Girls Love Travis Walker (11 page)

I was almost done. As the animal started to slide down a pants leg, I whipped the tank onto my back. The thing kept sliding as I put on my helmet and gloves.

I raised my hand.

“Sixty one seconds!”

“Aw, too bad,” Garret said. “The old record stands!”

A small thump as something furry slid from my pant leg and to the floor. It was a hamster. Garret and Jason fell over laughing, while the Discoverers ranged from laughter to horror.

I bent down, picked up the hamster, and checked him out. He seemed unhurt by his journey down my pants leg. As everyone watched, I walked over and held it out to Garret, who automatically reached for it.

“You lost this,” I said and placed the hamster in his hand.

Garret gave me a little salute as I left, thinking I might not have won this one, but I had held my own.

##

I’d managed to calm down Mrs. M with another payment, but then Mom needed eyeglasses. She’d been doing without for two years, but her near vision had become so bad she couldn’t see to write me a note or read the mail. It didn’t help that she sat every day in a darkened apartment.

Although I hadn’t noticed any change in her behavior, she said the antidepressants were making her feel better. When I took her to the Free Clinic, she said as much to Nurse Bridgette, who acted like
Great, case closed
, although I didn’t believe it
.

We got a bargain rate on the glasses, but even that set us back. Having gotten the glasses, we were now on the verge of losing our phone service.

 You’d expect I’d be too concerned about Mom and our state of total poverty to think about a girl, but no. As a break from worrying, I thought about Zoey. A lot. I would think about  taking that silky ponytail into my hand and gently pulling her head to the right to kiss the beauty mark on the left side of her neck. I was thinking about the curves of her breasts and waist as I walked into the community center.

The first person I saw was Kat.

I stopped short. I’d forgotten about those lips. Today she wore shorts that clung and proved that my previous hopeful guesses about the exact shape of her ass had been correct.

Then my head cleared. Things had changed for me. Kat was slammin’ in all ways, but she wasn’t Zoey, who had just come out of the kitchen. I tried to catch her eye, but Kat walked right up and gave me a full-wattage smile. “Miss me?”

“Yeah, sure.” Before Zoey, I would have been on this situation like a terrier. Now I just felt off balance. I argued with myself, reminding myself that Zoey was taken, and I was free to go after Kat all I wanted.

She smiled. “How you been?”

“Fine.” I checked over her shoulder to see what Zoey was doing. She instructed a couple of the servers, as if she didn’t even know we were there.

 I walked over to her. “We’ve got to get the tables set.”

“You and Kat can do it today,” Zoey said, sounding cool and impersonal. Damn. She could have been at least a little jealous.

I started laying out plates while Kat smiled and smoothed her hair, then slinked her way over to me. Whatever lack of interest that she felt before seemed to have disappeared.

Now that I could have Kat, I didn’t care. I wondered what was wrong with me. “You wanna put out the silverware?” I nodded my head toward a tray of forks and knives.

“Okay.” Kat drifted in the direction of the tray and picked up a fork. “So what have you been up to?”

I tried think of what to say. “I’m in a program at the fire station.”

“What for?”

“We learn stuff about being a firefighter. Like how to get all your gear on in less than sixty seconds.” 

Kat’s gaze moved around the room, then came back to rest on me.

“Those firefighter outfits are really hot to wear aren’t they?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t imagine having to get dressed that fast. But I have to decide exactly what to wear, and that always takes time.”  She walked around the tables, letting her hips sway back and forth.

“Uh, huh.”  I kept my eyes on my work.

“Yoo hoo, over here!” she said, playfully batting her eyelashes and pointing to herself.

I gave her a weak smile. She did have a very fine ass.

“Are you really as into this job as you seem?” She gave me a dry look.

One of my eyebrows went up, despite myself. “Have you looked around? This place is all women. Perfect for a guy like me.”

“I see.” Kat’s eyelashes rose and fell, and her hips swayed again, too. “And you’re man enough to handle that?”

“If you even question the idea, you obviously don’t know me that well.” I let my eyes run up and down her body, knowing she’d love it.

“Maybe I should get to know you better,” she purred.

