The Fortunes of Indigo Skye (15 page)

"Indigo, you could come with me."

I laugh.

"No, I mean it. I wanted to ask you before, but
Dad says you'd have to pay for your own plane fare, and ..."

"You knew it would be an issue."

"You could buy your own plane now," she
says.

"That's ridiculous. Plane fare will still be an
issue." But Melanie has popped up from her folded-leg position on the bed and
has gotten her cell phone, which is the kind that has the calendar and the
camera and does everything for you but clean your room and balance the national
debt.

"Okay, look." She taps the screen with a little
metal stick, shows me the screen. "The end of June. You can come down for a few
weeks. We can rent a convertible. Hell, you can buy a convertible."

"I don't know, Mel, that's a lot of time to
take off work." I imagine Mel and me in a pink Barbie Camero, wearing little
plastic Barbie shoes and Barbie wedding dresses, our veils flying out, some
giant hand driving us around on the kitchen floor.

"You've got to be kidding me. You're still
going to work?"

"I told you, I'm going to give it
back."

Melanie pretends to punch numbers into her
phone. "Hello? Yeah, I want to report that I've got an idiot in my house?
Uh-huh. A certified f-ing lunatic. Please come and take her away before I kill
her myself."

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"Hey, let's play Name the Fish. I'll hold my
hand over the labels and you can tell me what they are."

"You are a millionaire!" she shrieks. She is
hugging me. I picture a cartoon scene where my tongue is gaggling out from the
force of her embrace.

"Air, air," I Freud-shriek back.

"Girls," Melanie's mother says, her head
suddenly in Melanie's room. "I told you, I'd like you to keep the door open when
you're visiting."

Melanie's mom is gone again, but I can feel her
presence still lingering in the hall. "Quick, hide the pot," I say
loudly.

Do you ever have those moments when your dream
life and your real life intersect like spirits from the dead who appear in the
here and now to knock over vases and picture frames? When you wake from a dream
of a long kiss or an angry moment and you take that feeling into the new day?
The sense floats, looks for something to latch on to, feels both right and not
right, too present for something imaginary. This is where I am now, when I walk
into Carrera's, my work shoes on and laced, the news I have to share trailing
ahead of me and behind me, wispy but insistent as perfume samples in a magazine.
The news is the real and not real of a dream. The here and now but not
now.

"Well?" Jane says from behind the register. She
is wearing dangly bead earrings, jeans, and a T-shirt, a white one, which has
the smeary gray haze of once having been washed with a blue towel. Clothes that
may not understand two and a half million dollars. Even Jack lifts up his head.
His red cloth collar with the bone hanging from it with his address and name
etched on--I'm suddenly sure that even he won't understand two and a half
million dollars.

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"You were right," I say. "It was
big."

"Oh God," she sighs. She shares this with
Mom--the equation of "big" with "disaster." It makes me wonder, right then, if
the Moores, or even Melanie's mother and father, would ever feel this equation,
and I don't think so. Wealth gives you the expectation of more wealth, and
struggle gives you the expectation of more struggle. The willingness to embrace
the idea of "a surprise" is dependent on our past surprises being good ones.
Maybe this is obvious, but I don't think so. Pessimism and caution and cynicism
and the inability to be spontaneous are character flaws to those who've had good
fortune, and common sense to those who haven't.

I put on my apron, tie it behind my back. I
shout a hello to Luigi, who greets me with a "Ciao" that comes through the open
rectangle window that leads to the kitchen. Poor Luigi--he's like those other
isolated workers stuck behind small openings--bank tellers and limo drivers and
movie theater ticket sellers. The most we see of him is his dark, hairy arm
sliding plates through to the other side, though he doesn't seem to
mind.

"For Christ's sake, Indigo. How much longer are
you going to make us wait?" Trina says.

I peek under the foil of Harold's pie dishes.
"Lemon or berry?" I ask her.

