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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Mail

When Lisa Doyle opened her mailbox that afternoon, she found a catalogue for fireplace tools, a dry-cleaning coupon, a gas bill, and an envelope that made her skin prickle. The scribbly handwriting was Joe Keesler's, and it was postmarked Cambridge. She sat down on the grass, still prickling and almost giddy with the feel of an actual letter from Him, and ripped open the envelope:

Wednesday, May 23

Dear Lisa,

I feel very confused and sorry, but the long and short of it is that
when I came back home, my old girlfriend from Duke had driven all
the way from North Carolina (she called my mom and my mom told
her when I'd be released) and even though she broke up with me when
I decided to go on a mission (she's agnostic), she said she wanted to be
with me again and I have to say that when I saw her, I felt the same
way. I really wasn't leading you on. I really, really care for you. I
cared for you more than I should have, given the situation. But I have
to see where things are going with Kara.

Please forgive me for any hurt this has caused you.

Joe

Lisa crumpled the letter in her fist, then smoothed it out, reread it, and crumpled it again. She let it drop to the ground. Wednesday. He wrote the letter on Wednesday. Which meant he'd left on Monday, long before she set the book on his doormat. Was the book sitting there still? Or did Elder Pfingst have it on a shelf somewhere in the apartment, wondering what to do with a used book by Isak Dinesen and a note from a girl signed Love?

She looked at the balled letter. She picked it up, unwadded it, and then with the flat of her hand tried to iron the letter smooth again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Perambulation

That same afternoon, Mick headed for the library, then changed his mind and started toward his father's shop, then changed course again and wound up at Reece's. He called in through the back door and heard Reece yell, “Down here!”

Reece was in the basement lying on the sofa reading
Moll
Flanders
by Daniel Defoe.

“How is it?” Mick said, nodding at the book.

Reece made a mock grimace. “Every time Moll does any of the stuff she's famous for—you know, the good wanton stuff—she pays the price, and then some.”

“Kind of takes the fun out of the fun stuff, huh?” Mick said. The problem was, he thought, sometimes you don't know what price you're going to pay. Getting caught by Cruso—if he did get caught—didn't bother him. Whereas Lisa Doyle indirectly calling him a coward did.

The phone rang. Reece waited for the third ring, then picked it up and said, “Reeceville.”

Mick saw his eyes brighten and heard his voice deepen. “This is Mr. Reece speaking.”

Mick knew at once it was a telemarketer. Reece loved asking telemarketers increasingly weird questions until finally the telemarketer would hang up on him, which was the object. Today Reece began, “You know, I
haven't
been very happy with our long-distance service. I've been calling the Cayman Islands a lot lately—what kind of rates do your people have to the Caymans?”

Mick went over to the piano and played “Invention 13,” twice. When he finished, Reece was still on the phone, smiling and talking in his husky adultoid voice.

Mick closed the key cover. As he headed for the stairs, Reece covered the phone and said, “Who gave you permission to leave?”

Mick smiled, waved, and kept walking.

The house was empty when Mick arrived home ten minutes later. He took Foolish to the park, threw him Frisbee after Frisbee, shot him a stream of water from the fountain, then went over to the spot where he'd first met Myra and Pam. He sat on the ground and scratched Foolish's stomach until the dog stretched out and went limp with sleep.

Mick lay back and closed his eyes, but he didn't feel like sleeping. He didn't feel like anything. In fact, things seemed pretty grim. He'd thought making Mr. Cruso feel bad would make him feel better, but it didn't. It made him feel worse, especially after hearing Lisa's ideas on the subject. And two thousand, three hundred and seventy-five dollars. He had no idea that a little sand in a gas tank could rack up that kind of money.

“That you, Mick?”

Mick's eyes shot open. Myra smiled down at him. He said, “What're you doing here?”

Myra fingered the sleeves of her jogging gear. “Running. Getting stuff out of my system.” She smiled. “How about you?”

Mick nodded at Foolish. “Giving the hound a little quality Frisbee time.”

Myra gave him one of her big, easy smiles and sat down close enough to Foolish that she could stroke his stomach. They were quiet for a while, then Mick said, “My history teacher was freaking out last period because somebody vandalized his car.”

