Nothing Real Volume 1 (2 page)

Mrs. Lerner was one of the few women who actually looked good in the pajama-style pants we sold. She was skinny and had a butt like a twelve-year-old boy.

“I've got three pairs left,” I said, and I started handing her a pair of white pants with tiny black squares in a pattern that made them look vaguely like dice. I actually wanted them myself, but a good Mrs. Lerner sale could add up to five or six hundred dollars, which was worth opening the store for. If we had too many bad days, Carol would close us in August. I brought her a second pair for good measure, a roomy, light blue silk, when the front door opened, and the rope of bells we kept tied to the inside handle jangled lightly.

Joe was still wearing his painter's cap, but he must have washed up at the job, because the smell of turpentine filled the store. I indicated, with my eyes, that there was someone in the dressing room. I thought he might stay by the door, since the store is small, and most of the husbands stand there looking sort of awkward, but he walked all the way in and leaned against the jewelry case. “What time you close?” he asked.

“Five thirty,” I said.

Joe nodded. “All right. Why don't you swing by and get me after you finish? I've got an idea.”

He must have been waiting for me to pull up, because he came right
out of Angie's crumbly-looking, white stucco house, wearing his same cutoff shorts and a T-shirt. I had the windows rolled down, and instead of opening the passenger-side door, he pulled himself up and slid through the open window, like he was getting into a race car. He didn't kiss me, but mussed my hair and kept his arm behind me while I drove. Every once in a while he'd reach up and pat my head.

He told me to get on the Saw Mill in Dobbs Ferry and head north, which I did, even though the on-ramp was short there, and I sometimes couldn't find second gear and stalled getting into traffic. We drove out past Tarrytown, where we'd gone to camp together, and up through Hawthorne, and then Thornwood. At the traffic light in Thornwood, he told me to take a right. I'd been to that intersection before when I ran cross-country, and we'd stopped on the way home from a meet for burgers at the Red Rooster. It was a sleazy strip, filled with fast-food places and a few motels, the kind that only truckers went to. Joe pointed at a driveway up the street past a Carvel. It was a motel called Castle Inn, but it wasn't an inn, just another truck stop–looking joint, with faded, painted turrets reaching to the flat cement roof. “You're kidding,” I said. It was about seven at that point, and not even dark.

I pulled into the driveway, but didn't kill the engine. He flashed me the package of condoms he had in the pocket of his cutoffs. “We've got all sorts of time,” he said. “And supplies.” He looked at me with one hand on the passenger-side door, waiting for me to give the signal.

“I don't know,” I said. He tapped his fingers on the armrest.

“Tell you what. I'll go get us a key, and you give it some thought.
You decide you don't want to, I'll go back in and say the room sucked, and that'll be that.”

I didn't know what I wanted, but I knew I didn't like the finality of those words. “All right,” I said, but I looked straight ahead, and my voice was barely above a whisper.

The room was small, with a double bed with a mauve bedspread, and rows of yellow roses on it. There was a spider, I noticed, near the window, just a small, black dot racing across the rough-looking paint. I turned to Joe. I wanted to tell him it was a mistake, that I wasn't up for this. But he took the Coke out of my hand, and the two glasses I'd taken from the stand by the machine, and set them on the cheap, plasticky-looking side table. First he kissed me slowly, and then he opened his mouth a little, and let his hands wander up under my dress. I was still wearing my work clothes, one of those dresses we always sold out of.

We stayed until eleven. I was so hungry by the time we left the motel, I thought I'd faint. We drove back south down the parkway, back to Dobbs, and got off at the Main Street exit, and drove over to the Midnight Diner. I let him drive my car.

When he parked, Joe said, chuckling, “You should've seen your face when we pulled into that parking lot. Your eyes were this big.” He made his eyes go real round, pulling them open with his fingers. I hit him softly on the shoulder.

“Give me a break. I'm not Miss No-Tell-Motel.”

“No worries,” he said. “You rose to the challenge.” I wasn't sure
how to take that appraisal of my performance.

“I didn't know it was a test of my worthiness,” I said.

“Oh, come now,” he said, and he patted my knee like a grandpa.

