by Marie Sexton
Then there was Lenny.
“That you, D?” he asked.
“No, not Dimitri.”
“Dom?”
“Got it in two.”
“Huh?”
I resisted the urge to sigh again. It wasn’t that Lenny was a bad kid, but he was stoned more often than not. I wasn’t opposed to a bit of weed now and then, but I wished Lenny could at least wait until he was off the clock. He was spacey enough, even when he was stone sober. My dad had promised his brother Jim that he’d give Lenny a job straight out of high school, as some kind of ridiculous favor. I was pretty sure the arrangement had involved a great deal of beer and backslapping during the Final Four playoffs the previous March, but nobody asked me.
“Dom?” he asked, sounding confused. “Two what?”
“Forget about it.”
“Okay.” A moment of silence. Then, “Hey, there’s a guy needs picked up from the middle school at 3:45. I thought maybe you’d want to do it.”
Normally we let Lenny do the courtesy shuttle since he wasn’t qualified to do much around the shop, but I understood why he’d offered it to me. It meant I’d have a chance to pick Naomi up and give her a ride home.
I glanced at my watch. It was a few minutes past 3:00. “Sure, I’ll take it. Does this guy have a name?”
“Yeah….”
But Lenny didn’t sound too sure. I waited for him to offer it up, but when no additional information seemed to be forthcoming, I ducked down to peer under the car at my glassy-eyed cousin. “Well?”
“‘Well’ what?”
“What’s his name?”
“Who?”
“The guy who needs a ride from the middle school!”
Lenny didn’t look up from the pan at his feet, which was slowly filling with the oil draining from the car above him. “It’s the same as that donut place.”
We didn’t have a donut shop in Coda. The only donuts in town came from the grocery store bakery. Still, I took a shot. “Dunkin’ Donuts? Is his name Duncan?”
“No. The other one.”
“Krispy Kreme?”
“Yeah, man.” Lenny laughed. “Krispy Kreme Jones.”
“Those are the only two donut stores I know.”
“No, there’s those others in Denver, you know? I heard they might build one here in Coda. They’re good too. Wish we had some now.” He stared blankly at the trail of falling oil for a second, pondering, then looked up at me with sudden enthusiasm. “Hey, you want donuts? I can run over to the grocery store if you want to finish this oil change up for me.”
I gritted my teeth in frustration. A name. All I wanted was a name for the customer I’d be picking up in approximately forty minutes. Instead, I was on a circumlocutory exploration of every fucking donut shop in the state. “Lenny?”
“Yeah, Dom?”
“I need you to think about this now. They might build one of what?”
Lenny shook his head as if he thought I’d lost has mind. “A donut shop, man. What do you think I’m talking about?”
I gave it up as a lost cause. If one of our customers needed a ride, it meant we had his car, which meant somebody in the damn building had to know who he was.
I found Dimitri in the back office with his feet on the desk. That didn’t mean he wasn’t working. He had the computer keyboard in his lap and his eyes glued to the monitor.
“D,” I said by way of greeting when I entered.
“What’s up, bro?” he asked without looking up from whatever he was doing.
“Lenny says we need to pick somebody up from the middle school. I thought I’d take it so I can get Naomi while I’m there, but Lenny didn’t have a name. You know anything about it?”
“I do. Junior towed it in this morning. Somebody beat the hell out of it.” He sat up, put the keyboard aside, and began digging through files on the desktop. “We fixed the tires and replaced the windshield, but we have to get the side windows from Boulder. Julio’s picking them up as we speak, so we can’t fix those until tomorrow. Also, we didn’t have the side view mirrors in stock. They’ll be here in five to seven days. Where the hell’s his paperwork?”
“So I’m taking him home, and we’ll need to arrange rides for him tomorrow too?”
