“Gordon said that?”
“Of course not.”
“So what do they want—pretty little flowers and cottages and happy people and shit?”
Rose snorted. “No. At least, I don’t think so. Gordon said a lot would be left up to the artist. You could talk to him about it, at least. He said he’d love to see your work.”
“You already volunteered me? I can’t believe you fucking volunteered me.”
“I didn’t volunteer you, exactly, I just asked if you could apply for the job. That’s all.” Rose stood and pulled on her coat. It was time to go home and start supper. Christie liked his meals early and regular.
“Well, you shouldn’t have,” Petie said.
Rose sighed. “They’ll pay you fifteen hundred dollars.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not kidding.” Rose wrapped a scarf around her throat.
“Whoa.” Petie let out a long, low whistle.
“So come up with maybe ten or so sketches and drawings to show Gordon. If you do it soon—soon like tomorrow—you won’t have anyone competing against you. I want you to do this with me, Petie. I want both our names on the cover.”
“When would they pay?”
“Maybe some up front, then the rest when you turn in all the work. That’s what they’re doing with me. So think about it. And next time I see you I expect you to tell me everything about the Wayside on Friday. Something is definitely up with you.”
“Nothing is up.”
“I want to hear everything.”
“Nothing is—” The door slammed shut and all that was left of Rose was a gust of cold wet air.
“Shit.”
Several years ago they had sworn that neither one of them would smoke a cigarette except when they were with each other. They might get cancer, but if they did, at least they were going to get it together. Petie cheated sometimes; she assumed that Rose cheated sometimes, too. She tapped a fresh cigarette out of the pack and lit it.
Last Friday, long before seeing him at the Wayside, Petie had had lunch with Schiff again. They had driven in Schiff’s pickup to an old county landfill where no one ever went except to make out or dispose of a body or an old beat-to-shit appliance.
“I had coffee at the Hot Pot this morning, me and Bob Harle,” he told Petie after he’d parked the truck under some dripping trees and Petie had divvied up the sandwiches. “We’re just sitting there talking and this family comes in—overweight woman, balding guy, teenage daughter, you know, nothing special, a farm family. They sit right near us, keep looking at us, and then after a few minutes the girl comes up to me and says, Are you Ron Schiffen? So I say yes. She says, We stopped at the Pepsi place and they said you might be here. We were looking for you.”
Petie chewed, watching him through her bangs, that silky Indian hair Schiff sometimes found himself thinking about when he shouldn’t; that hair and her small tough body. No one had ever watched him like that before. “So who were they?”
“Wait. So she says, Are you Ron Schiffen? And I say yes, and then she says, Well, I’m Angel.”
“Oh my God, Schiff.”
He was breathing quickly, remembering. “I didn’t even recognize Mary. I could’ve walked right into her and said excuse me and walked away again without ever realizing she was someone I knew. She was just sort of, I don’t know, faded, nothing special. And she used to be a goddess.”
“But what about the girl?”
Schiff tapped his fingernail on the dashboard. “That child was beautiful. When I left her she was beautiful, like an honest-to-God angel—I used to swear that if you looked at her with the lights out she would glow like a goddamn candle.” He wiped his mouth with care on the napkin Petie had brought, folded the napkin in half and in half again, and then unfolded it and smoothed it over his knee. “But the thing was,” he said, “she wasn’t beautiful at all. Nice girl—pretty hair, braces. Ordinary; hell, not half as pretty as Randi. She’ll probably be pregnant in another year. I used to think her and her mom hung the moon and stars, and then I run into them and I don’t even know who they are. Even once she told me who she was, I couldn’t see it.”
He looked at Petie with the dumb eyes of a field animal. “I just couldn’t see it.”
“So then what?”
“Then they left.”
“Just like that?”
