Edward Adrift e-2

by Craig Lancaster

  I do that, and she slides her hands farther up my thighs as she leans in again. This time I lean toward her, even though my ribs ache a little bit, and we kiss again.

  I can feel her tongue trying to get between my lips. I pull back and look at her.

  “Open your mouth,” she says. “Move your hands up.”

  Both of these things sound inadvisable to me—mouths, even freshly brushed mouths, are gross—but I do as I’m told.

  Sheila Renfro’s tongue goes into my mouth, and it’s the strangest thing, because I expect to be grossed out, but I’m not. I like it. She uses her tongue to touch mine, and then she pulls back again.

  “Use your tongue, Edward.”

  Again I do as I’m told, and my tongue and hers flop around inside our mouths. I move my hands from her hips and up her side. Through her plaid work shirt, I can feel her ribs. As I do this, her hands again move up my thigh, almost to where my legs meet my tallywhacker.

  Then she touches my hard tallywhacker through my pants. Holy shit!

  “Do you want to go to the bedroom?” she asks.

  “I want to keep kissing,” I say.

  She smiles at me, the biggest smile I’ve seen yet from her, and I realize that I’m smiling big, too. She leans into me and I meet her with my mouth open.

  This is so great.

  — • —

  After we’re done kissing, Sheila Renfro sits close to me and rests her left hand on my right knee.

  “When I put my hand on your knee,” she says, “you should put your arm around me and make me feel safe.”

  I lean to my left, and I feel the dull ache in my ribs. I lift my right arm and clip her under the chin.

  “Ouch.”

  “I’m sorry, Sheila Renfro.”

  “When are you going to call me just Sheila?”

  She holds her jaw between her thumb and first two fingers and moves it back and forth.

  “What about S-Money? You liked that.”

  “That was just for fun. I don’t like that one anymore, and it’s not warm and sexy to hear my full name.”

  “I’m sorry, Sheila Renfro.”

  “Edward, put your arm around me.”

  I set my arm where her back meets her neck.

  “Like this?”

  “Don’t hold it so stiff. Wrap me up and pull me in.”

  I do as she describes. It feels weird.

  “Like this?”

  She nestles her head into my shoulder.

  “Perfect.”

  Her hair smells like strawberries.

  “What do you know about sex, Edward?”

  I did not expect this question. Expectations are just a way to be disappointed with what you get anyway.

  “Just what I read,” I say.

  “Have you ever masturbated?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re awfully honest about it.”

  “I read ‘Dear Abby’ every day. ‘Dear Abby’ says that half of men practice self-satisfaction and the other half lie when they say don’t. I figure with those odds, why lie?”

  “Do you want to have sex with me?”

  This question is one I expected, given the direction of things.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “You keep saying that. Why?”

  “It makes me nervous.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “I didn’t say I was afraid. I said I was nervous. But, yes, I’m afraid, too.”

  “Why?”

  “What if I’m not good at it? What if I can’t do it? What if I have sex with you and I think it’s great, and then I have to go home? What if I miss it when I’m gone?”

  I hate what-if questions, because they almost never have answers.

  Sheila Renfro sits up, removing her head from my shoulder. She makes a half-turn on the couch and faces me.

  “You don’t have to go home. My daddy left a full shed of tools here when he died. You could have them. You could stay here. You could help me run this motel.”

  “I live in Billings, Montana,” I say. “Not here.”

  “Well, I live here,” she says.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Don’t you like me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t you like kissing me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I liked kissing you, too. We could kiss every day if you were here. We could have lunch and work on the motel and go have a beer at the tavern—”

  “It’s better that I don’t drink alcohol with my type two diabetes.”

  “The alcohol isn’t the point. We could be together. That’s what I mean. Don’t you want that?”

  “I live in Billings, Montana,” I say again.

  At that, Sheila Renfro stands up and walks away. I call after her, but she doesn’t turn around. She goes into her bedroom and closes the door.

