Fixed in Time
From the beginning, Becca wondered what she could give Zach—that is, besides herself, which seemed too simple and easy a gift, however often he declared it was all he wanted or needed from her or the world. He gave her so much—besides his apparently bottomless adoration, he gave her exposure to all sorts of new experiences, new insights, new ways of seeing the world. She wanted to give something back, something to balance his gifts to her. She finally settled on the gift of regional flavor and color, access to uncommon people and out-of-the-way places from the fast-disappearing Old South. She had an interest in these vestiges of a bygone era and had assembled a sizable list of such opportunities. So she’d share them with Zach, for use in his life and writing.
They were nearing the end of the holiday break, with classes scheduled to start the following Monday. Barton had asked Zach to go to Williamsburg and Jamestown with him the last weekend of Break, so he’d be away then. Becca, bored at home and longing to see Zach before he disappeared for the weekend, called early in the week and suggested they take a day-trip to the folk potteries in Moore and Randolph counties, about a two-hour drive southwest of Shefford. Zach—bored himself despite, or because of, a heavy self-imposed workload of reading and writing, and always missing Becca if she wasn’t beside him—was thrilled at the idea and suggested she come the night before for dinner—and breakfast the next morning, and dinner after the outing, and breakfast the next morning (and maybe dinner that third night and breakfast the next morning before he had to head off with Barton).
Becca laughed on the other end of the line. “Zachary Taylor, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you miss me.”
“What gave you that idea?”
“Just a wild guess.”
“Well, should I plan dinner for two?”
“Yes.”
“And the rest of the week?”
She said, “I’ll do my best to work it out.”
Zach knew that meant yes. He hung up the phone in a state of near euphoria. They’d never spent three days in a row together, and with no school or other obligations in the way—just the two of them.
She arrived on Tuesday shortly after dark. He’d just put the eggplant parmesan in the oven and was drawing water into the big pot to boil for the spaghetti when she knocked on the door. He set the pot aside and ran to open the door. She stood outside on the breezeway with a shy smile, appearing nervous, almost like on a first date despite their well-established intimacy. He felt a little shy himself, a bit coy, and wondered if it was the prospect of three days together that held them back. He took the grocery bag from her arm and gestured for her to enter. She stepped inside just far enough to get past the door, which he closed behind her. He turned and faced her. She stood watching him with that same shy smile. He stared back at her. They both were waiting for the other to make some move, or say something. Then they both started to speak at once. Then they both stopped speaking. Then they laughed. But still they hadn’t touched or spoken.
Finally Zach held up one finger on his free hand, gesturing for Becca to wait. He went and set the grocery bag on the kitchen counter, then came back and slid Becca’s book bag off her shoulder and set it around the corner in the bedroom. Then he returned to the living room and took Becca’s hand, opened the door, and led her back outside. Then he stepped inside and closed the door. He counted to five, then opened the door with a broad smile, took both Becca’s hands in his, pulled her inside again, shut the door behind them, and gave her a powerful hug and a long full kiss on the lips.
When he stepped back from her, he took her two hands in his. “Now that’s how glad I am to see you.”
“That was strange. It was like I didn’t even know you.”
“I’ll get you a key. You having to knock like some kind of saleswoman is way too awkward.”
“I won’t use it if you’re not here.”
“That’s up to you. But I want you to use it if I am here—to let yourself in, make yourself at home. Far as I’m concerned, it is your home.”
Becca shrugged. “Whatever you think.”
Zach thought of an Auden couplet Barton often quoted:
And two by two like cat and mouse
The homeless played at keeping house.
How much were they playing at keeping house? Well, time to find out, he thought, with only a wisp of trepidation.
Becca peeled off her coat, tossed it on the couch, and set about unpacking the grocery bag, making herself at home.
They ate the dinner Zach had prepared—eggplant parmesan atop spaghetti, a tossed salad with bottled Italian dressing, and garlic bread—in an easy familiarity and intimacy that contrasted their initial awkwardness. Becca had many stories of her long holiday break at home—outings with her sister and niece, meetings with old high school friends, relatives and acquaintances visiting from out of town. She shared them enthusiastically with Zach, seemed almost intent on using her family experiences to fill the void in his life where family should’ve been. Zach listened happily, not so interested in her exploits with her family and friends—people he barely knew, if at all—as in just hearing her voice and seeing her so animated. He feared he sometimes overwhelmed Becca with his own passions—his writing, his love of literature and art, his diverse experiences in places near and far—and was delighted to step aside and let her immerse him in stories of her life.
