Leaving the Comfort Cafe (13 page)

There was also a nativity scene, with shepherds in bathrobes and the baby Jesus skillfully portrayed by someone’s baby doll. It was the only time different denominations ever got together for anything—unless you could count the terrible Easter rendition of Handel’s Messiah. There was always some good-natured interdenominational joking, usually at the expense of the Baptists and Episcopalians. That’s when Austin learned that Baptists hide their liquor so no their fellow parishioners won’t see it, and Episcopalians hide their liquor so their fellow parishioners won’t drink it.

The tree itself was pathetic, even for Conyers. The sad, little evergreen looked like the bastard child of a Scottish pine and a rabid boxwood hedge. It had long since grown too irksome to keep trimmed because, no matter how many times the town employees shaped the tree, it always had a few branches that managed to miraculously grow back into strange, awkward angles, as if—like Frankenstein’s monster—it had just been reassembled by attaching different parts.

Austin didn’t realize that Blythe was there until he spied her frayed perm bobbing up and down in the crowd. She slithered silently up beside him, much in the same way she must have sneaked up on the snakes she “hoed” to death, may they rest in peace.

“Know what happened two years ago?” Blythe said, a little too loud for a whisper but too soft to be interpreted as a conversational voice.

“Dare I ask?”

“They had the tree lighting ceremony in the middle of a thunderstorm. Lightning struck the tree. The mayor said it was as if God Almighty was having his own disco to celebrate their lighting of the tree. Yeah, like God would care about a stupid tree in Conyers.”

“And then what?” Austin asked.

“The tree was burned to a crisp.” She gave a brittle, horsy laugh, while in the choir, someone was loudly humming “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and the combination created its own whimsical melody that seemed to rise and fall in perfect sync.

“So they just planted a new tree?” Austin asked.

“No. The Ladies Garden Club Auxiliary got in on it to try to salvage it—did some kind of limb graft or whatever they do to trees—but they got into a fight over what color the surrounding flowers should be, and the whole project fell apart. All they did was give this poor tree a dose of CPR.”

“Looks like it should have had a ‘do not resuscitate’ order,” Austin said.

The ceremony required Austin and the mayor to flip the switch to light the tree at the same time. After the mayor’s very pro-Jewish speech, Austin and the mayor waited for the cue, and flipped the switch.

Nothing happened.

Austin knew in the large scheme of things, this was not a huge deal. Still, he felt glowering eyes of Conyers citizens nailing him in the back for committing the worst kind of faux pas. He primed the handle and then tried again. Nothing. The stares got loud enough for him to hear—a dull, vague hum that made the corner of his mouth twitch. The choir was getting to “and heaven and nature sing” and still no Christmas lights. The choir slurred over the second verse of “Joy to the World,” many of them scrambling to turn to the corresponding page in their Christmas carol music books. They’ve never had to sing any more than just the first verse at a Town Tree Lighting.

Blythe leaned over Austin. “You got a pocket knife?”

Before he could answer, her svelte hand had dove into his front pocket, fishing uncomfortably close to his crotch. She took the knife, opened the blade, went over to the power box, and started poking and prodding at what Austin prayed was not a live electrical socket.

Then, right when the singers were starting “He rules the world with truth and grace,” the lights twinkled into a small, yet glorious, holiday sparkle. The mayor plastered a fake smile, as if he wanted everyone to know he had planned this all along.

After the ceremony, Blythe found Austin and walked with him toward his parking space. Only the town manager and the police chief were allowed their own parking spaces.

“You could have been killed,” he said. “Electrocuted.”

“I could have been killed? You would have been killed if that tree didn’t light up like the Fourth of July. Then you’d be so depressed and down on yourself, I’d have to go buy you another pair of silk underwear.”

“You bought? I bought it myself, thank you very much.”

“You probably haven’t even worn them, yet,” she said.

“Maybe I’m wearing them right now.”

“Good for you.” She grinned. “People don’t realize that they have to use the guest soaps in life.”

“Guest soaps?”

