Wonder When You’ll Miss Me (14 page)

Ben had loaded me up with antibiotic ointment and bandages. “Keep it clean,” he'd said. “Seriously. And don't pick the scab off, whatever you do.”

My boots were good for this, protective.

“The kiss and everything, you know?” The fat girl was working on a giant roll of SweeTarts.

“Yeah.” I could still feel his mouth on mine. My first kiss, really. Even if it was intended for someone else, it was still at least partially mine.

“Whatever,” the fat girl said, and rolled her eyes.

We didn't exactly have a plan to get to Atlanta, though we still had $532. We decided to wait a few hours to hitchhike, to wait until the world was sleeping.

We found a graveyard and climbed over its high stone wall to sit in a dark corner and rest. It felt like the center of night. We sat on the damp grass with our backs against the stones and our legs out in front of us and we looked at the sky arching overhead. I wished for a cigarette, but I hadn't taken any, even though Counter Guy had offered as we left the shop. I was oddly happy though, under the dim stars in this graveyard in this strange city with the fat girl. I wasn't thinking of Fern or my mother or Starling or Andrea Dutton. Or Tony Giobambera. Any of it.

A
crazy hippie lady with lots of wild gray hair picked us up hours later in a rusting Chevy Nova and gave us a ride out of Nashville. She said, “I'm only pulling over because I'm sleepy. I'll take you as far as Chattanooga if you keep me awake. I want you to sing, not chitchat.” I was relieved not to have to make small talk. I sang camp songs, “Oh Sinner Man,” “She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain,” and the Beatles whenever it looked like she was nodding off. The fat girl dozed in the back.

She left us at a truck stop and there was such a chill in the air that I barely felt my fingers and toes. A big trucker named Willie found us there, standing outside the restaurant and stomping our feet to keep the blood moving, and gave us a lift all the way to Atlanta. I was wary of him, but the fat girl didn't seem concerned. I stared out the window and watched all the towns slip through the darkness along the highway. Mostly my eye caught the neon of chain stores and gas stations, but occasionally I saw a tract of houses or a strip of neighborhood.

He left us at a gas station and I tried to clean myself up in the bathroom. Old makeup smudged in half-moons beneath my eyes. My hair was an awful yellow-orange and stuck up all over. I did what I could in that fluorescent room, even taking off my sweater and swabbing at my armpits with paper towels and shiny pink soap.

When we were ready, I tugged my skirt into place, brushed my teeth with my finger, and put on shimmery lipstick the color of cotton candy.

 

It was warmer than Chattanooga had been the night before, but still chilly. More than anything, I wanted to curl up somewhere and sleep, but the fat girl wouldn't let me. “Come on,” she said. “Suck it up.”

We walked along a stretch of empty road towards the lights we'd seen from the highway and came to a strip of small tired storefronts and a donut shop. Her eyes lit up. Frosting in the morning made her happy all day.

Inside we sat at a bright semicircular counter and I had a coffee and a cruller. It was delicious. It made me realize how hungry I was, wonder how long since I'd eaten, but I was too tired to worry about it. I slurped the coffee instead, and tried to concentrate on clearing the rumble from my skull.

And then, at the fat girl's insistence, we checked the paper and there was a story. Not front page—not that it mattered—but there. It mentioned Tony Giobambera by name, said that he had been in critical condition but was expected to recover. And I learned that it wasn't just his cheek I'd hacked out when I missed his fingers, but a good deal of his tongue.

I saw it fly through the air, landing in the dirt like a wet fish, like a piece of liver.

“Faith?” The fat girl snapped her fingers.

“They recovered the weapon,” I said.

“Of course they did,” she said. “You left it there.”

I looked back at the article. I was not mentioned by name of course, but described:
a history of mental disorder
and
a suicide attempt less than a year ago
. I shoved the paper back to the fat girl and folded the edge of my Styrofoam coffee cup back and forth until it broke off. I folded that piece and the pieces it made, until I'd made a mountain of little white shards.

“Let's check out Hot-lanta,” she said. “It's a real city. Lots of cool stuff to do.”

“Can't we just find the tattoo shop and get on with it? They probably are looking for me.”

