“Mom. God, it’s not raining anymore,” I say.
“Oh! Right,” she says, and flicks off her windshield wipers.
Mom drops me off at Carrera’s on her way to work. I was able to work before school and not just on weekends because I had all my graduation credits and could have first and second period free. So Mom and I “carpooled” the few miles downtown to the café, and from there she went on to Dr. Kaninski’s office in Seattle. Right then, Mom’s trying to balance a coffee cup between her knees as she shifts, which is a recipe for disaster even with a cup sporting a lid with a little slit. “Indigo, I want to apologize for snapping the other day. I feel like the worst mother in the world.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Last night. At dinner. I’ve been up all night, thinking how terrible I acted.”
“Why?” I ask. “Mom, your coffee…” I can see it rising from the lip of the cup. Any moment it’s going to splotch onto the skirt she has on for work.
“Why! Are you kidding?” She lifts the cup, sips, downshifts into second through the stoplight by the Front Street Market. “I said I’d had enough. I told you guys you were ungrateful. I know you’re not ungrateful.”
“You were right. We don’t help unless you ask us.”
“When I got up this morning, Bex was dusting the living room.” Her voice wobbles.
“So?”
“So! I was hurtful. I threw that oven mitt.”
“For Christ’s sake, Mom, it was an oven mitt. It’s got dancing vegetables on it. It’s not like you threw the knives. You know, then we’d have an issue.” I swear, Mom could feel bad for days about things we never even realized happened.
“When does she ever dust? She never dusts. I never dust. I’ve had that can of lemon Pledge practically since we moved in. The bottom is all rusty. I’ve just been so stressed lately. God.” She looks like she might cry.
“You know my friend Liz?” I say. “Art class? The cool one that moved from Oregon? Her mother’s going through menopause too. You should hear her talk about it—it’s hilarious. Her mother tells her, ‘We never spend time together anymore! Where are you? We’re growing apart!’ And then when Liz makes a point to be around the house, her mom says, ‘What are you doing home? You need to get a job!’ Liz says she comes downstairs and sees her mom standing in front of the open refrigerator, just staring.”
“Indigo, jeez. Would you quit with the menopause thing? I’m too young for menopause. You can be over forty and just be a bitch.” Her guilt is disappearing, deflating, as if it has been punctured. I like her better like this.
We reach Carrera’s, and I haul my backpack up and open the car door. “Have a good day,” Mom says. “I’ll, you know, try to keep the hot flashes down to a minimum.”
“No throwing oven mitts at work,” I say.
Trina’s car is parked at the curb, but something horrible catches my eye. Red-block-letters-on-black-plastic-rectangle horrible. A sign in the Thunderbird’s window: FOR SALE.
I shove open the café door, clattering the bells so loudly that Jack leaps to his feet and gives a woof of alarm.
“Tell me I didn’t see what I thought I saw,” I say.
“In the Thunderbird,” Joe says.
“You saw what you thought you saw,” Jane says. “Easy on the bells, huh, Indigo?”
“We all saw,” Nick Harrison says.
Trina rips the top off of two sugars and pours them into her coffee. She’s wearing this white cape, with white leather pants. The emerald ring from Roger that she used to wear on her left hand is gone. “For Christ’s sake, you people are more attached to that car than I am.”
“I’m sorry, but you cannot, I mean cannot, sell that car,” I say.
“If it’s a matter of money,” Joe says, “we can help you. Not that I have any myself, but we could all pull together—”
“Hey, I’ll have a bake sale,” I say. “Anything—”
“It is not a matter of money,” Trina says. I didn’t think it was. Trina exhales the scent of cash. “I just want to rid myself of any reminder of Roger.”
“That was two weeks ago, already,” I say.
“God, Indigo, two weeks is nothing,” Trina says.
“I’m still not over Victoria,” Jane says. “That was six months ago.”
“She was too controlling anyway,” Funny Coyote says. “You could tell by the way she bossed you around.”
“Yeah, you know, Jack never liked her. That should have told me all I needed to know right there…. A bad sign,” Jane says, and sighs.
“I’ll never be over my wife…,” Nick says. “Well.” He clears his throat.
