Tide King (36 page)

“I can't, in good conscience, let you do something like this.” The car lurched along in Sunday evening traffic to Penn Station. He had not told Kate about Ela's plan. It was best to spring that on her last. That when he saved her, made her immortal, he hoped she took to Eastern Europe. Kate drew a line on her upper and bottom lips before filling it in dark red. “Who knows what Palmer will want to do to you at the Institute? Blood tests, then experimental surgery? It's a slippery slope.”

“If there's anything I can do to…help you.” He stared at the buildings, the New Yorkers on the sidewalk. They walked through him, their orbits collapsing into his, and he would always know their pains and joys. The solace of humanity is that pain is temporary. There is always death. But that pain had to go somewhere. He wondered if it went to people like him, like Ela.

“Calvin, I'm scared.” She clenched his hand. He could feel the bones in her fingers, her wrist. He tried to remember if he had always felt them so starkly. “My legacy here…I'm not nearly finished at the museum. My boys…one is still in college. I want to see them get married, have their own children.”

“I've got nothing to lose.” He placed his hand on her thigh. Even in her fear, he desired her. He would rip open his throat so that she could crawl inside, live in him, a pupae, until his or her transformation was complete. “I'll find Stanley Polensky. I'll get the herb, and this will fix itself.”

“Your optimism is always endearing.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “But do you expect him to believe you, just give you his knowledge, or the herb, if he even has it?”

“I don't know.” He smelled her hair. She always smelled of young, fresh flowers, but also of propriety. “You did.”

“I'm not the best sample from which to draw.” The cab pulled up to Penn Station. She had given him money for a ticket, for expenses. More than he thought he needed.

“Why don't you have dinner with me?” He kissed the top of her head. “Or we could get a hotel…”

“I'm having dinner with my husband. I really need to get going. It'll take an hour to get uptown.” She sat up straight, dabbed the corner of her lips with her pinky finger. He dimly expected, in some way, that she would be here for him, in New York, even in dying, when he got back. And, to come back, he still needed to believe it.

“I love you, Kate.” He took her face in his heads. Her lips seemed fuller as he pressed them to his. Disappointment? Resignation? Possibly medication. “I won't be long, I promise.”

“Hurry back, darling. Be safe.” She smiled, ran her hand the length of his face. Then, he watched the back of her head, exposed in the window of the cab, disappear uptown.

“This is my favorite time of the year.” Ms. Webster explained to her twelfth-grade honors English class. Heidi wondered why; it was the end of January. “Because we get to do group projects.”

Heidi stared at her notebook until she thought she would burn a hole through it. Group projects were the equivalent, she thought, of choosing teams for gym, and she was always chosen last. She couldn't believe Ms. Webster would have such a tin ear for classroom politics. Whoever she wound up with, at any rate, she would be assured of doing more than her fair share—one, because anything less than an A was unacceptable to her, and two, because taking on more than her share had been the only way to present her as an appealing member of any group that didn't consist only of the school's downtrodden.

“Before you get all excited, I should introduce a caveat—I will be doing the pairing. I have taken the liberty of already pairing everyone with someone on the basis of your strengths and weaknesses so everyone will participate in the strongest groups possible. And, I have also chosen your topics.” Ms. Webster paced the front of the room, hands in her khakis. “I've given this a great deal of thought, and I don't think you'll be disappointed. First group—Oliver Truitt and Heidi Polensky will do T.S. Elliot's
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
.”

There was a chortle from the left edge of class, where Oliver Truitt and Shauna Beck sat with the jocks and cheerleaders, and Ms. Webster frowned and continued reading the lists of groups and authors. But Heidi could no longer hear them. She snuck a glance at the back of Oliver's curly head and considered whether she could ask Ms. Webster to change the assignments. Not that there was any way now, not without it looking suspicious or bad or crazy.

She didn't know whether Ms. Webster simply paired the over-achieving Heidi with the clearly underachieving Oliver or whether she had some other sort of matchmaking designs in mind. Not that Heidi had a chance. Oliver Truitt, for a small-town hick, had a distinctly suburban style that everyone envied. His father, who was in upper management at the chemical plant in nearby Delaware, outfitted his family and his home handsomely. The Truitts often went on shopping excursions in Annapolis, Baltimore—even Philadelphia—to find the latest in designer fashions.

Yet Oliver could not be pinned down by a store receipt. He was a forerunner of “shabby chic” before people in town even knew how to pronounce “chic.” His curly hair grew over his eyes and ears like a shaggy mutt, although Stacey Benkin's mom often referred to his coif as a “JFK Jr.” He wore ratty t-shirts under expensive Ralph Lauren oxford shirts that were left untucked underneath Merino wool sweaters. His jeans were ripped strategically at the knee, and his Adidas were always untying themselves. He was an effortless god of a boy, and Heidi had no more business having a crush on him than she did Robert Redford.

However, even if it was more out of cluelessness than chivalry (for a jock, Oliver was a real space cadet), he did not tease her like the others. In fact, he always acted as if she was a perfectly normal human being, deserving of polite and sometimes extended conversation. After class, Oliver walked over to her desk and punched her lightly on the shoulder.

“Hey partner.” He smiled. “I guess I lucked out, huh? You want to go to the library later today and get some source materials?”

“I could.” She nodded. She knew where everything was; it would certainly be the fastest and most efficient use of their time.

“So you want to me to pick you up, or do you want to meet there?”

“Oh—you meant together.” She felt a lump the size of an egg in her throat that she hoped wasn't lasagna from lunch.

“Yeah. How about we go grab a bite to eat beforehand? I've got basketball practice, but I can meet you at six-thirty. How about Taco Olé?”

