“What’s that?” Nemo asked.
“That, son, is a pack of Marlboros. Smoked them back in Texas. Couple packs a day. Now they’re scarcer than toilet paper.”
Nemo picked up the package and turned it over in his hands. He’d never seen a pack of machine-rolled cigarettes before outside of the Bin. He was brought up short by a warning in tiny print on the side stating that the contents caused a long list of diseases and health calamities, including the death of small children who happened to get too close. “Jesus!” he said. “You smoked these things?”
“Sure did. What’s more we’re going to smoke one right now. After breakfast is the best time, with a cup of coffee.” He smiled beatifically. “We plan to smoke one a day. We got twenty day’s worth of pleasure coming up.”
“But they’ll kill you.”
Lawrence carefully unwound the gold strip of cellophane and opened the top of the box. He removed a small piece of aluminum foil, and there they were in three neat rows. He pulled one out and lit it with a kitchen match. “Everything kills you a little bit. Even love.” He blew a cloud of smoke into the air and propped his feet on a stepstool. “So how’d it go with Justine last night? You wouldn’t say two words after you got home.”
“I was tired.”
“Not tired now, are you? Hell, if you’re still tired, there must’ve been more happened than you know how to tell about anyway.”
“Get off it, Lawrence. We just had a drink. Two drinks, actually. Well, I had two. She only had one.” Nemo got up and poured himself some more coffee, though his cup was still half full.
Lawrence had that damn Texan twinkle in his eye, full to the gills with sausage and gravy and now Marlboros. Nemo knew he wouldn’t let up. Lawrence tried to blow smoke rings, but he couldn’t get his lipless mouth to work right. “So what’d y’all do, just sit around counting each other’s drinks all night?”
“Lawrence, I kissed her good night, okay? That was it. One kiss. It was nothing.”
“Nothing, shit. You’re breaking out in a sweat just talking about it.”
“Fine. Could we change the subject now?” Nemo leaned against the counter and stared into his coffee cup. It was quiet for a while except for the faint sounds of a mockingbird hard at it.
“Nemo,” Lawrence said softly. “Come over here and sit down.”
It was the nanny. Nemo was glad to hear it. He’d had just about as much of the Texan in a good mood as he could stomach first thing in the morning. He went over and sat down.
“Please accept our apologies,” Lawrence said. “Sometimes our banter gets out of hand. We mean no harm, truly.”
“That’s okay.”
“And we’ll put this thing out.” Lawrence ground out the Marlboro, which was mostly gone anyway, and brushed the ash off his fingertips. “Filthy habit, actually.”
“Then why do you put up with it?”
Lawrence laughed softly. “It gives us pleasure. A bit of the old life, you know? We could all use that now and again.”
“I guess so.” Nemo sat stock still and stared at the table. He wanted to talk, but he didn’t know where to start.
“You have feelings for this girl?”
“Yes.”
“Are you in love with her?”
Why did he always have to be so direct? “We just met. I hardly know her. I mean, have you ever fallen in love with someone—just like that?”
Lawrence smiled and nodded his head. “Yes. In England. He was a bank clerk. Nothing remarkable about him, to anyone else, but it was quite sudden, actually. Love at first sight. At our wedding everyone assumed we were pregnant.”
“And were you?” Nemo’d heard of the bank teller before. He’d been the nanny’s husband.
“We shan’t answer that question, until you answer ours.”
“And what question is that?”
Lawrence rolled his eyes. “You would try the patience of a saint. Are you in love with this girl?”
“I don’t know how to answer that.”
“Yes or no would do quite nicely.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.”
Lawrence tried to suppress it, but laughter bubbled up inside him with the combined force of three senses of humor. Pretty soon he was cackling away. Tears streamed down his face, and he gasped for breath. He slapped his thigh with one hand, and with the other fluttered sign language in the air like a crazed bat.
“We’re sorry,” Lawrence wheezed, still laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Nemo asked. This provoked new gales of laughter. He stood up and gulped down his coffee. “I’m going down to Jonathan’s. I’ll see you later, Chuckles.”
“Wait, Nemo.” Lawrence brushed the tears from his eyes and managed to bring his laughter down to a low boil. “We’re sorry. We’re feeling a bit impish this morning. It’s spring, and, well, you’re so young.” He shook his head, and finally brought his laughter under control. “But you’re not so young as to believe that love is a decision, are you?”
