Highway Trade and Other Stories

by John Domini

  Yes, it appeared to be happening just the way she’d set it up. A thing of one-liners, breezing along on the culture shock. The word Nellie used was assimilation. “When he realizes he’s not the only smart mouth to make it across the Great Divide,” she told Fitzie, “then he’ll move on.” In this way too she could justify him buddying up to Wade. Now and again Ernie picked up the boy at school, and after dinner they sat talking basketball. The two of them had even established a running argument. Ernie claimed that pro ball was the only kind that mattered, and of course the only organizations that really knew what they were doing were Boston and Philadelphia (though she was over the sink pretending not to listen, Nellie had to grin; God she could see his lines coming so clearly sometimes). Wade meantime pumped for the college game. And if Ernie insisted on talking the pros, hey, how about those Lakers? Assimilation. Ernie bought himself a decent pair of hiking boots and replaced his over-the-shoulder bag with a Beaver orange backpack. “The man’s sure getting with the program,” Fitzie said. “Zip, zip.”

  Nonetheless all of this left Nellie once more with trouble she didn’t know how to talk about. Zip, zip was the problem. She’d been sleeping with the man how long now, three weeks? And already he was out buying a new outfit. He was playing Papa, he was asking to meet her friends. In fact when it became clear that Nellie didn’t have the kind of friends he was after—no one so close; no one who’d drop over and stay late—the result was something like a fight. Something like. What else should she call it when, after a couple nights of it, she was left combing all these quips and turns of phrase out of her overworked nerves? But when you were actually talking to the guy, it seemed he’d hardly laid a hand on you. Just, suddenly she would realize that he’d worked her job into every conversation. Her “so-called job.” But this had gotten started at the Drop By after all; if he was so upset about her working he could have reported it the first time her name came across his desk. Instead, he came hinting and fluttering around. “If someone back at the office wanted to kick up a fuss, about your so-called job.…” Eyebrows up, significant pout. The first time Nellie fully understood what he was saying, she went straight for the heavy artillery.

  “What if this got out?” she shouted.

  She’d been bent over, lighting the incense candle; now she gestured round the bedroom with it, agitated enough to put out the flame. “What about that, hey Ernie? Think they’d like to know you’ve been popping one of your cases?”

  She should have known. Ernie laughed. He took the matches from her and stood unnecessarily close, getting one of his own hands around the squat red candle as he relit it.

  “Popping?” he said. “Last woman I did this with, we were consummating our marriage. Now it’s just, popping?”

  Admit it: she hadn’t known too many like him. Most guys she’d been with, the first time they argued, that was the death knell. In fact most guys she’d been with couldn’t argue. Their emotional baggage was too much, kick over just one piece and next thing you know the guy would be stamping off to his truck. Nellie would watch them from her stoop, still mouthing their sawed-off insults after the ignition had roared on. But Ernie now, watching him argue was like watching him eat. Only the good leaf lettuce, see Nellie, and God not that mustard; try some Nance’s. Or: see taste the beef, Nellie, you don’t have to have money to eat decent Chinese. You’ve just got to start the marinade the night before. She’d told him that Wade was the reason they could never meet at his place, when in fact what stopped her was this, his absolute killer instinct for quibbling. Sifting the facts through his active fingers and turning up yes partly this, but also partly that. Yes just a so-called job, but also maybe some serious trouble over in the Albany office. Quips and turns of phrase. On his turf, Nellie figured she’d be overwhelmed.

  Even the way he’d wriggled out of the shouting match over the candle, the wisecrack comparing his ex to Nellie—that too started pitching around uncomfortably. Not till afterwards of course, when she stood by the sink trying to keep it quiet, using a washcloth rather than taking a shower. Then she started to think: on the one hand consummating a marriage, on the other hand merely popping. Who was this guy? Since when was that their only choice? Even her lawyer hadn’t gotten in such subtle digs and irks.

  Not that Nellie was completely in the dark about him. She’d seen some things like this before. “I mean,” she told Fitzie, “it is so obvious that he’s just gotten a divorce. It’s like a goddamn billboard. He has to keep punching your buttons because otherwise he feels helpless.”

