Rufus + Syd

by Julia Watts

  I call out, “Sorry!” but I don’t wait to hear what he has to say. My muddy shoes make a weird splooshing sound as I run to the car and start it. I’m already on the road before I realize I’ve forgotten to turn the headlights on. How could I be so stupid? I should’ve known it was supposed to be a hookup. I guess I just hoped so hard that somebody was finally trying to be my friend that I didn’t see the obvious. I should’ve looked at the uneven number of guys and girls and guessed what my purpose was supposed to be.

  And if I was like my mom, I would’ve gone with it. After all, Danny isn’t gross or anything. Awkward maybe, and not that bright, and the onion ring breath wasn’t exactly a selling point. But he was nice, not mean or anything. But when he touched me I felt nothing, and absence of meanness isn’t enough of a reason to hook up with somebody, especially since I’ve never hooked up with anybody before. If it’s ever meant to happen, I’ll know my first kiss when I see it. And that definitely wasn’t it.

  Rufus

  I KNOW it’s a cliché about what a difference a day can make, but that’s because it’s also really true. And I guess the lesson, if you want to look for one, is that sometimes it’s important just to wait things out, if you can stand it. I mean, what if I had been the kind of person who decided to kill myself last night?

  So here I am, in my room again, lying in my bed and staring at the ceiling, the very next night—but I feel totally different from how I felt yesterday. Instead of feeling trapped and helpless, I feel a lot better, and maybe even hopeful—like the ceiling really could open up for me, and one day I’ll be free. Instead of drawing how I feel, I wish I had some paints, because this should definitely be depicted in color.

  Mama and Daddy left for Atlanta this morning to visit Dwight, and though they tried to get me to go with them, all I had to do was say the magic word “homework,” and they left me alone. I told them that I was going over to Patrick’s to work on algebra, which could have been true but wasn’t, as it turned out. Patrick is an algebra problem.

  They’re home now—Mama and Daddy, in their bedroom, probably already asleep since it’s past eleven, and I don’t hear their TV. Meanwhile, I’ve had a really good day.

  I was kind of stumbling around for a while at first this morning. I was kind of miserable, but then at around noon I figured I’d walk downtown to Mr. D’s for a coffee, since that always seems to help. The place was really hopping, something I hadn’t even thought about since I’ve never been there before the lunchtime crowd. Whereas all I wanted was a cup of coffee or two. I felt pretty unhappy at first, with it being so busy and all, but then I spotted Josephine sitting in a booth in the corner by herself. She had a few books, some DVDs and papers scattered all over the surface of the table like some crazy woman, which I loved her for, but then as soon as she saw me she scooped it onto the seat beside her while calling me over. “Please come and join me, Rufus!”

  I smiled and scooted into the seat across from her. “What’s all this?”

  She looked at everything, took a sip of her iced tea, and then with a flick of her hand said that she’d just come from the library. “What about you? You look like you’ve just lost your best friend.”

  “More like I just found her.” I think the smile I gave her must define the word “wistful.”

  “Come on, tell me what’s eating you.”

  “I’m not Gilbert Grape!”

  Now it was Josephine’s turn to smile, catching my movie reference. “Leonardo DiCaprio’s last credible performance.” She cocked her head to the side and scrutinized me with her fiery blue-green eyes. “Seriously, Rufus, I’m concerned.”

  Looking into her interesting face with all of its planes, and at her glamorous and unconventional long gray hair, I decided to give it up, but of course first I had to shrug. “Dunno. Just lonely, I guess.”

  “Oh,” she said, her gaze falling toward the table now, her eyes seeming to melt, “that.”

  And by the way she said “that,” I could tell she knew what I meant, had experienced it.

  She patted my hand, which rested atop the table, and added, “We’ll talk. But first, let’s get you something to eat—what would you like? Tony’s making some Greek specialties that aren’t on the menu for me.”

  “Just coffee.”

