The Boyfriend (27 page)

Gabe looked at Moreland for a second, then shrugged. “I guess so.”

Moreland said, “Great. We can meet here tomorrow for breakfast, and then leave from here. How about eight o’clock?”

“That’ll be great,” said Sharon. “I’m so excited.”

Gabe looked at his watch. “We’d better get going. I’ll get the check.” He got up and walked to the cash register.

Sharon leaned forward toward Moreland. “Wait until you see the Butter Cow.”

“The Butter Cow? What’s that?”

“It’s a cow. Made of butter.” She stood up and gave a little wave. “Thanks, Michael. We’ll have a great time.”

She went to join Gabe as he was paying the check. She took his arm with both hands and walked with him to the door. She turned around and waved again. Moreland smiled and waved back.

Moreland waited for the waitress to swing by his table so he could order his breakfast, then sat at his booth and ate it. He couldn’t be sure this was going to turn out well, but being one of three people would make him a little harder for all of the people pursuing him to spot.

The next morning Joey Moreland was in the same seat in the booth at Denny’s. There were a few people eating breakfast on the way to work, and a few families who seemed to be vacationers just getting ready to head back to the interstate, but the place was not crowded.

“Michael!” The high, chirpy voice came from over his left shoulder. As he turned and saw Sharon in a tank top and a short white skirt, she slid into the booth quickly and stopped only after her hip had touched his. He found himself with his face only inches from hers. “Ready to go?” The minty smell of toothpaste was strong.

“I’m just finishing my breakfast,” he said. “I got here early. Want to see the menu?”

“No, thanks. I had breakfast, and Gabe did too.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s out in the lot with our bags waiting to see which car is yours. His brother Dave drove us over here in his truck and let us off.”

“Then maybe we should get going,” said Moreland. “Want some coffee to take with you?”

“No, thanks,” Sharon said. “It’s more fun to stop for coffee on the way.”

“I can see you’re a worldly and experienced traveler.”

She bumped him again with her hip.

He opened his wallet and set a couple of ten-dollar bills on the check beside his plate. “We’d better help Gabe load up.” He slid out the other side of the booth and they met in the middle of the floor.

She looked at his hand. “No ring. You’re not married, are you?”

“Nope. Never been married.” He smiled the smile that had worked on her yesterday. “The good ones all seem to be taken.”

“Maybe you’ll find somebody at the fair.”

“No heifers, though, or Butter Cows.”

“You’re awful.”

“Probably, but I’ll still stay away from the ones that are wearing blue ribbons.”

She gave his arm a gentle slap, turned, and went out the door ahead of him. He led her to his car, popped the trunk with his key chain remote, and watched Gabe sling the two small duffels into the trunk and close it. He held out his hand. “Morning, Gabe.”

Gabe shook it. “Morning,” he said. “Would you like me to drive?”

“I appreciate that, Gabe. But I think for now I’ll drive. I feel pretty fresh.”

“He’s not,” Sharon said. “Gabe worked the night shift.”

Moreland kept his attention on Gabe. “Really? What do you do?”

“I work at the big Mobil station out by the interstate. Eight gas pump islands and a store.”

“Why don’t you lie down on the backseat and get some sleep? If you do that you’ll feel a lot better, and we’ll all have a better time at the fair.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Of course not. Just so somebody’s awake, we’ll be fine.”

“See?” Sharon said to Gabe.

“Thanks.” Gabe climbed in the back and lay down, Sharon got into the passenger seat beside Moreland, and Moreland started the car.

“That way out of the lot,” she said, “then right, then left at the first light.”

He drove as she directed, and then got onto the interstate and headed north across flat farm country. He had made this trip once, when he had gone to establish the bank account in Springfield, but he pretended everything was new to him. He spoke in a low voice to give Gabe a chance to fall asleep, but he had no need to worry. Before he accelerated onto the interstate, he could hear Gabe’s first slow, regular snores.

“Thanks so much for letting him sleep. If you want a good driver to spell you, well, then, that would be me.”

“Are you a good driver?”

“Sure am. No tickets, no accidents, and hardly anybody ever swears at me.”

“Then I’ll keep you in mind.”

“I’ll bet you will.” She smiled.

