The Circle Game

by Tanya Nichols

  “Well, we do play a couple of eighties numbers, but really the thing is we all have day jobs, and this is what we do for fun nights and weekends, our night shift.” His fingers drummed the steering wheel.

  “I thought you said you spent your weekends up at Huntington fixing up your cabin?” There was a familiar edge in her voice, always on the lookout for inconsistencies.

  “I do. I’m just not always alone. Sometimes, we all go up and rehearse up there, do a little work on the place, then we might even play a gig at Trapper’s, a bar at Shaver.”

  “Wow, you never mentioned any of this before.” She realized she had pegged him all wrong, imagining him alone, sitting in an old rocker reading books by the fire, sipping a brandy, a fluffy dog at his feet. She struggled to replace that image with a bunch of musicians drinking beer, playing together in a dark bar, surrounded by drunks and eager girls who always like the lead singer the best, but a date with anyone from the band would do.

  “Like I said, I was afraid you wouldn’t take me seriously as an expert if you thought I was more interested in playing music. It’s not that I lied, I just left that part out. I’m telling you now because, well, I’m not trying to get work from you; I’m trying to get to know you and let you know me.”

  “So,” she said, “when you were trying to get me to go up to your cabin, would I have been staying with the guys from Night Shift?”

  The procession finally ended, and the cop sped away. Don moved the truck into first gear, glancing over at her as he pulled away from the light, a flicker of a grin appearing. His voice was gentle, almost a whisper. “Oh no, no, no. I’d never put you through anything like that.” His smile broadened as he added, “at least not on your first trip.”

  “Well, thanks for that, at least.” For a moment, she just listened to the music and tried to pick out Don’s voice from the mix of harmonies.

  “So, you’re a Tom Petty fan?”

  “I guess so, sort of. If we’re being honest, I’m really more of a Joni Mitchell fan. I love her.” Bernie couldn’t help but think of how she would drive Noni crazy playing Ladies of the Canyon over and over again. She would pick the needle up from the spinning record to play “Circle Game” four or five times in a row, her squeaky voice singing along, full of raw pain, conjuring up the memory of her mother.

  “Ah, Joni is the Queen. What’s your favorite song?”

  “‘My Old Man,’” she lied. “Okay, that’s not true. Confession: I really love “‘Circle Game’”. Bernie watched him nod slowly, a smile on his face.

  “It’s a beautiful song. My mother used to play that when I was a kid.”

  “Sounds like you have a good mom.” Bernie hadn’t listened to the song in a long time, but she could still feel the raw comfort it had given so many years ago. “That’s life, a circle game, the past, the present. We can look back, but we can’t go there. Children grow up and it goes on.”

  “I never gave it that much thought, but you’re right.”

  Bernie looked at her side window, considering how much thought she had put into Joni’s lyrics, how they saved her in some small way.

  “We’re here,” he said as the truck pulled into the parking lot of the Triangle Drive-In, a holdout from the days when drive-ins were the hangouts for high school kids out cruising Belmont on a hot summer night.

  “I didn’t even know this place was here,” Bernie said. “How’d you make this discovery?” She knew that most folks would speed past a place like this with no temptation to venture inside, preferring the familiar menus of McDonalds or Burger King. But not her. And apparently not Don Fielding. “How have I never seen this place? I mean, I come out this way pretty often.”

  “This place has the best burgers and fries in California. There’s a better place in Arizona, but that would take more than an hour.”

  She opened the door herself and slipped out of the truck into a blast of cold wind. She pulled her jacket tight around her and hurried to the front door. Don was already there holding it open for her to rush through. They settled into a booth of red vinyl seats around a chipped Formica tabletop.

  “This is fun,” Bernie said, looking around the half empty dining room. Other than a woman having lunch with her son, a kid about ten years old with what seemed to be a fresh cast on his left arm, no names yet scribbled on the clean white plaster, the other diners were men, men who looked like they worked hard for their money, their skin tough and brown from too much sun, their hands thick and calloused.

