Anywhere But Here

by Jenny Gardiner

  “It kind of creeps me out, to tell you the truth.”

  “You don’t like tattoos?”

  “Not exactly. Though I suppose a very small one, strategically placed, might be okay.”

  “Just okay? A small one strategically placed would be about as sexy as that pierced navel you’ve got.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t get any ideas. I’ve had enough pain for one day.”

  “We’ll see.” Smoothie winks at Doug and closes the book, reaches for my hand and helps me up. I feel like a piranha just bit me in the gut.

  Doug hands me a bottle of saline cleaner and box of Q-tips and instructs me on my mutilation maintenance. Again I try to pay, but Smoothie won’t hear of it.

  “Nope. It’s my mission to subsidize the reclamation of Miss Mary Kate Dupree,” he says.

  “I don’t want to be your charity project, Smoothie!” It feels a bit embarrassing, him taking pity on me like this.

  “You aren’t a charity project. You’re more like a home improvement project. A home away from home improvement project.”

  Doug wishes us luck and we get back into the car. By now it’s approaching dinnertime, and we decide to stay the night in this honky tonk town rather than driving mountain roads in the dark. Where we’re gonna sleep is another thing altogether.

  Chapter 12

  We soon learn that there’s not a room to be had in this hellhole of a town. Apparently the fair has set up shop, and with it all the hotel beds fill up. A few blocks away from the Ring of Fire, we see a sign for a bed and breakfast. We follow it down a country road, and then another country road, and then another, and pull into the turn-around in front of a modest little house that appears well-kept enough for my liking.

  A woman in a pink gingham dress as wide as she is tall galomphs out the front door in black rubber boots when she hears our car door slam. Her hair is pulled back in a red bandana and she’s got large round eyeglasses as thick as my wrist magnifying her eyes two-fold.

  “Ken eye hep yew?” She’s missing one of her front teeth and an assortment of others in a pattern reminiscent of that mottled brickwork you sometimes see on old farmhouses.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Smoothie says, reaching out his hand to shake hers. She doesn’t oblige. “The missus and I are fixin’ to stay the night and were hoping you had a room.”

  Geeze, there goes that missus stuff. A man like him would no sooner marry a woman like me than fly to the moon on a go-kart. At least my ring finger has a wedding band on it. I notice his still does too.

  Our hostess gnaws on her cheek—I can’t help but visualize a cow and his cud—and ponders her answer.

  “Well, I’m afraid we’re full up. Alls I got is a loft in the barn. We ken scare up some blankets and such. It should be warm enough out.”

  As long as there are no copulating coalminers, I think I can deal with the barn.

  “You got yourself a deal,” Smoothie says, overemphasizing his drawl to sound like a local.

  “’Course the bathroom’s in the main house. We’ll fix up breakfas’ fer yew in the mornin’, though you’ll want to be out early.”

  I’m anticipating some pre-dawn cattle round-up.

  We collect up our things and head out to the barn, which turns out to be, quite literally, a barn. Up above, a loft covered in hay. I hope there’s no vermin hiding in there. Down below, horses, and I think goats, maybe some sheep. Definitely cows lowing nearby. Should be a real peaceful night’s sleep.

  “You folks headed to the fur?” our hostess (who we now know is named Luanne) asks.

  “The fur?” I ask.

  “You know, the furris wheel and cott’n candy and the midway?”

  “Oh, the fair!” I look at Smoothie, wondering if that’s what we’re planning on doing.

  “We just might do that. What do you think, Mary Kate?”

  “I haven’t been to a fair for years. In fact, last fair I went to ended in tears. I’m not sure it’s exactly what I’d choose, but if you want to go, I’m not gonna say no.”

  “We can’t have you left thinking fairs make people cry, then. Come on, let’s get you changed and we’ll head over there.”

