Empty Pockets (16 page)

“What's wrong?” she said.

“Nothing,” Michael said. “Let me just take a minute.”

“No!” she laughed, and she pulled him to her again and Michael said, “No, wait for a minute,” and he reached over and
turned the floor lamp off so the only light in the room was coming from the light left on in the kitchen, and this time when he put his mouth on her breast he unsnapped his jeans and let his cock come out and she put her hand on it and touched it and slowly pulled on it and he lifted her skirt up and pulled her underwear down and she laid back on the couch and let him pull the underwear off along both legs over her shoes and she kept holding on to him and pulled on him and then he was lying on top of her and slowly rubbing himself back and forth on her and they were kissing and he felt something stopping him and she winced and he pushed again and said, “Am I in?” And Beverly said, “No, I don't think so.”

“No?”

“Maybe,” Beverly said. “I don't know. I don't think so, but I'm not sure.”

“I'll go slow,” Michael said.

“I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't,” she said.

Michael had not yet ever been inside a girl, and this would be the first time for Beverly, too, and he lay still against her for a moment in the dark, feeling her heart beating and her breathing, and then he heard the cat meow and meow again and then car headlights swept into the driveway outside and Beverly said, “Oh, my God!” and was pushing him off, and Michael said, “Jesus!” and she was sitting up and then scrambling on the floor for her underwear and he grabbed his jeans, pulling them up, and she said, “Hurry, Michael, hurry! Go out the back. They'll come in the front door and it's locked.”

Michael was already moving, and going into the kitchen he saw the car lights go out and heard the car door open and slam shut and he waited by the back door until he heard the other car door open and shut with the footsteps going away on the concrete toward the front of the house.

As he slid the door open the cat came outside with him and he silently tried to put her back inside but she wouldn't go. He slid the door closed and waited. The cat was rubbing herself back and forth on his leg and he heard them go inside the house
and saw the light from the living room go on and he waited another moment, his heart still beating really fast, and whispered, “I've got to go,” to the cat.

He got the bike and wheeled it down the side of the house along the Monahan's Chrysler and got on and started pedaling back up the street.

The cat, running on the side of the street along the other houses, darting in and out among the shrubbery, followed him for several blocks and then she was gone.

Michael was pedaling now as fast as he could get the bike to go. Everything was dark out and he felt safe. His only worry now was getting home unseen, then getting inside without waking anyone. But what if his mom had already come in to check on him and had discovered the pillows under the covers? Or his dad had?

Well, he would know in a few minutes. He really hoped they hadn't.

He was sweating under his arms and sweat broke out on his forehead now, and he pushed hard, the bike flying, and by Paul Hayes's house the automatic lawn sprinklers went on, shooting spray out across the grass and into the street. Michael rode through the showers, the little drops hitting his face and neck and arms, and then he came off Modoc and turned down Winnebago, all the lights of the houses still out except for the Keplar's bedroom window, and then it went out just as Michael approached, and he coasted on the bike, not wanting them to hear him.

Then, for some reason, not knowing why he was doing it, he let the bike slow, and dropped it on the grass right by the curb and walked up to the bedroom window.

There was a curtain across it, and stepping up to the sill he pressed his ear to the glass and tried to listen. Someone was saying something, but it was too hard to hear, and then there was nothing, and then, just as Michael started to step back, he heard Don Keplar say, “Say
I am fucking.
Say it. Say
I am fucking.
” And then Vi Keplar said, “I am fucking.”

“Say it again,” Don Keplar said.

“I am fucking,” Vi Keplar said. Her voice had gasps of air in it.

Michael was stunned.

He pulled away from the glass. He couldn't believe it. He pressed his ear against the glass again. This time there was nothing. He couldn't hear anything. He stayed there a moment longer. Then he turned and banged into a garbage can.

Michael took off out onto the lawn, grabbed up his bike and ran across the street with it. Moving into the carport he saw his dad's Chevy was gone. Oh, Jesus, he thought, he's gone out to look for me.

A car went by on the street, headlights flaring. It was a black four-door Oldsmobile, not anyone's car he knew. The street went quiet, the sound of the car vanishing. Michael laid the bike up against the post, then walked around back to his window. He waited and listened. The crickets were working. The smell of jasmine was strong. He slid the window up. The rug was still pushed up against the door. No one had looked in, thank God.

He boosted himself up and slid in on his stomach and got down on the bed and waited until his breathing calmed down. Where had his dad gone? He undressed and tossed his clothes on the floor and got into bed and lay there for quite a while, thinking about his dad and how there was no way he would know that he, Michael, had gone out, and about Beverly and what she must have said, if she had got caught or not, and then about Vi Keplar and Don Keplar and how somehow that made it all sound dirty, really dirty, and how with Beverly it didn't feel like that at all, and if he and Beverly had really done it yet, had really achieved the sensation of having arrived on the planet, as Gunner had put it, and he was really glad he really didn't know Vi Keplar and how she was, not at all, and that Beverly was going to be babysitting at the Monahan's for at least two more nights this week since both of the Monahans were working out at the county fair, and that he would have to sneak out of the house much earlier than he had tonight. He could do that. He knew he would do that.

Then it was late in the morning, and when he got up and went into the kitchen his mom was there mixing up pancake batter, and she said, “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

“Where's Dad?” Michael said.

“I don't know,” his mom said. “You want some pancakes?”

“Sure.”

