14

WE CHECKED OUT of the Magnolia Hotel early. Delia came out yawning and wanting to stay in bed until noon. “Our flight home leaves in two hours,” I said. “And the concierge says we ought to check in early.”

“What’s left to go back to in North Carolina?” she asked. “Lets start a new life in Houston. I like it here. No Gradys or Mason Freemans to hold threats over your head. The pickings are good as far as guys are concerned. We got money to burn.”

“You’ve got to stop it, Delia.”

“I’ve never had so much.”

“If we don’t stop and get it in an investment where we can’t spend it, it will all be gone, and you’ll be no better off.”

“But we had a good time,” she said. “That’s worth something.”

Duke phoned up for our car. We waited on the walk in front of the hotel.

My cell phone rang. I answered. Braden had come home and found the apartment turned upside down. He was breathing hard, having trouble talking, but finally said, “What’s happened to our place, Gaylen? Looks like a war zone, like someone took a bat to the place. Your leasing agent, Kimberly, is frantic and wanting to know if you’re alive.” He did not sound easeful, nearly like when he could not find a landing strip in the dark. “Did you really quit?”

“Fired and quit,” I said.

Delia twirled around to face me, staring with her mouth open.

“I hated that job anyway,” I said, wondering why it mattered if Delia heard.

“You loved it,” he said. “Like I’ve never seen you work so many hours.”

“I was never off work.” He really thought I loved that stinking, awful job.

The sound of someone moving furniture around or lifting broken objects made it difficult to understand him. In the background, Kimberly said, “Omigosh! I called the cops. Is she hurt?”

“I’m coming home, Braden, but that guy whose eyes you blacked is a hit man. He wants Delia really badly. I got a first name. It’s Grady. I don’t know where to take her, where its safe.”

“Where are you now?”

The driver pulled up with our car. Duke said, “Your carriage awaits, girls.”

Braden asked, “Who was that?”

“Duke,” I said.

“Do I know him?”

“I’m in Houston. Delia and I came here to try to put together some facts about my family.” When he did not answer, I said, “I needed to get Delia out of town.”

“Did you find what you’re looking for?” He sounded melancholy and put out.

“I’m not sure,” I said. There was not enough time to explain Truman Senior or Amity’s dresses.

Duke took my luggage and stowed it in the trunk.

Delia slid into the open door on the passenger’s side. She waved good-bye to the valet as if they were old friends.

“Are you coming home?” Braden asked.

“Grady will be looking for us. I don’t know what to do.” I finally told him, “He stole our wedding bands.”

It took a moment for Braden to answer. “It’s time to take Delia to the police,” he said. I could hear sirens in the background. I imagined Deputy Bob pulling up in front of Building B on Moss Court while Kimberly ran up and down the stairs and Mrs. Shane paced back and forth on the landing.

Delia pulled down the visor and found a mirror. She dug through my purse and pulled out a lipstick. She put it on and grinned at herself.

“I agree. I’ll take her straight to the police,” I said.

Delia mouthed, “Let’s go,” through the window glass while I tried to please both Braden and her.

“The cops are here,” he said. “I have to go. Call me when you land in Wilmington.”

We had not pulled all the way out onto Texas Avenue when Delia blurted out, “You was fired? See, you don’t tell me a thing. You’re the last person I would think would be fired.” She was still holding my handbag in her lap. “Me, I get fired drop of a hat. You got any mascara?” She fished through my bag like she did our mother’s whenever she took us to church.

“Braden’s going to the cops, Delia,” I said. “He has to tell them about Grady, and that will mean telling them about Sophie.” I was tired of holding back, worried that Delia would explode. “You should have told the cops from the start.”

She sat up, frowning, her chin drawing up tight as a baseball. “They’ll not protect me, Gaylen! They’ll be waiting on me when we land in Wilmington. I’ll be thrown in jail. Don’t you get it? I can just hear Deputy Bob laughing his hind end off, dropping the jail key down his britches.” She set to crying, so she pulled tissues out of my handbag and alternated wiping her eyes and applying little dashes of mascara to her thin, damp lashes. “I didn’t mean to shoot Sophie Deals, and she’s moving on with her life, isn’t she? Let’s all just make up and get on with things. Why is it everyone always has to blow up everything I do as if I was a mass murderer?” She kept pumping the wand into the tube and working her lashes until they were stiff and black as spider legs. “You got to take me some place far away. Mexico. Or Paris, how about? I got new clothes.”

