The Fortunes of Indigo Skye (27 page)

children at play sign. This would be the time
for Severin to make our same lame joke about fast children, and the fact that
they must be playing somewhere else. But he misses the sign entirely. One hand
is clinging to the door handle, and the other is clenching a clump of fabric
from his swim shorts. "Would you relax?" I say.

"God, In, the way you drive makes that slightly
impossible," he says. "You almost took out that lady with the stroller, and then
you slid through that stop sign and now we're having the grand tour of this
neighborhood, with that cocker spaniel practically riding on our front
fender."

"No children or animals were hurt in the making
of this film," I say. "Backseat drivers must get out at the next
stop."

"That poor dog. I saw the terror in his eyes,"
he says. Maybe I have made Severin a little nervous with my defensive driving.
I've got the air conditioner on, but he's got a mustache of
perspiration.

"You want your own car? Work on Mom for me.
Until then, it better be 'Thank you, Indigo, my beautiful, wonderful sister, for
going out of your way for me this morning so that I can visit my spoiled
girlfriend, Buffy.'"

"Now take a right. Right, here! Shit, man.
Okay, that next left, by that willow tree." He points, but thanks, I can see it
two feet in front of me. "God, I'd love a car. Why's Mom freaking out like this?
She doesn't want it to change us in some drastic way, but she's the one going to
extremes, if you ask me."

"Hormones!" I sing.

We reach Kayleigh Moore's house, if you can
call that place a house. I had wondered if it would look different to me now. I
couldn't buy it, or anything close to it, even if I spent everything

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I had. But I have seventeen-dollar lipstick on
now, from my binge at the makeup counter. I view the house with new, expensive
lips and realize it looks the same to me as before. It feels cold and unreal,
like a movie set. It is not a place where your Mom would go into the kitchen in
her robe in the morning and make hot chocolate. It is not a place where you
could find the bag of marsh-mallows for that hot chocolate, fastened closed with
a rubber band.

I leave Meer Island and hit the gas so I won't
be late to work. I breathe better once I am out of that place. There's something
about it that makes me feel like I've got a plastic bag tied around my head. At
the next stop light, I drag race a King County Library bookmobile and a minivan
with the bumper sticker proud parent of an honor roll student . I beat them both
soundly, then take the on-ramp to the freeway. I get off at the Nine Mile Falls
exit, curve around the Texaco station and Old Country Buffet, one of those
all-you-can-eat places that no one who lives here actually goes to, one of those
places with gravy that makes you have second thoughts. My eye is caught by
something at the roadside.

It's a man, and he's wearing some huge, spongy
yellow upright rectangle costume, with some orange glob coming from the top. He
is dancing around and holding a sign that says, spend the morning at old country
buffet . Usually, I wouldn't pay much attention, but my eyes travel from the
mysterious costume down, and I see the legs that stick from under it. Tattooed
legs. Legs with zodiac signs--rams and bulls and water bearers and intertwined
fish--that edge down into the top of his sneakers.

Maybe I forget my turn signal, because someone
honks, and maybe I swerve just a little, because the spongy yellow
upright

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rectangle hightails it into the restaurant
bushes. I yank the parking brake, get out. The yellow rectangle has had the
orange goop scared out of him, and he's taken a tumble--he's horizontal in the
junipers and it appears that he's unable to right himself again.

"Leroy?" I call.

"Who is it?" His arms and legs are flailing
like a tortoise stuck on his back.

"Me. Indigo."

"Oh, thank God! Did you see that car try to run
me over?"

"Leroy, jeez, I'm sorry. That was me! I was
just pulling over. I saw this yellow rectangle with your legs ..."

"I'm a breakfast burrito. Help me
up."

I pick my way across the junipers, hold out my
hand and foist him upright. "You have shit all on the back of you," I say. I
swat off the back of him, freeing bits of prickly green and dirt and
leaves.

