Seraphim and Raindrops

“What’s your story?” she said.1

“ ‘The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber,’” he said.2

“Oh, you’ve thought about this.”3

“Of course. What’s yours?”4

“ ‘The Lady or the Tiger.’ Maybe ‘The Pit and the Pendulum.’”5

“That’s a little bit dark.”6

“I’m a little bit dark, I guess. Mind if I sit?”7

He moved aside and she sat on the porch swing next to him. They both stared out at the water all choppy with foam. He put a finger in his book—A Sentimental Journey, by Laurence Sterne, and looked at her expectantly but didn’t say anything. Her brown hair couched a face that was pale and pretty and whose eyes were intensely focused on nothing. Her lips were pursed.8

“So what is with you?” she said.9

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “What’s with you?”10

“I also fail to understand the question.”11

“Well, you seem to be following me.”12

“I… what? I never.”13

“You did. You followed me from the minute I got off work, and I walked up and circled the Lutheran church, and walked into some random shops to try to shake you, but in a town this size there’s not much of anywhere to shake. But I know you followed me back here, because why else would you be behind the visitor’s center? No one comes back here. That’s why I like it.”14

She was silent for a moment, and he thought she seemed irritated, which he also thought unreasonable. 15

“Well, I suppose you’re right. Going to take out a restraining order?”16

“I don’t know. I find it kind of sexy to have a stalker.”17

This forced a laugh from her. The laugh sailed out over the dancing twisting lake water before it drowned. To cover its death, she said,18

“What are you doing tomorrow?”19

“Working,” he said, and shrugged. “Why?”20

She shrugged in return. “What are you doing tonight?”21

“Reading,” he said.22

“Well, you’re booked solid,” she said.23

“Yeah, well, this celebrity life is very hectic.”24

“Oh, yeah, life in the fast lane and all that. Well, see you.”25

She got up and walked away. He turned and tried to think of something to say in parting but the glare emanating from the back of her head silenced him.26

He left the restaurant after a long sweaty eight hours and the sun was still out, the day still hot. He walked along the road in the general direction of his apartment. There she was, leaning against a tree, wearing jeans and a yellow blouse that seemed to harmonize, somehow, with the sun. He realized she was very pretty.27

“You were five minutes late this morning,” she said. “And you ate a pickle out back and the Mexican guy who washes dishes saw you so you had to give him one.” He came to stand in front of her. “And you’re in a bad mood,” she finished.28

“I am not in a bad mood,” he said.29

“You are. You’re glaring.”30

“I was deep in thought. You should try it sometime.”31

“Bollocks.”32

“What, are you Irish?”33

“No, but when you need to refute someone’s whole statement using one word… well, can you think of a better one?”34

“I suppose not. Do you want to… go get coffee or something? It’s hot out here.”35

“Sure.”36

They set off down the road in the general direction of Coventry Cove.37

“Is that what it takes?” she said. “Torturing you?”38

“Is that what what takes?” he said.39

“Never mind.”40

Coventry Cove was a little set of shops ensconced in a grove off the highway and soon the two of them were ensconced at a table in the coffee shop drinking the iced coffees he had bought.41

“So,” she said. “The basics. What’s your name?”42

“You’re a pretty bad stalker, if you haven’t bothered to find out my name.”43

“Well, you told the lady at the confectionary your name was Tristram. I think it was mean to lie to her that way.”44

“You would be right, if I had lied.”45

“Seriously? Tristram?”46

He shrugged. “My parents wanted a name that was unique, literary. They didn’t bother to find out it means ‘child of sadness.’”47

“Man, if you were in a story, you’d be screwed.”48

“I know. I thank my lucky stars every day…”49

“I’m glad I’m not the only one with an unreasonably romantic name.”50

He was suddenly aware of his conversational failure. “What’s your name?”51

“Esmeralda.”52

“Hey, that’s a cool name. You… get to be saved by a hunchback, and all that.”53

“Yeah, great, I get to marry an ogre.”54

“I’m pretty sure he dies on your behalf, actually.”55

“Really? Huh. I’ve never actually read it.”56

“It’s been a few years. Eighth grade, I think, maybe seventh.”57

“Nerd.”58

“And proud of it.”59

“Good.”60

“Where are you from, Esmeralda?”61

“Oh, here and there, near and far. I was sold to the gypsies at a young age, and I ran away because they used to make me carry their dead animals to sacrifice to the pagan gods they worshipped.”62

“Aren’t gypsies generally Christian these days?”63

She shrugged. “What about you?”64

“From down south a few hours. Up here for the summer, of course. Got a job at the restaurant and figured I should take it, not having been around my family for nine months withal. Staying in the employee housing, an apartment up on Hillcrest Road.”65

“Where’s that?”66

“Up at the top of the hill. They’re really creative with names around here. You go up Hillside Road, take a left, and it’s that first house. The apartment’s above the garage. Nice little place. I have four roommates, pretty cool guys.”67

