“I know I fucked up. But, Nicki—”
“Seriously? Are you about to start explaining something? Because that’s what you just sounded like. Like you’re going to try to explain where you’ve been for the past three weeks.”
“I can explain—”
“No, you can’t,” I say. “I know you came back into the house and took the emergency money. My dad was there, and he told me.”
“Please,” he says. “Just give me a chance. I can explain.”
Everything about his tone of voice and the way he’s talking makes it sound like he’s a normal person trying to converse with another normal person on a normal day. As if he’s been coming home every night for the past three weeks, eating dinner with me, fixing things around the house, cracking jokes, and having sex with me three times a week. It’s like he’s daring me to mention that he walked out of my life nineteen days ago without saying a word and I haven’t heard from him since. He’s probably hoping he can psychologically manipulate me into just forgetting it ever happened. Is that what he wants me to do? Because if that’s what he wants, I really want to set something on fire right now.
“Are you kidding? You have to be kidding. There is no possible explanation, Jake.” The car in front of me stops on short notice, forcing me to slam on the brakes. I hate stop-and-go traffic. “I shouldn’t have answered the phone.”
“Nicki, wait—”
“You’re just going to use that regular tone of voice, like this is just some sort of, misunderstanding? Like you—”
“Nick, please—”
“Like you just forgot to come home?”
“I can’t talk to you if you’re going to—”
“As if now you’re calling to say you just remembered?” I can hear myself making a terrible wheezing noise that I hardly recognize as my own. “Oh my God, are you serious? I’m in escrow on a house because of you. On a house I don’t even want!”
“Can’t you cancel the escrow?”
As if I am in a frame of mind to answer any logistical questions, but no, I can’t. The seller of the new house is refusing to let me out of the deal. All he has to do is sign a thing called a Cancellation of Escrow and I’d get back my deposit. But he won’t. There’s no good reason—I guess he feels like he has a buyer (me) and he doesn’t want to have to go find another one. So I basically have two choices: go forward with the purchase of the house, or forfeit the thirty thousand dollars of earnest money I put down. Oh, there’s a third option. I could sue—which would cost me fifteen thousand dollars in legal fees. And if I lose the lawsuit, I still forfeit the thirty grand, or have to go forward with buying the house.
I am screwed every which way. And it’s all Jake’s fault. So I’m screaming at him.
“Are you insane?” At the top of my lungs. “Seriously? Are you that idiotic?”
“Nicki. Listen to me! Please?”
He’s pleading with me. I can hear it right there, tucked into an inflection deep in his voice, he’s pleading with me. It almost makes me calm down slightly—from an 11 on the Rage scale to a 9.5. I’ve never heard a tone of pleading in his voice before. He’s usually either large and in charge, or not talking at all. This sounds more like truly apologetic. I mean, for him.
“Please,” he repeats, this time softer. It’s enough to make me take a breath. “Please?”
“Okay, what.” I’m not relenting, I just want to hear him out.
“I need you to know that I’m working something out. And I hope when I work it out, you’ll understand. That’s what I hope.”
Why does he—right this very second—sound like the person I’ve been wanting him to be for the last eighteen months? Like the person he made it seem that he was in the very beginning, that I knew he could be all along: a reasonable guy who would sometimes go, “Yeah, you’re right,” instead of a narcissist who thinks every time I try to offer another point of view I’m trying to “teach” him something.
Just like my mother.
Why would he start sounding like that now? After there’s almost no way I can go back to Peaches—or Cody, or Ronnie, or Miguel, or anyone—with a straight face and say he made it all up to me and it’s okay now, we’re going ahead with our house, our relationship, our life together?
“I’m never taking you back,” I say, totally aware that I want this to be true more than I know this to be true. “I have to move into a house I don’t even want because of you.”
“I’m not asking you to take me back, Nicki.”