  After hours again, Johnny Walker Red, Fitzie nodded but kept on setting up tomorrow’s menu, slipping letters into the new board.

  “He just feels—totally helpless,” Nellie said. “That’s what makes divorced guys such a drag.”

  Fitzie only snorted. She’d moved on to the numbers, and Nellie found the red digits aggravating somehow, a reminder of the night before. Ernie had inadvertently put a foot through one of the sliding cupboard doors at the head of the bed. The trailer panelling was nothing but pressed cardboard, cheap and lightweight as the Drop By menu, and the bedroom walls were warped to boot. Though last night, none of that had bothered her any. On the contrary, Nellie had gone ahead and kicked in the other door. Howling with laughter, forgetting even Wade for a moment.

  “You know, I think about his ex sometimes,” she said. “That poor woman.” Her sneer felt natural, Fitzie’s snort was more satisfying.

  “Because I mean, he hasn’t really sprung her on me yet. Oh I’ve got the basics, everybody feels guilty. Sure. But I’d like to really—I’d like to get my hands on where the real breakdown was. Then I’d know something.”

  “I don’t see how it’ll ever get that far.”

  Fitzie had gone back to the other box. Fingering up black letters, it took her a while to realize Nellie was staring. “Well I just don’t see it, Nellie. You already got what you wanted.”

  Nellie got both arms up on the bar. “Did I ask him to put the papers through on me?”

  “Nellie, come on. Everybody knows—“

  “Did I ask him to? Did I?”

  “What are you getting so upset about? I’m just saying you already got what you were in it for.”

  “Fitzie, the last time I asked a man for money was when Wade was born. And that’s the last time I’m going to.”

  “So? So that’s just what I’m saying. This whole thing started because you needed some way to get through Christmas. And now that you got it, if you’re not going to ask for anything else I don’t see how you’re ever going to find out about his ex-wife. Not Nellie Nails.”

  “Oh, so now you’re going to tell me what I should do. You. Fitzie Faithful.”

  Fitzie’s look shortened. She tongued her front teeth, thit, and returned to the toy-like letters and prices.

  Still it was another week at least, three or four more times with the incense candle going and Ernie leaving his curls all over her neck and chest, before Wade gave her the kick she needed in order to make a move. Wade, as always. Before she’d started tending bar, same thing, she’d needed his go-ahead. Mom I’m old enough. This time, Ernie offered to take the boy Christmas shopping in Portland, and Wade just couldn’t handle it. He’d already taken on managing the basketball JV’s, something that had come out of all that sports-talk with the man.

  “And Christmas shopping on top of that?” she told Fitzie. “In Portland? I mean, I shouldn’t even have waited till they brought Wade home from that exhibition game. As soon as Ernie sprang that one on us I should have said no, this was getting much too serious. Too serious on Ernie’s end I mean.”

  At least tonight Fitzie wasn’t diddling around with the menu board. Nellie had let her know to begin with that it was some heavy-duty news, and the other waitress hardly broke eye contact to light a cigarette.

  “But I blame myself, Fitzie. I blame myself. They had to bring Wade home, first basketball game of the year and he’s like totally stressed out—he had to go thro
ugh that before I realized the kind of pressure we were under.”

  The worst was how the boy tried to giggle his way through it. M-Mom, I’m afraid there’s been an accident. This, when she could see he’d had to borrow one of the team’s sweat pants for the ride home. Of course for months he’d been warning her that he wasn’t going to haul around that stupid waste bag all the time any more. In front of the coach, Nellie had lifted Wade’s chin, checked out his eyes. In fact she would have taken him off the team then and there, if it hadn’t been for that coach.

  “I mean Fitzie, who does that guy think he is? Big shot high-school junior varsity basketball coach.” It made no difference that she’d suffered through his kind of thing before, all that smug I’m-so-sorry. You never got used to how people wanted to score points off the Bad Girl. “To hear him talk, you’d think he had a hotline to George Bush himself.”

  And Wade, well. This was all about him anyway, right? “The last thing he told me before he went to bed, the first thing he said when he got up—Wade really wants to stay on that team. So I figure I know the boy, it’s worth the risk.” But when it came to going out with Ernie, she’d laid down the law. No way.

