Wide Blue Yonder (26 page)

When Josie picked Mitch up he had his swimsuit rolled in a towel. She thought that was so cute.

“Ready to get wet?”

Mitch smiled a twitching smile. “Sure.”

He didn’t have to be a total killjoy. He was probably only acting that way because this was her idea. When they stood at the front door and she was having trouble working the key, Mitch kept looking around like he expected some neighbor to start photographing him. Exasperated, she jiggled the latch back and forth.

“Maybe they gave you the wrong key.”

“Maybe I just need two seconds where I’m not being totally hassled.”

Finally she got it open. Mitch perked up a little when she was entering the security code on the keypad. “That’s a state-of-the-art system.”

“Oh yeah. Nothing’s too good for Daddy. So whaddya think?” Josie led him down a passageway and made a sweeping gesture.

Mitch whistled. There was a fireplace made of enormous boulders with an oversize beam for a mantel. A red-felt pool table
with a rack of balls set out at one end. An old-fashioned jukebox in one corner glowed with ribbons of flamingo and violet light.

“Daddy’s playroom.”

“Not too shabby.”

Encouraged, she presented him with further wonders. The big saltwater aquarium with its blood-colored coral and nervous fish, the library, the built-in cedar closet, the twin leather sofas, and finally the pool, liquid turquoise, the water ruffling in the warm breeze.

They floated and splashed and dried off with Teeny’s fluffy towels and fixed themselves ice cream and Kahlúa from the bottle they didn’t know she knew they kept in the pantry. She could have sneaked them a real drink but Mitch was always very serious about not drinking before he went on duty. They played hide-and-seek through the bedrooms and landed finally in the expanse of pillows in the master suite. Here they made love, although Josie was conscious of a certain distraction. It felt obligatory, rushed, even smutty, as if they’d come here for the wrong reasons. Lying there afterward, watching the evening shadows creep over the ceiling of the strange room, she was nearly melancholy. She was unprepared to feel this way, it seemed unfair that after working everything out, all the planning and coaxing and anticipating, her own self would ambush her like this. Wanting different from having. Longing from loving. Nothing ever what you expected. But thinking this way only made her restless and confused so she reached out and buried her hands and mouth in his warmth.

She did cheer up once they went back out and had another swim and were relaxing on the lounge chairs. It was dusk and the line of lights beneath the water’s surface had a filmy, moonlike glow. The horizon was still streaked with orange and burning pink. If she looked only at a certain slice of sky and water, she
could imagine herself somewhere else, anywhere in the world that was not Springfield. As they watched, a pair of swallows came wheeling and skimming low over the pool, incredibly agile, startling, alive.

“This is heaven.” Josie sighed. And it was. The stereo was going, playing something bluesy. They were holding hands across the space between their chairs. And Mitch wasn’t acting mad or gloomy or some other way she couldn’t understand. He was just being normal and she loved him and it was a beautiful shining evening, yes, heaven. This moment. If you didn’t think about the moment before or all the moments that would follow when it would not be heaven.

As if all it took was one bad thought to trigger the next, Josie exhaled and said, “I can’t believe school starts in what, three weeks.”

“Well, I can’t believe I have a girlfriend who’s still in high school.”

She swatted him with a towel for that, although she was secretly delighted to hear him say it. Girlfriend.

“Well, if you’re nice to me, maybe I’ll take you to the prom.”

Her tone had been the heavy teasing that she fell back on when she didn’t trust herself to say anything else. Josie waited for him to tease her back. Instead he worked his forehead around into a serious shape.

“Hey, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

Her heart went to her knees. “Yeah?”

“There’s this thing I have to go to. A police thing.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s sort of a banquet. They make awards and have speeches and stuff. It’s coming up at the end of the month and I already made the plans. I can’t get out of it, I set it up a long time ago.”

“Well if you have to …”

“I really do. It’s kind of a big deal. Like I said, it’s been on the books a long time.”

“Are you getting an award?”

“Naw, you have to stop a bullet or drag a kid out of a burning house, you know, hero stuff. But I have to be there in the dress blues and the shiny badge. I’m real sorry you can’t come with me. It’s just the way it worked out.”

