Where the Kissing Never Stops (20 page)

Then on the second Saturday night after we’d broken up, I just picked up the phone, called Rachel — and got nothing. Not even the machine. Casually I hung up. Casually I went into the bathroom and turned on the hot water.

Self-deception is funny. Part of me was just soaking in the tub; part of me knew I was about to set out on a quest. Part of me was still very casual — shaving, checking myself out in the mirror, smoothing on after-shave; part of me was hurrying the razor, rejecting that shirt and those pants, slapping on the after-shave hard enough to snap the average person out of a little fit of hysteria.

I had the car because that guy Porter — who’d turned into pretty much of a steady boyfriend, I guess — had picked Mom up. Driving toward Rachel’s — still casual, right? One arm out the window, the side vent arranged so the wind would hopefully blow my hair with wild abandon instead of right in my eyes — carfuls of girls checked me out, giggling, waving, doing mysterious, semaphore things with their eyes.

Isn’t it funny? That’s what I’d always wanted: girls who were interested in me as me and not just some chubby kid who would give them directions to the nearest Snack Shack. And then I got what I wanted, and it didn’t mean a thing. Not that I wasn’t flattered or even, let’s face it, a little interested. But it didn’t really matter. Isn’t that amazing? If I live to be a hundred, there are some things I’m never going to understand.

Of course Rachel wasn’t home. Even the garage was empty, but that didn’t mean anything. She and her dad took separate cars to dinner all the time so she could leave while he wooed prospective clients with tales of paradise.

Since there was a good chance she was at Peggy’s, I headed that way, but nobody was home there, either. Or at Sully’s.

Okay, maybe she wasn’t alone. Maybe she was “seeing other people” for a hamburger, a trip around the skating rink, or a movie at the drive-in. Big deal. Very innocent.

At the Moonlight Rollerdrome I strolled in, waved to some people, leaned across the barrier, and scoped the place out. She could be holding hands with somebody while she skated. For safety’s sake. He could even have his arm around her waist. That’s how it was done on skates. It didn’t have to mean anything.

“Seen Rachel?” I asked a couple of girls skating backward, but they shook their heads.

At the A&W I resisted ordering absolutely everything and, when she wasn’t there and hadn’t been there, headed for Big Sky Drive-in.

“Seen Rachel?” I asked a guy I knew at the admission booth.

“Not yet, but I just came on.”

“Seen Rachel?” I asked some kids at the refreshment stand. “Seen Rachel?” I asked, standing outside under the moth-filled funnel of light from the projector.

Always the same answer: No, nope, uh-uh, not lately, not tonight. Then as I made one last sweep of the place, I spotted what could have been her in a Firebird with California plates. Had an old boyfriend shown up from the West Coast? They were outlined — the two of them — against the enormous screen, nose to nose, pucker to pucker like a Valentine silhouette. I studied them through the back window while I wondered what to do.

Now that it’s over, I can think of a dozen other plans, all of them better: I might have taken the flashlight out of the trunk and pretended to be an employee, or simply bought a box of popcorn and got close enough by merely acting lost.

Instead, I parked a couple of rows ahead of them, slithered out of the passenger’s side, and crept up to the Firebird’s grill on all fours. Then, like some dark moon rising, my head slowly emerged from behind the hood ornament.

Naturally the girl shrieked. Who could blame her? She was watching
Aliens from Zoron
and here comes this thing out of the front of the car.

But it wasn’t Rachel’s shriek, and by the time the guy even got the speaker off his window, I was back in the trusty Saturn, throwing gravel and heading west. Because it’d dawned on me where Rachel had gone. Where did she always go? Where, for that matter, did most kids go?

“Seen Rachel?” I asked the first bunch of girls I saw at Westgate, all of them dressed alike, all with their hair done the same, all angling left then right in unison like a school of pretty fish.

“Just Desserts,” they said.

Great! But what would I do when I found her, pretend I was just there for a triple-dip rocky road?

Carefully, wearing an imaginary trench coat and Bogart hat, I peered around the edge of the window plastered with gaudy sweets. No Rachel. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

“Looking for Rachel?” someone said behind me, and I jumped.

“Jesus, Billy.” It was a guy from English Lit.

“She just came out of Nordstrom.”

