Onward Toward What We're Going Toward (13 page)

“I'm sorry you had to see that,” he said now. He went past her, toward the stairs.

In the bedroom, he told her he didn't want to talk about it, then shut off the nightstand lamp. The room was dark. Lijy propped herself up on one elbow, waiting for him to say something, but she knew he wasn't going to say anything. He never said anything.

There was this one guy at the Pair-a-Dice who spent whole afternoons—a green duffel bag on the floor next to his stool—playing video poker. He was a few years older than Mary, maybe ten years, but age didn't matter, the loud voice told her. At this point in her life, beggars couldn't be choosers.

The guy always arrived via one of the retirement home buses that flooded the Pair-a-Dice's parking lot. Sometimes, Mary saw him line up with a group of other old people while a young woman wearing hospital scrubs marked names off on a clipboard. He would tell the woman his name, but Mary never heard it clearly—
something with a C. It was a weird name. Mary had been thinking about him lately, after she beat Seth at pool, after she got the flowers from Green, in the hospital as she watched Green lying there and wondered how she could get herself out of this mess. To more than one guy over the years, she'd simply left a note on the kitchen counter—
I'm really sorry this didn't work out
—and hadn't looked back: a new break, a new spread of balls on the pool table. She told herself this time was different, but after the stroke, a part of her, that loud voice, kept nagging her, telling her to go. She'd heard this voice before. Like the time she caught Lyle in the apartment with the black woman. When she climbed behind the wheel of the Mustang and was about to turn the ignition key, the voice told her to do it, to turn the key, to just go already and get it over with. She didn't want to leave. She wanted to be with Lyle, but the voice screamed at her to turn the key, to go, go, go! But there was another voice, a competing voice, a whispering voice that asked questions like, if she had a stroke, would Green stay with her? It talked in clichés, too, like:
do unto others as you'd have done to you
. It told her that Green would be at the hospital holding her hand and feeding her ice cream. He wouldn't be thinking about running away. He might not ever talk again, the loud voice fired back. The whisper voice cleared its throat and told her that C, whatever his name was, lived in a retirement home, and Green had sent you flowers. That cowboy sure wasn't interested. He didn't check you out even once.

In the employee locker room, Mary stashed her pool cue in her locker and changed into the ridiculous waitress uniform. Out on the floor, she snaked between the slot machines and behind the craps tables and over by the blackjack tables where the pit bosses stood scanning the table games and, finally, by the video poker machines to see if C was there. She just wanted to look. She wasn't going to do anything. If he was at his usual machine, she'd let one of the other waitresses know that he was a good tipper.

Of course he was there. She watched him deposit a coin and pull the handle. The loud voice told her to do it, walk up to him, take a
chance, who knows what's going to happen—roll the dice. Don't do it, the other voice said. Think about Green in that hospital bed, taking a nap, the television on, machines beeping. You can't do it to him.

“Hey.” Mary tapped C what's his name on the shoulder. She set her tray down on top of the video poker machine and picked up the duffel bag—MIDDLEVILLE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL was written across it in white letters—from his lap. “Hey, don't touch that,” he said in an agitated tone. She tossed the bag to the ground and threw a leg over him, straddling him. There you go, the loud voice said. Make a big splash. Get his attention. That cowboy at the bar doesn't know what he's missing. You are sexy.

C whatever his name was looked over his shoulder. “Where is he?”

“Who?”

“Morris.”

“Who's Morris?”

“He put you up to this.” He looked into the Chow Wagon, the buffet restaurant, behind them.

Mary put her arms around his neck and stuck her face into his face. They were nose to nose like they were about to kiss. “What's your name?”

“Mary, what are you doing?” Another waitress balancing a cocktail tray struck a grade-school teacher pose—one hand on her cocked hip. “This isn't a strip club. You know you're not supposed to touch the customers.”

Mary slid off of C's lap and smoothed the front of her skirt.

“Don't make me report you.” The waitress walked away toward the slot machines.

“Chic,” he said. “Chic Waldbeeser. Now, where's Morris? How much did he pay you?”

“Who's Morris?”

“My roommate. There he is.” In the Chow Wagon, Morris sat at a table eating a slice of watermelon, a plate heaped with fried chicken and mashed potatoes in front of him. He noticed Chic pointing at him and waved.

“I've never seen that guy in my life.”

“Yeah, well, I don't believe you.” Without bothering to get off his stool, Chic reached for his duffel bag but couldn't quite get to it. “Can you give me that?” Mary handed the bag to him. Chic unzipped it, took out a quarter, and put it in the video poker machine. The machine made beeping noises and dealt him a rainbow: three of clubs, nine of diamonds, seven of hearts, jack of spades, and ace of spades. “Goddamn it to hell. Look at that. Terrible. One ace and a bunch of junk.”

“I know the feeling,” Mary said.

Chic took another quarter out of the bag. Mary grabbed for it. “Hey what are . . . stop . . . don't.” She pried his hand open and took the quarter and, giggling, dropped it down her low-cut blouse between her breasts.

Chic swallowed hard and stared at the cleavage crease that had eaten his quarter.

“You like these, don't you, Chic Waldbeeser?”

