“You serious?”
Kiki leaned forward, flashing her smile. Jonny introduced her. “He’s running for mayor of Red Vine.”
“How ambitious. What are you going to build for him, Jonny?”
Lenny grinned. “Tell her what you’re going to build.”
Jonny tore at the label of his bottle and sighed. “Okay. It’s a grain bin remodeled into a cabin. Windows, doors, plumbing.” Jonny could see it in his mind, the green door that symbolized farming, crops, the land. A tangled red vine, snaking around the windows, painted on the metal siding. “It’s just something we’re talking about.”
Kiki wanted to know what a grain bin was, then asked all about his idea for the round metal cottage. She and Lenny were way more excited about it than he was. He hadn’t forgotten about it. The idea came back to him while he was working on the roof or driving around town. There were more pressing problems, like his parents’ marriage and the rest of his life. Where would he get a grain bin anyway? How could he fix it up without any money? He thought about his sketches, his rush of enthusiasm. Both seemed childish now. He should just forget about it and get on with his divorce and whatever came after. He got up to get beers at the bar. When he got back Lenny was asking Frances about her studies in physics. Quarks, she said. Sub-atomic something-or-other.
It didn’t last long, like most topics with Frances. Jonny passed her a beer and she grabbed the bottle like she’d been scouring the desert for an oasis.
“Fanny,” Kiki said in a warning voice.
“I’m old enough. I’ll do what I want.” Frances tipped back the beer and took a long drink.
Kiki turned to Jonny. “Lenny tells me you played with that singer.”
“Audri, yeah. She’s good.”
Frances downed her beer in noisy gulps. The guitar player returned to his stool and picked up his instrument. He was a white guy with curly black hair that fell in his face like Frances. He began a solo set without Audri.
“Did you bring her back, Thunder?” Jonny asked Lenny.
“Audri? No. Walter, I guess. Hey, the Queen Bee asked me about her the other day. Maybe it was her.”
Frances belched loudly then declared, “Her name is Monica.”
They looked at Frances for a second, some of her hair tucked behind one rather large ear. Her face had a soft sheen of sweat like her bottle. She took a long swig from her beer. Frances’s cheeks were sunken and her eyebrows grew thick as small shrubs but things could be improved, if she cared enough. Jonny wondered why she was angry at her parents, why she hid behind that hair.
“No, her name is Audri. With an ‘i,’” Lenny said. “She—“
“Not her,” Frances said, a little slurry. She clapped Kiki suddenly on the shoulder, making her jump. “This one. Her name is Monica.” Frances was very loud. The musician finished his song. People turned to listen.
“That’s right, Fanny,” Kiki said quietly. “My sister couldn’t say it. She called me Kiki.”
“My name is Frances. And Frances wants another beer.”
“Frances is a little obsessed with the correct form of address,” Kiki said, pulling at the empty bottle in Frances’s hand.
“My name is Leonard. I’m not crazy about it. You can call me Lenny.” He talked to her carefully, as if she was four years old or about to explode.
“Or Thunder,” Jonny said. “Or Mister Mayor.”
“A beer, sir! Monsieur Walter!” Frances called, waving her bottle. The college kids around the bar stepped aside for the bartender to deliver a single PBR to their table. “Thank you, sir. Very kind.” Frances actually smiled.
“I think you’ve had enough.” Kiki reached for the new bottle, but not fast enough. Frances cackled and took a swig.
“How old are you, Frances?” Jonny asked.
She held the bottle aloft and cocked her head. “Twenty-two years, six months, and five days.”
“How many hours and minutes?”
Her eyes crossed in the effort. “Seven hours and—” She consulted a watch on a leather band on her wrist. “Forty-three minutes. No, thirty-seven. Yes, seven hours and thirty-seven minutes.”
She could still read time. She wasn’t that drunk. Her second beer was empty. Jonny stood up to get her chips or something. Frances was obviously a neophyte in the drinking game. As he reached the bar one of the college girls grabbed his arm.
