Rats Saw God (15 page)

“I don't know,” Dub said weighing the tapes in her hands. “My putting completely sucks.”

She put the Neil Diamond cassette in, nevertheless. Lush sounds of Spanish guitars and violins glided out of the speakers.

Right mood/wrong generation. If I were taking a middle-aged woman home, I'd have to pull the car over right now to be ravaged. My future with Dub was less certain. My stomach threatened to convulse with each block nearer we drew to her front door.

As I docked the Lincoln in the Varner driveway I checked the windows of the house to see which had lights still on: two upstairs… downstairs was dark save the porch light. This time I managed to make it around the car in time to open the door for Dub. As she got out, I stupidly put my hands in my pockets. She took hold of my biceps anyway. I tried to flex very slowly, so she wouldn't notice me doing it. When we made it to the door, she spoke.

“Thanks for taking me to the dance. I know I've been kind of a bitch all week. You didn't deserve that. It's just sort of a girl solidarity thing.”

I wanted to say, “You're right. And now that you're my woman, don't let it happen again or I may just cut you loose.” But what I said was, “It was my fault.”

“No, it wasn't. It wasn't your fault, and if you want to know the truth, I wasn't acting that way because I was sticking up for Rhonda. I think I was just being jealous.”

“Really?”

After I said it, she just looked at me. Three or four seconds maybe. She was savoring the moment. I don't think it mattered to her one way or the other whether I tried to kiss her. She was a scientist measuring my response. She smiled as she reached up for the front door handle. I'm not sure where I found the nerve, but I grabbed her hand. We quickly weaved our fingers together. I reached out for her shoulder with my other hand and leaned in toward her mouth. Her empty left hand came in under my arm and intercepted my head. At first I thought she was going to stop me. Instead, she held my chin softly and guided me toward her lips. I had snuck quick lip licks on the walk to the porch, but I was afraid her staredown had allowed them to dry and crack. It didn't matter; hers were wet enough for both of us. She kissed me softly. Slowly she moved from my lower to upper lip. Her hand let go of my chin. She brought it up to the back of my neck, running her fingers through my hair and leaving her thumb on my ear. Then she backed away. She looked at me and tried to stifle a laugh. I think I was smiling pretty big.

Though an electric fan rotated methodically and a lone window was open as far as the crank-controlled school sort allow, the stench left no doubt that someone had puked in DeMouy's office. The buzz of the fluorescent lighting punctuated the fact that DeMouy wasn't, for the first time since I had been sent to him, jamming to the sounds of Mother Nature. The man himself looked disconsolate. Slouched in his chair, DeMouy rested his cheek against the back of his overlapping hands, which in turn covered a disorganized pile of memos and forms on the desk. The counselor had lost his trademark crispness. The routine Japanese precision of his hair part had given way to a three-day-hike-in-a-stocking cap matting. A line of blood was beading up across the visible side of his neck. His creased tie hung from his desk lamp, and black coffee replaced herbal tea in his Far Side mug.

“Rough day?” I asked.

I could see DeMouy focusing on me. I decided I should try to help.

“DeMouy,” I queried, “did you have a happy childhood? Do you remember not getting something you always wanted for Christmas and really hating your parents because of it? Was going into education a way to get even with them?”

“I sent for you yesterday,” he answered coldly.

I thought about returning when he was in a better mood. Whatever he needed me for could wait. I finished scanning the office: trash basket on its side, fern branches broken, mop bucket filled with detergent-blue water.

“Did I miss a fight?”

DeMouy nodded.

“And somebody puked?”

He nodded again. He raised his torso, and I saw that his button-down featured a wet spot roughly the size and shape of Connecticut. He began halfheartedly sorting through the papers on his desk.

“You've never had to break up a fight before, have you?”

DeMouy found the college info he had been searching for and handed it across his desk to me.

“I'm thirty today,” he said.

“Kids,” I said, shaking my head.

The next day Dub and I decided to drive down to Galveston. I dressed in attire more befitting nonconformist convention—muskrat-holed blue jeans graffitied with lyrics to my favorite songs, Screaming Trees T-shirt, oversized lumberjack-thick flannel overshirt, dragonfly fishing lure earring (used to catch porpoises and eels). We lunched at Captain Pegleg's on a deck that overlooked the typically wimpish Gulf noted for its eighteen-inch-high waves breaking ten feet from the shore, packed brown sand, and detergent green water. We were the only two who chose to eat outside in the cold, and our middle-aged waitress seemed unimpressed by our stoicism. Afterward I took Dub to see a movie. I made a couple of disparaging remarks about the projectionist's obliviousness of a focus problem before inching a tentative pinkie over to Dub's hand. We shared a bucket of popcorn and a large Pepsi. We drank from the same straw.

