The Wishbones (15 page)

“That's a good point,” said Julie. “I definitely don't want to rule out a conga line.”

“As far as the music goes,” Randy went on, “I'm happy to be
as traditional or adventurous as you want. If it suits you, I can supply a whole night's worth of Sinatra and Madonna and Kenny Rogers. But if you want reggae or salsa or anything like that, just say the word.”

Instead of answering, Julie again consulted her watch. Her eyes widened with melodramatic alarm.

“Yikes,” she said. “I hate to cut this short—”

For the first time, Randy betrayed his eagerness.

“So, is it a deal?”

“Well?” Julie turned to Dave, beaming her approval. “What do you think?”

By that point, Dave had pretty much accepted the fact that Randy had the gig and would do a decent job of it. But cool as he was, Randy was still a DJ, and Dave couldn't imagine breaking the news to the Wishbones.

“Whatever,” he said. “Your dad's writing the check.”

Julie's smile slipped a little.

“You know what?” she told Randy. “I think we need to talk this over a little more. Can I get back to you in a couple of days?”

“Not a problem,” Randy said, falling back on his earlier posture of complete indifference. “Do what you have to do.”

Before they left, Julie asked to use the bathroom, which was located at the far end of the apartment, down a long hallway. She was barely out of earshot when Randy jumped up from the milk crate and beckoned to Dave with an urgent movement of his hand.

“C'mere,” he whispered.

Groaning to himself, Dave rose from the couch and reluctantly approached the DJ, expecting to be the victim of some gentle man-to-man arm-twisting to close the deal. But Randy surprised him.

“I don't mean to pry,” he said, keeping his voice low and confidential, “but there's something I need to ask you.”

“Yeah?”

“That girl you were with at the Westview? The bridesmaid with the glasses?”

Dave's brain snapped to attention; his body felt suddenly electrified, alert to danger.

“What about her?”

Randy cast a quick nervous glance in the direction of the hallway.

“It's an awkward question. I mean, people's lives are complicated. It's not my business to judge.”

“I'm not following you.”

Randy winced. “She kind of gave me the impression that you and her—”

Dave couldn't believe this was happening.

“You know Gretchen?”

“I bumped into her out by those Dumpsters on my break. We had a great conversation.”

Dave shook his head. He felt Miles Davis peering down at him, not quite hostile, not quite amused.

“She didn't tell me,” he said, more to himself than to Randy.

The toilet flushed, the explosive sucking sound of it audible down the length of the apartment.

“So I guess I misunderstood her,” Randy said carefully.

“I guess you did.”

The bathroom door creaked open. Julie's clogs smacked smartly on the wooden floor. Randy leaned in closer.

“There's only one problem,” he confided. “I didn't catch her last name. You wouldn't happen to know it, would you?”

Dave's insides flooded with relief as Julie stepped back into the room, mouth bright with a new coat of lipstick, hair shining the way it always did after she'd brushed it. She was wearing old jeans and one of those tight ribbed shirts Dave was glad had come back in style. She looked good. She looked like her mother.

“Sorry.” He laid his hand regretfully on the DJ's shoulder. “Wish I could help you out.”

It was dark outside, oddly desolate. Dave's Metro was parked in the shadows, near a hulking green Dumpster bathed in the glow of a streetlamp. There was something almost purposeful about this tableau, as though it had been arranged to showcase the simple, bargelike beauty of the receptacle.

“What was that all about?” Julie asked him.

“What was what all about?”

“Your little conference with Randy.”

“Just the usual chitchat.”

“It looked like you guys were plotting to overthrow the government.”

Dave unlocked the passenger door and walked around to the driver's side. Julie wasn't suspicious as far as he could tell, just curious. He could have let the matter drop, but for some reason he felt like talking.

“He was asking about a girl,” he reported, slipping behind the wheel and yanking the seat belt across his chest. “He wants to find out the last name of this bridesmaid from the wedding we played the other night.”

“How come?”

“He's got a crush on her. He wants to ask her out.”

“Do you know her?”