“Hey, Jonny.” It was a blonde— well, one of them, smiling seductively. “It’s me. Alison.”
Before he could answer another blond, the short, chubbier one, stepped in front of him. “I loved that party last weekend. The accordion rocks!”
He mumbled his thanks and kept moving. Behind him he could hear Frances talking loudly. As he waited for Walter to pour a Coke he looked down the bar. At the end, away from the others, stood Isabel, back to the bar. Her head bobbed to the beat of the guitar but turned his way for a second. He nodded and she glanced back to the guitarist.
After delivering a Coke and a packet of beer nuts, Jonny stepped back from Kiki’s table. He wasn’t in the mood for the bar tonight. Tomorrow he would have to help set up for the Rose Rave, run errands for his mother for all the things she forgot, and there would be many, and run interference between her and Ozzie. Kiki had her arm around Frances’s shoulder, urging her to drink from the straw. But Frances had started talking and now she wouldn’t stop. She rambled on about the night she was born, the full moon that brought her bad luck and, she claimed, a power akin to certain witches. Born under a bad sign, she declared loudly. Kiki tried to calm her, to get her to shut up, or at least talk about something else.
Frances jumped up. “I want to dance. Let’s dance!”
Lenny took her outstretched arm, leading her to the dance floor where she writhed spasmodically for a few bars then collapsed, groaning, into a heap of arms and legs. Kiki rushed over, they pulled her up, and the two girls left the bar with arms draped over each other. After a moment of silence conversations began again around the Owl.
Jonny stood next to Lenny, watching them go. The door slammed behind them. Lenny nudged him. “A little bit of Monica all night long…” he sang. “You sly dog. You didn’t tell me about her.”
“Kiki? I just met her.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. You’re one fast mother.” Lenny looked up in time to receive a friendly hug from Audri. “Imagine seeing you here again. Should I take this as a compliment?”
“Probably not, mon ami.” She wore a low-cut white blouse of something stretchy, with fringe that swung as she turned to Jonny. “No squeeze box tonight?”
“Giving everybody a break.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Which one of you is going to buy me a drink?”
Lenny lurched toward the bar to order her something, remembering halfway there to ask her what she wanted. He disappeared into the college students. Audri and Jonny talked about the guitarist, a friend of hers from St. Paul. They were in a blues band called Monkey’s Uncle.
She only had time for a couple sips before it was time for her to go back onstage. Lenny sighed, watching her step back behind the microphone.
“Forget about it, Thunder. She and the drummer in Monkey’s Uncle are moving in together,” Jonny said. “Hey, what about you and Frances?”
“Christ on a crutch. Now, seriously, what about the metal mayor’s office?”
“You aren’t afraid of being called the Tin Man?”
“If I had a heart I would be.” Lenny squared off, looking him in the eyes. “I’m serious, man. When are you going to start? We don’t have forever. The election is November fourth. But I won’t take office until December.”
“I don’t have a grain bin, Len. I don’t know where I’d get one.”
“That’s the problem?”
“Along with four or five others. The first one is no money. Then, no time.”
“Time you got. You just have to quit working for your old man for free. Think, man. Outside the squeeze bo
x. Which old farmer will give you a grain bin?”
They discussed which farms around the county might be explored for derelict outbuildings. Jonny humored him. What harm was there in talking about it? Nothing seemed less likely to happen. They disagreed on the perfect spot for it downtown. Lenny wanted it front and center, on the green opposite the courthouse where everyone could watch its transformation. Jonny wanted to work on it in secret if possible. Inside a big barn would be ideal. It was academic. He didn’t have a grain bin, didn’t have money to buy one, or the materials to finish it off.
Jonny shook his head. “You’ve got a campaign to run. You’ve got enough going on without a harebrain idea like a metal office. And you’ve got to make your moves on Frances before she leaves town.”
“Ah. Double date with Kiki? I might do that just to smell her again. Kiki, I mean. I’ll take your word on the sniff test for Frances. But wait. I’d have to teach her how to dance. And talk.”
“And drink.”
“And comb her hair.”
