The Selected Short Fiction of Lisa Moore (11 page)

M
elody lets the first half dozen cars go by; she says she has a bad feeling about them.

The trip will take as long as it takes, she says. There are no more cars for an hour. She pulls her cigarettes out of her jean jacket and some matches from the El Dorado. We had been dancing there last night until the owner snapped on the lights. The band immediately aged; they could have been our parents. They wore acid-washed jeans and T-shirts that said ARMS ARE FOR HUGGING, VIVA LA SANDINISTA, and FEMINIST? YOU BET!!!

Outside the El Dorado two mangy Camaros, souped up for the weekend Smash Up Derby, revved their engines and tore out of the parking lot. I watched their tail lights swerve and bounce in the dark. They dragged near the mall and sparks lit the snagged fenders. A soprano yelp of rubber and then near
silence. I could smell the ocean far beyond the army barracks. The revolving Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket still glowing in the pre-dawn light. Waves shushing the pebble beach; Brian Fiander falling in beside me. He had been downing B52s. He was lanky and discombobulated until his big hand clasped my shoulder and his too long limbs snapped into place like the poles of a pup tent.

The clock radio in my dorm room came on in the early afternoon and I listened to the announcer slogging through the temperatures across the island. Twenty-nine degrees. Mortification and the peppery sting of a fresh crush. I'd let Brian Fiander hold my wrists over my head against the brick wall of the dorm while he kissed me; his hips thrusting with a lost, intent zeal, the dawn sky as pale and grainy as sugar. Brian Fiander knew what he was doing. The recognition of his expertise made my body ting and smoulder. My waking thought: I have been celebrated.

I felt logy and grateful. Also sophisticated. I'd had an orgasm, though I didn't know it at the time. I didn't know
that's
what that was. I could count on one hand the number of times I'd said the word out loud, though I'd read about it. I believed myself to be knowledgeable on the subject. I'd closed my eyes while Brian touched me and what I'd felt was like falling asleep, except in the opposite direction and at alarming speed: falling awake. Wildly alert. Falling into myself.

I made my way down the corridor to the showers, the stink of warming Spaghetti-Os wafting from the kitchenette. Wavy Fagan passed me in her cotton candy slippers and she smirked. I had a crowbar grin; his hand on my breast, slow, sly circles. Wavy smirked and I knew:
Oh that's what that was
.

The showers were full of fruity mist. Brenda Parsons brushing her teeth. Her glasses steamed. She turned toward me blindly, mouth foaming toothpaste. She had been going out with Brian Fiander.

We can see anything that's coming long before it arrives, and nothing's coming. The highway rolls in the sulky haze of midafternoon and Melody and I are eternally stuck to the side of it. The night before comes back in flickers. A glass smashing, swimming spotlights, red, blue. Hands, buttons. The truck, when it appears, is a lisping streak, there and not there as it dips into the valleys. A black truck parting the quivering heat. A star of sunlight reaming the windshield.

I say, Do I stick my thumb out or what?

I'll do the thinking, says Melody. She ties the jean jacket around her waist in a vicious knot. We don't hitch but the truck pulls over. I run down the highway and open the door. Melody stays where she is, she just stands, smoking.

My friend is coming, I say. I climb up onto the bouncy seat. The guy is a hunk. A happy face on his sweatshirt. Smokey sunglasses. Brian Fiander barely crosses my mind. Brian is too willing and skinny; he's unworthy of me.

This guy tilts the rearview mirror and puts his hand over the stick shift, which vibrates like the pointer of a Ouija board. He has a wedding ring but he can't be more than twenty. A plain gold band. The fine hair on his fingers is blonde and curls over the ring, catching the light, and I almost lean toward him so he will touch my cheek with the back of his hand.

I've had too much sun, may still be drunk from the night before. Is that possible? I experience a glimmer of clairvoyance as convincing as the smell of exhaust. I close my eyes and the shape of the windshield floats on my eyelids, bright violet with a chartreuse trim. I know in an instant and without doubt that I will marry, never be good with plants, suffer incalculable loss that almost, almost tips me over, but I will right myself, I will forget Melody completely but she will show up and something about her as she is now — her straight defiant back in the rearview mirror — will be exactly the same. She'll give me a talisman and disappear as unexpectedly as she came.

