Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [70]
“Work,” she whispered. “I need a minute to recover.”
“I work at Denny’s,” he said. “In Buchanan.”
She sat up in bed and looked at him carefully. Her hands began reaching for her clothes. “You really don’t want to live with me, do you?”
“Not if you push me into a corner.”
“I see.” She dressed in rapid, hurried movements.
“I need more time to think things out,” he said.
“You got it.”
Holding the door open for her, he saw that her bra strap was twisted under the ribbing of her tight little shirt, and this made him want to kiss her. He always appreciated Libby at moments of departure. She was such a trouper. Tonight, he was soppily grateful she was leaving without a fight. He disappointed her, he knew. She wanted and deserved more than he could give. Someone like Arvill would do far better, could help her along in life.
Libby turned as he moved forward, his lips aiming for that anger-flushed cheek. Before he got there, she kicked him—hard—on the shin. He could tell she’d meant the kick as a jokey, incomplete gesture, but his momentum had swung him into her oncoming foot. The gently pointed toes of her black pumps connected with his shinbone like a dull axe.
He muffled a shout and she grasped his arm. “I’m sorry! Jesus, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. He pulled away from her, away from the pain. Even so, he felt a thrill: for once, she’d done the wrong thing. “I’ll be okay,” he said. “Just go. Get away from me. Please.”
She sprang away, into the stairwell, quick and light as a cat. Her swiftness startled him, and he realized how heartless he’d sounded. Hobbling, he pursued her to the first landing. “No hard feelings, Lib,” he called after her sotto voce. “I’ll call you soon. Take care, now.”
AS LIBBY turned up her road, she saw white and yellow lights hovering and swirling in the sky. Is this what UFOs looked like? The lights seemed to come from the area of her trailer. Would she be captured, probed, and then spend the rest of her life trying to convince people that such events actually occurred?
The lights, she soon saw, came from vehicles parked in front of her trailer. Trucks. Large trucks. Fire trucks. And Billie’s great white Chevy.
Her first impulse was to drive away, come back, and have it all be different.
Billie’s foreman, Rogelio, had been out on patrol when he smelled something. He drove up to investigate and saw smoke seeping from the trailer, called the fire department on his CB, then busted down the door on the off chance Libby was inside. “The fumes could’ve killed him,” one fireman told Libby. “Just be happy you weren’t in there asleep.” He snapped his gloved fingers. “It happens that fast in these tin cans.”
The firemen had thrown what they could onto the deck, covered it with a tarp, then gone back in and sprayed like hell. Now they shined spotlights so she could see to gather up some things.
“Get everything of value out of here,” the fireman said. “There’ll be looters before morning.”
“Looters!”
“They come out of the woodwork.” He nodded toward the olive grove, as if that leafy darkness were full of eager eyes.
Billie and Little Bill helped her pile as much as they could into the Chevy. Her musical instruments were safe, and a lot of her furniture seemed fine except for a terrible acrid smell. They worked for an hour or so, loading what they could, locking the rest in the sodden trailer. Back at the Fitzgerald adobe, Billie and Libby drank scotch in the library. “I must be numb,” Libby said. “It just doesn’t seem so bad. Not as bad as it could have been.”
Billie put Libby in what she called the guest suite, two lovely wheat-colored rooms on the second floor. Wheat carpeting and curtains, wheat sofa and bedclothes. There Libby dreamt of trash heaps swarming with looters shaped like giant sow bugs. One turned, and the face in the gray carapace was Lewis’s. She woke, kicking at the sheets. What had they even been fighting about?
While Billie was out doing irrigation, Libby dressed and drove back home. In the colorless