The Other Mr. Bax (16 page)

“But fate is a fixed plan with a fixed outcome,” Joyce said.

“Yeah.” He pointed at his plate with his fork. “This is making me happy.”

She smiled, and took another sip of wine. “I used to believe that… that fate is what brought us together that day in Saint Petersburg. Our meeting seemed so freakishly coincidental.”

“It seems like most everything that happens depends on an intricate set of circumstances, doesn’t it?” he said.

“Maybe what often appears as fate is nothing more than a set of circumstances that turn on our decisions,” she said. “By choosing one way over another we select an alternate set of circumstances, which we then become locked into.”

“That my meeting you in Saint Petersburg was fate, and Dana’s timing in showing up in my life was also fate?”

Joyce nodded.

“But how does this”—he gestured with his eyes and hands—“our current reality, fit in?”

“Perhaps a glitch, a bug in the program.”

Roland furrowed his brows. “I don’t like that. It leaves you with only two options: live with it, or call tech support. Both suck.”

Joyce laughed. “Sir, is it plugged in?”

“But, seriously, it doesn’t fit, does it?”

“Roland, perhaps it too is fate… or nothing is. It doesn’t exist. Anything could happen. And at some point you look back and are amazed at the coincidences and intricacies. But they’d be there no matter where you end up.”

“You might be right. Fate’s nothing more than a romantic idea we dress up the usual with, to make it unusual and interesting.”

Joyce lifted her fork to her mouth.

Roland turned and looked out the window to his right.

“Mineral Butte,” she said, chewing. “We’d sometimes take our sleeping bags up there. It’s like a big patio up there. The night sky here is so much starrier than in the east, you know? Up there, you get the whole sky. In August… the Perseids Meteor Shower. Have you ever seen it?”

“Not really.”

“Hey! We could take a picnic dinner up there some night, watch the sun set, count the stars. You want to?” Her eyes danced with expectation.

He turned back toward the window. Dana entered his mind, sitting across from him at a different table in a different world.

Joyce added, “Well, I just thought…”

“I’d like that. I love sleeping out.”

“Okay then. We have a plan.” She smiled. “You want that tour now?”

Nodding, Roland returned her smile, then rose from his chair.

“And through here…”

The piano music was still playing. Roland walked up to the entertainment center, looked again at his drawing—a visible link between Joyce’s past and the only past he knew. The drawing, though small, seemed wrapped in an infinitely complex story. Two whole, separate realities tangled around it. He gazed at the drawing, sensing a tug—subtle, like it was pulling at him, that other reality.

Joyce’s voice came from just behind him. “I look at that sometimes and am instantly taken back to that day in Saint Petersburg. It still amazes me that you were there, that we found each other, after all those years.”

T
he landscape was nearly void of life,
except for small patches here and there of cactus and other prickly, stabbing, hostile plants. The clumps of grasses growing along the old weathered fences appeared as dry and lifeless as the rocks and sand that accounted for the bulk of the terrain. Trapped by the fences, tumbleweed competed with bits of dusty, sun-bleached reds and blues, dashes of white, and the occasional metallic glint of a bottle or can. The litter thinned more and more the farther from Flagstaff he traveled. Despite the trash and the harsh environment, Roland felt an affinity for the region.

On the horizon to his left, beyond a few miles of nearly featureless terrain, were the rusty shapes of two small, worn-down buttes—like the two hills Joyce had pointed out to him, the night they’d spent on Mineral Butte.

A little before sunset, they’d filled two backpacks with firewood, and then hiked from the house to the top of the butte. From its roof, they watched the sun vanish over the mountains in the west. Joyce pointed out landmarks in the distance: Sierra Estrella, San Tan, Twin Peaks, the lights of Sacaton. A network of ravines converged at some imagined distance in the south, like silent rivers of shadow emanating from a common void. They grew quiet as the sky morphed from deep-blue-dusk to the star-speckled black of night—the waxing moon, two days from full, rose in the east, as large as ever.

Sitting, mere inches away, Joyce began to fidget. She folded her arms, rubbing goosebumps from them.

