Leaving the Comfort Cafe (19 page)

The pie tasted bland and stale, as if the entire thing had been placed in a microwave for not enough time, and it was neither warm nor cold, just that paltry lukewarm that even Jesus would want to spit from His mouth.

It was not quite 1:30, and the remaining lunch crowd was still lingering at their tables, wondering how long they could nurse their cups of coffee before they had to go back to work…or until Grandma kicked them out. You had to order something every 15 minutes if you were just lingering. Grandma had no use for lingerers.

Blythe came behind him and put her arms around his shoulders, embracing his neck in an awkward hug as she kissed his cheek.

“I got some information on the ponies,” she said.

“Oh?” Austin wanted to be sure she put the hot pot of coffee down before he mentioned Kerry.

“Look.” She set the pot on the table, which Austin was sure would damage the Formica.

She spread a rainbow of brochures in front of him, each one with a horse on its cover. They were from the Save the Shackleford Horses Coalition. They told all the best places to view the horses, tips for travelers, where to rent kayaks and how to contribute to preserve the area wildlife.

“They even name them. They call this one ‘Darcy,’” she said, pointing to a tan mare with white mane and a white blaze down the front of her regal nose. “And this, this baby one is Luke.” She giggled. “Much better than the Luke I met at your class reunion.”

For one instant all of Austin’s insecurities and worries came back to him, and he was sure the light had vanished from his eyes. He wondered if Blythe would notice.

“Don’t get me wrong, I love these pictures of the ponies,” she said. “But wouldn’t it be better to shoot them with a longer lens from an angle…” She again held up her imaginary camera, “once again from an angle like this? Maybe you could even see your reflection in their big eyes. Have you ever noticed how big their eyes are? Horses can see in front and behind them at the same time. I read that somewhere. Isn’t that amazing?” Her sentences rambled on together like a child who had had too much caffeine before bedtime.

“Yeah. I might…we might…we might have to delay our trip a little.”

“What?”

“Just a week or two.”

“What has the mayor got you doing now? I told you, he’s all bark and no bite. You’ve got to stand up to him.”

“It’s not the mayor. It’s Kerry.”

“The girl in the picture.” Thankfully, Blythe was not holding a tray of food. If she were, she might have dropped it.

“Yeah. The girl in the picture.” Austin found it interesting that Blythe had reduced Kerry to nothing more than the girl in the picture when that picture held such deep memories for him.

“What about her?” He could hear the defensive dander starting to pick up in her voice.

“Kerry called me the other day. At work. She said…she said she was flying into R-D-U this weekend to go down the coast to South Carolina and look at some galleries.”

“Oh?” Blythe rapped her fingers anxiously on the tabletop.

“Sh—she’s getting tired of New York life.” Austin tried to make it sound like Kerry had not decided to come down just to see him. “I don’t think her gallery is doing that well. Though, I mean, some of the stuff she did was pretty edgy. Not everyone wants ottomans painted like Van Gogh. She’s thinking of trying something…you know…er, landscapes.”

“And how does this concern you?”

“She wants me to go with her,” Austin said.

Blythe looked at him expectantly. “And?”

“And, you know how you’ve got to try something just to be sure that you made the right decision that—”

“And?”

“I—I’m going down with her.”

“Why?”

“Because I, Kerry and I were very close in college.”

“That was several years ago.”

“I know, but I used to. I always wanted to go out, and I thought—”

“Let me get this straight.” She leveled a long, manicured finger at Austin, and for a brief second or two, he was afraid she might actually try to put his eyes out. “Some old girlfriend calls you out of the blue, asks you to go on an overnight trip with her and you say yes?”

It sounded so cheap when Blythe said it.

“It’s something I have to do,” Austin said. “If not, I’m going to spend the rest of my life wondering what if—”

“Don’t.” She didn’t shout, but the words screamed volumes. “Don’t even try to pin this on having no regrets or carpe diem or living life to its fullest. You men want to act like it means something really special, that you have to go and do this, and we have to sit there and be grateful, like we’re so glad you’ve gotten your head on your shoulders straight enough to make this manly decision. It’s the same way when you go off to war. You know that? Men go off to war the same way they go off with another woman. Like it’s something they have to do. Like it’s something noble when you do it. And you always end up coming back in pieces. Always. In pieces.”

