Authors: Connie Falconeri
“You know what they say about beggars and choosers, right? Maybe you want to stick
with your duffle?” He reached for the blue pack, and she pulled it out of his reach.
“Never mind,” she grumbled. “Thank you.”
She started pulling a couple of T-shirts and underwear and her bathroom stuff out
of her duffle and transferring it into the small backpack. In her rush to get ready,
she had forgotten to zip up her cosmetics bag and a strip of six condoms fell out
like a tiny accordion, the shiny metallic wrapper catching the morning sun.
“Maddie!”
“What? I might meet someone while I’m camping.” She reached down and grabbed the packets.
“Best to be prepared, my mom always said.”
He burst out laughing and went back to organizing the camping gear in the backseat.
He’d pulled the canoe out of the garage and set it into the flatbed of the truck,
securing it with some rope and bungee cords.
“Done packing, Post?”
“Yes.” She threw the blue pack into the backseat, then picked up the empty duffle.
“Let me put this back up in my room and leave your mom a note. She’ll be fine if we’re
gone when she gets home from work, right?”
“Are you kidding? She’ll be thrilled. She’ll have us married with children by Monday
morning.”
Maddie kept walking toward the house without looking back. She was mildly disconcerted
by how Henry had said “married with children,” as if it were the most laughable prospect
imaginable. She tried not to let her mind wander into the strange paranoiac minefield
of thinking about whether he was opposed to married-with-children-with-anyone or married-with-children-with-Maddie.
As if that would ever be her problem. She shook her head and jogged up the stairs
to the second floor to toss her useless duffle into her closet, went back to the kitchen,
jotted down a quick note to Janet, then locked the back door. She walked around to
the front door and double-checked that it was locked too.
“All set,” Maddie said. “Let’s hit it.”
Hank was leaning against the cab of the truck with his arms folded across his chest,
watching her move with all that restless energy.
“Come on!” She snapped her fingers up close to his face and he grabbed her hand before
she realized he’d even moved. He pulled her fingers to his lips. “Relax, Post.”
She took a deep breath. “I’ll try.”
He kept her hand in his. “We’ll work on it together. Okay?”
“Okay.” She stood there for a few more seconds. “But, we should go—”
“Get in the truck, bossy boots.” He opened the door and kept her hand in his as he
helped her into the driver’s side of the truck and she slid across to the passenger’s
side.
“Thanks,” she said.
Within a few minutes, they were out of Blake and on I-95 heading north into the wilds
of central Maine. The trees. That was all Maddie could think about. The trees. The
trees. The trees.
“There are so many trees.” She must have said it five times already.
“Yeah,” Hank agreed for the fifth time, not even making fun of her. “There really
are.”
He had a satellite radio hooked up to his car and it was tuned to some classic rock
station. He reached to change it, expecting Maddie to want some alternative rock or
pop, when an old classic came on.
“Wait! Do you mind? I love that song. I love that they make it to Mexico. Is that
wrong of me? That they rob that guy and get away with it?”
He turned to face her. Their windows were rolled down and she was lounging against
the opposite side of the seat, sort of sprawled out with her back in the space where
the seat met the door. She had kicked off her sneakers and her long legs were distracting,
one beneath her and one near the suspension ridge in the floor.
“Who wouldn’t want them to get away with it?” Hank asked.
“Probably the guy they killed while robbing?”
Hank laughed. “Hey. They only shot him. They never said he died.”
Maddie laughed. “An optimist. I like it.”
“But you’re right, maybe that guy. But everyone
else
wants them to get away. It’s like a modern day Robin Hood story. Chicks love that
shit.”
Maddie stared at his hard jaw and his cocky smirk. “You are kind of a jerk sometimes.
You know you like the song—” She shook her head and stopped talking so she could keep
listening to the final chords. The song timed out, and another song came on. Another
California ’70s kind of rock song.
“Go on,” he prompted. “You were going to say how chicks don’t love Steve Miller?”
“No, I wasn’t going to say that. I was just going to say that you didn’t have to try
to belittle everything to be cool.” She stopped looking at him and forced herself
to look at more trees out her window.