We ordered burgers and fries, and when the food came I decided to fish around. I wanted to know how long he was going to be in town, and was this how he wanted to spend the summer.

“We're going job by job, Johnny and me. We're supposed to gross about two thousand for this one, but now we've got some complications—bats, actually. An army of them under the roof, so now the exterminators are there too. Makes a job longer, and pay more, or so it should. I want to make maybe five grand this summer—my cut—so I think we need three jobs minimum.” He took my knee between his legs and squeezed. I was going to be his three-job girl.

I hardly saw Joe the whole rest of that week. He and Johnny finished the bat house; then they got another job about an hour north. The owners were away, and had offered to let the guys sleep there while they painted, and they said sure. Joe came by the store the day before they left and told me about the plan. “I get back maybe Tuesday,” he said. “So I'll see you then.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I should probably be around.” Of course I had no plans but to be at Carol's shop for the rest of the summer, but I made up some crap right there on the spot about maybe going on a buying trip with Carol to the city that week. Joe just shrugged.

“We'll figure it out,” he said. I wondered at his confidence in me. He went out with his hands in his painter's pants, with his strange
sort of loping walk. I wasn't sure what about him made me certain he wasn't a boyfriend kind of guy, or at least that he couldn't be my boyfriend. We had just fallen into an arrangement since that first night, or maybe it went even back further, to that day at camp. I wondered if this was the way Joe was with other girls, or just with me. If he was using me, he was oddly insistent that I be using him too, that we were in this thing together.

I hung with Angie while Joe was gone, and we got crazy drunk one night down at Larry's. I had to leave my car in town and walk back to Angie's house. I puked in her bathroom, and had to rinse out the striped rug in the sink. The next morning Angie's mom made us scrambled eggs. She's a fat, grandmotherly sort of mom, hair in a bob, wears these housedresses from Kmart or someplace—nothing like my mom, nothing like the women who shop at Ragtime. She put the eggs down in front of me, and some bacon, and then she poured me a big glass of tomato juice. “Drink the juice, if nothing else,” she said, and Angie nodded. Angie's mom knew about hangovers, between Angie and Johnny, and their dad probably too.

“Not sure about that,” I said, eyeing the thick red liquid. “That is some daunting-looking juice.”

Angie and I sat around most of that morning listening to music, trying to feel well enough so we could get up and go downtown to where my car was languishing behind the stationery store. That was when Angie filled me in about Joe's family, and how his dad, Angie's
mother's brother, was a real prick.

“Big Joe was my favorite uncle until I was ten,” Angie said. “Then they were all here for Christmas one year. All the grown-ups were drinking all night, just like any Christmas Eve. Then they went out caroling, and they were passing around drinks. I remember one of them carrying a silver flask, because some of the older kids wanted a hit off of it. When we got to mass,” Angie said, “Big Joe was standing in the back with some of the older kids. I was in front of them in a pew, fighting to keep my eyes open.

“They got to this part of the mass where they're talking about Jesus, how the baby Jesus was born and everyone was coming to see this baby, and Big Joe started laughing. I remember everyone in the church turning to look at him, and he was cracking up and pointing, and tears were rolling down his cheeks. Nobody knew what had struck him so funny. Then some guys got pissed and went after Joe, and dragged him outside. I remember this one guy making like he was going to punch Big Joe in the face, but then he just snarled at him and said, ‘Better be glad it's Christmas, asshole.'

“I didn't see Big Joe after that until a wedding a few years ago,” Angie continued. “Little Joe sees him once in a while. Anyway, I think that's why Joe's Joe.” She said this definitely, like I should have known what she was talking about.

“How's that?” I said, thinking Angie was going to say something about how Joe didn't drink.

Angie gave me a pitying glance. I suddenly felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff. “Johnny went down to Philly with him. They
told me not to tell you. Joe didn't want to hurt your feelings. He's got this thing about not letting anyone down.”

“Oh God,” I said. “I was so stupid.”

“Shit,” Angie said. “I told him he couldn't play with you like that. I mean, you've known him for fucking ever. He just doesn't know how to step up.”

