Lost Between Houses (6 page)

Harper laughed in amazement.

“Nice talk, Simon. Like real psycho stuff. This family, I mean it. Sometimes I feel like they brought the wrong baby home from the hospital. Everybody here seems so
warlike.
I don’t think I’m going to be happy until I’m fifty. I’ve always thought that. Even when I was a kid.”

He went quiet for a moment. “I wonder why Annie Kincaid wasn’t there tonight?”

We went into the house. He went up to his bedroom and lay on the bed and turned on the radio and listened to a baseball game.

I went downstairs, made myself a ham sandwich. Then went out the back door and swatted deer flies in the garage. They were big as bolts. You had to hit them really hard to bring them
down off the window. Sometimes I had to finish them off with my shoe, all buzzing around on the floor and pissed off. It made a sound like stepping on a small light bulb.

Then I went out into the driveway and threw stones into the ravine; across the valley a dog barked from the Barrigers’ farm. A car drove along the small road on the horizon. It was very lonely out there, and I came back inside and went upstairs. I looked into Harper’s room, but he wasn’t very talkative. He was lying there on his bed with his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. From a small maroon radio on his left, the ball game jerked along and halted.

“What do you suppose happens to all those golf balls down in the ravine? I mean do you think they just
disintegrate?”
I said.

“I’ve got to listen to this,” he said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

I went on down the hall to my room, got onto my bed and opened my book. I was reading a James Bond novel, I can’t remember which one, but I flipped ahead to make sure there were enough pages left for the racy stuff.

It must have been after one in the morning when the phone rang. I raced along the hallway in my socks, down the wooden stairs. I took it in the kitchen.

“Hello,” I said.

“I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

“Scarlet?”

“Jesus, you do have a good memory. What are you doing?”

“I was just at a dance.”

“Oh yeah?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Meet anybody interesting?”

“Yeah. Well, not really. You know, the usual stuff. What are you doing?”

“My parents are away.”

“Oh yeah? They on holiday?”

“No, they’re in Los Angeles. My dad’s got a couple of movies opening.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He’s got to look after the movie stars. Make sure they don’t get too drunk. That kind of stuff.”

“Oh yeah? Who’s he have to look after?”

“Well, I think he’s going to have dinner with Steve McQueen. Do you know him?”

“Have Gun, Will Travel?”

“No, that’s what’s-his-name.”

“Right.”

“Anyway, they’re going to have dinner.”

“Just the two of them?”

“No, there’ll be other people there. I met Alfred Hitchcock once. When I was a kid.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s he like?”

“Not very interested in kids.”

She yawned. Then after a pause, “You’re not one of those guys, are you? Keeps a lay book?”

“What’s a lay book?”

“It’s where you write down all the girls you’ve laid. You know, two stars for a feel, four stars for a home run.”

“Hardly.”

“I go to a French school,” she said. “In Quebec. I almost got kicked out last year. But they let me back in on account of my father.”

“What for?”

“This stuff got wrecked and I got blamed for it.” You could hear she wasn’t interested in going on about that.

“So you’re not mad at me for calling?” she asked.

“No, not at all. How’d you know my parents weren’t here?”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, what if they’d’ve answered the phone?”

“I would’ve hung up.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not
stupid
you know.”

Silence. “So your parents are away?”

“Yep. I’m just here with my brother.”

“Just the two of you?”

“Yeah.”

“You should come down here.”

“I should. That’d be fun.”

“No, I mean it.”

“Like when?”

“Like now. Right now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come down here right now. We could stay up all night.”

“I don’t mean to sound like a bonehead here, but how exactly would I get down there? Just for technical information.”

“I don’t know. Hitchhike.”

“At this time of night?”

“Sure, there’s bound to be people up. Truck drivers and stuff.”

“Are you putting me on?”

“No.”

“Jesus, I don’t know, Scarlet. What if I get kidnapped?”

“You’re so conservative. It’d be fun.”

“I don’t think that’s my style.”

“No, maybe not.”