“You think I’m cool?” He prodded her thigh with his right hand. “Admit it. You think
I’m cool.”
She repressed a smile. He didn’t deserve it. Yet. “I’m just saying . . . if one
were
to think you were
possibly
cool, it wouldn’t be necessary to be all judge-y about everything to solidify that
opinion . . . of your coolness.”
He stifled a laugh and kept his eyes on the road.
“Well?” Maddie asked.
“Wait . . . were you speaking English just then? You lost me at something-something
cool, then something-something coolness.”
Maddie shook her head and her smile widened. “Whatever, Mr. Big Man. You’ve got everything
sewn up tight.” She kept looking out the window and missed the way Henry’s face clouded
at her words. He wasn’t sure himself why that sewn-up-tight comment had scraped across
him like it had. He didn’t like it.
“Let’s play some games—” he said.
“Okay.” Maddie was like a puppy, practically bouncing up and down in the seat. She
widened her eyes and lowered her voice. “What kind of games, Hank?”
He laughed again. “Word games! Are you a nymphomaniac or something? Has it been more
than your usual seven days without getting any?”
He was still smiling, but she took it wrong. He thought he was still being funny.
Sort of. Shit. He should have known she wasn’t going to like him basically calling
her a two-bit whore.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean that like it came out,” he tried.
“Whatever, Hank. You’re safe with the sex-starved co-ed. Not to worry. I’ll get my
daily dose in town behind the diner like I’ve been doing this past week.”
“Maddie, c’mon. It was a joke. The condoms falling out of your bag and all that. Lighten
up.”
All of his suggestions that she relax or lighten up or take it easy were starting
to set Maddie off. “You know what, Hank—”
“Oh, here we go—”
“Yeah, here we go—”
He slowed down the truck. “Am I going to need to turn around, because this is as good
a place as any—”
“Darn it, Hank! What is your problem?” Maddie felt frustration welling up. Why couldn’t
this guy just be normal?
He continued to slow down the truck. “This was a bad idea.”
“No it wasn’t. Keep driving. Cut it out. You are being such a baby.”
“
I
am being a baby?” But he started to accelerate again.
“Yes, you are being a baby. We were going to have fun and relax, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. I suggested it. So why did you have to go and get all sensitive
about me accusing you of being a hooker?”
She whipped her head around and was ready to rip his head off, but he was smiling
that secret, really good smile and she just shook her head and looked at him instead.
“What?” he said, still smiling.
“I bet you get a lot of mileage out of that smile.”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
“You’re like one of those girls who just bats her eyelashes and everyone does what
she wants . . . no effort.”
He flexed his biceps by squeezing the steering wheel and dipped his chin close to
the bulging muscle, showing off like a body builder. “Oh, there’s plenty of effort.
You don’t get to bat these eyelashes without being able to bench two-fifty.”
“There’s no way you bench two-fifty,” Maddie scoffed. “That’s just something guys
say at bars.”
“You calling me a liar?” He was challenging her, but the smile was there and she felt
more like she wanted to kiss him than kill him again.
“Maybe a little white liar. But yes. My brothers always say stuff like that, and it’s
always a crock. I read somewhere that sixty-nine percent of men think they are in
shape and in reality only thirteen percent are.”
“Do you think I’m in shape, Maddie?”
He was such a tease. When he talked to her like that, with that deep, rolling suggestive
voice, she felt all quivery and shaky inside.
“You know I do.” She looked out the window, hating to admit how attracted she was
to his body. It seemed wrong, somehow, insulting to him, to just be hot for him because
she wanted him for sex.
He laughed. “See. That’s the great divide, right there.”
“What is?”
“You probably feel guilty because you only want me for my body and you shouldn’t.
Feel guilty, I mean.”
She smiled her encouragement. “Go on.”
“I don’t feel the least bit guilty for wanting your body . . . and you probably think
I should. Feel guilty, I mean.”
He kind of had a point. She twisted her lips the way she always did when something
rankled. “But . . .”
“Mm-hmm.” He looked at her for a few more seconds, then focused back on the turn that
was coming up after the straightaway that had taken them through the wide valley north
of Bangor.