I was about to say “Maybe you should,” when I caught sight of Zoey across the room. Like the first day I saw her, she had her back turned, her ponytail a long rippling wave of platinum. It stopped me short, all thoughts of Kat draining from my head.

 “We better finish up these tables,” I said. “The guests are coming soon.”

Silly

After dessert was served, Zoey was busy with Johnnie and Hilda. Kat popped up next to me, peeling off her apron. Some guests still ate dessert, while others milled around getting ready to leave. I started clearing the empty lunch tables, while Kat toyed with a few pieces of silverware.

“This is not my favorite thing, working at the Community Center! I just do it for community service credit,” she said. “It’s required at my school.” She kind of hugged herself so that her arms moved in, squeezing her breasts together and creating an obvious and tempting slice of cleavage.

 She might as well have been wearing a sandwich board sign that said “I’m available.” Her legs were just right – toned with slim ankles. Zoey’s got a boyfriend, I reminded myself. It’s okay to look at another girl. And touch.

“I’m in school full-time, and I work as a receptionist,” she said. “At my dad’s office.” She turned so I got the three-quarter view. She was quite excellent from every angle.

By now I’d cleared a couple of tables, moving dirty dishes and glasses onto a rolling kitchen cart. Kat picked up a damp rag, with which she could have wiped off the tables, if she’d been the type to do some work. I spotted Hilda wandering in our direction in her fluffy bedroom slippers, the only shoes I’d ever seen her wear.

“It’s a very social job,” Kat continued. “You just sit around and talk to people all day long.”

 She’d be a natural for that. Since I couldn’t think of anything to say, I gave Hilda a big greeting as she stopped in front of me.

 “Hey, Hilda!  What’s up?”

She eyed Kat with a scowl. “There are no words that rhyme with Travis.”  Her face, tanned dark from the sun, had brown blotches that looked like age spots. Over her other clothes, she wore a huge, torn apron with pictures of vegetables.

Kat had an artificial smile pasted on her face. “Hi. What a pretty apron.”

Wrong. I knew what looked good on a woman, and this apron had never had a pretty moment. Even before it got all stained and ripped.

Hilda didn’t have to be sane to know bullshit when she heard it. She leaned toward me, as if she had secret to tell. “Silly. Filly. Hillbilly,” she pronounced. Her lips were chapped and cracked.

Kat recoiled. I struggled to keep a polite expression on my face as Hilda’s foul breath enveloped me like fog. She wandered away, muttering. I looked around for Zoey. Finding no sign of her, I began to push the cart toward the next table.

“So I guess we’re done, right?” Kat tried to get her bright-and-perky face back into place. Anyone with an eye could have seen we had more dining tables to clean up, along with the serving table. And the dishes had to be done. But Kat was looking back and forth between me and the exit.

“You wanna go hang out after work one day?” she asked. Her hair was pretty, curled around her face. As hard to get as she’d been earlier, she was a sure thing right now. A sure thing, and hot as Hades.

Easy to bag, but the flip side was, the escape routes were problematic. She was Zoey’s friend. She sometimes worked at the Center. This would be a nightmare. It was Suki times ten.

And worst of all, if I slept with Kat, Zoey would write me off forever. Other girls might look past something like that, but Zoey wouldn’t.

I couldn’t do it. “I got another job after this one.”

“Her lips bunched together in a pout. “Okay then.” She started to turn away, then seemed to have second thoughts.

“Do you know how to change a tire? When I parked my car to come here, I noticed I was getting a flat.”

I swore silently to myself. “Okay, but let’s finish up here first. We can do it when the shift ends.”

“I have a doctor’s appointment! I have to leave now.”

I didn’t want to be one of those volunteers like Charlotte, who flaked out on their work, leaving it for Zoey to do. “Let me just tell Zoey what’s happening.”  I’d come back afterwards and help her finish up.

“She went to the bathroom. It’ll only take a minute, and I’m late for my appointment.” Kat headed for the parking lot, with me following reluctantly behind.

Her brand new cherry red Mini Cooper had picked up a nail in its left front tire.

“You can probably get it patched,” I said. “Do you know where the spare is?”

Of course not.