“Thanks.” I broke into an easy canter.

“Seen Rachel?” I asked right outside the department store doors.

“Try the lower level.”

With a groan I plunged down the stairs, bumping people, excusing myself, not excusing myself, emerging to see her with Tommy Thompson’s loathsome arm draped across her shoulder.

If I’d had a gun, I would have shot him in the foot; if I’d had a club, I would have beaned him. As it was, I ran up and bit him in the wrist.

“Jesus,” he cried whirling around, shaking his hand like it was burned. “What’s the matter with you?”

Rachel turned, her face knotted in disbelief.

“You’re not Rachel,” I said happily.

“Who’s Rachel?” she turned on Tommy. “Who’s this Rachel?”

“I’ll have to get rabies shots,” he said, inspecting his wrist.

“I’m sorry, honest.” I began to back away. “I’m really sorry. Really.” Then I turned and ran.

Upstairs, I went into the men’s room, hardly recognizing myself in the mirror. My hair was plastered to my skull, I was flushed, and somehow my shirt had been twisted so that one sleeve was very short and the other very long. When I bent to wash my face, I got one cuff completely soaked. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I smelled. It was the worst kind of perspiration, the stuff that sets off alarms on TV or leaves people flattened in its wake.

Good Lord, if Rachel did see me, she wouldn’t recognize me. If she recognized me, she would shriek and run; if she didn’t run and for some reason put her arms around me, I’d feel and smell like an old washrag.

“Forget it,” I said, pushing open the bathroom door. And then, naturally, there she was not twenty feet away, staring into the window of Tom’s Travels. Startled, I darted into the nearest store, peering out at her from between the mannequins in the window.

“May I help you?”

“Oh, uh, sure,” I said to the saleslady, whose purple hair reminded me of Mom’s violets. I reached into the nearest bin. “This,” I said. “It’s a gift.”

“You’re sure?” she said suspiciously.

Outside Rachel drifted away. “Absolutely. Wrap it up.”

“This is a panty girdle for the full-figured woman.” And she held it up with both hands.

It was the color of Petunia Pig and about as large. “Oh, well,” I said. “Full-figured. Well.” If I wasn’t hemming and hawing, I was at least hemming. Backing away, I bumped into another counter, reached behind me, plunged one hand into another bin. “These, then. Instead.”

“And what would those be?” she asked, starting to lose her patience.

I looked at them. “Uh, I don’t know.”

“Panties,” she said.

“You’re kidding.” I looked again. Panties were what Rachel wore, little dainty things as pretty and fragile as flowers. These were industrial strength. The elastic could have shot me across the room. I dropped them like they were hot.

“I think I’d better call security.”

“No, no,” I assured her. “Honest, I’m leaving. It’s a mistake. It’s all a terrible mistake.”

I retreated to the parking lot. Like in those old Greek plays, the madness had passed and I was purged. As I sat on the fender idly looking one way and then the other, I didn’t even worry about which side was my good side or even if, like a record that never sold, I had two bad ones.

Then as the crowds thinned, as the security men ushered the late shoppers out and locked the gates to the Magic Kingdom of Things, there she was. Alone.

She didn’t see me; she was walking with her head down, scuffing one shoe on the asphalt like a little kid.

I watched her stop, hesitate, run one hand roughly through her hair, then turn, stride to the nearest waste can, and drop in the bag she’d been carrying. Finally she whirled and strode resolutely toward her car. Until she saw me.

I raised one hand tentatively, a mini-wave. Less than that, a micro-wave. She nodded in reply. And even though it was shadowy in the huge lot I was sure I saw her smile.

Then she started toward me. Flustered, I sat down again, goosing myself on the hood ornament, but I think she was still too far away to see me wince.

When we were a few yards apart, she stopped. I smiled encouragingly. She raised both hands tentatively, then sort of kept raising them and hugged herself.

“Walker,” she said softly. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“I, uh, called you a couple of hours ago and when you weren’t home I started to look for you.”

“Well, here I am,” she said holding out both arms like someone showing off a new dress.

“Yeah, me too. I’m here too.” I stood up, kind of patting myself to show I wasn’t an apparition.

We looked at one another, half grinning, half embarrassed.

“How’ve you been?” she asked.

I shrugged. “You know.”