Following dinner, clearing the table, and washing their dishes, they stood on either side of the small kitchen and contemplated their options for the rest of the evening. During semester, there was always something to do or someplace to go—even if it were only to The Inn on campus for beer drinking and conversation with whatever acquaintances they might find there. But campus was closed down for Break. They could maybe find a movie that was worth seeing, or a bar that was open on a weeknight; but the weather was cold and drizzly and there was no strong draw to pull them out into it. So they decided to stay in. It would be the first time they’d spent an entire evening in Zach’s apartment.
The reason they never spent much time not in bed in Zach’s apartment is that there were few entertainment options available there. He had no T.V., and the only music player he had was a small tape player-radio, with about a dozen cassettes—a mix of classical and rock—in a shoebox beside the player. Besides sleeping, Zach’s apartment was good for reading, writing, and cooking. These options were more than enough for Zach, but he wondered if they would leave Becca bored.
But Becca seemed unfazed. She insisted on cooking tomorrow night’s meal, and would start by making banana bread from her mom’s recipe. She shooed him out of the kitchen—he retreated to his desk in the bedroom to work further on a difficult scene in his novel—and started rummaging through his cupboards and drawers to find the ingredients and utensils she needed for the banana bread.
Sometime later, with the wonderful odor of baking banana bread filling the whole apartment, Zach emerged from the bedroom and found Becca lying on the couch reading My Antonia, a book he’d given her before Christmas. She smiled up at him and raised her legs into the air so he could slide under and sit with her, then lowered her legs across his lap.
Becca held up the book. “She makes a hard life seem so wholesome.”
“Antonia or Cather?”
“Is there a difference?”
Zach considered this. “Maybe not in this case—though it’s always dangerous to assume any work of fiction is simple autobiography.”
“Seems like most good fiction is largely autobiographical. Isn’t that where its power comes from?”
“Even autobiography is run through the filter of memory, experience, and nostalgia. Consider ‘The Dead’ or Look Homeward, Angel—they start at autobiography and end at art, start trapped in time and end up timeless.”
“What happens in the transition?”
Zach laughed. “Trade secret.”
Becca sat up onto his lap. She kissed his forehead, then his eyes and nose, then his cheeks and lips, then over hi
s neck. “What can I do to get you to give up that secret?” She unbuttoned the top three buttons of his shirt and kissed down over his neck to his chest.
“It’s a big secret,” Zach said.
Becca undid a few more buttons, kissed further down.
“Can’t share it with just anybody,” he whispered.
She finished unbuttoning his shirt and pushed it around behind him.
From above, Zach was mesmerized by the perfectly straight part—on the left side of her head, coming off her temple—in her beautiful hair. He loved this girl so much. He loved her far beyond the parts of his body that were springing to life beneath her ministrations (he loved her with those parts also, though they sometimes seemed a distraction from the true nature of his love).
Just then the oven timer went off with an awful jangling buzz. Becca laughed into his stomach, kissed around his bellybutton, then stood to go check the banana bread.
Later that night, in the full dark of the bedroom, Zach lay on his back on the thin cushioned pallet, his legs extended straight, his arms stretched out to either side; and Becca lay squarely atop him on her stomach—her legs atop his legs, her feet on his shins, her arms stretched out on his arms, her hands reaching his wrists, her head cradled at his neck, just beneath his chin. Skin touched skin only at her feet on his shins, her hands at his wrists, her face in his neck. Everywhere else their two skins were separated by at least two, in some cases four, layers of cloth, as he had on boxers, sweatpants, and a long-sleeved T-shirt, and she had on panties, pajama bottoms, and his old button-down white shirt. They’d never continued the foreplay Becca’d started earlier, and certainly could’ve continued it here, in this position in this bed in this moment with both awake and yearning toward each other—her hips and groin grinding against his, trying to see how hard they could press together, if such pressure might actually dissolve the four layers of cloth that separated their longing. But then at that most impassioned moment, they both stopped thrusting toward each other simultaneously, and simply lay together—unmoving, unintentioned, just together. Zach held his breath; Becca panted lightly into his neck. Zach finally exhaled in a long slow release of all the tension and desire he had. His muscles went limp, his whole body compressed under her weight. He wanted her to flatten him to nothing, to absorb his body into hers; and she wanted to take him entirely into her. She’d never wanted to bring someone wholly into her before—she wanted him now, all inside her, all swallowed up. She didn’t understand this momentary fierce desire. If she were told she had it, she’d deny it. If she tried to remember it, she’d draw a blank. She was outside herself; and she wanted him entirely inside her, all part of her. They lay like that—unmoving, unspeaking—till they both fell asleep from sheer exhaustion in the effort, the weight of the wish, still separated by those layers of cloth.