It wasn't difficult to find a deserted stretch of beach where we could park. Dub didn't ask where we were heading, and I didn't volunteer any information. I had a kite wedged behind her seat that I would use as Plan B if Dub started freaking about my tender notions. My timing was perfect, though. I pointed my car toward the ocean in time to catch the last few minutes of the sunset. I pushed in the
Best of Bread
eight track that I had cued up to “Everything I Own.”

“Rico suave,”
Dub responded.

We watched the sunset through her passenger-side window. I delighted in the back of Dub's head. She turned to say something, but I reached over and kissed her. We kissed with the gentleness of the previous evening, but Dub started making noises low in her throat and was soon licking my teeth and biting my lips. I made my first tentative probes of the inside of her mouth. My left arm was supporting all my weight, though, and it began to shudder. I leaned back and pulled Dub across my lap. We made out furiously. I didn't even worry that she might notice my car wasn't a standard.

The curved, carpeted walls of Mom's cubicle provided nearly 270 degrees of wasted bulletin board potential. I was tempted to make use of it for her. I don't know how she gets anything accomplished with all the crap strewn across the top of her desk. I swear, she's messier than Sarah. Manila folders and faxes covered most of the work space and buried the nameplate declaring this the domain of C
INDY
B
LACK
, R
EAL
E
STATE
A
GENT
. The only items she had tacked up were citations as top seller for the last two quarters and
photos—one each of Chuck, Sarah, and me. The shot of me had been taken the summer after my freshman year. I stood beside my supervisor, Mr. Lozano. We had posed, unintentionally, like farmer and wife in
American Gothic.
I held my rake in the same determined manner as my precursor gripped his pitchfork. Even then I was taller than my boss, though my chest was concave and I could have played Peter Pan in just about anyone's cast. I wondered if she chose this particular photo because it recalled the prepsycho, dope-fiend days of Steve.

When I first visited Mom here more than three years ago, I couldn't see over the cubicle walls. Now I rested my chin on top of one and waited for her to get off the phone.

“Well, hello,” she said, replacing the phone on its hook. “It's been a long time since you've been down to the office.”

“I was thinking of getting a place. You know, striking out on my own.”

“Ah, and what price range were you looking at?”

“Oh, something in the ten-twelve range,”

“Mil?”

“No, dollars. Ten to twelve dollars.”

“We're going to have a tough time finding something with a pool in that bracket. A young, single man like yourself probably wants a pool.”

“What the hell. I'll go fifteen. Man, you're good.”

“Yes, I am,” my mother said. “So what really brings you down here?”

“Sarah,” I said. “She asked me to talk to you about the Pearl Jam concert.” Mom crossed her legs and folded her arms across her chest. “Okay, here goes.” I had rehearsed most of
this on my way to Mom's office. “I know all the people Sarah's going with. Well, not really know them, but know who they are. They're a regular who's who at school—all good kids, teacher's wet dreams, straight arrows. And Sarah… jeez, you know as well as I do she'd be a
total
bust as a rock and roll degenerate. She's too careful and levelheaded. I mean, she might sign a pact with the devil, but she'd check him out with
Consumer Reports,
just to make sure his customers were getting good value for their souls.

“Besides, most of these people are just friends. They're not looking at this as a romantic getaway. And even if they were, what could they do in a hotel room with six other people?”

Mom unfolded her arms and began tapping the eraser tip of her pencil on a mound of forms. “And what about the drinking?”

“Everyone drinks. At least Sarah is abnormally responsible. I don't think she would get in a car with anyone who was fu— messed up.”

“Are you planning to go to your father's wedding?”

This certainly came from left field.

“I haven't thought much about it. When is it? I didn't read the invitation very carefully.” I knew the wedding would be in Houston, a town in which I had sworn never to set foot again.

“The beginning of August.”

“I don't think so.”

“It would kill your father if you didn't show up for the wedding.”

“I doubt it. He didn't even call to ask us.”

“He was probably afraid to talk to you, afraid the two of you would fight. Communication never was his strong suit, or yours
for that matter. But I know him—he needs you and Sarah there. Sarah will go, but I'm not so sure about you. I can't make you go.”

“There's more to it than just that….”

Mom leaned toward me and took my forearms, just like she had Sarah's outside that Broadway theater years ago.

“I know, honey. I know.”