by Brent, Cora
“It’s all right,” I shrugged. “And yes, we are.”
Marco chuckled.
I put a finger to my lips. “Shh, don’t tell Tony.”
Chris looked around nervously. “Tony. Where is Tony?”
Gavin looked up from where he had been tossing things into a battered tool bag.
“Tony is long gone,” I said with a sigh.
Chris nodded with relief as Gavin stood and began nudging him out the door. “It’s a trip seeing you again, Angie. You know, you get tired of this guy, you can-“
“Hey,” said Marco irritably, “why don’t you boys just quit while you’re marginally ahead?”
“Fair enough,” Gavin nodded.
“Bye!” yelled Chris before Marco pushed the door closed in his face.
“Sorry about that,” he said, but he was smiling.
“Another blast from the past.”
“I can give you a blast,” Marco whispered, holding me hard.
“You’ve given me several. Just in the last few hours.”
“You complaining?” he asked, backing me into the bar and breathing heavily.
“No,” I whispered, feeling him against me.
Marco pressed himself firmly to my body but didn’t go further.
“What’s that?” I asked, motioning to a white-sheeted object in the far corner.
“Jukebox.” Marco stepped away from me and pulled the sheet off. “Mary’s pride and joy. She had it restored in Boston just before I took off after graduation.”
“Does it work?”
“Of course.” He reached around and plugged the cord in. The machine hummed to life.
“There anything good in there?”
“You got a dime?”
“No.”
Marco smiled and pulled some change from his back pocket. He started flipping the selections around and then laughed, pressing a button. A moment later I knew why.
“Very funny,” I said as the opening notes of Merilee Rush’s timeless version of ‘Angel of the Morning’ filled the bar.
Marco moved toward me. “Come here.”
His arms went around my waist as mine reached up, resting on his shoulders. Marco kicked some of the sheets away from the fresh wood floor as we softly swayed.
“You’ve done a good job,” I said, looking around.
“Hmm. Yeah, luckily Damien is free with the checkbook. As long as I can promise a good return.”
“I thought you guys were partners now.”
“We are. And he’s been great about letting me jump right into management, especially because if he’d had his way we would have sold the place.” Marco’s hold on me lightened as he spoke thoughtfully. “But let’s face it, he’s the guy with the means. I’m just the penniless prodigal with nowhere else to go.”
I tried again, pulling him close. “Really though, he must have a lot of faith in you.”
Marco held back, fixing me with a sharp look. “I’m not feeling sorry for myself, Angela. Just speaking the truth.”
I leaned in, kissing him on the neck. “She’d be pleased,” I said. “That you took it on.”
He didn’t yield, staring darkly into the corner. “You knew her well, did you?”
I backed away, a little unsettled by the coldness in his voice. “No. But she loved you, Marco. And she loved the bar.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes.” He stopped moving to the music and absently took my hands in his.
“Hey,” I said, squeezing his hand. “It’s getting late. How about grabbing some dinner?”
Marco shook his head. “Nah, I’m not hungry. Think I’m going to stick around here a while and go over a few things.”
I brought his knuckles to my lips. “Will I see you later?”
He stared at me. “Do you want to?”
“Of course.” I touched his cheek, a bit puzzled by his sudden change in mood.
“All right, then.” His face broke into a smile which melted what was left of the frost around my heart.
Shit, he has me.
“I’m going over to the store to visit with my dad a while. Why don’t you drop by the house when you’re done doing what you need to do?”
“I will, Angie.”
The final stanza of ‘Angel of the Morning’ was fading. I started toward the door and turned back, my mind screaming at me not to say the words.
Think them if you must. Just don’t fucking say them!
“Marco?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m crazy about you.”
I closed the door behind me before he could answer. Especially because I wasn’t sure he would.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Durant’s Drug Store only had one customer, a withered old woman who I vaguely remembered as an elementary school cafeteria attendant. She was always stingy with the napkins. Her face looked like it had been gnawed on by squirrels recently and she made no sign of seeing me as she brushed past.
The place seemed a little barren. The counter which used to serve sandwiches to seemingly endless surges of customers was dark and unused. I winced at the sad neglect, having pleaded with my father to do something with that corner. Even the soda fountain no longer operated. Anthony Durant’s preserved handsome face stared at me from underneath his serviceman’s hat. He didn’t have any idea he would die within a year.
“Angela.” My father’s voice was pleased as he climbed out of the shadows. He was smiling until he took stock of my revealing shirt, my disheveled appearance. I blushed, realizing too late I should have taken a few moments to clean up.
“Been out?” Alan Durant said tersely.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to smooth my wild hair down and failing. “I went for a ride with Marco.”
“Ah, Marco.”
“Dad, I thought you got over your problem with Marco.”
My father gave me a severe look. “Marco Bendetti isn’t the problem.”
“So what the hell is the problem?”
“You are, Angela.”
I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. “What do you mean?”
My father leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. “You’re better than this, running around looking like a biker’s cheap hussy. Even your damn brother knew you were better than this. The only time I was ever proud of Tony was when he kept all these hot blooded hoods away from you.”
