by Wyborn Senna
“Cool,” the taller one, named Eben, said.
The boys stripped off their jeans and shirts to reveal swimming trunks.
Wearing a pair of board shorts, Fred came out of the house and pointed at the pool. “Jump in, guys.”
They did, and soon, Fred joined them. Within a half hour, a dozen more boys arrived. Logan worked up the courage to try the pool. He stepped into the shallow end and sat down on the steps. The water was up to his chest.
Ramona’s voice was so loud she could be heard in the Henns yard. “You’re not going anywhere!”
Jarrod was just as loud, just as caustic. “The hell I’m not!”
Logan slid down the steps of the pool and sank down into the water. The argument escalated, and Logan reddened, certain someone would notice him. Kara came out with more lemonade and stopped beside her husband, who was setting up lawn chairs.
“Are they at it again?” Ted’s eyes darted around the yard. He had invited Logan to the party but didn’t see him anywhere.
Logan was ashamed. It hadn’t always been like this. He shut his eyes and drifted back to a time when MawMaw was still alive and his mother was happy. MawMaw had her own room, and it was the only place in the house that was kept clean and tidy. Even now, her belongings remained in the drawers and closet as though she were still alive. Occasionally, Logan escaped to her room to be alone in the dark and inhale the scent of lavender sachets she kept buried among her stockings. The only clutter back then was Ramona’s ever-increasing stack of Elvis Presley albums, which Ramona and MawMaw listened to as they played cards at the dining room table. Logan remembered them all—the one of Elvis in his tropical shirt and the swirly lettering of the words “Blue Hawaii”, the black and white one that said “Elvis” in red along the left-hand side of the cover and “Presley” in green along the bottom, and the one where golden records were hung like ornaments, with Elvis’s face on one of them. The golden records one had songs like “Hound Dog”, “All Shook Up”, “Heartbreak Hotel”, and “Jailhouse Rock” on it, and it was MawMaw and Ramona’s favorite.
Logan was only five when MawMaw died, and sometimes he was certain his mother had died with her. He knew, at least, her heart had. In the months following her mother’s passing, Ramona dedicated herself to buying useless items, cluttering up every square inch of the house but leaving MawMaw’s shrine intact. He wanted to go back to the days of Elvis, when both of the ladies would sit at the table, drinking gin and tonics, smoking cigarettes, playing cards, and gossiping like schoolgirls. Their laughter and the clinking of ice in their glasses complimented the music they listened to, and now that it was gone, all that was left in the house was the seething resentment between his parents.
Ramona was still screaming now, but Jarrod hadn’t left.
Kara restacked the plastic cups on the table. “Isn’t there something we can do?”
Finally, one of the boys noticed Logan pressed against the side of the pool in the shallow end. “Hey, Lockhart, don’t your parents ever shut up?”
A few boys made their way to the shallow end, and one of them grabbed him. “Don’t you ever get sick and tired of listening to them argue?”
One of the boys laughed and jumped on Logan, pushing him down, holding him under the water.
“Maybe they’re arguing about him. Maybe they’re sorry they had him. Maybe things would be better if he were dead.”
Underwater, Logan held his breath for as long as he could. Then he started to feel dizzy. Oblivious of the fact a boy had shouted Logan’s name and that he was in the pool, Kara was still talking to Ted. “That poor boy. Someone should get him away from those people.”
“Hey, cut it out, guys!” Fred pushed his friends out of the way and dragged Logan to the surface.
Logan sputtered and coughed.
Kara finally noticed him. “Oh, my God!”
Fred slapped Logan on the back, trying to clear his lungs. “You OK, dude?”
The boys who had been pushed away muttered to themselves and moved to the deep end. Logan wished Fred a happy birthday and got out of the pool. Kara noticed he didn’t have a towel, so she brought over one of hers and dried him off.
“It’s rough at home, isn’t it, Logan?”
Logan shook his head, trying to be tough.
Kara’s words were hesitant. “If you ever need anything…”
“Thanks, Mrs. Henn. I’ll be OK.”