  And as if on cue, Brandy walked by. Josephine caught her and, after making sure that was all I wanted, ordered my coffee, then turned back to me. “There are different kinds of loneliness, you know.”

  I nodded, preferring to listen.

  “I’ve felt lonely a lot of the time since my husband died—I miss him so.” She stopped as if to compose herself. “Then I moved back here to Vermillion to take care of my mother, and she died. That’s been another kind of loneliness. But there’s a deeper and more existential kind of loneliness too, and somehow I think that’s what you’re talking about—am I right?”

  Again, I shrugged, but then I said, “I guess so.” I only half understood what she was saying. “I just don’t have any friends, really, and I just feel so different all the time and alone, so alienated from just about everybody.”

  Josephine pushed herself back from the table. “Well, really! And all this time I’ve thought that we were friends.”

  I was ashamed. “We are!” I felt bad and wanted to reassure her. “I mean, friends my own age, like at school and all.”

  “I know.”

  “Here ya go, hon.” Brandy dropped off my coffee.

  “You’re too good for this town,” Josephine said, looking straight at me.

  I couldn’t believe she said it.

  “I mean it. You’re smart, you’re sensitive—just you hang on, Rufus Snow.”

  To digest what Josephine said, I took a big sip of my coffee.

  And then this girl that she knows walked into the diner, almost as if there were a God—although that’s not what I thought at the time. At the time I resented the interruption.

  “Syd!” Josephine called.

  Syd was skinny and pale, and she had this really great shag haircut, like a rock star. And that, along with the eyeliner she wore—well, I’m just trying to say that she looked cool, kind of tough but also vulnerable at the same time. She walked over and stood at the head of the booth.

  “Heya, Josephine. How’s your shoulder?”

  Josephine dismissed Syd’s question with a wave of her hand and said, “Sit down.” She scooted over and moved the clutter of books and DVDs to make room on her side of the booth. “Do you two know each other?”

  We looked at each other as Syd eased into the booth. We shook our heads simultaneously.

  “Syd, Rufus. Rufus, Syd.”

  We kind of smiled at each other then. I was so glad she didn’t extend her hand for a shake. I hate that, because it’s so rote.

  “What’ll you have?” Josephine asked Syd. “Rufus is drinking coffee and I’m having iced tea and some Greek specialties that Tony’s making for me.”

  “Coffee, please.” Syd looked at me shyly, as if we’d just shared something profound.

  “What is it with you two not eating?” Josephine asked.

  Syd and I shrugged.

  Then Josephine told me about how she and Syd had met at Hair Affair, where Syd’s mother works.

  When Brandy brought Syd’s coffee, she also delivered Josephine’s lunch—some sort of a salad, and these things that looked like short cigars—then she gave me a refill.

  “What are those?” Syd asked, pointing at the cigars.

  “Stuffed grape leaves,” Josephine said, “and I want both of you to try them.”

  Syd and I did and actually liked them. The three of us must have sat there for a couple of hours at least, talking—well, about everything it seemed. Syd was obviously so smart, but also funny, and I liked her immediately, which almost never happens. She also made it clear that she hates Vermillion at least as much as I do (she referred to it as a “rural hellhole”) and said that she plans to get out of here as soon as she possibly
can.

  About an hour or so into the conversation, though I’m not exactly sure, because to tell the truth I completely lost track of time, Josephine told Syd and me that ever since she met Syd she’d been planning to introduce us—“Because I thought you two might hit it off.” But she added it was best this way, that we just accidentally ran into each other, so that it’s natural and not forced.

  Initially, this had the effect of making me feel even shyer. And maybe it did the same thing to Syd. But gradually it became clear, over the two or so hours that we were there talking, that Syd loves old movies as much as Josephine and I do, but she doesn’t have cable so she hasn’t seen as many.

  When suddenly Josephine looked down at the pile beside her, gasped and said, “Oh, I’ve just had the most marvelous idea. What are you two doing this afternoon?”

