Places to Stay the Night

by Ann Hood

  “What are you looking at?” she said. She stopped walking and waited for his answer.

  He couldn’t say, Your legs. That would be all wrong. “You’re wearing Keds,” he said. He smiled at her.

  “Ugh,” she said, and started walking again. “You have a tattoo.”

  “Yeah,” he said. He laughed. “I actually have a few. Stupid, huh?”

  Again she stopped walking. She faced him, hands on her hips. She had slender hips, small breasts under her navy blue and white cheerleading sweater. The sweater had a big H on it. And a husky that seemed to be running out of the H, right at you.

  “I think tattoos are disgusting,” she said.

  He wondered if the sweater was what made her eyes seem so blue.

  “They are,” he agreed. “I went through this weird time.” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  He was glad he was wearing one of the new T-shirts. It was pure white too.

  “Can I see it?” she asked him.

  “See it?”

  She pointed at his arm, where Yosemite Sam was poking out from under his sleeve.

  Her eyebrows were so pale, he could hardly make them out. She was a real blonde. A natural. Not like Jessica Tremont.

  “Sure,” he said. He lifted his sleeve and she lightly touched the tattoo, tracing the dark outline.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “Yosemite Sam.”

  “I don’t know who that is.” She looked up at him. “I know who you are, though. Jessica told me. She said you are wild. Bad news.”

  “I’m not.” He smiled at her. “I’m good news.”

  She started to walk again. She seemed to be deciding something. “You look a little bit like Matt Dillon,” she said. “Don’t let it go to your head, though.”

  “I won’t.”

  “We just moved here,” she said. “From Minnesota.”

  “Wow,” he said. “Minnesota.” He knew nothing about Minnesota, except where it was on the map. He thought about that, then said, “It must get pretty cold there.”

  She smiled at him, all shiny and silver. “Yes,” she said happily. “Very cold. There are places in Minnesota where you can die just from breathing the bitter cold air. It freezes your lungs. But we lived in Minneapolis.”

  “It’s okay to breathe in Minneapolis?”

  She laughed. “Yes.”

  They had stopped walking again. “I think you’re very pretty,” Troy said. He didn’t look at her when he said it.

  “My father would kill me if I went out with someone who had tattoos.”

  Troy nodded.

  “He would absolutely murder me.”

  Troy almost said, I didn’t ask you out. But he wanted to do this just right. “I could wear long sleeves,” he said.

  She looked past him, down the road, but didn’t say anything.

  “Would he kill you if you told me your name?”

  She glanced at him, then away again. He could see that she was smiling.

  “It’s Jenny. Anderson.”

  Jenny, he thought. What an absolutely perfect name. Jenny.

  “And I know you’re Troy.”

  He waited, considering before he said, “Would he kill you if I called you?”

  “Probably,” Jenny said. She searched inside her red-flowered backpack, then pulled out a pen. “Do you have any paper?”

  Troy shook his head. Then he extended his arm.

  Jenny hesitated, then wrote her phone number below his elbow, pressing hard on his skin.

  Tuesday night Renate drove to Dee-Dee Winthrop’s house. She told herself that she wanted a normal life for Millie, that going to Dee-Dee’s meeting was a way of doing that, even though it felt anything but normal. It was funny, she thought as she stopped the car in front of Dee-Dee’s white Cape with the black shutters and Hondas and Nissans crowded into the driveway, in a way returning to Holly was therapeutic for her too. A way to confront the old ghosts of teenage girls whispering about her in the girls’ room at school. She had returned, a hero’s widow, a member of a group.

  Renata had tried not to dress funny. She wore jeans and clogs and a paint-splattered T-shirt for authenticity—after all, she was an artist as well as a hero’s widow, wasn’t she?

  Giggling spilled out of the house and froze Renata before she got to the front door with the big brass W and a droopy yellow ribbon hanging on it. It was the same terror that used to strike her before she entered the smoky high school girls’ room or the locker room at the gym. She could already identify Dee-Dee’s voice above all the others. Like a burglar, Renata crept behind the hedges and flattened herself against the wall, creeping toward the window.

