My Deja Vu Lover (18 page)

  
After that it was all about what Macbeth wanted and I told him so and he laughed at me. His face made me angry until he laughed. The gap in his front teeth made him look so human, I couldn’t stay angry.

  
We drove to a large empty parking lot, which meant we drove quite a way out of the city to one of those dead strip malls that hadn’t yet met a wrecker’s ball. Blackened leaves blew across the cracked concrete of the lot, along with scraps of paper. The surface was blotched with old oil stains and dirty water and stuff I didn’t want to try to recognize.

  
“What are we doing here?”

  
“Eat something,” he said.
             

  
No use arguing with the man. I dug into the bag and
 
finished the fries and handed back the burger. Gave him my stubborn stare because the line had to be drawn somewhere and the burger was where. Hate the things, too much fat and my stomach wasn’t going to take that. Despite the wishful thinking of alpha types, depression does not improve appetite.

  
“Okay,” he said, all toothy smile, “then let’s get on with it.”

  
“Get on with what?”

  
He opened his door, got out, came around to my side, opened my door, and stood there wearing his happy face. He had discovered the solution to world problems, apparently.

  
“You are going to learn to drive.”

  
I clutched my paper coffee container so hard the lid popped off and the whole thing went flying out on the parking lot.

  
“Are you insane?” I screamed.

  
He was. Insane. He stood there with light mist settling in diamond drops on his neat brown hair, and glittering wetly on his face, leaving dark streaks on his jacket and his Nikes. Only the creases in his jeans seemed immune to the damp.

  
In a slow, grade school teacher voice he said, “April, your problems all started with a nightmare about a car crash. I’m not asking you to drive a car out in traffic. Just learn how to drive. Here. Around in the parking lot. There’s no one else around, nothing to hit, and I will be right next to you.”

  
“No, no, no!”

  
“If necessary, I can pull on the emergency brake. So you won’t run into anything, I promise.”

  
“No, no!”

  
“My car is in very good condition. The hand brake works well. And if I have to, I can reach the steering wheel. You’ll be fine.”

  
“No.”
 

  
He had me down to one no. He also had hours more of lecture ready and so finally, with a whole lot of protesting, I told him my rules. He wouldn’t follow them, we both knew that, but at least it gave me a small hope of limits. At least he wouldn’t suddenly suggest I drive out into the street.

  
“Ten minutes,” I said. “I’ll do this for ten minutes.”

  
“Takes longer than that to explain. All right. You will actually drive for ten minutes? Fine, come on.”

  
He led me around the car hanging onto my elbow as though he thought I might escape. To where? The strip mall was closed, out of business signs slapped on dark windows. The street was a blur of traffic, no crosswalk in sight. Not a lot of choice. I slid behind the wheel and expected to go into convulsions right there.

  
Mac closed the door and returned to the passenger side. After he was settled, the first thing he did was put one firm hand on my shoulder.

  
“Try to focus,” he said, which no doubt meant that he, too, expected me to go into convulsions. “Look down at your feet.”

  
“Huh?” Wasn’t expecting that. He surprised me into forgetting to be terrified. And then he explained the pedals, the steering, gears, way too much stuff, and I tried to follow what he was saying and at the same time pretend I was someplace else.

  
He told me to put my foot on the brake, and then turn the key and step by step, because I was so busy listening, he tricked me into sitting behind the wheel of a car with its engine humming.

  
“Now isn’t this easy?” he said. “Okay, very slowly, ease your foot up on the brake.”

   
No, it wasn’t easy, and when I did what he said the car lurched forward and I panicked and jammed the brake pedal to the floor and threw us against our seatbelts.

  
Macbeth kept up the “that’s better” lies between muttered oaths. He also completely ignored his promise to honor my ten minute limit.

  
An exhausted half hour later, when I’d sunk from loud screaming to soft blubbering and moaning, he finally agreed I could stop the car. And the lesson. We’d circled the lot about a million times. I could make the damn car go forward and stop and start and turn, but reverse was so impossible that even Macbeth agreed to let reverse go for another day.

  
Fat chance I’d ever get into a car with him again but I let him dream.

  
“That wasn’t bad,” he said, after we changed places and he was back behind the wheel. “You just need to focus, April. Don’t let your mind wander. Nothing to be afraid of. See how stupid your nightmare was? A car isn’t hard to control. You aren’t going to run head-on into anyone on a sunny day on a dry road.”

  
And then, while my head continued to ache, he gave me another long lecture about wet roads and snow and ice, as though I would ever be driving over the mountains.

