Zen and Xander Undone (15 page)

I dial Paul's number, my mind racing, as if choosing the right greeting will assure the survival of the human race.
Hello? Hey? Hiya? Good morning? What's happening?
The phone clicks on the other end, and I hear a guy's voice, much deeper than I remember from the prom. “Hello, goddess.”

Damn it. Caller ID. “Hi, stalker.”

“I was afraid my leisure suit might have frightened you off.”

“I'm a brave woman.”

“So, when can I come over and watch you bust some boards?”

“I'm not in board-busting shape at the moment. I threw out my back.”

“Ouch. You okay?”

“I just need to take it easy.”

“Need a male nurse?”

I'm not sure what to say. Is he suggesting a sponge bath? Or just being funny? Suddenly I feel awkward. “Um . . .”

“Well, I'm not one. No medical training whatsoever, actually. But I could photo-document your misery.”

“If you must.”

“How about you just put on your white outfit and stand there with your fists raised?”

“That I can do. Probably in a few days.”

“Okay, how about Wednesday then? At like eleven?”

“Sounds fine. Just come by.”

“Um, your father doesn't own a gun, does he?”

“Just don't make any sudden moves.”

As I hang up, I realize that my fingers are white and shaking. I liked the way his voice sounded, deep and throaty, but clear too. And he's smart. I can tell by the rhythm of his speech.

Xander bursts through the door. “That was good! You sounded cool. You only said one really funny thing, but I think it's better to be dull than to try too hard to be funny, because then you just come off as desperate.”

“Thanks for the critique.”

“Least I can do.” She holds up a red shirt and wiggles it at me. “This will go great with your tits.”

“I'm wearing my gi!”

“For the photo shoot. For the date, you'll wear this shirt and those nice jeans I got you for Christmas that you never wear.”

“Because
you're
always wearing them.”

“I know how to appreciate a fine garment. They'll make your ass into a tight little cream puff for our Paulie,” she says as she backs out of my room, a wicked smile on her face.

Why did I think I could keep her out of this? She's like radioactive gas. She leaks in through the tiny cracks in the walls and fills up the entire room.

She grants me a grand total of thirty peaceful minutes before she comes in again, papers in her hand. “He's at Marquette!” she yells. She's holding a jar of Vicks VapoRub.

“What's that for?”

“Turn over. I'll rub.” She slaps at my thigh until I turn, and bends over me. “Tell me how hard.”

I feel the horrible coldness of Vicks on my back, but as it melts into my skin, my tight muscles dissolve. Xander gently rubs her palm over my back, up and down, until I can release my tension enough so that she can really knead. It hurts, but it feels nice, too. “You can push harder,” I tell her.

“That's what you'll be telling Paul this weekend.”

“Gross, Xander.”

“So Phillips is at Marquette. That's in Wisconsin. Where they have cheese.” She works a knuckle into a hollow near my spine until I wriggle. “And football.”

“Did you get his phone number?”

“I think we should go there. People are more forthcoming in person.”

“Have fun.”

“Like I'd ever
let
you stay home.”

“Xander, where will we get the money for a trip like that? It's not like we can ask Dad for it.”

She's silent as she works her fingers into a knot between my shoulder blades. For a second it hurts so much that I want to tell her to stop, but then it starts to loosen up, and I find I can take it. “We'll let your back heal up a little before we go.”

“Gee, thanks. In the meantime I'll build us a flying machine to get us there.”

“I'll figure out that stuff.”

“I think we should try calling the guy, first,” I say.

“That's why I'm the one who does all the thinking.”

Xander plunges her fingers into my lower back, and for a while I'm incapable of speech. I turn my head toward my dresser and see the red shirt Xander wants me to wear draped over my mirror. It's a sexy little V-neck, with tiny pearl buttons down the front. It looks soft and comfortable, and not too showoffy. It's pretty.

She's probably right. It would look great on me.

But I'm not going to Wisconsin.

T
HE DOORBELL RINGS,
and I slowly pull myself upright and walk to the door. My heart feels like it's wiggling around in my ribs, but I don't know why I'm nervous. I'm not even really attracted to Paul. At least, I wasn't at the prom.

