Hick

by Andrea Portes

  I give up on the upstairs and decide to venture down to the first floor. There’s a light coming from somewhere down there, with voices echoing off the white plaster walls. I walk towards the action and find myself staring at three high school jocks playing Marco Polo in a chintzy pool.

  One by one, they look up at me, unconscious, stopping their game. There’s no way to play this off. They’re staring at me and I’m staring at them, plain and simple. Seems like the rest of the world just dropped off the face of the earth.

  “Hi,” I squeak out, sounding more like a lizard than a real live girl, with dreams and a newfound body to get them with.

  The boys look at each other, silent, deciding who’s gonna talk first or if they should even bother to answer at all. Nothing.

  I give up, chalking it up to them being rich and me being some country-fried lowlife from the sticks. I spot the ice machine over in the vending area on the other side of the pool and give it a go, wishing I didn’t have to walk past their perfect-life stares.

  One of the boys gets out of the pool and walks towards me. He’s dripping wet and coming closer.

  I’m too shy to look at him, so I put all my attention into the ice machine, burying my head deep inside, pretending to use all my concentration to scoop out the ice with the scooper.

  “Careful. That thing might swallow you up.”

  “Ha ha, funny,” I say, before I can stop myself. Being a smart-aleck is second nature.

  He unhooks the little swinging door above me, threatening to drop it on my head.

  “Tell me your name or you’ll be sorry.”

  He smiles down at me, holding the chrome door so it teeters perilous over my head. Looking up at him for the first time, I notice that he is about sixteen and much too good-looking to be talking to me. He’s spoiled-looking and handsome, with green eyes and light-brown hair, the color of ashes. He has that confidence you get from never having to worry what you’re gonna eat for dinner or if there’s even anything coming at all, like he’s entitled to a fun life and every moment is just a part of the ongoing heaven of pleasant surprises and bouncy youth. His skin has this undertone glow of olive, like he never ate a Twinkie his whole life. He smiles at me with perfect teeth and I regret that I was ever born.

  “C’mon, then, what’s your name . . . you better tell me or you’re gonna get it.”

  “Luli.” Again, like a lizard.

  “Come again?”

  “Luli. My name’s Luli.”

  I finish scooping the ice and stand straight, owning up. He closes the chrome door.

  “Well, that’s a weird name.”

  “Yeah, wull, it was nice meeting you.”

  I start to walk off, awkward. I don’t fit in and never will. I’m too lowborn for them, might as well just face facts.

  “Hey! Excuse me? Aren’t you gonna ask my name?”

  I stop in my tracks, turning slightly. I’ve got my feet pointed forward but my top twisted back, like a contorted pretzel trying to play it cool.

  “No.”

  “Well, why not?”

  “Because I don’t care.”

  I start walking.

  He stops and then lets out a laugh, collapsing everything back into good fun and high times. He’s not gonna let this world turn bad on him, no sir.

  “Okay. Well, then, I’ll tell you anyway. My name’s Clement.”

  “Oh, and you say my name’s weird?”

  “it’s a family name.”

  “Oh.”

  The two of us stand there, sizing each other up, trying to pretend we’re not. His two friends make believe they’re not watching from the pool.

  “You ever hear of the category game?”

  “The what?”

  “The category game. it’s this game we like to play with cards, just face cards.”

  “Why’s it called the category game?”

  “Well, cause, if you turn over a Jack you have to think of a category.”

  “What kind of a category?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, could be anything. Like . . . things you would find in a hardware store . . . or fake rock bands, in alphabetical order. So, then, if you went first, you would say something like . . . Acid Head. And then the second person would say something like . . . Black Serpent. Or something like that. And then you just go around and around until someone can’t think of anything or someone repeats . . . and then they have to drink.”

  “Sounds stupid.”

  He laughs again and looks at his friends, still pretend ignoring.

  “It is stupid. that’s why we play it. C’mon, you should try it. it’ll be fun.”

