Althea and Oliver (21 page)

It seems like they're bickering. The boy's face has tightened, and the girl's hands are on her hips. He begins covering the food, continuing their argument with disinterest. Whatever it is can't be very serious. It might be moments like this Althea misses most, about Oliver, about everyone back home. The fleeting disagreements that seem so charged—which record to play, whether to stop and ask for directions—and then pass so quickly, tapering off with no real resolution necessary. This one looks like it's concluding, the guy bundling up plastic forks and knives, the girl refastening her ponytail, turning away from the table and bounding across the grass toward Althea, yelling something in her direction.

“Sorry?” Althea says, shrinking, cinching her hood around her face.

The girl waits until she's reached Althea's bench to speak again. “To eat,” she asks. “Did you have enough to eat? I wanted to make sure, before we pack up the food and take it home.”

“I did. Thanks. It was good.”

“I made the fake meatloaf myself,” she says proudly. “You should come back tomorrow; we do a big spread for Thanksgiving.” The girl puts her hands in her back pockets and looks up at the weighty clouds sweeping in off the Atlantic. “It might snow.”

Althea removes her sunglasses. Even without them, the sky is darkening quickly. “You think so?”

The boy is struggling to fold the banner as the wind unfurls it comically. “Matilda!” he yells. “Get over here.”

Matilda takes another look at the leaden clouds sinking toward them every second. “It's gonna do
something
.” She lowers her gaze to Althea, grinning. “You don't talk much, do you?”

Althea looks at the ground helplessly. “Sorry.”

“Don't be sorry. It's just an observation. You from California?”

“California?” says Althea, perplexed.

Matilda tugs on the disintegrating sleeve of Althea's sweatshirt. “You're underdressed for New York.”

“I didn't think I was going to be here long enough to need a new wardrobe.”

“Fucking hell,” says Matilda, seeing the bandage on Althea's arm. “What happened here?”

“I cut myself, it's fine—”

“That looks filthy. Let me see it.” She reaches for Althea's sleeve again.

“Don't!” Althea pulls back. “If I just look at it wrong it starts bleeding again. Please. Don't touch it.”

Relenting, Matilda lights a cigarette.

“North Carolina,” Althea says finally. “I came from Wilmington, North Carolina.”

“Really?” Recognition lifts Matilda's eyebrows. “I just talked to a couple of kids from there. A few weeks ago. They got my name from someone, called and asked for advice, some recipes. Shit, what were their names?”

“Valerie and Minty Fresh?”

“You know them?” Matilda says, surprised.

“We were friends, yeah.”

“They seemed nice. Minty Fresh seemed a little on the overzealous side.”

“You have no idea,” Althea says.

She's about to explain about all the pamphlets he left under her windshield, how she found them in the glove compartment and they led her to Coney Island, when the wind sends a green beer bottle rolling down the sidewalk behind them with a hollow, desolate momentum. It freezes her in place, their pleasant conversation forgotten.

“Are you okay?”

“I just—It was that beer bottle. It reminded me about this nightmare I had last night.”

Matilda nods, wide-eyed. “Must have been some bad dream.”

“It wasn't actually a dream. Part of it was. I mean, I don't think it was actually dinosaurs watching me sleep in my car.” She rubs her eyes, trying to focus.

“Someone was watching you sleep in your car?”

“I think so.” She explains about the dream and finding the cigarette butts and beer bottles on the curb in the morning. Matilda listens attentively, her shoulders tightening under her coat when Althea describes the moment when the deinonychus had tapped on the window. “I don't know, maybe it
was
just a dream.”

“You're really lucky,” says Matilda seriously.

Althea nods.

“You don't have any place to stay?”

Althea shakes her head.

“What are you going to do about tonight?”

Althea shrugs.

“Okay, so we're back to the not talking.” The boy is signaling Matilda, beckoning her back across the park. She raises her gloved hand, fingers splayed, mouthing,
Five more minutes.
“Look, we live around here. Why don't you come back with us, stay at our house for the night?”

The boy has his hands cupped around his mouth, yelling Matilda's name.

