Playing Botticelli: A Novel

by Liza Nelson

  Then he kissed me, and there in the dark bus, it felt wonderfully right, romantic as a movie. He was a man, not a boy, who trusted me as a woman. He needed me. The other passengers just faded away. Except for the driver, who didn’t count because he couldn’t look back, we were the only people awake on the bus, anyway. The forward rocking of the bus, the drone of the engine blocking out all sound except Spider’s burred twang so close to my ear, made the outside world seem unreal. We were locked in our own little private night. Only the whisper of cold air escaping in along the rubberized window frame reminded me where I was.

  I don’t know if I slept at all. I remember a neon gas station sign somewhere, a gold shell lit up like a perfect jewel on black velvet. Sometime after that, gray streaks began to stain the sky. When a few people lumbered past us on their way to the toilet, I wondered briefly, a passing thought I didn’t try to hold, what it would be like with Spider once the sun came up. It was almost light enough to see his face clearly, but my eyes wouldn’t open. Not that I fell asleep exactly, just my eyes. The rest of my body was aware of every lurch and turn and brake of the bus, every slowdown and speed-up. Here and there I’d let myself sink into a luxurious blank undertow, but then I’d feel the pressure of responding weight against my shoulder and float back into semiconscious awareness of Spider next to me, wide awake. He didn’t seem to need sleep at all. By the time we got to the Shoney’s we’re at now, Spider had only to touch my arm and I was awake. Eyes-open awake and starving.

  As soon as we got here, Spider took his zippered bag of quarters and went off to the pay phone. He should be back any minute. Meanwhile, I’m stuffing my face. This is my first real meal since Thursday night. I was too nervous Friday to eat anything before I left, and since then it’s been chips and candy bars washed down with orange soda. But Spider ordered the breakfast buffet for two before he went off. I’m having bacon, scrambled eggs, a blueberry muffin, hash browns, pancakes. It’s amazing how hungry sitting in a bus seat can make a person. If Godiva were here now, she’d be sipping tea and smoking, blowing smoke rings and tapping ashes into the little tin ashtray. That’s what most people here are doing, drinking coffee, but I can see Godiva so clearly because even doing almost the same as everybody else she’s always out of place. She’d dwarf them all.

  Outside in the parking lot a man keeps wandering up to the door and then wandering back. It’s really kind of sad. He’s wearing three layers of sweaters and one of those hats with earflaps. His hair sticks out in knotted spikes and he’s real dirty besides. A street person, I guess, but when he peeked in the last time, he had the clearest, bluest eyes.

  What if I get to the farm and they don’t know where you are? Hiding from the police and the FBI all these years could damage a person’s spirit. I suppose street persons are able to get by without social-security numbers. If your spirit is broken, I’ll rehabilitate you. I’ll get a job and learn to cook. But what about your parents? Are they accepting, like Gerry Flint’s? Do you send them postcards occasionally? We could go to their house in Michigan or wherever. They’d probably be overjoyed to get back their son; a granddaughter would be a bonus. Only we wouldn’t go right away. I’d get you good and healthy first so you could cope. Not that you’re going to need rehabilitating. You’re going to be great.

  It turns out the schedule was misleading. I can’t make it to Eden before late tonight at the earliest. But I am going to get there and I will find you. I almost hope Spider doesn’t come back, although I know he will because his briefcase is here next to me. I could look inside if I wanted. It is tempting, but no, I do not think I will peek. One glance at me and Spider could tell. Even though we hardly know each other, he seems to see into my heart somehow. It’s kind of cool.

  Don’t worry, he won’t get in the way of my finding you. He is a little bit of a distraction, but in a good way because he makes the traveling less lonely. Even if only half of what he says is true, his life has certainly not been dull. He’s a renegade, same as me. He told me this whole philosophy he has about living by the inner light, what he calls self-actualizing. Not like Godiva at all even if it sounds that way. Well, maybe a little like her.

