THE TENTH DAY . . .
(Sunday, June 21, morning)
MACK:
Sun comes up hazy
between the condo towers they’re building past the reservoir there.
I guess I slept some last night. I’m studying the G-turned-C stickpin.
Boo whines to pee. I take her down to the street, and we walk the
reservoir and then pick up the rest of the dogs. The whole morning
I can’t think of anything except that I’m the biggest idiot in the
city for not holding on to that girl’s hand.
When we get back, I
set down a pot of cool water. While Boo’s drinking I go to the
other side of the roof. “Boo, come.”
She looks up, gets
back to her water.
“Boo, come.” This
time I show her inside my hand, peanut butter wiped on
it.
She bolts across the
roof to lick my palm clean. I try it again and again, then without
peanut butter, and still she comes to me every time, even if it’s
just for a scratch under her jaw. Now is the hard one:
“Wait.”
Nope, dog won’t stop
following me, her peanut butter man.
“Wait.” I say it
strict and deep as I walk away from her, but she keeps following
me. She’s too tired for training after all our walking. I pen her
and rest with her. By mid-afternoon I can’t stand it anymore,
dreaming of Céce but not seeing her.
I’m not on the
schedule tonight, but I show up at Vic’s Too just at the time Céce
is getting off brunch shift. I wait out front, by the
mailbox.
Her mom comes out
first. Her hair is dyed bright pink. She has a Band-Aid on her
nose, but she’s smiling her pretty gold teeth. Her eyes are pink
too, means she danced hard with the bottle last night. I want to
help her, but my experience is adults get mad when kids try to help
them. She musses my hair. “Couldn’t stay away even a
day.”
I can’t tell if she’s
talking about Vic’s Too or Céce, and either way I’m too sick with
the crush to pretend I’m not interested in her daughter. She knows.
She winked at me when she caught me staring at Céce last
night.
Céce comes out kind
of mopey.
“I gotta go buy
limes,” her mom says.
“For your cornbread,
ma’am?”
“For tonight’s bar
fruit. Lime cornbread, though. You’re a genius.” Mrs. V. pinches my
cheek and heads off for the market.
“Hey,” I
say.
“You’re not on the
schedule tonight,” Céce says.
“Happened to your
mom’s nose?”
“Ask me about her
hair instead.”
“Okay?”
“When she gets
depressed, say like when her only son is leaving in a week to go
get himself killed, she dyes it a bright color. Last time it was
orange.”
“What triggered
that?”
“When my grandfather
died. She went to the funeral with her hair blow-dried to look like
a flame. She wanted me to do it too.”
“You got the
prettiest hair, though.”
She rolls her eyes,
hand on a cocked hip. “What do you want from me?”
“I just want to be
with you. You want to go for a walk? Hit the park maybe. There’s a
couple of sweet hiking trails. I was gonna bring Boo, but it’s too
hot. You like the country?”
“Why are you doing
this?”
“Doing
what?”
“You have me up on
that roof last night, and it’s like, I don’t know.”
“I
know.”
“You know what I
mean?” she says.
“I know. I don’t
know. I’m an idiot.”
“I mean, it’s like if
you want to be friends, that’s okay, but I just have to know which
way you want to go.”
“No, I definitely
don’t want to be friends. I mean I do too. Hell, look, I got
something for you.”
“More dog-training
advice for the dog I don’t have. Can’t wait. Lay it on
me.”
I pull the stickpin
from my pocket. It’s kind of crusty with sweated-up dog biscuit
crumbs. There’s this dot of chipped glue where one of the diamonds
fell off. Damn.
She takes it gentle
from my hand and stares at it. Now that she’s holding it, I see
it’s way not good enough for her. For the prettiest girl you ever
seen, you need to do better than a junky piece of plastic that like
a kid in fourth grade would give to a crush. And on top of that you
can tell it isn’t a real C to begin
with. She shakes her head. Knew I
should’ve gave her the phone case instead. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m
just the lamest.”
“It’s so, so
beautiful.” She pins it to her shirt, and she’s misty in those dark
brown eyes. She grips my hand. I let her keep it. We thread fingers
tight all the way to the park. “I’m afraid to ask you,” she says.
“That guy in the alley.”
“Which
guy?”
“The one you’re
flipping tens to.”
“He told
you?”
“I saw you from the
window.”
“Spy,
huh?”
“Mad?”
“Never be mad at
you.”
“Just so you know,”
she says. “I trend toward intensely emotional.”
“I like that about
you. That emotional stuff.”
“I should be on
meds,” she says.
“You are a
med.”
“I’m a med?” she says.
“You’re like a happy
drug to me. You’re kind of like perfect.”
“What?”
“I went on a ride
once at one of those fun parks. It’s sort of a coaster. I forget
the name of it, but it kind of makes you want to puke. It’s real
cool. The freefall thing. That’s what it’s like with
you.”
“The puke-inducing
freefall?”
“I mean that from the
bottom of my heart.”
“Okay, so I’m looking
at you right now, right?”
My eyes flick to
hers, then away. “Looks that way.”
“I feel myself
leaning in,” she says.
“You are. You have a
cherry gum smell on you. That’s like my second-favorite
flavor.”
“How I’m holding off
from ramming my tongue down your throat, I have no idea,” she
says.
I have no answer to
that. I’m pretty sure I’m about to drop backwards and smack my head
on the trail rock, and then she’s going to be ankle deep in dumb
brains.
“But first I have to
know about this guy you meet behind Vic’s every day, in the alley.
What’s his name, your friend? You don’t know, do you? Yet you give
him money.”
“He needs
it.”
“But you need it
too.”
“I got, I have enough
to spare somebody a little.”
“But why you?” she
says.
“Somebody has to lend
him a hand, I guess.”
“You’re not lying to
me, right? I can’t tell because you won’t look me in the
eye.”
Still can’t look her
in the eye. Wouldn’t be able to say the stuff I’m saying. “Never
lie to you. Promise and swear.”
“I’m praying you’re
for real.” She says it more to herself than to me. She grips my jaw
and turns my head so I have to look at her. “Mack
Morse?”
“How’d you find out
my last name? Tony told you, right?”
“I saw it on your
time card,” she says.
“You really are
spying on me.”
“You’re a curiosity.”
She kisses me and leans back to look at me. I try to work up the
courage to kiss her back, because who knows if this will happen
again, her getting all mental like this. A breeze starts up the
trail and dips and comes back stronger and stays. I’m trembly, and
I look her in the eye as I lean in to kiss her, till my eyes cross.
We smack mouths a little too hard. “Damn, sorry. Did I chip your
tooth? No, you’re good.”
“You too.” She sucks
my bottom lip. I feel her breathing on me, from her nose, on my
mouth. Sounds gross but it isn’t. It’s warm. She breathes fast and
light like when a pigeon lands on the bench top real close to you
and they look at you with a cocked head like you’re a freak and you
can see a purple rainbow on their wings.
We’re standing there,
hugging, our hearts punching each other. “You want to go sit under
that tree, in the shade?” she says.
This is so perfect
right now. Right here. I can’t move. I can’t open my eyes.
Ninety-odd degrees and my teeth are chattering. “Let’s just stay
like this,” I say, and she’s my world, and I’m her satellite
coasting through the stars.