Hick - Andrea Portes [32]
“You better fix your B before someone starts calling you Lane.” Glenda says it.
“They already do.”
The bartender looks me up and down. He has salt-and-pepper hair and piercing green eyes. I can’t bring myself to look at him. He looks like the kind of guy who could break up a fight, change a tire and spoon-feed his dying mother, all at once. He moves slow and doesn’t bend over himself or hunker down.
Glenda gives him a side smile and makes a point of perusing the abandoned lanes. There’s a silence between these two. Like no one wants to show his hand.
“Tell him your name, kid.”
I try to look up at him but end up looking at the bar.
“Luli.”
“What’s that again?”
“My name’s Luli.”
“Hmmph. that’s a new one. Well, my name’s Blane. Pleased to meet ya.”
Glenda’s watching me now, taking notes. Later she’ll tell me what I did wrong, where I blew it and not to tell my name to the barstool.
“Well, Blane, you gonna stand there gawking or you gonna pour us a drink? Me and the kid, here, got some celebrating to do.”
Blane looks at the little Mexican boy and makes a sign with his hand. The boy laughs. Blane nods and looks back at me. The boy grins and I look away.
“Cat got your tongue?” I say, real smart.
“He’s mute, Luli.”
For the first time, I see something new in Glenda, something like quietness and resignation and wanting to fix the world but feeling helpless.
“Got a present for ya, kid.” Glenda hands the keys to me. “Go get the you-know-what outta the car, Luli.”
“The what?”
“You know.” She leans in and whispers, “The bunny.”
“Oh! Oh, yeah, okay, gotcha.”
I go out to the car, open the door and start wrestling with the bunny in the dark. His ear gets trapped in the seatbelt, and I’m feeling pretty stupid playing outsmart with a stuffed rabbit in the middle of the parking lot. Finally I get my grip and start lugging the bunny across the dirt. it’s cumbersome and unwieldy and everything else you don’t want to do after a long day of faking epileptic fits and old men keeling over. His bunny feet are dragging on the ground, getting dusty, and I’ll probably be getting bitched at for that, too.
I push the door open with my back and hoist the bunny over beside the Mexican boy. Glenda looks on with pride as I prop the thing up next to him, facing him in some button-eyed greeting. Blane starts to chuckle. He and Glenda seem to have some private moment of unspoken meaning that goes back to before I was born.
I look at the mute Mexican boy. He inspects the bunny, smiles. Then he points to himself, crosses his chest and points back at me. Then he does it again. And again. I pretend not to notice. I pretend to fix my shirt. I pretend not to get it. Glenda looks at my made-up shirt-fixing and then back at the boy.
“Well, well. Looks like you got yourself an admirer here, Luli.”
I pretend to inspect the tile floor.
Blane pours two whiskey Cokes, watches the boy and looks back at me.
“I believe he’s trying to say he loves you.”
The two fat flannels take notice and start laughing. One of them sputters out, “Looks like that bunny rabbit sure did the trick. Ha ha ha.”
The other one slaps him on the back, laughing hard and mean.
The Mexican boy keeps signing away, harder this time. Point. Cross. Point. Stop. Point. Cross. Point. And then again. Glenda starts chuckling along with the two flannels. Blane grins, joining in. They laugh and look over to me for an answer, expectant.
I hesitate, mortified. If you could see my cheeks they’d be lobster-colored. I try to think of something clever, something to get the staring off me, something to separate me from the Mexican boy, to keep him and his affliction at bay. I have to swat him away before I catch whatever it is he caught