“I think it’s the ‘only’ that’s the sticking point.”
It was his turn to encourage her. “Yes?”
“Yeah. I mean, think about it.”
He smirked. “I’ll give it a shot, Post.”
“You know what they say about hiding your lamp under a bushel, Gilbertson.”
“Point taken. Go on. I’ll try to keep up.”
She rolled her eyes. “I just mean telling someone that you
only
want them for their body is kind of like telling a chef how to cook. It’s a package
deal. It’s a whole recipe. You can’t just walk into a restaurant and stroll into the
kitchen and say, more oregano, I hate onions.”
“Sure you can. People order like that all the time.”
Maddie smiled. “But they don’t really like to eat.”
He laughed hard. “You might have a point.”
“Seriously.” She was warming to her theory. “If you want to bang some chick—”
“Maddie—”
She swiped her hand to cut him off. “You know what I mean. One night stand. Whatever.
Don’t trip me up. I’m on a roll.”
He smiled. “Go on, then.”
“I mean, if you want to just
use
someone for sex, there has to be something about
them
that you want . . . not just their flesh.”
“This is a deadly dangerous conversation. You might be painting me into a corner so
I’ll say something you’ll use against me.”
“Oh, cut it out. Consider this the all-clear or whatever you would call it in the
Army. All bets are off. Say what you will. I won’t hold it against you.”
“Women always say that.”
Maddie shook her head in dismay. “Darn it, Hank. Who are ‘
all these women
’ that you keep talking about? It’s so annoying!”
“Simmer down, tiger. I just meant, that’s always the way when
the women I have dated
—and banged—in the past drew me into the quicksand of let’s-have-a-real-discussion
type discussions. Maybe you are different.”
“Talk about quicksand. If I say, ‘Yes, I am so different from other women,’ then I
am some arrogant twit. If I say, ‘No, I’m just like that. Tricky. Wily. Trying to
trap men into saying all sorts of stuff they don’t really mean . . .’ Doesn’t leave
me much wiggle room.”
“Okay, okay. Go back to your theorizing. At the very least, I like to hear your voice
and watch your lips twist around when you’re trying to get your mind around an idea.”
“You’re impossible.”
“Totally,” he said with another smile. “But you like me this way, so keep going. Please.”
“Oh, all right. It sounds stupid now that we’ve lost track of what was really just
a little aside. But here’s the thing: by saying I just want someone for x, y, or z
it’s like you are totally denying that they are a whole person. They are just some
object. A tool.”
Hank tapped the steering wheel for a few minutes. Thinking. Finally he started talking.
“But. Now hear me out. Sometimes you need a tool. I use very specific tools on my
job. There are very specific wrenches and gauges and valves and—”
“But those
are
objects!” Maddie said over a laugh.
His smirky, wide-eyed look silenced her. “May I finish?”
“Yes,” she said, chastised.
“And sometimes people
want
to be used like that. To be taken in hand.”
Oh, Jesus. He did it again. The slow, deep, suggestive, this-means-nothing, this-means-everything
voice. Maddie felt like she might melt right into the seat of the car.
“Yeah? And?” She tried to sound blasé.
“Yeah and nothing. It’s just a fact. I think people sometimes just want the cigar.
It doesn’t need to be all Freudian and meaningful. It can be great and not be attached
to everything that ever happened in the universe. It can just be a thing.”
“Eloquent.” Maddie sneered.
“
Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you and be silent.
”
She stared at him. “Picked up a little Epictetus in the Middle East, did you?”
“Something like that.” He put his elbow on the edge of his window and looked peevish.
“Something like what? Where did you get the philosophy degree, and why do you act
all anti-intellectual and then go and quote Epictetus to me?”
“West Point.” He barely said it loud enough.
“Yeah right.” Maddie inhaled to laugh and then realized he was serious. “You went
to West Point? How? When? I thought you enlisted on your eighteenth birthday.”
He looked at her and narrowed his eyes. “My mother been singing my praises to you?”
“Something like that.” Maddie smirked back and tried to ignore him. Why would he act
all gruff and dumb when he had a degree from West Point?