Remembering the house is all it takes to get me back in touch with my fury. Jake surely understands that you can’t just cancel an escrow, not once you’ve removed the contingencies. It makes me sick to think of how much my miscalculation-slash-delusion-slash-fantasy about Jake is going to cost me. “I’m hanging up.”
“Nicki, wait.” He sounds reasonable again. The way you would imagine Denzel Washington would sound if he was trying to convince you not to hang up.
“No,” I say flatly. I’m on the ropes now and I don’t like it. How did that happen? How come I feel like the unreasonable one now, the one who won’t listen, the one who needs to calm down? This is what I can’t deal with about Jake. It doesn’t matter what’s happening, I’m always off balance. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Okay, I won’t. But I want you to know that there is an explanation. And I want to give it to you eventually.” He adds for good measure, “I promise that I will. I swear, Nicki. I’m still in love with you.”
He says this with just enough certainty to make me want to hear him out. I’m thrust back into confusion—can I trust him, can I not trust him? An image of Dave Armstrong pops into my mind. He was my boyfriend freshman year of college—I dumped him for Gio—but the thing about Dave was, he was trustworthy. Not just I-won’t-cheat-on-you trustworthy. He was, like, globally trustworthy. He brought you soup when you were sick, listened to your tears, listened to your friend’s tears, and never put bros before hos. In fact, Dave had no bros of that type. Dave would take you home for Thanksgiving, remember your birthday, and bring you Peeps on Easter. You could trust Dave. He was there.
Unfortunately, I didn’t really want to have sex with him.
I consider this the cruelest trick nature (or is it nurture?) has ever played on me. That I’ve never wanted to have sex with a truly excellent guy. I’m not saying I’ve never had sex with a truly excellent guy. I have. But a truly excellent guy has never rocked my world. It’s like when it comes to men, I have two channels: ho-hum and sociopath. At first I thought Jake was a slightly more interesting and fashionable version of ho-hum. But underneath the flannel shirt and the aw-shucks demeanor, he turned out to be a slightly tamer version of sociopath. Which I should have known, because from the moment I met him, I really wanted to have sex with him.
Maybe I’m like the female version of those guys who only want to date strippers. They wish they could like nice girls they could bring home to Mom—and they do like those girls for friends—but when it comes to sex, only a girl named Pandora or Savannah will do.
I feel tragically stuck. How come other girls get to be dying to have sex with a guy who’ll come home every night for dinner? Who are these women? These New York Times wedding announcements–type women. And can they give me a stem-cell transplant? Because I feel utterly, totally, and completely screwed. No pun intended.
“Nicki? Nicki? Are you there?” I can hear Jake asking if I’m here—it feels good for a second to make him wonder. I want to say to him fuck you, buddy.
But I know the deal: to engage with Jake will only open the door to him again. Arguing with Jake is like eating potato chips—the moment you eat that first one, there is no possible way to stop. You just want to feel that crunch between your teeth and that impossibly flavorful vegetable fat and salt coat your mouth one more time. Even though you know it’s terrible for you. There’s s
omething sick about knowing a thing is bad for you and doing it anyway. When I argue with Jake, I just want to say one more thing, just one more thing, until three hours have passed and I feel sick and lonely and desperate. And I don’t want to do that now.
So I quietly hang up the phone without saying a word.
Let him wonder.
I just wish I wasn’t wondering, too.
16
* * *
RONNIE
“You have to push the button, I think,” Cody says. We’re sitting in Nicki’s very fancy car, getting ready for our first driving lesson. Trouble is, I haven’t driven a car in almost twenty years. Good thing Cody’s been paying attention. He points to a spot on the dashboard. “It’s right there by the steering wheel.”
I push the button, but nothing happens. “Nada.”
“No, you have to do the brake first,” he says, “then push the button. So you don’t accidentally start the car.”
“You mean like this?” I step on the brake then push the button in the dashboard and boom! The car comes to life. It’s a really nice purr, too. My daughter got herself a nice ride. “Nice.”
