Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [72]
Or she could take one of Red’s bungalows, paint it a woodsy green with white trim, set it high upon her hill, run bougainvillea on trellises, build a series of decks like rafts among the flowers and trees. There would be opera—Verdi or Puccini—in the air. She could see Lewis there, too: he’d be outside watering, or pruning fruit trees, his unmistakable brooding self, now sufficiently domesticated. We had our troubles, she’d say to people. Oh, believe you me. He didn’t know what he wanted. Spooked as a bird …
She slowed for the turn into Round Rock’s front entrance and saw the familiar off-white Fairlane at the stop. The curly silhouette waggled this way and that. He looked right at her—his head ticked back in recognition, didn’t it?—and then he made a fast, sloppy righthand turn. The Fairlane skidded on a patch of gravel, slid, and she was sure it would go off the road. But a wheel caught, and in a big fishtail he was gone.
She pulled over to the side of the road. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.” If she stayed absolutely still, she thought, she might not feel a thing.
RED RAY found her twenty minutes later. The worst was over; that throat-corroding cry. She’d spat gobs of black-streaked mucus out the window and dried her eyes on her stinky, soot-smeared sleeve. Red peered in her window. “What are you doing in there?”
His T-shirt was so white it hurt to look at. “Thinking.”
“Coming up with anything?”
“No.”
“Sorry to hear about your trailer.”
“You already heard?”
“Welcome to Rito,” he said.
“And Lewis heard?”
“He left a while ago to give you a hand.”
She frowned, thinking this over. “I don’t think so. He saw me and took off. We had a fight and he didn’t want to see me. That’s pretty clear.”
Red watched her without speaking.
“I’m okay, now,” she said. “I really should get back.”
Red reached inside to touch Libby’s shoulder. “Let’s take my truck,” he said.
BILLIE was waiting for them at the trailer, her truck bed stacked with empty 3-Bill brand orange boxes. Libby packed the boxes while Red and Billie loaded them onto their trucks, along with the salvageable furniture.
As she worked, Libby kept thinking she heard a car and hoped to see the Fairlane crest the hill. There was still time for him to relent—or was it “repent”? “Sorry, I choked,” he might say. “I flinched, but I’m here now, aren’t I?” She tried not to glance down the driveway too often, in keeping with the watched-pot principle. Also, she was embarrassed that, after all his antics, she still wanted Lewis to appear. She couldn’t help it. Some part of her—her heart or guts—hadn’t gotten the message yet, not quite. She found herself chanting under her breath what was surely a prayer, that Lewis would come, and come soon, before it was too late and this lapse became irreparable.
NEXT STOP: the laundromat. Though reluctant to leave her alone, Billie and Red agreed to take the boxes and furniture to Billie’s warehouse while Libby monitored ten loads of stinky wash. “I need time to myself,” she’d said. “Please.”
Once the clothes were sloshing, Libby walked up to the Mills. Why am I doing this? she wondered. Her trailer had burned, her life was in complete disarray, and all she could think about was Lewis? Clearly this was some kind of post-trauma derangement.
She wanted to find him at home and miraculously equipped with a convincing explanation: his car exploded en route to her, he’d done an L.A. turnaround to fetch her bags of money, he had amnesia, anything. All she wanted was a wild story whose upshot was, We’re fine, we’re good, our future is bright.
She knocked, then tried his locked door. She stood in the hallway, approximately where she’d kicked him only twelve hours ago. “Oh, God.” She was talking out loud now, like a crazy person. “Don’t let this be happening. Not to me. Not right now. Not again.