  — • —

  I stay away from Sheila Renfro for the rest of the afternoon and stick to my room. I sat in her living room for sixty-eight minutes after she closed herself in her bedroom, but she never came out. So I left.

  I wish I could explain myself to Sheila Renfro. She is asking me to take a leap of faith, and I have a lifetime’s worth of experience that suggests a keen attention to the facts is the more advisable course. My house is in Billings, Montana. My job was there, and while Jay L. Lamb seems to believe that I can make it through the remainder of my days without working, I know I’ll need something else to do. Returning to the Billings Herald-Gleaner is not an option. But it’s a big city, and I will find something.

  I know where all the right turns are in Billings. My memories are there. My routines are there waiting for me to reestablish them.

  When I embarked on this trip, I thought that perhaps the road would hold some answers for me, but it doesn’t. It’s just a bunch of concrete and asphalt connecting one town to another. Seven hundred and twenty miles of it stand between me and home. Tomorrow, I think, it will be time for me to head that way. I hope I can make amends with Sheila Renfro before I do.

  TECHNICALLY TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2011

  It’s 3:18 and I’m awake. Again. This keeps happening to me. There was a time, one that seems long ago, when my hours were heavily regimented and I went to sleep at the same time every night, slept through until morning, and then woke up, usually at the same time. Those days are in my past, and if my present circumstances are any clue, they’re not likely to return. This, however, is conjecture, and conjecture is not for me. I prefer facts.

  I think this bed has something to do with it, too. As Sheila Renfro and I came back from Denver, I told her that the bed in room number four, where I’m staying, was too hard. She switched it out with the mattress from room number one, which she said was older and fluffier. She was correct about that. It’s too fluffy. I would rather have the first mattress back.

  But if I were forced to make a determination about why I’m distracted in these wee hours, I would have to say that it’s because of Sheila Renfro, who is asleep next to me on this bed and has her right arm flopped across my lap.

  How this came to be is an odd story.

  Given our protracted (I love the word “protracted”) silence, I was prepared to skip dinner at Sheila Renfro’s cottage and instead walk into Cheyenne Wells and find a restaurant. It seemed prudent to prepare for such an eventuality. The last I’d seen of Sheila Renfro, she had walked away from me and disregarded my pleas for her to stop and talk.

  As it turned out, she intercepted me in the lobby as I headed for dinner and said, “Edward, come on in and have some grilled cheese sandwiches with me. I’d like to talk with you.”

  I’ll concede that I was wary of talking with Sheila Renfro, but I do love grilled cheese sandwiches. It seemed that the risk-reward gamble of getting bawled out versus having something good to eat was worth taking.

  Sheila Renfro had no intention of bawling me out. Her voice was really quiet—not at all excited like it was when we were kissing
and touching on her couch. She asked me when I wanted to go to Denver to pick up my new car, and I told her tomorrow—now today—if she didn’t mind. She said that would be fine, that she needed to get some bulk supplies in Denver anyway.

  I decided that I should try to explain to her what I was feeling.

  “It isn’t that I don’t like you,” I began, and she cut me off.

  “I know, Edward. You don’t have to tell me. I thought you were the special man who would understand my specialness. But you’re not. It’s not your fault.”

  Those words hurt me more than I can describe, because I’m not good at describing anything. I think I do understand her specialness. It’s just that I don’t see where I fit here. I want to tell her these things, but I don’t. I hear Dr. Buckley’s voice in my head again, telling me that when two people see the same set of facts but disagree in their interpretation of them, one of the most destructive actions one can take is to attempt to convince someone of his or her errant view. Some facts have no room for interpretation, she once told me. The freezing point of water. The sum of two numbers. But when it comes to the human heart, variables always exist. I think Dr. Buckley was trying to tell me that a fact-loving brain can carry me only so far and that empathy would have to do the rest.

