Lone Star (63 page)

“He just wants to be your lover, baby.”

“Which song is that or are you making unsupported observations?”

“Correct,” said Taylor. “Blind friend, have you seen how yummy he is, how jacked? The other day when they were at our house working on a transmission, I overheard him telling my Joey that his favorite tool was the demolition hammer. I nearly came right then and there.”

“Taylor!”

“Chloe, Fiona still calls me up bawling three times a week. That boy's got game. Swear to me on your boobs, you haven't once thought of him using the demolition hammer on you—”

“Taylor, I swear on all things holy, if you say
one
more word . . .”

Blake calling to the girls from his dock. Hey, what are you two giggling about? Everyone on the lake can hear you.

God, Chloe hoped not. The girls giggled all the more.

Chloe did only one actual thing in July. She turned
twenty-one. The rest of the time she slept, ate, swam, played with Ray, floated, bowled, fished, drank Blake's beer, tailgated off Blake's truck, visited Hannah, and occasionally opened a celebrity magazine. She wanted to be and not to think, and most of the time she succeeded, except at night.

At night she tried to convince herself that it was all for the best. Sometimes she tried to hypnotize herself into believing it was better he didn't come looking for her, better she didn't find him.

That way she was never disillusioned.

Or disappointed, or bored.

There wasn't any bickering.

(Or Christmas.)

No shopping in crowded malls, waiting for the car to be brought around, being hot in your parka, knowing as soon as you got outside you would freeze.

No getting fuel in the rain, no flat tires.

His hands never smelled of gasoline.

They were never broke. Or had to get up in the middle of the night to let the dogs out, or because she heard a noise.

She never heard a noise.

She pretended she wanted a routine with him, but she wouldn't trade it for the sublime with him, not when their fused celestial bodies had imagined that everything else would one day be perfect, too. Or that nothing could be as perfect.

Either way it wasn't real.

Just a fairy tale, a dream divine, a breath barely taken.

Her lungs filled with his fake name and, for one shining day, life became extraordinary.

And even before she exhaled, he was already receding. Every moment with him was the one before the one before the one before the last.

But every once in a while when her body ached with loneliness, Chloe craved not the aria burst of Italian fire, but the elevator Muzak of daily love. Every once in a while she longed to find someone else in the woods. She slept and wandered,
hopelessly lost in the brambles, in every new face searching for him and the way out.

Faith

“Mom, do you think he'll ever come looking for me?”

“No, my love,” said Lang.

Chloe wouldn't speak to her mother afterward, wouldn't listen to her explanations.

“Ask me another question,” Lang said.

“Like I'd ever.”

“I think the best you can hope for,” Lang said, “is to find out what happened to him, and for that you'd have to learn who he is. Every year that goes by makes the task more difficult.”

“Should I keep trying?”

Her mother sat at the table, hulling strawberries. Jimmy Devine loved coming home to the smell of warm treacly jam. The screen door to the back was open, the birds were chirping, the lake glistened through the birches, it was peaceful, midsummer, it smelled fantastic, it was green and warm. Her mother's silence filled Chloe with so much sadness, she had to turn away.

“My angel beloved,” Lang said from behind her. “My darling child. What do you hope for?”

“He promised me he would come back,” Chloe whispered. “Can you understand that?”

“I can. But he hasn't.”

“He could've lost my number! I gave it to him on a piece of paper. You know how some people are with pieces of paper. They always lose them. Look at Blake.”

Lang nodded. “Perhaps he lost yours. Is that what you hope for?”

“Clearly.”

“Okay. Say you find him. He is Brad Jones, son of Bill Jones, grandson of Bud Jones, distracted phone-number loser. Then what?”

Chloe's face was turned toward the window, to outside. She heard her mother's voice from behind her. “If he wanted you to know his real name, wouldn't he have told you?”

“He was trying to reinvent himself,” Chloe said. “He told me that his name was not his name to disclose. He was trying to protect his father.”

“How hard is it, do you think, to get in touch with you?”

“I don't know. I've been trying to get in touch with him, and I haven't been successful, have I?”

“He would've had to forget your father was chief of police of a small town.”

“No, Mom,” Chloe snapped. “All he would've had to do was forget the name of my small town.”

Lang lowered her head. “Or that you go to the University of San Diego.”

“There are four universities in San Diego!”

“You've searched through fifty states for Lone Star. He can't look through four universities? He can't look you up on Facebook? You're plain and prominent enough there.”

“He doesn't have a computer. He doesn't have a Facebook account. A thousand things. Mason is not on Facebook. Neither are you. Neither is Blake. For God's sake!”

“What if he just moved on, Chloe?”

“Do you know how much you're not helping?”

“I'm trying to help you work through the possible endings. Do you want to learn he's forgotten you, and moved on?”

“I don't want riddles from you too, Mother.”

“Not riddles. Questions.”

“Stop with the questions.”

“What if he died in that damn Afghanistan, what if his life ended years before your story begins?”

Chloe burst into tears.

Lang put down the strawberries. She got up and walked to Chloe, who, besieged with fright and desperation, actually let her
mother touch her. Let her mother hug her. On Lang's shoulder, she bent her head and bawled.

“My sweetest girl,” Lang said, gentle as a hummingbird, “I want to help you. But you haven't thought it through.”

“You're being truly terrible right now,” said Chloe, sniffling. “You're being the worst. I'm going to write a story about you for Advanced Composition. Just wait till you see how you come off. Terrible, that's how.” She didn't stop her mother from touching her, embracing her.

“Leave it be, angel. Let it go, my love. Go swim, and I'll make you your favorite honey cake.”

