Hick - Andrea Portes [37]
That’s the difference.
To me it’s all longing and wishing and knowing in my heart that my impossible dream will never become a reality. To him it’s like picking a piece of lint off your shirt sleeve, something you might look at for a second but then never think twice about.
“Grab my purse, if you wanna, in the back.” Glenda crashes my personal dirge.
She reaches into the backseat behind and tosses her purse on my lap, keeping eyes on the road. Now that the bunny’s gone, I’m promoted to front seat. I look at her concentrating on the road, from my newfound shotgun, and wonder if there’s someone she thinks about like this, someone quiet and massive who can change her day if she lets herself think too much.
Does she have it, too, some lonely, empty space that sits in the hollow of her chest, changing with the weather like some kind of never-say-so condition? And if she had it, if she had that permanent condition of the heart, what would she do with it? Where would she put it? I want to know. I want to know because I want to put it there, too.
I reach down and start sorting through her purse, bit by bit. I find the white powder vial, untwist the top and lift it up to my nose, breathing in. It burns like metal and creeps down the back of my throat. I shake my head and stare into the visor mirror, feeling better, hoping that the feeling lasts, watching the sun raise itself to the top of the sky.
I am made of steel now. Metallic. Numb.
Maybe this is the place you put it.
SEVENTEEN
Glenda doesn’t know I have a .45.
And I’m not gonna tell her. How can I when so much has gone on with me keeping it secret? If I confess now, she’ll wonder why I kept it from her so long and what I’m up to anyways. she’ll think I’m hiding something else.
No, it’s best not to tell her. it’ll just make her wonder if she should have picked me up in the first place.
It’ll just be my little secret.
EIGHTEEN
By the time we pull into Jackson, I feel a hundred years older and fifty pounds too heavy, like I have rocks in my shoulders. Glenda pulls up to a ranch-style house with a slate-stone sidewalk winding up. You have to walk through an oriental-looking garden, complete with miniature waterfalls spilling out over into little lily-padded fish ponds. it’s real neat and tidy, like they hire a maid each Tuesday to dust off the leaves and polish the ceramic frogs.
A lumbering ox of a man comes out the front door like he’s walking onstage on one of those late-night shows, expectant and smiley, waiting to bask in thunderous applause. Sensing no takers, he hulks towards us with big outstretched arms. I stop and pretend to look at the shiny green frogs, newly dusted, staring up, while I wait for Glenda to catch up and interact with Mr. Rogers over there. I take note that some of the fish in the little ponds are gold, some are white and gold and some are just see-through sickly white like they’re radioactive and are just about two inbred laps from swimming to that great end-of-the-line fish tank.
Glenda grabs me by the back of the neck and turns me towards Mr. Friendly, who’s well over six feet and two feet wide. He picks me up before I can get out of it and gives me a big bear hug like he’s gonna crack my ribs with kindness. I turn my cringe into a squiggly-mouth smile till he relents, finally, putting me down.
“This here’s Lloyd, Luli,” Glenda chimes out round the cigarette she’s squinting into, trying to light up in the afternoon breeze.
“Luli! We-hell, that sure is a funny name for a little filly.”
I stare at his feet, which happen to be wrapped up in beige snakeskin cowboy boots. He’s got on brown pants, a brown cowboy shirt and a tan Stetson hat. He takes up the whole top step.
Glenda nudges me.
“Um, wull, my name was supposed to be Lucy, but I couldn’t say it, I just kept saying Luli, so they just gave up tryin.”
“That so? Well, good thing your name wasn’t Elizabeth.”
He says this like it’s the punch line and neither Glenda or I know quite what to make of it. We stand there, watching him, trying to figure it out. He keeps on