"No chocolate?" she says. She looks slightly
panicked. "Berry. Chocolate ice cream." It sounds disgusting, but it's not my
job to argue with the customers. I notice something shocking about Trina. There.
Under the table. No boots. No knee-high boots or calf-high ones or even
ankle-high. No I'm-no-virgin white ones, no
you-can't-handle-what's-in-
these red ones, no tie-me-up black ones. She's
wearing Reeboks, oh God. She had to walk here, I

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realize. I realize, little bits of Trina are
disappearing.

"Until everyone else gets here. I don't want to
tell this a thousand times," I say.

Nick is next, and he looks like hell. He's got
a sweatshirt on from some resort, and this looks rudely prosperous and
overconfident next to his jeans that have seen too many wearings without being
washed--you can tell because they're loose and low-slung without meaning to be.
He's unshaven--whiskers sprouting up sure as the lawn our neighbors, the
Elberts, just reseeded. He doesn't even greet us. Just slides and slumps into
his table.

"Look who the cat dragged in," Trina says.
She's as direct as she likes her coffee. Black, no sugar or cream.

"Yeah, well," Nick says.

Jane goes to him, sets her strong hands on his
shoulders. "Today's the anniversary?" she asks.

He nods. He pushes his palms to his eyes. "You
said it was coming," Jane says. "Year two," he says.

"It's so hard," Jane says. "When my mother died
..."

"I thought this was supposed to get easier," he
says. He takes his palms from his eyes, which are red and baggy; they have the
new wrinkles of apricots left too long in the fridge.

"They don't tell you that the second
anniversary is harder," Jane says. "You think you're supposed to be better. Hits
you worse."

"You're telling me."

"Grief is harder when it simmers than when it
boils," she says.

"I wish I still smoked," Trina says.

I don't even bother getting on Trina's case for
this. I put in

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Nick's order without asking him, add an order
of toast that I'll take from my tips, or rather, tip, if necessary. I want him
to have something to crunch, rather than just swallow down. You are not
completely helpless if you can crunch. I also ask for a hot chocolate with
whipped cream, because whipped cream can remind you why it's good to be
alive.

I am wondering how I will be able to share my
news, lay this gold egg on a battleground. Some kind of feeling is working
around my insides; this finger, looping and curving on steamed-up glass. My
conscience. Guilt, maybe. But I don't have time to think about it; a mismatched
couple comes in--a very large woman and a tiny man, one of those couples that
bring to mind Bomba's expression, "There's a lid to every pot." And then Funny
arrives and she's bouncing and smiling, her dark eyes gleamy, the corners of her
mouth turned up like an elf's. Her smile relieves some of my guilt.

"People, people, people," Funny says. Funny is
small. Tiny, really, but you forget she's tiny because of her intense dark hair
and sharp, focused eyes. But I see it now, with her thin wrists and small
fingers clutching a magazine. It's not a regular magazine, all shiny and bold
and shouting, but a quiet, whispering one with thick paper and thoughtful
fonts.

"What's that?" I ask.

"People, people, people," she says again. "I'd
like everyone's attention." Even the large woman and tiny man .raise their
heads. They have the look of restaurant dread you get in those places where
you're supposed to interrupt your dinner to join in to some rousing
group-singing of "Happy Birthday," belted out by over-enthusiastic waiters and
waitresses as a sparkling candle melts into an oversize sundae.

114

"Funny Louise Coyote is officially a published
poet," she says.

"What?" Jane clasps her hands together. Her
eyes are wide. "You sold a poem?"

"Well, 'sell' is a relative word. I get ten
copies of the magazine. You know, the landlord won't take those instead of
rent--"

"My God, Funny, that's wonderful," Jane
says.

Even Nick smiles. "Well done, Funny," he says.
That's the kind of good man he is. A man who looks outside himself, a
non-murdering man, a man who never leaves a messy table and wipes up sugar he's
spilled.

