Stay Gone Days, page 10
“You’d never guess what I did last night.”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t.”
“So I’ll tell you. I bought a bottle of wine from your boyfriend. Julio, right? Or is it Jose? Anyway, I bought the cheapest thing they had in the store, some kind of off-brand cabernet. I must have stood there and shot the shit with him for ten or fifteen minutes. Turns out he grew up in Paso Robles. When he was fourteen he started picking grapes at Covino Vineyards. To this day, he’s partial to their Zinfandel and tried his hardest to sell me some. You know what that suggests to me?”
A response could only reveal her fear and, perhaps more importantly, her exhaustion. She wasn’t tired of work. She was tired of thinking about him, of wondering if he’d find her again. She thought about this off and on all day, she dreamed about it at night, and now it had happened.
“To me, that suggests he’s not exactly Cesar Chavez. If I’d been out there picking rich people’s grapes for peanuts when I was a kid, I wouldn’t be so eager to put money in their pockets later on. I’d be looking to take some out.”
“You’d be looking to take money out of their pockets whether you’d picked their grapes or not.”
“Thieves Like Us,” he said. “Ever see that movie? It’s set in Mississippi.”
She’d never told him she came from Mississippi or that she’d been born Caroline Cole. Back when they were together, he’d found an old driver’s license in some of her things—this was why whatever foolish girl he’d been with a couple of years ago could pick up money in her name at the Western Union in Beaumont, Texas. She’d been stupid to hold onto the license and hadn’t known what went with it until she was summoned to the phone at the garlic plant. He said he was desperate, that if she’d help him then, he’d never bother her again. She hadn’t believed him. She left Gilroy the following day and ended up in Fresno. Then she left Fresno and ended up here. She should have gone much farther.
As if he’d read her mind, he said, “You know, hon, California’s not that big. People think it is, but they’re wrong. Here we are together again. Get in.”
“No.”
One thumb idly tapped the steering wheel. “I need a little help,” he said.
“What kind of help?”
“I could use some cash.”
“What’d you buy that bottle of wine with last night?”
He shook his head. “Oh, Carin.”
“Oh, Carin, what?”
“I could’ve just taken it, right? I was in there late, maybe half an hour before closing. Probably no more than three or four cars went by the whole time I was talking to him.” The wrong kind of smile began to play on his lips. “I could’ve taken a whole lot more than that bottle. Couldn’t I?”
She struggled to keep her voice even. “There’s a surveillance camera.”
“I know. But whoever decided where to put it must not be a security specialist. It’s mounted in a corner up front, so the only thing it catches when you walk in’s your back.”
“You still have to get out.”
“There’s a rear entrance. And if somebody did do something nefarious, that person could just step around the counter and walk out the back door.”
“They keep a .38 under the register,” she lied, her pulse starting to pound.
“That’s useful info. Little bit smaller caliber weapon than I might’ve chosen. Depending on somebody’s body mass, it might not cause enough blood loss to stop ’em from doing whatever they wanted. Assuming they intended to do something other than make a lawful purchase, that is.”
Her right leg was starting to quiver. But he wouldn’t notice it. Surely, he wouldn’t. “If you need money,” she said, “you’ve come to the wrong place. You might’ve noticed I work at McDonald’s?”
“Of course, I noticed that. I notice all kinds of things, hon. I think I probably notice more than you do, since you didn’t notice me when I drove by your place this morning. I had my eye on you from the moment you walked out the front door till you stepped under those golden arches. I saw you leave the bowl of milk or whatever it was for that junkyard cat.”
On her way to work, she’d stopped at the B of A and withdrawn her portion of the utilities along with an extra forty dollars because they’d planned dinner in Bakersfield on Saturday night and intended to see a movie. Julio had never asked her to help with the rent; when guilt finally led her to broach the subject, he said he’d continue to handle it but that if they ever made it “official” they could just merge their finances. What he didn’t know—and she felt bad about not confessing it—was that for somebody who almost always worked minimum wage, she’d saved a surprising amount. In Fresno, she babysat for the cafeteria manager on the side, and cleaned houses, too, and she babysat for her current boss as well. She had over a thousand dollars socked away. And Tom had watched her visit the ATM. “I hate you,” she said. “I really do.”
