Asking for Trouble (2 page)

His fifteenth Kincaid Christmas. Fifteen. It was a big
number. A significant number.

That first time, he’d been more than reluctant. Because he’d
known what to expect, and it was the one thing he couldn’t handle. Rejection he
could take. He knew all about rejection. But he couldn’t stand to be pitied.
 

“No, thanks. I’ve got lots to do, already made my plans, and
it’s your family, not mine,” he’d said without looking up from his Multivariable
Calculus textbook or lifting his mechanical pencil from the notebook where he
was working through a final problem at the desk on his side of their Stanford
dorm room. His other books lined up on the shelf above, his bed neatly made,
the aged blue cotton sleeping bag with its plaid lining stretched over the
white sheet and flat pillow, because he felt more comfortable when things were
neat. And Alec’s side looking like a hurricane had struck.

“My mom about killed me when she found out you’d stayed here
alone at Thanksgiving,” Alec argued, lying on his bed and tossing a bright
yellow hacky sack lazily into the air, grabbing it with a sure brown hand
before flicking it up again. “Come home with me, or my life isn’t going to be
worth living. You don’t know my mother. She’d probably haul ass down here
herself and pull you up to Chico by your ear. And anyway, it’s just too damn
depressing to contemplate. Microwaved frozen turkey dinner in the dorm room.
Merry Christmas to you.”

“It’s just a day,” Joe said. “Doesn’t mean anything to me.”

Alec paused with the squishy ball in his hand, gave his
roommate a quick, searching glance. “Do me a favor,” he said at last. “Come
with me. I want you to meet them.”

And he got his way, because Alec always got his way. What
would it be like, Joe wondered as he gave in, as he’d wondered so many times
since the day they’d met, to be born under that lucky star? To be that good-looking,
that magnetic? To have everything come so easy, always? To have it all?

Joe had assumed at first, seeing the look of him, that Alec
was rich, like so many of their classmates. He
looked
rich. And Joe knew that he himself had looked anything but, the
first time he’d knocked at the door of the room.

He’d arrived late, had had to make his way through sidewalks
crowded with little knots of parents saying tearful farewells to their beloved
progeny before getting back into their shiny late-model sedans and SUVs and
driving off to their leafy suburbs, or maybe their townhouses. Wherever people
like that lived.

Whereas he . . . Fourteen hours on Greyhound, riding the dog
through the dark, silent hours, watching the merciless summer sunrise glow into
morning, brighten towards afternoon while he was carried ever farther north and
west across a flat brown landscape, across passes that had turned to suburban
green, then to urban sprawl, until the pneumatic doors hissed open and the big
silver bus spat him out in San Jose. Then the walking and waiting for the city
bus that would get him closer, until, finally, he’d swung up the steps into one
of Stanford’s own personal shuttles, looked out the wide window as it rolled onto
a campus of perfectly groomed squares of perfectly green grass, tall, neat
palms, white stucco buildings roofed with red tile. Nothing striking a false
note, nothing out of place. Except him.

Joe Hartman, owner of nothing. Dressed in old Wranglers and a
faded gray T-shirt that he’d outgrown but couldn’t afford to replace, a little
grimy and a lot sweaty from the long, hot journey across the Mojave Desert, the
pack containing his precious, aged laptop on his back. Carrying the green Hefty
bag that held the rest of his worldly possessions over his shoulder like a
scruffy, low-rent Santa Claus, walking into a dorm room that was nicer than
anyplace he’d ever lived, and meeting a roommate who looked like he’d just
stepped out of
GQ.

He hadn’t had high hopes. But it hadn’t been a disaster after
all, because Alec was all right. A full-ride scholarship student, just like
Joe. And just as broke, no more able to get a Coke from the machine or go along
for a late-night pizza run than Joe was, which had formed a bond all the
stronger for being unspoken.

And just as good at programming. That was the main thing.
Every bit as good, speaking the language of computers, the language Joe knew. Alec
didn’t work as hard as Joe did, maybe, but that was because he didn’t have to.
Alec was smarter, no doubt about it, better prepared, too. And he didn’t have
as much riding on this.

So not a bad roommate, all in all. But Christmas, that was
something else. Christmas was families, and traditions, and knowing you had a
place to go, a place where they were counting on you to be there. All the
things Joe didn’t have. So he didn’t want to go. He didn’t need reminding.

