Hick (16 page)

I am not sticking around for the show.

“You know, maybe I ought to get some ice.”

He’s burning a hole into the carpet, forest green, turning brown around the edges.

“Want anything?”

“Huh?”

“You want anything, you know, like some Fritos or something?”

“Did I say I wanted anything?”

“No.”

“Wull, then, I guess I don’t, then, do I?”

He’s getting to that mean part of the drunk show. Drink number four or five.

It’s gonna get worse before it gets better. I guess he left the romantic part back in Jackson. I guess he left that part for the day.

Maybe if he ate something he might just get grumpy mean but not mean mean, like the kind that does that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing where you’re watching a person and they get that faraway staring look in their eyes and, around drink number six, transform into someone else, some dark version of themselves sent from a parallel universe where everything you say is wrong and you’re gonna get a beating for sure, so you might as well buck up and stop trying.

I walk out, slamming the door behind me. I do not want to stick around for drink number seven or eight through nine.

We’re on the second floor and you have to walk on the outside balcony, past all the rooms, to get anywhere. The floor is covered in Astro-turf, wet and worn, like there’s a pool somewhere nearby. I wander around, looking for the ice machine, ending up in a dead end and then another dead end and then one more.

It’s misty out here, quiet. There’s an eerie buzz underneath everything, like there’s a plug buried deep beneath the hotel that you could just pull out and the whole place would vanish into thin air, never to be seen again. I’m beginning to think I just stepped into some late-night fluorescent Astro-turf mirage, some spaceship version of reality, going nowhere fast, walking around in circles in
some made-up maze with aliens watching for their own personal amusement. And then another dead end.

I give up on the upstairs and decide to venture down to the first floor. There’s a light coming from somewhere down there, with voices echoing off the white plaster walls. I walk towards the action and find myself staring at three high school jocks playing Marco Polo in a chintzy pool.

One by one, they look up at me, unconscious, stopping their game. There’s no way to play this off. They’re staring at me and I’m staring at them, plain and simple. Seems like the rest of the world just dropped off the face of the earth.

“Hi,” I squeak out, sounding more like a lizard than a real live girl, with dreams and a newfound body to get them with.

The boys look at each other, silent, deciding who’s gonna talk first or if they should even bother to answer at all. Nothing.

I give up, chalking it up to them being rich and me being some country-fried lowlife from the sticks. I spot the ice machine over in the vending area on the other side of the pool and give it a go, wishing I didn’t have to walk past their perfect-life stares.

One of the boys gets out of the pool and walks towards me. He’s dripping wet and coming closer.

I’m too shy to look at him, so I put all my attention into the ice machine, burying my head deep inside, pretending to use all my concentration to scoop out the ice with the scooper.

“Careful. That thing might swallow you up.”

“Ha ha, funny,” I say, before I can stop myself. Being a smart-aleck is second nature.

He unhooks the little swinging door above me, threatening to drop it on my head.

“Tell me your name or you’ll be sorry.”

He smiles down at me, holding the chrome door so it teeters perilous over my head. Looking up at him for the first time, I notice that he is about sixteen and much too good-looking to be talking to me. He’s spoiled-looking and handsome, with green eyes and light-brown hair, the color of ashes. He has that confidence you get from never having to worry what you’re gonna eat for dinner or if there’s even anything coming at all, like he’s entitled to a fun life and every moment is just a part of the ongoing heaven of pleasant surprises and bouncy youth. His skin has this undertone glow of olive, like he never ate a Twinkie his whole life. He smiles at me with perfect teeth and I regret that I was ever born.

“C’mon, then, what’s your name . . . you better tell me or you’re gonna get it.”

“Luli.” Again, like a lizard.

“Come again?”

“Luli. My name’s Luli.”

I finish scooping the ice and stand straight, owning up. He closes the chrome door.

“Well, that’s a weird name.”

“Yeah, wull, it was nice meeting you.”

I start to walk off, awkward. I don’t fit in and never will. I’m too lowborn for them, might as well just face facts.

“Hey! Excuse me? Aren’t you gonna ask my name?”