“My pet peeve is to visit someone’s house and go to their bathroom and there they have the beautiful little guest soaps, all made up in little shapes like seashells and starfish—and no one’s used them at all,” she said. “You know the soaps are only meant for guests—and you’re a guest—but you still don’t use them because they’re brand new and they look so pretty. So instead of using the nice guest soaps, you just use some from one of those squirt dispensers. If one of those dispensers isn’t handy, you just end up rinsing your hands for a long time.”

“And that relates how?”

“Silly goof,” she said. “I can’t help but wonder if anyone used any of those guest soaps on the Titanic. Did the passengers splurge on dessert? Did they go ahead and order the good wine? I doubt it.

“How many guests on the Titanic used those little soaps? I’ll bet none.”

“I don’t think they had guest soaps on the Titanic,” he said.

“My point is, here’s something pretty. You don’t use it, and then, wham! Next thing you know, you’re at the bottom of the Atlantic. Can’t use those soaps then.”

“You’re always surprising me.”

“Well, you need to use the fancy soaps, wear fancy underwear, dance naked in your living room when no one’s looking—ah hell, dance naked in your living room when people are looking. We wonder why God doesn’t make our dreams come true, and God wonders why we never use the fancy soaps. You think He’s going to give us something special when we don’t know how to use what we’ve got?”

Suddenly, for a brief segment of a second, everything in life made sense to Austin: Conyers, the reunion, the fancy soaps, the silk underwear…

“Blythe, let me give you a ride home.”

She didn’t respond immediately, but instead scanned his truck carefully, as if checking to see if it came with lifeboats. She seemed to decide that, like the Titanic, there weren’t enough lifeboats to go around.

Austin tried again. “If you’d like, we can drive around a bit and look at the Christmas lights.”

Blythe giggled. “Or we could count and see how many people still have jack o’ lanterns out. Or better yet, how many didn’t even bother to take them down, but just smacked them in the middle of their Nativity set, big as you please, with Jesus, Mary and Joseph. She climbed into the vehicle with amazing agility. Austin tried to clamor into the driver’s seat with a John Wayne swagger, but then decided maybe it would be better to do a James Dean swagger, then maybe a James Bond swagger, then he remembered that James Bond didn’t swagger. The result was the same kind of awkward limp he got when his feet fell asleep.

By the time he started the engine, Blythe was already fiddling with his special parking permit from the Town of Conyers, eyeing it carefully as if trying to figure out how to counterfeit it.

“Shelley,” she said. The word was flat, broken and floated off her tongue to land with a soft thud somewhere between Austin’s brake and accelerator.

“What?”

“Shelley. That’s the name on my mailbox. Blythe Shelley. Zero-two-two-four-zero West Mount Drive. Shelley. It’s an old family name, you know.”

“Most mailboxes have family names.”

“No, I mean the family name. Shelley. After the Shelleys—the poets. Percy Shelley. I come from a long line of poets. Or did I tell that to you already?”

“You didn’t.” She did, but Austin didn’t mind hearing it again.

“Yeah. Princesses, too. I come from a long line of princesses.” She winked.

“That’s fascinating.” Austin grinned. “Princesses of where?”

“You know, one of those small countries in Eastern Europe with the strange names that doesn’t exist anymore. I’m from a country that doesn’t even exist any more.”

“Those were the countries I always missed on the geography exams,” he said.

“Well, I never missed it because I’m really good at geography, but yeah, I guess it would be the country that everyone misses on the test.”

“So, your majesty, what is your country like? Lots of mountains?”

“Yeah, lots of mountains…only they’re polluted now. All gray and smoke-like.”

“Beaches?”

“Nude beaches. You can’t go onto a beach unless you’re nude. We like it that way. Cuts down on the tourists,” she said.

“Does it export anything?”

“No.” She twirled her hair. “Just princesses. My country only exports princesses.”

“Must be a very wealthy country then.”

“You’d think…you’d think.…” With a smooth motion of her wrist, she rolled down the window and stuck her head outside. Her hair struggled to take over her face as a madcap mass of ringlets burst forth from her brain like insane Slinkies.

“Uh, it’s a little cold out there,” Austin said.

“That’s what Percy Shelley must have loved about sailing in England. The nip in the air. The cold wind. Like God running His fingers through your hair.”

“God has some pretty chilly fingers.” Austin was half afraid she was going to jump out the door.

