“I’ll be back before midnight,” I said. “I won’t forget this favor.”
“Can’t you be arrested for leaving the apartment?” she wanted to know.
“No. You’re not guilty of anything until the court says.”
“I was never in a courtroom,” she told me, as if she had been denied some pleasure that all girls our age had already enjoyed.
“Lucky you,” I said.
“Does Keefer know you’re going to see him?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
“I told Charlotte Lily about you. She was very interested.”
“Like I care,” I said.
“Bring me back a chocolate bar with nuts. My stepmother threw every piece of candy out of the house today.”
“Axel will like you more if you lose weight.”
“That’s not what he said. He said he likes a woman with something to grab on her.”
“Okay,” I said. “One chocolate bar with nuts.”
I was getting away cheaply, I thought, and after I put on the skirt I had bought with Cory’s money and found a blouse that came close to the one I had stolen, I went to the bathroom to fix my hair and put on some lipstick. Then I started to leave before Kathy Ann could change her mind. Fortunately, she was already hooked on a television program.
“Call me,” she said as I started toward the front door, “and let me know what’s happening.”
“Will do. Don’t forget. I’m in the bathroom, and if she calls again, say I’ve got the runs. She’ll believe that.”
“I bet you’ve been lying all your life, haven’t you?”
I thought a moment.
“No, my whole life’s been a lie,” I told her. She smiled in confusion.
“Huh?”
“Thanks, Kathy Ann. I owe you,” I said, and left quickly.
I had to wait longer for the bus and at one point wondered if I should try hitching a ride. Finally, it came. I went directly to the shop, but stopped dead in my tracks when I turned the corner and looked at the building. There were no lights on like there had been the night before. Disappointment settled over me like a leaden cape. I felt like crying. Then I remembered Keefer saying he had an apartment behind the shop.
I went around the building and saw a small window with a light on behind it. What if he was with someone? I thought. It would be very embarrassing for both of us. I should have called him first. Feeling timid now, I went to the window and peeked through the flimsy curtain. I saw it was as he had described: a single room with a pullout sofa, a small stove and sink on the right, and a television set across from the sofa. There was a table with two chairs as well. The walls were bare. The truth was, it looked more like some sort of a storage room that had been converted into a living space. The floor was bare, and the only light came from two lamps. How depressing, I thought.
“See anything you like?” I heard, and nearly jumped out of my skin.
I turned, holding my breath. There was Keefer, a bag of groceries in his arms. When he saw it was me, he broke into a big smile.
“Robin, what the hell are you doin‘?”
“I was just seeing if you were in, or if you had any company,” I explained.
He nodded.
“Company? Here? It’s just me, myself, and I,” he told me. “What are you doin‘ here?”
“I had to get away from my place,” I said. “I got into trouble today.”
“Oh? C’mon inside then and tell me about it. I love to hear about trouble.”
He opened the door, and I followed him into the one-room apartment. He had a very small refrigerator, actually more like a portable thing. He had to bend down to put his food in it. He took two quarts of beer out of bis bag and put one in the refrigerator.
“Beer?” he asked.
“Sure.”
Now that I was inside, I felt even more depressed. The walls seemed to close in, and I could hear what sounded like a leaking pipe in the wall.
“There’s a couple of rats livin‘ here, too,” he said, seeing how I was listening. “Friendly. I even put out some cheese for them.”
“Keefer!”
“I’m just kiddin‘. That’s the hot water heater. So, tell me about your trouble,” he said, pouring me a glass of beer. He sat beside me and I described it all. He went from a smile to a serious face and then a very pensive look.
“I doubt they’d send you to jail,” he said, “but you will get some sort of probation. You don’t need a lawyer. Tell your sister to just throw you on the mercy of the court.”
“How do you know so much about it?”
He poured himself another glass of beer, filled mine again, and smiled.
“I wasn’t exactly an Eagle Scout myself.” He stopped smiling. “Only when I got home, my daddy didn’t just tell me to stay put. He took his belt out and gave me welts that lasted for a month.”
“What had you done?”
“Stole a car,” he said nonchalantly. “Just for a joyride.”
“Was that when you had your fight with your father?”
“Who told you about that?”
“KathyAnn.”
“Yeah, I had a real fistfight with my father. I didn’t do well. He nearly broke my cheek bone, in fact, but I wouldn’t stop until he backed off. He knew he had to kill me to get me to stop, and that’s when he told me to get out and stay out, winch is just what I did. He never wanted me anyway. I wasn’t just an accident, I was a train wreck as far as my father was concerned.”
He finished the beer in his glass and poured another. I stared at him long enough for him to widen his eyes and say, “What?”
“I’m living a lie here,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not here with my sister. I’m here with my mother. She makes me say she’s my sister because she wants music people to think she’s younger than she is.”
