It Needs to Look Like We Tried

by Todd Robert Petersen

  “Y’all’re from Texas?” she asked, noting his plates.

  “Plano,” Doyle said.

  “You’re gonna want to do insurance cards or something, right?” she asked.

  “We’ll have to,” Doyle said.

  “Baby, we gotta go,” the boyfriend said in a loud, flat voice.

  When Doyle heard this he freaked out and started shouting that leaving would make this a hit-and-run, which is a felony.

  What is he saying? the boyfriend signed.

  Nothing, the girl signed. He’s crazy.

  The boyfriend got into the car and turned it on. He looked ready to go.

  Doyle pulled out his phone and ran to the front of the car and tried to take a picture of the license plate, but the front plate said OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER. The car lurched backward and screeched to a halt as the boyfriend yelled for the girl to get in.

  Doyle ran around behind him and snapped a photo of the rear plate, saying, “I got it. You run now and it’s game over.”

  All through this the girlfriend held the sides of her face and frantically told her boyfriend to stop. “Eric!” she screamed as she got in the car. “Eric, this is a bad plan.”

  Doyle held his phone up to the windshield and said, slowly, that he was going to call the cops. The girlfriend’s face went white, and she banged on the roof of the car.

  “That’s right. I am so calling 911.”

  The girlfriend looked at her boyfriend and got back out of the car. She was clearly scared out of her wits as she walked toward Doyle. “Don’t, mister. Please don’t do that,” she said.

  The boyfriend got out of the car but stood at the door. She paused for a second and then shifted her face to a three-quarter reveal, which instantly transformed her from sideshow freak to knockout. Doyle realized that, like a pool shark, she must constantly be aware of the angles required to make her next move. “My boyfriend and I just can’t get tangled up with the cops right now.”

  “What about my car?” Doyle asked.

  “There’s barely anything wrong with it,” she said.

  “It’s the principle of the thing.”

  “Mister, do you believe in love?” She looked over at her boyfriend, who looked exactly like the kind of person who should be modeling for a men’s magazine. She signed to him, then blew him a kiss. “Do you?”

  Doyle looked back at the window of the Burger King, the glare of the sun threw the image of the parking lot back at him, but he knew CJ was inside, staring out. He thought about their trip and how they had shown up at the wedding dinner already a little bit drunk, their fingers interlaced, Doyle thinking about the newness of CJ, the foreignness of her smell. He thought about how he hid inside the giddiness of this new relationship, ignoring his father and his bride, a woman he knew only a fraction longer than the woman who was doing things to him with her feet under the table.

  Was that love? Possibly, but probably not. The sad truth of Doyle’s life since he arose this morning was that whatever had happened between him and CJ was at best an impersonation of love. He had gone out to the motel pool at dawn and slipped into the water in a pair of red and silver trunks, he floated, faceup, staring at the rusted edges of the neon palms. He thought about where they would go from here. The sex had already tapered off, and they were beginning to lapse into normal activities. The night before, they had done laundry together in a coin-op laundromat. He tended the massive booming dryer and folded the clothes while she went for tacos. In front of him had been a stack of her things and a stack of his. He was tempted to blend them, but didn’t. Carefully he packed his things into his bag, and scavenged a Walmart sack for hers. As the pool water lapped around his face, he thought about that moment. What did it mean to see himself and her as two separate things, two distinct entities? Don’t you always see the separation first, he thought. Even if you say, “I love you,” you are basically admitting that above everything else, you recognize that you are not me and I am not you. Goo goo g’ joob, and all that. We’re different, and if we weren’t, there wouldn’t be any us.

  Doyle floated there, trying to remember all the lyrics to that Beatles song, until CJ dove into the water next to him.

  “HEY, MISTER, I ASKED YOU a question,” the girlfriend said again.

  “Goo goo g’joob,” Doyle said.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she said in the meanest way possible.

