Billy grinned and patted me on the back. “You got heart. I’ll give you that. Dumb as a stump and doomed as hell, but you’ve got heart.”
After that, I had the rest of the afternoon off, so I walked into town and had a sandwich at the Starlite in hopes of catching a sight of Charlene, but she was nowhere around, then I walked around town some more, and somehow I ended up over at this pink house. Right there, I decided I ought to just give in to all my poor lusty dreams. It wasn’t a thing I could fight. It was something wicked and burning inside of me.
Dahlia and Favor Muller’s house was a big white one with nice pink awnings and pink trim. It all looked like a nicely iced kind of confectionery. There was no car in the drive. No kids playing out in front. I burdened up my lust at the bottom of the stairs and walked up to the white front door. I pressed my finger to the doorbell and held my breath.
The door opened and Dahlia stood there grinning with her hand over her ample chest.
“Ask and you shall receive. Isn’t that what the Good Book says? Just tell me this isn’t a dream.”
Dal was wearing this pretty little blue number, this blouse that stopped just short of her belly and a matching blue skirt, showing off her middle and her bare legs. I felt myself get nervous. I felt my hands get wet with moisture and my throat grow dry.
“Do you mind if I come in for a drink?” I muttered.
“I thought you’d never ask.” She smiled with a little mischievous wink.
Dal opened the screen door before I really knew what I had just said. I stepped inside and looked around the front room. The first thing I noticed was the sofa. It was red, covered in clear vinyl or plastic, pretty large, set up against the wall. It had been on a couch like that where I had first kissed Dahlia, innocently or not so, I guess, just a kiss on the cheek when we were sixteen or so. It had been there that I had sealed my own fate. I was going to make the same hopeless mistake. Believe what this honey-toothed woman said. Believe all the things she laid so gently at my ear.
“Where’s your husband?” I asked.
“At work. Where every husband should be. Collecting trash.”
Dal sat down on the sofa, spreading her skirt over her bare, creamy legs. They were genuinely creamy. Everything about her was pretty creamy.
“Luce, I just need to get something off my chest.”
I stared into her blue, blue eyes, wondering if it was not her blouse.
“I just need to tell you how sorry I am for putting you through all of that. I mean, the eloping and not being pregnant and all that.”
I looked her in her white face. It had all been a lie. The worst one I had ever heard in my whole life. It was a thing that would not go away with a simple little apology. Poor Dahlia had told me she was with child. Pregnant by me, sure as hell. Dal told me if I didn’t elope with her and skip town, then she’d go see the doctor in Colterville and get the problem fixed. Just like that. So I didn’t have any real choice to make. I loved her and I loved the kid that wasn’t even born, so I made off with the returns of the liquor store. But then there was the accident, and the trial, and me going to prison, and then after three months she finally told me it had all been a lie. Nothing more than a way of getting me to marry her and take her out of a town she had hated more than anything in the world. But it was too late. Three months of dreaming about having a child of my own. Watching the way Dahlia’s belly never seemed to grow when she came to the prison to visit. Worrying myself sick that the poor little baby was ill somehow. Worrying that it would grow up wrong having its daddy sitting in prison.
“I’m sorry for all the pain I caused you.” Dal sighed, pulling my hand against the side of her face. “I still love you so much. You have to know that. I love you more than I could love any other man.”
Dal tilted her head to the side, closing her eyes. This meant she was ready to kiss. I felt my mouth go dry right away. Dal flashed open her blue eyes. Boy, she really had pretty eyes, they were deeper blue around the irises, cool and delicate, they weren’t set too close together or too far apart. Dahlia patted the blank, empty sofa space beside her. I nodded and sat down. She placed her tiny white hand over my knee, leaning in close.
“I just knew you would come. I knew you could forgive me. I knew you would.” She smiled, unbuttoning her skirt. I caught a quick glimpse of her smooth white flesh and the unholy tight blue panties beneath. I always liked the way that looked. I could paint a dozen goddamn masterpieces of “
Girl in Panties
.” I don’t know why, maybe it was the mystery of it all, but seeing Dahlia in her underdrawers would always be enough to make me fold.
