The Heart You Carry Home (15 page)

It felt odd to have this stranger's hands on her. They were different than Ben's hands. Shorter, thicker fingers.

“You're sexy,” the man said, and instead of feeling offended, Becca smiled. Why shouldn't a man call her sexy? The hands began a descent down her lower back and onto the back pockets of her jeans. She let them linger there for a moment, then changed her mind and moved them back up. “Don't push it,” she said, and the man laughed.

They danced in silence for a second slow song and she let her partner pull her even closer, his belly ballooned against her torso. Moving in and out, his stomach and chest felt uncomfortably alive. How strange, she thought, to feel the inner workings of a person whose name you didn't know.

A fast rockabilly number came on and Reno cut in. She hesitated, but he just shook his head. “Come on, girl, you've had a couple beers, gotten a tattoo. You could do worse than dance with ol' Reno.”

Every time he twirled her out, she felt like she was about to crash into the other couples, but just at the brink of disaster, he'd pull her back, safe.

“Watch the hand!” she shouted, worried that Reno was going to grab her wrist right over the fresh tattoo.

“I gotcha!” he called, as though she were dangling over a cliff, her feet kicking into the abyss. She thought she might throw up, but then Reno put one hand firmly on her back and they danced more calmly. Gradually, the world stopped spinning.

“I like you better like this,” he said.

“Like what?”

“A little drunk and without a damn pole stuck—well, you know.”

Reno was only slightly taller than Becca, and dancing with him, she could see his face up close in a way she hadn't before. His skin was burlap tan and the furrows around his quick eyes made him look older than he appeared from a distance. He couldn't have been much younger than her father.

“I like you better when you're not a total hard-ass,” Becca said.

“That really is what you think about me,” he said, turning her slowly.

“You never gave me reason to think otherwise.”

“You know what I think, Becca?” She stiffened, her easy feeling fading. “I think you set your mind against most people and refuse to budge.”

She started to protest, but Reno shook his head. “I get it, okay? I know why you do it.”

He rocked them both, left, then right. He turned her in a slow circle, still swaying to the music.

“It's not true,” she said.

Reno looked at her in a joshing way that said,
Lies—after all we've been through?
She looked back at him as though to say,
You may be right, but you'll never hear me admit it out loud.

The song ended. “Thank you for the dance, Miss Becca,” Reno said and gave a little bow.

Becca felt, suddenly, a swelling in her heart. It was sadness and uncertainty all mixed together. “Reno, what was in Kath's letter?” She knew she must have looked awfully weak to him right then, but she didn't care.

Reno fixed his eyes on hers, and Becca believed that he was finally going to tell her everything. But then his eyes shifted to something over her shoulder. “Brace yourself,” he said.

Becca turned to see a tsunami of frosted bangs rushing at them, led by a bosom that looked ready to burst from its denim halter.

“Becca!” The woman squealed like a teenager. “I can't believe I'm finally meeting you!” Becca shrank back, afraid she'd be knocked over. Instead, the woman grabbed her shoulder and pulled her into an embrace. It felt more like a throttle. The bruises screamed.

“King, she's the cutest thing. I mean, she's perfection.”

“Perfection,” Reno mimicked.

Set free, Becca looked around for her father. He was hiding behind Bull as though cowering from this explosion of feminine excitement. Who was this person?

“Oh, I envy your shoulders, Becca,” the woman said. “So narrow! Those are model shoulders.”

Becca had never once thought about her shoulders. “Thanks?” she offered.

“I mean, just look at these hunks of flesh! I look like a linebacker.”

“Elaine, you haven't even introduced yourself,” Reno said.

“Oh!” The woman's eyes widened beneath eyelashes that looked coated in tar. “Well, I'm Elaine. Your daddy's woman.”

King has a girlfriend?
Becca was too stunned to feel hurt for being kept in the dark.

“You're about as dainty as they come,” Bull assured Elaine, and Becca saw her father blush deeply. It wasn't exactly true—the woman's halter exposed skin that had clearly wrinkled beneath unnatural UV light. Her arms were more or less skinny for a woman in her fifties, though she'd deftly hidden her stomach paunch with high-waisted jeans. Her belt, Becca noticed, was stamped leather. Clearly, a present from King.