  “Um. I dunno . . . I’m kind of supposed to be getting back.”

  “Just one game. One game. I promise. it’ll be fun.”

  He grabs the ice outta my hand and motions to the corner, where they’ve got their towels set up on a cooler, hiding the beer under a table with a white-and-blue umbrella and four matching white plastic chairs.

  Clement takes out a chair for me and doesn’t move till I sit down. I look up at him, nervous to be treated so good. He sits across from me, smiling to his friends over his shoulder. I don’t like it. I don’t want to be some inside joke between friends, some girl you fiddled with in some cheap hotel in Utah.

  Just then two older folks walk up and smile big, looking proud down at Clement and his two friends, still pretend playing in the pool. The man is on the tubbier side but he’s got an air about him, something tan and comforting, like a dad you’d see on TV, the kind that takes his sons hunting and buys his daughter a pony for her sweet sixteen. Next to him stands a woman who looks exactly like a horse.

  If you took a horse and gave it tits and a blond head of hair, that would be this woman. And that’s not all. There’s something about her, something conniving and cheap, like she’s just along for the ride and hit the jackpot with Mr. Comfort. She wears a white vest, somewhere between a dress shirt and a tank top, with a pair of new-bought, too-tight jeans. I can’t believe this woman is hanging off Mr. Comfort’s elbow. If she could get this guy, with her horsemouth, then my mama, with her blond flip and steel-gray eyes, ought to be able to land a billionaire.

  Clement puts his feet up on the cooler, casual.

  “Luli, this is my dad, Buck.”

  Mr. Comfort looks at me, tan and charming. “Nice to meet you, Luli.”

  The horsemouth looks at Clement and waits for a response. Clement smiles at me like that’s that and doesn’t say a word.

  “Well, Clement, aren’t you gonna introduce me?”

  Clement keeps smiling at me, not looking her way.

  Buck chimes in, nice and easy. He’s got a voice sweet like molasses, like some ancient medicine from where the buffalo roam. “Luli, this is my wife, Edna.”

  Clement clears his throat and I just about start laughing because I cannot believe that someone who looks so much like Mr. Ed would actually be named Edna.

  “It is so nice to meet you, Luli. What an unusual name.”

  I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is about this woman that so clearly reeks gold-digger, gold-digger, gold-digger, but I will tell you this, I am about ninety percent sure that he met her on a flight where she was a stewardess and she bent over backwards to turn him into a mark because that’s why she became a stewardess in the first place. And I don’t know why I think this but it just hits me and all the sudden I hear myself saying, “Did you used to be a stewardess?”

  And this changes the air around each individual into a different shade. Mr. Comfort smiles, amazed. Clement starts to laugh and Miss Horsemouth looks like she could just clop clop clop her way right over me, if Mr. Comfort would only let go of the reins. She checks herself, chomping at the bit, trying to play nice.

  “Why, yes, how did you ever guess that?”

  Clement is pretending not to laugh into his hand, keeping his head down and smiling up at me through his eyes, twinkling. Buck is smiling, benevolent, not a mean bone in
his body, like some countrified Buddha.

  “Oh, just a lucky guess.”

  “Well, that is truly amazing. I am shocked,” Buck chimes in, leaving me wondering why I can’t have Mr. Comfort for a dad and why I got stuck with Mr. Drunk and Sometimes Speed instead.

  The horse lady looks down at me, plotting her revenge.

  “You live around here, Luli? Maybe outside of town. Wait a minute, are you from that trailer park across the street or are you staying right here at the motel?”

  Clement freezes, fixing his eyes on the ground.

  “Dad, we’re trying to play a game here, so—”

  “Ooo! What kinduva game?! Can I play?” she neighs out, making my skin crawl, the timber of her voice like fingernails on a blackboard, high-pitched and whiny.

  “No, sorry, it’s a kid game.”

  Clement still has his eyes fixed on the ground.

