Four Three Two One

by Courtney Stevens

  “You’re going straight to hell, and they’ll probably keep you,” I replied.

  Rudy hung his arms over the side of the car like he was starring in a sixties movie about drag-strip racers. His hair poked out the front of the beanie. I’d seen Highland cattle with the same cut. I hugged my elbows, as if that would keep him farther from my heart.

  “What are you doing in Orlando?” he asked.

  “I heard you needed a ride to New York City.”

  21. BEWARE OF ALLIGATORS

  $59,989.00

  Necessary pleasantries occurred.

  “This is Becky.”

  “This is Victor.”

  “Friend.”

  “Stepbrother.”

  Rudy was the same as before, and that was mostly a relief. I’d had hours to construct reunion narratives. The one where he didn’t show at all. The one where he lived in Canada. The one where his family forbade him from seeing me. I should have written the narrative where he was here, one parking spot away. I thumbed toward Parkers. “One of your favorite establishments?”

  Victor gave a mirthful laugh and flicked Rudy in the gut. “Told you we should have said Dollar Store.”

  Rudy stopped Victor from swatting him again, and said to us, “Parkers is easy to find if you’re not from here.”

  “We’ve been to worse,” I assured him.

  Victor cast another gleeful, coy look at his stepbrother. “So have we,” which I could have guessed, because their eyes were talking miles a minute. There were so many stories in the space between the boys, I’d never get to read them all, even if they handed me the book. I didn’t have a great vantage point to assess Victor, but he was small, compact, and always smiling. My granddad would have called him “a pistol,” my gran, “a card.” His head was shaved, tan as the rest of him, and he had a cursive tattoo on his shoulder that read Deuce. I liked him immediately.

  I released my elbows. Finally. “Thanks for meeting us.”

  The expression Rudy volleyed back was delightful. “Anytime.”

  Which made it easy to tease back at him. “I have a nasty habit of showing up when you invite me somewhere.”

  “No complaints on my end,” he said.

  I felt slightly queasy. Like I’d eaten some badly cured guilt this morning and my stomach was just beginning to spasm. Becky slipped her hand to my leg and lifted a wrinkle in my jeans. “Keep breathing, you.”

  What were we to do now?

  Rudy sensed my question. “You bring your camera?”

  I lifted the battered Canon into view. “Never without one.”

  This time Rudy hit Victor in the gut before Rudy turned to me and upnodded. There was something unspoken going on and no time to ask for clarity. “Let’s hit the farm,” he said, more to Victor than me. Then, a wicked grin curled Victor’s lips. “You ladies wanna see something beautiful? Besides yourselves, I mean.” He’d said this to other girls, and it had surely worked. Victor was sugar water, and we were meant to be the hummingbirds.

  Becky revved Dolly’s engine. “We do.”

  The boys squealed backward and spun toward the road. “Try to keep up,” Victor yelled at Becky. Thank goodness the traffic was still mind-numbingly slow or we’d have lost them. The Mustang wove through neighborhoods and zipped across a major highway. We drove—God knows where—through canopies of Spanish moss and glades and reeds and past houses with big boats and houses with small boats and mansions with manicured lawns and shacks where the only income seemed to come from hot boiled peanuts. Two turns-offs later, we Y’d onto a furrowed dirt road and into a pull-out. A rusted chain stretched between two crooked wooden posts. The posted sign read:

  PRIVATE PROPERTY

  Beware of Alligators

  Becky said, “Quaint,” and I said, “The Farm.”

  “A place for beautiful ladies,” Becky added, mocking Victor, and clearly pleased with the compliment.

  My insides were pacing. Not from fear. I never once felt like we were in danger. Well, not physical danger. Every minute we spent with Rudy and Victor felt like inching toward the ledge of the fire tower back home. Breathtaking and precarious. Becky expressed it best. “We’re in it deep already, aren’t we?”

  Victor flung his door open, fiddled with a combination lock, and the chain collapsed to the ground. Two tire ruts led to the hilltop. Dolly and the ’Stang parked side by side under a Florida oak, its gnarled branches curling from the trunk like octopus legs. The clock rolled from 8:59 to 9:00. Rudy called, “Four. Three. Two. One. Look there,” as fireworks lit the horizon. Boom. Boom. Boom. I recoiled, shrinking in the seat. Rudy passed something to Becky’s outstretched hand. Noise-reduction headphones.

