Random (Going the Distance) Read online

  I give him a half-smile, shooting him a sideways glance from under my eyelashes. Teasing. “Brains and beauty.”

  The half-smile he gives back is small but real, his eyes connecting with mine. An electric rippling passes between us. His teeth are perfectly white and straight, the product of a childhood full of dental visits. I slide my tongue over a crooked eyetooth and then force myself to stop.

  He says, “Give me your phone. I’ll put in my number. You can call me when you’re on the way to the Spoon.”

  I pull out my phone, flip it open. Hand it over and dare him to say anything. He looks at it for a second. “Can you even text on this thing?”

  “Of course.” I shrug. “I have to do the triple tap thing, but it works.”

  “Triple tap?”

  “Yeah, you know, tap the 1 three times for a ‘c.’”

  He holds the phone in his hands and gives me a slow, unbelievably sexy smile. It’s mostly on one side. Sunlines crinkle on the left side. “I had a phone like this in high school.”

  “Yeah?” I raise my eyebrows. “That makes you old!”

  Tapping in his name and number, he nods. Sunlight dances in his thick brown hair, too long and streaked with gold. I notice the tanned skin of his throat at the opening of his shirt, catch a glimpse of his collarbone. He hands me back the phone and pulls his out. An iPhone, of course, sleek and black and not wrapped up in some fancy case, just cloaked in black glass. He brings up the screen, taps an icon and gives it to me. “Put yours in.”

  I do it, flushing like he’s going to call me for a date.

  Don’t flatter yourself, I think. He’s from a whole different world, and must be at least twenty-four or twenty-five.

  Not to mention the little fact that I already have a boyfriend.

  I give him back the phone, and over his shoulder I see a news van and think of Henry, seeing this on TV and freaking out. “I’ve gotta call my step-dad.”

  He gives me a nod. “Call me. I mean it, okay?”

  “I’ll come in this afternoon.”

  Chapter THREE

  Henry arrives ten minutes after my call. He drives an old, cartoonishly round blue pickup truck, the engine in perfect condition because that’s one of his hobbies. The exterior is a little less polished. Like Henry, who fell off a telephone pole seven years ago when a goose bit his hand. Pretty random.

  He broke his back in seven places and hasn’t been able to really work since. He says he’s lucky to be walking.

  Which is one way of looking at it.

  I spy the truck and wave. He waves back, waiting for me because it’ll be too hard for him to get out, then get back in, and I can see that he has Ginger with him, one of his little dogs. She peeks over the steering wheel with her peach-colored head and black button eyes.

  A cop has been asking me questions about what happened. I don’t really know what’s supposed to come next. “Is it okay if I just leave? My step-dad is here. I’d like to go home.”

  “I’m sure that’s fine. Nothing you can do here.”

  I take in the scene one more time, the gaping hole, the missing windows. My stomach hurts with the suddenness of the loss. Almost everyone is gone now—the injured whisked off to the hospital or patched up and sent home. Only the police and the reporters and the Wicked Witch are left. I feel like I should say something to her, even if she’s plainly hated my guts since I started here. But I kind of feel sorry for her, standing there in her wrecked business. A cigarette burns unnoticed in her hand as I come up. Her black eyes are blank.

  “Hey, Tina. I’m really sorry this all happened. I just wanted to tell you that I’m leaving now.”

  She just looks at me.

  “I just thought you should know. I don’t know if we can get our checks next week or—”

  “I don’t care about your fucking check, you stupid little bitch.”

  I blink at the name-calling. She has other things on her mind, I get that, but this is a pretty important issue to me, too. “I have to pay my rent next Tuesday. I was counting on that check.”

  She just turns her face away like she can’t hear me. For a long second I try to come up with something to say that will sum up how much I’ve hated her and hate her even more now, but nothing comes. Her shoulders are hunched and skinny and—

  I turn away, taking off my apron one last time. I drop it on a broken table as I walk out. One small part of me is already panicking about the rent, but another is saying everything will look better after I get a good lunch in me. Since I moved out, Henry loves to buy me meals at restaurants. Though it’s not like we ate together a lot before that, since you can barely find the kitchen in his house. I wouldn’t eat in that room if you gave me a million dollars.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” Henry says as I climb into his truck. A multicolored woven blanket from New Mexico covers the ratty old seat. Ginger dances over on her tiny legs to give me kisses. She’s mostly Pomeranian, probably mixed with poodle to give her that pale peach fur. Henry rescues little mixed breeds and currently has six. Or seven. I’m not sure. He started rescuing after my mom died.

