by Robert Maxxe
Awkwardly, not knowing what else to do, Carrie had gone on ladling seafood salad into the plastic container while he supplied his thumbnail sketch of an unhappy marriage. When he fell silent, she finally looked up.
He was still staring at her. But now, miraculously, the tension was gone.
After a moment he said, "I thought you ought to know."
It could so easily have been presumptuous, but somehow it seemed exactly right. She nodded and put the plastic lid on the container.
She had to clear her throat to ask: "Anything else?"
He smiled and shook his head. "Just the bill."
She closed up the store and they got back in the car. Nothing was said. The air was full of possibilities both wanted to savor, and each understood the other's mood. Carrie turned the car around and resumed the trip to Bowridge Road.
Then she noticed they were passing the arcade. Her foot moved off the gas unthinkingly, and she scanned the front. The signs glowed; there was no other visible sign of activity.
"You look worried again," he observed. "Want to go in?"
Was Nick there with the girl? It wouldn't look good, coming in with a strange man, on the prowl.
"No," she said, "I ought to get home." They drove by.
"I give you my promise," he said with exaggerated gravity, "Pac-Man will not destroy your son."
There wasn't any Pac-Man in this arcade, she thought, only a game called Spacescape. Why should she think that made a difference?
He studied her still-concerned expression. "Hey, that was supposed to be funny," he said.
She shrugged and gave him a broad helpless glance. "Deep down," she said, "I guess I'm just one more human chauvinist pig."
"Then I'll have to see that you get liberated."
She felt another meaning in his offer than merely changing her attitude about computers, and she didn't mind.
When she dropped him off at the foot of his driveway, he invited her in. She repeated her wish to get home. Enough had already passed between her and Lon Evans for one night; she needed time to digest it.
"How much of this will keep?" he asked, gathering up the big shopping bag with the TREATS logo on the side.
"The canned stuff, of course, and the caviar until it's opened. You can freeze the quiche. The rest is best fresh."
"Oh," he said, sounding disappointed. "The kids'll have a feast, anyway. I have to go to California tomorrow on business, do my monthly song and dance for the home office. But I was wondering . . . I'll be back next Wednesday. Could we have dinner together?"
She didn't answer right away. She had grown so comfortable loving only her memories. It was a daunting prospect to take the unpredictable risks of reality, even if you'd longed for it.
"You can't say no," he insisted. "I won't warm up your own quiche. We'll just have the caviar, with drinks before dinner. Then we'll go to a thing called a restaurant—get this, single parents, a place where you can actually eat without making the food or washing the dishes."
Carrie laughed. It sounded like Lon hadn't been on a date in a long time, either. "I'd like that," she said. "Very much."
"Wednesday night, then." He got out, then leaned down into the car. "And thanks for giving me a lift, Carrie—in more ways than one." He closed the door and jogged up his drive.
She drove home very slowly, her mind so full she had trouble concentrating on the road.
Another man in her life! Was she ready? Oh yes, it might be wonderful.
The arcade had done her that much good, anyway. Her concern had taken her to the high school, and there she had met Lon Evans.
His booster's spiel about the computer had done a bit to reassure her, too. Even if she still couldn't buy the idea of the machines—and the games, to hear him tell it—being no less than the great hope of the future.
11
On Saturday afternoon the soccer JV was having its first match and Carrie went to see Nick play starting left forward, whatever that was. She hadn't ever been to a soccer game before and couldn't suppress butterflies in her stomach when she saw how rough-and-tumble it was. Nick was trapped several times in the thick of hot scrambles for the ball, and more than once he got jostled to the ground amid feet flailing in spiked shoes. Carrie had visions of him getting kicked in the head.
Yet she was thrilled when Nick scored a tie-breaking goal toward the end of the first half; and that mitigated against her condemning the sport even after he had to be sent limping off the field in the last quarter, his shin bruised by an opponent's kick.
