Eight

 

Chandra didn't usually remember her dreams, but when she woke up in the morning she had the clearest image in her head of a dream she'd night the before. In it she was a young girl in a bright yellow sundress. Her hair was long and braided in a single plait down her back. She could feel it move, tickling her shoulder blades when she turned her head from side to side. She stood on a cliff of dark red rock. Her toes hung over the edge. When she looked down she could see the cliff dropping down forever with no end in sight. Brilliant white birds like albino hawks swooped overhead. Chandra wasn't afraid. The birds swooped closer and closer until one grazed her head and caught her braid in its talons, lifting her up off the ground.

She thought about the dream all morning as she talked to customers on the phone and entered orders into the computer. She wondered what it could mean or if dreams really meant anything at all. Before she knew it the morning was over.

"You going to lunch?" Renee stuck her head into Chandra's cubicle.

"Yeah, in a minute." Chandra typed a few sentences into her computer. Then she placed the files on her desk in a neat stack. She swiveled around in her chair. "Where are we eating?"

"The deli down the street?"

"Sounds good. I like their salads."

Renee walked at a leisurely pace. Normally this would have annoyed Chandra, but she was trying to stop and smell the roses today. "Guess who asked about you?"

Chandra couldn't imagine who might have been asking about her, but she could tell by the way Renee smiled it was a man. "Who, Barney?" she said sarcastically.

"Him too, but he always does."

"Who else then?" Chandra pulled open the door to the crowded deli. The line was so long she wondered if they'd have time to eat once they'd gotten their food. She scanned the tables. There was only one empty. Just as she spotted it three young men dressed alike in khakis and navy blue polo shirts sat at it. One of the men was bald. He spoke loudly as the other two laughed. Chandra wondered where they worked. Maybe she should try to get a job there, she thought.

"The pianist at the bar."

At first Chandra thought that she had said penis and wondered who that could possibly be. "Who, Craig?"

"At the bar. You know, the pianist. I don't know his name. I should, but I don't."

"The piano player?" Chandra said to clarify what Renee was saying.

"Yeah."

"Zade."

"Is that his name? I have to try to remember it."

Chandra knew Renee would most likely forget it. She was just that way. She had worked with Renee for months before she could remember her name. "It's just such an unusual name. It doesn't really stick in my head," Renee had said after asking Chandra her name for the fourth time.

"Zade, Zade, Zade," Renee repeated the name like a mantra. "Anyway, me and Craig talked to him for a while after you left and the only thing he was really interested in talking about was you." She pointed a pale, pink, polished fingernail at Chandra when she said you as if she was trying to clear up any confusion as to who you might be. "He wanted to know everything about you. Maybe you should come back to Prescott's with me tonight."

"I can't tonight." Chandra didn't really have any plans.

"I'm busy tomorrow night, but how about Saturday?"

"They don't play on Saturday. They play on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday."

Renee's face swelled with joy. "You know their schedule. We'll just have to go next week some time."

"Maybe," Chandra said. She didn't want to admit that she was intrigued to hear that Zade had been asking about her.

 

**

 

When Chandra got home, her father was sitting on the couch with his ankle just barely crossed over his left knee tugging at a turquoise cowboy boot. "I just can't get these things off," Henry said. His voice strained as he pulled. He stopped and put his foot down on the floor.

Chandra looked at her father sitting on the couch in his khaki shorts and turquoise boots and laughed. "Where on earth did you get those?" she asked pointing at the boot's impossibly pointy toes. Black stitching swirled up the sides. Henry's stick thin calves emerged from the tops.

"Never mind." He got up and walked to the kitchen.

Chandra followed him. "Come on, Dad. There's got to be a good story to go along with those."

The boots' slight heels made him seem taller. Their soles struck the tile hard. "I bought Cajun catfish for dinner. We can have it with rice, and I got a can of string beans." He ignored her teasing as he opened the refrigerator to get out the fish.

"I'll make dinner," Chandra said.