Now dry, Logan walked back to the fence and crawled under it. He turned back, wanting to thank Mr. Henn for inviting him, but no one was watching.
Chapter 10
Ryan’s voice was angelically high and sweet. Puberty hadn’t raised a pimple, but he already loved music and girls, and of all the girls in the world, little Beatrice Edwin ranked higher on his best-loved list than the chocolate in his milk, frosting on his cake, sleeping in on Saturdays, baseball with his buddies, and his favorite song—“Jailhouse Rock”—all rolled into one. Most of all, he loved to spend time with her in her bedroom, which was decorated with Disney princesses and an ever-increasing number of wall clocks. Right after Thanksgiving, in early December, they lay on the floor in her frilly room, staring at a new cuckoo clock she’d placed on the wall above her dresser, waiting for four p.m. sharp so they could watch the cheery bird pop out.
Ryan had brought his guitar over and wanted to cook up a new song for the Christmas talent show at Page. Cuckoo…hours…minutes…seconds…He thought maybe something about Bea’s growing obsession with clocks would inspire him.
“Talk about time,” he prompted.
“Time is all we’ve got.” She raised her butt and tried to lift her legs back over her head, being goofy. She was dressed in leggings and a black top with tiny rosettes.
“I read Barlett’s Quotations for inspiration, but those dead guys all say the same things. Don’t waste time, seize the moment, one day at a time, and time changes everything.”
Finally, the blue, wooden cuckoo bird popped out of his door and cuckooed four times. Bea jumped up. “Let’s stroll the neighborhood.”
She ran to her closet, pulled a heavy sweatshirt off a hanger, and struggled to tug it over her tangle of sandy blond curls.
Ryan got up and reached for his jacket. “I like flower imagery, how time unfolds like petals.”
Bea grabbed her brush and ran it through her hair. “Me, too.”
Ryan scanned the room while buttoning his jacket. “You have about a dozen clocks now. Why?”
Bea placed her brush back on top of her vanity next to her collection of empty perfume bottles she’d gathered from neighborhood trashcans and cleaned. She only liked ones she considered pretty, and over the past three years, she’d found eight. “Come on. We have to be back in time for dinner.”
Ryan wanted an answer, so he sat on the edge of her canopied bed and waited.
Restless, Bea paced as she looked around her room. “I got my first clock from my dad when he came back from Amsterdam four years ago. It’s that one.” She pointed to a small silver clock on her dresser. “I thought he would be gone forever, but so much was happening at school, it felt like he was only gone a day or two before he was back. So I started thinking about time and how it goes quickly sometimes, especially when you’re happy, and how it just about kills you by dragging along when you’re not. I like the perception of it and our inability to stop it. It’s all we have. It’s relentless, and we have to make the most of it.”
“Relentless,” Ryan reiterated. “And we have to make the most of it.”
Bea was emphatic. “We do.”
“So let’s go and see how the neighbors decorated their homes for the holidays.”
“Let’s,” she agreed, grabbing his hand, pulling him toward the door.
Chapter 11
The night Manny drove Elvis southbound on Paradise Road, took a right onto Harmon, and stopped at the curb before they reached the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard, Ramona Johns was smoking a cigarette on the porch of the condo unit she
shared with her mother and her brother, Wendall. The front door to Wendall’s practice, Las Vegas Fertility Associates, was within shouting distance, and it was clear to her that her brother, the good doctor, was about to meet a very special client, because limousines seldom stopped there.
Ramona was too far away to hear the muffled exchange between the man and the driver, who spoke with him before the man got out and shut the door on the passenger side facing the sidewalk. Wendall turned on the light in his office and disappeared from Ramona’s view as he headed down the hallway to the front door, then reappeared to unlock the entrance. He stepped halfway out and waved.
