So Close (2 page)

I was retracing the morning’s sprint of shame.

Thanks to my hometown’s faltering population, I couldn’t so much as grab a quart of milk without facing past mistakes.  So, as I had many times, I pulled myself up to my full height, shook my hair forward and rung the bell.  The door opened to Rooster Shorts in a hotel robe he was still pulling on.  He was clearly trying to channel Hugh Heffner, but was presenting more Big Lebowski.  If I never see another frat guy in a hotel robe.  “Dude.”   He grinned with surprised delight as if the hotel had just sent up a complimentary stripper. 

“Where would you like this set up—” I unclenched my jaw to finish the mandated script.  “Sir?”

“Oh-ho-ho, sa-weet.”  He looked like he wanted to high-five someone, but there were only the two of us in the vestibule.

“If you prefer me to leave it here—”

“Come on in.  You know the way.”  He strode ahead and I pushed the cart to the dining table where I quickly popped the sides under the linen.  “Nice uniform.”  I sensed him coming up behind me and stood just as the master bathroom door opened to the sound of a running shower.  The guy who’d been on the terrace earlier strode out—naked—“Shit”—and jumped back in. 

“Westerbrook!” Rooster called to him.

“I, uh, needed my razor, Trevor.”  He stepped back out, securing a towel around his waist, his toffee face turning a satisfying plum.  “Did you take it?”

“Look.”  Trevor pointed at me.  “Mandy—from last night.”

“Yeah, hi.”  He nodded.  “So did you, uh, find your purse?” His genuine curiosity seemed to take his friend aback.  Trevor looked between the two of us.

“Alright!”   I lifted off the lids.  “Eggs Benedict.  Chicken and sage sausage.  Blue cheese burger.  Fries.  Double espresso and vanilla milkshake.  If you could just sign?”  I handed Trevor the check, but he just kept grinning.  Because he was high. 

“We should meet up later.”

I wanted nothing more than to give him the look a girl like me has to perfect.  Lips pulled taut to both ears as if by piano wire, eyes dead on.  A firm, pleasant, “No fucking way.”  But I couldn’t risk rattling his cage. 

“What time do you get off?”  He cracked himself up at the double entendre.

“Nine.”  Ten.  “We’re going to The Lido Club.”  We weren’t. “You don’t need to sign.  Just call down when you’re ready for them to take the cart.  Enjoy your stay.”

“Enjoyed it,” Trevor said like he was peeing on me.

“Dude.”  Westerbrook’s embarrassment amplified.  He grabbed the check and scribbled his signature. 

“What?” Rooster balked, stuffing a fistful of fries into his mouth.  “Just sayin’, I’m looking forward to seeing what she does for dessert.”

I took the check and turned for the door, his friend at my heels.  “Sorry.”  He fumbled to open it for me.  “Trevor’s a fuck-up.  We’re fuck-ups.”

“How nice for you.  I’m working.”

“Westerbrook” tipped me a hundred bucks, which I discovered on my way downstairs.  And I did not return to hurl the leather fold at their grease-flecked faces—because my taillight needed fixing and I wanted to turn my cell back on.  So I took his Daddy’s money. 
That’s
what I do for dessert.

Back at the kitchen the check was plucked from my hands and two brimming pitchers were put in their place.  “Water!  Ballroom!  Now!”  Clenching the handles, I followed the string of servers to the corridor where I was the last one through the padded doors.  Silverware clinked as waiters scurried to finish setting the round tables. 

Suddenly the speakers screeched.  “The good people of Florida should vote to re-elect Senator Watkins because what this country needs is—” a man’s voice boomed through the room.  “Okay!  Mike’s on, now we’re cookin’ with gas.”  I looked up to the stage at the far end of the room.

“You sounding like the Wizard still doesn’t make me believe you!” a woman playfully called out. 

“Because I’m pussy footing around here,” he said with frustration.  When people talk about Tom Davis they’re tempted to pin his appeal on his Kennedy good-looks, but I can tell you it was more than that.  He was so perpetually at ease he made those around him feel that things could be easy, that solutions—even for epic problems—were only one discussion away.  That and his eyes were always smiling like he’d just caught his breath after hearing a really good joke. 

He crouched down as the blond walked up to him.  He dropped his head to hers and she spoke softly to him before pointing him back to the microphone.  He mugged being dragged back to the podium by a cane.

“Remember, I know when you’re not saying it straight,” she called up to him, crossing her arms in her black blazer.

