When I typed my last line and glanced up, there was Belinda. She looked good, and I got the distinct impression that she had just finished dabbing on fresh makeup. She had a way of wearing it light, so that it didn’t hide her freckles. I liked that. I liked those freckles.
“Is that offer of a coffee after work still good?” she said.
“Absolutely,” I said.
“Could we make it drinks instead of coffee?”
“Absolutely.”
16
I went to see Mom and Dad and drank some coffee with them in their kitchen and told them about my new job, and tried to dress my life up as much as I could without making everything seem like one big, obvious damn lie. I mentioned that I was seeing someone, or at least I was about to, and I think that pleased them. Nobody said the Gabby word, and I tried to make sure they knew, without saying it, that I had moved on and that she was a thing of the past.
I hadn’t moved on, of course, but I wanted them to think I had, and while I was telling that whopper, I wanted to believe it myself.
I finished the coffee and Dad and I talked a little about baseball, then Mom and I talked about Belinda. I told her just enough to satisfy her, and not enough to get her worked up into thinking we were about to elope and start making grandchildren, then I left.
As I came to the curb, was about to reach for my car door, instinctively I looked up in the elm. Jazzy was up there on her little platform.
“Hi, Jazzy,” I said.
Jazzy swung out on a limb and twisted and hung upside down and clung there like a sloth, dangling her head backward and looking down at me.
“Hi Mr. Statler’s little boy,” she said. “I was hiding from you.”
I grinned at her. “You going to stay up in that tree?”
“I like it up here,” she said. “You don’t live here no more?”
“I’ve moved.”
“I wish I could move.”
“Do you?”
“Can I come stay with you?” Jazzy asked, swinging back around until she was stretched out across the limb like a long lizard.
I slowly shook my head. “Sorry, Jazzy. You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“The law, for one thing. They won’t let you. It’s complicated, kid.”
“I see.” She didn’t, of course. “You going to come back?”
“Soon. Right now I have to go.”
“What you going to do?”
“I have a date.”
“With a girl?”
“Yep. With a girl.”
“Some guys date guys. I seen it once on television. They aren’t supposed to.”
“Can’t say as I care one way or another.”
“Guess I’ll see you when you come back.”
“Sure will. And kid, you need anything, you go see my mom and dad. They’ll help you out.”
“You’re my best friend, Cason.”
I found it hard to say anything for a long moment. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll be good friends.”
“I like you,” she said.
“Friends should like one another. You play safely, okay?”
She nodded and I got in my car and drove away from there.
I fought against it, but I wheeled by Gabby’s clinic. Her car was gone and the place was locked up tight, but something about driving by gave me a boost, then a few minutes later the boost went away and I felt my stomach go as sour as if I had eaten something rotten.
I went home and had another cup of coffee. I was beginning to get a little tight on caffeine, felt as if my hair was going to detach from my head and weave itself into a potholder. I decided after drinking yet another cup, then half of another, that I ought to quit. I poured my last bit of coffee in the sink and rinsed out the cup and put it in the dishwasher.
After showering and brushing my teeth, I got dressed and made ready to meet Belinda. She called and said she was back at the paper, doing something or other, and would I come by there and follow her home and could we go in my car.
I went to the paper and followed her home and she parked her car and I drove us to a hotel bar, which she suggested. She had a fruity drink of some sort. I had a beer, which helped mellow out my caffeine, and we talked.
“I like your hair, long like that,” she said.
“And I like yours too.”
“It’s not longer.”
“But I like it. You’ve done something different with it.”
“I had it recut. A few extensions added. Last time, my hairdresser tried something that didn’t work and I tried to fix it myself, and that really messed things up. I looked like someone had cut it with a Weed Eater. But I went to someone new and they did a better job.”
“You added extensions but it’s shorter?”
“Don’t try and figure the mysteries of women’s hairdressing, it’ll just give you a headache. Basically, to fix it, I had to cut it short, add extensions that helped it look better than it did, but they are shorter than my hair was before I cut it.”
“I like it,” I said. “That’s all I’ll say.”
“That’s the safe thing to say. It was expensive, I can tell you that. On my pay, too expensive. It cost me an arm and a leg, and once a day I have to go see the hairdresser and wipe her ass.”
I grinned at her. “Well, it still looks good.”
Unconsciously, she moved her hair a little with her hand. “You don’t look like a happy man, Cason.”
“I just try and look that way so I’ll seem mysterious.”
“You have that part down,” she said. “You’re mysterious, all right. What I wonder is, when you got back from Iraq, why didn’t you go back to Houston and work there? What in the world could a little rag like the
“There’s Mrs. Timpson. She’s a peach. And Oswald. I guess it’s the friendship that I find most rewarding.”
“You got the job because everything Oswald writes is as dry as Mrs. Timpson’s cunt.”
“Do I sense some bitterness?” I asked.
“Oswald got the reporter job I should have gotten.”
“Ah ha. You aren’t just a nice pretty girl with a good heart.”
“Damn right, I’m not. Hey, you know what? You managed to change the subject.”
“From?”
“Why you came to work here instead of a larger paper.”
“How about the weather? I like the weather here. That could be the reason. How about this? Houston smells bad and there’s all that traffic.”
“I can understand that being a reason. But I can’t understand it being THE REASON.”
“My parents are here. My brother and his wife. That’s a lot to do with it.”
“But not all?”
