This is Just Exactly Like You (28 page)

He wants her to tell him other things. He wants to know about her dance recitals, her failed tryouts for the soccer team and the school play, her broken arms. All of a sudden, he wants to know everything. He says, “How did you end up here, anyway?”

“Here where?”

“Here in North Carolina. At Kinnett. With Canavan.”

“We never told you guys any of that before?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Tell me again.”

“Can we go up on one of these piles first? I want to sit up there. It feels like we’re at some ancient ruins or something, all these mounds everywhere.”

“Sure,” he says.

She points at the pine bark. “How about that one?”

“Ants live in it,” he says. “Let’s do the cedar.”

“Ants?”

“They nest in it.”

“What do you tell people who buy it?”

“Wear gloves,” he says. “Plus it’s just black ants. It’s not fire ants or anything.” He walks over to the cedar, then up in it, carrying the cooler, his feet sinking in to the tops of his shoes. He makes it to the top, ten feet off the ground, and turns around to help Rena, who’s scrabbling up after him on all fours. She’s got another towel from the truck slung over her shoulder. They get set up, spread the towel out, and he gets beers for each of them.

“You can see a lot more from up here,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says. “The inside of the dump truck, the roof of the office, the satellite dish over there on the Shell—”

“I think it’s pretty up here. Don’t ruin it.”

“Who says I don’t like looking at the bed of the truck?”

“Just don’t fuck it up, OK?”

“I’m trying not to,” he says.

“Good,” she says. “Keep at that.”

From up here he can see Butner’s tomatoes all lit up by the light they’ve got hung up on the pole, their only security measure. It’s all an enormous tangle, vines on top of vines. There might be fruit in there already, little blotches of red in all that green. Soon enough they’ll get the tables set up out front, sell them for two bucks a pound. Drag the big plywood sign back out from behind the office: TOMS. Jack wonders how much Butner might have stashed away in coffee cans in his back yard, under his mattress. Thousands.

Rena says, “The market wasn’t great, and my research wasn’t great. And I didn’t care much about being at an R-1.”

“What?”

“You asked how I got here. I applied, and they hired me. Same as Beth.” She leans back on her elbows. Her shirt bunches up around her sides. “And as for Terry, we met in a plain, dumb way. Over sandwiches at this place that’s not even there any more. We were in line, ordered the same thing, and he asked if I wanted to share a table. He turned out to be funny. I’d given up on finding anybody at Kinnett. Everybody’s either already married, or they’re sociopaths. One of the two. Do you know Stephen Budbill, in Accounting?”

“I don’t think so,” he says.

“I dated Stephen Budbill for a few months. Then he wanted me to go on this trip with him, to Chattanooga, to some conference thing where people dress up like wizards and cast spells on each other and pretend to stab each other in the woods.” She shakes her head. “My boyfriend was a wizard. And not even. A pretend wizard. He had a purple cape. He showed it to me.”

“Did you go to Chattanooga?”

“No. But he made me go to some local thing in Raleigh one weekend. There were these guys there, in the parking lot of this branch library, hitting each other with swords. Real swords. And they’d made their own chain mail. Stephen knew them. After that I broke up with him. So Terry seemed—I don’t know. Normal. Not a wizard. That’s all I’m looking for, really,” she says. “Give me a guy who’s not a wizard, and I’m fine.”

“I’m not a wizard.”

“I know. I looked all over your house for the pointy hat.”

Moths are circling in the lights at the Shell. A car rides by on 61, music blaring out the windows, bass rattling the trunk. She yawns, and he watches her neck go tight, loosen again. “How long do you think this whole thing might go on?” he says. He’s asking her, he realizes, because he thinks she might know the answer.

“That depends on what you mean.”

“How long do you think Beth’ll live with Canavan?”

“I have no idea,” she says. “I don’t know whether him cutting his leg off will make this go on longer or not.” She picks at the cooler. “What about you? How long are you planning on living in your dollhouse?”

“I like it over there,” he says. “I like the lawn furniture.”

“That’s because you’re still just playing at it,” she says.

“Maybe so.”

“You want to be able to set your shit up wherever you decide.”

“I like sitting in the plastic chairs and watching TV,” he says.

“You seem to, anyway,” says Rena.

“How long are you going to stay in the condo?”