“Okay, what if I am in love with her? I can still decide what I want to do about it, can’t I?”
“Most certainly.”
“Okay, then. When I decide, I’ll be sure to let you know.” Nemo turned to go out the back door, when he remembered their bargain—question for question. He looked over his shoulder at Lawrence, who was pouring himself another cup of coffee. “So were you pregnant or not?”
Lawrence set down the pot and became very still. “Yes.”
“You never told me you had a kid in England.”
Lawrence kept his eyes on the coffeepot, his hand still grasped the handle. “He was stillborn, actually.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
Lawrence looked at Nemo. “Of course you didn’t know. You were never told. It’s quite all right. That was another life, ages ago.” He gestured at the door with the back of his hand. “Now, run on, will you? Jonathan will be dying to hear all about your birthday.”
As Nemo left, Lawrence lit up another Marlboro.
NEMO
FOUND
JONATHAN
BEHIND
THE
HOUSE
,
TURNING
UP a section of the garden. A couple of kinds of lettuce and some of the greens were already in. The potatoes, onions, and carrots were in the ground. Jonathan’s family grew enough to feed a dozen people and often did. Sometimes in the winter there’d be tents pitched all over the yard because there was no more room inside. Nemo watched Jonathan work, sliding the shovel into the earth, turning over rich brown dirt, almost black. The clods had a dull sheen where the shovel sliced them out of the ground. Jonathan stabbed them with a few quick thrusts from the point of his shovel, and they crumbled into piles of moist loam.
“Hi,” Nemo said. “What’s going in there?”
Jonathan buried his shovel in the earth like a sentry planting his lance. “Tomatoes. How was the birthday?”
Nemo caught something in his tone. “Have you already talked to Lawrence?”
Jonathan smiled slyly. “Yes.”
“Jesus, when?”
“After he left you, he stopped by to play a game of chess with Dad.”
“And I suppose he told you what I was doing.”
“I asked.”
“So what do you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, come on, Jonathan. I know Lawrence. Once the Texan got on a roll, he’d not only tell you what happened, but also whatever he could dream up that might happen.”
Jonathan laughed. “He said she’s very attractive.”
“What else did he say?”
“That there seemed to be a strong attraction between you.”
“Is that what he said? ‘A strong attraction’?”
“In so many words.”
“I’m sure.” Nemo pointed at the shovel. “You want some help?”
“It can wait. Let’s go to the greenhouse. You can take some tomato plants. We’ve got more than we need.”
The greenhouse had once been a two-car garage. Jonathan and his brother and father had stripped off the walls and roof, leaving the frame standing. Originally, they’d covered it with sheet plastic, but when a hailstorm ripped the plastic to shreds a few years ago, they’d replaced it with windows and windshields from junked cars, screwed into place and sealed with caulk. It was about ten degrees warmer inside. The criss-crossing joints and the different tints of the auto glass gave the light a patchwork effect. The air was heavy and moist, tangy with the scent of dozens of plants. They walked down one of the narrow aisles, Jonathan pausing to examine a leaf or feel the soil. He stopped to water the peppers from a rusty watering can. There were at least four different varieties. “Tell Lawrence we’ll have plenty of jalapeños this year, too.”
“I’ll do that.” Nemo watched the water pouring out of the can, the soil soaking it up. He wanted to talk to Jonathan about Justine, but he had even less experience with women that Nemo did. Jonathan had been engaged to Lea, a girl in Raleigh, for about two years now. The marriage, as arranged by their fathers, would take place in a couple of months, when Lea turned eighteen. During their two-year engagement, she and Jonathan had spent a total of maybe three weeks together, when the two families visited each other. Arranged marriages were pretty common among the fundies, now that
Be fruitful and multiply
made sense again. And it made sense to Nemo. You couldn’t let a good Christian boy like Jonathan marry just anybody. “Jonathan, are you in love with Lea?”
Jonathan quit watering and turned to Nemo. “You’re in love?” He sounded almost happy for him.
“Come on now, I asked first. You’re about to marry her. Are you in love with her?”
“Yes, I am,” Jonathan said, smiling just thinking about it.
“But how? You hardly know her.”