She had been waiting for this kiss a long time. I could feel it along her lips. She had dreamed of me coming back. She had been waiting for the kiss for almost three years. There was nothing but the tingling of her own lust against my skin. But there was no ardor there that belonged to me. No tenderness that made me want to open my eyes and stare into her unloving face.
Another lady held my heart in her hand. Charlene.
Then I could see all the lies that Dal had told me written somewhere upon her sweet skin. All the dishonesty and guilt seeping out of her flesh. And I knew something else, something clear as a bell. I had never forgiven her for all the things she had said.
“Dal,” I whispered, “I can’t.”
“He won’t be home for hours. He’s out with the trash.”
“It isn’t Favor, it’s me. It’s me. It’s someone else. I can’t get her out of my head.”
“What? But you can have me … right here … right now …”
“I know. That’s the trouble with it all. My heart isn’t here. I think somewhere deep inside I can tell I don’t like you very much.”
“Get out,” Dal muttered. “Get out!”
I shot up from the couch, tripping over an end table, smacking my head on the couch. I stumbled out the front door as Dahlia began throwing things at me.
“You bastard!” she shouted. She pegged me with some stupid glass poodle, still baring only her underpants. The poodle cracked into a dozen pieces against the back of my head. I tripped down the front stairs and out to the street. I didn’t notice until I was down the block that I was smiling. I felt blessed as hell all of a sudden. All of a sudden I knew how bad I wanted Charlene. All I could do was smile about it and whisper her name to myself again and again in surety.
A lonely drifting heart may find another of its kind to moor. That’s what I was hoping for, at least. A delicate rope to keep me from floating adrift.
Viceroy cigs 1.50 pk
unfiltrd and penitent
as an only wish
At night, I stared out the dull glass windows up into Junior’s electric sign. I began to close the gas station a few minutes early when these kids, these really young dirty-faced kids, came in. They had their blue baseball hats pulled down halfway covering their faces, their eyes looking at their feet. They weaseled up to the counter and stared me right in my eyes. This one kind of red-faced kid with freckles and red hair nodded at me. The other one with greasy black hair and real pink lips dropped the money on the counter.
“Pack of Viceroy Golds,” the kid with freckles whispered, staring down from the blackness beneath his baseball hat.
I smiled, shaking my head. “You got ID?” I asked.
“Nope,” the kid mumbled, not moving away from the counter. I looked down into that red-faced kid, right into his little eyeballs, and shook my head.
“Sorry, kid. I already told you. Try some other place.”
“Man, don’t be a dick. Just give us the smokes.”
“Get the hell outta here before I come around the counter and brain you both.”
They shook their heads, hitting each other in the arm.
“Asshole!” the red-faced kid shouted. He slammed the glass door closed, still swearing and shaking his head. I smiled and came out from behind the counter and locked the doors, then closed down the station, cleaning and restocking, switching off the lights and pumps. I turned the signs off and folded my blue Gas-N-Go hat and slipped it in my rear jeans pocket. Then I stepped outside into the warm blue night. The night was sweet and clean-smelling like a prom bouquet. I just stood there for a second and smiled, staring up at the sky.
“There he is!!” someone shouted from the blackness.
“Asshole!!!” someone else yelled.
A big wad of dirt flew through the black night, crossing down, and hit the glass door behind me. I had just cleaned the windows that day. I turned back around, squinting into the dark.
“Get ’im!!!” someone shouted.
“Asshole!!!”
There was another volley of dirt. Three or four clumps smacked the glass windows and doors behind me. One lucky clump caught me right in the forehead, sent from the cover of darkness. I squinted my eyes and peeked behind the dull fluorescent streetlights and saw about a half-dozen little bastards lined up behind the first line of gas pumps, armed with a big gray plastic bucket full of dirt.
“Asshole!!!” the kids shouted. It was the goddamn cigarette kids. I could see that lousy little red face as another dried clump of dirt caught me in the ear. They all laughed and kept throwing, smacking the glass behind me, haw-hawing through their miserable little teeth and dirty mouths. Then the front of the glass Coca-Cola machine suddenly shattered with shards and bits of rocks and dirt. That was it. I saw that happen and ran right for one of them. He gave a little cry as he froze where he stood, shrinking up in on himself as I grabbed him around his tiny arm. The other kids shouted and took off, leaving this one kid all by himself. It was the one with red hair and splotchy red freckles. His face was so tight and full of fear that he looked ready to cry.