  I did not contradict Sheila Renfro. I ate my grilled cheese. Sheila Renfro ate hers.

  That’s when my mother called my bitchin’ iPhone. I asked Sheila Renfro if I could answer there in her kitchen, and she said I could.

  “Hello, Mother. I was going to call you in about an hour.”

  “I have a concert tonight, dear. I didn’t want to miss you. How are things in Cheyenne Wells?”

  “Great.”

  “Are they really?”

  My mother sounded skeptical, and she was not incorrect in her feeling. At that moment, things weren’t so great, but I thought it would only create more friction with my mother if I told her how difficult the situation with Sheila Renfro had become. I focused on something positive instead.

  “Yes, they really are. Today, Sheila Renfro and I practiced kissing—”

  “You practiced what?” my mother asked in a loud voice.

  Sheila Renfro stood up like she had a rocket in her badonkadonk, which is of course absurd, and she slapped my bitchin’ iPhone and knocked it from my ear.

  “Hey!” I yelled.

  “What are you doing?” Sheila Renfro said. “That’s between us. Nobody else.”

  “You hurt my bitchin’ iPhone and my ear! What the fucking fuck, Sheila Renfro?”

  Sheila Renfro began to cry. “Don’t cuss around me, Edward! Just get out of here. Go! I don’t want to see you until tomorrow morning.”

  Sheila Renfro ended up back in her bedroom. Again. And I ended up back here in room number four. Again. And my ear still kind of hurts.

  — • —

  At 8:57 p.m., I heard a loud thump, and then there were all these voices—all men, all loud—coming from the hallway.

  I pushed myself off the bed, walked to the door and opened it.

  Next door, outside room number six, stood a uniformed man in a cowboy hat. He carried a rifle, and he heard me open my door.

  He headed toward me.

  “Sir, get back in your room, please.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Back in your room, sir.”

  I closed the door fast.

  The loud voices continued for some time, an imprecise measure, but I was so spooked that I forgot to look at my watch. After that, it was a continual clomp of boots walking past my door in both directions. I pulled back the curtains that covered the exterior window of my room and saw the sheriff’s squad car. At 9:46, two uniformed officers walked out with the young man and young woman I’d checked into the motel earlier that day. The officers put them into different cars and then drove away. Other people, not in uniform, emerged in the parking lot carrying banker’s boxes and guns. Three more cars left the parking lot.

  Someone knocked on my door.

  I closed the curtain and made my way back across the room. I opened the door, and Sheila Renfro stood there in her nightgown.

  “I knew there was something about those two,” she said.

  “What happened?”

  She walked past me into the room. I closed the door.

  Sheila Renfro sat at the foot of my bed and invited me to sit down with her.

  “They were selling crank.”

  “What?”

  “Meth.”

  “Meth is bad. And illegal.”

  “Very, very bad. And totally illegal.”

  “Totally illegal” is redundant; something is illegal or it’s not, subject of course to the vagaries (I love the word “vagaries”) of the local ordinances. Meth is illegal everywhere.

  Sheila Renfro put her hand on her chest and fluttered it.

  “That’s a lot of excitement,” she said.

  I was flummoxed by that. I felt only fear, especially when the deputy sheriff was walking toward me with his gun.

  “Edward, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be able to take you to Denver in the morning. I mean, I know you want to go, but the cops are going to be in and out of here tomorrow, and I really need to stay.”

  “It’s OK.”

  “I can ask around town, see if anybody’s going to Denver tomorrow. Maybe we can find you a ride.”

  “No, I want to ride with you. I can wait.”

  Sheila Renfro reached for my hand, and I let her have it.

  “I was hoping you would,” she said. “I know you have to go home eventually. But it would be nice to have a little more time.”

  “Yes.”

  Sheila Renfro looked down at the floor. Her left foot was thumping up and down.

  “Can I ask a favor?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Can I stay here with you tonight?”