“You're going to get us in trouble.”

“Hold on. Watch this.” Mary could feel the quarter sliding between her breasts. Then it dropped out from under her blouse and landed, without a sound, on the casino's carpeted floor next to her high-heeled shoe. She expected Chic to reach for it, but he turned back to his poker hand, discarded everything but the ace of spades, and hit the deal button. The machine whirred to life and dealt Chic another ace and three other rags. It then beeped and dropped two quarters into the win tray.

Lijy had known that Buddy needed help from the moment she saw him eating a bowl of pork noodles that afternoon in San Francisco. On the outside, he looked like just another typical guy
wearing a suit and a derby hat, but on the inside, if you looked closely, if you peeled back the outer layer, he wasn't altogether all right. Lijy knew what she was getting herself into with a man like that, but she wasn't altogether all right herself, and perhaps, she thought, if you put two not-quite-altogether all rights together, that might somehow make them both right. And that's what she told herself she was doing. That's what got her through the days and nights sitting in the living room waiting for him. She'd wait an entire lifetime if she had to. No matter what, waiting for him was better than Stockton, California. Or maybe it wasn't. No, she wasn't going to let herself think like that, and besides, there were things she had to do like buy groceries, which she hated, but she would do it, for him. So she found herself, again, at Stafford's. She put a head of cauliflower into her shopping cart, a package of rice, a sack of potatoes. She felt a pair of warm eyes on her while she searched for a ripe cantaloupe. She glanced over her shoulder. A wiry man in a black turtleneck sweater stood a few feet away. He pushed his glasses up on his nose.

“There's so many to choose from,” she said to him.

“Allow me.” He took a melon and smelled it, then held it up high like it was a trophy. “Have you ever been to California?” he asked.

Lijy thought that maybe this was some sort of joke. She looked behind her, thinking she'd see someone standing there, laughing, but there was no one.

“In San Francisco they have these people called Beats. I can tell by looking at you,”—he motioned at her sari and Khussa shoes—“that you'd dig them.” He smelled the melon again. “This one fits you. It's a gorgeous melon for a gorgeous woman.”

Lijy blushed.

“My name's Lamar Jimmerson, the second.” He held out his hand limply, like a woman, and Lijy noticed he was wearing a gold bracelet.

“Do you like tea, Lamar Jimmerson?”

“The second,” he said. “Lamar Jimmerson, the second.”

“Sorry,” she said.

“Actually, I have a confession. My name is not Lamar Jimmerson, the second. It's Tom. Tom T. Shiftlett. I'm sorry I lied. It's just that . . . I normally don't meet women at the grocery store.”

“I normally don't meet men at the grocery store.” Lijy smiled at him. “Do you like tea, Mr. Shiftlett?”

“Please. Tom. And, yes, tea is beautiful. The world right now is so beautiful.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose again. He was blinking so rapidly that Lijy thought he might pass out.

“Are you a priest?” she asked.

“No. I'm an athletic trainer. For the Rivermen.”

Lijy had no idea who that was. “Rivermen?”

“The hockey team in Peoria.”

Lijy nodded, feigning interest, and smiled at Tom T. Shiftlett. He was a slit of a man, like a small tear that could be fixed with needle and thread. She noticed that his hands were like a child's, soft and hairless. Buddy had big hands with hair on his knuckles, and stubble that grew down his neck and disappeared under the collar of his shirt.

Over mugs of tea in Lijy's kitchen, Tom explained that he was from Ohio and had a Doctor of Science from the Chicago School of Applied Science. He'd gotten the head trainer job with the Rivermen three months ago. The training room, he said, didn't have a whirlpool and he was a strong believer in whirlpools. He didn't understand the term, “the Middle West.” “It isn't really west. It's more east than west. And it's gray. So terribly gray. A more accurate description would be ‘the Gray West.'” In the Middle West, only 48 percent of the days each year were sunny. No wonder people were always complaining about back problems. They were scrunched up, tight-muscled, trying to fend off the elements. It snowed a lot in the Middle West, and anything that fell from the sky was not good, in his opinion. His plan was to move to California and open a private practice for aging weight
lifters. He told Lijy that weight lifting was a beautiful sport, and that Yury Vlasov was, without a doubt, the favorite to win the gold medal in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. He said he wasn't a communist, despite his admiration for a Russian weight lifter. He asked Lijy if she knew what the word California meant, and she said she didn't. He told her it meant “the perfect life” in Spanish. Then he told her that that wasn't true. He didn't know what California meant, maybe it was an Indian tribe. He said the houses were closer together in California because so many people wanted to live there. When he moved there he wasn't going to be just anybody. He was going to live out his dreams—the private practice, the weight lifters. He'd go out for dinner on Friday nights. He'd go to the movies. He'd buy two color television sets—one for the living room and one for some other room he hadn't decided on yet, maybe the bedroom. He'd put a hammock in the backyard.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I can tell you're not very interested in my description of California, but I have another confession. My name's not Tom T. Shiftlett. It's Ellis McMillion. This time I'm telling you the truth. I promise. It's just that I couldn't help notice your wedding ring and, well, it made me . . . one can never be too safe. Does your husband work out?”