Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [44]
“It’s all pink?”
“Right! Right! Now we don’t have to eat this hunk of leavened lard.” Opening the kitchen door, he slung the pastry out into the night, and served her strong, truly delicious decaffeinated espresso. He drank the high-octane stuff himself.
At least she didn’t have to worry about what to say. Lewis talked like a radio. No dead air. He kicked off his shoes, perched on his chair like a cat on a fence post, and held forth. He kept to his topics, where he felt safe: music, books, alcoholism, God. Even if he wasn’t a real dyed-in-the-wool, black-out-on-your-first-drink alcoholic, Lewis said, he was fascinated by the spiritual aspects of recovery. “Do you have any kind of spiritual practice?” he asked.
She felt, immediately and for the first time ever, spiritually inferior. She’d never gone to church. Her mother was a defiant nonpracticing Jew, she explained; her father, a guilty nonpracticing Catholic. She grew up unaffiliated, just defiant and guilty. “I fish,” she told Lewis. “Every Sunday morning. At Lake Rito. I commune with the catfish. They bring me messages from the deep.”
“Spirituality doesn’t mean organized religion,” Lewis said. “It’s more about intuiting or inventing something you believe in which helps you have a rich and loving life. Do you believe in God?”
“Sort of.” Stupid answer. Still, what a relief to be with a man who (a) talked, (b) but not about architecture, and (c) used phrases like “a rich and loving life.”
Around eleven, Red Ray drummed lightly on the door and stepped inside. Next to Lewis’s dark looks, Red was so pale that he glowed. “Look what I found in the driveway,” he said, and held up the pink pan dulce. “At first I thought it was a beautiful seashell.
Want some?” He broke off a piece, crossed himself, and held it out in offering. “Eat this in remembrance of me.”
They all took a bite, road dust notwithstanding.
I like these men, thought Libby.
Lewis drove her home at midnight. Once in the car, he was hyped up and nervous; then again, he’d had about five hits of espresso. He told her how a Russian theologian had distinguished between being and existing. “Things have being,” he said, “and the spirit has existence. Or maybe it’s the other way around.”
AT FIVE-THIRTY the next morning, Libby was making an egg salad sandwich to eat out at the lake when the phone rang. “You alone?” Billie asked. “Yes.”
“So why aren’t you fishing?”
“I’m going as soon as I can get out the door.”
“So, how was it with the scholar?”
“Fun.”
“It can’t have been too much fun if you’re alone.”
“No, really, we had a good time.”
“What base did you get to?”
“Don’t beat around the bush or anything,” Libby said.
“Well?”
“I never did know which base is—”
“Just remember the four F’s.”
“And I really don’t want to know,” Libby said loudly, “thank you very much. He didn’t even kiss me good night, okay?” “Frenching, feeling—”
Libby held the phone against her thigh for a few seconds. When she lifted it back to her ear, Billie was laughing. “So where’d he take you to dinner?” “Round Rock.”
“What? You ate at the cafeteria?”
“No,” Libby said, “at Red’s.”
“Red’s house? And where was Red?”
“He came home later.”
“Did he know you were there? I mean, was he expecting you?”
“Of course. What’s the big deal? He’s very courteous.”
“ ‘Courteous,’ ” said Billie. “Sometimes you kill me. So our history buff—he didn’t even try to kiss you?”
“That’s okay.”
“Did you want him to?”
“I guess.”
“Did he ask you out again?”
“Not yet.”
“You think you’ll see him again?”
“Well, I lent him a book.”
“I gotta give you credit,” Billie said. “Dating takes such stamina. Score me a roughneck at the Gusher Inn any day. At least I know what I’m getting—and getting it right away. I couldn’t stand the suspense. I get all the delayed gratification I need from raising citrus and a child. So does this mean we’ll be staring at the phone for