“Broke the goddamn Coke machine!” I shouted. “Little punk!!”
“Don’t brain me,” he muttered, his eyes watering with tears. “Sweet Jesus, I’ll come back tomorrow and clean it all up. I swear. It was just a joke. I’ll come back and clean it up and pay fer it to be fixed.”
I let go of his arm and turned him loose. He ran off into the dark. I stood there for a minute, looking at the mess. There was dirt all over the front windows. Bits of plastic and glass strewn along the front of the Coke machine. I gave a little mumble to myself. It was a mess. There was no way in hell that kid was coming back. It had felt like the right thing to do, turning that kid loose. But there was no way he was coming back. I shook my head and frowned and began picking up the broken glass. I went back inside and got myself a broom and some towels and started whistling to myself to keep from getting mad as hell. It took me two hours to clean it up. By then it was nearly midnight. I began to walk down the road, still whistling to myself. A huge white moon hung low and heavy in the sky. The rest of the night sky was black and thin, like a sheet, it slipped around the moon like a nice black frame. It was very beautiful is all I can rightly say.
Don’t ask me how or why, but I ended up at the Starlite Diner again. I stood outside the joint and stared in through the glossy white glass windows. It was hot and warm. I looked in through a side window, shading the light from my eyes with my hands, and stared inside.
Charlene saw me and looked up from the shiny white counter, just lifting her head a little. She smiled a low sad smile, like she was forgiving something, then looked back down at her white, white hands. Her brown hair was so curly. It twisted and ran all over her shoulders. She leaned closer against the counter as I walked around the front of the diner and inside. My chest felt weak and heavy all at once. I marched right up to the counter and took a red vinyl seat at the bar without even knowing what I wanted to say.
“Hi,” she kind of whispered. Her hair smelled so good and heavy and sweet. She pushed some of it behind her ear and leaned closer over the counter.
“How do.” I smiled, staring down at my hands.
“Are you going to order anything tonight?” she asked curtly. Her eyes were cold and stinging and brown.
“No,” I mumbled, giving her an awful look back, still kind of smiling a little.
“You can’t just come and sit here. You’ll get me in trouble.”
“Fine,” I grinned, swiveling on the red vinyl stool. “What do I care?”
“You’re really some sorta jerk, aren’t you? Don’t you have anything better to do than bother me?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “No, not really.” I looked down at my hands as I ran my fingers in big wide circles across the counter. I twisted a paper napkin between them. I poured a tiny mound of salt and began sifting it back and forth nervously. “Jerk,” she murmured with a small smile, rolling her eyes. “What do want from me?” she finally asked.
I wanted to touch the back of her neck. “Nothing,” I murmured. I looked around the diner. The same trucker with the same red beard was in the same seat. Maybe he hadn’t ever left.
“Why do you come here then?” She said it mean, because it was supposed to be mean. “Can’t you find some other girl to bother?”
“Don’t you have something to do here?” I asked, looking around again. “That guy looks like he can use another slice of pie.”
“Don’t
you
have something to do?” Charlene asked.
“Forget it!” I shouted, knocking the tiny mound of salt across the counter. “You’re just a dumb kid.” I hopped off the stool and strode outside, slamming the glass door open hard. It shook in the frame, but didn’t break or anything.
I looked up at the lousy low yellow moon and spun around as the door opened behind me and her clean white legs shone in the dark.
“Maybe …” she whispered, her heels clicked against the pavement. “Maybe we can go out sometime.” Charlene smiled. She was holding my hand. “But I’m telling you right now, this isn’t a date or anything. I have to work every night until two.” She sighed.
“That’s fine.” I smiled. “I can meet you tonight after work if you’d like.”
“OK. But this isn’t a date.”
“No.” I nodded. “Nothing like that.”
She kind of looked at me, biting her lip, then over my shoulder at the moon, then back at me. My heart was pounding against the inside of my dirty gas station shirt. All I could see was her pink, pink lips, lit up by the moon. I was holding her hand again, don’t ask me how, but we were just standing there, holding hands really weakly, just by the fingertips like it was the only thing keeping us there on earth.