Where the Kissing Never Stops (3 page)

“She’s at least as good-looking as Debbie, and she’s rich.”

“So what would she want with me?”

“Just to go out. She’s lonely. She doesn’t know anybody in town. You need this girl. She needs you. Two lonely souls. She hasn’t got a mother.”

“Shouldn’t we call the Pope? Isn’t that a miracle?”

“She died. Listen, meet me after math tomorrow. I’ll introduce you.”

“No.”

“Look in the paper. Find something to tempt her — a movie, a concert, anything.”

“She’ll be busy.”

“When you talk to her, don’t be put off by any aloofness, okay? It’ll just be a defense. You can bust through that icy facade.”

“I’ll just throw my body against it.”

“You aren’t fat.”

“No? Then why do the Pillsbury Doughboy and I wear the same size shorts?”

I really was hysterical. That wasn’t always my style. Or it didn’t used to be. Had I changed? Had I emerged from that box-shaped hole a different person, too?

Sully had to get back to his books; Sully always had to get back to his books. I tried studying, but my mind wouldn’t stay put. I kept picturing my mom onstage, in the spotlight, while lowlifes waved dollar bills and left their fingerprints all over her shoes.

Who needed to study, anyway? Anybody who couldn’t graduate from high school with about one hour of concentrated studying a week was better off being a forest ranger. I admit, I wasn’t taking those high-tech accelerated classes, but what was the big hurry? I just wasn’t like Sully, with his career map: all those straight lines from high school to college to medical school. My map would have been like the ones you see in museums, full of blank spaces and sea monsters and land masses with no name.

In spite of myself I scanned the entertainment pages. What would a girl from California like to do? There was very little surfing in Missouri.

Back to the books. God, I hated
Silas Marner.

TV time.
NYPD Blue
cops in a rowdy bar full of drug addicts and felons. They were looking for a topless dancer who’d been kidnapped.

So I tried the more obscure channels — land of the non-stop evangelist, Korean variety hour and, on the educational network, the usual close-up of a lizard. I settled for
The Farm Report,
a slow crawl of prices for soybeans, hog bellies, and wheat.

But it soothed me. The next thing I knew, something woke me up. Some sound. Tentacles? Pods cracking open? The rustle of a silk-lined cape?

It’s funny, but whenever Mom was home and I heard something, I got my baseball bat and went to take a look. This time I scurried into my bedroom and locked the door. Protecting somebody else is easy; taking care of yourself is a whole other thing.

Pretty soon I heard her car, and I have to admit I was relieved. I unlocked the bedroom door and pretended to be asleep. Man, people are weird. Look at me — open the door so she can peek in, and then act like it doesn’t matter.

Maybe I wanted it both ways. I wanted to make sure she still loved me, but I didn’t want to see her in some embarrassing outfit. What if she wore her work clothes home, tassels and all? Who would see her, and who would they tell? Would everybody at school know by first period?

What I wanted was to go down to breakfast next morning and find her standing at the stove, wearing two or three aprons, cooking up stacks of pancakes, and apologizing all over the place.

Instead we got to the kitchen at just about the same time. I could see a sequin or some sparkly stuff right near the corner of one eye. Man, it looked out of place, especially since she was wearing the robe Dad had given her for Christmas last year.

She nodded at me coolly.

“So, how was it?” I asked.

Disgusting. Stupid. A real mistake. Only a passing fancy. I must have been out of my mind. Harmless but silly. I wouldn’t go back there for a million dollars. Once was enough, believe me.

“Fine.” She moved her shoulders under the salmon-colored chenille and shook her dark curly hair. “Hard, though. It’ll take me a while to get in shape.”

“So you’re going back?”

She looked at me evenly. “Sure.” It was a little like a cowboy movie. She might have said “Yup,” or “It’s your move, stranger.” And God knows I felt like one.

“I’m hungry. What sounds good, Walker?”

“You don’t have to fix anything for me. You’re so tired. I ate dinner alone; I can eat breakfast alone.”

She let it slide by. The Teflon effect on sarcasm. “You should eat; you know all those studies about a good breakfast and success in the classroom.”

“I’ll get some doughnuts.”

