Sparkle (10 page)

Eddie found himself drifting. His breath sped up and his mind raced, rapid-fire thoughts threatening to spin out of control. Maybe it wouldn’t happen until he took a cab to the zoo. Maybe he’d held his hand wrong. Maybe he’d misinterpreted the dream. He’d been together with Jolie in it. They’d been happy and they’d definitely held hands. There wasn’t anything else in the dream. Nothing. Nothing.

Nothing he was going to let come into his head.

Each racing thought had a hook on it, wanting to attach and repeat itself over and over and over. Eddie had to refocus, couldn’t let himself get flustered. Not today. If he did, he could easily become immobilized, and the day would be lost.

Jolie studied him intently. “Are you all right, Eddie? Do you need to sit down?”

After an embarrassingly long moment, he managed to say, “No.”

“Is this for me, Eddie?”

“Uh-huh. Okay,” he managed.

“Thank you. I really appreciate it.” Jolie looked at the bottle in her hand. Eddie heard the smile in her voice. The sound was reassuring, calming. “You’re very thoughtful. You know, my birthday’s on Monday. I guess this is actually my first present.”

“Uh-huh. Okay.” Without warning, Eddie felt the pang in his heart, the familiar, painful hot thump that forced his thoughts toward his mom. It usually came only before he started cleaning. What was going on? As he looked at the ground beyond Jolie he had a flash of what looked like Lucy Silver peeking angrily out from behind a bush. The gears in his mind ground and clashed for a moment. Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the pain faded and everything was clear.

Of course. Eddie had chosen to enter unfamiliar territory. Discomfort was unavoidable. It made sense. He hadn’t remembered to anticipate it. It certainly wasn’t what his dream had promised, but it made perfect sense. And now he’d learned that Jolie’s birthday was coming. That seemed important. Had he somehow known? Eddie’s breathing deepened.

“Are you ready to get started? We’ve got a lot to see.”

“Okay,” Eddie said. “Let’s go.”

Jolie knew it was best to keep conversation to a minimum. Still, she wondered what Eddie had been thinking. Sometimes, when he stopped stock-still like that, he looked so intelligent and far away that she wished she could get inside his head.

Jolie started walking, and Eddie followed her through the zoo’s main entrance. The zoo would be crowded soon, but there was still just a thin steady stream of early arrivals, and they barely registered with Eddie. Jolie stopped at the administrative office.

“Can you wait for me here for a minute, Eddie? I’d like to go put this Sparkle in the fridge for later, all right?”

“Uh-huh. Okay.” He didn’t want her to go, even for a minute, but Eddie understood. He’d pass the time sorting through the fascinating animal smells drifting through the air.

There were a few employees in the small, cluttered main office. Mark was bent over Jolie’s desk, his back to her.

“Hey, Mark,” Jolie said. “What are you doing?”

He looked up, surprised. “Oh. nothing. Just looking for…um, do you have an extra pen?” He turned toward her.

Jolie reached over, pulled one out of his breast pocket, and handed it to him.

“Here you go.”

“Oh. Ha, ha. Thanks. Isn’t it time for you to be with your…special guest? Um, Eddie?”

“Yep, he’s right outside. And he brought me a present.” Jolie held up the bottle of Sparkle, then stowed it carefully in the community fridge.

“That’s nice,” Mark said, sounding unsure. He lowered his voice. “Actually, I need to talk to you, Jolie. It’s about…some paperwork.”

“It’s going to have to keep. Eddie’s waiting for me, and I don’t want to leave him alone.”

Mark looked after her as she breezed out. He furrowed his brow. She wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

But he had a responsibility.

Outside the office, Eddie hadn’t moved. But he had half-closed his eyes. And concentrated. The smells, the sun, the anticipation, the reassuring news about Jolie’s birthday—all the good bits in the moment—had worked like mental magnets, helping him drive his anxious thoughts to a better place. The Sparkle Soda jingle played quietly in his head. The day hadn’t even really started yet. It was going to be okay.

“Okay, Eddie,” Jolie said. “Thanks for waiting. Let’s go. It’s a beautiful day.”

Eddie didn’t answer. He opened his eyes wide and walked straight to the tiger pit.