We are quiet for a moment, except for Luigi. “Way down among the Brazilians, coffee beans grown by the billions…” he sings softly. Finally Trina says, “I’m getting rid of everything that makes me think Roger. The car, the leopard throw rug, my diaphragm—”
“Thank you oh so much for the diaphragm status,” I say. I bring Nick his orange juice and Funny her eggs and pancakes and bacon. Extra napkins, like she likes. Leroy must be sleeping late again.
“I changed the message on my answering machine. Not that I’m under any illusion that he’s going to call or anything. But if he comes running back…I had my neighbor record it for me. He says, ‘You’ve reached Pizza Hut. Today order a large special and get an order of cheesy bread sticks free.’”
“Roger was controlling too,” Funny says.
“No, he wasn’t! You never even met him!” Trina says.
“You said he told you what to wear,” Funny says. “High heels. That’s control.”
“If Trevor ever told me to wear heels, I’d pull those little hairs on his arm,” I say.
“Men should leave fashion to the ladies,” Joe says.
“I didn’t mind the heels,” Trina says. “Roger had a great eye.”
“Yeah, which he’s using on chicks in thong bikinis in Rio,” I remind. I can tell she needs some emotional rescue ASAP. She is in that post-breakup phase of wild swings—where the ex goes from being the saintly love of your life to the darkest wedge of evil within twenty seconds.
Trina nibbles the bit of piecrust on her fork. I can practically see her mind ditch Roger’s halo and remember all the times he checked out other women when he thought she didn’t notice. “I guess it’s a bad sign if you like everything about someone except their personality,” she says.
The bells on the door jangle and I shoot my eyes over in a flash, because it’s about Vespa guy time. He’d been coming in every day, and we still hadn’t gone beyond the smiles and thank-you’s and the occasional Have a nice days, Okay, you toos. But it’s not Vespa guy, it’s a man and a woman who must work at the salmon hatchery, judging by their T-shirts. I’m guessing not too many people wear matching salmon life-cycle shirts for amusement or glamour. I slide them a pair of plastic-covered menus, get another for the man who runs the used bookstore who comes in every now and then. It starts getting busy. Two ladies in business suits and with briefcases sit down and we’re rockin’ and rollin’, and I’m taking the hatchery people’s orders—one fruit plate, one French toast—and trying not to stare at the salmon spawning over the little pile of eggs right on the guy’s left pec.
I start getting worried about the Vespa guy, but right about the time I give the bookstore man his Farm Scramble (eggs with ham and onions—I’ve tried to tell Jane the name of it sucks), Nick Harrison gestures my way and nods his chin out the window. Vespa, stage right. Maybe it’s pathetic, but none of us has lost our fascination with him. Trina sits up straighter, though she’s given up trying to get his attention. The fact that he hasn’t responded to Trina the way everyone responds to Trina only adds to his mystery. He couldn’t be moved by flesh packed into spandex, which tells you a lot about a person. Our theories so far: he is depressed, shy, a lonely newcomer, sexually confused, divorcing, evading the law, in over his head with cocaine addiction. But no one has gotten up the nerve to just get to know him and find out. As his waitress, I’d had the most natural opportunity, but I just couldn’t seem to get myself to do it. There was just something unapproachable about him. He was a store you wouldn’t go into, or if you did go, he was the things you didn’t dare touch hanging on the rack, the glass case you wouldn’t even lean against.
He sits at Nero Belgio, as usual. Caramel-colored corduroy pants and a buttery yellow shirt and a creamy suede jacket. It’s not the thin, fuzz-gathering type of corduroy either, but the lush, velvety sort. We do our routine. He smiles, I smile. I hand him a menu and he says, “Just coffee, please.”
“Are you sure I can’t talk you into anything else? French toast? Farm Scramble?” It’s the most I’ve ever said to him, and I’m pissed at myself that it’s Farm Scramble that comes to mind. It’s slightly embarrassing to say Farm Scramble to someone so well dressed.
“No, no thank you,” he says.
I bring the man his coffee cup, pour in a steaming stream. He smiles his gratitude. Tink-tinks his spoon against the sides of the cup, stirring. He stares out the window. It’s practically infuriating how little we know about him. I can feel this little burble of frustration percolating, a feeling I have to ditch because the French toast is up.
