Wide Blue Yonder (4 page)

Later, after the Prince had gotten bored with abusing her and retreated back to his nasty little office, Josie thought more about quitting. There had to be easier ways to earn gas money. Someone in the Taco Hell corporate headquarters had lost it and replaced
the chain’s spuriously festive colors, red, green, and gold, with an even worse combo of pink, green, purple, and red. You could see both color schemes in evidence, like an evolutionary struggle between two repulsive species.

Bonnie said, “Hey. Feel like playing?” Josie shook her head. “Come on. Your turn first.”

It was a game they played when they were feeling particularly raunchy. They had to imagine doing it with the first man who walked through the door. It was truly sick, considering the clientele, enough to put you off sex entirely. “Come on,” Bonnie insisted.

“Yeah, OK.” She’d sunk this low. It was a gross-out game. Usually you got stuck with some bald type.

“He has to be somebody at least our age, though. Not a kid.”

“Whatever.” Maybe she could get a job at the Cinema. She could watch the movies in ten-minute chunks. Pour butter goo on the popcorn. Give in, live the Springfield life, die quietly. She wasn’t even looking at the door when it opened but Bonnie’s face made her turn around.

Josie saw the uniform first. A cop. Then she saw him. Dear Lord. He paused at the head of the little post-and-chain maze that herded people toward Order Here, scanning the menu. Outside of a magazine, she’d never seen another human being look this good. He had the most beautiful throat. An architecturally perfect column of marble skin. A statue in uniform. Dark dark eyes. Everything inside her stopped. Like going right up to the edge of a cliff and balancing there.

She was aware of Bonnie shuffling and nudging and silently carrying on, but she paid her no mind. His lower lip was caught between his teeth, making the color bloom in it. Then he was moving toward her through the maze.

“Welcome to Taco Bell, can I take your order?” The idiotic
mantra. Her voice a squeak. She couldn’t even look at him directly so she stared at his blue blue shirt and silver badge.

“Yeah, how about …” He paused and she dared to lift her eyes up to the beam of his face. He was doing that lip-biting thing again. His teeth. His dark, level eyebrows. His voice, God, sometimes she thought the thing she loved the best about men was their voices. “Two of the Baja Steak Gorditas and a large drink.”

“For here or to go?”

“To go, please.” Damn.

Josie repeated the order, forcing Bonnie to turn and reluctantly begin fumbling with the bags and cups. Josie announced his total and waited while he reached for his billfold with the same lazy movement you might use to scratch a not-very-pressing itch. There was an actual gun and all that other police stuff on his belt. Every molecule of her body felt scrambled, as if she’d been microwaved. She actually felt dizzy. She didn’t trust herself not to fall in a heap. His hand warmed the air above hers as he passed the money to her. Say something. If she didn’t say something, she might as well commit suicide.

“Arrest any bad guys today?” Just shoot me.

“Not yet. My shift hasn’t started.” He smiled, but the smile settled somewhere above her head as he waited for his order to come up. Frantic, she attempted to get some part of her being to function properly. Mouth, hopeless. Feet, gone. Her eyes were open but they were connected to something other than her brain. Name tag. Name. Tag. Focus. It said M.
CROOK
. A cop named crook? No way. Rings? Nothing. Glory be. But already he was picking up his food, telling Bonnie he wanted hot sauce, rattling ice cubes into his drink, fifteen seconds away from disappearing forever.

The door opened and closed behind him. Bonnie already had her mouth working, saying, “I don’t believe it, he was like …”

But when she turned around, Josie was no longer there. She was out the backdoor of the Taco Bell, tearing off the stupid hat and sending it skating across the parking lot. She was diving for her car keys. Everything within her had started up again. She had stepped off the cliff edge into brilliant air and she knew now what splendid shape her life was meant to take.

She would fall in love.