“No biggie,” Josie said cheerfully. Like she really wanted to hang out with a bunch of cops making cop speeches. But it was sweet of him to worry about her. It was completely dark by now and the pool lights made tunnels of glow in the quiet water. She stood up and drew him out of his chair, standing on her tiptoes to breathe in his ear, feeling him through his swimsuit and pulling him toward the water.

So of course they lost track of time and it was late and they had to rush to get everything cleaned up and that was why she forgot about the stupid sheet and all hell broke loose with her mother. She didn’t tell Mitch about that part. It was so little kid to complain about your mother. And besides, some cautious instinct told her that if she let on to him about being under suspicion, he might grow alarmed, veer away, or chicken out entirely. She had to wonder if he really would get into any kind of trouble about her, if it was a big deal to anybody besides her mother. So it was illegal, she knew that, but a lot of things people did were. Most likely it was only a big deal if somebody made it one. Most likely the rest of the police guys would just give him an elbow in the ribs and make dirty comments. That would just kill him. He was so into his truth, justice, and the American way of life notions.

Of course, there were any number of things she thought it best they not talk about. Anything that reminded him she was a jailbait kid, of course. Which meant anything that made her sound ignorant or naïve. That covered a lot of ground and resulted in
her nodding along a lot and pretending to know about car insurance or limited warranties or fly fishing or whatever else he was talking about. Anything having to do with the infamous night she’d been riding around with Moron and Ronnie and that slime devil Podolsky, anything about her career as a stalker. She still hadn’t owned up to seeing him for the first time in the Taco Bell. She wondered if she ever would.

Whenever Mitch tried to get her to say where she knew him from, Josie smiled and told him she’d spotted him on radar. It wouldn’t hurt to keep on being Mystery Girl for a little longer.

“Once we’ve been together for a while, maybe I’ll let on,” Josie told Abe. “Love at first sight at the Taco Bell. How we met. What a hoot.”

Abe was noncommittal. He stared serenely past his polished nose, past the empty parking lot and the exhausted, late-summer grass, into some region of history and disinterestedness that only descended on you once you’d been dead for a hundred years or more. It was just before sunrise; Josie had stayed at Mitch’s all night, or at least as much of it as she dared, enough, she hoped, for it to count as spending the night. She liked watching him sleep. He said he never remembered his dreams and maybe he didn’t have any. Josie said no way. Everybody dreamed, even dogs dreamed about chasing rabbits, you could watch them twitching and woofing. Mitch said that was probably what he dreamed about. Chasing speeders. Oh you are so funny, Josie told him. Not.

She hung over his sleeping face, watching. He breathed in and out with perfect unchanging ease. That beautiful line of his mouth, the white edge of his teeth just visible below his raised lip. His eyelashes were curled up and dampish. His dark level eyebrows, she thought she must have fallen in love with his eyebrows before anything else. She watched him so hard and so long, she
imagined she could see the whiskers surfacing in his jaw. She could watch over him every night of his life and still not be able to tell what sort of movie was playing inside his head.

She had to admit that not only was he a man, and older, and a cop, but that he was unlike her in some other important way. He lived just inside his perfect skin as if it was another uniform. There wasn’t that much space inside him for a lot of other things.

“I really do love him,” Josie said. Abe didn’t disagree; he just let her words float out into the air by themselves, until they had a lonely sound. “I do. So he’s different from what you’d expect. Like anybody would be. He probably thinks I’m different too.” Why was she talking to some dead guy anyway, it wasn’t like she was going to hear anything she didn’t already know.

School started next week, one more dismal thought. Maybe she could drop out, get a GED. There were lots of people who’d done the same thing, and nobody cared once they were famous. She knew dropping out wasn’t really an option, not unless she wanted to declare outright war with her parents, but high school seemed so, well, high school to her now. The cliques, the tiny gossip, the droning teachers. It would be like doing prison time. Josie yawned and headed back to her car. She was just tired and cranky. “My hair hurts, my feet stink, and I don’t love Jesus,” she announced.