Nicki is out with her friend for the afternoon, and I have decided to take the liberty of teaching my grandson to drive.
“You’re really going to let me drive my mom’s car?”
“Of course I am,” I say. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because it’s really expensive.” I like that he’s an honest kid, basically telling me his mom would never approve. “My mom wouldn’t let me do this. She said she’s going to get me a really ghetto car and let me practice on that.”
“Well, that’s not a bad idea she’s got there.” I wave it off with my hand. “But it’s just a car, and you’re starting driving lessons now. With me.”
I roll out of the driveway and back to a stop. It’s one of those rare sunny days in mid-November, before the rain comes for its annual six-month visit. Driving toward Southeast Thirty-Seventh reminds me of Melissa and the first night I came up this street. That was a lifetime ago. Now that I’m thinking of her, I almost miss that girl. I really should give her a call.
“Okay, get out,” I say, opening my car door. “Your turn to drive.”
“Here?” Cody has a shit-eating grin on his face. This is probably the best day of his life.
“Yeah, here.” I’m already walking around the front of the car. I open Cody’s door and stand there. “C’mon. Get out.”
“Aren’t we supposed to go to the mall parking lot or something?”
“I believe in sink or swim, young man,” I say. “The old-fashioned way. You either got it, or you get it. In a hurry.”
Cody scrambles out of his seat, runs around the car, and settles into the driver’s seat. I push backward on my seat adjuster. At least I know where it is now.
“You know what to do,” I say. “You’ve been watching people do this your whole life. You’ve been playing those video games. You’ve been riding your bike. You’re just going to do what you already know how to do. But really, really carefully.” I smile, and he starts the car.
This is going to be fun.
He pulls away from the curb but guns it a little too hard. “Sorry,” he says, sheepish.
“No problem,” I say. “That type of thing happens at first. You don’t know your own power. Your car’s power.” I point toward the end of the block. “Just go down to that light and take a right. Start slow.”
He pushes down on the gas.
“Uht, uht, uht,” I say. “On a residential street like this one? You don’t really need much in the way of accelerating. Mostly, you’re gonna coast.”
“Got it.”
He pushes down on the gas again, makes it to the end of the block, and comes to a stop at the red light.
“Now you need to signal. Take that thing on your left there—”
He’s already got it.
“Good work, boy.”
“Can we listen to the radio?”
“Maybe once you’re going.” The light turns green and Cody takes a right, steering too hard and heading for the curb.
“Stop!”
He slams on the brakes, which lock up. We look at each other. He thinks he might be in trouble. “Shit.”
“You’ll get the hang of it,” I say.
“Whoa. Did I almost crash?”
“Naw, not really,” I say. “Just go forward.”
We start moving again. Cody’s got the car on a nice forward motion. When I’m sure he’s got the hang of it, I give him the next set of directions. “So when you get onto Thirty-Seventh, just go straight for a long way. Don’t think about any turns or lane changes or anything. Just get used to being behind the wheel, and being in the flow of traffic.”
“I got it.”
“You don’t need to turn hard. A little bit will do it. Then you just let go of the wheel and it’ll”—I mime steering with the heel of my hand—“go right back to where it’s supposed to go. You’ll see.”
We come to a red light. Cody hits the brake kind of hard. “Gentle, son.”
“The brakes happen so fast,” he says.
“You’ll get used to it. You’re doing great.”
The light turns green again. “It’s green, boy.”
Cody takes off nice and smooth. “Very nice!” I say. “You’re getting this.” He smiles, proud of himself. I flip on the radio. “You got any hip-hop?”
“I think it’s number four,” he says. “On the buttons.”
I push number four and it’s one of those fools talking about money on the floor or some shit like that. “This is a whole song about strip clubs?” I say. “In my day, there was romance. We had Teddy. And Luther.” Cody doesn’t say anything. “Don’t you want to know who Teddy is? And Luther?”
“Not really.”
I laugh out loud. Ha! Then I clap.