Dave started the engine and clicked on the headlights. The beams landed on the side of an apartment building up ahead. A woman was framed in one bright window, washing dishes with an air of almost religious devotion.

“Nope,” he said.

They bounced over four speed bumps on their way out of Chestnut Gardens, then turned right onto Springdale Avenue. The
movie theater was only five minutes away, in the center of downtown West Plains.

“It can't be too hard to find out,” Julie told him. “Doesn't Artie keep a list of all the people in the wedding party?”

Dave hesitated, unsettled by this oddly practical turn in the conversation. He should have seen it coming, except that his brain had been overwhelmed by the simple, thrilling fact that he was discussing Gretchen with Julie and getting away with it.

“I don't know,” he said. “Even if I knew her name, I'm not sure it would be ethical to share it with Randy.”

“Ethical?
What's ethical got to do with it?”

“Think about it. We don't know the first thing about this woman. Maybe she's married. Maybe she's got a boyfriend. Maybe she's not interested in Randy.”

“If she's not interested, all she has to do is tell him.”

“If she was interested, she probably would have told him her last name.”

“Huh,” Julie said, acknowledging his point. “All I'm saying is that if I were single, I'd be happy to get a call from a guy as cute and interesting as Randy.”

“You think he's interesting?”

“Yeah,” she said. “But not half as interesting as you do.”

Dave didn't argue. He turned into the parking lot behind the theater, distracted by the question of why Gretchen hadn't mentioned meeting the DJ even in passing. An irrational feeling of jealousy seized him as he pondered the scene—Gretchen stoned and barefoot, Randy in his Hawaiian shirt, turning on the charm. The worst part of the feeling was that he had no right to it whatsoever. What claim could he have on her? For all he knew, she was off in some Village cafe at that very moment, drinking wine with the guy in the stovepipe hat, and that was none of his business either.

They bought their tickets and entered the theater with a couple of minutes to spare. The previews hadn't even begun yet.

“So was she pretty?” Julie asked as they settled into their seats.

“Who?”

“The bridesmaid.”

Gretchen's face appeared in Dave's mind with haunting clarity, as vivid as if it had been projected onto the blank screen looming in front of him. Her wary eyes and sexy haircut, her downturned mouth and odd, pointy nose. He thought about the way her breast fit his hand, and how close he'd come the previous night to staying in bed with her, not coming home at all.

“She was okay,” he said. “A skinny girl with big eyeglasses. Nothing to write home about.”

Two hours later they emerged from the theater as if in mourning, Julie dabbing at her eyes with a crumpled yellow Kleenex, Dave rubber-legged, emotionally frazzled.

The Bridges of Madison County
had been an unexpectedly difficult experience for him. It wasn't so much that he saw any direct parallels with his own life: Meryl Streep didn't remind him of Gretchen—or of Julie for that matter—nor did he see himself as some kind of vagabond romantic figure like Clint Eastwood, a cowboy with a camera. The landscape and lifestyle of rural Iowa made him wonder if suburban New Jersey was such a dull place to live after all.

Despite its sluggish pace and disappointingly tepid sex scenes, the movie simply made him ache for Gretchen in such a hungry and direct way that he almost couldn't bear it. He just wanted her to be there with him, bathed in the light from the screen, her knee touching his through two layers of denim. He wanted to suck flat Coke through a straw that had touched her lips only seconds earlier.
And he wanted to watch her expression as she watched the movie, to explore the fresh mystery of this woman who seemed to have turned his life upside down in a matter of weeks. The need to connect with her grew so strong that he got up in the middle of the movie, supposedly to use the rest room, and tried to call her from a pay phone in the lobby. Her line was busy, a circumstance that, though frustrating, had the effect of calming him down a little. At least she was home, and probably alone. But who was she talking to? A friend? An old lover? Some guy she'd just met? It pained him to consider how little he knew of her life, her romantic history, what kind of future she envisioned for herself.

Luckily for Dave, Julie was in no condition to notice the state he was in. A big fan of the book, she began sniffling a half hour into the movie, long before anything sad had actually occurred, and worked herself into a state of out-and-out weeping by the time the credits rolled. They were halfway home by the time she finally felt composed enough to pocket the Kleenex and make a stab at conversation.

