Anywhere But Here

by Jenny Gardiner

  “Well, if you aren’t the gentleman,” I say and thank him as if he just paid me the highest compliment. I can’t remember a time that Richard has done such a thing. More like he’d be racing the patrons in to get seated and ordered before the early bird special has run out.

  “Suppose my mama did me right now and again cause she damn sure made me treat her like a lady.” Smoothie grins a half-grin that fades as quickly as it had appeared.

  “She did indeed.” I appreciate such gestures much as an art critic would value a well-executed painting. I guess the more you realize how rare something is, the more you savor it when you see it.

  We obey the Seat Yourself sign, finding a table in the back that feels out of the way. It seems the right thing to do under the circumstances.

  “So, you ordering chicken breast then?” Smoothie chides. “After all, it is Monday, and that would have been on the menu at Chez Dooo-preee, right?”

  I shake my head vigorously in defiance, determined to find the furthest thing from chicken breasts on the menu.

  “I’ll have a fat greasy burger. With onions. Richard hates onions, won’t let me put them on anything.”

  “The lady will have onion rings as well,” Smoothie tells the waitress, a thin, mousy girl with straggly slate-brown hair who can’t yet be out of high school but already has a wedding band on her left hand and the telltale bulge of a baby in her belly.

  “And a root beer float,” I add. Sure as hell beats kumquat soufflé. I know that Richard would tell me I had money burning a hole in my pocket right now. If only he knew.

  Once the waitress delivers a Budweiser long neck to Smoothie, I decide it’s time to pry some answers out of him.

  “So, you ready to ’fess up yet, Mr. Smoothie?”

  He grimaces at the formality, takes a thirsty swig at his beer, and engages my undivided attention with the fix of his eyes.

  “You sure you’re up for it? It isn’t a pretty story, you know. And it’s got two parts.”

  “Ooooh, like a soap opera or something?” I always loved to watch All My Children back when I was younger, but Richard forbade me from watching soap operas once we were married. He didn’t approve of them, all those people sleeping around like they do, the irony of that not escaping me. “Beside which, you don’t know the half of my story, so don’t you worry about my delicate constitution. I may look fragile but I’m as tough as an old ox.”

  Smoothie laughs at me and drinks long from his beer then holds the near-empty bottle up to the waitress, motioning for round two.

  “Once upon a time, there was a boy,” he starts out. “A starry-eyed boy who fell in love with a beautiful girl named Donna.”

  “Sounds like a fairy tale.” I smile. His brow furrows, and he continues.

  “The boy, of course, was me, a pitiful little kid, scrawny as a preemie. I was the last one to reach my full growth potential, I guess you’d say. In other words, I wasn’t the one attracting all the most beautiful girls in high school. But that’s okay. I was busy with other stuff. I liked to draw and was a damn good tennis player; I kept myself busy.

  “My good grandma—the love of my life, really—always used to tell me, ‘Randy’ she’d say, ‘Randy, honey, you’re what we call a late bloomer baby. Don’t you worry, my boy, you’ll come along. And when you do, those girls will be knocking down your door.’”

  I try to imagine this, this, this man in front of me being anything but the stunning depiction of virility that he is and can’t begin to imagine it. If only I were younger, I begin to type on the cold Naugahyde seat beneath the table. Younger, and desirable, I add to the end of the imaginary sentence.

  “You are putting me on. You? The ninety pound weakling?”

  “No, I’m not,” he insists. “You want proof?”

  “Okay. Prove it.”

  He whips out his wallet, flips it open to the pictures, and shows me a photograph of a scrawny boy of about fourteen, sitting next to a very pretty girl who must be several years older than he is.

  “That is me,” he says, pointing at his gangly body, braces on his teeth and looking like he still believed in Santa Claus. I can see how he might have had a hard time looking like that in high school. I mean, it’s okay when you’re in the seventh grade, but when everyone else starts to shoot up, kids can be cruel.

  “And who’s the honey next to you?”