  Victor winked at me. “My man, Ru, thinks of everything. Got his babies and bathwater in two separate containers.”

  Rudy smiled proudly. “I really love fireworks. And I thought you might want to shoot the famous nightly Magic Kingdom show.”

  I couldn’t put my appreciation into coherent words. Instead, I made the necessary adjustments to camera settings, leaped from Dolly, and snapped photos in time with pyrotechnic beauty. The sky was in utter cooperation, night-black, the magical quality that makes you think of lampposts inside wardrobes and shifting staircases under castle spires. All that firmament spent the day inhaling beauty, and this was its gloriously long exhale. I took a very deep breath, smelled the sulfur and copper, the hint of citrus permeating the air, and thought, Am I awake?

  Headphones on, I walked to Rudy’s side of the Mustang. “Thank you for this.”

  “What?”

  I yelled over the explosions. “Thank you!”

  He lifted the left earpiece from his face, grinned. “Say it again?”

  I took his picture instead. Letting the camera catch around my neck, I gripped the door. Rudy covered my fingers with his; the weight of his body seemed to be in those hands. Victor turned toward the opposite window.

  “Pinch me,” Rudy whispered.

  I eased the words out. “I still have Boyfriend.”

  His eyes cut downward toward the diamond hearts on my fourth finger. “That from him?”

  “Yeah.”

  Rudy’s hand limped away from mine. He scratched his scalp, the beanie shifting around to reveal more wayward dark hair. “Boyfriend not want to come along?”

  I shrugged and looked skyward, not wanting to out Chan, and not feeling the urge to defend him either. My eyes stung, but I kept the tears inside my head.

  “Hey! No worries. I swear. I’m very glad you’re happy, Go. I’ve wanted that for you,” Rudy said.

  He’d considered me enough since June to want something for me, and I liked having occupied space in his life the same way he had occupied space in mine. “I’ve wanted happiness for you too.”

  “Guess there’s some mutual wanting going on.” Before I responded, Rudy leaned around so Becky heard him. “We really moving this party to New York?”

  “If you’re willing,” she said for us.

  “Willing and . . . able.”

  Victor cut in. “Where are you lovely ladies staying tonight?”

  I made a grand gesture at the cab. “Top reservation at Hotel Dolly Dodge.”

  That’s the moment Rudy realized I hadn’t planned this out. He checked with Victor, who flipped his hat around and gripped the wheel. Rudy looked off toward the Magic Kingdom and said, “Follow us. We’ll see about parking that reservation somewhere safer than an alligator farm.”

  22. ALL-WHEEL DRIVES

  $61,469.00

  We played follow the leader for the second time, and Becky did a bang-up job of not asking, “Jennings, what the hell are we doing?”

  Wise on her. I had a very short list of things I knew. Four in total.

  I knew Chan hadn’t called and that if I were home right now, and everything were normal, we’d be nice and cozy watching a nineties movie with soft action and glaringly bad CGI. My head would be pillowed on his thighs; one of his hands resting heavy on
my head, the other sketching.

  I knew Carter’s fund had collected more than sixty thousand dollars.

  I knew a boy I’d met twice handed me noise-reduction headphones during a fireworks show.

  And I knew I was still terrified of buses.

  We passed Parkers, and Becky ran out of grace. “Those fireworks. That was some show,” she said in a way that was 90 percent Charlotte’s Web and 10 percent asshole.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “You keep telling yourself that, Jennings.”

  There was no time to tell myself anything else. The Mustang stopped along a curb in a neighborhood where the roofs needed repairs and the paint peeled off in large dandruffy flakes. The house directly in front of us had two front windows, one broken, and one apparently added for the sole purpose of holding a window unit. Two baseball bats braced the AC.

  “This is us,” Rudy yelled. “Pull into the yard.”