  “I mean I even called Ernie at the office to let him know. I even left a message, so the other people there would see it.” She shook her head, crick-crick against the long night’s ache.

  “So that’s your heavy-duty news? That’s not so—“

  “Hold on, hold on. It gets better.” Fitzie was right, though; this wasn’t coming out nearly hard enough. “I mean that man—I might as well be trying to stop a fucking bulldozer. Swear to God. The next time Ernie comes over, the very next time, he starts in trying to get around me.” Ernie had suggested another kind of trip, all three of them together. “Some kind of benefit concert down in Eugene. I didn’t get it all, something for the homeless.” Still, that much had only left her worn down, worn and unsure; she hadn’t gotten angry with the man till Wade had gone to bed. “See, once Wade’s out of the way, the guy starts pulling all this nostalgia stuff on me. You know. Like, ‘Some of your old crowd should be at the concert, Nellie.’ Like, ‘Some of the people you took drugs with, Nellie. They should be there.’ I mean, he was asking for it after he said that.”

  Fitzie kept her look set, drawing smoke.

  “Some of the people I took drugs with, Jesus Christ on a crutch. If there’s one thing that really fries my ass…” “What’d you pull on him, Nellie?”

  “Oh.” She fought down a shiver, pretending to shrug. “Wade’s father came back through town a couple days ago. Him and me we went to the old motel. Then after that, you know me, Fitzie. I had to stick by my rules.”

  And she was able to look the other waitress in the face, another taste of Johnny Walker was all it took. The signs were good, just what Nellie had hoped for. Plainly the delay in getting to the point hadn’t cost her, Fitzie was going through such changes. First she was shocked (“You told Ernie? You told him?”), then she was smart. The cigarette and the shot glass seemed suddenly much too delicate for such a big unstable body. Nellie got some of the old hardball payoff, especially after a fresh mouthful.

  “Nellie Nellie girl. Sometimes you scare me.”

  “I can’t out-talk the guy, Fitzie. I have to give him that, he’s one guy I just can’t out-talk.”

  Some of the old payoff, sure. But also the other woman’s face sagged so badly by two in the morning. Had Nellie actually given her such a tumble, or was it just that Fitzie’s eyes had gone pouchy, her neck was starting to flap? “Nellie Nellie,” she was saying. “Whoa. Sometimes I think you should live up in those hills. I mean it. You should take Wade out of school before he gets too big to leave you, and you should go hide out up there with the growers. You know who I mean, the people up there who sell sensamilla. You went with Rusty to the motel?”

  Nellie lowered her eyes but kept her grin fixed.

  “How’d he take it, anyway?”

  Through the red liquor, it looked as if her fingers were broken. Still the shrug came easy: “Ernie? You notice he didn’t bring his act in here tonight.” Then, drinking, she glared across the ungainly dim lounge and allowed herself to sink at last into the low-grade soreness that had nagged at her since she’d come in. Such a dud joint. Those lamp-cages along the ceiling, filthy with grease, the lamest kind of play for class. Especially combined with the cheesecake shots for Red Hook Ale, frat-house stuff. You’d think there’d be some decent highway trade at a place along Route 20. But it was over a year now since Richter had made them wear these damn tit-shakers, and the most interesting guy who’d stopped to talk—she admitted it, sank into it—was Ernie. How could she help but miss him? On her break tonight, when she’d called Wade, same thing. Tonight when he’d started in on his usual round of cracks about her boyfriends, it’d stung so much she couldn’t even think to change the subject. High school had turned him into such a wise guy. And much as she needed that smart mouth sometimes, tonight as she’d listened she hadn’t been able to think. She hadn’t been able to tell the boy that Ernie most likely wouldn’t be coming by any more. She’d sat with the phone at her neck, buffing her nails with a bar rag, working till the red polish was hot. Nellie didn’t like to dwell on the sex in these things. She didn’t like the idea that at the heart of all her machinations and teases there was nothing but a few soaked minutes of wildcat clutches and grunts. Kicking out the cupboard doors. More soreness just to think of it tonight. But then Nellie herself had been the one to keep a running tab on Ernie’s performances, so regular that now she could probably remember every tumble. If you assigned a rating, it helped you maintain control.

