World Gone Water (9 page)

“Hi, Dora,” Tim said.

“Hi, Tim,” Dora said without looking at him.

“This is my friend.”

“Hi,” Dora said without looking at me. She seemed to be concentrating on something in the distance.

“You want to go inside?” Tim said.

“No,” she answered. She shaded her thick-framed glasses and turned her head up to get a look.

“C'mon,” Tim said. He pulled Dora by the arm and Dora rose like a genie.

“Let go,” she said.

“C'mon, Dora,” Tim said, gently turning her toward his apartment. “Let's go inside.”

“I don't want to,” she said. “I'll call the police.”

I grabbed Tim's arm. “Man, don't.” I tried not to sound panicked.

“Don't worry,” he whispered. “She isn't going to call the cops.”

“I am,” Dora said. “I called them last time.”

“Yeah? And what did they tell you?” Tim asked, smiling.

“They told me not to let you do it again,” she said.

“Did the cops really come?” I asked worriedly.

“Yeah, they came. Didn't they, Dora? You called the cops on Timmy, didn't you?”

“Yep, yep,” Dora said.

Tim grinned and I looked away, Dora's gaze following mine, trying to see what I was looking at.

Dora began waiting for me on the curb in front of her apartment, three doors down from Tim's. Her last name was Wells. “I think I'm English,” she said. Dora would say things like that that would crack me up, without trying to be funny.

What Dora told me about herself wouldn't be more than an hour's conversation no matter what day of the week it was, but she parceled the information out over time. She was born in San Diego and had never left. Dora didn't have any other friends besides me, she'd lived in her apartment for more than twenty years (before I was even born, I thought), and her parents lived “somewhere else.” Someone from a special service came and checked on Dora twice a week, bringing her a small amount of marijuana to relieve the shooting pain in her eyes. The only thing Dora loved was bingo, so three nights out of four we'd take the bus to Our Lady of Hope, smoking a plump joint on the way.

Even though the bingo hall was the size of a double-car garage, they somehow managed to pack in more than two dozen people every night. The room was charged with nervous excitement. Dora played faithfully every week but couldn't seem to win. And it didn't appear to bother her. She only ever talked to one other person besides me, one-armed Eva. Eva's husband axed off her left arm in a blind rage. “He was cuckoo,” Eva said, laughing like the joke was
somehow on her. I liked Eva's sense of humor. She could really work her bingo marker too.

Dora never played for more than a couple of hours. I'd sit in the corner, propped up on the stool with the wobbly third leg, smiling for good luck when Dora turned around in her metal folding chair. I didn't mind waiting; bingo didn't interest me. I liked to sit and picture myself on the stool, like an image from a satellite, and wonder if any of my old friends back in Rapid City would recognize me. I wanted to see the look on Lloyd Inman's face when he saw me with Dora. Man, old Lloyd would've been surprised. The whole gang would've. Zeke and Bruce and Georgie and J.P.

“Okay,” Dora would say when she was finished. We'd hold hands while we waited for the return bus. Once or twice Eva took us out for a late dinner at Hardee's or Arctic Circle—the only two places where Eva would eat. But it was usually just me and Dora. We'd spark up down the street from Our Lady of Hope and imagine we could hear the 57 bus before it turned the corner. The bus driver would accelerate on the freeway on-ramp, Dora's face pressed against the window, the yellow freeway lights flashing by like lightning.

I didn't tell Dora about the note someone passed me the morning after Tim's suspension. “I never knew you were a fag,” it said. Someone had written “Me neither” in blue, curlicued letters. I turned around in my desk, but everyone was staring at the chalkboard, intently watching Mrs. Riggins explain algebra. Heat flashed across my forehead and I stood up and walked over to the trash can. Mrs. Riggins stopped the chalk and everyone was looking at me. I crumpled the note into a ball and dropped it into the garbage. Mrs. Riggins waited for me to reach my seat before she continued.

“What do you and Tim do up in the shack by the highway?” Tony Richards asked me at lunch. Now that I was infamous, I'd tried sitting at the popular table.

“Suck each other's dicks, probably,” John Killspotted said.

Everyone at the table laughed and looked at me. I tried to laugh with them, to take the joke, and Greg Knot pointed and said, “Look, he likes it too.”

