A Hole in the Universe (31 page)

She was still talking as he handed the phone to Delores. He found the broom and began pushing glass-splintered pickles and glittering chunks of meat loaf into the dustpan.

Delores was telling the old woman she was sure it hadn’t been Jada; her running through the yard was probably just a coincidence. He knew it wasn’t. Of course it had been Jada. She was paying him back for the other night.

Chocolate syrup and tomato juice sloshed underfoot. Delores had cleared enough of a space to open the back door. The soft chirp of crickets through the twilight was obliterated with each glass-rattling sweep of the broom.

“We’re getting there,” she said.

He looked at her.

“Gordon. It wasn’t Jada. She adores you. In a million years she wouldn’t do something like this,” she said, shoveling two hundred paper napkins into a sodden mound. “If she wanted something, she’d ask you.” She leaned the broom against the table. “Oh, Gordon!” She threw her arms around him. “I feel so bad for you. Here you are just getting started, then something like this has to happen.”

M
osquitoes kept buzzing at her ears. If there were any crickets, the other night sounds drowned them out—a far-off burglar alarm, sonic bursts of music from car radios, the intermittent cries of a woman for “Melio! Melio!”—all to the beat of a dribbled basketball, the gritty scrape of running sneakers, then with every
clung
of the rim a scuffle of male voices. “Get that shit outta my house!” one laughed now.

“Yeah. Get that shit outta my house,” Jada whispered in echo, the dull incantation steadying her in the darkness of the bandstand steps. Her uneasy eyes scanned the street. The Navigator was parked by the Liberty Rooming House. It looked empty, but Polie said he’d be watching. The bites on the back of her neck stung as she scratched them with the rough edge of the beeper. Knees to her chin, she tugged her shirt over her knees and ankles to keep the bugs away. She hadn’t been to school in a couple weeks. Not since her mother had been back. Vacation must have started, though. They’d probably keep her back again. If they did, she’d just quit and get a job. She’d be fourteen pretty soon. July 24, which shouldn’t be too far off from whatever the hell day or month this was. Like her mother would even remember. Like anyone would. “So fuck it,” she said aloud, then laughed, said it again.

She’d seen Gordon from a distance, going back and forth to work, or mowing his grass, or bringing groceries to Mrs. Jukas. Last night Delores’s car had been out there until midnight and Jada felt really jealous, then confused because she didn’t know who she hated more, Delores for being with Gordon, or Gordon for being with Delores, or both of them for not being with her. She gnawed the side of her thumbnail until she tasted blood. She sat on her hands and waited.

A low red car slowed down. She stood up. She couldn’t see if it was the Toyota Spider or not. No beep from Polie. The car passed, so she sat down. Her hand closed over the bulge on her belly, the bag of rocks in her shorts. This deal was huge. She was supposed to count it first, twenty hundreds, before she passed the bag. Beep, Polie had said, then head straight back. Any trouble, just keep on going right by the Navigator. Stuff the money down her underpants and run like hell.

Polie and Feaster had bought her a Big Mac and a large Chicken McNuggets on the way here, but her stomach was rumbling again. She was hungry all the time now. Eating only made it worse. Maybe Polie would get her a Coke or something. Water, even. She jogged along the path up the rise to the SUV.

“Jesus Christ! That’s them!” Polie shouted as a red sports car stopped on the far side of the park. She ran back and sat on the bottom step.

Their headlights went off. She slapped her leg, and the mosquito flattened in a sticky mess. “C’mon! C’mon!” She ground her knuckles against the concrete step. Maybe they couldn’t see her. She stood up with her hands on her hips to make as big a target of herself as possible. One of these times something bad was going to happen. She was getting in too deep, but her mother owed Feaster all that money from before plus for the crack she needed now, and that wasn’t even counting anything for food or rent. Yesterday the electricity got turned off, but her mother called from a pay phone, crying and saying she had a new baby in the house. It came back on this morning. The sheriff had come by twice already with eviction notices, but they wouldn’t let him in.

Both car doors opened. A runty guy in a shiny black shirt started down the path. Arms folded, the other guy leaned against the car, watching. Halfway along, the runty guy called out and asked if she had something for him. She said she did.