But he did go. Of course he went, because he’d never met
anyone more persuasive than Alec in his life. He rode home with Alec, with a
girl Alec knew from Chico who had a car, because Alec knew everybody. With
Joe’s same green Hefty bag tossed in the trunk.

“Taking your laundry home to get washed?” she’d laughed. “Me
too.”

He hadn’t corrected her, had just climbed into the back and
let Alec get in front for the four-hour drive, had let Alec fill the car with easy
chat, laughing and joking and looking forward to his Christmas with nothing but
happy anticipation, while Joe relapsed into his customary silence. When in
doubt, shut up.

The girl, Kathleen, slowed to 35, then 25 as the rural
highway gradually changed to city outskirts and then to a city proper. A neat,
tidy city, if a sleepy one, the streets all but deserted in the winter dark.

“Winter break,” Alec said over his shoulder to Joe.
“Usually, it’d be getting rowdy by this time of night, but the students are
gone.”

Not many people, but lots of trees, the ones in the town
square strung with tiny white lights. Kathleen kept driving at Alec’s
direction, through the town center and a couple miles beyond, pulled to the
curb on a block of small houses mostly decorated for Christmas, colored lights
or dripping icicles outlining rooflines and windows, reindeer made of lights
nodding in front yards, Santa Claus driving his sleigh across rooftops. Like
some kind of documentary on Christmas in America, lacking only the snow.

“The ancestral pile, old boy,” Alec said. “Someday she’ll be
mine, don’t you know.” He laughed, full of the ebullient spirit of coming home.
“If I’m the next minister at Bidwell Presbyterian, that is. And unfortunately,
we can rule that right out.”

Joe picked up his backpack, opened the door and swung out,
grimacing at the stiffness of long legs stuffed into the back seat of a compact
for too many hours, shivered in the sudden cold. He slid his pack onto his back
and shoved his hands under his armpits, stamped a couple times as he waited for
Kathleen to open the trunk.

“Supposed to get down below freezing at night, the next few
days,” Alec said as he pulled his duffel bag from the trunk and Joe picked up
his Hefty bag.

Joe shrugged. He’d been cold before.

“Thanks for the ride, Kathleen,” Alec went on, slamming the
trunk shut again. “We still on to go back on the thirtieth? I could drive, if
you want.”

“I did
not
drive
that badly,” she protested. “And it’s my car.”

“But just think of the nice rest you could have,” Alec
coaxed. “Sit back, relax, and get delivered to your destination. How upscale
would that be?”

“Not too upscale sitting by the side of the freeway with
some cop shining his flashlight in the window to write you a ticket,” she
tossed back. “I know you. You can talk and keep me awake, and I’ll drive.”

“Slowly,” Alec pointed out.

“Safely. Legally.”

Alec laughed, reached out, and gave her a hug. Alec always
hugged girls, and he always got away with it. “Thanks again. It was awesome.
Talk to you soon. Merry Christmas.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Joe added. He didn’t hug her. Joe didn’t
hug. And she didn’t look disappointed.

He watched her taillights recede down the quiet street, the
decorous blink of her turn signal before she hung a left and disappeared from
sight. Then he forced his feet to move, followed Alec up a long driveway to the
back of the house, into an unlocked rear door that led into a spacious linoleum-floored
laundry room.

Alec toed his black rubber-soled sneakers off, still holding
his bag. “Mom likes shoes off,” he instructed.

Joe set his Hefty bag down on top of a white washing machine
and bent to unlace the yellow laces of his scuffed brown work boots as Alec
waited. He pulled the boots off and set them at the end of a long, untidy line
of footwear, tried to find an unobtrusive way to pull his left sock around to
hide the hole that had formed over the second toe, then gave it up.

Alec swung the inner door open, calling out as he entered a
big, warm kitchen. Nothing fancy, nothing new, white tile countertops and worn
pine cabinets.

“I’m home!” he called out, and now a middle-aged woman was
hurrying in. Middle height, still pretty and slim in jeans and a red sweater,
brown hair in a tousled cut that curled into the nape of her neck, laugh lines
around eyes that were the same vibrant blue as Alec’s. Laugh lines because she
was laughing in delight, throwing her arms around her son, who had dropped his bag
to lift her into a hug, whirl her around.

“Miss me?” he asked her, setting her down at last.

