Betty rolled her eyes.
“I do. But mostly, it’s for your voice.”
At this she laughed. Most boys said other stupid things about her when they complimented her. None had ever said anything stupid about her voice. None until Charlie.
“You’re angry, but you don’t sound it. All I hear is something earnest. You’re not mad at Frank as much as you’re shocked that indecency like his even exists in the world.”
“I am,” she said. “It’s so much easier to be honest.”
“I agree.”
She smiled. “Are you planning to take me to Macavoy’s?”
“Truth is, Betty, I’d rather not take you there. Just doesn’t seem the right place. And even though I know there’s a free sherry waiting for you there, I’d rather go somewhere else, even if I have to stretch for it.”
“Do you have a blanket in your car?”
“I do.”
“Then I have an idea.”
This worried Gpa immediately.
“I’ll say this,” Gma then continued. “At least you have a car, Charlie.”
She directed him through town, northeast, into the hills, and on the way she asked if Gpa was a gentleman and Gpa said he was. “How can I know?” Gma asked.
“What would it take to prove it?”
“You won’t try to kiss me tonight.”
“I won’t.”
She directed him to a field, a clearing on a hillside, a slope like a natural amphitheater looking out over Lake Cayuga and the infinity of night. They watched the stars swim slowly through the sky. They talked about their lives growing up. They were three years apart, they’d gone to the same high school, and Gpa was shocked she’d remembered him when he was a senior. She was finishing college now, at Ithaca. He’d been working at the Morrises’ garage, saving everything he could, and planned to open his own garage soon. They made each other laugh. What they both knew without saying it was that they trusted each other. And finally, when it had gotten late, and Gpa would have to take Gma home soon, she told him it was okay.
“You can kiss me.”
“No,” Gpa said.
She laughed. “No. It’s okay. I don’t mind.”
“No. I’d be breaking my promise,” he said. “And that’s no way to start something I want to continue. I keep my promises.”
“Oh!” She whacked him on the shoulder. “Don’t be stubborn. You’ll ruin the moment.”
“No,” he said again. “But I will ask a favor.”
“The nerve!”
“Would you let me bring you back here tomorrow night?”
They went back to the same spot the next night, and with their hearts pounding and getting in the way of what had been easier conversation the night before, Gma couldn’t wait any longer, and she beat Gpa to his line.
“Good God, Charlie, can I please kiss you and get this over with?”
“Yes,” he said, and she did.
After a while they paused, and they were silent for a moment.
“Now,” Gpa said, taking Gma’s hand. “Can I kiss you again?”
She laughed and the night was perfect, with only one exception—Gpa felt a little guilty that he got her home a half hour late.
I read it all to him through the open window while we waited for Corrina to pay the bill, and by the time I finished, he was nodding and remembering along with me.
“Teddy?” he asked, and I was glad he was back with me again. I opened the door and he stepped out and leaned against the Blue Bomber beside me. “This is awful.”
“I know.”
We’d only been on the road one day and I was already beginning to wonder if I’d made the right choice. I just wanted to keep my promise, and I didn’t want doing that to hurt him more.
CHAPTER 15
CAMPFIRE
Eventually Corrina came out and we put the leash on Old Humper and took him around the neighborhood for a walk to stretch his legs and let him go buck-wild if he needed to, because I thought I understood what it was to feel a little crazy and act a little crazy and feel the need to shake that craziness out once in a while and not keep it bottled up inside you like a bomb waiting to go off in some sudden, unexplainable moment in the future.
Gpa held the leash, since Old Humper listened to him better than me or Corrina, and we walked downhill toward the edge of the neighborhood, to look out over another part of Flagstaff that dipped below.
“Sorry about all that,” I said to Corrina as we walked behind Gpa and Old Humper.
“No, don’t worry,” she said. “I’m getting used to it. You just have to go with it. You give a little and play in his world, and that’s cool, and then you slowly walk him back into ours.”
“How’s your hand?” I asked.
“It’s fine. But shit is fucked up, Hendrix. The sign? The logo? Sombrero-wearing shark, and the shark has a big thick black mustache? And the dude behind the bar, a white dude, was wearing the same sombrero and had a fake mustache too.” She swatted at the air in front of her. “That’s what scares me. That guy plays racist Halloween every day of his life?” She glanced up at me. “Seriously, Hendrix, I don’t know if the asshole at the garage or the clueless dude behind the bar is worse. That’s what scares me. Not your Gpa.”
“Well, sorry about that.”
“Stop apologizing, Hendrix. That doesn’t fix anything. Think about where we’re going to sleep tonight.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Yeah,” Corrina said. “Exactly.”
We were both quiet a moment. My brain felt like it could explode. I had to think about Gpa, but I also couldn’t stop thinking about what Corrina had just said. It was so weird. It was like my whiteness just put pirate patches over my eyes and I was blind to all the pain. I wasn’t the guys in the garage or the guys at the restaurant, but if I didn’t try a lot harder to take the damn blinders off and say what I saw, then I sure as hell was more like those guys than I wanted to be.
Corrina was right. And she was right that we had to find a place to sleep.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t know if we should drive on today. I mean, we could. We probably should. But it might be better just to keep it low-key with Gpa.”