“At least as long as Beth’s living with Terry,” she says. “So we’re back to the beginning.”

“What the hell’s happening here?” he says.

She digs a toe into the cedar. “You ask too many questions.”

“Beth says the opposite.”

“Beth isn’t here,” she says. “And by the way, I’m not coming on to you. That’s not what this is. This is two grown adults having a little beer at the end of the night. There may be some physical contact between us before we’re all done. But I think the situation warrants all of that. I think we’ve got some leeway.”

“I’m still not sad,” he says. “Just so you know.”

“Oh,” she says. “You’re sad. Look at your fucking house.”

“I don’t know,” he says.

A car pulls into the Shell, up to the air and vacuum. “Why’d you kiss Sarah Cody?” she asks.

A man gets out, puts money in the air machine. Jack can hear the coins landing in the bottom of the canister. The compressor kicks on, and he works on his left front tire. “I kissed Sarah Cody because she was cute, and because she kissed me.”

“So why’d you kiss me?” she asks him. “Same reason?”

“That,” he says, “and I enjoy your company.” And other reasons he’s having trouble naming.

The tire guy leaves, and the highway goes still. No cars, no trucks. She says, “Alright. Here’s what I propose we do.” It is hugely quiet. “We are going to sit up here and finish our beers,” she says. “And we’re going to wait until one more car comes into the gas station.” She sips, wipes her mouth. “And after that, I think I’m going to throw myself at you, and we’ll just see what it is that happens next.”

“That seems a little dramatic,” he says.

She holds up a handful of cedar. “I’m sitting on the world’s largest hamster cage,” she says. “My boyfriend tried to maim himself, and your wife is over there washing his socks. We have been to Gubbio’s. We are now right here at Mulch City. The situation calls for drama, Jack.”

“You think so.”

“I do think so,” she says.

Three cars go by, all in a row. None of them stop at the Shell. Jack drinks his beer, looks down at the dump truck. “Do you think he’s actually asleep in there?”

“Let’s say he is,” says Rena. “As an indication of his faith in all of this.”

“His faith in this?”

“Yep,” she says.

There’s a little bit of wind. It’s hazy. A red pickup, an old one, Toyota or Datsun, pulls into the Shell, pulls up to a gas pump. A girl gets out, tall, pulls the nozzle down off the thing and starts filling up. Jack didn’t see her take the gas cap off, didn’t see her open the little door on the side of the truck. They both must be missing. She’s smoking. Everybody smokes over there. Cherry’s got a tin of cigarettes on the counter, sells them for ten cents each. Jack imagines the whole thing going up in flames, imagines running down there with the towel, or a blanket, trying heroically to put her out.
There was nothing we could do. And then the whole thing just blew up.
She pulls the nozzle back out of the truck, hangs it up again, digs in her pocket, comes out with money. She walks into the store and the bell rings against the glass door. Rena moves toward him. His heartbeat speeds up. He can’t right now remember the last time he kissed Beth. He remembers touching the back of her neck while she sat at the kitchen table, remembers bringing her another cup of coffee. The girl comes back out again, bell bouncing. She gets in the truck and pulls her door shut—she left it open the whole time—and drives back out onto the highway, a cloud of bluish smoke behind her. Jack has a good sense of where each bone might be inside his body, gets an idea of his vertebrae stacked one on top of the next. His hair itches. His mouth goes dry. Rena comes at him on her hands and knees, straddles him, is on top of him, pushes him down into the mulch. Even though this will untie his entire life, it feels familiar, like he knows how to do it, or like he could learn, and she’s kissing him, and she may be crying again, or she may just be sniffling because of the cedar—and he reaches for her, reaches for her shirt, pulls it up in the back. He’s touching her skin, feeling out the plane of her shoulder blade, moving back down to the waist of her jeans, slipping his hand under, one finger finding the last of her backbone in the cleft of her ass. She’s a rubber band. A spring. She kisses his ears, his neck, his chest through his shirt. He works his hand around to her hip, feels the outcrop of bone there, pushes against her, wraps a leg around hers. She’s tiny. He feels something starting to shift underneath him, feels them moving an inch or two, then a little more, and realizes too late that what’s going on is that the whole mulch pile is getting ready to give, and all at once they’re sliding down the back of it, a little avalanche, the smell of closets, of pet stores, and when they hit the wooden wall at the bottom, the cooler hits right after them, cracks open, spills ice and cans of beer everywhere. Rena’s already laughing and trying to stand, and Jack gets himself upright, sits up, trying to figure out exactly what happened, what’s happening. The cedar chips keep coming down the pile in a little trickle. Mulch is everywhere: In the cooler, in their hair, in his shirt.

