Talk about jealousy.
No. Definitely not. That was not the message for this email. She didn't mention him, so he was not going to be a point of conversation.
Before I powered off the laptop, the email notification was back on. She was online and had already replied. "K. {smiley face). Nite. TTYL. {hugs}. B. (heart)"
I felt a warm glow in my chest, filling my heart. I didn't know what was going on, but I wasn't going to stop myself from liking how it felt to think she liked me. Even if we could never be together. My hands reached for the reply button, but then hovered in mid-air and stopped. There was no need to say anything else. And then I hit the reply button anyway, and just typed. "K. Nite. (smiley, smiley, smiley)."
The smileys weren’t really my style, but I was trying to mirror her. That was something else they talked about in the sales books, to help when trying to make a sale. Mirror the mood, style, posture, and language of the prospect. Put yourself on the same playing-field as the prospect. Understand their actual needs (requirements - must-haves, to make the deal), their emotional wants (the perks that excite them on a personal level), their motivations (why are they looking), their ability to close (when can they act, how much can they afford, how motivated are they), and then move toward closing the deal. Even before the first word was spoken, the process should have been directed toward closing the deal. With every word and action.
Honestly, it bothered me that sales was all about the manipulation of people as if they were programmable machines. Maybe that's why I wasn't a huge fan of sales people. But the Madison Avenue machine impressed and intrigued me none-the-less. If I hadn't had a soul, maybe I could have been a great sales-person. I was definitely enough of a prick.
We'll see.
[ The Painting ]
Early the next morning, a silver mini-Cooper pulled up in front of our house. Pa was at the window in his underwear, suspiciously staring outside, wondering who it was. Ma was telling him to put on some pants. A nicely-dressed girl got out of the car, and went to her trunk. I was watching from my own upstairs bedroom window. Bo went to the trunk, and removed a large painting frame wrapped in white cloth, then she carried it to our front door and rang the bell.
Ma answered, and immediately began telling her, "I'm sorry, but we're really not interested in buying anything."
Bo smiled and asked, "Hi. Is Waylon home?"
"Oh!" Ma was surprised. "You know Waylon?" The first surprise was that Bo was not a door-to-door salesperson. Then she realized that the beautiful girl in the expensive car had just asked for her loser son. She repeated, more surprised, "You know Waylon???"
"Yes. I wanted to give him something."
I was already rushing down from upstairs as soon as I was decent, still pulling my sneakers on as I went. "Howdy!" I called from the stairs.
She smiled when she saw me. "Hey, Waylon. Brought you something."
I knew what it was but I had to ask. "That what I reckon it is?"
"You paid for it at the gas station, so I wanted to deliver it in person."
"What?" Suddenly I realized that her gas that I had paid for had also been her asking price on eBay for the painting. She had let me buy the painting by paying for her gas.
Ma was standing there, looking between us, hanging on our every word. I suggested to her, "Y'mind givin' us a little privacy?"
"Oh, certainly. I'll tidy up in the kitchen." That had to be a joke. She never cleaned. She was just relocating her eavesdropping.
I removed the cloth from the painting, and held it by the frame, admiring it. "It really is beautiful. It looks like you. Did you use a mirror?"
"Digital pictures, until I found one I liked, then I made the sketch from that, and painted it in."
"Is this really mine?"
"Didn't you say you wanted it?"
"I did."
"It's yours."
"Thank you." Then I added. "I don't remember giving you my address."
She grinned wildly. "You didn't. I thought if I were going to hang around with you, I wanted to try my hand at cyber-stalking."
"Ahhh!" We both laughed. It came good and easy. I was also glad to hear her say, “If I were going to hang around with you.” This sounded promising, and my pulse started to race.
There was a moment of awkward silence, but Bo caught me staring at her face, gazing longingly.
She asked, "What? Do I have something in my nose? Like that booger of Ryan's?"
