Boy Minus Girl

by Richard Uhlig

  And there she is: the Shower Lady is standing on my own front porch banging her fist on my very door. I hit the brakes. Today’s short shorts are orange—with a matching tube top and shiny black cowboy boots. She’s gotta be a hooker.

  “You can’t slip away from me, Ray Eckhardt!” she yells, pounding away, her hoop earrings swinging. “I know where your sorry ass is hiding!”

  As I cautiously roll closer, she turns around, giving me the once-over. “You live here?”

  I nod a little and struggle to make eye contact.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Ray Eckhardt.”

  I stare at myself in the reflection of her big wraparound sunglasses. It takes all my self-control to keep my eyes on her face.

  “Th-there’s . . . no one here by that n-n-name,” I stammer lamely.

  She cocks her head a little. “This is the Eckhardt residence, ain’t it?”

  “Uh, yes, ma’am, but there’s no one here by that name.”

  She sighs, crosses her arms, and taps her booted foot. Above and behind her I see the curtains in my bedroom window move a little.

  “You go in there and tell Mr. Nobody’s Here that Cookie ain’t leaving town till he comes out to the motel and talks to me. Tell him I am dug in for the duration.”

  “But—”

  “Sonny boy, the next time you try to cover for that coward, it might help if you moved his car out of the driveway first.”

  As she struts across our freshly mown lawn, I can’t help but linger on her legs. Man oh man.

  Finding the back door locked, I retrieve the spare key Mom keeps under a ceramic bullfrog in the flower garden. Upstairs, Uncle Ray stands beside my bedroom window, peering out like a fugitive. He turns to look at me.

  “You didn’t tell her I was here, did you?”

  “Uncle Ray, she saw your car.”

  “Shit!”

  He hobbles over to the bed and lies down, fear showing in his bloodshot, gray-bagged eyes. Uncle Ray’s hair is matted and greasy; he has almost a full beard now, flecked with gray. Big sweat rings darken the armpits of his pajamas.

  “If I’m going to cover for you,” I press, “the least you can do is tell me who she is.”

  “Just a stripper.”

  Wow. I settle in my swivel desk chair and lean back. “Really? I’ve never met a stripper before.”

  “There’s a shock. I deejay at the club where she dances. We had a thing. Now she claims she’s pregnant with my kid. Wants me to marry her.”

  “Is that why you came here?” I ask. “To hide from her?”

  He rubs his eyes. “I told her I’m not going to marry her.”

  “Don’t you love her?”

  “What sort of question is that?”

  “Well, I don’t know. But what about the baby?”

  He sits up and points at his chest. “Do I look like a daddy to you? Could you see me changing diapers? That’s for other guys. No, sir. Ray Eckhardt has never been, never will be the settle-down kind. I’m a lone wolf, a free agent, a rolling stone. That’s just who I am and I won’t apologize for it. No, sir. Last thing I need is a family to tie me down. Hand me a pen, paper, and envelope.”

  I collect them from my desk, then watch him scribble something.

  “I don’t know, Uncle Ray,” I say after a minute. “I think you’d be a pretty awesome dad.”

  He looks up at me, brow creased in confusion, as if I’ve just told him I think he should become a priest.

  “I mean, you’re a lot of fun to hang out with,” I explain. “And you know a lot about people and life. And you talk to me, you know, like a real person.”

  He resumes scribbling, then grabs his big black wallet from the top of the dresser. My pulse quickens when I catch sight of the wad of twenties he takes out and stuffs, along with the note, into the envelope.

  “Just deliver this to her at the motel,” he says as he licks and seals the envelope. “And don’t lose it! There’s three hundred dollars in there. I think that’s a pretty decent amount, don’t you?”

  I nod and slip the envelope into my backpack. He hands me a ten dollar bill and winks. “And here’s your gratuity, kid.”

  And so with three hundred and ten dollars—of hush money?—in my backpack, the most money I’ve ever seen, I pedal down to the motel. I’ve never been in the middle of an adult drama like this. It’s nerve-wracking and kind of fun.

