The recipe called for golden mushroom soup, but all she had was regular. Rae-Lynn stared at the can, wondering what made mushroom soup golden. She thought about calling the store. If they could tell her that, say, it was brown sugar or butter or just more mushrooms that made the soup golden, she could try to add it to the recipe. Or she could just go with the regular mushroom soup and hope for the best.
That’s what she did, in the end, layering the Tater Tots, hamburger, and regular mushroom soup into a deep casserole dish, setting the oven at 425, sliding it in and noting the time. It was six-thirty in the morning, half an hour before Kelly was due home from his graveyard shift at the hospital. She liked saying that to herself, that he was due home from the hospital, even if he was just an orderly. Sometimes he told people that he was a physician’s assistant or that he was an intern, but he usually winked at her later and explained that the person had been acting all superior and had deserved it. Anyway, that kind of stuff didn’t bother her.
He loved having a meal when he got off work and it had become Rae-Lynn’s favorite time of day too, getting up before the sun rose, showering, putting on something nice, and having dinner ready for him when he came home at seven. They’d eat and he’d tell her stories about patients he’d saved from the laziness of doctors or from the stupidity of nurses. Even if most of it sounded like bullshit, it was still really interesting and she felt proud that he could even think of stories like that. Then they’d smoke a bowl, have sex, and he’d go to bed. When he was asleep, Rae-Lynn would head off to her job making lattes in a little drive-through espresso stand just off the freeway.
When the hamburger–Tater Tot casserole was done cooking, she turned off the oven and figured she’d just leave it inside to keep warm. At seven-thirty, she turned the oven back on, called the hospital, and found out Kelly had left at six-thirty, like always.
At eight, she pulled the casserole out of the oven and was officially worried. She stared out the window of the duplex and chewed on her fingernail. A little before nine, the door finally opened and Kelly came in with a guy she recognized as one of his friends from the hospital, a short, older guy named Scott. They spoke quietly about something as they came in the door, Scott saying something like, “Good light,” Kelly whispering to Scott that he should be quiet, that Kelly would take care of it.
I’m not mad, she wanted to say. You don’t have to be quiet. Don’t worry. But when she looked up at Kelly, she could see it was something else.
“Hey, baby,” he said and kissed her cheek.
“Where you been?”
“Remember Scott?”
“Sure,” Rae-Lynn said, and she nodded to him. He was half a foot shorter than Kelly, with glasses and thinning hair. He smiled without showing his teeth, and his heavy-lidded eyes were aimed right at her tits.
“It sure smells good in here,” Kelly said.
She didn’t like how small her voice sounded. “Geez, what took you so long, Kelly?”
“Oh, Scott and me just had a beer and talked about some stuff. Remember, I told you, he’s into computers and all that.”
“I didn’t make a very big casserole,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Kelly said. “Let me talk to you for a minute, baby.” He led her toward the kitchen.
“I’m gonna go out and get the stuff,” Scott said.
“What stuff?” Rae-Lynn asked.
But Kelly was pulling her into the kitchen. He set his car keys on the hook next to the refrigerator, dipped his finger into the top of the casserole, and tasted it. Then he winked and shook his head. “Boy, that’s good, Rae. That’s really tasty.”
“It got cold.”
“No, it’s good.”
“I had to use regular mushroom soup,” she said.
“It’s great, baby.”
“I didn’t have the golden mushroom.”
“Oh, I like it better this way,” Kelly said.
“Have you had it the other way?”
“Oh, yeah. This is way better.”
“You promise?”
He pulled her to him and she disappeared into his chest, smelled cigarette smoke and beer on him. He kissed her on the forehead, patted her butt, and pushed away from her, back to the table. He picked up a fork from one of the two tidy place settings and took a bigger bite. “Oh, yeah. It’s really good,” he said through a full mouth.
Rae-Lynn heard the door close in the living room. “So what stuff is he getting?”
“Hmm?”
“Your friend. He said he was gonna get some stuff.”
