Wide Blue Yonder (15 page)

After the first surge of glee at her own daring had worn off, she’d felt shame, then more shame, and a kind of angry hopelessness. What a stupid stunt, little kid stuff, really, something they used to do at recess, pretend to kiss the boys so they’d run away. She actually remembered doing that. Kisserbug, they’d called it. Cute, if you were in the second grade. And so gradually, the physical memory of him, his taste and feel and hot smell, were erased by the sneering inner voice that always knew the very worst thing to say.

It was after ten o—clock when she left work and paused just outside the door. Behind her the restaurant’s lights were dimmed so that they looked more lonesome than complete darkness would have. She hesitated because she had absolutely nowhere to go except back home. Maybe that’s what she should do. Except her mother was probably still awake, and these days it was just as hard to explain why she was home early as why she stayed out late.

Josie dug her keys out, took three steps across the parking lot, and stopped. A black Acura with a sunroof was pulled up next to her car. The driver’s window was open and someone’s arm was resting along the door, the fingers keeping time to the radio music she could only just hear, the thread of an old Beatles song, the one about Sexy Sadie:
you know you turned on every wu-un, you know you turned on everyone
.

Not knowing what to think, Josie crossed the lot and bent down to stick her head in the window. “Hey.”

Mitchell Crook wasn’t smiling, wasn’t even really looking at her. Was she in some new kind of trouble? “You work here?”

“Yeah.”

“I saw your car,” he explained after a moment.

“Oh.”

“Beefeater’s,” he said reflectively. “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten here.”

She shrugged, looking back at the restaurant. “Well, it kind of sucks.”

The Beatles song ended and a commercial came on, nothing he could pretend to pay attention to, so he fiddled with the tuner until he found another music station. God, he was acting weird, like a cop who’d forgotten how to arrest people. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, but a green T-shirt and jeans. The neck of the shirt fell below one side of his collar bone. A new territory for her greedy eyes. Since he wasn’t saying anything, she prompted, “Do you have to work tonight?”

“Yeah, in a little while. So, you want to tell me what all that was about the other night?”

“What all what was about?” But in that instant
she knew,
both what he meant and everything that would follow.

“Maybe you should get in the car.”

“Front or back seat?” Josie asked, and he looked as if he wasn’t sure it was supposed to be funny, as she’d meant it to be, then he reached over and unlatched the passenger door. She took her time walking around the front of the car where he could see her, because this time she was wearing something really good. Her pink sundress that was low and bare on top. As she walked she tried to rearrange herself without being obvious.

Once she was in the car she was glad for the music. Neither of them knew what to say or even how to look at each other. Josie crossed her legs carefully at the ankle. She especially wanted him
to notice her legs. Mitchell Crook pretended not to be watching them. He turned around with his back against the door so he was facing her. “OK, so where do you know me from?”

“You really don’t remember?”

“Remember what?”

She shook her head, mourning. “And here I thought it was so special.”

He finally figured out she was teasing. “Jeez.”

“Boy, you must have a guilty conscience.”

“Come on, where did I meet you?”

“Just around.” Josie ruffled the air with her fingers and smiled. The words
Taco Bell
were not going to pass her lips. She shifted her weight delicately on the car seat. His car was so classy. A real grown-up car, very new and clean-looking, with one of those leather covers on the steering wheel.

Mitchell Crook narrowed his eyes at her, thinking. “You know Tom Cook?”

“Nope.”

“Bobby Cook? Kim Burlingame?”

She shook her head. She wondered how long she could keep up her Mystery Girl act, before he figured out she was nobody. To change the subject she said, “Thanks for being so nice to me the other night.”

“Well, I wasn’t that nice.”

“Sure you were. You could have thrown my little punk ass in jail. It was such a totally messed-up situation.”

“It was a drug dealers’ gunfight and you’re lucky you didn’t get hurt.”

Josie tried to look chastened at this. But in fact nothing had happened, her heart was beating as if it would live forever, and joy was something she could almost hold in her hands. He was only sounding stern because he felt obliged to, the cop part of him
that had to keep making cop noises, or perhaps it just came easier to him. She thought about how she had drawn his face down to hers, the shock to her senses. She thought about doing it again. She said, “So you changed your mind and you came back to bust me.” “No, just to make sure you’re staying out of trouble.”