“Well give me the address. Just in case. But I’m not promising. I’ve got a lot of stuff to sort out up here first.”

“Like what?”

“Just stuff. Personal obligations and things. But it’s not very likely.”

“If you were really daring, you would.”

“What if I don’t get a ride?”

“I’d pick you up. Anybody in their right mind would pick you up.” Another pause. “You could sleep in my father’s bed. It’s as big as a tennis court. With satin sheets.”

“It’ll take hours.”

“I’ll be up.”

“Yeah?”

“Just ring the buzzer. You’ll see.”

“So?” she said after a moment.

“I’ll try.”

“Don’t say you’ll try. People always say they’ll try and nothing ever happens.”

“All right. I’ll really try.”

“You better.”

“I will.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What?”

“The address.”

So she gave it to me.

After I put down the phone I just sat there for a minute, moving my jaw from side to side. It made a funny sound in the middle of my head. I always did that when I was thinking about something, but Harper said it made me look like a fish with a hook in his mouth so I only did it in private. I went upstairs to
his bedroom. The wallpaper was light blue in there. He had a football balanced on his chest.

“Was that that broad again?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d she want?”

“She wants me to come down and see her. Tonight.”

“Right,” he said.

I went down the hall and sat on my bed. Then I got up and looked at myself in the mirror. I hauled out my wallet and looked inside. I had a whole lot of cash the old lady had left, just in case of an emergency. I
could do it,
I thought, I
really could.
I could feel it going from a wild idea to something I might actually do, I could actually feel it happening inside me, like a lab experiment, fizz, fizz, all the chemical stuff mixing together.

Finally I got up off my bed and I went back into Harper’s room. I stood in the doorway.

“I think I’m going to,” I said.

“What?”

“I think I’m going to go.”

“You can’t. I’ll get in shit. The old lady will blame me.”

“I’ll be back in time.”

“Forget it.”

I started down the hall. I heard him get off his bed. I ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time, giggling like a maniac, and burst out the side door and started up the driveway. Just when I got about halfway up, I heard the screen door come flying open.

“Asshole!” he shouted. But I kept going.

I hurried up the dark driveway toward the main highway. I could hear the stream gurgling behind the trees. Stones scattering under my feet. Man, was I wide awake.

I got to the top of the road and started to walk toward town. In the moonlight I could see all the way across the fields. There were no cars. I must have walked for about fifteen minutes, everything still as a graveyard when I heard this funny humming sound. I stopped and listened. Way at the far end of the road, a pair of headlights came swinging around the corner and came up toward me like a shotgun. I put out my thumb, shielding my eyes. They got closer and closer, they were really coming down on me, the guy blasted his horn and then roared by, this great big wind flapping my clothes like I was some kind of scarecrow.

Then everything was still again.

I kept on; I walked by a farmhouse. A dog barked. I jumped. I moved into the centre of the road, walking on the single line, one foot after the other, sticking my arms out for balance, talking to myself a mile a minute. They would have stuck me in the booby hatch if they’d heard. It was like there were six people with me. Me talking to Harper and to my mother and then Scarlet, even some of the guys at school, explaining to them what I was doing in the middle of the road in the middle of the night. They were all ears.

Another car came winding around the corner. I stood way back from the highway this time, a friendly little smile on my face so they didn’t figure I’d just taken an axe to my whole family. Just seconds before the guy pulled even with me I felt this weird impulse to throw myself in front of the car.

The guy whizzed by, looking sort of startled. But about a half-mile up the road, his back lights went bright red and just hung there for a second, like a space ship.

Holy fuck, I thought, he’s stopped, and I started running toward him. A man in a farmer’s hat leaned over and pushed open the door.

“I almost didn’t see you,” he said. “I’m going into town. How far you going?”

“I’m going to the city.”

“I can get you started.”

It was stuffy in the car, it smelt like old men and oil and rags.

“Smoke?” he said, offering me a cigarette.

“Sure,” I said. I put it in my mouth and he lit it with the car lighter.

