Lamb (5 page)

“Why?”

“It’s a tribute to your delicacy.” He lifted their hands and twirled her in her tennis shoes. “You see?”

He walked her down two narrow flights of wooden steps stained with rainwater that ended just before a mossy falls, the wide muddy river gliding through the trees.

“Look,” he said. “If you squint your eyes and plug your ears, it almost looks like an unexplored woods.”

“Almost.”

He stooped and held up a cold, flat stone. “Kiss it.”

“The rock?”

“I’m going to make a wish on it.”

She kissed the stone and he skipped it three, four, five times over the water.

“I won’t even ask what you wished for.”

“Smart girl.” He handed her a stone. “You need a beautiful young woman to kiss it for you,” he said. “But good luck finding one. I got the last one on the planet.”

Say he then bought her an expensive rain jacket of her own. It was nice to buy a girl a jacket. Hers was the color of oak leaves burnt red with seven pockets and a neat little hood and pale, striped silk lining.

“It’s a little grown-up,” she said.

“Well. You’ll grow into it.” He held open the shop door, liquid music of little silver bells strung about the handle, and pulled the hood up over her head. “What will you tell your mother when she asks you where this came from?”

“I thought we were running away.”

He laughed. “Don’t tell her that!”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I ought to keep the jacket. Mail it to you on your seventeenth birthday. Maybe this ought to be our last outing for a while. What do you think?”

“Because it’s weird?”

He looked at the girl. “Yes,” he said. “Because it’s weird.”

She shrugged.

“Will you let me buy you a really nice hot lunch first, and we can talk it over?”

“Where?”

He pointed. Three decks up a little restaurant stacked out over the falls, its square windows bright with warmth in the drippy gloom.

The toes of their shoes were dark with rain, so Lamb asked the waitress to sit them at a table beside the lit giant stone fireplace. Once seated, Lamb
raised a finger to his lips, then reached beneath the table and removed the girl’s shoes, and set them on the stones before the fire.

“Gary!”

“Look,” he said, turning away from the fire. “They look perfect there.”

Out of heavy cloth-backed menus he ordered them both little clay bowls of buttery red soup, he ordered them both goose liver ribbon sandwiches and hot tea, and he asked her all about her mom, and Jessie, and how the days went, and did they all eat together? Never? What time did she go to bed? No bedtime? Was that a good idea? Whose idea was that? And did she wake herself in the morning or did her mom wake her? What did she eat for breakfast? Did she fix it herself? Every morning? What grocery store did they go to and what thing was she never allowed to have? Really? But that was odd. Why wouldn’t her mother just buy her cashews? What was wrong with cashews? And what thing was she sick of having? Ah, he told her, Cap’n Crunch is not a meal. Burger King, he told her, did not make a family dinner. And did they spend a lot of time together on the weekends? Did they take her to the Morton Arboretum? Never? The Art Institute? The Field Museum? But that was shameful. Criminal even. And what was the biggest secret she ever kept from them? Where did Jessie keep those
magazines? And how often did she look at them? And what was the worst thing she ever did? Taste booze at Sid’s place? Terrible, that was terrible, what a bad kid she was after all.

“Don’t become the girl who drinks too much.”

“I won’t.”

So did he advise her, and question her, and the girl answered all of his inquiries as if Tommie were some other person in whom they were both extraordinarily interested. She became a project unto herself, split in two, adolescent-made, and he watched it happen. A sliding gray veil of rain fell outside the window behind her head. She turned around to see what he was looking at.

“Nothing,” he said. “In this room your hair matches the rain.”

“That figures.”

“I meant it as a compliment.”

“Oh.”

“The polite thing to do, Tommie dear, when someone compliments you, is to just say thank you.”

“Thank you.”

“It makes your hair look silver.” He sat very still, lowered his voice to almost whispering. “You’re the silver girl. Aren’t you?”

She watched him.

