Hungry for the World (13 page)

And that’s what I remember most, the way he
watched
me. I was not yet twenty. My long brown hair was layered and curled, my fingernails polished, my makeup carefully applied to bring out the blue of my own eyes. I might have expected a man to look at me, perhaps even allow his glance to linger. But this was different. The man in the ’Vette settled into his gaze as though it humored him to do so.

I thumbed out the bills for him, counting by twenties, slid the metal box from my closet of bulletproof glass. When he
asked my name, I told him, and he smiled. I remember the smallness of his teeth, his ease. Even with other cars lined up behind him, he took his time slipping the money into his wallet, lighting his cigarette. He seemed to swallow the smoke, letting a thin line of it escape each nostril before raising an eyebrow my way.

I watched him pull into traffic, checked my watch. Friday with its long lines and mill paychecks seemed never to end. A few more minutes and I could lower the shade that read
SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED
and be gone for the weekend.

Please let me balance tonight, I thought. One nickel off and we’d all have to stay, six women at six windows, counting and recounting. The
girls
, they called us. We were mostly loyal to the bank, more so to one another. No one complained if another didn’t balance. Everyone stayed, checking the debits and credits, lighting up a cigarette because the bank was closed and the customers were gone. It looks bad, we were told, for a woman to smoke in public. The men could smoke at their desks—Mr. Paul, Mr. Hampton, who ushered customers from his office to our windows with a sweep of his Salem.

It was Mr. Paul we answered to, and I believed he hated us all, perhaps women in general but especially me, the youngest of the tellers. I had broken all the rules of the bank at least once, and now I was breaking another: no chewing gum while on the teller line. Bent over my work, I was startled by Mr. Paul’s hand appearing beneath my chin. I dutifully spat the gum into his palm. His nostrils flared in distaste as he carried the wad to the wastebasket, turned his hand over, and dropped it in. The customers watched him,
then looked at me. I shrugged, embarrassed like a child is embarrassed, shamed, and stricken with helpless anger. People shuffled, coughed. I began my count over.

“HE’S A DICK,”
Charlene said later, lifting her chin and blowing smoke toward the ceiling.

I nodded, glad to be balanced and out of the bank, at the bar with Charlene drinking daiquiris. Charlene was New Accounts, moved up from teller because her line was always longest. She had a way with people. She had red hair, green eyes, a Barbie-doll figure, a smile that meant something. I loved seeing her change out of skirts, nylons, and high heels into the tight Wranglers and manured boots of a weekend rancher. She was twenty years older than I was, and I was both puzzled and pleased by her attention.

Tony, Charlene’s boyfriend, had shown up at the bank that afternoon on his way out of town, catching the door just at closing, just as Mr. Hampton slid his key into the inside lock. Everyone had watched as Tony strolled across the lobby to Charlene’s desk. He wasn’t tall, but he was solid and probably a little mean the way cowboys can be. He’d leaned toward her and smiled, then slid out his tongue, a quarter balanced on its tip.

I thought I might be a little in love with Tony myself. If I told Charlene, I knew what she would say: “You think you can handle him, honey, you go right ahead.” I wanted to be like that: in control but with an edge. I could never find that fine line between the bad girl and the good, and right then I felt like a failed audition for both.

Charlene and I smoked together, filling our ashtray with her lipstick-kissed Winstons and my Virginia Slims.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Charlene said.

I stubbed out one cigarette and lit another, as I’d learned to do when the talk turned serious. “I don’t know. How men are.”

Charlene laughed. She believed in keeping her men guessing. “Got to give them a little, but not too much,” she’d say, and even though I knew some women were capable of such magic, I also knew that I wasn’t one of them. I was no good at the games, the push and pull, the approach and retreat.

“When Tony gets home,” Charlene said, “he’s going to fill me so full.…” She gave a tight moan and closed her eyes. Then she began to laugh, that deep, rolling laugh that anyone could see was honest, and pretty soon we were both laughing, slumped sideways in the booth, the men at the bar grinning, shaking their heads, and the bartender saying, “Somebody better buy those ladies a drink.”

We drank until there was no rum left, then stumbled into the night, rummaging through our purses for keys. I made it home and into my bathroom before getting sick. I clung to the porcelain, intent on keeping the walls still long enough so I could fall asleep or pass out or do whatever it took to stop the roiling deep in my gut.

I wiped my mouth, blew my nose, looked at myself in the mirror. Strands of hair stuck to the sides of my face. Mascara and eye shadow smeared my temples; spittle shone on my chin. I didn’t care. Who was I afraid might see me, anyway?

I slipped to the floor, rested on the green throw rug my mother had given me, then covered myself with a towel, still
damp from that morning’s bath. Knees drawn tight against my chest, I shivered beneath the white brilliance of the two bare bulbs on either side of the mirror, wishing for 7-Up and saltines, my mother’s cure for stomachache. I longed for her cool hand, her voice telling me I’d feel better soon. I thought of her lying in bed next to my father, and I felt a sharp pang of loneliness. When either of them was ill, the other was always there, bringing bowls of Campbell’s soup, offering toast and sweet tea. How much was it worth to have such a companion, someone to care for you, someone to brush the hair from your forehead?

I thought about the guy in the ’Vette. He was not my
type
, not jockish or boy-next-door cute, yet I felt drawn to him for reasons I could not name. Years later, I would meet women who would have wanted him immediately, women whose dreamed-of lovers bore the deep marks of hard living, dangerous to the core. I’d told Charlene that there was something about him that intrigued me. It wasn’t just the car or his attention. Something I sensed more than saw, a kind of familiar intimacy. He made me feel funny, like he knew something about me, like there was this
secret
.

