by Ann McMan
The stream of water lessened to a trickle. El sat back on her haunches and looked back at me. We were both soaked to the bone. The tiny restroom was in shambles. The persistent drip drip drip from the broken water pipe resounded from the walls like hammer blows on a coffin nail.
I sighed. “We’re toast.”
El gave me a crooked smile. “You look great with wet hair.”
I felt myself blush, which seemed ridiculous considering the event that had precipitated our dilemma. I opened my mouth to render the same compliment back to her.
Loud pounding shook the bathroom door.
“Would you hurry the hell up and let somebody else have a chance?” a voice boomed. “I have to tap off.” It was Luanne. Of course.
I gave El a miserable look. “Any ideas?”
She looked around the room. “This bathroom has an appalling lack of transom windows.”
“I know. Next time, we’ll have to plan more carefully.”
We smiled at each other. I got to my feet and extended a hand to her. “Come on, we might as well face the music.”
El stood up and tried to pull her shirt down to cover the gaping front of her pants. Then she got an idea. “Hang on a minute.”
She sloshed to where the broken sink lay. She picked it up and tested its heft. “Perfect,” she said, settling it against her waist. “Let’s go.”
I took a deep breath and unlocked and opened the door.
Luanne and T-Bomb stood together on the other side. They looked like a pair of those raffle gnomes—without the grenade launchers. I noticed that T-Bomb was holding a folded, blue shirt.
Luanne looked us both up and down. “What in the hell happened to the two of you? You look like something the cat drug in.”
“Why is there water all over the place?” T-Bomb asked.
I held up a hand. “Trust me . . . you don’t want to know.”
El pushed past me, carrying the sink. “Excuse us ladies, we had a minor restroom malfunction.”
She walked off with squishing shoes. A rivulet of water trailed along behind her.
“What she said,” I added.
I pushed my plastered hair back from my forehead and moved on past them.
“Malfunction?” Luanne called after me. “This looks more like the damn Poseidon Adventure!”
I could hear T-Bomb laughing. “I told you them two had experience in bathrooms . . .”
Their voices faded into the background. So did all the other sights and sounds inside the hall. I didn’t notice the stares or comments we surely got as we made our way out. I just kept my eyes focused on El’s straight back, and followed her out into the balmy summer night.
Chapter 8
“Damn.”
“What is it?” El looked at me from the driver’s seat of her SUV. We had just left the VFW parking lot and were headed west on Broadway.
“I left my backpack inside the hall.”
“Do we need to go back, so you can get your keys?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Not unless you mind dropping me at home instead of back at Hoosier Daddy?”
“Of course I don’t mind taking you home. But don’t you want to get your truck?”
“No. It’ll be fine there overnight. T-Bomb can give me a ride to work in the morning.”
I thought about the unopened letter inside the backpack. That could wait until the morning, too. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to read it then.
“House keys?” El asked.
I looked at her.
“Let me guess. You don’t lock your house?”
“I lock the front door,” I said, defensively.
“Is there a back door?”
“Of course.”
“But you don’t lock it?”
I shook my head.
She laughed. “Indiana. Main Street of the Midwest.”
“Don’t forget I have a dog,” I reminded her.
“Fritz?”
I nodded.
“Oh. Well. Then I’m certain potential thieves would avoid plundering your place for fear of being licked to death.”
“Very funny.”
“Who takes care of him during the day?” she asked.
“You mean when he isn’t out at Grammy’s?”
She nodded.
“He’s kind of on auto pilot. I have a screened porch, and he can get out into the yard from there.”
“Don’t you worry about him when it’s this hot?”
“He’s got a dog door into the house.” I studied her with interest. “Why all this concern about Fritz?” She shrugged. “I like dogs.”
“Yeah, well it appears to be a mutual admiration society.”
El gave me a confused look, and then rolled her eyes. “Oh. You mean Lucille?”
“Yeah. That seems like a love affair for the ages.”
“Unrequited, I assure you.”
“You don’t find his attachment . . . appealing?”
“No,” she replied. “I don’t find his flatulence appealing.”
I chuckled.
“Although,” she continued, “Aunt Jackie has been pestering me to take one of his puppies.”
“The Jack Affs?” I asked. “Seriously? Are you thinking about it?”
“Only in the throes of delusion,” she said. “There’s no way I can have a dog with the life I lead.”
“That’s too bad. You’re missing out on a lot.” It took her a minute to reply. “I know.” I thought she sounded sad.
We approached the intersection at U.S. 41.
“Which way do we go?” she asked.
I was tempted to say she could take me anywhere she wanted. Instead I told her to continue on straight.
“I live in Owensville,” I explained. “We go about another five miles or so, and take a left at the blinking light. It’s about a fifteen minute drive to my house. Are you sure you don’t mind going that far out of your way?”
“I don’t mind a bit,” El replied. “Maybe you can lend me a pair of pants.”
“Sure. But you’ll probably have to roll the legs up.”
