Lost Between Houses

by David Gilmour

  It must have been after one in the morning when the phone rang. I raced along the hallway in my socks, down the wooden stairs. I took it in the kitchen.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

  “Scarlet?”

  “Jesus, you do have a good memory. What are you doing?”

  “I was just at a dance.”

  “Oh yeah?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Meet anybody interesting?”

  “Yeah. Well, not really. You know, the usual stuff. What are you doing?”

  “My parents are away.”

  “Oh yeah? They on holiday?”

  “No, they’re in Los Angeles. My dad’s got a couple of movies opening.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. He’s got to look after the movie stars. Make sure they don’t get too drunk. That kind of stuff.”

  “Oh yeah? Who’s he have to look after?”

  “Well, I think he’s going to have dinner with Steve McQueen. Do you know him?”

  “Have Gun, Will Travel?”

  “No, that’s what’s-his-name.”

  “Right.”

  “Anyway, they’re going to have dinner.”

  “Just the two of them?”

  “No, there’ll be other people there. I met Alfred Hitchcock once. When I was a kid.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Not very interested in kids.”

  She yawned. Then after a pause, “You’re not one of those guys, are you? Keeps a lay book?”

  “What’s a lay book?”

  “It’s where you write down all the girls you’ve laid. You know, two stars for a feel, four stars for a home run.”

  “Hardly.”

  “I go to a French school,” she said. “In Quebec. I almost got kicked out last year. But they let me back in on account of my father.”

  “What for?”

  “This stuff got wrecked and I got blamed for it.” You could hear she wasn’t interested in going on about that.

  “So you’re not mad at me for calling?” she asked.

  “No, not at all. How’d you know my parents weren’t here?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Well, what if they’d’ve answered the phone?”

  “I would’ve hung up.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m not stupid you know.”

  Silence. “So your parents are away?”

  “Yep. I’m just here with my brother.”

  “Just the two of you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You should come down here.”

  “I should. That’d be fun.”

  “No, I mean it.”

  “Like when?”

  “Like now. Right now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come down here right now. We could stay up all night.”

  “I don’t mean to sound like a bonehead here, but how exactly would I get down there? Just for technical information.”

  “I don’t know. Hitchhike.”

  “At this time of night?”

  “Sure, there’s bound to be people up. Truck drivers and stuff.”

  “Are you putting me on?”

  “No.”

  “Jesus, I don’t know, Scarlet. What if I get kidnapped?”

  “You’re so conservative. It’d be fun.”

  “I don’t think that’s my style.”

  “No, maybe not.”

  “Well give me the address. Just in case. But I’m not promising. I’ve got a lot of stuff to sort out up here first.”

  “Like what?”

  “Just stuff. Personal obligations and things. But it’s not very likely.”

  “If you were really daring, you would.”

  “What if I don’t get a ride?”

  “I’d pick you up. Anybody in their right mind would pick you up.” Another pause. “You could sleep in my father’s bed. It’s as big as a tennis court. With satin sheets.”

  “It’ll take hours.”

  “I’ll be up.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Just ring the buzzer. You’ll see.”

  “So?” she said after a moment.

  “I’ll try.”

  “Don’t say you’ll try. People always say they’ll try and nothing ever happens.”

  “All right. I’ll really try.”

  “You better.”

  “I will.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “What?”

  “The address.”

  So she gave it to me.

  After I put down the phone I just sat there for a minute, moving my jaw from side to side. It made a funny sound in the middle of my head. I always did that when I was thinking about something, but Harper said it made me look like a fish with a hook in his mouth so I only did it in private. I went upstairs tohis bedroom. The wallpaper was light blue in there. He had a football balanced on his chest.

  “Was that that broad again?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’d she want?”

  “She wants me to come down and see her. Tonight.”

  “Right,” he said.

  I went down the hall and sat on my bed. Then I got up and looked at myself in the mirror. I hauled out my wallet and looked inside. I had a whole lot of cash the old lady had left, just in case of an emergency. I could do it, I thought, I really could. I could feel it going from a wild idea to something I might actually do, I could actually feel it happening inside me, like a lab experiment, fizz, fizz, all the chemical stuff mixing together.

  Finally I got up off my bed and I went back into Harper’s room. I stood in the doorway.

  “I think I’m going to,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I think I’m going to go.”

  “You can’t. I’ll get in shit. The old lady will blame me.”

  “I’ll be back in time.”

  “Forget it.”

  I started down the hall. I heard him get off his bed. I ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time, giggling like a maniac, and burst out the side door and started up the driveway. Just when I got about halfway up, I heard the screen door come flying open.

  “Asshole!” he shouted. But I kept going.

  I hurried up the dark driveway toward the main highway. I could hear the stream gurgling behind the trees. Stones scattering under my feet. Man, was I wide awake.

