“Like you’re sending me to check on her now? Blake, stop the car, please.”
He pulled into a dirt lot near the downmarket bar and grill.
“You have to go see her, Chloe,” Blake said.
“I know. I plan to, I do. I just … I’m damp, I don’t want to go into the air-conditioning.”
“Oh, don’t worry, there’s no air-conditioning at Yesterday’s.”
“You and I have so much to catch up on.” Chloe forced a smile. “We didn’t even talk about your book or Blake Haul’s amazing fundraising fair.”
“Stop buttering me up, I’m not toast. Go.” He took two twenties out of his pocket and stuffed them into Chloe’s hand. “Have a burger with her. Leave her the rest of the money for a tip. I’ll be here. Wait, not a burger. She’s a vegetarian now. Go!”
Chloe sat at a little table near the exit. She was studying the menu—very thoroughly—when she felt a long, tall shape at her elbow. She looked up. Hannah stood like a statue, unsmiling in her beige uniform.
“Hi,” she said. “How did you know I was here?”
“Blake told me. Hi, Hannah.” Chloe managed a smile, guilty, uncomfortable, happy to see her friend, sad to see her under such circumstances. “How are you?”
“Where is he?”
“Outside.”
Hannah made a desolate face. “He’s still mad at me. But it gives me hope, you know, that there’s love there. Because you’re never mad at people you don’t care about. Don’t you think?”
Chloe bleated back something inarticulate. She didn’t know if she would call what Blake was at Hannah mad. You’re mad at your girlfriend because she forgets you’re going to the movies on Friday night and makes other plans. Having unprotected sex with an old dude and then getting knocked up while supposedly being faithful to you was a different kettle of fish entirely.
“Hang on, I’ll take my break. Can I get you a grilled cheese? I’ll have one too. I don’t eat meat anymore.”
While she waited, Chloe peered out the small window. She wanted to shake her fist at Blake lounging in his truck, head back, listening to the radio, but he was facing the road, not the restaurant.
Hannah returned with two crisp hot sandwiches and two coffees. “I only have like ten minutes,” she said, sitting sideways, as if at any minute ready to bolt. “Can you believe what happened to me?”
I can’t even believe what happened to me, Chloe thought. “No. How’s your baby?”
“She’s good. She’s with my mom.” Hannah sighed. She still looked ephemeral, delicate, forlorn. In other words, irresistible. “It’s terrible. Mom doesn’t want me there, and I don’t want to be there. She’s remarried, and I’m completely intruding. Blake told you everything? Isn’t it sick about Martyn? How could it happen? To be in such debt is ghastly!”
Chloe squeezed her mouth together. “Also to be dead.”
“Chloe, he owed more money than my mother earned in twenty years! And all his creditors are now after me. It’s a nightmare.”
“It’ll be okay—”
“How? I’ve got Zhenya with me now, too. At my mom’s. What was I thinking? Good news is, she’s almost old enough to babysit. Bad news is, she wants to be out with her American friends. And I’m like, no way. You’re eleven. So we’re fighting. At my mother’s house.”
Chloe began to tell Hannah about Ray. He was only eight years old. He didn’t want to be anywhere but with Lang and Jimmy.
“I know, right?” Hannah said. “I wish my mom hadn’t moved. It was so nice on our lake. And your mom helped me a lot with the sponsorship papers. She filled them out for Ray and Zhenya at the same time. I couldn’t have done it without her. If we were still there, she could help me look after the kids. She’s so great. She’s always home.”
“Well, not always …”
“Do you have any idea how Blake is feeling?”
“About what?”
“About what? Chloe! About me, the baby, the whole situation.”
“You mean about you getting married to someone else?”
“No, about what’s happening to me now.”
Their sandwiches lay untouched, their coffee undrunk. Chloe sat and listened, shaking her head or nodding in the appropriate places. It was as if Chloe didn’t exist. It was as if Europe, Johnny, Mason, San Diego weren’t even a blip on the friend radar. Chloe tried to keep the sting of their suffocating one-way friendship from watering up her eyes. When it was time to go, she left Blake’s money on the table.