“Delia, if I hadn’t started running you all over the country, I’d not have lost my job. I can’t keep running.”

“You have me to thank, then.” She feigned sobbing. “I heard you tell your husband you hated that job.”

“What else was I supposed to say?”

“You’ll get another job.”

“I’m so employable,” I said. “I crash planes, steal airport food. I’m everyone’s low man on the totem pole.”

She wiped a long, dark, salty stream from her cheek. “That’s why you hooked up with that professor.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said, and I was mad at her for continually bringing him up.

“He was a hoity-toity man.”

“You’re so off base, I can’t believe it! But that’s because you don’t know me. How could you? Never do you try to get to know me. I’m the one always left to figure you out.”

“You never wanted to be like the rest of us, Gaylen.”

“What are you saying, that I slept with Max Swinson to elevate myself?”

“What does a man like that talk about anyway, I’d like to know.”

“Philosophy.”

“You sure know how to flirt.”

“Are you saying that my stupid fling with Max had an ulterior motive?”

“I don’t even know what that is.”

She annoyed me to the point of losing my way out of downtown Houston. “Until we get on the plane, will you can it, Delia?” I asked. “I’ll never get us out of here, and I don’t want to miss the flight.”

I finally saw the interstate sign and ramped into the stream of morning traffic. Most of the commuters were coming into the city while we were leaving, so I drove onto the interstate with ease. The airport sign guided me back to Hobby Airport. It was a gray morning that, according to the radio weather report, would break forth into Texas sunshine within the hour. But all I could see before me were Max Swinson’s eyes the color of muddy ocean water and his slightly crooked smile. He was a bookish nerd who expressed how surprised he was when I so easily followed him out to his beach cottage. I finally hated him.

Delia was humming, not any tune in particular but a ditty that she seemed to make up.

Max hovered inside me like a funny little enigma of a man buzzing around in my head. Whether or not I was trying to elevate myself had not been so clear up until the moment that Delia unearthed it without a bit of, reflection or effort on her part. My sister was wrong, but now I was left to figure out how the only good Syler girl had fallen so easily for a man who seduced me with so little effort. How well I remembered.

It was the second rendezvous to the beach cottage, and Max brought champagne. Not even good champagne, but he poured it into my glass like it had cost him a weeks pay. He wore a black suit that made him look lean. The suit was fresh from the dry cleaners. I saw the tag in the collar when he laid it over the chair.

I was getting over a cold and wore so many layers it took fifteen minutes to undress. But Max never undressed fully. He kept sipping his drink and watching me. I was a floor show, but it was not like me to succumb to this brand of monkeyshines. My high school friends voted me the only girl who did not know how to flirt. I dropped my neatly folded tights onto the floor next to the blue cardigan and the knit plaid skirt.

I never felt comfortable the first time a man saw me naked. I was thin and subconsciously aware of my size B cups. I had hated puberty anyway, so when hormones trickled into my skinny frame at age nine, it filled up more of me below the waist than above. This was just another new experience with the sickening sense of discomfort that ruled over me.

Max pulled me close. It occurred to me that he had never kissed me. I closed my eyes and prepared for the kiss. I hoped his kissing me would finally rev things up between us. But he barely touched my lips. I opened my eyes, and he was holding me as if he did not know what to do next.

“Is something the matter?” I asked.

“You don’t want to be here.”

“Im here. Isn’t that proof?”

“You’re not into me at all.”

Braden had said the same thing. “You’re ruining this!” I said, angry.

I sat on the bed crying. He left me there with a key telling me, “Spend the night if you want.” There was a slight tremor in his voice, as if I had stolen his virility. “I’ll call you.”

“Delia, if you’ll not bring up Max again, I’ll buy you a pair of black boots. You need black for the sake of your basics.” I drove into the rental car lot piecing together a plan for how I could use my share of the inheritance to finish my education and get out of Boiling Waters. But that thought was put on hold when Braden called again. The police were looking for Delia, he said, and for me. “Don’t come home until I can sort this all out. Wait for my call,” he told me. “And whatever you do, don’t get back on that plane.”

Delia was happy again.

