A Room on Lorelei Street

  Opal’s brows come together. “Does it matter?”

  The something is there again, floating between them, and Zoe looks down. She picks at the ivy print of her comforter. “I think I know what you meant,” she says.

  “Meant?”

  “What you said the other day about fate. All those things pushing up against each other so it can’t happen any other way.”

  “Hmm,” Opal says.

  “I felt that today. That’s all. So maybe I do believe in fate. Today was meant to happen. I could feel it in my bones. Do you ever feel that way?”

  “All the time, dear. My bones are always speaking to me.” She sighs and tucks a stray corkscrew into her turban, looking past Zoe. Creases appear at her eyes and their focus drifts to another world.

  Zoe watches Opal’s distant concentration and wonders what dreamy thought is passing. Is she flipping through all the moments that have pushed away the past? Is the ache in her short, broken leg pushed aside by the life she has created? Are all those cheerful breezy moments her corner of control, the way the room is for Zoe?

  But then just as quickly as the dreamy mood came, it goes and Opal’s eyes sparkle again with focus. Control. She claps her hands. “And my bones are speaking to me now! I have to go—the Count and I have a date on the roof! We’re sleeping there tonight. A meteor shower at two, and we won’t miss it! You’re welcome to join us! Bring a blanket. Just take the attic stairs to the lookout.”

  “Thanks. But, no. I’m having friends over tonight. We’ll just be looking at these stars.” She glances at the ceiling.

  “Oh,” Opal drawls. “Good enough. Come along, Basil,” she says and glides out of the room like a billowy cloud with the Count close behind, his stubby rear end wagging. The door closes out the hallway light once again, and her candlelight circle flickers back into its place on her ceiling.

  A dog who likes stargazing, Zoe thinks. Who would have thought?

  Thirty-Two

  Carly fills the length of the window seat. Monica lies on the bed, bouncing her crossed leg to the beat of “La Bamba” on the jukebox. Reid leans back in the only chair with his feet propped against the bedpost. The room is full in a way Zoe tries to memorize, like a photograph.

  It has never been this way. Before the air was always stretched thin, taut, ready to snap. Not from them, but her. Mama might walk in. Would walk in. Talking too loud. Dressed in too little. Hugging too closely. Swaying too much. Too much of everything so Zoe was ready to jump. Explain. Defend. Make sense of Mama. Because she had to. She was still her mama. And she was beautiful. She was gentle. She was more. Once.

  But Mama is not coming in. Won’t be coming in. Ever. Their relaxation is hers, too. She catches it as it ripples through the room. Tries it out, even breaths, moments that are free of time, clock-watching, and door-watching. It is new, and doesn’t quite fit her yet.

  She throws her legs over the side of the bed and grabs another Dr Pepper from the refrigerator. “Who was Jorge’s hot date?” she asks.

  “Melanie Hobson,” Monica answers.

  “He ditched us for her?” Reid asks.

  Carly sits up. “He’s got a freakin’ date on a Friday night, doesn’t he?” Carly says. “That’s how it’s supposed to work, in case you forgot, and it’s more than you can say for any of us.”

  Zoe clears her throat and spreads her royal robe out from her shoulders for another full view. “Excuse me? Are you not out at a friend’s very own apartment? A friend who not only won all her tennis matches and is the official Queen of the Courts, but also talked herself out of a speeding ticket today?”

  “You what?”

  Zoe savors the pitch of Carly’s voice. The disbelief. She takes in the way Reid’s feet drop to the floor and he leans forward. She loves Monica’s attentive twist of her head. And maybe…maybe she loves the way she can tell them the whole story and no one will interrupt. No sudden appearances and rushed excuses will take her moment away.

  “That’s right. Learn from a pro.” She tells the story. No one interrupts. Except when she tells about taking her shirt off. Reid makes her tell that part again.

  “No way!” he says. But he believes her. She knows. It is Reid playing to her, center stage. Letting her build and make the most of a moment that could have been lost. She is grateful to him for it. She loves him like a brother, and for an instant she wishes Carlos weren’t coming. Not for her sake, but for Reid’s.