I clear Joe’s plate, bring the bookstore guy a bottle of ketchup for his eggs, which is just disgusting in my opinion—an egg crime scene—but never mind. Nick asks for a second orange juice. The Vespa guy takes off his jacket and hangs it over the chair next to him, and he’s right, it is hot in here. I have an eye on everyone and I’m pleased with myself, because it’s the point in waitressing that I love—it’s all going. I’m handling everything like a conductor handles an orchestra, or maybe more like a kindergarten teacher handles a room of demanding, messy five-year-olds. They’re all right there in my hands and everyone’s happy and has just been fed their snack. Things are running as smooth as can be. I’m God’s gift to waitressing.
The Vespa guy sets his cup down, nearly empty, and I’m heading over and I’m smiling and everything’s cool, the pot of coffee is in one hand, when I see something that just flips my mood. It’s that fast, fast as Luigi’s wrist-flick of a bubbly pancake from dough side to brown side. It’s that coat hanging over the chair that gets me. This beautiful creamy suede coat with a satin lining, slits for pockets. It’s what’s sticking up from one slit that starts this curl of anger. A square cellophane-wrapped pack.
Cigarettes.
You see people smoking all over—kids at school, guys standing around outside the Darigold plant, women in cars with one arm out the window. I am always revolted and marginally pissed, annoyed with that low-slung irritation you feel around stupidity. But this time, I am one notch over into really mad. The Vespa guy, he’s perfect. He’s supposed to be perfect. And now look how he’s letting us all down.
I pour his coffee, my lips pursed with disapproval. I am doing a Mom, where I’m trying to communicate with the vast vocabulary of my silence everything he’s done wrong. But he’s not listening, because when I tip my pot back up, he gives me only that smile, which is suspect now. I’m thinking it is perhaps insincere.
I just stand there wanting to speak, doing this yes-no, yes-no, yes-no thing in my head, and then, before I even realize the debate is over, I’m at yes and I’m talking to him.
“I wouldn’t be saying this if I didn’t care about your health and well-being,” I say, and suddenly I’m channeling the spirit of my mother, and she’s not even dead. “But do you know there are over four thousand toxic chemicals in cigarettes?” I gesture with my chin toward his jacket pocket. “Carbon monoxide, for starters. Cyanide, formaldehyde, ammonia…” I count them off on my fingers. “Should I go on?”
Well, I guess I might as well have just hooked Vespa guy up to numerous electrodes and shocked him with twelve thousand volts of electricity for the way he just stares at me, blinking.
“If you care about your health and the health of others,” I say.
“Well,” he says. “Well.”
“It’s only because I’m worried about you,” I remind.
“Thank you for your concern,” he says. “Your concern…,” he repeats.
And then, oh God, something awful happens. There’s this pause, and then his eyes—they get glassy, wet. He blinks. My God, I think he might be about to cry. He blinks some more. Shit. Shit! I’ve made the Vespa guy cry.
He clears his throat.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
“Yes. Yeah. It’s just…” He coughs.
Oh, man. Shit, Indigo, I think. Now you’ve gone and done it. I made him feel terrible. I couldn’t keep my goddamn big mouth shut. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have…”
“Sorry? Don’t be sorry. Lately…I don’t know.” He gives a laugh that isn’t a laugh.
“What?”
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “This is waitress-client privilege. Purely confidential.” Except for all the Irregulars listening in, of course.
“I go to work and everyone’s ‘Yes, Mr. Howards. Of course, Mr. Howards. Can I get you anything, Mr. Howards?’ And no one means a goddamn word they say. It’s unreal.” He runs his fingers through his hair.
“Maybe it’s time for a job change,” I say.
“I haven’t heard a sincere expression of concern in five, six years.”
“A lifestyle change, then,” I say.
I’m taking too much time here, I know. The ladies have put their credit card in the plastic folder and are shifting around in their seats. The bookstore guy has pushed his plate away and I can feel his eyes tugging on me to notice. In terms of my kindergarten class, I’ve got one kid who’s knocked over the finger paint and another who’s jumping up and down with his hands in his pockets, needing to use the bathroom. It’s starting to fall apart, but I don’t care. This is Vespa guy we’re talking about, and he needs me.
“I don’t know. My situation’s…complicated,” he says. “But man, sometimes I want to just…” He shoves his hands away from himself as if pushing something heavy. His voice is soft.