“Crowded?”68

“It’s all right. Not as exciting as getting sold to the gypsies.”69

Her eyes twinkled with amusement and suddenly a lump formed in his throat.70

It was happening at night more frequently now. In the old days he’d keep it away with prayers and reading the Bible, listening to music, reading a novel. But these days he didn’t pray and he didn’t even have a Bible and music only agitated him and in these cynical moments he knew that fiction was useless art anyway. And so he had no shield and no crutch and the thoughts at night assaulted him, all the vulnerabilities and the sins and the worries and the fears crashing down on him like the lake water the other day when she—when Esmeralda—sat next to him just wanting a friend and he had been cold and indifferent and she should have walked away and kept walking and never talked to him again and the tears starting down his cheeks and then everything faded out and he was asleep.71

Tap tap tap. He woke and looked at his window, the shifting shadows in the moonlight, and was annoyed at the branch for tapping so insistently. He looked more closely and saw that the shadows were unusually lump-shaped—were, in fact, shaped like a girl clinging to a branch.72

He opened the window and shone his flashlight out. The light fell on Esmeralda’s grinning face. Hissing nothing in particular, he held his hand out and helped her into the room and slammed the window behind her.73

“What are you doing? The head chef lives over there and he’s crazy and owns guns! He’ll shoot you if he thinks you’re an intruder. Besides, we’re not supposed to have guests at all, especially at—” he glanced at the clock glowing red in the dark. “Three in the morning!”74

She grinned and the white of her teeth and the yellow of her shirt shone in the dark. “Well, then, we’d better get out of here before I get caught.”75

“We’d better—listen, I’ve got to sleep, I have to work tomorrow, and you’re definitely—”76

She grabbed his hand and the touch electrified him and shut him up and rendered him unable to resist as she dragged him toward the window.77

“Wait,” he whispered, pulling back on her arm like a parking brake. “Let’s at least go through the door. Hold my hand, and step where I step.”78

He opened his door and they ventured forth into the pitch black and she wasn’t very successful at stepping where he stepped, but they managed to make only the amount of noise to be expected from one male going to the bathroom in the middle of the night in a dark apartment. They creaked down the stairs and she let his hand go and he wished she hadn’t because hers felt nice. His probably didn’t, he thought.79

They set off along the dark road, the woods around them dark and looming, the noise of wings and the chirrups of insects and the soft whisp of the wind working together to build a symphony of night noise. He smelled plants, and grass, and the air tasted moist. In the cold of the night the moisture felt good. The road hard under him, and her presence soft beside him. An unspoken question hung in the air, but he couldn’t say just what it was, couldn’t put words or form to it.80

She stopped walking after a time, and he stopped too and looked her in the eye. He realized her eyes were closed, that she was listening and smelling and tasting. He closed his eyes too, and the dark rushed in on him and he couldn’t breath and he opened them again. She had disappeared. He looked down, and saw her splayed on the road gazing with wide bright eyes up at the stars. He lay down beside her and the hard road crackled and shifted under his back. He looked where she looked, wondering what she saw.81

White and blazing the light roared down from the heavens, a light so pure he could hardly bear its gaze. The stars were the brightest he’d ever seen, and the night seemed so complete and so alive and as though it were the only thing that ever had or would exist, and the day and waking life were but dreams. He hoped it was true.82

He kept trying to form words, to say something, because he was acutely aware that they hadn’t spoken in some time. But everything he thought of only sounded awkward. Soon he relaxed into the moment and let the silence become part of it. 83

He couldn’t tell how long they lay there: minutes or hours or days. The moment was shattered when headlights popped out of the darkness, getting closer and closer with the animal roar of the car. He sat up as the headlights drew close, and looked at her. He poked at her arm. She didn’t move, and he shook her harder. She sat up, and her eyes widened in the suns coming at them and she scrambled toward the side of the road dragging him as if he were the one who needed saving. They collapsed in the grass and the car passed by, oblivious.84

“Did you… fall asleep?” he said.85

“I think so,” she said. “Or something. If I fell asleep my dream was that I was lying on the road next to you, looking up at the stars.”86

They sat there a minute. She got up. “We’d better get you home. You have to work tomorrow.”87

He stood and they set off the way they had come. They didn’t talk, but by the time they got back to his apartment they were holding hands. 88

“Can I walk you home?” he said.89

“I’m a gypsy, remember?” she said. “The woods and fields and all the land are my home. In other words, I’ll be fine.”90

Three o’clock, the next afternoon, just after the last of the lunch rush. Tristram leaned against the counter listening with half an ear as the head chef, Flint, talked about the inferiorities of women. The head chef was a large, amusing, profane irreverent man with a big mouth but with, for the most part, the cahonies to back it up. Tristram had been here three weeks and had heard this rant a dozen times already; he wondered idly how the guys who had worked here for years put up with it.91

“You ever have a girlfriend, Tristan?” the guy on middle mispronounced his name; but then, everyone did.92

“One or two” said Tristram.93

“More trouble than they’re worth, aren’t they?” said Flint.94

“Yeah, I guess so,” said Tristram. Actually, that was the exact conclusion he had come to. But hearing Flint say it made Tristram want to contradict him, want to defend the virtues of the pair of women he’d thought he loved. He said nothing.95

They sat around a while longer, the three cooks, shooting a breeze that was already thoroughly dead. At quarter after, the head chef said, 96