  “I bow to the queen,” Carly says, getting up. “If I had known that all it took was to go shirtless for those troopers, I would have saved myself a hundred and fifty bucks.”

  “Three hundred,” Reid corrects. “You’ve had two tickets, but I don’t think you’ve got three hundred worth of anything under your shirt.”

  Carly throws a small purple pillow across the room at him but misses and hits the bulldog instead.

  “Wasn’t the shirt anyway,” Monica says. “They just didn’t want a hundred pounds of mouth in their jail.”

  “Thanks, Monica,” Zoe says. “A hundred and eighteen actually.”

  Monica shrugs. “There you go.”

  “Well, I’m taking my fat mouth out for a smoke. Wanna come?” Zoe grabs her cigarettes and lighter from her purse and goes out to the porch. Opal never said she couldn’t smoke in the house, but it is her choice. She doesn’t want the stale smell of smoke clinging to her walls like it does—What should she call that other place now? It’s not home anymore, but it hasn’t been a home for years. The other place. She won’t have her room smelling like that. No oily, smoke-stained walls. No heavy dreariness to cover her indigo ceiling and stars.

  Maybe if Mama had stars…

  She shoves down the hope like a threadbare rag to the bottom of the trash where useless things belong. Only Reid joins her on the porch. They share a cigarette.

  “Where’s the landlady?”

  “Shhh. Up on the roof.”

  Reid leans out from the railing, trying to get a look. “She spend a lot of time up there?”

  “Just when I have company like you.”

  He ruffles her hair. “What does she do—for money?”

  “Social Security, I guess. She’s old. And there’s me. My rent helps her make ends meet she says. She grows things, too. See over there—the garden? Some of it’s mine, too. She gave me a plot of ground. I actually planted rutabagas. Can you believe that?”

  “You’ll be here that long?”

  Zoe runs her hand along the railing, searching for a grain or two of dust that needs to be brushed away. “Opal gave me the seeds and told me what to do. It’s not hard, really.”

  “My cousin Cord moved out for two weeks. That was all he could handle. Expenses were too much. It’s always more than you think. He couldn’t—”

  “They’re really turnips, you know. A type of one anyway. That’s what Opal says. Murray serves turnips.” Smoke curls from the tip of her cigarette. Into the air. A foot. Maybe two. And then gone. But the line continues to be replaced by another line and another. She pulls it to her lips, inhales, and then breathes out the smoke in a fast, shapeless gust. “I never had turnips before. Not until I started working at Murray’s. They’re good with butter and brown sugar. Really. You had ’em? I bet the rutabagas will be even better. At least that’s what Opal says.”

  “But how are you going to make it that long, Zoe? Can you swing it just waiting tab—”

  “I’ll have to put brown sugar and butter on my shopping list.” She turns and narrows her eyes at Reid. She stretches the moment, hoping he grasps what she cannot say. “I have one of those now. A shopping list. Did I tell you? Who would’ve guessed?” She takes a last puff of her cigarette and stoops to mash the stub in the ashtray she has placed on the porch. She stands and reaches for the door. “C’mon. Let’s go in before Carly and Monica eat all the cookies.”

  He grabs her arm. Holds the door shut. Holds her still against the railing. “Zoe,” is all he whispers.

  What does h
e want from her? She can’t give it. “I’m okay, Reid. Give the drama a rest. There’s cookies waiting. Chocolate.”

  He doesn’t move toward the door. She knows it’s more. Not just the room, the knowing or the not, the rutabagas, the rent. It’s the needing but not getting, the skimming, the hurry, the take with no give. She has no give for him. What does she have? Only rutabagas. Will it keep him to her?

  Keep him in that friend way, not best friend or boyfriend, but friend something, someone who is there. Someone who connects her like a dot to this world.

  The possibility of a dirty yellow root is all she has.

  “And if you’re nice, I’ll share my rutabagas with you, too.”

