The last remnants of salmon-colored sky swam through the Cumberland in rivulets sliced by the prow of a barge. William took a picture of the scene with his phone. When he viewed it, he saw the back of Christina’s shaved head ghosting the window. An unbearable urge gripped him.
“Hey, fuzzy.” He grinned.
She narrowed her eyes as he approached. Then she crossed her forearms above her head as if warding off an evil spirit. “Begone!”
He reached out a hand. “Just one little rub for good luck and I’ll never invade your personal-space bubble again for the rest of your life.”
He saw her hand dart toward him but didn’t react fast enough. She plucked the Twizzler from his Coke and took a huge bite, rendering it useless as a straw.
William lunged toward her in exaggerated slow motion. “Noooooo…”
She stuck the Twizzler between her lips like a noir dame with a cigarette and turned her head as he thrust his neck forward in a ridiculous attempt to Lady-and-the-Tramp it away from her. Just above her ear was a deep red scratch, a gouge in the shape of a scimitar.
“Jesus! What did you do to yourself?”
She shimmied back against the curious headboard, a cream-colored rectangle of leather attached to the wall. “Nothing. It’s just a scratch.”
William had seen her pick at her scalp a hundred times before. He assumed she thought she was being sneaky, as if pretending to run her hands through her hair could hide the fact that she was clawing at her skin. He’d never once brought it up, but now, with her head shaved, the angry cut was exposed. He wanted to take her head in his hands and lick the wound clean like Daniel’s sisters’ cats did to each other. He was aware of the weirdness of this impulse, but there was nothing he could do about it. A wave of light-headedness sent him to the bed. He sat facing her, wondering what exactly had just come over him.
“Oh my God,” she said, finishing the Twizzler with furious chomps. “I’m fine! Don’t cry about it.”
“I’m not crying.”
“Don’t cry on the inside either. Don’t look at me like that. Stop doing things.”
The pillow hit him squarely in the chest. Across the bed, Christina laughed at his inability to block it. “I was thinking we should have a pillow fight, but then I was also thinking how clichéd that was—road trip, nice hotel, PILLOW FIGHT. I don’t know why I can’t just do things spontaneously. Teach me the secrets of spontaneous fun, William Mackler.”
He was used to her abrupt subject changes. Their whiplashing conversations threaded through days and weeks like driftwood on the Cumberland, picking up stray bits of chatter and carrying them along.
He touched the side of his head. “You sure you don’t need some Neosporin? I can call the front desk.”
He caught the second flung pillow with ease and affected a movie-German accent. “Now I have all ze pillows, Fräulein.”
She hugged her knees to her chest. He noticed that her Nightwish shirt was a different shade of black than her denim shorts. She wiggled her toes and used them to grip the fabric of the comforter.
“Stop looking at my toes.”
“Requesting authorization to look somewhere, anywhere.”
She put on a hypnotist voice. “Looook deeeeep into my eyyyyes.”
Things left unsaid retreated to a little heap in the back of his mind as he and Christina fell into a routine that might as well have been scripted. He glanced out the window at darkness pulling itself like a cowl across the skyline. Then he really did look deep into her eyes. They were the color of a pastoral scene, perpetually on the cusp of some whimsical transformation.
“You have really pretty eyes,” he said. “Try not to scratch them out.”
“You have really pretty eyelashes,” she said. “For a boy.”
“Thanks, I made them myself.”
Now it was Christina’s turn to look out the window.
“Nashville,” William said.
“Uh-huh.” She turned back to him. There was something different about her face. “What are you gonna do after this?”
William shrugged. “I guess that’s up to my new best friend Otto.”
“You gonna have him drop you off at the scrap yard every day? Pick you up at the end of your shift?”
He grinned. “That way I can always grab a few drinks at the U-Turn without having to worry about driving.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Kidding!” he said. “I’ll have him take me to the strip club instead.”
She pressed the tip of her finger into the center of the comforter’s pattern, which resembled a dartboard. “I was thinking, you know…” William’s heart pounded and he didn’t know why. “You could come with me to Buffalo.”
He put up his hands in protest. “I ain’t no college boy. Ain’t one fer…” He trailed off quietly when he saw that she was serious. “…book…learnin’.”
She leaned forward, hugging herself tightly. “I’m not talking about college. You could just move out there and find a job. Then we’ll be in the same place.”
“I already have a job.”
“What does it matter if you work at Tanski’s in Fremont Hills or some other scrap yard in Buffalo? Why do you have to even work in a scrap yard? You can do anything you want. You know that.”
“Tell that to my