They stood near the bar, listening to Audri. Jonny finished his beer and said goodbye. As he turned to the door someone touched his arm. Another over-sexed and bored stupid college girl, he thought. They were relentless. It was Isabel, holding a folded sheet of paper. Her short hair surprised him, again. How it framed her face.
“What’s this?”
She pushed it closer. “Just take it.”
Passing notes? Which of the girls was responsible for this? They were looking on, sly grins on their faces. Alison tossed her hair. “Love notes for Jonny. Mmmm.”
He checked that with Isabel. She didn’t seem like the love note type but who knew? “Or don’t. I don’t care.” But her arm was still out, note between her fingers.
“How about a message in a bottle, Izzie,” a girl chirped. “I’d be glad to sacrifice one of mine to the cause.”
“I like the look of that cause myself,” said another, laughing.
Jonny snatched the paper, crammed it in his pocket, and spun to leave. Giggling followed him. A high-pitched voice cackled: “You scared him off, weasel. Run, Forrest, run!”
——
Isabel turned to the swarm of students by the bar. The male students fit right in, all laughing, drinking beer from green bottles. To think she’d once tried to keep them out of here. The girls were on overdrive, teasing, flirting with anything and anybody— even scarecrow Walter and greasy Terry— as if there was a race and they were in training.
Alison caught her eye. “Smoke’s coming out your ears, Izzie. Smacked down by your new object of affection?”
“Take a chill pill,” Maddie shouted. “It’s Friday night.”
“Okay,” Isabel said. “Right after I call the cops and tell them you are all underage and drinking again.”
“Aw, don’t be like that,” Alison said, pouting. “Then we’ll get sent home and you’ll never finish your lovely bee study.”
“That would be a shame,” Kate teased.
“Two more fricking weeks?” somebody said.
“I got stung on my left ass cheek today,” Andrew said. “Now it matches my right one.”
“At least it missed your plumber’s crack.”
“If only we could.”
“You,” Isabel said, struggling to control her temper, “are a bunch of adolescent slackers who wouldn’t know how to finish a sentence, much less a college degree. I could do better with a bunch of chimpanzees.”
The bar went silent.
“Hey,” Terry said. “You calling us monkeys?”
Isabel took a deep breath. If they all got mad and quit she would be in big trouble. Several girls leered at her, others twisted their hair and looked sideways.
“Of course not. I’m just— Hey. Have a great time tonight. Just remember we’re working tomorrow.” Moans and protests. “Be at the bus at six-thirty. If you are on time and work hard, we’ll quit in time for that party next door. If not, well, there’re bees to count.”
Isabel walked double-speed back to the motel. It wasn’t far enough to really work off her anger but it helped. The air was thick with insects and pine. How did she get stuck babysitting these cretins? They didn’t care about science, or the environment, let alone the future of the feral bee. Why had she thought they would— or should? They were day-workers, temps. She was the one who cared. That was all that mattered. She would get this study finished, the data collected, and get out of this town that was making them all nuts.
As she rounded the last corner the cell phone in her pocket vibrated. That would be Professor Mendel, checking up on her organizational skills. Isabel had made the mistake a few days before of confessing her concerns about some of the field crew and gotten a lecture on people management for scientists. She should have listened. Soothing egos and motivating the troops were not her forte. She dug out the phone. Too dark to read. The ringing stopped.
She hated the damn cell phone. Her father had gotten her number and kept leaving cryptic messages about her grandfather. He was on oxygen, he had a fever, he came to and recognized his daughters for a second. She hadn’t returned any of her father’s calls. They’d all see each other soon enough.
The car was unmistakable, even in the gloom of the motel’s gravel parking lot. Red, sexy, classic, her father’s vintage Corvette stood out from the student cars, a princess among the paupers. But it wasn’t her father standing next to it.
“There you are!” Daria had her arms crossed, her tight jeans, satiny tank top, and high-heeled sandals an odd sight this far from the city. “Why don’t you answer the phone?”
“What are you doing here? Has something happened?”
