Into Thin Air (22 page)

She began to like him for his books. She began slowly to imprint herself into them. She couldn't bear to hurt the books, but she bent back his paper bookmark or stained it with juice; she replaced it with a matchbook from Bally's Pub down the street. From the kitchen she watched him reclaiming his books, discovering her. He plucked up the matchbook bookmark she had left him and flipped it through his fingers. He frowned at the sudden stains, gazing up into the restaurant, but inevitably he became lost again in the book, reading a few pages until his meal arrived.

“He's cute, isn't he?” Valerie said.

Lee shrugged. “He's all right,” she said.

“I keep asking him, so who're you seeing? But all he says is ‘Oh, someone.' I think he's lying. I think he's too embarrassed to admit no one loves him but his baby sister.”

“Well,” Lee said. “You never know.”

It was a fairly slow night. There was a blizzard, and most people had stayed home. Valerie, queasy with flu, had Roy come and pick her up, leaving the car for Lee, who didn't once mention that she didn't have a license.

There was something in the air. It was a night when arguments seemed to erupt in the restaurant. Lee saw one woman hurl her fork at her lover and start to storm from the table before he reached out and grabbed her back. A businessman in a pinstripe gray suit, sitting alone by the window, wept quietly into his napkin.

Even Andy seemed somehow different, Bookless, he hunched over his meal, staring dreamily around the restaurant, and for the first time he seemed to be watching her. When Lee passed by him, he suddenly smiled. “You want something else?” she said.

“Nope,” he said.

Gradually the restaurant thinned out. Andy was finishing ice cream. Lee wished he had brought a book to forget; she could use something to read. “I'll close up,” one of the other waitresses said to Lee. “You get going.”

Outside, the snow kept powdering the ground; the streets were nearly deserted, and the same ominous heaviness hung in the air. There were bits of faded yellow light coming from some of the windows she passed. It began to hurt to breathe. She tried tugging up the collar of her sweater and breathing through it; she put one mittened hand in front of her mouth.

She was almost to the car when she heard labored footsteps behind her. Twisting around, she peered into the blur of snow. She couldn't tell whether the person behind her was a male or female, but it had suddenly stopped. The entire body was swaddled in a long bright blue down coat, the puffy hood cinched tight over a face hidden by a wrapping of black scarf. Uneasy, Lee began walking again, and there behind her was the quickening crunch of boots. Lee ran.

Tensed, she began digging for the keys in her purse. There it was. A red car at the end of the street. She was afraid to turn around again, and now all she could hear was her own terrified pant.

“Hey!” someone called, and she stiffened.

A figure was coming toward her, dots of black and red in a blurred matrix through the white.

Lee found the keys, jamming them into the lock.

“It's Andy,” he called. Straightening, she turned toward him. The huge down-coated figure was nowhere in sight. Andy swiped snow from his face. “It's not a night to be out alone,” he said. “I saw that guy following you.”

She studied him. “Thanks,” she said.

“You taking Val's car?” he said cheerfully.

“She gave me her keys,” Lee said. She gave the door a rough juggle, and it sprang open.

“Well, my car's just down the road,” he said. “Will you be all right driving in this? You want me to drive you?”

She hesitated.

“Well, you'll be all right,” he said abruptly. “The main roads still look okay.” He squinted at her. “Didn't your mother ever tell you about wearing a hat when it's cold?” Her hands fluttered to her snow-soaked hair.

“Well, listen,” he said. “Don't get any traffic tickets because I won't fix them for you.” He laughed. There was a frosting of snow on his lashes. “Lee,” he said. “Have dinner with me tomorrow night.”

“You know my name,” she said. “You act like you don't know me in the restaurant.”

“Well, I don't,” he said. “Not yet.”

She hesitated. “Dinner's okay,” she said, getting into the car. She fit the key into the ignition. The car jerked backward. Agitatedly she rolled down her window a little. “Look, I can do this,” she called. “You don't have to watch.”

He cupped hands toward himself. “Just back up a little bit more,” he said. “You're doing fine.”

