“Yes indeed. Meet Florida’s Up-and-Coming Writers. One of us was an eighty-two-year-old woman who wrote what she called ‘cracker romances.’ Brilliant stuff. She even gave me her business card. She has business cards. I don’t have business cards.”
Clarissa studied his face. He appeared bemused, not harsh. She liked that. The cracker romance writer, she thought, was probably smitten with him. “And I bet she sells the hell out of them.”
Adams paused, his hand on the screen door of the old mansion. “You really do look pretty, Clarissa.”
She felt herself sparkle, head to toe, and wondered if gravity weren’t a law but a suggestion. She wanted to say something witty, sophisticated. But all she could get out was a giggle in a minor hysterical scale. Criminy, she thought, I am behaving like a wounded old waif in a Tennessee Williams play.
Adams held open the door. “After you, sweetheart.”
Clarissa stepped into the house, her bangles melodious as they clinked one against the other. She stood just inside the doorway and was immediately struck by how much the interior also resembled her house, only larger and not as accomplished. The sweeping staircase with its carved newel post was nearly identical, except the carving was rough—hewn by an unsteady or untrained hand. In an ill-conceived remodel, someone had dropped the ceiling—probably to keep down heating and cooling costs—but it did the house no favors. Clarissa had admired the structure from the street, but now that she was inside, she felt claustrophobic. The dropped ceilings caused the space to feel smaller than it truly was, as if the weight of the house were pressing down on its inhabitants. She walked over to the wall nearest the entry and studied a gilt-framed photograph—an old studio shot, late nineteenth century, if she had to guess—of four men, dressed in suit coats, staring glum-faced at the camera. One of them was missing an arm, another an eye. Despite the suit coats, the men appeared rough, even violent. Clarissa felt the stir of an odd and distant fear.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Adams said, looking around, picking up a porcelain whatnot. “A little froufrou for my tastes with the curtains and all, but real nice. Beats my apartment any day.”
“It’s a lot like my house,” Clarissa said, looking around, trying not to feel creeped out. “But not, I don’t know, as finished. You should come see it sometime. It’s a grand old rambling example of…” Her voiced trailed away as her middle-aged station in life began to assert itself.
“I’m going to just go drop off these pages,” Adams said, pulling a thin sheaf from his back pocket, “and then I’ll be right back down. How about we go get a drink?”
“Sounds good.”
Adams took the stairs two at a time. He seemed awfully fit. He must be working out. Clarissa imagined herself in a muumuu, slugging Geritol straight from the ugly brown bottle, but before her self-loathing fantasy could gain any air, a well-appointed sixty-something woman with a pretty cloud of silver white hair pattered in. “May I help you?”
“Oh, no. I’m just waiting. I’m visiting a guest of yours.” Clarissa could feel her nerves gnawing away at the private maze of her intestines. She did not want this woman, whom she didn’t know from a cornflake, thinking she was a floozy. “We’re going out just as soon as he gets downstairs. If that’s all right.”
“Of course it’s all right, dear.” She reached for her glasses, which were on a golden chain around her neck, and perched them on the tip of her nose.
“This house, it’s wonderful,” Clarissa said. “It looks so much like my own.”
“The Old Florida Magnolia Inn, circa 1845, is very special indeed,” she said. “It has gone through many a delicate renovation, survived a fire, and is, simply put, a stunning example of early Florida architecture.” The woman wafted her bejeweled hand through the air—a gesture designed to punctuate the house’s grandeur. “I’m sure any similarities with your house are purely a result of region, dear.” The woman seemed very certain and prideful and in no mood to learn anything about Clarissa’s house, including that it predated the bed-and-breakfast by two decades.
Clarissa peered into the room to her right; it had been converted into a small dining area, complete with a reproduction Coca-Cola cooler and a new sign with an old message: MANAGEMENT RESERVES THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE. Funny how one person’s nostalgia is another person’s nightmare, thought Clarissa. “That sign in there,” she said. “I realize it’s a re-production, but its original intent was to keep blacks out of white establishments. Don’t your guests find it offensive?”