  “Can we go to Cracker Barrel?” I ask.

  “You bet.” He takes a minute to peer at me. “How are you doing?”

  A fast crush of freakout pours over me all at once, and tears well up in my throat. I stare through the windshield until the emotion goes away. “It was crazy,” I say, “but I’m all right, aside from being out of a job.”

  “Oh, man, I didn’t even think about that.” He puts the truck into reverse and navigates around a TV van. “You got enough money?”

  “I should be okay,” I lie. He lives on disability and whatever he can get fixing things, which is to say not that much.

  “You can always come back home. Give me a day or two of warning and I’ll get things cleaned up for you.”

  More like a century or two, but I smile. “Thanks, Henry. You know I love you.”

  “I’m lucky that way.” He turns up the stereo and pulls into traffic, singing along to U2, his favorite band of all time.

  For the first time since the crash I feel my body letting go. With Henry, I’m safe. He’s the one true person left in my life and, while I won’t ever live in his house, I’m glad that he’s around.

  My mom met Henry only a few months after she got back to the States with me. She left my real dad in New Zealand, said she just couldn’t stand being so far from the world anymore and my dad wasn’t going to move. I was six. By the time I was eight, Henry and my mom were married and happy.

  Henry parks in the shade and leaves the windows a quarter of the way down for Ginger. He uses a cane to lever himself out of the truck, and we walk slowly through the doors and sit down. He looks pretty good today—his curly black hair clean, his whiskers shaved, a clean t-shirt and jeans. The wrinkles around his eyes that say he’s in pain aren’t there, and I think he must be having a good day. He always says he is, but today I think it’s true.

  That was the thing that made it hard to move out—I knew he needed me. Or somebody. I feel guilty about it sometimes, but it was just not possible to stay in that house. I used to have nightmares about drowning in junk and wake up gasping. In the middle of my senior year, I just couldn’t take it anymore and Henry didn’t protest my moving out. In fact, he helped me.

  Now we see each other a lot, mostly for meals like this, or when he brings stuff over for my house. I go down to his house to check that he’s not gone over the line too far, and to use the computer once in awhile.

  Once we’re settled at Cracker Barrel I excuse myself to wash my face and hands, because people are looking at me, then looking away. In the bathroom mirror I see that there’s dust over my forehead and a smear of what might be blood on my neck, and little bits of debris in my braid. I bend over and splash water on my face.

  As if it’s happening all over again, I see the car coming in slow motion through the door, knocking things down…

  I snap off the water, dry my face
with paper towels and look myself in the eye. Dark blue irises, the eyelashes disappearing now that the mascara is gone. I think of Tyler looking at me so intently. What was he seeing? I straighten up, narrow my eyes a little. Oval face, maybe too long. Big mouth, way too big. I fake-smile and see the crooked eyetooth.

  The car crashes through the reflection in slow motion, coming through the door.

  “Okay, no,” I say to myself, pulling the elastic band out of my long braid. “We aren’t doing this. Pull yourself together.”

  As I work my fingers through my hair, little pieces of stuff fall out of it. Taking a comb out of my back pocket, I start at the bottom, around my rear end, and comb it upward, a little at a time. I washed it this morning, and it’s still a little damp, but the waves are pretty, making ribbons of the streaks of blonde and brown. It’s really long, like my mom’s, to the middle of my rear, and I leave it down, a magic cape of protection.

  My mascara has smeared, and I wipe it away. There’s a little bruise on my right cheekbone that surprises me—I don’t remember anything smacking me.

  A woman comes in, herding what must be her granddaughter. The little girl looks at me. “Are you a princess?”

  I smile at her. “Yes, actually. I’m Princess Jessica. Are you?”