The car eased out into the road. She clicked the automatic into drive and looked back at him through her rearview mirror. He was standing there, waving at her. She was sure he was shouting something, and she rolled down the window, letting in another clip of chilly air. “What?” she shouted, but he was already turning down a street, vanishing into the frozen white landscape.

Andy always thought that love was this season that had somehow passed without his knowing it.

In college he remembered being in love numerous times. There was easy romance, pledges of undying love, all lasting until the moment when another caught his eye, and then his heart unstuck and reattached as easily as Velcro.

As he got older, though, he began to think about marriage, and with this new seriousness, it suddenly became more difficult to fall in love. He had plenty of dates, but he somehow could no longer muster anything stronger than a vague fondness, and it began to terrify him.

Valerie told him he just wasn't choosing well. “I got myself a great husband, maybe I can help find you a great wife,” she said, She began inviting him over. Sometimes one of her friends would be there, a woman pretty enough, pleasant enough, and sometimes he would get her phone number and go out with her a few times, before he grew distant, before the friend called Valerie in tears or in anger to complain, as if his sister could do one thing about him. Finally he just refused Valerie's setups, not wanting to disappoint her, the woman, or himself again.

“Don't you want to be happy?” Valerie demanded. “You've got to give things a chance.”

He hadn't given one thought to chance until he had first seen Lee. She had been walking on the street, bundled in some fake furry coat that was a size too big for her, her thin pale face flushed in the cold, her blond hair flashing, and as soon as he saw her something deep hurt inside of him. He had followed her to Valerie's restaurant, imagining how he'd casually sit down at whatever table she was sitting at, how he'd start up a conversation, dazzling her with repartee. He rehearsed a few opening lines in his mind, and then she took off the coat and went into the back room and changed and she became a waitress.

It startled him for a moment, but then he told himself she must be something more, Writers were waitresses, Students bussed tables. Awkwardly he settled into a table in the back. All that night he searched for clues to another life she might be burning up with. She seemed to know some of the regulars, but when she talked with them all he overheard was suggestions about the specials or, once, a comment about a movie she had seen. On breaks she leaned dreamy-eyed along the far wall or talked to Valerie. Her seeming contentment bothered him. Why wasn't she in a rush to get someplace else—an acting class, a graduate course? He pretended disinterest. He thought about asking Valerie, but he was superstitious. Her participation before had been no help; he didn't want to risk it now, so instead he asked Annie, another waitress he knew. “Oh, that one,” Annie said when he gestured at Lee. “She's the only full-time one here. She hardly talks.”

Annie didn't know everything, he told himself. He kept studying Lee when she wasn't looking and sometimes when she was. He ate at Valerie's so many nights, even Valerie noticed. “Can't I give my sister some business?” he said.

He tried to be cautious, but every time she passed he felt a change in the atmosphere, a charge. It was ridiculous. He could come up with a thousand reasons why he didn't want Lee. He needed someone bright and accomplished—a kind of kindred spirit—and she seemed to be just a waitress. She was beautiful, but there was a roughness to her beauty. He'd still be embarrassed to be seen with her. Her hair was torn. Her eyes were ringed in black. And the way she dressed—Jesus—bowling shirts with names like Madge or Hanna embroidered on the back in orange stitching, odd pastel skirts that looked as if they came from Goodwill. She wore earrings in the shapes of teapots or fish. He watched her sashaying among the tables, following an edge of her hip, frowning anxiously at the tips before she pocketed them. He looked at her, and he couldn't imagine kissing her, not those chapped, ragged-looking lips. No, he couldn't imagine it, at least not until he had left the restaurant—and her—not until he was back at home and thinking about her, wanting her so much he felt his will draining from him.

When he discovered she was reading his books, his heart began to buoy. That was a good sign. He had started back one evening to retrieve one and had seen her pick it up, avidly read a few pages, and pocket it. Once, she kept his favorite book,
Crime and Punishment
, for over two weeks. When he got it back he placed his hands on the page, where he imagined hers had been. Heat shot up through his fingers; two days later, in the middle of a blinding snowstorm, he asked her out.

