The Spaces Between Us

by Stacia Tolman

  “Um…” I begin. “I don’t think…”

  “Just do it,” he says.

  It takes me three tries to get over the gate, but I manage it, and we drop down to the wooden deck of the bridge.

  “There was a murder here last year,” Bo explains. “A couple guys pushed a girl over the edge. So now they lock it up at night.” He takes my hand and we walk out over an expanse of water. “Route 66 crossed the river here,” he says softly, putting a hand on a girder and looking up at the web of steel. “Over a mile to the other side.” The night is soft and warm. There are no lights along either side of the river, but a glow past the trees to the south provides a soft light.

  “That’s St. Louis,” Bo says, pointing at the glow.

  We walk a long way out to the middle of the bridge, where there is a scenic overlook hanging out over the water. I am just about to ask Bo about the name of the bridge when I notice just that, a chain of rocks, stretching across the river, partially submerged, creating a wake with a soft, rushing sound. I point at it.

  “Is that the chain of rocks?”

  “That’s the chain of rocks.”

  “So what river is this?”

  Bo looks at me and smiles. I smile back. “You can’t guess what river this is?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “That’s St. Louis.” He points at the glow above the trees.

  “Yeah.”

  “Missouri.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And that’s East St. Louis.” He points at the glow on the other side of the river. “Illinois. And whatever river this is, it must be damn big, because the Chain of Rocks Bridge is a mile across.”

  “Yeah. So what river is it?”

  He smiles and shakes his head. “You take your time. It’ll come to you. We got all night.”

  “This bridge is a mile long?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And that’s St. Louis, Missouri?”

  “Yup.”

  “So this is … the Mississippi River?”

  “Yup.”

  “Wow.” Suddenly, I feel like weeping. I lean over the railing and let the tears drip off my nose. I wipe my eyes and my nose on my sleeve and stand up.

  A barge glides by underneath us, a silent black shape followed by the rattling sound of a tugboat engine.

  “I love how the river smells.”

  “What’s it smell like?”

  I inhale. “Mud. Oil. Tar. Faraway places. Like the road, a little, only different. On a river you can smell the whole world. A river smells like a big wet dog.”

  Bo laughs. “Good image,” he says. “Maybe you smell me. I never did take that shower this morning. I was so worried the dispatcher was gonna send me back to California I forgot all about it.”

  “Have you always had a thing about bridges?”

  “Always.” He tells me old bridges inspire him, it’s where he goes to write songs. Sometimes he sings them into his phone, sometimes he writes them down and then finds the tune later. We stay on the bridge for a long time. When I tell him the plot of Huckleberry Finn, how Huck and Jim probably went right past here on a raft, his arms are around me. When he tells me about his old-timey family in Texas, how he grew up singing in church, my ear is against his chest and his words sink into my skin. I ask him to tell me more about how he turns the stories he hears on call-in radio into songs, he says that everything you see and hear goes into a big hopper in your mind, and you can never tell what’s going to come out in a song.

  When we kiss, it’s awkward at first. We don’t really fit together right away. Fortunately, other forces are working in my favor. Going around the bend, a tugboat blows its horn, lonesome and romantic. The wind picks up and sighs through the girders of the bridge.

  Just on the other side of the trees, trucks on the interstate hum east and west, and below us the river quietly flexes its muscles. Bo pulls me in close, and suddenly everything fits, like two halves of a broken bowl.

  “Damn,” he says. He takes a step away but leaves a hand on my back. “I wasn’t going to put the moves on you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.” He sighs. “I don’t like one-night stands. I always feel empty the next day.” He brushes his hand up and down my back. “When I first saw you leaning against the bumper of Bob’s truck, I thought I must be dreaming. I thought, There is no way that anyone that pretty is standing in a parking lot in Boomtown waiting for a ride.” He looks down at me. “I like you,” he says. “A lot, but—you’re so … educated.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Hardly,” he mimics. “See? You been to college?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither. You finish high school?”