Ramona took a deep drag on her cigarette and moved closer. She bumped the card table her ashtray was stationed on, and red and white plastic chips from an earlier card game with MawMaw slid across the laminated surface of the table and splattered onto the second-story porch. The client did not look up, and Ramona watched him walk. With every step he took, amazement and increasing recognition blossomed in her heart until it fluttered as rapidly as a hummingbird’s wings. She knew, from his trademark rings to his aquiline nose, from his full lips to his glistening black hair that shone in the dim security lights along the side of the condominium complex that Elvis was in the parking lot. Her squeal overlapped with her brother’s question, so she never heard what Wendall asked him. Wendall locked the front door after letting him in, and the men disappeared down the hallway. When they reappeared in Wendall’s office, the doctor went to the window and drew the shades.
Ramona finished her cigarette and picked up the plastic poker chips, returning them to the wooden carousel on the table. Then she went inside the three-bedroom condo to get her Polaroid camera, buried beneath her oversize lingerie in the bottom drawer of her bureau. The door to MawMaw’s bedroom was closed—Ramona dared not wake her mother, who was generally good-natured except when being disturbed from a sound slumber. She returned to the porch and sat down on one of the heavy-duty folding chairs before she dumped her full ashtray over the balcony railing and lit a fresh cigarette.
By the time she was on the eighth cigarette of her wait, her eyes flew open. Perfectly balanced upright between the index and middle fingers of her right hand, resting on the card table, her cigarette had burned down to an inch of ash and stopped at the filter. Wendall’s office building was now completely dark, and the limousine parked by the curb was gone.
Chapter 12
The school was decorated with holiday lights shaped like chili peppers, and the pre-show buffet in the dining hall was authentic Mexican, with celebrity chef, Judd Smith, running a kitchen filled with his students.
While most parents had arrived early with their kids to eat beforehand, Gene had a late meeting, so he and Zella planned only to attend the show at eight. Glad for the extra practice time before curtain, Ryan sat in a corner of the dance classroom on a foam mat and scrutinized his reflection in the wall of mirrors as he pulled out his guitar. Bea promised to meet him there at seven thirty, and it was now seven fifteen.
Aretha Franklin got respect, and Gaye wished it would rain, Presley had amazing grace, and Sam Cooke promised change. Lennon smoked Norwegian wood, Ray Charles—What’d I Say, Dylan dreamt of a drifter’s escape, and Redding loved the bay. Stevie Wonder lit a roaring fire, James Brown was a prisoner of love, Paul McCartney could easily carry that weight, Little Richard drew strength from above. A wop bop a loo mop a lop bam boom, time is fast a-fleeting while we’re sitting in this room, a wop bop a loo mop, don’t like a thing, a wop bop a loo mop, go and jump for that ring.
Roy Orbison heard distant drums, Green had a broken heart, Robert Plant knew cities don’t cry, with Jagger alone from the start. Tina Turner was an acid queen and Freddie the great pretender, Marley knew three little birds, and Smokey sang songs of surrender. Johnny Cash was the man in black, Etta James would rather go blind, Bowie mulled over life on Mars, Van Morrison mystic eyes. A wop bop a loo mop a lop bam boom, time is quickly ticking, go and put your lens on zoom, a wop bop a loo mop, don’t win spit, a wop bop a loo mop, try again and never quit.
Ryan rang through the song once and glanced at his watch. Three minutes had passed. He repeated the song twice more and then put his guitar back into its case. Closing his eyes, he imagined the audience cheering for him as he finished his original composition. He would graduate to cool rocker status, and people would know his name.
He straightened the sleeves on his jacket and shook out his pant legs. Maybe Bea misheard him and thought they were meeting somewhere else. Wandering down the hallways, he checked the classrooms and listened at the girls’ bathroom door for any activity within. The only noise resonating throughout the building emanated from the cafeteria. Most people had finished their meals, but in the far corner of the room near the fire exit, three boys from his homeroom were pelting each other with hard taco shells.
It was almost eight. Ryan hurried toward the auditorium, passing a friend from math class who wished him good luck. Then he turned the corner, where the choir and band rooms were, and finally found Bea. She was leaning against the wall near the water fountain, and Kincaid Cochrane was pressed against her. She giggled as he kissed her neck and nibbled her ear. He stepped back and raised his hand to his mouth.