"No, I'll do it. You've been working all day, and this is a meal I can cook."

"Thanks." Chandra retreated to her room to change. When she was at home she liked to be comfortable. There was no sense in messing up good clothes.

A pot of rice simmered on the stove, the fish was in the oven and Henry was opening the can of string beans when Chandra came out of her room. "Thanks again for cooking dinner."

"That's okay. Besides, I wasn't sure if you had another night out planned." He dumped the can into a glass bowl and put it in the microwave. The bowl spun slowly round and round. He left the can on the counter; the jagged top stuck up in the air.

Chandra wanted to point out that she did call to let him know that she wasn't going to be home, but she figured it wasn't worth mentioning. She leaned against the refrigerator and watched him. "Are you sure you don't want my help?"

"It'll be done in a minute. Set the table if you really want to do something."

At dinner, Chandra ate slowly. The rice was a bit crunchy and the string beans tasted like the can they came in, but the fish was good. She really wanted to know about her father's new boots, but he obviously wasn't interested in talking about them. She thought that chatting about her night out might put him in a better mood. Once he'd cheered up a bit, he might be more forthcoming about his boots. "Aren't you going to ask me about last night?"

"I was trying not to ask. I don't want you to feel like I'm being nosy."

"I went out to dinner with one of the girls from work. Then we went to a bar afterward." She decided to leave Zade out of the story.

"Did you have fun?"

"Yeah, I guess I did. I'm trying to turn over a new leaf." It was such a strange phrase for her to use.

Her father crinkled his forehead. "A new leaf?"

"Yeah. I want to be more outgoing. I want to do more. I want to be one of those people who goes skydiving and runs marathons."

"And going to a bar will help you do this?"

"Well, no." She put her fork down and sat back in her chair. The wooden back pushed into her. Chandra wished her father would take her more seriously when she tried to confide in him. She was sure he knew what she was trying to say, but just pretended he didn't understand. She crossed her arms and tried to think about how the new Chandra should handle this situation. The old Chandra would have said forget it and gone back to eating. "I don't think I'll really run a marathon. I just want to be that kind of person."

"An athletic person?"

Chandra sighed. "No, I mean an outgoing person. Someone who makes things happen, not someone who lets things happen to them."

"Interesting."

Chandra picked up her fork and started eating again. She thought her father would say something else, but he didn't. Instead he turned on Wheel of Fortune and went back to eating.

He complained every time someone bought a vowel. "Why would you waste your money like that? They must tell them to buy vowels." He gestured angrily with his arm at the television. "Aww, come on!"

When dinner was over Chandra cleaned up. She carefully rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. She covered the leftover string beans and rice and found places for them in the crowded refrigerator. She wiped the counters, swept the floor and took out the trash.

When she came back in her father was right where he was when she came home--sitting on the couch in the same position tugging at his boot. Chandra walked towards him holding out her hand. "Give it to me," she said.

"What?" He looked at her puzzled.

"Your foot."

He stuck his foot out. "I'm old. I can't put it up that high."

Chandra smiled and got down on one knee. She cupped one hand around the smooth heel of the boot and placed the other across the front. She leaned back and pulled. It gave a little resistance before sliding off in one smooth motion. She placed the boot on the floor next to her. "And now the other one." They repeated the process with the other one. Instead of setting this boot down right away, she examined the rounded lines of the stitching and the texture of the leather. They smelled like new leather, a smell she particularly liked. "Where'd you get them?" She placed the boot down next to the other and moved to sit next to him on the couch.

"The flea market. They were cheap." He seemed embarrassed when he said this.

"You went to the flea market?" Chandra grinned. Going to the flea market was just not something she could imagine her father doing. Going to the supermarket was hard enough for him. She tried to imagine him sifting through piles of merchandise in the hot sun.

"Yeah. Red Barn. They have a part that's inside," he said as if reading her mind.

"Oh. Why turquoise?"

"That was the only pair in my size."