“That’s okay. I’d rather be compared to Ellie May Clampett than Ermaline.”
I stifled a laugh. “I’m really sorry about your pants.”
“It’s all right. I’ll keep them as a memento of our night of almost passion.”
“Almost?”
“Well. It did sort of end just as things got interesting.”
“No kidding. That seems to be a pattern for us.” I paused. “I’m . . . uh . . .”
She looked at me. “You’re what?”
“I wanted to ask . . . if the burning stopped?”
El laughed. “Yes . . . it was overwhelmed pretty quickly by the onset of mortification.”
“I know that always works for me.”
“Oh, really?” El asked. “You have prior experience with hot sauce?”
“No,” I said quickly. “That isn’t what I meant . . .”
El looked at me over the rims of her glasses. I thought it was charming that she had to wear them to drive at night. They made her look downright professorial, which I now knew was not a stretch for her.
“Oh,” I said. “You were teasing.”
“Right.”
“Sometimes I have a hard time telling the difference.”
“I know. It’s really sweet.”
I felt shy and embarrassed by her comment. I tried to cover it up by being glib. “Sweet is always the thing I go for when I’m trying to impress a woman.”
“Ah, but that’s not how it works. It’s not trying to impress that makes you sweet.”
“I’m very good at my craft.”
El gave me a look that could only be called sultry. “I know I have only limited experience, but I’d have to agree with you about that.”
That response didn’t help ease my embarrassment. Fortunately, we’d reached the turnoff for Owensville.
“Left turn up here.” I pointed toward the blinki
ng light ahead of us. I was grateful to have a reason to change the subject.
“It’s a good thing they put this flashing light here. All these roads look exactly the same.”
“Trust me. When you grow up out here, they kind of are. No matter which way you go, you seem to end up right back where you started.”
We were rolling through another sea of cornfields. They flanked the road, and were only disrupted by an occasional fence row or lone stand of trees. At night, the gray strip of road seemed narrower. It was like driving through a leafy tunnel. The full moon was waning, but it was still bright and high on the horizon. It made the winding rows of corn look soft and deep.
“I’m always amazed by how much space there is out here,” El said. “I can’t get used to it.”
I studied her profile. It looked blue and white—a combined trick of the moonlight and the gauges on the dashboard. Her hair was still wet, just like most of the rest of her. It was amazing how soaked we both got in such a short space of time. I thought again about the ruined, tiny sink. El had hastily tossed it into the back of her SUV before we left the parking lot.
“What are we gonna do about that sink?” I asked, jerking my thumb toward the cargo area.
“Oh, god.” El waved a hand. “I don’t know. Pick up a new one, I guess. Where’s the nearest plumbing supply store?”
“Menards . . . back in Princeton. We can get one there.”
“I suppose we should pay to have the wall fixed, too?”
“Yeah. I don’t imagine they’re too happy with us right now.”
“You think?” El chuckled. “A hall containing about two hundred people, all swilling beer and iced tea, and we take one of the two bathrooms offline? Why would they be upset about a little thing like that?”
“I think they have other restrooms in the bar area.”
El glanced at me with an amused expression. “Are you always this literal?”
I sighed. “Unfortunately, yes.”
She patted my leg. “Not to worry. This is why god created expense accounts.”
“For real?” I was having a hard time ignoring El’s hand, which still rested on my soggy thigh.
“Of course.”
“They wouldn’t question an expense like this?”
She looked at me over the rims of her glasses again. I decided right then that this little head duck gesture was my new favorite thing about her. Well . . . maybe my second favorite thing. Her hand on my leg was feeling pretty good, too.
“Buying a new sink for the local VFW wouldn’t even make the top ten on the UAW’s list of spurious reimbursement requests.”
“Really?” I was intrigued now. “What does make the list?”
“Let’s see . . . if memory serves, we once paid to replace the carpet in the banquet room of a Holiday Inn outside Wentzville, Missouri.”
“Why?”
“It was a food fight on an apocalyptic scale.” El waved her hand and returned it to the steering wheel. The spot where it had been resting on my leg still felt warm. “We were doing a multimedia presentation and had a good-sized crowd. Things were going well until some pipe fitters got into a shouting match with the catering staff.”
That wasn’t hard to imagine. Most of the pipe fitters I knew were a pretty burly lot. “Were they defending their right to be there, listening to your treasonous rhetoric?”
El laughed. “Not so much. They were defending their right to raid the service area and help themselves to more fried chicken livers.”
“Uh oh.”
“Yeah. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried to wash that mess out of your hair.”
I laughed. “So my bout with the tartar sauce was kind of pro forma for you?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”
Her voice had taken on that sultry timbre again.
I mentally cleared my throat. “So, what else is on the list?”
“Hmmmm. Well. There was the time Tony paid for a shift foreman’s girlfriend to have a boob job.”
“Are you kidding me?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I think they classified that one as
‘operational enhancements to the physical plant.’ ”
“Good god.”