  Most of the men Bernie saw during her days seemed artificially sleek and polished, their muscles developed from a challenging workout at the gym, not from hours of manual labor. Her dad was neither of those types. She couldn’t recall him ever worrying about his body, watching what he ate, running laps or lifting weights. He just was what he was. He always looked the same to her, ageless. Her mother was the one who worked hard at looking good, applying makeup and fixing her hair before going to the market, skipping meals and smoking lots of cigarettes to stay thin. Neither of them would ever grow old. She wondered if Julie Randall was beautiful like her mom.

  They sat across from each other, their eyes focused on the plastic menus, examining the choices of burgers, sandwiches, and foot-long chili dogs when the waitress scurried over with her pad and pencil, ready to write. “Can I start you off with some drinks?”

  “Yeah, I’ll have a diet Coke,” Bernie said, not bothering to look up, her eyes still fixed on the laminated menu.

  “Wait a minute,” Don said. “Get a chocolate shake or a lime rickey. You can have a diet coke any old time.”

  “You have lime rickeys?” she asked, her voice raising with a hint more excitement than she expected. “I want one of those.” Her eyes opened wide, grey with a splash of blue, and a happy grin spread across her face as she looked over at Don. “I haven’t had one of those since I was a kid.”

  “They’re the best,” Don added. “Make that two lime rickeys.” He turned his attention to Bernie. “Are you ready to order? I know what I want, but take your time. I’m in no hurry to get back.”

  “What are you getting?”

  “Cheeseburger and fries. It’s ridiculous it’s so good.”

  “Okay, I’ll have that, too, but no mayo. I hate mayo.” She looked at the waitress and with all earnestness she could muster said, “Please, I don’t think I could handle it if my burger came with mayo or Thousand Island or any other strange sauce. I don’t want anything on the bun. I’ll add my own mustard and ketchup.”

  “No problem,” the young woman added and hurried away.

  “‘No problem,’” Don mimicked. “Everyone says that these days. ‘No problem.’ Whatever happened to, ‘Thank you,’ or, ‘Yes, I’ll be right back with those drinks,’ or ‘Absolutely,’ or anything at all. All you ever get from anyone today is ‘no problem’. It used to be ‘have a nice day’ that drove me nuts, but now it’s ‘no problem’.”

  “You’re a strange man,” Bernie said, “nice, but strange.”

  “Oh, you’re just getting to know me,” he said. “What’s sad is that I’m still trying to impress you and destroy my illusion of Zenness with rock and roll and greasy fries.”

  Bernie grinned at his jab at her comment about him being Zen.

  The eager server brought their lime rickeys and sat the drinks down before pulling two straws from her apron pocket. “Your burgers will be right up,” she said then bounced over to drop a check on the table of two men in blue work shirts, their names embroidered above the pockets.

  “So, what’s happening with the Carlos case?”

  “Well, mediation is coming up next month, before Christmas sometime, you know that. I will need you there to work out any settlement matters.”

  “Yeah, Crystal called and told me about it. Don’t worry; it’s on my calendar. I’m just curious if there’s anything new going on.”

  “Actually, Carlos and his grandmother are flying in next week. Their deps are coming up soon. And
if I’m not mistaken, your deposition is being scheduled as well as the driver that hit the Lunas. Right after depositions, like the next day or the next week, I think, is mediation, and hopefully we’ll settle there. If not, we go to trial sometime early next year.”

  “I’m sure you’ll settle.” He paused to take a sip from his glass, not bothering to use a straw.

  Bernie slipped the straw down into the ice and pale-green liquid and took a long drink. “Oh, my God, that’s so good.”

  “Because it’s the real deal, a genuine lime rickey, not just a Mountain Dew with a cherry tossed in.” Don wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist before reaching for his unopened straw. He looked out over her shoulder to the outdoors. “It’s starting to really come down hard out there. That sucks for those people headed out to the cemetery,” he said.