Zach woke in the middle of the night out of a calm, dreamless sleep. When he slept alone, he had frequent vivid dreams, almost all of them either frightening or, more often, haunting—various renderings of failure, missed connections, abandonment. But he never dreamed when he was sleeping with Becca; and he realized at just that moment of waking that she was his dream—of longing fulfilled, of safety secured: no other searching required. She’d slid partly off him during their hours of sleep, had her head on a pillow wedged against his shoulder, her near arm tucked under her head; but her left leg still crossed over his, her left shoulder and breast still rested on his chest. In the dark and with his eyes shut, he did a slow inventory of their bodies, trying to find if their skin touched anywhere. He felt her soft exhalations against his cheek, the rise and fall of her chest on his ribcage, their knees hard against each other but parted by the cloth of their pants’ legs. He thought then maybe she really was a dream—a breathing angel withheld, isolated by attire, no skin offered. Then he felt it—the slow pulse of her blood through the veins of her wrist, her right wrist crossing over top of his left, his skin numb from hours of pressure but the blood still coursing, the liquid of her life passing so close to the liquid of his the two almost felt as one.
They woke the next morning to more drizzle and the air even colder—just a few degrees above freezing. The radio’s weatherman said there was a chance the temperature would fall still further, producing some areas of freezing rain. Freezing rain or not, the weather was too unpleasant to undertake the long ride to the potteries. Becca said she knew of an old mill just a little outside of town that had been turned into a country store. They could go there in the afternoon without having to travel far or risk being caught in bad weather.
After breakfast she made a shopping list for tonight’s dinner, then put on her coat to head out to check on her apartment (which had been empty since before Christmas), run a few errands, and get the groceries for dinner, leaving Zach to work on his novel.
Still in his sweatpants and T-shirt from last night, he intercepted her at the doorway. “So when will you be back?”
She smiled. “Missing me already?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
“Can’t be together all the time.”
“I know that; but I can still miss you, can’t I?”
She kissed him lightly on the lips. “Only if I can miss you.”
He nodded. “Deal.”
“I’ll be back early in the afternoon. That’ll give us plenty of time to get to Johnson’s Mill and back before dark.”
He caught her hand as she turned toward the door. “Take this.”
She looked at the key he gave her then laughed. “I guess this is serious.”
He didn’t join her in the laugh. “For a long time now.”
She stared at him and nodded. “I know.” She dropped the key in the pocket of her field coat. “But I’ll still knock.”
“Use the key!”
“I’ll try,” she said over her shoulder as she headed out into the gray damp day.
It seemed they’d traveled farther than they had. The drizzle of the morning had thinned to a silvery mist that clung to the bare trees, the lofty dark pines, the low pointy cedars, the sere grass of the fields. Though the temperature was above freezing and the roads safe, the mist and low clouds cast the countryside in a surreal aura that seemed caught between welcoming and forbidding.
Becca drove them away from town on country roads. At first Zach recognized the roads carrying them toward the university village to the south; but then Becca turned onto a road Zach had never seen. The few businesses—a convenience store, a gas station, a nursery—fell away behind them; and the brick-sided ranch houses grew spaced farther apart, the gravel drives into them longer and winding. They crossed a one-lane wooden bridge over a broad and swollen creek, Becca stopping before crossing to check for oncoming cars though they’d not seen any for miles. A half-mile beyond the bridge, they turned right onto a narrow road with no lane markings and deep drainage ditches on either side. The road wound off into a mix of thick woods and open pastures. It amazed Zach that they could be in such deep country less than ten miles from campus and the busy town that surrounded it.
Becca slowed and turned left into a narrow dirt drive pocked with deep puddles. She swerved to avoid the worst holes but the car still lurched from side to side.
“Just where are you taking me?” Zach asked with anxiety that was less than half feigned.
Becca grinned. “Should be just ahead,” she said then added with less than full conviction, “But it was warm and dry the last time I was here; looks kind of different today.”
Just then the car rounded a dense cluster of pine saplings; and a two-story house with dark green clapboard siding, white trim, and a tin roof rose up out of the mist. A wide porch ran the length of one side of the house, cluttered with rocking chairs, a butter churn, a spinning wheel, and other miscellany of household implements. There were no other cars or signs of life in the parking lot in front of the porch. A weather-beaten sign at the base of the wooden steps read OPEN, though that sign looked like it’d been sitting ther
e for years. Becca eased the car to a stop beside that sign.
Standing on the porch, the cold mist clung tightly to their faces and worked its way inside their coats. They gazed across a broad field that sloped to a line of woods barely visible at the bottom of the hill. A single majestic oak rose up out of the center of the field, a rope swing hung from its lowest limb. A small flock of crows perched in the top of that tree like sentinels watching for invaders out of the woods. The crows flew off in silent unison and disappeared into the mist like phantoms.
Zach turned to Becca. “I’d say I’m about ten omens past relaxed.”
She leaned toward him and lightly hugged his arm and pressed her face against the fur fringe of his bomber jacket. “Somewhere between spooked and petrified?” She looked up at him with the sweetest indulgent smile.