In the lake Chloe lay on the water float, eyes to the sky, and she lay in the hammock as the sun set, eyes to the sky, and she sat like a mute at the dinner table, eyes at her plate with her father asking every minute, “Chloe-bear, what's the matter?” She lay on her bed up in the loft and stared at the wooden rafters, and tried to listen to her mother's voice of reason, to her own voice of reason. She tried to heed the passing of time. She felt distant from San Diego, from Blake, from her parents, from herself. She flew to the only place she felt connected to in the universe, over the oceans and the distant miles to the room near the castle by the sea. All the windows were open because it was stifling hot, and she saw the stars over the Adriatic, and the swell of the green water, even at night, heard the occasional car passing, the laughter of women at a nearby bar. It was so vivid, and his parched voice murmuring.
Chloe, sometimes you have to have faith even if you don't have proof. Especially if you don't. Look at my grandparents.

Binary Boys and Sentient Girls

They were standing face-to-face on her dock when Taylor and Joey drove up in his Explorer to have a swim and a picnic.

“What have you wrought, Chloe?” Blake said, waving to their friends. “Nobody works because of you. Taylor is going to
get fired from Applebee's. Joey hasn't fixed a car in days. You've corrupted everybody with your indolent summer.”

“Who wants to work, this is way more fun,” Taylor said, putting down the towels. “What are you two up to?” And it must have looked strange. They had been standing close to the edge of the dock facing each other, Chloe all coiled up in her
moroto dori
aikido position of full-frontal offensive, and Blake at complete ease as if loitering.

“She is trying to show me what she has learned so far after one hundred and seventy
thousand
dollars worth of schooling,” said Blake, “and I'm refraining from knocking her into the water for the . . .”

He trailed off as she struck out, attacking with her arms, and he twisted out of her way and with the back of his forearm swatted her off the dock and into the lake. “For the—what is it, Haiku, twenty-first time, or twenty-second?” He catapulted into the water and swam after her. She swam away, giggling.

Taylor watched them, nodding wisely, as if the high school graduate understood in its entirety the ontological relativity of all metaphysical arguments. “Hey, did you know,” she said officiously as if reading from an educational manual for professors, “that your best chance of finding a compatible mate is sixteen blocks from the home where you grew up?” She plunked herself cross-legged onto the dock and opened her
Redbook
magazine.

“Taylor! Shut up,” Chloe said from the water. “Put down the magazine and go jump in the lake.”

“Nice. Do you want to hear the rest or no?”

“No!” Blake and Chloe both exclaimed, and laughed.

“The part I don't get, Taylor,” said Blake, “is why such a specific number? Why not five blocks? Or thirty-three? And what if there's no one remotely attractive enough who lives sixteen blocks away? What do you do then? How far does Joey live from you? I thought he was from New Hampshire.”

“This isn't about me,” Taylor said. “This is about you.” Even
Joey had had enough and picked her up and threw her into the lake,
Redbook
magazine and all.

Nothing is like bobbing on Blake's floating dock in the deep part of the lake on an August afternoon. In a blue tankini Chloe lies on her back and he is spread out next to her in black swim trunks. She pretends to tan, but she's just looking up at the sky. It's quiet except for their occasional speaking; he murmurs something; she echoes back. Dad is working. Janice and Burt are at Home Depot. Mom and Ray are at the water park. Blake and Chloe had offered to take him, but Lang said no. She wanted to. Stay here, she said. Relax. You've done enough. Chloe ponders this, because she knows she's done nothing. Literally nothing. They had swum, dived, argued about distilled spirits and the best soil for jacarandas and almost made a bet that Chloe could grow and keep a palm tree in the Maine weather if Blake would build her a greenhouse for it. They wondered whether there was any time before she flew back to drive down to the ocean and Chloe said, I see the ocean twice a week in San Diego, and he said yes, because it's all about you. And then he added, it's not even about the ocean, it's about the drive. You know how much I like to drive. But I also like gratitude. And smiling she played along and said, why would I want to thank you for driving me to a place I don't want to go, and he said, geez, maybe just to be polite? And she tried hard not to laugh, her body shaking from the effort. How do you know you don't want to thank me? he said. What if you really, really do—and suddenly in front of her eyes there appears a mountain and a glen full of cacti, long and tall, saguaros maybe, and not one, but myriad! What an odd vision, she thinks, and there is tremendous heat. She is hot, parched, panting, sweating. Nothing makes sense. And then Chloe hears Blake say, “Binary boys like sentient girls.”

She opens her eyes and moans. She is sitting up on the dock,
leaning back on her arms. She is naked. Her blue tankini floats in the water. His blond streaked head is pressed deep into her bare breasts, into her wet nipples, his big work hands fondle her, his lips are hot in her white neck, and she is moaning, and then he pushes her down onto her back and opens her legs. And vanishes. She looks up and sees nothing but sky. Her fingers grip the edge of the dock. Her body writhes in agitated, desperately longed-for incineration. The mountains in the distance are embroidered with her scarlet cries. She reaches down, grabs hold of his shaggy head, begs him, slower slower, she doesn't want it to end, the indiscreet things he is doing to her with his mouth are making her body curve upward, and then he gets up and stands over her, naked himself, throttle on full. She gasps, reaches for him, and—

“Chloe, are you okay? You're whimpering.”

She reels away from him on the bobbing dock. She is wobbling, she is panting. She doesn't say a word. Any moment she will keel over and pitch into the water. That would be a blessing. Was she only dreaming? It's not possible! It was so real! She glances down, to check for her bathing suit. It's disappointingly on, the blue nylon fabric covering what was just fully exposed to his eyes, to his hands, to his mouth. She feels so let down. Her body, her soul stretching over her bones like fine fevered Jell-O, Chloe can't look at him in her mortification and regret.