The Leftovers (12 page)

Some other time,
she told him, with a sadness in her voice that sounded sincere.
I promised Bob I’d be good.

But there was no other time, not that summer, and not for the next quarter century. Bob and Melissa went steady all the way through high school and college and ended up getting married. They bounced around a bit before coming home to Mapleton, right around the time Kevin moved back with his own family. Tom was just two at the time, the same age as Melissa’s younger daughter.

They saw each other a lot when the kids were small, at playgrounds and school events and spaghetti dinners. They were never close—never socialized or exchanged more than the usual parental small talk—but there was always that little secret between them, the memory of a summer night, the awareness of a road not taken.

*   *   *

HE ENDED
up buying her three drinks, the first to discharge his debt, the second because he’d forgotten how easy it was to talk to her, and the third because it felt good to have her leg pressing against his while he sipped his bourbon, which was exactly how he’d gotten into trouble the last time.

“Any word from Tom?” she asked.

“Just an e-mail a few months ago. He didn’t say much.”

“Where is he?”

“I’m not exactly sure. Somewhere on the West Coast, I think.”

“But he’s okay?”

“Seemed like it.”

“I heard about Holy Wayne,” she said. “What a creep.”

Kevin shook his head. “I don’t know what the hell my son was thinking.”

Melissa’s face clouded over with maternal concern.

“It’s hard being young now. It was different for us, you know? It was like a Golden Age. We just didn’t realize it.”

Kevin wanted to object on principle—he was pretty sure most people thought of their own youth as some kind of Golden Age—but in this case she had a point.

“What about Brianna?” he asked. “How’s she doing?”

“Okay.” Melissa sounded like she was trying to convince herself. “Better than last year anyway. She’s got a boyfriend now.”

“That’s good.”

Melissa shrugged. “They met over the summer. Some kind of survivors’ network. They sit around and tell each other how sad they are.”

*   *   *

IN THEIR
previous meeting at the Carpe Diem—the night they ended up going home together—Melissa had talked a lot about her divorce, which had been a minor local scandal. After almost twenty years of marriage, Bob had left her for a younger woman he’d met at work. Melissa was only in her early forties at the time, but it had felt to her as if her life were over, as if she’d been abandoned like some crappy old car on the side of the highway.

Aside from alcohol, the main thing that kept her going was her hatred of the woman who’d stolen her husband. Ginny was twenty-eight, a slim, athletic woman who’d worked as Bob’s assistant. They married as soon as the divorce was final, and tried to start a family. They were apparently having trouble getting pregnant, but Melissa didn’t take much comfort in that. The very thought of Bob even wanting children with another woman was infuriating. What made it even more galling was the fact that her own kids actually
liked
Ginny. They were more than happy to call their father a cheating bastard, but all they would ever say about his new wife was that she was
really nice
. As if to prove their point, Ginny made multiple attempts to smooth things over with Melissa, writing several letters in which she apologized for the pain she’d caused, and asking for forgiveness.

I just wanted to hate her in peace,
Melissa said.
And she wouldn’t even let me do that.

Melissa’s rage was so pure that her main thought on October 14th—once she’d ascertained that her kids were safe—was a wild, unspoken hope that Ginny would be among the victims, that her problematic existence would simply be erased from the world. Bob would suffer as she had suffered; the score would be settled. It might even be possible, under those circumstances, for her to take him back, for the two of them to start over and find a way to reclaim some of what they’d lost.

Can you imagine?
she said.
That’s how bitter I was.

Everybody had thoughts like that,
Kevin reminded her.
It’s just that most of us won’t admit it.

Of course it wasn’t Ginny who vanished; it was Bob, while riding the elevator in a parking garage next to his office. There were disruptions in phone and Internet service that day, and Melissa didn’t find out he was missing until around nine o’clock that night, when Ginny herself showed up to break the news. She seemed dazed and groggy, like someone had just awoken her from a long afternoon nap.

Bobby’s gone,
she kept muttering.
Bobby’s gone.

You know what I said to her?

Melissa had closed her eyes, as if she were trying to wish away the memory.