“You’re not the first.”
“And won’t be the last either.” Keeping her eyes on him, she reached into her purse, unzipped the pocket where she’d placed the wad of twenties and pulled it out. She tossed the bills into the pickup, to make sure his hand didn’t touch hers.
He shook his head, as if her behavior was both puzzling and hurtful. “How much is that?”
“A hundred and forty fucking dollars. Basically, a week’s wages, you son of a bitch.”
A lot of women had called him that, and even worse. Yet he’d never called any of them a cunt, or a slut, or a whore because, at least when they were with him, he preferred to think they weren’t. He never even raised his voice to them. The other thing he’d never done was hit them, or get rough with them in bed. Eventually, all of them came to fear him, though why this was so he both did and did not understand. They liked to get high with him, they liked to fuck him, and they liked how he looked beside them. Six-foot-three, a strong chin, rippling abs, and the kind of eyes—according to his momma—that made Sinatra rich. They hadn’t made him rich. Apparently he was like the off-brand jeans his grandma used to buy him when he was growing up: great-looking at the outset, but they never quite fit and after a certain number of wash cycles they began to unravel. It was all so unfair, and when he thought about it, which was not infrequently, it made him mad. It made him do some things he sometimes wished he hadn’t.
“A hundred and forty bucks won’t last too long,” he said, “even with me sleeping in this old truck. I mean, don’t misunderstand, I’m grateful. But it won’t take me past Albuquerque, and I kinda need a big change of scenery. I’m thinking Tampa-St. Pete.”
He watched, with interest, as she realized where this was all heading. She was less predictable than any of the others. She never became truly submissive, not even when she was scared, and she was plenty scared now.
“Go fuck yourself,” she said. She set off toward Main Street.
She might not have been predictable, but he was. He did exactly what she figured he would when she took the first step, switching on the ignition and beginning to creep along behind her.
This town was seldom troubled by traffic at six-thirty on a weeknight, since nearly everybody was with their families or significant others, sitting down and sipping beer after a long day at the raisin plant, or getting ready to eat dinner. He could slowly follow her all the way home, if she went home, and there wouldn’t be anybody to stop him from doing whatever he chose to: an overgrown lot flanked their house on one side, an empty rental on the other. The junkyard would be deserted except perhaps for the stray cat. She could go to the liquor store—he probably wouldn’t follow her inside—but she couldn’t stay there until closing without telling Julio what was up. By the time she reached Main Street, she realized she really had only one choice.
When she spun on the truck, it halted. She walked to the passenger side, and he leaned over to open the door. She shook her head. He stared at her for a moment, his face impassive, then rolled down the glass.
“I have five hundred dollars in the bank,” she said. “If I give it to you, will you leave me alone?”
“Sure. No problem. I hate to be in this situation, but—”
“Just shut the fuck up. You know where the bank is. You can stay close enough to keep an eye on me. I’m sure you don’t trust me any more than I trust you, and you don’t have any fucking reason to. When I get to the ATM, you park in front of the florist shop. Leave the engine running—you won’t be there long. If you climb out of this truck, so help me God, I’ll scream my head off. The stores are closed, but there are rental apartments above every goddamn one.” She didn’t wait to hear if he accepted the offer or not, just set off for the B of A.
He did as instructed, parking down the street from the bank and leaving the engine running. She withdrew the cash, put her card away and walked back to the truck.
“I bet you had at least a thousand,” he said. “Maybe two thousand.”
“Bet all you want to.” Again, she flung the bills at him.
He let them flutter past his face.