  I shook my head and said, “Nothing,” whereas Syd said she’d have to check her social calendar, which she then mimed doing. “Let’s see… a manicure at three; tea with Mummy at four thirty….”

  I laughed.

  “Nada,” Syd said.

  “What do you say we go over to my house and watch a movie?” Josephine asked. “And I know just the one too.”

  I loved the idea and said so. Syd half raised her hand and said, “Seconded.”

  “Good, it’s unanimous.” Josephine reached for her wallet. “This is on me—to celebrate!” She took out a twenty-dollar bill and placed it under the saltshaker.

  “ONE OF the things I’ve always loved,” Josephine was saying to Syd and me as we walked in the front door of her house, “is going to a matinee when it’s still light and then walking out of the theater into the dark. It’s positively transporting!”

  Naturally, Syd and I loved the very same thing—and said so.

  “So if we time it right….” Josephine let the thought hang in the air. “Do either of you have to be home by a certain hour?”

  Syd and I both said “No.”

  Josephine started walking around the house pulling down all the window shades; everything had a roseate glow, or at least that’s how I saw it. She told us that her family home was one of the few Tudor-style houses in Vermillion. “My parents built it back in the ’20s.”

  It did look old. But very cool too: cluttered with antique furniture, books everywhere, piles of newspapers and magazines, and more than a few house plants, which Josephine said had belonged to her mother and were the “bane of her existence”—the first time I’d ever heard that expression. She said she had deep, dark thoughts about murdering them.

  Syd and I both laughed at that.

  “This is Lola Lola,” Josephine said as a large gray cat walked over and rubbed against Syd’s legs. We both reached down at the same time to pet her.

  There were framed movie posters leaning just about everywhere too, though only one was hanging on a wall: The African Queen.

  “Wow!” Syd said, looking through the stacks of movie posters. “Look, here’s Rebel Without a Cause.”

  I joined her. Next up was Casablanca. “Where’d you get all these?”

  “Philip and I ran a repertory movie house in Chicago for about twenty years.”

  Syd and I looked at Josephine kind of bug-eyed. She really is just too cool for words.

  “Why don’t you each choose one to take home?”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Syd spoke the words before I could. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course!” Josephine said. “They’re just gathering dust here.”

  “I already know which one I want.”

  Syd looked at me. “Rebel Without a Cause?”

  At the same time I was nodding, I realized that she wanted it too.

  “Have fun looking through them,” Josephine said.

  Somehow, in those few moments, Syd had made some kind of internal adjustment. “I want this one.”

  I felt bad. But I also admired how quick she was to adapt. It suggested a kind of intelligence that I don’t think I have. I’d already moved on to looking through another stack, so I walked over to see which one she’d chosen. It was a movie I didn’t know called The Letter.

  “Because Bette Davis looks so badass with her smoking gun,” Syd added.

  I smiled mostly from the sheer pleasure of being with Syd, somebody who’d say something like that.

  She witnessed my reaction and, I think, knew what I was feeling without my even saying anything. She smiled back.

  “What’s it about?” I asked.

  “What? Oh, The Letter?” She laughed. “I haven’t seen it!”

  I laughed too, and then added that it was a cool poster, and that there was something so appealing to me about women with guns. “Another one of my favorite movies is Gloria with Gena Rowlands.”

  Syd said she hadn’t seen that one either. And then, without even thinking what I was doing, I said something about all the movies we had to look forward to showing each other. But we’d just met.

  “Bonnie and Clyde,” Syd said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Cookies?” Josephine called out from the kitchen.

  Syd laughed and answered, “Sure!”

  “Yes!” I responded, adding, for some reason, “The more the merrier!”

  Josephine walked back into the room carrying a tray holding glasses and plates, a small sugar bowl, and a big plate of yellow cookies.

  I hate yellow food. “What are those?” I asked, pointing to the cookies.

  “Iced lemon cookies—they’re delicious!” Josephine exclaimed. “Just you wait. And they’re even better with iced coffee. I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” I said.

  “So what are we going to watch?” Syd asked.