“Do you always have to clap when you laugh?” He’s deadpan, face as straight as a board, which makes me laugh even harder.
“We’ve been over this,” I say. “The answer is: yes, I do. When something’s funny, I laugh.” I clap, again. “And then I clap.”
Cody stares straight ahead. Then he takes a right turn, even though I told him not to.
* * *
I’m not supposed to associate with my old associates. But I don’t consider a brief visit “associating.” I consider it being in the old neighborhood and dropping in to say hello. Cody and I had to drive the car somewhere, so I figured, why not here? It’s almost like the car drove itself.
The Hi-Lite looks the same as ever. We walk in and there’s Mal behind the bar, pretty much right where I left him. “Good to know some things around here haven’t changed,” I say. Mal’s got more gray hair than he used to, but he’s still the same curmudgeon.
“Well, look who’s here. Ronnie Daniels! Hell musta froze over. I thought I’d never see this day.”
“Me neither, man.” We give a big half hug and a high five. “Me, neither. This is my grandson, Cody.”
“Nice to meet you, Cody,” he says. Then he looks me up and down, shaking his head. “Mm, mm, mmm. You just get out?”
“Little while now,” I say. “Seventeen long ones, man.”
“That’s some time.”
“It sure is.”
“You see DJ in there? I heard he was up there at Sheridan.”
“Yeah, man. We didn’t see each other but once or twice. They don’t like you having friends in there they didn’t introduce you to.”
“I know that’s right.” Mal’s really checking me out. “Can I get you something, Cody? A Coke? How about you, Ronnie?”
Cody shrugs and nods. Mal gets out a highball glass and presses the nozzle on the gun until it’s filled. He throws down a napkin and slides it across the bar toward Cody. Pro
bably his first real bar drink. Even though there’s no alcohol in it.
“Nothing for me, man. Maybe a soda water,” I say. “I don’t fux with alcohol. That shit ages you. And I like to look good.” I wink at Cody. I know he’ll like the proper use of the latest slang phrase fux with.
“Well you always did. And you still do.”
“Thank you.”
“And what about Beth? How’s she? You see her still?”
People out on the street still associate me with Beth. At one point in the early eighties, we were the golden couple of North Portland. She looked like a movie star—long legs, great smile, long, curly hair—and carried herself like the beauty pageant contestant she once was. One time we flew down to LA for the weekend; people couldn’t stop staring at her. One guy even asked for her autograph. Thing is, Beth was beautiful, but she was as down for the life as anybody I ever met, too. Maybe because she was from a small town in Eastern Oregon. Maybe because her dad couldn’t hold a job. Maybe because her mom ate too much. Who knows? But Beth couldn’t wait to turn a trick or do a line or run a game. She couldn’t wait to hustle some dumb businessman out of a few thousand. She couldn’t wait to get down with another girl. And all that made her perfect for me, because I couldn’t wait to do that shit, either.
But after Beth gave birth to Nicki things changed. I knew they wouldn’t be able to stay the way they were, because we were buck wild bats out of hell. But to be perfectly honest, I thought Beth would change into a good mother, and I would keep doing what I was doing. Instead, Beth took care of the baby, but her heart never really seemed in it. It seemed more like she was taking care of her baby because she was doing the right thing, not because she was done being buck wild. It always felt like she missed the life.
For a while, until I got my second conviction, she went back to it. We had this con where we would drive to a small town, and Beth would post up in a bar somewhere. We’d use her as the honeypot to attract a rich old rancher, always married. She’d take him to a nearby hotel room, sex his brains out, and once she hooked him, she would ask for a loan of fifteen thousand dollars for an emergency, or an investment, or her kid, or some other urgent situation. The detail would just depend on the mark’s weak spot. He’d give it to her, and she’d go back to servicing him with the best sex of the guy’s life, and when the appointed time came to return the money, we’d be gone. Presto! In and out of there in a week, and we’d walk away with a year’s rent.
Multiple Listings Page 17
