Doyle thumbed through the messages, shaking his head.
DOYLE’S BOSS APPEARED SUDDENLY IN his cubicle with his arms spread so they reached across the entry. A wind blew his hair and tie to one side. He was a tall, imposing person, and with Doyle looking up at him from his chair, he looked twice as tall and extra unhappy. “Look, Doyle,” he said. “I’m not sure I even want to ask what happened.”
“Well, I hit this lady’s dog on the way to California, and—”
“And I’m pretty sure I don’t even want to hear anything about it either. Point is, you don’t work here anymore. We had to move on. You have to understand our position. We had a project to finish, and you were gone for three months, Doyle. Disappeared without a word.”
Doyle felt his boss’s voice detach from the room and start falling away. He shrunk the way things do in a rearview mirror. His boss said, “Point is, you don’t work here anymore. Point is, Doyle. Point is … you don’t work here anymore, anymore. Point is … we had to move on … point is, point is, point is—”
“DOYLE?” CJ SAID. “ARE YOU having a seizure?”
He looked down at his phone and switched it off and opened the stiff, creaking lid of his salad. “No, sorry. I was just … I don’t know what I was doing. How’s your burger?”
“Okay,” she said.
“They let you have it your way, so it should always be perfect,” he quipped.
“Or it means that something’s wrong with the way you want it.” After a minute, she said, “Just saying.”
Doyle tore the dressing packet open with his teeth and applied it to the salad, thinking about how right she was about what people want. If he’d learned anything about this woman in the last three months, and he was not sure he had, it was that she was not satisfied. So, she’d know about desire.
“You know,” he said, avoiding her eyes, “I’m sorry things turned out the way they did.” He stabbed a mouthful of salad then crunched it.
“You shouldn’t be sorry,” she said. “Neither of us knew what was going to happen. You can’t have a fling unless you get flung.”
“I guess that’s the problem. You were having a fling and I was falling for you, or something.”
“Doyle.” She tried to touch his hand.
“No, it’s okay. I’m a big boy. We spent a lot of money, and I burned a lot of bridges. It’s just that usually when you break up with someone, you can kind of just walk away. We broke up while we still had an eleven-hour drive in front of us. Well, it’s just two hours now.”
“Counting the hours, huh?” She smiled.
“Yeah, but it’s probably not what you think,” Doyle said.
IT WAS EXACTLY LIKE A hospital room, except it was in the house. His stuff was all there. Photographs of horses, bulls, dogs. A lariat thrown over a chair. His daughter was texting, her thick French nails clicking against the screen of her smartphone. One of her brothers was eating a cheeseburger out of the wrapper. He had mayonnaise on his lip, and he was dropping shreds of lettuce onto the carpet. Her other brother was working, focused on the screen of his iPad. CJ thought it was work, but it turned out to be the roster of his fantasy basketball team.
Three of the five children were there. The other two were on their way.
“Is he awake?” the daughter asked without looking up.
CJ said, “No, he’s not, but he’s breathing.”
The brother who was eating crumpled up his paper and wiped his mouth with it. He chewed a couple of times and then he leaned over to his sister and whispered something into her ear that made her eyes flick up at CJ. She stared, without blinking, for a moment. While her brother talked on, her mouth tightened slightly, nothing at all like a sneer but worse somehow for all its brevity.
The sister nodded three times and then said “I know” loudly enough to make it clear that she was sending a message.
CJ unlaced her fingers from Doc’s hand and placed it back onto his belly, just under the other one that had an IV running into it. She stood and smoothed her dress, took a quick look at the LCD display that showed the old man’s vitals.
The mayonnaise-faced brother stuffed his wrapper into the bag and wadded it up. As CJ crossed the room to the door, he handed the bag to her. She looked down at him and said, “I’m not your father’s maid, I’m his wife.” Then she left the room.
DOYLE DROPPED HIS FORK INTO the salad container and stood. He had a smear of ranch dressing on his chin and CJ thought of saying something about it but didn’t.
“I’m going to get more Coke,” he said. “You should, too. Looks like you’re about ready to pass out.”
“I look what?” she asked. She glanced at her reflection in the window. She saw it on herself: fatigue. She let her eyes shift focus to the parking lot and then back to herself. She took the lid off her drink and slid it over to Doyle. “Diet Dr Pepper,” she said.
“You know, artificial sweeteners are probably worse for you,” he said. “I saw a thing on the Discovery Channel about it.”
“The other stuff’s too sweet.”
Doyle nodded, but it didn’t look quite like agreement. She watched him walk stiffly to the soda machine, and she sighed. When he showed up at Doc’s house in Congress, she was at something a lot like rock bottom. It was her forty-fifth birthday. She was alone in the childhood home of a man she married so he could exact vengeance on his children. When she left with Doyle there was a grinding in her stomach, a feeling of someone has who just read the nutrition label on a now-empty pint of Ben & Jerry’s. Taking off with him seemed like the right thing to do for only about ten minutes, which was enough. Trouble is always easier to get into than out of. They were just getting settled in the car when the wrongness of it all took shape. She set that feeling aside in favor of the one that said the universe had brought him here. She told herself to see where this would go. What she got out of it was days piling up on each other, turning into week-long stays in cheap motels all over California, each stop getting worse as the money ran out. Sometimes they’d get a paper and look for jobs, get bored of it, and sleep in. Eventually, they stopped talking to each other except to figure out whose turn it was to go to the laundromat. Months ago, she was desperate, and Doyle just happened along. It seemed like a lucky break, except she didn’t believe in luck. Two things held her in that house: the dog, and having a car she couldn’t afford to fix. The dog died, and Doyle was willing to run away.
