Burning (10 page)

But now, with a baby of her own soon to arrive, she watched our mother and Stefan as if she was glimpsing her future. Marko stood behind her, his arms wound around her belly, fingers splayed across it. He too watched and chuckled as Stefan played in the water. And when he stood up in the shallow pool, arching his back so that he could pee outside the water onto the hard dirt ground, Marko threw back his head and laughed, delighted.

My father and Romeo were working on repairing a hubcap, Romeo holding it steady while my father hammered out
the dents. They worked well together, Romeo anticipating my father’s every move and adjusting the hubcap before my father even told him what to do.

We had told fewer fortunes since the weekend had ended; Marko assured us that it was worthwhile for us to wait the five days for the Burning Man festival to conclude up the road. Just as the revelers had wanted their fortunes read on their way into the encampment, so would many stop to visit upon exiting.

Ben Stanley’s visit had been one of just a few readings that day, and truly it was all I could think about. I could not stop my mind from turning to the pattern of the cards he had drawn. It was my job to help my customers find connections in the cards that turned up on the table, but oftentimes I found myself stretching to make everything fit together. That, I think, is what makes me so good at what I do: I think quickly, I ferret out information from my customers that make sense of the cards. The
gazhè
pay well for being told what they want to hear.

But today’s reading had been different. Or perhaps what had been different today was not the cards, but rather myself.

I finished drying the dishes and carried them into the motor home to put them away. Alek was sitting at the little table playing on his Nintendo DS. He did not look up as I came in. The tinny sound of his game grated on my nerves.

At last my work was done. I took from my pocket the twenty-two dollars that Pete and Hog Boy had paid me and added it to the billfold where my father kept the money.
It was bulging already; we would pay for the cars in Reno with cash, and our fortune-telling had added substantially to the money we had brought. I had told Ben Stanley and his friends that people usually pay fifty to a hundred dollars for a reading. This of course was not true, but I knew from long experience that they would feel the reading was more valuable if they thought they were getting a bargain. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered if Pete’s Melissa was angry with him for spending all her money.

Then I unplugged my phone from where it had been charging near the dashboard.

“Nice talking with you, Alek,” I said over my shoulder as I left.

He just grunted, eyes riveted to the tiny screen in his hands.

Even in the few minutes I’d been inside, the night had cooled significantly.

Mother held Stefan wrapped in a towel on her lap and Violeta sat beside her. My father and Marko were smoking. Romeo was just pulling his guitar from its case, tuning it.

“Lala,” he called. “Come listen to this song I am working on. It is for our wedding.”

“Later,” I answered. “I want to rest alone for a little while. It quiets my mind.”

He called after me but I pretended I could not hear him over the roar of a passing truck. I went around the side of our tent and sat cross-legged on the ground behind it. My phone was in my hands, but I did not look at it.

Instead I looked out at the flat expanse of the desert.

And my thoughts turned to my wedding, which grew closer with each passing day.

We were to be wed on the twenty-third of September, the day after my eighteenth birthday. Traditionally my people elected to marry their children even younger, but the state of Oregon requires that those under eighteen get their parents’ written consent, and my parents preferred—like many Gypsy people—to avoid unnecessary interactions with the authorities.

Violeta too had been married within a week of her eighteenth birthday. Her wedding was beautiful. It had cost a small fortune and our people had traveled, some quite far, to attend. I was the maid of honor. Romeo was the best man. All through the reception everyone came up to us, kissing us and saying, “You two will be next!” It was no secret that Romeo and I had been promised to each other for years.

This had not bothered me before, when the date of the wedding had seemed so far off. It had seemed … comfortable, I suppose, to know that my future had been well planned by the people who loved me and knew me the best, my family. And to marry the brother of my sister’s husband—this would guarantee that I could always be close with Violeta. But recently my feelings had changed, though I was loath to admit this even to myself. When my thoughts turned to the impending wedding, I felt my heart thrumming hard like a caged bird.

I did not want to think about it anymore. I tried not to listen as Romeo strummed the first notes of his song, but the
sweet strains of his music were inescapable. Tears I could not explain filled my eyes.

I pressed the button on my phone, bringing up the book I was reading,
The Catcher in the Rye
. I had read it before, but sometimes I liked to reread books that touched me in a way I did not fully understand. It was like this with people, too; I was drawn to those who seemed complex, whose motivations were unclear, whose desires were complicated.

So why did I think again and again of Ben Stanley? He seemed no mystery to me. An average boy, more handsome than most, this was true, but not special in any way I could see. I understood his desires and motivations—for one thing, he desired the press of my flesh. That had been easy to read in his blue-gray eyes. I smiled to myself, remembering the way he had looked at me.

And he wanted to make his family proud. This I could understand as well. I too wanted to please my family. I worked hard to be good at the things that were of value to them—learning to cook and keep house, watching my mother as she told clients their fortunes. And I avoided showing them the parts of myself that they might not approve of; I did not discuss the books I read, assuming that it would bother them—especially my father—that I derived such pleasure from the
gazhikanò
writers.

Perhaps there was something more to Ben Stanley, something that was not so easy to see but that my subconscious recognized as interesting, complex. Maybe this was why my thoughts had returned to him, again and again, all through
dinner, when I should have had my focus on my parents, my siblings, and my future husband.

Or perhaps I was fooling myself. Maybe there was nothing deep about the
gazhò
’s pull on me. Maybe it was simply lust that drew me to him. For the attraction I felt was undeniable.

I shook my head. Unable to really concentrate on the words, I thumbed through the familiar text. Perhaps I was as bad as Alek, filling my time with images on a screen. Was his video game really any worse than this story of a spoilt
gazhò
?