“I’ve been looking for the silver girl,” he said. “And it’s a shame, because when this lunch is over,
I have to put you in my truck, and take you home, and say good-bye.” His thoughts washed back and forth between pitying the child and wanting to crush her, stamp her out for her own sake. Because he knew exactly what the rest of her life would be after he returned her, and it was a bleak and terrible secret that he and all the world were keeping from her, and his withholding was the worst of all, because his presence in her life—this sudden and unusual friendship—might be the only bright spot, the only break in an otherwise scripted life. She was an arm’s length away. He could reach her, he could show her something else, just briefly, just for a page of her life. She was just close enough to warn. With a small bright spoon she ate from her glass dish of crème fraîche and the last of summer’s crushed blackberries.

He leaned in close over the tabletop, moved the crystal salt and pepper shakers aside, beckoned her closer with his forefinger.

“You know what, Tom? I’d rather sit here all day with you and order you dinner at eight than do anything else in the world.”

“What would we have?”

“Roast duck. Wild rice. Baby carrots in butter. Warm bread and mushroom soup and baked apples. We’d sit here until the rain turned to snow and filled up the streets, and all the waiters and
waitresses went home. Till the snow filled up the windows and the whole room turned blue, and the fire went out, and I’d make you a little nest of these beautiful red tablecloths and tuck you in.”

And there was nothing wrong with all that, was there? With a guy like him buying a kid like her a nice lunch, spoiling her a little? It was good for her. It was just a little tonic for his poisonous heart. Right? Why shouldn’t he have that? It was good for them both. And so it was good for everybody—because that’s how goodness works. It spills like water, bleeds into everyone, into everything, into trees, rivers, cracks in sidewalks. And Christ, it gave him such a feeling to put that nice new coat on her, to button it up right beneath her freckled chin.

It was just a day with a girl, right? Just a couple of harmless days, and he’d leave her alone by and by. He would become the source of a few odd treasures in the wreck of her bedroom closet. She’d forget all about him by Christmas. But when they were back in the truck driving east, back into the filth of the city, as if without warning from himself, he slowed down and looked sideways at her.

“What?”

“You really want to see the mountains?”

“Duh.”

“You want to go with me? A week?”

“Where?”

“I’m not just talking here. I mean it. It might be risky. You might get in trouble when you get back.”

“A week?”

“Just a little secret trip in your secret life. You’ll get your camping trip. Something to keep in your pocket when you’re back in this place and forty years old and I’m dead and buried. Right? Like the pencil sharpener? We could eat at little restaurants like that one, and drive way out across the country, and survey the grounds, then turn around and bring you home? What do you say?”

“Yeah.”

“And I’ll spoil you up. And you’ll never tell anyone where we went? Swear to God?”

“Swear to God.”

“Not even your mom?”

“Not even my mom.”

“Not even Sid.”

“No way.”

“You have to swear.”

“I swear.”

“Not even your husband in forty years when I’ve been dead for practically forever?”

“Okay.”

“Cross your heart.”

She crossed her flat chest. “Hope to die.”

“Want to leave now?”

“I don’t have my stuff.”

“I’ll get you stuff.”

“You will?”

“All the useful things you’ll need. We can make a list of supplies, right?”

“What about my mom and Jessie?”

“We’ll have to talk about that.”

“I don’t think we should ask.”

“Neither do I.”

“Because they’d never let me. Maybe mom. But Jessie, never.”

“I’ll bring you back before anyone gets too worried. One week? Monday through Sunday. You won’t be gone two Mondays. Six days. Five nights.”

The girl made a crazy face, as if to say: this is crazy. As if to say: yeah.

“Did you ever stay away from home for a week?”

“Five days.”

“An uncle’s?”

“Grandma’s.”

“Out of state?”

“Michigan.”

“Detroit?”

“Holland.”

“Okay. Is this like going to Grandma’s in Holland?”

“Sort of. Not really.”

He frowned. “What if we get halfway there and you want to turn around?”

“I won’t.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“I’m going to do everything in my power to make you want to keep going.”

“Ooo. I’m scared.”

“I’m just letting you know. I’m a really smart guy.”

“Says who?”

“I do. I get to say. And you better get used to it.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he said, “I have all the money.”

