LATER, lying on the bed in my room, unable to find a comfortable position, listening to the hospital noises, I thought I wasn’t going to be able to sleep, but I must have drifted off because when I opened my eyes Dee was there, talking quietly with L.A. in the doorway of the room. Then he was standing beside the bed with his hand on mine. Then Hubert Ferkin was there, saying something to L.A. about “that fuckin’ Jack.”
The next time I woke up it was dark outside the window. I looked around the room. L.A. was curled up asleep in the armchair in the corner. There was an open Life magazine and an empty paper cup on the floor beside the chair. She was lying with her cheek on her hands, and I caught the light sound of her breathing among the other noises of the hospital. I was thirsty, but not quite enough to get up for a drink.
And then I was crossing into and out of dreams, the long, involved, semi-real kind you sometimes get with painkillers, where it’s not always clear whether you’re thinking about something that happened or dreaming about it:
It is early afternoon at Gram’s, me on the couch in front of the TV with nothing else to do, watching Daffy Duck harass Speedy Gonzales.
But really mostly thinking about Diana.
L.A. is sitting cross-legged in her blue jeans and an old T-shirt of mine at the other end of the couch with a bottle of cream soda in her hand and her nose in one of Gram’s magazines. Earlier I saw her sneak a drink of the Madeira Gram uses for cooking, so the cream soda could be for camouflage. The cover of the magazine, which is the kind that has recipes and pictures of beautiful kitchens and quizzes about how to tell if you’re a good wife, shows a lemon cake with one slice out of it, like all magazine cakes. It looks like it would taste great, but I can’t focus on that because I can’t stop thinking about Diana. The reason she is a problem for me right now is that I have a more or less major date with her coming up. Actually it’s a road trip, and even though her parents will be there too, I still have my hopes.
Not that Diana would worry. Except maybe for the possibility of hellfire and damnation, she is mostly fearless, seeing the universe as basically a safe place and generally counting on things to turn out all right. That seems kind of sweet but contradictory to me, a smart girl like her thinking that way, but I envy her peace of mind. Actually her whole family is like that, which is surprising to me because of the work they do. Diana’s mom is a nurse at Parkland, which is a place that is somehow both here all around me and also across town, and her dad is a police detective, which you’d think would make them both pretty serious-minded from constantly looking at people who are sick or dead or guilty. But it doesn’t really work that way, and this is one of the things I love about all of them. They like to laugh, even Fubbit, Diana’s little brother, whose actual, unused given names are Andrew Gaines. I’ve helped babysit him several times and know that although he can be a four-alarm screamer if you piss him off, like any baby, most of the time he is either chuckling and grinning or dead asleep and really almost no trouble at all.
The trip I’m worried about is going to be to the Chamforts’ family cabin at a place called Duck Lake somewhere up near the Canadian border in Minnesota. L.A. was invited too but after talking it over we decided one of us should stay with Gram. Overcome by an impulsive burst of gentlemanliness, no doubt brought on by the fact I was already throbbing with guilt about leaving the two of them here unprotected, I actually offered to flip L.A. for it. But she just looked at me pityingly, shook her head and said, “Try not to fall in the lake.”
The trip will be a completely new experience for me and I have endless fantasies about it, imagining myself swimming with Diana in the cold water or taking her out in the boat or maybe just walking in the woods with her. The more I think about the possibilities the better it all sounds to me. But I am still uneasy.
“What’s a soul kiss?” I ask L.A. I know what a French kiss is but I’m not sure it’s the same thing.
L.A. puts down her cream soda, saying, “Where’d you hear that?”
I usually give myself credit for being about as smart as L.A., but that isn’t always easy to hold on to.
“Hubert and them,” I say. “What’s it mean, really?”
She gives me the you poor ignorant child look and puts her magazine aside.
“Here, I’ll show you,” she says, coming over to sit on my lap facing me, holding my hips with her knees. She brushes the hair back from her cheeks and says, “Close your eyes.” She takes my face in both her hands, then puts her half-opened mouth on mine and pushes her tongue between my teeth. Her mouth is cool and sweet from the cream soda.
When she draws her head back and we open our eyes, she looks at me with a funny expression, like maybe she’s a little surprised at something, and her breath is coming fast. I see that her nipples are stiff under the T-shirt, the way they get when she’s cold. She looks down at my lap between her legs and back up at my eyes as I sit breathing through my mouth and feeling the blood thumping in my neck. My ears are so hot they feel like they’re going to spontaneously combust, and I am wondering where L.A. learned this particular skill and whether she’d be willing to do it again.
Then suddenly she gives a kind of strangled sob and punches me in the face, then again and again and again, swinging with both fists. I’m almost too surprised to react. I try to cover, but she’s getting them in there pretty good in spite of me.
“Hey, SHID!” I yell, throwing her off my lap. I grab my nose. “Tha hurds, godabbid!” I feel my lip to see if it’s split. “Why the hell’d you do that?”
She doesn’t answer, just stands there in the middle of the floor, white as death and shaking from head to foot. She’s looking more or less in my direction, but her eyes are glazed and unfocused.
A nurse woke me up, and I saw L.A. had now turned the other way in her chair. The nurse asked me how I felt and what my name was and where we were. In the background I could faintly hear different people talking: a woman saying, “No, she was a good kid,” and another saying something about what happens when people turn away from God, and Dr. Colvin’s voice somewhere saying, “Not on my watch.”
The nurse left and I went back to sleep.
L.A. and I have been at the pool all afternoon and now we’re back home with a little time to kill before supper. Gram has fixed meat loaf, peas, mashed potatoes and corn muffins, nesting the hot rolls neatly in a straw basket with a cloth napkin over them, her way with fresh-baked bread whether it’s a special occasion or not. I don’t notice that L.A. has gone in to take a shower because I’m concentrating on snatching one of the muffins without getting caught. Not that the penalty would be that bad—just some stiff talk about how it isn’t dinnertime yet and only hooligans take up their food in unwashed hands—but I pride myself on stealth and try to stay sharp. Today is a good test for me with Gram right there in the kitchen fussing around, but I score.
I stuff the muffin in my mouth as I walk down the hall and open the bathroom door. I’ve completely forgotten about L.A., but there she stands in a steamy cloud, naked and wet, on the rug by the tub shower. There are droplets of water on her skin and in the dark tuft of hair I didn’t even know was there between her legs. Following my eyes, she looks down at herself and then back at me. A trickle of water travels slowly down between her small breasts toward her navel. Without hurrying, she takes a towel from the rack on the wall and wraps it around herself. Neither of us says anything. She watches me as I back away and close the door, taking the muffin from my mouth.
Somebody shook my shoulder and softly said, “James, wake up.” I opened my eyes and saw Diana’s mom in her white uniform. For a second I thought she might be an angel. “I’m sorry we have to keep bothering you,” she said. “We need to make sure you’re all right.”
“M’fine, Miz Chamfort.”
“I know you must be tired,” she said. “I heard you had a headache. How is it now?”
“Lot better,” I said.
“Dr. Colvin says your X-rays look fine.” She lifted my wrist and took my pulse while keeping an eye on her watch.
L.A. got up, stretched and walked over to look into my face with her eyes squinted half shut. Then she went back to her chair and worked herself into sleeping position again. She didn’t open her eyes when Diana’s mom touched her arm on the way out of the room. I went back to sleep.