Slide - Kyle Beachy [57]
“I guess. Sure.”
“Sure you're sure. Now. What is it brings you to the prince?”
I looked at Deanna and felt a gust of exclusion blown in from some foreign land I was too young and stupid to even visit. I felt like a dog might feel, staring at a horse. We were the same shape, roughly, but the differences in scale and skills were immense.
“Just a quaint, selfish concern. Nothing important.”
“Some girl, I bet. Some dumb girl doing dumb things got you worried might be the goddamn end of the universe. And by now we're old friends, Potter Mays. Friends share.”
Here was a woman who'd persisted long enough as a secretary that she eventually usurped her boss's master bedroom. Before, she had loved at least one mechanic. But what else? What jobs, what varied lives with what array of others? She had been run through a system, her own sequence of boxes checked or left empty. She emerged older, scathed, and was rewarded with astounding wealth, empty days of cat-watching and gin. By all standards, she'd won. Deanna Hurst had beaten them all.
“There's a girl,” I said.
“Sure is.”
“It's an issue of love. After four years together we've reached a kind of chasm. Who was chasm? Hegel? Point is, I either step into this chasm or turn and walk away. Or leap over the chasm. I'm not sure how the metaphor is set up.”
“Chasm. Okay. I don't mind that idea. I can attest to a chasm or two along the way. Now, but what's keeping you from making this decision on your own?”
I scratched my forehead and wished I had made myself a drink.
“Nothing. Myself. Her, maybe?”
I coughed. She sat up and looked at me like I'd just vomited into her lap.
“And with all the people in the world, you thought to hand this decision over to Stuart Hurst. Boy, if that was dumb alone you might be okay, but I got a feeling what's wrong here isn't a problem of dumb. I got a feeling you're a pussy.”
“I mean.”
“My goodness. You almost had me for a second. Mixed up a stiff drink and handled yourself like a man. Nearly had me fooled. That's the worst kind of pussy too. Sneaky little-boy pussies like yourself.”
And as if I owed her further proof, I offered no defense. All I could do was sit there while she pounded the rest of her drink and lay back down into her lounger. Swallowing and smiling with disgust. I couldn't imagine what her eyes might have looked like behind the glasses.
“Little pussy boy, look at you. Who's the tall muscle freak? Edward? Edmund? Least that one's got a set of balls on him. By association I figured you had something going on too. Now I look at you and wish I didn't have to.”
“I have to be back at work. Should I get you another drink before I go?”
“There it is—little pussy with that little pussy face. Pussy arms. Pussy legs.”
I parked the van inside the warehouse, tossed the MTs into one pile and the flattened cooler boxes into another, then filled out the day's paperwork. At home I bathed and ate a salami sandwich. I found the stack of papers I'd printed in the computer room and put them into a manila folder. I carried the folder out to the garden, where my mother was gardening. She didn't immediately notice me. I pretended to walk in exaggerated comical movement for the audience. She made no acknowledgment of my presence. Her face was in a state unlike any I'd seen on her, violently focused on the task at hand, everything chin to hairline somehow appearing both furrowed and taught, a wrinkled stretch.
I decided this wasn't something I should watch. I left my mother in the garden and continued across the driveway, up to the door of the Hoynes’. I rang the bell and waited, clutching the folder at my waist. Inside the folder were SAT exercises I had stolen from a Web site.
Nancy Hoyne welcomed me into her home. She offered juice or tea or