He says, “Are you OK?”

“I hit my head,” she says, still laughing.

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so,” she says. “You?”

“No,” he says. “I’m good.”

“I’ve got wood chips down my pants,” she says.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault.” She unzips her jeans, pulls them down to her knees and shakes them out. She pulls on the waistband of her underwear, looks in there. “Nope,” she says. “I’m unscathed.” He stands up, too, shakes cedar out of his sleeves. There’s dust in his nose, in his throat. She leans over, runs her hands through her hair, shakes it out. Her jeans are still down around her knees. He looks at her in the half-light. When she stands back up straight, she says, “Stop staring at me.”

“I’m not staring,” he says. “Just looking.”

“You’re staring.” She pulls her jeans up, rebuckles her belt. “Shit,” she says. “Maybe it’s a sign.”

“It’s not a sign,” he says.

“Everything’s a sign,” says Rena. “From one god or another. We’re just lucky they’re not down here raping us any more.”

His heart’s still going hard. He’s sweating. And he’d like to take her home, which can only be one more misstep in a long, long line, but it’s still what he wants. “Let’s get out of here,” he says.

She looks at him. “Oh, yeah?”

“Let’s go home, take a shower, and go to bed.” He’s got clean sheets on the mattress. He put clean sheets on this afternoon, felt like an idiot doing it, did it anyway.

She stands there. Another car pulls into the Shell, a white Ford. She says, “OK, Jack. Let’s go home.”

And without saying anything more about it, they climb around the cedar pile, leaving the broken cooler and the beer where it is. When they get to the truck, for a minute Jack’s afraid Hendrick won’t be there, that he’ll be standing across the highway, hands at his sides, repeating safety tips.
Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires. Stop, Drop and Roll.
But he’s fine. He’s right there, on the bench seat, asleep, face down and ass up in the air. Jack gets Rena up into the cab, shuts the door as quietly as he can. When he starts the engine, Hen moves around a little, but doesn’t fully wake up. The air smells like rain. Jack pulls out onto 70, makes the familiar set of turns that take him back into Greensboro.

He thinks about Bethany standing in their kitchen, back from Chicago, looking at the back wall, trying to understand it, trying, possibly, for ways to tell him that it would be beautiful if he ever finished it. Thinks of her standing in Canavan’s front hall, waiting for him to drop Hen off. Thinks about what it is that he might be doing here with Rena in the cab of his truck, what they might talk about tomorrow. When they get home, Yul Brynner greets them with the full show. Jack gets Hen put to bed, gets the door open the right number of inches, gets the nightlight shining in the correct manner. They shower, one at a time. Rena’s waiting for him when he’s done. Yul Brynner’s already asleep again on the floor by the TV. He takes her into the bedroom. She laughs at him, takes off her towel, takes off his. He reaches for her. Her hips feel like golf balls, like limes. She bites at his shoulder, locks an ankle behind his. She is in my house, he keeps thinking. She is in my house.

 

 

 

J
ack comes up out of a dream where he’s wearing blue coveralls with his name stitched in cursive over the pocket, and the coveralls feel kind of tight on him, and he’s riding an escalator down into a stark white room filled with hundreds of wooden tables holding flat after flat after flat of impatiens, all colors, the foliage looking really healthy, which is what he’s noticing in the dream, how good the foliage looks on all these impatiens, that these are the healthiest plants he’s ever seen, but the phone’s ringing, his work phone, and his bed’s in the wrong place, because he’s in the wrong house, and the light’s gray outside, cloudy, and Rena’s there in the bed, turned away from him, sleeping, and he gets up, finds the phone out in the den on the arm of one of the Adirondack chairs, looks for a minute at a
National Geographic
map of the Prince Albert Islands he’s hung on the wall. It’s a little crooked. The phone’s still ringing. He answers it. It’s Beth.