Random Acts Of Crazy (10 page)

He gently pulled my shoulder toward him and I had no choice but to respond, the bed so tiny I couldn’t exactly pull away or I’d fall off. He was the only man I’d ever had in here, so this was all new on so many different levels. First of all, this was not a bed made for two people. I rotated my body, my hips sliding against wetness, a proud sort of blooming inside me recognizing that it was a symbol of what we’d just done.

Face to face, I couldn’t hide anymore but I could close my eyes because his right now were searching, and deep, and questioning. That was the problem. Trevor was taking all of this far too far. What I thought was supposed to be some fun, something wacky, something to add to my list of Stupid Things That Darla Did For Stupid Reasons was quickly becoming Something That Darla Had Always Hoped Could Be.

I knew how this would end, though. His friend was coming, taking him away and then I would just become some joke that Trevor told to his friends. A story about how he got high as a kite and found himself in Ohio and some crazy fat chick picked him up and fucked him. That’s all I needed to be, right?

That’s all I was.

I was fooling myself if I thought that what I wanted so desperately to see in that look from him was really there.

On the other hand, what did I have to lose, giving him what he was asking for? Sure, I could chip off a chunk of my heart but hell – nobody else was asking for it right now. The leap was easier than I thought. I just opened my mouth and let shit pour out. Except, this time, it wasn’t shit.

It was true.

“When I was four and when my Aunt Josie was eleven, my mom and dad, and Josie’s mom and dad, were out on a double-date – I don’t know whatcha call it when you’re married.” I smiled, but I could feel it not even reach my eyes – and it definitely did not reach Trevor’s face. His features had gone slack, his eyes a little narrow, focusing all of his attention on my words, one hand pressed against my hip, pulling the lower halves of our bodies closer.

“My Uncle Jeff was driving and he probably had some beers in him – that’s what I guess, I don’t know. We don’t talk about it,” I said, my stomach tightening. “Umm…” I stumbled, trying to find the words. Eighteen years of being told this story and I still didn’t really have the right words. “So…umm, Uncle Jeff was driving and he was in the front seat and so was my daddy, and my Mama and Aunt Marlene were in the back and Uncle Jeff didn’t see a semi truck that was backing into a driveway across the road – ”

“Oh, God,” Trevor said, his voice husky and shocked.

“Yeah. Oh, God.
Oh, God
is the right thing to say, Trevor.”

“So your dad…”

He left the question out there. “He passed. And Uncle Jeff did too, instantly. At least that’s what I’m told. I was only four, so I don’t really know the details.”

“And your mom lived, right?” Trevor said.

“Well, obviously. She’s not an apparition.” I tried to smile at my own joke but we both just gave each other a sick look.

“And your aunt?”

“She lived. She had brain damage bad enough to be at the Cleveland Clinic for six weeks. They weren’t sure if she’d live but she did. Me and my Aunt Josie had to live with the assistant librarian until my mama got out of the hospital, and then Josie lived with us for a while until her mom was back.”

“Why the librarian?”

“Uncle Jeff was the head librarian here.” He just nodded, his chin sliding up and down the skin between my neck and earlobe.

“And she’s OK? Your aunt who was in the accident?”

I thought about all the ways that that question could be answered, my mind floating through answers in nanoseconds, as if someone had picked up my brain and thrown it through the air in a giant arc. And then I chose the easiest answer. “She lived. She’s here.”

We both sighed. I looked up, having focused on his shoulder to get through the explanation. I expected to find pity in his eyes. What I found instead was his face coming toward me as he planted the gentlest of kisses on my forehead and stroked my cheek.

Something troubled in his eyes told me he had a story, too, but now wasn’t the time to pile more sadness on top of my own. I wasn’t really surprised. Everyone has a sad story – around here we have more tragedy and misery than most places, but no one’s really poor in those. If bad luck and terrible timing were a currency, our whole trailer park would be on a Forbes list every year. In time – which we didn’t have much of – maybe I’d hear Trevor’s story.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said.

“Neither do I.”

In the stillness, all we heard was our breath. I snuggled against him, pressed my cheek against his heart, enjoyed the throbbing of it against my jawbone. His stomach gurgled and I mumbled, “Don’t make me make you another crazy omelet.”

He laughed and then kissed the top of my head, the pressure so fatherly it almost brought tears to my eyes. “You’ve been through so much,” he said.

“So have you,” I answered. We both knew that was lame.

A deep rumbling in his diaphragm burbled through me. “Darla, I’m a fucking pussy compared to you.” His words were mumbled and a bit slurred with sleep, arms loosening as he settled in, snuggling down and kissing my cheek. Before I could answer (
then again, what was I supposed to say to that?
) his breathing went even and my sweet Trevor Connor was out cold, slumber overtaking him in the wake of our lovemaking.

We had popped my shed’s cherry.

Miraculously, the man figured out exactly what I wanted and turned around, the back of his closely cropped hair showing up in stark relief even if I hadn’t really caught a good look at him in the front. Wiggling into my jeans and my blouse, I figured
what the hell
, and skipped the underwear. I didn’t need a bra to tell some guy to go away.

I tiptoed over to the door and opened it.
Creak
it went. Damn! I didn’t oil the hinges, I didn’t do anything to the outside of this pile of wood. I didn’t want to tip anybody off to my little place. As I opened the door and light shone in I gasped, the sound abrupt and halting, even coming out of my own lungs.

