Wide Blue Yonder (16 page)

“I don’t know, I might like it. Something new and different.”

“Well, I’ll try to come up with some.” There had to be a way to get out of this room.

“Just because you walk around in your own little world and you don’t pay attention to anyone else, that doesn’t mean you’re invisible.”

Josie stood up, really alarmed now. This was creepy. “I’ll talk to you sometime when you’re sober.”

She headed up the stairs but her mother was following her. “A word to the wise. To the wiseass.”

“All right, Mom. Sleep it off.”

“Go ahead, make fun. I’m not drunk. I’m just in a ruminative mood. Wondering what illicit activity my only child is up to. Insurance fraud? Product tampering? I ask myself.
Je me demande
.”

“Good night, OK?”

She closed her bedroom door. But her mother stood outside it. “I was thinking, maybe we could do something together sometime.”

“Do something?”

Beneath the bottom edge of the door was a crack of light, and in its center was the dark space that was her mother. “Lunch. Shopping. Or you could come to India with me next time.”

This last was so unexpected that Josie laughed a little barking laugh. “India? What would I do there?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Her mother seemed to abandon the idea as soon as she voiced it. “You could meet some of the people I know there. Well, good night, honey.”

“Good night.” The space beneath the door lightened, then almost immediately she was back.

“Jose? Sweetie? I’m sorry to keep bothering you. It just makes me sad that we don’t like each other more.”

Josie put her fingers to the door. Her mother sounded as if she was breathing through the cracks in the door frame, it was as if the wood itself was breathing. “What are you saying, Mom, you don’t like me?”

“Baby, how could you even think such a thing? I love you more than anything in the whole big blue-eyed world.”

The blue-eyed world?Where did that come from? “Yeah, but you just said you didn’t
like
me.”

“I love you more than this boy whoever he is that you won’t tell me about. Open the door.”

“No. Go to bed. I hope you don’t remember any of this in the morning.”

“I just want to give you a hug.”

Josie opened the door. Her mother had a fixed, sorrowful expression, and her eyes were small and red. “Don’t be mad at me, Sunshine.”

“I’m not mad, Mom. I just think you’re a little out of it.”

“Whoever this boy is, he doesn’t deserve you.”

“Mo-om.”

“Come here.”

Josie allowed herself to be hugged. It was awful. She and her mother were exactly the same height, and her mother’s hair caught her full in the face. It smelled perfumey and it made her nose itch. “All right,” said Josie, trying to get loose from her mother’s sagging weight, the soft insistence of her breasts. “All right.”

Her mother kissed her on the neck in one of the places Mitchell Crook had kissed her. “You’ve just go so much to learn, baby.”

“Yeah, well. I’m trying.”

“Don’t let anybody ever tell you you’re less than absolutely precious.”

Josie promised she wouldn’t, and her mother retreated down the hall to bed. It was probably some menopause thing.

J
ust when she thought things couldn’t get any stranger.

Why hadn’t Mitch told her when she’d see him again? Why had she let him get away without making plans? If she thought she was crazy before, now she was worse, remembering all their greedy touching and wanting more. Maybe he was afraid to call
her at home, she could understand that. Or maybe there was some kind of police/crime emergency, except there wasn’t anything in the papers, or maybe he’d just been playing her, but no, he wouldn’t do that. Most likely she was supposed to wait, be patient, which was of course the adult thing to do. But she had gone to her odious job for the last three nights, had endured the pimp calling her Parking Lot Peg, had loitered around afterward as long as she dared, and there was still no sign of him. Didn’t he want to see her, didn’t he want it as much as she did? Everything that she’d thought was so certain was now in doubt. And yet it could be restored in an instant.

She was going to call him. She’d call some morning when she was sure he was home, wake him up if she had to. She would think of some good excuse, except she didn’t have one. She felt how she could hate him, truly hate him if she had to, and how she could love him again in spite of it. Meanwhile the world went on and on about its stupid yakking business, and each day was as hot as a year of fever.

Was it possible to take some kind of amnesia pill and go back to the way she was before, when she was only unhappy? No, you had to remember everything you ever knew or felt or saw. Everything stayed with you forever and marked you like blobs of paint on a canvas, so that by the end of your life you were one big blobby mess.

