The Fortunes of Indigo Skye (25 page)

"Wasn't he a singer?" Marty says. "Kinky-haired
guy?"

187

"Not that Peter Frampton, you asshole," I say.
I ball up the napkin in anger. "You better remember this. It's the last warning
you're gonna get."

I turn my back. I hold my breath.

"This place sucks," Bill says.

"Let's go to Starbucks," Marty says.

They ease out of the seat. The bells of the
door jangle hard behind them. When the two men pass by the window, Leroy starts
to applaud. Then Trina joins in, and then Joe, and even the bookstore guy. It's
just a smattering of applause, not the full-fledged all-out type you'd get if
this were a movie, but still. The old couple, who I'm guessing are visiting from
out of town, look up like gaping fish, eyes big and scared behind their
glasses.

"I've always wanted to do that to those guys,"
Leroy says.

"Me too," Joe says.

"Do you really have a black belt?" Funny
asks.

"Sure," I say. "I also have a brown one, and a
fake snakeskin one that I don't wear because it looks like an endangered
species."

"Why didn't we ever DO that?" Leroy says. "We
just sat there and let it happen, and no one said a word to those
assholes."

"Why didn't I ever do that, is more like it,"
Nick says.

"Those guys were shaking. Did you see that?"
Trina holds up a hand, makes it tremble.

"Indigo?" Jane says. "I need to talk with you.
When your shift is over." Her voice is stretched tight, like the snappy skin of
a polish sausage.

"Dum da dum dum." Trina hums uh-oh
music.

"She's not in trouble for that. Tell me she's
not in trouble for that," Leroy says. Jane ignores him. She gives the old couple
their check and smiles nicely at them.

188

"If I were younger, I would have
pow,
popped those guys in the kisser," Joe says.

I know Jane isn't exactly pleased with me, but
I figure it'll wear off by the time the morning's over. She'd been pissed at me
before--for taking too long at tables (it's not my fault if people want to tell
me their life stories), for flipping off nasty customers behind their back. But
I just act remorseful and everything is fine. Even with her weird new attitude
toward me, I figure that's how it'll go. So I work my shift and the Irregulars
start heading out, and I hang up my apron and say good-bye to Luigi, and expect
Jane to give me a few serious words using her eyebrows of concern, the
end.

"Indigo," she says. We are by the coatrack in
the back room. It is past coat-wearing season, but the rack is filled. There's a
blue puffy parka, and a navy nylon jacket and a zip-up gray sweatshirt. Who
knows who the coats belong to--they've been here for as long as I've worked
here, gaining new members periodically (a red jacket with ski tags on the
zipper, an orange slicker like crossing guards wear). It's like the shelter for
homeless coats. Coats with no places to go and be a coat.

I sigh.

"Look, I'm not kidding around here," she says.
"I didn't say anything," I say.

"Not
yet,"
she says, and her tone
surprises me. The "yet" is a word with edges, the sharp angles of
hostility.

"Jeez, Jane," I say. Here's where I am supposed
to apologize. She's supposed to accept. I make a joke and all is well again. But
her tone jabs in a way she's never jabbed before. And I'm not so sure I like
being jabbed. "Ever since I got the money, you've been like this," I
say.

189

"And
you've
been like
this,"
she
says. "You leave me in the lurch when you go off to Hawaii. Your cell phone's
making me freaking nuts and I told you I wanted it off. You tell off my
customers--"

"I had to go, you
knew
that. And your
customers are hurting your other customer," I say.

"I can't exactly afford to lose people here,
Indigo." She folds her arms. Her face is actually flushed red. "They're probably
not going to come back."

"You shouldn't even let guys like that in," I
say. I start to cross my own arms, then let them hang at my sides. It feels like
a face-off, and this is Jane and I love her, but the edge is in my own voice
now. "They treat Nick that way--"

"It's up to Nick to take care of himself. I've
got my own things to take care of here. I've got people who count on me. What
you did might have been amusing to everyone else--"

"Amusing isn't the point, Jane," I breathe.
"Caring about
people
more than a twenty-dollar check is the
point."

"That's all fine when you have the luxury of
being able to have principles."

I do fold my arms then. We are arguing. We're
actually arguing. And then comes what I know is coming. What I knew all along
was coming.

"You may have the money to say and do whatever
you want, Indigo, but I don't," she says. "I've got
responsibilities.
I
have bills to pay. No one gave me two and a half million dollars." Her forehead
is shiny with sweat. She wipes it with her palm.

"I didn't ask him to give me that money. It
just happened," I

say.

Jane takes a deep breath, blows out slowly. She
looks at me,

190

and for a minute I see just Jane, the old Jane.
"I know you didn't," she says. "I apologize for being bitchy. I'm under a lot of
stress here lately. And the whole money thing--I'm sorry. I confess to feeling
very human about it. Ungenerous. Jealous in a way I'm not proud of. And then
there's your own behavior recently ..."

"Okay," I say.

But I don't say I'm sorry. She's being unfair.
It's not my fault I'm suddenly rich. The apology is noticeably absent. I stare
at the coats. Jane stares at the coats. I hear the siss of Luigi cooking
something in oil. Jane looks at me briefly, then shakes her head and walks back
out to the dining area. "I want the phone off," she says over one shoulder. I
watch her silver earrings flash their disappointment, then the round curve of
her shoulders heading away.

I don't think of those shoulders hunched over
the spreadsheet on a computer screen, or at the counter of her bank, or even up
late at night in bed, the light on when lights should be off, joining all of the
other lights lit in midnight worry. Instead, I think about Leroy's question, of
why no one stopped the True Value guys, even Nick himself. It was hopelessness,
I decide, and the word, just that word, makes me feel ticked off and even
slightly disgusted. Hope is not something that fate bestows, like Willy Wonka
and the golden ticket, I think then. Hope is a decision. And sure, maybe money
allows you to make that decision more easily, but still.