“Oh, so suddenly you're not adventurous anymore?” She had that old familiar mean look in her eye and I shook my head, resisting the urge to bury it in my arms. The rhythmic pulse of traffic made my eyes heavy. I fought sleep, gritting my teeth against it.

She pinched me hard and hustled us out, yanking me along by the elbow until we were in the sharp air outside. She slapped me once on each cheek, and I batted her away.

“Walk!”

I stumbled forward and she prodded me in the back.

“March, Faith!”

I did what she said. And soon I was awake. Blurry, vacant, but awake.

 

By the time we figured out how to get to Little Five Points, the day had bloomed into a beautiful afternoon. The sky was clear and the streets were teaming with kids my age. The fat girl was oblivious. She had one goal in mind: the Lemon Drop. I didn't see what the big deal was, but Ben Dixon had captured the fat girl's attention and I wasn't up to an argument.

We walked in. Off to the side was a small room full of Marilyn Monroe. The fat girl was transfixed. Any bit of Marilyn memorabilia you could imagine was set up behind glass like an enormous diorama. Letters. Photos. Shoes, dresses, records. A souvenir mirror.

The bartender waved a greeting from behind the scuffed wooden bar. He was a huge man in overalls and no shirt, wiping down glasses. He had a straw-colored mustache and vivid Dr. Seuss tattoos that splattered his freckly arms.
Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish
.

A bumper sticker:
MY INNER CHILD IS AN HONOR STUDENT AT THE LEMON DROP
.

“Order a drink,” the fat girl urged, but I didn't want a drink. I asked for a glass of water and was obliged by the big bartender.

“I'm Tommy,” he told me. “What's your name?”

“Annabelle,” I said, and then he asked about my cowboy boots, which he liked, he said; they were just like some his girlfriend had and did I know that there were more than sixty thousand kinds of cowboy boots and what the best ones were and when they were invented and why some cowboys preferred a rounded toe to a pointed one and…

We'd found ourselves another talker.

“You in school?” he said finally, and I shook my head. “Drop out?”

I nodded. “Me too. After freshman year. My folks never forgave me for not finishing college,” he said. “But I never regretted it. Just 'cause everyone else does it doesn't mean you got to.”

I was amazed that he thought I was in college. I asked about his tattoos and heard a half-hour monologue on the brilliance of Dr. Seuss. By then the bar had begun to fill up with a mix of hippie and honky-tonk, yuppies and college kids.

“You gonna stay for the band?” he asked. “Sweatblossom. They're real
good.” I thought we should be going, but the fat girl kicked me in the shins and we stayed.

 

Tommy's shift ended around ten and Sweatblossom was still going strong. By then he'd been slipping me free beers for a while. He introduced me to his girlfriend, Lucia, who had a fringe of inky hair around a pale, heart-shaped face and the greenest eyes I'd ever seen. Something about her made me think
dumpling,
though I didn't know what. It wasn't her shape—she was tall and slender. Certainly not her pierced nose, or the spiderweb tattooed around her left arm, or the elaborate sword drawn along her clavicle.

When Tommy and Lucia heard my mumbled (by now, slurry) and convoluted story of how my friend hadn't shown up to fetch me at the bus stop, a look passed between them, something I couldn't decipher. Then they offered their couch for the night and, with the fat girl's nod of approval, I gratefully accepted.

We drove there in Tommy's pickup. It didn't take very long, so it must not have been far, but after a few rights and lefts I had no idea where we were. The landscape had quickly become more rural and wooded. We pulled into the long driveway of a peeling yellow house tucked deep into the forest.

“No neighbors behind us,” Tommy said proudly. “Across the street is it. The houses on either side are empty right now and we have all the land out there.” He pointed into the woods but I couldn't see much, just night and the trees illuminated by his headlights, which he then shut off.

We climbed out of the truck and I felt woozy, beer sloshing in my stomach. Lucia put out a hand to steady me and I tried to smile my thanks.

Inside, their house was crumbling and filthy, a true punk-rock crash pad, but I was so tired and grateful, I didn't care. Tommy made us all towering sandwiches and I gobbled mine so fast I could barely breathe. And then Lucia lent me a towel and in their grimy mildewed bathroom, I took the best shower of my life, standing under the hottest water I could bear, scrubbing away all the Nashville and Asheville and Gleryton I could find, to emerge clean and pink and new.