I open the door, and he's standing in front of me with a crooked smile, holding an enormous camera. He takes in my gi, and my bare feet, and he presses his palms together and bows deeply, just like they do in Bruce Lee movies.

“
Konnichiwa,
” he says.

“Huh?” I retort.

“Japanese for ‘good afternoon.' I don't know the word for ‘morning.'”

“Oh. Um.
Konnichiwa
to you, too.” I open the door wide for him and he sort of slides in sideways, like he's nervous my dad is going to leap out at him from behind the sofa.

“Dad's taking a nap,” I say, trying to make that statement sound normal at eleven in the morning. “He's really tired lately,” I add, as if that explains anything.

“Oh, okay.” He shrugs.

“Iced tea?” I ask him. Xander forced me to make a pitcher ahead of time, insisting you should have something besides water and fermented apple juice to offer a guy. Now I'm kind of glad that she did, because it gives me something to say. I'm even more nervous now that he's here, because I realize that it was the leisure suit that made him look ugly. His hair is shiny, his eyes a pretty hazel color, his skin perfectly even and tan, and he's tall. Taller than Adam. Taller than Dad. I like tall. “It's brewed, not instant,” I add, like any teenage guy would care about that.

“Oh, lovely,” he says, and winces at his use of a girly word. “I mean, okay.”

I lead him back to the kitchen, which looks pretty clean except for the floor, which is sticky on the soles of my feet. I have to lift the iced tea pitcher with both hands because it's heavy and my back can't take the weight. I pour two glasses and hand one to Paul.

“
Domo arigato,
” he says before raising it to his lips.

“
De nada.
”

He chuckles, and that helps some of my nervousness fade away. As he drinks his tea, I look at him more closely. He's wearing a white T-shirt with a picture of Gumby on it, and plain blue jeans. Not the expensive kind, but regular Levi's, which I like. Guys who spend a lot of money on clothes are kind of a turnoff for me. He's wearing the same Birkenstocks that he'd worn to the prom, and in the daylight I can see how broken down they are. I bet they're his only pair of shoes. Or the only ones he wears, anyway.

“Where should we do this?” he asks me as he wipes tea off his chin.

“Backyard?”

He looks out the kitchen window and nods. “Good light.”

For a while, it's all business. I hold up my fists, and I can even balance well enough to do a very slow side kick. Soon, though, I have to sit down to rest my back, and he takes a seat next to me on the bench in the gazebo.

“Who's the bird freak?” he asks me, his eyes on the dozen bird feeders hanging in the trees behind our house. With a pang I realize they're all empty. Mom was the one who always bought the birdseed.

“My mom was,” I say.

“
Was?
”

I look at his twitching mouth. “She died last year,” I say.

He's quiet as he takes this in.

“I thought everyone knew.”

“Why would everyone know?”

“You know how bad news travels.” I watch as a raven circles over our house, high above. Or maybe it's a crow. Mom would know the difference. “People talk.”

“Well, I'm sorry to hear about that.”

“Oh, that's okay,” I say. “She was kind of a pain in the ass.” I wait to see what he does.

He narrows his eyes at me, kind of amused, but mostly just thinking. “Really?”

Something about the way he's half smiling makes my jauntiness take a dive. “No. I just don't like people feeling sorry for me.”

“Okay.” He's looking at me with too much intensity, and I want to move away from him. I need to.

“I'm hungry,” I say as I stand up.

“I know a place that makes great french fries.” He screws his lens cap on carefully, as though the camera is a beloved, delicate pet.

“I'll go get changed.” I turn my back on him. Even though he's cute, and nice, and funny, I want to get away because he makes me feel too jumpy.

I go up to my room and change into my date clothes. The jeans Xander wants me to wear are a little too tight for my taste, but I do wear the red shirt, which makes my skin look bronzed and sexy. I slip into my loose Levi jeans and dig through my closet until I find my most comfortable loafers. I pull my hair out of its ponytail and brush it until it's shiny and smooth. That's the only good thing about having fine hair—it's glossy.