“It’s your body; you’re grown-up enough to pollute it if you want to.”

“How much money do we have?”

“Enough.”

“How much is that? If I’m so grown-up, why don’t I know?”

Deliberately she broke two eggs into a skillet, then she held up two more. “Are you sure you don’t…”

“Quit treating me like a kid — I mean it.”

“Stop acting like one, then.”

I could feel the tears, but they were a long way off, down at my knees or maybe even in my shoes. I hadn’t cried since the funeral.

“I hate that job of yours.”

“Good. You get to hate it and I get to do it.”

I sat down at the table, then got up. “But I don’t want you to do it.”

“I know, and I respect that. You get to feel that way and I get to dance.”

“What, is dancing your whole stupid life or something?”

“I know this is hard on you,” she said softly.

“Then why do it?” My heart was really going.

“Honey, I liked it. I liked dancing again.”

“You liked taking off your clothes?”

“Some of the people in the audience — and if you want the truth, some of the ones I work with — would’ve made your dad pass out; but some of them are really nice. And anyway, even if they’d all been drooling in their beer and counting on their toes to get to eleven, I’d still like it.” She smiled kind of crooked and goofy. “Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Your father used to say that when he got mad. Maybe he was right.”

“Why would he have passed out?”

“Walker, you know your dad. He went to church every Sunday.”

“I went with him.”

“Unless I’d lie for you and say I needed you around the house. And then you’d go off with Sully, and I’d lie again when he came home and say you’d just left.”

“Did you lie to him about other stuff?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you lie to me?”

“Just so you won’t worry.”

“Tell me how much money we have,” I demanded. “Tell me the truth.”

She stared at her eggs, which, sunny-side up, were sort of staring back. Then she sighed heavily and tipped them into the garbage.

She began softly. “If your dad had lived a few more years, I’m pretty sure everything would have turned out all right.”

“Don’t you know?” I sounded like the relentless interrogator in a World War II movie.

“We had an arrangement. I took care of you and the house; he took care of everything else.” I could see the barest smile. “Like the future.”

“But he didn’t, did he? Not really.”

“It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t plan to get hit by a car in his new jogging suit. But things turned out to be in pretty much of a mess. What it boils down to is this: one insurance policy worth almost a hundred thousand dollars.”

“That’s a lot.”

“It just sounds like a lot, honey. There could be a little more — some lawyer’s still pawing through things — but I wouldn’t count on it.”

“And that’s it?”

“We’re living off the insurance money now. By the time you get ready for college, there won’t be nearly enough for all four years.”

“And that’s why you’re doing what you’re doing, to send me to college?”

“Partly. And to put food on the table.”

“I’ll never eat anything you buy with that money.”

She gave a little snort of disbelief, then pointed to the cluttered sink. “If you’re never going to eat that tainted food again, why didn’t you at least wash your dishes from last night?”

“You know how you just love to dance? How you can’t explain it but you just love it? Well, I just love to leave dirty dishes. ‘Maybe there’s something wrong with me,’” I mimicked. “‘But I just plain love it.’”

“You really can be a little shit, Walker. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“You should talk. You should talk about being ashamed.”

That morning I peeked out the front door, wondering, I guess, if the police might not be there with a big-hearted social worker or two ready to whisk me off to the warmth and safety of some foster home where my new mother would make desserts all day and feed them to me with a golden spoon.

The street was deserted. No clucking, sympathetic neighbors, no jeering kids. Business as usual.

At school, too. No banners saying
WALKER’S MOTHER IS A STRIPPER.
No gutty saxophone music as I walked in, no whistles or catcalls. Nobody knew. At least not yet.

“Walker, over here.”

The girl beside Sully wore a soft brown skirt, tall boots, a white swashbuckler’s blouse, three or four yards of Brazilian peasant shawl, and a little mustache of perspiration. Her hair was cut jagged and pointy across the brow, and her brown eyes were big and kind of sad.

Why hadn’t I dressed up a little? Why had I picked a T-shirt, much less a T-shirt with the word
T-shirt
on it? Probably she would think I was such a retard I had to have all my clothes labeled.

Sully introduced us. Her hand was warm and damp.

“You look hot,” I said.