  I got to the top of the road and started to walk toward town. In the moonlight I could see all the way across the fields. There were no cars. I must have walked for about fifteen minutes, everything still as a graveyard when I heard this funny humming sound. I stopped and listened. Way at the far end of the road, a pair of headlights came swinging around the corner and came up toward me like a shotgun. I put out my thumb, shielding my eyes. They got closer and closer, they were really coming down on me, the guy blasted his horn and then roared by, this great big wind flapping my clothes like I was some kind of scarecrow.

  Then everything was still again.

  I kept on; I walked by a farmhouse. A dog barked. I jumped. I moved into the centre of the road, walking on the single line, one foot after the other, sticking my arms out for balance, talking to myself a mile a minute. They would have stuck me in the booby hatch if they’d heard. It was like there were six people with me. Me talking to Harper and to my mother and then Scarlet, even some of the guys at school, explaining to them what I was doing in the middle of the road in the middle of the night. They were all ears.

  Another car came winding around the corner. I stood way back from the highway this time, a friendly little smile on my face so they didn’t figure I’d just taken an axe to my whole family. Just seconds before the guy pulled even with me I felt this weird impulse to throw myself in front of the car.

  The guy whizzed by, looking sort of startled. But about a half-mile up the road, his back lights went
bright red and just hung there for a second, like a space ship.

  Holy fuck, I thought, he’s stopped, and I started running toward him. A man in a farmer’s hat leaned over and pushed open the door.

  “I almost didn’t see you,” he said. “I’m going into town. How far you going?”

  “I’m going to the city.”

  “I can get you started.”

  It was stuffy in the car, it smelt like old men and oil and rags.

  “Smoke?” he said, offering me a cigarette.

  “Sure,” I said. I put it in my mouth and he lit it with the car lighter.

  “So what are you doing out here?”

  “I’m going to see my girlfriend.”

  “Same old story, isn’t it?” he said. “Never changes.”

  We started up, the road snaking through the black countryside. A deer ran into the bush. A song came on the radio, real slow, country and western, normally stuff I hate but tonight I was kind of in the mood.

  I saw you tonight

  In her arms so tight

  I watched as she held you tenderly.

  The guy turned it up. We drove through town. A police car was sitting in the empty gas station. The farmer took me to the outskirts.

  “Good luck,” he said and drove off.

  I got another ride. Can’t remember where he dropped me off. Just a bunch of pictures, a waitress in a pink dress staring from a truck-stop window. That soft light off the radio in the dashboard. It was like I kept hearing the same song all night long.

  I don’t want to go out

  But I can’t just stay home

  I don’t need company

  But I sure don’t want to be alone.

  I got out of one car and into another. At four o’clock in the morning, I was standing at an amber-lit intersection on the outskirts of another town. A sixteen-wheeler picked me up.

  “Hang on kid,” the driver said, “we’re going all the way to Toronto.”

  It was quarter past six when I got to the front door of Scarlet’s place. Into the lobby. Real bright; smelt like perfume and that potpourri shit. Carpets, chairs, vases, lamps, a wonder somebody didn’t make off with all that stuff in the middle of the night.

  I rang Scarlet’s number. It took awhile.

  “Guess who?” I said.

  There was this squawk from her end of the line. The door buzzed and I pulled it open. When I got out of the elevator, Scarlet was sort of peeking out the door.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said. “You actually came.”

  She was wearing a fluffy white dressing gown.

  “Whoa,” she said, leaning against the doorframe. “I’ve got to lie down. I got up too fast. I’m seeing stars.”

  I caught a glimpse of the light coming in the windows down the hall, and for some reason it made me think about studying for my Physics exam.

  I followed her into her bedroom. It was dark in there, the curtains pulled, and it smelled like a girl’s room. I sat on the edge of the bed.

  “So what do you want to do now?” I said.

  “You talk and I’ll sleep,” she said. “I’m not very good in the morning.”

  “Really?”

  “Don’t be disappointed. I’m just going to have a little rest here. Tell me something. Talk to me.”

  She put her hands under her head.

  “You know that guy at the party,” I said, “the one you were kissing on the mouth?”

  There was a little bit of silence.

  “Are you sure you want to talk about that now?”

  “Who was that guy?”

  “A friend of the family.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “I mean I’ve known him since I was little. It was his birthday, so I gave him a kiss. Big deal.”

  “But you felt pretty guilty about it. I could tell.”

  “I was afraid you were going to snitch on me.”

  “No, I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Were you jealous?”

  “Now why would I be jealous? I hardly knew you.”

  “For some guys, that’s all it takes.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not some guys.”

  I looked around the room. “It smells nice in here. What’s that smell? It’s like vanilla.”

  “You like that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I like it too. It’s exotic.”

  She was quiet for a moment.

  “God, I wondered when you were going to bring that guy up. You probably thought I was a big whore.”

  “Actually, it’s pronounced the other way. Like the moving company.”

  “Simon, it’s too early for grammar lessons. Really. I feel sort of sick to my stomach. Why aren’t you tired? Lie down here for a minute. Just be quiet.”