“Aww, don’t cry,” Hannah said. “You said yourself it’ll be fine. Maybe you can come visit me and the baby?” She grabbed the two twenties and hid them in her apron. “She’s fifteen months now. Super cute.”
Chloe swatted away a rogue tear. Why did growing up mean having to accept that people you loved kept disappointing you?
“But bring Blake with you,” Hannah added. “Don’t come on your own. I want him to forgive me. I need him to forgive me. I know he won’t be able to resist the baby when he sees her. He can barely resist me.”
Chloe thought Blake would want to talk about Hannah, but it was the last thing he wanted to talk about. He slammed the truck into reverse and peeled out into the open road.
“Thanks a lot,” she said.
“Better you than me.”
“Why is that the choice? Why is that the only choice?”
He laughed. “You think that was hard work? Try writing.”
“Sorry, no. That was harder than hauling junk out of people’s homes.”
“How would you know? Try sitting in one place for hours and hours. Your back hurts, your ass hurts, your arms go numb, your eyes stop focusing. You chew the pencils to nubs, so now you got wood chips floating around in your gut, and then the words don’t come. Outside the sun is shining and you want to be fishing or swimming or … I mean, I’m glad I wrote it, but man, I wouldn’t want to inflict that on someone I hate.” He didn’t specify who that might be.
Chloe felt sorry for herself for only a second. Blake told her Hannah never even asked him about The Blue Suitcase. When he told her his story had won first prize, she said what story?
“She didn’t!”
“Oh yeah. She did.”
But then again, Blake was running around town, working a little, bowling a lot, and Chloe was on a break from awesome, while Hannah was waitressing an empty lunch shift before she went home to her mother’s where her two kids waited, one of them a tween.
“So if you don’t marry Hannah,” Chloe said, “what else are you going to do with your money?”
“Don’t joke, I’m not in the mood,” he said lightly. “The dough, when it arrives, is already spoken for.”
“For what? You got the truck. Mason is doing his own thing.”
“My dad, if you must know,” Blake said. “His back keeps getting worse. He’s nearly paralyzed.”
“Sorry.” She had been too flip.
“The operation is crazy bucks. My mom’s insurance covers most of it, I guess”—Blake raised his voice—“except for the twenty thousand dollar lifetime deductible. Plus thousands more for rehab. Who the hell has all that?”
“Well,” said Chloe. “I guess the answer is, you do.”
Blake didn’t even sigh as he drove, one hand on the wheel, one arm bent through the open window. “After I’d get paid, who knows when, my mom and I would still be short. And Mason never has any money. And Dad’s really been struggling. So I got this idea to have a fundraising fair on the Academy grounds. Games, rides, prizes, some food and drink, and charge a few bucks for admission. I talked to the president, and he agreed to let us have the Academy for a weekend, provided that afterward we made it look like we were never there. So a month ago we had our first Annual Haul Spring Fair, sponsored by Chevy.” Blake smiled happily. “The mayor was so proud that I’d won the competition, he made the town put up a banner over Main Street. ‘Congratulations Blake Haul’ or something like that, and the local radio interviewed me a
nd the local paper did a piece on me, so we had pretty good attendance. Like ten thousand people.”
“No!”
“Yeah, it was epic. We made fifty grand.”
Chloe loudly verbalized her astonishment.
“I know, right? Well, thirty in the clear after expenses. But amazing, still.”
“No wonder Hannah wants you back.”
“What did I say about jokes? Dad’s going under the knife in August. Maybe I’ll get my money by the time we have to pay for his rehab. But now Mom thinks she’s found her true calling. She went around for months asking local businesses to contribute garbage cans, drinks, games, cookies, burger joints, zeppoles, pizza. She loved it. She wants to do it every year. She’s a born saleswoman.”
“Your dad is not going to need an annual operation, is he?”
Blake smiled. “Let’s hope not. Mom says there’ll always be a kid out there who needs help. Your mom, because she’s a troublemaker, says to my mom we should have a fundraiser for Hannah and her daughters.”
“Be cheaper just to get back together with her.”
“How many times do I have to tell you that unlike your mother, you’re not funny?”