During the game Carrie kept looking over the stands and the sidelines, searching for the girl who'd come to the house last night. If there was some throbbing infatuation, the girl could be expected to turn up here, rooting for Nick. The goal-scoring sports hero—wounded in action, no less—that was the stuff of which crushes were made.
But the girl was nowhere to be seen. And she was too much of a stand-out, Carrie thought, to be overlooked.
At breakfast on Sunday, Nick explained that he would be rehearsing all day at the Bannermans'. He had told Carrie a week ago that The Mindbenders were hoping to land their first paid engagement—thirty-five dollars to play at a school Thanksgiving Dance—and they were working hard to prepare their audition for the Social Committee. Touched by Nick's effort, Carrie had automatically tabled her plan to take the children away over Thanksgiving. The Caribbean might be nice at Christmas, too.
With the passage of the weekend, and Nick's total involvement in all his usual activities, Carrie realized she must have jumped to the wrong conclusion. The girl was just someone Nick met occasionally at the arcade.
But if Carrie no longer suspected the arcade of providing her son with a rendezvous for precocious romance, she was still curious about the place. Her conversation with Lon Evans had left her feeling both chastened and challenged. It was time, she thought, to overcome her own prejudice of computers and the games they could play, establish a friendly relationship with the technology of the future.
On Monday at lunch hour she walked down Elm Street to have another look. She frowned slightly as she approached the arcade and saw a couple of young boys walk up to the entrance ahead of her. How many other potential Philip Carmichaels were already inside? But then one of the boys tried to pull the door open and discovered it was bolted. Frustrated, he kept yanking on the handle for half a minute. At last he cursed and walked away with his companion.
Despite what she'd witnessed, Carrie had to try the door for herself. Locked. She found it hard to believe. It couldn't be because whoever managed the arcade was out to lunch. Carrie had seen it open when no one was on the premises. And hadn't Patrick been in there during a lunch hour?
Carrie went back to her shop, but she kept thinking about the arcade. Had it closed up? Could Friday night's protest meeting have made the difference—and so quickly?
When business remained slow in the early part of the afternoon, Carrie decided to leave Patrick in charge and take off. She could go home, wash her hair, perhaps get out the sewing machine and finish a slipcover for the little chair she'd bought at a yard sale to use with her vanity table.
But first she drove back to the other end of Elm Street. She parked the car outside the arcade and tried the door again. It was still locked.
As she turned back to her car, Carrie's eye caught Osgood's across the street and she was reminded that she needed some new shampoo and hair conditioner. She spent ten minutes in the pharmacy buying these and a few other standby items for the medicine chest, then chatting with Jack Osgood about his son's first semester at Yale. She was getting back into her car, when a bunch of kids on bicycles came riding up from the direction of school. She glanced at the clock on the dash: just a few minutes past three. School was out, the kids were eager to play. Carrie started the car, but waited in front of the arcade to see how the children would react to being locked out.
Jumping from their bikes, they propped them against the side of the cottage and raced for t
he entrance. They lunged at the doors, seized the handles—
The doors opened easily and the kids streamed inside.
Carrie shook her head in confusion. Had there been someone inside all the time the arcade was locked? Then why had it been closed? To keep her out?
Nonsense. That was leaping across the generation gap into paranoia.
Carrie considered getting out of the car again and going into the arcade, but then she saw a few more knots of schoolchildren walking quickly along the sidewalk toward the cottage. There would be dozens now that school was recessed. If she wanted to try one of the games herself, she'd have to pick a better time than right after school. She turned the car around and drove home.
On the way, it suddenly occurred to her that the timing wasn't coincidental: the arcade had opened only after the schoolday was over. And she remembered that a major complaint of the anti-arcade group—in fact, their most reasonable—was the accessibility of the games during school hours.
Was it possible that the arcade had adjusted its hours in response to a reasonable objection? It would make good sense politically, as a way of blunting community protest and heading off the move for a permanent closing.
