“No, what?” He smiled down at her. He knew what his best date with her would be.
“A sports bar, a beer, and a hamburger,” she admitted. “So if it turns out you don’t like the guy, at least you get to watch the game.”
He laughed. “You just put yourself on every guy’s wish list.” Like she wasn’t there already.
“But I’m freezing,” she pointed out. “And I’m starving, and I want a hamburger. You going to take me to get it, or what?”
“I’m going to take you to get it. We’ll drop your car off at your place, how’s that, and I’ll take you in mine. That way you can have as much beer as you want with your hamburger. Unless you want to drive your new car some more,” he realized he should add.
“No,” she said. “I want you to drive. I want my beer. I think I deserve two beers, after all that car shopping.”
“I have to say thank you,” she said when they were sitting in Chez Maman—hamburgers, but bistro hamburgers, because he did have some standards. And she looked so pretty, he hadn’t wanted to take her to some dive. “Moving me was bad enough, but taking me used-car shopping on your Sunday? You’d probably have paid money not to spend your weekend like that. And I’m not even your sister.”
“No,” he said. “You’re not my sister.”
“And another thing,” she went on. “This is what I really want to say thanks for.” She picked up a french fry, dipped it in mustard, then held it in midair and wrinkled her brow a little. Alyssa could get more expressions out of one face than anyone he knew. “That you didn’t do it for me,” she finally said. “Thank you for that. I assumed that I’d be trailing along while you chose my car for me and told me to like it. That’s what I’d have done if Alec had gone with me. Rae would have been more tactful, but same difference.”
“It was your car, not mine,” he said, gratified that he’d got it right. She’d clearly been surprised when he’d suggested that she search ads for cars she might be interested in, contact the lots and let them know she’d be coming by, and he’d worried that she’d thought it was because he didn’t care enough to do it for her. “You know what you like, and I don’t. And anyway, things you get for yourself are better. Besides,” he said, and he had to smile at her now, “the look on their faces when I got out of the car, after they’d heard your sweet voice on the phone, when they’d been in there rubbing their hands thinking how easy it was going to be . . . that was worth the price of admission.”
“You think I have a sweet voice?”
He was lousy at compliments, he knew it, but he had to get better, because look at what had just happened. He’d said all that, and her takeaway had been that she had a sweet voice. He had to get better.
“You know you do,” he said. “You have a great voice. All lively and . . .” He shrugged. “Female,” he finished lamely, which wasn’t any progress at all.
“As opposed to a male voice,” she teased.
“Mmm.” He took a bite of burger.
“This was the first time I’ve ever ridden in your car, do you realize that?” she asked after taking her own bite. “You have a different car than I was thinking.”
“What did you think it would be?”
“Hmm.” She put her head on one side and considered. “A pickup truck,” she admitted, and laughed. “An old, battered one. Not one of those shiny new ones with the crew cab. Which is making me rethink your one-bedroom apartment with the white walls and the board-and-brick bookcases, too. I realize I have no idea at all where you live. Do you have hidden depths, Joe?”
“Maybe.” She was making him nervous now, so he shifted back to her. “How about you? What’s your dream car?”
“I don’t know. I never thought about it.”
“Really?”
“I don’t think women necessarily spend a lot of time dreaming about cars,” she explained. “At least I don’t. I might think about the house I want someday . . . All right, scratch that, I definitely think about the house I want someday, but cars? No.”
“Really. I always had a dream car, though it changed a lot over the years. And I can imagine yours pretty easily.”
“So what’s my dream car?” she asked, holding her messy burger in both hands, her head on one side again like a perky little robin, smiling happily at him.
He worked on his fries for a minute while he thought. “Porsche Boxster,” he decided at last. “Absolutely. That’s your car.”
“Is that a convertible?”