I said, Good, now you know how it feels.

*   *   *

THE YEARS
had changed some things but not others. Melissa’s freckles had faded, and her hair was no longer red. Her face was fuller, her figure less defined. But her voice and eyes were exactly the same. It was like the girl he’d known had been absorbed into the body of a middle-aged woman. It was Melissa, and it wasn’t.

“You should’ve called me,” she said, pouting sweetly as she laid her hand on his thigh. “We wasted the whole summer.”

“I was embarrassed,” he explained. “I felt like I let you down.”

“You didn’t let me down,” she assured him, her long fingernails tracing cryptic designs on the fabric of his jeans. She was wearing a gray silk blouse, unbuttoned to reveal the scalloped edge of a maroon bra. “It’s no big deal. It happens to everyone.”

“Not to me,” he insisted.

This wasn’t exactly true. He’d had similar malfunctions with Liz Yamamoto, a twenty-five-year-old grad student he’d met on the Internet, and then again with Wendy Halsey, a thirty-two-year-old marathon-running paralegal, but he’d chalked those up to performance anxiety caused by the relative youth of his partners. It was sadder with Melissa, and harder to account for.

They’d gone back to her house, had a glass of wine, and then headed into the bedroom. It felt good, relaxed and natural and totally right—like they were finishing what they’d started back in high school—until the very last moment, when all the life drained out of him. That was a defeat of a different magnitude, a blow from which he still hadn’t recovered.

“It’s scary the first time with a new partner,” she told him. “It hardly ever works right.”

“The voice of experience, huh?”

“Trust me, Kevin. The second time’s a charm.”

He nodded, fully prepared to accept this as a general rule, but just as willing to bet he’d be the exception that proved it wrong. Because even now, with the back of her thumb resting ever so lightly against his crotch, he still wasn’t feeling much of anything beyond a dull throb of anxiety, the vestigial guilt of a married man out in public with another woman. It didn’t seem to matter that his wife had moved out, or that people his age hooked up all the time at the Carpe Diem. Some were married, some weren’t; things were a lot looser on that front than they used to be. It was as if his conscience were stuck in the past, tethered to a set of conditions that no longer existed.

“I don’t know.” He smiled sadly, trying to let her know it was nothing personal. “I just don’t think it’s gonna work.”

“I’ve got some pills,” she whispered. “They’ll fix you right up.”

“Really?” Kevin was intrigued. He’d been thinking about asking his doctor to prescribe something, but hadn’t worked up the nerve. “Where’d you get them?”

“They’re around. You’re not the only guy with this issue.”

“Huh.” His eyes drifted south. Unlike her face, her breasts were still freckled. He remembered them fondly from their previous encounter. “That might work.”

Melissa leaned closer, until her nose was almost touching his. Her hair smelled good, a subtle aura of almonds and honeysuckle.

“If you have an erection that lasts for more than four hours,” she told him, “I’m probably gonna need a break.”

*   *   *

IT WAS
funny—once Kevin knew that pharmaceutical assistance would be available in case of emergency, he realized that he probably wouldn’t need it. He sensed this even before they left the bar, and his optimism only grew on the way to Melissa’s house. It felt good to be walking down a dark, tree-lined street, holding hands with an attractive woman who’d made it quite clear that he was welcome in her bed. It felt even better when she stopped him in front of Bailey Elementary, pushed him against a tree, and kissed him long and hard. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d experienced that distinctive, double-sided sensation, warm body softening against his front, cold bark jabbing roughly into his back.
Sophomore year?
he wondered.
Debbie DeRosa?
Melissa’s hips were rocking gently, creating some sweet, intermittent friction. He reached around and cupped her ass; it was soft and womanly, heavy in his hand. She made a purring sound as her tongue swirled around the inside of his mouth.

Nothing to worry about,
he thought, picturing the two of them on the living room floor, Melissa on top, his cock as hard as a frat boy’s.
I got this covered.