“Bring it here, then.”

“First you gotta give me something.” She came off the path a few feet, then stopped.

“C’mere, then.” He gestured her closer. “Here. You gonna take it?” He held out a brown paper bag.

She grabbed the bag. It wasn’t supposed to be taped up. “Stupid ass,” she muttered, ripping it open. She counted quickly: twenty hundreds. Well, twenty bills; it was hard to tell what they were. She tried to see.

“C’mon! Hurry up!” He kept looking around. “C’mon!”

She pulled the bag from her shorts. The white guy hurried down the path. The Navigator was gone. Polie had taken off. Something was wrong.

“C’mon, give it over! I ain’t got all day!” The runty guy stepped closer. The other guy had a beard and his hair was longer. Fuck! It was the cop who’d chased her and Thurman on their last deal together. His arm went out. Thinking he had a gun, she threw the bag and the beeper in his face and ran toward the Liberty. They were close on her heels now. Cars came at her from both directions as she ran into the street. Men yelling.

“Stop, you little asshole! Stop! Police! Stop! Police! Police!” Holy shit! She had their money. Horns blared. A car braked onto the sidewalk. She opened her fist and flung the money up into the air before darting down the alley behind the Liberty. She ran and she ran, all the way to Gordon’s garage. Hours later, when no one had come, she ran home and fell onto the couch, exhausted and still shaking.

T
he still morning air was soft with the fragrance of roses. Gordon was spraying the bushes with his baking soda elixir when he saw a long broken cane on Mrs. Jukas’s side. It had been split at the base. Last night Delores had brought a slice of cherry pie over to Mrs. Jukas. Instead of using the walk, Delores must have blundered her way between the bushes.
Typical,
he thought as he pruned off the perfectly healthy cane. In her slavish need to please, she did more harm than good, he thought, then immediately flushed with guilt and desire for her.

Delores was the first woman he had ever slept with. The experience continued to be both profound and disconcerting. Though he wasn’t naive enough to think he was her first partner, he was sure there hadn’t been many others. She just didn’t seem the type. The sexual aspect of their relationship was far more exhilarating than anything he had ever imagined. He had never felt so much a part of another human being, so vulnerable and yet so strong. But the moment it ended he would be overcome with desolation. She would curve her body to his, wanting to be held, wanting to talk, when all he wanted was for her to leave so he could be alone. As soon as she got home she would call, and he would force himself to answer the phone. She deserved the same unfailing kindness and tenderness she gave, but it just wasn’t in him. Maybe it never had been. Maybe he had achieved nothing and this was all a charade, everything, everything about him. Maybe he would always be a shadow trailing truer, more substantial lives than his. Emotional intimacy came easier for women, Delores had said last night in another attempt to get inside his head. He couldn’t tell her how that kind of talk frightened him, left him feeling shallow and inadequate, wondering which realization was worse: that he had nothing to give or that there was nothing he wanted or needed from her. Or from anyone else, for that matter.

When he stirred now in the depths of night, it was Jilly Cross’s sweet face he saw in his dreams, and this was deeply disturbing. He would wake up feeling like a hypocrite, unprincipled, corrupt. In his prison fantasies he had struggled to be faithful to the same centerfold women. When he did have to replace one, it was always with guilt and self-loathing. Paper-worn but ageless, his women never parted their legs for the camera’s ugly eye or touched themselves or stared out with brazen seduction. Instead they gazed off shyly, bodies turned ever so slightly as if they had been just about to cover themselves when the shutter clicked.

He was finishing his cereal when the doorbell rang. He rinsed the bowl quickly and was on his way into the other room when the frantic banging started. Ever more cautious since Jada’s night here, he checked the window. His brother’s car was in the driveway.

“Dennis!” he said, opening the door.

Dennis rushed inside. “What the hell’s wrong with you? Don’t you ever think anything through?”

“What do you—”

“She’s scared out of her mind! What’re you doing, following her now? Stalking her?”

“I wasn’t—”

“She just told me! She comes out of the post office and there you are? Warning her? Telling her to stay away from me?”