“You know I did, you wretch.” She pulled his face down to
give his cheek a kiss. “Alyssa doesn’t give me quite enough trouble to make up
for you being gone. And this must be Joe.” She held out a slim hand after a
moment when Joe had feared that he was going to be hugged as well, and he shook
it in relief.

“Ma’am,” he said. “Thanks for having me.”

Her eyebrows rose a little, but she didn’t comment, just
smiled at him. “You’re more than welcome. Your dad’s at the hospital, making a
couple visits,” she told Alec. “He’ll be home soon. Have you two had dinner?”

And it was like that. Joe dumped his bag and pack onto a
trundle bed that Alec pulled out from underneath the twin bed in his small
bedroom, which made it so there was just about no room at all in there, and ate
hamburger-noodle casserole and green beans at a big oval table in a comfortable
living-dining room, and listened to Alec’s mom—Mrs.
Kincaid—catching her son up on the news, and asking him questions about
his classes, about Stanford. Tossing the occasional question Joe’s way, but not
pressing him, not like he’d feared.

Alec’s dad came in in the middle of it, gave his wife a
kiss, his son another big hug—they were the huggingest family Joe had
ever seen—and shook Joe’s hand, echoed his wife’s welcome.

He was a bear of a man, as tall as Joe, and even broader
across the shoulders. Barrel-chested, thick-thighed, with massive hands, more
like a construction worker than a Presbyterian minister. Black hair, a strong
nose and cheekbones, a face to reckon with, kindness in its lines, but firmness,
too. His dad was a quarter Cherokee, Alec had told Joe with some pride, and it showed.

Mr. Kincaid was eating his own casserole, catching up with
Alec, and Joe was having seconds that Mrs. Kincaid had urged on him and seeing
that even the huge roasting pan of noodles, meat, and cheese wasn’t going to
last long, when the back door slammed again, the kitchen door burst open a
moment later, and a girl whirled through it like a sudden gust of wind, talking
as she came, and the room was charged with electricity. And Joe was staring,
his fork in midair, all the air sucked out of his lungs.

“Alec!” She was on him, her pretty mouth stretched in a
smile, and he was standing up, and, yes, hugging her, laughing in his turn.

“I’m
so tired!”
she
said, flopping into a dining chair next to her brother, picking up the spatula
sticking out of the casserole pan and dishing up a healthy serving, grabbing
the milk carton and pouring herself a glass. “Practice was
brutal.
Coach Saller thinks just because it’s Christmas, we’re
going to get all fat and lazy, so she has to work us
three times
as hard now, or we’re going to lose in disgrace or
something.”

Everything she said seemed to be in italics, or have an
exclamation point at the end. Darting glances flicked between Alec and Joe out
of sparkling dark blue eyes extravagantly fringed with black lashes, the delicately
curved, nearly black brows quirking as she smiled, lowering into a brief frown,
her pretty face with its finely carved features in constant, vibrant motion,
her energy more effective than any makeup could possibly have been, and Joe was
a lost man.

“Alyssa,” her mother said. “Slow down. Say hello to Joe, and
then wash your hands before you eat.”

“Hello, Joe,” she said, and popped up again, danced into the
kitchen before Joe could even answer.

He watched her go, because he couldn’t help it. Red sweats
over long legs, a red-and-gold Chico High Basketball t-shirt that clung to her
slim torso. Which had plenty of girl curves to it. Which he shouldn’t be
noticing. But he couldn’t help it.

“And that,” Alec said with a grin as they heard water start
to run, “in case you had any doubts, is my little sister. That’s Alyssa.”

She was in the room again, and the words were tumbling out
again. “Do you remember Heather Monroe, Alec? She’s our point guard. You
wouldn’t
believe
how fast she is! I
wish you were going to be here to come to the game, so you could see. She’s
gotten really pretty, too. You should see. Really.”

That was the first night. The next morning, it got worse.

He was sitting at the table again, eating pancakes and eggs
served up by Alec’s mom and thinking he’d be happy to stay in this house
forever, because she’d given him three eggs to start, and then just kept
sliding more pancakes onto his plate and urging him to eat them. Butter and
syrup, orange juice and black coffee, and the hole inside him that had so
rarely been filled since he’d started to grow was filling, and he thought that
if she kept this up, he wasn’t even going to be hungry until lunchtime.