“I wouldn’t call this going to war. I’m just helping out a friend.”

“Who’s going to try to seduce you the first chance that she gets. Can’t you see that?”

“Kerry’s not like that.”

“She’s a woman. She’s like that,” Blythe said.

“I wasn’t expecting her to call,” Austin said.

“Well,” Blythe rolled the word on her tongue until it sounded as if it were coming from her nose. “You still love her, don’t you?”

“Blythe, I want to be with you.”

“Well, I want to be a size four, but that’s not necessarily going to happen.”

Austin had been afraid he would break her heart. Now he was only afraid that she was going to break his. “I just want…I mean, if I didn’t—”

“If you didn’t you’d be wondering what would have happened for the rest of your life, I know, I know.”

“You do?”

“I live it every day.” She reached out and took his hand lightly, only touching it around the fingertips. “I know what it’s like to live with regret and wonder, and it’s not pleasant. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still pissed off. You’re going to go no matter what I say, aren’t you?”

“Well…”

“Aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then there’s nothing I can do about it. But when you come back in pieces, you just remember I loved you when the town board was giving you hell. You remember I loved you when I first met you and that when Kerry was in college she didn’t give you the time of day. And you’re going to have to do a lot of kissing up to me for me to take you back.”

“I didn’t plan on this,” Austin said.

“We never plan on it. We never plan on anything. We never plan to grow old, we never plan to have our transmission give out, we never plan to get pregnant, but somehow, that’s when life always seems to happen. You can’t escape it. You can only live it. I know. I know.”

“Cornell.”

“I think about it every day, why I didn’t go. It all made sense at one time, but now I’m not so sure. Since I met you, nothing has made any sense. You’re the only one who has seen me as anything more than a redneck chick working at a greasy spoon.”

“Waitress!” one of the lingerers called. “Some coffee, please.”

Blythe ignored him. “But if you want back in my arms, you’ll have to have that humble pie, sir. Yep. Lots of humble pie.”

“Do you think you could go back to Cornell?”

“Don’t try to change the subject. Besides, I’m sure my SAT score has expired by now.”

“Those things expire?”

“Of course, sweetheart.” It was the first time she had called him sweetheart. “Everything expires.”

“Waitress!” The lingerer called again.

“Screw you! I’ll get there in a minute!” Blythe barked with annoyance that Austin was afraid had actually been reserved for him.

“But we’ll still go.” Austin said. “I’m going to take you to see the ponies. I promise.”

“I promised my nephew the same thing. Lots of people don’t know I made a perfect score on the SAT. I promised him I would one day pile him into a kayak and we’d go see the horses. That after we took pictures, we’d go back to the hotel room and make scrapbooks of all our adventures. We’d name the horses, even if they already had a name, we’d give them our own special name. We’d do something. Just the two of us.”

“Waitress!” the lingerer was starting to get surly.

Blythe stood up, girding her coffeepot as if it were some mythological shield that would protect her from all the onslaughts life presented. She turned to walk away.

“Blythe,” Austin said. “Why do you love horses so much?”

“Horses sense who you are. They’re intuitive. They don’t solve your problems, but they bring out your personality. Any unresolved junk you’re carrying around with you is amplified when you get on that horse’s back. I don’t know why. It just is. Maybe I’ll study that if I get to Cornell.”

She turned and went to refill the coffee pot.

Somewhere, Austin thought he heard something break. Even worse, he knew that he was responsible, and he knew how delicate and shy the heart is once it’s in need of repair.

And that, of course, made him feel even worse.

He opened his mouth, as if by simply saying something, he could take back the hurt and pain he had caused, that he was all too familiar with…but to turn back time…if we could do that, then maybe there wouldn’t be any need for heroes.

