"I suppose you think he's cute, huh?"
Now he raised his head. "I'm sorry I said that."
They both tried to disregard the fact that he had tears in his eyes.
He put his hand on her wrist. It was a fleshy hand but a strong one, and damp with sweat. In a curious way, it felt like a baby's hand, and so the sensation of it lying on her wrist was not unpleasant.
He said, "I don't like you as much as I used to, anyway."
She smiled. "Well, I like you more so I guess that evens things out."
"You don't like me more. You like me less. I can tell just by the way you look at me. About half the things I do irritate you."
She said carefully, wanting to change the subject but not be too obvious about it, "Whatever happened to Judy?"
He shrugged. "Said she didn't want to see me anymore."
"Why?"
He shrugged again, fatty shoulders beneath the Batman T-shirt. "Said I embarrassed her every time we went to the comic book store."
"How did she say you embarrassed her?"
"Oh, arguing with people and all. Like one day there was this guy in there who said that the Green Lantern was better than the Flash. So I just kind've told him his opinions sucked."
"In a real loud voice?"
"Well."
"And making your argument very personal?"
"Well. He was kind of a geek, you know?"
"We're all geeks, Tommy, our whole little group and everybody like us-don't you understand that yet?"
He stared at her. "Is Richie a geek?"
"I suppose."
"Really?"
"Why else would he sit here with us?"
"But he isn't fat and he isn't crippled and he doesn't have any birth defects and he-" He shook his head. "He doesn't look like a geek to me." He patted his massive belly. "I'm a geek."
"So am I."
"No, you're not, Marie. You always say that but-"
The bell rang, ending lunch hour, summoning the kids back to class.
She said, "When's the last time you talked to Judy?"
"Last weekend. She hung up on me."
"Why?"
"Because she said this copy she had of Wonder Woman was in mint condition but it wasn't. It had a crease on the cover and the back was kind of wrinkled and-"
"And so you told her that?"
"Sure. It was just the truth."
"Sometimes you need to spare people the truth, Tommy."
"You mean lie?"
"I mean take their feelings into account. Judy's probably proud of her comic book. Then let her be proud. Don't spoil it for her."
Tommy stared at her and sighed. "I screwed up, huh?"
"Yes."
"And I should call her?"
"Yes."
"And tell her the comic book's really in mint condition when it isn't?"
"No, call her and tell her that her feelings are a lot more important than any comic book, and that you're sorry, and that you'd like to see her again."
"What if she hangs up?"
"Then wait a few days and call her again."
Tommy smiled. "You always make things sound so easy, Marie."
She touched his hand. "Things can be easy, Tommy. At least easier than we make them sometimes."
He shrugged. "Maybe so."
"Well, good luck, Tommy. I hope things go well for you with Judy."
He smiled. "I hope they go well with Richie, too." He patted her small wrist again with his big hand. "I really mean that, Marie."
"Thanks," she said.
Then it was time to walk back across the space between table and door where everybody interested could watch her walk. The nice thing about the end of the hour was the congestion. You didn't stand out in a crowd when you had people on all sides of you pushing toward the EXIT door.
When she was out of the cafeteria and heading down the long phalanx of lockers, she started thinking again of Richie, and a wildness filled her-a wildness that was one part joy and one part terror.
She had no confidence where boys were concerned. She did not want to hope for too much with Richie because she might end up getting nothing at all.
For a time, he put his head back and closed his eyes and let the apple blossom breeze through the open window balm him.
It was almost possible to forget that he was on a city bus, and that he did not know who he was, and that he was going to see-3567 Fairlawn Terrace.
Who lived there? he wondered.
Every few minutes the bus stopped and the big doors whooshed open and people got on and off.
And then the bus started up again. He liked the lunge of power. It was relaxing somehow; made him feel he was being mercifully carried away from trouble.
With his eyes closed, he smelled the pieces of the day: grass and sun, warmth and wind, diesel fuel and cigarette smoke.
And the sounds: children, car horns, radios, black people, white people, Mexican people, aeroplanes, motorcycles.
The whole human jumble of it made him feel safe again, hiding once more in his own humanity.
Unlikely as it was, he slept.
When he woke, he made a tiny frightened sound.
An old lady in a faded head scarf turned to look at him with accusing blue eyes.
Drunk, and sleeping it off, her gaze said.
He sat up straight, looking desperately now at the scene surrounding the bus.
Again, he sensed that this was an area he was familiar with but his mind offered no objective proof Neat ranch houses, neither cheap nor expensive, lined the low grassy green hills on either side of the street.
I live in one of these houses.
The bus pulled over to the kerb.
The old lady, overburdened with K-Mart and Wal-Mart shopping bags, got off. She still glared at him.
The bus pulled away once more, the forward rhythm relaxing him immediately.
If only he could ride forever…
Two blocks later, he saw the street sign that read FAIRLAWN TERRACE.
He reached up and grasped the cord that would signal the driver to stop.
And then he saw the police car. It wasn't marked, of course-the police were not stupid-but it was one of those bulky dark Ford sedans whose very plainness announced it as an 'official' car and 'official' in this case meant police.
They're waiting for me.
The driver pulled over to the kerb.
He sat down again and said, self conscious because he had to speak so loudly in order to be heard, "I made a mistake. Just drive on, all right?"
Mistake? What a stupid story. I reached all the way up there and yanked on the cord. And it was a mistake?
He saw 3567 then.
It was a particularly nice ranch style, one made of both lumber and natural stone. He put his face to the bus window like a small lonely boy peering into a house.
Why was 3567 so special to him? Who lived there?
But of course he knew the answer to that one.
He lived there.
He rode the bus for the next hour and a hall. During this time he fell asleep and when he woke, he was disoriented. Not only was his name vague now; so was his purpose.
I'm on a bus. Why? Where am I going?
And then he felt the shift in his stomach.
He touched his hand to the slight swell of his belly, felt something thick and round curving across the arc beneath his sternum.
He recalled something that had happened to him once as a boy.
On the back porch, autumn winds blowing dead colourful leaves scratching across the screened in windows, he saw something move in a gunny sack his father kept on the back porch for storing walnuts. He had never forgotten what happened next. He knelt down and touched the palm of his hand to the top of the gunny sack He was sure he'd seen the sack move — and then he knew why. Beneath his hand, just under the fabric of the sack, uncoiled a fat writhing snake. He jerked back in panic. He had never been able to forget that odd sensation-the unseen reptile slithering beneath the rough material of the sack