  The ghost flits between them. The shadowy, shameful one she wishes she could take back like an inhaled breath that never was. He twirls his finger. “Yippee,” he says. And he is giving again, Reid again, Carly’s little brother, opening the door, plopping in the chair, and reaching for a bag of chocolate cookies.

  Cookies, chips, and chopped-up conversations get her through again.

  Carlos arrives an hour later. By now, only two taquitos, three cookies, four sodas, a dusting of chips, and three beers courtesy of Monica’s older brother are left. No introductions are made. They remember him from Yolanda’s party. But a glance from Reid, an odd exchange of glances, and timing that is off tell her she should have prepared Reid in some way. Shit. It’s not like I’ve been the only one. Get over it. But then she knows the odd exchange has settled over Carly. She shifts on the window seat, her hand comes up to her mouth, gently, hovering and then back to her thigh. “We gotta go. It’s late,” Carly says. “I work early shift at the cleaner’s tomorrow.” They gather up to leave like the bell has rung at school. Only Monica winks and offers a secretive thumbs-up as she leaves.

  “Get out of here,” Zoe whispers to her.

  Carly kisses her cheek. Her expression is serious. “Call me,” she says.

  “I will.” But she doesn’t want to explain she has no phone, only Opal’s for emergencies.

  “Bye, Reid,” Zoe calls from the landing. He is already an indistinct lump being sucked up by the darkness at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Yeah,” he answers.

  Thirty-Three

  “Sorry,” he says.

  “I’m late,” he says.

  “I didn’t mean to break things up,” he says.

  But she can hardly focus on the meaning of his words.

  He’s here.

  And she doesn’t even know why it should matter so much.

  “There’s two taquitos left. Better grab one while you can.”

  “You closing up?”

  “It’s late.”

  “Too late?”

  They stand awkwardly in the middle of the room. Practically strangers. No table to touch. No pillow to hold. Awkward arms. Legs. No way to cover them. Pretend. Hide. But she remembers the dance. The time they shared at Yolanda’s. The time that seemed so right. She reaches for a taquito. Dips it in salsa. Thrusts it out to him. “No. Not too late. It’s only”—she glances over to the ticking panther—“midnight. Too late for you?”

  He takes the taquito. “No,” he says. She gets him a Corona from the refrigerator and takes another Dr Pepper for herself. She doesn’t want another soda, but she wants something for her hands. Something to sip in case she forgets how to talk. For the first time she notices the lack of seating in her room. One chair, and the bed. The window seat is so far from the chair, it would be awkward. All these things matter. She sits on the bed and motions to the chair. “Sit,” she says. He does.

  “So this is your place?”

  “No. I just rent it out on Friday nights.”

  He laughs. “Yeah. Stupid question.” He looks around. “Nice,” he adds.

  “Works for me.”

  He sips his beer. She sips her Dr Pepper. Her fingers busy with droplets. Wiping. He should go, she thinks. It is late. The bargain-bin candle burns low. The circle of ceiling light will be gone in another twenty minutes, she guesses. She hates the void. Where does it come from? She has never lacked something to say around a boy before. Her hundred and eighteen pounds of mouth have always been adequate. She jumps up from the bed and grabs his free hand. “Come on. I have a garden. Let’s go for a walk.” She has released his hand before they even go out the door, but the touch lingers. The clammy warmth. The calluses, knuckles, angles. The largeness of his grip. A two-second exchange becomes a kaleidoscope of memory and want.

  “A garden?”

  It stops her. A garden. Yes. She has a garden. Bare dirt right now. Furrowed lines. You would never guess. But it will be something. In a few months. Rutabagas.

  “Nice dirt,” he says as they stop and stare at her small plot.

  Nice dirt. She loves that. She knows it is humor, maybe gentle sarcasm, but it doesn’t matter. It is shared. And his voice is true like he knows it matters. “It’ll be more,” she says. “It just takes time. New to me, too. I’ve never grown anything in my life. Never wanted to. But now that I have it…” She shrugs. “I check it every day.”

  “Trying to hurry it up?”

  “Not exactly. More like curiosity, wondering if I really can make something grow.”