“More or less.”
“If we’re going to go, better to go together.” She released his arm, turned and strode toward the house, and pushed open the tall and thick wooden door with Zach close at her heels.
They entered a large, two-story open room with exposed rough-sawn framing, unfinished pine paneling, and wide board flooring. To the left was a long wooden counter with glass-enclosed display shelves beneath. Beyond the counter was a flight of open-tread stairs that ran up to a loft that ran along one wall and across the front of the room, above where they’d just entered. There was a woodstove at the back, and they both felt its radiant warmth as soon as they stepped inside. On the walls, hanging from the railings, and displayed on shelves and tables scattered throughout the room was an eclectic mix of Americana from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth—antique quilts, a metal Esso sign from a crossroads gas station, a Bull Durham Tobacco poster, a display of soda-pop bottles, a wooden pitchfork, a hand-crank coffee mill, a stack of Saturday Evening Post magazines, an old stand-up radio in its ornate wood cabinet, an empty pickle barrel. The room was dimly lit by several bare-bulb fixtures hanging from the ceiling and two lit kerosene lanterns atop the long display counter.
A man with thinning gray hair and a weathered face sat against the wall behind the counter in a dark-stained chair with heavy wooden legs and thick carved armrests. “Afternoon,” he said.
Becca turned to him with a smile that lit up the room better than all those measly light bulbs. “Good afternoon, sir. How are you today?”
“Be better if this damp weather would move on down the road.”
“Got us all out of sorts,” Becca agreed.
“Damp weather or damn weather?” Zach asked.
“Call it what you want,” the man said. “Has my knees ’bout locked down tight. Paying the price for all that holiday cheer, I reckon.”
“Dancing or drinking?”
The old man looked at him with a tilt of his head. “Who’s asking?”
“What if I said the church deacon?”
“Then I’d say neither one!” The man roared with a cackling laugh that seemed to shake the walls.
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
Becca was looking at the ornately painted tins with friction-fit covers displayed on the shelves beneath the counter. “These are beautiful. What were they used for?”
The man pushed himself up out of the chair with his arms, stood a moment to wake his legs, then shuffled forward to the counter. “Best collection of tobacco tins this side of Richmond.” He plugged in a fluorescent light that was mounted under the counter and the detailed designs and rich colors of the tins leapt out into the dim room.
“Were they hand-painted?”
“Some were done by printing machines. Others were hand-painted by teams of women sitting at a long table passing the tins from one to the next with each adding her own particular design or lettering or drawing, everyone a little different.”
“Sounds like a southern version of a sweatshop,” Zach said.
“I guess there was some sweat, especially in the summertime. But there’s nothing wrong with good steady work. Mama said they’d line up at the old American Tobacco warehouse downtown whenever jobs came open. Then the tobacco companies stopped the hand-painting and did it all with machines. By the time I came along, they’d done away with tins altogether and started using cardboard and paper packs. Just wad them up when you’re done and throw them away.”
“Not as beautiful as these,” Becca said.
“Or as useful. Nowadays, everything is used once and thrown away. Back then, everything was made to last a lifetime, then handed down to the next generation. Everything in here”—he waved his right arm to take in the entire room—“works as well as the day it was made, even this building—not fancy but well-made, built to last.”
The old man might’ve had the bias of his years, but they could not contest his point. “Slower pace,” Zach said.
“And harder work,” Becca added, looking at the coffee mill and recalling the butter churn on the porch.
“Better quality,” the man said. “Better life.”
“At least you have this place,” Becca said.
The man scoffed. “That’s changing too—going to bring an interstate through the farm.”
“Where?” Zach asked.
“Down the bottom of the hill, just beyond the woods.” He pointed toward the front porch, the lone oak. “Already got it surveyed. Begin construction next year.”
“It’ll disrupt your life?”
“That’s for sure—split the farm in two and reroute the roads, noise and exhaust fumes all the time.”
“You going to move?” Becca asked.
“Nowhere to go,” the man said. “Nowhere to hide.”
That night in the dim grayness of the unlit bedroom just before he fell asleep on his back Zach felt Becca’s hand push his sweatpants and boxers down to his knees. She straddled him and slowly but deliberately rode above him with the covers pulled over her shoulders like a tent and her head pitched back, facing the darker gray of the ceiling. She rode gently at first, her pace gradually quickening over many minutes, her head thrown back the whole time, a rhythmic moan rising from somewhere deep in her chest.