  “No.”

  “GED?”

  “No.”

  “I got mine in the corps.” He sighs. “I guess I’m kind of conservative that way.” He holds my face in his hands, his forehead to mine. He looks off at the river. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’ve never met anybody like you.”

  “What am I like?”

  “You’re so sure you’re right.” He puts his arm around me, and we walk off the bridge back to Illinois. We take the bike path up the steep riverbank and then find the parking lot again through the underbrush.

  And then there’s the truck.

  Is that it? Isn’t he supposed to take charge, somehow, of something? Isn’t that the deal? That’s how it always worked with Grimshaw. All she had to do was be pretty, and they figured out the rest. But Bo is just walking toward his truck. I hurry ahead and step in front of him. He stops. My hands start flailing wildly. “I, I—” I stammer. “I just want to—” I look at him, wanting him to guess what I want. He puts his hands in his pockets and waits. “I want to sleep with you tonight.” It comes out loud and wrong, a desperate cry clanging against the softness of the night and ruining the rightness of everything that’s happened so far.

  “Yeah.” Bo nods. “I want that, too.”

  I run to get my backpack out of the Kenworth while Bo rents us a room.

  “Sst, Grimshaw,” I hiss into the dark cab. No response. “Grimshaw!” I repeat, a little louder. Silence. “You got a condom?” The curtain flings open.

  “Se-re-na!”

  “Well, do you?”

  “With a trucker?”

  “Why, are truckers beneath us now?”

  She coughs her disdain.

  “Just give me the damn condom.” The curtain shuts.

  “Grimshaw…” I plead. Out comes the condom. I snatch it.

  “Slut,” she says.

  “Bitch,” I hiss back. I slam the door as hard as I can. Bo comes walking toward me. We meet in the middle of the parking lot. He tosses me a key attached to a big wooden stick. It looks like the restroom key to a filling station.

  “Room thirty-three,” he says, walking toward the truck. “I gotta go get my gym bag.”

  I hold up his gym bag. “I got it.”

  He stops and slowly pivots around to face me. “You got it,” he says.

  “It was on the front seat.” All I can see is his silhouette. We walk toward the strip of doors, staying about five feet apart.

  “You sure this is the right thing to do?” he asks.

  “No.” I find room thirty-three and jam the key into the lock. I jiggle the handle and kick the door. The room smells like mildew, urine, Lestoil, and stale tobacco, covered over by artificial strawberry air freshener. There are two huge beds. I throw Bo’s gym bag on the first one, my backpack on the second one, go into the bathroom, strip, and get in the shower. I lean my head against the shower wall and let the water beat on my back. The water is so chlorinated it makes my eyes burn. When I put my clothes on and come out into the room, Bo’s looking out the window at his truck. Without saying a word, he picks up the gym bag and goes into the bathroom. The shower starts. The wallpaper room features little amoebic shapes with specks in them, like magnified germs. The drapes and bedspreads are green. The c
arpet is orange. It’s the ugliest place I’ve ever been.

  Bo showers for a long time. I’m staring up at the ceiling when he comes out. He’s rubbing his head with a towel. He has blue jeans on and no shirt. I close my eyes. When I open them, he’s looking out at his truck again, through the slats of the Venetian blinds.

  “I don’t even know where you’re headed,” he says.

  “New York.”

  “City?”

  “State. We started in LA.”

  “She doesn’t seem very happy.”

  “She’s not.”

  “Are you a dancer, too?”

  “No.” I tell him the story of me and Grimshaw, which leads to the part about her wanting to be a stripper, which leads to the part about Mike Lyle and LA and the postcard and the bus trip out. I take him right up through how Melody left me asleep on the dirty laundry pile in the dressing room at the Over Easy.

  “Was your plan—to try to seduce the boyfriend to get him to break up with her?” he asks.

  “It was more like survival than a plan. But, yeah. I guess that was the plan.”

  “And it worked?” he asks.