On the fourth night he came into Beefeater’s. She saw him the instant he walked in. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and he smiled straight at her and the pimp manager sneered and swaggered and Mitch was right, he was jealous, which seemed to her both sad and awful, but she was too blissed out to care.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself.”

“Would you like to see a menu?” Josie asked, playing it serious.

“I don’t know. Is there anything good here?”

“Ooh, I’m not sure I want to touch that one,” she teased, and he rested an elbow on the counter and leaned back to survey the restaurant and it didn’t matter that they were talking like total flakes, he was perfect, everything was perfect.

“You have to work?” she murmured, because of course everybody, the line cook and the waitresses, were gawking at them, even the dishwasher was peeking around the corner with his child-molester leer.

“Not unless they call me in because of civil insurrection or something.

He had to move to one side so a man could pay his bill. Josie rang up the customer and gave him change and told him to have a good evening. Then she reached beneath the cashier’s stand for her bag and hooked it over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

It was like in
An Officer and a Gentleman
where Richard Gere comes into the factory and carries Debra Winger away. Well, not quite like that but almost as good.

Now they were drifting out over the hot black asphalt. The night sky was enormous and blazing with lights. Even the pink streetlights that always reminded her of the sun on some ghastly planet had a shimmering look to them. Josie said, “You would not believe how glad I am to get out of that place.” And she laughed, out of nervousness. They hadn’t touched yet, but she felt him walking beside her, that zone of almost-touching.

When they reached his car he kissed her, stooping just enough to graze her mouth. “You didn’t tell anybody who I was, did you?”

“Of course not.”

“I could get into some big-time trouble. Seriously.”

Was he changing his mind? “I haven’t told anybody. I won’t. It’s nobody else’s business. I’m a sphinx. A repository for secrets.”

“What’s a repository?”

“It’s a … place you keep things. Could we leave my car here for now and take yours?”

“OK, but where are we going?”

Josie had assumed he’d have a plan of some sort, know what to do. And maybe he did but wouldn’t let on, maybe it was a test. She didn’t want to pipe up and say “your place,” although she assumed that was where they were going, for fear of sounding cheap or overeager, so she said, “Let’s just drive around for a while.”

“Sure.”

Josie couldn’t tell if it had been the right thing to say or not, since he didn’t look particularly disappointed. She wished she was old enough so they could go to a bar, the right kind of bar, and flirt with each other over drinks, but the car was fine. Even though it was only the second time she’d sat across from him in it, there was a familiar and settled feel to being there. They looked over at each other at the same time, and smiled.

He said, “It’s great not to have to go in tonight. I’m still trying to get used to the schedule.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Josie was a little disappointed, she might have wished him to say something more personal or intense, by which she supposed she meant something about herself. Oh well.

“Coffee. I must drink six, eight cups a night. Maybe ten.”

“Oh yeah, I love coffee.” Small talk. Meanwhile she had a fistful of condoms in her purse, she’d been carrying them all week, just in case. And she was on birth control-pills; she didn’t know if she should come out and tell him that. She’d only been on them a few months but she guessed they worked, considering Jeff and all. Some nights she woke from a dead sleep with the breath yanked out of her and her heart racing, thinking she’d missed taking a pill, although she hadn’t once missed. She wondered if she’d ever be able to tell him about that.

“So what do you like to do for fun?” Mitch asked her. They were driving toward his apartment, although she wasn’t supposed to know that.

“Fun.” She was desperately trying to remember if she’d ever had any. “Just hang out, mostly. I used to dance, ballet. Do concerts and recitals, but I don’t any more.” Hi, I’m a ballet dork. My other hobbies are brushing my teeth and picking up rocks. She made a last grim effort to find something interesting about herself. “I play acoustic guitar sort of, but I’m not that good.”

Her poor little offering of conversation trailed off into silence. Well maybe talking didn’t matter right now. Josie focused instead on the arm nearest to her, its knots of muscle, the white shirt making his skin look almost tan, the way his wrist bone jutted, funny, how men’s hands were built like that. Her stomach was squeezing itself into peculiar shapes, nerves, she supposed. It wasn’t like she’d never done it before. Plenty of times with Jeff and once she sort of did it with Rick Conrad except they were both drunk and it probably didn’t count. God, she wished it was already over and they were lying next to each other in bed, all peaceful and close. She turned her face away from him because she couldn’t be looking at him while she thought such things. She had to remind herself that he was a policeman and nothing bad would happen.

