Sparkle (23 page)

As his mind reached out to the stain on the floor, he could hear the victim begging for mercy, and his mind answered with a mantra: Shiny Gold, it said, over and over. That’s what I call clean.

Then it hit him. There was something familiar here. And it wasn’t good.

Chapter 32

Jolie reached over without opening her eyes and shut off her alarm clock one minute before it went off. She yawned, stretched, and stared languidly at the ceiling for a few minutes before she got out of bed. She showered and dressed with an oddly light feeling. Despite her anxiety about the day ahead, she kept looking around her clean house, smiling and touching things like a child in a toy store. Everything looked new somehow, and her home felt good to be in. She would never have expected such a change from a simple cleaning. Eddie definitely knew his stuff.

If it weren’t for Mark, she thought, she would have been in an excellent mood. Maybe she’d gone too far in disinviting him from her party. Of course people wondered where he was, and she’d simply shrugged her shoulders. No doubt there would be office gossip when it was found out why he hadn’t come. And then she’d have to deal with him some more. What a fucking mess.

Jolie was thinking about Joe, too. Should she let him know what Eddie had done? Probably, but she couldn’t stop thinking of Eddie’s poignant plea that she shouldn’t tell. Clearly, his intention had been to do something nice without Joe’s help or permission. Despite the fact that he hadn’t quite pulled it off, she didn’t want him to end up feeling even worse. It was important to encourage his independence. The more he was capable of, the better it would be for both him and Joe.

Jolie did a lot of second-guessing on her drive to work. She couldn’t help but partly blame herself for the blowup with Mark. Up until yesterday, she’d actually considered dating him. Now she was going to have to deal with an awkward situation at work. Not to mention navigating the whole thing with the state.

When she got into the office, Jolie was relieved to see that no one else was around. She wanted to put her things away and get out onto the grounds as soon as possible. But before she had a chance to get out the door, Mark walked up behind her.

“Can I see you in my office, please?” he said. Then he was gone.

Jolie took a deep breath. She would compose herself and take her time, even though she wanted to get this over with as soon as possible.

But she still had to deal with the situation with the State. If Mark really wanted to make a point of it, her Saturdays with Eddie at the zoo would be in serious jeopardy. If there was any way to keep things from deteriorating further, any dignified way to defuse the situation, she needed to find it. Quickly.

After five minutes, she walked—calmly—into Mark’s cluttered office. He was sitting behind his desk, rubbing his temple and looking serious.

“Hey, Mark.” she said, as casually as possible.

Mark sipped his latté thoughtfully before speaking. “I’m moving up your evaluation.”

Jolie’s heart stopped. “What?”

Mark’s face changed completely. He tilted his head and smiled sheepishly. “Just kidding, Jolie. Jeez, lighten up. I just wanted to say I’m sorry about last night.”

“What?” Mark seemed to have a way of making Jolie’s head ache faster than anyone she’d ever met.

“I think I was out of line. But you have to believe me—I mean, if he did break into your house—”

“Look, Mark, what happens in my house—”

“I know. I know. It’s none of my business. What I saw scared me, but I overreacted. Jolie—if you knew why, you might be more sympathetic. And…I mean…did you really have to disinvite me to your party? Because that was a little humiliating.”

“Yeah. You know, I’m actually sorry for that one, myself.”

“Because everyone knew I was going to pay. It makes me look pretty stupid.”

“Phew. Yeah.”

“Would you care if I just told people I was not feeling well? Tell everyone I’ll take the crew out next week or something to make up for it?”

“No. Of course not. I actually think that would be better.”

“Okay. So there’s that.”

“So what are you saying about Eddie?”

“I guess I’ll just keep my mouth shut for now. You know how I feel.

I’ve pretty much driven it into the ground. But if anything happens to one of my employees—well, I just couldn’t take it.”

“I understand. And I take full responsibility.”

“Okay, then.”

“Okay. So…” Jolie hesitated. “Is there anything else?”

“Well. Yeah, maybe.”

“What?”

Mark scractched his cheek. “I might be crazy, but I really did want to celebrate your birthday. Can I buy you a drink tonight?”