“Would you get out the milk? I need a little more here.”

Michael went over to the refrigerator and took out the milk.

“You know what, Mom?” Michael said. “I'd like to get a cat.”

“A cat?”

“Yes.”

“What would you do with a cat? You're going off to college soon enough. Who would take care of it then, me? No, thank you.”

“Cats take care of themselves.”

“Oh, brother,” his mom said.

The phone rang and his mom answered it.

Michael brought the milk over to the counter and set it down next to the bowl. His mom was listening on the phone.

“Really! That's terrible!” she said. She listened for a few moments, then said, “No, come on over. I really want to hear this.”

She hung up the phone.

“Who was that?” Michael said.

“Vi. She's coming over for a coffee. They had a prowler last night.”

She picked up the milk and poured a little into the bowl.

“They did?” Michael said.

“I guess so. Don heard something outside and went out to look and he saw a car going away down the street.”

“What kind of car?”

“I don't know. She said a black car.”

“That's scary,” Michael said.

“You just never know,” his mom said, stirring the batter.

“You know what, Mom?” Michael said. “I'm going to skip breakfast. I've got to get going.”

“Where are you going?”

“Over to Gunner's. We're going over to Richland today to look at some cars.”

“What's wrong with the car you've got?”

“Nothing's wrong with the car I've got. We just like to look at cars.”

“Well, you should wait and hear what Vi has to say. If she describes the car Don saw maybe you'll know whose it is.”

“I don't think so, Mom. If this is about the pancakes, it's all right. I'm just not hungry. Thank you anyway. I'll let you make them for me tomorrow.”

“Well, aren't I the lucky one,” his mother said with a laugh. “Go on. Get out of here.”

Michael turned to go.

“About the cat,” his mother said. “You'll have to ask your father.”

“He won't care,” Michael said. “He's never here.”

He hadn't been looking at his mom when he said this and now as he did, he saw her face had broken. A bad feeling, blinding him to the space around them, flooded out into the room, his mother standing there in the middle of the darkness of it.

“I'm sorry, Mom,” Michael said.

“You don't know how hard it is,” his mother said. “You don't know how hard I try to keep things the same for you. Things aren't the same. I can't do it anymore.”

She broke out crying.

“I am so sorry, Mom.” He was stepping to her.

“Go on. Get out of here,” his mother said. “I need to compose myself before Vi gets here. If you want a cat you should get one. Who am I to say you shouldn't?”

“Jeez, Mom,” Michael said. “I am really sorry. Come here.”

Michael put his arms around his mom. Her shoulders felt so thin.

Chimes rang through the house.

“That's Vi,” his mom said.

“What am I going to do?” his mom said.

She wasn't talking about Vi.

“I don't know,” Michael said.

Claire

“I
must tell you a love story. This will be a love story, my love story for you. It's about Brian, and how it ended for me with Brian. You remember he and Lola were married then? He was seeing me and it became, well, it became too involved, too intense, he was so demanding, so needy, he needed me to fix things so much it wasn't for me, so I ended it. I ended it, and then right after, I ran into Lola in Smiley's, and she was very drunk. She was very drunk and she came up to me saying, ‘I know what you've been doing, I know, and I'm going to beat you up.' I said. ‘What is this? Yes, it's true, but you're too late, it's already over, it's finished, I've ended it with him.' Now she was very, very drunk, so it ended up that I had to drive her home and put her to bed. Since I had to do that and it was raining I couldn't walk home. It was her car, you see, I didn't own a car then, so I had to stay over, and we slept together in her bed, and I made love with her. It was very funny. I'm wearing Brian's clothes, his robe, and I play Brian's role with her, and in the morning she says, ‘My God, what did we do?' And I said, ‘I don't know. What do you mean?' And she says, ‘Brian. What are we going to do about Brian?' And I said, ‘I don't know. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to tell him? Is that it?' So when Brian came in she told him, you see, and that is my love story for you this evening.”

Gone to Polyester

T
he waitress was forty years old. Wore her hair piled up on top her head. Unfolded the linen napkin and put it on the boy's lap. He was startled. He was fifteen years old and it was his first trip to the South. It was politeness on her part. The biscuits were powdery and wonderful. His grandfather said you eat them with gravy. He was telling the boy, whose name was Michael, about the war.

“My war,” he said. “The big war. You'll never experience anything like it. I sure as hell hope you don't. You live in a foxhole that's all mud, 'cause it rains for two straight weeks, you sleep in it, you eat in it, then there's thermal pollution.”

“What's that?” Michael asked.

His grandfather laughed. “That's when Zumwalt has got you in an ammunition truck that's on fire, the canvas is, and you're driving it out of the compound during a Stuka bombing run and everything is blowing up all around you and the damned truck starts exploding behind you, or you're hunkered down behind a log on the Rhine with the Colonel and a Kraut machine gun is firing from across the water and the slugs are chunking into the log and you can feel them hit and feel the heat from the ones singing off right over your head and both of you crap your pants.”

“Were you hit?”

The waitress came over and refilled his grandfather's cup. She poured it really slowly.

“Thank you, Elizabeth,” his grandfather said.

The waitress gave Michael's grandfather a smile and shifted her look to Michael and gave him the same smile.

“No.” His grandfather laughed again. “But I sure was humiliated.”

“Who's Zumwalt?”

“They called him Zip. He was a mean son of a bitch. He'd shoot guys.”