I shoulda had more fun, she thought sadly, as if looking back on a life that was over.
The rest of the way home, Bruno sat there like he was alone in the car and she stared morosely out her window.
A block from her house, he pulled into the back of a Laundromat and parked. He rolled down his window a little and the breeze came in and lifted his hair. It was pretty where they were. The streetlight spread the shadows of leaves across the car.
He shifted so his back was against the door and he was facing her. She couldn’t see him very well. Her stomach had that unsettled caffeine-y feeling. She waited for him to say something. She touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip.
Something prowled across the parking lot, in the distance. She guessed raccoon.
“Lean forward,” he said. “I wanna show you something.”
When she did he touched his finger to her bottom lip. She opened her mouth slightly.
He took her hair between his fingers and turned them gently and pulled her farther forward. Their noses grazed. She could smell a faint scent she hadn’t noticed before, his shaving cream, maybe. He turned his head slowly to hers and kissed her. She was conscious of the awkwardness of her pose and of breathing very slightly. Late in the kiss, he outlined her upper and lower lips with his tongue.
She kissed the side of his mouth, and then his cheek, and eased back.
They sat there, a foot or so apart. Because of the brightness of some areas under the streetlight, her eyes weren’t getting very used to the dark. “Come over my house,” he said.
She kissed him again, a little kiss.
“You don’t wanta come over my house,” he said quietly.
She looked down and shrugged, and then looked back at him, unsure if he could even see her.
He put his hands on both sides of her head, pulling her hair outward. She could feel it fall to her ears. “Tell me if you want to. Open up to me only if you want to. You don’t want to open up, don’t open up,” he said.
“Like you open up to me,” she said.
“Hey. This is business. This is what business is. People taking care of themselves. The freedom of the individual to fuckin’ make somethin’ of himself. Am I out of line on this?”
She eased sideways against the seat, a more comfortable position.
He ran his hands over his face. “Whaddyou think time it is?” he asked.
She didn’t know. A car turned around in the parking lot and its headlights blinded them.
He sighed. “Knowing what the fuck you’re talking about. It’s rare, Joanie. So rare.”
She put her hand to her mouth. She wanted to kiss him again. Do you have any idea what you’re doing? she thought. She shifted all the way around and sat back against her door.
“How’re you doin’ for money, really?” he said out of the darkness.
She pulled a leg up onto the seat between them and folded it under her. “We’re all right,” she said warily.
“I think you got a little more ready cash than you think you do,” he said.
She felt saliva in her mouth, and she swallowed so that he could probably hear it. Something ticked in the dashboard. “Where?” she said. “You know something I don’t?” She tried to sound jaunty.
Some kids rode by on bikes, circling and screeching. They swerved near the car, and one of them lost his balance and thumped it with his hand. The sound seemed to come from her chest. They cut through the parking lot to the street. Each of them banged the dumpster on the other side of the lot on the way past.
“Where?” Bruno said. “I’m talkin’ about Mr. Gary. Who’s probably got a steady job, a little something stashed away, a coupla bucks nobody’s touched?”
She didn’t know what to say, or if that was what he was really getting at.
He held up one finger. “We never know until we ask. What’s the worst that can happen when we ask? What’s the worst that can happen?”
He seemed to be waiting for an answer. She cleared her throat and swallowed again.
“You know what the hard part is?” he asked. He waited. “Am I coming through out there?”
“What’s the hard part?” she said. She sounded scared.
“The hard part is doing it. Doing anything.”
She sniffed. “Obviously.”
“Obviously my ass. My ass, obviously.”
“I don’t even know what we’re talking about here,” she said.
His head leaned forward in the darkness. “You say, I am going to do this. That’s what we’re talking about. Otherwise you wander around — you know what you do? You wander around in thrall to somebody. That’s what you do. You’re in somebody else’s fucking thrall.”
Her face and stomach felt as if she were going down in an elevator. Her neck prickled. “What if he’s not willing to do what I want?” she asked.
“Then you know what you do? You do something to hurt him,” Bruno said softly. “Where he lives.”
PART THREE
TODD
Last night I watched a movie called I’ll Take Sweden with Bob Hope and then one called Boeing Boeing with Tony Curtis. They were both terrible.
Audrey got sick again and I cleaned it up, but you can still see the spot. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.
I tried calling my Dad by using Information in these cities: Spokane, Seattle, Olympia, Tacoma, Yakima, Walla Walla, Sacramento, Redding, Chico, Eureka, Santa Rosa, Yuba City, Crescent City, Denver, Durango, Boulder, Buena Vista, Fort Collins, Greeley, Grand Junction, Glenwood Springs, Steamboat Springs, Pagosa Springs. A lot of them I found in an atlas of his called These United States. If you call the regular operator and give the city and state, they’ll give you the area code.
I have a map where I put a pin in the city after I call.
When my father was still here, one of the things he liked to do was go to Yankee and Met games. We went like twice a year. He went to the World Series in 1986, when the Mets played the Red Sox, and saw the ball go through Bill Buckner’s legs. I don’t know how he got tickets. He had friends. He said he wanted to take me, but I was only four and my mother thought I was too young. She said she didn’t think I would have even remembered going. I would have remembered.
He threw the ball around with me a lot. When he threw me ground balls, he called me Luis, after Luis Aparicio, a player he liked when he was a kid. I looked him up in Bill James’s Baseball Abstract. He’s in the Hall of Fame.
I called the police again and hung up again. I’m never going to do anything with that. I might as well just stop.
My mom came back at one in the morning from her date with Bruno. I don’t know how long the concert was supposed to go, but I doubt it was that long.
Last night I had a dream so bad I don’t even want to talk about it.
Toward the end, Sister Justine came into it. Sister Justine last year was one of the ones who’d watch us during Mass to make sure we were singing the songs right. Sometimes kids would make up their own words to try and crack you up. Sisters hate that.
Sometimes you really didn’t know the words, though, and you didn’t bother reading along in the Missalettes. She came down the row once and grabbed me by the elbow, and I didn’t even know what I did wrong. I was singing, “‘Oh, my soul, praise Him, for He is our health and salvation. Christ the high priest bids us all join in His feast, victims with Him on the altar,’” and I thought those were the right words. She scared me.