  Renata could just see into the living room, all colonial furniture in autumn colors, studio portraits of children on one wall.

  “I can’t believe she was married to a soldier,” another voice was saying. It was a voice, that was both familiar and strange to Renata.

  “I can’t believe she was married to anyone,” someone else said.

  And then yet another voice said, “Remember that time she did her oral report on astrology? She said she could read the stars?”

  Everyone started laughing again.

  “Sure,” Dee-Dee said. “She got up there and started talking about her moon being in Sagittarius …”

  Renata stepped out of her hiding place, crushing chrysanthemums and asters. She walked across Dee-Dee Winthrop’s front lawn and back to her car. She didn’t know if they saw her and she didn’t care.

  When she got home, Millie was sitting in the yard, staring up at the night sky.

  “Back already?” she said.

  Renata sat down beside her. “I didn’t go,” she said. “I never liked those girls in school and I don’t like them now.”

  “There are more stars here,” Millie said.

  “Not more,” Renata said. “You can just see them better here. The lights in the city dim them.”

  “Oh,” Millie said.

  And the two of them sat there for a while more, watching the stars, not talking.

  Troy stopped calling Nadine. He could not even believe that he had wasted so much time with her. Lately he felt that he’d spent the last few years in a fog that was starting, finally, to lift. He imagined that he was like this guy he saw in a movie once, who was wrapped up like a mummy for ages, then slowly had all the bandages removed and saw the world differently than he used to.

  It was not easy to explain this to anyone. Especially not Nadine. At home, the phone would ring and ring and when someone finally answered she’d hang up. She called all night, until his father took the phone off the hook. Troy knew she was following him, even though he never actually saw her. He felt her, those crazy eyes of hers on him, watching.

  The first week of school he called Jenny Anderson every evening after dinner. They talked for hours, until her father yelled for her to hang up already. The second week he started to sit with her at lunch, and wait for her after cheerleading practice, then walk with her almost all the way to her house.

  On the afternoon that he heard Jessica Tremont call to her, “Be careful” as soon as he appeared, Troy decided he would ask her out. Fuck Jessica Tremont, he thought.

  “What did Jessica say about me?” he asked Jenny.

  She hesitated. “She said I shouldn’t be talking to you. She said you had dropped out of school and lived with some drug addict or something.”

  That afternoon, the cheerleaders had made their pom-poms out of blue and white paper, shredding it and gluing it together. Jenny held hers gently in her arms. Without saying anything, Troy took her backpack from her.

  “I think you’re nice,” Jenny said. She leaned against a stone wall on the corner where they usually parted.

  “I like you so much,” Troy said softly. “I even dream about you.” He had been having dreams about her. But they were not the kind of dreams you told a girl you had.

  “You do?” she said.

  “Practi
cally every night.”

  “I don’t really care what Jessica says about you.”

  “I did date a girl for a while,” Troy said. “But she wasn’t a drug addict.”

  Somehow this information seemed to be a relief to Jenny. She stepped closer to him. He could smell her perfume. It was light and flowery.

  “So then do you think maybe I could take you out Saturday night?” he said.

  She swallowed hard. “Yes.”

  He touched her chin with his fingertips, very lightly. “Yes?” he said. “Really?”

  She nodded.

  “Great.” He removed his hand and he thought that maybe she even looked a tiny bit disappointed. Like maybe she thought he was going to kiss her.

  “Great,” he said again.

  Troy wanted everything perfect. He washed his car. He ironed his shirt. He went right up to her front door and rang the doorbell. He shook Mr. Anderson’s hand and said they had a lovely home. It wasn’t really so lovely but when he said that Mrs. Anderson smiled. He stood when Jenny walked in the room. He promised to have her home by eleven thirty.

  Jenny had on that flowery perfume and baggy jeans with a white blouse. He could see the outline of her bra underneath, a tiny rosebud nestled in the center. He made himself look away.