“Right. Aha!” He pulled a form out of one of the folders, along with a set of keys, which he tossed across the desk in my general direction. “Those are his. He was in such a hurry, he gave us the whole set. I kept the one to the car, but he’ll probably want those back.” He opened the folder and scanned the top page. “Here it is. Lamar Franklin.”
My heart skipped a beat. Lamar. Like the donut shops in Denver. Not a common name, necessarily, although not so uncommon as to mean it was definitely my Lamar. Still, the idea made my heart beat a bit faster than normal.
Dimitri was already back to his computer work, long legs propped on the desk, fingers clicking away at the keys.
“Did you meet him?” I asked.
“Yeah. Went over the paperwork with him before Lenny drove him to work.”
“What’s he look like?”
His fingers stopped moving. He glanced up at me, his brow wrinkled in confusion. “What?”
“I mean, I have to look for him, right? All those other teachers will be coming out of the building at the same time. How will I recognize him?”
Dimitri stared at me for a minute, clearly confused. Usually, all we had to do was stand by the courtesy shuttle—which had our name and logo splashed across its side—and the customer found us. This descriptor thing was new territory. But after a second’s hesitation, he humored me. “I don’t know. Short. Early thirties. Dark blond hair, kind of….” He waved his hand around his forehead, searching for a word to match Lamar’s style. “Preppy, I guess.”
Everything he said described the Lamar I remembered.
Then again, everything he said could have described a lot of men. I tried not to get my hopes up, but butterflies swarmed in my stomach nonetheless as I drove across town. I became uncomfortably aware of bare knees poking through my torn and stained jeans, and of the grease-spotted work shirt under my Jacobsen’s Garage jacket. I’d been sweating all day. There wasn’t exactly a cool way of determining how smelly I was, but I tried anyway, lowering my head and sniffing hard in the general direction of my underarms. Didn’t catch a whiff of anything too heinous. Then I looked back up at the road and had to slam on my brakes to avoid rear-ending the car in front of me.
“Shit!” I swore as the van’s wheels screeched to halt on the asphalt. “Jesus, Dom. Get it together.” Stinky or not, there was no way out now, and smashing the courtesy van on the way to the middle school wouldn’t help matters.
Still, me covered in grease and possibly stinking like a damn yak wasn’t exactly the way I’d envisioned us reuniting. And yeah, I’d imagined that encounter more times than I could count over the years. I’d dreamed up a hundred different scenarios. Him wandering into our garage or calling for a tow had even been among them.
That didn’t mean I was ready for it now.
I’d texted Naomi before leaving the garage and let her know I’d be waiting outside the south entrance of the school if she wanted a ride. Once there, I did what I’ve always done when picking up customers: I got out and leaned against the side of the truck.
And I waited.
I didn’t have to wait long.
He looked exactly as I’d always imagined, which was to say, not so different than he had when we were seventeen. A bit taller, maybe, but not much. Broader in the shoulder and thicker in the waist. A lot less mousse in his hair. But it was definitely him, looking as wholesome and white bread as he had when he’d crawled into the back seat of my GTO.
He didn’t see me at first. He mostly watched his feet as he walked, while deep in conversation with a black woman. Once they reached the end of the walk—stopping less than five yards away from me—she said good-bye, and he finally looked around for his ride.
I’d worried h
e wouldn’t recognize me, and I’d be faced with the awkward decision of whether or not to reveal my identity, but my doubt disappeared in a heartbeat. His jaw dropped. His briefcase clunked to the pavement.
“Dominic?”
I couldn’t speak. I stood there smiling like an idiot for a moment and then, to my utter surprise, he threw his arms around my neck and held me tight.
“Holy shit, I can’t believe it’s you.”
It was strange, but not unwelcome. I found myself laughing as I hugged him back, and yet I noted he wasn’t laughing. He was solemn, like this was a funeral, and we were both mourning. I felt him trembling.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Why?”