The rental car dealer allowed us an extra day, so back we went into Houston in search of a car to keep. I told Delia, “We’re not far from Dallas. I’ll call Uncle Jackson and Aunt Noleen and see if they might take us in for a couple of days.” I would use Renni’s name and Daddy’s name and hope that would open their door to us. “That will give me time to think.” I was thinking of calling the Boiling Waters police but did not know how to tell Delia. Then I wondered if Jackson might help her find a job in Dallas. I could set her up with a bank account and a small amount of cash to get her started in a new life. Then I could tell Deputy Bob that she had run off and left me stranded.

But as the scheme was hatching, it was not settling well. Braden once said that it was not possible for me to lie. I thought that was true, that I knew myself. But that was before Max. The lying took over for a while until I hated myself too much to continue. But running with Delia had turned over the dark side of me again, flipping me back and forth from good to bad like a pancake.

Buying a used car in Texas was like picking shells off the beach. Every street corner, it seemed, blazed with the sales schmaltz of low auto deal claims. I drove onto a lot called The Texas Stampede. The sign was in the shape of a longhorn bull’s head. The front door on the mobile office flew open the instant we pulled onto the lot. Out walked a salesman wearing a brown suede vest and a ten-gallon hat. He sidled up next to Delia and handed her a shiny marshal’s badge. “It’s the law around here: every customer gets the best deal in Houston.” His name tag read Chris. “I’m the marshal of used cars,” he said.

He handed me the keys to an orange sports car that Delia and I drove around until we were carsick. There was little room for our luggage. We tried out a second car, a Volkswagen that smelled like stale taco sauce and cigarette smoke.

Delia begged, “Please, a pickup truck, Gaylen. I’ve always wanted one, and look, it’s marked down to twelve thousand, and it comes with a set of cookware.”

“Any automobile you pick out today and drive off this lot comes with the nonstick Country Chef cookware,” said Marshal Chris. “And that’s a five cook-pot deal, lids included.” He pressed the truck keys into my hand. “Take ‘er to lunch, girls. Be our guest.” He handed Delia a coupon for a bucket of chicken at a cafe he called the Hungry Hen. Delia grabbed the keys and the coupon and clambered into the driver’s seat. I joined her inside the truck’s cab.

She zipped onto the interstate, playing with the window buttons and the radio dial. “It’s got a five-CD changer and a cup holder big enough for a Big Gulp,” she said, a passionate connoisseur of 7-Eleven Slurpees. She spotted the Hungry Hen cafe sign and followed the arrows up the ramp and into the parking lot. She pulled the bright blue truck into a front-row parking slot. When a couple of men in cowboy hats glanced our way, she slid out of the truck, fake reptile boots hitting the parking lot pavement while she waved at the men as if she knew them. “Texas has a lot to offer a person,” she said, walking past me through the doors.

I passed on the chicken and ordered a salad. We sat in an orange plastic booth under a sign that said “Boat on Beautiful Nacogdoches Lake.”

She snuggled up next to a double-battered chicken leg, chewing and rolling her eyes. “Nobody ever give me anything for free. Except there was that time that Lee and me was down on the lake fishing. The bait shop gave us two bait cups for the price of one, seeing how the worms were going to dry up if he didn’t pass them on.” She smiled at the two Texans who took a booth across from us. She wiped her hands on a napkin and extended her hand across the aisle. “Name’s Delia,” she said to one.

“Harrison Pew, Delia,” he smiled. “This is my cousin, Avery.”

Avery smiled at me as if we were all being paired off by an unseen hand. He was younger and better suited to Delia. He reminded me of the type of boys at Boiling Waters High who hated school and loved shop class.

“We’re test-driving that truck,” Delia told Harrison. “I don’t know much about trucks, like, knowing when you’re getting ripped off and when you’re getting a good deal.”

“Avery will look under the hood for you,” said Harrison.

“That’s not necessary,” I said, but no one listened to me.

“I just knew you were the type of guys to help us out,” said Delia. “We’re not from Houston.”

I knew that if I did not interject some sort of distraction into the conversation, Delia would next tell them that we were wealthy heiresses hiding out from the North Carolina state police. “Where’s a good place to visit around here?” I asked, figuring that Harrison and Avery were most likely not concerned with intellectual repartee.

“I like the Houston Symphony,” said Harrison, glib and looking at me.

“We’re not really from here either,” said Avery. “We flew here from North Carolina to get away before racing season. Harrison here is a race car driver. I’m his crew boss.”

