Things I’ll Never Say (10 page)

I grab one, scurry back out the window with it, and am on my bike pedaling double speed back to Bread & Waters.

The
Lucky Buoy
is still steaming into port as I pass that way again. It hardly seems to have moved, which I have noticed before, watching for what seems like days for it to make the journey between first sighting and docking. I watch the whole thing whenever I can. Only now I can't.

When I hit the last street that leads directly to the shop, I see, from a couple blocks away, Charlie and Celeste sitting out front in a couple of folding chairs that once belonged to somebody else. Abruptly, though, she bounces up and starts marching away. Charlie gets up and follows her a few feet, gesturing like he's conducting an orchestra. It's not a truly serious pursuit, as he slows and stops and laughs almost as quickly as he started.

“What did you do?” I say as I pull the bike to a stop in front of him.

“What? Nothing,” he says. “I was sharing.”

“What did you share, Charlie?”

“My dad. I was telling her stuff about my dad. Anyway, I don't know what her problem is, because everybody else laughs.”

“What stuff, Charlie? Not the penis stuff, right? Tell me it wasn't that.”

“Right, like I'm going to hold back the real quality material when I'm trying to impress a girl as beautiful as that. Of course the penis stuff.”

As briefly as I have known him, Charlie Waters Jr. is my best friend. He is a kind and gentle guy; I know this. But even I have concluded that when his mother left him, then his father left this earth, and young Charlie was left behind that counter, where he appears now to be embedded, well, gaps were also left. My friend has gaps.

“I did mention, Charlie, that probably a lot of people won't be quite as okay with hearing about your dad's penis as I was after, what, knowing you for an hour?”

“I don't recall you saying anything like that. What is that you have there? You got a painting? How did you . . . Only
one
?”

“Yeah,” I say, and take off with it in the direction of Celeste.

As I am gaining on her, it comes back to me with fresh amazement, when Charlie first told me the story he has just told her. “The last time I ever heard my parents speak to each other, I just caught the tail end of an argument in their bedroom. So all I picked up was him saying,
Well, it's my penis and I'll do what I like with it.
And so naturally my first thought was
What does he like to do with it?
Kept me preoccupied for weeks.”

“Celeste?” I call when I'm about ten feet behind her. She keeps walking, ignoring me. “Come on,” I say. “I have something for you.”

“Oh, excellent,” she says. “Now
you're
going to start. What's
wrong
with this place?”

“What? Oh, no, I didn't mean anything like that. I got one of your paintings back. From the café.”

She stops short enough that I struggle to stop the bike in time. The front wheel bumps slightly into the side of her leg.

“Jeez, I'm really sorry about that,” I say. “Are you hurt?”

“I'm fine,” she says, looking at her painting under my arm like I am returning her beloved missing cat. She reaches and takes it, holding it up high and then at different angles to the light, checking for damage. Looking at it myself in this clear afternoon light, I'm thinking it looks a little less professional. Like I could have done it. And I royally suck at that kind of thing.

“It's beautiful work,” I say, and if the universe wants to judge me for that, let it judge me quietly.

“Thank you,” she says, looking away, getting blushy. I guess she's not used to glowing reviews. “How did you get this? I thought the Crabbit was all padlocked up.”

“Well, I know the place pretty well. I worked there, you know.”

“Of course I know, Warren. I saw you work. I watched you work.”

My frickin' name and everything. I am not sure if there is a word that covers this sensation, of a combined shiver of thrill and jolt of unease, but there should be.

“You watched me work? I never saw you there. And I
would
have remembered you.”

“I skulk. It's an artist's thing, skulking. See and don't be seen.”

I am nodding enthusiastically.
You are being seen now
is the thing I will not say, because one Charlie is enough for one day. “Very good,” I say. “Well skulked.”

“Thanks,” she says. “Listen, you want to go for a beer? North Star Bar or Compass Inn, your choice, my treat.”