He drove for a time, keeping the car at the same speed as the rest of the traffic, and not making any sudden moves.

Sharon said, “You’re a lawyer, but what kind?”

“I’m sort of a general attorney. I do whatever is necessary for each client. This job is claiming and taking possession of some assets my client owns, and bringing the money back to him. If you don’t do that now and then with your financial assets, the state confiscates them, as though you died without a will and had no relatives.”

“That doesn’t sound fair.”

“Some people stash their money away for the future, but then forget about it.”

“I should have that kind of problem.”

“Me too. It’s pretty simple to fix, but I don’t want it to spoil the fun of the fair. We can stop at the courthouse after the fair.”

He could feel her staring at him for a time. The only sound in the car was the snoring of Gabe in the backseat. “Do you have a girlfriend? Anybody special?”

“No,” he said. “Not lately. I’ve been working and traveling so much lately that it wouldn’t have been fair to the girl.”

“Poor thing.” She patted his right shoulder, and then he felt her hand move slowly and deliberately down his arm to his elbow, and then to his thigh. She rested her hand in his lap and left it there. He turned his head to look into her blue eyes, but said nothing.

“It’s a good thing we met up in Denny’s,” she said. “I think we’ll have a good time. You’ll be glad you came.”

“I already am,” he said. This time there was something conspiratorial in his tone. He looked in the rearview mirror to be sure Gabe was asleep. He had always loved the moment when the first step had been taken and things were no longer ambiguous. She kept her hand there, and as he began to grow hard, she gripped him.

He tolerated it for a minute or two, and then he moved her hand away. But before he could return his hand to the wheel, she clutched his hand and placed it on the smooth skin of her inner thigh, and held it there, just above the hem of the skirt.

He looked at her blue eyes again, and they were wide with innocence. He looked in the mirror to be sure Gabe was still asleep. “You hit me for teasing you, but you seem to be quite a tease yourself.”

“People have said that, but I think they just weren’t good sports.”

“I’ll try to be a good sport.”

She looked at his lap. “You’re doing fine.”

He shrugged. “I’m looking forward to Springfield.”

She nodded. “You’re going to like it.”

Coming into Springfield from the south brought them under exit signs that announced the fairgrounds.

“I forgot to look to see what day it was,” Sharon said. “Tuesday.”

“No, at the fair,” she said. “They have something every day. Agriculture Day, Senior Citizens Day, Republican Day.”

“It’s Sharon day.”

She smiled happily and leaned back in her seat so he could move his hand farther up her thigh. “Well, maybe it is.”

As though he had subconsciously set an internal alarm, Gabe stirred in the backseat, then groaned. Sharon sat up and pushed Moreland’s hand away. By the time Gabe had groaned again and sat up scratching his scalp, she was sitting up straight and looking prim. “Hi there, Sleeping Beauty,” she said. “We’re nearly there.”

They drove onto the fairgrounds and parked in a huge lot that had until this week been an empty field. They walked the half mile or so to the front gate, where Moreland bought their tickets, then handed each of them a hundred dollars in cash, as though the bills were coupons that came with the tickets.

Gabe looked at the money and said, “ Hey, Michael. You don’t need to do that.”

“It was our deal. I said I’d pay for the trip. You two will help me do my errands tomorrow, and we’ll be even. Today we have fun.”

“Thanks, Michael.” After a second, he nudged Sharon. “How about you? Aren’t you going to thank him?”

“Oh, I will. Don’t rush me.” Only after he looked away did she give Moreland a glance.

“Where do we start?” asked Moreland.

“Let’s go on some rides right away before we eat anything,” Sharon said. “I don’t want to get queasy.” Moreland watched her scamper ahead, her perfect white legs graceful in the short skirt she wore and her pink-lacquered toenails showing through the toes of her sandals.

Gabe hurried to follow Sharon, and Michael trailed both of them by a few feet. He never got between them or competed for Sharon’s attention. For an hour they went from ride to ride. They fell 130 feet on the Mega Drop, then hurried to other machines where they were lifted, hurled, spun, rocked, somersaulted, and taken on quick turns.

