Tenderness (9 page)

The clock reached noon, and Eric raised himself on one elbow, breathless with anticipation. A minute passed, two.

As Dunstan approached with another glass of water, the sound of the siren filled the air, a frantic howl that caused Dunstan to stumble, spilling water on the floor. The floor seemed to tremble, bottles rattled on the shelves.

Failed again, Lieutenant
, Eric said silently, settling back in bed, the siren like a crazy symphony. He turned away from Dunstan, hiding the smile of triumph on his face.

That evening, after dinner, the Distributor handed him a note.

Still on guard, Eric shot him a questioning look:
Who’s it from?

“I don’t know,” the Distributor said. “It was in the usual place. I always collect at the receiving end.” Fast-talking as usual. His hard face softened. “No charge. A going-away present …”

Eric nodded his appreciation, flustered a bit,
unaccustomed to accepting favors that weren’t earned.

In his room he unfolded the note. Delicate handwriting, blue ink, the paper faintly scented. Without salutation, the note read:

Her telephone number followed.

He drew the envelope across his nostrils, inhaling the faint scent he could not identify but that smelled beautifully feminine. He pressed his lips against the paper, seeking whatever tenderness it contained. Her long black hair and slender throat came to his mind.

Although he knew the risk of retaining something that could become evidence, he could not make himself throw the note away. He folded it as small as possible and slipped it into his wallet.

At the window, he stretched out his arms, raised his head high, arching his back. In twenty-four hours he would be free.

Free. To follow his destiny. To pursue them all.

Here is why I am fixated on that face and those eyes of Eric Poole on television.

Two days after my twelfth birthday, I was wandering lonely as a cloud like in a poem we read in English, out at the railroad tracks, thinking about my birthday and how my mother arrived home late because she got involved with some guy at a bar and drank too much and forgot to buy the birthday cake.

Then I told myself:
Snap out of it. A birthday cake is not a big thing anymore. You are no longer a child but almost a teenager
. A cake was too sweet, anyway, and I was outgrowing sweet stuff, having a taste lately for cheese and redskin peanuts and potato chips instead of chocolate, which I used to crave all the time. So, at twelve, I should not have been sad about not having a cake, and as far as a birthday present goes, my mother would suddenly remember and be full of regret and shame and would buy me something spectacular on payday.

We were living that summer in a small town in New York State and I hadn’t made friends with
anyone because my mother said her job at a resort restaurant was temporary and we’d be moving again soon. As I walked on the rails, balancing myself precariously, I looked up and saw a guy and girl walking beside the tracks, ahead of me. They were holding hands. They stopped once and he kissed her, gathering her into his arms. Then they disappeared into the woods.

I followed the tracks all the way into town and passed time wandering a strip mall of discount stores and places to buy fishing gear. On the way back, I paused at an abandoned railroad shack and suddenly he was there, the guy who’d been with the girl, and he was looking at me, one hand in his pocket and the other smoothing out his blond hair.

He was a neat dresser, not sloppy like the usual kids with their baggy clothes. I kept walking on the rail, getting closer to him, and he smiled as if admiring my skill at balancing. Which was silly, of course, but I loved his smile, which made his eyes seem like they were dancing. His eyes were blue like the surface of a pond with the sun shining on it.

“Hi,” he said, in a careless voice like he was throwing the word away.

I didn’t reply but smiled back at him, my smile matching his, as if we were suddenly connected.

“What’s your name, miss?”

Miss
. Not
kid
.

“Lori.”

“Nice name.” A funny expression on his face now, studying me, as if trying to memorize my features.

“How old are you, Lori?”

“Twelve. I was eleven years old only two days ago.”

“Happy birthday.”

Still smiling but his eyes inspecting me now, from top to bottom and top again.

“Did you get a lot of presents?” As if he was not really interested but only being polite.

“All kinds of stuff,” I said. “My mother is a nut about birthdays. She always goes overboard. A big cake and candles to blow out. One year she hired a clown to perform at my party, another we celebrated at McDonald’s with all the kids in the neighborhood.”

I was talking fast because I was lying, of course. If you talk fast, it’s easier to lie. And I always liked lying because you can let your imagination go and don’t have to stick with the facts.

His smile changed, became softer, with a kind of sadness in it.

“Didn’t you get any presents at all? Didn’t you have a cake at least?” His voice gentle, tender.

At that moment, I thought,
He knows me, he
can see right into my soul
, and I felt as if we had been friends for a long time.

“I don’t need a cake, anyway,” I said. “That’s for little kids. I used to like cakes once but not anymore. I’d just as soon have a bag of peanuts.”

He just kept looking at me.

“My mother is very nice,” I said. “She loves me very much. She just gets forgetful once in a while.”

He shrugged my words away, lifting his shoulders, and a lock of blond hair fell across his forehead. He pushed it back in place with long, beautiful fingers.

“You shouldn’t be out here all by yourself,” he said. “What are you doing here, anyway?” As if suddenly angry with my presence.

“It’s a shortcut.”

I almost told him I was wandering lonely as a cloud, thinking that he might understand. Instead, I said, “What are
you
doing here?”

I was about to ask him about the girl when the roar of motorcycle engines burst through the air, coming at us as if we were under attack, dust kicking up, brakes screeching.

Five or six bikes pulled up and surrounded us, the riders with leather jackets and brass studs, dark glasses hiding their eyes.

“Hey, little girl,” one of them called to me, a
rider with red shaggy hair leaking out of his helmet.