Josie crept into her house and into her unmade and rather stale bed and if she dreamed she didn’t remember it either. She woke up after noon and showered and did her nails and tried not to think about how this time next week she’d be taking an American History quiz or watching kids play gross-out with the fetal pigs in biology lab or some other dreariness.

She was up in her room when she heard her mother come home. Early, though Josie didn’t think much about it. She was reading a fashion magazine and wondering if anyone was really
going to wear those stupid little head-scarf things when the door to her room pushed open.

“You want to knock next time?”

Her mother’s face had a cracked, off-balance look. “What did you get arrested for?”

“What?”

“You heard me. What did you do? And don’t say ‘nothing.’”

“Do when? What are you talking about?”

“Don’t lie to me for one more minute. I absolutely have a right to know this. If you won’t tell me, I’ll call the police.”

“Call the …”

“I assume they keep a record of these things. They should have notified me. I shouldn’t have to hear it from someone else.”

“Hear what from who? God, Mom, slow down.”

“I already called the restaurant. You haven’t been there for weeks. So don’t tell me you get all dressed up and stay out all night going to work.”

Caught, unable to come up with words, Josie shrugged. A mistake. You had to deny everything, not just parts.

“Are you pregnant?”

“No!”

“I hope not, but I’m not sure I can believe you anymore.”

“Oh, sure, but you believe some bullshit from I don’t even know who.”

“You’re saying if I contact the police department right now and ask them to look up your name, there’s nothing?”

When Josie didn’t answer, her mother’s face narrowed, hardened. “It’s drugs, isn’t it? This boyfriend of yours is making you do things for drugs.”

Josie gaped at her. Then she laughed, a barking noise cut short. Her face felt numb.

Her mother nodded. “All right, then. At least I know.”

“You don’t know anything. I don’t believe this, you are so out of it.”

“Then explain to me what you got arrested for.”

“I didn’t! Besides, it’s none of your—”

“I’m sorry, but it is very much my business. I suppose it’s my fault for not taking a firm hand. Wanting to be a pal. Well, those days are over.”

“You’re making this whole thing up. But entirely. You are going to feel so stupid later, I promise.”

“I’m going to have to ask you for your car keys.”

Her mother waited, hand outstretched. “Now, unless you want me to call the police this minute.”

She didn’t want that. And her mother had this spooky look on her face, like she might do anything, like she was almost glad to believe her daughter was a drug-crazed hooker. Josie fished in her purse and tossed the key ring over. She said, “I’m going to expect an apology later.”

“Once I’ve had a chance to think things through, we’re going to have a talk. I just want to understand how this happened. I want to get you the help you need. In the meantime I’m going to have to ask you not to leave the house. Excuse me, I need a little time alone.”

She left, but was back in an instant. “Unplug your phone and give it to me.”

“What is this, jail?”

“I’m sure we can arrange jail, if you’d prefer it.”

Josie handed over her phone. The door closed and she was alone in the room.

Good God.

She was sweating and the sweat was turning cold on her. Carefully, she went to her bedroom door and cracked it open. The house was quiet. Her mother had gone crazy, it was some kind of
hormonal thing, she’d always been jealous of her. Somebody must have seen her with Mitch and her mother took it from there and came up with something she’d seen on last week’s lurid TV special. It was so nuts, she was going to have to talk to Mitch and warn him, except he was already so paranoid about people finding out. And if her mother actually did call the police … There might be some record of when he’d stopped her that first night. They might even call Mitch in, ask him about her, oh shit, why hadn’t she ever told him to take it out of the computer or whatever you did? It was the only thing keeping her from laughing in her mother’s face.

She stayed in her room until sunset, then crept down to the kitchen. The house was still quiet. Her mother was probably up in her room, chewing Valium. The kitchen phone was mounted on the wall and her mother couldn’t have ripped it out.

But the handset was gone, unplugged. The hook where the spare car keys were kept, empty.

This was just ridiculous. Enough was enough. She started back upstairs to try to talk some sense into her mother. She wouldn’t tell her about Mitch, of course, but she would come up with something …