The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival (21 page)

“I’m not breaking my vows. End of story.”

“Not even if it was an old lady’s dying wish?”

“Not even. And stop saying that.”

“Fine,” she says. “Be that way. Not that it matters. If that girl gets it into her head to go after you, you won’t be able to fight it forever.”

“Just stop it,” I say, trying not to blush any more than I already am, trying not to show any more emotion at all.

“Okay, Steve, you don’t have to pout just because I’m right.”

“You’re not.”

“Of course not.” She shakes her bag of cracklin’s and picks around for a good one. “You get on home, leave me alone,” she says, dismissing me without looking up. “And I’m sorry for calling you gay.”

I stand up to go. “That’s not what you should be apologizing for.”

“I know,” she says, still picking in the bag. “Sorry for letting that hate in my heart. I’m never gonna say this again, but you right. I’m wrong. Put that in your scrapbook.”

I might have to start scrapbooking for just this occasion.

Miss Rita rolls her chair over to the wall and pulls down her calendar, closes the cover on Mr. March’s gleaming black body. She hands it to me.

“What’s this for?” I say, getting defensive again.

“Go on and give that to your friend. That Mark fella,” she says.

“You don’t have to do that,” I say. But the truth is, Mark will likely wet himself in glee over the gift.

“I feel bad,” she says. For a split second, she sounds almost like a child that’s been scolded. In fact, she sounds like I used to when she’d scold me. “I’m glad you have at least some kind of company out there. A person shouldn’t be alone.” Then she changes her tone. “Besides, I already looked at all the pictures. Figured at my age, better look now. Might not make it through the year.”

“Okay, Miss Rita,” I say, walking out the door. “Bye.”

“And you tell Vicky I said hi,” she shouts after me.

I didn’t expect to see a crowd at a roadhouse on a Wednesday night, but it’s amazing what a rock-blues band and five-dollar pitchers can do for business. The place is crawling with unattached men on the prowl for the next victim. But I’m good and drunk by the time I realize that none of these hard-legs has asked Vicky to dance. Weird. Well, their loss, I guess.

We haven’t been dancing, either. Mark’s usually the ringleader. But I left him alone in Grand Prairie tonight. I didn’t tell him I was going out with Vicky, even though he’s sure to find out about it soon enough. After Miss Rita’s fit, I needed a little break from Mark. When I gave him the calendar, he ran directly to his room to hang it up and went on and on about how he wanted to meet her. I couldn’t find it in my heart to tell him it might not be the best idea. She’d said she was sorry, but I imagine there are limits to how much a person can change. And, to be honest, there was that little dark corner of my heart that was ashamed she thought I was gay—which in turn made me ashamed to be ashamed.

So I left him behind. So we haven’t been shouting over each other and laughing. And we haven’t been mingling with the locals.

What I have been doing is drinking a little faster, a little more than usual. Maybe even a lot more.

“Hey, stud, you gonna ask me to dance or what?” Vicky says.

I turn toward her. It feels like an exaggerated movement, as if my neck turns; then my head and eyes catch up a few seconds later. She’s looking at me and there’s this, I don’t know. It’s not quite her usual smirk, but not quite a smile. Her eyes dance in the candlelight. Red candles. She looks positively saintly in red candlelight.

“Huh?” I reply.

“We gonna dance or sit on our asses all night?”

This, I know, is a rhetorical question, yet my mind, dulled by booze, cycles through the available answers.

I offer my hand, she takes it, and at that point a wee little voice in the back of my head says,
Excuse me, Father Steve. Not to be a stickler here, but you’ve never danced to this music before.
But before the voice can lodge any further protest, we’re moving along easily, and as far as I can tell, I have it all under control. I’m not counting out loud, not stumbling over my feet—just moving, gliding.

“Damn, Padre. You’re cutting a rug tonight,” Vicky says, looking down at my feet.

I blush a little, but I don’t care. I, too, look down at my feet sliding across the floor, turning me around seemingly without input from my brain.

“I guess I was due,” I shout over the music, enjoying my Navin Johnson moment. I’ve found my rhythm for once. I’m leading and she’s following and we don’t show any signs of stopping, even between songs. We’re red-faced and a little sweaty when the band downshifts into a cover of “You Look Wonderful Tonight.” My first inclination is to step off the dance floor, but for whatever reason I pause, frozen by a clear flashback to high school. I’m standing on a cul-de-sac in a soon-to-be-developed suburban neighborhood. Some guy in an amped-up van is playing DJ, and pops this same song into the tape deck. And there I am, slow-dancing with Ruh-ruh-ruh-Rachel, happy as a clam at high tide, gulping down the summer air, heavy with the scent of fresh cut grass and entirely too much Drakkar Noir.

Vicky pulls herself into me, puts her head on my shoulder, and we rotate slowly.

