You Only Get Letters from Jail (14 page)

I reached for the knife but she held it back and out of my reach. I would've had to slide across the seat to take it and it seemed like too much distance to cross. There was
an entire section of brown vinyl between us, and a third seat belt, and so I dropped my hand and let her keep it.

“It's my mom's,” I said. I folded my hands in my lap and looked down at them.

“So, you're taking it out for a ride? Getting it some air?”

I felt hot and confined. “It's a long story,” I said.

“Well, considering you don't have a radio in here, we don't have much else to kill the time with.” There was a hole in the dash where the radio had been—a decent aftermarket that one of my mom's boyfriends had installed as a birthday present. I told her that it had gotten stolen when I was at school; somebody popped the lock and yanked it. She had been disappointed and angry and told me that it wasn't safe to drive her car to school and afterward I found myself freezing my ass off and walking in the half dark to get to first period on time, but I got forty bucks to pawn it outright, and I had managed to roll that forty into about two hundred, on a streak, until last weekend and a bad Sunday.

“Do you know what point spreads are?” I said.

Ivy held her cigarette out and poked at the paper with the tip of the knife. “Maybe,” she said. “Something about sports, right?”

“Betting sports. Basically it evens out the chances of either team winning by adjusting the score. But that's not important.”

“But it's important enough for you to have your mom's knife.”

“Okay, last Sunday I put everything I had on the Patriots game against the Jets—took the spread at plus 8.5 with the Patriots as the favorite—I mean, playing at home, on
a roll—and with the Jets out a starting running back and Pennington throwing like shit, they'd have to put the ball on the ground and New England's defense against the run was going to shut the Jets down. It was a sure thing.” I unlocked my fingers and flexed them. I had been squeezing them together so tightly that my wrists were numb.

“It
was
a sure thing? I take it that it wasn't.”

“I also bet the under.”

“You lost me,” she said.

“What it comes down to is that I bet on one game and I lost two ways, and now I owe this guy Richie Dobkins a hell of a lot of money and he's going to serve me up a lot of pain when I can't pay him in the morning.” My voice almost cracked but I cleared my throat and caught the waver.

Ivy's cigarette was impaled like a bug on the tip of the knife and she raised the blade up so she could take a drag like she was smoking a roach. She held it for a second and then exhaled toward the window, and the window steamed over until the smoke rose and cleared. “So this is personal defense in case the guy jumps you, right? Get him before he gets you and all that.”

I looked out my window at the street and saw a small dog walking down the sidewalk on the opposite side. It was a wiry dog with dark hair and it sniffed at the doorways and posts but did not linger. I couldn't see a collar on him, but the way that he walked made me think that he knew where he was going.

“I just need some money,” I whispered. The dog lifted his leg against a parking meter and then kept moving west.
I felt something sharp in my thigh. Ivy was pushing the knife into my jeans.

“You were going to fucking rob me,” she said. “You were gonna what . . . take my money? Stab me?” She pushed on the blade and I thought I could feel my jeans open up to let the point through.

“It wasn't like that,” I said. I tried to edge away from her but I was pinned against the door. “I didn't know it was you.”

She pushed the knife again and this time I felt it go beneath my jeans. “So if it hadn't been me—say it was some other woman—you were gonna wave this knife at her and scare the shit out of her and take her money? Because you lost a fucking bet?”

She pushed the knife again but there wasn't much pain. “I guess so,” I whispered.

Ivy pulled the knife back and tapped the blade against the dashboard. “That is fucking ballsy,” she said. “I mean, totally insane, but absolutely Clint Eastwood. I love it.”

My lungs felt like two tiny sacs that couldn't hold more than a puff.

“Oh my God, I had no idea that you were this kind of guy. I mean, where was all this when we were going out in eighth grade?”

I shook my head.

“Remember that time we made out in your bedroom when your mom was gone and you got all freaked out?”

“I didn't freak out,” I said. I wanted to rub my leg. I needed to feel for a puncture mark through my jeans, broken skin, blood.

“You freaked out. We were kissing, tongues and everything—and you got a total hard-on and when I reached down and touched it you jumped up and went downstairs and turned on the TV.”

I remembered kissing Ivy, and there had been a lot of hard-ons, and I couldn't imagine that if she'd offered to touch it I would've turned her down.

“I was totally willing to have sex with you that day,” she said.

I touched my thigh with the tips of my fingers but I couldn't feel a break in the fabric. My leg was not warm with blood.

“You missed your chance.” She smiled at me and I wasn't sure if she winked or if she had something in her eye, but I was suddenly tired. I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. “I have an idea,” she said. “You know where the Loaf 'n' Jug is on Twin Oaks? Out there past the three-way signal?”

I nodded.

“Take me there. I have a really good idea.”

I looked at her but didn't move. I had thirty-six bucks and that would get me enough gas to drive three hours in any direction. I tried to imagine all of the possible ways the radius might extend if I were at the center of the circle.

“Come on. I'm not kidding. You'll be so happy, I swear.” She reached over and patted me on the leg and I tried to measure if there was any pain. Just because I couldn't feel my leg bleeding, didn't mean that it wasn't. I turned the key and the ignition caught and the engine turned twice
and fired. Ivy pulled the control on the heater to high. “I have to be honest, though.” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the noise of the fan. “Before, when I said that stuff about getting weed from those guys—I was just kidding.” She smiled and rubbed her hands together in front of the vent. “I've never gotten high—I don't even know for sure what pot smells like. I don't know why I said that I did.”