“Whoa. You’re not talking drastic measures here—”
“No, God. Suicide? No, never. Never. I mean, like quit my job. Give it all up. Become a basket weaver.”
“Why not? My father did that. Well, he’s not a basket weaver. But he up and quit one day, ditched all the high pressure and moved to Maui and now he rents surfboards.”
“Wow. Sounds great.”
“He loves it, I think. He’s got this small house by the beach. Surfboards, and what are the things with the sails that you stand on? My mind just went blank.”
“Windsurfers?”
“Yeah. Windsurfers. I went there once. It was beautiful.”
“I’d love that. Maui.”
“I don’t even think he wears shoes anymore. Of course, you have very nice shoes,” I say.
“I have very nice everything. It’s exhausting.”
“Look, I gotta take these people’s money,” I say.
“Sure, sure,” he says.
I grab the ladies’ credit card and give it to Jane to run. She’s already cleared the bookstore guy’s plate, and I give him his check and sit a Darigold worker and make change for the salmon hatchery folks. Nick’s trying like crazy to catch my eye, and so is Trina and Funny, and Jane keeps nudging me every chance she gets and Joe even whispers Well? even though it is hardly a whisper. I ignore all of them, and it takes some doing.
The Vespa guy holds up his hand in a Stop motion to indicate no more coffee. When I bring him his check, he says, “Thank you, you know. Really. I have faith again that everyone doesn’t give just to get.”
And he seems to mean it. One little gesture, you know? The Oh, shit from earlier is gone, and I fill up with a fellow-man-humankind gladness. I have this sense of satisfaction. A beach-ball-just-blown-up feeling, or a full tank of gas feeling. “Hey, just promise you’ll ditch the smokes,” I say.
“Promise,” he says.
The Vespa guy leaves the plastic padded folder on the table. On his way out, he stops me, holds out his hand. “Richard Howards,” he says.
“Indigo Skye,” I say.
“S-k-y?” he asks.
“With an E,” I answer.
“A pleasure, Indigo Skye. And thank you again.” We shake. When he leaves, I see there is something else on the table too, left in the saucer of his coffee cup. It’s the package of cigarettes. It’s a brand I’ve never seen before, a white package with a red square in the middle, Dunhill Special Reserve. I hear the Vespa start up outside. I watch him ride off, and he’s butterscotch, melting into the distance.
“Well?” Trina practically shrieks.
“I couldn’t hear hardly anything from over here,” Nick says.
“Something about quitting his job,” Funny says. “Becoming a basketball player.”
“Basket weaver,” I say. But I feel suddenly proprietary about our talk; decide to give them crumbs and crust, not the squishy center of the bread. “He’s unhappy with his work.”
“He said his life was complicated,” Nick Harrison says.
“I thought you said you couldn’t hear,” I say.
“He said he could hardly hear anything, is what he said.” It’s the bookstore guy, interjecting. We ignore him.
“A smoker?” Jane waves the package in the air, gives it a shake.
“He’s quitting,” I say. I hear the defensiveness in my own voice. You feel responsible to someone when they’ve given you something private.
“Tell me you didn’t give him shit about it, Indigo. I can’t afford to lose any customers.”
“She’s merely doing her civic duty as she sees fit,” Joe says in his old, gruff voice. “Those are cancer sticks.”
“Unhappy with his work. Why is he unhappy?” Trina presses, but I am saved from revealing more, because just then Leroy comes in.
He is holding up one arm, the right one, with the dragon, breathing flames that lick up the back of his hand. In that hand is the red and black sign from the window of the Thunderbird. “Trina, God. Someone put a ‘For Sale’ sign in your car,” he says.
It’s May, and on my way to school after work that day, Nine Mile Falls is all warm-weather promise. It’s that perfection that comes just before something; summer, in this case. You see all that it can be before it becomes what it is. No lawns are brown yet, no one is cranky from too-high heat, there are no splinters or sunburns or bee stings. The air is just all jazzed up from school almost out, and the usual signs that the prisoners are about to be released for summer break are appearing—the telephone lines in front of the school are strung with old tennis shoes that had been flung there and are now hanging by their tied-together laces; the kids walking back home wear short sleeves and sandals and floppier, less-homework backpacks, and the ones in cars are almost required by law to shout things out windows. Prom invitations and graduation class years are written on windshields with soap. The slams of locker doors sound triumphant rather than doomed.