When Gabe said he was going to the men’s room, Sharon said, “We’ll be over on the Sky Ride.” She pulled Moreland to the end of the Sky Ride at gate 2, and got them aboard. They stepped onto a track side by side, and a seat like a ski lift scooped them up and a bar came down across their laps.

As soon as they were aloft and moving away, Sharon turned and kissed him. He started to pull back, but her tongue was already slipping into his mouth, and she held tight to him. He kissed her for a few seconds before he gently disengaged and looked back to see if Gabe had emerged from the men’s room. “Sorry,” she said. “I can hardly keep my hands off you.”

He smiled. “I hope we don’t get thrown out of the fair.”

“People don’t think that way, silly. We’re young and single and cute. They don’t care about anything else, and nobody looks up here anyway.”

He knew they were too far away now for Gabe to see clearly, so he put his arms around her and kissed her until he had induced a kind of breathless excitement in her. He released her when the Sky Ride swooped down and stopped to let them off near the arena. They stood by the arena and he kissed her again for a second, but she pulled away. “That’ll help focus our minds.”

“Is that a good thing?” he asked.

“Now we go back and finish wearing out Gabe.”

“He had a good nap.”

“A little over two hours. Not much after he was working all night long.”

When they got off the Sky Ride on the return trip Moreland studied Gabe. He was squinting and looking tired already. “I’m hungry,” Gabe said.

Sharon took Gabe by the hand and made him walk quickly along the midway to a row of food shacks. She led them to one where she ordered all of them beer and barbecued pork sandwiches. Then there was another that had roasted corn on the cob and more beer. In a few minutes they were walking again, and then they went on another ride.

All afternoon she tired Gabe out. She insisted that they walk the length of the midway stopping at each of the games where he could win her a prize. He wasn’t big or heavy enough to ring the bell with the sledgehammer, but he won her a small pink bear. He had a good arm for throwing balls at clown dolls, but the dolls were on a wooden rack that made them nearly impossible to dislodge. Sharon told Gabe how good he looked throwing hard, so he kept it up until he won her a faux pearl necklace. Then Sharon insisted that he must be thirsty again, and brought him another big cup of beer.

Moreland could see that Sharon was succeeding. Gabe looked more and more exhausted as the early afternoon breeze subsided and the late afternoon sun sank lower and shone directly at him. Wherever Gabe looked, the light flared as it reflected off every metal or glass surface into his eyes. The beer was a powerful soporific, but the heat made him drink more. For a time the beer infused him with enough energy to do more walking and play more games.

As evening came, the three revived a bit. The air lost its most uncomfortable ten degrees, and they went to watch horses pulling sulkies around the track. Gabe bet and won a couple of times, so he felt elated. The lights came on at dusk and the enormous fairground glowed with a garish beauty. They went to a German beer garden, and ate dinner. Sharon made sure to buy beer by the pitcher, but only Gabe drank much of it.

By the time they were finished it was after eight-thirty. Sharon announced to nobody in particular, “Wow. This has been one of the best days of my life. I’m having so much fun. But do you think maybe we should go find a place to stay? I’ll bet we have to drive a ways to find a vacancy.”

“I have reservations,” Moreland said. “I called yesterday.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. If you’ve had enough, we could go anytime.”

Gabe leaned against the side of a refreshment stand, and barely seemed to hear, but said, “Yeah, I think we’re pretty worn out.”

They made their way out of the fair to the field where their car was parked. Moreland opened the doors, and watched them get into the backseat. He drove to a hotel on East Clear Lake Avenue. On the way they passed several other hotels that seemed indistinguishable from the one he’d picked—tall and whitish with a circular drive in front, a roof over the entrance, and a large lot for guests to park their own cars.

Moreland opened the trunk and took out his suitcase. Gabe carried the other two, and Sharon handled the door openings, then waited with Gabe while Moreland registered. When Moreland returned he handed Gabe a key card in a folder with the room number written on it. As they walked to the elevator he slipped the second folder with his own room number on it to Sharon. He walked them to their room, then went on to his own room. He took a shower, lay down on the king-size bed, and turned on the television set.

It was no more than twenty minutes before he heard the knock on his door. He stood and looked through the fish-eye lens and saw Sharon’s blue eye pressed to it. He opened the door.