  His face sort of curdles, and he dismisses my question. “We’ll get to her later.”

  Cryptic answer, but I don’t want to knock him off course now that he’s talking. “Well, I think you’re cute! Look at those dimples, and you have that smile with those teeth. Granted, you got braces on ‘em, but still.”

  “As I was saying,” he continues. “Donna was one year my senior. We’d known each other since I was in sixth grade when we starred opposite each other in the junior high school production of The King and I.”

  “Wow, you put on the King and I in middle school? Do you sing and dance?”

  “Hell, no, I don’t sing and dance. I was the only boy who tried out. We had a teacher who had Broadway ambitions tempered with having not a clue about how to put on a play. So instead we hit on the high points. Minus the singing. And dancing for that matter.”

  “Sounds forgettable.”

  “Mostly. Except I got to plant my first kiss on Donna. And while it may not have meant a thing to her, for the next few years, that kiss remained with me, the thing that kept me going when everything else might have worked against me. Because I knew that just like my body, I would grow into that kiss, and with it, I would grow into Donna Ketchum and some day Donna and I would finally be together.”

  He catches the waitress’ eye and waggles his beer bottle for yet a third.

  “And did you?”

  Smoothie kicks back in his seat, resting his elbows against the back of the booth, dangling his beer bottle from his hand, looking relaxed and uptight all at once.

  “Well, I did have one other thing in my corner as far as Donna was concerned. I was a pretty decent tennis player—the best serve in three counties at least. One thing about tennis that I have found always holds true—it is a social currency whose value lasts over time. So back then, it kept me on par to some degree with the likes of Donna of my dreams. You see, she only respected me because I could kick most anybody’s ass on the tennis court. There’s something to be said for that. Unlike football or basketball, you don’t need to have a body of steel to play tennis. You gotta be smooth, and you gotta have finesse. Both of which I had in spades.”

  I nod my head in agreement, based on what little exposure I’ve had to the man or the sport, for that matter.

  “So, did we ever get together?” he asks rhetorically, then smiles wistfully. “That is a definite yes. When I finally grew into myself, Donna was right there and waiting for me. We dated for a couple of years, sort of on and off through college, and when we both finished at school, we went ahead and made it official.”

  He pulls out his wallet again and shows me a picture of him and Donna on their wedding day. Smoothie is wearing a white dinner jacket and a bow tie. Donna, with her halo of blond floss hair and a gown with layers of white netting, looks like an angel. Smoothie is feeding his bride the traditional wedding cake.

  I think back to when Richard and I got hitched, how he didn’t want to spend the money on a tux, just wanted to do a quick thing at the justice of the peace in a shit-brown polyester blend business suit and a meal at The Eatin’ Junction. And then how Richard shoved that cake in my face to the laughter of our fellow co-workers who came for the buffet luncheon. I laughed, but only because I had no choice.

  The waitress delivers our food just when we’re getting to the good part. I hope Smoothie can eat and talk all at once. Most men can’t perform two things at the same time, so this will be a good test. I al
ways said after being with Richard for so long that I could never put up with another man unless he could keep up with me.

  Our hands do the silent dance of condiment passing, he ketchup, me mayonnaise, then the mustard, salt and pepper. I notice he shakes enough salt and pepper on his fries to supply the entire population of Lubby’s Family Restaurant.

  “You might kill your taste buds if you put much more on there,” I warn him.

  “Nah.” he laughs. “Donna always called me ‘asbestos tongue.’ The hotter and spicier the better.”

  We laugh and eat quietly for a few minutes, but dammit, I want to know more.

  “So you were saying—” I finally chide him on.

  “Nosy thing, aren’t you?” His eyes dance with mild amusement, fully aware that he’s keeping me from knowing the rest of the story. Finally he relents and picks up where he left off.

  “So a few years out of college and after a good handful of break-ups—during which I took full advantage of my availability—”

  “Hence the name Smoothie?”