  Mr. Comfort smiles like everything in the universe is exactly as it should be, now and evermore. Edna looks like she’d like to take this kid all the way to the chopping block. I’m starting to wonder how long it’s gonna be till Eddie comes down and turns this little scene of domestic drama into more like a circus of insanity.

  “Wull, I’d better go. it’s getting late—” I start to move my chair back.

  “No no no. You just stay put. Just stay right there,” Clement says, reaching his hand out and touching me on the elbow. And then I see it, some little crack in the Wedgwood, and I can see, behind his eyes, deep into the back of his late-night dreams, a pleading from the same place of shame and desperation that I hail from. It stops me in my tracks.

  “Well, we’ll just be going to bed, then.” Mr. Comfort says it, leading Miss Horse with him in a semi-circle and then back upstairs. She follows, obedient, clopping her way out the picture, not failing to look back, one last look at Clement that says she’ll get him, she’ll get him, just give her time.

  “That’s not my mom. In case you’re wondering,” Clement whispers, making sure they’re well out the way before opening the cooler and grabbing a beer.

  “Wull, yeah, I could tell.”

  “She’s my step-mother.”

  “Oh.”

  “But when my dad’s gone, she likes to pretend she’s my wife.” He says it quiet like he never said it before and it doesn’t exist.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  There ain’t nothing to say to that. And I don’t. I don’t try to follow up or pretend it never was or act concerned or play after-school special. I don’t try to do nothing but just sit there.

  And now I know the secret of why, even though he’s from rich-ville and even though he never had to contend with the stomach-grumbling and the screen-door slamming and the late-night breaking of glasses, even though all those things have escaped his privileged silver-spoon life, he’s still not unscathed from those late-night humiliations you might just have to contend with if someone leaves you alone with a trusted uncle or a horsemouth step-mother or a friend from the First Baptist down the way.

  And then I realize, for the very first time, that you might just be sitting in a wingback chair in the middle of your mansion, counting your presents on a cool winter night, staring up at some giant Christmas tree that costs more than Jesus, with all that glitter and those bows and ribbons outshining each other under the lights, but if you’ve got someone, some horsemouth, paying you a visit in the middle of the night, well, then you might as well be setting down in a shack in crapsville, cause you still ain’t safe and never will be.

  I look up at Clement and he looks back at me, and it’s like I met him eight million years ago before time began, and when I met him then, it was just like when I met him now, and when I meet him again, in 2090, it will be just like this moment, on and on until the end of time and even past.

  And I could set the rest of my life in this moment. I could settle in and let the dust pile up around me and let the leaves fall off the trees, one by one. I could let the snow pile up and then melt, and the buds come out and turn into daffodils over and over again for the next hundred years, with me, here, set in this moment with Clement, from the beginning of time and to the end.

  But that would have to be in another world where Eddie wasn’t coming up straight behind Clement with a look on his face that could freeze Texas. Before Clement even sees him coming Eddie’s got me by the arm, dragging me out the chair, bumping me into the table and then halfway across the concrete.

  Clement stands up and starts to follow. His friends stare frozen from the pool. He tries to make a beeline in front of Eddie, but Eddie cuts him off, wheels around and socks Clement in the eye, dropping him to the ground before he knew he’d been clocked. They are two different species. Someone like Eddie is raised on slamming doors and whiskey till four in the morning. Someone like Clement is raised on apple pie and trips to Crested Butte before the snow thaws. Clement’s head makes a loud thud on the pavement, sending shivers down my spine and all the sorrys in the world that I had ever stopped to think my life could be better and that I dragged something clear and kind into a world of dirty trick poker.

  I trip over myself, trying to look back, but Eddie’s pushing me forward, up the stairs and towards the room. I hear voices yelling behind us, splashing and calling for help. Eddie hurls me into the room, grabs the keys and throws my bag at my chest.

  “Get in the truck.”

  “But we already paid for the room.”

  “I said get in the goddamn truck!”