“We have so much to catch up on!” Elaine winked at Becca. “But first, your daddy's promised me a dance.”

No way,
Becca thought and then watched in astonishment as her father followed Elaine to the dance floor. He just
went
, like dancing was simply something you did at a party where a band was playing. Which it was—for normal people. To be fair, what King was doing now could not be called dancing, exactly. His body jerked and folded and stretched and there was this expression of intense concentration on his face, like the activity was extremely complicated. Periodically, Elaine took his hand and tried to pull him into a rhythm. It never worked. They'd fall out of step, trip over each other, and then separate until Elaine coaxed him back into line. She smiled and didn't seem to mind the mess that was King on the dance floor.

“Horrible, ain't he,” Reno said. Becca nodded dumbly.

The song ended and Elaine returned. “Let's get to know each other,” she said. “I've heard so much about you.”
I've heard zip about you,
Becca thought but she followed Elaine anyway. “Truthfully, it's good to have girlfriends to drink with, since, you know, I'd never drink with King,” Elaine said as they walked toward the bar. “He says he doesn't mind, but I prefer not to have a beer when he's around. It doesn't seem fair. Don't you agree?”

For the next thirty minutes, while they sat at a picnic table drinking Coronas, Elaine talked about herself. She was a nail technician in town but was studying acupuncture. She'd been riding motorcycles for nearly twenty-five years, ever since her husband—now ex-husband—informed her that women “weren't fit” to ride. Elaine was living outside Flagstaff, Arizona, at the time, and the very next day, she'd gone to the DMV for her motorcycle license. Then she put her entire savings—all forty-two hundred dollars of it—toward a bike. “A beautiful bike,” she said wistfully. Her husband had gone ballistic over the purchase. “He was a red-necked, dimwitted brute,” she said and explained that the man had beaten her for years. Through all of this, Becca noticed that Elaine's voice sounded cheerful, as though she were discussing a great movie she'd seen and not the tragedy of her marriage. “Of course he tried to stop me,” she said. “But things had changed. I had the bike!”

“You ran him over?” Becca asked, incredulous. She wasn't sure that she liked Elaine, but the woman was certainly impressive.

“No, nothing like that. I hit him with a lamp. But I felt like that motorcycle had given me special powers. The lamp, by the way, was an antique my mother had left me. The metal base must have weighed twenty pounds. He took it right in the chest. It was like a kick from a samurai or something—only it was a lamp!” Elaine shook her head, as if even now she couldn't believe it.

Elaine said she hadn't looked back, had just jumped on her bike and gotten the hell out of there. “I might have killed him for all I know,” she said. This was over a decade ago. She'd met King at a motorcycle rally back in 2002. She was there with a motorcycle club called the Biker Bitches. “Biker Bitches!” she said gleefully. “I don't have my vest on tonight or I'd show you our patch. It's a motorcycle with pink headlights. Some of the gals think it's silly, but I love it. Anyway, I spotted your daddy in the crowd and I just had to talk to him. Everything he's been through, it boggles the mind. He wasn't sober yet, but he was trying. And I knew I could help him. I could be his rock.” Elaine raised her beer to her lips only to discover that she'd already finished it.

“Wow” was all Becca could say. Beneath her astonishment at Elaine's story, she felt the itch of jealousy. Was she the only person on earth who didn't know anything about her father's life? She wanted to hate Elaine. The woman seemed less a rock than a swamp of emotion. But King was doing okay and if Elaine had played any role in helping him, then who was Becca to judge. Also, unlike Jeanine, Elaine gushed understanding.

“So what about you, honey? I bet you and I have plenty in common.”

Becca wondered what Elaine knew. Did the woman hope to bond over their both having fled their men in the middle of the night?

“You know, I get this sense about you,” Elaine continued. “You can take care of yourself. Not many women these days really do that. They don't have the—the wherewithal. Now, you don't have to thank me for the compliment,” she added quickly. “I'm guessing that compliments make you uncomfortable. Same as your daddy.”

Becca blushed. Maybe she was warming to Elaine. Or maybe the sudden tenderness she felt for her was from a more calculating impulse: Elaine could provide information about the enigma that was Kleos.

