Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [65]
Everyone burst out laughing.
“A teeny twenty-room mansion,” Billie said. “Now we’re talking.”
“Not the mansion,” Libby cried. “Red’s house. The bungalow.”
“That’s easy,” Red said. “Take one. I only have nine of them. They sit on stone supports. You could almost move one with a fork-lift.”
“You don’t have any plans for them?”
“Every conceivable plan,” he said. “A retreat center. A sober resort. Low-income housing. Anything I’d do, Billie would fight me every inch of the way.”
“Someone has to preserve this ranch land or this valley would be”—Billie looked directly at Libby—“one … big … trailer court.”
“I do love those little houses,” Libby said.
“Think about it,” said Red.
“You think about it. And if you’re serious, come up with a price.”
“Oh, hell. You could pay for the moving. I should probably pay you to take one off my hands.”
A small white bungalow sitting snugly against her hill: she wanted it so much, she was afraid to fully imagine it. Yet there was something else, too. A dark spot, an ache. Libby, surrounded by generous friends, suddenly missed Lewis keenly. Where was he? Why wasn’t he sitting here next to her, taking her hand under the table and placing it on his admirable erection?
HE’D STOPPED reading. He’d stopped writing. He’d stopped thinking. He’d essentially stopped living his life. From the moment he came to Round Rock, he’d put his personality, work, and future on hold, and now he was in trouble. His advisor had told him he couldn’t register for the fall term because he was on academic probation. Over half his courses were still listed as incomplete, and three were already past due. But for the ineptitude of the registrar’s staff, he’d be facing three F’s. If he wanted extensions, he had to petition right away.
As a last resort, Lewis pleaded getting sober. When he explained how he’d been interned at Round Rock, his advisor softened. “You’re very brave,” he said. “We want you back. So get your work in.”
Inspired, Lewis devised a routine. Every night, after AA meetings at the farm, Lewis drove in to Buchanan, to Denny’s, where he sat in booth twelve. Six days a week, this booth was in Phyllis’s section. Phyllis was a skinny bottle-blonde with a chronically bloody nose caused, he was certain, by snorting methamphetamines by the spoonful. Not that he had any proof, but this theory explained her low weight, her frequent trips to the restroom, and her edge, although she was nice enough to him. Phyllis didn’t care if he kept the booth all night. She sat across from him for brief spells, during which she doled out her life’s story in terse sentences, which he, in turn, jotted down and fashioned into a poem. He considered including it in an appendix to his paper “Found Elements in Poetry, Art, and Architecture.” He called the poem “Shit, Yeah.”
I married at fifteen.
Of course I was pregnant.
Did you really have to ask?
You’ll meet Ralph one of these nights
I can’t find a babysitter.
He looked like a lizard when he was born.
Long and lipless.
You bet I’m divorced.
He was a college man, too.
Bad news with a big mouth.
He had forcible sex with my sister.
And my mother.
And me, too, of course.
If that counts.
Rape. Right.
You are smart.
He said he’d kill Ralph if I left.
No kidding, I believed him.
His hands had a life of their own,
Snapped off doorknobs.
See this nose?
Feel it.
Feel that?
That’s just how it healed.
One night I put ant poison in his food.
Shit yeah, he got sick.
What’d you expect?
He ate ant poison, for chrissakes.
Phyllis read it over several times. “Pretty bitchin’ poem,” she said.
LEWIS wore pressed khakis. A bright white T-shirt. A black linen sport jacket. Black sneakers. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail. In the porch light, framed by the doorway, his face had a carved, princely look.
“Want to get some dinner?” he asked.
“I already ate.”
“I thought we could go to Buchanan. Eat dinner and catch a movie.”
“Wish I’d known. I wouldn’t have eaten that lousy torta.”
“We can still catch a movie.”
“Come inside,”