El looked out her driver’s side window. “Hey? Tell me something.”
“What?”
“What are those funky-looking, mechanical things that randomly appear in the middle of these fields?”
“What mechanical things?”
“Back there.” She gestured over her shoulder. “We just passed one. They’re all over the place out here. They look like little metal horses or something.”
“Oh. You mean the pump jacks.”
“Pump jacks?”
“Yeah. They’re oil wells. Those are the pumping stations.”
“Oil wells?” she asked.
I nodded.
“In Indiana?”
“Yes.”
“In the middle of corn fields?”
I nodded again.
“But I saw one back in town, behind a Free Methodist church.”
“Right.”
“I don’t get it. How much oil could there possibly be in Indiana?”
“More than you might expect,” I explained. “Back in the early eighties, when oil prices were so high, a lot of people out here used the income from those wells to put their kids through college.”
“Really? Does everybody out here have them?”
“Not everybody. But a lot do. Oil companies manage them for groups of owners. They pump it out, and divide any profits on a percentage basis between the various landowners. Most of the oil fields straddle property lines.”
“So it’s like Indiana’s version of OPEC?”
“Sort of. But with fewer wars and less interesting head gear.”
“Well, you certainly have the same climactic conditions.”
“Not for long. Wait another month or two until this place turns into the Midwestern equivalent of Yakutia.”
“Oh, do not even try to talk to me about winter here.” She looked at me. “Ever been to Buffalo in February?”
I pretended to think about it. “No . . . but I kinda like the music.”
El rolled her eyes. “And Grammy likes the spicy wings . . .”
The mention of spicy chicken caused my bravado to evaporate like drops of rain on hot asphalt. Lucky for me, we had reached the outskirts of Owensville. A few ragtag-looking buildings dotted the roadside. They gave way to clusters of small homes.
I pointed ahead. “Behold, Owensville.”
The town looked better at night. It occurred to me that everything in Indiana looked better at night. Less depressed. More lush. Even graceful. Probably, that was because I was trying so hard to see it the way El saw it. And, somehow, El saw the unspoiled raw beauty of a landscape that had long since grown dull and lifeless for me—like a photograph that had slowly lost its color over the years and faded into a muted mass of gray.
“This is really charming,” she said.
It sounded like she meant it. I looked out my window at the abandoned gas station on the corner. “Charming” wasn’t a word I would have chosen to describe the entrance to Owensville.
“Turn right at the next intersection after the Methodist Church,” I said. “Stay on 65.”
“Okay.”
We were in what passed for the center of town. A small strip center on the right had battered aluminum awnings and several empty storefronts. But the Dollar General was still doing a robust business.
“Turn left here,” I said. “On Main Street. It’s only three blocks. On the right, after the funeral home.”
As we got closer to my house, I began to doubt the wisdom of letting El bring me home. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed about her seeing my place, it was more that this trip was like crossing some kind of boundary—even more than the one we’d crossed when El came to Grammy Mann’s for pot roast and rhubarb pie. I thought again about the letter from Don
K. I was glad it wasn’t in the car with us, writhing around on the back seat like the garter snake some kids once tossed into my truck at the Quik-Stop. It didn’t belong there—just like I was beginning to believe that I didn’t belong here. Not anymore.
“This is it,” I said. “On the right.”
El turned her blinker on and pulled over next to the curb.
“Oh, Friday Jill,” she said. “This is your house?”
I nodded.
“It’s adorable.”
I could hear Fritz barking. It sounded like he was on the back porch. I was surprised he wasn’t already in the side yard and investigating this potential threat. Apparently, El’s canine magic continued.
El hadn’t shut the engine off.
“Do you want to come inside?” I asked.
To be fair, I wasn’t really sure how I wanted her to respond. I thought about that famous quote. The one about there only being two things in life to fear: not getting what you wanted, or getting what you wanted. Right then for me, it was pretty even money on either result.
El turned off the engine, and I knew right away that I did want her to come inside with me. I wanted that more than anything.
“I’d like that,” she said.
Fritz stopped barking and came around the side of the house to greet us. He was prancing back and forth along the low, iron fence with his tail wagging. El and I got out of the SUV and made our way down the sidewalk toward my small front porch. She took a quick detour to walk over and greet Fritz.
“Hello there, handsome,” she cooed. “Aren’t you a good boy?”
Fritz was standing on his hind legs, licking El’s face. I walked over to join them.
“Let’s go in this way.” I unhitched the gate that led into the back yard.
El was studying the outside of my small house. “I love all the roof lines. It looks so gothic. How old is this house?”
“I think it was built sometime in the early 1900s. It’s one of the older homes in town. I was lucky to get it.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“About six years. I’ve been working on it pretty much nonstop. It wasn’t in the best shape.”
El shook her head. “It certainly looks great now.”
I led the way to the back porch. “Trust me. It’s a work in progress. I still have a lot of work left to do on the interior.”