  “I—”

  “No kissing or funny business,” she said. “I just don’t want to be alone.”

  Her eyes, normally fixed and unblinking, were looking around the room with uncertainty. She looked scared, not excited, and that made sense to me.

  “OK, Sheila Renfro.”

  — • —

  She had no trouble falling asleep. We watched the late news, and then we subdivided the blankets so she would have hers and I would have mine. By 11:27 p.m., she was lightly snoring, a tendency I did not notice when she slept next to me at St. Joseph Hospital. I suppose I was preoccupied with my own problems then.

  At 12:14 a.m., she rolled toward me and set her arm across my lap, which was in her path because I continue to sleep—or try to, anyway—in a sitting position. She has violated our agreement to segregate (I love the word “segregate”) the bed, but I am not going to call a penalty. I’m going to let her sleep. One of us should.

  I keep looking down at her resting head. In my mind, I draw patterns by connecting the small freckles on her nose. I think about the R.E.M. song where Michael Stipe sings about secretly counting his lover’s eyelashes, and I wonder where Michael Stipe must have been sitting when he did that. I cannot count Sheila Renfro’s eyelashes from here.

  She stirs just a bit. I hold my breath. She falls back into slumber, and she grips me tighter across my hips.

  She looks peaceful.

  She is beautiful.

  OFFICIALLY TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2011

  From the logbook of Edward Stanton:

  Time I woke up today: 3:18 a.m. and then again at 8:37 a.m. Sheila Renfro was already up and gone, which did not surprise me. She has to wake up early to get this motel moving. I threw on yesterday’s clothes and hustled out to the lobby for breakfast. The deputy who walked toward me with a gun last night was there, eating a muffin.

  “How’s it going?” he said.

  “Fine. I’m sorry I left the room.”

  “No harm, no foul.” That’s a sports euphemism.

  High temperature for Monday, December 19, 2011, Day 353: 35 in Billings, a 1
5-degree drop from the high the day before. Might we finally be seeing some seasonable weather? Let’s see what the facts bear out.

  Low temperature for Monday, December 19, 2011: 18. That’s a 17-degree drop from the day before.

  Precipitation for Monday, December 19, 2011: 0.07 inches

  Precipitation for 2011: 19.48 inches

  New entries:

  Exercise for Monday, December 19, 2011: I took a long walk with Sheila Renfro during which she suggested that she struggles with an affliction similar to mine. She did not go into specifics, and I did not ask, because I don’t like people asking me what’s wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with me, and there’s nothing wrong with Sheila Renfro.

  Miles driven Monday, December 19, 2011: None.

  Total miles driven: Holding steady at 1,844.9.

  Gas usage Monday, December 19, 2011: None.

  Addendum: It’s strange how just the passage of a few hours can change things so profoundly. When I retired to my room last night, it was with the full expectation that I would be going to Denver today to pick up my new Cadillac DTS and begin the drive back to Billings, Montana. Now, because of the meth bust in Sheila Renfro’s motel, I am going to be staying at least another day. Sheila Renfro said she thinks we can leave tomorrow. To be honest, that makes me happy and sad at the same time. I’ve been gone from Billings, Montana, for more than a week, and that’s the longest I’ve ever been away as an adult. But I also want to enjoy my remaining time with Sheila Renfro.

  After I shower and change clothes, I see Sheila Renfro for the first time today. She is laundering bed linens. Ed Piewicz has checked out, she says, and of course the cops ended the stay of her other two guests. She says there are no reservations for today.

  “Do you want to take a walk?” she says.

  “Yes.”

  “Let me get this last load into the wash and we’ll go.”

  — • —

  Before we leave, Sheila Renfro checks in with the sheriff in room number six and makes sure he doesn’t need her. He asks her to bring him back a cup “of that good coffee from the Kwik Korner and not this instant swill you serve here.”

  This makes Sheila Renfro super-mad, as well she should be, I think.