  Navigating my bike across the hot, fissured asphalt of the motel parking lot, I keep wondering if I could pay this Cookie to give one of those lap dances. Would my ten be enough? Since that is her job, maybe she’d think nothing of it. I drop my bike and step onto room three’s little porch. Knocking on the rust-streaked door, I can hear the applause of a TV audience from inside.

  “Who is it?” she yells through the door.

  “It’s Les—Ray Eckhardt’s nephew!”

  “One sec!”

  The TV goes silent, the door opens, and Cookie squints out. “Ray with you?”

  I shake my head. “He, uh, wanted me to give you something.”

  Cookie ushers me inside, and the scent of her flowery perfume is amazing. Her dog stretches out on one of the pillows on the double bed, a small black-and-white TV rests atop a pressed-wood dresser, a lone straight-back chair lurks in the corner. Cookie shuts the door, and I see that her gleaming pink toenails match her fingernails and lipstick.

  I’m shrugging off my backpack when I notice a book called You’re Going to Have a Baby! on the nightstand, along with a banana peel. I hand her the envelope.

  She opens it, eyes the money, reads the letter, then stuffs the money back into the envelope and thrusts it back at me. “Tell him I’m not getting no abortion.”

  I stand frozen. I have given her money for an abortion? Mom and Dad believe abortion is murder and a sin. Did Uncle Ray almost make me an accomplice to my own cousin’s murder?

  “You tell him I’m gonna have this baby, with or without him. . . .” And then her voice cracks, her face crinkles up, and she flings herself facedown on the bed. She’s crying—no, actually, she’s sobbing. What should I do? Am I supposed to hug her and say “there, there”? Will she slap me if I try? I stare at her quaking back and shoulders and try not to notice her butt too much. Geez. For the next few minutes I stand awkwardly and repeat the phrases I heard at my grandpa’s funeral: “I’m real sorry.” “You have to try to be strong.” “Things have a way of working themselves out.” No one has ever been less convincing.

  The little dog whimpers and sniffs Cookie’s face. Her chest is still heaving as she wipes her running eyes with the back of her hand. When I go into the bathroom and tear off some toilet paper, I notice a pair of purple panties and a lacey bra hanging from the shower-curtain rod. I also notice the frosted window in the shower is still open about an inch.

  Back in the room, Cookie is sitting up, her back against the headboard, her knees drawn to her chest. I hand her the toilet paper.

  “Thanks,” she says, and blows her nose.

  I shift my weight from one tennis shoe to the other. Canned laughter blares from the TV set.

  “So, Ray’s your uncle. You don’t seem much like him.” She blows her nose again. “What’s your birth date?”

  “February 11.”

  “Aquarius.” She wipes the corners of her eyes. “You’re kind and sensitive. Ray, he’s a Cancer. I should’ve known better than to get involved with a Cancer. All they really care about is themselves. Why don’t you sit down, sugar, you’re making me nervous standing there twitchin’ like that.”

  I settle into the little straight-back chair and watch Cookie scratch her dog under its chin.

  “Man, do I want a cigarette,” she says, nibbling the corner of her lower lip.

  “Want me to go fetch some?” I ask.

  “Thanks. Can’t. On account of . . .” She points to her belly.

  “Oh. Right.”

  She stretches out her legs and wiggles her toes. “How well do you know your unc
le?”

  I shrug. “He doesn’t visit us very often.”

  “Has he ever talked about me?”

  I shake my head.

  “He’s something else, let me tell ya. Leads me to think I’m the love of his life. That we’re forever ’n’ ever. I allow myself to fall for him—and lemme tell you, that’s rare. See, I’m a dancer. You can’t imagine how often I get hit on. I make it a rule not to date guys from the club, but your uncle, he just wore me down and won me over. He was the one guy I really and truly believed loved me for me, and not just for . . . you know, my assets. Boy, am I a damn fool!

  “Thirty-two minutes after I tell him I’m pregnant, he skips town. It took me a week to track him down to this godforsaken place.”

  As I sit there and listen to all she’s going through, I start to feel really bad about spying on her.