It may have been a cue for him to move closer, but Roland was reluctant to presume and be misunderstood. “It’s a bit chilly, isn’t it?” he said.

After another stretch of silence, Joyce finally hopped up and said, “A fire. We need a fire.”

Flames danced in their eyes, while the shadows around them swayed and shifted. They sat close enough to share the cookies and brandy they’d included with the night’s supplies. Joyce passed the flask to Roland. He lifted it to his lips and took a nip. As the warmth of alcohol filled his chest, he relaxed into a smile. “This was a good idea.” He glanced about as though to clarify that “this” was all inclusive, then handed the flask back.

Joyce turned his way with a smile.

“You ever been to Wyoming?” he said.

“A couple times”—her eyes shifted in a playful manner—“with you.”

He nodded.

She took a swig of the brandy, produced a huff, then said, “The Bighorn Mountains. We drove up from Chicago, camped in the Badlands. A few years later, we went back to the Bridger Tetons, and to Flaming Gorge.” She reached up and scratched the back of her neck. “I guess that’s Utah, isn’t it? On the border. Maybe it’s both.” Her eyes drifted up toward the sky. “Oh… you liked it there. Said you wanted to go back, but we’d inevitably pick some place that we hadn’t yet been to.” She drew in a breath. “I’d go back though.”

“Yeah?”

“If I had a companion.” She caught Roland’s eye, then quickly returned to the fire.

“Maybe we will, someday.”

“Yeah.”

Roland gazed into the hot coals at the base of the fire. “So, what was so great about Flaming Gorge?”

She handed him the flask. “Mmm… we camped by this narrow stream—a babbling brook. No, it was a gibbering crick.” She giggled. “You could hear it from our tent. We were in a grassy area, surrounded on two sides by trees, but still open enough to see the stars at night. Just to the other side of the stream was a steep rise of rock, like a wide plateau, on and on in both directions, maybe fifty feet high. The stream emptied into a big, beautiful, blue lake. Blue like I’d never seen blue.”

He smiled. “How blue?”

“Like the most bluest blue ever.” She grinned. “And crystal clear. We swam there. Found a rock ledge to dive from.” She sighed. “I remember sitting around the campfire one night and you saying that it felt like an old western, like John Wayne could come riding up on his horse at any moment. Hey there, partner. Why don’t cha give your ass a break from that thar saddle? Park it here by the fire fur awhile.”

A smile found its way into Roland’s eyes. Joyce’s face was alight with contentment. Roland handed her the flask. She took a sip, made a breathy “ahhh,” followed by a quick shiver.

“When was that?”

“Few years ago. August ’97.” She lifted her eyes toward the moon.

“I’m ready.”

Her eyes widened as a smile stretched across her face. “Really?”

Roland repositioned his legs, shifting his weight.

She added, “You don’t really mean it, do you?”

“Well… yeah, but… I mean...” He poked a stick into the fire. “I was just thinking out loud… wishful thinking, I guess.” A long, heavy sigh left his throat. “I don’t know what I’m saying. Maybe I’ve had a bit too much brandy.”

Joyce turned her gaze to the fire. “Well, if you ever want to.”

He looked at her. The glow of the fire on her face and the shine of moonlight in the loose wisps of hair about her head brought to mind the fairies from an old black and white movie he once saw:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. And then, for an instant, he caught a glimpse of the little girl on the swing he had fallen so hopelessly in love with as a boy. “I really
would
enjoy it,” he said.

She took another sip from the flask, coughed, then, as though feeling his eyes on her, she turned, held the flask out toward him, and in her mock-western accent, said, “I’m a-thinkin’ you ain’t no way had enough.”

“Such an ass,” he whispered, as he passed a caravan of semis. “I could’ve said yes. Sure, Flaming Gorge, why not?” He glanced at the speedometer. “Like there’s this urgent need to get back. To where?” He flipped on the turn signal, checked the passenger side mirror, then pulled back into the right lane, ahead of the leading truck. His eyes were pulled to the right. A set of train tracks had been within sight since leaving the Flagstaff area. Three engines, pulling an endless string of freight cars, slowly crept ahead.