He pulled back—not quite out of my arms but enough to put distance between us. Enough to look up into my eyes. The top of his head was barely taller than my chin. His cheeks were red, but for the first time since he’d walked out the school doors, he smiled, although it was an unsure, hesitant smile. “I don’t really even know you, do I? But this has been one bitch of a week, and….”
“Yes?” I prodded.
His smile grew a bit. “It’s good to see a friendly face.”
That made me laugh. I brushed his cheek with the back of my fingers. “It’s good to see you too.”
And for a moment we just stood there, smiling, looking into each other’s eyes.
Remembering.
In nearly every scenario I’d ever imagined, this would have been the moment when I kissed him. Somehow, in those fantasies, there’d never been a dozen teachers and God knew how many students milling around. In those fantasies, the fact that I wasn’t exactly out hadn’t ever been an issue. And in those fantasies, Lamar’s eyes hadn’t quickly given way to shadows, like they did now as he turned to pick up his briefcase.
Yes, those first few moments had felt perfect. But now….
Now I didn’t have the faintest idea what to say. Luckily, I was saved by Naomi, who came tearing around the corner as only a thirteen-year-old girl can, looking like she was all hair and elbows, her enormous backpack bouncing and clunking against her shoulders as she ran. “Dad!”
“Hey, Snowflake. You got my message?”
She refrained from rolling her eyes but only barely, I could tell. “Duh. Who needed a ride?” She looked over at Lamar, who was watching us with a stunned expression on his face. “Mr. Franklin, it’s you! Is something wrong with your car? This is my dad.” Then, without waiting for him to respond, she turned to me, “Mr. Franklin’s my English teacher.” She gave the words a quiet emphasis. Translation: this is the one I was telling you about.
That put everything that had passed between Lamar and me in a new context.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, bowing formally to Lamar, who didn’t seem to realize I was joking.
“Uh, yeah. You too.”
Naomi wasn’t paying attention. She was already talking a mile a minute. “Dad, I was gonna walk with Abby and Annabelle up to Aunt Jen’s, and then we’re gonna do our homework, and then Aunt Jen’s taking us out to a movie, okay?”
What that really meant was she and her cousins were going to walk home, probably stopping at 7-Eleven on the way for Slurpees and candy bars. Then they’d hang out giggling and gossiping and watching TV until her aunt came home, at which point they’d harass her into taking them down to A to Z for whatever the dinner show was this week. When Naomi finally walked in our front door five minutes after curfew, she’d have exactly zero percent of her homework done, so she’d stay up until eleven or midnight, alternately working, chatting with her friends and cousins on her phone, and listening to music on her headphones.
Whatever. She wasn’t a straight-A student, but she did better than I ever had. And there were worse ways she could spend her afternoons than hanging out with her cousins and Elena’s sister.
“Okay,” I agreed. She took off running before the whole two syllables had left my mouth. “Be home by nine!” She lifted a hand to show me she’d heard, and then she was gone.
I turned to find Lamar still watching me, his eyes far more wary than they had been before. I felt a twinge of sadness, as if we’d lost some golden opportunity, but there was nothing to be done about it now. I opened the passenger-side door of the courtesy shuttle. “Your chariot awaits.”
LAMAR
WALKING OUT of the school and finding Dominic waiting for me was one of the most surreal moments of my life. After weeks of gloom, there he’d been, bright as the sun. And I’d known he was there specifically for me even before I realized he worked for the garage. Somehow I’d felt sure he was there to save me.
Stupid, in hindsight. What did I know about him anyway? Nothing. We’d spent a couple of hours together, fifteen years ago. That was it. The fact that he apparently had a daughter only proved how wrong my assumptions about him had been.
And yet he’d embraced me enthusiastically when I had thrown myself at him like a moron. He’d touched my cheek. For half a second, I’d thought he was going to kiss me, like Prince Charming at the end of a fairy tale.
This was looking more like a tragedy than a romance, though.
“So,” I said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “You’re married?”