"It's in there? Let us see," I say.

"It's not in this one," Funny says. "This is
just the magazine. It won't come out for two more years." She holds it close to
her chest.

"Wow," I say.

"If the magazine stays in business that long. I
mean, I know no one really reads it, but that's beside the point," Funny says.
Funny sets the magazine carefully on the seat beside her. She places the napkin
onto her lap daintily. She lines up her silverware. She makes the bottoms of her
knife and fork and spoon all even.

"It's not something you do for fame and
fortune," Jane says. "It's a heart thing."

"Right," Funny says. "Pancakes," she tells me.
"Eggs, bacon." I write it down.

"Beware of heart things," Trina says. "That's
all I can say."

Big lady and small man have gone back to their
uneven conversation, and the bookstore guy comes in and so does Joe. Joe eases
up onto his counter stool and sighs. He reminds me of Eeyore. His bald head is
shiny but has a terrain of its own; bumpy,

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a barren planet. His thumbs grasp the edge of
the plastic menu that he could recite by heart. His jacket smells like smoky
outside morning. I pour Joe's coffee.

"Come on, Indigo," Jane says after I take the
bookstore guy's order. An omelette, which means he's okay with things mixed
together. He's not fussy about clarity. The rest of him shows this too. His
shirt is untucked and the orange T-shirt peeking from underneath is a color that
doesn't match. He's got an earring, but earrings don't necessarily mean cool
anymore, just trying to be. He's edging through his thirties reluctantly, the
earring says. He's a walking omelet of contradictions. "Leroy's always late, if
he even comes. I'd say we're all here."

"He's coming," Trina says. "I see him." She
leans forward to look out the window, showing us the small of her back from her
shirt that's eeked up. "He's parking that piece of crap car. Okay, he's locking
the door, not that there's anything to steal. Keys in his shirt pocket.
Whistling. He's whistling. Almost at the door, and ..."

"Give me your best hangover cure," Leroy
says.

"You want to stay in shape, you gotta lay off
that, what did I tell you?" Joe says. He shakes his dark, bumpy head.

"Lack of
sleep
hangover," Leroy says.
"No booze involved. I worked all day, then all night. I got this job watching
this old lady because they're worrying about her falling and I'm supposed to
stay up all night because she walks around. She isn't gonna fall. She's steadier
than me. I put on some music, and she danced. I wasn't supposed to let her
dance. Why bother being alive if you can't dance?" He snaps a vine-covered
finger.

"I can see this job's going to last," Trina
says.

"I shimmied her around the room." He chuckles.
"Man, she loved that."

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"Come on, Indigo," Jane says. "Everyone's here.
Spill it."

"Oh man, that's right," Leroy says. "What was
in the envelope? He suing you or something?"

I think about making this big. For a moment, I
see it cinematic. Indigo lifts her pant legs, steps up onto a counter stool,
onto the counter itself. She holds her hands out, makes her grand statement, and
they swarm her, lift her, carry her around, turn circles with her in their arms.
It's a joy moment, the arms of friends, their goodwill.

But instead, I see their faces, and I can't
speak. There's Nick, and he is wiping the edges of his mouth with a napkin, and
Jane, hands on her hips. Trina in her Reeboks and Joe, looking like a visual
sigh. Leroy, grinning. Both inked hands clasped in expectation. Leafy fingers
intertwined, the forearm mermaid, upside down in waiting. And Funny, leaning
back, smiling, whose good news no longer feels like relief to my strange guilt.
It is an ace to my four aces. News I will trump.

"He gave me two and a half million dollars," I
say quietly.

"Holy fuck," Leroy breathes.

"What?" the bookstore guy says. "I didn't
hear."

"Nobody gives away two and a half million
dollars," Jane says.

"I knew he was loaded," Trina says sadly. "Damn
it."

"Can you repeat that?" Nick says. "I think I
didn't hear right."