  “Nothing,” Doyle answered. He stared at the girlfriend, looked her right in the eye. “I was just thinking about your question. It’s a good one,” Doyle answered. “I haven’t been in love in a long time.” Saying it hurt worse than anything else he could remember.

  “I asked if you believed in love. You don’t have to be in love to believe in it.”

  Doyle’s lips pulsed involuntarily. He looked away from the girl and back. As he did this, he became aware of exactly how suspicious his expression must have seemed. He tried to make himself look benign, but in the end, he realized that it just made it look like he was hiding something. He realized in the middle of it that he used to like a song that asked this question. He fought the urge to sing it in his head. “Yes,” he said finally. “There’s probably something like love out there, for some people. Not for everyone.”

  “You sound like my little sister,” the girl said.

  “No, he doesn’t,” Lexi said, typing into her phone.

  “Whatever it is, it’s not what most people think it is.”

  During the discussion CJ came out. She had an overhand grip on her soft drink, the straw sticking up between her ringed fingers. “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  Doyle turned when he heard her voice.

  The girl said, “Everything’s fine, ma’am.”

  CJ’s eyes went to the tattered flap of fender hanging from the front of the other car. She got Doyle’s attention and said, “I’m gonna get something out of the car and then lay low, unless I can actually help. Better to be out of the way.”

  Doyle was infuriated, but there really wasn’t anything she could do, especially since they weren’t together. Doyle would have to take care of the details, and he would, just as soon she vanished. It didn’t stop him from being irritated that she was so nonchalant.

  “No, whatever,” Doyle said.

  CJ ducked into the Nissan and came back with a few magazines and took a sip from her drink. “Come get me,” she said, and then walked slowly back to the Burger King, watching the conversation resume in the reflections of the glass. She knew Doyle would be upset by what she was doing, and she was a little glad her strategy seemed to be working. She was impressed by the idea that not much had changed since middle school. You couldn’t just sit down with a person and say, “You know what, this isn’t working out for me.” You had to devise a stratagem, create a plan to make the other person break up with you. In this way, every teenager learns that to be successful, one must become a con artist. A commitment to the truth is like being under house arrest.

  “Let’s go inside, sit down, and figure this out,” Doyle suggested.

  MONTHS AGO, THEY HAD WRAPPED themselves in sheets and blankets and done the dishes in Doc’s kitchen. Eventually, it became so difficult to keep the blanket sarong around his waist that Doyle let it drop to the floor. He continued to wash the dishes, and CJ also abandoned her sheet and began putting things away.

  “It’s like the Garden of Eden,” Doyle said.

  CJ lifted a stack of plates into the cupboard. Her reaching pulled the shape of her breast into near perfection. “What?” she asked.

  “The two of us, doing this. It’s like Adam and Eve.”

  “That didn’t end well,” she said.

  “Never mind,” Doyle said and returned to the suds, careful now of where he positioned himself. In a few seconds, he shook his hands dry and left the room. He returned wearing pants. CJ noticed and covered her breasts with a forearm and walked past Doyle. She returned in a bathrobe.

  “I don’t normally do housework naked,” sh
e said.

  “Me neither,” Doyle said. “You are beautiful, though. I think you’re really pretty.”

  CJ pushed some hair behind her ear and started putting other things away.

  “I’ll be ready to try it again in a little bit,” he said.

  CJ pulled out a chair and sat. “Why don’t we try it again in California?” she said.

  Doyle looked surprised.

  “Take me to this wedding. You said you didn’t have a date. Take me.”

  Doyle scratched his chest and then looked at the clock on the wall. It was one thirty in the morning. If he left within the hour, he could still make it. “What about your job?”

  “I’m not working.”

  “I guess you don’t have to take care of the dog.”

  CJ looked up.

  “Sorry,” Doyle said.

  “Look, I’d love to get out of here with you. I’m just stuck in this dead guy’s house. That dog was the last thing holding me here. I’d love to go to LA.”

  “Santa Barbara.”

  “Sure, whatever. You seem like a really careful person, Doyle. Let’s break the rules a little.”

