Into Thin Air (9 page)

The next night, when Tony put his hand on her thigh, she let him, curious. But when he tried gently to push her down into the grass, she resisted. “What's the matter?” he said. “You afraid of something?”

“Who's afraid?” Lee said. “I just don't want to do it on the grass.” She stood up, brushing off her skirt. “I know a place we can go to,” she said abruptly. “It'll take ten minutes to drive there.”

She led him to one of the empty houses Frank loved. It was a small blue ranch in a new development. Only a few of the homes had been sold; even fewer were inhabited. Tony grinned when he saw the Franklin Homes sign pitched into a grassy front lawn. “There's no place like home,” he said.

It was easy enough to break in. Frank never believed in spending money on security, because really, who would break into an empty house besides vandals? And if they wanted to wreak havoc, they could do it on the outside as well as in. Lee walked around to the side and squinted at a window. “Give me a boost,” she told Tony. He laced fingers into a bridge for her and hoisted her up against the glass. Shoving open the window, she tumbled down onto a smooth wood floor. “You coming?” she said.

Tony pulled himself up, bellying down against the floor, and it was only when he stood up and faced her that Lee realized just how terrified she was. Across the street she could hear blurry strains of music. She could see the house across the street, a white curtain drifting along an open window.

He tugged her to him and began to kiss her, pinning her against him. “Wait a minute,” she said, but he was pulling her down against the dusty floor, peeling her clothing from her. She struggled to move away, but his body was shadowing hers, making her moves his own, and then suddenly he was bucking against her, banging her spine into the wood, and when she cried out he kissed her.

He finished fast, unsticking himself from her, rolling into a heap alongside her. “Jesus,” he said. Lee, silent beside him, shut her eyes. Outside, a door slapped shut.

“Let's get out of here,” Lee said finally.

“Don't you want to hug a little?” Tony said, tracing her face with a finger. “I thought girls liked that. Come on, let's moosh.”

“Workmen will be here,” Lee said. “We have to go.”

She pulled on her clothing, deliberately leaving her blue barrette by the fake fireplace.

She went further and further, trying to feel something. She saw Tony, and a basketball player named Ted and another boy, Brian, who had his own out-of-tune band, the Grateful Onions. She could walk into the school cafeteria and any table would make room for her. And every once in a while she would bring someone to one of Frank's houses; she would leave a sock crumpled on top of a bathroom sink, a ribbon on the kitchen floor. She waited for Frank to find her things in his houses, but if he did, he never said one thing to her, and she couldn't bring herself to ask.

The next evening she stayed out until three in the morning with Tony. They were just sitting on a hill behind one of Frank's houses, looking at the sky. She was wishing a thousand things that would never happen in a thousand years, trying to dam out Tony's constant talk about New York City. “So go if you're so hot about it,” she said,

“Not without you,” he said.

He drove her home, squealing the tires in front of the house, and as soon as she got off, the door flew open and there was Frank, his good suit rumpled, his hair askew, and as soon as he saw Lee, his face lit with relief, He couldn't hide his joy as he started his approach to her; he couldn't have been more helpful to her if he had handed her a road map. “How you doing, sir?” said Tony, and Frank suddenly seemed to see Tony, and his face hardened into rage, recaptured back. “It's three
A.M
.,” Frank said, thrusting his watch forward. Lee shivered in the night.

From then on she knew what to do. She began staying out later and later with boy after boy. It didn't matter who. She skipped so many classes at school that Frank had to come and talk the principal out of suspending her. Frank had to talk to her.

Once, she actually was suspended because she had been caught trying to jimmy open a teacher's car door. Frank didn't trust her to stay at home the week of suspension, and Janet declined the responsibility, so he took off work and stayed with her himself. He had her sit with him in the living room, where he could watch her. She bloomed, talking him into games of Scrabble, where she'd delightedly cheat. She made popcorn for the two of them, and they watched a daytime movie. After the fourth day, while she was reading contentedly, he got up, “You've been punished enough,” he told her. “Tomorrow you can leave the house if you want.”

Lee was astonished at how disappointed she felt.

