Onward Toward What We're Going Toward (15 page)

A man in front of them turned around and stared at Lijy, who was practically using Chic to hold herself up. He shook his head and grabbed his son's hand and led him away.

“You're making a scene, Lijy.”

She held out an envelope. “I wrote this . . . ” She dropped the envelope.

Lomax reached for it, but Chic swatted his hand away and picked it up. It had his name written across the front.

“Good luck,” Lijy slurred. Then she zigzagged toward the seats. She cut in front of one guy, then cut back, going in the opposite direction.

“What's the matter with Aunt Lijy?” Lomax asked.

“She's drunk.”

“I know but why?”

“Because she had too much to drink.”

“I know what drunk means, Dad. Why did she do it?”

“I don't know,” Chic said and folded the envelope and stuck it in his pocket.

Mary sat beside Chic in the minivan, his duffel bag in his lap. She didn't know a thing about him, except that he was interested in her, or she thought he was interested in her; she couldn't be sure. She was losing her touch; she used to be able to get any man's attention, but the cowboy at the Brazen Bull wouldn't even turn an eye toward her. Now she was down to this, a guy who lived in a nursing home—though he didn't seem like he should be living in a nursing home. He'd told her he didn't have to be there, but had moved there for the company. After the third time she called it a nursing home, he corrected her and said it was technically an “assisted living” facility. He said, with a smirk, that he needed assistance living; he said it like he was making a joke, but she wasn't sure she got the joke. Did he mean that he needed help going to the bathroom and stuff like that? She asked him, and he said that was not what he meant. She waited for the punch line, but it never came. Instead, he stared at her like she was supposed to say something, but she didn't say anything.

There was an odd smell in the van, musty and sweaty, and Mary knew it must be coming from Chic . . . or it could be Green's dirty suits, which were in a laundry bag behind her seat. Maybe the sun had baked them? She cracked the window. The whisper
voice told her that this was a bad idea. Green was in the hospital, and she was in his minivan with a man who could be the reason,
who actually probably was the reason,
for the old man smell clogging up her nostrils. She looked at Chic and smiled. “Ready?”

“Ready as I'll ever be.”

Mary turned over the ignition. The radio—Rock 106, Peoria's classic rock station—blasted Heart's “Barracuda” from the speakers. She loved this song and remembered a time when she thought of herself as a barracuda. She glanced in her rearview mirror and saw a retirement home bus. She backed out of the parking spot carefully, but before she could get halfway out, she had to stop to let a group of old people, walking single file toward the bus like a sixth-grade class, cross behind her. A white-haired lady with a walker made eye contact with her, while a bald guy in a flannel shirt wearing a loose wristwatch waved. Mary thought of Green in the hospital. She had held his hand last night, and it felt bony, like his long fingers were pencils. She hated what happened to the human body over time. You need to get back to the hospital, the whisper voice said. What are you doing with this guy?

Chic slouched down in the seat, hugging his duffel bag against his chest. “Don't say anything,” he whispered. “There's Morris. Don't move.” A guy wearing a Members Only windbreaker brought up the rear of the line. He was looking around with concern—right, left, over his shoulder. Chic was scrunched so far down in his seat he was practically on the floor. “I'm supposed to be on that bus. Jesus Christ, Morris is going to see me.”

This was a new low. She was “kidnapping” an old man from a nursing home. His assisted living residence, the loud voice said back, and it wasn't exactly kidnapping. You asked him to come with you, and he agreed. He likes you. And you sorta like him or think you could like him, in time.

“You'll have to drive me back to We Care,” Chic said from his slouched position. “In Middleville. When we're done.”

“I know. You told me.”

“It's a half-hour drive.”

“That's fine.”

“That's a half hour there and a half hour back.”

“I know. I got it.”

“I have to be back by ten.”

“You told me. I remember.”

“I'm just saying.”

“I got it.”

Once everyone had disappeared into the bus, Mary eased the minivan out of the spot and turned the corner into the lot where the valet guys were huddled by the entrance to the casino.

“Okay. It's safe now.”

“You sure?”

“It's fine.”

Chic sat back up and put on his seat belt. “That was close.”

This is the biggest mistake of your life, the whisper voice told her.

“I haven't been to a bar in years. I never went to bars that much to begin with. My wife didn't like them. She's dead though. I'm a widower. Or a widow. Is it widower or widow? I'm widowed. Can a man be a widow?”

“You told me your wife died. Three times now.”

Chic shrugged. “She hated me. Did I tell you that? Hate probably isn't the right word. I did some things that made her mad. That's probably more accurate.”