See? See? Right from the get-go, I just knew I would be getting and going in Lundy Lee in a way I had never done anywhere. Not that I was setting the bar particularly high there.

“Um, Celeste, I'm too young to go for a beer. Sorry if I misled you or anything. Maybe I look a little older than I am. . . .”

“You don't,” she says, reaching and placing a hand on top of my hand on the handlebars. “I know how old you are. You just don't seem to know
where
you are.” She starts towing me and the bike along toward Lundy Lee's entertainment district.

“How do you know how old I am?” I ask her. “What else do you know?”

She half turns toward me and puts a great thin long artist finger up in front of lips that are suddenly bunched up in my direction, giving me the shushing of a lifetime. If I were somehow granted another lifetime, I'd spend it on another shush just like that one.

“What would life be without a sequence of secrets?” she asks, giggling like she knows every last one of them. “If you told everybody everything, where would that leave you, huh?”

“I don't know where that would be,” I say. “Other than it's someplace
I'll
never go.”

“Ha,” she says, and spins around as we idle up in front of the North Star Bar. She notices my sudden paralysis and gently pries the bike from my grip. She leans it against the front window and takes me by the hand. “Let us go inside, then, young man, and drink to someplace you and I will never go.”

I have never been more frightened in my life. And I have been frightened plenty.

“That grin makes you look a tiny bit insane,” she says as we hunker down in the little snug almost directly next to the parked bike on the other side of the window.

“Sorry,” I say. “I'm still new at this. If I wasn't the only guy in here with teeth, it wouldn't be so noticeable. I'm sure I'll blend in soon enough.”

“I'm sure you won't,” she says, examining her painting again with surprising intensity.

The waitress, doubtless attracted by my teeth, comes and stands next to us. That's all she does.

Celeste, seemingly familiar with this type of thing, speaks without looking up from the picture. “I'll have a Manhattan, sweet.”

The waitress stares, as if the volume was off when Celeste spoke.

“Right, then,” Celeste says. “Double Jack Daniel's and ginger ale.”

That seems to unlock something. The waitress turns and looks me over intently.

“He'll have the same,” Celeste says firmly.

I am stunned to see the waitress almost instantly pivot to take the order to the bar.

Celeste looks up and fillets me with a sweet, sinister smile.

I can feel the mentalness of my grin even before she has to tell me this time. The drinks arrive, and the
thunk
of how the glasses are delivered to the table is an attention grabber. Celeste stares at the waitress as she leaves, but then we both hold up and clink glasses.

“How come?” I say as she savors her cocktail with eyes half closed.

“Company,” she says.

I sip my drink. Even with a load of ice, it stings my eyes, my tongue, and my throat.

“Unbelievable,” I wheeze in a voice that sounds like hydraulic brakes. “You would never be short of company.”

She's sticking with the one-word sentencing. “Lonesome,” she says.

I look at her face, at her soft melty eyes looking back at me over the rim of a stout squat glass that no longer holds any Jack Daniel's or ginger ale. And I can't figure it. I can't, no matter how I angle, see this face spending any time at lonesome.

She flags down the waitress.

She stops the waving, folds her hands on the table between us, and says, “Your aunt and uncle were very fine people.”

I nod at her. “But not really, though.”

She nods back. “I suppose not. But they were very fair with me.”

“That's good to hear. I'm not aware of any of my people ever being fair with any other people before.”

Two more drinks thunder down onto the table even though my first one is only half gone — and so am I.

“Well, that hardly makes them unusual, does it?” she says, picking up her drink and clinking with mine while it's still on the table.

“You don't think people are fair?”

“No.”

I pick up my original drink, find that the melting ice has made the drink more agreeable and that the drink has made me more agreeable.

“That's sad,” I say. “I'm sorry, Celeste.”

“Why? Are you responsible? Because if you are, well, I have been looking for you for a long time, buster.” She puts down her drink and puts up her dukes, and if I fall any more in love than I am right now, it'll probably set off the smoke alarms.

