Stay (17 page)

By the time we called it quits, I could barely feel my fingers, or my toes, or my ass, for that matter, and my face was windburned, but I didn’t want it to end. So when we got back in the truck, and Alex asked if it was okay if we stopped by his friend Louis’s house on the way back so he could drop off a book, I was thrilled. Even if it was just a quick stop, it was an extension of our time together.

“Of course,” I said.

Joe sat on the seat between us. His eyelids started drooping, but he’d sit up at attention again when we’d hit a bump or make a turn. Finally, he gave up fighting sleep, and flopped down on the bench seat, resting his head on Alex’s thigh.

We stopped at a red light. “I see a lot of dogs,” Alex said, scratching Joe’s ear with one hand while he steered with the other, “but this one here is in a class by himself.”

“It’s a very happy accident,” I said.

Alex smiled, and we had another quiet moment. I knew he was blushing, and I knew he knew I was blushing. It was the best kind of uncomfortable there is.

“Now, let me fill you in on Louis,” Alex said, breaking the silence. The traffic light changed to green. Alex pulled his hand away from Joe and put it back on the steering wheel to make the turn. “Louis is a character. I guess that’s the best way to put it.” He looked over at me and smiled. He kept his eyes on me for just a little longer than I thought was okay for him to not be watching the road. “He’s almost eighty, but he’s quite the charmer.”

“Really?” I’d assumed Louis was Alex’s age, although I wasn’t quite sure what Alex’s age was. Thirty maybe? Thirty- five? Twenty-eight? I couldn’t figure it out.

“Really. We’ll only stop for a minute, but it deserves a warning. I swear, I take the man out to dinner, every waitress in the place is bringing us stuff. I go alone, I can’t even get a refill on my coffee.” He laughed. “The man has some mojo or something.” He winked at me. “He’s giving me lessons.”

“Seriously?”

“No,” he said with an impish grin.

“You had me worried for a minute!”

“That you wouldn’t be able to resist me?”

“Sure. Something like that.” I turned and looked out the window.

“Just for the record, I will be offended if you ask me to leave you with Louis.” Alex didn’t look over at me when he said it, and I think I saw his ear go pink.

“I’ll try not to fall too hard.” I picked at the seam on the side of my jeans. I didn’t know where to put my hands, and everything I said embarrassed me after I said it.

“So-what else about Louis.” Alex cleared his throat. “He’s been married three times. His last wife, Gloria, she was the one.

“What happened?” I asked. “Did she die?”

“No. She ran off with the UPS guy.”

“What?”

“She started ordering all this stuff off of one of those home shopping shows, so she got, um, familiar with the delivery guy.”

“Oh my God!”

“Then one day I took him bowling, and when we came back, she was gone. There was a note, explaining- but she left all the stuff. Boxes and boxes of cheap jewelry and fake alligator purses. Tons of scarves. It was crazy.” I noticed that his eyebrows moved a lot when he talked. “Louis had me get rid of all of it. Hauled it to Goodwill. Boxes and boxes. We thought that would do it, but it didn’t make him feel any better. It’s been months.” He leaned his left elbow up against the door and sighed. “He just can’t get over it.”

“Yeah,” I said, softly. “I can understand that.”

“Three wives. And the one who left him was the first one he really loved.” Alex sighed. “Poor guy. He got a taste of his own medicine. He knows it, too. I think that makes it harder. He’s just been moping around. It’s hard to get him to go out with me anymore.”

We stopped at another light. Joe lifted his head and looked around, and then rested his head on Alex’s leg again with a big sigh.

“Well, sure,” I said. “I mean he’s got to be so- ” I trailed off. I couldn’t think of how he would feel. “So how many times have you been married?” I laughed.

“Just once.”