The ride to Charleston was a long stretch of nearly nothing. Expressway driving. Large tractor trailers that blocked Austin’s view, and dead deer along the side the road that had met with a particularly unfortunate and gruesome fate. Austin also saw a road kill that he thought was a small bear. Either a bear or the biggest dog he had ever seen in his entire life.

He couldn’t quite place his finger on it, but Kerry seemed depressed. It was almost as if a small puff of bad chi had lit itself around her like a halo of cigarette smoke and refused to leave, just like the stench of a cigar never really leaves a living room.

“So how was the flight?” he asked.

“Any flight you walk away from is a good flight in my book. Want some airline peanuts?”

Austin laughed and shook his head. “So, do you ever see any of the folks from school?” He wanted to know what Luke had told her.

“Nah. My old roommate was going to come visit me and then had to back out at the last minute. She said she had the stomach flu, but I think she actually had a really hot date. Must be nice.”

It is.

“I can’t believe I’ve never been to Charleston,” she said. “I’ve lived hours from it and never went.”

“That’s always the story. You never recognize what’s in front of you. I’ll bet you haven’t even been to see the Statue of Liberty, have you?”

She laughed.

“You haven’t, have you?”

“No.” She laughed even harder now. She fiddled with her hair, holding her fingers in the same manner that you would hold a cigarette. Austin wondered what was going through her mind.

“I’ve got us a place near downtown,” she said.

Austin gulped. He had not even considered the sleeping arrangements.

“It’s supposed to be really nice,” she continued. “At first, I wanted to get a bed and breakfast place, but it just makes me feel like I’m in the middle of someone’s living room, you know. Someone else’s living room.”

“I always felt like I was on some reality TV show, rooming with strangers.”

“Yeah.” She stopped fiddling with her hair and turned to face him. “Well, you seem to have done quite well for yourself.”

“Conyers isn’t exactly New York City.”

“Not Conyers, silly. The gubernatorial candidate—what’s his name—Luke said you were working on his campaign.”

Blythe. The class reunion. The lie. Oh crap.

“Luke has a tendency to exaggerate. You know how he is.”

“Yeah, I know how he is, and he’s not impressed with anything. He never said anything nice about you until then.”

“He hasn’t?”

“Well, he hasn’t really said anything bad, either, it’s just…it’s just Luke.”

“Yeah.”

“You know, I never did like the way he treated you,” she said.

Well, that’s nice, but you’re telling me a couple of years too late.

“I hate that you have to drive all the way to Charleston. I was hoping to get to see Conyers,” she said.

“You’re not missing anything in Conyers.”

“Didn’t the Virgin Mary—”

“No. I mean, it’s kind of a confusing thing. There’s a Conyers, Georgia, and…well, you get the picture.”

“I guess you get a lot of phone calls.”

“And a lot of disappointed pilgrims,” he said.

“Isn’t that what we all are when it comes down to it. Just a bunch of disappointed pilgrims?”

Kerry let out a long yawn.

Dear God, she looks thin.

“Early morning?” he asked.

“Yeah. I had to get to the airport around five this morning—you know, to be there early in case they want to strip-search you or something.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“I really would have liked to see Conyers. If I had known, I would have just flown in to Charleston.”

“I thought you might like to take the route that goes down the coast,” Austin said, hoping she wouldn’t take advantage of that option since he had no idea how to get to Route 17 from where he was now.

“That’s fine, it’s just that I hate that you—”

“Really, really, it’s okay. I just—just had to get away from that place for a while. Work and all. It can be crazy. Everyone asking you for favors, everyone wanting this and that. You know how it goes.”

“I would have liked to have met your girlfriend,” she said.

Austin never knew how to take it when women made this remark. He couldn’t tell if it meant sincerity or if it meant that she wanted to size up Blythe to see if she could take her on in a knockdown, drag-out fight. He didn’t know if they were trying to be motherly to see if this girl really was a nice girl who treated him right, or if they wanted to see if she was prettier or had bigger boobs or something. Austin had no idea how to reply. So he didn’t.

“How is she?”

“Hm?”

“Your girlfriend.”

“Well. I wouldn’t know. We had a fight before I left.”

“Luke said you two were pretty chummy at the reunion.”