“Mrs. Bax,” he said. “Joyce Bax…”

T
he exit onto Broadway was backed up
to the beginning of the ramp; the morning traffic was heavier than usual. Joyce stopped at the end of the queue, reached up and twisted the rearview mirror toward her. Her eyelids were slightly pink and puffy—evidence of the cry she’d had earlier. She visualized Roland behind the wheel of the station wagon and wondered if he was thinking of her too. She knew in her heart that her fantasy of him falling in love with her was nothing more than that—expectations and thin hopes. She was fine with the hopes—it was the expectations that she now regretted. She’d kept reality at bay for the three days he was there, but then, the moment his car disappeared down Olberg Road, it was right there in her face.

A car horn beeped—a nudge. She jolted back to the moment at hand, lifted her foot from the brake pedal and crept forward a few yards. Again, she studied her eyes in the mirror, then readjusted it so she could properly see behind her. Something Roland had asked her the day before came to mind. They’d gone for a walk down Olberg Road, west, toward the reservation. She’d slept little the night before, their night on the butte, the same as Roland. He’d admitted that much as they walked along in the afternoon sun. He’d admitted, too, that his sleeplessness was largely due to his excitement over being there.
That
got her attention. But then, fanning that spark of curiosity, he added, “What was it like meeting me at the art festival in Florida? Did you somehow recognize me? How’d that happen?”

His interest in her past, their past—she cherished that story. The world had suddenly become dizzy with promise.

The last few cars between her and the signal turned up Seventh Street where the traffic was more fluid. Joyce glanced at the clock on the dash.
Coffee
… She’d not had time to make any before leaving the house. A picture of the coffee maker in the break room popped into her mind—a grimy glass-beaker, a cup or less of charred black acid, left there for the most desperate. She thought of the coffee shop across from the bank, two blocks from the office. She’d be a little late, she realized.
But who cares
?

T
he “Welcome to New Mexico” sign
appeared unlevel. But it was the state, not the sign, that was skewed—that particular portion of it. Roland crossed the border with a feeling of displacement, as though he was not actually going somewhere—only leaving somewhere—a feeling he’d become too familiar with in recent months.

Paying little attention to the drab landscape scrolling by either side of the road, he let his thoughts drift back to the day before—the walk down Olberg Road with Joyce, and her account of the art festival in Saint Petersburg. As she described their meeting, he imagined himself there, alongside her. He sought that moment of revelation—the recognition and realization that he had so often fantasized about, though never
truly
believed in.

After all those years, she still remembered him, as he did her. And there was something she’d said that struck him as particularly revealing. “Our first night out together, our first date, we went to a Mexican restaurant in Ybor City, Casa la Pita, I think it was. We had margaritas at the bar, while waiting for our table. We talked about Selma, the school, being kids—reminiscing, you know.” She kicked a pebble from the road, then turned and squinted into the daylight. “You told me you’d never stopped being in love with me. I don’t know why, but I was embarrassed by that. Maybe it was that I felt the same way, but thought it was silly… a childish fantasy that I’d worked hard at letting go of. You’d sometimes say things, things I think most people would keep to themselves, perhaps for good reason.” She produced a self-conscious chuckle, then continued. “I remember thinking about it later, about what you’d said. I was a bit puzzled by you.” She nodded. “But I wanted to see you again… more than anything. I guess I really liked that about you… your willingness to take risks.”

He’d looked at her, staggered a little as though he was losing his balance, but then quickly regained it. She gave him a brief smile, just a quick shrug of the lips, and said, “Is that your experience? I mean, do you remember being in love with me?”

He had stopped. Then, a few steps ahead of him, Joyce stopped and turned to face him. “I mean, ever,” she’d said, “Selma, after Selma, before you met Dana.”

An old blue pickup truck whizzed by. Two Latin American males, a big yellow dog parked between them, were seated with their backs to the cab, staring blandly over the tailgate. Roland gave the speedometer a glance: ten miles under the posted limit. He applied a little more pressure to the gas pedal.