With no blankets over him and only his T-shirt covering his skin from the waist up in the chill room, Zach was cool but not cold, cool enough for his mind to detach somewhat from his body—especially the part of his body that was in full engage with the complementary part of Becca’s body. And that detached part of him—clear sight adjusted to the dim light of the room, clear mind in full control of all his senses and sensing organs except that one that was operating by its own rules and will—gazed calmly at the girl rocking back and forth above him. He saw the pale underside of her chin, her neck muscles taut. He reached up and unbuttoned her shirt till it hung loose at her sides. He ran his right hand and fingers downward from her chin, across her neck, gently over her heaving chest, pressing lightly on her breastbone then down over her belly to where her pubic bone ground back and forth against his. Then he ran his hand back up over all the same parts till he reached her chest, paused there, felt her heart pounding inside her. He suddenly desperately wanted to know the person attached to this heart pounding just a thin layer of skin and a sternum’s thickness from the pads of his fingers, wished to know and hold the essence of this faceless body riding to fruition over him, with him, on him. If he could just see her face now, her eyes, into her eyes—to that core, that center, that home—would he discover what he craved? Would he know then what she needed from him and find a way to give it to her?
She sped toward her current need, her breaths quickening, her short moans rising in pitch. Deprived of her face and eyes, Zach held his hand over her heart, felt her life pulsing forth from there, returning depleted, pulsing forth again. Then her body froze, her back arched, her head thrown back still further. An unfamiliar sound caught between a shriek and a sigh rose out of her chest and flew forth toward the ceiling then was gone. Her upper body suddenly pitched forward toward him, no strength or tautness in her muscles—pure free fall from far above.
>
With his hand already on her chest, Zach was able to ease her fall and spare them both some pain and bruising. He slowly brought his hand bracing her chest downward till it was sandwiched between their two chests, a temporary prisoner there. Becca’s head flopped down between his left shoulder and neck, her panting exhalations whistling past his ear, fluffing his hair. Her chest heaved against his hand.
He slid his trapped hand free and wrapped both arms around her and pulled her still tighter to him. He rolled his face toward hers and kissed her cheek. He could see her eyes were shut, might remain so now till morning as she faded toward full sleep. He’d just given her something she needed—that much was sure. But he also realized that it alone wasn’t enough, not by a long shot.
He pressed his lips lightly against her ear and whispered, “I’ll always love you.” Her uninterrupted breathing proved she didn’t hear his words but also guaranteed she knew their truth at some far deeper level, trusted his pledge of permanent devotion and care at the core that would allow her to fall asleep still straddling his waist, blank vulnerable to any passing harm, harm that he would not let come her way. Her other needs he’d have to seek later, the need at hand challenge enough for tonight.
In her quest to show him more regional color, Becca drove Zach into downtown Shefford for lunch at a hole-in-the-wall diner called The Palace. The previous three days’ cold drizzle, low clouds, and mist had finally cleared up and given way to bright sunny skies and temperatures rising into the fifties. This was the kind of day Zach had hoped would dominate this southern version of winter, a type of winter day that had been noticeably absent in the season to date, a winter defined by cool, damp, gray weather that was enough to drive even the most effusive of souls into the dark hole of depression.
The sun and the warmth combined with the golden-haired girl beside him and no obstacles in the path of their day together and no overt obstacles in the path of their unfolding love made Zach want to dance and sing (neither of which he ever did unless locked in his room with the lights low and the shades drawn). He rolled the car window down and hung his head out in the warm fresh air like a big shaggy-haired blond dog. He tilted his head back, felt the wind push his long hair out behind him. At a stoplight near the edge of downtown, he pulled his upper body back into the car, leaned across the console, and kissed Becca on the cheek.
She faced him and laughed. “Feeling frisky today, Mr. Sandstrom?”
Zach grinned but shook his head. “Just very much alive.”
Becca nodded. “It is a gorgeous day.”
“Oh,” he added, “and I’m head over heels in love with my driver.”
“That right?”
He leaned over and kissed her on the lips—holding the kiss for several seconds.
The driver behind them honked his horn.
Becca turned her attention back to the road and the green light in front of them. “Hold that thought for tonight,” she said as she drove through the intersection.
“It’ll always be there.”
“Always is a long time,” Becca said as she turned down a narrow one-way street between tall grimy buildings with boarded up storefronts.
“Not for me when it comes to you.” The statement was for Zach a simple truth, planted in his heart for months now. He was pleased to say it to the only one for whom it mattered, in the full light of this fine day.
Becca stopped the car in the middle of the road (there were no cars behind them). “That’s sweet,” she said, looking calmly at him. “But you don’t know that.”
Zach gazed just as calmly back at her. “It’s not sweet—or if it is, that’s secondary. It is primarily a statement of fact. And yes, I do know it, absolutely. It is the only thing I know for sure.”
Becca stared at this man of intemperate avowals and passionate beliefs, unlike anyone she’d ever known. Her right pinky touched the corner of her mouth, the way it often did when she’d confronted a confounding realization, and hung there for several seconds. She put her hand back on the wheel but still faced Zach, still held his eyes with hers. “Then I’ll always thank you.”