  This is the side that I knew was coming. Drink number eight through ten. This is the side that was the reason I stayed put down by the pool in the first place. Eddie’s got me tight around the arm, making a bruise right above the elbow, finding the last of the cash and the whiskey, hurtling the both of us down the stairs and barreling forward into the truck. Clement and his friends are nowhere in sight, but I can hear the commotion coming round the corner, the boys’ yell echoing across the white plaster walls, crying for help.

  The last thing I want to do is get in that truck with Eddie piss drunk and liable to crash into the nearest tree. But he charges across the front bumper and shoves me in, cursing and turning red, mumbling to himself about little sluts and being loyal and you never know who to trust. He darts back over, hops inside, starts the engine and tears away.

  I look straight ahead, silent, trying to duck under the radar. In the wing mirror, I’m looking for Clement and his friends and Mr. Comfort or even Horsemouth to appear and save the day. But the hotel is dead quiet, as if none of this ever happened or maybe the world just ended.

  Because to me it just did.

  Eddie is quiet now, looking out into the darkness with a fake kind of calm.

  He ruined my chance. I had one chance at clean sheets and kind words before bedtime. I had this one opportunity. I had this moment where I could say something stupid and laugh and feel something sparkly and look across the table at someone young and awkward like myself. Somehow, from out of nowhere, from out of the blue, I had one second to see what it could be like to be a normal girl with a schoolgirl crush and maybe a future with wingback chairs, willow-wear and Wedgewood. I could have crinkled my forehead and studied for the SAT and had high hopes for heading back East to a school with green rolling hills and gargoyles on the library.

  I could have had that.

  I say his name to myself. Clement. I think of him curled up into a ball on the pavement, knocked out cold. Clement. Clemency. Clement. I make a pact with myself. I make a point of it. I make a date down deep, past my skin and my bones and deep into my blood, into my soul.

  See you in 2090. See you in 2090, when flying cars are whizzing by and you can get from here to China and back in the blink of an eye. See you in 3060, when people are made of metal and you don’t even need a flying car anyways and you can look up fighting in the history books. See you in 4070, when there’s smoke billowing up from the red-crater horizon and it’s hotter than Mexico with dust and dirt and a
few scavengers holding on, scraping by. And on and on till the moon gives way and the sun kills itself and the stars fall from the sky.

  I guess I’ll see you then.

  TWENTY–SEVEN

  Cheapest motherfuckers in the world. Rich people.”

  We’re barreling west on I-70, cutting a swath through the night, with rocks popping up at our sides, red and mysterious, like somewhere in the night we landed on Mars and just kept going.

  “They count their pennies, Luli. Don’t think that they don’t. I know. I used to work as a busboy back at Kirby’s in Omaha. You’d never get a good tip from a rich person. Never. They’d stiff ya every time. Hell, they’d skip out on the check if they didn’t think they’d get caught and all their friends’d find out and they’d get kicked outta the country club. One guy left two pennies. Two pennies! They don’t know what it’s like. They don’t. They wanna think it’s your fault you’re poor. Cause that way they don’t have to feel guilty for being rich.”

  I grab a cigarette off the dashboard and light it, peering out into the red rocks of Mars.

  “Well, then, I guess you know just about everything.”

  “Just about.” Eddie sneers at me through the side of his mouth, waiting for my reply. “I know a helluva lot more than you, anyways.”

  I don’t give him the benefit of an answer. I start humming to myself instead, looking out the window, trying to break through the mystery of all those red rocks beyond the darkness, casually observing us flying by in our light ship down the road. The sky has a burning to it. There’s a crispness here, like it’s fall all year round and the stars are made of glass.

  I open the window and put my face into the wind, thinking about 2090 and what it’ll be like a hundred years from now with spaceships zipping by and folks never getting old and robot slaves. I think about Clement and what it takes to get skin the color of olives, glowing from underneath, like there’s a light-bulb tucked behind your earlobes.