“Well, you know, she said it was good to meet me, and I asked about how she was doing in school and shit. I got her address.” He fished a Post-it out of his shirt pocket and looked at it with amazement, like it had revealed the face of Jesus, maybe, or glowed with a heavenly light. “She was the closest thing I ever had to my own kid and I tell her to, you know, take care, be good, and I cannot think of another single goddamn thing to say. Her mom and me, we didn’t even talk.”
“So, what, they burst your bubble?”
Schiff frowned at her. “What bubble?”
“The one where you’re the cowboy and they’re the helpless woman and child you left behind. The one where everyone adores you and they never grow up and they never change and none of it’s your fault.”
“I knew Mary would change,” he said hotly, and then subsided. “Jesus, though, not that much.”
Petie looked out her window, as though she could actually see through all the breath fog. “You tell Carla about it yet?”
Schiff sighed heavily. “She won’t like it. Carla, she doesn’t want to talk about other people. Anyway, I never told her about Mary and Angel.”
“You’re kidding.”
Schiff shrugged. “She don’t like to know about things that happened before her.”
Petie ate in silence, drank her Pepsi. Schiff watched her out of the corner of his eye. “Aren’t you afraid I might take advantage of you, out here where no one’s watching?” He leered halfheartedly. “An attractive woman like you?”
“You don’t have to do that, Schiff.”
“Do what?”
“Proposition me. Do the macho sex thing.”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“It wasn’t until now,” said Petie.
“Then what was I doing?”
“Telling a story, Schiff. You were just telling a story.”
“And what were you doing?”
“Listening,” Petie said.
“Is that okay?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
Petie gathered the odds and ends of their lunch things and stowed them by her feet. “Are you ready to go back?” she asked.
“No,” he said, turning the key in the ignition and easing the truck into gear.
NOW, THREE days later in the middle of her kitchen, Petie stubbed out the last cigarette and listened for noise. She found Loose right away by following the sounds of two pieces of wood being knocked together out in the side yard where he often played, oblivious of the rain and cold, a tough child at home. It was harder to locate Ryan, but at the foot of the stairs Petie could hear the low murmur of a child reading out loud to hear the music of his own voice wrapped around the taste of someone else’s words. Unobserved, Petie picked up the phone and dialed.
Bev Houghton answered at the Pepsi distributorship in Sawyer. “Hi!” she greeted Petie when she heard her voice. “You want to talk with Eddie? He’s up north, but I could give you his voice mail.”
“Thanks, but I actually need to talk with Schiff for a minute.”
“Oh! I think he’s in. While I’ve got you, though, are you coming to the company Christmas dinner next week?”
“Sure,” Petie said. “I never miss the chance to attend some dinner where you hold a disintegrating paper plate in one hand and a beer in the—”
“A Pepsi,” Bev interrupted.
“What?”
“Where you hold a disintegrating paper plate in one hand and a Pepsi in the other—” Bev said helpfully.
“—until the plate disappears and you’re wearing your food on your shoes,” Petie said. �
�Count me in. Me and Eddie. Can kids come?”
“Of course.”
“My two kids, too, then.”
“Okeydoke. You ready for me to put you through to Eddie’s voice mail?”
“Schiff,” Petie said through clenched teeth. “I needed to talk to Schiff.”
“Oh, that’s right, I forgot. I’m sorry, hon,” Bev cooed—and she a woman who Petie knew damned well could tell you the color of the toilet paper she wiped herself with two days ago. “Nice talking to you, Petie.”
“Sure,” Petie said, and then mouthed into the receiver, “My ass.” God save her from fat Bev and the death grip of her memory, which was puny only when compared with the size of her big mouth.
On the other end the phone rang for the third time. Thank God. Maybe Petie wouldn’t get through but could still tell Schiff she’d tried.
“Hiya, princess,” Ron Schiffen suddenly murmured in her ear. Bev must have told him it was Petie on the line. Of course she had.
“Fuck the princess,” she hissed, feeling herself slipping into the unreal and tireless world of Schiff’s knee-jerk seductions.