Zach nodded and smiled. “And you’ll always be welcome.”
Becca found a parking spot on the next street up. When they stepped out of the car, they were enveloped in the sweet earthy smell of cured tobacco being turned into cigarettes at the two sprawling factories just down the road. The smell was wonderfully rich and exotic, like a spice from a distant land, about as far removed from the biting odor of tobacco smoke as two odors from the same substance could be. That fragrance combined with the deserted streets and shuttered buildings gave the setting a dream-like quality, as if they’d been dropped down a local version of Alice’s rabbit hole. They fed the old-fashioned meter with a pocketful of change (their currency still worked in this surreal world) then walked the two blocks to the restaurant with its floor-to-ceiling windows across the entire front facing out onto an alley with soggy newspapers moldering in the gutters and a mangled shopping cart wrapped around a power pole.
Despite the abject setting, the restaurant was nearly full of mostly construction workers from the high-rise office tower and hotel being built on a city block where a Woolworth’s department store had been till a wrecking ball smashed it to oblivion. (This block, including The Palace restaurant, was itself slated for demolition in about a year, to make way for a parking deck to accommodate the cars for the hotel and office complex.) The booths were all occupied, but they found a couple stools available at the end of the Formica-topped, chrome-edged lunch counter.
The small restaurant bustled with noise and motion, the action especially frenetic behind the lunch counter as several servers—they were all men, both black and white, with long white aprons over jeans and white T-shirts—ran back and forth, shouting orders through the pass-through into the kitchen at one end of the counter, then striding back with plates of food balanced on muscular bare arms. Given the cramped space beyond the counter and the number and size of the servers moving to and fro, it was amazing that there were no accidents or harsh words exchanged. It was clear that they’d been doing this for a long time and were comfortable in the chaos.
One of the waiters—a white man with slicked back dark hair and a MOM tattoo on his left forearm—paused in front of them. “What’ll you have?” His words and his manner were brusque, but his smile and drawl were friendly. Becca ordered the fried chicken platter with collards and okra and Zach got chicken-fried steak (no direct relation to fried chicken) with mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans. The waiter scribbled the order down in an illegible short-hand then raced to the pass-through window and shouted something unintelligible to the cooks beyond the hole in the wall.
“They must think if they move fast enough they won’t tear this place down,” Zach said.
“Like Superman turning the clock back.”
“Yeah. Or maybe if you’re always in a frenzy, you don’t give yourself time to think about it.”
“Or maybe they’ll just take what comes and learn to live with it.”
“No doubt.”
“But I’ll miss these old places. They’re already all gone in Greensboro—won’t be long here.”
“The New South has arrived,” Zach said.
Becca nodded. “The New South.”
The waiter slid their plates full of food in front of them, added two glasses of sweet tea, a small cruet of vinegar (for Becca’s collards), and a bottle of ketchup all in less time than it took Zach to unwrap his silverware from the napkin. Then the waiter was gone.
“The New South will be a hurry-up kind of place if these guys are any example,” Zach said.
“Got to adapt,” Becca said.
“Guess I’ll see a slower Old South in Williamsburg this weekend.”
“Pretty old, pretty slow. You ever been there?”
Zach shook his head as he dug into the delicious chicken-fried steak slathered in thick gravy.
“I’ll be curious what you th
ink—twentieth-century actors playing eighteenth-century people in meticulously recreated eighteenth-century houses and shops. They’re very convincing. Don’t even try to get them to step out of character—it won’t happen.”
“Sounds strange.”
“It is, at first; but after a few hours, you’ll think it’s normal. You’ll think the traffic rushing past beyond the wooden barriers is the oddity, and the slow and careful life inside the walls a better reality.”
“Maybe I’ll just stay up there and become a stonemason or a tanner or something.”
“You’d be good at it, Zach; you’d fit right in.”
“They got chicken-fried steak up there?”
“Doubt it.”
“So much for that idea.”
“They’ve got great fried chicken, though.”
“Well, I’ll think about it.”
“Why are you going up there?”
“Because Barton asked me to go along as his research assistant.”
“And what does a research assistant do?”
“In this case, keep Barton company, maybe help with the driving.”
“And why Williamsburg?”
“Well, Williamsburg is a sidelight, where we’ll be staying. The main reason is to go to Jamestown to check some facts for Barton’s novel. A key scene takes place at Jamestown.”
“But you said the other night that an author runs it all through memory and reflection, turning fact into art.”
Zach laughed. “I’m touched. You really do listen.”
“To you, yes.” She paused with a chicken drumstick held in her right hand. “Well, most of the time.” She winked before turning her attention to the drumstick.