Their engines purred now, the bikes slanted, bikers’ legs angled on the dirt, dust settling, the bikes like mechanical horses under them, straining to gallop away.

A biker with a tattoo of a coiled snake on his arm leaned away from his handlebars and reached for me, his glove black and gleaming with brass knuckles.

“Leave her alone,” the guy called out.

The bikers turned their attention to him.

The guy was outnumbered and he looked frail and vulnerable standing alone, but his eyes were hard now and not shining but glittering and his chin was firm and his lips thin against his teeth.

The biker with the shaggy hair squinted at him and spit something brown and juicy onto the dirt.

“We was just fooling around,” he said. “We got better things to do.…”

He lifted his hand, signaling to the others, and stepped down hard on the pedal, the motorcycle buckling under him, the front wheel leaping in the air.

“Let’s go,” he bellowed, his voice hoarse and rough but clear above the roaring of the engines.

More dust raised, as if a bomb had exploded, engines booming, war cries and yelps, and away
they went, kicking up dirt, whooping and hollering.

As the dust settled, I began to cough, my throat dry and scratchy. I looked at him through the dust, like a brown mist, wanting to tell him that he’d been very brave. Gallant, in fact. I loved
gallant
, an old-fashioned word that you only see in books.

“Better get going, Lori,” he said. “Before something else happens.”

His words and his voice stopped me and I did not move. Probably could not move. Because his eyes were not dancing anymore and the gentleness, the sadness were back in them.

“What else could happen?” I asked, wanting to add,
I’m safe with you. How could anything else happen?

“Get going,” he said, dismissing me, as if no longer interested, discarding me like a used Kleenex.

He turned away, flexing his fingers, then slapping them against his thighs, as if his fingers were apart from his body and he had no control over them. “You shouldn’t come out in the woods like this,” he said, scolding, as he looked over his shoulder at me.

I started walking away, feeling more lonely than ever, lonelier even than a cloud, as if I had lost
something dear to me that I would never find again.

After a few paces, I stopped and looked back, but he was gone and the spot where he had been standing was a lonesome place.

I ran all the way home, like the little piggy in the nursery rhyme, not crying
wee-wee-wee
but hot tears on my cheeks, anyway.

Now those eyes of Eric Poole on television have caught and trapped me and I know that I must stay in Wickburg and track him down and end this new fixation the way I ended my fixation with Throb.

Remembering that day by the railroad tracks, I know that this fixation on Eric Poole is more than that, it’s as if we made a connection that was broken when the bikers came, and that we must meet again. He was so gallant when he stood against the bikers that day, protecting me like a knight without armor.

I close the door of the diner, leaving behind the smell of fried food and the harsh white lights and the giggling of the girls, and I step out into the streets of Wickburg.

Wickburg is like coming home again because my mother and I lived here for almost three years, the longest we ever stayed in one place.

We lived on the third floor of the three-decker on The Hill, looking down on the city. I didn’t have any best friends in Wickburg but a gang of older guys and girls let me follow them around if I kept my distance and my mouth shut. The reason they didn’t mind my company is because they’d send me into stores to cop stuff for them. I was successful at copping stuff because I looked sweet and innocent, Rory Adams said. Rory was the leader of the gang. He was tall and good-looking.

Rory said I should go to Hollywood and be a child star and grow up to be another Marilyn Monroe. The gang was like a family, with Rory almost a father to us all. A small plump girl named Crystal absolutely adored him, ready to do his slightest bidding. Bantam, a skinny runt of a kid who pretended to be tough, acted like Rory’s bodyguard, always walking ahead of us, like he was scouting the territory, clearing the way for Rory.

Anyway, Rory and the gang taught me about living on the streets, the safe places and the bad places, taught me how to break into locked cars, showed me that secret doorway for the ConCenter stars, and told me about Harmony House. That’s my destination as I walk through the twilight streets of Wickburg as the sun disappears behind the city’s jagged skyline.

Harmony House is where pregnant teenagers
end up when they have no place else to go. They don’t yell at you or preach to you there. In fact, they make you feel special. I heard all this when Crystal became pregnant and was thrown out of her house by her father, who realized he couldn’t beat her up anymore in her condition. After she had the baby and gave it up for adoption—she never told us whether it was a boy or a girl—she described how wonderful she was treated at Harmony House, and I sat on the edges of the gang, thinking about that baby and about Crystal and vowing that I would never give up my baby if I ever had one. But I also felt bad for Crystal. She always looked as if someone was about to hit her when she did something stupid like flirting with the new young cop on the beat, which called his attention to the gang. But Rory never hit her hard, just a slap or two.

I make my way toward Harmony House, hurrying against the descending darkness. I have enough money to stay in one of the motels on Lower Main but I don’t want to spend money unnecessarily and those motels are seedy and rundown looking. Places like the Marriott and Sheraton are off-limits because I don’t have a suitcase and do not look at all like a career girl. I look exactly like what I am: a runaway.

I can fake it easily for a night or two at Harmony House. There would not be a physical examination
right away, and I can make a quick getaway before that happens.

A woman opens the door a minute or two after I ring the doorbell. She has gray hair like a grandmother but a young, sweet face and it’s hard to tell how old she is.

“Welcome to Harmony House,” she says. As she leads me to an office off the main hallway, she tells me that her name is Phyllis Kentall and that I can call her Phyllis, all the girls do. She sits at a desk and writes down my name and address, which I fake, of course. I always use the name Brittany Allison when I go on the road and have a card made out in that name, the kind of card that comes in a wallet you buy. She smiles at me and her teeth are white and glossy, like her string of pearls.