“I should go, your friend needs you.” Althea hastily puts on her sunglasses, yokes her bag around her neck.

“Are you sure?” The concern in Matilda's voice is sincere enough to bewilder Althea.

“I'm sure. I'll be okay. I'll sleep someplace safe.” She rushes toward the exit of the park.

“Come back tomorrow, okay?” Matilda hollers.

Nodding once, Althea secures her hood and keeps going.

• • •

Althea buys a cup of coffee and goes back to the boardwalk. Digging the calling card out of her wallet, she finds a pay phone. She was supposed to let Garth know when she arrived safely at her mother's house in Taos; it's time to make a preemptive strike, lest he grow concerned and dial Alice first. Fortunately, Garth has yet to succumb to the allure of fancy technologies like call waiting and caller ID.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Dad,” she says.

“Althea?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you there already?”

“I just got here,” she says, staring out over the Atlantic Ocean. “I made good time.”

“You did. Is everything okay? You getting settled?”

“What are you doing?” She wants to be able to picture him, perfectly, wherever he is in the house.

“Just making some notes for the book.”

“So, napping?”

“Don't be smart.”

“I can't help it.” She presses the mouthpiece of the phone to her vest while taking a heavy drag of her cigarette. And then: “Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.”

“Althea.” She can hear him sitting up on the couch in his study, and the whole image snaps immediately into place—his books spread around him, the sleep lines on his cheek, a half-eaten sandwich forgotten somewhere on the floor. Removing his glasses, then rubbing one eye with the heel of his hand, then pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. His voice is an outline; the rest she can fill in easily herself. She wonders if he's doing the same thing, envisioning her safely ensconced in Alice's guest room, surrounded by crystals and mediocre Southwestern art. Instead here she is, standing by the aquarium, hoping the distant sounds of the sea lion show aren't leaking into the pay phone.

“Maybe I shouldn't have come here,” she repeats.

“You just got there,” Garth says. “Do you really want to turn all the way around and come back?”

“I don't know.”

“Just give her a chance. I know you don't know her that well, but you're already there. You might as well let her try to be your mother for a couple of days. Maybe you'll like her.”

Even though she knows he's talking about Alice, it's Matilda who comes to Althea's mind. “What if she doesn't like me?”

Garth's teasing smile makes its way into his voice. “Now, girl, why on earth wouldn't she like you?”

“Don't be smart.”

“I can't help it. I've got a PhD and everything.”

Althea changes the subject. “How's the book going?”

“Did you know that Cortés was supposed to leave Spain for the New World a year before he actually did? He was injured fleeing the bedroom of a married woman from Medellín and had to postpone his departure.”

“Sounds like a real class act.”

Garth warms to his subject. It sounds like he's reading an excerpt from his book-in-progress. “Fifteen years later, when he was living in Cuba, he almost missed his chance again. The man who assigned Cortés to the expedition was rethinking his decision because he was afraid that Cortés was too headstrong to remain loyal. When Cortés got wind of that, he cut his preparations short and left Cuba with his crew. And after they arrived on the mainland, he destroyed the ships so his men would have no choice but to follow him.”

“Jesus.”

“Try to enjoy yourself. And don't let your mother overcook the turkey. Okay?”

“Okay.”

No
I miss you
, no
I love you
, just a click and the hiss of the empty line. She tries not to hold it against him; he thinks she's safe in Taos, New Mexico, wrapped warm and tight inside one of her mother's Navajo blankets. For just one second, she wishes that she were.

It was Minty Fresh who started drinking coffee first—not because he liked it, but because he found a vintage Popeye thermos at Goodwill and wanted an excuse to show it off. Later, they filled the thermos with gin or whiskey, whatever they could quietly loot from their parents or convince someone to buy them at the liquor store. But in the beginning it was always coffee, some fair trade dark roast Minty Fresh learned to enjoy, and eventually Althea learned, too. She never gave him enough credit for that aspect of his personality. The thermos came first, and he found a way to fill it; he gave himself an enormous blue Mohawk and then reinvented himself as a boy worthy of one; they'd given him the most ludicrous nickname they could think of, and he'd owned it.

