Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [61]
He heard Libby talking as if from a great distance. “They probably looked so much like catfish because that’s all they ate,” she was saying. “But where was their car? How’d they get all that junk down there? I think … Are you all right?”
Libby’s face loomed in front of him, her eyes enormous with concern.
“I don’t know,” he croaked. “My chest …”
Libby stared at him hard, her eyes darkening, then broke into gasps of laughter. “Look!” She held up the near-empty cellophane bag of pork rinds. “Jesus! You have the chicharrón choke! My God, Red, you can’t eat these things without washing them down with something!” She tore off the pull tab and handed him another Pepsi. “They get stuck and expand. Oh, you poor baby. I know, it really, really hurts—doesn’t it?” She stopped talking to laugh some more. “Drink. But it’s going to get worse for a minute before it gets better. They’ll really swell now.”
Red drank, and the waddage of rinds indeed seemed to balloon beyond his capacity to contain it. Drawing breath was like taking a thick, blunt knife in the chest. When slowly, miraculously, the pain began to ebb, he wanted to weep with relief.
“My God,” said Libby, “this expedition’s been a disaster from the start. What time is it—almost ten? What say we pack up?”
The pain stopped. Red took a deep breath. His heart was fine. He wouldn’t die. He was so relieved he probably would’ve agreed to anything. “Great,” he said. “Let’s.”
“Hear, hear,” said Libby, getting to her feet. “I like a man who says ‘let’s.’ ”
Red liked her too. Her thick ponytail and bright laughter. Her knobby ankles, the bold way she handled bait and fish and pieces of fish, not to mention her kindness to Joe. She managed with ease the small acts of attention he found paralyzing.
As Red drove them all home in his truck, the vague ache lingering in his chest became a specific sadness: that age and weight, his own inarguable fate, had disqualified him from Libby’s romantic consideration. Though she was undeniably fond of him, when it came to love he was clearly out of the running.
LIBBY AND LEWIS watched meteor showers from her front deck. Single stars sprang out of nowhere, shooting this way and that. “Buddhists,” Lewis said, “believe our true nature is really the great sky mind.”
“Mmmm.” He could, it seemed, deliver a lecture on almost anything.
“And this miserable, fragile biological existence is just a place to work out karma. Eventually, though, if you play your cards right, you can cycle out of existence.”
“Who wants to do that?” said Libby.
“It’s supposed to be okay. Like that period between falling asleep and dreaming. What the Tibetans call the Great Illumination.”
“Why am I not convinced?”
“It takes training. Once you’re trained, you’d be aware of that state, and then you’d know what’s so great about it. It sounds good to me—an end to endless mental sausage-making.”
“I’d rather be reincarnated.”
“So would Bodhisattvas. They won’t settle for enlightenment until they’ve helped everybody else get there too. Which is what this life is supposed to be about. Helping others.” Sighing, Lewis stretched his arms over his head. “Red Ray does a pretty good job of it.”
“You think he’s a Bodhisattva?”
“Almost. Maybe in his next life, since he’s spent so much of this one in service to others.”
“But you’re that way too,” said Libby. “Your job is pure service. I mean, you can’t be doing it for the money.”
“But Libby!” Lewis nosed into her neck. “I am doing it for the money!”
“You’re so tender with the men.” She strummed his ribs.
“Not really. They bug me.”
“I’ve seen you,” she said. “They bug you but you still help them.”
“Oh, Libby.” Lewis snaked his arms around her, tangled his legs with hers. “I like your version of me. Very generous. And totally full of shit.”
Cosmic debris rained down as she slid her leg along his. Skin, hair, muscle, bone. Nothing else felt as real,