Fuck. Crossing back to Denver’s side of the laundromat, El tried to quell him with a glare, which only made him laugh. “Fine. He comes by every day to sell something. Are you happy now?”
“Giddy. El and Strawberry, sittin’ in a tree.”
“He is straight.”
“And thinking about acquiring a few angles, if he’s emptying out his house to get your attention. Interesting.”
It would only get worse if El admitted the reason Paul kept coming was because he’d told him he could only sell one thing a day. El would have sold it as a joke about how gullible and cute Paul was, which was what he’d told himself, except he knew Denver would never buy it.
El was starting to wonder why he had.
By Saturday, I had clematis planted against the corner of the house and a bit more pantry space for food I didn’t have. Velma appeared as I was weed-whacking around the base of Stacey’s sculptures.
“It’s gorgeous.” Today’s tennis skirt was bright turquoise. A matching headband held her auburn hair off her face. “Just wait until they start to climb the trellis. They’ll be perfect.”
I glanced over at Bill, who was once again standing in his front yard, water hose in hand, glaring at me. Once more I wondered if Velma was a judge for the Curb Appeal contest. If I won after taking her advice, would Bill be able to protest the decision?
Was I entirely too worried about something so silly?
Yes. Yes, I was.
Velma left, and I finished my weeding before heading back inside for a break. I was settling down on the couch with a huge bowl of pistachio ice cream when Stacey appeared. It was strange to see her walk through the front door as if nothing had changed. As if she still lived in the house. Her platinum hair was disheveled and there were smudges under her eyes. The small red birthmark high on her left cheek told me she had been crying. For some reason, it always became more prominent then.
“Stacey.” I stood up. “What are you doing here?”
She shrugged and smiled at me awkwardly. “I thought I’d stop by and see how you’re doing.”
That was a lie. Something had obviously upset her, but confronting her about it wouldn’t do me any good. I had no idea what to say. What came out was, “Would you like some ice cream?”
She laughed, a sudden bright sound that took me back to our time together and made my heart ache. “Sure. Why not?”
My hands shook as I went into the kitchen and scooped some into a bowl for her. I wished I had another flavor on hand. She didn’t like pistachio. She would have preferred mint chocolate chip. She wrinkled her nose a bit when I handed her the bowl, but she smiled. “I’ve never understood the appeal of ice cream flavored like a nut.”
“Vanilla’s a nut. So’s chocolate, isn’t it?”
She shook her head. “No, they aren’t nuts, not at all. One’s an orchid and the other is a bean.”
They were? This was news to me. I felt foolish, though mostly frustrated. She’d completely missed my point, except now I couldn’t figure out how to articulate my point anymore. So I didn’t say anything. She sat on one end of the couch and I sat on the other, my stomach in knots. I couldn’t believe she was here. I tried not to wonder what it meant.
I looked at my own bowl of ice cream. I wasn’t even sure I still wanted it.
“Why don’t we watch a movie?” she asked.
“Steel Magnolias?” I hated that movie, but she loved it.
“I don’t want to cry. How about something scary?”
I looked through the movie cabinet. She’d taken most everything with her when she left, but I didn’t comment on that. There wasn’t really anything scary left, so we settled on Terminator 2. I put it in the DVD player and sat back down on the couch. She immediately came closer, not quite cuddling up against me. Should I put my arm around her? Could I hold her hand? Not since our days of dating had I been so unsure around her. I held perfectly still. I kept my hands to myself.
Halfway through the movie, she scooted even closer. She leaned her head on my shoulder in a way that was heartbreakingly familiar. She put her hand on my thigh.
“I’ve missed you, Paul,” she said quietly. “I’m so sorry about how things have gone.”
“I’ve missed you too.”
She snuggled closer, and I put my arm around her. “Did something happen?”
She went stiff and still for a moment, but then she sighed. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Are you here to stay?”
“I don’t know.” She settled more comfortably against me. Her hand moved higher on my thigh. “I just thought it might be nice to see you. I don’t think I realized how much I missed you until now.”
I rubbed her shoulder. I tried not to react to the hand on my thigh.
“It’s really nice to be here,” she said.
I tried to sort out what I was feeling. She was here, telling me she missed me, and yet it didn’t fill me with joy or hope the way I might have expected. There was a fleeting sense of comfort. Of knowing how things would be between us. Of knowing which direction my future lay.
There was also the very real possibility of getting laid, and as shallow as it may have been, I couldn’t help thinking about it.
She suddenly took her hand away from my thigh. She wrapped her arm around my waist. “Can I stay here tonight?”
My heart skipped a beat. Inside my pants, fun things began to happen.
In my head, the chipmunk quivered with anticipation. Normal. She’s here, and you can be normal again.
And get laid.
“Sure,” I said. My voice came out a bit too high and shaky. “That might be nice.”
“I don’t want anything to happen,” she said. “I’d just like to stay and have you hold me.”
“Oh.” That certainly wouldn’t have been my first choice, but it didn’t seem like an opportune time to argue. The chipmunk agreed, undeterred by the lack of sex. I told myself to be happy with what she was giving me. Maybe this was the first step. Maybe tomorrow, we’d talk. And then she’d move home, and we’d be together again.
