M
ena has made a giant pan of baklava, which she sets down at the table next to the coffee inside the Town Hall. The ingredients she’d asked Sam to order online had finally arrived (the eggplant paste, the quince preserves, the boxes of bucatini). She’d had to wait until she had orange blossom honey before she could make baklava. She wouldn’t make it without the special honey. Mena peels the plastic wrap off the pan, which is still warm.
“Hi,” Jake says.
She looks up and smiles. “Hi.”
“Did you make this?” he asks.
“I did,” she says. “It’s still warm. Do you want a piece?”
“Absolutely. I’m totally starving. I got caught up in the shop tonight and forgot to eat dinner.”
“Well, this isn’t much of a dinner,” she says, slipping a flaky triangle onto a napkin and handing it to him.
He eats half of the piece in one bite, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Mmmm. This is delicious.”
She feels heat rise up somewhere through the center of her body. She knows she shouldn’t feel this way, she isn’t supposed to feel this way, but still she allows that heat to spread, enjoys the way it extends, like a hot river down her arms and legs, up into her face.
“You missed a little,” she says, gesturing to a small crumble of walnut in the corner of his mouth.
He wipes at it with the napkin, misses.
“Here,” she says, and dabs at the crumb with her own napkin.
“Thanks,” he says, and smiles at her. But his smile lasts too long, and suddenly all that hot liquid freezes. She thinks of Sam. What is she doing? God, is she flirting with this guy?
“I made baklava!” she says in her mother’s voice, which booms through the small room.
“Oh yum!” Anne says, and suddenly everyone is swarming around the table.
Lisa has them rehearsing the first scene of the play. Mena loves how the play opens with an argument, with violence. Shepard wastes no time. And May is there, in the thick of it, as soon as the curtain rises. Well, if there were a curtain. For now, there’s just some strike tape marking off where the stage will be.
“ ‘You smell,’ ” she says to Jake. Jake has the cowboy hat that Anne brought in cocked forward on his head. He looks up at her from underneath its wasted rim.
“ ‘I been drivin’ for days,’ ” he says. And she imagines him, Jake,
Eddie,
driving across the desert to find her, the heat vapors playing tricks on his eyes. He’s right. He’s come so far. But still, he smells. She smelled it when he came through the motel door. When she pulled his hand to her face to check. His fingers.
“ ‘Horses,’ ” Eddie says, his lip rising up on one side. Is he mocking her?
“ ‘Pussy,’ ”
she spits.
Still, he won’t admit it. He can’t ever admit it. She imagines the Countess, the rich bitch he’s been screwing.
“ ‘I’m goin’,’ ” he says, adjusts his hat and makes his way to the makeshift door.
“ ‘Don’t go!!!’ ” she screams, surprised by her own voice, by the absolute desperation of it. By the keening. She moves to the bed, just a cot for now, and throws herself onto it, writhing, moaning, clutching the lumpy feather pillow.
And then he’s back. He always comes back. She feels the relief well up inside her almost as big as the anger was.
“ ‘What am I gonna do?’ ” Eddie asks, and as he does so, he bends down to her where she is crouched on the dusty floor like an animal. She is an animal, a wounded beast.
He forces her chin up with his hand, making her look into his eyes, and she watches the flecks of gold swim among all that green.
Goddamned Eddie.
“ ‘You’re gonna erase me.’ ”
And as the words come out, she pictures herself, the Cheshire cat, slowly fading into a background of desert sand, of desert sky. But there is no smile to leave behind, and so she simply disappears.
“You guys are so, so, so good,” Anne says when they break. “It’s like you were meant for these roles. Lisa doesn’t even have to direct you. This play is going to be awesome. They did it at my school last fall and it wasn’t anywhere near as good as this.”
They are standing out on the porch of the Town Hall, which faces a cemetery on the opposite side of the street.
Mena is feeling exhilarated. Antsy. Every inch of her is tingling. She keeps rubbing her arms, as if the sensation she’s feeling in all of her nerve endings is as simple as being cold.
“You chilly?” Jake asks. “I’ve got a sweater in my car.”
“No, I’m fine. Thanks though.”
“Five more minutes,” Anne says, tapping her watch. And then she disappears back into the building.
Jake pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his jeans pocket and smacks it against the palm of his hand. He taps the pack so that a cigarette shoots part of the way out and gestures to her. “Want one?”
She shakes her head.
“Nasty habit. Can you believe it? I didn’t start smoking until my wife and I separated. I made it through my entire adolescence, through college without even taking a drag. Now, I probably couldn’t quit if I tried.”
She nods and looks up at a street lamp, watches some slow-moving moths circle the light.