I was part of it all and not part of it, as always. Part of it because there were kids I liked, such as Melanie and Liz and Ali and Evan (who we call King Tut because he once wore this metallic-gold shirt), and teachers I liked—Jane Aston (art class, who never marked me late for class, even if I got there ten minutes past bell because of work), Mr. Fetterling (American Government). Not part of it because I couldn’t care less about prom and rah-rah shit like that, and because there were these rituals and rules I just didn’t get, things I was supposed to be interested in that I wasn’t, like who was going out with who and like those magazines with makeup tips and who-gives-a-shit articles. “What does your favorite nut say about you? Take our quiz! If you like almonds, you’re the romantic type…” Yeah. When you want what’s real and you try to find that in high school, you might as well be looking for a mossy rock beside a babbling brook on the corner of Sixth and Pine in downtown Seattle.
I didn’t get things and people didn’t get me, ever since the ninth grade. I went to this concert, and the chick at the door stamped my hand with what was supposed to be a sun. She’d probably just OD’d on coffee—her shaky hand gave me a crappy ink mark with only five solar rays in the exact shape of a marijuana leaf. I was Lady Macbeth trying to scrub that thing off. But the dyes they’d used sunk so deep they’ll probably give us all cancer in thirty years. Anyway, ever since then, people decided that my unique clothing choices plus the design on my hand equaled STONER, and the closest I’d ever gotten to dried herbs was my mother’s oregano. I’m sure no one would even remember that mark specifically, but it never went away in people’s minds, which just goes to show how badly we have the need to sort people into groups and keep them there. It’s some twisted, limited, grocery-store mentality, where people have to be dairy products or vegetables or frozen foods for us to be able to understand them and feel safe. Maybe we’ve just become such mega-consumers that we can’t deal with anything that’s slightly inconvenient (basically, anything that requires thought). I was the tofu amidst the Baking Products and Cleaning Supplies.
Anyway, that day I’m having what I consider to be a regular school day. My schedule is pretty light; the only truly sucky part of the semester is that I have to take PE as a senior, because I couldn’t stand the idea of taking it as a freshman, or as a sophomore, or as a junior. I’d backed myself against the take-it-or-don’t-graduate wall, and now I was in there with a bunch of freshmen and Mr. Talbot, who was only a few years older than us and hadn’t gotten the news flash yet that he was still the dumb jock he was back in high school. He occasionally tried to be a real teacher and gave us tests on basketball that you could take with your eyes closed. Bouncing a ball in basketball is called (A) Dribbling. (B) Bribbling. (C) Passing. He’d write something on the chalkboard, step back and squint at it, because the word “didn’t look right,” that favorite old cover of people who can’t spell.
That day, we spend the period sitting on the gym floor in our PE clothes, as Mr. Talbot tries to figure out how he’s going to get five volleyball teams to play on four courts in a rotation lasting two weeks. It’s a bit like watching a chimp try to macramé, and beats actually getting sweaty and stinking for two periods afterward. At lunch, I think about sitting with Melanie, but she’s hanging out on the front lawn with Heather Green and Amelia Swensen, and Amelia’s boyfriend, Jay. Not only are they likely to give me crap about my clothes or something equally as important (they will use the word “interesting” to describe what I’m wearing, and we all know that to most people, “interesting” is not a compliment), but I don’t especially want to watch Jay with his hands practically up Amy’s shirt right there on the front lawn. So I decide to go with Ali and Liz, who are walking to Starbucks. I hate to spend my hard-earned money on expensive coffee when I get it free at Carrera’s, but it’s either that or go back and join the audience of Feel-Up Fest, and darn, I forgot my ticket.