He smiled without taking his eyes off the road. “Not anymore. How about you? Married? Any kids?”
“No.” It’d never even been a possibility. “I never really went that way.”
“Women, you mean?”
I winced and looked out the passenger window in order to hide it from him. “Yes.”
“You’re wondering why I did?”
Yes, but I felt like a fool for being so obvious. “It’s none of my business.”
“I’m not sure I’d have an explanation anyway, other than it seemed like the thing to do at the time. And it gave me Naomi, so I can’t regret it too much.”
“Is she your only one?”
“Yes.”
“She’s a good kid.”
“She is,” he said with obvious pride. “Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
He laughed. “Well, she has her moments. And now that she’s a teenager, those moments seem to come far more frequently.”
“Like the blue eyebrows?”
He laughed again. “Exactly.”
“And you’re just getting started on the teen years.”
“Don’t remind me.” He stopped for a red light, and we sat for a moment in silence. “Of all the grades you could teach,” he asked as the light turned green again, “why would you choose junior high?”
I had to think about the best way to answer his question. “You remember how it felt to be that age?”
“All too clearly. Those were the worst three years of my life.”
“Exactly.”
He glanced over, his brow wrinkled in confusion. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s a tough age. There’s so much they’re trying to figure out, and they’re so sure and so scared at the same time. Not that they’d ever admit that last bit.”
“Of course not.”
“It’s the end of childhood, but adulthood still feels awfully far away.” I shrugged, frustrated by the inadequacy of my words to capture what I wanted to say. “I guess I figure they need all the help they can get.”
“Naomi says you’re one of the good ones.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m glad she thinks so.”
“Oh. I almost forgot.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out my keys. “These are yours.” He frowned as I took them, his lips pursed in thought as we slowed for a stop sign. “Listen, I know this is weird, but do you have any plans tonight?”
“No. Why?”
“I thought maybe you’d want to come over. We could order a pizza and… I don’t know, catch up?”
He sounded unsure as he said it, and I found myself smiling. The boy I’d once spent an evening with was easy to see when he gave me that look, and I certainly didn’t have anything better to do. “Sure.
”
We stopped at the garage to trade the courtesy van for his pickup truck, then headed uphill into one of Coda’s older neighborhoods. He turned down a residential street lined with trees and old-fashioned houses, then into a narrow driveway next to a home that was small but not without charm. It was cottage-like, probably built sometime in the first quarter of the twentieth century, with a peaked roof over the front door. It was so perfectly Norman Rockwell, I could practically smell the apple pie. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected his house to look like, but this certainly wasn’t it.
I followed him up the walk. A purple bicycle lay in the grass next to the porch. A wind catcher shaped like a hot air balloon twirled next to the door. The interior was warm and roomier than I’d expected. It was clean and well lit, the dull afternoon light through the windows somehow cheerful despite the dreary skies outside.
“Make yourself at home,” he said, tossing his jacket onto a bench by the front door. He started to unbutton his work shirt. He had a T-shirt on underneath, but somehow, it all became clear. His daughter was gone. We had the house to ourselves. He was already undressing.
Some dark feeling bloomed in my stomach. Not panic, exactly. Something more like dread. Some part of my brain wanted to believe sex would make me feel better, but the idea of faking my way through the requisite foreplay was exhausting. It wasn’t as if Dominic wasn’t attractive—he definitely was, even after all these years—but somehow, trying to maintain that much connection with any human was more than I could face.
“I can’t do this.”
He turned to look at me, his eyebrows raised. “Can’t do what?”
I gestured at his house, toward the hallway I assumed led to his bedroom, toward him undoing his shirt, trying to convey the entire range of possibilities in a single movement. Trying not to blush as I did it. “This.”
He looked down at his shirt, now most of the way unbuttoned. “I’m covered in grease. I was just going to—” He stopped short as understanding dawned. “Oh,” he laughed. “I see. You think I brought you here to get you into bed?”