Myra asked who his history teacher was, and when Mick said, “Cruso,” she kept smoothing her hand back and forth over Foolish's stomach. Finally she said, “I wouldn't feel too sorry for Mr. Cruso.”

This surprised Mick. “Why's that?”

In a quiet voice Myra said, “He's got a slimy underside.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he makes passes at female students.”

Another surprise. “I didn't think teachers did that.”

Myra laughed. “Yeah, well, in a perfect world they don't.” A few seconds passed. “Here, for example, is what Cruso said to me. It was after a practice for
Anne Frank,
and he gave me a ride home in his little roadster, and before I got out he said, ‘You know, Myra, you are strangely vivifying. You breathe life into things. You should give me a call sometime late at night, after you turn eighteen.'

“Cruso said, ‘You are strangely vivifying'?”

Myra smiled unhappily. “Direct quote.”

“What did you say?”

She kept scratching Foolish. “Well, in this weird way, I was flattered. I mean,
vivifying.
Nobody ever called me vivifying before.” She smiled. “But afterward I thought it was creepy. Lining up girls for future, you know, plucking.”

Mick nodded. Myra was the local version of a rock star. He'd never imagined feeling sorry for her, but he felt a little sorry for her now, or at least for the younger Myra that Cruso had been hitting on. “Not so easy being a girl, huh?” he said.

Myra shrugged and smiled. “Not so easy being anybody,” she said. They were quiet a few seconds, and Myra said, “Okay, this is fun, but it ain't aerobic.” As she bent to stand, her strapped top loosened and drew Mick's attention to the smooth whiteness that swelled there. She gave him a knowing look, then set something on her watch. As she turned to go she said, “Check your e-mail when you get home.”

Mick watched her start into long loping strides. She had her hair in a ponytail and when she got far enough away that he could no longer tell the color of her hair, she reminded him of someone else.

He leashed Foolish and started walking. He thought he was going home, but when he got there, the house was still dark and he kept walking, just walking, block after block, first in one direction, then another. He walked past houses, Duz Bro, and the First Presbyterian Church. He checked his pants pockets, found $3.75, and stopped at McDonald's for four eighty-nine-cent hamburgers and a cup of water. He sat at one of the outside tables, ate two of the burgers, and gave two to Foolish. They kept walking. When the sun set and it turned cool, he zipped up his jacket. He turned east into a snug-looking neighborhood, glanced into the lighted homes and saw people eating dinner, watching TV, reading newspapers. He walked block after block, heading generally toward the high school but in a totally new way that made him feel he was a tourist in his own town. He crossed streets named after birds and governors and forgotten officials, then followed one that led to a series of English names. Cumberland, Westmoreland, Nottingham.

Lisa Doyle's street.

Mick followed the numbers down the street until he stood in front of 1331, the numerical palindrome.

A Dutch-style house on a hill. The front room was lighted, but nobody was in it. To the right was another room, also lighted, but the interior was made indistinct by sheer curtains. Mick glanced around, then looped Foolish's leash over a fence picket and walked over to the window and glanced in.

It looked like the breakfast room. Lisa Doyle was still in her green skirt and white blouse, lying on the window seat with a letter in her hand.

He tapped lightly, then a little harder until Lisa looked up, startled. She came over and cranked open the window. She looked a lot different than she had after school this afternoon, a lot worse. Her face looked puffy and wet. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” Mick said. “What's the matter? Is something the matter?”

She lowered her eyes. “Not really.” Then, looking up, “How'd you get here?”

Mick saw the envelope on the window seat. “I don't know.” Pause. “I was just out walking the dog.”

Lisa raised her eyebrows. She sniffed a little. “Kind of a long walk.” Then, touching her nose with a wadded tissue, she seemed to be thinking about something. When she met his eyes again, she asked, “Want to walk a couple more blocks with me?”

This seemed like a good way to find out what was going on. “Sure. If you want to.”

As they headed away from her house, Lisa crossed her arms and said, “It's nice out.”

Mick nodded and didn't say anything. It was nice, especially now that Lisa was there. There was the clicking of Foolish's nails on the pavement and the gentle stirrings of light wind moving through the street trees.

She said, “Were you out walking because of that Cruso thing?”