“Oh, yeah.”

So you see, none of this was planned. This is the kind of unforeseeable map that arises one bright little city at a time. It’s about letting go of the clench in your forehead and letting your heart steer. And it isn’t as easy as it sounds.

In the hotel lobby, everything was white. The floor of bleached ceramic tiles; the high frosted ceiling supported by smooth, ash-colored marble columns. Tommie stared around as if she’d been transported to another world.

“Are you afraid?” he asked in the elevator.

“No.”

They rushed silently upward.

“Are you being honest?”

“I’ve never been anywhere like this.”

“I know.”

“Are you really rich?”

The doors opened.

“Now listen,” he said as he walked her down the corridor. She pushed the hair out of her face. Like a little woman. “This is just an intermediary step, right? This trip is not for certain. We’re going to do this in stages.” He unlocked the door with the plastic card and held it open for her. “And maybe not at all.”

The room was warm and dry and smelled of citrus and balsam and clean linen. The creamy whites of the down comforters and painted walls were softly lit. Outside the giant panes of glass the dark sky was lifting and cracking apart. Lamb and the girl stood together near the door a moment, as if the room were intended for some other couple.

“Do you want the bed by the window or by the bathroom?”

“Duh, window.” She went in.

“Good.”

He opened the armoire and turned on the television, searching the channels. “What do you like? You like cartoons?”

She rolled her eyes. “Please.”

He tossed her the remote and rezipped his jacket.

“Are we going someplace?”

“I am. To get supplies.”

“For the road?”

“Yes,” he said. “For the road.”

“How long will it take to get there?”

“Two days.”

“How can we make it back in five nights?”

He looked down at his hands, then moved his mouth as he counted in his head. “This is exactly why we’re doing this in stages,” he said. “So we don’t do anything stupid. It might actually be seven nights. Or ten.”

“Can’t I come with you now?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Three reasons. First, because it’s warm in here. And we don’t want you getting sick. Second, I want you to be alone for an hour or so. You know how to get home from here, more or less?”

She gave him a blank look, so he opened a drawer in the little white desk and took out the binder of guest information. “Here.” He put four twenties on the desk. “That’s for a cab home. And a little extra.”

“I don’t want to go home.”

“I want you to think about it. I want you to take this hour and think real hard about whether or
not you should stay and wait for me. This will look a lot to other people like I’m kidnapping you. Right?”

“Oh.”

“It will. I’m fifty-four years old, and you?”

“Eleven.”

He inhaled. Christ. He’d taken her for thirteen at least. Eleven. That was closer to five years old than it was to eighteen. Her friends did not look eleven. The blond one—she could’ve been sixteen. He looked at his hands. At the floor. He did not look at her when he gave her the last reason.

“And three, here you are,” he said, “alone in a hotel room with a stranger. And eleven.”

“But you’re not a stranger.”

“Well. Maybe you feel a little funny.”

“I don’t feel funny.”

“Maybe you’re just not letting yourself feel funny. Think about all the ways this situation could make a girl your age feel. Okay? Say okay, Gary.”

“Okay, Gary.”

“And then, if you choose to stay, I want you to make this room yours. Do some rearranging. Put your shoes over there, and wash your face, and mess up the pillows. Make it like it’s your own room. So when I come back, it’ll be like you’re inviting me into your room, okay?”

“You’re weird.”

“Maybe so. But I know what I’m talking about. And if you don’t want me to come in when I get back, you can hand me my stuff and I’ll go get another room. Right?” He’d meant to sound forceful, convincing, but he was almost whispering.

“That won’t happen.”

“Just say okay, Gary.”

“Okay, Gary.”

“And if I come back and you’re gone, I’ll understand you’ve gone home. And no hard feelings, okay? It wouldn’t mean we can’t—you know—hang out. Like before. Say it: no hard feelings.”

“No hard feelings.”

“Good. Good girl.” He squinted at her. “Are all seventh graders eleven? I mean, your friends look a little old for their age.”

She shrugged. “I’ll be twelve in December.”

He looked down at the floor and nodded.