Now that we’re not moving at such a frantic pace, I can feel how drunk I really am. That little blast of nostalgia has knocked me into one of those fugue states in which I can watch myself from a higher vantage point, something akin to astral projection.

There we are, turning slowly below me, looking like any couple in the world, no different than the others on the dance floor. So that’s why no one else asked her to dance. We looked like a couple. A regular deductive genius, I am.

And there’s Vicky lifting her head just a bit, enough to get me to pull back a tad to look down at her. She lifts her head up a little more and looks at me, her eyes heavy-lidded as if she’s just waking. She stands slightly higher on her toes, moves her face closer to mine.

I expect to be pulled back down into myself, made more aware of my surroundings as I’m flooded by memories of all those long-forgotten kisses.

But no. I stay up here, watching, waiting, wondering. The only thing close to a fully formed thought going through my head at the moment is:
Huh. That’s not what Jesus would do.

The kiss ends. She puts her head on my shoulders.

I didn’t tell Mark.

I woke up that morning earlier than I had any right to. After the kiss, I’d suggested shots. Lots of them. Perhaps it was the first step in erasing the event. At any rate, the rest of the night is now forever gone from my memory. Yet there I was at nine that morning, putting coffee on, humming to myself, waiting for Mark to get his ass out of bed so I could tell him.

But just as suddenly, the hangover showed up and along with the sour stomach, my head began throbbing with pain. And common sense. And propriety. And a touch of “What have I done?”

So I didn’t tell him. If I’d told him, it would have made the whole thing real, made it that much harder to put it behind me. Of course, there were two tangoing that night, and if Vicky told Mark, well then, I’d have a drama on my hands.

A small part of me wanted to see if she would tell him. Because if she did tell him, that would have meant…I don’t know. That it was something more than drunken stupidity? That she was excited that it had happened? That she was mortified, wanted to make sure I hadn’t taken it the wrong way but was too embarrassed to ask me directly?

Yet since that evening Mark hasn’t come running in, half squealing and half screaming at me for not telling him about this, the biggest development since the invention of fire. Nothing from him. Vicky’s been silent all week long as well. And, it goes without saying, nothing from me. Nothing all around.

Nothing except a loud clang as the shiny gold saucer that is held under the chalice of the wine slips out of Denise’s left hand and hits the gleaming strip of marble at the edge of the altar.

I wake up as if from sleep. I’m in the middle of Saturday evening Mass. And there’s Denise with this satisfied look on her face. She’s still got the chalice firmly gripped in her right hand and looks me straight in the eye as Maggie falls to all fours to grab the saucer. Denise shrugs as if to say, “Shit happens. Sue me.”

She knows! The thought flashes through my mind and I feel a blush coming on. But I regain control quickly enough. The only thing Denise knows is that this week and last I’ve been distracted by something—something so distracting that it distracts me from her distractions. And that’s pissed her off, it seems. Or maybe it was simply an accident.

Either way, I’m back. And there’s Vicky sitting in the third pew from the door, right next to Mark, whispering to him from time to time.

Maybe she’s telling him right now.

No. She knows better than that. Mark wouldn’t be able to stop himself from blurting out an “Oh. My. God. No, you didn’t!” and smacking her on the thigh right during the middle of the Eucharistic Prayer.

So I muddle through the rest of Mass as best I can, wrap things up, and head for the door, where I’m mobbed by the usual gaggle of old geese. Denise takes off without saying good-bye. After my old birds fly away home, I walk over to Mark and Vicky, who are waiting for me at the edge of the cemetery. Mark hands me a cigarette.

“What a beautiful, heartfelt Homily,” he says. “I thought it would never end.”

“Shut up,” I tell him. “Hey, Vicky.”

“Evening, Padre,” she says. “I have to say that cymbal crash during the Eucharistic Prayer was a nice touch.”

“Yeah, well.”

“It’s almost like Denise was angry at you for something,” she adds.

I look at her. She looks me in the eye and smirks, shrugs her shoulders.

Mark looks at each of us in turn, his eyebrows knitting in confusion, as if he’s just about to connect a few dots.

“So where are we headed tonight?” I ask.

“Excellent question,” he says. “I say Hamilton’s.”

“Sounds good to me,” I say.

“I’m not going to make it tonight, fellas,” Vicky says.

“What?” I say before I can stop myself. I’m sure it sounds entirely too defensive, perhaps even wounded.

“Does someone have a hot date?” Mark asks. “Do tell.”

“Just a previous engagement is all, Mr. Busybody,” she answers.

So it’s going to be like that.

“Fine,” Mark says. “Be coy. I guess we can’t expect you to spend all your time with a couple of eunuchs.”

Speak for yourself,
is on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow the words.

“You don’t have to be so dramatic, Mark,” she says. “I’m sure you two studs can have fun without me.”