“Now it’s my turn to watch you,” she said. “I’m going to watch your taillights until they disappear onto 99. Then I’m going to the police station, which I can get to in about ninety seconds if I run—and I will run—and tell the cops a stranger in a green Ford Galaxy tried to abduct me. They’ll take me home and have somebody watch the house the rest of the evening.”
He didn’t bother to conceal his fascination. He’d met his match— they both knew it. The difference was that this meant one thing to her and something else to him.
“Check you later, baby,” he said, then backed into the street.
DOWNTOWN CEDAR PARK, THE NORTH Shore community where Martin had grown up and lived for all but the few years he attended college, consisted of two blocks of shops. It seemed as if every second or third business made use of the town’s name: Cedar Park Drugs, Cedar Park Hardware. The latter, directly across Main Street from the seafood restaurant where they were sipping their drinks while waiting for a table, had snow shovels, trashcans and wheelbarrows piled up behind the plate glass window. The clutter reminded her of the hardware back in Loring, where her father hunkered in the plumbing section, hiding from the woman he loved.
“You’ve again got that look in your eye,” Martin said.
“What look?”
“The one that tells me you’re someplace besides here.”
They were scrunched shoulder to shoulder in the alcove that housed the bar. This restaurant, which he claimed was the only good one in town, did not take reservations. You just appeared, gave them your name, ordered drinks and bided your time. He didn’t need to give them his name, though. The woman at the hostess stand simply smiled, said “Hiyuh, Mahty” and made a note on her list. Everybody knew him.
The snow, limited earlier to flurries, was beginning to fall harder. Getting back into the city could become a problem, but this didn’t trouble her as much as it might have a month ago. The reasons were too complex to parse just yet. “I’m here,” she said.
“Your body is. But where’s your mind?” He shut his eyes for a second or two, then opened them and snapped his fingers. “I know! It’s in Mississippi. You’re either thinking about high water everywhere or going down to the crossroads and doing a deal with the devil.” He was smiling—that open, guileless smile that suggested he’d be easy to hurt, that it had happened to him on numerous occasions and he was one of those who, for some reason, did an inadequate job of protecting himself. “How about it?” he said. “Is yo’ daddy right? Or is yo’ daddy wrong?”
He had a good ear, he knew immediately that his tone was off. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “That was in bad taste.” He stirred the ice in his watery Bushmills. “Sometimes I’m a bit of a dolt.”
“Sometimes we all are.”
A waitress nudged her way through the clustered bodies and told them their table was ready. They grabbed their drinks and followed her to a booth at the rear of the restaurant, beneath a massive mounted swordfish. Before handing over the menus, she listed the evening’s specials, concluding with something called Panko Parmesan Haddock. After checking to see if they had any questions, she promised to return in a few minutes.
“What about it?” he asked. “Their stuffed lobster’s killer.”
“I might as well be honest and admit I don’t like what one has to do to the lobster before eating it. What else is good?”
“Everything. At one time or another, I’ve eaten it all. The Gloucester Sole’s pretty fabulous. They wrap it around a crab cake.”
In the end, she chose stuffed shrimp, and he picked the fisherman’s platter. They ordered a bottle of sauvignon blanc and, when it came, he raised his glass. “To whatever,” he proposed.
“To whatever? That’s a vague sort of precision.”
He’d become accomplished at the art of the rueful smile. He didn’t know what it looked like, but he knew when it was happening, and it was happening now. How he’d gotten good at it remained a mystery to him. It used to annoy his wife. As did so much else.
Rather than respond to her observation, he said, “Back before Cedar Park turned into a bedroom community, this place used to be pretty different.”
“How so?”
“It smelled different, it looked different. They served about five things, four of which were fried. You never saw anybody in here with a tie on, but it wasn’t uncommon to encounter one of the guys who’d caught the fish on your plate. You might see him and his wife celebrating a birthday or anniversary, often with some other men from the boats and their wives. Lots of wind-burned faces, loud voices, raised mugs. It was pretty downscale. Things started changing around the time my dad suffered his first stroke. He closed his law practice after that, which was just as well. He’d probably never had a client who didn’t live in this town or an adjoining one. He was on the Board of Aldermen for something like thirty-five years. For him, Cedar Park, Massachusetts, was the center of the universe.” He paused and gazed into his wine glass, as if embarrassed at divulging so much.