  “I don’t know, rainy days and funerals kind of go together.” She was a bit surprised at his comment; he hadn’t seemed to even notice the procession earlier as they sat and waited for the long line of cars to pass. “It’s just the atmosphere for how they feel.”

  “Are your folks buried around here?” He pulled his straw from the wrapper and slowly lowered it down into his glass, his gaze shifting from the glass to Bernie, back to the glass, and back to Bernie.

  “Yeah, over in St. Peters, a bit farther out.” She tried to seem unfettered by his question, but the very mention of parents reminded her of the dilemma tucked away in her pocket. She also knew how uncomfortable the whole subject of her dead parents was for people. They want to know everything, but they don’t really want to ask. There was an odd sort of pleasure in watching some of them squirm, but ultimately, she ended up feeling like some strange creature in a freak show, so she told them lies, lies to make it easier for them to take, easier than the truth.

  “I take my grandmother out there sometimes. She likes to take flowers to my mother’s grave on her birthday and holidays. Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day.”

  “Just for your mother? What about your father?”

  “My father’s parents died years ago; I barely remember them.”

  “But don’t you and your grandmother visit both of their graves.”

  Bernie wanted to change the subject and wished the food would arrive. They did really well when they talked about food and work. “Sure, they’re buried right next to each other, but, Noni, my grandmother, is my mother’s mother, so she’s just more emotional about her daughter.” She paused for a moment, then added, “She’s never really gotten over it.”

  “I used to come out here when I was in high school. A bunch of us would pile into somebody’s car and head out to the Oddfellow’s Cemetery late at night. There’s this grave out there that’s a bed. An honest-to-God concrete bed, full sized I think, pillows and all.” He picked up a pack of Sweet N Low and studied the small print before flipping it back and forth between two fingers. “We’d drink a few beers then dare one another to lay down on top of it for like ten seconds or something, I don’t remember exactly, but not very long. Then we heard about some girl getting killed out there. They found her body stretched out on the bed.” He shook his head from side to side, as if he was still trying to erase the memory after thirty years. “We didn’t go out there any more after that. Too creepy.”

  Bernie looked toward the ceiling and squinted her eyes as she searched back through her memory, back and back, summoning the details of violent and passionate crimes, her specialty. “I remember that,” she said. “It was her boyfriend who did it. He found out she was going to break up with him, so he strangled her, or stabbed her, I’m not sure about that part. Anyway, he killed her and then took her out to the cemetery and left her there on that bed.” She looked at Don and could almost feel the blood draining from his face and the slight parting of his lips as he listened to her tell of a murder that happened more than twenty years before. “Another crazy love story gone awry,” she said. “It happens every day, you know.”

  That was one of the first articles she’d snipped away from the rest of the daily news. Noni was the one who spotted the story, eagerly carrying the paper to her while she sat doing homework at the kitchen table. “There’s one for you,” she’d said, “cut that one out.” She handed Bernie the kitchen shears and stood at her granddaughter’s side, watching her with peculiar excitement, as if she had given her a cherished gift that she couldn’t wait to see opened. Bernie cut out the gruesome article and carried it to the Capezio shoe box she first used to store her collection of death stories, while her grandmother proudly took the sliced-up paper back to her spot on the red velvet sofa.

  “You know, I probably still have that newspaper article, if you want to see it. I cut it out for some reason; I guess because it was local, and she was about my age, I don’t know.” She realized she had said too much, mentioning the saved news article buried in a plastic tub beneath her bed. “Anyway, I always wanted to see that grave; maybe you can take me by there.”

  She watched his expression fill with the familiar pain of sympathy, the slow tilting of the head, the slack jaw. She hated that look.

  “What happened to you, Bernie? Why are you so, I don’t even know the word, jaded isn’t exactly it, sad, I guess, but in a twisted, grim kind of way. You’re the successful lawyer one minute, even fun now and again, then, I don’t know, bleak or something; I can’t figure you out yet. Why are you so sad?” His dark eyes were clear and focused as if he could find the answer if he looked hard and close as she answered, rendering her unable to lie under such a persistent gaze. With one finger, he lightly touched her forearm.