“Charlie is fair with me,” I say. “Always has been, right from the beginning.”

“So,” she says, “you're in love with Charlie, yeah?”

“Wwwhaat?” I say, and hop up from my spot. But the height of the table in relation to the bench seat I was sitting on is such that I can't get all the way up like that and so am jammed with the table edge pressed into my thighs. I stand-like, awkwardly for several seconds, trying to hold on to indignant when absurd has already won the day.

I have no idea how a thing like this is supposed to play out, and Celeste is in no rush to help me with it. She smiles and sips as I think of a next line, until it's not necessary.

“Oh, Jesus,” she says.

Charlie is standing there on the sidewalk, looking in and taking up most of the window with an awkward goofiness that's making me look pretty suave even right now. Celeste is staring at him as he leans on the glass with one hand as if he was just hanging out, nothing and nobody on his agenda. I take advantage of the diversion and slide back into my seat.

“This town could use more girls,” she says.

“It could,” I say. “It really could.” I wave Charlie in to come sit with us, and as he scurries toward the door, Celeste gets agitated. She finishes her second drink awfully quickly.

“I need to go now,” she says. “Thank you for the painting. I sure would love to retrieve the others. Have you got a phone?”

“Yes,” I say, taking it out of my pocket and displaying it proudly, like I am the first person in town to have one.

She grabs the phone and hurriedly starts pressing buttons on it. “I'll give you my number. And I'll put yours in my phone as well, in case you forget about me.” That was already ridiculously unlikely even before she withdrew her own phone and amazingly began programming both of them at the same time with her two flying thumbs.

“Hi,” Charlie says.

She keeps her head down and focuses on the phones and the task at hand. “Hi, Charlie.”

“I came to apologize,” he says.

“It's okay,” she says.

“You know, Warren here has been trying to tell me that I can be a little inappropriate sometimes.”

She finishes, flips my phone closed, and looks up at him. She smiles sympathetically as she hands the phone to me and slides out of the seat.

“That's good,” she says, patting him on the chest.

She turns back to me and says, “Please, if you can arrange to get me the rest of them, that would be great. Just give me a call.” Then she puts money on the table to pay for the drinks. We watch her leave.

“Don't even bother,” the waitress says just as Charlie begins to bend his knees on his way to sitting. “You know better than that, Charlie Tuna.”

Charlie straightens back up without a word of protest.

“It's okay,” I say. “He's with me.”

“That's right, he is,” she says, gesturing with her thumb for me to scram, too. “Now that your mother's gone, you can't be in here, either.” She scoops up the money.

Charlie splutters a laugh as I say, “That was my date, not my mother, if you must know.”

“I don't think she must know,” Charlie says, pulling me up, “since she must already be in the bathroom.”

I follow him out, collect my bike, and start walking in the direction of Bread & Waters.

“Can I see your phone for a second?” he says.

I sigh loudly as I pass it to him. We both know it's not really my phone.

“You're doing it again,” I say as he scrolls.

“Doing what?”

“Being inappropriate.”

“I am not. And anyway, I'll give you another one as soon as we reach the shop. I must have something like seven of them just now. Nicer ones than this, too.”

I'm behind him as he's unlocking the shop and hear his low brumble of excited laughter.

“You honestly believe something good is going to come out of you having that phone, don't you?” I say. He pushes open the door and we are in.

“Of course I do,” he says. “This was like an act of God or something, me getting a second chance like this. She'd never get to know the real me if I didn't have some way to sneak up on her first.”

He is rummaging around in a couple of the lower drawers in the great wall of dark wood drawers that run right up the wall behind the counter. “Here,” he says cheerily, spilling a half-dozen phones out for me to pick from.

“Honestly, Charlie, I don't think there is a second chance for you. I don't think there was a first chance, really. And also, talking like that, about
sneaking up
on her, that's another one of those things that might put people off.”