Walk on Water (10 page)

“That’s my alma mater,” I shared with him.

“You’re a Longhorn?” Brian asked elatedly.

I laughed.

“I guess I’m entitled to that,” I replied, thinking that it was just barely.

All of that school pride stuff had been Luke’s thing. Occasionally I had gone along as a spectator, not so much for the sport of it but as a future sociologist observing the cult-like dynamics. And to be with him.

“Maybe we can take in a game sometimes,” enthused Brian. “Austin’s just a short hop from Love Field, and my daughter’s constantly after me to come down. She’s a cheerleader.”

Oh God, I was thinking, no way was I going for that. Tailgate parties with too much beer and roasting meat, and freezing miserably in hard stadium seats, all to watch behemoths crack each other up on Astroturf while very pretty girls threw their legs up in the air, and bands played brassy tributes to metaphors of war.

“Sure,” I said. “That’d be great.”

It was dishonest, but Brian would figure out soon enough that I was probably not his type, and in the meantime going out with him occasionally would please Mommy and throw Corrine off the scent. Naturally Brian would get something out of the bargain too, good company for sure, and maybe even something more. I wasn’t exactly immune to his charms. I just wasn’t particularly interested in them. But sometimes you simply had to settle for what was in front of you.

While Brian was in the middle of explaining the virtues of German automotive engineering (he drove a BMW) over American car manufacturing, I took the cell phone away from my ear to check the power bars. They were running out. My own battery was running low too.

“I’m not too much into luxury cars myself,” I said. “They’re a little out of my price range.”

“Oh but you have to treat a good car like an investment,” Brian instructed. “You buy it to last. Not to mention how much safer they are to drive.”

I wondered what Luke had been driving the day of the accident. Was that why he drove a Mercedes now, to be safer? Wouldn’t that be like closing the barn door once the horse had run away? What had the texting teenager been driving? He was dead.

“Corollas have a good track record,” I said.

“They do, they do,” agreed Brian.

“And decent gas mileage.”

“German cars get good mileage, particularly on the highway.”

“Oh yes the autobahn. You think they have our kind of rush hours?”

“Pretty and smart, I see,” said Brian chuckling pleasantly.

“And a little pooped right now,” I added.

“Oh—I’m sorry,” he quickly replied. “I’m talking your ear off and keeping you up passed bedtime.”

“That’s okay,” I assured him. “I called you.”

“So how ‘bout it, dinner this week?”

Football and fast cars, but I didn’t sigh out loud. He’d probably take me somewhere nice. It wouldn’t be good if the show opened and closed on the same weekend.

“How ‘bout I call you,” I countered. “And we’ll set something up.”

“In demand too,” Brian surmised. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”

I chattered something about his own schedule being busy too and got us quickly to goodbye before some kind of truth leaked out by word or tone.

Minutes later I was saying my prayers. I crawled into bed. Because I usually had a harder time falling asleep on Sunday nights, out of habit I turned on the TV and found a sitcom rerun, then set the TV timer for thirty minutes. I didn’t make it to the first commercial. When I woke up the telephone by the bed was ringing and the television was off. Sleepily I reached for the phone.

“Hello,” I mumbled.

“Never let it be said I don’t keep my word,” a man’s voice came to my ear.

I sat up straight up, my heart racing.

“Luke?” I asked.

I must be dreaming. It was Sunday night. We didn’t talk on Sundays.

“Just under the wire,” he chuckled. “But a promise is a promise.”

“What promise?” I asked.

“You must have had a good time last night. You don’t remember I told you I’d call you today?”

Because it was his shot and the winner was going to get the prize. My heart was settling down.

“We don’t talk on Sundays,” I said.

“Now why is that?” asked Luke.

“I-I don’t know.”

“Could it be because you never call me?”

“I call you. I called you last night. But you were too busy to talk.”

“Am I detecting a tone?”

“No. You were just busy that’s all.”

With another a woman. His
prize
. Like old times.

“I was that,” said Luke. “And I won too.”

“So did you like your prize?” I asked dryly.

He laughed a little.

“I did,” he said.

Suddenly my eyes filled with tears. I didn’t want to do it again. I didn’t want to hear another one of his quasi-confessions involving another woman with whom I would silently compete and to whom I would inevitably lose. But I couldn’t help myself either because I wanted him. I wanted Luke’s voice waking me up like this in the middle of the night, and his stupid clever repartee over meals in expensive restaurants that he could easily afford. I wanted a place, any place in his life.

“Are you there?” Luke asked.

Yes
. Where I would always be. Right where he had left me. And he would leave me.

“I’m here,” I answered, grateful for the cover of darkness and the separation of phone lines.

“Thought maybe we got cut-off or something,” he said.

God—I despised his coolness. He knew it wasn’t in my power to cut him off. He had done that, and married Christina, so that I had had to wear that stupid pink dress, and ludicrous happy smile like it was one of the best days of my life.

“No,” I said to him now.

“So we’re going to change the rules about Sundays?” he asked. “About calling each other I mean? I wouldn’t dare interfere with your family time.”

“You get together with your folks too,” I reminded him.

“I do,” he concurred. “But with us it’s more hit and miss. And a lot of miss.”

“Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, I guess,” I replied smugly.

“Emerson,” said Luke.

“That’s right. You remembered.”

“I had a good tutor.”

I breathed deeply.

“Are we okay?” asked Luke.

“Why wouldn’t we be?” I asked back.

“No reason here,” he said.

Because he had everything he wanted. The
this
had always been enough for him. I was the one who idiotically kept wanting more, the
that
and the
other.
I was the one who got my feelings hurt over and over again. No wonder I had become so good at hiding them.