“Oh, God! I’m so sorry. I was joking. I didn’t mean to- ”

“Van, it’s fine,” he said and smiled. “I’m not hiding anything. It’s good for you to know.” He looked at me quickly and then back at the road. “Sarah Evans. She didn’t take my name.” He took a deep breath. “We were together in college. And then we got to the end of college and everything was changing. I think we got married to keep things the same. She moved down to Knoxville with me when I went to vet school. We gave it a try.” He rolled his hands around the steering wheel. “If we hadn’t gotten married, we would have drifted apart. You know, missed phone calls and postponed weekend visits. The way everyone’s college love fades when you get out in the real world.” He didn’t sound upset. It was a story, not a tragedy.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, because he didn’t seem like he had any more to say and I didn’t know what the proper response was.

“It wasn’t messy. We signed some papers and that was that. She stayed in Knoxville. She’d already found someone else. She said she didn’t meet him until we were separated. You know, you wonder still. But either way, we wouldn’t have worked.”

I felt awful for bringing it up. I, of all people, knew what it was like to love someone who loved someone else. It wasn’t something I ever wanted to talk about either. “I really didn’t mean to-”

“Van, it’s fine.” He patted my leg again. “No worries. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“You can’t stay with the wrong person. I guess the trick is finding the right one to begin with. Right?” He glanced over at me really quickly and then looked back at the road. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and sighed. “Sarah and I don’t talk anymore. It’s weird, you go through that much”-he paused to think of the right word- “life with someone, and then you don’t even exchange Christmas cards anymore. We’re not on bad terms or anything. It’s just, there’s nothing else to say, I guess.” He smiled. “I promise that’s my only deep dark secret.”

“Impressive. I’ve got at least twelve.” I raised my eyebrows and gave him a silly smile. He laughed.

As we sat in silence, I looked out the window, watching the rows of perfect little tract houses with postage stamp lawns like something out of a documentary about the fifties-shrubs bundled up for winter in burlap and twine, white plastic sticks with red reflectors like lollipops at the end of every driveway.

The houses reminded me of the time I went to Levittown to meet my father. Every third house was exactly the same, with a green plastic awning here and a pair of concrete kissing Dutch kids there, to let you know that the people inside were not all made from the same blueprint.

I drove out to Long Island, marched up to his house, and rang the doorbell twice. No one answered. I consoled myself with the idea that I could have rung any doorbell and talked to any man, and it would have meant the same thing.

“Whatcha thinking about, Van?”

I looked over and his eyes were right there to meet mine.

“Just taking it all in.”

“I didn’t freak you out, did I?”

“Oh, no! I appreciate your honesty.” My words echoed in my head. I appreciate your honesty. It sounded like I was reading aloud from a form letter.

“That’s my house,” Alex said, slowing down as he pointed to a raised ranch with brown shingles and black shutters. The hedges were a little overgrown and there was a Frisbee on the roof. At the end of the driveway stood a big wooden bear statue. He was wearing orange plastic sunglasses.

I smiled. It looked like the kind of house where you could put your feet on the coffee table.

We drove about a quarter of a mile, and turned in to a driveway in front of a yellow ranch.

“Well, here we are,” Alex said. “On the way back, you’ll have to tell me your life story, and at least ten of those deep dark secrets.”

Joe woke up when we pulled into the driveway. His eyelids were still droopy, but he surveyed the scene, ears at attention, trying to make sense of where we were. As soon as Alex put the truck in park, a short man in a long white apron came out of the door next to the garage door. Louis was not what I expected. He looked like Jimmy Durante. He was a round little man, with thinning hair that might have been dyed black with shoe polish, and a nose like a sweet potato.

Alex leaned in to me and said, “Wait for it. The charmer part. It’ll all make sense.”

“Hey, Lou!” he yelled, as he opened his door.

“Oh, Alex the Great! Alex the Great!” Louis called back, waddling over to the truck.

Alex got out of the car, and Joe followed him, bounding over to Louis.

“Crap!” I yelled. I got out of the car and grabbed for Joe, but he darted away from me.

“He’s fine,” Alex said.