“Oh, that silly thing!” The woman again waved her hand, but this time in dismissal. “My nephew decorated in there and thought the sign was the cutest thing, and I haven’t had the heart to take it down.”
“But it sends a message that I’m not sure—”
“You look so familiar,” the woman said, cutting Clarissa off. She readjusted her glasses. “Do I know you?”
“She’s a famous writer,” Adams said, jostling down the stairs, the thudding of his boots magnified by the vacant space of the stairwell. “Meet Clarissa Burden.”
“Oh! The writer!” The woman beamed, and Clarissa turned red. “I read about you in the paper last spring. I cut it out, intending to buy the book. I just haven’t done it yet. I’m sorry. But I will.”
“Well, thank you.” Clarissa looked at Adams, who was also beaming.
“You’re much prettier than that picture they ran.”
Clarissa shot the woman a polite smile and tried to remember the photo. “I’m afraid I’m just not very photogenic.” The newspaper had sent out a staff photographer, but other than that, she came up blank.
The woman arched a penciled brow, and the perfection of it reminded her of Deepdeep. “A pretty thing like you! I’m sure that’s not the case. It simply didn’t reproduce well.” The woman’s hazel eyes took on a steel edge, as if this were a matter of deep consequence. “I’ll run to the bookstore tomorrow. Will you sign it for me?”
“Books,” Adams said. “She has several.”
“Only two,” Clarissa corrected, wanting her imaginary sinkhole to open up and save her.
“That’s two more than most people, dear.”
“Damn straight. In fact,” Adams said to the proprietor, who seemed delighted by his use of profanity, “you should buy them all—multiple copies—one for each room.”
“What a great idea, young man! You know, all my friends tell me I should write a book. Oh, the stories I could tell! Just about this house alone! Do you mind me asking, how long does it take you to write one? Start to finish?”
“Well, that depends,” Clarissa said, a second wave of claustrophobia washing over her.
“Oh, right.” The woman’s face tightened as though she’d just received bad news. “Writer’s block. Awful! I’ve heard of it. What a terrible thing for you.”
How in the hell, Clarissa wondered, had the woman zeroed in so quickly? Was it that obvious? Or just a lucky, random jab? Payback for saying something about the sign? Clarissa felt a nearly irresistible urge to kick the old broad: one good blow to her shin. But instead, relying on her polite autopilot, she said, “I’d be happy to sign a book for you. Next time I’m in town, I’ll stop by.”
“Perfect!” On the strength of two simple syllables, the woman’s sparkling demeanor returned.
“I hate to break this up,” Adams said, taking Clarissa by the arm, “but somewhere in this town there is a bar stool with my name on it.”
“Go, go! Didn’t mean to keep you,” the woman said, fluttering her hands. “You two have a good night. And it was so nice to meet you, Clarissa Burden. See? I remembered your name. I’m Mrs. Butler. Eunice Butler. I married the great-great-great-grandson of the man who built this house.”
“Very nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Butler.” Clarissa inched toward the door. She could feel a story coming on. She could see in the woman’s prideful smile that she needed to tell Clarissa all about it. And perhaps if Adams hadn’t slipped a guiding hand around th
e small of her back, she would have been happy to listen. Listening, after all, was a writer’s mandate. But the house gave her the creeps, and the sign had pissed her off, and the woman was spooky, and Adams was making her swoon ever so slightly, and even though the day was long, in all honesty, the night was young. The old woman’s story would have to wait.
Clarissa and Adams stepped onto the porch and headed down the steps. Happy to be out of the uneasy house, Clarissa took a deep breath and held the steamy air in her lungs for five long counts.
“Good night!” Eunice Butler called from behind the screen door.
Clarissa breathed again and thought that the woman’s vibrancy was weightless, like an image spun from the heated lens of a projector. She and Adams responded in unison, “Night!”