Now there was a flirting note in his voice that she recognized and knew how to answer. “Trouble? Me?”

“Yeah, you.” He smiled, his first real all-out smile. It just about finished her. The wild bad thing between her legs was making itself known, agitating, putting crazy pictures in her head, and again she had the sensation of wanting to slow things down, make sure they were really happening. She missed a beat and didn’t smile back the way she should have. When she finally got her face working, it must have twitched or blanched, because his smile lowered a notch.

She felt she had to apologize. “I’m sorry, I was just thinking how weird this is.”

“You think I’m weird?”

“No, it’s weird that you’re talking to me and you’re an actual human being.” Could she have said anything stupider? “I mean you being a cop and, all. How do you like it, ah, police work? Was it something you always wanted to do?” Lame. Conversation 101. But Mitchell Crook appeared to give it serious thought.

“I used to want to play ball.”

“Ball, like basketball?”

“Baseball. I played semipro for a while. In Texas.”

“Really?” Weak. But she couldn’t think of one thing to say about semipro baseball. Not one.

“Yeah. Pitcher. I had a fastball that clocked at eighty-fve miles an hour.” She knew to be impressed with that, although she didn’t want him to keep going on about baseball. It made her anxious, it was nothing he should be thinking about right now.

“Yeah. Then I blew out my arm. So much for that idea.” He shrugged as if to shake himself loose from the memory. “My Dad’s a cop. My uncle too. I kind of grew up with it. You know.”

Josie nodded seriously, to indicate the depth of her understanding. Then he said, “So you’re what, still in school?”

It killed her to admit it. She tried to make it sound as if school was something she only did in her spare time.

“I would have figured you for older.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. A year or two, maybe.”

The radio filled the silence. Josie knew what he was thinking about. Her stupid driver’s license that said she wasn’t eighteen yet, wouldn’t be until next April. That made her some kind of illegal, so that if he ever God … God. She couldn’t even think it. But it was what she wanted most in this world.

She said, “I bet girls lie about that stuff all the time. I bet nobody ever blames the guys.” That sounded like she was desperate, begging. She tried again. “Age is just a number. It’s nothing you should let define you as a person.”

Mitchell Crook said Sure, in an absent way, gazing out the windshield at nothing at all. That earlier joy was turning slippery and liquid and dense, like the mercury in a thermometer, falling away. She willed herself to keep silent, not to make things even worse. He leaned forward and turned off the radio. The only sounds were the engine and the air-conditioning whoosh that had been there all along. Was she supposed to leave now?

Then he said, “You still aren’t going to tell me where you know me from?” Josie shook her head. “You’re something else, you know?”

“Something good or something bad?”

“Oh, very good,” he murmured, and that heavy, silvery joy began to crest in her once more.

“You mean you don’t have girls throwing themselves at you all the time?”

“Not such pretty ones.”

Lord God Almighty.

She said, “I guess I just wanted to …”

She didn’t get any further than that, and Mitchell Crook didn’t find anything to say for a time either. Then he spoke up, sounding almost angry. “Look, I don’t want to get you in trouble. Or me in trouble.”

For once in her life, she was inspired to say exactly the right thing. “I can keep a secret.”

“… or hurt you. Take advantage.”

“You wouldn’t. I know you wouldn’t.”

“I’m twenty-five,” he said moodily.

“That’s nothing. That’s not even ten years more than me.”

“I don’t know why, I just can’t stop thinking about you.”

Their voices had dropped, as if they were already telling secrets.

They bent forward. Josie wondered if she would ever see his face in daylight again, or he hers. The darkness was so perfect. Everything had slowed way down. She could count her breaths in heavy beats. He shook his head. “What am I supposed to do with you?”

She raised a finger to her mouth, meaning he was not to talk, and he wrapped her hand in his and that was how they began touching. She let him pull her toward him. Her bare shoulders shivered from something other than cold, she even shrank back because she was almost afraid, he was so clumsy and so strong. But she made herself be fearless, she wanted to meet him at least halfway and she did. She took a step in her mind and her body followed.