“So what do you think? Did she do the right thing?”

“Who?”

“Francesca.”

Dave kept his eyes on the road and shrugged like a disinterested party.

“Depends how you look at it, I guess.”

Julie seemed disappointed by this answer. “Depends on what? It seems pretty straightforward to me. The woman gives up her one and only chance at true love because she can't bring herself to abandon her husband and family. Happiness or duty? Which do you choose?”

“It's not that simple. If you hate yourself you can't be happy. And she would've hated herself for leaving her family. So happiness wasn't in the cards for her either way. It's a false choice.”

“No it's not,” she said, annoyed by his logic. “They loved each
other. I mean, what would you do five years from now if you met someone and fell madly in love with her? Would you stay with me just because it was your duty?”

Dave pretended to consider this scenario, but his mind was pretty much empty except for a growing sense of dread. This was not a conversation that could do anyone any good.

“It's too hypothetical,” he said. “I need to know the details. Do we have kids? Are we getting along?”

“I can't believe you're so wishy-washy.”

“Well, what about you?” he shot back. “What would you do if you fell in love with someone five years from now?”

“Me?” She laughed triumphantly. “I'd dump you in a minute.”

“Thanks,” he said, not quite sure if she was teasing him or not. “It's good to know these things in advance.”

“In a heartbeat,” she continued, in a needlessly emphatic tone. “Robert Kincaid shows up and I'm out of here in a heartbeat.”

“Great. And I'm left alone to change the diapers and slop the hogs.”

“You know it, buddy. And in a couple of weeks, those hogs are gonna be lookin’ mighty good to you.”

As soon as they began kissing in the rec room, Dave experienced for the first time the full force of his infidelity, the sadness and shame generated by the act of touching one woman while desperately wanting to be touching another. It was a low-down, hollow feeling, complicated by a powerful surge of tenderness for Julie, a desire to protect her from the humiliating reality of the situation.

It occurred to him, while worming his hand under her tight shirt to massage her full, almost watery, breasts—so different from Gretchen's, so utterly different—that this deception would have been easier to live with if he'd resented Julie or felt somehow
betrayed by her. But that wasn't the case at all. He
loved
Julie. That was an indisputable fact. The problem was, he
wanted
Gretchen, and that, at least at the moment, was more than a fact—it was a low-grade fever, a physical truth, the news his blood kept bringing him as it sloshed through his body.

Still he plowed on, stroking Julie's hair, kissing her mouth and neck, grinding against her in a halfhearted simulation of urgency. It was disheartening to notice how ritualized their lovemaking had become, how easy it was to coax her along the worn path from sitting to lying down, from fast breathing to slow purring to suddenly squirming out from under him with a move that would have made any Olympic wrestler proud and landing with a thud on the floor—

“Wait!” she gasped. “We need to talk.”

“Huh?” He peeled his face off of the couch and sat up, trying to look puzzled instead of alarmed. “Did I do something wrong?”

She arranged herself in lotus position on the floor. Her face and neck were flushed a deep pink, the color of desire and embarrassment.

“It's not you,” she said, still breathing hard. “It's us.”

“What about us?” He spoke carefully, keeping his voice calm and neutral.

She brushed her hair out of her face and looked up at him. Her expression grew shy and hopeful.

“It's just—I've been thinking about something for a while now. A kind of experiment.”

“Yeah?”

She shifted her gaze to her right knee, causing her hair to fall back in her face. She looked sexy like that, he'd always thought so.

“I want our wedding night to be special,” she said.

“Me too.” He made a conscious effort to look open-minded and agreeable. “Are you worried it won't be?”

“I'm not talking about the ceremony,” she said. “I'm talking
about afterward, when it's just the two of us in the hotel room. That's what I'm worried about.”

“We'll manage. That's the one part we've never had any trouble with.”

She peered at him through the curtain of hair, twisting her engagement ring around and around her finger. She toyed with it constantly these days, often staring at it for long intervals, sometimes rubbing the tiny diamond back and forth across her lips.

“Remember how it used to be? When nothing even came close?”