The Long Wait for Tomorrow (3 page)

“Did you check?” Jenna finally swallowed. Reached for her water, left lipstick stains on the straw and tried again. “Did you check the
mail
today, Patrick?”

“Parents did.”

“How about yesterday, did you check yesterday?”

“Two cheeseburgers!”
came the cry from behind the counter.
“Double hash browns, smothered, covered, diced, and peppered!”

Patrick glanced over at the sudden rise in activity and grill-top sizzle. “No. Nothing yesterday.”

“Quit bothering Patrick,” Kelly told Jenna.

“I’m not
bothering.”

“You are.”

“
You
just don’t want to think of a game without Patrick in that horn section.”

“Don’t have to,” Kelly stated. “Patrick’s going to get in.”

“You know the future all of a sudden?”

“Yes.”

“Neat.” Jenna resumed slicing up her waffle.

Patrick had retreated from the conversation. Turned his head toward the curved floor-to-ceiling windows. There wasn’t
a hell of a lot to see out there. Ten p.m. traffic lights along the Scarborough Road overpass, changing their colors more out of principle than anything else. An occasional taxi pulling into the parking lot. Cabdriver raking his fingers through a salt-and-pepper beard, waiting for the witching-hour calls of drunken barflies unable to get home on their own. Gas station across the road, another farther down the way. Shopping outlets mingling with pawnshops, Mexican-owned convenience stores, fast-food marquees dropping low as ninety-nine cents, burger outlets outbidding each other in the race to see whose egg-and-cheese biscuit was the most worthless. Far in the distance, the crimson sign shining high and bright just beyond the railroad tracks-white letters reading
BOXXX CAR VIDEO
.

Verona was a town both alive and dead in many ways, but outside wasn’t what concerned Patrick. Simple focus, ignoring the orange streetlights and simply staring
at
the window. Watching the secret reflections of Kelly and Jenna. Narrowing his sights even further, Patrick locked out all that lay beyond and around Jenna’s face, hair, body. He watched her smile, chew, never let on when she caught herself talking with her mouth full, hand shooting up to cover her mouth, eyes wide, mortified that someone might have noticed. The window was Patrick’s sanctuary, a bunker for nuclear testing. It was a looking-glass world where Patrick could give his eyes the liberty of gazing, even as he saw Jenna look across the table and ask someone a question.

That someone was Patrick, and reality came complete with two quarters sliding across the table.

“You want to put on some tunes?” Jenna asked.

Patrick glanced down at the change resting by his arm, an eagle and founding father awaiting their fate.

“Pat’s just going to put on the same two songs he always does,” Kelly announced.

“That’s what I like about Patrick.” Jenna smiled reassuringly across the table.

Kelly shrugged. “I just don’t see why all the suspense.”

“I don’t, either,” Jenna informed him. She gave Patrick another smile, head jerking once in the direction of the jukebox. “Another thing I like about Patrick.”

“Whatever,” Kelly said playfully. “I liked him before you did.”

“Can’t change history,” Jenna lamented.

“Or the future,” Kelly added, turning to Patrick. “Go on and play your songs, Patrick. I can dig it.”

Patrick picked the two quarters up off the table, scooted his way out of the wooden booth.

Kelly handed him twenty bucks and a yellow slip of paper, grease stain on the top left corner. “And get that for us while you’re up, will you, Pat?”

Patrick nodded, walked across the black and gray tiles. There wasn’t a soul around, it seemed sometimes, who could make it across that floor without shuffling. Something about the noise, the white fluorescent weight from above. The secret knowledge that it didn’t matter how many times a day they mopped up, or how high the sanitation grade got with every
inspection, nobody truly
believed
that floor was or ever would be truly free from that invisible layer of grit.

And the jukebox was no exception to an unchanging world. Pale pink and yellow track labels faded by the shine of 24/7 service. No MP3s or Internet connections; and although old-timers might laugh at the thought, the CDs stacked within were Patrick’s old-school. They were the happy constants, the familiar threads woven into the fabric of the security blanket, keeping the world at bay.

