26
I sure as hell didn’t feel like listening to any damn heartbreak tunes. The Janis Ian tickets went out the window as soon as I coasted down the driveway and into the street.
No wonder Walt didn’t want to tell me who he’d been seeing.
Once safely out of the driveway, I started the Ford and turned on the headlights, then got out of there as quickly as the clattering valves could carry me. Two blocks away, I rolled through the stop sign onto Hillsboro Road, then through two lights to the freeway entrance ramp. I ran the car up to seventy-five, the steering wheel shaking like it had the ague.
I felt like such a fool. It’s not so much that Rachel slept with me; hell, people sleep with each other every day without even the benefit of a proper introduction. Happens all the time.
No, it was more that I bought into the whole charade. All my life, I’d been a sucker for this sort of thing. I get interested, misread signs, take too much for granted, get my hopes up for nothing. Jeez, at my age, you’d think I’d have learned by now.
One thing was for sure; I could hold off on packing my bags and giving Mrs. Hawkins my notice. I hadn’t realized until I pulled into that driveway and saw Walt’s car how much I’d been subconsciously fantasizing about a future with Rachel. I still had feelings for her. It just seemed natural that we’d slide back into life together, and that eventually we’d find what we once had with each other, before Conrad came along and ruined it all.
I passed over the Cumberland River on the 1-265 bridge, the water below a ribbon of darkness cutting through the city’s nightlights. A single tugboat, a pinpoint of light as sharp as a needle, plodded slowly upriver against the current. The amber freeway lights cast harsh shadows over the darkened concrete. The night air was filled with the smell of the rendering plant.
I took the exit ramp off the freeway and drove up to the entrance ramp of the Ellington Parkway, a lightly traveled bypass that ran from downtown Nashville north toward Madison. The E.P. started next to one of the city’s most grim housing projects, the chain link fence separating the highway from the grounds of the project peeled away in some places, torn completely down in others.
I slapped the steering wheel, disgusted with myself and life in general. I got off the parkway at Douglas Avenue, steered my way through the roller-coaster hills to my own neighborhood, and back to the safety of my apartment. I went upstairs, locked the door behind me, and threw my clothes in a pile in the corner. I opened the refrigerator and realized I was out of beer. Damn, I thought, I ought to throw on a good drunk.
Only thing was, I’d outgrown throwing on good drunks years ago, and I never had much luck with it then. I never liked that out-of-control, reeling feeling that hits you right before you head for the porcelain.
But I wanted to be drunk, wanted to drown in the stuff until my head spun like a Ferris wheel gone wild. I wanted to forget it all-Conrad’s murder, Mr. Kennedy’s murder, the smell of sweat on the racquetball court, the sheen of perspiration on Rachel’s face as she twisted beneath me in the sheets.
I turned out the lights and went to bed, the neighborhood strangely and eerily silent. Saturday night in East Nashville usually brought with it the sound of parties gone wild, tires screeching as teenage boys fought to impress girlfriends and one another, the occasional sounds of ominous gunfire. But tonight there was nothing, only silence.
I lay there half the night, struggling vainly to find sleep, that wonderful, empty, dark hole that I could step into and fall forever void of thought and feeling. I needed more than anything else to quit thinking, and that seemed the one thing I could not do. Over and over again, the screens inside my head played the same movies.
Conrad lying beneath me, his lights fading to black.
Rachel lying beneath me, her breath coming in short bursts.
Bubba Hayes on top of me, his thighs like tree stumps, pinning me to the floor.
Walt standing over me, dripping sweat on me, helping me up off the racquetball floor.
Rachel’s face outlined against the ceiling as she sat astride me, the two of us pumping away at each other madly.
The glowing red digital numbers of the alarm clock read 4:30 the last time I looked at it. I drifted off finally, into an uneasy and troubled sleep that was anything but rejuvenating. I woke up around seven. I was exhausted.
I spread the Sunday paper out on the kitchen table, but didn’t have the concentration to get very fer. My eyes burned from lack of sleep. I felt brittle, old.
Even then, I couldn’t stop thinking. I kept seeing Rachel’s house, with its great lawn and expensive furniture, the cars, the clothes. The more I pondered, the odder it seemed that Conrad Fletcher could afford all that, yet couldn’t afford to pay off his bookie. A hundred thousand dollars, Bubba said he owed. Not exactly pocket change, but probably only a few months’ salary to Conrad. A fortune to me. If I owed that kind of money to a bookie, it could just as well be a hundred million. But Conrad
Maybe the truth lay somewhere else. Maybe, I thought, it was the house and the cars and the lifestyle that
If that were true, then the mirror was cracked. All the perfect reflections I’d seen were false, tricks put before my eyes like a magician’s scarf covering sleight of hand. I sat at the kitchen table staring at the wall for over an hour, my thoughts reduced to pure, nonverbal essence.
Something’s stinko.
“You rook awfuh.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Lee. Good to see you again, too.”
“Weah you been? It been days now.”
I looked across the counter as Mrs. Lee scribbled my order down on her green lined pad. She was as crotchety as ever, the result, I guess, of risking your keister to escape to the land of freedom and opportunity and discovering that freedom and opportunity meant opening up at 7:30 in the morning and closing at 9:30 at night seven days a week for the rest of your life.
“Don’t tell me you missed me.”
“I nevah miss anybody,” she spat. “We just made too much chicken tree days in row ’cause you didn’t show up. Cost me money.”
“I’ll leave you a big tip.”
“Oh, yeah, weah I heahd dat befoah?”
She disappeared behind the stainless steel counter between the cash register and the kitchen. I could see her husband back in there, slaving over a hot wok.
Maybe things weren’t so bad for me. Then again, maybe Mrs. Lee would give me a job. I used to make a pretty mean Mooshu Pork back when Lanie and I were married.
Mrs. Lee came back around with the steaming plate a moment later. She shoved it across the front counter.
“I put exta chicken on theah foah Shadow. Doan you eat it all.”
I smiled at her. “Mrs. Lee,” I said, “you’re one of the few truly wonderful people I’ve ever met in my life. I mean that.”
“Yeah, and you fuh of it.” She waddled off behind the counter with a load of dirty plates.
This was the longest I’d gone without a visit to Mrs. Lee’s since I moved to East Nashville. I guess I didn’t realize how much this part of town had become home for me. It’s weird to think that I used to eat at joints with names like Mario’s and Chef Sigi’s and Arthur’s, all restaurants where you were as likely to run into the mayor as anyone else, or maybe the chief of police, or maybe the head of the Nissan plant in Smyrna. With two people, you’d walk out with a VISA that was three figures closer to being maxxed out than it was before you walked in.
I used to think I enjoyed that life, even regretted losing it, but realizing that Mrs. Lee had honestly missed me the past few days made me feel better than all the three-figure dinners ever had.