The night he drove her home from the restaurant in Cambridge, he’d stayed at her place. She was the one who suggested it, and she wasn’t sure she would do it until he pulled up in front of her brownstone, perfectly willing to tell her good night and let her out. She opened the door, even placed one foot on the pavement. “Would you like to come in?”
“I would.”
He parked in front of a hydrant, the only available space. When she pointed out that his car would almost certainly get towed, he said, “I’ll worry about that when it happens.”
Nobody except Liz had been inside her place in the three and a half years she’d lived there. She realized, as they descended the basement stairs, that it was a worse mess than usual, due to her Thanksgiving malaise. Sticking the key in the lock, she said, “I’m afraid—”
“I’m afraid too.”
“Jesus.”
“What?”
She still hadn’t turned the key. “All I meant to say was that I’m afraid my place looks like a hurricane hit it.”
He laughed. “Well, I guess my fears are larger. And more existential. If you’ve changed your mind, I’d understand. Just say so.”
“Jesus,” she said again, then unlocked the door and switched on the lights.
Clothes lay scattered on the floor: a fleece jacket she’d owned since high school, a Red Sox tee shirt she’d bought at Fenway, a winter boot missing a heel, a pair of faded Levi’s all but reduced to a thread collection. At least, she reflected, no empty liquor bottles stood on the counter. They would have completed the portrait of squalor and despair. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything to drink here. I mean, except for water and coffee and some Diet Coke.”
“Diet Coke’s fine.”
“Aren’t you worried it might keep you awake?”
“Not really. I kind of like being awake.”
“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re an odd man?”
“Been hearing it for most of my adult life. Before that, they told me I was a strange little boy.”
The studio was freezing. She turned up the thermostat, then opened the small refrigerator, pulled a can out, popped the tab and handed it to him. They sat down on the loveseat, the only real piece of furniture she had except for the nearby bed and a rickety table barely big enough for one person to eat at. If her circumstances appalled him, he did a good job of concealing it. “So why did people think you were a strange little boy?” she asked.
“The usual reason. I did strange things.”
“Strange how? You mean like, say, torturing the neighbor’s cat? That kind of thing?”
He laughed. “There was no neighbor’s cat. Properly speaking, there were no neighbors. The house I grew up in’s on top of a hill, at least a hundred yards from the next home.”
“Somehow, that fails to subdue my concern.”
“For instance, there was this clear-channel station up in Maine that broadcast country music all night. I fell in love with the sound of a pedal steel, and I discovered that if you wrapped an ordinary pocket comb in a sheet of notebook paper, put it against your lips and whined through it, you’d get the same kind of vibrato.”
“Well, that is weird. But not cat-killing weird.”
“In high school, I paid my sister, who was around nine at the time, to learn to play the fiddle.”
“I’d say that was money well-spent.”
“My folks didn’t think so. They thought I was encouraging her to become as frivolous as me. My dad wanted me to be a lawyer, and my mother wanted me to be a doctor, and all I wanted was to lie on my back and play electric guitar like Mike Bloomfield. You know who he was?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Super Session? With Al Kooper and Stephen Stills?”
“Sorry. I’m drawing a blank.”
After that, a couple of minutes passed in which neither of them could come up with anything else to say, though both of them were thinking as hard as they could. He felt that as badly as he wanted to stay, he really owed it to her to go home because, after all, he’d maneuvered her into having a couple of drinks, which she clearly wasn’t used to, and the alcohol had probably clouded her judgment. How different was he, she might wake up thinking, from her voice instructor? As for her, she wished she had one more glass of wine, or maybe even two, so that she could find the courage to say she wanted him to spend the night there, that she dreaded waking up alone and feeling like she’d felt the last couple of days.