I shook my head. This was a mistake. My father didn’t talk like this. Not to me. Slowly I leveled my gaze at him. The gray eyes that we shared looked defiantly back.
Alan Durant made a noise of disgust. “Look at you. My daughter. Never thought I’d see the day when you’d traipse around town like a whore. You’re better. So be better.”
“Well, Dad,” I answered shakily. “You might be wrong. I might be no better than anyone. I’ll be twenty five next month and I haven’t had a single meaningful relationship with a man. So if fucking Marco Bendetti makes me happy, then I’m pretty goddamn grateful!!”
My father’s face was deep red. He waved a furious finger. “Don’t you talk like filth, Angela!”
“Then don’t treat me like filth, Daddy.”
He deflated. But it was too late. I ran blindly out the door as he sadly called my name.
***
Grace was in the kitchen carefully removing a meatloaf from the oven. She was startled when I tore through the side door.
“Angie,” she exclaimed, noting that my face was still red from angry tears cried on the mile long march from town. She put the hot dish down and pulled the oven mitts from her hands, reaching for me.
“I’m fine, Mom.”
Her face clouded. “Is it that boy?”
“No! And he’s not a boy anymore. Just like I’m not a girl anymore. Jesus Christ, it’s like everyone and everything here is in a state of suspended animation. Guess what? Time has marched right the hell on. It’s time to acclimate.”
My mother’s nose wrinkled. “What?”
“Nothing, ma. I�
�m sorry, I don’t mean to yell. Ask your husband if you want to know.”
“Alan? You and Daddy had a fight? What on earth about?”
“Apparently I’m a cheap whore.”
Her eyes widened. “He would never say that.”
“He did say that.”
“No,” she shook her head. “No.”
“Well Alan Durant doesn’t lie. Go ask him. In the meantime, I don’t want to be here when he gets home.”
“Where are you going?” she called as I left through the side door.
“Across the damn street!”
Of course I didn’t know if Marco had a habit of keeping his front door unlocked but I tried it anyway, remembering how I’d walked right in earlier. And how he’d been waiting for me. Naked.
He wasn’t waiting for me now, though I was relieved the door was indeed open. Actually I felt a little foolish running over here. Adults didn’t run away from their parents. Adults confronted unpleasant situations and tried to sort through them, having realized through the trial of experience that problems didn’t just dissolve when ignored.
If I really wanted to get away I could have just climbed into my waiting BMW and been back in Boston before prime time programming began. But already the idea of leaving Marco was causing my stomach to tighten.
I curled into a ball on Marco’s ugly couch. What was wrong with me? Was I trying to get back some of the adolescent angst I’d missed out on?
The vague musty odor of the couch made me remember the old sofa in my parents’ living room. I wondered where it was now, if someone else was burying their face in the oily fabric and fretting about the cruel, cruel world.
The sun was on its descent and the light filtered thought the window shades, playing on the furniture’s hideous pattern. The brown and orange hues evoked the deep decay of autumn. I could almost smell the smoke of the burning leaves, the swish of kicking aside the piles which carpeted the sidewalks. It was a beautiful time of year, especially here. Every year I’d been away I’d missed it a little more. The cool anticipation of Halloween before the season settled more firmly and then started to give way to the approaching blanket of winter. Most of the trees were bare by Thanksgiving.
When images of Thanksgiving flitted across my wandering mind I was surprised to find Marco there. But it was true. My mother had invited him several times, after Damien had moved away and Mary was spending the holiday at the bar. Because the bars would be the only CPV establishments open on Thanksgiving. People didn’t stop drinking to celebrate a holiday. In fact, often it was the loneliness of a holiday which drove them to drink more.
It was the last Thanksgiving my grandmother was alive. Fay Durant was my only remaining grandparent. She wasn’t a pleasant woman. People blamed the loss of her son and the slow, painful demise of her husband. But to me she just seemed like a patently unhappy person. One who liked to make other people unhappy too.
“Angela,” she frowned at me as I helped myself to a slice of pie.
“What?” I dared her.
Her thin lips smiled. “Ladies ought to watch their figures. After all, one day that baby fat will fall away and you’ll be a pretty girl.”
My mother grimaced. Tony laughed. Marco looked at the floor. He hadn’t said much since arriving just in time to sit down to dinner.
I slammed my fork down on the dining room table. So that I could not stab my grandmother to death with it.
But my father tried to salvage things by way of deflection. “Mother, did you know Angela won a scholarship for an essay she wrote?”
“A scholarship?” The old woman exclaimed in confusion.
My father continued, proudly explaining that I was the first high school sophomore to ever win the coveted ‘My Massachusetts’ annual written competition. But as I listened to him speak I felt odd and weary. I just wanted to get away.
“Excuse me,” I said, wiping my mouth and running through the kitchen and out the side door.
It was already cold as hell. The first snow flurries were predicted to fall sometime during the night. I plunked down miserably on the peeling redwood bench and stared up at the barren tree branches extending their cold fingers into my backyard. I’d been here my whole short, stifling life. And I hated it.