Patrick slipped in his fifty cents.

One quarter, then another.

Glanced over to the table, saw Kelly whispering something in Jenna’s ear.

Patrick shifted his focus, out to the window. Caught Jenna’s reflection.

Eyes lowered with a demure beauty, unable to stop herself from smiling.

Patrick absently placed a hand over his abdomen, turning to the jukebox.

Punched out the numbers from memory, and turned to pay the check.

Patrick had parked his ass out on the back deck. Sitting on a green iron-crafted chair, legs stretched out, listening to 90.7 FM, a couple of cuts from Lester Bowie and the Brass Fantasy. Behind him, kitchen windows joined forces with outdoor floodlights, cast long shadows on the deck, past the deck. Out
into the backyard, where shadows grew thin and disappeared, darkness stretching out into a singularity.

Patrick tapped his pen against the sheet music in his lap, blank lines awaiting his touch.

He closed his eyes, searching for it. Listening for the sound of crickets, the only evidence that there even were such things. Listening for their message, feeling his hand move across the page, a slow-motion printer. Filling in notes without thinking, without looking. Rescuing all that was lost in translation.

The sound of crickets, mercifully commonplace, and Patrick felt his face flush. He opened his eyes, glanced back to the brick façade of Kelly’s house, up to a dimly lit second-story window. No way to tell if they were still going at it, Patrick’s ears had found their sanctuary. Guilt-ridden thoughts, wondering if he’d left the house because the sound of Kelly and Jenna was too much to bear, or if maybe the sound of Jenna’s cries was simply too good not to listen to.

“You’re a disgusting person,” Patrick muttered, trying to countermand images of Jenna’s eyes and lips, both half closed, hair sprawled over Kelly’s pillow.

That’s right
, came the voice of his angels….
Kelly’s pillow.

Patrick sighed, lulled into a melancholy state. He sank uncomfortably into his chair, craned his neck back, and strained his eyes for some small hint of starlight. Each distant dot originating years before he could witness it, nothing more than what was once upon a time.

“That one dot,” Patrick murmured, unconsciously transcribing
its position along with the others’, “that one dot could be seven years ago. Seven years ago is right now, so we’ve all gone back.”

“And they say we all come from starlight,” Jenna added, her face now floating over him, eclipsing Patrick’s entire vista. He might have jumped, startled, might have found it in his heart to cry out. But there was too much to like about this one interruption. Jenna’s upside-down face grinning an upside-down smile. Tousled hair reaching down to tickle his face, mascara smudged into tiny raccoon ringlets. The faint understanding that she was wearing one of Kelly’s button-down shirts, still open and revealing a black underwire bra. “So truly, seeing that we all come from starlight, where
have
we finally gone?”

Patrick smiled stupidly, a common side effect brought about by the sight of Jenna’s face. “I don’t know.”

“Good night, Patrick …,” Jenna whispered.

She darted down the wooden stairs, toward the driveway.

“You going home?” Patrick called after her.

“I don’t want my dad to worry….” Jenna turned, hands clenching both sides of the shirt together. Black work pants and bare feet skipping backward. “I’ll see you, Patrick.”

“Tomorrow!” Patrick managed to call out.

Jenna waved and disappeared around a corner.

Patrick looked down to find every line filled with the notes of starlight and Jenna’s voice.

It wasn’t more than four seconds after her car started up when Kelly stepped out onto the deck. He stood behind Patrick,
allowing his shadow to join ranks with the rest for just a second. Not a lot said, and for that one second, the Brass Fantasy continued with their rendition of “I Only Have Eyes for You.”

Then Kelly took a few steps, reached down, and snapped the radio off.

Waited for the whirr of the CD player and pressed Play.

The latest from 50 Cent belched out into the night, crickets gone silent, unhappy.

“Sorry, Pat.” Kelly lowered the volume to adjust for the music. “Just not in the mood for jazz.”

