It took him just a beat too long to say something, to invite them in.
“You said we should come, so we came.” She was belligerent, gorgeous. And he was so tired.
The truth was that Jules had had enough. He suffered. Lord, he suffered. He had broken so many bones so many times, he could barely get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes he could actually hear his joints creaking.
Pain, humiliation, brushes with death. No fame and not much glory.
Once he had been making a jump at a town fair, and he had run out of gas on the take-off ramp. That’s how broke he had been. The car tipped off the end of the ramp and fell heavily onto the cars below with an inglorious metallic crunch.
Once he sped off a ramp, and somehow the car rolled in the air, landing on its roof on the ground. The car had crumpled like tinfoil around him. He was trapped. Sitting there helpless, losing consciousness, he could smell gas.
Then, he heard someone suggest using a torch to cut him out of the car.
This will be it, he thought, killed by stupid ideas heaped on top of stupid ideas. He had been very surprised to wake up alive and only slightly damaged. They had managed to pull him out without blowing him to pieces. He still had dreams about it sometimes: the smell of gas, the voices, the rasp of the lighter.
A few more car rallies and county fairs and then one massive jump. If he made it, he would be set: talk shows, merchandise, maybe even movies. If he didn’t make it, well, his worries would still be over.
Because if he didn’t make it, he really wouldn’t make it. That much seemed obvious.
Mark told Mercy and Trudy to sit down, and he went to the fridge. One ginger ale, one beer. Jules saw Trudy eyeing his cast. “I’m almost thirty.” He just blurted it out. “I can’t do this for much longer.”
“You’re what?” said Trudy. He could see the look in her eyes: Thirty. Christ. Then she said it. “I didn’t think you were that old.”
“I feel a hundred.” Jules smiled a very small smile. His head was pounding. It was the truth. He felt at least one hundred years old.
“We saw unicorns. It was close to here. But they’re not there anymore.” Mercy unzipped her jacket to reveal a pink T-shirt with a sparkling rainbow iron-on on the front. “Trudy made me this shirt.”
“Nice,” said James. “You think she’ll make me one?”
“No! They’re for little girls!” cried Mercy, scandalized.
“But I like rainbows. Why can’t I have one?”
“You’re silly, James!” Mercy was laughing, doubled over. As if she could see it in her mind: great big tall James in a tiny tight pink rainbow T-shirt.
“Mercy, why don’t you show Mark and me where you found those unicorns? Maybe they’re back.”
“Can I, Trudy?”
Trudy looked at James and Mark, smiles on their goofy faces, and at Mercy, sitting up as straight as she could, as if it would help. As if good posture might sway her. “OK, then. But come right back. We have to get home soon.”
Mercy kissed Trudy on the cheek hard and loud and waved at Jules as she grabbed James’s hand and pulled him toward the screen door and out onto the porch. Jules felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up as Trudy turned to face him across the table.
Alone at last.