“Tristram, we’re dead. You can boogie if you want to.”97

Tristram muttered his thanks and took the trash out to the dumpster in the back and put a new garbage bag in the trash can and punched his computerized time card and gathered up his backpack and left. As soon as he emerged from behind the wooden fence in back of the restaurant Esmeralda fell into step beside him. He found himself unsurprised.98

“Going anywhere in particular?” she said.99

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s my brother’s birthday in a week. I have to get him a present.”100

“The confectionary, then?” she said.101

“Of course.”102

The Confectionary was cool and smelled of sugar. Row on row of candy lined the shelves: licorice chocolate rock candy hard candy soft candy. A case on the far wall displayed behind precious glass rows of fudge, homemade peanut butter cups, hand dipped chocolate-covered Oreos. 103

The two of them walked the perimeter, surveying the bright packages in old-fashioned apple buckets. Esmeralda stopped before a bucket containing Jelly Belly suckers.104

“That’s what you should get your brother,” she said.105

Tristram surveyed the piece critically. “Oh?”106

“Well, it’s two candies in one. It’s like getting a jelly bean and getting a sucker.”107

“Oh. You’re right.”108

He took three of the suckers—and two licorice pipes—and presented them before the older woman at the counter. She smiled and glanced from him to her and her eyes twinkled, a light in them like the stars from last night. He wondered what she was grinning at, and then he looked at Esmeralda and realized it was that kind of look, and was a little embarrassed. 109

They left the shop and he handed her one of the pipes and stuck the other in his mouth, Sherlock Holmes on vacation. She chewed thoughtfully on the stem of hers.110

“What are you doing this afternoon?” she said.111

“Honestly, I was thinking of taking a nap.”112

“Well. I suppose you would be justified.”113

“Yeah. But I don’t want to go back to the apartment.”114

“Why not?”115

“Well, it’s hot, and at least one of my roommates will be there, and I’ll feel like I should say something to them, and if I don’t it’ll be awkward, but if I do the conversation will be awkward…”116

“Okay, okay,” she said. “I know a place.”117

She led him up the hill toward the apartment, but turned down another street. Soon the woods gave way to a graveyard on both sides of the road, stretching back into the tree line. She led him through the uneven grass. They passed gravestones that watched the sky tranquilly and tranquilly smiled up at him when he looked at them. There was a bench of white marble in the middle of the place that the shadows just barely reached.118

She sat down and patted the bench next to her. “This bench is always in the shade.”119

He lay back on the bench as she indicated and somehow found his head in her lap. He looked up at her, a brown peekaboo bang hanging down and failing to conceal her smile. The bench, against all reason, felt cool and comfortable against his back. She brushed the hair back from his head, slowly, absent-mindedly. He found that the fight to stay awake was hopeless.120

He woke to find himself lying on something rubber, which on inspection turned out to be her shoes. They weren’t the most comfortable pillow, but they served. He raised his head a little and looked around, and saw her crouched over a grave facing away from him. Her arms were moving and he heard a scraping sound, and he realized she must be taking a rubbing. She stood up and held a sheet of wax paper to the sun, nodded once, and turned and smiled at him when she saw his eyes open. 121

“Hope I didn’t cut off the circulation in your legs,” he said.122

“You were fine,” she said. “Did you sleep well?”123

He sat up and stretched and his limbs felt heavy. “Yeah… weird dreams. I can’t really get a bead on what they were about.”124

“Well, they were probably a prophecy and now that you can’t remember it the world will end. You’ve doomed us all. Thanks a lot.”125

“My pleasure.”126

She folded up the wax paper and put it in her pocket. “Want to go to the post office and mail that stuff to your brother?”127

“Yeah,” he said. “Good idea.”128

They walked back down the hill into town. They talked some more, aimlessly. He tried to get her to tell some of her past, or even her present, but she avoided his questions as smoothly as ice cream.129

The post office reminded him of nothing more than a prison, a boxy place with gray walls lined with little doors with locks on them. A prison for mice, maybe. He picked out a ready-to-ship FedEx box and filled out all the paperwork and rang the bell at the window and paid the lady. Esmeralda wandered, looking at pamphlets and checking to see if anyone had left their PO Box open. He thanked the lady at the window and went over to look at the “Public Enemy” and “Missing Children” posters as he always did, mostly out of morbid curiosity. He would look at the seething glares or wide-eyed wonderment of the hardened criminals, and look at the statistics and the tersely worded summaries of their careers and think about how a series of violent crimes and terror could get turned into something so clinical-sounding, so unconcerning.130

He went through the Missing Children and stopped short. There was a picture of a girl, maybe fifteen, with long brown hair and wide eyes. Missing four years. She looked pretty, and she looked familiar.131

“Hey, Ez,” he said. “This girl looks like—”132

“You ready to go?” she said, over his shoulder, as if she hadn’t heard him.133

“Yeah,” he said, letting the postings drop back on their metal rungs.134

“What are you doing tonight?” she said as they were assaulted again by bright sun. “And don’t say sleeping, or I’ll call you lame and then you’ll feel bad.”135