DOYLE SET CJ’s DRINK DOWN and then slid into the booth. He stared at his food, sucked on his straw, and fidgeted.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am. You’re a really nice person, you know, but it’s obvious this isn’t working out.”
“That is one perspective,” Doyle said without looking up.
“You know we both have to agree on the perspective for there to be a relationship, Doyle.”
He plunged his straw up and down and made a smashed-up shape with his mouth. She watched to see if he was actually going to speak. He didn’t.
“You are really nice.”
“You said that.”
She sighed. “But I’m not looking for nice.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I wouldn’t be good for anyone right now. I’m a little bit broken.”
“If you’re broken, why’d you cook me all that food? Why’d you strip naked in your kitchen? We’ve been doing this for eighty-seven days.”
“You’ve been counting?”
Doyle was embarrassed by the question. “When people do what we did, it’s supposed to mean something,” he said.
“Not always. Sometimes it is just the thing. Just the thing and that’s it.”
“But you came with—”
“That’s not always what it is either.”
“You came to the wedding,” Doyle said. “And then we lived in all those places. Why would you come if it didn’t mean something?”
“‘Living’ doesn’t seem like the right word.” When she said it she could
see that Doyle was legitimately hurt, that she had hurt him. Usually in situations like these, you grab your bra and panties and dress in the entryway. You end it with a quick jerk, Band-Aid style. You don’t return calls. You ignore texts. You unfriend him. It’s kinder that way, in the end. If you linger, if you have breakfast with him, if you have a second dinner or meet for drinks, it gives the lie time to metastasize.
It was her turn to stall, stare at her tray, play with the edge of the waxy paper her burger came in, sip her drink, pinch the tip of her straw. As she did, she gazed out the window at the parking lot.
What did it take to get here, in this particular Burger King on the edge of the Mojave? How does anyone end up anywhere?
She thought about fate and how deep in her memory a story of the fates lay curled up like a pill bug. Her father had read it to her. The fates were sisters, three in total. They arrived at the birth of a child and called its future, set the course. These sisters were so powerful, even the other gods feared them. Sisters. Old women. And the gods minded their p’s and q’s around them. They were weavers, she remembered. The fabric of the universe was on their loom. Her father told her lots of old stories like that when she was a girl, before he left. Many were hard to remember, but this one stuck. When she thought of how she arrived somewhere, she imagined the loom clattering, mindlessly adding line to line.
SHE WAS WORKING FOR BELL South in Texas, in a huge room full of people processing bills. At lunch a woman burst into tears, crying, “It’s over. It’s just over.” Mostly people ignored her. CJ sat across from her and tried to ask her questions. “He won’t leave his wife. I’m just someone he screws on Thursdays.”
She patted this woman on the back then walked out of the office and never returned. She saw a future of desperation. When she was a girl she wanted to sing. She was good, too. Other people said so. In two weeks, she moved to Nashville. In four weeks she was in another office, just like the one in San Antonio. She wasn’t singing, she was just somewhere else. Every couple of months she took out her guitar and worked on a song.
Eventually, she met a man. They dated for a while and then slept together, always at her place. One day she was having lunch, and she heard the looms of fate, saw the weeping woman in her mind, realized that she had traded places with her. She understood that he was never going to leave his wife, and immediately she felt like something was trying to crawl out of the inside of her belly. She wanted to weep and scanned the room to see if anyone was watching. Everyone was looking at their phones, forking food into their mouths. A week later she was waiting tables in a diner. She got the slow shifts with all the bad tippers, but it was better. A person waiting tables was, at least, out in the world. She got a cheaper apartment. There was a fan next to the bed.
One day she served an old man, who came in alone. He asked her to call him Doc. He didn’t flirt, just ate his meal (short stack, bacon, skim milk, cantaloupe) and wrote things down on a small yellow notepad.
They didn’t talk. He was there the next day. And the next. Eventually he asked her name. She told him CJ.
He said, “No. Not the letters.”
She looked around and saw everyone in the place like they were flowers in pots. Doc’s eyes were honest. He was not playing her. She cleared the next table and took the dishes back. When she returned, she said, “Charlene.” He nodded, wrote the name on the pad. “And the J?” he asked.
“Joelle,” she said.
“Don’t hear that name a lot,” he said.
“I don’t say it a lot,” she answered.
He left for two weeks and then came back with a man in a suit. “This is Curtis,” he said, and then he motioned for Curtis to talk.
“I handle Doc’s business affairs,” he said, rising as he spoke. “Doc would like me to discuss an opportunity with you.”
“Well, I’m working,” she said.