  I do wonder how it’s going—if Godiva is suspicious by now. I’m worried about Cass when she gets back. She thinks Godiva is so interesting. She could mess me up although I’ve warned her that Godiva is tricky, that she sucks people right in if they’re not careful. She’ll talk to Cass as an equal, ask her questions that hit little pings of truth Cass won’t be able to imagine Godiva has recognized. Cass will be flattered, but I think she’ll hold out. She shouldn’t be back in Esmeralda for another day and a half anyway. Everything will be chill as long as Gram doesn’t call, and why would she, all the way from Waikiki?

  I have my fingers crossed. I have to get farther before Godiva knows anything. At least to Eden.

  Eleven

  IT HAS MOSTLY to do with Spider’s smile. The way his thin face stretches almost painfully before the sudden flash of teeth and gum grabs me in the chest and squeezes my breath away. My thinking goes all haywire when he’s around. He takes me in so many directions at once.

  When he came back into Shoney’s, he had flowers for me. No one has ever brought me flowers in my life. Where he came up with orange daisies and yellow carnations at 8:00 on a Sunday morning is a question I did not dare ask because what comes to mind is a church or a cemetery. He pinned the flowers in my hair like a crown. He says that his aunt who runs a beauty parlor in Tupelo taught him all kinds of hair tricks. I felt kind of silly, but nice silly. Getting back on the bus, I knew I was blushing and I knew I looked pretty and special to the crone patrol (as Spider calls them). Even the bus driver smiled.

  It was such a beautiful morning. The dark tint on the windows could not keep out the sunlight, and the Virginia countryside was so much livelier than the Carolinas or Georgia, all blues and yellows and greens. More prosperous, the rolling farmland clotted with barns and houses, old-fashioned and neat, like the miniature Victorian village we helped Cleo set up under her tree on Christmas Eve, another holiday tradition. I unwrapped the colored tissue papers one by one to discover a house or a little store just like I do every year. I don’t know why Godiva has always been so eager to spend so much time with Cleo and have all these little traditions with her when she can’t stand to be around Gram, her own mother, for more than three minutes and never would think of spending a holiday with her. They’re both old ladies so what’s the big difference? Not that I care. She can spend as much time with Cleo as she wants now.

  All through Virginia, Spider told stories about one or another of his great-great-great-uncles fighting a Civil War battle in whatever town we were passing through. Spider could tell me exactly how many people were killed on each side, what injury his great-great-great-uncle suffered and what act of heroism he performed. At some point I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was one of the more decrepit old ladies.

  “I’m just on my way to the restroom,” she whispered, her hand digging into my shoulder as she tried to keep her balance against the bus’s sway while she offered me a mint LifeSaver, slightly damp. “You two look so sweet together.”

  It was a lark. Spider even had a soda can ring he pulled from a pocket of his briefcase. I don’t know, I guess it sounds corny, but at the time I was all caught up in the mood. It was romantic, even when the flowers began to wilt and the petals started falling into my lap.

  He was telling me about his great-great-uncle Morrison Peavy being taken prisoner of war at the Battle of Vicksburg when he stopped in midsentence, squeezed my hand tight and smiled. His eyes, yellow brown like a cat’s, stared at me without a flicker, demanding that I not turn away. So I didn’t. Hand and eye, he did not let go and did not let go. I could feel the strength in his hand, felt it traveling down his sinewy arm from somewhere inside his narrow back. I felt dull and tired in comparison. I didn’t think about what he wanted; I just relaxed, letting the current pass between us back and forth. Then it
was as if I were floating separate above myself, watching my mouth open and close. I began to tell him my story, about living out my childhood as if I’d been born by Immaculate Conception or something, knowing as little about who my father was as Godiva told me she knew, which I believed was next to nothing, then finding your picture. How that changed everything.

  I never told anyone or even completely admitted this to myself, but I used to dream, daydream and night dream both, that you were Sam Malone, the guy on that TV show Cheers who owns the bar. Not the actor, but Sam Malone. He is funny and cute and lovable for an older guy, and he has no visible family. I used to imagine being part of the show one week, how it would be written up in TV Guide: “A beautiful young girl visits the bar and seems very interested in Sam. Diane is jealous until the girl confides she is Sam’s daughter but is afraid to tell him.” By the end of the episode, Carla, the waitress who’s always pregnant, would make a joke about him being old enough to be my father. Then everyone, Cliffy and Norm and that psychiatrist, would roll their eyes, but I’d go into Sam’s office and tell him the truth and there would be a big reunion scene and I’d end up with some kind of continuing role.