Joe circled Louis once and gave him a sharp bark. “All right, all righty,” Louis said. He leaned over and patted his knees. Joe put his paws on Louis’s knees and licked his chin before running off to smell the mailbox post. “See, we’re good buddies already,” Louis said, wiping his face as he stood up. “This must be Savannah.”

I was amazed that he knew who I was. It meant that Alex had been talking about me. I wondered what the nature of the conversation was, if it was more on the side of “I’m taking this crazy girl to the park and then I’ll stop by with that book you were waiting for,” or if it was more of a “I really like this girl, I’m going to think of an excuse to come by with her so you can check her out.”

“You didn’t tell me she was so lovely.” Louis talked to Alex, but waddled over to me and hugged me around the waist. He pulled away and kissed me on both cheeks. His cologne was dizzying. The hand he kept on my side was so big that it made my waist feel tiny. “I’ve heard great things about you,” he said, and his breath smelled like cigarettes and peppermint. The parts of him didn’t make sense, but the pieces all together were quite something.

“Come in! Come in!” Louis said, trying to corral Alex with his free arm.

“We need to get going,” Alex said. “I just stopped by to give you that book you asked for.” He did a half jog over to the truck.

“What do you mean, ‘get going’? You say you’ll come by, I bake! I just poured the honey on the baklava, and there’s a pound cake in the oven. Stay! Stay!”

“Next time, Lou,” Alex said, walking over to the truck.

“You can stay, right?” Louis asked me, nodding to prompt my answer.

Alex came back with a biography of Elizabeth Taylor. I raised my eyebrows at him. “Long story,” he said.

“Now, we have coffee,” Louis said. “Vannah wants to stay and have coffee. You stay.”

“Are you sure it’s okay, Van?” Alex asked. “This guy is great at putting words in your mouth. He’s talented in that way.” Alex winked at me.

“It’s fine with me,” I said. “As long as Joe isn’t a problem.”

“Problem?” Louis asked. “He’s a gift! Look at him.” He gestured toward Joe like a circus announcer presenting him to a crowd. “He’s beautiful. Beautiful. Joey! I have biscuits in the cupboard!” Joe’s ears perked up. He raced over to Louis and sat in front of him at full attention. I couldn’t blame him. I’m sure Joe had no idea what a biscuit was, but Louis’s enthusiasm was strangely compelling. “Come on, Joey,” Louis said, and Joe followed us to the house.

Louis kept one arm around me, the other around Alex, until we got to the door. He pulled Alex down closer to him and said, “I love this kid. I just love him,” and kissed him on the cheek.

Whenever I’d talked to my mom about a guy, she asked me if he came with “references.” Her theory was that if a guy’s friends thought a lot of him, and they seemed like nice people, it validated him more. Apparently, no one liked my father much. He didn’t have any good references. Alex, on the other hand, had a very enthusiastic reference in Louis.

We went in through the garage. It felt like a real garage. Louis had a shiny black Lincoln Continental. But there were oil stains on the concrete and folded-up beach chairs hanging from the rafters. Diane’s garages all had spotless floors and were just for storing cars. Lawn furniture had its own outbuilding.

When we got to the kitchen, just off the garage, the oven timer was beeping. Louis scurried over, and pulled the pound cake out of the oven, using the corner of his apron as an oven mitt. “Hot, hot, hot!” he yelped, dropping the loaf pan on top of the stove and shaking his hand out. Joe ran over to Louis and sniffed his hand. “Oh, you’re a good boy,” Louis said. “You worry about old Lou, huh?” He pulled a handful of biscuits out of a box in the cupboard. He broke off a piece and gave it Joe, and then shoved the rest of them in his pocket, effectively making him Joe’s new favorite person.

The kitchen smelled like garlic and coffee and vanilla. It was warm. The walls were a creamy orange color, like those foamy marshmallow pumpkins that come out at Halloween. Alex looked at me and raised an eyebrow like he was asking a question. I tried to raise an eyebrow back at him, but they both went up. Worried that Alex might not get that I was okay with being there, I said, “Louis, thank you so much for inviting us for coffee.”