“In Barton’s mind, you’ve got to get the place exactly right, then set the characters in that carefully defined place and let them come alive there. In some ways, it’s the setting that animates the characters. But what Barton doesn’t tell you is that he’s reshaping the place even as he defines it—emphasizing one thing even as he excludes another. However literal he would claim it is, it’s still the place of his remembrance, reshaped by his memory and experience.”
“So what are you going to check out?” Becca’d finished her food and had turned on her swivel stool to face Zach directly.
“The facts of the place.”
“So they can be changed?”
“At the author’s discretion.” He’d finished his meal and turned toward Becca.
“So then is it truth or fiction?”
“Oh, it’s always truth; it just may not be fact.”
Becca laughed. “You’ve got me thoroughly confused now.”
“I’m just the research assistant.”
She took his hands in hers. “Who’s being taken from me for the weekend.”
“Sorry. I’ll hurry back.”
“Maybe if we stay here, time will stand still.”
Zach nodded. “We could give it a try—chicken-fried steak for all eternity: not a bad Heaven.” But he was already reaching for his wallet to pay the check the waiter had left in one of his whirlwind passes.
Lori called Jennifer who called Donna who called Zach to tell him of a Welcome Back, Kick-off the Weekend Early, Before the Start of Classes party that Lori and her roommate Megan were hosting that night at their two-bedroom apartment in the same complex Zach lived in (it was a big complex, with dozens of buildings and hundreds of apartments). “Lori told Jennifer to tell me to tell you that she really hoped you could stop by.”
Zach laughed. “I barely know Lori.”
“Well, far be it for me to read between the lines, but Megan might’ve had a little input with the invitation. She’s had her eye on you since last fall.”
“What would Megan say if I brought a guest?”
“Male or female?”
“Female.”
“That’ll be interesting. I’d like to be there to see how Megan handles that. But the invitation is coming from Lori, and I know Lori would say bring your friend—the more the merrier.”
“So you’re not going to be there?”
“Wish I was. But I’m still in High Point, won’t be back to campus till tomorrow afternoon.”
“And I’ll be in Williamsburg by then.”
Donna sighed. “Story of my life—another cute guy fleeing across state lines at my approach.”
“I’ll make it up to you, dear; I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to it.”
“I’m good as my word. Travel safe. See you next week.”
“I’m counting the hours,” Donna said and hung up.
Zach told Becca about the party when she got back from dropping groceries off at her apartment to restock their empty fridge.
“Sounds like fun,” Becca replied.
“Back to student life.”
Becca shrugged. “Can’t hide forever.”
They ate a dinner comprised of leftovers from the previous two nights then showered and changed and drove up the hill (it was that far) to 49-F around ten o’clock.
Students jammed the living room, kitchen, dining area, and hallway of Lori and Megan’s apartment, and spilled out onto the second-floor breezeway in the clear cool night. The doors off the hallway, to their two bedrooms, were both shut.
Lori greeted Zach with a warm hug and shook Becca’s hand politely with only a slight raising of her eyebrows, then told them to help themselves to beer in the kitchen and whatever food they could find, if there was any left. Zach thanked her, said they’d already eaten, and waded toward the kitchen to find two beers. Becca looked around the room, greeted a couple of familiar faces with a smile and wave, and searched for a place to sit.
As Zach was shuffling sideways between the kitchen counter and a couple wrapped together in a prolonged and highly intimate greeting, a pair of hands reached around from behind him and covered his eyes.
“Guess who?” a smoky voice whispered just inches from his ear.
There was only one who to match that voice. “I think that would be one of the hosts of this party.”
“Which one?” the voice whispered.
Zach could feel her breath on his ear. “I greeted Lori in the living room, so this must be the other one.”
“Say her name,” she whispered.
“Megan.”
“Good guess. You win a prize.” Her hands still covered his eyes.
“And what would that be?”
“You’ll have to come back into my room to claim it.”
Zach said, “Can I bring my date?”
Megan spun him around by the shoulders. “I hope you mean ‘date’ as in a piece of dried fruit from off the date palm.”
Zach smiled down at Megan. She looked incredibly sexy with her shoulder-length dirty blond hair in cascading tight curls with a single thin braid of hair hanging past her eye and over her cheek down to the shoulder strap of her bright red tank top that may have been out of season for the rest of the world but not for Megan. “I mean date as in Rebecca Coles waiting somewhere out in the living room for me to return with her beer.” Zach looked over the heads of the crowd and was relieved that he couldn’t see Becca from where they stood.
Megan’s frown curled into a mischievous grin. “You would’ve had more fun if you’d come alone.”
“My loss.”
“You can still collect your prize, if you ditch the dried fruit.” She had on lip gloss and long, dangling earrings.
Zach grinned. “The dried fruit stays.”
Megan paused then made him one last offer. “You can have the prize anyway, back in my room. We’ll go look for the beer there.” By then her arms had circled his waist.
