh,” Jay said, sitting up. “It was a clue, to help you figure out it was me.”

“But why?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“Did we go there when we were little?”

Jay’s eyes darkened as clearly as if a blind had been drawn behind them, and Liz knew she had said the wrong thing. She had forgotten something that Jay remembered.

For a moment, and only a moment, Jay considered telling her. But if she didn’t remember, she didn’t remember. “There was a Baggie full of water,” Liz ventured.

“It was ice when I put it in there. I thought you were going to come that day to get it. You didn’t, and it melted.”

“Ice?” Liz said. “Is it a riddle?”

“Where’s our food?” Jay grumbled. “I’m gonna go find the waiter.”

“Wait, it’s only been—”

Jay skidded down the narrow staircase to Main Street. He went to Troy’s table, slipped the bottle into his own jacket, and took it to the men’s room.

I
T WAS DARK
when Enrique got home. Lina was watching TV. “Where you been all day,
mijo
?”

“Riding my bike.”

“Should I fix something, or should we go to McDonald’s?”

“I don’t know. McDonald’s?” He rubbed his palms together and gazed absently at the TV. His eyes were bloodshot and his face drained, except for his crimson cheeks. This was how he always looked after hours of riding.

Earlier this afternoon, Enrique had heaved open the heavy metal door and entered the cool, foul-smelling bathroom of the Greyhound station. The first time he had done this, a few weeks ago, he had actually needed to pee. As his eyes became accustomed to the light, he had been disappointed to see that he was alone. The bathroom was shaped like an L, with a trough urinal and a line of sinks in front and a row of doorless stalls around the corner. He peed in the urinal, then rinsed his hands in the sink. So many letters had been scratched onto the thick plastic panels that protected the mirrors that he could barely make out the words, let alone his reflection behind them. The subsequent times Enrique ventured in, it was because he had seen men go in before him. They quickly zipped up and charged out as soon as they saw a kid among them. Enrique himself, with his heart pounding in his ears, returned to his bike and rushed away, standing up to pump the pedals more powerfully, swearing to himself and to God he wouldn’t go there again.

Today the men had scattered, all but one. He was a slim man with gray in his hair. He wore a windbreaker and jeans. He remained at the urinal as Enrique took his place at its farthest end and turned to shelter himself from view. Enrique opened his pants but didn’t take himself out—he hadn’t really needed to pee. Wave after powerful wave of adrenaline surged through his body, shaking him. With effort, he steadied his breath. This was worse than the day he had found
Working Out
at the bookstore. The man stood patiently with his hands at his sides. There was no tinkle of urine. Finally Enrique built up enough courage to cast a furtive glance over his shoulder, and there it was, shocking, even though he had expected it: the man’s fully erect penis standing straight out, almost comically, like a cartoon tree limb that would snap off, sending the cat crashing down while the bird flew merrily away. Enrique quickly looked back to himself, down to his own, much smaller penis, which was arcing painfully against the fabric of his underwear. He couldn’t help it; he had to look again, and when he did, the man pushed the thing down, causing it to bounce back up, then bob up and down—again, cartoonishly: a dopey nod,
Hello
.

Enrique zipped up and fled.

He played the game he sometimes did, where he was biking on water, splitting it into great sheaves that V-ed behind him like the Red Sea under Moses’s staff. If he slowed down, he’d sink. It took hours of hard riding across all the world’s ocean to get it out of his system.

And he hadn’t even seen the man’s face.

Lina said, “Connie asked me to feed Gene dinner the next few nights.”

“Huh?”

“She’s going somewhere. Kansas.”

“Did you say yes?”

“Of course.”

“Mom! I don’t even
like
him anymore,” Enrique said, walking to the kitchen.

“So what? You can eat in your room if you don’t want to see him. Connie asked me for a favor, and I’m doing her a favor.”

Enrique drank orange juice straight from the carton.