“You do?” His voice was amplified as he returned to the mike.

“A wife knows when to call bullshit.”

He grinned at her. “A wife knows a hell of a lot more than that.”

“Don’t waste your flirting, Tom,” she said, a smile in her voice.  “I’m already sold.  Okay,” she said.  “Hurry now, before all the people get here, say it to me plain and simple, just like you said it to me on the beach.  You’re just introducing the man.  Shoot from the hip.  People should vote to re-elect Senator Watkins because America needs . . .” she prompted.

“To get—“  He gripped the podium, thinking intently. “We just need to get . . . a map.”

“A map,” she repeated dubiously.  “Like Dora?”

“A Goddamn map, Lindsay.  Too many people want better, but they have no fucking idea how to get there.  They’re living just one paycheck ahead of real destitution.”  His whole countenance darkened.  “Their kids want to go to school, but they’re stuck home taking care of sick grandparents—or parents.  They’re too focused on surviving to thinking about thriving.  How can we make this all just a little bit easier on them?  What can we take off their plates so they can give their kids a fighting chance?  How do we give them a clear path forward?  It’s a fact of nature, no—it’s damn physics is what it is—a body in motion stays in motion.  People deserve genuine motion.”  He brought his hands down flat on the podium and shook his head.  “And one of these stuffed shirts aught to give it to them already.”

A waiter had stopped setting a nearby table and was looking at me weirdly.  I hadn’t cried in front of anyone since third grade when I’d taught myself exactly how many steps it was from the school bus—or our door—to the sanctity of the nearby woods.  I’d silently count with a jutted chin until the cover of foliage made it safe to collapse. And I sensed a collapse was imminent. 

I rushed out of the ballroom to the ladies’, which was blessedly empty.  Twisting the stall lock behind me, my head dropped with tears whose force took me by surprise.  Up until that moment I’d been harnessing every molecule to convince myself I was in motion.  But I wasn’t.  Not really.  I was just in a breathless state of stuck, leaping from one trestle to the next in front of a barreling train and mistaking that for travel.  Maybe I wasn’t in that trailer, or at Kath’s, but I was standing in someone else’s bathroom, wearing someone else’s clothes, surrounded by strangers.  And every penny I’d earned had been stolen by a guy I was stupid enough to believe was anything other than the same old. 

The bathroom door flung open.  I tried to catch my breath as someone rushed to the sinks.  “No,” she murmured and then louder.  “Nonono.”

I gulped and tugged at the toilet paper to wipe my face.  I heard Grammy in my head.  Amanda Beth, get it together. 
Now.
  But I couldn’t, I couldn’t. 

“There’s no reception in here?” the woman muttered.

I looked out to see beige heels and freckled legs, the edge of a white skirt. 

“It’s—no.  You have to go out to the ballroom,” I sounded terrible.  I cleared my throat.

“He’s not worth it,” she said halfheartedly to me.

“Right, no it’s not—just I’m, um—I was listening to the guy practicing his introduction in there and everything he’s saying is—America should listen to
him
.” 
Get it together
.   I unlocked the door.  “Sorry to babble.  I’m fine.”  I blushed as I realized it was the blond from the conference room, the speaker’s wife, her black blazer now tied around the waist of her white dress.  “Are you okay?” I stepped out.

“No . . . I’m—”

That’s when I saw it, in the mirror behind her, a deep stain spreading below the blazer.  Stunned, she looked down and we both saw the red trail snaking down her legs. 

“I’ve so been there.” I touched her forearm.  “Don’t worry, I’ll get you—”

“I’m not prepared . . . for this—”  She fumbled with her phone.  “I just need to call my doctor.”

“I’ll get you a Tampax.” 

She looked at me like she couldn’t decipher my meaning.

“There’s a housekeeping station.  At the other end of the corridor.”

“A Tampax isn’t going to . . .”  Her mouth twisted.  “This isn’t.  We were trying—”  She clenched her eyes. “His speech,” she instructed herself.  “Is happening.  And I have to get back in there.  That’s what’s next.”

“Wait here.”  I motioned to the handicap stall.  “I’ll run to the staff room and get you a clean skirt.”

She shook her head, nonetheless stepping inside.  “We’re here at the hotel.  Room 817.  If you wouldn’t mind?”  She reached in her blazer pocket and pulled out a key card with a trembling hand.