  “Thing is,” she continues, “he thinks I tricked him into getting me pregnant, but I swear it ain’t true.” She wipes her nose, then tosses the tissue on the nightstand. “I was on the pill when it happened.” She raises her right hand. “So help me God. I never meant to get knocked up, but now that I am, I want this baby more than anything in the world. And that’s that.”

  Stealing a look at Cookie’s dark-chocolate eyes, I feel my heart flutter—just like it used to with Charity. Cookie is the most exotic person I have ever met: her brown skin, the way she moves, her huge hoop earrings and hookerish clothing. What more could Uncle Ray want? Plus, she is sweet and kind and so-so-so sexy.

  “Now, I realize being a father scares the bejesus out of Ray,” she says. “Goes against his badass image of himself. But a kid needs a father. That’s why I ain’t giving up on him. Say, here I am spilling all my business and I didn’t catch your name.”

  “It’s Les.”

  She reaches forward and offers her hand. “Cookie.”

  “Cookie . . . ?”

  “Well, I’m mostly just Cookie. Like Cher is just Cher.” She turns my hand over, pulls it close to her face, and studies my palm.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  She runs her index finger down a wrinkle that curves around the base of my thumb. “You have a long life line. You’re going to live to be a very old man.” She releases my hand. “Me, I’m not so lucky.” She holds up her right palm and points at a crease. “See there. I’ll be lucky to see fifty.”

  “Gee, sorry.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I want this child now—I want something to show for my life. I’m almost twenty-three, my own midlife.”

  The dog leaps off the bed and waddles to the door, scratching the floor in front of it.

  “Mr. Mister gotta potty,” she says as she slides off the bed. She unlatches the door and walks outside.

  When I step out, Cookie is sitting on the porch step watching her dog mark the grass. I settle tentatively beside her.

  “Y’know,” she says, “this baby would be good for Ray, too. Give him some responsibility. He’s no spring chicken.”

  “I told him I thought he’d be a good dad.”

  She faces me. “What’d he say?”

  “Said he wasn’t the daddy type.”

  “Why are Cancers so goddamn stubborn? Can you tell me that?” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what it is about me, but the guys I pick always end up being deadbeats and losers—God almighty, do I wanna smoke.”

  I can see that once Uncle Ray wins a woman over, he just doesn’t want her anymore. He is one of those thrill-of-the-hunt guys. If I could have his luck with women, just once, and land someone like Cookie, I would definitely keep her forever.

  Her dog is sniffing my shoes. I pat his head and say, “Think he smells my beagle.”

  “Y’know, Mr. Mister loves to be scratched under the chin,” she says.

  She is right; he waggles and wiggles in doggy ecstasy as I scratch.

  “I like beagles. What’s your dog’s name?”

  “Rusty. We’re the same age.”

  “That’s so sweet. I found Mr. Mister here shivering one snowy night at the back door of the club. Let me tell ya, it was love at first sight. I just wish the men in my life were as loyal to me as Mr. Mister. You ever been in love, Les?”

  I nod, and it occurs to me that Cookie and I are in the same boat—we are both in love with people who are incapable of being in love with us.

  “Love will make you do some pretty stupid shit,” she says, “if you’ll pardon my French.”

  I have a flash of myself in cape and top hat kneeling before Charity.

  “I’m still a virgin” blurts out of my mouth, and I wonder where it came from.

  She looks at me, a little taken aback, then says, “Well, I think that’s real sweet. I think that’s about the nicest thing I’ve heard in a long time. You stay that way until you meet the right girl, y’hear me? There’s no rush, believe you me.”

  Not quite the answer I have been looking for.

  “Me, I lost my virginity way too young,” she volunteers. “And it screwed me up a little, I think.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “I’m fourteen.” And I’m ready.

  “His name was Harlan and he drove this shiny eighteen-wheeler. It was such a big, expensive-looking truck that I guess I just figured any guy who would be driving something like that must be pretty important. Harlan wasn’t much of a looker, to be honest with ya, but when I climbed in that rig I trembled at all the power he had, sitting up there on top of the world, driving all around the country, talking on his CB like Burt Reynolds. Well, I let him take my flower right then and there in his cab.”