They were all tangled up in each other, kissing and touching as
if their hands were mouths also, when a car door slammed nearby. Josie broke loose and twisted around to see the pimp manager grinning at her from the front seat of his own car. “Oh Christ.”

“Who’s that?”

“Nobody. Arrest him, OK?”

The pimp raced his engine, then pulled out, tires squealing. Mitch said, “He was jealous. I can tell from the way he was driving.”

“Oh screw him.” Josie sat back, exasperated. She knew that now she’d be in for all the idiocies he could think to inflict on her. “Did you change over to working nights?”

“Yeah, I used to work second shift. You knew that. How did you know that?”

Josie did Mystery Girl again. Smiled. “I was just thinking, I probably won’t work here much longer. So I’ll have my evenings free.” She was about to quit her second cruddy job because of him. Good.

“Oh wow, it’s late. I gotta go. Fight crime and/or evil.” He reached out and tousled her hair and they kissed again, more practiced this time, with something serious and knowing behind it.

Josie said, “So I guess …”

“Hey, I’ll be around.”

He really was waiting for her to go, so she smiled in a way that she tried to make carefree, and walked to her car just as cool and slow as she could manage. He waited for her to start her engine, then he waved and pulled into the street.

Unreal. Unfuckingreal.

She drove around for a while, thinking about everything, but she didn’t want to run into him again while he was being Officer Cop, so she gave up and headed home. There was no one in the world she could tell. Not Tammy, God knows. And not her
mother, who, when she parked her car in the garage and tried to creep up the stairs, called out to her from the den.

“Just a minute.” Josie checked herself in the powder-room mirror for any visible signs of depravity, then went to stand at the open door of the den. “What?”

“Come in and sit down, please.” Her mother motioned her over. Oh shit, did she have some kind of instant sex radar? But no. Her mother was absorbed in one of her shows, one of the hospital shows. She followed the screen for a moment, then turned back to Josie. “Sit, honey. How was work?”

Josie perched on the arm of an overstuffed chair and stared the television down. “OK.”

“You’re home early.”

“Yeah, it was kind of slow.” Sometimes she thought that she and her mother hadn’t said anything new to each other in years. Meanwhile, her real life was going on all around, it lit up the sky like neon, it sang out loud. Her mother’s wineglass was empty, and she had her hand in a bowl of crackers, just resting there, ready to resume the automatic cracker-feed. She was wearing her glasses and the lenses were all smudged and fingerprinty, from the crackers, Josie supposed. She made a move to get up but her mother waved her back down.

“Just a sec, this is almost over.” The television music reached its swelling, roll-credits conclusion and her mother turned her smudged glasses in Josie’s direction. “You ever watch this?”

“No.”

“It’s so good. It’s enough to make you go into medicine. Of course you’d have to be gorgeous like all of them.”

“Was there something you wanted?”

“Your father has to make airline reservations for Aspen.”

“Who’s stopping him?”

“If you still don’t want to go, you need to call and tell him.” Josie waited. “That’s it?”

“Well, nobody’s going to tie you in a sack and make you go. I think it would be nice if you could bring yourself to appreciate the things he tries to do for you. But you’re getting old enough to make your own decisions. Live with the consequences.”

“Gee, thanks.” She was sarcastic, because of course her mother was trying to make her feel guilty, but her stomach went hollow as she thought about Mitchell Crook and everything she had already decided. It was as if she stood once more on that cliff edge, or no, she had already jumped, and it was a lonely feeling, all that empty air.

“Are you going to tell me what it is?”

“What what is?”

“You just have this funny look on your face.”

Josie could have kicked herself. She knew better than to be caught with her face showing anything at all. “I’m just kind of tired.”

“It’s not Jeff, is it?”

“Jeff? Excuse me while I vomit.”

“Then who is it?”

“God, Mom, give me a break.” Was she drunk? Sometimes her mother drank a lot of wine and fell asleep in front of the television with her mouth open. Sometimes she got the idea she was very funny and made remarks that were supposed to be clever. But she was never nosy like this; she’d been trained too well. Josie gave her a look of polite indignation and her mother stared blandly back. “How would you like it if I started asking you a lot of personal questions?”