That night over dinner, Darren tells the story of crazy Joe Davis and his homemade tickets. In the telling, Davis’s hair is crazier, his hands dirtier. The tickets are more ridiculous, written in pencil crayon, each the size of a placemat. Mercy laughs. Claire tells Joe Davis stories from her girlhood. Trudy doesn’t find any of it very funny. When she and Tammy were girls, they had been terrified of Joe Davis. His catcalls and lewd gestures. His crazy teeth.
And the idea of the jump being real, something that could really happen, is chilling. The thought of Davis and a bunch of drunken fools sitting outside his ruin of a trailer watching it — as though it were entertainment — was sickening to her. But of course it is bullshit. It isn’t happening. Jules would have told her. He would.
She will call him tonight anyway. Just to make sure.
Trudy wants to enjoy dinner, to savour this harmony. She likes Darren, after all, and she is glad to see Claire and Mercy happy. Tammy and Fenton are eating take-out burgers in the truck, like the weirdos they are — determined to be on the wrong side of everything. Since the Frisbee incident, they have been keeping their distance, and to Darren’s irritation, Fenton has been showing up late for work or not at all. Good, thinks Trudy. Stay out there. Don’t show up.
It is better without you.
That’s the way you have made it and that’s the way it will be.