  “Were you in love with him?”

  “I sure thought so at the time. But looking back on it, I think it was just a way for me not to feel so lonely. Y’see, being a foster kid and all, I never felt like I belonged nowhere.”

  I am about to ask her what it’s like being a professional dancer when she suddenly winces and grabs her abdomen.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  She nods. “I get this shooting pain lately. I better go in and lie down. Les, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help me persuade your uncle to step up to the plate and do right by me.”

  “I’ll do what I can. Promise.”

  “Okay, then,” she says as she stands. “Give him back his three hundred dollars and tell him I’m asking pretty please for him to be a man and come out here and talk to me. Will you do that, sugar?”

  “I will.”

  She offers her hand. “It was real nice to meet you, Les Eckhardt.”

  “You too, Cookie-just-Cookie.”

  On the bike ride home I keep thinking about how I’m going to give Uncle Ray a piece of my mind—tell him being a father isn’t something he can just decide not to be, and that he shouldn’t treat Cookie this way. Once I get home, I no sooner open my bedroom door than Uncle Ray, head propped up on pillows, says, “What’d she say?”

  I hand him back the envelope of cash. “You’re going to be a daddy.”

  “Jesus!” He hurls the envelope across the room. It hits my dresser mirror and bills flutter everywhere, littering the floor like green confetti. Shaken, I decide to hold off on telling him my opinions for a little while longer.

  My uncle’s eyes dart around crazily. He’s a drowning man searching for any life preserver. “She tricked me into getting her pregnant!”

  “She said you’d say that.”

  “What else has she been telling you? Has she been messing with your head? Well, don’t believe her.”

  “I just—I feel bad for her.”

  “You like her so much, you marry her.”

  “Maybe I will,” I say. I’ve never meant anything more.

  “If—and I’m saying if—I were to ever tie the knot, it wouldn’t be with her. Guys don’t marry chicks like Cookie.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, for one thing, she’s a stripper, for crying out loud!”

  “No offense, Uncle Ra
y, but you’re not exactly a Boy Scout.”

  He reaches under his pillow, removes his flask, uncaps it, and swigs—only to throw it down. It bounces and thumps on the carpet. “Damn it! Take one of those twenties and go buy me some more J.D. And don’t drink half of it this time!”

  Before I can tell him off—tap, tap, tap. Dad pops his head in. “Hello, boys.” He steps inside, asking, “How you feeling today, Ray?” and then gets all wide-eyed at the bills littering the floor.

  “Er—Les,” Uncle Ray says, “would you mind picking up that item we discussed?”

  “Little brother, you’ve got to try and lie still,” Dad admonishes. “With whiplash it’s important you don’t strain yourself. Now, let’s have a look at your neck.”

  I snatch up a twenty and slip out of the room.

  “Doris next door said she saw a colored woman yelling and pounding on our front door this afternoon,” Mom says at dinner. “She also said you spoke with this woman, Les. Is that true?”

  I nod as I painfully swallow a chunk of Mom’s chicken-and-rice casserole, chasing it down with a ton of milk.

  “Who was she?”

  “Er—she was selling Bibles.”

  “Wasn’t she cursing and pounding on our door, like Doris claims?”

  I shake my head. “She seemed perfectly normal.”

  “But Doris said—”

  “Doris Daetweiler just likes to stir up trouble,” Dad barks, and sets his fork on his plate. “She should mind her own business for once.”

  “Well!” Mom gasps at Dad. “That wasn’t very nice.”

  “It’s the truth,” Dad says. “The woman does nothing all day but look for something to gossip and gripe about.”

  “Doris has been a good neighbor to us through the years,” Mom insists.

  Dad points his finger at Mom. “She’s a busybody, Bev, and you damn well know it.”

  “Is it necessary that you use such ugly language in our home, Roger?”

  “Sometimes,” Dad murmurs.

  “You’ve been in awful spirits lately,” Mom says. “Awful spirits. And I don’t like it.”