"No." I was embarrassed, for being caught in a prolonged gaze.
"You'd tell me if I did, wouldn't you?"
"Oh, yeah." I found myself blurting out without filters, "It's just that sometimes I stare at your face and say to myself, you’re so beautiful."
She smiled uncomfortably.
"I shouldn't have said that," I grimaced, but refused to take it back.
Quietly she admitted, "I like how you're not afraid to say what you feel all the time."
I squirmed. "I'm plenty afraid. Half the time I don't know what's coming out of my mouth until I hear it. Robby does the same thing, but in his case, he just doesn't care what he says."
"I can always tell when things are getting too personal for you. You start comparing yourself to Robby."
"I do?" This was news to me. I had always thought it was because I talked too much and knew Robby about as well as I knew myself. I must have done that more times than I realized for the couple days I had hung out with her.
"You're shy. A kind of 'outgoing shy.' A little bit extroverted, but you like to keep your feelings hidden. You try to jumble them up. Mask them. Why is that?"
I paused to give it some serious thought, then answered, "I'm afraid to let people find out what a dickhead I really am."
She chuckled, "Oh no, you have NO problem letting people see THAT side."
I groaned. "Thanks. Tell me again why I like you?" It was another one of those moments where my eyes darted over nervously, wondering if I had revealed too much and was going to get in some heap a trouble for it.
She faced away from me and began twirling her brown wavy hair around a finger. She did that when she was nervous. "I like talking with you because I feel like I can say whatever I want. I don't have to worry about it first."
"You look like you're worrying now," I told her, twirling my own hair to show her The Tell.
"Ryan's good to me." She seemed to be reminding herself not to stray off her proper path. Or maybe she was reminding me she had a boyfriend. Hard to say.
"I Know." I didn't really want to talk about him, but couldn't always avoid it. "He's a good guy. I like him." I added, a bit more from the heart, "I'm glad you're with someone that I know cares about you, and takes care of you. That's important to me." The statement was about Ryan, but it said even more about me.
"He tries," she said with a slight jerk of the head, as if undecided.
After a moment where I was afraid to interrupt her deep brow-furrowed thoughts, she asked me, "What about your future? After you graduate, are you going to move to New York or California, or somewhere, to pursue your career?
"Why? They don't need laid-back, pop-culture-savvy marketing-professionals in the South?"
"That's a lot of implied hyphenation again"
"It's my specialty."
She smiled. "I know." Pause. "I was just wondering if you were planning to stay around. Or leave? That's all."
I looked at her intently, considering her question, trying to figure her out. "I guess that depends."
Bo was quiet, as she asked, "On what?"
I felt she wanted me to say, “On you.” She wanted me to let her know where I stood. To be clear. To be forward. To put the innuendo behind us, and figure everything else as we went along, from that moment onward.
But I was afraid to go there. I didn’t want to risk ruining it, whatever it was, with one careless step. I ignored the question and nodded to the painting. "You want to help me find a spot for this in my room?"
Ma called from the k
itchen, not afraid to admit she was eavesdropping, "Waylon-Willy Billy-Bob Bowden, you KNOW you are not supposed to have girls in your room!"
I shouted back, "I'll leave the door open!"
Bo whispered, grinning, "How old are you, again?"
I shook my head. "Don't even start." And then I led her upstairs carrying the painting.
Once we were in my room, she bobbed her head a few times, underwhelmed by my bedroom.
"Wow," she said. "I did not picture your room looking like this. Has it changed since you were seven?”
I joked, "Yeah, those Action Figures over yonder are new. And the Thomas the Train wallpaper."
"Great. It’s wicked nice," she said.
"Thanks. I picked it out myself."
"And you didn't get a dorm at college. You must really like this." She probably knew I didn't have the money for a dorm, but she wasn't holding that against me. She was just having some fun with me, and I liked it.
"I like it around here," I admitted. "Maybe not the room, but the area. I love to take a gander out my window. Unobstructed."