T
here was nothing wrong with the car, they said. Everything checked out, oil pressure, battery, emission control. They swore up and down. Elaine, a woman who was no longer impressed with promises and who didn’t mind being difficult, made them go through it all over again everytime the light came on. Difficult was now called “assertive” and was a good thing. She figured that sooner or later they’d get tired of dealing with her and fix the damn car. It was driving her crazy. Literally. She’d forget all about it, she’d be behind the wheel, hands, feet, eyes doing the car thing, her mind lightly tethered, free-floating, enjoying the ride. Then the light would go on. A pinprick of worry puncturing all that good feeling. Elaine tried ignoring it. It was, after all, only a stupid lightbulb. But it was taking on a life of its own. She tried to predict it, outsmart it, by doing things like not using (or using) the air conditioner. No dice. It was becoming a superstitious tic she used to measure the success of her days: light off, good; light on, not so good. She kept waiting for the car to do whatever it was threatening to do so she could drag it back to the dealer in triumph.

Meanwhile, she had other problems. Ed Pauley was doing his fussy best to make his interminable point. Elaine kept nodding to show she was paying attention, and also, she hoped, to hurry him along. Finally she found a place to wedge in an interruption. “Ed, I agree with you, it’s a matter for concern. But why not tell Frank? After all, Harvey’s
his
uncle.”

Ed puffed his cheeks and pretended to think about this. Frank was the last person to be useful in any human crisis. They both knew this and she was mildly curious as to how he would avoid saying it. Finally Ed put on a thoughtful face and said, “Of course. Absolutely. But I kept thinking how much Harve’s always taken to you and the little girl and I thought, well, maybe he’d enjoy seeing you.”

Meaning, you could divorce a guy, but because you were a woman, you were still on the hook for the family obligations he couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of. Elaine tried to imagine what Frank would say if she was the one with the crazy uncle and somebody asked him to deal with it. She watched Ed gaze around the shop at the fabric displays. Every surface was heaped with color and pattern, like yards and yards of butterflies. Clearly none of it interested him. More womanish business, Ed’s face seemed to say.

Elaine said, “I’ve always been fond of Harvey too. He’s never hurt anybody but himself.”

“That’s what I’m worried about, Mrs. Sloan—”

“Lindstrom.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Lindstrom, not Sloan.”

Ed nodded to indicate that he would forget this immediately. “When I saw him last week I had to wonder if he was taking care of himself.”

“He always has. Cashes his Social Security checks. Pays his bills. Functions. It might not seem like much of a life to you or me, but you can’t decide those things for people.”

“He was buying cat food.”

Elaine said patiently, “He’s got a cat.”

“Oh. I was afraid …”

“I can buy him vitamins, but I can’t promise he’ll take them. I can make a doctor’s appointment, but there’s no guarantee I can get him out of the house.”

“If you could just check up on him, that would ease my mind,” said Ed, still concerned but beginning the process of handing off, retreating. She supposed she was only annoyed at him because he was trying to get her to do the decent thing, what she should have done anyway, regardless of how richly Frank had deserved divorcing. Poor Harvey. What had he done to deserve his lonely life?

Ed Pauley was the same age as Harvey. There had to be a little anxious itch behind his good-neighbor concern, it had to be anxious, watching yourself age in the mirror of your friends’ faces. Ed’s own pink face was deflating, losing air. A big, bulky old man, going soft around the edges. Elaine didn’t know him all that well personally. He was only the kind of man you knew publicly. Chamber of Commerce Ed, Kiwanis Ed, glad-hander Ed. The hometown lawyer made very good. The thriving opposite of Harvey. Productive citizen. Wife and kids, grandkids. People to take care of him in his golden years. As Harvey had her, sort of.

Because now that the obligation had been laid on her, she’d see it through. She believed in responsibilities. Acts of charity. They were positive things that you could balance against all the wreck-age and mistakes of your life. So far she had a business that worked, a marriage that hadn’t, and a daughter that the jury was still out on.