I finish up with American Government and the Gettysburg Address, which is 2265 Alder Street, in case you want to send a postcard, ha-ha. I walk home and I pass QFC, where Bex is already there with her table and new, large sign that says PLEASE HELP THE HOMELESS and, in smaller letters, TSUNAMI VICTIMS. Underneath, she’s drawn an unhappy face, two dots for eyes and a half-circle mouth pulled down. Her bike rests against a display of bags of bark and potting soil that’s out front. I put a couple of bucks into her can and ask her if Mom knows where she is, and she says yeah, and that Mom thinks it’s better than her hanging out with that Lindsey, who’s always getting her into trouble. This is just one of those annoying and unjust differences between you and your younger sibling, because the only place I could ever ride my bike alone was the end of the driveway. I was probably fifteen before I could go to a friend’s without giving Mom an FBI dossier on the people; Bex can practically hitchhike on the freeway with a mere “Have fun, honey.”
At home, Severin is there, which is pretty unusual. He’s in the front yard, and he’s mowing. I’m thinking Mom should get mad more often, because the chores are really starting to get done around here. The lawn mower is roaring, and I can’t hear a word Severin’s saying but I see his mouth moving, and I scream “Whaat?” and he tries to scream back, and we do that routine once or twice before he lets the engine cut out and it’s suddenly quiet.
“Jane called,” he says. “She wants you to call back as soon as you can.”
“Okay,” I say.
“She said it was really important.”
Which probably meant she wanted me to work late tomorrow, which would mess up Trevor’s and my plan to hang out at Pine Lake and swim. “What are you doing home? Did they finally come to their senses and fire you?”
“Nah. MuchMoore is having sales conferences for a few days, so they let us off early.” He raises his arm, wipes the sweat from his forehead. There are big rings of sweat under his arms.
“What’s with guys and sweat, for God’s sake? You’re, like, leaking.”
“Get me a glass of water, would you?”
“What, my T-shirt says ‘Personal Slave’? Forget it. You gonna give me a tip?” But I actually do go inside, and I get a glass of water and even get the tray of ice and give it a twist, chase some ice cubes around the countertop to put into his glass. He’s my brother, my twin, and even though we don’t do the twin-bond-till-death routine, we’ve been around for the same length of time so we’re there for each other. From the kitchen window I can see him yank the lawn mower to life again by its string. He’s wearing this grin. It’s this inner-pleased that seems to be about something more than the happy that comes from the smell of cut grass.
I slam out the screen door. “Let this be the end of your macho bullshit,” I say, and hand him the glass. He cuts the engine again.
“Thanks.” He drinks. His Adam’s apple shoots from penthouse to lobby and back again.
“What are you so happy about?” I ask.
“What? Nothing.”
“Yeah. Right. I saw you smiling from the kitchen. God, see? Look, you can’t help yourself.”
“Quit it.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“You are. Aha, you’re smiling. Look at you smiling,” I sing.
“Shit,” he says, and tries not to grin. “Why do you always do that?”
“Why are boys so secretive?”
“It’s nothing. Get your hands off your hips. You look like Mom.” He drinks more water, peeks at me over the glass. “Oh, all right. Okay, are you pleased with yourself? I asked Kayleigh Moore to our prom.”
My sweaty brother is standing before me, hopeful on a hopeful day. The sun is out—birds are twittering. Okay, birds aren’t actually twittering, but there’s a crow on a branch of a nearby evergreen, cawing at Freud, who sits calmly on our porch step, staring with sly killer eyes. That hope, it’s worrisome. It’s Snow White type hope, where she’s tra-la-la-ing in the forest and not realizing that (1) her stepmother is plotting her death by fruit, and(2) seven short guys who want to live with you is just sick.
“You what?” I say. “Kayleigh Moore–Kayleigh Moore? Or a different Kayleigh Moore?”
“No, that one. What’s the problem, Indigo? Jeez. You’re acting like I asked out the president’s daughter.”
“Well, you did, you idiot. Of your company.”
“That’s not what I meant. And you don’t have to be concerned. She said yes.”
Freud gets up, stretches, steps to the lawn and plops onto the grass. Closer to that evergreen tree. He’s got one eye on that crow the whole time. His tail twitches.
“Oh, man.”
“It’s gonna be fun. It’s gonna be great. Here.” He hands me the water glass, but I put my hands up. Forget it, Bud.
“And she goes to what, Riverside?” The private school for gajillionaire kids. I once heard that they’re required to each have their own laptop, and get lunch catered from local restaurants. “It’s not like you’re going to be able to give her a carnation and drive her in Mom’s car. What do you see in a girl like that?” I saw her once, when I picked up Severin from work. The lasting image was her T-shirt, which read: THIS IS WHAT A PERFECT 10 LOOKS LIKE. That, and her smile. Row of teeth in a perfect line, like the white deck chairs on a cruise ship.