  His arm brushes close to hers. She wants to touch him. Feel him. “Carlos,” she says. And with his attention fully hers, she reaches up and pulls his face to hers. Opens her mouth, feels his tongue. His lips molding to her own. She memorizes the touch of his fingers on her throat. The burning. The pulling closer. And then his pulling away and taking a deep, startled breath. She pulls him back again and feels his mouth melt into hers, his hands at the small of her back, until they both have to step back for a breath.

  He points through the trees to the black hole that leads through the elms. “What’s that way?”

  He leads her deeper than she wants to go. Deep as she needs to go. To that place of deeper that never comes. That place she wants. The kaleidoscope turns. Splinters of color, light, darkness, and memory fracture their walk.

  I thought you loved me.

  You said.

  I’ll call you. Sure.

  It means nothing.

  Nothing.

  They go deeper into the darkness of the canopy, farther, beyond the elms. To the place the season has changed. Where a carpet of fallen leaves rustles beneath their feet. Where stars can be seen through naked branches.

  They stop and press their mouths together again.

  She pulls on his back. Presses her hips to his.

  She wants to make him happy. She can make him happy. She knows how. She needs him to need her.

  She pulls him down so his weight presses on her from above, so leaves press at her back. So a glittering black sky looks down on her. On her.

  Special, Zoe.

  Stars, Zoe.

  She fumbles for his belt, tight between them. He lifts slightly so her fingers can maneuver. Loosen. His buckle is cold in her fingers. Cold. Hard. His breaths are lost in her hair. Heavy. Moving. Lips pressing her ear. Her throat. Hot.

  But the buckle is cold.

  Stays cold.

  Smooth coldness.

  Like porcelain.

  Cold. Like never-eaten eggs.

  Cold.

  Like.

  Gray.

  Water.

  She pushes him away. Gasps for a breath.

  Touch.

  Need.

  Is fractured.

  He sits dazed. Tight. Drawing into himself already.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I—”

  but there is nothing to say.

  She is not sorry. Not really.

  She still wants him. Wants to touch him. Have him touch her. But not, too. Two wants pulling against each other.

  “It’s too soon,” he says. “I don’t know what I—”

  “No. It’s me. Don’t say anything.”

  They go back to her room. Listen to the Everly Brothers on the jukebox. Listen in the dar
k when the circle of bargain-bin light is gone and all that is left are a few faint ceiling stars still reflecting borrowed light. They lie on her bed and don’t touch except for his hand stroking the edge of her little finger. He stays. Doesn’t rush. And it all seems too much. Too much for someone like her.

  Thirty-Four

  “Home fries, not hash!” She slides the plate across the stainless-steel shelf. “Please,” she adds. She never says please. Not usually, but today every order seems to come up wrong. Is the cook out for her? Her tips are nosediving faster than one of Kyle’s kites on a windless day.

  She wipes the counter and sets a new place as she scans the parking lot for Carlos’s truck. She hoped he might come. Saturday they met for an early dinner before he had to go to work. Texas cone-droppers, it seems, even have night duties. It was almost like a real date. It was, maybe. They met at the Rocket Gourmet, but he paid for her burger and shake. When he left, there was no kiss, but there was a moment. A hesitant, quiet moment where they seemed to exchange a thought: I like you. A lot. The parking lot is void of his battered blue truck. No Carlos. Maybe the shared thought was only in her own needy head.

  “More coffee here?” The sleazebag holds up his cup. The cook’s bad enough—Zoe can’t afford to piss off her best tipper, too. Not today. She forces a smile to make up for forgetting him.

  “Coming right up,” she says. The pot is empty. It was her turn to brew more coffee and she forgot. Shit. Is all of life out for her today? But it was the orders. All the screwed-up orders. She puts the pot on to brew. “It’ll be just a minute. Everything else okay?”

  He beams at the morsel of attention she throws him. “Just fine. Real fine.” He draws words out the way Opal does, but with entirely different possibilities. She endures it, forcing a smile, hoping he might make up for her other meager tips.

  “I’m really happy to hear that,” she says. “We like to keep our customers happy.”