She glanced down at her hands, one curled palm up in the other, like a soloist’s.

“I miss you, Rachel.”

She started to look teary. “I was just in the mall missing you.”

“Me too.”

“Isn’t that dumb? We should have just got together and missed each other.”

Little by little we were getting closer, she moving warily in one direction, I in the other. I’d seen a movie in biology like this, but it was about a couple of birds.

“You know what my dad wants to do now?”

“Build the first mall on the moon?”

“Stay in Bradleyville.”

That stopped me in my tracks. “You’re kidding.”

“Oh, who knows with him?”

“But he said it.”

“Sure, but I’ve been so miserable, it was probably just to make me feel better.”

“Well, it makes me feel better.”

“Me too, but I’m afraid he’ll change his mind again.”

I shrugged. “But until he does…”

Involuntarily we started toward each other again. I knew how it was going to feel to kiss Rachel and to hold her warm, sturdy body. I was just about to open my arms as wide as they would go and scoop her up when I remembered. And stopped dead in my tracks.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “There’s something else.”

“What? Are you mad? I don’t blame you. I should apologize….”

I shook my head. “Something about me.”

“About you? Walker, what?” She looked really concerned. “It doesn’t matter, whatever it is. You’re okay, aren’t you?”

“My mom…” I said cryptically.

“Is she hurt?”

“… is a stripper,” I said, a lot louder than necessary. “She’s a dancer, but she dances at some place called Ye Olde Burlesque, probably with her clothes off. So…” I looked away, then down at her feet. My eyes swept the ground like someone who has lost a key. “So if you don’t want to be around somebody whose mom —”

“Walker,” she said softly, “I know all that.”

I fell back against the car. “You do?”

“I found out a few weeks ago. Tommy Thompson asked me how I like going out with somebody whose mom was a topless dancer. I just told him to stuff it.”

“You don’t care?” I couldn’t believe it.

“Your mom’s nice. God, my dad bullies people until they sell him their homes. What’s worse?”

“But didn’t you wonder why I’d never said anything? What about all those lies about her being a waitress and all?”

“I thought you’d tell me sooner or later. Anyway,” she said sweetly, “everybody’s got secrets.”

“But if you know and Sully and Peggy know, then lots of people know.”

“Probably almost everybody.”

“How come nobody ever said anything to me before?”

She shrugged. “So they’ll kid you tomorrow.”

They’d kid me. They’d kid me tomorrow. And that’s what it would amount to — kidding. All this time and nobody really cared but me.

I loved holding Rachel in my arms again, and we just leaned against my fender for a few minutes until our breathing slowed and meshed.

Around us the other isolated cars crept away. Nearby, a shiny Porsche pulled up beside a Chevy mini-van whose interior was lined with baby seats. The couple in the Porsche embraced; then a woman slipped out, glanced around furtively, and fumbled — alone and in the dark — with her car keys.

Maybe Rachel had been right all along and the mall was the new community. Certainly everything happened here. Tonight lovers used the parking lot instead of a side street or park bench. Last week a woman had gone into labor right in Pet’s Delight.

“Where were you born?” someone would ask that child, and he would answer, “In the mall.” “Where have you been?” the anxious husband would ask. “At the mall.” If things kept going like this, my mother would end up dancing at the food court.

“My God,” I said, stepping back. “Do you know what we should do?”

“Yes, start kissing and never stop.”

“No. I mean yes, but no. We should go and see my mother.”

“Where is she, home?”

I shook my head. “Working. At the club. Dancing.” I was talking like a tap, going on and off. “We could see her. See what she really does. Sort of. Maybe wave to her. Or something.”

“You go,” she said softly but firmly. “I need to see my father.”

“No. I mean, sure, but why? What’s he doing?”

“Probably waiting for dinner right now, banging his spoon on his dish.”

“Afterward, then. You could dress up and look twenty-one easy.”

“You go, sweetheart.” She touched my chest lightly, not off to the left where everybody pledges allegiance, but almost in the center, where the heart really is.

“I just don’t want to go alone, do I?”

“I don’t want to face my dad, either. But I was thinking about a lot of things in the mall tonight, and I just don’t want to be his bookkeeper anymore. Or cook breakfast for him every morning or tell the cleaners there’s a spot on his cashmere sweater.”