Round Rock (21 page)

He leaned against her, her breasts squashed cozily against his back. “You coming over tonight?” she whispered.

He closed his eyes. “I have to work.”

Her body stiffened and her arms withdrew. A chasm of air opened between them. “I need to see you alone,” she said. He closed his eyes. Here it is, he thought.

He’d had a good run with Libby. Three months of happy, have-at-it, laugh-it-up sex. He’d known all along it couldn’t last forever. “Okay,” he said. “Why don’t you meet me later at Happy Yolanda’s for a drink?”

“A drink?” she yelped.

“I can drink water or juice,” he said. “Milk, Coke, whatever. A Virgin Mary. A virgin martini.” He laughed, bumped her arm. “A virgin martini—that would be an olive, right?” Libby wasn’t laughing. “Okay, then,” he said. “Meet you at ten for an olive.”

H
APPY
Y
OLANDA’S
door was flung open. Inside the warm darkness, a coppery blur of faces and a sad Spanish love song rasping on the jukebox. Bottles clinked. A drunken laugh rang out. Lewis inhaled the sour breath of his old life: smoke, spilled alcohol, disinfected air.

What if he walked in and ordered a double bourbon, neat? Surely nobody would say, “Hey, aren’t you Red’s assistant out at the drunk farm? Sure you want to throw away all that hard-earned sobriety?” The bartender would more likely pour the drink, his face blank as lumber.

Libby sat on a stool at the end of the bar, talking to Arvill Hartwood, a big-shot rancher in the valley. Lewis had seen him around town. Though not in Billie’s league, Arvill was still rich by anybody’s standard. He was famous for having both Morrot and Fitzgerald blood, and for his kindly nature. Even Victor Ibañez, who praised no man, admitted Arvill was sweet, but he called Arvill’s wife, Charlotte, “the Barracuda.” The Barracuda had walked out on Arvill for the fifth or sixth time two months ago—which was probably why Arvill was slumming in Happy Yolanda’s—and Victor had a pool going for the exact date of her return.

Arvill, thought Lewis, was probably just the right man for Libby; maybe fifteen years older, and not bad looking if you don’t mind grizzle.
Wiry, charming, and rugged in spades. Arvill raised longhorns for a hobby in the pastures around his ranch-style home; if Libby married him, she could admire lunky cattle with silky, speckled hair and handlebar horns from various picture windows.

Lewis sat at the other end of the bar. Libby spotted him, said something to Arvill, and carried her drink over. She’d been home and changed into jeans. Her hair was shiny and floating around her face. Her green, ribbed shirt was tight enough that Lewis could see bra straps and nipples. “Swacked yet?” he said.

“It’s club soda, dummy. I know better than to drink around you.”

Arvill was watching them. Lewis stood up. “Let’s get out of here. That guy creeps me out.”

“Arvill?” said Libby. “He’s all right.”

“He wants to fuck you.”

“He does not.”

Lewis put his hand on her back and urged her off the bar stool, steering her out onto Main Street. The night was bright, with an almost full moon. You could see the bricks in the buildings, the green bridge arching over the river, the brush-covered hills rising up behind town. He nudged her up Main to the Mills, then through the lobby and up the stairs. In his room, he pushed her down on the unmade bed. “Lewis,” she said. “We’re going to talk.”

He evaded her hands, peeled her shirt up until she lifted her arms, and her breasts, in her lace bra, sprang free. She covered her chest in an ineffective show of modesty. “This isn’t talking,” she said.

“We’ll talk,” he said, and unhooked the bra. He pulled her hands away, kissed her breasts, yanked the buttons of her Levi’s, which opened in a rapid arpeggio. She kept trying to cover herself, but she was also starting to laugh.

He put two fingers inside her and looked her in the eye, which she never endured with equanimity. She bit her lower lip. “Talk to me now,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”

“I remember this trick,” she said, and arched away from his fingers. With his other hand, he held her pelvis in place. She tossed her head and began moving against him. He climbed on top of her, still using only his hand. She felt juicy, warm, complicated. She couldn’t look at him for more than a second. She kept pulling stuff out from under her—a balled-up T-shirt, a pencil. She twisted and squirmed,
cried out, pulled a book from under her thigh, and finally came, as if to get away from him.

She was still, eyes closed, breathing hard. Then she reached for his belt buckle. “Take off your clothes,” she murmured.

