Wanting Rita (16 page)

“Son of a bitch, Rita! You didn’t have any cause to talk to me like that! I’ve taken so much shit from that guy! That shithead! I always treated you good, didn’t I? Never said anything! Always respectful to you and that damned D. J. jerk! You can’t just walk over me like that! I’ve been good to you and your friends. I’ve got feelings, dammit! I’m not just some fat nobody!” He spun away from my view. “Dammit! What the hell are you trying to prove! Get up!”

Rita stayed down, head bent close to the carpet until damp strands of hair brushed the floor. She held the strained posture, like a sorrowful whipped dog, still reaching for her master’s hand.

Robbie turned, face red and pinched. He focused on her gradually. “Didn’t I do you favors? Never asked for nothing!? Hey, you know…what goes around comes around, Rita! You be nice to somebody and they’ll be nice to you.”

Rita nodded.

“Then why did you talk to me like that?”

I couldn’t hear what she said, but it seemed to soften him. His shoulders relaxed. “Get up! Rita. For God’s sake, get up!”

She was motionless.

Seeing her resolve and fearing a customer might wander in, Robbie reluctantly, and with agitation, finally gave her his left hand. She took it, held it preciously for a time, and then brought it to her lips. She kissed it. To complete the penitent ritual, and to be absolved from her sin, she pressed the hand lightly to her forehead.

Robbie shuddered.

A long moment later, Rita released his hand and rose. Both stood in an embarrassed silence, eyes near-missing the other, until, finally, Rita turned and started toward the front entrance.

I scampered away out of the light.

Chapter Nine

“Have you been dating Robbie Styles, too?” I asked, gravely, weaving out of the Holiday Inn parking lot, fishing for words in a murky pool of inebriated emotions.

She looked at me with impersonal eyes. “I thought you were in the car.”

“I wasn’t. I watched.”

“Don’t be a jerk, Alan James. Robbie’s a friend.” She made a vague gesture. “Well, was…a friend.”

I drove clumsily, under the speed limit. We both leaned gratefully toward the vents, feeling the warm breath of the heat rush over us.

“Alan James, you must be drunk. The car’s moving all over the road. You’re over the yellow line!”

“I am not!”

“Why do you always say you’re not doing something, when it’s obvious that you are? It’s one of your weirdest qualities.”

I ignored her, slapped myself across the face and pointed my crazy eyes on the meandering road. I felt dizzy and lazy, my mouth was numb. I was terrified that a cop was going to pull us over and, conversely, I wanted to speed and crash into the ludicrous night with mad ravings of love and hate and demonic laughter. I somehow restrained myself.

It seemed hours before we arrived at the Hartsfield exit. Rita had fallen into another one of her strange silences. I glanced at her, at one point, and saw her eyes shifting about, anxiously, as if she were seeking help from one of her guardian angels.

Approaching Jack’s from Sawmill Road, we saw a soft amber glow hovering low in the night sky, as if a house were on fire. I turned left and, through the dark trees, Jack’s seem to drift slowly toward us, bright and strange, like a phantom ship on a black sea. It was evident that Jack’s was having a stellar night. I wanted to turn back, but Rita was suddenly on the edge of the seat, alert, eyes wide, picking up the busy neon lights. We began to hear the dull blare of horns and we instantly knew that the Hartsfield Vikings had won the game.

“We won, Alan James! We won!” Rita shouted.

“Well, whoop di-doo,” I said, flatly. “Those blockheads are actually going to the playoffs.”

Jack’s parking lot was a bright and giddy chaos. Cars flooded the place, circling the lot, parking where they met obstacles and clogging the entrance and exits. Headlights flashed high beams, feisty girls swung wild from the open doors of cars and cheered. A firecracker rocketed high, screamed and exploded into red, glassy diamonds. More cheers and blasting horns. Boys barked like hound dogs chasing squirrels, as another singing firecracker roared skyward and broke into a fist of thunder, raining green sequins over Jack’s roof.

A paunchy security guard darted about like a duck in a rage, bellowing orders, but was playfully bounced from car to car, like the ball in a pinball machine.