“Good. Then you know all about engines and such,” said Delia. She got up and walked to the door as if she knew that Avery would magically follow, and of course, he did.

“I wasn’t kidding about the symphony,” said Harrison. He moved across the aisle and sat in the seat Delia had just left. “I’ve got tickets to the Christmas concert tonight. People give me things like that all the time, but a NASCAR guy like Avery is not likely to join me.”

“You don’t want your tickets?” I asked him.

“Avery doesn’t want his,” he said. “I know you don’t know me, but I’m a big fan of the Houston Symphony, a bit of a patron. I’d hate to go by myself, though.” He did not try to flirt or persuade me. He said, “You look like the kind of woman who’d like to hear a good orchestra.”

Harrison’s eyes were not so dull and void of light. He removed his billed cap emblazoned with his name. He had a mass of blond curls that softened his looks. His temples were high, and in spite of his flannels and jeans, he looked as if he might own a black dress coat. I was about to open my mouth and tell him that I wasn’t dating since I was still carrying my unsigned divorce papers around in my suitcase next to my dead mother’s pictures. I said instead, “Tonight?”

Delia and I checked into the less pricy La Quinta near the interstate. It was near a shopping mall, and I needed a new dress. I found a sheath dress that fell across my hips in as flattering a manner as possible. I had shed a few pounds while running from Delia’s demons.

Delia rattled on about Avery and how he saved us a fortune when he discovered a bad gasket under the blue trucks hood that had been doctored, most likely, by Marshal Chris’s mechanic. He knew of a friend selling a good used sports car—a blue Miata—for a song. While Harrison and I went to the Houston Symphony, Avery would take Delia bowling, and the two of them would test-drive the friend’s car.

Delia was ecstatic, not only for her bowling date, but that I had agreed. For one night, we were free of each other. But I was having second thoughts, feeling as if I was betraying Braden all over again.

“He divorced you and then told you about it after the fact,” said Delia.

I sat down on the bed. “It was my fault though, Delia. I initiated the train wreck.”

We sat quietly staring into the motel television. There was a battle in Fallujah and two U.S. soldiers were killed. Delia slid on a pair of flip-flops and went out for ice and canned drinks. I changed channels several times but could not get away from the war.

Harrison would come for me in one hour. He gave me his number, he said, in case I changed my mind. I showered, changed into the dress, changed out of it, reached for the phone, and then lay across the bed in my bathrobe.

Delia came through the door expecting to find me dressed. “You look awful,” she said. “You having second thoughts?”

“I’m getting dressed,” I said, reasoning, “I haven’t seen a symphony since Braden’s parents bought us tickets for our first anniversary.” I burst into tears.

Delia fished a box of tissues out of the bathroom console. She lay beside me on the bed, passing me fresh tissues and wadding up the ones I used. She rolled onto her back, staring at the overhead light. “I don’t think I’ve ever loved a man like that,” she said. “Not so I just about throw up when he’s gone. Lee, he did me dirty, but I liked revenge as much as I liked marriage.” Her face was drawn, the face that she wore when she wanted to convince me she could be serious. “Love is a pain I get rid of. But you hold on to it, like the pain is just part of it.”

“So that’s what I’m left with? Love is a pain in the gut?”

“Why keep it when it goes bad?” she asked. “I’m not one for punishment.”

I came up onto my elbows. “When I married Braden, it felt as if I was being carried along into marriage and then there he was sleeping in my bed every night. It became an obligation. Maybe love has to get painful before you recognize it. It’s not like you think, not like you imagine.” I still did not have it right, but neither did Delia. “You don’t know what love feels like until you lose it.”

“I’ll never get it,” she said. “Avery’s got nice eyes. I feel something when he looks at me. I used to call it love. But it’s always like that at first. Then one day I just look at a guy and there’s nothing, nothing at all that feels like that first look. Listening to you, though, I don’t know what else to expect. Did I ever know—with Lee, Freddy, and now with Avery?” She sat up, aimed the remote at the television, and turned it off. “Maybe I just want to have someone say nice things about me. Maybe to me that is my definition for love. Why does it have to turn so ugly?”

I handed her back the tissue box.

“You’re not going out with Harrison tonight, are you?” she asked. She slumped down onto the bed, burying her face in the linens.

“I’ll go,” I said. “But we’re headed for Dallas tomorrow. So don’t grow too attached to Houston.” I washed my face and dressed.