“Actually, I don’t work tomorrow, so I don’t really need to sleep tonight.”136

“Great,” she said. “Because I have plans for you.” 137

Tristram fancied himself the kind of person who didn’t take orders from women. Not that he was a Flint, not by any means a misogynist. But he had seen friends, comrades-in-arms, taken in by beauty and raked over the coals, not realizing they were being used, being played, until the women had chewed them up and spat them out. Then his friends would come back to him, shamefacedly, and shamefacedly he would pretend not to know. But secretly he would resolve never to be treated that way.138

So it was with surprise that he found himself obeying without question when Esmeralda all but ordered them up the hill, ordered him into his apartment to return with blankets and any easily portable foodstuffs he desired. One roommate was there, the world-traveler, a short buzz-cut of a guy who had taught English to Buddhist monks and who found himself sinking into sere and feckless indolence waiting tables forty hours a week. He was slumped on the couch, watching Futurama. He grunted a greeting and Tristram returned the grunt. The roommate didn’t raise an eyebrow when Tristram paraded past bearing a couple blankets, a flashlight and a backpack. He went into the kitchen and stuffed a box of cereal bars in the pack after the flashlight. As he went out the door the roommate called,139

“Do you want to take my flask… or some pot?”140

“Thanks, no,” Tristram called back. He creaked his way down the stairs to find her grinning at him from the bottom step. A petulant little voice in his head pointed out that this was technically a violation of the “No guests” rule.141

“I came inside because your roommate was leering at me through the window,” she said as he followed her out the door. He turned around.142

“I’ll kick his…”143

She grabbed him by the arm and marched him along the road. “No, no,” she said. “Let’s go.”144

“Where are we going, anyway?”145

“So, tell me about Flint. You said he goes shark fishing?”146

“Yeah, he… he does. It’s pretty cool, I guess.”147

“You seemed to think it was a lot cooler yesterday.”148

“I did?”149

“It was part of your rant about how cool your job is this summer.”150

“Oh. That.”151

She stopped him and stood in front of him and all he could think of was how neat and pretty an effect it was, with the lowering sun backlighting her, giving her a halo or an aura.152

“Honey, what’s wrong?”153

The endearment sounded so natural it endeared her to him all the more. He shrugged, kept walking.154

“I don’t like to complain.”155

She fell into step alongside him and she was looking hard at the side of his face. “Think of it as medicine, then. Something you have to do. What is it?”156

He sighed. “Have you ever noticed how things can be good and bad? Exactly the same things, at exactly the same time?”157

She was quiet for a long time, then she said, “Yes.”158

“Last summer I was in this clerical job all summer. Cubicle work, basically, except I wasn’t even a member of the office, so I didn’t get to share in the jokes and the banter and… and the stuff that made office life somewhat bearable. I was an outcast at the parties. The bosses hated me; the machine that is office life was impersonal. It was… it was bad for me, I think.159

“So this summer I decided not to do that kind of thing again. I applied for this job early and got it. And I got here and I thought, all right, this is a job. I’m making stuff, making people happy, I’m working for people who aren’t OCD about breaks and lunches and doing things exactly right and whether I had a constructive attitude and all that. And the setting! I’m out here in the country, it’s a tourist trap, sure, but a beautiful one, and there’s landscape and history and interesting people. And… sure there are downsides, but I should be grateful, you know? Life doesn’t give you unvarnished blessings. You take the good with the bad, and you thank God for the good.160

“But lately… the downside’s been getting to me. Flint, for example. He’s interesting, cool, funny… but he’s a misogynist and has a filthy mouth and a filthy mind and that shouldn’t bother me, but it has been. 161

“The other night, though, that was the kicker. I called my family, and talked to them, you know, for an hour. Most of that was my mom, who’s the type to miss people. Then I talked to my dad for ten minutes. And my dad and I have never needed all that much talking—we have long discussions, but not habitually. But… he seemed to want to talk to me, kept trying to prolong the conversation, and I let him, though I kind of rushed off the phone. I said it was because my minutes were getting chewed up, which was true, but also I wanted to finish the book I was reading.162

“And I said goodbye, and I loved them, and I hung up. And I picked up my book. And I couldn’t read. All I could do was remember my dad’s voice, and I wanted to talk to him some more, call him back and talk all night. But I couldn’t, I didn’t have the minutes, and I vacillated until I knew they would be going to bed. And… I went to sleep, and by the time I did I was crying. 163

“I’d had this dream a few nights before. It was a guy with dreads in a white room with no windows and no doors, and he was screaming. And he was me and I was screaming, and the scream felt good and it felt cathartic and necessary. I wondered about that, because I always think dreams mean something.”164

They had been walking along those country back roads, trees and small farms and rich peoples’ vacation homes passing them by. He stopped and stared at one small tree, which had some kind of silky cocoon-shaped nest in several of its branches and was drooping dilapidatedly. He didn’t know what, but there was something sad and beautiful about it, and tragic too. Esmeralda was looking at him, and her face was sad with sympathy and the weight of her own memories.165

She took his hand and squeezed it. The backpack drooped down his arm and she took it and threw it over her shoulders. She started walking again, pulling him along. 166