When we’d made the new route at the Raconteur’s we’d planned to stay in Albuquerque our first night out of Vegas—an eight-hour drive or so, without traffic. From there, the next day, a nine-hour drive to somewhere outside of Oklahoma City. But we were only in Flagstaff and I’d pushed Gpa enough that day. I resolved to do more takeout, if we could, for the rest of the drive.
It was already evening by the time we found our accommodations. The place was on a hill just outside of Flagstaff and it looked more like a log cabin amid the woods than a motel or B&B, but the rain and heavy clouds had swept away and there were what sounded like a thousand tiny birds chirping in the pine trees around the cabin. We were all glad to be out of the car for the rest of the day, especially Old Humper, who spun a few circles and tried to break free from the leash until Gpa settled him.
The clerk couldn’t have been much older than me. He had long, greasy black hair he kept tucking behind his ear as we spoke to him, and he didn’t look any of us in the eye. I was pretty sure he was stoned, but I didn’t care, because we paid in cash and he didn’t ask for any ID. There were only eight bedrooms and two bathrooms in the cabin-motel, and we were the only guests staying there that night. The clerk said if we only paid for one room, we all had to stay in the same room. The owner would be there in the morning and she served breakfast at 8 a.m. Supposedly she made her own bread.
Corrina had had all the rest of our food from the taco joint bagged for takeaway, so we ate an early dinner in the kitchenette, reheating everything in the microwave, and shortly after it got dark Gpa went down to sleep. There were only two beds in the room, and that was almost all I could think about, and I wondered what Corrina was thinking about it, but just thinking about being in bed with her
made me start to feel a little light-headed.
Corrina and I fiddled with our phones for a while after Gpa went to sleep. The common room had an enormous, vaulted ceiling with exposed log beams that rose to a point at the top of the A-frame roof. There was a fireplace with a flagstone hearth, and even though it was summer, it was much colder in the desert mountain night than it was in LA.
“Think we can get a fire started?” Corrina asked.
I was skeptical because (a) I’d never started a fire in my life and I immediately had visions of burning the whole cabin down and (b) I was paranoid that there was some rule I didn’t know about that prohibited the starting of fires here and if we started one and got caught, we’d get kicked out. But stoner clerk had vanished while we were eating dinner, and Corrina was determined. She located a lighter in the kitchenette, but we couldn’t find firewood. She stood by the stone hearth and flicked the lighter. I saw her shiver and I grabbed the big army blanket that was draped over the couch and threw it over her shoulders.
“That’s nice,” she said.
“So, are you really not going to call your dad back?”
She stared at the empty fireplace. “This is the line I remember best from his file on me,” she said. “She misreads reality easily, becomes confused, and becomes further confused by her emotions, unable to distinguish between different ones. This leads to disproportionate outbursts at other people, when, in fact, it is her own self-concept that is poor. I don’t really want to think about that guy, let alone talk to him.”
“Man,” I said. “That’s rough.” Oddly, though, it reminded me of Gpa, a diagnosis that probably fit him just as easily. I wondered what it would have said if someone had created a file on me.
“You know what the file doesn’t say? It’s not a tough one to figure out. But I’m serious, I have this feeling like everyone is always leaving me, or they’re about to. And let me tell you something, Hendrix. They do. They leave. Well, fuck it. This time I left them.”
She was quiet then.
“You know what?” I said. “I always thought you had a million friends, that you lived your life like a carefree rock star.”
“Well, now you know. I’m nothing but Clusterfuck Corrina. Nice to meet you.” She stuck out her hand, but I didn’t take it.
“No,” I said. “No, now I know that you’re actually a lot more like me.” I shrugged. “I’m not saying that’s great, by the way. I’m just saying I get it—at least the feeling alone part.”
Corrina wrapped the blanket around her tighter. “I really hate feeling alone, being alone. But I am. I’m really all alone, Hendrix.”
“Well, me too,” I said. “I feel like that all the time.”
She shivered. I didn’t want to sit there all night moping around, and because most of the light in the room came from dim lamps, I was reminded of the time Gpa and I had gone “camping” in the living room, back at the Great Empty Blue. It had been his idea, and I remembered it now with a kind of goofy nostalgia.
I sat Corrina down on the rug in front of the fireplace, and then I sat directly across from her, our knees almost touching. We tucked the corners of the blanket beneath us, and I held the center above our heads like a tent. “Flick the lighter,” I said.
She did and the little flame danced.
“There’s our campfire,” I said.
“Wait.” Corrina slipped out from under the blanket and ran to the kitchenette, and when she came back she had a flashlight. “This is better,” she said. “For effect.”
“It’s like the metaphor of fire,” I said.
“Yeah. Exactly, Poet. The metaphor of fire. Can metaphors keep you warm?”
“I’m not cold,” I said.
“Me neither,” she said. “Not anymore.”
I held the blanket over our heads and she turned on the flashlight and put her fingers over the top and made flickering shadows on the surface of our “tent wall.” She put the light under her chin and made funny ghost faces, and put the light under my chin and called me a zombie.