I stop in my tracks, turning slightly. I’ve got my feet pointed forward but my top twisted back, like a contorted pretzel trying to play it cool.

“No.”

“Well, why not?”

“Because I don’t care.”

I start walking.

He stops and then lets out a laugh, collapsing everything back into good fun and high times. He’s not gonna let this world turn bad on him, no sir.

“Okay. Well, then, I’ll tell you anyway. My name’s Clement.”

“Oh, and you say my name’s weird?”

“it’s a family name.”

“Oh.”

The two of us stand there, sizing each other up, trying to pretend we’re not. His two friends make believe they’re not watching from the pool.

“You ever hear of the category game?”

“The what?”

“The category game. it’s this game we like to play with cards, just face cards.”

“Why’s it called the category game?”

“Well, cause, if you turn over a Jack you have to think of a category.”

“What kind of a category?”

“Oh, I don’t know, could be anything. Like . . . things you would find in a hardware store . . . or fake rock bands, in alphabetical order. So, then, if you went first, you would say something like . . . Acid Head. And then the second person would say something like . . . Black Serpent. Or something like that. And then you just go around and around until someone can’t think of anything or someone repeats . . . and then they have to drink.”

“Sounds stupid.”

He laughs again and looks at his friends, still pretend ignoring.

“It is stupid. that’s why we play it. C’mon, you should try it. it’ll be fun.”

“Um. I dunno . . . I’m kind of supposed to be getting back.”

“Just one game. One game. I promise. it’ll be fun.”

He grabs the ice outta my hand and motions to the corner, where they’ve got their towels set up on a cooler, hiding the beer under a table with a white-and-blue umbrella and four matching white plastic chairs.

Clement takes out a chair for me and doesn’t move till I sit down. I look up at him, nervous to be treated so good. He sits across from me, smiling to his friends over his shoulder. I don’t like it. I don’t want to be some inside joke between friends, some girl you fiddled with in some cheap hotel in Utah.

Just then two older folks walk up and smile big, looking proud down at Clement and his two friends, still pretend playing in the pool. The man is on the tubbier side but he’s got an air about him, something tan and comforting, like a dad you’d see on TV, the kind that takes his sons hunting and buys his daughter a pony for her sweet sixteen. Next to him stands a woman who looks exactly like a horse.

If you took a horse and gave it tits and a blond head of hair, that would be this woman. And that’s not all. There’s something about her, something conniving and cheap, like she’s just along for the ride and hit the jackpot with Mr. Comfort. She wears a white vest, somewhere between a dress shirt and a tank top, with a pair of new-bought, too-tight jeans. I can’t believe this woman is hanging off Mr. Comfort’s elbow. If she could get this guy, with her
horsemouth, then my mama, with her blond flip and steel-gray eyes, ought to be able to land a billionaire.

Clement puts his feet up on the cooler, casual.

“Luli, this is my dad, Buck.”

Mr. Comfort looks at me, tan and charming. “Nice to meet you, Luli.”

The horsemouth looks at Clement and waits for a response. Clement smiles at me like that’s that and doesn’t say a word.

“Well, Clement, aren’t you gonna introduce me?”

Clement keeps smiling at me, not looking her way.

Buck chimes in, nice and easy. He’s got a voice sweet like molasses, like some ancient medicine from where the buffalo roam. “Luli, this is my wife, Edna.”

Clement clears his throat and I just about start laughing because I cannot believe that someone who looks so much like Mr. Ed would actually be named Edna.

“It is so nice to meet you, Luli. What an unusual name.”

I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is about this woman that so clearly reeks gold-digger, gold-digger, gold-digger, but I will tell you this, I am about ninety percent sure that he met her on a flight where she was a stewardess and she bent over backwards to turn him into a mark because that’s why she became a stewardess in the first place. And I don’t know why I think this but it just hits me and all the sudden I hear myself saying, “Did you used to be a stewardess?”

And this changes the air around each individual into a different shade. Mr. Comfort smiles, amazed. Clement starts to laugh and Miss Horsemouth looks like she could just clop clop clop her way
right over me, if Mr. Comfort would only let go of the reins. She checks herself, chomping at the bit, trying to play nice.