Jonathan nodded, then shrugged his shoulders. It was something of a mystery to him as well. “You’ve got to understand that the very first time I met her she wasn’t just some girl. She was the woman I’d spend my life with. Lea and I may not’ve spent that much time together, but you can bet I was paying attention. I wanted to know her like I’ve never known anyone else—like my mom and dad know each other. I think about her all the time. I can’t wait to marry her.”
“How does she feel about it?”
“Same way.” Jonathan refilled the watering can from a tank at the end of the row. The water rang off the bottom like a gong. when he was done, he said, “It’s your turn.”
Nemo’d hedged with Lawrence. He hadn’t been in the mood for Lawrence’s older-and-wiser. But he had to tell somebody, or he was going to explode. “Jonathan, I’m absolutely crazy about this girl. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“What do you want to happen?”
Nemo sighed. Everything was always so damn simple to Jonathan. “What do you think? I want to make love to her, spend hours talking with her, going for walks, the whole damn thing.”
“Do you want to spend your life with her?”
This was worse than Lawrence. At least Lawrence didn’t have him walking down the aisle already. “I don’t know! She’s in the
Bin
, Jonathan. I don’t want to go in there. We’d end up just like my mom and dad, just like everybody else in there—a bunch of smiling faces bobbing around in a stagnant soup.”
“Does she feel the same way about you?”
“I don’t know.” Jonathan gave him a questioning look. “Okay, I think so.”
Jonathan pinched a wilted leaf from one of the plants. “A very difficult decision.”
“Is that all you’ve got to say? ‘A very difficult decision’?”
Jonathan looked at Nemo, his long lashes flickering, as he took a deep breath. “Okay. I think it’d be terrible, if you went in there, and lost your soul. But I also know that you don’t want to lose this girl. God asks us to make very difficult decisions.”
Nemo wished it were that simple. He’d have a word or two for God. “Maybe it’s not God who’s asking. Maybe the world’s just a mess.”
“Maybe someday you’ll believe differently.”
“Maybe. Don’t hold your breath. But I’ve already made my decision. I’m going to break it off while I still can.”
Jonathan gave him a sympathetic look, and Nemo pointed at one of the bell peppers. “You missed one.” Nemo waited for Jonathan to start watering again, before he spoke. “I promised to go see her tonight,” he said as casually as he could. “Will you come with me?”
“Into the Bin?”
“She’s a singer. She’s playing in a club tonight. We just go hear a set, and then I break it off and come home. I promised to go see her.”
“Why do you need me?”
“Moral support.”
“There’s no such thing. Everyone makes his own moral choices.”
“Dammit Jonathan, does everything have to be such a big religious deal to you all the time?”
“Yes,” he said. There was nothing defiant in it. He was only telling the truth.
Nemo shook his head. “I’m sorry. I was forgetting who I’m talking to. But will you go with me? I don’t know if I can trust myself alone with her.”
“Don’t you want to see her alone? Do you really want me to be sitting there listening while you break up with her? Don’t you think that’s unnecessarily cruel?”
“Whose side are you on?”
“It’s not a question of sides. If you reject her, she’ll be hurt. She’s chosen a life I believe to be wrong. That doesn’t mean I feel no compassion for her.”
“So you won’t go?”
Jonathan set down the watering can with a dull clunk. “I’ll go because you’re my friend, but when it comes time to tell her whatever you’ve decided to do, I’ll leave. Fair enough?”
“Thanks, Jonathan.”
“Do you want those tomato plants now?”
“I’ll get them tomorrow. I’ll come by to get you at nine, okay?”
“Sure.”
As Nemo was leaving the greenhouse, he turned back to Jonathan, who was filling up a flat box with tomato plants. “Jonathan, have you ever been in the Bin before?”
“Never,” he said.
Nemo wondered what he’d ever done to deserve a friend like Jonathan. “Thanks,” he said.
AS
NEMO
CUT
AROUND
THE
SIDE
OF
THE
HOUSE
,
PETER
beckoned to him from his doorway, looking up and down the street as if he expected a band of marauders any minute. Ever since Rosalind had gone, Peter had grown stranger and stranger. Nemo walked into Peter’s room, and Peter closed the door behind him. The place smelled like old cheese and burning wax. The windows were covered with sheets, and the only light came from a smoky candle on the desk. There was a chair at the desk, and a mattress on the floor. The other furniture had been piled up in the other end of the room.