I came upon the quote that explained the novel’s unusual name. Holden Caulfield was speaking with his sister, Phoebe, telling her what he wanted to become.

He says to her, “You know that song, ‘If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye’?”

And Phoebe tells him, “It’s ‘If a body
meet
a body coming through the rye’! It’s a poem. By Robert Burns.”

Then Holden Caulfield explains what he would like to do: Stand in a field of rye near the edge of a cliff and keep the children playing in the rye from falling over. It made a pretty picture, a boy standing near a cliff’s edge, the wind swaying the tall rye grass, and laughing children protected by his spread arms.

This image in my mind made me recall Ben Stanley’s reading. I thought of him—the Fool—dancing merrily along the path, about to tumble off the edge of the cliff. And I saw in my mind’s eye, as if in a dream, myself, a catcher of fools, coming out from somewhere and saving him—pulling him back from the precipice, turning him away.

But in my daydream it was not just safety I turned him toward. Instead, I turned him toward myself. I imagined him realizing what I had done for him, looking down at me with grateful eyes and his arms encircling my waist and his mouth slanting across mine, and our lips meeting in a kiss, a first kiss that fed the fire inside me.

I played with this image for a while, lingering on the idea of Ben’s kiss. It would be soft, I felt, tender and gentle.

An alarm went off in my brain. To imagine myself kissing the
gazhò
—what was wrong with me? Reluctantly, I forced myself away from the thought of Ben’s kiss. Instead I focused on the thought of the cliff. What if
I
were the one about to step over the precipice? Only I would not be blind, unaware. In a way I was heading there, every day, as my wedding day drew closer. The difference was only that I knew what I was stepping toward, where my path was leading.

Who would be there for me? Who would be my catcher in the rye?

The answer was clear. No one. There was no catcher in the rye for me, no one waiting to pull me back from the precipice over which childhood inevitably falls. Only there were people pushing me, urging me forward over that steep drop—my parents, Violeta, Romeo—all of them were waiting, eagerly, to see me fall.

“That chick was fucking hot,” said Hog Boy. “But she scared the shit out of me.”

We were standing around in front of the Gypsum Store, waiting for Melissa to get off work. Pete wanted me there for moral support when he told her what he’d done with the money; Hog Boy stuck around to watch Pete squirm.

“What’d you think about the reading?” Pete looked eager, as if he was at least hoping Melissa’s money wasn’t pissed away on nothing.

“It was pretty weird,” I admitted. “I mean, you know I’m a skeptic, but she seemed to know all kinds of stuff.”

“Who cares what she said?” said Hog Boy. “It was worth the twenty-two bucks just to stare down her shirt for half an hour.”

I fought down the urge to smack the side of his head. It didn’t make any sense for me to feel protective of Lala; I’d barely met her, and she sure had shot me down when I asked her out. But I didn’t like the thought of Hog Boy’s sick mind lingering on her.

“Yeah,” said Pete miserably. “Listen, Hog Boy, don’t mention anything to Melissa about how hot she was, okay? She’s going to be mad enough as it is. I don’t want her to get all jealous, too.” He started chewing on his lip, imaging Melissa’s reaction if Hog Boy started describing the girl who had her money.

“Hey, Pete,” said Hog Boy. “Lemme borrow your truck tonight.”

“No way,” Pete answered. Then, “What for?”

“I’m thinking maybe the reason the Gypsy chick turned down our boy Ben is that she was hoping—you know, maybe she’s hungry for a big, thick pork sausage.” He rolled his hips, thrusting them into the air.

“I don’t think so, Hog Boy,” laughed Pete. “You saw the way she kept eyeing Ben—even if she did turn him down.”

I tried my best to sound casual. “What do you mean, eyeing me?”

Hog Boy guffawed. “No way, Pete. She was just doing her job. You know—like how a stripper flirts with all the guys in her place, and the more dollars you put on the table, the more into you she gets.”

“Lala was nothing like a stripper.”

Pete heard it—the tone in my voice. Hog Boy was either oblivious or baiting me, because he said, “Wish she
was
a stripper. I’d be willing to lay down some serious cash to see—”

I didn’t know what he was going to say next. Nothing good. But I didn’t wait to hear it. My hand shot out and connected with his nose
—pop
, just like that.

One thing about Hog Boy—he’s an easy bleeder. Didn’t take more than a tap to get the blood flowing.

“Fuck you, Ben,” he said, tilting his head back to control the bleeding. He grabbed the hem of his shirt and pushed it against his nose. “This was a new shirt, too. I’m out of here.”

He half stumbled down the street, not really watching where he was going. I smiled grimly at his retreating back.

“Don’t you think that was a little harsh? I mean, not that Hog Boy doesn’t deserve it. But over a girl you don’t even know?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, man. I just couldn’t stand it—hearing him talk about her like that. Knowing that he was
thinking
about her.”

Pete’s appraising gaze made me uncomfortable. After a minute he whistled. “Man, you’ve got it bad.”

I didn’t bother denying it. “Pretty lame, huh? Less than a week before I leave the state, and I fall for a girl who’ll only talk to me if I’m paying her. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong girl.”

“Can’t you just, I don’t know, channel some of that energy toward Cheyenne? I’m pretty sure she would take you back, even if you do have one foot out the door.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said vaguely. I hadn’t ever told him or Hog Boy what had happened with Cheyenne—how she’d wanted to sleep with me, how I’d balked and run.

“We could go on a double date this weekend before we all leave town,” said Pete. He sounded hopeful now, making plans. “Maybe I could borrow my mom’s Taurus and we could go into Reno for a pizza.”