  #

  I find the bathroom, which isn’t half-bad. No coal stains in the tub, thank goodness. Toilet looks clean. It’s one of those bathrooms with crocheted toilet paper holders made up to look like dolls, and knitted doilies beneath the potted plastic flowers. I count three Glade air fresheners. It smells like a cheap hooker in here.

  I dig into my bag of goodies and decide I’m putting on whatever I pull out first. Which happens to be the hot pink push-up number. Matching panties are next. Then I pull out a cami top and the mini-skirt, which reluctantly slides up my torso but thankfully decides to zipper without objection. I leave the button undone so as to not interfere with my throbbing mid-section. Last I slip on my sparkly flip flops, drag a brush through my ratty hair and mercifully brush my skanky teeth. I step back to look in the mirror, surprised that I don’t look half-bad. I can’t help but giggle over how Richard would react if he saw me looking like this.

  “Mary Kate, you trying to be a cocktease? Cause if you are, you’ve got something else coming to you.”

  Me. Mary Kate Dupree. Cock-tease extraordinaire. Yeah, that’s me.

  As I walk toward the barn I see Smoothie resting against the split rail fence, his elbows hanging over the top rail as he leans back, his ankles crossed one over the other. He’s got a piece of straw in his teeth and somewhere he came up with a cowboy hat.

  He hears me coming and turns to look my way. “Whooo-ee, Mary Kate. I do declare you’re looking mighty fine and ready for a hot time on the town tonight.” He whistles appreciatively and I lower my eyes to deflect the compliment.

  “Something wrong?” he asks.

  “No. Why?”

  “Cause you look ashamed or something.”

  I turn my face away a little bit. “I’m not ashamed. It’s just that, well, I’m not used to anyone saying anything like that to me.”

  “You mean no one’s paid you any kind words?”

  I shake my head. “Not so much. It wasn’t Richard’s way. I really didn’t expect it, though, so it’s okay.”

  “Key-ryste, Mary Kate. No, it’s not okay. You don’t go marrying someone and never saying a nice word to them. I don’t know what was in that dude’s head but it’s not okay. So allow me to start making up for lost time. Mary Kate, you look spectacular.” He reaches out and pulls my hand toward him and bows down and touches my fingers to his lips for just a second. “You’d make any man proud to be with you.”

  When I say I’ve never met a compliment, I’m not exaggerating. Not from my mama, not from my daddy, and certainly not from my husband. I feel a knot in my throat, so I just motion for Smoothie to follow me to the car.

  We follow the signs to the fair, park about a mile away, and finally get to the ticket booth.

  “Eat, drink, or—”

  “Be merry?” I ask.

  “Well, I was going to say ride. I figured being merry was implicit.”

  I smile. “Then let’s do a little of everything.”

  We each get a beer and a corn dog and wander till we find the salt and pepper shakers.

  We get in line and watch the compartments filled with riders spin back and forth as the long arm holding the cages rotates around and around.

  “You expect me to ride this thing?” Smoothie asks me, his eyebrows raised in disbelieve.

  “You bet! I love the throw-up rides!”

  Smoothie doesn’t look like he concurs. “How about you ride and I watch?”

  I shake my head. “I need you there in case I hemorrhage.” I point to my belly button.

  “Lord help us all if you start gushing in that thing flip
ping around in mid-air.”

  “Well, still.”

  “I’ll make a deal.”

  “You’re one to make deals, aren’t you?”

  “It works out more equitably then. So here’s the deal. I’ll try the throw-up ride if you agree to do something tame like the Ferris wheel next.”

  There are probably forty different rides set up here, and he has to suggest the Ferris wheel? I purse my lips and frown in dismay as we move forward in line.

  “You’ve got some sort of Ferris wheel issues, Mary Kate?”

  “I don’t really like heights. But it’s more like what happened with the Ferris wheel last time I went to a fair.”

  I turn to hand my ticket and grab Smoothie’s hand to run to the same car before it fills up.

