Eye to Eye (24 page)

Now she's starting to piss me off.

“You mean Willie Nelson?” I ask.

“Yeah. The one Jessica Simpson's character is always saying she's in love with. That old dude.”

Katie tilts her head flirtatiously in Earl's direction and starts to braid her strawlike hair.

“Katie,” Earl says. “What you don't know about music is a lot.”

Ronnie puts her hand on Earl's knee and squeezes.

“I always think of Earl more like Tommy Lee Jones in
Coal Miner's Daughter.
Might not be the best singer, but all man.”

Katie looks disinterested.

“Must be an old movie,” she says. “He's, like, what, a thousand now?”

“And hot,” I add. No-one knocks Tommy Lee Jones on my watch, especially not someone who would clearly prefer Tommy Lee. “A flawless movie. They don't make 'em like Loretta anymore.”

Katie smiles politely, like she's humoring her grandmother in order to stay in the will.

“I don't know Loretta Lynn,” she says. “I mean, I know she's the old lady that Jack White did that CD with, right?”

True. I had to give her that one.

“Sing some country,” Katie pleads, now just ignoring Ronnie and myself. “Please,” Katie says. “I wore my cowgirl boots just for tonight.”

I now add definition C to the growing list of synonyms for “Katie”: really, really REALLY obvious and just a liiiittle tacky. In a deeply strip-aerobics move, she reaches down and rubs her leg, tracing a line to the top of her red leather cowgirl wear. Her boots are no doubt expensive, acquired from some boutique on Melrose with eight hundred percent markup, but country they are not. No more country than the faux-twang she puts on when talking to Earl.

Ronnie inhales the last half of her margarita.

“Listen,” Earl pipes up. “Speak of the devil. It's miss Loretta herself, Ronnie. I asked them to put this one on special for you, and there's some Dolly Parton cuing up in your near future, Doris, so get ready.”

“Thanks, Earl.” In the background, I can hear the karaoke machine wailing the first chords of
You Ain't Woman Enough to Take My Man,
and I can't tell whether or not Ronnie is amused, pissed or some frightening hybrid of the two. Regardless, she pours herself another margarita from the pitcher and heads to the front of the bar, patrons hollering at the surreal sight of Ronnie getting ready to belt out a country standard. A vision right up there with hip-hop Ian and Ziggy Doris. Surreal, and then some. Ronnie has a decent voice, and starts into the song with no small degree of conviction. Earl leans back in his seat. Katie looks bored and annoyed. She puts a hand on Earl's shoulder, but he shrugs her off.

By the second verse, I can tell that Ronnie's had it. She's still mouthing the words, but something inside has changed. Having read multiple Internet articles on how to spot liars, I can see that she's faking any form of joy. Her mouth is smiling, but her eyes are hard as the pavement outside Mann's Chinese Theater. And maybe I'm projecting, but I think that she's having a similar moment about Earl to the one I had earlier with my clothing. That the sort of out-of-control mismatch of Earl, Katie, Loretta, Ronnie, Melrose boots, margaritas, bad karaoke and Mexican ballads is no longer wacky and zany, it's just taxing. If I could read Ronnie's thoughts at this exact moment, I'm pretty sure they'd be
I am officially too old for this here brand of shit.

It's been three weeks since the hip-hop showcase, and now I'm on a plane, sitting in the aisle seat, getting my knees obliterated every time someone passes by with their luggage. After she'd gotten back to Atlanta, safe and sound from “Hellay,” Doris convinced me that I'd be sorry if I never met my very first editor and never visited my very first publisher. So I decided to go to Atlanta. Plus, it was an opportunity to see Doris, which is the real reason for her cheerleading.

I stare out the window of the plane, glad I'm not at the window seat. I just don't want to know how bizarrely high in the sky I am, in a hundred-ton plane that, still, impossibly, glides through the air. But here I am, flying, which I hate to do. Doris said that I really had no choice in the matter, since I was in major travel debt with her. The hip-hop showcase was not her fantasy. So, I got into more debt by charging my flight on my supposedly emergency-only credit card.

The hip-hop showcase, while amusing on some tangential level, and with really good music on another level, really wasn't our style. We've aged out of that scene, sadly. It was a hard night for Ian, too, but an important night. Something about him had changed. I could hear it in his voice on the machine. I'd tried to call him on his cell a few days after the show, but he didn't pick up. I called all day. I even called his mother, who said he was fine, but kept saying he wasn't feeling well and that he'd call me. And the next day there was a message.

“It was short,” Earl said, taking chicken out of the fridge. “Something about being sorry and talking to you when he saw you.”

Ian said sorry? That was about as rare as me being at a loss for words. But I was. “So that's it?”

“It's on the machine. You can listen to it still.” Earl's already distracted by the chicken and poking around in the cabinets for flour and seasonings.