“Are you having fun?” he asks.
At first she doesn’t understand.
“With the play. It’s fun, no?”
“Yeah,” she says, and rubs her arms three times quickly. “I’m having a good time.”
They return to the first scene after the break, trying different things. At one point, Eddie threatens to leave again and she holds on to his legs, clinging, pressing her face into the back of his knees as he drags her across the floor to the door.
Later, as she drives back to the cabin, she turns on the heat in the car, but she still can’t stop trembling. And after she gets home, when she starts to get ready for bed, she will feel the places where her skin burned against the wood floor. Touch the raw flesh that by morning will have already started to scab over, to heal.
“T
each me how to surf,” Alice says, sitting up suddenly. “What?”
“You picked Dare, and I dare you to teach me how to surf.” She jumps off his bed and slips her flip-flops on.
“You can’t surf here.” He laughs.
“Then why did you bring your surfboard?”
Finn looks at her to see if she’s kidding around, but she’s dead serious. “You have to have waves to surf. The ocean.”
“Why?” she asks.
“Because that’s what surfing is. It’s riding the waves. The
surf?
” He laughs and lies back down on his bed. It’s getting dark out, and the artificial stars are starting to glow.
“Let’s try it anyway,” she says, and reaches for his hand. She pulls him up off the bed. “Come on! It’ll be fun.”
Once he’s standing up, he realizes she’s not going to let this one go.
“All right,” he says, and shrugs. “It’s your dare.”
A huge shit-eating grin spreads across her face. When she does that her eyes get really small. It makes him smile. It’s the first time he’s smiled all day. All week maybe.
They make their way out of the house as quietly as they can. The light is on in the loft, but it’s quiet. He wonders if his dad has fallen asleep up there.
It’s a warm night, and for one disorienting minute as they walk down the winding path to the water, him carrying the surfboard under his arm, he could be at home. He feels a wave of homesickness. Alice walks behind him, holding onto the back of his T-shirt, following his lead. There are only a small row of faintly glowing solar lights illuminating the path.
“Okay,” Alice says. “What do I do?”
“I don’t know,” he says. Smiles. “I’ve never surfed a lake before.”
He’s got his board shorts on, and Alice is still wearing her suit from earlier in the day. She pulls off her T-shirt and shorts and chucks her flip-flops onto the grass. “Well, let’s try.”
He puts the board into the still water, and they both wade in.
“Here,” he says. “Lie down on your stomach.”
He helps her onto the board. She’s so tiny; the board is way too big for her.
“Like this?”
He nods. “I’ll swim out next to you.”
He shows her how to paddle out. He can barely make her out in the dark, and he’s wondering if he should have put the leash on. If they lose the board out here tonight, they might never find it again.
He’s grateful for the moon. Once they get out about a hundred yards, he can see her more clearly.
“What next?” she asks. “When do I stand up?”
He laughs, and his laughter echoes on the still lake.
“You can’t stand up. You’ll sink,” he says. “I told you, you need waves. Otherwise, it’s just ... I don’t know,
floating
.”
She throws her head back and laughs too. This makes him laugh harder. Soon they are both laughing so hard he almost gets a cramp. Their voices turn into one giant laugh that echoes back to itself. A loon cackles back, which makes them laugh even harder.
“Can I get on there with you?” he asks. “I’m gonna fucking drown.”
“Sure,” she says. “What do I do?”
He helps her sit up and then he slowly climbs onto the board in front of her.
“It’s kind of like riding a horse,” she says.
“Is it?”
“Sure, my grandmother has horses. I’ve been riding since I was a little kid. I actually think my dad was the one who taught me how to ride. I don’t really remember that well. But I do remember holding on to him; I remember the way he smelled. Sometimes I’ll catch that smell somewhere, probably just whatever detergent my mom used, and I’ll remember that. You know, the good stuff about him.”
Finn nods. He can remember but cannot name the exact smell of Franny.
“Look!” she says suddenly, and points to the sky.
“What?”
“That’s the Big Dipper,” she says. “Or maybe it’s the Little Dipper. Do you know?”
He peers at the stars glowing faintly in the dark sky and shrugs.
“It’s kind of cold,” she says, and puts her arms around his waist. She leans her head against his back. He smells the wet smell of her hair, her shampoo.
“We should get back,” he says, his voice breaking in a way he hopes she didn’t hear. He can see a light on in the downstairs of the cabin. His mom is back from rehearsals, and he’s going to be in deep shit.
“Not yet,” she says. “Let’s just stay a little bit longer.”