“I’m fine,” he said, and moved away from her. He stood, found the cigarettes, lit one. She reached for it; he gave her a puff. She closed her eyes and patted the bed. He sat down beside her. “So,” he said. “Let’s get this over with. I gotta get to work.”

“Work,” she whispered. “I need a minute to recover.”

“I work at Denny’s,” he said. “In Buchanan.”

She sat up in bed and looked at him carefully. Her hands began reaching for her clothes. “You really don’t want to live with me, do you?”

“Not if you push me into a corner.”

“I see.” She dressed in rapid, hurried movements.

“I need more time to think things out,” he said.

“You got it.”

Holding the door open for her, he saw that her bra strap was twisted under the ribbing of her tight little shirt, and this made him want to kiss her. He always appreciated Libby at moments of departure. She was such a trouper. Tonight, he was soppily grateful she was leaving without a fight. He disappointed her, he knew. She wanted and deserved more than he could give. Someone like Arvill would do far better, could help her along in life.

Libby turned as he moved forward, his lips aiming for that anger-flushed cheek. Before he got there, she kicked him—hard—on the shin. He could tell she’d meant the kick as a jokey, incomplete gesture, but his momentum had swung him into her oncoming foot. The gently pointed toes of her black pumps connected with his shinbone like a dull axe.

He muffled a shout and she grasped his arm. “I’m sorry! Jesus, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. He pulled away from her, away from the pain. Even so, he felt a thrill: for once,
she’d
done the wrong thing. “I’ll be okay,” he said. “Just go. Get away from me. Please.”

She sprang away, into the stairwell, quick and light as a cat. Her swiftness startled him, and he realized how heartless he’d sounded. Hobbling, he pursued her to the first landing. “No hard feelings, Lib,” he called after her sotto voce. “I’ll call you soon. Take care, now.”

A
S LIBBY
turned up her road, she saw white and yellow lights hovering and swirling in the sky. Is this what UFOs looked like? The lights seemed to come from the area of her trailer. Would she be captured, probed, and then spend the rest of her life trying to convince people that such events actually occurred?

The lights, she soon saw, came from vehicles parked in front of her trailer. Trucks. Large trucks. Fire trucks. And Billie’s great white Chevy.

Her first impulse was to drive away, come back, and have it all be different.

Billie’s foreman, Rogelio, had been out on patrol when he smelled something. He drove up to investigate and saw smoke seeping from the trailer, called the fire department on his CB, then busted down the door on the off chance Libby was inside. “The fumes could’ve killed him,” one fireman told Libby. “Just be happy you weren’t in there asleep.” He snapped his gloved fingers. “It happens that fast in these tin cans.”

The firemen had thrown what they could onto the deck, covered it with a tarp, then gone back in and sprayed like hell. Now they shined spotlights so she could see to gather up some things.

“Get everything of value out of here,” the fireman said. “There’ll be looters before morning.”

“Looters!”

“They come out of the woodwork.” He nodded toward the olive grove, as if that leafy darkness were full of eager eyes.

Billie and Little Bill helped her pile as much as they could into the Chevy. Her musical instruments were safe, and a lot of her furniture seemed fine except for a terrible acrid smell. They worked for an hour or so, loading what they could, locking the rest in the sodden trailer. Back at the Fitzgerald adobe, Billie and Libby drank scotch in the
library. “I must be numb,” Libby said. “It just doesn’t seem so bad. Not as bad as it could have been.”

Billie put Libby in what she called the guest suite, two lovely wheat-colored rooms on the second floor. Wheat carpeting and curtains, wheat sofa and bedclothes. There Libby dreamt of trash heaps swarming with looters shaped like giant sow bugs. One turned, and the face in the gray carapace was Lewis’s. She woke, kicking at the sheets. What had they even been fighting about?

While Billie was out doing irrigation, Libby dressed and drove back home. In the colorless dawn, the trailer looked bombed. She walked around it slowly. Where the south wall buckled away from the east wall, she could see into a cavern of spongy soot. Side windows had been blown out by the heat. Insulation hung from the ceiling in pendulous stalactites. One willow was scorched, its leaves yellowed and crisped.

At least the trailer had contained most of the fire. One fat flying spark and the hillside would’ve ignited as if sprinkled with gunpowder. Chaparral actually flourished with fire, since many of its plants and grasses reseeded only after a burn-off. Even this fire, Libby thought, wasn’t necessarily a tragedy. The insurance money would pay for moving one of Red’s bungalows, and surely a house would appeal more to Lewis.