“No, it's not that,” I said. I didn't know how to explain it. I thought the thing between me and Joe, the whole mystery of it, went back to when we were kids. There was some bond there, some prior knowledge. But there wasn't a mystery. There was a girlfriend.

“You always kind of liked him back then,” Angie said. “So, it was bound to happen.” She shrugged. She was trying to help me shake it off, along with my hangover.

“Sort of,” I said. “It was just more fun before this little talk.” It was annoying me how Angie had started talking in clichés, how the whole thing had become a cliché.

“He should've told you about Amy.” My head felt enormous; my brain felt like it was too large for my skull.

To my surprise, when Joe came back to town after visiting Amy, he came around to the store in his painter's clothes, only he didn't come in. He stood out on the sidewalk and called to me through the open door.

“So you're back,” I said, my arms folded across my chest. “How much did you make up there?” I asked, wondering if he would play along or not.

“All right, all right,” Joe said. “I should've told you.”

“I guess so,” I said. “Not that I thought we were anything.” My voice sounded shaky, and I wished I could steady it.

Joe shook his head. “Don't be that way,” he said.

“Maybe that's how I feel,” I said. It wasn't like I was heartbroken.

“That's not what this is.” He made a gesture with his hand, waving his fingers between us.

I crossed my arms, shaking my head. I tried to look amused, worldly.

“Well,” Joe said. “The problem is I like this face,” he said, and he traced my cheek with his finger.

“Okay,” I said. “I like your face too. Sort of.”

“I told Amy we should see other people. Things haven't been good with me and Amy in a long time.”

“But,” I said, “this is all just us messing around.” I didn't want him to have a girlfriend, but I didn't know what he really meant to me, nor did I know whether to even believe him about Amy. “I know and you know this is nothing real.”

“Whatever you say,” he said.

I stared at him. I thought he had to know how he'd been moving the whole thing forward, the night at Leonard's Field, the Castle Inn.

“Yeah,” he said. “I just keep trying to impress you. But you have this way about you. It's very intimidating. Even back when we were little. You were such a cool girl.” He said this with a chuckle. At first I thought he was kidding, mocking me for going along with his every move. I wanted to say,
But you're the liar, the cheat, the one who's playing
games,
but I just stood there staring at him, blinking away tears. I didn't know why I was crying.

“It's whatever you want it to be,” he said. That's when I realized how he'd done it. How he'd seduced me, how he'd made me want him. There was never anything so special about Joe, nothing between us beyond a few nights of craziness.

He had tricked me, I saw now, using only my own confusion.

Kev's short, not much taller than me, with small eyes, scraggly hair, and he maybe is and maybe isn't my boyfriend. We are out at the park, under the metal climbing dome on a patch of earth scraped by little kid feet.

It's a surprise when he brings me to this point where I cry out, and then I cry.

I am too high, and Kev is too short, and a nobody who probably thinks of me as a somebody, which makes me feel wicked, like a song I once couldn't understand.

Kev doesn't notice I'm quiet when we walk back to his house, his arm draped around my shoulder. Kev's house is old, surrounded by porches with little roofs. Kev wants to make me an omelette, but I am stuffing Thin Mints in my mouth and take a Sprite out of the fridge without asking. I imagine the Girl Scout coming to the front porch, and Kev giving the order. I've never heard him call to his mom from another part of the house, the way I do, the way everybody does. His
mom keeps a low profile, and it sometimes seems like Kev lives alone in that rambling house.

Kev and I eat in the kitchen, sitting on high stools, my feet dangling, not reaching the rungs. It's a good omelette, gooey with cheese. We leave our crap in the sink, take a couple beers from the fridge, and go upstairs to Kev's room.

Kev has crap all over his floor—textbooks, magazines, a tennis racket I almost step on. I thank God for this, for his being normal in this respect, at least like me. Kev is fussy, and very particular about his stuff. He's one of those guys who loves anything retro, and collects turntables, typewriters. He puts a record on, actual vinyl. It's Velvet Underground, which is going to kill me. The first time I heard Lou Reed I thought about how bad the seventies must have sucked, and I sort of felt bad for my parents. The guy sings like the undead.