Kelly rolled his eyes as if it were nothing, but continued chewing when his mouth was empty. Finally, he said, “I told you about Scott before. Remember, from work?”
She held her hands out. “I don’t…What do you mean?”
“You know, the computers and stuff. I know I told you.” He kept eating the casserole, ignoring the two plates she had out on the small kitchen table. “He does those Web sites and makes a shitload of money. He’s gonna be like Bill Gates one of these days. Own his own computer company. That’s why I’m trying to get in on the ground floor with him now. It’s a good time to get in.”
All she could think to do was nod.
“I told you, I don’t plan to be at the hospital forever.”
“What does he do?” she asked.
“You mean with the computers and stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I know I told you this, but he’s got these two Web sites, like I said.” Kelly turned to the sink so his back was to her and poured himself a glass of water. He stared at the glass as it filled with water. “One is mostly topless stuff, some beaver shots. The other is really tasteful too, you know, but definitely more hardcore.”
He returned to the casserole and took another forkful from the middle, leaving the browned edges. He chewed without looking up at her. “Like I was saying, Scott’s a genius when it comes to the computers.”
“Kelly, I don’t—”
“What kind of soup did you say you used here?” He waved a forkful toward her.
“Regular mushroom.”
“It is really good.” He chewed the bite of casserole and then set the fork down on the table and took her limp hand. “I think you oughta write them people and tell ’em your way is just as good as the other.”
“Kelly, I don’t—”
But he interrupted her. “See, Rae, this is real important for me. I know I talked to you about this. It’s not fair for you to change your mind now that he’s here and all.”
Rae-Lynn could hear something being unpacked in the other room.
Kelly smiled. “It’s no big deal. It’s just like it’s you and me except Scott’s gonna film it. What’s the difference between this and what you and me do every morning?”
Rae-Lynn couldn’t look up. “What about him?”
Kelly shrugged and looked at the floor. “You know, when we’re done, if you wanted to do some stuff with him…”
“Kelly…”
“No,” he said, “it doesn’t have to be that. You could just, you know, blow him or something.”
“Kelly, I don’t want to be with another guy.”
“Hey, I don’t mind, Rae,” he said. “I mean it. I’m not jealous like that. I’m fine with it. I mean, if it’s all right with me, then I don’t see what the big deal is…”
She looked down at the casserole, which had a hole carved in it from where Kelly had been eating. She leaned against the table.
“Don’t worry, we’ll smoke a bowl first. You know, loosen us all up.”
Rae-Lynn put her hand against the table.
“Is it that much different from what you used to do?” Kelly asked. “I mean…you can do that for me, right? Just this once.”
She didn’t say anything, just stared at the casserole.
He kissed her and grabbed her butt again. “I knew you’d be all right with this. It’s gonna be cool, Rae.”
Kelly was eight years older than she was, but they had taken the bus together when she was a kid. She knew his younger brother, Ted. After the guy nearly killed her and then took off with Risa, Rae-Lynn had decided to return home to Moses Lake. She’d been in town only a couple of days when she recognized Kelly at the grocery store. That had been six weeks ago. She hadn’t used anything but pot in those six weeks. No treatment or methadone. She had just decided she wasn’t a junkie anymore. And it had really felt like something, like a time she would look back on as normal and good. But now that it was over, she wondered what difference it made—six weeks or six months? Or six hours for that matter? Once it’s over, the fact that it was a good time meant nothing, no different from having a picture of your birthday party. Real flat, like that, like a picture of someone you thought you loved.
She knew everything had to end. She wasn’t a kid anymore. But as she watched Kelly scoop casserole onto a plate for Scott, she wondered if this thing she was about to do would erase all the memories of the first few weeks. See, it wasn’t the thing Kelly wanted her to do. She would live through that. She had lived through worse. And it wasn’t the leaving. She always left. But this time, it would’ve meant so much to Rae-Lynn if she could’ve saved something of what this had been, and all she could wish right then was that she had left just one day earlier.