T
he tow truck driver had given Dale the name and address of the shop scrawled on the back of a greasy business card. And Troy offered to give her, and her crap, a ride to the motel. “It’s near where I work. It’s no Hilton, but they got an outdoor pool and AC. HBO too, I think. And it’s dirt cheap. I lived there for a whole month when I first moved to town.”
“What do you do?” she had asked as he helped her load her stuff into his truck.
“I’m a tattoo artist,” he said. “You got any ink?”
Dale shook her head, thought of Thoreau and wondered what he’d say right now if he knew what had happened to the Bug. Puff the Magic Dragon. Damn.
They got into the truck and he turned on the AC. It felt so good. So cold and good. She trembled.
“You oughta let me do a piece on you. Wouldn’t have to be anything big or fancy. Maybe a butterfly? A little rose? A flame?”
Dale shook her head, blushed.
“You got pretty skin,” he said. “A nice canvas.” He nodded and smiled.
She could suddenly feel every inch of her skin. “Thank you.”
The motel was definitely cheap, but it was clean, and the guy at the repair shop promised he’d have the car fixed by the weekend. Troy came by to check on her after she got settled in that night, brought a bucket of chicken. After they were done eating, he started to rub her back, and she knew what was going to happen next. He undressed and she undressed and then they were on the bed kissing and she felt happier than she had felt in a long, long time. He was covered with tattoos, and she imagined the pictures telling a story to her as they made love. And he, unlike Fitz, stayed. He only left when it was time for him to go to the tattoo shop. She spent the entire next day pacing back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the motel, waiting for him to come back.
And he did come back, that night and every night after the tattoo shop closed.They ate dinner together in the motel room: Chinese food, Pizza Hut. They watched HBO and played gin rummy naked. By Wednesday, he’d talked her into it.
“I’m not letting you leave until you get at least a little work done,” he said. “Something to remember me by. And it’s on the house. My treat.”
Now, face down and half naked at the tattoo parlor, she’s wondering if she’s really got the guts to go through with it.
They’d stayed up late drinking a bottle of Boone’s Farm, watching reruns of
I Love Lucy
as she gave him a blow job, and afterward, her tongue prickly and her jaw numb, she’d shown him her idea.
“That is the coolest idea for a tat I’ve ever heard,” he said, grinning. “But you’ve got to be careful with words. A lot of times people who get words done change their minds after. Like names and stuff.”
“I won’t change my mind,” she said.
“This is going to probably take me a few days. And it’s not going to be any sort of picnic for you either,” he said. “You sure you don’t want something smaller?”
She shook her head. “Let’s do it.”
Now, inside the parlor, her Boone’s Farm bravado is gone.
“I’m gonna go get everything ready,”Troy had said. “You’re going to need to take off your shirt. Try to relax. I’ll be back in five.”
She can hear him in the small lobby of the shop, talking to the girl who had taken her ID and had her sign the release. She’d watched to see if he flirted with her, felt a nasty pang of jealousy when he smiled his slow smile at her.
When he comes back in, she shivers.
“Are you cold?” he asks, and walks over to the thermostat on the wall. “Jessica likes it pretty cold in here. I keep telling her I can’t tattoo through goose pimples.”Troy laughs a hearty laugh and pulls on a pair of latex gloves he gets from a box on the counter.
“Ready?” he asks, bending over so he can look her in the eye.
“I think so,” she says, surprised by how frail her voice sounds.
First, he rubs her entire back with rubbing alcohol. The smell makes her nose twitch, makes her remember getting her ears pierced at the Maryvale Mall when she was twelve.
“I’m going to shave your back now,” he says, and she grimaces. Does she have
hair
on her back?
“I just have to get all the fine baby hair off. It gets in the way otherwise.”
“Okay,” she says.
When he’s done, he rolls a stick of deodorant across her whole back. “This is to help the transfer stick,” he says.
She’d found a used bookstore down the street from the motel. It was pretty small, but they’d had almost all of Sam’s books. She’d found a beat-up hardcover copy of
The Hour of Lead
and paid fifty cents for it. Troy had helped her cut out the pages with an X-Acto knife. He’d measured her back with a tape measure he kept in his truck. And he had gone with her at midnight to Kinko’s to get them enlarged. At the tattoo parlor, he’d shown her the machine that would turn the design into a stencil of sorts.
Now he lays the design across her back, gently pressing the paper on her skin. He makes his way from the broad expanse between her shoulders all the way down to her waist.
“Does it fit?” she says. “The whole chapter?”
“This is going to fucking rock,” he says.
She closes her eyes and hears the crinkle and tear of the paper covering the needles. She opens them again when he turns on the machine, and then there is the first prick and the hum that spreads through her body like a song.
This is the hour of lead. I remember, because I am the one who lived.