9 Letters (17 page)

“I bet that’s hard
work,” I said, when he’d finished. “Keeping track
of everything like that, that seems hard. Like when you’re
building a house, keeping all those parts together in your head,
remembering who’s going to do what, where you’re going to
get parts, all of that.”

“That sounds about right,”
he said.

“But when I’m
building something, at least I get to be out there with the rest of
my crew. Sitting around all day, this might sound like I’m not
being serious, but I am, sitting around all day has got to be one of
the hardest parts of the job. Don’t you just find yourself
itching to get up? Walk around?”

“Every day,” Madison
said. “I want to get up, walk around. Get some air. Maybe just
walk away from my desk and out to my car and never come back.”

“I was about to ask why you
did it,” I said, “But I guess you’ve gotta.”

Madison nodded.

I realized I was feeling sorry
for a guy with three times my salary.

But at least I didn’t have
to wear a polo shirt.

I filled my plate with chips and
some buffalo wings, and as soon as I could, I ducked over to where
Eric and Nicole were standing by the back porch.

“Luke,” Eric said,
smiling. I shook his hand.

“How’s it going at
the studio?” I asked.

Eric grinned. “Still
hitting that record button and dreaming of the big time.”

“You’ll get there,”
I told him. “Just you wait and see.”

“Everyone’s asking
about you,” Nicole said, lowering her voice.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, you’re the man
of the hour,” Nicole said. “Been a long time since Rae’s
had a handsome guy over, and no one knows the first thing about you.”

“Don’t worry,”
Eric said. “I’ve been talking you up. Something about
swooping in, saving Irina. Fighting off like eight huge drunk guys.”

“You’re making me
sound modest,” I said. “Couldn’t have been less
than a dozen.”

“A dozen huge drunk guys,”
Eric agreed. “Beat them all up, threw them out of your bar.”

“Which you totally own,”
Nicole said. “Don’t worry, we’ve been telling them
that too. You definitely aren’t just a bartender. You’re
like, independently wealthy and own the bar just so you’ve got
a place to kick back and drink.”

“Well I appreciate you all
talking up my good name,” I said. “And damn, I wish your
stories were true. Independently wealthy, that’s the job for
me.”

“But I’ll tell you
something serious, Luke,” Nicole said. “Rae hasn’t
been sweet on too many guys since Derek.”

“Rae and I are just
friends,” I said. I didn’t mean it, of course. Just being
in the same room as her then…it didn’t matter that she
wasn’t next to me. Just that I was in the same space as her was
enough. It was reassuring, knowing I could turn my head the slightest
bit and there she’d be. As if that calm she radiated could
reach me right across the room. Felt good.

“Sure,” Nicole said.
“Anyway, Rae’s been having a rough time since Derek, so I
know you’re something special. You gotta know that, too. And if
you break her heart we’ll kill your firstborn son.”

“What?”

“I’m kidding,”
Nicole said.

“Sort of,” Eric said.

Nicole’s face went serious
again. “I don’t know what-all she’s told you about
Derek. But I hope for her sake and yours that you’re nothing
like him.”

“I’ve got a job,
don’t I?” I said it with a smile on my face. It worked;
the conversation lightened up.

The next hour I spent introducing
myself to a string of alternately interesting and boring folks who
wanted to know everything about me. Most of them weren’t as
direct as Nicole, but all of them were working on letting me know
that I’d better play nice. Since I didn’t have any
specific plans to put the moves on Rae, it was actually kind of
heartwarming. She had a lot of good friends.

Someone dimmed the lights, and
Rae looked up just in time to catch Nicole walking in from the back
porch, birthday cake in hand. It was homemade. I couldn’t
remember the last time I’d seen anyone my age get a homemade
birthday cake. Maybe these office people were onto something, maybe
they did stuff with their hands all the time, just not at work.

“Happy birthday to you,”
the crowd started.

Rae’s face went firetruck
red, making her freckles all but disappear in the blush.

“Happy birthday to you...”

I was singing too, at that point.
Everyone was happy and swaying or raising their glasses. I raised
mine.

“Happy birthday, dear
Rae-Rae...”