 

Where was the fat girl?

I pulled the towel tighter around my body and wished I had something other than my old nasty clothes to put back on.

Lucia was waiting for me on the couch. “Annabelle,” she said with a slow smile, “you like to party?”

I wasn't sure what to say. My skin glowed where it poked out from the towel, still warm from the shower, and I wanted to curl up somewhere until the last of the beer left my body.

But Lucia was watching me, expectantly. “I guess…” I said.

“We do, me and Tommy.” She looked straight at me, through me. The light of a Christmas tree in the corner blinked on and off, red and blue against her pale skin. Something in her eyes made me freeze there in my towel in the middle of the room.

“We like you,” she said, and patted the place beside her on the couch. I told myself I was misunderstanding everything. I was just tired, I whispered to myself, my perceptions were unreliable.

But I felt very, very awake.

Lucia patted the couch again. She blew a few strands of black hair from her eyes and slowly I went and sat down. She began to rub my back in slow circles. “You like us?”

I nodded and swallowed, afraid of where this was going. Then she slipped her hand around my back and stroked my breast lightly through the towel with her fingertips.

I stiffened, paralyzed by competing impulses, but I didn't move. And then Lucia leaned forward, my whole breast cupped in her hand now, and kissed the back of my neck.

And the side of my neck.

And my ear, softly, her breath in it, my heart pounding, pounding, my own breath heavy and hard.

And then she pushed me back on the couch a little, and kissed me on the mouth, deep and warm and slow, and slipped her hand between my legs.

The whole world slid away, in a heap somewhere. There was only the weight of her on me, and the stroke of her hand between my legs.

I had stopped breathing, or moving, though everything seemed to shudder, and then she moved down, slowly, my towel loose now, piled around us on the couch, she moved down my body, licking me lightly, my breasts, my belly, all the time her hand moved in circles between my legs until her face was there too, and she pushed her way in.

My head was back, my body absorbed by Lucia. I closed my eyes and saw nothing, felt everything, a rainstorm, hard and bright, pounding away at me, coursing along my body.

And then I heard her gasp and I looked up to see Tommy standing over her, naked and enormous, touching her, and suddenly it all came crashing down and I pulled myself away, scrambling to the other side of the couch where I curled up as tight as I could and pulled the wayward towel around me.

“What's wrong, baby?” It was Lucia's voice, slow and syrupy, but I didn't open my eyes, just willed them away, all of it, willed time to rewind by half an hour, an hour, to the point where I'd come from the bathroom feeling utterly renewed. I gulped air and realized I'd been holding my breath. I opened one eye and saw Lucia crawling towards me, her skirt hiked up, her mouth wet, and I buried my head beneath the towel and pulled myself even tighter into a knot.

I stayed like that while they had a whispered conversation, then they moved away, went into their bedroom, and closed the door. And I stayed like that longer, my heart thumping hard, through the creaking and thumping and moaning that came from their room, and later through the silence of the night, with my eyes wide open.

When the whole world was still, I dressed in my dirty clothes and collected my bag and whatever stray clothing I could find so I'd have something else to wear. I found a T-shirt that had been lying on a chair in the corner, a University of Georgia sweatshirt, and a wool hat near the Christmas tree. In the kitchen I took a jar of peanut butter, some bread, a knife, and an apple.

And I let myself out.

 

I walked for what seemed like hours, and it grew lighter and warmer. I hadn't known which way to go once the driveway hit the road, so I just picked a direction and walked. The sun still wasn't up but I could tell it would be soon and every bone in my body felt like it had been dipped in lead. I alternated between shame and wonder, shaking my head every once in a while to free it of the images of the previous night. I just wanted to rest. More than anything, more than anything, to sleep.

Eventually I came to a park. I climbed a hill and passed a jungle gym, picnic tables. Where to curl up out of sight? It was all in the open, in full view of the rest of the park and of the road. But eventually I had to give in to my body. I had to lie down. And there was this stone bench that looked incredibly soft and comfortable. And I stretched out on to it, pushing every thought from my head, and the world went dark.