He hadn't moved. He was stretched out atop the covers, his limbs splayed, looking helpless and bereft, a faint quivering about his lips and nostrils as the expelled air shook through him. She felt bad for him. Felt bad for herself. But he was there for her, at least there was that-if ever anyone had passed the test, it was him. She spent a moment standing over the bed, gazing down at him, not thinking about love, not consciously, but stirred nonetheless by a rush of hormonal assertions, imperatives, desires. After a while, she bent forward and pressed her mouth to his and held it there, just held it, as if she were resuscitating him.
The restaurant they chose for dinner was a bit more upscale than the lunch place-softly lit, big Kentia palms in earthenware pots, linen-covered tables, clean plaster walls painted a shade of apricot-and when they'd paused outside before the recessed shrine that displayed the menu, she liked not only the prices but the vegetarian bill of fare. “Enough fast food,” she said, swinging round on Bridger as couples strolled by and the light began to fade over the mountains, “enough burgers and fries. Let's have something healthy for a change.”
He shrugged, in full passive mode. He'd canceled his cards, put a security alert on his credit reports, slept, showered and used the toilet, but he was still in shock. As they pushed through the door, her arm looped through his, he said something she didn't catch, and in the momentary distraction of addressing the hostess and following her to their table, he didn't repeat it.
Now, as they sat there over the menus-she'd ordered a glass of white wine; he was having a beer-she said, “I didn't catch what you said back there at the door.”
Another shrug. “Oh, it was nothing. I just-I don't think I have more than fifty bucks on me. Toto.”
“No problem. My treat.” Her hands unfolded to harmonize with her words. “It's all on me, everything-at least until you get your new cards. They can overnight them, right? And you can still use the cash machine-”
“Overnight them where?”
That was when the waitress returned with their drinks, and on her face the look Dana knew so intimately. It was a look borne out of the drink order and maybe some long-distance reconnaissance from the waitress' station, the probing look, the ready judgment. “Who had the white wine?” the waitress asked, just to hear Dana say, “That's me,” though with a party of two-one man, one woman-even a mental defective on her first day on the job would have divined that the wine was for the lady and the beer for the gentleman. Not to mention the fact that she was the one who'd taken the order in the first place.
“Are you ready to order?” she asked, and that was easy to read, because what else would she be asking, poised as she was over her little notation pad, one hip cocked forward, a look of spurious interest on her face. And the next thing she would say, once they'd made their selections, would be “Oh, excellent choice” or “That's the best thing on the menu.” “Hearing people.” Sometimes she couldn't help thinking the world would be a better place if everybody were deaf.
But yes, they were hungry. And yes, they were ready to order-the veggie shish kebab on basmati rice for Bridger, the hummus/couscous/ baba ghanoush pita platter for her-and the conversation died while Dana fought with the pronunciation and finally resorted to using her finger to point out the item on the menu. Every six months or so she went back to the speech therapist for a couple of weeks just to keep herself sharp-and she tried to practice regularly before the mirror, but with the insane pace of her life, teaching, writing and now this, the practice was the first thing to go. Really, though, “baba ghanoush?” Even the speech therapist had to have problems with that one.
She looked back to Bridger as the waitress drifted away. He was saying something, and he stopped, seeing she hadn't understood him, and began again. “I was saying, yeah, I do have, maybe, I don't know, a couple thousand bucks in my account-unless this creep has got to it-and I will try the cash machine, just to see. Because I don't-”
“Don't?” she echoed. “Don't what?”
“I don't want you to have to pay for me, because if we, if we're-”
“We're going to.”
“Yeah, well, I'm going to have to phone Radko-and you can bet I'll be out of a job when we get back.” He grimaced, then lifted the bottle of beer to his lips, ignoring the frosted mug that had come with it.
“How long does it take to drive cross-country-a week?” She took a sip of the wine-it was bitter, tannic. She was watching him intently.
“I don't know. Four and a half, five days if you drive straight through.”
“Could you stand that?”
“No. Could you?”
She thought about that a moment, one person asleep while the other drives, the shell of the car so fragile against the night, the eternal silence and nothing to distract her, and what if she nodded off? What was the name of that band, years back-Asleep at the Wheel? Bridger had his music, the radio, books on tape, and she had her laptop, but not at night, not when she was driving. And what if the car breaks down? What if it overheats in the desert or-what was the term-throws a rod? She was about to ask him that, about the car, about the rods, whatever they were, but she didn't get the chance because there were two other people hovering over them suddenly, a man and a woman in their twenties, dressed nearly identically in big jeans and big jackets over T-shirts trumpeting some band, and Bridger was up out of his seat as if he'd been launched, clasping the man to him in a bear hug.
She watched with a puzzled smile-or bemused, a bemused smile. “Bear hug,” she was thinking distractedly, and where had that come from? Who had actually seen bears hugging? “Did” bears hug? Or did they do it doggie style-or bearie style?
The man's name-Bridger was lit up, beaming, trembling with the information-was Matt Kralik, and he finger-spelled it for her while Matt Kralik and his girlfriend, Patricia, stood there gaping at her. Matt, he said, looking from Matt to her and back again, had been his roommate and best bud at SC, and what was he doing here? His parents had a place on the lake. But what a coincidence! Awesome! No, no, no, they had to join them for dinner. Bridger insisted.
There was the usual clumsy shuffle of place settings and chairs, the waitress looking on while a darting dark quick-blooded busboy studiously set them up and then they were all seated and Matt Kralik and Patricia had matching martinis in front of them, except that Matt's was officially a Gibson because he had a cocktail onion in his and Patricia preferred the traditional olive. For a moment no one spoke-this was what hearing people referred to as an “awkward silence,” but then no silence was awkward for Dana and her gaze quietly passed from Matt Kralik, seated on her left, to Bridger, across the table from her, and finally to Patricia, on her right. Patricia had an eager, almost ribald expression, her features too heavy for the taut athletic body that supported them-she looked cartoonish, all the weight above her shoulders, nothing below. “So,” she said, pursing her lips, “Dana-it's Dana, isn't it? I mean, I'm terrible with names-”
“Yes, that's right.”
“What do you, ah-do? For a living, I mean.”
All three of them were watching her as if she were one of the seals from Sea World propped up in a chair and about to balance a cane on her nose in expectation of the slippery reward of a fresh sardine from the trainer's hand, even Bridger, who was wearing his blunted look where a moment before he'd been transported, giddier than she'd seen him in a week, a month. She said, enunciating as clearly as she could, “I'm deaf. I teach in a deaf school. Or at least I used to.”