The Universe is a Very Big Place (17 page)

"Hmmm," she pursed her lips together and her eyes drifted down the aisle. "I hadn’t thought about that. Maybe next time I will."

The woman looked in John's cart and gasped. It was a familiar sound from all the women he had ever known. His diet consisted entirely of hamburgers, frozen pizzas, strawberry milk and fruit cocktail. John waited for her to snicker or to point out the value of a vegetable. But she didn’t. She simply looked up at him and grinned. God, what a smile. He scanned her hands for a ring, and seeing none, reminded himself that he was angry with her for not contacting him about his beat up pickup.

"Well, it was nice meeting you, um..." She paused. "Did you tell me your name? I’m sorry. If you did, I forgot." A rosy color washed over her cheeks.

"I'm John," he said. "John Smith."

"Oh my God!" She dropped her can of tomatoes and John bent down to pick it up as she rifled through her purse. After several minutes she produced a piece of paper and read the name. "Fuck, me." She slumped back against the aisle behind her, sending three cans of ravioli crashing to the ground.

"I was going to call you. Honest. My life has been crazy. I’m so sorry. You haven’t called the police yet have you?"

"Well." John crossed his arms and shook his head. "...Where I come from, a person makes good on their word."

The woman continued to rummage through her bag. "I don’t have any money. I have a credit card. And two packs of cigarettes for Lanie. You don’t smoke do you?" She pushed the cigarettes in his direction and he nodded that he did not want them.

"What can I do?" The woman tilted her head, shuffling from one foot to another. "If you need your tarot cards read I know someone who will do it for free."

John blinked and decided not to ask what a tarot card was. "Look. I’m not calling the police on you. You seem like a nice person and I still think we can work this out. I got two estimates. Both were around eighteen hundred dollars."

"Eighteen Hundred dollars?" The woman’s jaw dropped and her left eye began to twitch. He had seen this same expression when the local judge had ordered Pete to undergo his third paternity test of the year. "Where am I going to get eighteen hundred dollars?" Her eyes moved up and down the aisles as if bags of money might suddenly fall from the sky.

"Give me your name and number. I will call you and you can pay me a little bit each week. Okay?" He tried to sound reassuring. She paused and nodded, relief spreading across her face. He handed her a pen from his back pocket and she scribbled her name on the back of a receipt from her purse.
Spring Ryan.
 

Of course a girl like this would have a name like Spring.

"I’ll be calling you," he said, handing her back the can of tomatoes. She took his offer and he felt a small shock as he touched her. "I hope your spaghetti turns out good."

"Oh, it won’t. I spend most of my cooking time with a broom handle aimed at the little button that turns off the fire alarm. But you have to try. You never know how things will work out unless you try." She took the tomatoes and smiled apologetically once more. Then she walked down the aisle and disappeared. John had half expected her to fly. Even though he had only talked to her for a few minutes, he knew that she was nothing like the people he had known back home. He looked at the name and number scribbled haphazardly on the receipt, and then folded it up and placed it in his wallet.

John went home and made himself a burger on the stove top. He did the math over and over again in his head. He finally decided on a figure. If he asked her for 20 dollars a week he would see her for a total of 90 weeks. He turned on the TV and watched Cartoon Network, one of the hundreds of channels his new cable service offered him, and fell fast asleep in his recliner. His dreams were a mixture of things, images from back home, the people he had met at his new job, and a pretty, blonde woman whose hair hung in her face and who could not remember what she wanted to eat for dinner.

Spring was still shaken from her run in with John Smith. Phoenix was such a large city that the possibility of meeting him there, miles from the scene of the crime, seemed incredibly slim.
 
Of course, Lanie believed that there were no coincidences. "It’s fate," she’d say, shaking her cigarette. "You got karma you need to pay back. You can’t run from karma. Trust me, I tried."

"How was your trip to the grocery store?" asked Sam, tapping his foot and looking at his watch as she stepped through the door.

"It was good," Spring replied, unloading the tomato sauce and diet coke from her bag. She read Sam’s face. It was the same look he gave her when she forgot to shave her legs.

"You didn’t want spaghetti?" she asked.

"You were gone for over an hour and all you got was diet soda and a can of stewed tomatoes?" He rummaged through the brown paper sack to see if he had missed something.

"Oh, I didn’t mean to be gone that long," she said. "It took me awhile to remember what we were having for dinner."

"Pookie," he said, drawing out the word. "We were going to have meatloaf and mashed potatoes and gravy tonight. Remember? I mentioned that to you this morning before I went to work." He picked up her cellphone from the table and handed it to her. "And if you’d remember to take this little gadget with you, we wouldn’t have these problems."

Spring gritted her teeth. Maybe Lanie was right. Maybe Sam
was
an alien from the planet where potatoes were extinct, and so he was eating as many as he could before he was beamed back up. "We had mashed potatoes last night. We always have mashed potatoes."

"That’s because mashed potatoes are good. That’s why everyone in America eats them. I know you grew up kind of...different...but
normal
people eat mashed potatoes."

Spring shot Sam a look but he didn’t seem to notice. "I guess I can use the tomatoes in the meatloaf."