Melody is still standing with her cigarette, holding one elbow. She's looking down the road, her back to us, the wind blowing a zigzag part in her hair. A faint patch of sweat on her pink shirt like a Rorschach test between her shoulder blades.

She finally drops the cigarette and crushes it with her sneaker. She walks toward the truck with her head bent down, climbs up beside me, and pulls the door shut. She doesn't even glance at the driver.

Skoochie over, she says. My arm touches the guy's bare arm and I feel the heat of his sunburn, a gliding muscle as he puts the truck in gear.

We all set, the guy asks.

We're ready, I say. There's a pine-tree air freshener, a pouch of tobacco on the dash, an apple slice to keep it fresh, smells as pristine as the South Pole. It's going to rain. Melody changes the radio station, hitting knots of static. The sky goes dark, darker, darker, and the first rumble is followed by a solid, thrilling crack. A blur of light low and pulsing. The rain tears into the pavement like a racing pack of whippets. Claws scrabbling over the top of the cab. Livid grey muscles of rain.

Melody and I are working on math in my dorm room. She kisses me on the mouth. Later, for the rest of my life, while washing dishes, jiggling drops of rain hanging on the points of every maple leaf in the window, or in a meeting when someone writes on a flowchart and the room fills with the smell of felt-tip marker — during those liminal non-moments fertile with emptiness — I will be overtaken by swift collages of memory. A heady disorientation, seared with pleasure, jarring. Among those memories: Melody's kiss. Because it was a kiss of revelatory beauty. I realized I had never initiated anything in my life. Melody acted; I was acted upon.

I'm not like that, I say, gay or anything.

She smiles, No big deal. She twists an auburn curl around in her finger, supremely unruffled. Aplomb. She's showing me how it's done.

I like you and everything, I say.

Relax, she says. She turns back to the math, engaging so quickly that she solves the problem at once.

What I feel on the side of the highway, ozone in the air, the epic sky: I am falling hugely in love. Hank, the guy who picked us up in his black truck. Brian Fiander. Melody, myself. Whomever. A hormonal metamorphosis, the unarticulated lust of a virgin as errant, piercing, and true as lightning. A half hour later the truck hydroplanes.

Hank slams on the brakes. The truck spins in two weightless circles. I listen to the keening brakes of the eighteen wheeler coming toward us, ploughing a glorious wave of water in front of it. The sound as desperate and restrained as that of a whale exhausted in a net. I can see the grill of the eighteen wheeler's cab through the sloshing wave like a row of monster teeth. The transport truck stops close enough, our bumpers almost touching.

After a long wait, the transport driver steps down from the cab. He stands beside his truck, steely points of rain spiking off his shoulders like medieval armour. Melody opens her door and steps down. She walks toward the driver, but then she veers to the side of the road and throws up.

The driver of the transport truck catches up with her there. When Melody has finished puking he turns her toward him, resting his hands on her shoulders. She speaks and hangs her head. He begins to talk, admonishing, cajoling; once bending
his head back and looking up into the rain. He chuckles. The thick film of water sloshing over the windshield makes their bodies wiggle like sun-drugged snakes. After a while he lifts her chin. He takes a handkerchief from an inside pocket and shakes it out and holds it at arm's length, examining both sides. He hands it to her and she wipes her face.

Hank whispers to me, I'm not responsible for this. He lays his hand on the horn.

Melody gets back in the truck. She's shivering. The other driver climbs into his cab. His headlights come on. The giant lights splinter into needles of pink and blue and violet and the rain is visible in the broad arms of light, and as the truck pulls out the lights dim and narrow, as if it has cunning. Then it drives away. Hank takes off his sunglasses and folds the arms and places them in a holder for sunglasses glued to the dash. He moves his hand over his face, down and up, and then he rests his forehead on the wheel. He holds the wheel tight.

What did you say to him, Hank asks. He waits for Melody to answer but she doesn't. Finally he lifts his head. He flings his arm over the back of the seat so he can turn the truck and I see the crackle of lines at the corners of his eyes.