  Before Bernie could tell him she wasn’t sad, the nervous waitress finally appeared with a plate in each hand, a juicy burger smothered in melted cheddar resting on a French roll with half a plate of golden crinkle fries. She set one down in front of Bernie, the other in front of Don.

  “Can we have some ketchup?” Bernie asked, grateful to retreat to safety of discussing the content of lunch, a half-pound of meat on white bread with a side of potatoes fried in vegetable oil.

  “No problem,” the girl said, pulling a bottle of ketchup from the table behind them and setting it between the two plates before spinning on her heels and heading fast for the kitchen.

  Bernie looked at him and smiled weakly, urging the somber mood to shatter, “Your favorite response,” she said, then lifted the bun to a thick spread of creamy mayonnaise. “Ugh, it’s ruined,” she moaned and dropped the oily bun back down onto the plate, knocking her knife and fork clamoring to the floor in the process. “Now I’m sad.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute, don’t get excited, don’t have a conniption, this one’s yours. There’s nothing on it.” Don reached over and pulled her plate toward him, replacing it with his own. “See, good things happen; like this burger.”

  Don slapped the label on the ketchup bottle to get it flowing. “You know, speaking of clipping news articles, I meant to ask you if you saw the follow-up article about that girl who set the fires in the mountains.”

  “What girl?” She picked up a French fry and folded it into her mouth. It was almost too hot to eat, but a quick sip of lime rickey solved the problem.

  “Remember, the story you cut out. She had written a letter to the judge that you liked, so you cut it out.”

  “Oh, yeah yeah yeah,” she said, happy to talk about other people’s traumatic situations rather than her own. For a moment, she had worried this would turn into another struggle for information about her private life, and like he said, not mentioning something is not lying. She really didn’t want to lie to him.

  “Well, she stole it. She got that whole spiel from some novel; apparently she’s a plagiarizer as well as an arsonist.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. Someone read the letter and recognized it. I meant to call you and ask you if you’d seen the story. See? You can’t believe everything you read.”

  “And, the world is full of liars. Everybody lies sometimes.” She di
dn’t care that the story was stolen. She didn’t care that someone wrote those words as a piece of fiction. They still rang true for her and she would keep them tucked away with all the other rueful tales.

  They each took big bites and for the next five minutes, the only thing they talked about was their lunch, the preference for crinkle fries to shoestrings, occasionally curly fries, but not often, the perfection of the burger, the bun, and the unmentionable fat and calories they were consuming. And finally, all they could do was moan in pleasure as their bellies filled.

  “Boy, it’s really coming down now,” Don said, swirling a long fry into his ketchup, while the rain slapped against the wall of windows.

  “Yeah, it’s dark. It’s like it’s nighttime in the middle of the day.” Bernie had stopped eating and pushed her plate to the side to keep from finishing the last handful of uneaten fries.

  “Hey, I have an idea.” Don leaned forward, as if he were about to share a secret. “Let’s play hooky this afternoon. We’ll get an old movie, build a fire, and just hang out. You can call in well.” He smiled at his own joke. “You know, instead of sick.”

  “I get it. But, I can’t do that. Geez, I’ve been gone too long already.” She looked at her watch and realized it had been over an hour since she left the office. “Crystal’s probably freaking out with this weather. We have an office ghost, you know.”

  “A ghost?”

  “Yep. Old Mrs. Gordon roams around upstairs while we’re working. Floors creak, doors slam mysteriously. And, occasionally she steals files. But she always returns them. I think she just gets bored, so she messes with things.”

  “You don’t really believe that do you?” He seemed amused at her ghost story.

  “I don’t know. There have been some pretty strange things, but no, I don’t think it’s a ghost. I think it’s a busy office and sometimes I don’t remember where I put things and it’s an old house that creaks and groans, and sometimes doors catch a draft of air from below and swing closed. But Crystal is afraid of Mrs. Gordon on rainy days. I need to get back and protect her.”