He didn’t realize it, but he walked so fast that Jolie had to work to keep up. All the while, the Sparkle music got louder and clearer, and all the colors—the blue sky, the green grass, the yellow daffodils lining the path— began glowing, warm and brilliant. The world was starting to sparkle. Eddie let his imagination take him to the place where he was the Sparkle guy and Jolie was the Sparkle girl.

When they reached the tiger pit, Eddie stopped abruptly. The Sparkle music was loud. Surely Jolie could hear it. This was another chance. Maybe things would turn out just like in the commercial. They would stand together and look at the tiger. The tiger would roar. That would be Eddie’s cue. He would reach out and touch—maybe even hold—Jolie’s hand.

He let himself sink deeper and deeper, remembering the exquisite feeling he had woken up with. It was a moment he wanted to last forever. He and Jolie would help each other appreciate how awesome the world could be—despite all the loss, all the pain, all the dumb-ass mistakes that were so easy to make and so hard to fix—when it sparkled.

“Eddie,” Jolie said.

“Eddie?”

Eddie was staring off into space, not looking at the tiger at all. He hadn’t moved a muscle for several long moments.

“You okay, Eddie?” Jolie knew that he liked to move through the zoo according to a precise schedule, and for the second time he had started to drift. Part of her job was to keep him on track. “Eddie? Ready to move on?”

As much as he usually relished the sound of Jolie’s voice, just now it brought him back with a thud. He looked around, found himself standing in front of an ordinary tiger habitat, the colors dull and faded. It was disorienting. He looked down at the real tiger. It looked back up at him.

Eddie was flustered. He realized, as his vision faded and reality asserted itself, that maybe the day didn’t want to play out the Sparkle way after all. Eddie wasn’t ready to give up. Despite the lack of magic in the air, he turned slightly toward Jolie, just in case. Below them, the big lazy Bengal stood, yawned, and walked closer.

Jolie was confused. She knew Eddie could become overwhelmed in unfamiliar situations. The trigger wouldn’t necessarily be obvious. If it happened, Eddie would simply stop wherever he was and remain still, quiet and unresponsive. If he was especially agitated, he would rub his hair or face or arm over and over. It didn’t happen all that often, but when it did the remedy was simple: Try to get him to sit down on the nearest bench and wait, checking in with him every couple of minutes until he became responsive and agreed to go on. It usually didn’t take very long.

“Eddie?” Jolie spoke gently. “Do you need to sit down and rest?”

Eddie gave her shoes a look of longing.

Actually, they were boots. Interesting. He hadn’t noticed that before. His focus was going away, and his mind was reaching and drifting, trying to latch on to something he could use as an anchor.

Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t just that today’s dream wasn’t coming true. Something much bigger seemed to be lurking somewhere. But what was it?

For a second, Eddie’s heart got painfully big in his chest again. Only it was more urgent, and it took longer to quiet down. Mom. No, Lucy. Something in his pocket. Something she gave him.

The thoughts had a huge force behind them. The kind that would take hold of his mind and not let go until he’d fully worked it out. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not today. If he let it go too far, if he succumbed to the hopeless temptation of letting these urgent thoughts in to start working on him, Eddie knew the day he had dreamed about would be over.

He mustered his concentration. He would not let this precious time go to waste. He needed to make a move. To build a dam of sensation in the present to hold back what was trying to flood in.

Now.

Eddie looked hard at the big sleek tiger below for a long moment.

It roared.

Or maybe more like a half-yawn half-roar. But it was something. Something loud and interesting. More important, something from his sparkling dream. He glanced in Jolie’s direction, hoping this obvious cue might jog her memory, her intuition, any part of her that might understand the truth about them and this moment.

But Jolie didn’t wake up to the dream.

“Hey, Eddie,” she said. “It’s fine if you want to sit down. I’m happy to sit in the sunshine with you.”

Jolie’s voice. Eddie would focus on that.

“Thank you.” he forced himself to speak. It wasn’t Eddie’s usual response, and Jolie gave him a quizzical look. He risked a glance at her face. It was the most beautiful face he had ever seen. It filled his consciousness and he was grateful. He wanted to please her. Eddie made himself slowly turn and walk on. Was the Sparkle music playing? Yes, but it was faint and marred by an urgent whispering background chatter that would not go entirely still.

Jolie followed with a small concerned smile. Had Eddie wanted to tell her something? She wondered about that a lot when she was around him. Often, she’d have a persistent feeling after one of their Saturdays together that they’d talked and talked, even though they’d exchanged only a few simple words.