“Not at all.”  I closed the stall door and sped-walked past the arriving attendees, greeting each other with hearty handshakes.  Upstairs, I slipped the card in above the ‘Please Service’ sign, and went to the closet.  I took a black skirt and fresh blouse and returned to the door before thinking about what else one would need in such a situation.  I unclipped the hotel’s plastic laundry bag from its hanger.  Hesitating for half a second, I lifted the suitcase lid and, among the tossed contents, found a pair of underwear and hose to put in the bag.  In the bathroom I collected a few washcloths stacked beside a faded Hello Kitty pencil case filled with makeup—I grabbed that, too.  I saw the needles, and vials in the trash, but nothing in my life had given me reason to know their purpose.  Infertility was not exactly Tallyville’s most pressing concern.

Looping past the housekeeping office on the main floor I grabbed sanitary supplies, which I snuck through the thick flow of luncheon attendees and back to the bathroom.  Two women in pastel suits were drying their hands. 

“I have your things,” I said as they left us on our own.

The stall door unlatched and she looked out at me, tears streaks marring her foundation, but her composure otherwise returned.  “I can’t thank you enough.”

“No problem.”  I passed her the clothes.  “And here.”  I handed her the bag and she looked into it and then back at me.  “Oh my God, you’re amazing.”

Assuming she wanted to be alone—I certainly would have—I was about to leave when she said, “Will you wait and take the bag back up?”

“Of course.”

A few minutes later, she came out changed and pulled a face at herself in the mirror.  “I’m a hot mess.”

“No.” 

A man’s laughter just outside filtered in.  She ran a hand over her hair and then tugged out the pencil case, which seemed to threaten her resolve for a moment before she reached in and took out her powder.  “Well,” she said to us both with an eye toward the door.  “Let’s just say a prayer of thanks for the predominantly male population of the South Floridian Lawyers Association, shall we?  They don’t tend to notice the fine print on us wives.”  She swiped her cheeks with blush.  With her large brown eyes and fine features she was very attractive, but now that I looked closely I would have said older than someone who would want to have a baby.  Where I came from she would have been  grandmother material. 

“It does seem to be a lot of guys.”

“Funny, that’s how they sign their Christmas cards.”  She smiled at me.  “Well this was above and beyond the call of duty—?”

“Man—Amanda.  Luker.  Sorry to be simpering when you came in.  I really appreciated what your husband was saying out there, is all.  About motion.  And stuck towns.  Obviously he’s talking about much more than me and my stupid problems—”

“He’s talking about whatever it is you’re facing on our government’s watch.  And he means it. Spread the word.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“But not about this.”

“About what?” I cocked my head at her and she grabbed my hand in both of hers and squeezed it with more appreciation than I could remember getting from a grownup.

“One foot in front of the other, Amanda.”  She threw her shoulders back and walked to the door as if refreshed.  “That’s all a girl can do.”

I made it through the rest of my shift, standing at attention for nearby guests lounging under the misting machines as the staff ferried tapas just outside their perimeter of relief.  Adding to the temperature, a pinhole of hope burned in my chest.  The feeling was reminiscent of when Diego opened his laptop and showed me the work  he was so proud of in his room at the Tallyville Super 8, his face animating with the passion of someone who so badly wanted me to see what he did. 

And this hope went further back—to the first time I checked out a stack of books from the library with Grammy standing behind me, nodding proudly with her ever-present rattan purse dangling from the crook of her elbow.  “There’s more,” she said, meaning we’d come back every week, but I took it to mean more than Delilah and the trailer and a street that nature takes over at its end.

On my break I stuck my head in the ballroom, but by then everyone was long gone.  I picked up a program from the stack by the door to find the last name of the man who’d introduced the Senator.  Davis.  Tom Davis. 

As soon as I clocked out at ten I grabbed my keys and wallet and went to the Business Center.  Built before the world could be run on one’s phone, it was rarely used except by the occasional guy surfing for things he didn’t want record of in his search history.  I had taken to using it as I once used the library, like it was mine alone. 

Parking myself at the very first computer, I tugged down the zipper that had been digging into my ribs all day, and typed in Tom’s name as I held the lamé to my chest. 

In the first image I found he stood by a flag in a suit, looking like a businessman with a sweep of black bangs, his blue eyes warm and smiling.  In the flatness of the photo, nothing distinguished him from those at the restaurant who cut into steaks with elbows raised for leverage or stared into space while their wives kept the family vacation to a low roar.