“That would be nice.”
“Don’t you ever stop?”
“No,” Schiff said sadly. “Not that it gets me anywhere. Still, miracles do sometimes happen.”
“And if you were granted one miracle, what would it be?”
“It has to do with you and a hotel—”
“I’m serious, Schiff.”
“Me, too, princess.”
“Look, why did you call me earlier?” He had left a very careful, neutral message on her phone, presumably in case something went wrong and Eddie checked the machine instead of Petie.
“I wanted to see if you would have lunch with me.”
“I’ve had lunch with you.”
“Some people eat lunch every day.”
“We’re talking every day as it is. Why is that?”
“I like you,” Schiff said simply.
“I don’t think lunch is a good idea.”
“Why?”
“Why? Carla is why. You’re the one with the wife.”
Schiff was silent.
“Okay,” Petie said. “You can call me. Let’s leave it at that.”
“How can I seduce you if I never see you?”
“You said it, bucko, not me.”
“Eddie’s got a south county run the day after tomorrow. Have lunch with me then. You can choose where.”
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Schiff. You can call me tomorrow.” Through her own loud breathing, Petie heard his voice still talking as she hung up the phone. She couldn’t explain this to Rose even if she wanted to. Here, in the middle of winter’s pall on the dripping Oregon coast, unseen among people she’d known and been known by all her life, she had found something more dangerous than gunshots, more threatening than sex, and for which there were no words of explanation or retraction. Here, when she didn’t even know she’d been looking, in a man she’d never liked, she had found love.
Chapter 11
JIM CHRISTIE sat watching girls stream out of Sawyer Middle School like liquid sin. He hadn’t noticed girls like these when he was their age, but he noticed them now all right, the way their skin fit so perfectly over their muscles and bones, the way they were so taut and elastic, too good to be real except they were real. Right here, right in front of him, surging all around his pickup like he was no more than a stone in the river. An old man, an invisible man, with his faded hair and worn-out eyes and years of wrinkles from looking into the jaws of bad weather. A quiet man who looked with great potency.
Jim Christie wasn’t like most of the men on the boats in Alaska, who took whatever form of woman came along as soon as they hit port. He knew how to wait and what he was waiting for. Sex was a deep, warm, dark place and he wasn’t about to spoil it in a randy moment. He could wait—did wait—for Rose, with her generous hips and her soft luminous hair and the way she hummed when she took pleasure. She was strong drink, turning his head around, making him forget to keep things hidden that were best left concealed—his longing to stay in a place he was desperate to leave; his certainty that he would die in the next fishing season; the knowledge that he would go north to Alaska anyway.
“Hey!” The top of a blond head just showed above the window on the passenger side of his truck. “Open the door!”
Christie reached across a wasteland of mechanical parts and cracked the door. Carissa elbowed it open and tossed in an armload of books and notebooks, then heaved herself onto the seat after them. “Whew! I’m glad you’re here. I thought Mom was coming for me.”
“She had to work.” Christie turned over the ignition and steered his old truck into the crush of beater cars and school buses clogging the road.
Carissa raked her loose hair back and then let it fall in a tumble, Rose’s mannerism eerily reenacted. Christie kept his eyes on the traffic.
“What do you want for dinner?” she asked. “I could make that tuna casserole you like.”
“That’d be fine,” Christie said.
“Or we could have meat loaf.”
Christie shrugged. “Whatever you want.”
“What do you want? You never say.”
“Don’t want anything. If I do, I can fix it myself.”
“You never let anyone take care of you. Why won’t you let us take care of you?”
Christie reset his ball cap. “Don’t need it.”
“Well, it’d be nice if you’d let us spoil you sometimes. Mom spends the whole time you’re away thinking up things to fix while you’re home, and then you don’t ever want anything.”
“I like everything you fix, your mom, too. She knows that.”
