even on this part of 27, the old tourist trail from Miami on up to Tallahassee. After we’d gotten through bumper-to-bumper Hialeah, the road was stretching out toward empty wetlands and sugar country when I made him stop. It’s almost eleven and the parking lot is beginning to fill up. Nobody gives us a glance, but I think it will look better if we seem to be eating, so I stick my straw in my tea and suck its sweetness, then chew the warm fat of my sausage biscuit while I try to figure out my situation. I keep looking at his eyes, dark blue with the long lashes of a lover boy. Reassuring shoulders. I liked him. He’d say,
“Make your own luck,” he believed in hard work and drive, but who’s gonna stand up at the funeral and say, At least he made those last three calls. Honestly, what’ll happen if I go, Excuse me, this man is dead. No, I had no warning, Sheriff—
they have sheriffs, places like this, elected for their swagger and intolerance of strangers—
Well, I didn’t really know him and um. Can’t say my boyfriend. My employer, and please call his dear wife. She must suspect he was out here with someone like me, though women, my God, women can not-know whatever they put their minds to. Turn him into a shadow and concentrate on the kids. Then she’ll be here, and Zavala Junior will say B.K. was supposed to do his demo on a local girl each time, and when they check the motel records they’ll know we slept together if you can call it sleep, him always on the side nearest the door, grinding his teeth. Something was chasing him, and I guess it’s caught him now. He won’t be resting any easier if there’s a fuss. Excuse me, I noticed this man in a parked car, he hasn’t moved, I think he’s dead. How did I get here, though? Excuse me, I was just hitchhiking. Excuse me, Sheriff — and then I better not have ID for Carrie Hull, forty-two. B.K. got her birth certificate, a little girl he went to school with who died, leukemia. He must’ve liked her all those years ago. He said it was like we were giving her another chance, but that driver’s license with my picture, my granny’s address, is fraud, probably a felony. How simple it was when I used to be
Ruth Ann Reedy, just a little cracker girl from Paxton, highest point in Florida, 345 feet, right near the Alabama line. And then Ruth Ann Wheeler, when I married at nineteen. Jeep Wheeler threatened me into it and I was fool enough to think if I gave in he’d be reassured and uncrazy. On our honeymoon weekend in St. Pete he punched me out so, duh, I wised up. Back in Paxton I went to a lawyer and said, “You’ll think I’m weird, I’ve been married five days and I want a divorce,” and the lawyer said, “Happens all the time.” When I was hiding out, then, Jeep beat his mother up, and she got me word to come sign the papers to commit him for observation, which I did. Before he could get loose
I took off, went back to Reedy, made it Reed, and cocktail waitressed and studied dance in Tampa, where they started calling me Ginger in tap class. It’s Ginger Reed with the record for disturbing the peace, ’cause when I drank rum I liked to do the time step, flap shuffle flap shuffle flap ball change, on the roof of my apartment building. And it’s Ginger Reed who got pulled in when they raided the exotic dance club in Daytona where I was shaking it for the college boys. Charges dropped but those sheriffs can still get in to where it’s on record, and Now then, little lady, you’ve got quite a past, they say while they’re checking out your boobs. Which makes me think this leotard, fine for demonstrating Avocado Bosom Cream, shows too much for any decent Excuse me,
so I recline the passenger seat and slither through to crouch under B.K.’s suits and shirts hanging from the rack across the backseat. I wriggle into a long cotton skirt and T-shirt and switch my silver sandals for my Keds. I take down the two dresses I’d hung up and stuff everything into my big soft bag. Check to make sure my money’s in my tampon box, the place I figure no thief will look. I guess I can’t take the big sample case, so I just snag some Orange Mint Restorer, Señora Zavala’s original recipe, ’cause I really think it’s done my skin a lot of good. I toss my bag up front, and when I get in the seat and slowly crank it up I see
an old school bus, painted blue, has pulled into the lot. Homemade script proclaims, Christ’s Canaries, Choir of the First Church of Our Savior Sanctified. Out come round-faced women with virtuous perms. They look like home to me. Excuse me, but some sinning fellow ditched me here and could you please give me a lift? Excuse me, I’m working my way to my granny’s in Sebring, Leesburg, wherever you’re going. I’ll mingle with them in the bathroom line. I’m a second soprano, Carrie Hull, age forty-two — why, thank you, if I look good it must be living clean. B.K. will get found on his own. They’ll shut down for the night and there he’ll be, car stalled, heart attack, warm tea, and no one will even know I was here. I gather our food wraps and get out, soft bag across my shoulder, purse in hand. At the trash basket I turn,
look at him across the parking lot. He stares into the tinted windshield like any man left waiting for a woman. He must hate being stuck. He used to take right turns on red just to keep moving. We’d twine through a new town not yet on the map, and he’d grin when I worried and say, “We may be lost, but we’re making good time.”
Lemonade and Paris Buns
by John Dufresne
Aventura
(Originally published in 1996)
I called the clinic and made an appointment for a cholesterol test. I ticked that off my list. I called Dentaland at the Aventura Mall. They told me Dr. Shimkoski was no longer affiliated with their practice. Well, what was I supposed to do then? I’ve got this temporary crown here. I thought I heard someone outside talking to Spot. We can set you up with Dr. Perez. Fine, I said. Wednesday, noon. I dumped the whites into the washer, poured in the Tide, set the timer. I walked to the window to check on the voice.
Four children sat on the ground near Spot patting him, talking to him. Spot, I could tell, was loving the attention. I went out to the deck and introduced myself. I said, I’m the dog’s — and I was going to say master until I heard the word in my head and realized how absurd it was — I’m the dog’s dad, I said. I take care of him.
“What you dog name?” the oldest-looking child said.
“Spot. And yours?”
They were brothers, I learned, named Smith. The oldest, Trayvien, probably ten, introduced me to Demetrius, Everett, and Kendrick.
Spot rolled on his back with his legs in the air like quotation marks. Everett stroked Spot’s belly. I asked them where they lived. Trayvien pointed across the backyard. I asked them if they’d like a snack. They would. So we had brunch on the deck.
Trayvien helped me set the table and led us in Grace before we ate — his idea. We had lemonade and Paris buns. That’s what I called them for the occasion. They were crescent rolls, actually, from Pastry Lane. Kendrick, the tiny one, sat on my lap and rubbed the hair on my arm back and forth. Trayvien was like the father. He poured lemonade for his brothers, wiped their faces with napkins. He asked me what I did for a job. I told him I write stories. He said that’s what he did too. I asked him to tell me a story. Trayvien told me the one he called “The Wolf, the Bear, the Lion, and the Man.” The four characters are friends, and they don’t have enough money to buy ice cream. The lion wants to eat the bank to get some. The man says they should go to work and earn the money. The bear is sure they can find some dollars in the street. The wolf says we could just ask nice. And the wolf is right.
As I scooped out the chocolate ice cream, I asked Trayvien did he have any stories with vegetables in them. No, he didn’t. I told them all they should come by more often. Spot and I would enjoy their company. Trayvien said where they were living — he pointed across the yard again — was a frosted home, and they didn’t know how long they’d be here. Foster home? I said. That’s it, Trayvien said. Everett asked me, Where you daddy?