If Minty Fresh were set loose alone in New York City, he wouldn't be sitting around wondering what to do. Already he would have concocted half a dozen missions that had to be completed before nightfall; already he would have made half a dozen new friends. Picture him sitting on this bench, tightening the laces of his combat boots. Picture Valerie chugging a Dr Pepper and fooling with her hair. Picture two people who actually seem to know what they're doing. And then ask yourself what they would do if they were here.

• • •

The second Brooklyn address on the pamphlet isn't far, just a few streets away from the park and the water. The houses are large, some almost Victorian, not unlike her own back on Magnolia Street. Several are abandoned, the windows and doors boarded up with plywood spray-painted with graffiti. Others are decorated for Thanksgiving, jointed cardboard turkeys hanging off porch railings above neatly trimmed hedges. The block is at a strange impasse, somewhere between the suburban and the postapocalyptic.

She parks a few houses down. Slouched in her seat, she watches the front door. Then she pulls out her sketchbook and draws the two deinonychus from last night's dream, giving one a cigarette and the other a bottle of beer. It gets dark. It gets colder. She cracks a window and chain-smokes, wrapped in her childhood quilt.

Matilda comes out of the house, a sack of garbage over one shoulder. She heaves the bag into an overflowing trash can almost as big as she is and drags it to the curb, with that recognizable sound of heavy plastic scraping against concrete. After she wrangles the can into place she pauses, hands on her hips, her breath turning to vapor in the late November chill. Althea rubs her hands; she's not sure she won't freeze to death in her car overnight or be murdered. Matilda sits on the steps and pulls out a pouch of tobacco, and Althea thinks of Nicky.

Althea is so stiff, she almost falls over getting out of the car. Her sweatshirt cuffs are down over her icy fisted hands. Even in her dinosaur nightmare she hadn't been this afraid. Putting one numb foot in front of the other, she closes the distance between herself and this stranger, taking a shot in the dark.

“Hi,” Althea says, sitting on the step next to her.

Matilda grins widely. “Good. You're here. I can stop worrying.” She flicks open a Zippo, holds the flame to her cigarette, and snaps the lighter shut in a single well-practiced motion.

There's a quarter on the sidewalk, and Althea reaches for it.

“Don't,” Matilda says. “I'm superstitious. That quarter showed up there last week and I've been having good luck ever since. Now I'm terrified to move it. I keep meaning to come out here with a glue gun. Fucking shellac it into place if I have to.”

Althea looks at the quarter with a new reverence. Abruptly, she realizes how pathetic she must appear—unshowered and shivering, her blood-crusted bandage peeking out from under the cuff of her sweatshirt, her need completely transparent. A siren wails somewhere closer to the ocean. Althea discreetly massages her aching calves. The front door opens above them, and a girl with curly dark hair and deep olive skin sticks her head out.

“Hey, Management, Kaleb says it's your turn tonight.”

Matilda waves her away. “Tell your shiftless boyfriend not to worry.” The curly haired girl retreats inside.

“‘Management'?” Althea asks.

“It's what they call me sometimes.”

“Was that your roommate?”

“One of them. It looks like I was wrong about the weather,” Matilda says, nodding up toward the clouds parting in the night sky to reveal the waning moon. “It's weird. I'm never wrong about that shit.”

“Maybe it was your lucky quarter, kept the snow away.”

“Snow I don't mind. I'd rather save my luck for other things. You probably don't get a lot of snow in Wilmington, I guess.”

Althea shakes her head. “We don't really have cold like this.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Just a couple of days.”

The door opens again, and this time it's the guy with glasses from the park. He glares at both of them, but when he yells, it's at Matilda. “Are you going to—”

“Can't I have five fucking minutes to myself?” she shouts, her warm, friendly demeanor falling away. “Jesus H. Christ bleeding and suffering on a motherfucking cross. And close that goddamn door, you're letting all the heat out.” She waits until he's back inside. “Sorry about that. They make me crazy out of my jonzo sometimes.”