“Now, let me see what you've got under that bandage.”

Becca hesitated. “I'm supposed to keep it covered.”

“Oh, just a quick peek!”

Slowly, she unwrapped the gauze.

“Is that not the dearest thing!” Elaine turned Becca's wrist this way and that, evaluating the design like it was an intricate work of art. “I'm going to give your daddy a talking-to. He'd better understand how lucky he is to have a daughter like you.” She pulled a tissue from her pocket and dabbed her eyes. “Sorry for the display. Menopause. Makes me batty. More beer?” She stood up and was back in a flurry with two more Coronas.

“Elaine,” Becca said, after they'd sipped for a while. “I was wondering. My dad is so quiet. Not like . . .”

“Not like me.” Elaine nodded. “Oh, don't I know it.”

“But then how do you—I mean, does he show you—” Affection, emotion, love? Do the two of you
communicate?
These were the questions Becca wanted to ask.

“I love your daddy more than I've ever loved any man, Becca. And I know I love him so much because I'm still with him. We've had to work hard to get where we are.”

“He was willing to work?” Becca said.
Willing with you,
she thought,
but not me.

“I spotted him at that rally and I went to him, Becca. I almost always go to him. You know what I mean?”

Becca picked at the beer label. “And that doesn't bother you? Don't you want things to be equal?”

“Our relationship isn't about equality. Not for me, anyway.”

“Then what's the point?”

“Love,” Elaine said, as though this were obvious. “And perseverance. That's what your daddy and I are all about.” Elaine laughed and added, “We also live a couple of states apart, which I guess helps us get along.”

Later, Elaine took Becca back to the dance floor. Drunk, the woman turned belly dancer, all undulating hips and snaking arms, even during the hair-band songs. It was a strange way of moving, but Becca found it oddly beautiful. She wanted to try it, but even with the alcohol working through her, she felt shy. She did not like making a display of herself. But why not let loose a little? Why not try on someone else's way of doing things for a couple of hours?

She imitated Elaine, tentatively, and Elaine smiled wide; Becca understood that if a movement made her feel happy, it was perfect. Her head began to feel like a giant wineglass, with the wine swirling round and round. She had not been so drunk in a long while. At one point, she'd tried to calculate her alcohol intake. A bunch of beers before Elaine, a double shot of whiskey, then the beers Elaine bought her. A random biker had presented Becca with a hard lemonade, claiming to know what “girls” liked. Becca was about to throw it in his face when Elaine fixed her stare on the offending hunk of leather and said, “Girl? This here's a woman.” At that, they'd both burst out laughing. Were there more drinks after that? Possibly. There were certainly more men. Generally, when Becca consumed this much alcohol, she'd planned ahead. Ate a big dinner, at least. But tonight there was no plan.

A man who was not King started dancing with Elaine, and the Mexican appeared again and started dancing with Becca. This time she let him pull her in so that they were pressed together and she could smell his beery breath and cologne and feel her hand warm in his hand and his other hand on her lower back, slipping lower to rest not quite on her ass. Then the Mexican moved away, as though the music were a rope pulling him backward. And there before her was Reno, dancing with her, smiling as if to say,
Fancy meeting you here.
He offered her his hand and she took it without really thinking too much, just noticing a faraway voice that said,
Be careful,
and she'd laughed at this voice because for the first time in weeks, she just didn't care.

Becca felt like she owned Motorcycle Mountain. She felt as though she were the Queen of these bikers, Queen of this music, Queen of her destiny.

The music slowed. Elaine was dancing with King, and Bull was grinding with some townie. But Becca wasn't on the floor anymore. She was leaning against a picnic table under the sky, and there was another beer in her hand, and a group of men and a couple of ladies, none of whom she knew, were standing around, and they were all laughing about something. Someone was pointing at the sky, which was bursting with stars. The music was close but also distant. And for a second, the tent was a big top, and King and Elaine and the other dancers were circus performers, and Becca was in the audience watching them. But that picture faded when she felt someone lift the beer from her hand. Then that someone took her hand in his own and she saw that it was Reno, and there was that voice again saying,
Careful now,
and her brain saying,
Shut up,
which she must have spoken out loud because Reno said, “Huh?”