“Why, yes, how did you ever guess that?”

Clement is pretending not to laugh into his hand, keeping his head down and smiling up at me through his eyes, twinkling. Buck is smiling, benevolent, not a mean bone in his body, like some countrified Buddha.

“Oh, just a lucky guess.”

“Well, that is truly amazing. I am shocked,” Buck chimes in, leaving me wondering why I can’t have Mr. Comfort for a dad and why I got stuck with Mr. Drunk and Sometimes Speed instead.

The horse lady looks down at me, plotting her revenge.

“You live around here, Luli? Maybe outside of town. Wait a minute, are you from that trailer park across the street or are you staying right here at the motel?”

Clement freezes, fixing his eyes on the ground.

“Dad, we’re trying to play a game here, so—”

“Ooo! What kinduva game?! Can I play?” she neighs out, making my skin crawl, the timber of her voice like fingernails on a blackboard, high-pitched and whiny.

“No, sorry, it’s a kid game.”

Clement still has his eyes fixed on the ground.

Mr. Comfort smiles like everything in the universe is exactly as it should be, now and evermore. Edna looks like she’d like to take this kid all the way to the chopping block. I’m starting to wonder how long it’s gonna be till Eddie comes down and turns this little scene of domestic drama into more like a circus of insanity.

“Wull, I’d better go. it’s getting late—” I start to move my chair back.

“No no no. You just stay put. Just stay right there,” Clement says, reaching his hand out and touching me on the elbow. And then I see it, some little crack in the Wedgwood, and I can see, behind his eyes, deep into the back of his late-night dreams, a pleading from the same place of shame and desperation that I hail from. It stops me in my tracks.

“Well, we’ll just be going to bed, then.” Mr. Comfort says it, leading Miss Horse with him in a semi-circle and then back upstairs. She follows, obedient, clopping her way out the picture, not failing to look back, one last look at Clement that says she’ll get him, she’ll get him, just give her time.

“That’s not my mom. In case you’re wondering,” Clement whispers, making sure they’re well out the way before opening the cooler and grabbing a beer.

“Wull, yeah, I could tell.”

“She’s my step-mother.”

“Oh.”

“But when my dad’s gone, she likes to pretend she’s my wife.” He says it quiet like he never said it before and it doesn’t exist.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

There ain’t nothing to say to that. And I don’t. I don’t try to follow up or pretend it never was or act concerned or play after-school special. I don’t try to do nothing but just sit there.

And now I know the secret of why, even though he’s from rich-ville and even though he never had to contend with the stomach-grumbling and the screen-door slamming and the late-night
breaking of glasses, even though all those things have escaped his privileged silver-spoon life, he’s still not unscathed from those late-night humiliations you might just have to contend with if someone leaves you alone with a trusted uncle or a horsemouth step-mother or a friend from the First Baptist down the way.

And then I realize, for the very first time, that you might just be sitting in a wingback chair in the middle of your mansion, counting your presents on a cool winter night, staring up at some giant Christmas tree that costs more than Jesus, with all that glitter and those bows and ribbons outshining each other under the lights, but if you’ve got someone, some horsemouth, paying you a visit in the middle of the night, well, then you might as well be setting down in a shack in crapsville, cause you still ain’t safe and never will be.

I look up at Clement and he looks back at me, and it’s like I met him eight million years ago before time began, and when I met him then, it was just like when I met him now, and when I meet him again, in 2090, it will be just like this moment, on and on until the end of time and even past.

And I could set the rest of my life in this moment. I could settle in and let the dust pile up around me and let the leaves fall off the trees, one by one. I could let the snow pile up and then melt, and the buds come out and turn into daffodils over and over again for the next hundred years, with me, here, set in this moment with Clement, from the beginning of time and to the end.

But that would have to be in another world where Eddie wasn’t coming up straight behind Clement with a look on his face that could freeze Texas. Before Clement even sees him coming Eddie’s got me by the arm, dragging me out the chair, bumping me into the table and then halfway across the concrete.