“Being separated so from the ones you love is a terrible thing,” she said. “No matter how necessary, no matter how rational. It’s terrible.”167

He squeezed her hand, not trusting himself to speak.168

A car sounded behind them on the road. She looked back.169

“Oh, good.”170

The car approached—an old blue pick-up truck, actually, piloted by an older man wearing a nice collared shirt—and she smiled winningly and stuck her thumb out. The truck slowed.171

“Where are you kids headed?” he said, looking skeptical and a bit worried. She smiled and put a little breathiness in her voice, obviously an old hand at charming old hands.172

“You know where Seraphim Farms is?”173

“Sure do,” he said.174

“If you could drop us there we’d be very grateful.”175

“Hop in back,” he said. “You can ride in the cab if you’d rather.”176

She smiled more widely and thanked him and they helped each other into the bed of the pick-up.177

“Where you kids from?” he shouted back as the truck picked up speed again. 178

“Near here,” she called back. After that the roar of the engine drowned any hope of polite conversation. 179

They sat with their backs against the cab, comfortably shoulder-to-shoulder. Her hair fluttered about her head like angel’s wings. They said nothing, lost in thought.180

After a little while the truck slowed down. Tristram looked up and realized they were slowing as they neared a sign that said SERAPHIM FARMS. Glaring down from it was an angel with six wings and an expression like you’d just gotten caught making out with his teenage daughter.181

“This do ya?” said the old man.182

“This is great,” said Esmeralda. “Thanks!”183

“You kids stay out of trouble now,” he said. Tristram climbed out of the bed after her and turned to give the old man thumbs up. The man drove away.184

Seraphim was a Christmas tree farm, apparently. Row upon row of pine trees marched over the ground in all directions. The dirt road wound through them, out of sight. Esmeralda led the way down it, then turned off through the trees. It was an uneven forest; some trees were small enough to step over, some taller than Tristram, some twice as tall. 185

A row of pine trees stuck in Tristram’s mind, a solitary image driving him crazy. He thought about asking probing questions, but decided it was a hopeless cause.186

“So,” Tristram was going to say. “I’ve told you a lot of intimate things about myself. Your turn.” He got out the first word, and she held up a hand for silence. She crouched, and he crouched too, and they crawled through a couple rows of trees, and Tristram realized where the image of pine trees had come from.187

They were looking out over a wide lawn of cut grass with a huge white board up on one end and tall wooden board fences on three sides. A squat square building crouched in the approximate middle of the field. Poles rose from the ground to about waist height, bearing gleaming metal speakers that looked like the 1950s version of a walkie talkie. He’d been to this place on family vacations: it was the drive-in theater.188

“We’re hacking the drive-in?” he hissed. She just raised her eyebrows at him. 189

A few cars were starting to pull in, early comers picking out the best spots. The scent of pine was strong in his nose, but he caught the occasional whiff of popcorn. More cars rolled in, parked, trunks popping and little kids tumbling out and starting to chase around, their laughter and shrieks filling the night. Esmeralda got up, casually, as if she were meant to be here, and walked onto the grounds. Tristram followed her, trying to be as cool as she appeared. She led them to a long, curved bench with a reclined back a hundred yards in front of the screen. It was a shape designed to be comfortable for the entire length of a double feature. 190

Tristram put his pack down and Esmeralda spread one blanket on the bench and rolled one up for easy access later. They got up and wandered a bit, and ran into two cooks from the restaurant. Tristram knew they liked to come to the drive-in and smoke pot through the double feature. The four of them made conversation for a little while. Esmeralda excused herself and the two others immediately fell to congratulating Tristram and wondering aloud whether he would get lucky tonight, and advising him that the chances looked good and not to screw up. Tristram moved on.191

The sun was failing fast. The place was getting more crowded, and the sounds of families laughing and talking and arguing filled the air. It smelled now of popcorn and butter and grease and hot dogs and pizza. Tristram went into the square building, which was the concessions stand as well as the projection booth, and stood in line for a while and bought a large popcorn and Cherry Coke and took them back to the blanket. She was already there.192

“See?” she said. “You support them by buying huge concessions and paying their obscene prices for them. That stuff is how they make their money, anyway.”193

Tristram shrugged, settling next to her. “I hope Cherry Coke is all right.”194

“You worry too much about what other people think,” she said, and took a long pull on the soda.195

The sun went down and the projector started up. At first it was charming 50s advertisements for Pic and for the concessions stand; a preview; then the movie started. It was a romantic comedy, something about fate and about second chances and about love not being something you deserve. They sat side-by-side, shoulders just barely touching, comfortably and awkwardly. 196

The end of the movie neared and the woman walked away and the man, realizing just too late what an idiot he’d been, ran after her and ran and ran until he caught her. Tristram thought he heard Esmeralda’s breathing hitch, just a little, as the man begged the woman to come back and she threw her arms around him. Tristram stretched and his arm was around her shoulders and she fit comfortably there and laid her head on his shoulder. The night grew colder and she drew the blanket around them and they breathed easily in their swarm silken cocoon and let the end of the movie wash over them, sappy and glorious.197

The credits rolled and the voice-over announced that the concessions stand would close half an hour after the start of the next movie, it was your last chance.198

