Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [90]
Ben parked outside Stephanie’s house and told me to wait in the car. I had nothing to do but look at houses and telephone poles. Stephanie’s front-porch swing had rusted chains, and the paint around her house seemed to have blistered in cobweb patterns. One drab lamp with a low-wattage bulb was on near an upstairs window. I could see the lampshade: birds—I couldn’t tell what kind—had been painted on it. I adjusted the dashboard clock. It didn’t run, but I liked to have it seem accurate. My brother had said that anyone who invented a clock that would really work in a car would become a multimillionaire. Clocks in cars never work, he said, because the mainsprings can’t stand the shock of potholes. I checked my wristwatch and yawned. The inside of the front window began to frost over with my breath. I decided that when I grew up I would invent a new kind of timepiece for cars, without springs or gears. At three twenty I adjusted the clock again. One minute later, my brother came out of the house with Stephanie. She saw me in the car, and she smiled.
I opened the door and got out. “Hi, Steph,” I said. “I’ll get in the backseat.”
“That’s okay, Russell,” she said, smiling, showing her overbite. “Sit up in front with us.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Keep us warm.”
She scuttled in next to my brother, and I squeezed in on her right side, with my shoulder against the door. As soon as the car started, she and my brother began to hold hands: he steered with his left wrist over the steering wheel, and she held his right hand. I watched all this, and Stephanie noticed me watching. “Do you want one?” she asked me.
“What?”
“A hand.” She gazed at me, perfectly serious. “My other hand.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Well, take my glove off,” she said. “I can’t do it by myself.”
My brother started chuckling, but she stopped him with a look. I took Stephanie’s wrist in my left hand and removed her glove, finger by finger. I hadn’t held hands with anyone since second grade. Her hand was not much larger than mine, but holding it gave me an odd sensation, because it was a woman’s hand, and where my fingers were bony, hers were soft. She was wearing a bright green cap, and when I glanced up at it she said, “I like your hair, Russell. It’s kind of slummy. You’re getting to look dangerous. Is there any gum?”
I figured she meant in the car. “There’s some up there on the dashboard,” Ben said. His car always had gum in it. It was a museum of gum. The ashtrays were full of cigarette butts and gum, mixed together, and the floor was flecked silver from the foil wrappers.
“I can’t reach it,” Stephanie said. “You two have both my hands tied down.”
“Okay,” I said. I reached up with my free hand and took a piece of gum and unwrapped it. The gum was light pink, a sunburn color.
“Now what?” I asked.
“What do you think?” She looked down at me, smiled again, then opened her mouth. I suddenly felt shy. “Come on, Russell,” she said. “Haven’t you ever given gum to a girl before?” I raised my hand with the gum in it. She kept her eyes open and on me. I reached forward, and just as I got the gum close to her mouth she opened wider, and I slid the gum in over her tongue without even brushing it against her lipstick. She closed and began chewing.
“Thank you,” she said. Stephanie and my brother nudged each other. Then they broke out in short quick laughs—vacation laughter. I knew that what had happened hinged on my ignorance, but that I wasn’t exactly the butt of the joke and could