Eddie was having difficulty containing his agitation. It didn’t bother him when most people didn’t get him. Fair was fair. He didn’t get them, either.

But Jolie was different. No matter how orderly Eddie’s days became, no matter how much Joe got the patterns right, no matter how much temporary relief he won by his cleaning work, there was always a place in his mind he didn’t dare go. A part of him invisible, nagging in its absence. He believed that if he did the right thing with Jolie in the right way, she might fill the threatening void once and for all with good things.

It didn’t show much, but the day had tilted dangerously. His dream was letting him down. Eddie didn’t know what to do.

Chapter 16

Joe, on the other hand, knew painfully well what he’d like to do with LaVonne Wilson. He told himself there wasn’t time, that Eddie and Sparkle took up his whole life, but of course he never counted the thousands of private moments, usually brief and furtive, he’d spent alone conjuring up images of an eager and pliant LaVonne. As he pulled up to the Ravenna, the image of her appeared in his head, and he rubbed his face hard to rid himself of it.

Fantasy was one thing. Reality was another. And Joe was completely settled on the fact that his feelings for LaVonne were nobody’s business but his own. Besides, she was out of his league. Which was fine. Joe’s life was complicated enough as it was. The very impossibility of any involvement with women kept one more painful disappointment at bay and made life a little more bearable.

Still, Joe had thought about LaVonne a lot over the past two years, ever since the first time she’d smiled at him while taking his order. She had grace, poise, and an ease around people that he admired, in spite of himself. He usually wrote off friendly lively people as phonies and fakes. But LaVonne was the real deal. Everybody felt it, and Joe was no exception.

LaVonne seemed open to the world, Joe thought, comfortable in her skin and completely confident that she would be well received. He, on the other hand, went out of his way to be invisible but felt as though he was constantly making a fool of himself anyway. So LaVonne was a revelation. It was easy to carry around her striking image and take it home with him. And though he’d be damned if he’d show it, he couldn’t wait to see her again.

As he walked in, Joe was relieved to see that his usual place at the bar was open. It was early. Although the game had started, the Ravenna was still only about a quarter full. Things would heat up closer to lunchtime.

LaVonne saw Joe immediately and flashed him a friendly smile. He tried to smile back, but his mouth was suddenly so dry that he ended up grimacing strangely, trying hard to swallow.

LaVonne wasn’t a classic beauty. She was a little too heavy, a little too tall, and her features were too prominent. But her smooth chocolate skin, high cheekbones, full lips, and dark sparkling eyes blew Joe away every time he saw her.

As always, he sat on the second stool from the end of the bar and took up as much space as possible. He draped his jacket over the next one in. He spread out his mini-cassette, sports page, notebook, and Major League schedule on the bar. He didn’t want some schmuck sitting next to him, wasting his time. If anyone asked for the seat, he’d say he was waiting for someone. And if he chose to make a bet with someone, it would be on his own terms.

“Morning, Joe. Happy zoo day,” LaVonne said. “Let me guess…the usual?”

She actually sounded happy to see him, Joe thought. He tried to speak. Nothing came out. He grabbed his chest, covered his mouth, and coughed raggedly. “Yeah, thanks,” he managed finally.

“You okay, Joe?”

“Never better,” he croaked.

“Good,” she said, “I’ll get you some water too.”

“And an ashtray, please,” Joe squeaked.

The Ravenna was a friendly place. It was large, but with muted lighting and low ceilings that made it feel cozy, with two big screens and about five smaller ones. It had a comforting menu of sandwiches and beer. And it still allowed smoking at the bar, which was a must for Joe.

Baseball and LaVonne were a perfect combination. The game, Joe believed, was the only thing that could capture his attention deeply enough to keep him from making a total ass of himself, from wanting to stare at her and talk to her more than was safe. And the Tampa Bay game was promising to be especially interesting. The Ms seemed to be doing well. Up two-zip at the top of the second. A couple at a nearby table was already whooping it up, anticipating an easy win. But Joe was doubtful. Something odd was going on with the Ms today, something he felt compelled to figure out. LaVonne was looking especially good today, so he was grateful for the stronger-than-usual distraction. He rubbed his head thoughtfully, took a drag on his Pall Mall, and clicked on his recorder.