  They went to the movies in Pittsfield and then to Elizabeth’s for pizza.

  He told her, “I’m crazy about you.”

  She blushed and said, “Me too.”

  When they left the restaurant he held her hand. She had short nails with clear polish on them and a gold ring with a heart in the middle. She was so perfect.

  He didn’t take her to the quarry. He drove her straight home. In front of her house he kept the radio on real low. For a while they just sat there.

  “I like this song,” Jenny said.

  He didn’t even know what it was but he said, “Me too.”

  “Now when it comes on I’ll think about you,” she said.

  He leaned over, close to her. “Can I kiss you?” he whispered.

  She tasted like fruit, like berries and oranges.

  Her voice was nervous when she spoke. “Wilson Phillips,” she said. “The group that’s singing. Wilson Phillips. Their parents were all famous in the sixties. The Beach Boys and the Mamas and the Papas.”

  He kissed her again. He wanted to really kiss her, to put his tongue inside her mouth, to press her close to him. But he didn’t. He just kissed her again, then shut the ignition off. He walked her to the door where they stood holding hands for a while. Her parents had left the outside light on for her and he felt conspicuous standing there under it. So he leaned over and kissed her again, on the cheek this time, then watched as she opened the door.

  Before she went inside she turned toward him.

  “Will you call me tomorrow?” she said. She looked like a little girl.

  He nodded.

  When she smiled at him, her braces flashed, all silver and shiny in the light. He stood there for a moment longer. He wished his mother could see him now. She wouldn’t believe it.

  “I know,” Dana said to the boy with the dimples. “Pineapple, black olives, and Canadian bacon.”

  He smiled, showed her those dimples again. “Right,” he said.

  “Ten minutes,” she told him, but he didn’t leave the counter.

  “What’s the weirdest order you ever got?”

  He had on that gray T-shirt again. The one that said WILLIAMS in purple across his chest.

  She smiled back at him. “Pineapple,” she said. “Black olives—”

  “And Canadian bacon,” he finished.

  “Pretty disgusting,” she said. She had started to sweat. She hoped he wouldn’t notice.

  He scanned the list of one hundred toppings. “More disgusting than tofu and goat cheese? Or cherry and jalapeno?”

  Dana leaned toward him. She could feel the sharp edge of the counter digging into her hip. “My idea of a pizza is pepperoni and mushroom from Elizabeth’s. Or their sausage and pepper.” She spoke in a low voice. “That’s pizza.”

  “Where’s Elizabeth’s?” he asked her.

  “Pittsfield.” For a crazy minute Dana almost thought he was going to ask her if she wanted to go there. With him.

  But then a tall girl with straight blond hair appeared. A girl who looked as if she played field hockey, who knew Mozart from Bach, who went to college.

  “Do you think I could order here?” the girl said to Dana. “A small pineapple, black olives, and Canadian bacon.”

  Dana felt the boy’s eyes on her face. But she didn’t meet them with hers. Instead, she repeated the girl’s order.

  The girl was saying, “Hi, Billy. Did you already finish reading Hamlet?”

  “Not yet,” the boy with the dimples said. “I’m still working on that paper for Matthews’ class.”

  Billy, Dana thought. What a dumb name.

  “Ten minutes,” she said. Then she put the girl’s order all the way at the end of the row.

  “Did you know that in this area alone there are over twenty-five different kinds of apples?” Caitlin said.

  “That’s fascinating,” Kevin said. “Isn’t that fascinating?”

  He looked back at Dana and Mike in the rearview mirror.

  “Fascinating,” Mike said.

  They took a curve too fast.

  “Whoa,” Mike said. “An SOB.”

  Dana focused on the darkness outside the window. She tried to make out animals in the woods. Just a few years ago they had been able to see deer on this road. Once, her father even saw a bear.

  “We should go to a movie or something,” Caitlin was saying. “Wouldn’t you like to see a movie, Dana?”

  “Six bucks,” Kevin said, “when you can see it free on HBO in like a month.”