“Sad thing about Shelley.” She sighed. “He drowned. He loved to sail, but he never learned to swim. I wonder why he never learned.”

“I don’t know.” Austin could picture Percy Shelley, the air on his chin, the musty smell of history, slowly slipping away into the water and never resurfacing. Shelley’s ghost so captivated his thoughts that he almost missed his turn into Blythe’s driveway, which led to a small, rental house with gray vinyl siding. It was obviously one of those homes that, with a little sprucing up, could have sold for a fairly nice price, but was slowly sliding into disrepair. The screen on the front porch had several gaping holes. One of the numbers on the front of the house was hanging by one nail. The windows were dirty, and the shutters were in dire need of a new coat of paint.

“I rent the place cheap,” she said, as if sensing his thoughts. “The landlords do a lot of traveling and aren’t around a lot. They go lots of places, London, Paris, Manitoba…”

Austin felt Manitoba sounded out-of-place with the list, but he didn’t comment.

“They tell me there’s nothing like spring in Hong Kong. Ever been to Hong Kong?” she asked.

“No.”

“Ever been to London?”

“No.”

“Paris?”

“No.”

“You don’t get out much, do you?”

“Well, just not across the ocean.”

“Because you can’t swim?”

“Yeah.” He pulled into her driveway. “I guess, like Shelley, I never learned to swim.”

“It’s high time you learned how.”

“I think so.”

“Well, thanks for the lift. The mayor will have to treat you to another dessert.”

“Doyouwanttogooutwithme?” The words ripped out of Austin’s throat, searing it with the burning sensation he got any time he threw up.

“What?”

Deep breath. Time to swim.

“Blythe, do you want to go out with me?”

It was as if he had asked for her tax returns for the last 15 years. She looked quizzically at him, not sure what expression she should have.

“I’m having a college alumni thing…kind of a homecoming. I was wondering—”

“If I would go with you so you would have a date and not look like a total loser?”

He grinned. “Something like that. Well. And there’ll be—”

“Will there be any of those little fancy soaps in the bathrooms?”

“I’ll make sure of it.”

“Sounds good. Call me. Let me know when, and I’ll be there.”

Austin circled the date of the alumni gala in red ink on his desk calendar, and his eyes crept toward it whenever the ups and downs of town administration precipitated the need to look forward to something. In the second drawer of his desk, the illustrative outline of his comic celebrations grew and multiplied. The fiery redheaded waitress confronted the comic book Snake Lady with normalcy at stake. No secret identity. She was just the waitress. Everyone knew she had super powers. Everyone in the small town knew everything about her. And yet, they still treated her just the same, like some kind of inner torment—to have a special ability, a gift to save the world, and yet have it bulldozed down the rows of the status quo, just like the historic, ancient oak tree in the town square that no one appreciates until it is cut down to make way for new power lines. He was careful not to put her name on the calendar, for fear of being the victim of the town gossip vine. Somehow, Queen picked up on what was going on. She never said anything about it, but gave a slight grin and nod any time she saw his eyes wander toward his calendar.

When the day came, he washed, waxed and vacuumed his truck. He carefully cleaned underneath the seats—disgusted by the discovery of stray French fires that had somehow gone AWOL from his last fast food venture. As his new tires curved their way down Blythe’s road, Austin was suddenly transported back to 11th grade and the Junior-Senior prom, when he awkwardly tried to pin a corsage on his date’s dress, which was strapless. He hoped the awkwardness would eventually go away. He thought his late twenties was supposed to be some kind of magic time in his life, and when he reached it, he would have the ability to approach a woman with casual confidence. Now, he knew there was no such thing. Especially when he thought of Kerry opening her own art gallery in New York City.

Austin hoped that one day he would discover a mystical train baggage platform where you place all your mismatched suitcases, and someone picks them up, arranges and stores them neatly. Then they punch your ticket and take you to the place where your life really begins. Out the window, you see all those mismatched socks that went missing from the dryer, and all the little, insignificant things of life you realized weren’t insignificant at all. Finally, the train stops where your life will begin. You unload your bags and realize, for the first time, that you can actually unpack because you are going to stay for a while.