I’d have my life back.
I put my arms more tightly around her and bent to smell her hair. She didn’t smell the same, but it was still pleasant to feel her there against me. I wondered if she’d let her hair go back to its natural color.
The movie ended. Would it be appropriate to suggest we go to bed? She’d asked to spend the night. Did she mean on the couch?
After the movie, she followed me into the bedroom. She took one of my T-shirts out of my drawer and wore it as a nightgown, as she’d always done. She climbed into bed and rested her head on my shoulder.
On my bedside table, the engagement ring I’d given her two years ago sat in a small glass dish. It had been there since she’d left. I’d spent as much on it as I’d dared, and yet it’d still seemed to disappoint her. It was nothing like the huge rocks so many of her friends wore. Maybe I could trade it in for a bigger stone.
I was still thinking about it when I fell asleep.
I woke to a muffled voice.
Stacey’s voice.
I rolled over and stretched. Her side of the bed was empty, and I could hear her talking to somebody in the other room. I pulled on a pair of sweats, glancing at my bedside table as I did. The ring was still there.
How soon could I expect her to put it back on?
I found her at the kitchen table. She was still wearing nothing but her panties and my T-shirt. She had her cell phone tucked against her ear. She glanced up at me as I came in, her expression guarded.
“I have to go,” she said to whoever was on the other end of the line. She put the phone down. She tried to tuck her hair behind her ears—a nervous habit she’d always had—but now it was too short and fell back in her face. She was very carefully not meeting my eyes.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
She cleared her throat. She tried to push her hair behind her ears again, and when that didn’t w
ork, she held it there with her fingertips, as if staving off a headache. “Paul,” she said, finally looking at me, “I’m so glad you let me stay last night.”
“Of course. I mean, I’m glad you’re here.” I sat down across from her. She folded her hands in front of her on the table. I reached across to take one of them, but she pulled away.
“I have to go,” she said. “That was Larry.”
My heart began to sink. I pulled my hands back and crossed my arms over my chest. “Does he know you spent the night here?”
She pursed her lips at me. “Don’t say it that way. You make it sound tawdry and cheap.”
“I notice you didn’t answer my question.”
She shook her head. “No, he doesn’t know. And he doesn’t need to. I told him I was with a friend. Which is true, right?” She smiled hesitantly at me. “We’re friends?”
I sighed. “You told me you missed me.”
“I do,” she said, a bit too quickly. “Larry and I had a fight, but I talked to him and it was really a misunderstanding—”
“So you show up here and feed me lines about how much you missed me, but now you’re going to run back to him?”
“I wasn’t feeding you lines, Paul. I meant what I said.”
“Then why are you leaving again? If you miss me, then come home.”
She shook her head. “It’s not that easy.”
“Bullshit.”
She ignored me. “He wants to talk, and I owe it to him to hear him out.”
“And move back in with him?”
“I never moved out.”
That stung, all the more so because it was the truth.
“So you’re not coming back home?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I have to talk to him first.”
“What the fuck does that mean, Stacey? You have to get his permission?”
“It’s not like that. But if I can work things out with him . . .”
“And if you can’t?”
She smiled awkwardly. “Then yes, I’ll come home.”
I ducked my head and thought about that. It was what I’d wanted since she’d left, and yet, it wasn’t. I’d wanted her to come back because she missed me. Because she loved me. But here she was, telling me that Larry was her first choice.
I was nothing more than a backup plan. Second choice again.
“Paul?”
“I’m going to be late for work,” I said, which was stupid because it was Sunday.
I didn’t bother waiting for a response. I went in the bathroom and took the hottest shower I could stand. It felt like penance. Punishment for having been a fool.
When I came back out, she was gone.
I stood there for a long time, wrapped in a towel as my hair dripped onto my shoulders, the strangeness of the evening and the night and the morning and, well, everything swirling around me. Stacey had come back. Stacey was gone again. Stacey had gone back to Larry.
I should have been upset. I should have felt devastated.
I felt . . . tired.
Without consciously making a decision to do so, I got dressed, grabbed my keys and my wallet, and started walking. After a block I realized I’d forgotten my phone, but I decided I didn’t care. What did I need a phone for? Who did I think I’d call? Who would be calling me? Stacey, because Larry had made her unhappy? Too quick for that, so no. Nick, because Brooke was sick? It was still Sunday. My mother?
Well, she might. But it would only be to check on me. She had her own life.
I wondered when I was going to get mine.
When El’s mother called on Sunday morning, he steeled himself for hysterics, assuming she’d figured out what they’d done in the attic. She was sunny, though, which made El relax, but not all the way. “What can I do for you, Mom?”
“I wanted to know if you had any lamination machines at the shop. I can’t find mine, and I wanted to make the girls some bookmarks out of these great old calendars I found.”
I found was Mom-code for I dug out of someone else’s garbage. El swallowed a nag about how she shouldn’t do that and said, “No lamination machines today, I’m afraid.”
“Shoot. Well, I’ll get myself a backup.”