“Look at that. I got your earring,” he mumbled, taking the golden hoop from his clenched teeth and inserting it back into her left lobe.
Ryan felt sick. He backed away from them, but his movement caught their attention. Bea’s eyes widened, and her jaw dropped. Kincaid looked sheepish but said nothing. Ryan continued to back up until he made it around the corner.
Stunned, he tried to gather his wits. The show was about to start, and only one thing was clear: he needed to find a different route to the auditorium.
Chapter 13
Ramona Johns stared down at her brother’s fertility clinic, willing the lights to come back on, willing the limousine by the curb to reappear, but she had missed the final act of the meeting. Dropping her finished cigarette in the ashtray, she left the porch and went into the second-story condo with the purpose of changing into her standard garb of elastic-waisted black pants, a floral smocked top, and clogs. It was warm enough not to need a jacket. She peeked in on her mother, asleep in her double bed, and resisted the impulse to cover her bare legs with the blanket she’d kicked aside. She shut the door, left the condo, and headed downstairs to the parking lot, running a comb through her waist-length dark hair as she walked.
Her Impala was a mobile garbage dump, with food wrappers, plastic bags, and cups littering the front and back seats. She cleared an uneaten, brown-bagged lunch that contained an old peanut butter sandwich and a spotted, rotting banana off the driver’s seat before she lowered herself into the car and settled into the seat as though it were a nest. She knew where to find her brother.
Cruising down the strip, she turned down a small street near the Hacienda Hotel and pulled into the parking lot of the Dippy Dive. Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade” blasted out through the open front door, held in place with concrete blocks. No need for a bouncer at this bar. It was classic seventies basement, game room chic with a glittery laminated bar, red stools, and a checkered floor. The unadorned, dimly lit back room was where Ramona would find the good doctor.
MawMaw had taken a fifteen-year break from childbearing between Wendall and Ramona, who had turned nineteen on August first. With such an age gap between Wendall and his baby sister, Wendall often thought of himself as her caretaker, and in all actuality, he had been. MawMaw had him change her diapers and watch her at a time when Wendall would have preferred hanging out with his friends, skateboarding back alleys, and sneaking into the pool area at Caesars, where they could watch girls sunbathe. There were times when Wendall resented his little charge, but there were other times when he saw how much joy Ramona brought their ailing mother. It was at these times he knew Ramona was a blessing, and it directly influenced Wendall’s decision to go into the field of fertility when he finished medical schoo
l.
The jukebox was playing Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” when Ramona stepped into the back room, where the poker game was in progress. Wendall sat with three of his friends, all of whom Ramona recognized.
Chris looked up when he saw her. “Hey, Ramona, join us.”
Wendall looked up, and his face fell. She was the last person he wanted to see at the Dive.
Years shy of becoming the doctor who would someday meet Zella, Wendall’s thick head of hair was untouched by gray, and his long face was unlined. He did not yet need glasses to see the cards in his hand.
Ramona leaned over her big brother, causing him to shift uncomfortably in his chair.
Travis gave a cursory glance at Ramona’s ample derrierre and couldn’t hide his smile. “What brings you by?”
Ramona ignored Travis. She didn’t like his acne and was horrified by his interest in her. She poked her finger at her brother’s cards. “That’s good, right? What are you playing?”
“No-limit hold ‘em,” Bill told her.
Wendall glared up at her. “Why don’t you tell everyone what I’ve got?”
“I won’t, if you confirm that Elvis was at the clinic tonight.”
Chris whistled low and guffawed. “Elvis at the sperm bank. Right.”
Wendall shot him a look, then put his hand facedown on the table. “I think you need to stop drinking, Ramona.”
“I haven’t been drinking.”
“Then stop smoking.”
“Stop smoking what?” Both hands were on her hips now.
The men laughed.
Wendall picked his cards back up and pushed seven twenties toward the center of the table. “I’ll open the pot for a hundred-forty.”
“I call,” Chris said.