But we don’t, really. After Vicky leaves, I lock myself in the bathroom for a good fifteen minutes then tell Mark I’m not feeling well enough to go out. I don’t know what I’d do if I actually spotted her with a guy somewhere.

Did I just allow myself to think that?

“Oh, so your girlfriend can’t go and you suddenly develop a mystery illness,” he says.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.

He gives me a hard look before answering. “It was supposed to be a joke. But if you get that defensive about it, I might start wondering.”

“Oh, shut up.” I’m finding that to be the best answer for everyone tonight. “I might not be up for going out, but I’ll still whip your butt on Xbox.”

“Fine,” he says. “But I’m going to need some alcohol if I’m going to sit around here with you all night.”

“Fine,” I say.

And it is, mostly. The video games almost keep my mind off whatever it is Vicky’s doing. And when that doesn’t work, I start drinking.

After another week of mostly avoiding each other, and with no official agreement of any kind, Vicky and I are almost back to normal.

Almost.

She seems not as quick to laugh at my jokes. To be fair, I seem unable to make many. It’s as if I can’t help but take myself seriously in her presence. And if I notice that, surely she must. And Mark? If he notices, he doesn’t say anything. Hell, he’s probably tickled to be getting all of the attention. When we go dancing, she dances with him. She’ll make a show of asking me, but I just beg off. She seems to find Mark the funniest man alive, laughing at all of his jokes as if they’re funnier than they actually are. And they’re not that funny.

The two of us also talk through Mark rather than directly to each other. I’m half expecting her to lean into him one night and say, “Mark, tell Steve that I think the weather’s pretty good tonight.”

And then tonight Mark gets sick and decides he can’t go out. Judging by the inhuman smells and sounds wafting from the bathroom, he’s not faking.

“So I guess we’ll just stay in,” I say through the door.

“No,” he groans.

“Mark, you’re in no condition to go out.”

“I’m not going out,” he says, then flushes the toilet. After the noise subsides, he continues. “But you have to go. I promised this band’s manager we’d give him a check and a contract tonight.
Tonight.
”

“Seriously?” I ask, suddenly facing the prospect of going out with Vicky unsupervised.

“Yes, seriously.” He pauses. “Oh, Jesus, this is just so gross.” He flushes again. “Anyway, Vicky’s got the check. So give her a call. I’m going to be in here a bit longer.”

I walk, slowly, toward the kitchen phone. I pick up the receiver, start to dial, then stop. I pour myself a drink, finish it, then pour another before picking up the phone again. No big deal, really. I’ll just tell her Mark’s sick and she’ll volunteer to go drop the check off by herself. She’s not going to want to deal with me, I’m sure.

“Mark’s sick,” I tell her when she answers.

“He’s not coming out?” she asks.

“Nope.”

A moment of silence.

“Well, what time you picking me up?” she asks.

Another, longer moment of silence. My stomach drops. Why couldn’t she just volunteer to go alone?

“Steve? You there?”

“Uh. Yeah. I’m here.”

“What time you picking me up?”

“Half an hour?”

“Sounds good,” she says, then hangs up.

I put the phone back in its charger. It’s slick from the sweat on my palms. I finish off my drink and pour myself a third. I’d have a fourth, but I have to drive and I’m afraid it might push my stomach a bit too far. Already it’s doing flips, acting like it might start an export business in one or both directions. I drive to Vicky’s house in a daze, trying to ignore the telltale signs of an anxiety attack.

“Not good, not good,” I mutter to myself. I even try to pray, mouthing the first words that pop into my head. “Lord Jesus Christ, please have lightning strike my car and kill me dead right now. Amen.”

But no such luck. I pull into her drive and blow the horn, convinced that if I get out of the car I’ll puke. She runs out, flapping in flip-flops. She’s wearing a sundress that just happens to highlight her womanly figure.

I force a smile onto my face and reach over to open her door. Through the buzz of bees in my head, I hear myself say, “Well, hello there, sexy.”

Hello there, sexy? What the hell is that about? Am I suddenly a Vegas lounge lizard?

“Hey to you, too, Padre,” she says before hopping in and kissing me on the cheek.

I swallow hard and needlessly adjust the rearview mirror. Just as I notice the smear of lipstick on my cheek, she reaches over and rubs it off with her thumb. It’s all I can do not to pass out.

“Got something for the drive,” she says, and pulls a flask from her purse.

“Excellent,” I say.
Oh, thank you, Jesus,
I think, and take a long pull.

How I make it through the evening is a mystery. I’m in a complete state of panic for the first half, I get blind stinking drunk for the second half.

When I wake up the next morning, I’m certain we didn’t have a heart-to-heart, I’m fairly sure we didn’t kiss, and I have no I idea how I got home.

Mark tells me, while laughing at my hangover, that she drove home, that they put me to bed and she slept on the couch, waking him up at six in the morning so he could bring her home.