  Well, I told Spider and he didn’t laugh at me. So then I told about finding the wanted poster. He was still holding my hand. He opened his fingers and turned my hand over to study my palm.

  “Ronald Reagan is a student of astrology,” he told me. “The fact is not generally known, but it is one reason I admire him so much. He isn’t all objective scientific method. Neither am I, darling.” He actually called me that.

  “I can finish your story studying this pretty little hand of yours.”

  I was blown away. Astrology and palm reading, weren’t they on the same weirdness frequency as the I Ching? This had to be some kind of omen. I had not even mentioned that the poster was in Godiva’s I Ching box.

  “You are looking for him now and you don’t expect a TV star anymore. But I see a family uniting here.” He pointed to a spot right in the deepest part of my palm where three lines intersect. “And if your daddy is wanted by the FBI”—Spider’s finger pressed a gentle crease from my wrist along the longest line of my palm— “I have connections that could be a big help locating him.”

  I don’t know if I made a mistake, and I hope you’re not angry, but I showed him the poster. I was really nervous. Part of me was saying don’t do it, but I could not stop myself. Anyway, it is public knowledge, isn’t it? I told him about the research I had done to trace you. As I was about to explain how I learned about Eden, the shadow of a face slid across the window glass behind Spider, just a slight darkening. Maybe it was a sudden jolt of the bus or a man’s phlegmy cough a few seats forward, but I felt the warning was from you and stopped talking.

  “So you’ll look in his old haunts?” Spider kept stroking my hand, and I nodded, guilty that I was holding back, guilty that I had already said so much. He did not ask where I’m heading next; maybe he sees it on my palm, but I promise I haven’t told him.

  WE DIDN’T GET to Washington until about eight tonight. The camaraderie evaporated as soon as the driver accordioned open the door. Filing down the narrow aisle, no one looked at each other. No one helped anyone else down the steep steps. Waiting for the bags to be handed out at the side of the bus, no one spoke. The air was dense with exhaust, unbreathable, no one could have spoken if we wanted to. Even Spider was a stranger to me again, and the possibility that I should not rely on a stranger leaned awkwardly against the trust we’d been building between us. I could see the stubble of a day’s growth of beard on his chin. It seemed almost creepy that I’d been kissing someone old enough to shave every day. I’ve decided that he’s older than I thought, maybe even twenty-five.

  Spider left me alone by the island of plastic chairs while he disappeared to make one of his phone calls. The room was almost deserted. Two black men in their twenties stood in the corner playing a videogame machine and slapping each other on the shoulder, talking loud in a language I could not understand although it may have been a version of English. Every so often they looked toward me, not unfriendly exactly, but I pretended not to notice, any more than I noticed the stink of wine and urine on the five or six other men sprawled across or curled into the molded chairs around me.

  I was the only female and the only white person. You might be disappointed in me, but I have to be honest. I guess I am a racist because, despite all those years of Godiva explaining racial oppression and the bond that I should have felt from being partly named after a black woman (who, I remembered as I sat there, was murdered during a criminal act, probably in a similar neighborhood), I was scared to death. When Spider came around the corner from the men’s room I practically leaped into his arms. I couldn’t see what interested him about a dumpy teenage girl with dirty fingernails and dead weeds dripping down through my stringy, unwashed hair, but at that moment I was just grateful he was sticking around.

  I have no idea how he got us to this hotel room. He led me down various streets for what seemed hours. Then here we were. I was so tired I didn’t catch the name but the lobby was bland and impersonal with lots of heavily bundled people wandering around, Christmas season tourists I guess. The lady at the desk who gave us the key didn’t bat an eye at how cheesy I looked. Spider waved away the old guy who offered to carry our bags. Then up we went in the elevator to the twelfth floor.