Then she held the tent above our heads and I took the flashlight and spun it in circles. “Look,” I said. “It’s the hullaballoo, those massive lights swinging in the sky above the theater on the opening night of your first big show.”
She giggled and took the light back. “Look,” she said, sticking the light in her mouth. “Maw sheek’sh on foi-ya.” She took it out and stuck it behind her ear. “Now my ear’s on fire.” Her hair glowed a deep sunset amber in the light, and she pulled her hand through it, letting the strands loose, sending what looked like little sparks into the air between us in our tent.
“Be careful with that fire,” I said. I took the flashlight from her again. “Look how quickly it jumps from you to me.” I stuck it under my T-shirt, near my heart.
Corrina giggled. She reached up under my shirt and grabbed the flashlight. Her fingers weren’t cold, but they sent lines of goose bumps skating across my chest. “Look,” she said, doing what I’d just done. “It’s happened to me, too.” Her T-shirt was black and so the fire wasn’t as bright, but it still sent something like another fire crackling down into the pit of my stomach.
“You know,” I said, “I think I’m a better me when I’m around you.”
“No, me too. Or, I mean . . .” She paused. It was dark in the tent, except for the light that rested on her chest. “I think I’m the me I want to be when I’m with you.”
“Me too,” I said.
It seemed like gravity was playing a trick or she was getting closer to me, leaning closer, the light coming closer.
“I just want to keep going,” she said.
“Me too,” I said. “I don’t want to go back.”
“Me neither.”
“I like the way you say neither,” I said. She said it with the long e.
“I like the way you say neither. Like you think you’re British or something.”
“Neither.”
“Neither.”
“Neither.”
“Neither.”
“Neither.”
“Neither.”
I could feel her breath on my lips, and even though I knew where this was going, I still think a simple question is always the best way to go, and there’s nothing wrong with making sure the invitation is clear. “Can I please kiss you?”
And I know she was going to say yes because the flashlight fell between us and I felt that happy anxiousness stinging through me, and I just know we were about to kiss, but the front door suddenly crashed open.
Corrina gave a shout and I threw the blanket off us, wielding the flashlight like a dagger.
“What is this?”
A tall woman stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips. Despite the cold, she wore only a thin white T-shirt and a thin flannel shirt open like a coat. Rock-climbing ropes and carabiners were slung over her shoulder. She wore short soccer shorts and she was all muscle everywhere. Even her neck. She looked like she could pulverize stones if she tucked them behind her knees and did a squat. “What is this?” she said again in what sounded to me like a Russian accent. “Where is Greggie?” She was probably younger than Mom, but her hair was so blond it was white.
Corrina scurried backward and got up on her feet, and I followed.
The woman slammed the door behind her. “I don’t run a teenage sex palace!”
“Umm,” I said. “My grandfather is asleep in the other room?”
“You are having sex, with your grandfather in the other room?”
To be fair, I thought this was a better idea than in the bed next to him, but I didn’t think arguing with Muscle Beach’s Body Builder of the Year was a good idea.
“No one is having sex,” Corrina said. She could barely lift her gaze from the floor and I could see the blush flushing her cheeks and neck.
“No sex! That is one of the rules.”
“Are you the owner?” I asked.
“Yes.” She stepped past us and went into the kitchen
ette. “Greggie!” she shouted.
“Please,” I said. “My grandfather’s asleep.”
She frowned in response and went straight to the fridge and began pulling out food and creating a smorgasbord for herself, and it suddenly dawned on me that this wasn’t a hotel at all, but her home, in which she probably ran an illegal bed-and-breakfast, and that was why they only accepted cash.
The stoner clerk came in from the backyard through the kitchen door. “Hey, honey,” he said, lifting a lazy smile. His eyes were two red raisins.
“Greggie, did they pay?”
“Yeah.”
“How many rooms?”
“Uh . . .”
“One,” I said.
The Russian stone-crusher looked at Corrina. “Room number two. It’s yours. Stay in it.”
Corrina nodded.
“They have a dog?” Greggie said, his voice fading into his throat.
He had his hands in his jeans pockets and his shoulders were hunched so high and so far forward I thought he was going to fold in half and close the book of his body on his own face. Just looking at him made me want to blink. For his sake.
“Breakfast’s at eight,” the stone-crusher said, not to us, but to Greggie.
“Got it,” I said. There was an awful tension in the room and Corrina looked so mortified, but I was afraid to give her a hug in front of the sex police. “Hey,” I said instead, finding a chirpy, cheery voice. “I hear you make great bread.”
“I do,” the stone-crusher said, still not looking at me.
“Well, good night,” I said.
“Good night.”
Corrina remained silent and I gestured toward the hall with the bedrooms. Her room was first and closest to the kitchen. “I’m not going to sleep a minute tonight,” she said. “What the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t want to be alone.”
“She’ll kill us, or at least me, if she sees me come in with you.”
“She’s not looking.” Corrina opened the door and stepped inside. “Come on,” she whispered.
I hesitated. Bad idea. I didn’t say anything else, I just paused out there in the hallway, and it was as if I said, No. I can’t, or I have to keep Gpa company, or I’m so scared I need my blanky-wanky.
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