  
Could have told him to get real. Waste of breath. Macbeth always was real. If he couldn’t see it, touch it, hear it, and probably the need to smell was in there, too, it didn’t exist.

  
Fortunately the day was, by that time, dark. Car lights reflected off every wet surface. He didn’t expect me to do anything other than sink down into the passenger seat on the way home. Must have drifted off. Next thing I knew he was shaking my shoulder.

  
“Okay, sleeping beauty, we’re home.”

  
I stumbled out of the car, followed him up the walk and into the house, and I must have dreamed again because in my mind I heard Laurence’s lying voice saying he wanted to marry me.

  
Had I ever been as dumb as all that, clinging to a lying bastard?
 
Oh. Right. Same bastard, different name. And a lifetime later still using the same line about calling me soon.

    
There was a difference, though, wasn’t there? Laurence’s wife was his excuse until she died. Then he was free, and he still said he loved Millie, but at the same time, he was dumping her. Graham’s wife was his excuse and she was alive, he wasn’t free, and he was dumping me.

  
Did Graham even have a wife?
 

  
“Careful there,” Macbeth said and caught my arm to steady me when I tripped on the door sill. “You look zonked, babe. You only drove for thirty minutes. Now you’ll blame me for wearing you out.”

  
“You bet,” I mumbled and then I added, “Go home and shut up.”

  
He laughed at me, pushed me toward the couch, said something about goodnight, see you later, and was gone. And there I was in a dark empty apartment with nothing to do but ask myself questions about Graham.

  
Okay, so the apartment wasn’t dark because of course Macbeth had turned on all the lights before he left, but it might as well have been dark. I couldn’t see past the doubts growing in my head.

  
Plus this. What really happened to Millie Pedersen?
  

CHAPTER 18

  
“You’re turning into that revolving door thing in Evita,” I told Tom when he stopped by to flake out on the couch and to tell me all his troubles. Like he expected me to have answers.

  
“Not intentionally. And anyway, it’s all your fault.”

  
Pushing his curls back from his forehead, I said, “No, it’s your eyes. Women drown in your eyes.”

  
“I could flash a wedding ring and stop all that.”

  
Was that why Graham didn’t wear a wedding ring?
 
I said, “Who are you going to marry?”

  
“That’s a problem. I guess I haven’t met a keeper. If they’re not breaking up with me, I’m trying to break up with them. I need to get out of town for a week.”

  
His latest girlfriend was Sandra. We’d met at the Mexican restaurant and from the first glance I knew old Tommy was in big trouble. She had “wanna get married” written all over her, plus a five year plan in her eyes. Engagement ring, fancy wedding, buy a house, and by year five the second baby should be on the way.

  
Why she hooked on to Tom was a puzzle, but maybe he hadn’t explained his inadequate salary.

  
“Sandra’s stalking you?”

  
He shrugged, looked embarrassed. “Stalking I could handle. She’s getting buddy buddy with my mother.”

  
As Tom lived with his parents, I could kind of understand his mother’s motivation. It probably ran more along the lines of hoping he would move out than of wanting a daughter-in-law to move in.

  
“And she phones every half hour.”

  
“Let the voice mail get it.”

  
“Not my cell. She phones the house. Mom answers.”

  
“Got no solution for that one.”

  
“I do,” he said and told me his crazy plan. “We could take off a week, fly back to that town in Minnesota you’re always talking about and see what we can dig up.”

  
“You and me?”

  
“Why not? Cyd and Macbeth can’t get time off work. But you don’t have that problem and I need to get out of town.”

  
“What, Sandra has a brother with a shotgun?”

  
Tom groaned. “I could face a shotgun. It’s Sandra I can’t take any more.”

  
“Have you told her that?”

  
He threw up his hands in a gesture of defeat. “What, tell her that I don’t ever want to see her again? Is there a nice way to do that?”

  
“You’ve broken up with women before.”

  
Probably I was being a little bit mean because of course I understood the problem. I’d been through it with guys. Breaking up stinks because there’s always one half of a couple who doesn’t want to break up, clings, thinks talking things out will solve the problem.

  
As though he read my mind, he said, “She keeps saying she wants to talk. What’s to say? It’s not like we had a misunderstanding.”

  
“Yes, you did,” I said, because I knew him so well. “She understood that every time you said you loved her, you meant it. And you understood that those are just words you say when you’re making out.”

  
He stared at me, those dark eyes wide, and then he sighed. “Yeah, I suppose. Something like that. So, let’s go research this Millie mystery.”

  
A research project, Tom to the core. Never mind that it was my life and my fantasy and my problem, he was ready to apply his anthropology excavation skills.