“You know when was the last time I slept outside?” she said, sleepily. A wind had picked up outside. They could hear it rushing through the treetops. John was lazily tracing the outlines of her fingertips with his own, his head on her shoulder. It must be very late, now. Pru was relaxed and sleepy, saying anything that came into her mind. “Waiting in line at the Medina Ticketron for Springsteen tickets with Kate McCabe, when we were in high school. This was, like, The River, but we’d been in love with him since Born to Run. In junior high. Oh my God, you have never seen two girls so crazy in your life as me and Kate were for Bruce Springsteen. Her brother had all the albums, so we used to go sneak into his room while he was at basketball practice and listen to them.” She waited for him to say something. His answer was so long in coming that she almost fell asleep herself. She jerked awake. “Hey. Are you listening?”
“Hmph? Yeah. I am now.” John moved his head from her shoulder to her lap and curled up into her. She put her hands in his hair. She didn’t want them to fall asleep yet. If they fell asleep, then it would be morning, and this would all be over.
“All the other girls were all about Andy Gibb, you know, Shaun Cassidy. Boy singers with blond, feathered hair. And then there’s Springsteen, remember the cover of Darkness? He’s in that T-shirt, looking stoned?” John grunted something that seemed like assent. “I had never seen anything more beautiful in my life than that album cover. ‘Candy’s Room’ was my favorite song. I was probably the only fourteen-year-old girl in all of Ohio who got off to a song about a hooker.” John snickered a little, but he was mostly asleep. Softly, she said, “I always wanted someone who’d feel that way about me. Someone who’d still love me even if I was a hooker. He wants to protect her so much, you know? That’s my Springsteen, the one in the dingy T-shirt, in love with a prostitute. Did she live at Coney Island? No, that’s ridiculous . . . she couldn’t have . . .” Her eyes were closed and she was becoming confused. John had become very still, in her lap. Sleepily, she said, “Kate was more into Asbury Park. I don’t know, for me that one’s a bit overwhelming . . . all those words . . .” Then she was sitting on Josh McCabe’s green shag carpet, staring at the cover of Darkness on the Edge of Town, the scrawny, young Springsteen in a white T-shirt, his hair badly cut in a sort of pointy V on top of his head, as bleary-eyed as if he’d just gotten out of bed . . .
Pru awakened on the floor of the van sometime in the very early morning, before the sun was up. Even her head was under the blankets, against the cold. Her arms were wrapped around John. The way the front of her body was plastered against the back of his, she might have been a drowning victim he was pulling to shore. She started to ease herself away, but he rolled over and pulled her back toward him, tucking his arm under her head. She smiled, and closed her eyes. In a moment, she had fallen back asleep inside the warmth of his body, with his breath on her neck.
When she woke up again, the sun was just beginning to rise. Her hips and back were aching but she didn’t want to move. For a long time, she watched John sleeping. She wanted to reach out and touch the sweet line curving around each of his fine nostrils. She wanted to sweep his hair off his forehead and kiss him there.
He opened his eyes, blinked a few times, then smiled. “Hey,” he said, gently, without moving away. She smiled back.
“Thin Lizzy,” she said.
“Bruce Springsteen,” he said, yawning.
“It was before Born in the U.S.A. and that supermodel,” Pru said. “You have to understand that.”
“Wait a minute,” he said, his body tensing. “I think I heard something.”
In the next moment, the back door of the van flew open. It made a horrible wrenching noise. Blinding sunlight flooded the van. It was all so sudden and frightening that Pru felt like she’d been shot in the eye.
“That shit for brains,” someone said. “What the hell?”
John threw off the blankets and sat up. “Good morning,” he said, pleasantly.
The morning park ranger blinked at them, completely surprised by their presence. He held a Starbucks cup of coffee, Pru noticed, and something about that struck her as so funny that she started to laugh.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” the ranger said.
“Guess what,” said John. “No shit.”
Ten
“Oh, no no no no no,” Fiona said. “No. Rebound girlfriend: No.” The bartender passed by them and Fiona crooked a finger at him. “Hit me,” she said. It was the first night she’d had away from the kids in months, and she was going for broke.
She had had three shots of whiskey and a margarita (on the rocks) in twenty minutes, to Pru’s one glass of wine. They were at the bar at City. Pru was in culture shock after her night in the woods. She’d slept all day in her flannel nightgown in a bed piled with as many covers as she could find. She couldn’t get enough warmth. Even in sleep, she kept remembering John waking up in the van that morning: “Hey.” She would have liked to wander by the café to see what he was