“I'll meet you there,” she answered. Other than from Ms. Webster, Heidi had kept her house a well-guarded secret, fearing that Shauna and her friends would egg it, or worse. She insisted that her father take a long, winding route home from school every day, one in which she could tell, on the open country roads, whether someone followed. She never put her address on her backpack or in her books. And she would never let Oliver come to the house to pick her up, no matter how much she wanted to ride alone with him in his Mustang, show her father she was popular—maybe—or at least had friends, other than “the donut boy at the library,” as her father called Darren—“softer than an éclair.”

Oliver chucked her on the chin, almost knocking her to the ground in her weak-kneed surprise, and then jogged out of the room, leaving only a whiff of cologne behind. She stood up and didn't bother to wait for the class to empty. She strode to her locker in a daze, the buzz of the hallways' white noise around her, and when she climbed into the truck cab at 2:45, Stanley sat up straight in his seat.

“Well.” He lit a cigarette and muscled the stick shiftinto submission. “You're late.”

“Dad, I need you to drive me to the Taco Olé tonight at six-thirty,” she said, ignoring him, asserting herself in such a way that her father snorted but, for once, kept his mouth shut. “I have work to do.”

Oliver was late, and she was very early. Early enough to study the menu and see what she could get for dinner with a dollar ten, the amount her father had scraped from the pockets of his two pairs of pants. She could get one large taco and a cup of potato olés, but no drink. She spread her notebook and papers on the table and went through the basic outline of a presentation she had scribbled down at home. She'd read Prufrock many times, had jotted various plans of attack they could pursue. She could do all the work in a few days, complete construction visuals and Oliver's own neatly written index cards, which he would merely have to read to the class.

But Ms. Webster had not assigned them together to do that—she had wanted Oliver to care about something other than baseball and cars and Shauna—to see the love of the world, of learning, through another student's eyes. Or at least prepare him for the workload of college. And maybe, Ms. Webster figured, Heidi would taste a glimpse of the leisurely life of the senior class's royalty, the non-shit world.

“You look prepared.” Oliver appeared, smelling like the soap in the high school locker room showers, clad in a t-shirt, running shorts, and flip flops, even though it was still a little chilly—January, to be exact. “You eat yet?”

She shook her head, suddenly not very hungry, and followed him to the counter, where he ordered three tacos, two potato olés, a large Pepsi, and one cinnamon chalupa.

“What do you want?” He nodded to her as she fumbled for the change her father had thrust into her hand, although with lint and a bent nail. “Don't worry; I'm buying.”

She ordered a taco and a diet Pepsi, and Oliver added to her order a cup of potato olés and a cinnamon chalupa.

“God, I hate when girls don't eat,” he explained as he guided the overloaded plastic tray to their table. “And then Shauna pukes it right out in the women's room. You seem too smart to do that kind of shit, though.”

“Thanks for dinner,” she replied, not sure how to respond. It did not surprise her about Shauna, but if she was supposed to feel sympathy, she had a hard time mustering any.

“No problem. Ms. Webster is the one who deserves all the thanks. I mean, what did I do to get paired up with the smartest girl in the class?” Oliver opened his mouth and inserted half of a taco in it. He chewed thoughtfully and swallowed. “Not that I mean you'll do all the work.”

“I have some ideas.” She moved her hand to her notebook.

“Let's eat first.” He smiled. “We can work when we get to the library.”

She tried to eat her taco neatly, even though across from her, chunks of meat and lettuce and tomatoes frequently fell out of Oliver's taco, remnants that he shoved in his mouth with his fingers, licking them between slurps of his Pepsi.

“So, your father still have that orange truck?” He asked, unwrapping his cinnamon chalupa. “I've seen him pick you up sometimes in it.”

“Yes.” She blushed at the thought of him observing her unnoticed.

“You know, I let the guys in shop work on my car. They put some really great struts in and added the racing stripe. You should have your father take his truck in. I bet they'd do some work on it…maybe free, for the experience.”

“Thanks. I'll bring it up to him.”

“They had a really sweet Pontiac they rebuilt—a 1966. They only want a couple hundred for it, if you're looking for a set of wheels.”

“I can't really afford a car.” She carefully folded the waxy paper of her taco. “I don't know if you've noticed.”

“Can you get a job or something? I know Buildaburger is hiring.”

“Shauna works there.”

“Yeah, she likes it okay.” He took a large, broken piece of taco shell and swept the remaining rubble of ground beef and shredded iceberg lettuce into a final bite. “I know the manager gives her a hard time about not working hard, talking to the customers too much. She can't help she's popular.”

“I don't think Shauna likes me,” Heidi said carefully, taking a sip of her Diet Pepsi.

“Really?” He crushed the wax paper and arched his arms like a basketball player, aiming for the hole of the boxy trash can a few feet away. “I never noticed. I mean, Shauna is kinda bitchy, like most girls. I try not to get involved in that kind of stuff.”

The paper bounced off the rim of the trash can and settled on the floor. Oliver jumped up and retrieved it. Heidi blotted her lips with her napkin. She felt deep behind enemy lines, talking to a squirrel she had mistaken for the cavalry, while the enemy waited in the bushes, training its sights on her.

“You know, if Shauna is mean to you…” Oliver began when he returned.

“Don't worry about it. I never said anything, okay?”

“Then I'll talk to her about it. There's no reason for her to treat you bad. All right?”

“Please…”

“Don't worry; she'll never know.” He winked. “I've got your back, Polensky. You ready to go to the library?”

Later that night in bed, she carefully unwrapped the chalupa she'd saved and ate it quickly, licking her fingers and the wrapper. She wondered if she would develop an eating disorder, like bulimia. Anorexia seemed to fit more with their budget. All she knew was that she had been a complete fool with Oliver at the library, and a next step down the slippery psychological disorder slope seemed imminent.