There was a pounding on the door.
Three loud knocks that echoed across the room.

“Happy birthday to you.”
The last line was ragged and confused, because just then the door
swung open and a man walked in. Some guy with shaggy hair and a bad
goatee.

Eric was by the door, and his
body language said the newcomer wasn’t welcome. I stepped a
little bit closer to hear better, but I needn’t bother. The
fellow got louder all on his own.

“Rae,” the guy said,
slurring a little. “Happy birthday, babe.”

The cake was on the counter,
candles burning. But Rae was staring at the intruder, her expression
gone all dark and shut-down, and wax was melting down onto the cake.
It wasn’t too hard to know what was going on.

“You can’t be here,”
Rae said. She had her phone out.

“Don’t be like that,”
Derek said. “I’m just here to wish you a happy birthday.”

He shoved his way past Eric, and
when he got inside, I realized just how big the fellow was. Turns out
failed writers come in sizes other than scrawny, and he towered over
Eric.

Eric though, good on him, got
back in front of Derek. I went and stood a little bit behind him.
Didn’t want to draw attention to myself, because the man was
drunk and volatile. If he realized he didn’t know me, he’d
put two and two together and get five and assume I was sleeping with
Rae. That wouldn’t go down in a way that did anyone much good.

“I got you a birthday
present,” Derek said. “Just, you know, because you’re
the only thing that matters.”

“Get the hell out of here,”
Rae said. “I’ll call the cops.”

Derek looked down at Eric like
they were buddies. At some point, they might have been. “She
says she’s going to call the cops but she ain’t going to.
She never does, never will. You want to know why?”

“Because she wants you to
grow a fucking pair and leave her alone all on your own,” Eric
said. I liked him.

“Because she still loves
me,” Derek said. He went for his back pocket, and I started
forward, but he pulled out a little wrapped present. “This is
for Rae,” he said.

Eric took it from him, set it on
the coffee table. Derek took that moment to try to force his way past
the smaller man once again, which is when I stepped in.

“Hey,” I said.

He stared at me blankly.

“Derek, right?” I
asked like I was being friendly. “I hear you got a sweet ride.
You want to show it to me?”

“Do I know you?”

“Come on, let’s just
go outside.”

Then he tried to push me, but I
got his arm twisted around and handled him out the door, just like
John Lawson had shown me. Glad some good came from tending bar.

Outside, though, I let him go
while we were still in the yard. Because I somehow thought he’d
take the hint and leave.

“Hey, buddy,” I said.
“Come on. Just go.”

“Not your buddy, you
redneck fuck.”

He took a swing at me. All wild,
no form. I ducked my head out of the way. Let him start to recover
his balance, then gave him a shove in the chest as he overcorrected.
He toppled back, fell into the fence. Splintered the already-broken
picket.

“Fuck you, asshole,”
I said. Sometimes that rage, it just came on. Didn’t know where
from, but there it was. Guess I figured I’d already had enough
shit in my life and that taking more from this guy just wouldn’t
wash. I folded my arms and stared him down.

Even drunk, he took the hint,
stumbled away.

“Call yourself a fucking
cab!” I shouted after, as he disappeared into the darkened
street

“Up yours!” I heard
echoing down the nearly-empty street.

I sighed, pulled myself together.
Straightened my shirt, straightened my hat.

I went back inside and everyone
was silent, just kind of looking at me. Rae must have blown out the
candles when they were down to nubs, and the top of the chocolate
cake had puddles of blue wax.

Then Nicole and Eric went back to
talking, and the room recovered a little bit. Rae was still by the
counter, staring into her drink, the poor cake forgotten.

“Well,” Rae said.
“I’m pretty embarrassed.”

“Don’t be,” I
said. “It’s not you, it’s him.”

She just nodded.

“Say, he, uh, kind of fell
into the fence. Well, sort of through it. You need help fixing that?”

“Nah, I’ll call
somebody.”

“Suit yourself,” I
said.

I fixed myself about a shot of
rum into a plastic cup. Knocked it back, chased it with Coke.
Sometimes beer takes too long to calm the nerves.

“You want to talk about
it?” I asked.