“Angela!” Tony bellowed from the open side door. “Get the fuck back in here and eat your pie before I give it to the dog.”
“We don’t have a dog!” I shouted back.
Marco poked his head out the door. “I think I’m the dog.”
I hopped off the bench and looked at the gray sky. “Getting the hell out,” I promised to no one in particular as I sulked back into the house. I wasn’t much here and anyway I’d be damned if I was going to end up like one of the dingy young wives I always saw sifting sadly through the aisles of my father’s store. They were poor. They were bored. They had a litter of clinging humans on their heels who they slapped at idly. And before getting behind the wheel of beaten vehicle, praying it would start, they would pause by the door and smoke a cigarette with a tired hand resting over a pregnant belly. I’d come to realize there were more women like that in the world than there were women like my mother.
“Getting the hell out,” I said again. It made me feel powerful.
My hands were already numb with cold as I reached for the door handle. Marco Bendetti stood on the other side of the screen. For a while I’d felt shy around him, ever since our late night run in. And then gradually I realized he remembered nothing about it, that I was as consequential to him as a square of pavement.
But just then he looked at me clearly and nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Angie.” A firm hand was pressing in my shoulder and I shot upright with a gasp.
“Marco.” I rubbed my eyes. The room was completely dark. Marco stretched over to the end table and flicked the lamp on.
“My watch fell off. What time is it?”
“A quarter to nine.”
Marco sank down on the couch next to me.
I squinted and pointed to something in his hands. “What’s that?”
“Tupperware.”
“Christ, Marco, I can see that. What are you doing with it?”
“I stopped by your house. Your mom said you were over here. I guess she thought you’d be hungry.”
I smiled. “Grace.”
“Yeah, Grace.”
He peeled back a corner of the lid and sniffed. “I think it’s meatloaf.”
“I think meat should never be in the form of a loaf.”
Marco set the container on the floor. “What happened, Angela?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. Just an argument with my dad.”
“About me?”
“No. About me.”
Marco pushed a strand of hair out of my face. “I bet if we cover it in ketchup it’ll be okay.” I blinked at him. “The meatloaf,” he explained.
In the kitchen Marco rooted around in the cupboards and removed a dinner plate with hideous orange and green fish painted on. I raised my eyebrows. He shrugged.
“My mom had weird taste.”
He dumped the thick slices of meatloaf on the plate and drowned them in ketchup.
“Beer okay?”
“Beer would be the shit.”
Marco pushed a chair next to mine and we ate in companionable silence. He was right. A generous helping of ketchup made even my mother’s meatloaf palatable.
As I downed my beer with rapid swallows Marco watched me. “You want to talk about it?”
“No.”
Marco shrugged. “Want to do something else?”
I stared at him, for the first time vaguely annoyed by his one track mind.
“Like watch television?” he finished with a laugh.
“Yeah,” I said, smiling. “I’ll watch television.”
Marco turned on the console tv and began flipping the dial around. “This okay?” he asked. It appeared to be a movie
about a vapid, confused woman trying to decide between two equally hunky tanned men.
“Fine,” I said, sitting down. “You know Marco, I believe this is in fact the world’s ugliest couch.”
He laughed lightly. “If only there was a prize.”
I fit neatly into his arms and rested my head on his chest as a steady succession of commercials droned on. Marco’s hand tangled gently in my hair and I heard my own happy sigh as I listened to the strong thud of his heart. I thought about how it was for others, for real couples who didn’t need anything else but the steady promise of one another’s company. As I closed my eyes a nagging thought kept penetrating.
You have to go back to Boston.
And then, underneath that, a low but increasingly insistent voice.
Why??
***
We didn’t talk much as the silly movie arrived at its predictable conclusion and the eleven o’clock news came on. I yawned.
“I should go.”
Marco touched the low neckline of my shirt. “Do you want to go?”
It was the last thing I wanted. I was still stinging from the argument with my father. I knew he would be sorry. But the emotion of it all made me feel exhausted, drained.
Marco seemed to read my mind. “You can sleep here, Angela.”
I sighed, resting my head on his shoulder. “I would like that, Marco.”
He kissed my forehead and rose from the couch, stretching.
“Hey,” I said, “I feel a little stale. You mind if I use your shower?”
“Not at all,” he said, flipping the television off. “Two doors down from my bedroom.”
As I started to undress in the small, oddly frog-colored bathroom there was a knock at the door. I cracked it open. Marco was on the other side with a folded bath towel and one of his dark t-shirts. I half thought he would push his way through the door and demand a joint venture but he only offered the bundle with a gentlemanly air, seeming to guess that at least for the moment I needed some space.
Slipping Marco’s shirt over my damp skin seemed far more intimate than many of the more carnal things we had done. I briefly hugged my arms across my chest, then gathered up my pile of clothes.
I found Marco kneeling on the musty rust-colored carpet in the living room, sorting through old record albums. I sat down beside him, looking though a pile.