But if that was the case, Carrie thought, then some representative of the arcade obviously knew exactly what had been said at the meeting. And it couldn't be through the local newspaper: Tides 'n' Tidings would no doubt carry a complete report, but the weekly wasn't due out until Thursday.
Which meant that someone connected to the arcade must have been in the high school auditorium on Friday night.
Lon Evans? He'd spoken in defense of the games.
Yet if he was the one, why should he keep the connection a secret? Why not take the chair provided on the stage? He had been anxious enough to have his say.
The international computer conspiracy . . .
It was still an outlandish idea.
In her mind's eye, Carrie reviewed the other faces she'd seen in the audience. Was there anyone else who looked unfamiliar, out of place?
Unimportant as the questions were, Carrie couldn't stop turning them over and over in her head.
Could it be Evans? Was he connected somehow with Mr. Peale?
All the while she washed her hair and dried it, she wondered. And later, after she started sewing the slipcover, she finished three whole seams before realizing that one of the two pieces being joined was wrong-side out.
That evening, and again on Tuesday, Nick called right after soccer practice to remind Carrie that he was going straight to Dougie's to rehearse for a couple of hours.
Home alone with Emily, Carrie involved her in preparing dinner, and let her try the sewing machine, and curled up with her on the den sofa, both in nightgowns, and made jokes about being "bachelor girls" together. But Carrie felt a little blue the whole time and couldn't admit the obvious reason to herself until Tuesday night, when she and Emily fell into watching a couple of television sitcoms, and both happened to be about mothers or fathers, divorced or widowed, raising kids alone. It seemed to be a popular theme these days, though Carrie just couldn't find anything funny in it. She didn't want to sit home every damn night, much as she loved being with her children. She hated having her hair freshly washed and conditioned and smelling great . . . and nowhere to go. She was only thirty-seven, for God's sakes, in her prime! Oh Lord, would it be over now, the aloneness . . .?
No! She mustn't do this—make too goddamn much of one date. And with a man she knew so little about.
Before going off to school on Wednesday morning, Nick announced that he would be at Doug Bannerman's again that evening. Carrie balked. This was the night she'd be having dinner out with if he really called Lon Evans if she didn't decide there was something sinister about him she ought to avoid. She looked ahead, and imagined Lon picking her up, and thought it would be much easier on Emily—seeing mother go on her first date—if Nick was there, too.
"I think maybe The Mindbenders should take a night off," Carrie said, "and you stay home."
"Aw, Mom," Nick squalled. "I can't. How're we ever gonna get ready . . .?"
"What about your schoolwork? When does that get done?"
"We do it," Nick replied vaguely, then added, "If you have to know, I'm ahead in every subject."
That sounded too good to be true, and probably was. But the band effort did have a value of its own that Carrie didn't want to take lightly. She pondered for a moment, then shrugged in reluctant assent, and off Nick went.
The phone was ringing when Carrie opened the store at a few minutes before nine-thirty. She picked up the extension at the cash register.
"Hi, it's Lon Evans. There were no earthquakes in California, so I'm back to keep our date. Anything change at your end?"
Carrie's hesitation was barely perceptible. "No. I'm looking forward to dinner."
"Great." He paused. "I've been thinking so much about you, Carrie."
She didn't know how to answer.
Hurriedly, perhaps only to cover the embarrassed silence, he said he'd pick her up at eight-thirty if that was convenient, and when she said it was fine, he hung up.
She went through the rest of the day damning herself for that awkward silence. He'd been brave and sweet, and she'd been cold. I've been thinking so much about you. There were half a dozen answers she could have given instead of leaving him out there shivering on a limb. Sincere: "That's very nice to hear." Joky: "I hope it didn't get in the way of your work." Romantic: "I thought about you, too." Or plain honest: "Please don't rush things, Lon. It scares me."
Or was it just something she couldn't say: You scare me . . . because I like you, but I don't know who or what you are and I think you might be keeping some strange secret from me about your work. About the arcade.