“It was really stupid,
staying with him. Everyone says that. Everyone thinks they wouldn’t
do it, they wouldn’t stay with some abusive piece of shit like
him. But there I went. Being stupid. Three years of stupid.”

“You weren’t being
stupid,” I said. “You loved him. You thought you could
fix him. There’s a lot of women think that way. Wasn’t
your fault.”

She knocked back her own drink,
poured herself another. “Get out.”

“What?” I was
stunned.

“You’re not my
boyfriend. You don’t know me. You don’t get to talk to me
like that. And you don’t get to try to fix me, either. Get
out.”

There isn’t a thing you can
say to that. When a girl tells you that you gotta leave her place, it
don’t matter if you don’t understand what she’s
thinking.

“Yeah,” I said.
“Alright. See you around.”

I nodded goodbye to some folks,
went out the door.

Eric and Nicole came out after
me.

“It’s alright,”
I said.

“Just give her a couple
days,” Nicole said. “She gets angry when Derek’s
around. She’s not herself. Give her a couple days, then reach
out.”

“Sure, whatever.”

I walked away.

I was too drunk to drive, so I
was damn glad I parked down the street where no one could see me. I
climbed up into the bed of my truck, laid down.

Counted what stars I could count,
there in the city and all its lights.

It was cold, but that didn’t
get to me at all. Maybe I was happier cold, just then. Letting the
steel of the truck suck what was left of the warmth from my body,
counting my breaths as they appeared in front of my face and drifted
off into the night sky.

When I was a kid, I was going to
be a cowboy, then a firefighter. I hit high school, I was going to be
a baseball player or a rock star, but I wasn’t any good at
that. I was an alright contractor, but I knew better. I’d
worked with better builders than me all the time. There was one thing
in the world I’d been good at, one thing that came natural to
me, that I could see how I was just going to get better and better at
it, the more I tried. I’d been good at being a husband.

I should have been buried with
her. Would have been kinder that way. I’d wanted to, too. I’d
seen her in the coffin and I’d wanted to just curl up against
her, put my head on her breast one last time. Close my eyes, let
myself just die.

But there was my breath, coming
out of my face, visible. Proof I’d survived. I wondered if even
God knew why.

After I sobered enough to
convince myself it was okay to drive, I got behind the wheel. Didn’t
drive home, though. I was just on autopilot, and on autopilot I drove
right to Maggie’s, right to that dead-end street. The light
wasn’t on, but I could see the glow of her computer. She was
up. Unless it was dawn or something, Maggie was always up.

I made it to the buzzer, and I
stood there. I wasn’t even thinking. I was just…just
standing. Hoping for thoughts and feelings like a farmer hopes for
rain, I guess. Just standing there, a bit buzzed, waiting to see what
I was going to do.

If I’d rang her buzzer, I
could probably get her to forgive me. But maybe that wasn’t
what I wanted. Then again, maybe it was.

After five minutes or something,
just standing, I walked back to my truck. Got in, drove home.

I slept that night, but only an
hour or three. I dreamt of Emily again.

In the dream, we were old
bastards, and we’d lived our lives apart from one another. I
was living out of the back of my truck, with a camper shell on it,
like I’d thought about doing when I was a kid. She lived in a
trailer with someone...it was a dream, the logic didn’t hold
up. Maybe she was living with her husband or her kid or a roommate, I
don’t know, it sort of seemed to shift around.

But it was a dream about how I’d
rolled up to her place after decades without her. How I’d lived
my whole life without her, rootless and wandering. Happy enough, here
and there, but mostly alone. Especially the last few decades, I’d
been alone.

I showed up at her trailer door,
and I knocked, and she came out. I had daffodils. She took them
gladly, and let me in. The trailer was huge on the inside, there were
horses running through the halls and I heard a ball game somewhere in
the distance, probably on TV.

“What brings you here?”
she asked.

“I was thinking, I was
thinking maybe you’d like to go out with me sometime,” I
said. Her hand was wrinkled, her face was wrinkled. Her hair was
white and long, mine was long gone. I took my cap off, held it over
my heart, and ran my hand over my bald dome. Suddenly stressed that
without my hair, she wouldn’t find me handsome.