The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [17]
“She's my favorite singer. It's like she becomes transported. Did you notice that, how it's almost, like, religious,” she shouts over the air-conditioning and Céline's new CD that she'd bought for him. Paid cash, as she has for everything so far. No bills when she gets home, he reminds her whenever she takes out a credit card. To pass like vapor, leaving no trail, steers every decision, each unlikely route on the map. Out of her sight, he shreds every receipt. She admires his caution about money and is touched by his shame at not having any of his own right now. His concern for her well-being has eased her early fears. She can tell him anything, she confided last night.
She is talking, still talking. Louder, now, to be heard over the music. Please, he thinks, soon, needing, aching to close his eyes, but can't. Not yet.
“You know what I mean, like the way she's actually feeling it, becoming the music?”
Eyes fixed on the road, he nods.
“We should turn off soon, huh?” She sighs.
The brown, dusty landscape of rocks and wind-stunted trees depresses him. Like her talking, endless, unpunctuated by anything memorable. She's only got two more vacation days left. She could call in sick: in her inflection a suggestion, which he ignores. But then again, she hates doing that. Leaving them short-handed.
“When my father retired, he had two hundred and twenty-six sick days. Can you imagine? His whole time working, he only got sick once. A hernia, and four days after the operation he went in to work.”
“Huh!”
“Yeah. He's quite a guy. I think you'd like him. Did I tell you about his trains?”
He nods, but she continues anyway. “The whole basement's set up with tracks and tunnels. Mountains even. You won't believe it when you see it.” Leaning, she rips the Velcro flap on the soft nylon cooler between her bare feet. Another irritation, always taking off her shoes. He hates the sight of her thick toes, the purple painted nails, grotesque the way the little toe curls over the one next to it. Her stubby fingers paw noisily through the ice then, hold up a dripping can. “There's another root beer. Last one, want it?”
“No, that's okay.” He squints, trying to read the sign in the distance. His eyes are terrible. Along with everything else, his glasses are lost in the locked room.
She pops open the can and he tries not to glance in the mirror. As she sips, her full upper lip curls over the rim. Suddenly, this enrages him. The indignities he must endure, watching, seeing his own sniveling self with this beast. They better start heading back, she says again. There's a staff meeting first thing Monday and her boss is counting on her to have the monthly report ready.
“Liam. He's the one I told you about, the folk singer. Just the nicest guy, but the shelter, his heart's not in it. Sad really when you think of it. I mean, forty-two years old and his wife, she just got sick of the whole hippie thing and left. And you can't really blame her. I mean, two little girls, just the cutest things …”
He tries to tune her out. Out of the blue, she'll start talking about Liam. “Hey,” he interrupts. “Sounds like your boss's got a thing for you.”
“Actually he did try and kiss me once. At a retirement party, but I told him, not with a married guy. No way.” She looks out the side window, grinning, reliving the pathetic moment.
“What if I said, you've just spent the last five days sleeping with a married man?”
“Are you serious?”
“Maybe.” The quiver of her lip fills him with fleeting exhilaration. And then he's irritated again. Gullible people are weak. Weakness annoys him. Bile seeps into his mouth.
“Well, are you or aren't you?” she demands, though, he can tell, she doesn't believe him.
“Why?” He laughs. “What difference does it make? You had a good time, right?”
“Well, I wouldn't've come, for one thing.” Her large face flushes, mottled and red as the purse clutched to her belly.
Oh yes, you would've, he thinks. “Actually, my wife died. But that was a long time