  At home, we had bent grass for acres, a luscious green that fused to the knees of your jeans and wouldn’t wash out. If not for the ants, you could roll around and mistake the lawn for your bed. The yard here was scrubby sand with a few pimples of grass. It was packed with parked cars and plastic toys. The aforementioned Pontiac and a rusted-out yellow Jeep lacking a back left tire lurked beside the remnant of a wooden fence. Victor honked the horn and a neighbor across the street yelled, “Victor!”

  “Marco!” Victor called jovially and whipped out of the Mustang like a gunshot. A curly-haired baby toddled onto the porch and pinched the air to wave at us while licking a push-up ice cream pop. In a well-practiced move, Victor pinned the kid to his hip and blew a zerbert on his reddened belly. “Auntie Jane put you to bed at eight o’clock, Little Man.”

  The kid cackled.

  “Victor’s son, Deuce,” Rudy said to us from his passenger seat.

  Victor called over his shoulder to Rudy, “I’m coming, man,” and deposited Deuce inside the house, hustling back to the Mustang. Rudy didn’t move until his stepbrother lifted a low-profile wheelchair from the trunk and positioned it close to the passenger door, wheels locked. Rudy transitioned from the car to the chair, the motion graceful and easy.

  “Nice ride,” I said admiringly.

  He picked at the edge of a fitness sticker wrapping the lime-green frame. “I should have told you about my highly specialized wheels.”

  “No,” Becky answered for us. “It’s fine. We love all-wheel drives.”

  Becky made a scene while trying not to make a scene. I slid down the cab and fell into step beside Rudy. “I should have told you I was coming to Orlando today.”

  He popped a wheelie and spun a full circle. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “I can’t believe I am.”

  “I can’t believe you want to go to New York.”

  “How can we not try?” I said, thinking of everything Carter and the viewers had done. “All those strangers. They’re being so amazing.”

  “All we did was live. I don’t deserve college money for that, but I’m really stoked.”

  A very large gray dog—the one from Facebook—broke loose from inside. With wild abandon, the animal flung himself onto Rudy’s lap as if they’d been separated for years. “This is Buddy Holly.” Rudy wrapped the Great Dane in a hug and patted his muscular haunches. Buddy Holly wiggled into a better position. The dog must have weighed eighty or ninety pounds.

  “Buddy Holly?” I repeated. In 1959 Buddy Holly, the rock star, not the dog, died in an explosion. On a plane, not a bus.

  Buddy Holly’s ears thrust straight into the air like triangular satellites searching for a signal at the sound of his name.

  Rudy said, “Not what you’re probably thinking. He’s named after a Weezer song. Fairly one-hit wonderish, but Mom played their CD when she made lasagna. And you know how that goes? You like something weird and it’s connected to something happy and then all of a sudden you’re naming your dog Buddy Holly and smelling pesto in his dander.” He buried his face in the dog’s great neck and nuzzled him. “Isn’t that right, Buddy?” The dog nibbled his ear. “So, y’all want to come meet some of my family? You can even crash inside if you want.”

  “Give us a minute. We’ll be right behind you.” I was watching the dog.

  Rudy rolled from the road to the sidewalk to a rather steep wooden ramp. He turned back and looked at me, full grin. “You should see me at the skate park,” he said, and moved up the ramp in a few swift pulls. Victor and another dude appeared on the porch. The other guy gave a crooked, gap-toothed smile and waved. “We got beers if you’re thirsty,” he called before disappearing through the screen door.

  Becky traced her lips with her favorite brick shade. “I handled that pretty well, yeah?” Her sarcasm dripped all over us.

  “He has a dog named Buddy Holly,” I said.

  “Jennings”—she gave me a conspiratorial look—“do you also have a Great Dane named Buddy Holly?”

  “No, I had a Lab mutt named Weezer. Named after the same obscure nineties group, whom I liked . . . because—get this—my mother listened to their CD.”

  She scratched lipstick from her tooth. “A. Play your mom some real music. And B. You’re stretching synchronicity pretty thin, my friend.”

  “Come on. It is ironic.”

  “Careful, honey. You can’t marry him over a nineties band connection. Hardly anything worthwhile came out of the nineties.”