"Yeah?” she asked, "Going over to the window and looking out. "What do you see? Some neighbor doing bends in spandex?"
I laughed, "Oh, I do not want to see THESE neighbors, doing any bends, God love 'em."
"So what then?"
I pointed. "The open sky. Do you know what I love about spring?"
"It's the Season of Love? Great weather? Baseball?"
"Yes, yes, and yes. And also because the birds always come back."
"Huh?" She looked out the window again, amused. "The birds?"
"You know, on their way back up North after the winter. Every spring, no matter what, they come back; flying like clockwork across the skies; the Sandhill Cranes, in those impressive v-formations. I look out that window and can see these majestic flocks."
Bo was amused. "And you like that?"
"I do. For reasons I can't fully understand, it comforts me. Always has. It's like, if they didn't come back, what would that mean? Would it mean that things were so bad, it wasn't worth returning? And if that was true, what did that say about the future in general? As long as those birds come back, it's like, everything is still ok. At least for one more year. And I can relax and not worry about things that probably don't matter anyway."
I was thinking about the seals and whales that beached themselves in droves. The honeybees that mysteriously died off. The tricolored blackbird not having enough food to breed. It was not encouraging.
"Sandhill Crane, you said?" she asked.
"Yes."
She admitted, "I'm taking notes. Learning about you."
A silence was on the verge of creeping in, so I asked, "Where do you think your painting would look good?"
"In a Gallery," she joked.
I was hurt, but she waved it off. "It might be too heavy for your walls, but you can lean it over there, where you can see it real nice from your bed."
"I'm not sure if that came out right" I joked. “From my bed?”
"Excuse me?" she said, seriously.
I was used to making off-color comments like the one she made, followed by the comment I had made, but I realized that she wasn't me. I started back-peddling. "I, I just .. I mean, you..."
She broke into a laugh. "I know what I said. I was playing with you."
I was so confused. Just like when we had been out those other nights. I sure felt like she was flirting with me, but I didn't understand how that could be the case. Either way, I was happy to do the same, even if it meant we just enjoyed playful and innocent fun. I looked at her shoes. That little pin was still there. Playful and fun. I would have to tell her about my “Ho Shoe” website, but that could wait for another day.
"You're a character," I said.
"I should go," she countered. "I don't want your mother grabbing her shotgun and a minister, if I stay up here too long."
I groaned. "You are so crossing the line with my people," But I was smiling.
"I'll see you, Ok?"
"Anytime. Anywhere. Just say where and when, Bo."
And then she left; leaving me elated and puzzled, happy to be alive, but already missing her terribly. I knew at that moment that I would never breathe again if I did not try with all my heart to make her mine. I promised myself that much. Whatever it took, however long or however much patience was required, I would try with all my heart.
[ BasketBall ]
The next day after I got home from school and work, Robby pulled up in front of our house in his ugly brown van that he had nicknamed The Beast. It looked like a child molester's tool of choice. Robby had thought it would be great for random hookups with the girls (the legal ones), but he also got mileage out of it delivering newspapers and phone books, before he landed his town job. He sniffed around my kitchen for a minute - friend chicken was cooking – and he asked my Ma to invite him to dinner once it was done. Robby and I then went outside to shoot some hoops in the driveway.
"So what happened? Ya going after her?" Robby asked, dribbling and bouncing the ball around my reaching hands.
"Bo? Nah," I dismissed the idea, blocking his shot. My reply wasn’t quite honest, but I didn’t want him pestering me about it while I figured how I was going to make this work.
"Thought you liked her," Robby said. He knew I did. He could read me better than I knew.
He faked left and tossed the ball. It bounced off the rim, and I recovered it.
"She has a boyfriend,” I conceded, giving up. "It is what it is." I took a quick one-off toss. It went wide.