“She’s not ‘a girl like that.’ First off, she’s gorgeous.”
“Not that you’re shallow or anything.” I decide I want that glass after all. I take it from him, have a long swallow of what is left of the water. It is getting hot out here. Maybe from the sudden desert drought of real.
“She’s more down-to-earth than you think.”
I almost choke on the ice cube rolling around in my cheek. A spiky, ugly feeling is starting in my chest. Some kind of green, creeping sense of them-us, of protection. This cold sense of a power game one is sure to lose. Is it jealousy I feel? I’m not sure, but if it is, I’m fucking mad at myself for feeling it for someone I already have little respect for. Here’s what a perfect ten looks like. Maybe I want what she has without wanting to be what she is.
I watch smug Freud and the nervous crow. I hate crows, I detest crows. They are sleek and crafty and mean. They are the sinister type of sixth-grade boy who makes fun of the quiet kid, and who knows what all the dirty words mean. Crows leer. But right now, it is Freud who I want to put in his place.
“Remember when Bex was, like, four, and she cut off Freud’s whiskers?” I say to Severin.
“Oh, man, that was sad,” Severin says, and laughs. “She thought she would make them ‘even.’”
“He kept bumping into walls,” I say.
I can’t explain this. But I am hoping Freud is listening.
Severin starts the lawn mower again, and I go inside to call Jane. She’s not at Carrera’s, so I try her cell phone number. When I reach her, her voice is almost breathless.
“Indigo! You won’t believe what happened after you left!”
“Trina sold her car.”
“No! It has nothing to do with Trina. It has something to do with you…”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You.”
“Uh-oh. The guy from America’s Most Wanted came in. They finally found me. Oh, no, wait. A Hollywood agent saw my yearbook picture. Ha! And I thought it sucked.” I am just cackling away at myself when I finally realize there’s that endless, cave-deep silence that means Jane’s cell phone cut out. It’s always so suddenly lonely when that happens.
I call her back, but her line’s busy, because she’s calling me back, and we do that annoying call me–call you dance that someone should have figured out a social rule for long ago.
“Sorry, I was going through a tunnel,” she says. I can tell she’s in her car. The sound is all whooshing air, some distant between-channel static. I’ve got to strain to hear as her voice jumps through the hoops of satellites and sonar waves and tin cans with string to get to me.
“You missed all my great jokes.”
But she’s too excited to bother with my award-winning humor. “The Vespa guy,” she breathes. “Goddamned asshole!” she growls. For a moment I’m confused—the Vespa guy is pretty nice, actually. Then I realize I’m being treated to something that would have been inconceivable in the pre–cell phone days: the play-by-play You Are There! of someone’s driving experience. This is a different episode from the You Are There! of someone’s grocery store experience, and usually more exciting. (I’m passing the yogurt. Do we need yogurt? What about eggs?) “Jerk just cut me off,” Jane says.
“The Vespa guy,” I remind.
“Yeah, well, he came in. Back in. After he left. After you left. He brought you something, Indigo. An envelope. Was he supposed to bring you something?”
“No.” My heart has stopped—freeze-frame photo snap, held in midair.
“It’s got your name on it. How’d he know your name? I told you never to give out your name.”
“What kind of an envelope?” I ask.
“Yellow. Large. The kind of envelopes that only hold important stuff.”
“You didn’t peek?”
“Do you want me to?”
“Yeah! Wait. I mean, no. No! Absolutely not.”
“It’s sitting right here on the seat beside me. Would you get the lead out? God, this woman’s driving like an old lady.”
“No. Just keep it for me,” I say.
“Oh shit, it really is an old lady. She can barely see out the windshield. Maybe she didn’t hear me honk. I hope she didn’t hear me honk. I’m a horrible person. Do you think I’m a horrible person? I’ll give it to you tomorrow, okay? Hey, by the way, could you work late? Through lunch?”
“Sure.”
“That’s great. Nikki’s got to take her kid to baseball, or something.”
“I wonder what he could have given me.”
“I have no idea. But, Indigo? This is going to be interesting.”