He gave her a quick hug and kissed her forehead. "Thank you. I really do appreciate it. Now I’m going to go read in the bathroom for a while. Let me know when dinner is served."

Spring began defrosting what she hoped was ground beef in the microwave. It had been in the freezer for so long she couldn’t tell anymore. She shrugged. Once it was in loaf format it probably didn’t matter what it had begun as.

"I don’t know why that man wants potatoes for every G-damned meal," Lanie said, materializing from nowhere. "No wonder he’s so G-damned unhealthy looking. Anyone who lives on nothing but tubers is going to get sick." Lanie pulled the peeler from the gadget drawer and stabbed at the eyes of the potatoes as if they belonged to Sam.

"Mother," Spring said, rinsing each potato that Lanie peeled. "You don’t need to concern yourself with what Sam does and does not eat. Let me worry about it."

"You’re getting sick too," Lanie said. "You keep losing weight. And another thing," Lanie continued. "How the hell can you love a man who doesn’t eat pig? Pigs are nature’s perfect animals. Who the hell doesn’t eat pig?"

Spring rolled her eyes. They had been over this before. "It’s for his religion, mother. He can’t."

"Well I don’t see why Muslims can’t eat pig. Seems silly to me. How long is he going to keep praying to Allah anyways? I thought he’d be through with this phase by now. I’m not trying to tell tales out of school..." Lanie leaned in conspiratorially. "But are you sure he’s practicing his religion right? Some of the things he does seem...odd. I’m pretty sure Muslims don’t need to shave their underarms to enter Paradise."

Spring shrugged. "When it comes to Sam, I’m not sure of anything."

"He should be a Krishna. At least he wouldn’t have to shave his head," Lanie snorted. When Spring said nothing, she changed the subject.

"Heard from Trevor lately?" She asked, placing a pot of water on the stove.

"Not this again," Spring whispered, looking around to see if they were being watched. "If Sam hears you talking about Trevor, he’s not going to let you stay here."

Lanie tossed all four potatoes into the pot. "It’s your house too, missy. He might pretend to be Mr. Fancy Britches, but I know how little bankers make. Remember, I was married to one."

"He was a bank
robber,
mother, not a banker. And a bad one at that." Lanie pretended not to hear. "Anyways, Sam still pays half the rent. And he doesn’t like for me to talk about Trevor."

"That’s because he’s jealous of him. He knows he ain't got dick on Trevor."

"Mother!"

"It’s true," Lanie said. "If you faced facts you’d know I was right."

"Trevor left me. Remember? You’re the one who said you get one chance at true love."

Lanie slouched and Spring knew she had her. "What about Jason then? You didn’t love him but at least you got laid."

"I can’t believe you’d rather have me shacking up with the tilt-o-whirl guy than with Sam. I’m not you, Mom."

Lanie huffed. "How are we supposed to make gravy?" she grumbled, rummaging through the spice shelf. "You have no seasonings at all."

"With this." Spring foraged through a cupboard, tossing aside cans of creamed corn and pumpkin, and produced a packet of instant gravy mix.

"Does his majesty know you use this stuff?" Lanie asked, dumping it into a saucepan. She added water and stirred, scraping a metal spatula across Sam’s nonstick pan. Spring snatched the spatula away and offered her a plastic spoon.

"No, and he won’t, either." Spring shot Lanie a warning look.

"So the gourmet doesn’t know you been feeding him common fare. Shocking."

Spring swallowed. There was no perfect time and this was good as any. "I got even more incredible news. Sam asked me to marry him. And I said yes."

Lanie dropped the saucepan and gravy splattered across the kitchen.

Fifteen

"I’m going to see Trevor," Spring told Debbie and Sarah as she raced through traffic on their way to the event. "Am I being dumb?"

Sarah leaned over from the backseat. She was wearing the condom costume, which produced a weird waffling sound as the latex met the leather of her car seat. Her voice was muffled but Spring could make out most of what she said. "If––love––Trevor––you––talk to––him." Sarah exhaled and sank back into her seat, fanning herself with her gloved hands.

Spring accelerated, barely missing a minivan that was teetering into her lane. "Fuck my life."

Debbie spoke. "Spring. Honey. Look at you. You’re nice. You’re pretty. You’re a hell of a lot of fun. There are going to be so many men who want to be with you. Honest. Have you considered that neither one of these guys are the right ones for you?"

This was an easy statement for Debbie to make. Debbie probably had her pick of men with her quirky good looks, sense of humor, and her upper-class background. "No offense, Debbie but your parents were wealthy. You get to marry pediatricians or podiatrists or whatever the hell Roger is." Spring smiled in Debbie’s direction to let her know that there were no hard feelings. "I’m the child of traveling scam artists. What kind of man wants a woman like me?"

Debbie patted her hand. "A man who wants an adventure."

They arrived at the event and parking was a nightmare. People had lined up with chairs and sleeping bags the night before to reserve their spots for the parade. Cars were crammed into every available space. Teenagers held up signs that read
Parade Parking Five Bucks
. Spring handed one of the girls a five dollar bill and was escorted to a small lot four blocks from the main route.