  “Well, I gave that a lot of thought,” Josephine said.

  Syd looked at us both and announced, “I should probably tell you both that there’s a not particularly short list of actors and actresses that I can’t stand.”

  “You and me both,” I said.

  “That makes three of us,” Josephine added. “Let’s all name one and then move on.”

  Julia Roberts was my contribution. Tom Hanks was Syd’s.

  “Oh, there are so many!” Josephine said. “But since you two have mentioned contemporary actors, I’ll step back in time: Jane Wyman.”

  “Don’t know her,” Syd said.

  “Me either,” I shook my head.

  “I bet you’ve seen her, though,” Josephine told us. “The hairstyle she wore made it look as if a squirrel had taken up residence on her head.”

  Syd let out a loud guffaw. It was an unusually loud and deep laugh coming from such a small person. Another thing to love.

  “Plus, she married Ronald Reagan,” Josephine added.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “’Nuff said,” Syd chimed in.

  I REALIZE that I’m recounting practically the entire afternoon, but that’s because it was so much fun.

  The movie Josephine showed us was Some Like It Hot. Neither Syd nor I had ever seen it, and it was great. It’s too long a story to describe now, but it’s sweet and really surprising. Marilyn Monroe is in it too, and she’s funny and looks great, and the movie is in black-and-white, which I love and prefer to color. And then the ending is just mind-blowing, and it has this great message—but I don’t want to give anything away.

  So there we were, in the air-conditioned darkness of Josephine’s living room all afternoon, drinking coffee and eating iced lemon cookies, which really were delicious, just like Josephine said. Syd and Josephine were really fun to watch the movie with, and afterward, Josephine said she’d drive us home. We walked outside then, and it was dark—just as we’d hoped, and all three of us seemed to let out big, admiring, satisfied sighs, more or less all at the same time. It was just the best.

  Josephine drove Syd home first, so I got to see where she lives and all, and I could tell that she was embarrassed by it. The house does look pretty run-down. But I tried really hard to let Syd kn
ow that it didn’t matter to me, that I didn’t care—and I don’t. Best of all is that before she got out of the car, Syd asked me if I’d like to meet at Mr. D’s for a cup of coffee one day next week after school.

  “Are you kidding?” just came out of my mouth. I couldn’t believe my ears. I mean, that this really great person actually liked me. I guess I should have tried to be more cool about it, but I couldn’t help myself.

  Syd gave me a perplexed look and then did her best tough guy—or tough gal—imitation. “I don’t kid about coffee, kid.”

  Josephine laughed and hit the steering wheel with the heel of her hand.

  I laughed too, and then said, “Yes!”

  Syd took a folded piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to me. “Call,” she said.

  I looked at it—her phone number. “When did you do that?” I asked, meaning when had she written down her phone number for me.

  “The minute I saw you,” Syd said with a wink. And then she said, “Bye!” and ran across the short, browning lawn and into her house. By the time the door closed behind her, I realized that she had just been continuing the movie patter.

  So that’s why I’m in a completely different place from where I was last night, even though I’m physically in the exact same place. Because I think I may have made a friend today.

  Syd

  USUALLY WHEN I’m lying awake at night, I’m staring at a blank wall thinking about how lonely I am. But tonight I’m staring at a picture of a woman holding a smoking gun and thinking about what an amazing day I had.

  That being said, it was an amazing day that started out lousy. When I woke, the house was quiet and the clock said 10:35 a.m. I dragged myself up and took a peek in Mom’s room to confirm what I already knew. She wasn’t home yet.

  I have a rule that when this happens, I don’t let myself start worrying till noon. An all-night date isn’t cause for alarm unless she’s gone all morning too. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. When I went to the kitchen to pour myself a bowl of cornflakes, I discovered we were out of coffee. Now this was cause for alarm. Mom being out all night? No big deal. Out of coffee? Sheer¸ unmitigated horror. I was going to have to go out to get myself caffeinated.