The woman closed the door—they heard the click of the lock—and Adams and Clarissa found themselves on the side lawn, standing by a fountain dappled with goldfish, staring up at the hot, hot sky, talking about things of little consequence, things Clarissa would soon forget; and as they conversed, the evening’s first star pierced the solstice’s deep sky.
They walked down a sidewalk buckled from the great roots of the oaks that lined the street, toward the Capitol and its nucleus of bars and lobbyist offices. Clarissa, slipping her hand around the suitable crook of Adams’s arm, sensing this was a man who would appreciate her day’s crowning jewel, said, “Okay, before we do anything else, you have to see what I bought today. It’ll take just a second.”
She steered him in the direction of her car, and when she stepped onto the cobblestone road, he glanced at her sky blue pumps and asked, “Uh-oh, should I carry you?”
She laughed but kept her focus. “You, unlike some people I know, will appreciate this.” Avoiding the heel-trapping cracks, holding her arms away from her body for balance, Adams doing the same in childish solidarity, Clarissa led them one block over.
When they got back on the sidewalk, Adams paused in front of a house that had been converted to attorneys’ offices. A trellis arching the walkway supported a climbing rose, its twisting branches supple, snakelike. Adams reached into the thicket, snapped a tight pink blossom, and said, “For you.” He slipped it into her hair.
“Thank you,” she said, resisting an urge to touch his hand, feeling as if she were slipping into someone else’s life. She noticed that the vine had not given up the blossom without taking its weight in flesh. “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s nothing.” He readjusted the flower. “Perfect. Now, what is it that we’ve got to see?”
“It’s not far. Follow me.” She led him across the street, walked past the snaggled line of parked cars, stopped at the El Camino, dug into her silk clutch, lifted out her car keys, and jiggled them.
“This!” Adams said, his voice rising an octave and his navy blue eyes widening. “This is yours?” He shook his head as if in amazement. “No shit?”
“No shit.” Clarissa swept her arm Vanna White style. Pride bubbled through her like a clear, untainted stream.
“Fantastic!” He walked the circumference of the vehicle. “This is a classic muscle car. And it’s… oh, my God…”
“Cherry?”
He stopped at the left headlight, hands on hips. “Yeah!” He held out his hand. “Give me the keys.”
“What?”
“Give me the keys.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re taking Yellow Bird for a spin.”
“Yellow Bird. I love it!” Laughing, thinking, Why the hell not, she tossed them to him. The keys sparkled, end over end, under the glare of the streetlight. Adams grabbed them out of the sky, sure and confident. When he opened the passenger door, he offered her his hand—the one marked by the rosebush thorns. She took it and slid in, careful not to let her palm linger too long in his. As he walked to the driver’s side, she touched the rose, her husband’s recriminations growing ever more distant. In fact, she thought as Adams eased behind the wheel, she could barely hear them.
As Adams threaded Yellow Bird through the Tallahassee traffic, Clarissa looked in the side mirror, saw the city slipping away, and a memory from that long day surfaced: her husband touching Yvette’s chin and tilting her face to the light. You have beautiful skin, even when you sweat.
“I like the tunes,” Adams said, tapping his long fingers in time to the Tejano rhythms.
“What?” Clarissa pulled her gaze from the diminishing city.
“The tunes. They’re great.”
“Oh, right,” Clarissa said. “Me too. Especially the stuff with the squeeze box.”
“Exactly! Mexican polka!” Adams laughed as if he were deeply satisfied by the notion.
“What are we doing?”
“Don’t know. Just driving.” He turned left onto Monroe. “Do you realize that the earth’s temperature is the highest it has been in four hundred years?”
“No kidding. Like that’s breaking news,” Clarissa said, grinning. “It was a hundred and seven degrees at my house.”
“I don’t mean just today. I mean, like, it’s a trend.”
“Oh, like we’re totally screwed.”
“Exactly.”
“What do you think?”
“Of what?”
“Of Yellow Bird?”
“She’s fantastic!”
