“So it’s always been a secret between you.”
“Yeah, I left pretty quickly after that to go to Simon’s Rock, at Bard, where you can start college as a high school student.”
“Didn’t they find that to be odd?”
“My mother went there, so not really. I thought I could always come home again. But I never felt comfortable here after that. So when my best friend from college’s father fell in love with me, I traveled the world with him. When we broke up a few years later, one of his clients picked me up. It’s been like that ever since. Except it appears I’m aging out of this line of work. And I’m tired of it. I want to fall in love with someone real. Is it too late?”
“No,” I said vehemently.
She nodded. “But I need your help.”
“My help?” To fall in love? My heart juddered.
“I know this is ridiculous, you’re my therapist, but I don’t know who else to ask. My friend has to work. Will you rent a U-Haul truck for me? I can give you all of the money. I just don’t have a license. I can hire laborers, my friend knows some.”
“That’s a tough one, Delphine. You’re asking me to cross a therapist/client boundary.”
She looked crestfallen.
I thought of picking up the truck, entering the Hathaway compound, being useful. Delphine offering me a cold beer at the end of a long day. A stupid rule could keep Delphine trapped near Jacob. He could strike again. She could disappear from the Hathaway house, Eldorado, my practice, and my life.
“Then again, not helping you, knowing what I know about Jacob, seems even worse. Why don’t you have a driver’s license?”
“After the... you know, the thing with Jacob, everything seemed overwhelming. I never followed up with the paperwork.”
We made plans to meet at the hardware store the following morning at eight.
The next morning, I showed up in my best yard-work clothes. Todd of the pointed beard walked us out to the U-Haul cluster. Delphine’s clogs clonked against the macadam.
“That one,” Delphine said, pointing to a fifteen-footer.
I gave him my driver’s license.
He looked at Delphine’s credit card and my license and shook his bald head. “The credit card’s gotta match the driver’s license name.”
“Oh!” she said.
He stuck his pen in his mouth and worked it like a cigar. “Yeah, you know, we just gotta have these rules because people have all sorts of tricks up their sleeves, and it’s not fair but life ain’t fair, and these rules are here to protect all of us even if it isn’t always the most convenient thing...”
Unable to bear his pompous bloviating for one more second, I handed him my credit card. “Delphine, you can reimburse me. Not a problem.”
“Oh, thank you,” she said, and threw her arms around me. I gave her back a horridly proper psychologist pat, when I wanted to pull her even closer. Then I noticed Todd leering at us. He ran his stubby fingertips over his chest and cackled.
“Little Todd wants a hug too,” he said.
Delphine and I jumped apart. She turned toward the truck as I mutely signed the rental form, cheeks burning.
I slid my license and credit card back into my wallet and wondered, as we climbed into the truck that smelled of stale farts and coffee, how she’d gotten to the hardware store. Maybe she walked. I should have offered to give her a ride.
Delphine seemed somber as we carried boxes into the truck. The laborers handled her furniture. But the truck soon proved bigger than the job required. I was going to mention it, but she beat me to it.
“I’m pretty spatially challenged for a dancer,” she said. “We could have gotten away with the next size down.”
She told me her new place was down a long dirt road on the other side of 285. Most homes there were of the mobile variety, with appliances rusting out front, and adobe shacks with none of the grace of the houses of Eldorado. I suddenly appreciated the numerous covenants that ruled that land.
Delphine directed me to stop at a tall ranch gate crowned with an iron longhorn design. She hopped out, fiddled with the lock, and swung the gate wide open. I drove through, followed by the laborers in their ancient pickup truck, onto a rutted road. Horses grazed, alfalfa swayed.
After about a mile, she pointed to a tidy log cabin with a front porch.
“It used to be a ranch-hand cabin.”
We parked and carried the first load of boxes inside. Two old wooden built-in bunk beds barnacled the far wall. A small kitchen, potbellied stove, a flagstone floor.
“Home sweet home,” she said.
As I trudged back and forth with Delphine’s things in my arms, I felt a contentment I barely remembered. In sessions, I helped people, but I did it while sitting still. This was therapy too.
I wouldn’t tell my supervisor about it, because he was hidebound to traditional rules. Even if he did understand, he really couldn’t say so.
I swept out the truck and closed it up.
“If you leave now,” Delphine said, “you won’t get charged for another hour.”
“Are you sure you don’t want help unpacking?” I asked. “I don’t care about the money.”
“I care about the money. I insist on paying you back. You’ve done too much as it is.”
“Okay,” I said, deflated. I nodded to her, and she nodded back. “You have cell phone service out here? And the door has a lock?”
“The door has a lock, and if all else fails, there’s always this.” She lifted her jeans cuff, flashing a mother-of-pearl-handled gun strapped to her ankle.
The male platypus has a venomous spur in his right leg.
She kissed her fingertips and placed them against my cheek. “Thank you,” she said.
In the truck’s mirror, a few yards down the road, I saw the red lipstick her fingertips had imparted. I raised my finger to the smear and rubbed it, then drew it roughly back and forth across my lips.
Todd walked the perimeter of the truck and shined a flashlight around the inside. It reminded me of the time that I rented a car from the Santa Fe airport, and they charged me for a broken windshield even though I had returned it undamaged.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
While I waited, I took photos of the unscathed outside of the truck, and the cab.
At the bar, the conditions were good. Just a few people smoking illegally on the front patio, most of the barstools free, quiet conversations among friends, and on TV, two of my favorite sports teams mopping the floor with their opponents. After a couple of hours, I was too drunk to care about the people spilling out onto the front patio, all of the barstools taken by people eating pizzas, fuzzy-faced denizens rooting for the wrong team on the TV. I remember dancing to AC/DC at some point, with other revelers. But after that, I went dark.
I don’t remember how I got home. I woke up in my moving clothes, smelling of smoke and stale beer. My car was in the driveway, parked askew. The driver’s-side mirror dangled from a wire, and I wondered which whimsically painted Eldorado mailbox I had clipped.
Wallet: check. All contents accounted for, except for the cash. I’d have to see how much I abused my debit card by looking online, but not yet. I’d make a big, slutty, greasy breakfast first, take a bath, smoke some weed, and watch old movies for the rest of the day.
Delphine didn’t show up for her Monday appointment. Then again, she didn’t have a car and she lived in the middle of nowhere. At a quarter past the hour, the new doorbell rang. Bing-bong. Silly of me to assume so fast. She’d made it.
I opened the door to two strangers. Dressed in blue.