  Considering the sheer number of Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirts Becky owned, this didn’t seem to be a serious statement. “Are you sure?” I teased, poking her in the ribs. “Don’t tell anyone, but we drove to Florida . . . so I could marry my Facebook boyfriend . . . because he has a dog named”—I lowered my voice to a seductive quality—“Buddy Holly.”

  “Golden Jennings, I love you.”

  “Why?” I asked, which is never the proper response when someone says I love you.

  “For starters, you find out your Facebook boyfriend—your word choice, not mine—is in a wheelchair and you’re going on about a dog and a nineties band? That’s grade A refreshing.”

  “Why does it matter if he’s in a wheelchair?”

  “Doesn’t. Just seemed like late-breaking news.”

  Rudy lived through Bus #21 when nineteen others hadn’t. I wasn’t about to place restraints on miracles. “Becky, everything about this trip is late-breaking news.”

  “True. So, hey, maybe you should call your fiancé before we shack up here for the night.”

  “I want him to call me first.”

  “Said every girl ever.” Becky lifted her Vera Bradley duffel, gave her eyes and lips one last check in the side mirror, and then followed my Facebook boyfriend and his sugar-and-spicy stepbrother into their Orlando house.

  CAROLINE

  I hurled moments before the air particles compressed. Rudy and I tumbled down the well, soaked in my breakfast. Two eggs. Three strips of bacon. A glass of orange juice. The shock waves carried energy like jet engines. The shrapnel—screws Dozer and John had crammed into the vests—rocketed outward and vacuumed inward.

  When a bomb goes off, if you’re the one who bought the dynamite, you’re thinking about Taco Bell quesadillas, farmers named “Z,” plump sweet lips wearing Hot Tamale Sparkle pressed against yours, a second mouth inside your mouth probing and whispering, “Boom. Boom. Boom,” the thunking sound a PVC pipe makes when it strikes your temple because your boyfriend thinks you’re leaving him for a girl. You are. You were. You wanted to. You didn’t. You curled on the shower tile, beneath a teak seat covered in Moroccan argan oil and Neutrogena face wash, wondering about the effects of ingesting shampoo.

  You’re thinking, Let death be swift, and God forgive me, and If I’d already killed myself, would any of this have happened?

  Because you know everyone else is dead.

  And that’s your fault.

  And it will always be your fault.

  23. THE NEXT LOGICAL CHOICE

  $61,769.00


  Over the years, Chandler and I have held court on a number of things. Cars. His aspirations included power-train warranties with backup cameras. I want vehicles to move forward, backward, and occasionally diagonally. Church. I like to attend. He likes Sunday mornings relegated for sleep. Children. I want them. He doesn’t. (Too many unpredictable factors to suit his taste.) Our latest bout: cities. He’d strike their existence from earth. I was currently traveling to the one that never slept.

  Apparently, we disagreed over things that started with the letter C.

  I already knew we disagreed about Carter Stockton and non-C-word Rudy Guthrie.

  Because I disliked war on all levels, especially with Chan, I developed a peacemaking trick for conversations that had nuclear potential. Before impending confrontations, I listed reasons the person was in my life. I jotted a list about Chan on several rogue glove-box napkins—the list was too short to encompass Chan but long enough to encapsulate his humanity—and made the call.

  He answered.

  I opened with “I sent you a text,” instead of Why haven’t you called? A victory. For a phone connection traveling miles to space and back, Chan crossed the distance quickly.

  “Where are you?”

  “Orlando.”

  “What’s in Orlando?”

  “Another survivor.”

  Silence on a cell phone isn’t actual silence. Plenty of noise boomeranged between us. The breathing. The rising of his hackles. “Golden.” My name sounded like a weapon.

  I stared at my list and then crumpled it in my fist. “You said find someone else to talk to.”

  “I meant your mom.”

  “Yeah right.”

  “I meant Gran.”

  “Gran wasn’t with us last June.”

  “So the next logical choice was to drive to Florida?”

  Try New York.

  “I guess.”

  “You guess. Anything else I need to know about you two?”

  “No. God no. It’s nothing like that.”

  “Seems to me like this is the second time you’ve followed him somewhere that got us in trouble.”