Chloe faced him as he drove, observed his familiar profile, his easygoing expression. “So who are you making time with these days? Taylor told me you and Melissa hooked up.”
“Did she actually use the term hooked up, or is that your San Diego surfer girl talking?”
“She actually said hooked up.”
He was keeping it light. “Yeah, for a while. Then we moved on.”
“Who’d you move on to? Taylor said you were sweet on Crystal.” Taylor said he had broken up with Crystal in April.
“She was cute.”
“Still is. I like her better than Melissa.”
“Your approval of my girls means a lot to me, Chloe,” Blake said.
They drove through Fryeburg. The banner with CONGRATULATIONS BLAKE HAUL! still spanned Main Street.
They were past the rock with the whale, which meant almost at the turn to their road, when Blake said, “Have you heard from him?”
And Chloe almost said who.
“No.” She said no more. What more was there to say? And he didn’t follow up. What else was there to ask? He walked her to the front door in silence. There was a patter of feet, a swinging screen door and a dark-haired little boy ran out and hugged Blake around the waist.
“Blake! Football? You promised!” Eight-year-old Ray had learned English well. He begged like a pro.
Blake ruffled the boy’s hair. “Not today, bud. Maybe tomorrow. I got stuff to do.”
Lang came to the front door carrying a covered plate of cookies. “Hello, dear,” she said, but not to Chloe—to Blake. “Do you want to stay for dinner? I made plenty. Rib eye tonight. Your favorite.”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Devine, my mom is making what she thinks are burritos.”
“Ah. Well, here. Lemon bars for you.”
Blake gladly took the plate.
Chloe stared at her mother. “Lemon bars?”
Lang was already inside the house. Chloe glanced at Ray, expectant by her side. She was right from the moment she first laid eyes on him. He was the sweetest kid. A little needy maybe, but, well, who wasn’t?
“So, Ray,” she said. “How about I go put on my beating Ray shoes and you go get the ball so I can kick your butt?”
Lone Star
“Chloe, come inside, it’s almost dinner time. Why are you pacing the road? Are you waiting for your father to come home? He’ll be another twenty minutes. He’s bringing Latvian pie for you from Moody.”
“No.”
“Are you waiting for Blake?”
“What? No!”
“So what are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
Chloe couldn’t even mope in peace.
Aside from staring at the empty road, she searched for him from the comfort of her favorite red chair by the window with the white curtains and her glorious pendulous violet fuchsias blooming outside in the shade of the firs. With the PowerBook on her lap, she googled until her fingers went stiff. Johnny Rainbow this, Lone Star that. Johnny Rainbow no hits. Every search with the name Lone Star produced a million hits. There was of course the local Lone Star Pawn and Gun in Fryeburg. There was also Lone Star beer, and Lone Star steak, and Lone Star wine bar. Lone Star saloon, Lone Star campus, Lone Star kickball, Lone Star country road 92, and there was even a band named Lonestar, which got Chloe excited, as they had just put out a greatest hits CD, which would imply that there had been songs to choose from. But they were not Johnny and had nothing to do with Johnny.
Lone Star hiking club. How many search pages back should one go? Six? Twelve? All of them?
Why hadn’t she asked him why he had a tattoo of the star of Texas engraved on his chest? She thought she had asked him.
Evenings and nights crawled by in endless searching. Lone Star college. Lone Star fertilizer.
Lone Star mercantile shop.
Lone Star music.
That was almost promising. She called them, but they’d never heard of a Johnny Rainbow.
“There is a very strong possibility that isn’t his real name,” her mother called from the kitchen. Ray, not Chloe, was helping her make dinner. Chloe was busy.
“I don’t want to talk to you about it, Mom,” said Chloe. “You don’t know everything.” Chloe hoped her mother didn’t know everything. Why had Chloe told her everything! The only thing her mother had said two years ago after she heard the whole sobbing rant was were you careful. That’s it. Were you careful?
No, Mom, Chloe had replied. We were wildly reckless. Flagrantly irresponsible. Careful is the last thing we were. We lived it like we were dying. Don’t talk to me about this anymore. I can’t bear it. Because I’ve already bled, but what I want is to bleed out, is that histrionic enough for you? Is that super careful enough for you?