Delia found the gaming program on my phone and played solitaire.

Harrison showed up at the door dressed in black, his blond curls combed back into a ponytail.

Avery walked up behind him, his hair still wet from the shower. “You two look like you’re going to a banking convention. Delia, you ready?” he asked, bored with his NASCAR boss and our symphony date. “You’re missing a perfect opportunity to get creamed by me on the lanes,” he told Harrison.

“I’m sure we’ll live to regret it,” said Harrison. He offered me his arm. We walked to the stairs, and he let me go first. Delia ran giggling around me. Avery walked around us, scratching his head. Delia would blow it with a guy like him pretty fast. That was one thing I could count on. Avery was sane enough that he would be history by morning.

As for me, I wasn’t sure what I wanted.

Harrison was driving a rented classic. Braden on occasion had reserved a car like that for a wealthy client. Harrison said, “It’s useless trying to eat before a concert. I hope it’s all right with you. I made reservations for dinner afterward. That’s a late evening.”

He was so apologetic that I did not know how to take him. I wanted him to be pushy or boastful so that I would be glad for the evening to be finished. Harrison had the quiet demeanor of a monk. “I don’t mind,” I said.

He knew his way around Houston. He drove right up to the parking deck across from Jones Hall in the theater district. He led me through the crowd that spilled across the street and swarmed into the lobby.

“These are box seats,” he said. “A friend of mine keeps them but seldom attends.”

“When did you get interested in the symphony?” I asked.

“I play the violin. But it was hard to make a living at it. You have to keep five jobs going at once to keep the lights on,” he said.

I must have stared at him.

“Not many of the guys know, except Avery and one other. They give me a hard time about it,” he said. “Would you like a drink?” he asked.

“Club soda is all,” I said.

“I don’t drink either.” He ordered at the portable lobby bar.

Symphony patrons—some in dress black and some in work clothes—gathered in clusters and streamed into Jones Hall.

“How often do you come to Houston?” I asked.

“My mother lives in Houston. She hates the racetrack, so I come here to see her,” he said. “She was happier when I studied violin.” He bought a pack of M&M’s. “My first wife liked the money of racing.”

“I’m divorcing too,” I said.

“My ex was a good manager. She managed everything, our money, my career,” he said. “But she never would just look at me and see me.”

I wanted to know how long ago, but I was out of Harrison’s life in twelve hours. “I needed a night away from my sister,” I said. “But I don’t normally date.” He was still looking at me without commenting, so I said, “I hope you don’t think I get picked up in fast-food restaurants on a regular basis.”

We had to step aside to let a man and woman pass through. The orchestra was warming up. We disposed of the cups. Then he led us across the lobby up a carpeted staircase and down the hallway leading to the box seats.

“Not a lot of women are as quick to accept a date to the symphony. It’s not your typical pick-up line,” he said, a smile still fresh on his face. “Just shows you got some taste. Don’t feel like you have to keep explaining yourself to me. We’re two people away from home. No need to sit around in front of the television with a perfectly good city waiting on us.”

Harrison was a man of easeful nature, not one to start off compartmentalizing people into categories, it seemed. He had a bit of crease around each eye, like a man ten years older than me. But he didn’t talk down to me like Max had done our last night together.

I asked, “Are you Buddhist by any chance? You don’t have to answer if that’s too personal.”

“That’s all right. I’m not.”

“My husband’s friend is a Buddhist. He has your quiet demeanor. That’s the only reason I asked,” I said.

He escorted me into the hall. The red seating was less formal than most symphony halls. An usher led us to a box seat almost directly over the orchestra pit. “My mother’s friend from school keeps this box seat because his mother left it to him. But they never come and enjoy it.” The lights dimmed, and we sat in the padded chairs.

I reached into my purse to turn off my phone, but the phone pocket was empty. I had left it back in the room. The conductor walked out onto the stage. He introduced the pianist who would play Rachmaninoff’s Third. The audience responded with high approval.

“You said your mother’s friend from school,’” I said. “Is she a teacher?”

“Retired professor. That was what she wanted for me, to be a musician and teach college.”

“Race car driving and violin playing are strange bed mates,” I said.

“I know.”

I settled into the concert music, trying to get out of my head the thought that this was the silliest date I’d ever had. Going on a date to be away from Delia was like going to the men’s bathroom to avoid the graffiti scrawled on the pink women’s stalls.