At the bar, I’d whispered to Charlene what I had gleaned from his deposit slip and account information: his name was David M. Jenkins. He lived at 542 Meadowlark Lane, Apartment C. I knew that he had $3,987.55 in checking and over $1,000 in savings, which seemed like a lot of money to me. I knew his paychecks came out of Oregon and that he was much older than I was.

What I didn’t know was that he was a long-haul truck driver with a speed habit and an envelope full of Quaaludes, that he knew more about guns, traps, and pelts than any man
I had ever met, that he had a great horned owl mounted on his wall and a pistol under his pillow. That the Corvette was not his, and that what he knew about me had nothing to do with money or age and everything to do with the hunt: he had chosen me. He was waiting, watching me more carefully than I could ever imagine.

W
HEN THE FLOWERS CAME—A DOZEN
long-stemmed red roses spraying their scent into the bank’s lobby—Mr. Paul could barely contain his distaste. When customers asked who the flowers were from, I said, “David,” as though his name were already familiar and expected.

I took the roses home and set them on the small dinette. Their color, gaudy and warm, brightened the room. Several days later the Corvette was back at my window.

“Do you like steak and lobster?”

I nodded at David from my post at the drive-through, trying to remember if I had ever eaten lobster.

“Tuesday night?”

“I have karate lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

David raised an eyebrow. “Black belt yet?”

“Not yet.” I wished that he would take my cue and lower his voice, which boomed from the single speaker. Mr. Paul had noticed the length and probable inappropriateness of our conversation and was craning his neck my way. I pushed the drawer further out.

“Wednesday?” he asked. Smoke from his cigarette wafted into the bin.

“Sure. Okay.” I scribbled my address on a debit slip and pushed it against the window for him to read. He did not bother to write it down, and I wondered how he would remember it.

“See you at seven.” He winked, then motored casually out of the lot. I turned to see the entire line of tellers staring at me. I shrugged, grinning, until Mr. Paul clapped his hands twice, sending us all back to our ten-keys.

F
ROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW
I watched the Corvette pull into the driveway, saw David step from the car and straighten. His height startled me. I was used to tall men—John, my father, my uncles and brother all over six feet—but not to David, who beat them by several inches, whose wrists and ankles showed long and lean beyond his cuffs. “Built for speed, not comfort,” he joked, and I liked that he could laugh at himself.

He opened the Corvette’s passenger door, which swung out wide and low. He kept his window cracked enough to draw out the smoke. He didn’t gun the car across the bridge but steered it smoothly through traffic, content with his control. As we talked I studied the hard angles of his face, the thin length of his legs. He was nothing like John. I liked his full, eye-wrinkling smile, the roughness of his skin—proof that he’d seen some things, knew what mattered.

Cedars III was as plush as restaurants got in the valley—red carpet, heavy drapes, more silverware than I knew what to do with. Miniature loaves of dark bread came on little wooden boards. I remembered the first time I had been in the restaurant: prom night with John, who had thought the
small brown loaf a potato and reprimanded the waitress for bringing him a spud he hadn’t ordered. I rolled my eyes at the memory.

“What are you thinking?” David asked.

“Nothing, really. Do you come here a lot?”

He grinned. “Haven’t been, but I think I will.”

He might have said more, reached across the white linen tablecloth and touched my hand, but he didn’t. He left it that way, a hint of expectation. Instead, we began to get acquainted, and soon our talk turned toward an interest we shared: the woods and the ways of the hunt.

He seemed delighted by my knowledge of the outdoors. He listened and agreed or disagreed, and then we fell into jocular argumentation about whitetail versus muleys, bolt-action versus pump.

When David told me about his work, the semi-truck he drove from Lewiston to Seattle one night, then back the next, with a few days off between trips, I was again reminded of my father. But there was a difference: I noted the dark circles beneath David’s eyes, the eyes themselves shot through with red. His shirt was wrinkled; he needed a haircut. My mother would have seen it immediately: he had no woman at home.

We ate the thick tenderloins rare, the way he said they needed to be. The lobster tail we dipped in little pots of melted butter, kept warm over candles. I loved it, loved the way the flesh melted on my tongue. It was white, firm,
succulent
, I thought, and looked up to find David watching me, leaned back and smiling. I saw then what the evening might cost.

But I was wrong. That night David walked me to my door, told me how much he’d enjoyed my company, then turned
away without a touch. I watched him pull out of the driveway and disappear around the corner. I was surprised and relieved but also concerned. In my experience with men, satisfaction with my presence had always expressed itself in the physical: if the night had gone well, the man would at least attempt some contact, and I would have the choice of demurring or acquiescing. David’s simple exit had left me feeling empty, unsettled, as though the play had ended without its final scene.

Inside my apartment, I flipped on the TV, then turned it off. I paced the length of the small rooms. I ran a bath, covered my face with the steaming washrag. I wondered if he would call me again.

T
HURSDAY EVENING
I pulled on my stiff white
gia
and knotted the sash showing my rank in the martial art of Do Shin Kan. It made me feel stronger to learn the kicks and parries, but it was the
kata
I most enjoyed—geometric dance, the grace and force of contained movement, the wide arcs and small circles our feet and fists made through air. The sparring I liked least, always a little afraid of the men I fought, whose height and weight made me desperate to kick and run. I came home bruised—my forearms from blocking, my sides from blows I should have deflected. The skin of my knuckles broke and scarred from hours spent boxing a tape-wrapped plank. Even the rubber-bladed knives with which we mimed battle caught me with their spurred edges, scratching more than cutting—long, shallow wounds that stained my
gia
with blood.

I loved the discipline, the will it took, the concentration,
the denial of pain, and I loved the mysticism—the meditation a kind of prayer. In the gym with the lights off, the glow of the streetlamps shut out by the heavy, industrial shades, we sparred blind.