Tony's sister, Lucy, spit out her mashed potatoes, laughing.

I picked up my tray, my hands and arms shaking.

“Oops. Time to suck a dick,” someone said, and the table erupted.

The others started in too. John Killspotted said he'd heard I was in the hospital and asked if it was to get my stomach pumped. Greg Knot told a disgusting story about a gerbil.

I set my tray back down on the table. “Listen, fuckers,” I said. Nobody moved. “Tim's the fag, not me. In fact, when he gets back, I'm going to kick the shit out of him.” I was shaking as I said it, and when Tim came back a week later, I was even more nervous. The whole school was talking about it and I was worried Tim had heard what I'd said. John Killspotted put his finger in my chest at lunch and said, “We're coming up to your love nest. We expect you're going to do something about Tim.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. I felt Tim's eyes on me. John Killspotted walked away and I set my tray of turkey and gravy down across from Tim.

“Why are you talking to that Injun?” Tim asked.

“He asked me if I would do his homework,” I lied. “And I told him, ‘Fuck no.'”

“Doesn't surprise me,” Tim said. “Stupid fuckin' Injun.”

It was for reasons like this that I hadn't told Tim about Dora. I had been grounded by my aunt and uncle when report cards came
out, and I told him I was still grounded to keep him from calling me up. I always ran to the door at Dora's in case Tim was looking out the window.

“Hey, do you want to meet at the clubhouse after school?” I asked nervously. “You know, drink some beers.”

Tim looked across the table and smiled. “You mean you aren't going to visit Dora?” he asked.

Hearing her name in the cafeteria caused me to blush, and I stammered, trying to deny it.

“It's cool,” Tim laughed. “I won't tell anyone.” He shoveled a forkful of corn into his mouth. “I mean, that pussy's pretty sweet,” he said. He smiled as he chewed. “And
easy
.”

A sick feeling came over me.

“She can't keep her mouth shut about you,” Tim said. He winked. “I think she really likes you.”

“Yeah?” I asked weakly.

John Killspotted walked by the table. “After school, then,” he said, and walked away.

“What's after school?” Tim asked.

“That's what I meant to tell you,” I said. “When I told that fuckin' Injun that I wouldn't help him, he called me and you fags, so I told him to show up at the clubhouse after school. We'll fuckin' show him who's a fag.”

Tim put his fork down. “Fuck yeah. I hate that Injun anyway.”

“Meet me up there, then,” I said, and picked up my tray. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the nurse's office with a sick stomach, sprawled out on a cot, staring at the ceiling.

John Killspotted and Greg Knot met up with me as I climbed the hill toward the shack.

“Hey, fairy,” Greg Knot said.

John Killspotted laughed. “Hey, Tinker Bell.”

“Shut the fuck up,” I said, walking in front of them, as if I was eager to get to where I was going.

“You better beat your boyfriend into the ground,” John Killspotted called from behind. “I'm not coming up here to watch you two make out.”

We passed a group of sixth graders who had just gotten off the bus. “There he is,” one of them called out, and the pack fell in behind me. I saw myself from the satellite again. I saw Zeke and J.P. and the others looking too. This would remind them of Dallas Tucker, the new kid at the high school adjacent to Knollwood Heights whom everyone had heard about, the beating and the disappearance. It occurred to me that I, too, was a member of that phantom class. I never even knew what Dallas Tucker looked like. It galled me to think everyone back in Rapid City would probably remember us both in the same breath.

I thought about the satellite picture and heard what anyone who knew me before would've thought out loud:
Is that really him? Is that where he went? It doesn't even look like the guy we knew. It must be a mistake
.

I didn't see Tim at first, but he poked his head out when he heard the excited voices converging. He glanced at me and then at the crowd behind me, confused. He started to say, “What the—,” but I rushed up and shoved him to the ground.