Mary wasn't exactly sure why she'd decided to take Chic to the Brazen Bull. It had come to her during her shift, and she went with it. She told him that she was going to hustle pool and it would help if there was a man with her.

“Aren't you going to ask me why my wife hated me?”

“How about we don't talk about your wife.”

“She didn't really hate me. I just said that. I haven't really been with a woman in a while, and I thought it would make you
feel sorry for me, if you thought my wife hated me. I don't want you to feel sorry for me.”

Mary kept her eyes on the road. She didn't care if his wife hated him or not. She was dead now, anyway.

“I got a confession. I should have told you this. I don't think I can fight anyone. I mean I've never been in a fight. Actually, I take that back. One time. With my brother. Wasn't really a fight. He pulled me out a window. What I'm saying is that I probably won't be much help with this pool hustle thing.”

“I don't think you'll have to fight anyone.”

They stopped at a light at Creve Coeur Avenue, about a mile down from the Pair-a-Dice. Next to them was a baby blue Mustang—Mary knew it was a '65. The driver, a guy with feathered blond hair parted in the middle, was wearing mirrored sunglasses. At that moment, Mary would have given anything—
anything
—to be sitting in that Mustang. The light changed.

“Oh, that's a good restaurant. We sometimes stop there on the way home from the casino.” Chic pointed out the window at a Denny's, its parking lot half full. “I like the eggs over my hammy. Get it, like sun over Miami?

“I get it.”

“What do you think of Florida?”

“I don't really.”

“As a place to go. A destination. A place to live.”

“It's hot.”

“It's hot,” Chic repeated. “I did my honeymoon in Florida. Did I tell you that?”

“How about we don't talk about our pasts?”

“I'm just trying to get to know you.”

“But you're not really asking me questions. You're just telling me things about yourself. How about let's concentrate on the right now.”

Chic looked out the window. “You have any kids?”

She didn't take the bait.

“Married?”

“I told you.”

“Happily married?”

“Let's not talk. Okay. We're almost there. It's right up here.”

Mary drove into the parking lot of the Brazen Bull and pulled into a spot next to a beat-up van with a ladder strapped to its roof. There was a bumper sticker on the ladder that read, IF ALL ELSE FAILS, USE A BIGGER HAMMER. The only other car in the parking lot was a Geo Metro.

“Looks like this place used to be a fast food restaurant,” Chic said. “That's the drive-through right there. What was this, a McDonald's or something?”

“I don't know. It's a bar now.”

“A fast food restaurant that's now a bar. Who would have thought? Things change, huh?”

Mary reached behind the seat and dug through the laundry bag until she found one of Green's sport coats, the maroon one. “Put this on,” she told Chic. Under the laundry bag was a pair of alligator slip-on loafers. She handed them to Chic.

“My God, these are the worst shoes I've ever seen. Is this your husband's stuff?” Chic slipped on the sport coat over his windbreaker. The sleeves hung beyond his hands. “This doesn't fit me.”

Mary rolled up the sleeves. “Let me see those shoes.” She took them and stuffed tissues from her purse into the tips of the shoes.

“They're not going to fit me. I don't care how much Kleenex you stuff in 'em.”

“Just put 'em on, okay?”

Chic took off his jogging shoes and put on the loafers. He was right. They didn't fit, not even close.

“Why are you making me wear all this stuff?”

“Just deal with it. Okay. Humor me.”

On the walk across the parking lot, Chic's heels kept slipping out of the oversized loafers, and the soles thwacked the concrete.
Once they were inside, Mary put “Barracuda” on the jukebox. Chic tried not to move. He looked the place over. At the pool table, a college kid and an older guy dressed like a motorcycling cowboy were facing off. A couple sat at a table drinking brown liquor. A fat guy wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off was belly up at the bar.

Mary ordered a tomato juice and was sipping it through a straw while she watched the pool game. Chic thwacked across the bar. The college kid stopped sighting up his pool shot to glare at him. Chic slipped into a booth, not even noticing the look he was getting, and set his duffel bag on the table and fished out a notebook. He opened to a poem he was working on. He'd been struggling with it for two days. So far he had one line:
Around the corner is the end.
He glanced up from his notebook to notice Mary staring at him. Her eyes seemed to say, what are you doing? Behind her, the bartender was wiping down the bar; the guy at the bar was watching television; the college kid hit his shot and the cue ball clicked into another ball. A line came to him, in the same way that all lines of poetry did, dropping out of the heavens and into his mind—
the end is the end is the end
. He reread the line. Nah. He didn't like it. He scratched it out. He flipped back a few pages. To get the juices flowing, it helped to look over old poems. He read one of his favorites.