It was another curveball. Jolie felt a little woozy.

Mark took her silence as encouragement. “I’m asking you to give me another chance. We have to work together. I think we should at least be friends.”

“You know what? I appreciate that, Mark. I really do. But I think tonight’s not such a good idea. I’ll give it some thought. But I think, at the very least, we’d better wait awhile.”

Mark looked stricken.

“I really need to get to work, Mark,” Jolie said. Her head was buzzing uncomfortably. Mark didn’t say anything more, so she walked out of his office, holding her breath until she was clear outside and the warm, clean sunlight hit her the face.

Chapter 33

After Joe left the Red Lotus, he felt completely lost. He couldn’t hang around outside the door all day waiting for Eddie to finish, although if he had, it wouldn’t have been the first time.

Instead, Joe climbed into the van and started to drive, smoke, and think. He was confused, pissed off—and scared. Between Eddie and LaVonne, things were changing way too fast, and he was struggling to absorb it all.

He didn’t like wasting time. It made him feel guilty, and feeling guilty made him physically ill. I should go get the oil changed, or at least go through the car wash. I should pay some bills. I should try to line up some more work. I should go home and mow the lawn. The thoughts hammered him relentlessly. But Joe was paralyzed. All he could do was smoke and drive.

It had taken a long time and many, many headaches to create a bearable routine with Eddie, the business, and their life. All of a sudden it felt as though it could fall apart. Not that their life was so great. But now there was all this complicated stuff with LaVonne to deal with. Joe had been given a miraculous shot at fulfilling his deepest fantasy, and he’d already blown it to hell. And God only knew what kind of major trouble Eddie would get into if he was allowed to start going off on his own.

Joe never made a conscious decision, but after cruising around aimlessly until noon, kicking himself for wasting valuable time, counting stoplights, smoking, and holding his breath, the van seemed to drive itself to the Ravenna.

What exactly did I say to LaVonne last night? Joe couldn’t remember clearly. He had been so freaked out by his dream, not even fully awake when she left. He knew it was bad, though.

Joe remembered the bone-jarring sound of the front door slamming. He winced as it finally came to him. The whole thing had started with him accidentally hitting LaVonne right in her beautiful sweet face. How could he have forgotten? Somehow it hadn’t even registered in his brain until this moment. He’d hit LaVonne. He was mortified.

But he couldn’t leave. He needed to see her, with an aching physical pain in his chest that only grew stronger and more urgent now that he realized what he’d done. She’d changed his life last night, and that was how he repaid her? He’d gone to sleep happier than he’d ever been, probably in his entire life.

Why had the bad dreams come to fuck everything up? Can’t I ever get a break? LaVonne was, if Joe was honest about it, more than his first real lover. She was also, not counting Eddie, pretty much his only friend.

Joe sat in the Ravenna’s parking lot for an agonized hour, most of it with his head in his hands, rubbing his forehead and hair. He had never been in a situation like this before. What exactly did guys do when they were on the verge of losing the best thing that had ever happened to them? Surely it would be better to let it go, to drive away and forget about her. She deserves so much better than me.

But that thought stirred something up in him. He hated lies, and something about his self-pity struck him as dishonest. LaVonne had asked him out. If he questioned her judgment that he was worth a shot, wasn’t that putting her down in a way? He was entirely willing to think himself stupid, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe it about her. He desperately wanted to believe that her hunch about him had been right, that he was worth caring about. At one time, a long time ago, he had believed it.

A thought came to him. Joe started his engine and backed quickly out of the parking lot. He was going in. He was going to talk to her. But he wouldn’t—couldn’t—go in empty-handed. He needed to apologize, but he couldn’t trust himself to express how much and how deeply he was feeling. Didn’t guys give flowers in situations like this? It wasn’t much, but it beat wasting time in the parking lot. Maybe they would help show how sorry he really felt.

The fact that he had a plan, however weak, shifted Joe’s anxiety into something resembling excitement. He drove, a little better than usual, to the huge Safeway where he and Eddie did their main shopping. He’d gone past the flower section, right next to the produce, hundreds of times but had never given it more than a passing glance.

