American Boy - Larry Watson [76]
I was about to find out.
“Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in.” Louisa put down her sandwich and picked up her cigarette. “Somehow I didn’t think I’d heard the last of Matthew Garth. Come on in. Take a load off.”
I didn’t move. Not yet.
She smiled at me. “I don’t suppose you brought me a Valentine, did you?” It suddenly dawned on me what day it was.
I stepped forward, but I didn’t sit down.
“Ooh,” Louisa winced. She was referring to the yellow and purple bruise coloring the side of my face. “He really nailed you, didn’t he?”
I felt myself losing heart in her presence, so I rushed to my purpose for being there. “You’re going to Denver,” I said.
She smiled and raised her eyebrows. “Maybe. Someday. But right now”—she wriggled a bit as if the hard kitchen chair were as soft as an armchair and she could sink more deeply into it—“I like it here.”
“Today,” I said. “Denver. Or Minneapolis. Or Fargo. Or Sioux Falls. But somewhere.”
I reached into my back pocket and took out my billfold. I counted out two fifties, six twenties, five tens, and seven fives, and laid them all out on the table. “That’s enough to cover bus or train fare and arrive with some money in your pocket. The Greyhound leaves this afternoon at four o’clock. If you’d rather take the train, you can get on at Bellamy.”
When I put my wallet back in my pocket I noticed how much thinner it was without those twenty bills.
“Goddamn. You are persistent, Matt. I’ll say that for you. But me running off with you was about the stupidest, pie-in-the-fucking-sky notion before. And now my ... prospects have improved. So that idea that didn’t interest me in the least then has far less appeal now.”
“We’re not going to Denver,” I said. “You. Alone. Today.”
Louisa reached out and tapped through the pile of bills with her index finger. It was a casual, dismissive gesture. But it was also enough for her to see how much was there. “And this is supposed to persuade me? What is this—the money you were saving to buy a car? To pay for college? Did you save this up from your paper route?”
In fact, I’d taken the money that morning from an envelope in the top drawer of my dresser. The amount had fluctuated over the years, saved from doing odd jobs in the neighborhood—shoveling snow or mowing lawns or putting up storm windows—or from opening an annual birthday or Christmas card from my uncle and finding a five-dollar bill inside, or busing tables at Phil’s. The money had always been important to me, and while I’d never hoarded it—I had no trouble taking money out to buy beer or take Debbie to a movie—I tried to replace what I took and add to the pile when I could. I never put any money in the bank, but when smaller bills accumulated, I took them to a teller at First National and converted them to larger denominations.
Still, when Louisa made that remark, it occurred to me that I’d never been saving the money for anything in particular. But people always needed money, whether it was to get through a day or a year, to last through a life or to start a new one.
“You better get packed,” I said. “If you like, I can drive you to the station. Or even to the depot in Bellamy. But you have to get going now.”
“Matt. Matt. You’re stuck on the one note. Come on. Look around. Why would I want to leave this? This is as good as I’ve ever had it, and it’s only going to get better.”
I didn’t have to look around. I knew that room and that house as well as any on the planet. I knew them better than Louisa Lindahl did.
“You’re leaving”—I drew a breath and started over—“You’re leaving because if you don’t I’ll tell Mrs. Dunbar—and mister too—that you’ve been scheming to ... to take up with the doctor. To steal him away.”
She smiled, and a look of relief crossed her face. She obviously thought she knew what I had, and to her it didn’t look like much.
“You don’t understand, Matt. That’s not the way it works between men and women. I didn