  She dimples. “No.”

  Her grandma winks at me, and I go out to join Henry, and pig out on biscuits and gravy. This meal might have to last me a while.

  * * *

  Henry drops me off at Billy’s so I can pick up my car. The building has been cordoned off with police tape. In the bright light of the summer afternoon it looks sad, glass shattered and bits of wood hanging down, the parking lot empty. My car sits by itself in the back of the lot. I climb in and roll down the windows—by hand, since they’re not electric. I’m glad for the fact that at least the struts had to be replaced last week rather than this week, even if it did wipe out my bank account. Otherwise, I’d be out of a job with a broken car.

  Unfortunately, the gas needle is just this side of red. If I’m going to look for work today—and that is what has to happen—I need gas. I’ve saved some points from the grocery store and can get twenty cents off per gallon, so I pull up to the pump, trying to calculate how much I can get by with.

  The trouble is not knowing when there will be any more cash in my pocket. If I have to, I can take the bus. Meanwhile I put in two gallons, enough for fifty miles of running around town, and tuck the remaining $37 back in my pocket.

  Home doesn’t look like much outside—it’s a tiny mother-in-law house tucked behind a bigger house in a neighborhood that’s gone industrial over the past couple of decades. An apartment block sits to the south, two houses and then a car lot to the north. I drive in from the alley and park. Electra, my neighbor to the front, isn’t out in her garden right now, but I hear her radio playing the blues.

  I unlock my front door and slip inside to a narrow series of rooms, living room in the middle, bedroom to the right, kitchen and tiny bathroom to the left. Every inch of it is covered in this old pine paneling that’s rich and golden, and it looks like a cabin to me, like a place you would go on vacation by a lake, maybe.

  It’s cool and bright, sunlight falling through some antique lace curtains Henry found at a flea market. Plants everywhere, on shelves and windowsills and little tables. I don’t have a ton of furniture—only the bed and dresser I brought with me, a kitchen table with two chairs, and a couch Henry also found. It’s dark blue and very comfortable, and I covered the worn seat with a bright paisley tablecloth I found at a garage sale.

  That’s where I fall now, onto my couch in my own house, where everything is clean and orderly, and it all smells of plants breathing and lavender and my own soap.

  My sanctuary.

  I have to keep it. No matter what.

  Chapter FOUR

  After a long nap and a shower to wash away the craziness of the day, I realize I still haven’t called my boyfriend Rick. It’s nearly two—he should be up by now. Sometimes the band stays up all night practicing for a gig like the one they have tonight, which is a big deal. Or at least they say they’re rehearsing. Sometimes it seems like a lot of partying and a little playing.

  But as he always says, he’s young, just now twenty-two. There’s time to figure life out.

  I flip open my phone, and on the top of the screen is Tyler’s number. His ocean eyes flash across my imagination, and I think of the way his beautiful lips smiled ever so slightly, mostly on one side. A quiver of awareness coils down my spine, pooling at the small of my back.

  Guiltily, I push the vision away. Punch in Rick’s number.

  He answers on the third ring, his voice sleepy and sexy. “Hey, babe. I was just thinking about you.”

  “Were you?”

  “Yeah. I wish you were here in bed with me.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “Want to come over?”

  He lives in a house with the band, four guys, and none of them clean the place or wash dishes. Ever. I’m pretty sure nobody has vacuumed the entire time they’ve lived there. “Maybe if you hire a cleaning crew.”

  He laughs. “What’s up?”

  “Well, before you hear it on the news, I wanted to tell you that some old guy drove a car through the front of the restaurant.”

  “What? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Amazingly, I’m fine. Almost nobody got hurt, except Virginia and a couple of people with minor injuries.” My chest aches as I think about my friend. “Virginia is hurt pretty bad, though.”

  “That sucks. I’m sorry.” I hear him light something in the background—a cigarette, a joint, not sure. “Do you want me to come over?” He holds his breath slightly. A joint, then.

  “No, thanks. I have to go look for work.”

  “You don’t have to do it today. You could give yourself one day off.”

  “No, I’ll just worry about it. The sooner I get started, the sooner I’ll have a new job.”