  I went over and lay down on the very edge of the bed. She turned over and faced the wall.

  “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to sleep in a pink room,” I said after awhile.

  “Shhh,” she said.

  I lay there and tried to sleep.

  “I can feel you thinking, Simon. It’s making the whole bed shake. What are you thinking about?”

  “Snakes.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “When I was a little kid,” I went on, laughing all of a sudden, nerves probably, “my mother used to come in and tuck me in and sometimes she’d say, ‘Well, Simon, what do you want to talk about?’ and this one time, I thought for a second and I said, ‘Snakes.’ I must have been about six, but I remember that very clearly. Not the other times. But that one. Weird eh?”

  She rolled over and looked at me. Very pretty. Didn’t say anything, just looked at me.

  “What?” I said, suddenly very self-conscious.

  “In the dark, you’re very handsome.”

  She rolled back over again. I lay there, looking at the back of her neck. You could see where her hair had been chopped; it was thick and then nothing, just her neck. From that angle, I was thinking you couldn’t tell if she was a boy or a girl. Except for the smell, of course. No guy ever smells like that. Or should anyway. So I lay there for awhile longer, thinking about this and that, the way you do, but really thinking about one thing, the other stuff just jumping along the surface like grasshoppers. I put my hand on her shoulder, really softly, so it was hardly there. But she didn’t move or twist around, didn’t do anything that told me to move it. So I let it rest there, the full weight of my hand, this ache in my arm, I realized, from the tension of holding it there, a very unnatural position. But she didn’t moveaway. And then I moved my face right close to the back of her neck and I kissed her hair. But I could tell by her breathing that she wasn’t quite asleep yet. There’s a way people breathe when they sleep and a way they breathe when they’re waiting for something. I didn’t really know her well enough to be sticking my tongue in her mouth and besides I wasn’t sure I tasted too good, so I sort of hugged her. But really gently. I had the feeling, you know, that I was a safe-cracker, I was opening a very, very expensive safe, one false move would set off the alarms and release the dogs. So I proceeded very carefully. Very carefully, I pulled her shoulder toward me. It gave a little. I tugged a little harder and she just rolled over, her eyes still shut and her face in my armpit now. All warm and sleepy but not quite asleep. I started moving my hips a little bit, they just started moving themselves actually until I felt myself being drawn toward this giant, black planet. I could feel it drawing me toward its surface until gradually it seemed sort of inevitable that I’d go there; suddenly all the nerves in my body switched direction and I could feel myself arrive somewhere that was absolutely me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SLEEPING in the same bed with somebody ain’t all it’s cracked up to be though. I mean you want it to be nice for them, you know, not breathing all over them or lying on your back snoring like something that’s been washed up on a beach. You can’t really relax, just let one go like you might in your own bed; on top of which I’d taken m
y shirt off, it always makes me sweat wearing clothes when I sleep, but I was having a little breakout on my back, too many chocolates, and so I was self-conscious about turning over. In case she could see. So the ideal position was me lying with my arm over her, her facing the wall, which was fine but I like to flip around a lot, not to mention go to the bathroom a half-dozen times, so all in all I didn’t have the world’s best sleep. At one point I rolled over and I felt this thing under my hip. I reached down and pulled it out; it was a stuffed animal, a skunk I think, it was in the bed with her like she was a little girl. I looked at it for a second. I almost laughed but then I had second thoughts. So I slipped it back under the covers and the three of us sailed off to sleep again, me, Scarlet and the little skunk.

  Sometime around eight, I remember because I looked at the clock in the hall on the way back from the can, I lay down on the floor beside the bed. Scarlet was sound asleep, and I didn’twant to wake her. I wasn’t quite ready for everything to start up. I closed my eyes and boy, did I go under fast. Wow. Like I’d been crowbarred.

  Next thing I knew, something moved in the room. I opened my peepers; there was Scarlet stepping over top of me, a sheet wrapped around her, like an Italian movie star or something.

  I woke up God knows how much later. I lay there for awhile on the floor, looking around the room, feeling pretty pleased with myself, I have to tell you. I mean, like, I did it. I actually fucking did it. Just imagine what my little audience on the highway would have made of this, me making it all the way down here and then spending the night with a girl.

  I scrambled into my jeans and shirt and came out in the living room, the sun blazing down, me doing up my shirt pretty fast on account of my chicken chest. Sometimes in the shower I imagine people staring at me because I’m so skinny. Sometimes I tell them I’ve been sick recently. Ill, that’s the word I use. Sounds more tragic.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” I said. “It sure is bright out here. Man, I can hardly see.”

  Scarlet was sitting in a big chair with her legs draped over the side; wearing a white T-shirt and blue shorts. And glasses with big brown frames.

  She whipped them off.

  “About time,” she said.

  I didn’t want to get too near her on account of not having brushed my teeth.