I parked the car opposite Jack’s, in a weeded area, next to five others. A red and black NO TRESPASSING sign was clearly posted. It had always been ignored.

Rita pushed out of the car and was hurrying across the two-lane road before I’d come to a complete stop. I caught up to her in Jack’s parking lot, where bedlam had taken hold: kids walked across cars, sat on cars, drummed on cars, smoked on cars and danced to The Bee Gees’,
You Win Again
, between cars.

Most of Jack’s patrons had spilled out of the diner and had joined in, including Jack O’Brian himself, a ruddy-faced man with a bald dome, stubby arms and a coarse pirate-like voice. With a fat stogie clamped between his loose lips, he danced down the stairs to the parking lot, doing hip shots and head wobbles. It wasn’t pretty, but the crowd loved it, erupting into piercing whistles and screams. “More, big Jack! Go big Jack. Get em’ Jack!”

Jack bowed politely. He hopped high, dropping lightly down, snapping to attention, raking the crowd with his bulging eyes, as if to say “Don’t nobody turn away!” Then, like a little cherub, he broke into an amazing Irish jig. The crowd crushed forward in a collective “Whhaaattt!?” They gaped, clapped, and cheered him on as he fluttered and bounced playfully, arching his stumpy arms above his head, circling his space with quick, agile feet, puffing aggressively on his cigar. A heavy woman joined him, skipping, twirling and kicking. The crowd parted to give them all the room they needed to dance through the rowdy night.

Moments later, a chorus of girls and guys joined them, swinging careless arms and rubbery legs, finishing the dance with a clumsy Rockefeller Center Rockettes’ style kicking chorus that left them winded, wild and thirsty.

And then, every boy became a quarterback—cocking a tense arm, heaving a can of beer through the air to be tracked, reached for, and snatched—just missing the windshield, the girlfriend’s head, the hood of the car. Tabs popped loudly, heads snapped back and beer sprayed the world in ejaculations of victory.

Rita was on the periphery, getting all the news about the game from Ellen Tucker and her boyfriend, Tom Mullen, the senior class vice president; a cleaned and pressed manikin with startled eyes. “We’re going to the playoffs in Ohio!” Tom shouted over the celebration. “We won in the last 30 seconds with a 20 yard pass. Dusty was brilliant. Just brilliant! I can’t believe you weren’t there!”

“Family stuff,” Rita said, flatly. “Just couldn’t make it.”

It was nearly impossible not to feel the almighty joy of it all. I began tapping my foot to the music and bobbing my head, like a real participant. And even though I tried my sarcastic teenage best not to feel pride in our football team and high school, I was secretly delighted that the Hartsfield Vikings had won and were going to Ohio to “kick some ass.”

“We did it, Alan!” Rupert Tugs screamed, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me about, like I was a rag doll. His eyes flamed with a mad ecstasy. “We fucking beat them, Alan!” He was blocky and square, like a Maytag refrigerator. He’d always loathed me, even before I’d left for private school. He beat me up in the 3rd grade and again in the 5th. “We kicked their asses. We kicked their fucking asses!”

The spirited night was so heightened that guys who had hated my guts for years grinned at me and slapped my back. I glanced around, astounded to see that there were no enemies, no evils and no limitations. Camaraderie and merriment reigned.

I nodded firmly to them all as I was propelled into the swaying masses. Although I called for Rita, she melted into the dancing crowds, shouting, laughing and drifting out of sight. So I threw myself forward into the mad foam of beer and conquest, slapping backs and saying things like, “We’re going to kick some Ohio ass!” or “Now those assholes will know Hartsfield!”

The feeling was a rare one—that fine sense of belonging; to have a common cause that lifted me high into the lower and minor consciousness of popular value; to find the right pitch of the night, and sing out like all the other bulls, a howling mating call that drew the girls, the sharp nods of approval, and a cold crinkly can of illegal beer. I drank it all in, with gulps of pleasure.

When Terry Gardner, aka “Blade Man,” surely a Hell’s Angel in training, wrapped my shoulders with the wide sweep of his massive arm and shouted, “We’re number one, Alan! We’re number one, man!” I glowed. Then I pumped a fist of defiance into the night sky, made the terrible face of a nerd to be reckoned with, and shouted back in a raw and savage voice right in the center of Blade Man’s red stormy face, “YEAH!”