Once Joe was in the store, his resolve began to melt into indecision. There were big, bright bouquets combining who knew what: carnations, tulips, birds of paradise, daisies, and roses. There were potted plants. There were dried flowers. As Joe picked up and examined several combinations, he felt worse and worse. All the flowers were wrapped in plastic. None of them looked very good to him.

The motherly Asian woman who worked in that section saw his indecision and came over.

“Can I help you find something?” she said kindly.

“I…I’m having a little trouble d-d-deciding,” Joe said, looking blankly at the loud tacky bouquet in his hand. He noticed the price tag, $12.99, and wondered how hard it would be to peel the sticker off.

“Can I ask what it’s for?”

“It’s…it’s for a girl.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Is it a special occasion?”

“I fucked up pretty bad,” Joe blurted, and was immediately hit by a breathtaking urge to bolt from the store.

The clerk was unfazed. “Well, in that case, you gotta get roses,” she said knowingly. “Nothing fixes a fuckup like a dozen roses…or maybe two dozen.”

“Sure, yeah,” he said, deeply relieved. He took a deep breath. “Give me t-t-two, I guess.”

“You have a special color in mind?”

Joe wanted to say red, but he shook his head.

“You wait right here,” the clerk said. “I’ll get you some real pretty ones.”

Joe stood and waited. Before long the clerk came back, nearly hidden behind a huge bunch of red, yellow, white, pink, and orange roses, overrun with white baby’s breath, the whole gargantuan mass almost odorless, tagged, and wrapped in crinkly plastic. Joe was shocked at how ugly they looked to him. Tacky. Not that he knew a damn thing about flowers.

“I arranged them special,” she said. “I think she’ll really like them.”

“Thanks.” He tried to hide his dismay. “They’re perfect.”

“Want some balloons to go with them? Women love balloons.”

“Umm…no, thanks,” Joe said. Yeah. Maybe I should get some clown make-up, too.

The flowers took up most of the front seat in the van, where Eddie usually sat. They stared up at Joe, blindingly cheerful, forced, and plainly wrong. He was more confused than ever but tried to keep his mind blank on the way back to the Ravenna by counting cars and reciting recent RBI stats for the entire Mariners lineup.

Once Joe pulled into the lot, he’d pretty much made up his mind that he wasn’t going to give the horrible roses to LaVonne. If her hunch was right, he might possibly be good enough for her. But these particular flowers definitely weren’t. On the other hand, he told himself, maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe the gesture was enough.

As soon as he stopped the van, Joe went back to rubbing his head, agonizing over what to do. What could he give LaVonne that would really express how he felt? Without actually coming to any conclusions, he opened the glove compartment and rummaged around inside. He found a small pad of paper and, after a couple of violent scribbles, a pen that worked.

He started to write. He ripped five sheets off the pad working on the first sentence, but after that the words started to flow as though he’d hit an artery. He wrote things he would never be able to say. He wrote about his feelings, about his frustrations, about his hopes. At least the hopes he used to have. He even wrote a little about his history. He wrote about things he’d never realized until they came out on the page, like about how long he had hidden his feelings for LaVonne—even from himself. He did his best to tell the truth. It felt better than anything he had done in a long time.

After nearly an hour, Joe stopped writing and lit a cigarette. Doubt started filling up the space he had just emptied out. He looked at the pad sitting next to him on the seat. He’d filled about thirty of the small pages with his hurried scrawl. If he actually gave them to LaVonne, he realized, she probably wouldn’t even be able to read them. He was too scared to read them himself.

So he sat there, stuck. He was too stuck to give LaVonne the flowers or the letter. He was too stuck to drive away.

Joe checked the time. It was nearly 3:00
P.M.
If he didn’t make a move soon, it would be time to go pick up Eddie. That got him moving. He got out of the van, empty-handed, and headed into the bar.

“I can’t really talk right now, Vonelle,” LaVonne said into the phone. “We’re pretty busy.”

The voice at the other end of the line was insistent. “You haven’t said a word to me about that man, LaVonne. I know you and I know that’s not good. I’m telling you if he does one thing to my girl—if he takes one step out of line—I’m coming over there with a big-ass ugly stick to beat his thick head—”