“Stop that! Who do you think you are, Jay? Use a glass.”

“Gene’s a creep,” Enrique said, placing the carton back on the shelf. “Everyone thinks so.”

“I’m not thrilled about it either, Enrique, but I tol’ her I would do it, and that’s that.” She leaned forward to pick her keys up off the coffee table. “Let’s go. You want Sizzler?”

“Really?” Sizzler was Enrique’s favorite.

W
ANDA CROSSED THE
street, wandered through the junk-strewn front yard, and knocked on Darrell’s door. The dog ran with a crash through the house and barked and barked, but no Darrell. Whose phone could she use to call Coop?

She hadn’t seen Gideon in months. She still avoided walking past his apartment, not because it was a temptation to drop by anymore but because it was a reminder of the pathetic old Wanda who would bum drugs off any loser who had them. But at least he was sure to be home. She crossed the street again and walked down the row of apartments.

Gideon, when he answered the door, looked worse than ever. His V-neck undershirt hung more loosely against his bony, hair-matted chest, his teeth looked browner, and one eye appeared to have grown more alert while the other threatened to fall asleep. “Wanda,” he said with a knowing nod. “Well, well, well. Wanda.” He opened the door wide and bowed like a butler.

“Mind if I use your phone, Gideon?”

“What, no ‘Hello, Gideon’? No ‘How are you, Gideon?’ No ‘Haven’t seen you for a while, Gideon’?”

“Sorry, I’m not havin’ the best night.”

Gideon yanked at the cord and handed over the phone, then shook a cigarette out of a pack, and started moving newspapers and takeout containers around on the coffee table, looking for a light. Wanda called Coop and asked him to pick her up. “I’ll explain when you get here. Thanks.” She hung up and turned to Gideon, who smiled his old dirty-joke smile.

“What?” Wanda said.

“Is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“What I been hearin’.”

“Depends on what you been hearin’, but I don’t feel much like playin’ guessing games.”

“Well ain’t you all high and mighty all of a sudden! What I heard is that you took up with a couple. A rich couple in Portland.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I heard you was their third.”

Wanda turned away. Suddenly hungry, desperately hungry to the point of nausea, she reached into her pocket, where she kept a Baggie of crackers for just this kind of situation. She popped one into her mouth, then another. “That’s disgusting,” she said, chewing, “and you’re disgusting for believing it.”

Gideon drew his lips over his teeth in a smug smile. As usual, he seemed pleased by Wanda’s insults. “Makes sense.”

“What?”

“It makes sense. You haven’t been around, you show up all high and mighty lookin’ rich and taken care of. It all kinda fits with what I heard, that you’d been bought.”

“Thanks for letting me use your phone, Gideon,” said Wanda, rising.

“Oh, simmer down. I was just joshin’. Come on, Wanda, let’s have a chat. Ketch up.”

Wanda sat back down, eyeing Gideon as if at any moment he might pounce.

“I got a new hobby,” Gideon said. “My own invention. You might like it. I call it Gideon’s Bible, for lack of a better name.” He reached down between his knees and drew the Monopoly game from under the couch, which was where he had always kept the pot.

Wanda leaped up. “I’m gonna wait outside,” she said.

M
ISS
H
OLLY HAD
been stationed in the “café” on the gym’s balcony to keep couples from making out in the dark recesses, but it was still early and the plastic lawn chairs were all empty, so she perched herself against the railing and watched the dance floor slowly fill. The eighties were more than half-over, and finally Eula kids had allowed themselves to enter the decade. Hairstyles and prom dresses were at last asymmetrical, and the sheen of rayon and hair gel caught the light. It was only the odd girl here and there who wore the prairie dress that ruled last year’s prom. Miss Holly had grown up in California, where the kids snatched up every new fad and fashion and with dizzy abandon combined them into new ones, and it saddened her that here in Idaho preachers and parents cowed the kids into hiding in the fashions of five years ago.