“I forgot it there. Can you pay?”
“I don’t have my purse. I left it in my room.”
“Do you have any money?”
“No. Do you?”
“No.”
“Nothing?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
I looked at my half-eaten banana split with extra nuts and extra whipped cream. Mary looked at her half-eaten cup of mint chocolate chip. Then we both looked at the Calvinist laboring past closing time on those banana splits.
“Shit,” Mary whispered.
We sat in silence, our ice cream melting, the hum of the freezers swallowing us. I glanced at the door then at the dead polar bear. If there had been a clock on the wall, we surely would have heard it ticking.
“Tell him to stop making them,” Mary whispered.
The man finished the second banana split, wiped his forehead with his forearm like a coal miner, then started in on the third.
“You tell him,” I said. “Tell him we have a special-needs son. Work that in.”
“Fine.” Mary stood and approached the counter but at the last second veered off to the left and pulled a napkin from a metal dispenser. She quickly sat back down.
“You tell him. This was your idea.”
“Let’s call the girls.”
“We have the car.”
I nodded, considered my dissolving banana split, then carefully raised my eyes and watched as the man violently shook a can of whipped cream. He stopped, frowned, shook it hard again, then went into the back room.
“Run.” I had not planned on saying this, but I did.
“What?”
I grabbed Mary’s elbow. “Run, the van is right out front. Come on, come on. Let’s go. Run. We’ll send him a check.”
Mary, eyes wide, pointed wordlessly to a sign by the door that read NO CHECKS.
“We’ll send him cash. Come on, let’s get out of here. He probably killed Nate. Has him stuffed in a freezer. Come on.” I half dragged her to the door.
As soon as we were outside, Mary yelled, “Oh my God! He’s coming!”
“Holy shit!” I ran around the van, got in. Mary stood frozen by her door, uncertain, a former officer of the court having a crisis of conscious. Either that, or she was going to pull a Patty Hearst and claim I was kidnapping her. After staring into the shop for what seemed like forever, she dropped her cup onto the curb and jumped in.
“Hit it!” she yelled.
I pressed the gas, and we roared off like Bonnie and Clyde. In the rearview mirror, I saw the Calvinist start to run.
“He’s chasing us!” I yelled. “He’s actually running after us! He’s nuts!”
“We’re nuts!”
“Nuts are ten cents extra!”
“Nuts are twenty cents extra!”
Mary covered her face. She was laughing uncontrollably and stamping her feet. “Drive! Drive! Drive!”
*
We were still laughing when we pulled into the parking lot of the Courtyard. Mary, exhilarated, kept summarizing our grand caper, her voice and face animated and alive in a way I hadn’t seen in years.
“I can’t believe we did that! What if he finds us?” She kept looking over her shoulder.
“He’s not going to find us.”
“We have to send him some money.”
“Fine, I’ll send him a check.”
“No checks!” Mary said.
“Right, no checks.”
When she laughed again, I reached for her hand, and she let me hold it.
“We have a good story to tell the girls,” I said.
“Always an adventure with you.” I wasn’t expecting what she said next. “When I married you, I thought, this guy will make me laugh. He’ll keep things interesting.”
“Well, I’ve certainly kept things interesting.”
“I remember your saying our lives together would be an adventure.”
“I said that?”
“On our honeymoon.”
“Hilton Head.” I squeezed her hand.
“We should have had more fun. Should have done more things. Tried to do things. We just gave up. It’s not his fault. It was our fault,” she said. “We should have tried harder. We had lives too. But it was hard. It was hard.”
“It won’t be that hard now. We’re going to have time. We can have our adventures, still have them. Everything’s going to be okay. We’re going to have a happy ending, you’ll see. We all will.”
“You and your happy endings.”
“There’s nothing wrong with happy endings.” I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, but before things could go any further, she let go of my hand and unlocked her door.
“What’s wrong? What are you doing?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m going. It’s time to go.”
“Go? Come on, it’s still early. We can go somewhere else. Get coffee. Or we can stay right here. Or, maybe, we can go to my room. Look for my wallet.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why?”
“Because it isn’t. Things are complicated enough. We don’t need to add to them.”
“Add to…” I sat back. “Can I ask you something? It’s been more than two years. How long is my penance? I’m willing to wait as long as it takes, but I would like to know what I’m up against.”
“Good night, John.”