Neal got in and shut the door. “You got some time,” he said. “Let's cruise to the beach and drink a few.”
“Okay,” Eddie said. “But I got to be there by midnight.”
“Kind of a late date,” Neal said. He looked over his shoulder and backed up the Dart.
“Yeah,” Eddie said. He rolled his hand to a fist and dug his nails into his palms. Once, while in the bathtub, through the cracked door, his mother had explained how a lover had never come along who treated Neal well and how, as a child, he'd been beaten up regularly for being a sissy. Eddie had sat at the kitchen table listening to his mother explain that Neal had told her he never knew his father and only remembered the broad brim of his brown hat and the calloused upper palms of his hands. Still, Eddie squirmed: No matter how lonely the guy was, how hard his life had been, he better not try some move on me.
As the car lumbered up the wooden planks of the beach ramp, Neal said, “You're not talking much.”
Eddie popped a beer; it foamed up and he took a gulp.
“Your mother told me the whole story,” Neal said.
“He won't be back,” Eddie said, jolting forward as the car's wheels fumbled over the sand. He didn't want to talk about John Berry's break-in.
The car stopped, they both settled silently into the dark. The cook lit a cigarette and popped a beer for himself. Eddie swigged his down fast, tossed the empty to the back, and opened a second. This is helping, he thought. This is definitely helping. A few gulls swooped in front of the crescent moon.
“My mom, you know, shouldn't do a lot of the stuff she does,” he said.
“She just comes and goes,” Neal said. “I understand it. Like I said, life gets dull.”
Eddie watched Neal's cheeks hollow as he dragged on his cigarette. His hair, a brushcut with loose longer curls in the back, was cool. He does it with boys, Eddie thought. He remembered himself staring at his gym teacher back in junior high. Eddie'd day-dreamed that during warm-ups Mr. Graudins came over and kissed him right on the lips while the other boys kept counting their sit-ups in one thunderous voice. It must have been some kind of mistake. Because he liked girls. Just the sight of one sometimes turned him on. He was getting hard now thinking of the way Lila threw back her head and twilled her throat like a bird.
Odd things could get him going: certain wrestling holds, advertisements, the jagged movement of the school bus — even the slight wrinkles around the eyes of older women.
Neal reached for another beer. “Does she suck you?”
Eddie's eyes pooled. He would slam the door and run into the surf, swim so hard he'd quickly be a mile out in the dark ocean. “Stop talking about her,” he said fiercely.
“I'm sorry,” Neal said. “I thought you might want to talk about it or something.”
Eddie wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands. What a crybaby.
“She's pregnant,” he said, the fact out there and living in the air before he could even reconsider. The ocean waves beat back and forth against the sand.
“So that's it,” Neal said, stretching his legs to the brake pedals. “What are you going to do?”
“We're talking about getting married.”
“That's no good reason to get married.”
“I can't think of anything else,” Eddie said.
Neal put a hand on Eddie's shoulder. “I'll lend you my car,” he said. “You can go to one of those clinics in Norfolk.” He moved closer. “You can have your life just the way it was gonna be.” Neal leaned his head on Eddie's shoulder.
“I have to be there now,” Eddie said.
“Okay, baby,” the cook said, and as he lifted his head, he rested a dry kiss on Eddie's neck.
The car moved backwards, then forwards toward the ramp.
Eddie held the brown bag to his face and blew his nose.
“These next few nights I'll leave the keys right under the seat,” Neal said.
He drove around the inlet past the lighthouse and finally pulled onto Lila's road. “Just take it and go.”
“Thanks,” Eddie said, shutting the door with his back. He walked fast carrying the bag, as though it was a baby, toward her house. His eyes went to the smoky rectangle of her bedroom window. Neal's car did not move. Go on, Eddie said, swinging a leg over the low white fence. He creeped up to her window and heard Lila breathing slowly inside. Tapping lightly on the screen, he whispered, “Please come out. Or let me in.”
SIXTEEN. FERRY TO SHORE
Eddie sat in the parking lot of the gas station waiting for Lila. Gulls swooped around the Dart and it seemed that just that second the first grayish light was tingling up. Like the beginning notes of a song. Different from the verse and chorus because of a deliberate delicate leisure. He picked at the foam leaking through the front seat. Lila had agreed to meet him at five-thirty. To forget waiting, he tried to figure out what qualities he'd gotten from his mother. He looked like a sliver of her, like a cutting that grew differently in height and shape but still had the same hue. But it was characteristics, not looks, he was concerned with. Unlike his friends, but much like his mother, Eddie knew he cried easily and over things that seemed stupid. Like when his mother said she couldn't go to the beach with him, or worse. In school last fall he got teary-eyed when the coach had told him the new sweats wouldn't arrive in time for the first match.
He watched the sky pause before the sun tipped over the water. His stomach growled and he remembered wrestling season when, to make weight, he'd eaten only apples. He could still see them: the morning one that his stepmother set out on a plate, the lunch apple in a brown bag, then the dinner one, sliced thinly and served in a bowl with a few nuts and raisins while his father ladled gravy over his chicken.
Eddie glanced back and saw Lila far down the road: a dot with a small orange satchel.
He felt for the stiff twenties he'd taken out of the little one-teller bank yesterday, then started the car.
She stuck her thumb out like a hitchhiker as he stopped and threw the side door open for her. Lila put a brown bag by her feet and tipped the orange thing into the back.
“What's that?” Eddie thought that it was a parachute and Lila would want them to throw themselves off the highest building in Norfolk. The single parachute would not be strong enough for both but would let them eye the blue smudge of the Atlantic before splattering them on the asphalt.
“A tent,” Lila said.
“I can afford a room,” said Eddie.
“Nope,” Lila said. “I want to be near as possible to the flat dirt during all this.”
He pulled a U-turn and headed for the ferry.
“The cook's wheels ain't bad,” she said, leaning her feet up on the dash.
“Did you leave a note?” he asked.
“It's all set. They think we're staying with your aunt.”
“My mom wasn't home,” Eddie said. He looked down at the gas gauge.
“Figures,” Lila said.
“I wish you wouldn't act like that about my mom.”
“I think I can say anything I want.”
Eddie shook his head and shivered.
“You're cold?”
“No,” said Eddie. “I thought of something.”
Lila said, “It's impossible not to.”
“Not that. Neal made a move on me.”
Lila squealed. “What did you have to do to get the Dart?” She pressed an elbow into his ribs.
“Nothing,” Eddie said. “Don't be so stupid about it.”