Two in the morning. Back from an evening with a boy named Brad Rossy, a vocational student with bad teeth who spent the entire evening talking about pistons and motor valves and spark plugs. He had zoomed off almost as soon as he let her out. She had drunk too much. Her head reeled.

She rang the bell, but the house stayed dark, “Hey,” she shouted, pounding at the door. Upstairs, there was a flicker of movement; a curtain fluttered, showing a ruler of light. “It's Lee!” she called. She banged on the door again, and when it opened, Frank, in his robe, strode out to her and struck her abruptly, Stupefied, she stepped back. “Don't you ever make me call the hospitals again, you hear me?” he said. “Don't you ever make me call another police station.” He glared at her, “I should just let you stay out all night,” he said. “Who were you with this time?” He stepped back from her. “You smell like a swill,” he said, and lifted his hand toward her. Lee backed away, and then she was running, across the damp, dewy lawn, out into the street. “Lee!” he called. “Lee,” the sound scraping from his throat, but she was gone.

She began walking, There was an all night cafe just off the main road, A trucker's stop called Ketchups. She had enough change for coffee. Maybe one of the waitresses would let her sleep in one of the cots if they were free.

Cars whizzed past. “Hey, baby, how about some fries with that shake of yours!” someone catcalled, and she jabbed up a defiant middle finger. Another carload of boys swerved toward her, making her scuttle to the shoulder, breaking her heel. Limping, she steeled herself not to cry. Be calm, she said. Her stomach roller-coasted.

She was almost to Ketchups. She could see the blue fluorescent lights. Her bladder hurt and burned, A car behind her beeped, and exhausted, she turned.

She knew this one. She knew that face. Jim. Jim Something from biology class. Thin and quiet and serious. No girlfriends. She had sat beside him once in biology the day they had to dissect house cats. In front of him was a small calico. She had seen him absently stroke the cat's fur. He was fine. He was nothing. He didn't count.

“You need a ride?” he said, and she got in, folding her legs under her. Gratefully, she surveyed him, He touched her and she stiffened, suddenly awake. “Seat belt,” he said, pointing, and she clipped herself into a bolt of silver.

“Where to?” he said.

She was silent for a moment. “Can't we just drive around?” she said.

He rounded a turn, “Yeah, that's okay.”

Lee waited, but he never once asked her what she was doing walking the highway alone at night. Instead, he pulled into a 7-Eleven. “Be right back,” he said, and when he reemerged he had two cups of coffee fisted into his hands, plumes of steam escaping from the cups. He fitted one into Lee's hands.

“I have insomnia,” Jim announced. “That's how come I'm out driving. All I really need is four hours of sleep, anyway, and if I don't get that, I call in sick to school.” He sipped at his coffee. “You think I'm crazy?” he said.

“No,” said Lee.

He crumpled his empty cup, tossing it in the back. “Let's drive,” he said easily.

She didn't burst into tears until they were on the road, and then immediately he pulled over to the shoulder. He didn't touch one part of her except her cheek, and his touch was so delicate, it made her cry even harder. Gallant, he pulled out a none-too-clean napkin from the glove compartment and handed it to her. She took it, lifting it to her face, hiding for a moment. “I was locked out of my house, that's why,” she said, and then was instantly sorry she had said it.

He was perfectly silent.

“My father hit me,” she said.

“You want to talk about it?” he said.

She shook her head.

“You want to camp at my place? We have a guest room.” He turned on the motor. “That's stupid, I guess. You want me to take you home? I'll make sure you're all right.”

She folded up the napkin. “All right,” she said.

She started to give him directions, but he shook his head. “I know where you live,” he said smoothly. She was too tired to question a face that innocent.

He parked in front of the house. “I'll wait,” he promised. Lee got out, nearly twisting her ankle on the broken shoe. She was halfway up the walk when the door opened, and Frank, not even glancing toward Jim, took Lee in his arms, leading her inside, saying something low and insistent to her. The door closed, and for a moment Jim just sat there, watching her house and thinking.

Lee came to school two hours late, two weeks grounded. She took her time walking into French class, and when she entered the teacher lifted a wooden pointer. “Why, how very considerate of you to make an appearance, mademoiselle,” she said. Lee, silent, dropped her pass on the teacher's desk. Someone in the back giggled.