I listen to the message and it hardly sounds like Ian. It's a soft voice. I can't detect a sneer anywhere in the tone.

Hi, Ronnie. Um, Veronica. I'm sorry I left the show the other night. Stupid. I was stupid, I mean. So I'll see you, like, next week or something. When you come to my house.

Earl watches me listen to the message as he sprinkles flour on a cutting board. He stares at me long and steady until I hang up the phone. “You gone keep tutoring that boy or you had enough?”

“No,” I reply, still staring at the phone, thinking and thinking. “I mean, no, I've not had enough.” And it's true. I haven't. I know what enough is because Earl and I gave each other ultimatums the night of the hip-hop show. I'm not going to give up on anything else that easy, not anymore. It was the biggest fight we've had, and it was the best thing for us.

From the outside, to Doris and Bita, Earl and I are the perfect odd couple. But if I'm telling the truth here, from the very first time I saw Katie giving Earl hugs at the bar, I worried. Earl and I are always good to each other, but we also have, no matter how hard we've tried not to, somehow gotten into the habit of not making waves, of letting sleeping dogs lie, even after we promised each other we'd talk it through. I don't know, exactly, how many sleeping dogs Earl has tucked away, but Earl and I never mentioned that makeup smudge to each other. I had decided that sometimes stuff is small junk that doesn't have to be talked to death. And I'm always hearing Doris yelling at me like she did, telling me not to be such a girl.

But sleeping dogs have to wake up sometime.

After the show, Doris said that she had to take an Advil to stop the throbbing in her legs, go to bed and get some sleep so that she could dream away the evening, or she'd kill herself. But the night was still young by bartending standards and I knew that Earl sometimes hung out at the bar even after he got off work or went out with friends. He was home there, liked it there, and whenever I wasn't home, he'd kill a little time there. So I went looking for him after Doris crashed out on our couch.

When I pulled up, it was already two in the morning so things were winding down and the Baseline was thinning out. I didn't see Earl, but saw Jake the hottie sitting at the bar. The jukebox was playing “Space Oddity”, which made me laugh, thinking of Doris in her space shoes that night. I pulled up a stool and gave Jake a sideways hug. “Where's your running buddy?” I turned to face him and looked around the bar, noticing all the strips of black-and-white pictures they had tacked up from the backroom photo booth. There was a new picture of Earl, Katie and Jake mugging for the camera like the Three Musketeers. And Katie was kissing Earl's cheek, had her arm around his neck. That could explain some things, and yet, I wasn't letting it.

Jake sipped his light beer. He was forever working out and trying to keep his thirtysomething body looking good so he'd get work as an actor. Earl wouldn't be caught dead drinking a light beer. Jake looked me up and down, stared at my breast for a moment. “Nice shirt. I like those pearl buttons.”

Even though his eyes said “Nice rack,” I thanked him anyway. “So where's my baby?”

“Oh, he left with Katie. She needed a ride. Car trouble or something.”

“Really. Car trouble.” I felt that fear again, but tried to look as though it didn't bother me. Jake shook his head. He and Earl had gotten pretty tight and he knew how much Katie got on my nerves, although I thought I had kept my desire to break her tiny little neck on the down low.

“That's what she said.” He shrugged and stared at his beer bottle.

“So why didn't
you
give her a lift?” It was late, but I suddenly wanted a screwdriver. I motioned for the bartender, a twentysomething guy with the stick-thin body of Sid Vicious.

“She seemed to want Earl's company more than mine,” he said. “Earl was headed out, headed home, so it made more sense that he'd take her home.”

“Oh.” My heart started to beat fast. I got my drink and swished the straw around in it. Now that I had it I was too busy thinking to be drinking. “So why are you here drinking alone? Why didn't you head out for the evening?”

Jake chuckled and rubbed his clean-shaven head with his hands. “It was a
night.
”

“Party suck?” I pinched my straw between my fingers and took a tiny sip.

“For me, yes, but for Earl, it was a pretty good night.”

“Oh? What happened?” I sat up straight in my stool not wanting to hear what he meant by a good night. I kept looking at the picture of Katie kissing Earl, and it hurt.

“Well, I'm sure he'll tell you, but he met some casting agent at the party who liked his look.”

I didn't know what any of this had to do with Katie. “What do you mean? So what happened?” I was feeling sick and nervous and I didn't even know why. I should have been happy for Earl, but all of what Jake was saying was really weird.

“She offered him a bit part in this new thing that's coming out.”

What?
None of this seemed even remotely likely. “Stop fucking with me, Jake.”

Jake took a long pull on his beer. “Nope. Swear to God. I'm serious. And that kook of yours told her he'd have to think about it. That he wasn't ‘one to be acting.'”

Good for you, Earl. That's the spirit. You had to put your foot down somewhere or you'd turn into the good old boy who drank light beers and got facials so that you looked good on film. I'd forgotten about Katie for a minute.