Whatever her doubts, though, Carrie was all girlish expectancy by the time she got home that evening. She came early so that she could feed Emily and get her settled with Kim Larrimore, and still have time afterward to immerse herself for half an hour in a warm bath. She wanted to be ready for tonight—relaxed, smooth, perfumed . . . irresistible.
Lying in the scented water, she thought about the evening ahead, her first "date"—the getting-to-know-him kind—since she was twenty-two. It made her feel somewhat as if she were that age again. Or younger. Not all the feeling was good. Part of it was that green-around-the-ears insecurity, not knowing exactly how to behave, not sure she understood the social language of dating anymore. Christ, it had been hard enough getting the signals straight twenty years ago. But the world had changed so much since then, especially the world of interactions between men and women. What was expected of her? How should she respond if he wanted to go to bed with her? Was it all right to sleep with a man on the first date if you were a thirty-seven-year-old widow?
Maybe not. But she wasn't sure she could stop herself if he made the pass—or stop herself from making it first. It was obvious her sexual needs were spilling over. Look how fast the relationship was moving. And wasn't she the one who had really set the pace—bringing him into the store like that?
Thinking about it only made her tense. She pushed down deeper into the bath and tried to relax, wipe away all expectations and concentrate on the womblike warmth. But she felt so sexy now, and as if her thoughts of going to bed with Lon—the stranger—were an infidelity, her mind did penance by sliding into a fantasy with Mike, recreating some of the high points from a particularly long and satisfying bout of lovemaking they had enjoyed in a room at the Gritti Palace on their first trip to Venice. Hotel rooms had always turned them on, and there was something so exquisitely decadent about Venice that they had indulged themselves with a pure carnal delight that was at once bestial and childlike. Making love nearly until dawn, then still eager for more sensations after a room-service breakfast, Mike had taken the honey served to them with toast, warmed it slightly over a candle, and then—
The jangle of the phone shattered the dream.
Carrie pulled herself out of the ba
th and, grabbing a towel from the bar, hurtled toward the bedside phone and grabbed the receiver as if to strangle it. She was already lifting it to her ear when she realized that the terry fabric clutched against her dripping breasts was only a hand towel.
"Oh shit," she muttered, not caring what was heard by the torturer on the other end of the line who had chosen this moment to call. She followed with a sharp "Hello."
"Carrie, it's Joanne Bannerman. Listen, am I catching you at a bad moment?"
"No, no, not at all," Carrie said, sheepish now about her rudeness.
"Are you sure? Because I need to talk for a minute. . . ."
"That's fine, Joanne." Goose bumps rose on her arms and legs. Carrie yanked up a corner of the bedspread and wrapped it around herself.
"It's about Nick and Doug. I thought if we put our heads together, there might be something we could do to help."
"Help?" Carrie echoed curiously. "What do you mean, Joanne?" Did Doug Bannerman's mother really think it was worth playing band agent to land the boys a thirty-five dollar job?
There was a pause, then the other woman raced on. "I suppose what I'm really hoping, Carrie, is that you might speak to Nick. Of course, you can't change his mind, if it's really made up, I know that. But Doug has been moping about this for days. Maybe you feel differently because Nick put in so much of his own money, but Charlie and I paid for all of Doug's, and frankly we're none too thrilled about shelling out seven hundred dollars for all that equipment and then having it just sit there. I know, I know, it's not impossible to find someone else for him to play with. But since the whole idea started with Nick, Dougie feels it's really dead without him."
At first it was just noise, meaningless words strung together. Carrie kept waiting for a chance to break in, tell Joanne to slow down and start over slowly from the beginning.
But then all at once the bombardment of words fell into a dark pool of meaning. The boys' band had broken up. Nick wasn't rehearsing with Doug tonight. Moping about this for days. Hadn't rehearsed over the weekend or the last two nights, from the sound of it.