Kat made dumb conversation to me for the entire half hour it took me to wrestle the spare from its hiding place, get it onto the car, and put the flat tire away. Since my hands were black, I used my wrist to wipe the sweat off my forehead.

Kat laughed. “Silly boy! Now you got black all over your face!”  She produced a tissue and started wiping my face.

I ducked backwards. “That’s okay.”  But I was too late. Zoey walked up just in time to see us standing close together, Kat touching my face.

“Oh, hi Zoey!” Kat said. “Travis is my knight in shining armor!” 

“She wanted me to change a flat tire for her,” I explained. “Do you still need help with the kitchen?”

Zoey was back to cool and impersonal, like the first day I’d met her. “No. I did it myself.” She headed straight for her car, jumping in and revving the ignition.

“Hey, Zoey wait up,” I called out to her.

“Gotta go,” she said and drove off.

“Bye,” I said to Kat, furious. I took off.

“Hey!” Kat called after me. “Hold on a sec.” She ran after me and pressed a piece of paper in my hand. “My number. In case you want to give me a call.”

“Thanks.” I jumped into my car. Kat probably thought I was crazy— writing her love notes and then avoiding her.

Was
I crazy? It seemed like everyone around me was. My mom was falling to pieces, and most of the street people had already lost it.

I realized I was mumbling to myself. Okay, I thought, well,
that’s
crazy. I turned on the ignition and drove back to the hillside.

Fold

It was my second evening at the fire station. I laid down my cards and pushed the last of my poker chips toward Garret, who cackled and dragged them toward his large pile.

“And another one bites the dust,” he crooned. On duty, he and the others still wore their official firefighter clothing at eight o’clock at night, although some had traded in their button-down collar shirts for navy t-shirts.

“Damn,” I said, “You got me.” 

He didn’t have to know I’d had a full house. I’d learned my lesson well. There’d be no more showing Garret up, at least not for a long time. As in, when or if I ever completed the Discoverers program, passed the Firefighters’ Exam, and got a job.

I was in the Day Room with Perkins, Garret, Jason, and one of the oldest guys at the station, Larry—five sets of broad shoulders crowded around the dining table. The surface was sprinkled with cards, popcorn bowls, glasses and soda cans, and bags of pretzels and cookies. The only sign of health lay near Larry—a bottle of sparkling water and a small tray with carrot sticks and other raw veggies.

He had refused the high-fat, high-sugar items we waved under his nose. “My body is a protected area,” he’d said. “Kind of like a national forest.” 

“More like a historic landmark,” Garret said, then chortled at his own humor.

“Young troublemaker,” Larry grumbled, but he laughed too and gave Garret a friendly punch in the shoulder.

“I only speak the truth,” Garret crowed, on a roll from his victory over me. “Too bad we don’t play for cash.”

If they’d played for cash, they would have had to count me out. I wouldn’t soon forget that my father’s gambling had destroyed my family. I’d enter a shark tank before I’d play poker for money.

From another room, female voices drifted in—wives and girlfriends who had come to spend time with their on-duty men.

“Travis, you gotta girl? You should bring her over,” Perkins said.

“Thanks, but none right now,” I said.

The female voices were close now, as their three owners walked in. One of them was a bottle blonde with a superb rack. She came up behind Garret, winding her arms around his neck and resting her chin on his shoulder. “You almost done?”

She looked at me across the table and winked. I gave her a polite smile, immediately recognizing the kind of girl I knew from Chick’s. A girl who liked to have fun. Purring, she said into Garret’s ear, “Who’s the new guy?”

Garret stood up abruptly. “Let’s go.” Ignoring her astonished face, he bolted from the room, taking her with him.

Silence. Then Perkins got up. “I’m gonna turn in. Travis, glad you could come. We want to see more of you here!” 

I left soon after that, wondering if Garret would ever stop being pissed at me.

Tool

The hills were on fire again. Zoey and I listened to the radio report together in the kitchen. The firefighters were just able to save some small homes and a convenience store on the fire’s eastern edge, but the big news was that one of them had risked his life to pull a man and his son from their burning home. He was hospitalized, but in stable condition. I wondered who it was. I would find out on Saturday.