Halfway through the concert, Harrison cupped his hand over mine on the chair arm. I knew it was simply a gesture from a man away from home who needed human touch and meant nothing more. I turned my hand up and let his fingers close around mine. I felt twelve and hiding behind the cafeteria at Boiling Waters High to make out.

An older man in front of me was nodding off to sleep. I imagined his wife, who was caught up in the rapture of Rachmaninoff, had dragged him to the symphony. Harrison glanced toward him and then fixed his eyes again on the pianist.

Braden would have said something about the sleepy husband. He would have made me laugh. But Harrison actually liked the music and was most likely judging the man for his lack of musical savoir-faire.

The whole time Harrison held my hand, I could picture Braden flying through the air, through the fringes of clouds, barely visible by night. I closed my eyes and remembered the large mass of fingers taking my hand the first time. My life with him flashed forward to that night when, at a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, I considered for the first time the picket-fence-and-kids scenario, but nothing beyond the matrimonial pipe dream because I was a marriage critic. My mother had married three times, cautioning me it was for the birds. Conflict was the warning meter in the sensitive mechanism of marriage, according to my mother. If she and my father went to battle, then there was something irrevocably wrong between them. It was only because she was aging and failing in her health that she stuck it out with my dad, husband number three.

This was the handbook of my marriage schooling.

Braden was as plain as peanut butter. He seldom read a book, knew nothing about music except the songs he listened to on Carolina Country 104.2. But I sat thinking about him and how bored he would be and the tension he would bring to the evening. I sat in the pounding driving storm of Rachmaninoff’s Third, willing the clash and the fracas of Braden Boatwright back into my life. There was something inherently disturbing about me, I decided.

My first date with Braden was a night of almosts. I almost told him that I normally did not feel anything for any guy on a date. But instead I asked him if he liked his shrimp. He kissed me right inside my apartment door and almost kissed me again, but I backed away. I wanted Braden to come inside and stay because for that whole evening I never tired of the sound of his voice, even the way he repeated the punch line to a story. I never could get the words just right to make a guy want to make me the one he would take out again. Braden had almost made it out to his car when I ran after him and said, “I’ve had the best time tonight that I’ve ever had with a guy.”

If it were not for me finally giving him that first come on, he might never have asked me out again. We might never have known each other the way we did that first summer. But I said it, I realized, out of an earnest response, a feeling beating its way out of my fossilized emotions.

When the symphony ended, the lights came up. I put on my own coat, walking two feet ahead of Harrison. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll grab some deli food outside and take it back to my room, call it a night.” I expected to be hit over the head with a Coke bottle.

“I always know how to charm a woman,” he said, sarcastic but still self-abasing—so much so that I felt guilty bailing on him.

I waited up for him. “It isn’t you,” I said. “I’m on hold for the time being.”

“I could get us a room tonight.” Before I could say “no,” he said, “I mean, a place where you can talk.”

Of course, talk. Max had said, “Just talk.” “Talk” is what men say when they mean “sex.”

“Talk all night, if you want. I’ll order up a coffee service. I can tell you need a friend. Just please don’t go.” Harrison’s eyes had that effect to which Delia had alluded.

A symphony lobby employee wearing a black suit sold CDs for the pianist but also magazines, packages of nuts, cans of soda, and future concert calendars. I bought a CD along with a tin of mints.

“Let me pay for it,” said Harrison. “Then let’s find a quiet place. I know you’ve got something on your mind. I listen pretty good.”

I laid down the money. Max taught me a thing or two about resistance. “I’m an idiot, and I can prove it, Harrison. But the last thing I need is to spill my guts to you.” Harrison seemed like a sincere man. I wasn’t judging him. But poring over the past with a man I did not know had already cost me a slightly bruised marriage. “If you could go for the car,” I said. “I’ll get the deli food. You want a sandwich?”

His countenance clouded. “I’ll take you back to your place. We could have made a perfect memory, you know.”

“I’ve got memories,” I said. “None perfect.”

The air was stiff in Harrison’s car. The dropping temperature caused a mist to form inside his window glass. He grabbed a tissue and wiped the windshield in angry swipes, back and forth, squeaking against the glass as he muttered.

“If you’re mad, you should be,” I said.

“Don’t make it easier, Gaylen. I don’t need to analyze this. It was a mistake.”

“I don’t need another relationship in a hurry,” I said.