I finally found Rita in the back lot. As my father would say, she was all “caught up,” and for the next 15 minutes, I dragged along behind her, like a poor soul, as she covered the remaining real estate, researching and discussing every detail of the game, listening to the same stories in tireless variation from overheated girls and raucous hot-breathing guys. She was animated and thrilled with each telling and, unfortunately, she was also looking for Dusty. I sensed and smelled it. I knew the look.

“He’ll be here soon,” somebody said.

“He’s with Amber,” another shouted.

Amber Conrad was pretty—even sexy—but next to Rita, she was plain ole ordinary, which meant that I was growing more edgy by the minute. When Rita took my hand, squeezing it, intimately, it was an easy lie to believe that she was still with me. The booze tickled and taunted my emotions and helped to support that lie. I was a man child, firmly anchored next to the goddess and, by some fortunate whim of the gods, I had become sanctified.

Rita introduced me to her friends with pride, and they, shockingly, returned favorable expressions and scrutinized me anew. Surely if Rita was with me, there was something there, in “that Alan,” that they had missed. There was perhaps some shining jewel of quality that had been buried deep inside me that Rita had brought forth from the hard rock of my personality.

And so it was, from that night on to graduation, the other students and I, once sworn enemies, became, at least, dubious friends.

“I’m starving, Alan James,” Rita said, after she’d exhausted the stories and her voice was hoarse, low and sexy. “Let’s go inside and get something to eat.”

We found a narrow booth that had just been vacated, with a clear view of the entrance. We had already ordered cheeseburgers and sodas when, from outside, a boisterous cheer from the lot drew our attention to the windows. Rita stood, expectantly, and faced the entrance. I lowered my head and drank ice water.

Dusty entered Jack’s, looking every bit the conqueror that he was, with a bright grin and the flush of lingering exhilaration on his fatigued face. His hair, still damp from a shower, was combed back smoothly from his broad forehead. He wore jeans, a robin egg blue shirt, and a black leather jacket that gave him the look of a good-natured punk. His eyes glowed like a brand new day, with all the promise of eternal blue skies and wide open vistas. He took in the standing ovation with a series of slow rapturous blinks. I studied Rita and saw a suppressed thrill pass across her face. Amber noticed it too, and she scowled at Rita, drawing Dusty close.

When Rita left for the bathroom, and she went out of her way to pass Dusty, I knew it was over between us. Perhaps she had slipped him a note or maybe they’d spoken earlier by phone. Maybe it was just a recognition—an intuitive understanding that they were meant for each other: their attraction was unmistakable and terrible.

The food arrived just as Rita returned, but I’d lost my appetite. So had Rita. The room vibrated with energy and praise, as Dusty and Amber drifted to an awaiting booth and sat. Amber’s dewy worshipping eyes, famous sharp breasts and frosted long brown hair did all they could to hold Dusty’s attention, but the pull to Rita was a magnetic miracle. Dusty had sat strategically so that Rita had access to his gaze. They stole a couple of knowing, guilty glances, and everybody saw it. Amber and I began to brood.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t angry. Not then anyway. I’d known it all along. Known that Rita would move on. Why would she stay with me? It was an impossible thought and it always had been. So I began a slow retreat from her, and from all those splendid memories and emotions, when, with a great effort, she pulled her eyes from Dusty and returned to me. The turbulence would come later. I knew that. I knew that much about myself. When hurt came, I always had a delayed reaction to it. Now, I just felt isolated and small.

A moment later, Rita took my hand and looked at me sadly. A light glimmered from her eyes, gloomy, reflective, and I strained to grasp the process of her thoughts. “Alan James,” she said, softly, just barely audible. “I like you very much…”

I slid my eyes away from her, toward the windows. The parking lot party was still a thing of manic furor. I saw the red sweeping dome light of a police car.

“Alan James. Look at me.”

I didn’t.

She made a frustrated gesture. “Alan James…you know how much I like you…You know that.” She leaned in close and whispered. “Alan James…I showed you that, didn’t I? Do you think I do that with everybody?”