“Yeah. Red. A red Boxster.” He got an image of her coming downstairs with him today, out the door of that scruffy apartment building, expecting to get into that piece of junk with the shot transmission. Seeing a red Boxster with a big red bow around it waiting for her instead, just like in the TV commercials. A car to match her, just as hot, just as sleek, just as sexy, the curving lines of it asking you to run a hand over them, the dangerous promise of being able to go just as fast as you wanted, of taking every corner too sharply, of taking it all the way to the limit.
Yeah. That car. And then putting a hand in his pocket and handing her the keys, seeing the look on her face. He’d love to have done that. He’d love to have had the right to do that.
“Tomorrow’s the big day, huh?” he asked, deciding that he should probably change the subject. “Nervous?”
“Yes.” She took a sip of her beer. “Especially since you recommended me. I don’t want to let you down, or make you look bad to the board.”
“You won’t let me down. And besides,” he added practically, “nobody but Suzanne knows I recommended you. I asked her to keep it quiet. So no pressure.”
“Well, except from her, of course. But I like her, and I think I can learn a lot too. I’m sure going to try. I’m going to try hard.”
He was reminded once again that it couldn’t be easy to be Alyssa, to be the baby, never to be able to catch up.
“First days are never fun, though,” she admitted, setting down the burger and wiping her hands. “Are they?”
“Hmm. It’s been a while,” he admitted.
“That’s true,” she said. “Because you’ve been working with Alec for so long. You haven’t even had a boss, have you? Since . . . when?”
“Not really, not since Alec and I got that first idea, senior year. That was it. We never looked back. I don’t even know how we graduated.” He laughed a little, remembering. “We were breathing and eating DataQuest.”
“Can I ask—” She played with her fries, then abandoned them, looked up at him again. “Was it that you really liked it so much, what you were doing? Or was it more about being successful? I’ve always wondered what was wrong with me, that I’ve never worked as hard as Alec,” she said in a burst of confidence. “Or Gabe either, for that matter. I’m just not . . . I’m not driven like that. Or maybe I’m just lazy, I don’t know. What makes a person do that? What am I missing?”
He thought it over. He usually hated answering questions about himself, but Alyssa was different. If it would help her, he wanted to tell her. “I don’t think you’re missing anything,” he finally said. “I think some people just get lucky, find something they care about early, and keep caring. I wanted that diploma. I needed it. And I had no idea at the time that DataQuest would do so well, that it’d do anything at all, really. As far as I knew, it was just a cool idea, and we were making it happen, but it just . . .” He gestured helplessly. “Sucked me in. Took me over. I had to hold myself in my chair to get through the rest of what I was supposed to be doing. Especially this class on Ethics in Computer Science. I had to write three papers for that class, and that was a killer. I didn’t want to write about it, I wanted to do it. And I still do. I get into it, and I think it’s been a few minutes, and it’s been an hour. People say I work hard, but I don’t feel like I work hard. I feel like I work . . . easy.”
“So it wasn’t just trying to be successful? Wanting to make it?”
“Well, that too. That was part of it. I needed to get enoug
h so I knew that whatever happened, I’d be all right.” That he’d always have a place to sleep, a place of his own. That he’d never be hungry.
“But you give away a lot, too,” she said. “I’m guessing.”
“Believing that I’d be all right, that happened quite a few years ago. Time to, I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Give back.”
He could see the questions hovering on the tip of her tongue, see her searching his face. And he could see the moment when she decided not to ask them, because Alyssa’s own face was an open book. “I’d like to enjoy what I do as much as you do,” she said instead. “I’ve had jobs that were OK, but I’ve never had a job I loved.”
“It’ll happen. You just have to find something that matters enough. You’ve got the passion, you just have to . . . match it,” he finished lamely, wishing he were better at talking.
“Well, you know what they say,” she said more cheerfully. “Every wrong job is one more thing that you know you weren’t meant to do. I have a whole list of things I know I wasn’t meant to do, starting with McDonald’s and moving right along.”
