“I’m sorry your meeting with the Emerson guy didn’t work out,” she said, her voice filled with sympathy.
He had told her that the admissions rep had been a jerk and that he had given the man some attitude, probably eliminating himself from the running for a scholarship.
“That’s all right,” he said with a shrug. “I didn’t really want to go there anyway.”
He hated to lie to her—it didn’t bode well for their future—but what choice did he have? There was no way he could share with Vilma the freak show his life had become over the last week. He had even begun to wonder if it was a good idea to start any kind of relationship with her. The last thing he wanted was for to her to be sucked up into the maelstrom of insanity swirling about him.
The silence in the car was nearly unbearable. Vilma finally opened the door a crack and looked at him. He smiled.
“Thanks for the ride. I really appreciate it,” she said, returning his smile. Only, Aaron thought it put his to shame. “I think I had to bring every book in my locker home tonight. My bag’s popping at the seams,” she said, patting the stuffed nylon bag resting on her lap.
“No problem,” he said as he slid the palms of his hands over the smoothness of the steering wheel. “Anytime.”
The car door was open but she wasn’t leaving. He wondered if there was some gentlemanly thing he was supposed to do like go around to the other side and help her out.
“You know you can call me if you want,” she blurted out, as she played with the zipper on her bookbag. “If you wanted to, you know, talk about stuff? Like the Emerson thing—or our paper—I could help you with yours.”
Aaron looked at her—really looked at her. Suddenly any nervousness he had been feeling—any lack of self-confidence—was not an issue. In that instant, he decided that not only was Vilma the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen, but also the most real. There were no games with her. She said exactly what was on her mind and he liked that. A lot.
“Now why would you want me to do that?” he asked, looking back to the steering wheel. “I’m sure you have a lot more interesting things to do with your time than talking to me.”
She seemed to think about it for a moment and then began to nod her head slowly. “You’re probably right. Cleaning up after my cousins, doing laundry, my homework—yeah, you are right—I’d much rather do those things than talk with a cute guy on the phone.”
He was a bit taken aback, and reached up to nervously scratch the back of his head. “Are you saying that you think I’m cute, or is there some other guy you’re going to call?”
Vilma laughed and rolled her beautiful almond-colored eyes. “I thought you were supposed to be the dark, brooding guy—not the big doofus.” She shook her head in mock disbelief.
Vilma was laughing at him, but Aaron didn’t care. The sound was one of the coolest things he had ever heard, and he began to laugh as well.
“I’ve never been called a doofus before,” he said. He again looked at her. “Thanks.”
She reached out to squeeze his arm. “I like you, Aaron,” she said.
He had never wanted to kiss a girl so badly. Yeah, there had been that time with Jennine Surrette in junior high, but that was because he had never done it before. Kissing Vilma now would seem almost like his first time—like all the other kisses since Jennine were just practice leading up to this one.
He started to lean his head toward her, his lips being pulled to hers by some irresistible force that he couldn’t negate—that he didn’t want to negate. Aaron was relieved to see that she seemed to be having the same difficulty, leaning toward him as well.
There came a sudden knock at the passenger-side window, and the spell that was drawing them inexorably closer was abruptly broken.
A little girl, looking like how he imagined Vilma must have looked when she was around seven or eight, peered into the car, smiling. There was an open gap in her comical grin where her front baby teeth used to be.
Vilma shook her fist at the child and she ran off laughing.
“My cousin,” she said, looking a bit embarrassed.
The moment was gone, lightning in a bottle—now free to be captured again some other time. But that was all right. Kissing Vilma could wait—but hopefully, not for too long.
“I like you too,” he said, and briefly touched her hand. It felt remarkably warm.
Vilma unzipped the side pocket of her bookbag. She took out a tiny pink pencil and small pad of paper and began to write.
“Here’s my phone number and e-mail address,” she said as she tore the paper from the notepad and handed it to him. “Call between six and nine, my aunt and uncle kind of freak when anybody calls too late. You can e-mail me anytime and I’ll get back to you soon as I can.”
He looked down at the phone number. It was as if he had been given the winning number of a billion-dollar lottery—only better.
“You can give me yours later,” she said as she got out of the car, lugging her bag behind her. “I gotta get inside and kill my cousin.” She turned and leaned back in. “Maybe you can give it to me when we talk tonight,” she suggested with another winning smile.
He was about to tell her that it was a deal when he remembered he had to work. “I can’t call tonight—gotta work and probably won’t get in until after nine.”
“Ahh, blowing me off already,” Vilma said in mock disappointment.
“Give me that pencil,” he ordered.
She handed it to him, smiling all the time, and watched as he began to write at the bottom of the piece of paper she had given him.
“I’ll give it to you now,” he said as he finished. He folded the paper and tore away his number. “This way there’ll be no mistaking my intentions,” he said as he handed her the slip of paper.
“And what exactly are your intentions, Mr. Corbet?” she asked as she slipped the paper into her back pocket.
“In time, Ms. Santiago,” he said with a devilish grin. “All in due time.”
“Thanks for the ride,” he heard her say as she laughed and slammed the door closed.
He watched her walk up to the front porch. She opened the white screen door and turned to wave before she vanished inside.
The clock on the dashboard said that it was close to three o’clock. He had less then five minutes to get across town to work, but it didn’t really bother him. As he struggled to back out of the tiny, dead-end street, he realized he wasn’t really worried about much of anything right then. Everything was going to work out just fine.
He didn’t remember ever before feeling this way.
But it was something he could get used to.
Ezekiel drank from a bottle of cheap whiskey and pondered the question of redemption.
He shifted upon his bed to get comfortable and leaned his head back against the cool plaster wall. He took a long, thoughtful pull off his cigarette.
Redemption. Strangely enough, it was something he thought of quite a bit these days, since meeting the boy.
Zeke reached down to the floor again for the bottle of spirits and brought it to his mouth. Cigarette smoke streamed from his nostrils as the whiskey poured down his throat. It burned, but still he drank.
It was a kind of punishment, he thought as he brought the bottle away from his thirsty mouth and replaced it with the cigarette, a punishment for all that he had wrought.
It’s odd thinking about this after so long, he thought, staring at the wall across from him. A cockroach had started to climb the vertical expanse and he silently wished it luck. He could have told the insect directly but the communication skills of a bug were so primitive.