When I come back downstairs, Paul's eyes travel up and down my body, and I suddenly wish I'd worn a regular T-shirt. Am I sending the wrong signals? What signals do I want to send?

Paul drives us in his little yellow car. It's an ancient Beetle with rust crawling all over the doors, but it feels like a tank as we buzz down the street. It doesn't have air conditioning, so we roll down the windows. The engine is so loud that we don't talk, but I find myself smiling the whole way. His car is a junker, but it's fun.

We park outside the french fries place and a woman comes out to our car to take our order. Our town still has a lot of old-fashioned places like this. Drive-in movies, antique soda fountains, trolley cars, and even an old steam engine train that still runs. Al's French Fries, a real drive-in diner, is my favorite. When the waitress comes out with our root beer floats and fries, and I smell the salty grease and taste the sweet creamy soda, I'm glad I live here, where people know how to hold on to the good parts of the past.

“What year are you?” I ask Paul, just for something to talk about.

“I'm a senior next year. Same as you.”

“Are you planning on going to college?”

“Oh, yeah. For sure.”

“What do you want to study?”

He stuffs a few fries into his mouth, looking at me wryly. “Most people regret asking me that.”

“I think I can take it.”

“Okay. I want to study theology.”

“Theology? You mean about God?”

“Yeah. And religion.” He says this defiantly, like he expects me to make fun of him.

“Do you want to be a priest or something?” I ask, suddenly very disappointed. I hadn't even noticed that somewhere along the line, I'd started to like him. As in
like
like.

“God, no,” he says, then seems to hear himself and chuckles. “No. I'm just interested in the phenomenon of religion.” He looks through the windshield at the trees swaying in the wind. Right behind Al's is a small stream, with tons of trees and bushes crowded around it to drink. I can hear the gurgle of the water through our open car windows, and it sounds just like a lullaby to me. I glance again at Paul, who seems to be thinking hard as he looks at the millions of green leaves. Something he's thinking about seems to get him excited, and he turns to me, animated. “Did you know that every human culture has some form of religion?”

“I've never really thought about it.”

“So either,” he says, jabbing a french fry into the air for emphasis, “either there's an innate human need for some belief structure, or there really is a creator that we kind of sense somewhere up there, in the ether.”

Xander would be throwing a conniption. She thinks that religion amounts to a fairy tale for children that people make up because they don't want to believe they can really die. “So I guess you're pretty religious, huh?” I try to keep the judgment out of my voice.

“Not really. My family is Unitarian, but we don't go to church every weekend. I just find religion fascinating.”

So he's not a fanatic, but still, something about this conversation makes my hackles rise.

We eat our fries and sip our floats for a minute. I snatch little glances at him, watching his square jaw work at his food, his hazel eyes dance around. He's not talking, but he's thinking. I have a feeling he's always thinking. “But you must believe in God,” I finally say.

He thinks about this for a second, and I wait patiently. I don't mind this about him, because I'm the same way. When someone asks me a big question, I have to take some time to think. Not everyone can stand the wait.

Finally, he puts his float down on the tray between us. “Yeah, I do believe in God. I'm not sure what He—excuse me—
She
looks like, or is like, but somehow the universe seems to make more sense if there's a . . . I don't know, a
cause
behind everything. You know? Evolution explains
how
we came to be. But nothing really explains
why.
And that's the question I want to study—why?”

“You'll never get an answer.”

“I know.” He beams me with a brilliant smile. “What about you? Do you believe in God?”

It seems to make him happy to be talking about this with me. It doesn't make me happy, though.

I lean my head back while I think about it. Dad quotes literature the way some people quote the Bible, and that always felt like enough for me. But when Mom died, I wondered where she went. An entire person, all her thoughts, her feelings, her personality, her sense of humor, her laugh, her
being
—could all of that really
vanish?
Somehow my mind can't accept that. Xander would say believing in the afterlife is wishful thinking, but I'm not sure it is. I believe, or maybe I just hope, that there's an afterlife of some kind.