“I just told her . . . I said you were married, that’s—”

“Like she didn’t know that, right? Look,” Dennis said, shaking his head in wordless fury. “I don’t know how else to say this to you. But you can’t be doing this. You can’t keep fucking up my life! I can’t handle it anymore. I mean, all these years I’ve been trying to put it all back together. You . . . you can’t do this! If you want this to work, if you want us to have any kind of relationship, you’ve gotta stay way, way out of my way, Gordon! Do you hear me? Do you know what I’m saying?” He threw up his hands. “Jesus Christ, are you even listening to me?”

“I just don’t want anything to happen to you and Lisa. And the kids. You’re my family.”

“Nothing’s going to happen. There’s just some things you don’t understand. Just because you want things a certain way . . . I mean, life’s not like that—
I’m
not like that.”

“What are you like, then?” Gordon asked, then coughed to clear his wheezy throat.

“I’m like you,” Dennis said with a forced smile. “I make mistakes, but fundamentally, deep down, in here”—he pointed to his heart—“I’m a good, decent guy.”

“Not if you can’t be faithful to your wife, you’re not.”

The smile curdled. “You know, I could always see right through you. Same thing with Dad. He could never say what he really meant. He was always avoiding people, slinking around corners, trying to change one thing into something else. Like after you went away, no matter what I did, it was never enough. Nothing was going to make him happy. Nothing! No matter how hard I tried,” Dennis spat. “He never said it—how could he?—but deep down he resented every lousy little bit of happiness Mom and I tried so hard to have. Somehow we became the bad ones—like we were the murderers!”

Gordon struggled not to flinch or blink. “I’m sorry.”

“No! Just be honest—with yourself, at least. You’re trying to scare Jilly away because
you
want her.” Dennis glanced at his watch, then opened the door. “But that’s not the way it works, big brother.” He patted Gordon’s arm and smiled. “Uh-uh, no sir, no way.”

 

 

Dennis’s words kept coming back. It had been years since Gordon had felt this angry with him. He’d always considered his brother not just his best friend, but his only friend. And all this time Dennis had resented him, his visits to Fortley made out of the same sense of duty that kept him married to Lisa.

The store stayed busy through the day. Neil’s sour mood worsened when June called in sick. Gordon was relieved when Neil left at noon to play golf with his accountant. Serena always seemed to have at least three people lined up at her register. He tried to stay up front to help bag or run price checks, but a few times he had to hurry out back to receive a delivery. A brief lull came at five-thirty. Without June there, Serena had been surprisingly friendly all day. She was complaining about Neil again.

“Does he play golf much?” Gordon asked as he rolled up his sleeves. When the late-afternoon sun poured through the plate glass, the balky air-conditioning had little effect.

“He’s not playing golf,” Serena scoffed, putting on her red sunglasses. “He’s in a bar somewhere. I can tell. I can always tell. Like his voice, the way it was so shaky, and when I said how he should just hire a new kid for the summer he couldn’t even look me in the eye, he was so out of it.”

“I think he’s under a lot of pressure right now,” Gordon said. Yesterday the produce wholesaler had called to say there would be no more deliveries until the bill was paid.

“Oh yeah? Well, welcome to the club, then, but you don’t see me taking off at noon. Like tonight—when I get home I got eight people waiting for me. Eight mouths I gotta feed and clean up after.”

“I’ll help close. That way you can leave sooner.”

“Oh, Jesus, not again!” Serena groaned as Cootie limped through the door carrying his rheumy-eyed dog.

“Neil here?” The old man winced with every step of his right foot. “He back yet?”

“No! I already told you, he’s gone for the day. He’s not coming back,” Serena said, fanning herself against the stench.

“But he said to come, that he’d be here. This bum foot, it’s hard, I can’t keep coming back like this.”

Gordon tried to hold his breath, but the smell was overpowering. The old man must have soiled himself days ago. There was no way Neil wanted him here.

“He’ll be here in the morning,” Gordon said.

“No! No, he told me, he gave me the time. I wrote it down. Here,” he said, spilling the dog onto the counter so he could look in his pockets. The dog licked Gordon’s wrist, then wiggled toward Serena, wagging a dry clump of feces with its tail.