He didn't know who was more amazed when they started seeing each other, Lee or himself. He kept himself calm, thinking that any moment he could detach from her, but when he saw that same willingness in Lee, it made him afraid. He was used to women wanting to stretch the nights with him into mornings and afternoons, women who called him every day to remind him they existed, and here was Lee, leaping out of bed so fast that he sometimes woke to find her gone. Lee, who not only never called, but sometimes didn't even answer her phone when she was home. When they walked she didn't cling to his arm. When he tried to take her arm, she sometimes simply removed it.

She was secretive. Their first date, to amuse her, he took her bowling. He scribbled down fake names on the scoring sheet. He was Ward. She was June. She wore a really short red skirt and red lace socks, her hair cinched up into a ponytail. “Whoops,” she said as her ball raced toward the gutter. He was an even worse bowler, and in between games he tried to talk to her. He loved the way she listened, her whole body angled toward him, intent. She herself talked only about Madison, about settling in and saving money. She told him she hadn't finished school, that maybe she would do that. “That's a good idea,” he said. “The university here's really good.”

She gave him a funny look. “High school,” she said.

He blinked at her. His smile wavered. High school. “Why'd you drop out?” he said.

She fretted two fingers in the bowling ball. “I just did,” she said flatly. She looked at him. “I'm not stupid,” she said.

“Of course you're not.” He hated his voice. It sounded oily, as if he were speaking more out of politeness than belief. With a rush of air, he asked her about her family.

“I don't have any family,” she said. She clenched her fingers about the bowling ball. “How about your first boyfriend?” he said, touching her elbow. “You're the first,” Lee said, so seriously he felt his heart breaking.

When he took her home that night, he didn't expect one single thing from her. She sat in his kitchen, warming by the stove, pronging marshmallows onto forks, toasting them on the gas flame. She ate four of them silently, and then, her mouth sticky with sugar, she leaned over and kissed him.

There, in his brightly lighted kitchen, she took everything off except a pair of red lace socks. She leaned against him, weighting him to the floor, bumping his spine against the linoleum. She rolled him toward the braided rug Valerie had made for him. He couldn't get over her; the way her neck curved into her shoulder, the way her skin was so pale and seamless, as if she were all cut from one piece. She kept moving from him, pulling him along the floor with her. She knocked over a chair; she broke a small vase. She kept making these sounds that made him lean nearer to her. “What?” he whispered. “What?” but she only rolled from him. She arched her back. Her closed lids fluttered, and when he kissed them, she gave a small cry.

When they were finished he lay prone on his kitchen floor, perfectly content, but when he turned to her he caught her near tears. “What is it?” he said, trying to smooth her hair from her face so he could see her eyes. “Would you like more?” he said anxiously, but she just shook her head. “I don't feel well,” she said, leveraging up onto his thigh. “I have to go home.” Her body was shaking, but he didn't touch her. She didn't move. He stretched out alongside her, an inch distance from her. In the corner of the kitchen he saw a jagged bit of cracker he must have missed in his careless mopping. It took him a few minutes to realize she was sleeping, and then he slept, too, and when he woke in the morning, she was still there.

They began to have a routine. He picked her up every other night from Valerie's. He took her ice-skating on the frozen part of the lake and discovered she was as good a skater as she was a poor bowler. He took her to triple features at the Duplex Cinema downtown, and he found he was turning to look at her more than he was looking at the movie. “So, you still like me?” he asked her. “No,” she said, taking his hand. “Not at all.”

He hadn't counted on feeling so strongly. He couldn't stop thinking about her. He saw her everywhere, In his courtroom. On the streets, And, more telling, when he performed his weekly weddings inside his chambers.

He tried to convince her to come to a wedding. “How can you not like weddings?” he said, aghast. “They're all about hope.”

“Sometimes,” said Lee.

“Always,” Andy said. “Even if they don't turn out. And I can tell who's going to make it just by how they act in the wedding,” he insisted. Lee gave him a slow, steady gaze, “Come on,” he said. “Please. It'll be a blast.”