All day Lee felt people watching her. She waited for someone to walk up to her and ask if it was true, if her father had really hit her. She was halfway through the day when she finally saw Jim walking toward her. His face filled with his smile. “Everything turn out okay?”

Lee fingered the worn leather of her purse. “About yesterday,” she said. “Did you tell anyone?”

He frowned. “Did you want me to?”

“No. No, of course not.”

He hesitated for a minute. “Listen,” he said, “Would you go to a movie with me Friday?”

She beamed, a little taken aback. “Two weeks from Friday,” she said. “I'm grounded until then.”

Jim Archer had known where Lee lived because he had once followed her. It was the day he had first fallen in love with her, a stifling summery Wednesday when she had come into his father's supermarket to shoplift fruit. She was in an elasticized bare black minidress and lace-up leather sandals. Her hair was piled on top of her head, looped with a blue silk ribbon. He had never seen anyone so beautiful, or so sloppy a shoplifter. She didn't bother to look around her. Her movements slowed when they should have quickened. She left her purse wide open, walking out with at least ten dollars' worth of kiwi and Chinese plums bobbing in sight. He had been bagging groceries, nearly to the end of his shift, and as soon as she walked out of the automatic door, he untied his apron to trail her. You couldn't accuse shoplifters until they had left the premises; his father had been threatened with a lawsuit once when he had nabbed a woman who had a steak in her blouse. She insisted she was putting it back, that she had just put it there to leave her hands free to gather other groceries. She cried loudly that she'd never shop at the Top Thrift again. She threatened to sue because she claimed she had freezer burn where she had held the steak. Furthermore, she said she'd tell all her influential friends to stay the hell away from a supermarket that treated its clientele so shabbily. “And they buy
lots
of food,” she said.

Lee never noticed him following her, but the thing was, he didn't stop her once she was outside. He didn't stop her a block later but continued to shadow her in the hot shiny heat, right up to her front door. He watched her go inside, his heart skimming over each beat. For weeks afterward he took extra shifts bagging, just in case she might come in again.

The Top Thrift was right off of Woodkey Lane, a block or so away from where Lee lived. It was a booming business a less-than-enthusiastic Jim was expected to inherit. His father had started the market up from a small storefront, borrowing the money from his own father. He had dropped out of school at sixteen because the market took so much time, but within two years he had a bigger store and a wife, Gladys, a small pretty Greek girl who helped out on the cash register just to be near him. When Jim was born another two years later, the market had expanded even more, into the Top Thrift Supermarket, bigger, better, and so successful that Gladys retired home.

The Top Thrift
was
one of the nicer markets. It was well lit, well swept, with brilliant blue shelves and shining displays. Jack himself, in starched whites, paraded up and down his aisles, talking to the customers, making sure they had whatever it was they needed. He encouraged people to call him by name.

Afternoons, Jim bagged groceries, dressed in the same blue smock the other boys wore, the name of the store stenciled on the pocket in white. “Bagging's the best education you can get.” Jack told him. “You can tell a lot about a person just by what they eat, whether they think enough of themselves to buy the top-quality tuna instead of generic. You see who has food stamps, and how they feel about it, if they don't look you in the eye out of shame or if they act all defiant, like it's your fault the government's supporting them,” Jack told him. He talked enthusiastically, but all Jim got out of it was to see firsthand the lousy diets people had. Coke and candy and frozen pot pies. Canned baby food loaded with preservatives. All he learned about human nature was how nasty a woman could be when she couldn't find her coupons. He learned, too, the cruelty of his peers, who wandered into the store in bored wolfpacks. They laughed when they saw him bagging. Deliberately one of the kids would get into his ten-items-or-less line with twelve items, just enough over the limit to be annoying. The whole time Jim bagged, instructions would be barked at him. “Bananas on top, dufus,” a voice said. A hand sometimes dumped his work and rebagged it. Sometimes whole groups of guys would watch him, smirking, and then one of them would remember he didn't want a certain item and Jim would have to rebag. “Nice threads,” they said. “Do a good job and you could go far.” Jim, irritated, dug unseen fingers into new green grapes, squashing as many as he could reach, He packed their eggs on the bottom where they might be crushed. “Come back anytime,” he said.