"That was you? What were you doing? I thought
you were going to kill me."

"I was pulling over!" I say. "That's all! That
guy didn't need to honk and shake his fist! I couldn't believe this was you!
What are you doing?"

"It's a job, Indigo." A car with a bunch of
teenagers passes by and they beep their horn and wave. "I needed a job, you
know, after I got canned from the old lady."

"But, Leroy...," I say. "This?" It's a
humiliating job. It makes me sad to see him here, those Leroy eyes under that
orange ... "What's that orange stuff on your head?"

"Cheese. Melted cheese," he says.

Under that melted cheese. Leroy's eyes. This
makes him

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smaller than he deserves to be. Face it--adults
plus costumes equals humiliation. No adult should ever have to wear one for
money. Wearing a Dopey-the-dwarf costume or a mattress sale sandwich board and
dancing around so some big shot can make a profit, well, it's almost
unconstitutional. Cruel and inhuman.

"Beggars can't be choosers, okay? Not too many
people want to hire me with my tattoos. These people don't care. I'm all covered
up."

"Except for your legs." I point.

"I was supposed to have yellow socks, but I
forgot them," he says.

"God, Leroy. A breakfast burrito."

"At night I get to be a kidney bean. It's their
house soup special."

A large old-people car pulls up and a lady with
blue-white hair rolls down her window. "Can you tell us how to get back on the
freeway?"

"Back straight that way." Leroy points with a
yellow arm. I missed a clunk of juniper that dangles from his elbow. "Stay to
your right." The car drives on. "What do they think I am, the visitor's bureau?
I've given directions to triple X drive-in, Lake Sammamish, and the post office,
and I've only been here an hour."

"Why do you need to do this at all, Leroy? You
have a job at Darigold."

"It's complicated, okay? Indigo, I don't mean
to be unfriendly here, but I've got some arm waving and jumping around to
do."

I leave Leroy, and make my way over to
Carrera's. I'm a little late, I admit.

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"You're late," Jane says.

"Jane cut me a chintzy piece of pie," Trina
says. "You better be on time tomorrow." I hurry to the back room, drop my bag,
wave a hello to Luigi, and put on my apron.

"Leroy won't be coming in," I announce to the
Irregulars. "He's dressed as a breakfast burrito outside of Old Country
Buffet."

"And I thought I was the crazy one," Funny
says. Her head is bent over her notebook.

"Anyone says one word against Leroy, I'm gonna,
pow, pop him in the kisser," Joe says. Since my encounter with Nick's coworkers,
everyone's been a little ... aggressive.

"We all do what we've got to do," Trina says.
"Since Roger left, I'm answering the psychic hotline." She licks the back of her
fork.

"What!" I scream.

"God, Indigo. Not so loud," Jane says. "You
scared Jack." Which is true. Jack has leapt to his feet.

"I'm sorry, but... Trina, come on. What, you
tell people that tomorrow will bring a new day?" I bring Nick his oatmeal. He
rips open two packages of sugar and pours them on top.

"'A day without sunshine is like night,'" Nick
says.

"Yesterday, she told some woman that she was
going to meet a man named Roger who would run off to Rio," Funny
says.

"So?" Trina says. "The way Roger gets around,
it's probably true."

"Wait, guys," Nick says. He suddenly scoots
himself out from the table, knocking his spoon from balance on the side of his
bowl. "Is that--Look. Look! Outside!"

I almost expect to see the Vespa. The Vespa,
with the Vespa guy back on it. Richard Howards, looking for me, asking for
his

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money back. I picture it all disappearing--me
returning the TV, the digital cameras, the raft, the soap dispenser, damaged
from when Mom threw it against the bathtub tiles. The cell phones. God, no, we
love those.

But it isn't the Vespa. I see a flash of red
and white. It's Trina's Thunderbird. Parked down the block in front of True
Value hardware.