After five years of grinding effort, the business was about to become an overnight success. A Chicago store was planning on carrying her line of home accessories. Elaine imported most of the fabric goods directly from an artisan’s cooperative she’d organized in rural India, in Bihar. Twice a year she went there to tend
to its affairs and determine her new season’s order. She had invested in the rebuilt dye works and the water system that processed the industrial waste and provided the village with sewage treatment. There were times she marveled. It almost seemed as if all she had to do was aim herself at a goal, and after a time it was so. She understood those fables where someone smote the ground with a magic staff and a city, or a castle, or a fruited plain sprang forth. They were shorthand for enormous amounts of unimaginable labor. The cooperative kept fifty women employed in sewing circles where they produced gold-thread embroidery and tissue-fine blouses and other handwork, for the only money they had ever earned. When she visited, the women presented her with wreaths of hibiscus and offerings of food and tea and tiny bottles of Coca-Cola. Children in school uniforms lined up to sing songs. The plant’s managing committee strung a banner across the main entrance,
WELCOME TO MOST FAMOUS AND BEAUTIFUL LADY
. She had accomplished many solid, productive, useful things. She had done what she could. You did what you could, but there was still the rest of India. And there was still Uncle Harvey.

Elaine said, “I know what Frank says about Harvey. But what do you think happened to him?”

Ed did the cheek-puffing thing again and his eyes searched the ceiling, as if he needed a space clear of color in order to gather his thoughts. “Did you know that he was in the school glee club? Harve? Sang at all the assemblies. Tenor, I think he was.” Elaine must have looked impatient, because he raised a hand. “What I’m saying is he was as normal as pie. Just like anybody else. Or normal enough. Quiet. His brother, that was Frank Senior, he was the one everybody remembers. The war hero. Harvey was always sort of, ‘Oh, him too.’”

The door to the shop opened, a customer. Elaine said, “Be right
with you,” and Ed was left dangling in mid-story. Elaine tried to prod him along. “By the time I knew Frank’s dad he was pretty sick. I don’t remember him saying anything about Harvey.”

“Oh, he wouldn’t. None of his folks liked to talk about Harvey. They had that old-time religion. It didn’t allow for making mistakes.”

The customer came up and stood behind Ed, making a point of waiting for her, so Elaine was forced to shoo Ed away just as he was on the verge of becoming interesting. He said good-bye and took himself briskly out the door. But glancing out to the sidewalk, Elaine saw him becalmed there, hands dangling at his side, squinting first in one direction, then the other.

When she drove home that evening she was cautiously pleased to note that the dashboard light was off, as it had been for the last couple of days. She fixed herself a sandwich, then contemplated the telephone for a melancholy time. Calling her ex-husband was a necessary first step. She had to get Frank’s nominal permission before she embarked on any enterprise involving Harvey. She had learned over the course of her marriage, and especially after it, that the simplest matters could grow tentacles of suspicion and intrigue if she failed to take into account Frank’s sense of his own sovereignty and territorial rights. If, for example, she wanted to arrange a birthday party for their daughter (back in the days when Josie would have tolerated such a thing), it was best to proceed by complaining vaguely about birthday parties and how much trouble they were. At the time of the divorce settlement he had made a video of the house and its contents, complete with his narration: “Here you see the front vestibule, which, due to floor tile I installed in 1989, has appreciated at least twenty-five per cent in value.” He wanted to know why Josie had insisted on getting a driver’s license at age sixteen rather than the more insurable eighteen; had Elaine put her up to it? Every transaction was
like negotiating with the North Koreans. No one had forced her to marry the man. She picked up the phone and dialed.

Teeny answered with her melodic, three-syllable hel-lo-o that sounded like a door chime. “Hi, Teeny, it’s Elaine. I have a question for Frank, is he there?”

“Elaine. How are you? I can’t remember the last time we talked. Ages. You just keep so
busy
.”

Teeny’s way of annoying Elaine was to adapt a particularly gracious tone, tinged with sympathy for the fact that Elaine had to work for a living. “I’m fine, Teeny. Yeah, I have been busy. I’m sure Frank’s busy too. This’ll only take a minute.”

“Oh, he’s out by the pool. He just loves that silly float chair with the can holder built in. Paddles around like a big old water bug. Hang on while I walk the phone out to him. Honey? Honey, get that thing off your head.”

The phone was muffled then. Elaine heard some bumpy, cottony sounds that she took to be conversation. It’s Elaine. What does she want? I don’t know, she didn’t say. Well, tell her I’m not here. I already said you were. Christ.

“Hello.” His aggravated voice. She knew it well. She imagined him paddling around like a big old water bug in plaid bathing trunks. His white knees pointing east and west. Zones of pink sunburn crawling up his arms and shins and down his neck.