“That might not be important anymore,” Curtis said. Doc winked at her and opened his menu.
It had all been planned. Remember: bad shifts. The place was empty, except for the three of them and the cook, who apparently stepped out for a smoke.
Curtis explained that Doc is a very rich man, and has found himself in a situation with his children that caused him to adjust his will.
“Those sometime kids been stealing from me,” Doc said.
Curtis explained that they had been written out of the will, and Doc was looking for someone to—and here Curtis lost focus a little—Doc needed someone who could function as a distraction.
Doc leaned across the table. “Charlene. I’m wondering if you’d marry me.”
“Doc, I don’t hardly even know you,” she said, unflapped.
“That’s right. Curtis tell her.”
“Tell me what?”
“HEY! OH MAN, THAT’S MY car!” Doyle shouted, pointing out the window. “Somebody just ran into my car.”
Outside, a Day-Glo orange Honda Civic hunkered behind Doyle’s Nissan, the passenger’s-side fender splintered. There was no hissing water line or smoke, just the stillness of the two vehicles and the white blown-out light of midday. The windshield of the orange car was an overwhelming smear of pure white. CJ had to look away to save her eyes.
Doyle was on his feet, tossing his napkin down in a gesture that seemed, for a moment, like a heroic act. “Who does this?” he shrieked. He looked like he was going to rush outside, but he waited there for CJ to make some response, which never came.
Outside, the driver’s door opened and a tall guy got out. He wore stupid oversized sunglasses and a white tank top. His shoulders and biceps were sculpted and deeply tanned. He hoisted his orange Oklahoma State shorts and ducked down to look at his passengers. He made three gestures with his hands. The girl in the passenger’s seat watched closely, then nodded. The second girl did nothing. From his squatting position, the tall guy looked around the parking lot.
He rose and shut the door.
CJ finally looked at Doyle, who was huffing.
“He better not hit me and run,” he said.
“He shut the door. Doesn’t look like he’s gonna run.”
“This is going to affect my rates,” Doyle complained.
“You didn’t do anything,” she said.
“They’re always looking for some way to squeeze you.”
“Are you going to go talk to him?”
“I guess I’ll have to.”
Doyle glanced out the window and blew air into his cheeks. As he thought, he pumped the air from one side to the other and then looked at his watch. He lurched from his position and headed out the door. As he walked away, CJ heard him mutter, “With my luck he’ll be uninsured.”
Doyle ran through the Burger King with one hand on his phone, which was holstered on his belt. Every tenth step or so, he would slow and walk quickly in an attempt to avoid attracting attention. All this did was make him look like someone who could see himself in a security camera. The woman who took their orders looked up and watched Doyle with disapproval. As he moved across the lobby, she followed him with her eyes. Outside, the passenger’s-side window came down and a young woman leaned out. She was yelling, but the man ignored her. He crossed around to Doyle’s car and inspected the bumper. Doyle appeared outside. The older of the two girls noticed him, but the kid did not. Doyle stopped and placed his fists on his hips and stood his ground. CJ grabbed her drink and took two deep drafts. Doyle appeared to be speaking, and the man didn’t notice him. Doyle made some small motions, and then looked back through the window at CJ. The younger of the two girls took pictures with her phone.
Initially, Doyle went right for the damaged section of his car, but the man’s presence deflected him so that the orange street racer was between them. The tall guy pulled on a shattered section of his front fender, and Doyle was having trouble seeing any damage to his vehicle. He thought he might begin with accusations, but he thought it would be stupid to start in without any information. The guy ignored him completely, turning instead
to the girl who was with him. She was drop-dead gorgeous, with a figure that seemed photoshopped. She wore tight, urban camo cutoffs with a woven belt. She was squeezed into an American flag halter top that came down far enough to show the world that her belly button had been pierced, twice. Her hair was wild and sun-bleached, ponytailed on the side. The other girl was clearly her sister. She wore slouchy thrift store clothes, and blew tiny pink bubbles with her gum.
She looked right at the man and spoke to him: “Eric, there’s nothing wrong with his car.”
He signed something back to her, and she said, “I know, but he’s here. Behind you.”
She looked up at Doyle, and from the front, she seemed completely different. Her face was perfect in profile, but deformed from the front: squeezed and asymmetrical. Her left eye was half an inch higher than the other. Doyle couldn’t look away. It was so strange to see such a lovely woman damaged like that.
The woman tilted her head and leaned toward Doyle, “What are you looking at?” she sneered.
“I’m sorry,” Doyle said, unsticking his eyes. “You know, your boyfriend hit my car.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” she said, walking back. Doyle found himself distracted from this angle as well. She scraped at the paint with her thumbnail and then said, “Come look.”
Her boyfriend was pacing behind the two cars, gesturing to himself.
Doyle squatted down and edged in underneath the woman as she bent over. “Nothing? You’re not gonna take that dent out with a hair dryer, ma’am.”
“That could be months old.”
“There’s orange paint everywhere.”
She looked over at her boyfriend’s car, then stood. She reached into her bra and took out her phone, checked it once, and then sighed. “We’re not from around here,” she said.
“Of course you’re not,” Doyle said. “Oklahoma plates.”
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