Pay It Forward (9 page)

S
HE’D GIVEN UP AND PUT HERSELF TO BED
when she heard his quiet knock. She put on a robe and let him in. Well, opened the door to let him in, but he seemed to get stuck there on the threshold. She had to take his hand and give a little pull.

She wanted to offer a hug, but it seemed if she went forward,
he might go backward, since he always had before. She turned and walked into the bedroom, hoping he would follow, hardly daring to turn around to see if he did.

She dropped her robe on the floor, not really thinking in advance how he’d feel about that, the way she slept with nothing on even if it was just for sleeping. When she looked over her shoulder he was standing there in her bedroom doorway, watching.

The lights were all off, so it was dark, except for that little thin sliver of yellow moon, and she didn’t figure he could see much more than just the smoky outline of her pulling back the covers, settling in way over to one side to give him plenty of room.

In time he came around to the other side of the bed and lay down on his back on top of the covers. He was wearing jeans and a white shirt, and she hadn’t seen him in jeans since that day she went by his house. When he came by to take her out he always dressed nice, with a tie and everything.

She rolled a little closer and rested her head on his shoulder. After a few minutes more in silence she said, “Do you want me to take off my earrings? Are they digging into you?” She had three pierces on that side and didn’t want him to be uncomfortable, figuring he would never say if he was.

“No. I can’t even feel them.” It was the first he’d spoken since coming into her house. His voice sounded low and careful.

“Thanks for coming back, Reuben.”

“Why are you doing this? And don’t say because you hate to sleep alone. I’m sure there are plenty of men who’d like to be here with you tonight.”

“Got any of their phone numbers?”

“Is it because Trevor wanted us together?”

“Damn, Reuben. Just how far do you think I’ll go to help that kid with his homework?”

“Why me, then?”

Arlene sat up. “You know what your problem is?”

“No, but fortunately I have you to tell me.”

“Your problem is you worry too much about your looks. I don’t care near as much as you do, I couldn’t possibly. Even if I quit my day job, I just wouldn’t have time. Did you ever consider that if you’d never gone and gotten hurt like you did, you’d be way too good for me? I mean, you’d be in such a whole different league you wouldn’t even give me the time of day.”

“Nobody’s out of your league, Arlene. You’re too pretty.”

“There’s more to this league thing than just looks.”

“Good thing for me if that’s true.”

There was a bigger side to the story for her, but no words in which to frame it. It wouldn’t make sense to him, probably, or even ring true if she said she liked him because he picked her up, wearing a tie, paid for a baby-sitter, took her to a nice restaurant, and then walked her to her door. How do you explain to a guy that until you met him you didn’t know you’d been getting a raw deal?

She set her cheek back down on his shoulder and threw one arm across his chest, a big, solid chest, she thought, the kind that wards off evil spirits in the dark. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but wouldn’t you be more comfortable out of those clothes?”

He didn’t answer straight off; in fact, she thought he probably never would. Then he said, “Maybe next time. Maybe tomorrow.”

And she was so relieved to think he’d be there again tomorrow she didn’t say another word, not wanting to say or do anything that might break that spell.

T
he store closed at nine and he wasted no time breaking for the door. Three times when he checked the clock, he’d been sure it was broken, but another minute had eventually ticked away. Not for any special reason did the time go so slowly. Not much more than usual. Work always crawled by.

He’d parked his motorcycle behind the shop, on the hill. It made so much noise, and the owner always gave him a dirty look if he idled it too close to the store. It didn’t have an electric starter, or rather, the one it had didn’t work. So he had to kick it over. And it didn’t have a neutral light, so he had to rock it back and forth a bit to make sure it wasn’t in gear. Which was hard on the hill. Hard to coast it, hard to be sure.

Thinking it was in neutral, he straddled the bike, jumped on the kick lever, and the bike, still in first gear, rolled forward off the side stand and fell with him.

Now there’d be another three weeks of gas-tank-shaped bruise on the inside of his thigh, but that was not the worst of it. Straining to pick the bike up again, Matt saw he’d broken the front brake lever. Hit the handlebar and sheared it right off. And the
back brake wasn’t any too good. He closed his eyes and thought about screaming. But it was a quiet night, the houses in this neighborhood filled with quiet people. Nobody liked trouble.

Besides, he’d tried that once. Stood in the street and cussed out the bike, called it every name he could think of. Hadn’t fixed a goddamned thing.

He turned the bike around, straddled it again, coasted it down the hill. Popped the clutch and roll-started it. If only he’d thought of that to begin with. If only.

He ran the stop sign on the Camino because he had to, and nobody noticed. No cops around. So he cruised the Camino at twenty-five, half pulled over to the curb. That way if he had to stop suddenly, he’d have a fighting chance. Five guys in a lowrider Chevy slowed beside him, rolled down their windows, called him a pussy. Asked if he needed training wheels. It was a worse day than most, but not in a whole different ball park.

Only thing Matt hated more than going to work was going home and listening to the fighting. He had a tent in the overgrown backyard for when things got really bad. At nineteen, he knew he needed a place of his own, but it was not that easy. Everybody wanted first and last month’s rent, nobody wanted to pay more than $4.25 an hour for anybody who was anything-teen.

He pulled into his driveway, cut the engine. Put the bike up on the center stand. From out there he could already hear it, but he went inside all the same. Everybody’s got to be somewhere, and Matt was home.