  I nod again. “She’s out there in the truck.” Bo comes over and sits across from me on the other bed.

  He jerks his thumb at the window. “Does she know? About your plan?”

  “Are you kidding me? If she knew … oh my God. But she doesn’t know. No, she’s not going to. I was going to tell her about it, about what happened. I tried to. But it’s too late now.”

  Bo shakes his head. “It’s a dangerous game, saving people. Usually, they hate your guts for it. I should know.”

  “I didn’t mean to save her.”

  “So did this guy do anything to you?”

  “Well, not exactly. I left him thinking something would happen later, after he broke it off with her. At the club, I was asleep in the dressing room, out cold, and Grimshaw comes storming in with her suitcase, talking about how she’s always hated his guts, and she throws my backpack on me and says, ‘Let’s go, we’re going home,’ and by then it’s early morning and we’re out on the road, and that’s pretty much the end of the story.” The only part I leave out is that Grimshaw and I are still in high school, or at least I am.

  When I stop talking, he’s quiet for a long time. At first, I regret having told him anything. I wish he still saw me as this educated girl stranded on the shores of I-80. I feel dirty, like the whole thing’s just too sordid. Then I think through the whole scenario again, starting with Grimshaw’s postcard. I think about what would have happened if I’d gone straight home from Western Civ that day, if I’d not pilfered my mom’s wallet, not gotten on the bus, not showed up at Grimshaw’s gate, and not provoked Mike Lyle. Nothing, that’s what. Something is better than nothing. It has to be. This is America, after all. So I don’t have anything to worry about, morally.

  “You’re still in high school, aren’t you?” Bo finally asks.

  “I’m a senior. I’m on my spring vacation.”

  He nods. “That notebook should have tipped me off.”

  He sits on the edge of the bed. He takes my hand, opens it up, and traces the lines with his fingers.

  “You’re a good friend. See? Right there.”

  “That one? It ends.”

  “I’m just kidding around. I don’t know anything about it. I just wanted to hold your hand. But you don’t have to know how to read palms to know you’re a good friend.”

  “That’s what everyone says,” I sigh. “Everyone but her.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “That’s usually the way.” He climbs over me and lies down next to me on the other side of the bed on top of the covers. He puts his hands under his head. I turn toward him under the covers.

  “You have skinny arms,” I tell him.

  “Yup.” He holds them out. “Long and skinny. My old man always says that’s why God put pockets on blue jeans.”

  “Are you ticklish?” I ask.

  He slaps his arms down to his sides. I have an intuition that the small of his back is vulnerable. I attack it under the covers. Bull’s-eye. He screams, I mean, literally screams with high-pitched laughter. So I keep it up. He attacks back, but to no avail—I am the least ticklish person in America. We roll around laughing and wrestling and yelling. We end up on the floor between the beds wrapped up in the covers like a burrito, with only one thin layer of blanket between us. Somebody bangs on the wall next to our heads. Bo grabs two pillows off the bed for us and props his head on his hand.

  “So you’ve tried saving people, too?” I ask him.

  “Yeah. And I really screwed it up.”

  He starts telling me how stupid and mean and lazy his brother Jason got after he quit school. The marines wouldn’t take him because he didn’t score high enough on their test, he was too proud to work in fast food, and he couldn’t get a real job because nobody was hiring dropouts, although his father pulled every string he could at the refinery. So he got in more and more trouble, out of boredom. Finally, Jason seemed to get it together. St. Luke’s, the hospital in Beaumont where he had a temp job doing maintenance, hired him on full-time. He got a car and a steady girlfriend.

  “Priscilla,” Bo says, and then stops.