It was the smell of smoke that made them pull apart, a sudden awareness of company. They turned and saw the two Watchers hurrying toward them from the direction of the school—they must have been hiding in the bushes by the main entrance—moving with that strange sense of urgency they all had, as if you were an old friend they’d just spotted at the airport. He was relieved to see that neither one of them was Laurie.

“Oh, Jesus,” Melissa muttered.

Kevin didn’t recognize the older woman, but the younger one—a thin girl with a bad complexion—was familiar to him from the Safeway, where she’d worked as a cashier. She had a strange name he couldn’t quite remember, something that always seemed misspelled on her name tag.

“Hi, Shana,” he said, trying to be polite, treating her the way he’d treat anyone else. “It’s Shana, right?”

The girl didn’t answer, not that he expected her to. She hadn’t been all that chatty even when she’d been free to talk. She just locked eyes with him, as if she were trying to read his mind. Her partner did the same to Melissa. There was something harsher in the older woman’s gaze, Kevin thought, a smug note of judgment.

“You bitch,” Melissa told her. She sounded angry and a little drunk. “I warned you about this.”

The older Watcher brought her cigarette to her lips, the wrinkles around her mouth deepening as she inhaled. She blew the smoke right in Melissa’s face, a thin, contemptuous jet.

“I told you to leave me alone,” Melissa continued. “Didn’t I tell you that?”

“Melissa.” Kevin put his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t do this.”

She jerked away from his touch. “This bitch is stalking me. It’s the third time this week. I’m sick of it.”

“It’s okay,” Kevin told her. “Let’s just walk away.”

“It’s not okay.” Melissa stepped closer to the Watchers, shooing them like pigeons. “Go on! Get the fuck outta here! Leave us alone!”

The Watchers didn’t retreat, nor did they flinch at the foul language. They just stood there, calm and expressionless, sucking on their cigarettes. It was supposed to remind you that God was watching, keeping track of your smallest actions—at least that was what Kevin had heard—but the effect was mostly just annoying, something a little kid would do to get on your nerves.

“Please,” Kevin said, not quite sure if he was addressing Melissa or the Watchers.

Melissa gave up first. She shook her head in disgust, turned away from the Watchers, and took a tentative step in Kevin’s direction. But she stopped, made a hawking sound in her throat, then whirled and spit in the face of her tormentor. Not a fake spit, either—the kind that’s more noise than saliva—but a juicy schoolboy gob that struck the woman directly on the cheek, landing with an audible splat.

“Melissa!” Kevin cried out. “Jesus Christ!”

The Watcher didn’t flinch, didn’t even wipe at the foamy spittle as it dripped off her chin.

“Bitch,” Melissa said again, but the conviction had gone out of her voice. “You made me do that.”

*   *   *

THEY WALKED
the rest of the way in silence, no longer holding hands, doing their best to ignore their white-clad chaperones, who were following so close behind it felt like they were a single group, four friends out for the evening.

The Watchers stopped at the edge of Melissa’s lawn—they rarely trespassed on private property—but Kevin could feel their eyes on his back as he made his way up the front steps. Melissa stopped by the door, reaching into her purse, groping for the keys.

“We can still do this,” she told him, without a whole lot of enthusiasm. “If you want to.”

“I don’t know.” There was a melancholy weight in his chest, as if they’d skipped right past the sex to the disappointment afterward. “You mind if I take a rain check?”

She nodded, as if she’d suspected as much, squinting past him to the women on the sidewalk.

“I hate them,” she said. “I hope they all get cancer.”

Kevin didn’t bother to remind her that his wife was one of them, but then she remembered it herself.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“I just don’t understand why they have to ruin it for the rest of us.”

“They think they’re doing us a favor.”

Melissa laughed softly, as if at a private joke, then kissed Kevin chastely on the cheek.

“Give me a call,” she told him. “Don’t be a stranger.”

The Watchers were waiting on the sidewalk, their faces blank and patient, freshly lit cigarettes in their hands. He thought about making a break for it—they usually wouldn’t chase you—but it was late and he was tired, so they set off together. He sensed a certain lightness in their steps as they moved beside him, the satisfaction that comes from a job well done.