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” Spider said when we were inside with the light turned on and the bags on the little shelf. Of course, first we made out in the dark for a few minutes. His bony elbows with the little hollows were much sexier pressing me against the wall than scrunched into those bus seats.

  I wish he’d get back. He told me to wash up and make myself lovely. That’s how he put it. “Make yourself lovely, darling girl, then order us up two steaks, medium, and whatever dessert they have that’s chocolate. Charge it to the room.” Who talks like that?

  I took a bath. To get out of my sweater and my jeans was heaven. The pants practically walked by themselves. I washed everything and used the little hair dryer the hotel provides until they were only damp. I put on a clean white T-shirt and my jogging shorts.

  Do you condemn fancy places like this? Godiva would call it decadent. She refuses to stay in motels even. The few times we went anywhere, she always seemed to know a place we could “crash,” friends or friends of friends or someone she met once and kept his address because he had a nice laugh.

  In Esmeralda, of course, she’s never really had friends, just old Cleo and now there’s Mrs. Culpepper, too, I guess. But she’s always had what she called her long-distance-call friends. There’d be calls every so often and letters from weird addresses in Oregon and Maine and North Dakota. I snuck a look through them to make sure there weren’t any from you. Nothing doing. Not even a mention. Only a few references to me for that matter. Mostly the letters were about the letter writers. It was kind of pathetic, these grown people writing on and on about their love life, or lack of it. The letters all ran together: “Am I talented or just mediocre” … “If only I had enough time” … “I am lonely” … “If only I had enough money” … “I miss him but I wouldn’t take him back” … “What I am attempting now is completely different”… “I am learning to grow up.” Blah, blah, blah, blah. What did Godiva write back? They all wrote as if she felt the same way, but I cannot feature Godiva Blue ever admitting she didn’t know exactly what she was all about.

  Staying here is not really being disloyal to you, is it? I mean, the way I am doing it, on the sly and all. And it is amazing; I can literally see the Washington Monument from my window. How did Spider manage it? He says he has all these phony credit cards for his secret work, and they are all government supplied anyway, but who knows?

  I wonder if this is the kind of place Cass stayed with her friend. By now they should be driving toward Esmeralda in her car, or did she park it somewhere when they met up? What does he drive? I’m picturing them tooling along in a ch
erry-red convertible, her mother’s overnight bag stowed in the trunk? Holding what? A silk teddy the color of his car, a hundred dollars in single bills, Opium perfume, an ounce of cocaine? B.D., I never used to imagine other people’s lives so much, but then I never imagined my own life much, either.

  I’m frankly a little worried about Cass. I don’t know much, but a couple of days before I left, she told me some crazy things she did this fall sometimes when she was not where she was supposed to be. Like the night of the lock-in. It’s amazing what she got away with. Of course, who am I to talk.

  Still, it was a little perverted. Some afternoons, when Mrs. Culpepper worked at school late and the boys had activities that kept them out of the house until her dad picked them up on his way home, Cass would cut last period study hall and drive all the way out Highway 7 to a spot where she could hear 1-75. There’s no exit there, but Cass told me that’s why she liked it. She said she’d park the car and then cut through an abandoned field and some shallow woods to a grass embankment where she could sit and wave at the people driving by on the interstate.

  “Sometimes I’d even take my shirt off and wave it around over my head.”

  “What?” I couldn’t believe I heard her right. I made Cass repeat that part.

  “Yeah, I’d wave around my shirt. It’s like I could do anything sitting there. I was completely visible from the road but invisible, too. The cars go by so fast they can’t be sure what they see.”

  We were standing by our lockers at school as she said this. She had on a black T-shirt and her narrow jeans. Watching her unwrap a piece of gum, I realized how otherworldly she could be with her pale skin and black chopped hair, a ghost in someone’s rearview mirror. It gave me the chills, although considering Spider and me on the bus last night, groping each other, doing practically everything but IT, I can see how under certain conditions people do become, not invisible exactly, but beyond reach of everyone else’s awareness.