Carissa sighed and set her jaw. “Well, it would help if you were a little more demonstrative.” Christie cocked an eyebrow. “You know—showed how you feel.”
“I know what it means.”
They drove the rest of the way to Hubbard in silence. Carissa absently twirled a strand of hair around and around her finger. Christie could just make out the scent of her shampoo overlaid with something else, maybe perfume. He drove with both hands on the wheel.
They drove past Souperior’s. “How late is Mom working tonight?”
“Till seven.”
“Can we go by your place, then?”
“No.”
“Are you still fixing it up?”
“I go there sometimes,” Christie said.
“Every day?”
“Depends.”
“Do you take Mom?”
“No.”
“Does she even know about it?”
“Only if you told her.”
“I promised it would be a secret.”
“Doesn’t need to be.”
“Then why haven’t you told her?”
“Haven’t had any reason to.”
Carissa made a sound of exasperation. “Well, I wish you’d let me go back there again. I want to see what you’ve done.”
“Haven’t done anything.”
“Well, you could, though. Curtains maybe; maybe a rug. A chair.”
“I’ve got what I need.”
“Could you take me up there some other time, then?”
“We’ll see,” said Christie.
“Please?”
Christie set his shoulders and Carissa subsided, crossing her arms over her chest. She perked up again almost immediately, putting her hand on his arm. “I know, I’ll make brownies. How about brownies?”
Christie turned into their driveway, leaving the carport empty for Rose when she came home.
“Brownies would be fine,” Christie said, and walked away from the girl to the house.
She touched him a lot. It wasn’t a good idea.
EDDIE COOLBAUGH had finally found a place for himself that he loved: Pepsi. He wore his snappy uniform with pride, stood a little taller whenever he was wearing it—the neat striped shirt, the blue zip-front jacket, the pants with the smart
creases sharp as knives. He hopped from his truck cab with a confident bounce, knowing he was good-looking, knowing he was somebody. The women always held him up at his stops, signing for his delivery slowly, pretending to look things over, making foolish remarks about the weather, about a daughter’s wedding coming up, about nothing at all. What they were really saying was that he was a good-looking man of some importance, a man worth noticing, perhaps even worth remembering. For that, Eddie owed Ron Schiffen big-time. Eddie might even take over for him one day, who knew? He would learn the business, maybe get an inside position after a while, warehouseman or bottling plant foreman. He’d be good at that. Not a desk job, though. He’d hate a desk job, unless it was Schiff’s and he had a secretary who did all the work while he, Eddie, put his boots up on the desk and talked on the telephone. He’d mentioned his ambitions to Petie, but she just told him to go slow, do the job he had, be satisfied with that. Petie didn’t understand the fire in his gut when he thought about his possibilities. Schiff might, though. Eddie would talk to him one day soon, lay things out for him and see what he had to say. Not yet, though. Eddie wasn’t ready yet.
He and Petie didn’t see things the same way much anymore. Eddie didn’t know exactly why that was. He’d cheated on her once or twice, but everyone did that and the women mostly got used to it after a while. He took care of his kids and kept a roof over their heads; he let Petie do pretty much what she wanted to, even when it stank up the house and jacked up their electric bill. He didn’t see the point of it, himself, but he wasn’t a man who tried to tell people what to do. Now she was digging up little bits of drawings and shit from everywhere because Rose had told her she was an artist. She’d always doodled, from as far back as he could remember. When she lived with them, his mother had always kept paper and pencils around the house. It was probably because of Eula that Petie had shown anyone she could draw in the first place. It was beyond him why someone would pay for her doodling, but if they were willing to, well then, Eddie wasn’t going to discourage them. It was just like her and Rose to go off on another wild-goose chase that wouldn’t take them anywhere in the end, but hey. If Petie wanted to waste her time, that was her lookout, not his. He wasn’t a man who kept too tight a rein on things, plus Petie got mean when she was cornered. He’d learned a long time ago to swing wide.
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