“No, he’s too weird. And speaking of weird, the dolls are next on my hit list.”
I laughed as he tried to spook me with stories of how, if I got rid of them, they’d plot their revenge.
What did not need a ton of work—cue surprise face here—was the Bel Air. Clark found the car keys in a mayonnaise jar in the pantry with all kinds of odds and ends. Spying a Buffalo nickel at the bottom of the jar, he upended the entire thing all over the kitchen table. And as he combed through the stuff, I saw a key chain with two very bright and shiny keys. Biting back a squeal in case they turned out to be the wrong ones, I snatched them up, ran out to the garage, and slid behind the wheel before Clark even knew I was gone. I’d planned only to slip the keys into the ignition to see if they fit, but when they did, I couldn’t resist.
With a cough and a chortle, the engine purred to life. Clark ran outside, visions of a Bel Air–shaped hole in the garage no doubt in his head, and stood in front of the hood with a bemused expression on his face. I revved her up once, which made him sidle to the side a bit.
“It sounds pretty good!” I yelled over the engine, and he walked to the window.
“Let’s not tempt fate, shall we? I’ll have one of the guys from Brady’s Auto come over while you’re gone and make sure it’s drivable. How ’bout that?”
Eager as I was to tootle about town in it, I realized that it wouldn’t do me any good to get stranded on the side of the road. So I turned it off and reluctantly handed over the keys to Clark.
“Just so we’re clear, you don’t get to drive it first. Even if the guy says everything is great, you wait for me. Got it?” I said, poking him in the chest. He nodded, pocketing the keys. He’d better have listened to me . . .
Clark was around most days now. Cleaning and culling was uncovering some other necessary repairs to the house, which of course he needed to be consulted on. I didn’t mind. I’d gotten used to him being here. Now that the bandage was gone and the bruises had faded, I didn’t mind looking at him so much.
And when you got past the briefcase and the tie, the elbow patches and the dusty eyeglasses, he was a pretty funny guy. He made me laugh; he made me think. He also made me furious. But he was quickly becoming a good friend.
And I’d been right about letting him see the attic as is. He loved it. He went bananas over the old yearbooks, especially since most of them were from the local high school. As he pored over old letters and receipts from stores long since shuttered, I studied the light as it shone in. Where the shadows were, where the light was the strongest. I began to mentally carve out a space that was becoming my studio.
“Can I help you with that?” Clark asked as I struggled to pull a trunk away from the wall.
“No no, I’ve got it,” I insisted, pulling hard enough to make my eyes cross a bit. “What in the world is in here?” I mumbled, giving one more good tug and sending it, and me, sliding across the floor. I sat down hard, biting my tongue in the process. “Sonofa— Ow!”
“Impossible woman,” he muttered, but was at my side a moment later. “You need to let people help you.”
“What do you think I’m doing, with all this free labor cleaning out my house?” I said, wincing as I felt around the inside of my mouth. The piercing in my tongue clicked against the back of my teeth like it always did, and the sound made Clark look closer.
“You didn’t lose your piercing, did you?” he asked, crouching down next to me and offering me his handkerchief. God bless him, he carried a hankie.
“No, it’d take a lot for this sucker to come out,” I said, accepting what he offered and pressing it to the tip of my tongue where I’d bitten it.
“Did it hurt?” he asked.
“Well yeah, didn’t you hear me yell?”
“I meant the piercing. When you got it.”
“Why, you thinking about piercing something, Clark?” I asked with amusement.
“Good lord, no.”
I laughed out loud. He sat down next to me on the floor of the attic and looked carefully at me. “I just wondered how it felt.”
“It hurt, sure, but a good kind of hurt. And I was expecting it, unlike a moment ago. No biggie, I’m a tough girl. Five brothers, remember?”
He stared at me a moment, his eyes darting back down to my mouth. I poked the barbell out a little so he could see it, waggling my tongue at him. He breathed in hard. “Tough girl,” he echoed.
We sat in a patch of sunshine, staring at each other. Eventually I put his handkerchief back into my mouth, and his eyes blazed. And when finally a cloud passed overhead and interrupted the sunshine, we both sat back a bit, each looking away. Clark finally moved, standing and offering me his hand. He pulled me up harder than I expected and I overbalanced, knocking us into each other. We both laughed.