“I had a good time last night too,” I informed him, abruptly changing the subject.

“So tell me about it,” said Luke.

What was I thinking? I couldn’t tell him about dancing. I wasn’t cruel.

“We always have a good time,” I tried to steer the conversation in yet another direction. “My coworkers and me I mean. It was a girls’ night out.”

“So where’d you go?”

“Sensations,” I said as if I were confessing.

“That’s a great place.”

“You know it?” I asked.

Again Luke chuckled softly.

“Yes, Rachel,” he said. “It’s been a while since I’ve been there, but I’m guessing it’s about the same.”

I wished that I had never brought it up. I had reminded him of his loss.

“I’m sorry, Luke,” I said. “I didn’t mean to…I mean…”

“How long did it take for your ears to stop ringing?” he asked. “You always were a pretty good dancer.”

“No I wasn’t.”

At least not in front of him, and certainly never with him. I had been too embarrassed, too intimidated. In my fantasies though, in my head, sometimes I had danced with him all night, and perfectly, as free in the music as he could be.

“Yes you were,” replied Luke. “Just a little stiff at first until the rhythm got you.”

“The Miami-Sound Machine,” I said.

Now Luke laughed heartily.

“You remember that?” he asked.

“I had a good tutor,” I told him.

“I did have the moves, didn’t I?” he remembered.

My eyes refilled, and the
yes
caught in my throat when I tried to say it.

“I still have them, Rachel,” he said quietly. “They’re just different.”

I nodded my head as I tried to swallow the lump in my throat.

“I’ll show you one day,” he told me.

My heart was beating rapidly again, and I trembled in the dark, picturing myself sitting in his lap, our arms around each other.

.

ELEVEN

M
eandering up and down the wine aisles at Siegel’s Wine Shoppe, I vacillated between buying a red or a white, merlot or pinot noir, chardonnay or Chablis. Luke had been vague about the menu he was preparing and adamant that I didn’t need to bring anything. Of course I couldn’t just show up at his house for the first time empty-handed, and it wasn’t customary to bring a man flowers, unless he was in the hospital. What else could I do but bring a bottle of wine? Although Luke would undoubtedly be providing the wine himself, and it would be the perfect complement to whatever it was he was cooking for us.

Luke was cooking dinner for us. He hadn’t done that since his senior year at UT, when we had been studying for finals, and the meal had been thick burgers on his tiny Hibachi grill. I remembered him squatting down on the tiny apartment deck, fanning the smoke as he carefully turned the beef patties, and me inside the apartment standing at the kitchen stove, my face shining, as I tended to the French fries frying in a skillet. Had he been a good cook back then? I honestly couldn’t say, having been too blinded by the happiness of being with him. It was a long time ago. I hadn’t fried a potato in a skillet in a thousand years.

I was excited about having dinner at his place, but then again when wasn’t I
excited
? Tonight I would be having Luke all to myself. Unless I wasn’t. What if it turned out to be a dinner party not just for two? What if it were for three? Or more? Luke just getting all of his friends together? A whole new network for whom I would be his
little sister
again. It wouldn’t be the first time he had brought me along to meet his friends, me his
Robin,
his
Tonto,
his
Jimmy Olsen
, just never his
Lois Lane.
Surely I had earned at least the status of
Lois Lane
by now. I was my own woman after all, independent, confident.

And what if Stephanie came? Well then I would just be delighted to meet her. Stephanie was the wanna-be girlfriend I had always been certain Luke would have. She had come up between us one day while Luke and I had been having lunch, and she had happened to call his cell. Checking to see who it was first, Luke had taken the call. I hated it when people did that, answering the phone and leaving whoever was there to standby awkwardly, trying not to listen.

“Sounds like somebody’s got a special evening planned,” I had said because I had in fact overheard him confirm their dinner plans.

“Stephanie’s cool,” Luke had replied, putting his cell away. “You’d like her. She’s a teacher.”

And Luke Sterling was my friend, not my man.

“Was she your prize?” I had asked, being a little snarky.

“What do you mean?” Luke had asked back.

“Nothing,” I had replied, ashamed of my
Lucy
moment.

There would be none of that tonight, regardless of who else was there. I was looking forward to seeing Luke’s house. Ever since Mommy had asked me about it, it had been a niggling thing that he hadn’t invited me over. However, I wasn’t about to press the issue, not when I couldn’t return the gesture for the lack of an elevator. I supposed Stephanie, the teacher, lived in a building that had one, or at least she lived on the ground floor, not in the clouds where I might as well be.

In any case, Luke had finally invited me over, so it was going to mean another Saturday night that I wasn’t going out with Brian, although I had met him for Happy Hour yesterday. Since I was supposed to like Stephanie then I guessed Luke would like Brian. In college Luke used to make it a point to meet the guys I went out with, sometimes actually showing up unexpectedly at the places where I had my dates to execute his self-appointed big brother/
Batman
duties. “You’re a romantic, Rachel,” he had said. “I’m around to keep it real.” An ironic statement, even back then, considering the fantasy world I had built up around him.

But yes, Brian was likely to earn Luke’s seal of approval. He was a nice guy. For our first date Brian had been waiting for me at the restaurant with a bouquet of red roses. At first Robert had brought me flowers for our anniversaries and for my birthday, but that hadn’t lasted very long, but then again neither had our marriage. Luke had never given me flowers or met Robert for that matter. Brian reminded me of Robert, polite, traditional, possessively affectionate, constantly draping his arm over my shoulders or tucking it around my waist, letting everybody know that we were a couple. Which I supposed we were when we went out together—on a date. Like Luke and Stephanie must be too, a couple—on a date, and maybe more than
that.