“Do you ever worry about malnutrition?”
“Do you ever worry girls will smack you?”
“I feel relatively safe as long as I outweigh you.”
“Not for long.” I pull a box of Hostess Sno Balls from the cupboard, take out a Sno Ball, and bite into it.
“Are we going to share?”
“Nope.” But I hand him one, a pink one. I don’t even know why I eat this garbage when the kitchen’s full of things I baked.
He says, almost casually but in a tight, tight voice, “I’m supposed to be in my cousin’s wedding. This is probably what they’ll serve. I was going to cancel, but maybe I should keep everything looking normal. You think?”
This is it. The kiss-off. He leaves, and I’m out of here. I’ll call Walter from the bus, tell him to get another aide for Mrs. P. Fast.
I say, “Classy. Where is it?”
“South Dakota. The drive is going to take longer than the whole event.”
“Come on. No bachelor party and rehearsal dinner and binge drinking with the bridesmaids?” (Camel chitchats while exiting oasis.) “Maybe the binge drinking.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow. I should be back by Monday. Tuesday if I’m passed out in a drunken stupor with a couple of bridesmaids.”
Tomorrow?
I feel something I’m not supposed to feel. Big-time. I make myself smile. My face is the kind of mask that doesn’t have tear ducts. “Help yourself. You want a drunk bridesmaid, go to. It’s not like I’m your girlfriend.”
He looks relieved.
I feel miserable. Resent that this wedding is cutting into my temporary true romance because I can’t do this again anytime soon. Gainesville, Florida next. Or maybe Pullman, Washington.
I hate this. I hate that he can’t know Actual Me. Hate that I can’t go sneaking out with him in Cotter’s Mill. Take him to a party on the lake where Liv and Jody get to look him over, and Summer embarrasses herself with shameless flirting.
I hate how not-normal and approaching expiration this and everything else is. I hate that I can’t keep him. I hate everything about this.
Then he hands me a box.
“What’s in here?”
“No big deal—it’s a phone.”
“You can’t go getting me phones!”
“What if I’m up in South Dakota and the only thing to talk to for miles is a cow?”
“You got me this because talking to me is better than talking to livestock?”
“Don’t forget phone sex.”
“What?”
“That was a joke.”
It’s a cute green burner. Expensive for a prepaid.
I want to hurl myself around his neck.
He kind of grabs me, followed by neck-wrapping.
Sweet.
Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet.
I really like this guy.
Damn.
47
Jack
This is a bad idea.
I don’t look like the prep guy who shows up at Yucca Valley Correctional with clockwork regularity because his mother makes him anymore. I look like Jeremiah from El Molino, unshaven and scraggly haired, a cross between a hipster and someone who’s been camping for too long.
Don says, “Nice hair, Jacqueline.”
“Nice jumpsuit. You have something to tell me you couldn’t say on the phone?”
Don’s eyes narrow. “You’re here to dance like Pinocchio. Some people need to see me pull your strings.” His head bobs as if he’s inviting me to stand up. “So dance.”
I don’t move. “You’re the one in the cage, not me.”
“Don’t be such a smug bitch! You think you disappear in the middle of this, ditch my car, and nothing happens?” His voice is rising. He glances across the prison yard. “Try to look like a guy getting a message. Is that too hard for you? You don’t want to be sorry.”
A you’ll be sorry from Don is his most reliable promise. He saves it for special occasions.
“Fine!” I sound just like Nicolette with the defiant little fine of the defeated person: not as much fun when you’re the one who’s defeated. “Everybody knows you made me come. Take a bow. Can I go now?”
Don says, “Are you stupid?”
I look around the yard, wanting to figure out who he’s trying to impress.
“Words need to start coming out of your mouth, Jack-off,” Don leans in. “And when you get around to doing this thing, make sure it’s an accident.”
This thing I’ve been pushing further and further into the realm of the theoretical, parsing out directions I could go as if they were equidistant points on a compass. But here’s the reality: I’m taking concrete instructions from a man I visualize with slime dribbling out of the corners of his mouth when he speaks.
“That’s why you wanted me to take your gun? So I could stage an accidental shooting? Clever plan, Don.”
“Just finish her.”
For a second, I hope she’s on a bus out of El Molino right now, heading for somewhere I’ll never find her. Then the thought of never seeing her again makes me feel something close to panic. Followed immediately by the image of my mother’s house burned to the ground.