“Shut up, faggot,” I said. Tim tried to get up but John Killspotted kicked him hard in the stomach. Tim doubled over and the others started chanting, “Get him, get him.” John Killspotted nodded, menacing, and I hauled off and kicked Tim in the crotch, my foot aching. My blood surged, rushing through me, my skin pinpricked. Images of Zeke and Bruce and Georgie and J.P. swirled across my field of vision and I buried my foot again and again into Tim, who
curled up on the ground. He wore a quizzical look and I thought of Dora and I kicked him again, tripping and falling over his shaking body. Greg stepped up and kicked Tim and kept kicking and the crowd kept chanting and finally Tim rolled over onto his stomach and quit moving. John Killspotted said, “There you go, faggot,” and kicked Tim hard again and Tim groaned.

I pushed through the crowd and ran. I could hear Tim's groans all the way back to my house.

After bingo, Dora asked if I wanted to stay awhile, but I said I should probably go. Tim's window was dark. The temperature had dropped suddenly and the wind cut through my jean jacket. I hugged myself as I waited for Dora to put her key in the lock. All the apartments resembled one another from the outside, each unrecognizable from the next. Once Dora was inside, I kissed her good night. She waved to me from the window, but I was distracted by the large chunk of siding still missing from the corner apartment building. Tim and I had blown it away with a shotgun Tim's uncle had left behind. I guess I was surprised no one had fixed it. I felt the jagged groove. Tim was gone. I felt it right then. The next morning I would hear about how someone had called an ambulance, about Tim pissing blood. By lunch it would be confirmed that Tim's mother had transferred him to another school. Dora wouldn't know anything about Tim and Tim's mother moving out, a young couple with an infant moving into their old apartment. Dora wouldn't have any idea about her having to move apartments either. Less than a month later, I would be standing in front of Dora's, peering through the ghostly curtains at an empty apartment.

The houses across the street were strung with lighted candy canes and Santas, but the apartment buildings remained dark. The
holiday season had begun across the street and on the street over and block after block throughout the city. I can't remember what I got for Christmas that year. By then I had moved again, to Phoenix, where there aren't any seasons.

Here's the key to any relationship: surprise.

Surprise breaks the repetition that is the death knell of all contemporary unions. That's why for Jane's birthday I surprise her with a sunrise hot-air balloon ride/champagne brunch.

There is nothing more magnificent than watching the sun rising over the desert (except maybe watching the sun
setting
over the desert). Jane loves it. We stand holding hands and look out at the eastern horizon, spellbound. Looking down, we watch the shadow over the desert floor slowly pull back, revealing its harsh landscape, awakening wildlife.

Our pilot pours us champagne and we eat fresh fruit with our fingers, ignoring the handsome pastry display.

“Happy birthday.” I kiss Jane on the cheek.

“Thank you.” Jane smiles.

We hardly speak the rest of the ride. I can tell she is totally enraptured and this makes me feel good. It's a good feeling to treat people the way they deserve to be treated, according to Dr. Hatch, and he's right.

In need of money, I took a part-time job at Pete's Fish & Chips. Over the first few weeks, the regular set of customers slowly became known to me. One customer in particular, a comely woman in her late twenties with a young daughter, ate at Pete's with a frequency that shamed the other regulars. I soon learned that the woman and her daughter lived in one of the three low-income houses that shared Pete's asphalt parking lot, housing that was clearly from another era and was one development phase away from being leveled. The woman's daughter liked to ride the mechanical pony under the awning out front, and I began slipping the girl quarters as I chatted with her mother while they waited for their order. We talked about my situation with Jenny, me couching the demise of the relationship more in terms of my not being Mormon, which I'd come to blame as the truth.

“That's a tough one,” she said. She told me how her husband had deserted her and her daughter, an idea I obsessed over between her visits. I wondered what kind of person could do such a thing, disappear on purpose.

A loneliness descended upon me as Christmas neared, and an innocuous conversation with the woman about the holiday deepened the feeling.

“Buy your tree yet?” I asked as she hung around the front window.

She shook her head no. “It's either buy the tree, or buy something to put under the tree,” she said. The answered floored me; having a Christmas tree ranked up there with the other inalienable rights Americans enjoyed. Determined to right this enormous wrong, I borrowed my friend's truck and bought one of the last Christmas trees available from a corner stand, stopping at Target to purchase a bag full of bulbs, lights, and tinsel. I enlisted the help of a coworker to help me drag the tree to the woman's front door, the coworker happy to be excused from work. The woman answered my knock, perplexed.