“Jesus,” I said.

“Exactly,” Jake muttered over Mott the Hoople singing about all the young dudes. “I've been busting my ass trying to get my break, and Earl goes to this party practically kicking and screaming and gets a role in a film handed to him. Fuck.”

Fuck made me think about Katie and Earl together. I was ready to go and hadn't even finished my drink. “I think I'm going to head out, Jake. Get back home.”

“Really?” He put his hand over mine resting on the bar. “I'll buy you another.”

I looked down at our hands together and I imagined, for a second, about what it would be like to be with Jake, not Earl. “No, thanks, Jake. I should go.” I pulled my hand out from under his, put money down on the bar and walked out the door.

But when I went out to my car, the piece of shit wouldn't start. Again. I thought about walking up that long hill, up Echo Park Avenue, but I was tired and it was past two-thirty in the morning. Not a good time for women to be walking around by themselves at night. So I turned right around and went into the bar and asked Jake for a ride. He sucked down the last of his beer and grinned at me. “I would
love
to give you a ride,” he said.

When Jake drove me home, I was feeling strange hugging the waist of a man who was not Earl. When we got to the apartment, he turned off his bike and waited for me to climb off before he hopped off. When I gave him a thank-you hug, he grabbed me and wouldn't let go. He kissed me right on the lips and I didn't pull away as quickly as I should have—or could have.

“I've been wondering for a long time what that would be like,” he said, when I finally pulled away from him.

“It's not going to happen again, Jake.”

Jake shrugged. “Earl, he seems to get all the women.” He straddled his bike. “And all the jobs.” He turned the key, revved the bike and saluted me as he drove off.

I didn't know what had happened, exactly. I knew I felt guilty, because I let it happen. I guess I was thinking about Katie kissing Earl when I let Jake kiss me just a little too long.

I turned the key very quietly because I didn't want to wake Doris, but Earl was sitting at the kitchen table with beer in his hand, looking dead serious. His look made me feel like a kid sneaking in after curfew.

“Hey, baby,” I whispered and bent down to kiss him on the lips. He didn't kiss me back.

“Where you been? I didn't know what to think when I saw Doris on the couch and didn't find you in bed.”

I put my fingers to my lips and signaled for Earl to follow me into the bedroom. I shut the door behind us. “I went looking for you.”

“That was Jake's bike,” Earl said, sitting up tall on the bed. “I looked out the window and saw him driving away. Why is he giving you rides home?”

I pulled my boots off and unsnapped the buttons of my hip-hop hick shirt, as Doris so respectfully called it. Earl had a
tone
in his voice. He was not happy. I was getting defensive and nervous as if I'd actually done made out with Jake when I remembered that
I
was the one who should have been pissed off.

“Why are you giving
Katie
rides home?”

Earl's face changed then. He turned bright red. “Her car broke down, Ron. She needed a ride home is all.”

“Yeah, well, so did mine, so did I.”

Earl stood up and leaned against the wall with his big arms crossed. It's a strange thing to be pissed at someone and to also notice at the same time how hot they are. “Goddammit, Katie was lying,” he said. “She wanted more than a ride home and I gave her more credit than she had coming to her. I should know better than that by now.”

“Yes, you should have. So that's what this caveman routine is all about? Katie tried to put the moves on you—again—and because she's an operator, you think Jake's trying to do the same thing?”

Earl got quiet.

“She only tried, right?”

Earl sighed and suddenly pulled his black T-shirt off. “She did a little more than try,” he said quietly.

I don't want to know the bullshit she tried on Earl, but I decided on the spot that I would fuck her up if she tried one more thing. I kind of wanted to know what she tried to pull, but then I would have had to tell Earl about Jake. The Jake Situation, I decided, was the last sleeping dog I would let lie.

“Dang, it's hot in here,” Earl said. “I been drinking.” He rubbed his face and the back of his neck with his shirt.

“I can tell.”

“Both me and Jake been drinking. We got to talking and he let slip what he thought about you, thought you were just the kind of smart, beautiful woman he'd like to take home to his mama. Said I should trade you for Katie, so he could take you home to that mama.”

That bastard. “So what are you mad at me for?”

Earl walked over and pulled me to him. “I ain't mad. I'm just a little drunk. It was kind of a strange night.”

“I heard.” I wrapped my arms around Earl and he bent down to kiss me. This time he did it like he meant it.

“I'm just…” His voice trailed off. “More of the same stuff. Sometimes being together is harder than I thought. You never know when somebody says something to make you feel mad or hell, even sad.”

Welcome to my world, I wanted to say, but we have to take everything one conversation at a time. “Well, then. Just tell me whenever you feel mad or sad.” I sat on the bed and patted the space next to me, but Earl just stood there. He looked serious.

“Okay, then. Sometimes you make me mad, and sometimes you don't make me feel good about myself. Sad, I guess.”