  “Come on!” I motion as we take off. Well, as I run and attempt to drag his reluctant ass along with me.

  We get to the cage and sit down on the tattered vinyl seats, strapping ourselves in as the carny closes the cage and traps us in.

  “Mary Kate I might not talk to you the rest of the night.”

  “Well, you’d better, or you might never find out why I hate Ferris wheels so much.”

  “Point taken.”

  The ride starts up and at first we’re spinning forward on the long arm of the ride. As we gain momentum the cage actually begins to spin independently of the other movement. I’m laughing like a woman who just learned that her cancer diagnosis was wrong, laughing like I now realize the biggest burden in my life has been lifted. Smoothie’s face is ashen, but as I laugh harder he can’t help but join in, and by the time the ride is over I have tears streaming down my face and he’s not far behind.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” I ask him, wiping tears from my eyes.

  “Once I got over trying to suppress my need to get sick everywhere, it was great,” Smoothie says. “Now it’s my turn.”

  He pushes me forward and we navigate through the crowd toward the Ferris wheel, which looms like a menacing storm cloud up ahead. The line snakes around the fence.

  “You ready to tell me about your Ferris wheel grudge match?” he asks.

  I scrunch up my nose like I just smelled sour milk. “Do I have to?”

  Smoothie nods like a principal insisting a student confess his transgression.

  “A couple of years ago a fair came to town. Now I always liked fairs—you can see I prefer all the wild rides, all the lights and excitement. But Richard? Huh-uh. I tried to get him to go with me but he outright refused. Said he had better things to do with his time than waste it at some damn fair.”

  “No surprise there.”

  “He told me he was going to work late at the office instead. So I resigned myself to staying home, but at the last minute I just decided to get up and go myself. I mean, how bad is that? I grabbed my purse and went on down to the fair. I wandered about, played a couple of carny games, rode a few rides. I was fixing on heading home, actually. Up ahead of me was the Ferris wheel, which scares me to death—you get up so high and you’re so exposed to the elements.

  “But at the same time it fascinated me. So I wandered over that way, thinking I might give it a try. The line was long, and moved slowly, especially because it took so long to load and unload the thing. So I was watching as they were unloading people off of each car, and the top car moved down one and you couldn’t see who it was but then it moved down again, and I look, and I see this couple just loving it up. Hands all groping, oblivious to the fact that people might even be watching them. They were in one of those clinches, like you see on the cover of a romance novel. So the wheel moves down one more, so they’re near level with where I’m standing, and they come up for air, and—”

  “Don’t even tell me,” Smoothie interrupts.

  I nod my head. “Yep. Richard. Richard-the-fair-hater. Getting it on with some woman from the secretarial pool, right in front of God and the whole town.”

  “A secretary? How cliché. So what’d you do?”

  I look at Smoothie and turn away.

  “You’re kidding.”

  I remain silent.

  “You didn’t say a word?”

  I look up at him, ashamed at how lame I was. Am. “You don’t understand.”

  “Mary Kate, he was diddling some woman. How could you not say something to him?”

  I look around me in the line, hoping that the nearby lady with three teeth and the man with the sprig of hair sprouting from his ears and the boy with six fingers on one hand aren’t eavesdropping.

  “Look, Smoothie, I can’t talk about this right now. You just need to know there’s more to it than you can understand. Maybe later I’ll explain, but now is not the time.”

  Smoothie looks contrite, a little boy who ate a plate of chocolate chip cookies, ready to confess his sins to his mother. He reaches over and pulls me toward him. Damn, I’ve had more physical contact with this man over the past twenty-four hours than I had with Richard over the past year. But yet it’s not sexual, not quite. It’s more therapeutic.

  “I’m sorry, Mary Kate. I don’t want to take you out of your comfort zone. Wait a minute. Yes I do want to take you out of your comfort zone. You comfort zone sucks. There’s not a damn thing comfortable about it, in fact. But what I don’t want to do is make you hurt. You take your time, Mary Kate. I know you’ll tell me when the time is right.”