“That’s right. I remember that that was your first job.” His second Kincaid Christmas, and Alyssa bicycling in to work almost every day, because she’d turned sixteen. She was about the only person he’d ever seen who looked good in that uniform. Especially the baseball cap. She’d sure looked cute in that baseball cap.
“Yep. Not the worst one, but sure not the best. The worst, actually,” she decided, twirling another French fry that Joe was pretty sure she wasn’t going to eat, “was the latest one, even though it paid the best. That was the only one where I’d wake up and dread going to work. How about you? What was your first job?”
“Stocking shelves at the Nellis Exchange. The Base Exchange. The store.”
“Grocery store?”
“Everything store. A BX has everything.”
“Did you get that through your dad? He was in the Air Force, right?”
“Sort of. Through a friend of his.”
It had been the year he’d turned sixteen, at the start of the summer after his sophomore year. He’d been living with Mr. Wilson for a few months, and his life had already got so much better, it was like a dream. No more bunk beds in rooms shared with budding psychopaths. Packing a lunch every day, a lunch that was enough, because he was allowed to get in the cupboards and the fridge, even to do his own food shopping. Having a ride to and from school instead of an hour-long trip on the bus, doing his homework at a desk in the quiet, secure space of his own room instead of trying to solve math equations on a jolting bus before he got back to the house and there was no way. Being able to put his few possessions into the drawers and start to believe that maybe, this time, they’d stay there a while.
And then it got even better, because Conrad came back.
Conrad had been his dad’s buddy, but Joe hadn’t seen him for a couple years, not since all the trouble had started. Conrad had been posted to Kadena in Okinawa, about as far away as you could get, and Joe had only found out he was back at Nellis when he’d run into him at the BX with Mr. Wilson, when they were doing the grocery shopping on Joe’s military dependent ID.
Catching up had taken more time than that, because it wasn’t something you could explain easily, not in the ice cream aisle. Not anytime, not if you were Joe.
Conrad had come by that evening and picked him up, taken him for pizza. Had watched him eat a whole pie, and then had looked steadily at him, not giving up until Joe had told him the truth. Just like his dad. Exactly like his dad.
“Why didn’t you get in touch?” Conrad demanded. “Why didn’t you let me know?”
Joe shrugged. “I didn’t know how.”
“Bullshit. You knew where I was. I told you to let me know if you needed anything. You knew I’d be there for you.”
“It was just that . . .” Joe looked down, not sure how to explain. “People say that.” Nobody else had meant it. Not his mom. Not any of the social workers. Not even his sister, though he didn’t blame her. She’d had to survive herself. She didn’t have anything left for him.
“Well, I’m here now,” Conrad said. “So let’s figure out what you need. You’ve got a place to live. That working out?”
Another shrug. “Yeah.”
“Say again?”
Joe heard the warning tone, straightened up fast. “Yes, sir.” He’d forgotten, and the shame of it was almost the worst.
“Look me in the eye and tell me,” Conrad said. “Tell me if that’s working out. If it isn’t, I’ll fix it. I promise you that.”
“Yes, sir,” Joe said. “It’s working out.”
“OK, then.” The older man nodded his short-cropped head in satisfaction. “Next things. Transportation, job. You don’t have either of those, right?”
“No, sir. I just turned sixteen, but it’s hard, without a way to get anywhere. I tried with the bus, but it was late, and I was late to the interview, and . . .” He trailed off again. Excuses. “No excuse,” he muttered, because that was the answer.
“What about your dad’s bike?” Conrad asked. “What happened to that? He told me in Kuwait that when he got home, he was going to teach you to ride it.”
Joe swallowed. “My mom has a boyfriend.” He’d managed to avoid mentioning Dean so far, because even saying his name was like drinking something corrosive.
Conrad’s face hardened. “He took your dad’s bike?”
“He wrecked it.” Joe felt his fists clenching, forced the emotion down. “He totaled it.” When it had happened, he’d wished so hard that Dean had died. He’d been young enough then to think that life worked that way. Now he knew better. Only good people died. Bad people lived, and the things they did never seemed to catch up with them.