Lone Star emergency vehicles.
Lone Star girl. That was her.
Lone Star Texas eclectic gifts.
Lone Star burritos. Maybe there was a girl in a taco joint, and he got the tat to remember her by. Maybe Lone Star was his Winona Forever.
Zane Grey was the Lone Star Ranger. Did Johnny have anything to do with Zane Grey?
Lone Star chili cookoff. Did he cook chili? Did he even like chili? There were so many things about him she did not know and could not know and was now afraid she would never know.
She googled Johnny Rainbow and Lone Star together. Nothing came up.
But you know what did come up?
Lone Star shootout.
Lone Star cookout. They were having a barbecue in Texas. The best spare ribs won.
Lone Star scavenger hunt. Chloe was the scavenger.
Her mother observed her for the month of July. Then she said, “Didn’t you tell me you two went to visit his mother?”
“So?”
“Maybe she knows her son’s name?”
Chloe wasn’t sure Ingrid would want to speak to her. “No one there spoke English.”
“You’re right. Better not call.”
“Ugh. Don’t exasperate me, Mom.” A minute later, “It was two years ago. She’s probably not there.”
“You’re right. It’s hopeless. Stop looking.”
“Mom, I think Dad is calling for you to see what Ray is up to. Go see.”
“Chloe, I think Blake is at the door, asking if you want to go to the movies with him and Taylor and Joey. Should I tell him you can’t because you’re googling?”
Chloe slammed shut her laptop.
Later that night, after the movies, when everyone was asleep, Chloe googled the Tarcento Pensione to find its phone number. The first item that came up was not a phone number, but a news alert about a something in Italian. Incendio doloso. Gravi danni. She used her barely-trustworthy online translator. Arson. Heavy damage. At dawn she walked outside into the dewy fuchsias and dialed the number she had fo
und. There was no answer.
She kept calling. In August she finally reached someone who spoke a little English at the parish church of St. Peter in Tarcento. The man told her that after the fire, the pensione had closed because the insurance money didn’t cover the cost of rebuilding it. No, he didn’t know where the people who lived there had gone. Chloe asked if anyone had died. The man said no. It was a miracle that everyone survived. He told her to go with God. Andare con Dio.
That was that.
Fishing
Blake and Chloe were in the boat together, just like in childhood. It was mid-August, almost time for her to fly back to her other life. They were sitting in the anchored boat, bobbing lightly, late afternoon, trying to catch a perch or a bass. Pickings had been slim. Perhaps because they kept scaring away the fish. No matter how many times he said shh to her, he’d then make her laugh and ruin the silence.
Right before he pulled up anchor and rowed back to shore, he took a breath. “You asked before why I seemed off, and I didn’t want to be rude, but now I’ll tell you. I don’t want you to go back to school and have it stay unsaid between us, what pissed me off, and still does. Okay?”
“Okay, I guess.” They had been sitting so affably.
“I thought we were friends,” Blake said. “I mean, I understand what happened in Poland was awful, for you and Mason, for me and Hannah. I was upset with you for lying to me for so long—to all of us, I mean. You were leaving us, going west to almost Mexico.”
“Not for good,” she said. “Look at me, I’m right here.”
He looked. “Whatever. I understood why you couldn’t tell me, since you hadn’t told your best friend or your boyfriend, but it doesn’t mean I wasn’t upset about it.”
“I know.” She hung her head, but only briefly, because she wanted to watch him struggle to get the main part out, the part he wanted to get to.
“But that’s not what upset me,” he continued. “What really upset me was that after you came back from your little adventure, after you ditched us all in the middle of Europe without a word—”
“I left a note,” Chloe said. “I told you not to worry about me.”
“Yeah, okay. As I was saying. After all that, you came back home, a full week after us, and not five minutes later flew out to San Diego and didn’t say goodbye to anyone. Didn’t speak to anyone. I mean, I can understand maybe Mason, because he’d done you wrong, and I can almost understand Hannah, though you could’ve said sorry even to her for being so sneaky and underhanded.”