  “We could,” he said, smiling a little. “We could bend ’em.”

  “Or just get a hammer and start swinging.”

  “If we’re going to go, we need to go.”

  In twenty minutes, they had the whole place cleaned up. Doyle was dressed. CJ had stuffed some things into a bag. When she came back through the kitchen, she saw Doyle on his hands and knees next to the hot water heater.

  She bent over and looked at him. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Setting the thermostat to vacation. It’ll save energy and make it less likely to leak.”

  She stood looking at him for a very long time, and then said, “Okay, do it.”

  Then they were on the road, heading west.

  “That is a lot of stars,” Doyle said.

  “It’s clear and dry out here. We’re a million miles away from anything.”

  AT THE TABLE INSIDE BURGER King, the girl surprised everyone by taking out a stack of cash and pulling off a rubber band. She counted out ten one-hundred-dollar bills and fanned the money out on the table. She rebanded the stack and returned it to the bag, which was full of similar stacks.

  Doyle could see that CJ noticed this and it made her eyebrows furrow. The boyfriend stood behind her with his arms folded. His physique was remarkable.

  “This is complicated. We have insurance,” she said. “We just can’t use it right now. We’ve got people looking for us.”

  “Cops?” Doyle asked.

  “It doesn’t matter who it is.”

  “Course it does.”

  “Look, we didn’t kill anybody.”

  Doyle slipped CJ a look, but she wasn’t responding.

  “You’re probably star-crossed lovers, right?” Doyle said. CJ looked up at him for a moment, and a look moved upon her face that Doyle might have noticed if they were close. She breathed out more deeply than normal and held it. “Your parents are probably feuding. You got together against their wishes, and now they’ve got private detectives on your trail.”

  “You don’t have to be disrespectful right now, sir,” the girlfriend said. “I’m trying to give you a thousand dollars.”

  “Hush money?”

  “Jeez, mister. There’s like nothing wrong with your car. Can’t you just walk away from this? Can’t you just let us go? If you call the cops or your insurance people or anything like that, then it’s over for me and him, and for my little sister. She’ll end up in the system, and she didn’t do anything to deserve that. I wish I could just tell you what’s going on, but I can’t.”

  “Then I’m not going to sign off on this.”

  “Doyle, can I talk to you for a minute?” CJ leaned over the table and scooped up the money, tapped it square, and handed it to the girl. “Come with me, please,” CJ said, her voice tight and slightly uncertain. Again, this was not something Doyle picked up.

  CJ CROSSED THE RESTAURANT AND sat down with Doyle at an uncomfortable table underneath a television. The server had her eye on the both of them.

  “What was that all about?” CJ asked.

  “They smashed into my car.”

  “This has nothing to do with your car. I understand that you’re mad at me about everything. You know what, you should be. But if you’re mad at me, don’t take it out on them.”

  Doyle hung his head.

  “I really do wish I could be in love with you, Doyle. After the last few years of my life, I could stand a little consistency. I’m glad I could help you make a scene at your dad’s wedding. I’m glad we could spend a few months living day to day. I think I needed this fling as much as you did, but these kids need your help. They’re honest. You can see it in their eyes. They’re really in love, and they are really scared. I don’t think you want bad karma around your neck right now. This is your chance to change something in the universe.”

  “Why do you wish you could be in love with me?”

  “Because I’m a mess and you’re not. I never told you this, but that Doc guy, the one who’s buried in the backyard of that house, I married him so he could stick it to his kids. He arranged to pay me a million and a half dollars to marry him and jam up his estate. I met with his lawyer, and they worked everything out. He would change his will to lock them out and include me. The kids would contest the will, the probate proceedings would take forever, and if I’d just wait (he’d make sure I had some place to live) then I’d be paid through some offshore account, and I could ride off into the sunset.”

  “But?” Doyle asked.

  “But there hasn’t been any money. Everything’s frozen. All I’ve got is a couple of bucks. I’m sure when I get back, the utilities will be off at the house. I’ve got nothing, Doyle. Nothing.”