  “Hence the name Smoothie.” He nods. “Donna and I got married, and we were very happy. At least I thought so. We were renting a house down by the university. I had gone back to school to get my Masters degree and was waiting tables on the side; Donna was working in research at the hospital. Things were going well. Real well. We’d even talked about starting a family.

  “A few months ago, Donna told me a colleague of hers—Wanda somebody—needed a place to live for a few months. Evidently she’d lost her husband; ran off with their dog walker, even took the dog. I figured we’d do her a favor and give her a place to stay while she got her life in order.

  “I was often working late nights at the restaurant, anyhow. So this would be companionship for Donna, who was getting on me for not being home enough. Plus the added rent money helped out since I wasn’t working full-time.”

  I pop an onion ring in my mouth, biting down with an exaggerated chomp, enjoying the freedom to eat what I want without persecution.

  “Wanda was a nice enough woman. Not bad looking. Not as beautiful as Donna, but not bad. Some nights we’d all three go out for dinner, maybe to a bar to hear a band playing.

  “But then I came home one night, not long ago. I heard laughter, noises coming from the back of the apartment. I wandered back there, and found Donna and Wanda together.”

  “And?” I ask, clueless.

  “They were together,” Smoothie says, the inner corners of his eyebrows bearing down on his eyeballs like an avalanche.

  I stop chewing my onion ring and stare at him, my mouth agape. “As in, together together?”

  I notice a new song playing on the jukebox: good ol’ Charlie Rich singing Behind Closed Doors.

  Oh, poor Smoothie.

  Smoothie swills his beer and I flag the waitress for one too. No way can we continue this story with one of us drinking and the other entirely sober.

  “As in a guy’s-biggest-fantasy-turned-into-a-husband’s-worst-nightmare together.” He grimaces.

  “Were they naked?” I know this is probably the wrong question to ask but I just have to know. I mean, you hear about these things, but never quite so first-hand. My fingers begin to type Wanda and Donna and Smoothie, oh my!

  Sometimes I worry about my bizarre mind.

  He nods his head glumly. “Extremely. And smiling. And moaning. And—”

  “So what did you do?” I can’t imagine this scenario, how mortifying it would be.

  “Well, what was I gonna do? Here I come in and find my wife in a sixty-nine position with her jilted co-worker. Not looking too jilted at the moment, I might add.” Poor Smoothie with his sorrowful eyes, he looks so darned dejected. “I did what any red-blooded male would do under the circumstances.”

  “And that is?” I really have been somewhat sheltered about these things.

  “I started pulling off my shirt with the intent of joining in,” he says.

  Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I type against the pink-speckled formica table top. A threesome? Ménage a trois. Ménage a trois. Ménage a trois. Thank goodness for high school French, at least I can spell that correctly. Nothing vexes me worse than typos when I’m keyboarding mindlessly.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I should be hearing this,” I confess. “I mean, I think you’re the first person who has ever relayed such information to me on a first-hand basis.”

  Smoothie dismisses me with his hand as if annoyed at my puritanical nature. “Come off it, Mary Kate. For Christ sake, you are one state away from your home having dinner with a goddamned hitchhiker. Besides, didn’t you tell me you could handle it?” Smoothie’s words are a little slurred, thanks to the four beers he’s consumed in rapid succession. Despite his slightly inebriated mind, he’s probably right about that. But I’m flustered nonetheless. I tug my bra, pull my shirt down to straighten it out, and proceed.

  “Fine. So you might have a point. I apologize if I offended you,” I concede. “Continue.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be cross with you, Mary Kate. It’s just that this is hard enough to revisit as it is—”

  “Accepted,” I say. “It’s probably good for you to talk this out. Cheap therapy.”

  “Nothing cheap about this experience. Cost me my manhood.”

  “Oh, Smoothie…” I feel so badly I want to reach over the table and give him a hug, but I don’t really know him enough to do that either. All I can do is console him with words. “From where I’m sitting your manhood looks to be in pretty good shape.”