She unlocked the door and found no signs of looting. The smell, however, was unbearable. It clung to her skin like a pervasive and adhesive evil, a scent of scorched hair and incurable anger that contaminated even her tastebuds; her saliva tasted like tincture of burning tires.

She checked her watch to see if Lewis might be at the office yet. Guess who? she’d say. It’s me, the Little Match Girl.

Her phone, however, was dead.

W
HEN
Red Ray told him about the fire, Lewis was eating a chocolate doughnut for breakfast. He was going through a sugar phase. He woke up in the morning and thought of canned peaches and doughnuts even before coffee and cigarettes. He wasn’t getting fat—so far.

“Billie stopped by this morning on her rounds,” Red told him.

“She said Libby’s bearing up. The fire smoldered in the kitchen walls. It was only beginning to spread when the firemen got there.”

“So she didn’t lose everything,” Lewis said.

“It might’ve been easier if she had. As it is, she’s got a big job on her hands.”

“Good thing you’re giving her a bungalow,” Lewis said. “You want half this coffee?” Before Red could answer, he picked up a styrofoam cup and filled it. Lewis broke the doughnut apart, scattering flakes of frosting over the carpet, and offered half to Red, who patted his paunch and shook his head. When Lewis gestured again, he accepted.

“So go ahead,” Red said, “take the day off.”

“What for?”

“She’ll need all the help she can get. That trailer needs to be emptied.”

“I thought,” said Lewis, “I’m not supposed to make any serious moves at this stage in my sobriety.”

Red’s face clouded. “Don’t be an asshole. I can’t exactly see how helping a friend will land you back in detox.”

“You don’t know Libby,” said Lewis. “I have a hunch somebody’s going to try to make her housing problem
my
housing problem.”

Red put the last bite of doughnut in his mouth and chewed unhappily, as if the sweetness itself were upsetting. “You know, Lewis,” he said, “it is remotely possible that this fire isn’t just about you.”

“I know, I know.” Lewis ducked his head, embarrassed. “Okay, big guy, I’ll do the good deed.” He struck a muscleman’s pose, arms flexed, fist curled to forehead. “I’ll clean the Augean stables.”

Once in the Fairlane, Lewis could barely lift the key to the ignition. He was genuinely sorry about Libby’s trailer. She didn’t need any more grief, and he felt guilty enough for bringing up cohabitation the other night; some things seem like a good idea at three a.m., especially in the middle of an anxiety attack. But he wasn’t the answer to Libby’s problems before the fire, so what use could he be to her now? If Red cared so much, let him rescue the maiden in distress.

At the farm’s front entrance, Lewis checked for oncoming traffic and, sure enough, saw a familiar blue Falcon coming from the east. How right can you be? She didn’t waste two minutes!

L
IBBY
was experiencing a heady, if inappropriate, bout of elation. Tragedy struck and missed! The day itself was exhilarating—last week’s tinge of fall now deepened to a cool current, soft gray clouds blowing across the sky. Anything was possible. She could drive on, past Round Rock, out of this valley, turn north on the interstate into the Great Central Valley, land so resolutely agricultural as to still support general stores, grange halls, and tractor dealerships. She’d get a job in a small cafe, on the morning shift, and listen to the crop report on her way to work. She’d wear a fluted polyester uniform, let her hair go limp. She’d learn to make wisecracks about sorghum prices and hog bellies.

Or she could take one of Red’s bungalows, paint it a woodsy green with white trim, set it high upon her hill, run bougainvillea on trellises, build a series of decks like rafts among the flowers and trees. There would be opera—Verdi or Puccini—in the air. She could see Lewis there, too: he’d be outside watering, or pruning fruit trees, his unmistakable brooding self, now sufficiently domesticated. We had our troubles, she’d say to people. Oh, believe you me. He didn’t know what he wanted. Spooked as a bird …

She slowed for the turn into Round Rock’s front entrance and saw the familiar off-white Fairlane at the stop. The curly silhouette waggled this way and that. He looked right at her—his head ticked back in recognition,
didn’t it?
—and then he made a fast, sloppy righthand turn. The Fairlane skidded on a patch of gravel, slid, and she was sure it would go off the road. But a wheel caught, and in a big fishtail he was gone.