They cut over to Crawfordville Highway, passed through the big intersection at Capitol Circle. The strip malls thinned, replaced by trailers and houses, which soon gave way to forest. Dirt roads splintered the darkness, east and west. “Where are we going?”
“Where do you want to go? Man, oh man, will you listen to that engine!” Adams stared straight ahead. He looked fearless. She loved that.
“I’m not sure.” Clarissa shook her head; that old feeling of being in free fall, the Sears Tower slipping past, returned.
“How far to the coast?”
Clarissa glanced at the speedometer. The needle was pegged at seventy-five.
“From here, going this fast—maybe thirty minutes.”
“What do you think?” He looked at her for a three count and then back at the road. Clarissa thought she’d not been glanced at that forthrightly by a man—not even Trash Man or Cracker Bandit or Raul or even that dwarf—in a good long time, even if it was only for three seconds.
The road through this part of the forest was narrow. Except for the occasional oncoming vehicle, the El Camino and star shine were the only light sources. Anything could happen in a place like this, in a situation like this. Perhaps living a life full of possibility was a conscious choice. You either did or you didn’t. Yes or no. Black or white. Sugar or salt. Bored and safe or thrilled and dangerous. She stared at the parallel universe of the double yellow lines. She thought she felt her heart beat: steady, with a fierce, calm intent, totally out of sync with her brain. Truth be told, she preferred the forest and the coast over the city and a bar, a cherry El Camino over a fucked-up Dodge, a man who just turned up the radio and sang off-key to a song whose words he didn’t know over a husband who demanded her loyalty but eschewed her heart.
Adams took a curve, hard and fast. The centrifugal force pressed Clarissa against the seat. She enjoyed the feeling: earth’s power sliding right through her.
“It’s up to you.” Adams pressed the accelerator, brought her up to near eighty. “Do we turn this baby around or head for the Gulf of Mexico?”
Clarissa looked at the blacktop, stretching, it seemed, into eternity. She’d been cautious all her life. But she’d already made the leap. She knew that. The only question left was where she would land.
“Let’s do it. Let’s head for the coast.” She loved how confident she sounded, loved how the high beams illuminated just enough of the blacktop. Just enough.
“There’s a town up here?”
“Yep. Crawfordville.”
“They got a liquor store?”
“You bet.”
Adams flashed the lights at an oncoming car, signaling them to turn off the
ir brights.
“Adams?”
“Yes, baby?”
“I’m not writing anymore.”
Adams whistled one low, steady note. He reached for the stereo knob, turned down the volume. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I sit at the computer, day after day, and nothing comes. It’s like the well dried up.”
“You sure?”
“One hundred percent.”
His mouth twitched in that way men have when they are trying to convey, man style, that they feel your pain. “That sucks.”
“Yes. It does.” She was unsure if she appreciated his candor or was offended by it.
“So what’s going on?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I start a sentence or two, and then I just end up deleting them because I can’t see them leading to anything. Nothing lines up right.” Clarissa felt a knot form in her throat, and she feared she might cry.
“What do you mean, ‘nothing lines up right’?” He smiled at her.
“You know, like the alphabet. The freaking basics. A is supposed to precede B, and then comes C, and it’s all supposed to add up to something.” Clarissa barked the words.
Adams’s grin collapsed into shock. Or was it pity? Confusion, maybe? Before she could figure it out, he started laughing. She glared at him, wanted to punch him.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” But even before she’d finished uttering the question, she realized that her popped-off response contained, at least, a dose of hysteria. Shit, she couldn’t make B follow A? That was some sad business for someone who called herself a writer. Suddenly her anger seemed altogether silly, and she laughed with him, full-throated, the sound of their mirth mingling with a Mexican love song blaring from the radio (mi corazón, mi amor: Clarissa knew these words) and the thrum of the big tires. She slapped her knee and held her sides.
“Well, that’s pretty fucking bad, darling,” he said, his laughter slowly subsiding.
“I know!” She laughed some more and glanced away. For a moment, she thought that the night—its darkness and shadows—was just an idea and not real at all. “What am I going to do?”
How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly Page 20