“I did want to talk all night, in spite of what you believe,” he said.

“If I say I believe you, it won’t change anything.” I was feeling guilty for accepting the date. “I know better, but when has that ever stopped me?”

He tucked the wet tissue beside his seat. “You are right about me.” I didn’t know what he meant.

“I’m a jerk, and even if I thought you would spend the night talking, I’d hope for more. I caused my own marriage to fail.”

“Me too.”

“She caught me fooling around.”

“Caught you?” I said it so that I sounded shocked.

“Walked in on me with someone else in the middle of the day.”

“I can’t imagine.” And I couldn’t.

He must have been overcome with a need to confess. “I don’t know why I did it. Racing is like catnip to some women. But even then, it was like I was watching outside myself, standing outside a window yelling at myself to stop.”

“I know that feeling.” I did. It made me hate myself. I felt dirty, finally wallowing in the gutter that swallows up all Syler women.

“You do?”

I fell quiet.

“Why’d your husband leave?”

I said, “You don’t have to share the top ten dirty secrets of NASCAR drivers, Harrison.” I unwrapped the CD and slid it into his console. It was mostly piano, lots of runs and annoying staccato, so much so that he hit the eject button.

“Confessions are best saved for the person you offend,” I said.

“I wish you’d stay,” he said quietly.

“I still love my husband,” I said. “You can’t get mad about that or take it personally.”

“I could be him tonight.”

“You’d settle for that?”

“If you come over to my side, you won’t go back to begging. I wouldn’t make you beg.” He rubbed my arm. I touched his hand. It felt warm and foreign. The body hair on his hand was blond, like electrically fired wires in the gloss of passing lights. He slowed the car, pulling down a side road. He stopped at a traffic light. There were no cars coming or going, so he pulled the stick shift into park. He leaned across the seat and kissed me. He did not kiss like Max. He was large where Max was small and sinewy. I was swallowed up in Harrison. When his arms came around me, I felt like a size two. Braden worried over my size and what I ate. Harrison said, “You feel good next to me.”

“You too.”

He sat back as if he had gotten an idea. “Have you ever tasted liquid chocolate?”

“I’ve heard of it,” I said. It was odd of him to ask.

“I know a place that makes it.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at his cliche overtures.

“Gaylen. I’m not feeding you a line. I never met a girl like you. Think about it. We both live in North Carolina. But here we are in Houston, together. It’s meant to be.”

We kissed again, and I was relaxing.

“There’s this hotel that I’ve heard about. They will send liquid chocolate up to your room with a plate of cheeses. We could order a movie, see if we like liquid chocolate.” He kissed the side of my face. “It would be the first thing we try together.” The smell of his sweat was filling up the car.

“I can’t,” I said.

Harrison had had his fill of me. He started the car and drove me back to the La Quinta. I got out onto the landing in front of the office. Christmas lights blinked across the roof of the La Quinta. They were blue and matched the moon. Because there are no mountains in Houston, the city unfolded in all directions like a kids’ game board, while the moon seemed to hover over all of the lights. Inside the lobby, the old hotel attendant played a Perry Como CD that filtered out through an outside speaker. Amity used to love Perry Como, or I wouldn’t have known about him.

Harrison told me good night. No kiss good-bye, though. I went to the room. Delia wasn’t back yet. I turned up the heat and from a packaged mix made instant hot chocolate in the minipot. There was an old movie on TV. I fell asleep as the credits rolled.

Delia woke me up at two in the morning. I could smell her tobacco and beer. “I got to tell you something, Gaylen.”

I slipped out of my clothes and put on a T-shirt and flannel pants. She dropped her boots one at a time on the floor. She was obviously happy. Then she pulled my phone from her purse. “I forgot to give this back,” she said. “But Tim called. He’s being deployed to Kuwait.”

I wasn’t fully awake yet. “He can’t. Meredith needs him.”

“He said she was holding up. But he is leaving in the morning.” She looked at the clock on the nightstand. “In four hours.”

I slid down between the sheets. “Tim can’t go. He’s the only goodness left in the world,” I said.

“Not the only one. That’s what I wanted to tell you,” she said.

“Delia, what’s more important than Tim going to Kuwait?”

“Avery. I’ve fallen for him, Gaylen.”

“You haven’t, Delia. It’s a one-night stand.”