  I feel another tear forcing its way out of the corner of my eye. Only it’s not from laughter this time. “Can I tell you something, and you promise you won’t laugh?”

  “You bet.”

  “That woman? The one he was with? She had on a pair of big, shiny gold hoop earrings.”

  #

  I survive the ferris wheel, barely. We share a too-sweet-for-me cotton candy and then have a couple more beers and a fried Twinkie and at ten o’clock, as we arrive back to the car, we find out there’s a fireworks display about to begin.

  The good thing about a Crown Victoria is it’s about as big as a tennis court, so you can easily spread out on the hood of it with little discomfort. So we pull up a seat, leaning against the windshield, as the night sky is illuminated by the man-made stars and sparkles and chrysanthemums and hearts and all those things they can do with fireworks now, all played to the soundtrack of the audience oohing and aahing.

  “Why do you suppose they’ve got fireworks going?” I ask.

  Smoothie looks down at his watch, presses on the lighted dial, and checks the date. “Well, could be that this is the Fourth of July weekend coming up.”

  We have lost track of time so much that we didn’t realize it’s the biggest holiday of the summer?

  “Did you know that?” I ask him, feeling like a dope for not realizing it.

  “Nope. You?”

  We laugh at our ignorance and lie back to watch the finale and hop in our car before the droves of fair-goers pile out of the place.

  We pass by a convenience store on the way home and pull in at Smoothie’s behest, picking up a six-pack of beer, two bags of chips and some ready-made pudding.

  “It’s for our barn party,” he informs me.

  Back at the barn, we sit with our legs dangling over the ledge of the loft and look down, eating our pudding with our tongues since we have no spoons, and play a drinking game that involves chugging our beer each time a cow moos. After about the fifteenth moo, I surrender.

  “I’m too much of a lightweight.”

  “You’re not a lightweight, Mary Kate. You just aren’t conditioned.”

  Un-conditioned or just downright drunk, it’s a toss-up. But either way, my head is swimming a bit. I want to get my new tube of Crest Cool Mint Gel and my medium bristle toothbrush and get ready for bed. But that would mean Smoothie would insist I put on my new vampy red baby doll pajamas and while I
might consider wearing them in my own room, I simply cannot don that skimpy thing while I share a mound of hay smack next to the man. I mean, we might sorta know each other, but we don’t exactly know each other.

  Instead I retreat to my bedroll and plop my head down on my pillow. Smoothie lays down on his back nearby on his own, his co-opted cowboy hat across his chest, another piece of straw in his teeth. We’re both staring up at the roofline.

  “Mary Kate?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You ready to tell me what you couldn’t tell me earlier?”

  I groan. Can’t a girl keep her secrets to herself? “You’re not gonna let me off the hook on this, are you?”

  Smoothie leans his head sideways and stares at me intensely with those blue-green eyes that seem to have a laser set to my soul.

  “What do you think?” He smiles a gotcha smile.

  Well, I guess I’d rather delve into this under the soft glow of too many beers than confront it under the harsh glare of sobriety.

  “The Ferris wheel episode wasn’t to be my only encounter with Richard and his straying ways. Thing was, somehow his wandering eye was always my own fault. I think the thing of it that always made me just want to scream in fury was just that—that he managed to blame me for his infidelity.”

  “You do know that’s how men do it, don’t you?”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah, that’s as old as time. They can’t blame themselves, so they blame you. Ties it up in a neat little package that way.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been gifted with that package more than a few times then. The gift that keeps on giving.”

  Smoothie chuckles. I heave a sigh and begin.

  “So one night we went to a party. It was mostly folks from the office. Now, mind you, I once worked with many of these people. Though after we were married, a line was drawn in the sand. Work was Richard’s area, and I wasn’t to involve myself there anymore.”