"It's my cousin, that idiot," Trina says. "Do
you know he hasn't washed that car since he got it? There's an empty McDonald's
cup in the backseat. One of those insulting 'Sorry you're not a winner' scratch
tickets. There's a catalogue thrown on the floor too. The kind that sells
sausages and cheese logs?" She puts a knee on the seat, cranes her neck to get a
better look. She looks like a mother who's given up her child, now sure she's
caught a glimpse of him.

"It's the Thunderbird, all right," Nick says. I
stand beside him at the window. Jane is there too, and Joe, who has risen from
his stool to join us. Funny leans across Trina's booth to get a look.

"She's still a beauty," Joe says. "Mmm, mmm,
mmm."

We watch the cousin, a tall man in tight jeans
and a black T-shirt. His head cocks at an angle that says
These sunglasses
make me look hot.
He tucks the keys into the back pocket of his jeans, slams
the car door so hard we can hear it.

"Ouch," Nick says. I can feel Jane flinch
beside me.

The cousin peers in the window of the True
Value door, then bangs on the glass.

"It's not open yet, asshole," Nick growls.
Another happy graduate of Indigo's School of Assertiveness Training.

The cousin bangs the door a few more times,
then kicks at the sidewalk with the toe of his boot. He gets back into the car,
slams

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the door shut again, and then revs the engine.
He sits there for a minute, trying to decide what to do. He apparently has
forgotten this prior sequence of events, because he turns the key again, when
the engine is already on. The car screams in mechanical outrage. Trina gasps,
releases a whimper-cry.

"It makes me sick," Funny says. "God, I need a
Xanax."

We watch him drive off. Jack feels the
heaviness in the room and wants out. He noses Jane's palm to plead for a walk.
We're all quiet. I bring Trina a second piece of pie. Nick clears his throat. I
feel weighted with other people's misery. There is a part of me that understands
Jack. I just want out of here too.

The bookstore guy arrives; and then there's one
of the Nine Mile Falls librarians, who comes in with Joe Davis, the
minister/handyman who fixed our plumbing once. I'm starting to swing into full
gear again, when I hear the circus come to town--meaning, my phone is ringing.
Shit, I forgot to turn it off. I can sense Jane snap to attention as she waits
for my response, but I just ignore the phone. The ringing stops, then starts up
again. Stops and starts again, in that insistent way that means emergency. I can
feel the choice in front me--phone emergency versus Jane's anger, but what
really wins out is curiosity. It's probably one of those urgent wrong numbers
you get that immediately insert you into stranger's lives--
Uh, Beth? I'm
running late, because Dan's wife Sue had this thing with her pancreas ...
--but I can't stand not knowing. On the fourth call, I drop my menus onto the
counter and dash.

I fish madly for my phone. Severin, the screen
says.
Severin?

"Man, this better be good, because I probably
just lost my job," I say.

"Indigo," he says.

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"I cannot be-lieve you are calling me at
work."

"I started walking, but, fuck, it's a long way.
Can you come and get me? Indigo, please."

"Where are you? I'm in the middle of my
shift."

"I wouldn't ask, you know it. But I started
walking from Meer Island, and I'm on the freeway, and it's a lot farther than it
seems when you're driving." His voice is ragged. It sounds thin, thin as those
really, really old Levi's of his, the ones that had been washed so much they got
a new hole every time he kneeled down.

"What happened?"

"The swimming party? I get to the door, and she
asks me why I'm dressed like that. Why I'm not wearing pants and a
tie."

"Who swims in a tie?" I'm not getting
this.

"She wasn't asking me to the party. She was
asking me to be a
waiter
at the party."

"Oh my God," I say. "Goddamn it."

"I know, Indigo, okay? I know. Don't start.
Just come and get me. Please?"

"I'm coming," I say.

"What do you mean, you're leaving? You can't
leave."

I untie my apron. The bookstore guy's Farm
Scramble is up. Joe needs a coffee refill. "It's my brother. An
emergency."