Conrad nodded. He didn’t get all sympathetic, but Joe knew he understood how it had felt to see his dad’s Yamaha 800 that had been sitting in the garage, a memory and a promise, under Dean’s skinny butt, then gone entirely, and the knot loosened a little.
“OK, then,” Conrad said. “First step is, teach you to ride my bike, get you your license. Second step is find a bike for you. Third step is get you a job. You got anything going on the next few weeks, evenings and weekends?”
“No, sir.” He could hardly believe it. The past couple weeks, since summer vacation had started, all he’d had to do was help out Mr. Wilson with the house and the yard, study for the PSAT, and play basketball at the North Las Vegas Boys’ and Girls’ Club. It was all fine, but it wasn’t getting him anywhere. And he needed to get somewhere. “But I don’t—” He stopped.
“Don’t what?” Conrad prompted.
“I don’t have any money for a bike,” Joe admitted, feeling the flush rise. “I don’t even have any money for gas.” He had his dad’s leather jacket, because that had been in his closet, and Dean hadn’t been able to take it. But that was about all he had. A jacket, a military ID, and some memories. None of that would make the first payment on a bike.
“It’s going to be a loan,” Conrad said. “Believe me, you’ll be paying me back.” He smiled, the first time that evening. “I know where you live.”
And Conrad had come through. A month later, Joe had a bike, a Honda 400cc bought cheap from an airman being posted overseas, fixed up in the shop under Conrad’s guidance. And he had a job to ride to on it.
“Get your hair cut,” Conrad had instructed. “Short. Military-short. Wear a clean shirt, one with a collar. Clean jeans. Not clean enough. Clean. Take a shower. Be on time. Get there half an hour early if you have to, to make sure. Talk like you’d talk to me, like you’d have talked to your dad. Do all that and you’ll get the job, because I know Gary Roswell, and I’ve told him about you, and he’s ready to give you a chance. But keeping the job,” he warned, “that’s up to you.”
“Yes, sir,” Joe said, his feet itching to get out the door right then. He’d have a job. He’d have money.
But Conrad wasn’t done. “I knew your d
ad a long time,” he said. “He was a good man. I never knew him to do a cheap thing. I never saw him give less than his best. He’s gone, but you’re still here. You’ve got his name, and you can still know that you’d have made him proud. That’s something nobody can take away from you. But you make the wrong choices, you can throw that away. Don’t do it. Don’t let him down.”
“No, sir,” Joe said over the lump in his throat. “I won’t.”
“Was that the worst job you had?” Alyssa asked now, bringing him back. She was making circles around the rim of her empty glass with a finger. “Stocking shelves? That doesn’t sound too fun.”
“No, that one was OK. I did that for a couple years, till I went to college. That was fine. I never minded the physical ones that much, washing dishes or whatever, as long as the boss wasn’t too bad. Just happy to have the work.”
“Washing dishes? That was at more than our house, huh?”
“Yeah. I did lots of stuff, summers, during the school year too. High school, first few years of college. Washing dishes, busing tables at those Palo Alto restaurants. Working at 7-11. They like a big guy behind the counter, just in case.”
“Mmm,” she said, looking sleepy, or maybe just like a woman who’d had a couple beers after a tough day of used-car shopping. “They liked that you looked so tough.”
“Well, you know the good thing about looking tough. You know the secret of it.”
“No,” she said, and the sleepy look had changed to a dreamy smile that was kicking his pulse rate up a notch, “what’s the secret of it?”
“You look tough enough, you know you got the stuff to back it up, you almost never have to prove it.” He raised his beer in salute, then drained it.
“Can I ask you a question?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Why do you shave your head? I can tell you’re not bald. So why?”
“How can you tell I’m not bald?”
“Bald guys have . . .” She gestured with a finger at her own head. “That line, where they’re losing their hair. You don’t have it.”
Asking for Trouble (The Kincaids) Page 8