“I guess so,” Mick said. He couldn't tell her he'd watched Myra Vidal running and her swishing ponytail had reminded him of her, which, he realized now, was exactly what Myra's ponytail had reminded him of. He stopped so Foolish could do a little bush marking. Lisa stopped, but she didn't say anything.

Mick thought of the wrinkled letter on the window seat looking like it'd been wadded up, then smoothed out. “Was that letter something bad?” Mick asked.

She looked like she was about to say no, not really, or some version of it, but then her shoulders dropped and she said, “Kind of, yeah.”

“Yeah?”

She gave him a long, wondering look. “You really want to hear this?”

Mick put up a little laugh. “No, I mean, yeah, I do want to hear.”

Lisa seemed to be collecting her thoughts. “Okay. Remember a while back how I told you about the missionaries coming to dinner?”

Mick took a deep breath. “You mean tall, dark, and Mormon?”

Lisa nodded. “Well, tall, dark, and Mormon came to dinner. Tall, dark, and Mormon sort of said that he liked me. Tall, dark, and Mormon went back to Boston, where he immediately wrote me a letter informing me that his girlfriend from Duke, who he'd never mentioned, had decided to take him back.”

The “who” should've been “whom,” but Mick wasn't about to say so.

“Her name is
Kara,
” Lisa said. “The petty part of me thinks, how could he go for somebody named
Kara
?”

They walked half a block in silence, and Mick said, “So you liked him, I guess.”

“Yeah.”

For Mick, this made everything seem a little less nice. “Well,” he said.

Lisa didn't say anything for a while, and neither did Mick. The streets were dark now, and a big, squashed moon was rising. “What're you thinking about?” Lisa asked.

Mick looked at the squashed moon, then down at Lisa. “Oh, I guess I was thinking about how, before I got to your place, the houses I was passing seemed to be full of all these happy-seeming people doing happy-seeming things.”

Lisa looked down at the sidewalk. “And now they don't?”

“Now they seem to be full of disappointed people.”

“Like me?”

“Yeah,” Mick said. “Only I think it was probably my disappointment I was feeling right then.”

She didn't say anything.

They walked past a man practicing his golf swing in a dark front yard. The club head made a quick
shush
as it swept past the grass. Foolish turned to see what had caused the sound, but seemed confused.

Mick looked at the dog and said, “That's why we call him Foolish.”

Lisa's small laugh was delicate, and, to Mick's ear, almost musical.

After a minute or so, he said, “Once this college girl told me her favorite time ever was eighth grade because she and her boyfriend would just walk around everywhere together. Walk and talk.”

They crossed a street and Lisa said, “So would this college girl be Myra Vidal?”

Mick was surprised she knew this. “Yeah.”

Lisa asked how he met her, and Mick told her about the bet with Reece.

“And sometimes you see her?”

Mick remembered sitting with Myra in Bing's when Janice Bledsoe and Maurice walked in. “Guess your friend Janice reported that, huh?”

Lisa laughed. “The night has a thousand eyes.”

The sighting at Bing's had happened weeks ago. Mick was wondering why Lisa had waited until now to mention it when she said, “I guess you still see her sometimes?”

“Not very often, but sometimes she calls me when her best friend is occupied. She's got a boyfriend in California and tries to stay out of trouble. I guess I'm one of her ways of staying out of trouble.”

Lisa seemed to be thinking about something. Finally she said, “Do you think a relationship with somebody older is always bound to be kind of, you know, uneven?”

Mick said he guessed it depended on the people, “but, yeah, with Myra, it's kind of like she's this really cool older sister.”

Lisa didn't say anything. They kept walking and then all of a sudden Mick felt Lisa's hand take his, and his hand at once clasped hers, tightly, almost hungrily.

They walked three more blocks in a state of silence that Mick didn't want to end. Only when they got back to her house did she let go of his hand. They stood awkwardly for a second or two, and then Mick said, “Thanks.”

Lisa's face wasn't quite so puffy anymore. “For what?”

“I'm not sure. I guess just everything.”

Lisa Doyle smiled at Mick Nichols and then she did something surprising. She leaned quickly forward and kissed him on the cheek. “Bye-ya,” she said, and was gone.