The Loaf 'n' Jug sat on a weed patch of yellowed grass about a mile past the last trailer park and fifty yards from sheet-metaled wrecking yards, chain-link fences, and a Pick-n-Pull that offered a free yard shuttle on a flatbed trailer behind a GMC dually on Saturdays and Sundays so you didn't have to walk the lot. The asphalt was potholed and littered with crushed cans and bottles and chip bags and candy wrappers and cardboard beer cases and enough plastic six-pack rings to strangle a hundred seagulls at the dump. When we were parked and the engine was off and ticking, Ivy turned toward me and put her hand on mine, and even though it was warm and dry as paper, I had to stop myself from sliding out from under it and folding my hands in my lap, where they belonged.

“I'm gonna do this for you, okay? So don't worry about it. This place keeps their entire day of sales in the register—they don't even drop the cash until they close out at night. There's hundreds in there. Maybe thousands.” Her hand squeezed mine and I could feel the bones in her fingers. “It's the easiest money in town. I swear.”

I shifted in the seat and the springs under the vinyl squeaked. Ivy dropped my hand and then she moved out of
my reach and took the knife and the dome light came on before I could say anything, and then she was out of the car and pushing the door of the Loaf 'n' Jug open. It opened without sound. I watched her walk to the counter, but it was hard to see her behind the warning signs and ID laws and MasterCard logos and beer ads and Shoes Required stickers on the door. I tipped my head at an angle, but I could see only segments of her—the bottom of her jacket, the back of her left leg, an elbow. I tried to piece them all together to make a picture of her inside at the counter, but I couldn't remember if she was right-handed or left-handed and the knife kept switching position. She was in there for a long time.

I looked over my shoulder at the empty road behind us and I waited to see flashing lights in the distance, red on blue, but there was nothing but Christmas lights at the wrecking yards and pinpoints of white sodium globes peppering front lots like low-hanging stars. There was fog in the fields, suspended above the patchy weeds, and it shifted and broke up as bursts of breeze blew through it.

Ivy came out through the swinging door and as it opened I saw the height marker on the frame, which tagged her at five feet seven. She was carrying a small brown bag and I felt my stomach cramp at the thought of how much might be inside. A fine line of sweat ran from under my armpit and I felt it slide down my ribs and veer to my back and soak into the waistband of my underwear. And then Ivy was back in the car and she set the knife on the seat between us and I waited for another drop of sweat to run because it was a feeling that I could count on.

“That was fucking great,” she said. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips were bruise-blue under the light from the store awning.

I realized that we weren't moving yet and I reached to turn on the car because we were far from a getaway, but Ivy stopped me. “We're not in a hurry,” she said. “Just wait a minute.”

I could see the guy behind the counter, and it was the first time that I realized that there was another part to all of this. I saw his hand rise above the register, a bare arm, and I half expected to see a phone cord anchoring it to the counter, but there was nothing, just the flash of his white skin like a fish moving under water.

Ivy opened the bag and tipped it upside down and my stomach dropped into my knees and I couldn't breathe and I was counting what came out before it hit the seat and then I realized it was packs of cigarettes, Lucky Strikes, and there was no rubber-banded green mixed in with the hard shapes of red, white, and black.

“This is great, huh?” Ivy said. She picked up one of the boxes, smacked it against the heel of her hand and folded back the top. “I always turn two lucky cigarettes,” she said. “You know, you are really only supposed to turn one, but I figure if one is lucky, two should be double. Hedge my bets, right?” She pulled two cigarettes from the pack and flipped them tobacco-end up so that they stood out in contrast to the filters around them. “I could've gotten a carton, but these were the last of the Luckies and I won't even switch brands for free, you know?” She pushed in the
cigarette lighter on the dash and we both watched it and waited for it to pop.

I picked up the crumpled bag from the seat and shook it but nothing more fell out. My stomach climbed off my knees and decided to rise to my throat and I couldn't swallow the taste of puke away.

When the lighter popped, Ivy pulled it and hit the cigarette and there was smoke again and I was no closer to the money I needed than I had been an hour ago when I sat in the Plymouth down the street from the cash machine.

“I used to work here,” Ivy said. “I got fired for giving blow jobs in the beer cooler, but I guess that's another story.” She exhaled toward the window, but I had closed it when I shut the car down and now the smoke banked and could not escape. “You know, that's how I got kicked out of school. You remember Mr. Montgomery?”

Mr. Montgomery wore tight shorts even though he didn't teach gym. “I remember him,” I said.

“I did it with him. One time. It wasn't a big deal or anything, but I guess his wife found out and things got kind of bad from there.”

Ivy and I had gone to junior high together, but she wasn't at school freshman year and I figured she had moved over the summer, and then I forgot about her because six months is a long time when you're fourteen and things have a way of changing and people have a way of moving on.

“I have this condition, you know?” she said. “I'm a nymphomaniac. There's nothing I can do about it. My mom's
tried therapy and doctors and pills and one time I almost had shock treatment, but nothing works.”

“You're a what?”

“You know—a nymphomaniac.”

“You light fires?”

“Oh my God, you're joking, right? I'm a nympho. I love sex. It's like a compulsive thing. I can't help it.” Ash fell off the end of her cigarette and landed on her pants but she didn't seem to notice. I wanted to reach over and wipe it off, but it was close to the inside of her thigh and I was afraid of that short distance.

There was a knock on my window and I jumped so badly that I hit the horn with my hand and the noise made Ivy scream and then I screamed. All I could see was a bare hand against the window, with its knuckles pressed against the glass. They were scabbed and scraped with what looked like teeth marks. I looked at Ivy.

“Put the window down,” she said.

I turned the key and the window slid out from under the knuckles and then a face bent down and filled the gap and it was a young guy with shaggy blond hair combed forward over his eyes. “I'm on break,” he said. He held up a box of Rolling Rocks and Ivy started clapping and then he reached through my window and hit the button for the back door lock, and then he was in the car—a smell of leather and Big Red—and Ivy was turned around and slapping the headrest.