  So how was she supposed to handle it when the next morning, Sunday morning, Ernie showed up to make brunch? As if nothing had happened, sure. Except of course he’d come banging at the door before ten o’clock. While Nellie stumbled to get it she was fighting off paranoia, the FBI or a government crackdown. Ernie brushed past her and went into his setup like a pinball, so quick that at first she didn’t notice how carefully he was checking the place out.

  “Don’t worry,” she croaked. “Nobody else spent…”

  But before she could finish Wade hauled himself out of his bedroom, skipping the wheelchair because he didn’t want to miss anything. Nellie settled on a kitchen chair. She hardly glanced at the pack of Camels Ernie tossed onto her place-mat. Keep the priorities straight, check the boy out.

  Like most of the c.p. victims she’d seen, Wade had a handsome head. She could read his eyes so well because they were so sensitive, with the kind of wide, slow lids that would be sexy on another man. His nose was large enough to give the rest a center, and while Wade hadn’t stopped grinning since he’d seen that it was Ernie, his lips were so bright and defined that he didn’t look goofy. When she’d finished her onceover—the strain told: the skin under one eye was twitching and that lid drooped—Nellie rose and got his juice and vitamins from the fridge. She took one of his unbreakable cups from the rack and fitted it into the boy’s better hand; she made sure to slip the index and middle fingers inside the handle together.

  Ernie kept up the hustle. The radio had gone on, some bang-the-can blues out of a college station somewhere, and he worked around Nellie and Wade as if the kitchen were house-sized. Even singeing a finger on the coffeepot didn’t stop him. What sort of a person wakes up ready to rock? Wade made a crack about the burn throwing off his aim, and in another minute they were trading ball scores. Just how was Nellie supposed to handle it? She took a cup of Ernie’s “earthquake bean”—Italian and Maxwell House, at least she’d had it before. The eggs were steaming spiky with dill in front of her and she was working up to them, nearly done with her first cigarette, when Nellie realized the conversation had gotten round to Mom.

  “Wouldn’t you like it if Mom here went back to college?” Ernie was saying. “Wouldn’t you like to say, ’My Mom the bachelor?’”

  Wearily she made a face. “Ernie, do we have to go through this?”<
br />
  “Go through this? Gnarly girl, go through this?” God he was hungry for an argument. “How can you call this anything after what you’ve been through for the last ten years?”

  “Ernie,” the best she could manage was trying to be reasonable. “You just got finished with one catastrophe. What have you got to prove, that you have to go straight into another?”

  “Mom,” Wade said. “Come on, never mind that stuff now. Tell him about what happened with your comp teacher.”

  “I can imagine.” Ernie opened the Sports, flat-faced.

  Nellie had to laugh, the nasty thought starting to warm her up at last. “Oh Ernie. Honestly. You think I—“

  “Mo-om. Come on. Tell him.” Wade’s robe-sleeve flopped over his hand when he tried to point. “And Ernie, you listen. Mom tells a great story when she gets into it.”

  Okay, made as much sense as anything else this morning. Nellie’s comp teacher. “Talk about having something to prove. The guy wore a coat and tie and like, serious dress slacks in June. In June. I mean I know he can’t be making more than 12 K a year.” She noticed that while Ernie kept his eyes on the scores, he’d held one page so long that the butter on his burnt finger had started soaking into the print. “And then one day he starts telling the whole class about how he and his wife are trying to have a baby.” That got his head up.

  Wade was giggling. “Listen, Ernie. The best part is when she starts foaming at the mouth.”

  “Right in front of the whole class.” Nellie liked that last crack herself; she figured she could risk a piece of bacon. “I had to wonder, was this Writing 121 or Sex Education?

  “I mean, imagine if a guy like that walked into the Drop By. You’d see through him right away, right? But up there in front of the blackboard, dress slacks in June. The guy actually comes across like he’s somebody who knows something. And he stands there, and he has the nerve to tell us that he and his wife have it all planned. I mean I’m sitting right there and he has the nerve to say that if they don’t have a kid in the next year they’re not going to have one at all, because it would increase the percentile risk of disability. Increase the percentile risk!”