He sat down amid the beats and single-track sample. Took a sip of water, biceps bulging reflexively as he brought the bottle to his waiting lips. He kicked his legs up onto another chair, adjusted his boxer shorts, and raised his eyes to the sky.

“Jenna took off,” Patrick offered.

“Yeah, her father’s car …”

“Her pop’s a good guy.”

Kelly nodded. “Sure is.”

“What time is it, anyway?”

“ Eleven-forty, last I checked.”

Patrick nodded. Not that he really cared. The day had been a long one, with or without the aid of Father Time. And here he was, sitting with Kelly McDermott, watching the stars while 50 Cent let them have a tiny taste of the thug life.

“Kelly?”

Kelly kept his eyes skyward. “Yeah?”

“Have I congratulated you yet?”

“Huh?”

“On OSU? Have I said, you know, actually said, congratulations?”

Kelly thought about it. “Don’t bother … not till you get your letter.”

Patrick didn’t budge one way or another. Decided maybe a different approach would serve them best, and asked: “Were you this certain you’d get
your
letter?”

“Well, no sense in pretending anymore …” Kelly rocked his head left and right, cracked his neck, and straightened out. “I was accepted to OSU way back in the fall.”

Patrick didn’t say anything.

“I mean, you knew, Patrick,” Kelly insisted. “When we went to visit and they had me work out with their team. Didn’t have another way to make the final check, what with the NC season pushed back to spring…. So yeah, they offered it to me. So did Florida State, Michigan, a couple others. Had to keep it quiet, of course, but … I mean, who do you really think got me that new car?”

Patrick felt a twinge of jealousy. “I guess I knew you knew. I just didn’t realize just how you knew it was all going to work out.”

“Well …” Kelly shrugged, though not in any dismissive way. He took another swig of water, relishing the purity. “The world was made for people like me. It doesn’t matter what I do, what I say. Why do I get a car, while you get wait-listed? Nobody gets extra credit for guessing the sun’s going to come up tomorrow, that’s just how things have been fashioned. There’s a Kelly-shaped hole in the universe that needs to be filled, that’s
been hollowed out specifically for me to fill…. It’s like floating on an inner tube down the rapids, I am already there. It’s just plain old run-of-the-mill destiny.”

Patrick reached out and grabbed Kelly’s water from the table. “Sounds nice.”

“It’s not as though I like it, Pat. It is what it is.”

“Destiny.”

“And you’re coming with,” Kelly insisted. “It may not be fair, the way the world bends toward certain people. But as long as it does, there’s no sense in letting the opportunities slip by. I’m going places, and I want you there with me. You’re
going
to be there with me, Pat. We’ll make headlines.”

“Has Jenna gotten her letter yet?”

Kelly didn’t answer.

“You going to marry her, someday?” Patrick asked.

Kelly waved his hand before his face. “You sound like an old bitch nagging.”

“I’d marry her if I were you,” Patrick said. He stood up, tried to take a pull of water. Found less than a drop left in Kelly’s bottle, and that was that. “I’d wise up and marry her fast.”

“Before what?” Kelly asked.

“Before she wises up and realizes she just might have a choice.”

It was close as Patrick ever came to cracking on Kelly.

Kelly’s reaction was a quick laugh as he stood up. Turned his chair around to better face the backyard, catch sight of all that was waiting in the dark. “We’re all going to be just fine, Patrick…. You’ll see.”

Patrick didn’t answer.

He turned, opened the back door, and paused.

Patrick took a look back, one of those moments. Maybe it was that these days were numbered, moments where it felt as though life was quietly stalking them one by one. Moments Kelly would dismiss as weakness, and so Patrick kept his mouth shut.

Though he did look back, maybe because it was one of those moments. He took a look back at Kelly, sitting with his back to the floodlights, awaiting his destiny.

One last look before closing the door on tonight.

That last look, last glimpse of the young Kelly McDermott before tonight became yesterday, and tomorrow turned to today.