  “You can’t see it on HBO in a month,” Caitlin said.

  “Whatever.”

  Mike pressed his lips against Dana’s ear. “Why so quiet?” he whispered.

  She couldn’t think of a good reason, so she said, “Once my father saw a bear on this road.”

  Mike squeezed her close to him. “Are you afraid of bears?”

  Dana tried to pull herself free. But he was too strong. All that wrestling training.

  They finally reached the quarry, and Dana was the first one out of the car. She shivered, feeling the beginning of autumn in the cool air.

  “Frat boys,” Kevin said, pointing.

  There, on a rock, were four guys, in WILLIAMS sweatshirts, drinking beer and singing songs. One of them had a guitar. And Dana could tell by the size and color of their beer bottles that it was imported beer, Beck’s or Saint Pauli Girl. Beer from a country where people spoke a different language.

  Caitlin nudged Dana in the ribs, her elbow sharp.

  “Isn’t that your boyfriend?” she whispered. “With the guitar?”

  Dana nodded. She imagined that he could see her too, that he recognized her, and she felt suddenly embarrassed to be here with Mike, clutching a six-pack and a ratty old blanket. She was afraid he could see right through her, that he knew exactly why she was here, and what she was feeling. Dana bent her head and walked away quickly, her sneakers slipping in the moist dirt.

  Behind her, Mike was laughing. “Yeah,” he said, “she can hardly wait to get her hands on me.”

  Dana bit hard on her bottom lip, hoping that boy, Billy, couldn’t hear. Mike ran to her and caught her arm too hard, sending them both tumbling to the ground. She smelled the beer on his breath. In the distance she heard the other boys singing some kind of folk song, by Simon and Garfunkel or someone like them.

  Mike was kissing her, big wet kisses that left her feeling dirty. Already she could feel him, hard, pressing against her.

  “I have my period,” she lied.

  “I don’t care,” he said.

  That song was one her mother liked.

  “Well, I care,” she told him.

  It was something about being a rock.
/>   “Please,” he said. He unzipped his pants, took her hand in his and wrapped it around his penis.

  About being all alone.

  Dana squeezed her eyes shut and moved her hand up the length of Mike’s penis. She felt his body shift, heard him exhale hard. Zap, she thought, and she was on that rock with Billy. She was on that rock sipping imported beer. And she knew all the words to the songs he was playing.

  Carl told Libby that originally he saw her as feature film material. “But you said ‘Housewife,’” she reminded him.

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “But feature film wife slash mother. Think Jo Beth Williams.”

  Libby struggled to conjure the face of Jo Beth Williams. She couldn’t.

  “But,” Carl said, “I was wrong. Forget Jo Beth Williams.”

  Despite herself, Libby started to feel excited. He was wrong. She wasn’t housewife material after all. She had made a point of dressing up for every class. Not that she imitated Heather and Ashley, but she took a cue from them. They showed up in their short black outfits, all long legs and blond hair and Carl always gave them interesting roles to read. Libby didn’t get angry when those two got to do a scene from A Streetcar Named Desire, or when he cast Ashley as Laura in The Glass Menagerie and she was stuck being the mother. Instead, she tried harder to look sexy. Last week she had worn tube tops from breasts to thighs, just those bright bands of color. Now here was Carl changing his mind about what she could become.

  “Commercials,” he said. “A housewife on commercials.”

  “Commercials,” she repeated.

  “You don’t have that big-screen presence.”

  Libby looked down at her feet. They were killing her from standing at Von’s all day and then being pushed into the stiletto heels she had on.

  “There’s a lot of money to be made in commercials,” Carl told her. He did not sound unkind.

  Libby took a breath. In high school she had played the second lead in Fiddler on the Roof. Tzeitel, the oldest daughter. Everyone told her she stole the show.

  “I have, stage experience,” she said, trying to sound bright and determined. “Perhaps I should try theater.” Then she added, “Again.”

  Carl handed her a card. “Be at this address at ten o’clock tomorrow. They’re auditioning women for a floor wax commercial.”