There, before me, stood the most perfect man I’d ever seen in my entire life. I don’t mean perfect like Trevor, who was, objectively speaking,
the
most perfect man. I mean physically perfect, like God’s hand reached out of the sky and custom sculpted the face, the body, the look, every bit of it. It was as if whatever it had taken to make this ideal human being had involved sucking all of the good out of the men in this part of north-central Ohio, an uneven distribution of exceptional quality that had been poured into this specimen, making every other man look like a gremlin. Fat gremlins, around here.

“Uh…uh…I’’m – ” I stuttered. “Um…yes?” I said, my mouth going dry, my throat clicking as I swallowed. I had just found the most exceptional man last night, standing naked by the side of the road and he’d turned out to be one of my biggest music crushes. And yet, every part of my loins – once again – were on fire for this Greek god.

“Is Trevor here?” he asked.

I could have watched this man’s face move, the muscles twitching and turning, bending and dancing in perfect harmony with the words that came out of those luscious, perfect, symmetrical lips and been happy in that kind of stupor forever, as if his features were a kind of meth that didn’t cost anything but your dignity. Like a child who caught Santa, I gawked, dumbfounded and shocked by the implications of finding out what I’d thought had been imaginary was real.

“Excuse me,” the man said slowly, as if I were a bit slow. Which, right then, I was. “Excuse me, but I’m looking for Trevor Connor.”

He looked around me, craning his head, and then stepped back as if self correcting, too polite to barge in. No barger was he. This wasn’t some alpha male-wannabe who came in all cocky. Instead, it was like looking at a Calvin Klein model or one of those breathtaking men in Vogue you knew was gay – gayer than gay.

Oh, please don’t let this one be gay
, I thought.

Oh, for God’s sake Darla
, another voice popped in.
You don’t need to be thinking about what this guy does with his dick when you’ve got your own dick in the bed behind you.

Down, girl.

“Uh…yeah. Yeah,” I stammered. “Trevor’s right here.”

I pulled the door open, the
creak
sound making Trevor groan and then shove a pillow over his head to block out the light. My wits came back and I sighed heavily, enjoying searching this man’s face as I said, “Joe! You must be Joe.”

His features broadened, stretching with relief. I wanted to lick him all over and make all his worries go away.
Stop it,
I slapped myself on the inside.
Trevor, Trevor, Trevor, Trevor, Trevor.

“Oh, thank God he’s here,” Joe said. “Because I went to 26 Old Farm Road which is here,” he pointed two feet away at the trailer, “and once I got to the front door…” He looked down at his shoe as if dismayed. The bottom of his pants was torn and his shoe, which had been a nice white leather Nike, was now torn along the edges and had deep black streaks on it. “After my foot fell through a rotten board on the porch, I pulled it out. By the way, do you live there?” he asked. Answering “yes” was clearly not the correct answer as his brow furrowed and he scowled the most adorable scowl I’d ever seen. It was like watching a kitten frown.

“No,” I said ferociously. “
No. No, no, no, no, no,
” I added, shaking my head. What the hell was I doing? Of course I lived there.

“I live
here
,” I said, turning, my hand smacking against the side of the shed, a little piece of rotten board falling off and clattering to the ground, failing to help me in my lie. We looked at each other, equally embarrassed. Except, we were both embarrassed for
me
.

“Oh, so…umm, a person in there, I wasn’t sure who the person was, but the person…” If he said
the person
one more time I would have no choice but to smack him. It was obvious he couldn’t tell whether Mama was a man or a woman. She got that a lot. Probably, it was the low smoker’s voice combined with her weight. That and the fact that she hadn’t done anything with herself since Daddy had died. Eighteen years is a long time for a woman to go without anything special.

No, not
that
. Get your mind out of the gutter. I mean no makeup, no nice clothes, nothing. She just ate and watched her stories on TV, and went on the Internet and entered sweepstakes contests and lotteries. If that seemed about as pathetic as it sounded, that’s because it was. On the other hand, we had more swag than you could ever imagine. Corporate logos on t-shirts and water bottles and little stuffed animals from all sorts of products – you need something like that, stop by the trailer and grab whatever you want, as long as Mama’s not looking. No one needs three hundred pop can cozies, right? Except Mama. All of it her
winnings
, as she called it, cluttering up the trailer but it gave her something to look forward to whenever the mail came.

“That’s my Mama,” I said quietly. His eyes widened. I would have read him the Communist Manifesto in the original German if I thought that there was a snowball’s chance in hell that I could just stare at him. The planes of his cheekbones were entrancing, the way the skin folded around his eyes, dark and sophisticated, an exquisiteness to the waves of his bluish-black hair. He had the bone structure of a model and the whole package of a man who was beauty personified.

Composing himself, the gears turning in that gorgeous head, he finally replied with: “OK, yeah, her. Well, so, Trevor’s supposed to be there.”

“No, he’s here with me.”

“This is your house? You’re Darla?” he asked.

I pulled the door shut quickly and then realized that my breasts were hanging right around my bellybutton. Dammit! I actually did need my bra. And shoes would help too. “Just a minute,” I said, my finger in his face buying me a second as I scurried back into my little home.

Fumbling to pull off my shirt, I looked down at Trevor. Should I wake him up? Tell him Joe’s here? This was going to be the end, and any second now he’d be gone. This couldn’t be the way that it ended. And yet, it had to end, didn’t it?

I felt kind of stupid, now
extra
stupid, for telling him what had happened with Mama and Daddy’s accident. There was really only one person I could talk to about that and she was out in Boston right now. Why was I thinking about Aunt Josie when I had the most incredible man I’d ever found by the side of the road – OK, the
only
man I’d ever found by the side of the road, but he was still pretty fucking incredible – in my bed, covered in my scent, my juices,
our
minglings still floating through the air. And then another guy, standing outside my little house, waiting for something.