“I’ve never felt like that.” She whispered as if Mother were in the next room. “We made love in the museum.”

“How is that possible?”

“Avery’s got a friend who has a pass key for special guests who want to tour the museum after hours. It’s on account of Harrison and all his connections.”

“Delia, he was playing you. They had it planned. The symphony, museum privileges.”

“Avery said he never met a girl like me.”

“That’s probably true, Delia. But he and Harrison do this all the time. Don’t you know about men?”

She thought it was funny that I was giving her advice about men.

“He let me test-drive his friend Shawn’s Miata. I loved it, and he said he’d get Shawn to give me a good deal. Shawn owes him. Then he drove us to the museum. I was laughing. The lights were out. Then he drove us to a back door he called a special entry. I followed him inside. I mean, I’ve never been inside a museum let alone inside one after dark. I felt like a burglar in a mansion.” Delia said several times, “It was such a rush.” She lay across her bed and in a low confessional whisper, told me, “He took me into this room of paintings. He said there was this man who had a lover named Helga. He was a famous painter and his family didn’t know about her until they found like a whole basement full of paintings, all of them of her. Avery turned on a light, and there they were.”

“What?”

“This whole room was full of Helga, and she wasn’t wearing anything. So he asked me to be his Helga. I didn’t have no self-control after that. Who would for heaven’s sake? He stripped me down and next thing you know we’re making love right under a picture of naked Helga. He told me that when I got back to North Carolina, he was going to buy me a picture just like that for my house.”

“Did you tell him about the money?”

“I told him I’d buy him anything he wants, but what else could I say? I never made love like that. It was true passion, Gaylen.” She slipped down under her linens, her fingers pulling at the long strands of dark hair like a girl spinning flax.

I turned off the light.

Delia kept sighing and then laughing. I fell asleep hearing her laugh and whisper Avery’s name.

Avery’s friend Shawn showed up with the used car right about the time we were coming down the stairs for breakfast. Avery did not lie about Shawn selling us his car. He parked the blue Miata right out from the landing. Delia had been driving my father’s old Ford since Lee sold her car to pay off a gambling debt. She wanted the Miata like she had never wanted anything. “This is exactly the car I’ve dreamed about,” she said, even though she had never mentioned owning one.

“Avery told me to cut you two girls a deal,” said Shawn. “Eight thou, but Avery says you have to drive it to see him in Mooresville.”

I had to go and find a bank and come back with the money. Delia was sitting in the driver’s seat flirting with Shawn.

I asked, “Where is Avery this morning?”

“He’s downtown with his boss, Harrison. He and his wife are visiting Harrison’s family. They brought Avery along because Harrison’s wife has been trying to fix him up with her sister,” said Shawn.

Delia blanched.

“Don’t you worry,” he said to Delia.

“Harrison’s wife wants her sister to date Avery?” I asked.

“They’re close like that, but you two are sisters. I’m sure you understand sisterhood. Maura Harrison has always said she wanted Avery in her family. She’s used to getting her way.”

“Harrison must agree with her,” I said, hoping Delia could keep a lid on her temper. “What with Avery working for him and all.”

Her cheeks were flushed. She was tapping the steering wheel and looking over her shoulder at me, blinking.

“I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know Harrison too well. Avery says they been married so long they’re starting to look alike,” said Shawn.

I signed the bill of sale, and Shawn told me that since I had bought the Miata from an individual, Texas laws allowed me to drive temporarily without tags for thirty days.

“You say you don’t know Harrison too well?” I asked.

“I’ve been to parties at his parents’ house. The Harrison’s throw big parties.”

“The last name is Harrison?” I asked, curling up at the toes. “What is his first name?”

“Payne. He’s not big in racing yet, not like some of the other race car drivers. That’s probably why you haven’t heard of him. But he’s talented.”

“I’ve heard he plays the violin,” I said, hoping I had not been completely duped.

“Ha! I doubt it. His family made their money in real estate. Payne and his brother were groomed for business. Stories circulate that his daddy sold off part of his grandfather’s land just to help Payne finance his race car hobby.” He took the keys off his key ring and gave them to Delia. “Payne Harrison knows how to play all the games to get where he’s going.”

I packed up our suitcases and climbed in next to Delia. She drove away without saying good-bye to Shawn. We were nearly to Dallas before she said, “Avery told me he loved me.” She batted back tears and gripped the wheel, staring ahead at the southwest highway.