I let the bells slam against the glass, and if
Jane doesn't like that, either, it's just too bad.

Severin bounds out of the house when Trevor and
I drive up. The front door bangs against the wall with a bash--it lost its
springy

190

191

little doorstop long ago. Mrs. Denholm is
watering her plants-- i.e., spying on us. The stream of water that's supposed to
be hitting a rosebush is actually hitting a cement garden frog, and she is
squinting in the effort to get a good look at us. She keeps studying other
things intently--the mailboxes, her own porch--in an effort, I guess, not to
stare. She's no doubt convinced that Trevor and Severin are part of some robbery
or heist or credit card scam due to the amount of boxes that have been entering
our house in the last week, and she's probably working hard at remembering
everything to tell the police. Mrs. Denholm used to make those offers that were
really demands--
Would you like to borrow my clippers so that you can trim
that hedge? If your lawn mower's not working, you can certainly use mine ...
--but she has changed tactics lately and has taken to making statements that are
really quests for information.
There's certainly been a lot of commotion at
your house lately.
Or,
A delivery truck was here, but you weren't
home.

This is what she says now. "A delivery truck
was here, but you weren't home," she shouts, cupping one hand around her mouth,
megaphone-style. That cement frog is getting the watering of his
life.

"Thanks," I shout back, and give a little wave.
I love the fact that this gives her no additional detail. I love the fact that
this will make her stew in her own juices of curiosity, and that it will send
her into a frenzy of peeking through her Venetian blinds.

"We missed FedEx, but I was here for UPS,"
Severin says. He's getting tan already, and I'm surprised right then how much he
looks like Dad. "Trev, I need your help. What'd you guys do, buy the biggest TV
in the store?"

"Flat screen," Trevor says. "It can hang right
on the wall."

"If we had a wall that size. Come on, I can't
even get it out of

192

the box by myself. The UPS man had to use a
cart."

"UPS men don't lift refrigerators," Trevor
says. This reminds me to admire his muscles, which reminds me to pinch his cute
little ass. I love that little ass. It isn't Hunter Eden cute, not cute enough
for screaming masses, but it's cute enough for one Indigo Skye.

Mom isn't home from work yet, which is probably
a good thing. Severin was right about the TV--he and Trevor are hauling it
around and trying it in different places, and it looks a little like a drive-in
movie screen suddenly in our living room.

"We'll get used to it," Trevor says, and in
spite of his refrigerator comment, his arm muscles are bulgy with effort, and a
thin stream of sweat is cruising down his temple.

"I can't wait to see it on," Severin says.
"Where were you today at school, In?" he says. "Mr. Fetterling asked where you
were. He said he heard some rumor that you came into a fortune and were going to
drop out three weeks before graduation. I told him you had strep
throat."

"I got in a fight with Jane and didn't feel
like going," I say.

"She came with me on my rounds. You should have
seen her lift this microwave oven by herself," Trevor says. He shakes his head
and his hair swivels with crazy blond pride.

"Small but mighty," I say, and flex my arm for
him.

"Strong and beautiful," Trevor says. "And
rich."

I wish he wouldn't say that and I'm about to
tell him so, when Severin says, "Well, you better get Mom to call. Okay, I think
this wall is as good as we're going to get."

It's the wall where Mom's rocker is, and Trevor
lifts the rocker in one hand and plops it onto the middle of the carpet. The TV
sticks out into the hall a little, but it's either that or hanging it in the
hall itself.

193

"Screwdriver," Severin says.

I search around on the floor. "Check." I hand
it over. "Metal hanger," Severin says. "Check." That too.

Severin fusses with bolts and hangers while
Trevor hunts in the fridge for something cool to boost his strength before we
have to lift the thing up again.

"Hey, didn't you guys buy a drill?" Severin
says.

"Yeah, it makes holes to the tune of the
'Star-Spangled Banner,'" Trevor shouts from the kitchen, and chuckles. The soap
dispenser had been keeping everyone up at night. Mom hid it under some towels in
the bathroom cabinet, and it is still there now.

"Just a sec, I'll get it," I say.

Severin
zzzzz's
with the drill and
Trevor leans in the doorway and swigs a Fresca.

"Speaking of rich, In? I've got to ask you
something," Severin says. "I wouldn't bring it up, but it's sort of an emergency
and I figured you wouldn't mind.... Does that look straight?" He stands back,
appraises the hooks now firmly in the wall.

"I'm not buying you steroids. The protein
shakes are bad enough."

"Ha. And, no jokes, okay? Just because you're
not going? It's important to me. The prom. I don't want Kayleigh to think I'm
some poor kid..."

"You are some poor kid," Trevor reminds. "At
least, no one puts your head on God's body."

"You know, a few hundred dollars? I have the
tux money, but I know she'd expect a limo. And a nice dinner. A really nice
dinner. A dozen roses, maybe."

194

"A corsage, not roses," I say. "She can't wear
a dozen roses pinned to her dress."

"Well, she could, it'd just make dancing
painful." Trevor tilts the Fresca can and takes another swig.

"I just thought, both, you know? A special
night? Why not?"

Why not? Because I don't like Kayleigh Moore?
Because I think she's like some child who would only look down her nose at the
other children grappling on the floor for the candy that fell from the piñata?
Because I worry she's going with Severin to do a good deed for the kid who works
in the warehouse? Because in her case, Moore is less?

"I don't get why a prom is like a mini-wedding
these days and a wedding is like royal nuptials. No one should spend that kind
of money for a high school dance."