Then he saw the letter on the dining room table. He never got mail. And it was from someone he’d never heard of. Ida Greenberg. Weird. A big, thick envelope. Pages and pages mailed to him from Ida Greenberg.

Whoever she was.

From
The Other Faces Behind the Movement

You know what’s weird? What’s weird is when you mean a lot more to somebody else than they ever meant to you. I mean, a whole lot more. Like life on two whole different planets.

I been on the wrong end of that, too. My freshman year in high school, I was like head over heels in love with this girl. Her name was Laura Furley. I used to lie in bed at night saying that name to myself, over and over in my head. I had this pencil in my drawer that she’d dropped in the hall. I had it in this little box with tissue paper. I mean, it was weird. It was like a goddamn shrine or something. And I cut three pictures of her out of the yearbook and put them in a frame. I never said a word to her. I mean, not even hello. I’m not even sure I ever looked her in the eye. But I wanted to spend my whole life with her. And if I couldn’t, I thought I’d spend my whole life thinking about how I couldn’t. And then sometimes I would think, if she knew all this, boy, would she be amazed.

Probably she would have said, Matt who?

I’m not saying I think Mrs. Greenberg was in love with me, it’s not that. It’s just weird. I mean, I never noticed her any more than any other customer in that store. I just knew her name. I just said, “Hello, Mrs. Greenberg. How are you tonight?”

Man. She must’ve been awful lonely.

J
UST A LITTLE OVER SIX WEEKS LATER
he had it in his hand. He’d already put a fifty-dollar deposit on the apartment so the guy wouldn’t rent it to somebody else. He spent the night there, in a sleeping bag. He had a decent bed at his folks’ house but no way to move it yet.

It was quiet. Real little place, but nice and quiet.

When he opened the window he was right out on the slanting roof, because this apartment used to be an attic once, before somebody divided up the house. And he sat out on the roof in the dark, in the cold, in sweatpants and no shirt, just liking the quiet. What he saw from that roof was trees and nothing else. Just the side of a hill covered with trees. And a sliver of yellow moon gleaming through. Which was more than enough.

So he sat there for a while, wondering where people go when they die and what he could possibly do for somebody else that would mean as much as this $8,333 had meant to him. And what to buy with the rest of the money. And whether Mrs. Greenberg would know. He didn’t figure she probably would; it seemed corny to think she was watching. But he’d never known anyone who died, never thought much about it before, and he wasn’t all that completely positive that she wouldn’t know. Unlike the $8,333, it wasn’t something he could take to the bank.

Which made him think about decisions, and whether his were good ones, and how this would change them, not being completely sure if she would know. But it was a long subject to think through and a little unclear, and before he finished he got cold and sleepy, so he went inside and to bed.

The next morning he drove his old piece of crap motorcycle to the Honda dealer in San Luis Obispo. They said they’d give him $75 in trade. The first thing that caught his eye was a real
pretty brand-new 750. With a windshield, and all space-age aerodynamic in red and white, with a custom paint job. He sat on it. He shouldn’t have sat on it. It cost almost $7,000. Which was just damn close to all he had left after first and last month’s rent and that big security deposit. But, damn. It was more than pretty. It was, like…power. But it was too much.

They also had a new 350, like his old one but seven model years newer and no miles. And a neutral light and an electric starter. And then, for $3,500, they had a 250. With a nice custom paint job. Brand new. 350, 250. The 250 would go fast enough to ride on the highway. Just barely. And if he could go faster, maybe that would just get him a ticket, which he could not afford. Insurance ate up too much of his check as it was.

Then he sat on the 750 again, feeling that power. Nobody was going to pull up beside him while he was on this bad boy to talk about training wheels. But it was too much. It was most of the old lady’s money. That was all she had, that insurance, like someone cashed in her life and that’s what it all added up to.

This was giving him a headache.

He rode his old piece of crap to the Taco Bell. Had a breakfast burrito, thought some more.

Then he went back and bought the 250.

And on the way home stopped at Cuesta College to get a catalogue of all their extension classes. And sat on his brand-new little bike in the parking lot and leafed through the catalogue, and it was so cool because there was no possible combination of classes that he could not afford.

He stuck it in his backpack, and the motor started up nice and clean when he hit the button. He took Highway 41, just to feel the curves.

So, there. If she could see, she’d know he made a good decision. And if not, well. If not, he could see. He would know he didn’t waste it, whether or not Mrs. Greenberg ever found out.

M
ary Anne and Arnie have never been very nice to me. Like when I told them I thought Clinton was gonna win the election. Arnie hooted and laughed at me. Bush, he said. George Bush. Bet on it. Mary Anne came to school the next day in a cap that said
Ross for Boss
on the front. That’s how much you know, she said.

And I used to have this big ol’ thing for Mary Anne, too. What was I thinking?

Anyway, my mom said to pay them no mind. She told me a story of when she was a kid, and she told her uncle Harry, who was this big football fan, that Joe Namath and the Jets were gonna beat the Colts in the Super Bowl. He laughed at her. Then, when the Jets won, he wouldn’t talk about it with her. She said some people just can’t handle being wrong.

I said, the Jets and the Colts in the Super Bowl? Man. That must’ve been like a century ago. Both those teams totally suck now.

Thanks, she said. Now I feel real old.

When I gotta get up and say my project flopped, Mary Anne and Arnie are gonna give me hell. I sure hope Clinton wins the election.