“Do you want anything?” he murmured, tasting fine wisps of her hair and smelling the strawberry in it. 199

“No,” she said, and she huddled closer. 200

He turned and looked at her and her eyes were luminous in the moonlight. He kissed her, hard and firm and their mouths slowly melting together the lights swimming and swirling and becoming a part of it and they came up for air the stars cold and beautiful above and them warm and flushed below. He held her close and her arms went around his waist.201

They lay back, pressed close, as the second movie started. It was something about robots and conspiracies and there was lots of exploding and chasing and rescuing, and when the boy and the girl kissed Tristram couldn’t stand it and he kissed Esmeralda again.202

The credits rolled and they lay back, sprawled, her head on his shoulder. Headlights washed out the screen and the rumble of car engines drowned the closing techno music. The air was that peculiar 2 AM cold damp that chills to the bone and he drew the blanket tighter and suddenly she was speaking, her voice high clear pure and undercutting the noise around them, growing quieter as the noise quieted and left them alone in their hideout in the dark under the severe austere gorgeousness of the stars.203

“You know those stories you see on Dateline, about kids who get kidnapped by weirdos, and they make them be their slaves and do everything for them and they shame them so they don’t say anything or run away, and it’s a miracle when the cops find them? That’s kind of how it was with me, except the kidnappers were my parents so the law couldn’t do anything about it.204

“I heard my mom talking to my dad one night, when she thought my brothers and I were in bed. I had six brothers. She said that one night when I was a baby, she saw me and she just knew that I was a changeling, like the Faeries did in the old days, that I wasn’t actually hers and ever since, she hated it but she just couldn’t think of me as hers.205

“My dad was a pastor, by the way. Of a sort of a fundamentalist church, not quite a cult. Is a pastor, I assume. Still. They were very much about gender roles, and how the men should go out and do things like hunt and drive fence posts and the girls should stay in the kitchen and cook the men meals and clean up after them and otherwise keep the house in order. So I grew up with my mom, and her being someone struggling to even recognize me as her own… well, yeah.206

“My dad thought of me as a rebel, so I became one. Or maybe the other way around. I honestly don’t know anymore. He would shout at me and scream about how I needed to learn my place and lock me in my room, alone except for meals, for days. But then he’d be sorry, and he’d say the most wonderful things about how he was trying to raise me right, raise me strong, raise me to be a strong Christian woman, how behind any good man there was a better woman. So many times I almost left, and he would talk me back in to his clutches with stuff like that. Love’s powerful, you know? Even when it’s conditional.207

“Things went from bad to worse when I hit fourteen. You know what happens at that age. Hormones. I kind of fell for this boy from church, and he liked me, too, and we started ‘dating.’ Which didn’t amount to much, mainly hanging out together when the youth group did things, holding hands if no adults were looking. 208

“My dad found out, inevitably. He gave me a long lecture, the first time. My body a temple, temptation lurking around every corner, the right way being the narrow one, and so forth. The second time he found out about it I was grounded for two weeks.209

“Well, I had gotten into this habit of reading romance novels, and reading fantasy, the two genres my parents absolutely forbid me. So it was terribly romantic to me to be locked away in a tower, away from my handsome prince, you know.210

“I managed to get ahold of him, and had him meet me at 1 AM, and we did, in the country there, and we… well, we made out. We did that a couple nights in a row, then he got scared of my dad and we stopped. My dad found out, somehow. I always suspected that one of my brothers followed me, but I never proved it. He threw the boy and his family out of church, and he… he beat me. Not… as badly as he could have, I suppose. Threw me against the wall twice and then stormed off in a rage. I locked my door and paced around my room for an hour and by the end of it I knew. I packed my bag, and I ran for it. Out the window, down a tree.211

“I stopped by the boy’s house, having this romantic idea that we’d run away together, be together against the world. He didn’t want any part of it. Or of me, anymore. Well, I knew what kind of man I wanted—I think he rode a charger and dressed in armor, a combination of romance and fantasy clichés—and this guy wasn’t it. So I said Bye, and set off and left that whole sorry world behind me.212

“I’ve been running for four years. I’m eighteen now, so I’m technically an adult, but running is my instinct. It’s my life, and I don’t know what else to do. I’ve been tracking my relatives, my ancestors, all across the country. I’ve got two dozen grave rubbings in my backpack.”213

“Which is…”214

“In my hotel room, a little place the other side of town from your apartment. It’s just such a habit now not to let anyone know where I live…”215

“It’s okay.”216

“I worked jobs, waitressing and bartending and the kinds where they pay you cash and don’t ask a lot of questions. I… just moved around enough, and changed my appearance enough, that they never quite caught up with me. Got close a couple times.”217

“Is this your natural hair color?”.218

“Yeah, close to it.”219

“I like it that way.”220

“Good.”221

“Why… why did you choose me?”222

“What do you mean?”223

“To randomly befriend? Why me?”224

“I… living on the run, I’ve developed good instincts about people. I had to. I can size people up in a glance, tell if they’re trustworthy, if they’re hiding something. You… my instincts just told me to go after you, to stay with you. Whether it was for your good or mine… that I don’t know.”225