The night and the speed of the car were turning everything on the other side of the glass into a quick-jumping blur of fence and tree shadow and triangles of lamp-lit sidewalk. So that by the time Josie said, “Oh,” they were already a block past, and she had to ask him to turn around.

“What is it?”

“Just turn around, OK?”

Mitch pulled into a driveway, his hand poised on the gear shift. “Something wrong?” She might have been gratified to see how polite and tense and annoyed he was at having to stop, but she was too distracted.

“That’s my uncle back there. My great-uncle, really. He shouldn’t be out walking around, we have to go get him.”

“Get him?”

“Hurry up, he was heading the other way. He’s like miles away from home.”

Mitch put the car into reverse. Josie craned her neck to see past him. Across the road was the Knights of Columbus and their softball field and she was afraid Harvey might have wandered off into its darkness. But no, he was even farther along the sidewalk. He was moving fast in spite of the heat. He wore a broken-crowned straw hat, his shirttails flapped, and his arms swung loose-jointed from his shoulders. He looked like an escaped scarecrow.

“Hey Uncle Harvey!” Josie hopped out and waved him down. “Hey, it’s me. Where are you going?”

Harvey stopped and turned in her direction, although they were out of the zone of lamplight and she couldn’t read his face, couldn’t tell if he recognized her or not. He was half-blind anyway, he was the last person who ought to be wandering around in the dark. “Come on, we’ll give you a ride home.”

Josie opened the backdoor invitingly. “You don’t mind, do you?” she asked Mitch, who only shrugged. He didn’t have to be such a pill; it wasn’t like she could do anything else. “Come on, aren’t you tired of walking?”

Harvey looked at her sideways, swaying a little, then began to creep forward. But he stopped at the grass that edged the sidewalk.

“Har-vey. Don’t you want to go home?” The hat shook, shedding straw, no. “Well where do you want to go, are you hungry?”

Sidling forward half a step. His foot curled over the curb, hesitating. “How about a cheeseburger? Fries?” The foot retreated. “Well, there’s Wienershnitzel. We could get corn dogs.”

Mitch said, “Looks like he’s not hungry.”

“Just give me a minute, OK?”

“Not much of a talker, is he?”

“Do you mind? My uncle is not a well guy.”

“No kidding.”

She ignored him. “Here’s another idea. Dairy Queen. I’ll get you any kind of ice cream you want.”

Finally he stepped off the curb and shambled toward them in the dark. “Attaboy. Uncle Harvey, this is my friend Mitch. Oh don’t worry, he’s not gonna tell on us, are you, Uncle H.?”

“What’s that in his hand?”

The car’s dome light showed Harvey clutching a cellophane sleeve that contained a single dark red rose. His hand had already mashed the cellophane so that it was chewed and unfresh, the rose itself broken somewhere along its stem, the blossom hanging at a fatal angle.

“What a beautiful flower. Is it for me?”

“Ne, ne.” Harvey clutched the flower tighter, a death grip, trying to shield it from her. “Oh, it’s all right, I was just teasing.” Josie turned back around, a false and sprightly smile on her face. Mitch was looking straight ahead, like a cab driver. “Dairy Queen, anyone?”

He didn’t answer, but accelerated, the way guys did when they were mad. In the backseat Harvey shrank into a corner. Josie imagined she could smell the rose, its bruised and darkened perfume. So now everything was all screwed up. She wished she could be angry at Harvey but what was the point of that, or at Mitch, but it was hard to blame him either. So that left only her stupid self, and at least she was on familiar ground there. But she held her smile, turned the radio up, and sang along to some sucky Britney song, like she was having the time of her life.

At least she got Harvey to take his hat off before they went into the DQ, although he wouldn’t give over the wreckage of the rose.
She didn’t even want to think what that was about. The three of them stood in line at the counter and with any luck people would think they were just a nice young couple taking their slightly addled grandpa out for ice cream.