The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [118]
“You sound ridiculous when you say fuck,” he says.
______
Thomas opens the door of the Skylark. He reaches into the backseat and takes out the duffel bag. Linda watches as he makes his way to the beach in front of the dune grass, slipping and sliding as he goes. She sits on her hands to get a better look. The tide is high, lapping at his feet. With the strength of an athlete, he flings the bag high and wide into the sea. He watches it float for a minute until it sinks.
Her eye flickers between the vertical upright stalks of the dune grass, the horizontal clapboards of the cottage, the squares of the windowpanes. She hasn’t noticed this before, but everything is a pattern. She has thought that her life until now was a random series of events. This thing happened and then that thing happened, and then that thing happened. When all along, there has been a pattern, a plan. A beautifully intricate plan.
Thomas slips into the car, shivering as he does so. Though his jacket is on, his shirt is still unbuttoned. He rubs his hands together.
“What will happen now?” she asks. “Won’t Donny T. be mad? How much was in there?”
“A few kilos. He’ll probably put a contract out on me.”
“Thomas.”
“I’m only kidding. I’ll pay him. I’ll think of something.”
______
In the cafeteria the next day, Donny T. is making book on how many more days of school will be canceled before the winter ends. The high bet is six. The low is none. Linda thinks the low bet is closer to the truth. The minute changes in the light — the strength of it, the way it slants through the windows — suggests that spring is tantalizingly near.
There are pockets of slush on the tile floor beneath her table. She sits alone, with only five minutes left before class. She contemplates the iridescent sheen on the mystery meat in front of her, the congealed gravy that lies in lumps on the plate. She wishes she’d thought to bring an apple.
She watches Donny T. at his table: the deft way he takes the money from outstretched fingers; the sleight of hand as he slips it into a jacket pocket, the casual way he jots notations on a napkin, ready to ball it in his fist should an overcurious teacher wander his way. He is entrepreneurial and gifted.
She takes a bite of mystery meat and sends up a quick prayer to Mary to intercede on Thomas’s behalf, to protect him and to guide him. They are nearly, but not quite, rote, these prayers. She says them for Jack and for Eileen, said them for Patty when she had the German measles, for Erin when she got a D in Latin. She thinks of the prayers as balloons and sees them squiggling up through the atmosphere, past the clouds, trailing string. Balloons of hope. A prayer is nothing if not a balloon of hope.
“Linda Fallon,” a voice behind her says.
She turns and quickly swallows the lump of mystery meat. “Mr. K.,” she says.
“May I join you?” he asks.
“Sure,” she says, moving her tray aside.
“Don’t let me keep you from your lunch.”
“No, that’s fine,” she says. “It’s disgusting anyway.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
Mr. K., a short, squat, barrel-chested man who tries without success to look professorial, swings his legs over the bench. He is nursing a cup of coffee, poking at it with a straw.
“You know,” he says, “in addition to being an English teacher, I’m also the senior class adviser.”
“I know,” she says.
“And to make a long story short, I was going over the list of students applying to college, and I didn’t see your name.”
“No.”
“You didn’t apply.”
Linda unclasps a barrette from her hair and then puts it back in. “No.”
“May I ask why?”
She runs a finger along the edge of the beige Formica. “I don’t know,” she says.
“You have tremendous potential,” he says, still poking at his coffee. “You put sentences together in a very lucid way. Your writing has logic. Need I say, this is a rare enough commodity in student prose?”
She smiles.
“May I ask you a personal question?”
She nods.
“Is the reason financial?”
She has worked