“Mine. Definitely mine.”226

They lay there and they must have fallen asleep. Tristram woke and the stars had wheeled around them, their cold unblinking gaze watching neutrally as they drifted in and out of consciousness. She stirred and he murmured something nonsensical and she agreed.227

After a while they both woke, and they could feel each other stiffen to consciousness, and they lay and the cold night air kissed their faces and they didn’t want to leave their warm cocoon. Tristram murmured,228

“You must hate God.”229

“What?”230

“After all your father did, and that church? It must have soured you on the Old Man.”231

“Hardly. Sometimes he was the only thing that got me through. I mean… imagine lying like this, trying to sleep on a cold night when you’re cold through and through, except you don’t have a warm body with you you’re all alone. In a bus station, say. And you realize that one of those big men standing in a corner could come over here and beat you up and kill you or worse, and nobody would ever know, and nobody would ever care.232

“Except that, somewhere in among the guilt-tripping and the terror-mongering at your old church, some of the real Word of truth slipped in, and you know that God cares, and you fold your hands and pray quietly because it’s the only thing you can do. And suddenly you know that He is there, and He’s the same one who died for you and loves you unconditionally. Love is a powerful thing, especially when it’s unconditional. Sometimes you feel like He’s responding to you, comforting you, warming you, and sometimes you don’t have that feeling. But it doesn’t matter, because you know he’s there even if you can’t feel him, like a divine music that we’re mostly too deaf to hear.”233

She trailed off and must have fallen asleep again, and he lay awake for a long time, discomfited. He was starting to think he couldn’t take it, he’d have to get up, but then his limbs were too heavy and suddenly the daylight was beating against his eyelids and a guy wearing a drive-in t-shirt was leaning over them, shaking Tristram by the shoulder.234

“Sleep well?” the guy said, as Tristram sat up. Esmeralda sat up next to him, stretched, blinked.235

“Yeah, thanks,” said Tristram. “I guess we… better go call our parents. Sorry to… to cause you trouble.”236

“No trouble.”237

Tristram and Esmeralda picked up their blankets and his backpack and they headed for the gate to the right of the screen where cars exited. The sun was bright and the grass a vivid candy green and the gravel they kicked up caught the light like cigarette smoke. The speakers gleamed silver on their poles. Some of them had washed-out spots.238

She got them a ride most of the way back to his apartment, in the back seat of an SUV belonging to a rich vacationer who took them for two impoverished native kids and asked them stupid questions about how cherries were harvested and how cheese was made. Esmeralda had fun making up answers. Tristram stared moodily at the passing countryside for a while, but then he joined in, telling how they stomped the cheese curds into place with bare feet. The vacationer, a man in middle age with a cell phone headset dangling from his ear, smiled complacently and nodded. He probably wasn’t listening.239

The SUV let them off halfway up the hill and they walked the rest of the way up to his apartment. He offered to walk her to her room but she shook her head. He thanked her for showing him a good time and then they kissed, long and hard, and she set off down the road, grinning. Tristram took the creaky stairs two at a time. A couple of his roommates were sitting in the living room, watching Futurama and smoking pot, and the place smelled faintly like a dead skunk. They grinned up at him, leers in their eyes. He ignored them and went to his room and shut the door.240

He spent the rest of the afternoon putting things into boxes, grateful for his habit of traveling light.241

It rained the next day and there were a lot of soup and chili orders, ladling soup and chili from the big metal pots into bowls and cups (cups being actually smaller bowls). He burned himself twice, the hot chili sloshing onto his skin, and he knew the other guys were rolling their eyes but at least they had the decency not to be obvious about it. Flint wasn’t there, so it was a better shift than usual.242

When his shift ended he looked around and didn’t see her. He walked along the shoreline, looking out over choppy waves and seagulls bobbing in the wind. Around the corner of the tourist center, and there she was, sitting in the spot he’d been in when they first met. He sat next to her.243

“What’s your story?” he said.244

“ ‘The Man,’” she said.245

“Bradbury?”246

“The same. What’s yours?”247

“It’s a poem, today. ‘Ozymandias,’ by Shelley.”248

“Good poem.”249

“You know…” he put his arm around her, and she leaned in to him, her head against his chest, wisps of hair blowing into his mouth. He ignored the wetness under her cheek. “You know, I had this thought. That I could be happy, here, every day for the rest of the summer, if every day I saw you.”250

“Oh, honey… I was going to tell you. I’m moving on. I’ve got to go to a big city, join a church, start a life. I’d love to live here every day with you, every day for the rest of our lives, but you’ll go back to college, and I’ll just be a distraction, and we’ll get to resent each other, and the emotions will just…”251

“I know. I know. It can’t happen. Shouldn’t happen. I just… wish it could.”252

“Me too. And we’d regret it when it ended.”253

“You’re very wise, for someone who’s been running away her whole life.”254

She raised her head and wiped at her cheek. “I’ve seen a lot. Known a lot of people. Spent a lot of time in libraries, too, reading stories. Pointless, really.”255

“Oh, no. Not pointless at all.”256

They sat in silence a few minutes and watched the lake. It beckoned to them, offering them eternal sleep, eternal rest.257