They both just stared at me. God, I could have torn out my tongue and stomped on it.

“In the weather sense, I mean. You’re just wearing all those clothes and your lips are sweating.”

Her pink tongue slid out to investigate. “My lips are sweating?” She seemed genuinely concerned, and her eyes got even bigger.

“Your mustache. I mean, where it would be. If you had one.” Ah, the life of a grave-digger. Every time I opened my mouth, I got in deeper.

“You’ll have to be patient with Walker,” Sully said. “He’s just barely recovered from a tragic love affair.”

“Sully, for God’s sake.”

Rachel’s eyes darted from him to me, then back again, like a contestant on
Pick the Loony.

“When Walker wouldn’t be her one-and-only forever, she committed suicide.”

“I had this girlfriend,” I said patiently. “Her father got a job in another town and she moved.”

“That’s bad enough,” Rachel said sympathetically. “I know what it’s like to move a lot.”

Then we all just stood there, moving our feet a little like the world’s shyest dancers.

Finally Rachel leaned toward me. “You were going to say… ?”

“Oh, yeah. There’s this reggae concert in Kansas City this weekend, Burning Spear and —”

“God,” she squealed. “I love reggae!”

Sully and I both jumped.

“Walker has his own car,” said Sully.

“No, I don’t.”

“So it’s in the shop. We’ll take his mother’s Cadillac.” He leaned toward her. “So is it a date?” Then he leered at me and winked. “Is it a date?”

“What is this?” I whispered. “
Fiddler on the Roof
? I don’t need a matchmaker. I can make my own dates.”

“So do it,” he hissed.

I turned to Rachel. “Uh, is it a date?”

“Sure,” she said, beginning to frown and searching in both pockets like a girl mad for loose change. Sully glanced at me and shrugged. Finally, out came a card —
GARDNER ENTERPRISES
— with a phone number and address. “So call me, okay?”

I said that I would.

“For sure?”

“Guaranteed.”

She backed away, waving all the time, so Sully and I waved, too. Then Rachel bounced off another student, turned, grabbed for her books, and was lost in the crowd. Still, I heard her from what seemed like a long way off, “Goodbye, Walter. Goodbye.” It was plaintive and made the occasion seem somehow momentous. I felt like I was leaving for the war.

“You’re going to make out like a bandit, Walter,” said Sully, clapping his hands joyfully. “You could do anything. She doesn’t even know your real name.”

“I think we should definitely plan to throw her out of the car once I’ve taken her jewelry.”

“It’s not her jewelry you should be interested in.”

“That reminds me. Why did you tell her all that bullshit about my tragic love affair?”

“So she’ll think you’re sensitive and have deep feelings.”

“And I don’t have a Cadillac.”

“We’ll take my dad’s and say it’s yours.”

“She’ll find out.”

“So? You’ll probably never go out with her again, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“She’s got an overbite.”

“Oh, well. Let’s just put her out on the mountainside to die.”

“I could never marry a girl who wasn’t perfect.”

“Who’s going to marry her? We’re going to a concert.”

“Plus she doesn’t have any breasts. And she’s a little thick through the hips.”

“How could you tell? She had on more clothes than —”

“Doctors know these things.”

“Well, I like her. She didn’t make me feel like a jerk, even though I sounded like one.”

Just then, some kid went by wearing headphones.

“God,” I said, “what if there’s dancing?”

“What did I miss?” Sully asked, looking around.

“At the concert. What if everybody’s dancing? I don’t know how to dance to that kind of music. I’ll probably just stand there and quiver; she’ll think I’m some kind of religious fanatic.”

“We’ll practice. I’ll bring a CD over to your place tonight.”

“Since when do guys teach other guys to dance?”

“This is an emergency.”

“We don’t have to touch each other, do we?”

“We’ll wear gloves.”

I didn’t want to face my mother, so I went to the library, looked at the girls for a while, studied a little — very little — then rode home slowly.

Mom didn’t see me, but I spotted her turning the corner at Arlington and heading for the freeway. She sure didn’t look any different; she might have been on her way to deliver guide dogs to the blind. But she wasn’t.

I had barely gotten inside and put my stuff away when Sully knocked on the front door.