“No. Still hanging by a thread, poor old goat.” Daria frowned at the rundown motel with its burnt-out bulbs, ladder propped to the roof, old screens in a heap. “What are you doing here?”
——
Jonny sat on the edge of his bed. His mother’s bedroom light shone from under the door but he hadn’t knocked. He listened for his sister and heard only the old house settling in for the night, creaks and pops as it sank into the prairie earth.
A strong urge flooded him, making his heart race. GET OUT while you can. He had to leave Red Vine, leave this house, leave his family— or— or he would drown. He would become one of them. He shook his head. He was one of them. That would never change. But he could be someone else too, someone who wasn’t afraid, who was smart and strong enough to be different, to take a solitary path if necessary, to see the world or at least a larger corner of it.
Oh, fuck it. Nothing was holding him back but his own stubborn refusal to move on. He would figure it out, piece by piece, step by step, until whatever was waiting smacked him in the face and said, Bubka, this is real.
As he slipped under the covers he remembered the note. Maybe it would make him feel a little better, that for some reason he was honey to a hive of bee-counting blondes.
He dug the paper out of his jeans. A drawing, a map. Isabel or someone had drawn a little map in blue ink, the highway north out of Red Vine, then west on Sycamore Road a couple miles then right on State 62, a crummy strip of blacktop last patched in the fifties. On the top of the note, about five miles out, sat a star with Anderson written in a tight, small hand.
He turned it over. Nothing.
A treasure hunt? A secret rendezvous? There was no date or time listed. He stared at it a few minutes, trying to remember the Anderson farm. He couldn’t place it. It was just one of dozens of small family places in the county. What was so special about it that she had to give it to him in the bar in front of all those girls? With that same look of contempt and boredom she always wore.
He flipped out the light. She was an odd one all right.
Chapter 12
Hattie, the ancient waitress at Sid’s Coffee and Pie on the town square, filled Jonny’s blue plastic go cup with coffee. Main Street was quiet. Birds in the trees chattered. Saturday morning at seven was not his usual roaming time. He hadn’t bee
n able to sleep. The restless burning in his legs, the thumping of his heart, that voice telling him to get out: hard to sleep through that.
The harsh glint of sunrise reflected in the rearview mirror as he turned onto Sycamore Road. He adjusted it and saw the white van behind him. No one else on the roads, unless you counted a tractor, turning over a field. Potatoes? Sugar beets? He’d never been able to identify crops on sight.
The van turned onto State 62 behind him. He glanced at the odometer and counted out two, three, four miles, slowing. Draping branches from a clump of trees in the ditch surrounded the Anderson’s lane. No farmhouse visible. No crops, no equipment. As he pointed the Fairlane down the hill the van roared by on the highway.
The incline was the bank of a dry creek followed by a rickety bridge, emerging in a field pocked with boulders and pothole ponds. The lane curved around rocks piled into a haphazard wall, then a barn came into view. Small outbuildings in various states of collapse emerged from high weeds. The house was a small, white one-story with a lopsided porch. The only vehicle in the yard was the hulk of a jalopy with a sunflower growing through the missing windshield.
Jonny turned off the car. Why had Isabel sent him here? Across the yard, beyond a wall of thistle and milkweed, stood an apple orchard. Someone was still taking care of it. Fat green apples hung from the branches. That would be why Isabel and company was here, counting bees, but what did that have to do with him?
He was getting ready to take a look around when the screen door of the house slammed. On the front steps stood a young man, thin, with blond hair disheveled like he just got up. He raised a hand to Jonny.
“Morning,” Jonny said, walking past the rusty auto body and— look at that— a flower garden, fenced and tended, blooming in purples and pinks and mixed with a tomato plant and a zucchini. “Mr. Anderson?”
The man winced. “That’s my dad. I’m Lowell.” He stuck out his hand.
Jonny introduced himself. “Weren’t you a year or two ahead of me?” He would never have recognized Lowell, who had aged dramatically. Good old farm livin’.
All Your Pretty Dreams Page 10