  One day, Priscilla shows up at the high school and wants to see Bo. It’s important. She’s running away, and she wants Bo to tell Jason why. Remember that story in the papers, she starts, about the crack addict who was found half dead and tied to the bed in an Econo Lodge? Well, that was Jason. He did it. He traded crack for sex, and then afterwards the girl told him she had HIV. She thought it was funny. Jason grabbed her by the hair, she kicked him in the nuts, and then Jason lost it. He wasn’t used to smoking crack. He came home and told Priscilla everything. For a long time, they thought the girl was brain-dead, but now she was coming out of her coma. She was still hooked up to tubes, but she would be ready to talk to the police as soon as the doctors thought she was up to it. She’s at St. Luke’s, Priscilla said. Jesus, Bo said. You don’t think he’d do anything, do you? Talk to Jason before his shift starts, she begged. Tell him. He won’t listen to me. Why would he listen to me? Bo asked her. I’m just his kid brother. I don’t know, I’m too scared, Priscilla said. I can’t deal with shit like this.

  “So I turned him in,” Bo says. “Before his shift started, I called the cops. And it turns out the girl was so messed up already, she didn’t remember a damn thing. All she remembered was getting soda cans out of the machine to make pipes. When he sat in front of her in court, she had no idea who he was.”

  “Maybe you thought he’d get help,” I suggest. That makes Bo laugh. Not in Texas.

  Nobody in his family has spoken to him since that day. Not even his old man, not even after Bo joined the marines.

  “Stubborn son of a bitch,” Bo says.

  “I think they’re making a terrible mistake.”

  “I stabbed him in the back. My own brother.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “But nothing.”

  “But—”

  “No buts.”

  “But—”

  He rolls on top of me and stops my mouth with a long kiss.

  “You want to defend me,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “Defend my honor.”

  “Yes.”

  “Say I did the right thing.”

  “You did—”

  He kisses me again.

  “Just because I’m a nice guy,” he whispers in my ear, “doesn’t mean I did the right thing. Remember that now.”

  I push him off me and sit up. “You think too much,” I tell him. “Riding the roads all day and all night, brooding on the past.”

  “Well,” he says, “I just met someone who’s as big a fool as me.” He puts an arm under his head. “So now I’ve got something else to think about.”

  I look down at him. “You don’t think I did the right thing?”

  “Sure,” he says. “You did the right thing. Take i
t to the bank. But it’s like you said, you set bigger things in motion, things you can’t control. Yesterday I was hauling gaskets to Iowa, wondering if I could stand the boredom for another day. Today I’m in a crummy hotel in East St. Louis, talking to you.”

  I try to get back that feeling I had that first night out from LA, while Grimshaw played pool and I drank whiskey at the bar, the feeling that I had won, and that I was right, and that everything was going to work out. But the feeling isn’t there anymore. Grimshaw is out there in the truck, certain that the closer she gets to Colchis, the farther she’s getting from her dream.

  “We really don’t know very much, do we?”

  “We sure don’t. The smart ones know how stupid they are.”

  “So they can forgive themselves?”

  “Maybe.”

  Against the white of his skin, there is a triangle of chest hair. I put my hand on it. I slide my hand down his chest and feel his stomach muscles tighten. In the shadow his eyes reflect an unseen source of light, and they’re fastened on me. In this swirl of right and wrong, good intentions and bad outcomes, there’s only one thing I’m sure of right now. Only one thing is certain. And that’s what I want.

  He reaches his hand up to me. I pull him off the floor, and we get into bed.

  * * *

  Next morning, I come into the truck stop diner, wearing Bo’s white T-shirt and his leather jacket. He’s on a pay phone somewhere, having a big argument with his dispatcher about whether someone else can take the potatoes to Tennessee so that he can secretly drive us the rest of the way home. I walk up to Grimshaw, who’s in the back of the restaurant. She rips open a packet of sugar and slowly stirs it into her cup of coffee.

  “Hi.”

  She raises her eyes and fixes me with a hostile gaze. A guy in white with a paper hat on his head goes by behind me, dragging a mop and a garbage can on wheels. I lean forward to get out of his way. She watches him walk by. I sit down.

  “Here. Have another one.” Grimshaw flips a condom across the table at me. She jerks her head at the janitor. “In case he wants to do you behind the dumpster.”