He’d always found living in an urban area vaguely unsettling. Back home in Simpson Creeks they’d had to drive a hundred miles or more to buy anything beyond the basic necessities. Towns with shopping centers and malls were places you visited. Living in the city was like always being on a shopping trip. With no way to get home, trapped in your car.
Something that still had to be done…
He drove down Sheridan Boulevard, slowing when he reached Lakeside Amusement Park. Something left to be done. The entrance was the original, with the old picture of “The Cyclone—Greatest Roller Coaster In North America” over the gate. He wondered how long ago that had ceased to be true, or even if it had ever been true.
“You mean you’ve never ridden a roller coaster?” Carol’s face had looked so shocked he had to laugh.
“Never. And I haven’t been to a Greek restaurant, or visited a synagogue, or gone to a street fair. All that stuff isn’t exactly popular where I come from.”
It was their second date. Carol had practically dragged him to her car and driven directly to Lakeside Amusement Park and the Cyclone. Later that evening they went to a Greek restaurant for dinner. The synagogue and the street fair came on succeeding weekends. That entire summer had been spent on “kids’ big city pleasures.” Catching up.
The Cyclone. Even now he could hear the roar, and feel his hands clutching hers, surprised that he needed to hold her so badly, surprised at the depth of it. It thrilled and terrified him. As the car plunged down the incline, he’d welcomed the excuse to open his mouth and scream.
Wind and rain rattling the metal. The dead roaring down the tracks and screaming into the black, damp air.
“I never expected you,” he’d said to her,
Carol looked at him with obvious admiration. “The good stuff comes when you don’t look for it.”
He couldn’t remember ever being admired before.
He drove across the Nineteenth Street Bridge after darkness had fallen completely, to eat dinner at My Brother’s Bar. They played only classical music, and there wasn’t any sign so you had to know where it was to find it. Steer-burgers and the best french fries in town. Watney’s on tap. Reed and Carol had spent a lot of time there, slipping over a bit guiltily after Michael had finally gotten off to sleep. It was a good place to talk. The Forney Transportation Museum loomed behind it, one of Michael’s favorite places—Florence Nightingale’s car. Special movie editions. Row after row of ancient automobiles covered with dust and dimly lit by the yellowed light filtering down from high, dirty windows. You didn’t see many people there; usually you’d be the only one. Reed used to wonder what the place would be like in a hundred years… neat rows of rusted mummies. He couldn’t imagine the lives of the people who had owned them.
The bar was crowded that night, which bothered him. Normally he could find an entire corner for himself. He made his way through the narrow space between two tables, the rounded backs of chairs squeezing his thighs like hard, oily hands. He sat under an old miner’s lamp. The bench was old and stained, like an ancient church bench. He thought about that every time he came here, and wondered what kind of people had sat on the bench through the years. Did they ever see ghosts? Find images in the fireplace? Hear voices over a dead phone?
After the waitress brought him a Watney’s, he spent a moment finding a safe spot for the top-heavy glass on the uneven tabletop. There were shallow depressions worn or, perhaps, intentionally pressed into the plastic coating the old, scarred wood. He’d always intended to ask but never got around to it. He sat staring at the people in the room. Something left he had to do… There always seemed to be the couples who acted so unnaturally out in public he had to wonder about them. But perhaps that was cynicism. He knew that most likely they were unnatural only because of social constraints, that alone with their spouse they behaved more genuinely.
But seeing people like that always made him anxious—what if they were the same at home? What if the world was full of people who were uncomfortable no matter where they were, who never really recognized themselves?
An older woman with light blonde hair fading into gray sat beneath a dim light set next to one of the framed menus. Staring off, listening to the music. She was smoking, the rising smoke mixing with her hair and making a nimbus around her head. As if her head were smoldering. She smiled at him and he was unaccountably chilled by her smile.
Older women had always fascinated him. For a time he wondered if there was something oedipal about it all. He’d never known his mother very well; she was quiet, reserved, though even in her mystery she was always kind to him, and loving within limits.
But still she would not interfere when his father raged against him. She would not keep him from being hurt.
At first he’d thought Carol was an “older woman.” When he met her she’d had her law practice for over two years. Perhaps that had made her seem older. He’d been having some trouble with a former landlord trying to get his damage deposit back. Furious, he’d gone to the first lawyer’s office he could find, a storefront a couple of blocks from his apartment building.
Carol had patiently explained to him that there was a tenants’ board he could go to with his complaint, and that hiring a lawyer would cost him far more than it was worth, despite his urge for vengeance. Reed had been impressed with her gentleness, her obvious knowledge of people. They were married nine months later.
But Carol had her child side, which slowly revealed itself the more she grew to trust him. Underneath the professional woman were all the anxieties and insecurities children are prey to. She was afraid she was ugly. She was afraid no one would ever really love her. She was afraid she would lose him. She was afraid of dying, of ends in general. He had been surprised at first, but then it had only made him love her more. She had allowed him to know her, and that felt good. But it was still hard to talk to her about himself.
“Sometimes I don’t think I know you at all,” she’d say at night, in the dark, when they were alone together. “You completely surprise me. Some layer comes off, and it’s as if there’s a stranger underneath.” He never knew what to say. And even more frightening, he wasn’t always sure he knew what she was talking about. Sometimes he was afraid she would find out things about him that would disgust her, that would drive her away from him. She seemed able to pry beneath the skin so easily. Sometimes that was terrifying, and he’d wish he’d never met her.
The older woman at the other table seemed to be inviting him with her eyes. The cloud of smoke around her hair was thicker, more luminous than before. Burning above her eyes. He tried to ignore her as he left the bar.
Muddy’s was only a couple of blocks up the street, across the bridge. He walked, a cold wind seeming to rise up off the interstate, tearing at his clothes. He paused near the center of the bridge and gazed down at the cars slipping through the gray darkness beneath like luminous insects. He shuddered, and hurried up the sidewalk.
Reed entered through the used book store, browsing nervously, noting that there didn’t seem to be any new additions to the stock since the former proprietor had died. He felt foolish; he had no idea why he’d come. Killing time. He stared at the woman behind the counter until she looked down in obvious discomfort, then turned to leave. It was time to go home. He had a phone call to make.
Reed parked in front of his house and sat there for a long time. The wind had picked up, much colder than normal for this time of year. Leaves and other debris seemed to rock the car. A shingle blew down from the roof and clattered against a hubcap and he wondered, briefly, how secure the rest were.