  He smiles a little, just enough to get over the hump.

  “Now go on,” I say. “You can’t leave me dangling.”

  He sighs. “Fine. By the time I had stripped to my boxer-briefs, both Donna and Wanda were staring at me like I had shown up at their party uninvited.”

  “Which you had.”

  “Point well taken,” he says. “But still, this was my wife. Having sex with our houseguest. A woman, no less. And in our home!”

  “I’m guessing they didn’t invite you to join in?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

  He shakes his head and thrusts his lower lip out. “Nope.”

  “Wow.” I can’t imagine how Donna could have chosen anyone over Smoothie, let alone this Wanda chick. “So then what?”

  “I calmly got dressed, grabbed my wallet and threw a few things in my backpack, lugging along with me a huge sense of betrayal I don’t know that I can ever get past. And I walked out the door.”

  “Holy cow,” I reply, not really knowing how to respond. “So where’d you go next?”

  “Hell, I didn’t know what to do. I mean, where does one go when you catch your wife in your own bed with another woman? I didn’t have the money to stay someplace else—remember, I’ve been in school full time. So I went to my mother’s place.”

  “Wow.” I just shake my head and throw back the beer that the waitress has finally delivered.

  We’re silent for a few minutes while I try to rapidly catch up to his blood-alcohol level.

  “Mary Kate?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What is it that I have to do with Niagara Falls?”

  “I guess I never did finish that thought, did I?” In my mind I can hear the whoosh of the falls. I can see the blue, blue, blue of the water along that tempting crest. I can see the skull and crossbones. Don’t stare at the falls, don’t stare at the falls, don’t stare at the falls, don’t stare at the falls. My fingers are in hyperactive mode, typing faster than I can think, and a few times I transpose the letters, which stresses me out.

  “You are my Niagara Falls,” I finally admit to him. “I shouldn’t have stared at the lip of the falls. But I did. And now he’s sitting across from me—did you know I never get to sit acros
s from a man at a restaurant? Not only that, but he’s spilling his guts, and all I can think of is how much I want to take a running leap into that crushing cascade of water, and hope to God I survive the plunge.”

  Chapter 8

  “We’re closing up, hon. Here’s your check,” the waitress announces as she scribbles the total on our tab and hands us the bill. I’ve just finished my third beer; I think Smoothie’s had at least a six-pack. We’re in no shape to drive.

  I look at my watch and realize it’s almost eleven. “Miss—” I glance at her nametag: Tammy. “Miss Tammy. Do you know of any place in town where we could get two rooms for the night?”

  I hadn’t actually contemplated how we would handle sleeping arrangements. After all, Smoothie and I certainly are not on intimate relations. But we also don’t want to waste money on separate hotel rooms.

  Tammy shakes her head. “Ain’t no place for forty miles that I know of. You all ain’t together?”

  Shit. This does not bode well. I look at Smoothie whose reflective glassy stare tells me he needs a bed sooner rather than later.

  “Do you suppose there’s someone around who might have a spare bed or two?” My eyes try to convey the urgency with which I need this. “We’re willing to pay.”

  Tammy’s face looks pensive. “Well, I suppose you could bunk with me and Earl. We got a couch on the porch, and a mattress in the baby’s room that we keep for when Earl’s sister gets in a fight with her husband and has to come over.”

  I think back to a report I saw recently on the news about the resurgence of bed bugs in America. I scratch my head, then my arms out of sheer paranoia. “Are you sure? I’ll be happy to pay. I think I can scare up forty bucks or so.”

  One trick I’ve learned from Richard over the years is how to lowball someone. Sure, at this point, I’d probably pony up a hundred bucks for a bed, but Tammy doesn’t need to know this.

  “I’d be much obliged, ma’am,” Tammy says.

  After settling up the tab, we pile into the Crown Victoria, Tammy in the back, trailing the aroma of diner grease in her wake, pointing us in the direction of her place.