There was only so much nagging one could swallow. “Mom, you don’t need another lamination machine. You don’t even need one lamination machine. I bet you never even took the first one out of its box.”
“I did so. I just can’t remember where I left it.”
He should leave it alone. He knew that. But it was another one of those academic-versus-reality moments. “Tell you what, Mom. You make the bookmarks, bring them to me, and I’ll get them laminated.”
“Oh, I can’t bother you with that.”
“It’s not a bother. I have a friend with a lamination machine,” he lied.
“You do? Can I borrow it?”
“How about when you finish, you bring me the bookmarks, and I’ll get them laminated for you?” The odds were good she wouldn’t get to that point anyway, but if she did, he’d run them to Staples for her or wherever they did laminating these days.
“That’s nice of you to help me, sweetheart. I’ll make a bookmark for you too, then.”
Never mind that El didn’t read books, just newspapers and magazines. “You let me know when you’re ready.”
The conversation ended shortly after that, but El let himself get wound up over it all the same. He opened the shop like he always did, but within an hour he’d burned through almost half a pack of cigarettes, and the thought of going upstairs to have lunch while he continued to stew over the whole business was more than he could stomach. Closing up the shop, he headed out to pick up something from the deli, thinking the walk would do him good.
When he rounded the corner onto Main Street, he saw Paul standing in the middle of a sidewalk, staring into a shop window with an odd expression on his face.
Normally, El would have boomed out a cheerful, wise-cracking greeting, but something about the way Paul stood gave him pause. He didn’t have that lost look he usually had; or rather, he had it, but seemed to be more consumed by it than usual.
It made him come up beside Paul quietly, respectfully, made him smile a crooked smile when Paul saw him. “Hey there, stranger. Any chance I can take you to lunch?”
Paul blinked, as if the concept of lunch was something he’d forgotten. “Oh.” He glanced at the clock on the square. “Oh. Lunch. Sure.”
“Well, don’t let me keep you from staring into shop windows, if you’d rather do that.”
Paul winced and rubbed a hand self-consciously on the back of his head. “Sorry. I—had a weird night. Still sorting through it.”
El could have kicked himself for sounding so petulant. Placing a hand on Paul’s shoulder, El steered him away from the window. “Come to lunch with me, then, and tell me all about it.”
Was it El’s imagination, or did Paul relax a little? “Okay.”
El kept his hand on Paul’s shoulder while they walked away. He used the touch to anchor himself as he glanced back to see what it was Paul had been staring at so pensively. It was the photography store’s window display with senior pictures on one side.
Wedding pictures were on the other.
Paul didn’t tell El about what had upset him, though, because somehow, while they waited in line to place their sandwich orders, they ended up talking about exactly the wrong topic.
El.
“What’s it like to own a pawnshop?”
Paul leaned back against the deli’s brick wall as he asked this, his red-brown hair a pretty complement to the brick. It did crazy things to El’s brain. “It’s not really like anything. Just another job.”
“How did you get into it, though? Was it something you always wanted to do?”
El laughed. “No.”
Paul smiled his own lopsided smile and made go-on motions with his hand.
El kept his eye on Paul’s hair as he answered, watching light dance off it under the soft
track lights. “It was my grandpa’s place, his hobby shop once he retired. Nobody wanted it when he died, so I took it over. Bought it from my grandmother, and now it’s mine. I live upstairs, work downstairs. Nice and tidy.”
Paul studied El with a focus that made him want to fidget. “But did you want to run the pawnshop?”
El considered a moment. Then he did something he rarely ever did when someone asked about the shop. He told the truth.
“Yeah. I did.” El rubbed his thumb against his chin a moment, letting his eyes fall down to a set of bricks. “My mom . . . well, you know those TV shows about people who go crazy about collecting things and have houses full of trash? That’s my mom. She’s been that way since I was little, when my dad left. I know she’s sick, and I don’t blame her, not really, but it still makes me nuts. I thought maybe if I had a place she could sell things . . .” He let that trail off like it deserved, rolling his eyes and shrugging. “I was a naive twenty-year-old. Now it’s a job where I can smoke all day. But yeah. When I took on the shop? I wanted it.”
The confession made El feel very exposed, and he wished he could smoke right then and there.
It was their turn to order after that, which saved him for a few minutes. It gave him a chance to redirect his thoughts, too, and he had himself all ready to turn the conversation back onto Paul by the time they sat down.
Paul foiled him by starting it back up on El while they filled their drinks at the self-serve soda machine.
“Do you have any employees, or is it just you?”
“Just me. My brothers have filled in for me on occasion, but mostly if I don’t want to be open, I don’t keep the shop open.”
Paul paused with his cup half-full of Coke and gave El the strangest look of longing. “Really?”
“Really.” El elbowed him and reached for a lid. “Why, you looking to buy me out and let me retire early?”
Paul’s sad sigh wedged right under the bottom of El’s ribs and made them ache in an odd way that only Paul could. “I couldn’t afford to buy you out when I retire. I’m lucky to make rent.”
They settled into a high-backed booth, where the green vinyl complemented Paul’s hair rather nicely. “What is it you do, Paul? I’m not sure I ever asked.”
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