Which leaves only Teddy to absorb the lies. Poor Teddy. And poor Frankie, who’s embarrassed because he asked Teddy for a loan last week, and was turned down. Of course he was. Frankie wouldn’t say why he needed the money. Now he has to make sure everyone in earshot knows he didn’t need the money anyway—he’s got big plans, a surefire way to come out on top. Buddy thinks of the day in the casino, the chips stacked in front of his brother, just like he promised, and the roulette ball listening to him the way the pinball used to. Wasn’t it enough that he gave Frankie that hour of bliss? True, only an hour, but that’s more than most people get. Buddy only got forty-five minutes.
He’s twenty-three years old when he leaves his brother alone on the Alton Belle, walks the half mile to the Days Inn, and sees her, the girl of his dreams. In fact, he’s dreamed of her for years.
She’s sitting on a bar stool, turned slightly away from the bar, her tanned bare legs crossed at the knee. One hand lazily twirls the swizzle stick in her drink. And oh, those hot pink nails, the same color as her lipstick. The long blonde hair (a wig, but it doesn’t matter, not to him) cast into another shade of pink by the neon light of the Budweiser sign. His heart beats a tattoo, sending him to her. Pushing him across the room.
The bar is almost empty. The hotel, though only a few blocks from the Alton Belle dock, can offer none of the attractions of a casino, and this early in the night no one’s ready to drown their sorrows. Yet she’s there, waiting. Almost as if she had a vision of this meeting.
He’s ready. One pocket is stuffed with cash, a fraction of Frankie’s winnings at the roulette table. (Frankie is still on the riverboat, enjoying himself—for now. Buddy already regrets what’s going to happen, even though he’s powerless to stop it from happening.) The other pocket contains a hotel key card. His mouth radiates cinnamon freshness thanks to the three Altoids he chewed on his walk over from the riverboat.
He sits down, one stool away from her. The bartender is nowhere in sight, and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He reaches blindly into his pocket and puts a bill on the bar. Sees with surprise that it’s a hundred.
The woman says, “Good day at the Belle? Or haven’t got there yet?”
He smiles. She’s thin and tanned and maybe thirty years old. Her eyes are rimmed by black eyeliner.
“I got lucky,” he said.
“Or maybe it was your turn to get something nice,” she says.
This is what he’s been telling himself: Wasn’t it his turn? Yet his own words rang hollow. Everything he knows about the whirlpool of past and future tells him that the universe does not owe you anything, and even if it did, it would never pay up. He never convinced himself he was owed this moment, but hearing the words come from someone this beautiful makes him want to believe. It was his turn, tonight, and not Frankie’s. Oh God. Poor Frankie doesn’t know what’s about to happen to him.
“Don’t look so worried,” she says. “Come sit a little closer.”
How can he not obey? He shifts onto the next stool.
“Tell me your name,” she says. He likes the huskiness in her voice.
“Buddy.”
“Cerise,” she says. She puts a hand over his—and leaves it there. He can feel his heart in his throat. She smiles. “You don’t have to be nervous, honey. You’re over twenty-one, right?”
He nods, unsure where to look. She’s wearing a tight, spangly tank top with spaghetti straps and a black pleather miniskirt that barely reaches the tops of her thighs. He has a future memory of her underwear—a lime-green thong. He really needs to stop thinking of that lime-green thong.
She glances down at his lap. “Oh, you poor man,” she says. “I think you need the full treatment.”
He reaches into his pocket again and she says, “Not here. You have five hundred dollars?”
“And I have a room here,” he says. “Upstairs.” A clarification that’s probably unnecessary. He doubts they have guest rooms in the basement.
“Then what are we waiting for?” She downs the rest of her drink, then nods at the bill resting on the bar. “A twenty will cover my tab, hon.”
He takes out the wad of cash, thumbs through it. Finally he finds a twenty-dollar bill.
Cerise chuckles, leans in close. “You probably don’t want to flash your whole roll like that. This ain’t East St. Louis, but still.”
“You’re right,” he says. She doesn’t know that he’s going to give it all to her, in forty-five minutes.
They take the elevator up. She asks for the room number, and he tells her: “Three twenty-one.” She leads him there without glancing at the navigation signs, and as they get closer, he’s thinking of the room number like a countdown: three…two…
He lets her inside. She glances at the open closet, peeks into the open bathroom, and says, “You travel light.”
He doesn’t understand this comment at first, then thinks, Right. No luggage.
She puts her string purse on the dresser next to the TV. When she turns to him, she’s surprised. “Honey, you’re shaking.” Then she understands. He can see it in her face. She steps to him, and touches his cheek. “You have nothing to worry about,” she says softly.
But it’s what she says next that makes him fall in love with her. The words ring like chimes backward and forward through all the Buddys, across the years: sitting beside a cold window on a winter afternoon; arguing with his brother in high summer; lying on the grass on the last day of the world.
She smiles and says, “It’s all going to work out.”
Buddy crouches beside his bed. From underneath he pulls out a metal lockbox closed with a padlock. He dials the combination and slips off the lock. Inside are several white envelopes bound with a red rubber band looped two times around. Once, there were so many envelopes the rubber band could barely go around them. (Though he’d started out with a different rubber band. Then it got old and snapped, and he had to find one that was exactly the same color and thickness.)
All of the envelopes are addressed to Teddy, except one blue one that has Matty’s name on it. That one Buddy isn’t supposed to deliver until later. He takes the topmost Teddy envelope, and makes sure it has today’s date. Only one more letter to his father is left. His mission for Mom is almost over. He carefully puts the lock back in place and hides the box again.
With the envelope hidden in his shirt, he sneaks downstairs, trying to stay out of sight of the kitchen door, where Frankie is still yammering away at Teddy. Buddy slips out the front door.
As he remembers, a van is parked just down the street. A silver one, that will return here on September 4.
He puts the envelope in the mailbox and closes it with a silent sigh. One more secret duty nearing its completion.
Speaking of duty, he thinks, and turns toward the van. The man behind the wheel, a gray-haired black man, watches him approach from behind sunglasses. He probably thinks the glasses are sufficient disguise. After all, they have only met once before, at Maureen’s funeral, when Buddy was six years old. Buddy raises a friendly hand, as if greeting a stranger, and then walks up to the driver’s-side window. He makes a twirling motion, and the driver rolls down the window. There’s a passenger in a rear seat of the van, but Buddy doesn’t see his face. He won’t, until September 4.
The driver says, “Yes?”
Buddy does have an exact, clear memory of this moment, so it’s a relief to not have to worry about what to say. “Have you seen a teenage boy walk by here?”