  “So, I was better than nothing,” Doyle said, resigned.

  “You were a lot better than nothing,” CJ answered. “But I don’t want you to think this is something it isn’t. It’s not fair to you.”

  Doyle sighed and looked into the distance. “Well, after all this, I’ve got nothing, too.”

  THEIR ARRIVAL AT THE WEDDING had been a shock. As Doyle replayed it, he could see with absolute clarity how it would have seemed to everybody that he’d brought a prostitute as a date to his father’s wedding. He knew nothing about her. She had to introduce herself. As his relatives asked him questions, he found himself making up answers and CJ would reply with distinctly different ones. By the end of the rehearsal dinner, Doyle was drunk and toasting his dead mother and his father’s two other wives. CJ and his cousin had to drive him to the motel and put him to sleep on a layer of towels. As the room spun, Doyle thought he saw his cousin kissing CJ. He tried to throw the alarm clock at them, but the cord stopped the missile short, and it dropped to the ground. And then he passed out.

  DOYLE BRACED HIMSELF AGAINST THE table and rose. “You’re right,” he said, then he walked off without saying anything else. He went straight to where the boyfriend and girlfriend were talking. He leaned over the table and said, “Give me the money.”

  The girl looked bewildered and slid it over to him. Doyle picked up the cash and sat down. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I don’t know who’s after you two, but if you try to go anywhere in that car, you’re nailed. The color of the paint alone is going to make it so they can spot you from space with a good set of binoculars. So, we’re going to trade cars.”

  “What?” the boyfriend asked.

  “Trade. You get your title, I’ll get mine. We’ll write up a bill of sale. You give me a buck. I give you a buck, and then you head to Mexico or wherever you’re going in my car. I head east in yours. It’s not going to fool them, but it’ll get you enough time to get across the border. You both have passports?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Then, hell, I don’t know. Go to Idaho.”

  The girlfriend looked her boyfriend in th
e eye and said that she thought this was a good idea.

  “But I love that car,” he said.

  “But if you love me, you’ll disappear,” she told him. “I left everything to do this with you. We just need an edge, and this could be it. How long do you think your dad can keep the police off your back? How long before they piece all of this together? We might have the rest of today and that’s it.”

  The boyfriend agreed, and they proceeded to swap cars and titles. It took a little less than twenty minutes, and the other two were driving off in Doyle’s Nissan. As they disappeared up the frontage road, Doyle tensed to keep himself from sobbing. When CJ touched him on the shoulder, he pulled away and went to the other car. He checked through it and pulled his suitcase from the trunk, put a few things from the console and glove box into the suitcase, and zipped it closed. He pulled the handle into place and wheeled up to CJ and handed her the keys.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I took two hundred of that cash. The other eight hundred is in the glove box.” He jingled the keys. “Here, the car is yours. I put your name on the bill of sale.”

  “My name?” she asked.

  “Charlene Joelle Banks,” he said.

  “How did you? I never told you my full name.”

  “I know. That night in Ojai, I got into your purse.”

  CJ was furious, but she kept quiet.

  “The money’s yours. The car is yours. I never want to see you again. Good luck.”

  CJ tried to say something, but her voice was dry. Her legs were paralyzed. Doyle took his suitcase and pulled a blue baseball cap onto his head, and he walked across the parking lot with his suitcase wheeling behind. As Doyle grew smaller, CJ felt her heart shrink. She felt that in one version of this movie, she’d run after him and they’d embrace, with the cars zinging past on the interstate above them. In another version, she’d drive two hours back to the house and discover that Doc’s lawyers had come through. With a million and a half dollars, plus eight hundred, she could buy a car, drive it to Texas, and leave it in front of Doyle’s place with a note inside thanking him for everything. In yet another version, she’d drive off in the orange Honda, and a state trooper would pull her over because her vehicle matched the description of a vehicle used in a crime in Oklahoma. She would be detained and questioned and held overnight. The car would be impounded, and she would be back to nothing.