"...is what it is," he repeated. He always paused to spit some tobacco when he said that. He was always chewing tobacco, and always pausing to spit it. Sometimes it was like an anthem. "But if I really wanted someone,” he added, “boyfriends never stopped me. If the girl cared about him all that much, she wouldn't let me in, now would she?"
I stopped moving, and bent down, with my hands on my knees. "Her friends are pretty cool. You shoulda come."
He whipped the ball directly at my head, hitting me hard. "You didn’t want me to go. You were just too chickenshit to tell me.”
I stared, busted and dumbfounded.
“You thought I didn't know?" He laughed and scratched his balls.
I guess I had been flat-out stupid. We had been friends for way too many years. I rubbed my stinging cheek. "I just wanted another chance to meet her... to figure things out …"
He finished, "Without me screwing it up. I know."
I grabbed the ball before it rolled into the street, and started dribbling again. "Next time," I told him, "You're coming out with us."
"I can take care of that there boyfriend for you. Can kick the shit out him before I fuck up my boss. For practice."
"No. Y’ have to be nice."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he muttered impatiently. “Nice is my middle name."
It wasn't really, but it wasn't too far off. Robert Nicholas Puckett. Nick. Not exactly 'nice', but then again, neither was Robby.
I tried to run a circle around him, but he piled into me knocking me over. The ball went flying and we tumbled to the ground, both of us getting scraped up. We got into a little fight, then started laughing and brushed ourselves off.
Dinner was ready.
At the dinner table, Ma piled up the chicken and mashed taters on our plates. There was freshly-boiled corn on the cob and lots of butter, with little corn-shaped skewers to hold it. Day old ho cakes, corn-bread squares, were piled in the center of the table. I loved them when they were a day old, just a little stale, and then you cut them in half, top and bottom, and smothered them in slabs of not-quite-melted butter. They were heaven. Ma liked to put a mess of pepper on the chicken and corn, and other spices on the chicken. She made it extra crispy, which was great. Except about once or twice a year she set her frying pan afire, causing Pa to grab a lid, cover the pot, and throw the food outside, then put out the fire with dirt. We had permanent black smoke stains on the c
eiling and the wall behind the stove. The smell never quite went away. But it was all worth it. Her chicken was the best. Robby was bigger than me and always stuffed down double-heapings.
Ma asked Robby, "How's your mother?"
"She's well, ma'am."
"And your father?"
"The same."
I smirked. The speech never changed, and Robby didn't mean his Pa was well. He meant he never changed, and that was a little too bad, but ... is what it is.
My Pa sat there reading a paper until Ma grabbed it and swatted him with it. "Don't read at the table. Now say Grace."
Pa muttered something under his breath, and we all made the sign of the cross then dug into our vittles.
When we were done, we hung back outside on the front steps.
Robby asked me, "You really think they're gonna ask you out again? Bo and her friends?"
"Wow," I replied, shocked. "It never occurred to me that they wouldn't. You reckon I scared them off? I thought Bo's email was awfully friendly." I told him about it.
"Over friendly. Did you ever tell her how you found her?"
I nodded and picked at some of the chicken still stuck in my teeth.
Robby nodded. "And she still let you sit in her lap, even though you cyber-stalked her, and she had that fancy boyfriend. Then she emailed you with all those girly pre-teen 'moticons. That is one confused over-friendly piece of ..."
"Shut!" I did not want him referring to her that way.
"She send you any new emails?" he grinned.
"Dunno."
"We should check," he prodded.
"I dunno. Maybe later."
He mocked, "I Heart U, Bo!" Then grabbed my arm. "C'mon."
"No."
"Faggot. C'mon!"
I wiped my greasy fingers on my jeans and stood up, letting him pull me into the house.
We went upstairs to my room and fired up the laptop. A hundred years later when we were good and old, it finally came on. I checked my email. Sure enough, something was waiting from Bo.
Robby whistled. "Holy shee-yat!"
Under The Covers Page 7