  “All right. What time do you want me to pick you up tonight?”

  I’ve been up since four. The band will play until midnight. I’m wiped out from everything that’s happened. But the gig is important to him, a new club, and he wants me there. “Seven?”

  “I’ll be there. Can you wear the red halter?”

  “Sure.” He’ll want my hair down, too, and my low cut jeans that show a little belly. The girls with the boys in the band have to look good.

  When I hang up, I have to toss through my closet to figure out what to wear to the Musical Spoon. I’ve only been there a couple of times. It’s close to a private, super expensive college downtown, and students drink coffee there, along with people who live in the lofts and little apartments in the city center.

  I don’t have a lot of clothes for things like this, really. I take out my best jeans, and pair them with a green-and-blue-print peasant blouse with short sleeves, but that looks too casual. The last option is a sundress that’s been around for a couple of summers but still looks okay. I dither over shoes—flat sandals look too casual, but I can’t think of anyone who ever wore high heels in that place. Tennis shoes? The pair I’ve been wearing to work every day are pretty battered. I dig out a pair of clogs, but when I put them on, they just look sad.

  It makes me feel so anxious that my stomach is upset. This is always the big problem—never having the right stuff to wear. I have work clothes and ordinary clothes and sexy tops for when I go listen to Rick’s band.

  I don’t have ordinary-good clothes or apply-for-work clothes or going-out-to-dinner clothes. I stare critically at myself in the mirror, wishing for a magic wand to make me look exactly right for the part of server at the Musical Spoon.

  On the mirror of my dresser is a picture of my mom. It’s just before she met my dad, and she’s sitting on a beach in New Zealand, long-legged and tan in a tiny bikini. Her hair, like mine, is long and blonde, and she’s laughing and beautiful. My dad walked up right after he took that picture and asked her to go to the movie
s with him.

  Just be yourself.

  That was her advice to me whenever I felt shy, which was a lot. Serving has helped, because you have to be friendly and talk to strangers all the time, but I can still feel paralyzed when I have to do something new like this.

  Bottom line is, I need a new job. I kick off the clogs and slip into the flat sandals. My feet are tan, and the sandals look pretty. It’s a boho look, which might not be hipster enough for the Spoon, but it’s what I’ve got. I leave my hair loose and stick a comb in my pocket.

  In the car, I blast P!nk to give myself some courage and watch the mileage to the restaurant. It’s just over five miles, 5.4. Walkable if I had to, but I couldn’t do it both ways. The buses run downtown, so that’s an option, too.

  Gas is the pain in my ass lately. The price is so unreliable, day to day, that it’s hard to budget. I had to pay nearly four bucks a gallon the other day, and my old Kia is pretty efficient, but still—that’s a lot of money. The car, like my phone, belonged to my mother. I like to think she’s with me, too, that when I’m driving, she’s in the passenger seat.

  There’s a parking spot at a meter right in front of the Spoon, and I do wonder how we park—is there employee parking? I can’t be paying $6 or $8 a shift in one of the garages. For today I plunk some quarters in the meter. A guy in a plaid shirt and black horn rimmed glasses is smoking a joint against the wall, watching me. He just stares, doesn’t smile, and it makes me nervous all over again. Humming “you are perfect” under my breath, I push inside.

  It’s a little dark, so I have to stand there for a couple of seconds, blinking. The air smells of sugar and cloves and something I think might be patchouli, like it’s a coffee shop from some other time. When I blink away the sun spots I can see that it’s not busy at all—there are a couple of tables of single people drinking tea and beer, working at laptops; a young guy at the bar; and two women by the window in deep conversation over a pot of tea. The pot is big and fat, painted ceramic, the tea cups mismatched. The floors are wooden, worn smooth, and books line the walls. I want to take every single one of them off the shelves to read, or at least leaf through them. There are old books with weathered spines, yellowed paperbacks, tall books and short ones, red, blue, brown; some I guess are probably leather. Classics and science fiction from the sixties and romances from the eighties, and everything else in between. I once read a whole, admittedly tiny, novel here in one afternoon, a sad story about a woman who wanted to be an artist and had to get married instead.