“When are you going?”258

“Today. I… really hate to leave you so suddenly like that, but… but if I don’t do it now, while I know I have to… it’ll never happen.”259

“I know. I expected you to.”260

“My… my room at the hotel is paid through tomorrow night. Can I give you the key? If someone you know needs a place to crash, it’d be ideal.”261

“Yeah, it would. Thank you.”262

“Don’t mention it.”263

“You have to promise to write me. I’ll give you my email address. And I’ll give you my phone number, and you call me if you need anything. Anything. And once in a while, call me just to call.”264

“Darling… do you really think that’s wise?”265

“Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t care.”266

“Okay. Me either.”267

“And… you have to promise if you ever get married, to invite me to the wedding.”268

“Oh, honey…” and she was crying and kissing him, and then she was crying, pulling away, and she sat like that by herself crying on the bench and he let her. Then she lay in his lap and he smoothed the hair away from her face but she didn’t go to sleep.269

He did walk her back to her room that night, at a hotel nestled in the woods outside of town, a pretty little place. She said she had arranged everything and the owner lady knew about the key arrangements. She was going in the morning. They decided to say goodbye right there, and it was the longest, hardest, bitterest, sweetest hug he had ever experienced, as if they were trying to meld part of each other’s spirits so they would never be apart, not really, and then Tristram felt a sob welling up and he let her go.270

“Goodbye, darling,” she said, softly.271

He could only wave in return as she closed the door to her room. He walked away.272

The next day they got through the lunch rush and the three of them, the middle man and Tristram the salad boy and head chef Flint, were leaning against the counters and Flint running his mouth on his favorite topic, the inferiority of women. He was saying how that was one area where he agreed with the Bible, was that women brought about the downfall of everyone and as punishment they should suffer the pains of childbirth and so on and so forth, and before Tristram knew what he was doing he pushed himself away from the counter and turned on the head chef.273

“Screw you, you damned misogynist bastard.”274

This paled in comparison to the language Flint habitually used, and he knew Flint would consider it a pale insult, but he put as much force behind it as he could and he turned and stomped out of the kitchen, his feet landing hard and painful on the concrete floor.275

He marched through the dishroom past the dishwasher listening to his Mexican techno CD and he took off his apron and rather than putting it in the hamper like he was supposed to he threw it on the ground and a little scared voice in his head tried to whimper that he didn’t have a job or anywhere to go now but he ignored it and determined to go as far as he could on the fumes of his righteous anger. He stormed up the hill and creaked angrily up the apartment steps and his roommate wasn’t smoking while he watched Idiocracy but the smell of pot hung heavy in the room.276

Tristram went into his room and slung his backpack over his shoulder and stacked his three boxes of possessions and looked around to see if he’d forgotten anything. His black blazer was in the closet along with the black bowler he’d bought on sale at a hat shop last week. He put the jacket and the hat on and lifted his boxes and walked confidently out of the room.277

His roommate didn’t look up as he walked past. Still, it felt inappropriate to leave without saying anything, so he turned in the doorway and called, “Bye, dude.”278

“See you later.”279

He descended the steps carefully and set out on the open road. A pickup passed by and he tried Esmeralda’s tactic, looking cute and vulnerable and not too naïve, and in spite of this the truck stopped for him. The old farmer had him load his things in the bed and ride in the cab, and as the countryside sped past asked him why he was dressed like that.280

Tristram said it was a social experiment, a college club he was involved with that sort of promoted homeless awareness and things like that. The idea was to live as a homeless person for a few days, wear what clothes he could scavenge or barely afford at thrift stores, sleep where he could. The kind lady at the hotel had offered him a room for the night in exchange for some manual labor, and he had taken her up on it.281

The old man knew he was lying, but Tristram had a glimmer of what life must have been like for Esmeralda, all those years. Exciting, amusing, when it wasn’t completely terrifying.282

The farmer dropped him at the hotel and wished him luck, and Tristram brought his things into what had been Esmeralda’s room. The air smelled faintly of her; he lay on the bed and it smelled like her, too, and as he stared up at the ceiling a few tears trailed from his eyes.283

He got up, deciding he should at least check in at the front desk. He opened the screen door on a hot room and a middle-aged woman was sitting behind the wooden desk, sappy Christian music leaking from a CD player under the counter. She looked like she’d seen a lot, and knew a lot, and had decided to keep faith anyway. Tristram liked her immediately.284

“You’re Esmeralda’s friend, aren’t you?” she said as soon as Tristram walked in. “She said you’d be by.”285

“Yep, that’s me.”286

“Well, she’s all paid through tonight, so it’s fine with me. You need any help?”287

“No, I’m fine.”288

“Okay. How about her? You think she’ll be all right?”289

“I think she’s the most all right person of anyone I know.”290

“Maybe. But…”291

“I think she’ll be fine.”292

“If you say so. You look tired. Or sad. Either way, what you need is a good long sleep.”293

“You might be right about that. Thanks.”294

“See you later.”295

He went back to the room and got out his cell phone and called his parents.296

“Hey dad. Actually, not so good. I got fired.”