“So what are you doing out
here?”

“I’m going to see my girlfriend.”

“Same old story, isn’t it?” he said. “Never changes.”

We started up, the road snaking through the black countryside. A deer ran into the bush. A song came on the radio, real slow, country and western, normally stuff I hate but tonight I was kind of in the mood.

I saw you tonight

In her arms so tight

I watched as she held you tenderly.

The guy turned it up. We drove through town. A police car was sitting in the empty gas station. The farmer took me to the outskirts.

“Good luck,” he said and drove off.

I got another ride. Can’t remember where he dropped me off. Just a bunch of pictures, a waitress in a pink dress staring from a truck-stop window. That soft light off the radio in the dashboard. It was like I kept hearing the same song all night long.

I
don’t want to go out

But I can’t just stay home

I don’t need company

But I sure don’t want to be alone.

I got out of one car and into another. At four o’clock in the
morning, I was standing at an amber-lit intersection on the outskirts of another town. A sixteen-wheeler picked me up.

“Hang on kid,” the driver said, “we’re going all the way to Toronto.”

It was quarter past six when I got to the front door of Scarlet’s place. Into the lobby. Real bright; smelt like perfume and that potpourri shit. Carpets, chairs, vases, lamps, a wonder somebody didn’t make off with all that stuff in the middle of the night.

I rang Scarlet’s number. It took awhile.

“Guess who?” I said.

There was this squawk from her end of the line. The door buzzed and I pulled it open. When I got out of the elevator, Scarlet was sort of peeking out the door.

“Jesus Christ,” she said. “You actually came.”

She was wearing a fluffy white dressing gown.

“Whoa,” she said, leaning against the doorframe. “I’ve got to lie down. I got up too fast. I’m seeing stars.”

I caught a glimpse of the light coming in the windows down the hall, and for some reason it made me think about studying for my Physics exam.

I followed her into her bedroom. It was dark in there, the curtains pulled, and it smelled like a girl’s room. I sat on the edge of the bed.

“So what do you want to do now?” I said.

“You talk and I’ll sleep,” she said. “I’m not very good in the morning.”

“Really?”

“Don’t be disappointed. I’m just going to have a little rest here. Tell me something. Talk to me.”

She put her hands under her head.

“You know that guy at the party,” I said, “the one you were kissing on the mouth?”

There was a little bit of silence.

“Are you sure you want to talk about that now?”

“Who
was
that guy?”

“A friend of the family.”

“You can say that again.”

“I mean I’ve known him since I was little. It was his birthday, so I gave him a kiss. Big deal.”

“But you felt pretty guilty about it. I could tell.”

“I was afraid you were going to snitch on me.”

“No, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Were you jealous?”

“Now why would I be jealous? I hardly knew you.”

“For some guys, that’s all it takes.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not some guys.”

I looked around the room. “It smells nice in here. What’s that smell? It’s like vanilla.”

“You like that?”

“Yeah.”

“I like it too. It’s exotic.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“God, I wondered when you were going to bring that guy up. You probably thought I was a big whore.”

“Actually, it’s pronounced the other way. Like the moving company.”

“Simon, it’s too early for grammar lessons. Really. I feel sort of sick to my stomach. Why aren’t you tired? Lie down here for a minute. Just be quiet.”

I went over and lay down on the very edge of the bed. She turned over and faced the wall.

“I’ve always wondered what it would be like to sleep in a pink room,” I said after awhile.

“Shhh,” she said.

I lay there and tried to sleep.

“I can feel you thinking, Simon. It’s making the whole bed shake. What are you thinking about?”

“Snakes.”

She didn’t answer.

“When I was a little kid,” I went on, laughing all of a sudden, nerves probably, “my mother used to come in and tuck me in and sometimes she’d say, ‘Well, Simon, what do you want to talk about?’ and this one time, I thought for a second and I said, ‘Snakes.’ I must have been about six, but I remember that very clearly. Not the other times. But that one. Weird eh?”