Zach reached around and pulled her arms apart and held them in front of him by her wrists. “I’m incredibly flattered, Megan; and sorry not to be able to take you up on your offer. But I’d better get back to Becca.”
Megan shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She turned and waded into the crowd.
By the time Zach found
Becca, she was sitting in a large, upholstered chair tucked into one corner of the living room. Zach handed her the bottle of beer then leaned over and kissed the crown of her head.
Becca smiled up at him. “What was that for?”
“No reason.”
“Well, thank you for no reason.” She sat up on the wide armrest and patted the cushion for him to sit.
Zach sat down and Becca leaned back against his shoulder, still seated on the armrest.
They sat and watched the party unfold in front of them. On the few occasions when they had something to say, Becca could simply turn her head and speak softly into Zach’s ear, or he into hers, insuring that they’d be heard in the noisy room, and that no one else would hear them. It allowed them a degree of privacy that was in short supply in the crowded room of jostling and jostled bodies.
That sense of privacy was important for them at the moment, as each felt a kind of culture shock at this sudden immersion into renewed undergraduate life and its complex energy and demands. This return was especially jarring for their relationship, as they’d been mostly alone, and completely away from students, throughout the holiday break, a break that effectively began for them at the end of classes over a month ago. They’d thoroughly enjoyed their solitary time together, had made it the foundation on which they’d built their relationship, and had come to take it for granted. This return to student culture as a couple was a new and uneasy transition, especially given the expectation of sexual availability that dominated, and largely fueled, these sorts of social gatherings. Zach had already experienced first-hand this expectation; and the two of them didn’t have to watch the crowd for long before they saw numerous examples of such negotiations.
Becca rolled her face toward Zach’s ear. “Is it just me, or is everybody in here on the make?” She’d just watched a hulking guy with a ball cap turned around backwards on his head approach a petite blond girl, talk for a few minutes, then lead her toward the door with his meaty hand sliding down her back and under the waist band of her tight jeans.
Zach nodded. “At least two aren’t.”
“Thank God.”
“I guess everybody’s feeling energized after the long break and with the start of semester.”
“Staking their claims.”
“Something like that.”
“And the last undergraduate semester for some.”
“Probably for most here—Lori and Megan are both seniors.”
“Need to sow their oats while there’s still time.”
“Sow something, anyway.”
“Seems a little depraved.”
“Modern times.”
Becca nodded. “Probably a sociology paper in this somewhere.”
“Yeah, but who’d want to write it?”
A few hours into the party and with the crowd thinning just a bit, one of the starters on the school’s top-ranked basketball team ducked his head to clear the front door jamb and walked into the living room amidst much buzz and fanfare. Guys gave him high-fives and girls gave him hugs. He’d scored twenty-eight points two nights before in leading their team to victory over a national rival. He loved the attention, and everyone around him loved showering it upon him. He moved slowly across the living room toward the kitchen with a bevy of sycophants trailing along.
Megan suddenly appeared from the hallway and stood directly in front of the star. She threw her arms around his neck and stood on her tip-toes and he bent over a little and they exchanged a long and open-mouthed kiss. They maybe knew each other, or maybe not. In any case, Megan clearly wanted to get to know him better. After their mouths parted, she said something into his ear. He shrugged then followed her lead down the hall and out of sight, leaving the small crowd that had been following with nothing to do except continue drinking and chasing whatever members of the opposite sex remained unclaimed.
Awhile later, Becca rolled her face toward Zach. “Everyone’s so passionate and full of life tonight,” she said, her lips brushing his hair.
“I’ll say.”
“But a year from now, no one will remember any of this.”
“Some of them won’t remember any of it tomorrow morning.” He checked his watch. “I mean, this morning.”
“But even for those who do remember, it’ll fade eventually. As far as the world is concerned, none of this will have happened.”
“Clearly it happened.”
“But it won’t exist,” she said.
Zach nodded. “Unless I tell them.”
“So tell them.”
“If I do, will it be this?”—he waved his free hand over the room—“Or something else?”
Becca grinned into the side of his face, nibbled on his earlobe, then whispered, “‘It’s always truth; it just may not be fact.’”
Over her shoulder, Zach saw Megan emerge from the hallway, her hair rumpled and her face flushed. She smiled in Zach’s direction then disappeared into the kitchen. The basketball star emerged a couple strides behind her, still buckling his wide leather belt.
In the pre-dawn light of that morning, Zach and Becca lay together in his bed, both on their sides, Zach behind with his arms around her, she cradling his hands with hers up under her breasts, clothed in their sleepwear, covered by Zach’s blankets, skin touching skin, cloth touching cloth, his lips on her hair, neither one awake or asleep, paused in their life, in their love, in their singular union, in this moment of perfection that would never fade or suffer decay.