“Oh. Then that story about the plane crash…”
“I just made that up on the spur of the moment to tell Kathy Ann something.”
“Well, what about your father?”
“Your father could be my father for all I know,” I said. His eyes widened more. “No, I’m kidding, but not as much as you think. My mother can’t be sure who made me. She was high on something at a wild party, and she says she was with more than one man the same night.”
“Wow,” Keefer said.
“That seems to be a popular word around here, or maybe just around me.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind,” I said. I finished my beer. “I guess you and I are more alike than I first thought, only you’re lucky. You got away.”
“Got away? To this?” He looked around the room. “No, ma’am, this isn’t luck. It’s a stopover on the way to something better, I hope.”
I held out my glass and he filled it again.
“What made you want to come to see me after all this?” he asked.
I shrugged.
“You mend things that are banged around, dented, and broken, don’t you?”
He laughed, and then he looked at me long and hard before leaning over to do what I wished he would from the moment I saw him sitting in a pool of sparks.
He kissed me.
And I kissed him back, harder and longer than I had ever kissed anyone.
In my mind the sparks were flying all around us.
7
Honeymoon Fantasies and Strike Two
“You sure you want to get mixed up with the likes of me?” Keefer asked before he kissed me again.
“I could ask you the same question,” I replied. He liked that.
“Girls like Charlotte Lily always make me feel small, feel like something disposable.”
I saw how angry he became just thinking about it, so I leaned forward and kissed him softly on the lips.
“I’m not Charlotte Lily,” I told him, and the smile returned to his face.
“You sure ain’t,” he said, put his beer glass down, and kissed m
e on the cheek, the neck, and the lips while he turned me in so he could embrace me more easily. I felt his hands move down to the zipper on my skirt.
“I don’t want to get pregnant,” I said.
“Don’t worry, you won’t,” he promised. He paused, took out his wallet, and then took out a contraceptive.
He held it up as if he was showing off a diamond in the lamplight. My heart was pounding. He thinks I’ve done this before, I thought. I was going to tell him I hadn’t, but he kissed me again and then began to slowly undress me, kissing every naked part of me he uncovered until he stood up and undid his pants while he looked down at me and said, “You’re really beautiful, Robin.”
My heart was pounding so, I could barely breathe. When he was beside me, I finally confessed. He hesitated so long, I thought he was going to stop, but then he smiled and said, “You’ll never forget me then. Women never forget the first man.”
A part of me was disappointed in myself. When I had learned the facts of life, I used to fantasize my first lovemaking. It was always on some glamorous island during a wonderful honeymoon with music in the background and stars blazing above. Instead, here I was in some thrown-together, makeshift, dingy one-room apartment on a sofa that could have been rescued from a junkyard, both Keefer and I tasting the beer on our lips.
There were no shooting stars, no tinkling bells, no angels with magic wands around us. I was uncomfortable with my excitement, sensitive and nervous, moaning under his pleading to relax. Instead of being as soft and downy as a cloud, I was a tightening guitar string, stretched to the point of breaking, every nerve in my body cracking and snapping like a shorted electric wire.
“It gets better,” Keefer assured me when we were finished. He lay there, catching his breath, his head against my naked breast, listening to the thumping of my heart. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I managed.
He lifted his head and kissed each of my nipples before pushing himself away.
“Be right back,” he said, and went to the bathroom.
I sat up and began to dress. When he came out, we heard the phone ringing in the shop.
“Who the hell is that?” he wondered aloud. “Be right back,” he said, and went to the door that opened on the shop.
I continued to dress.
“Got a message for you,” he said, returning. “That was Kathy Ann. She says your ‘sister’ called and said she was calling back in fifteen minutes and if you weren’t there to answer, she was going to call the police herself and report you.”
“She would, too, I bet,” I moaned.
“C’mon,” he said. “I can get you back there in fifteen minutes.”
He pulled on his jeans, slipped into his shoes, and grabbed his shirt as we started out.
“Hold on,” he told me after starting the engine. I had barely closed the door.
The rear wheels spun and kicked up gravel, and then he turned sharply into the street and accelerated. He wove in and out of traffic, cutting someone off at one point. The driver leaned on his horn. Keefer laughed and just accelerated again, turning abruptly down a side street.
“I know a little shortcut,” he said, gunning the engine.
He went through a stop sign and then made some sharp turns again, throwing me from one side of the seat to another. I screamed and he laughed. I couldn’t remember feeling more excited and afraid at the same time. Then, when he made a final turn into the street I knew brought us to my apartment complex, he side-swiped a small sedan we passed.
“Damn,” he yelled. “I ain’t stoppin‘. I’m not supposed to be drivin’ this truck. Izzy will throw me out.”
The driver of the car laid on his horn and followed us as best he could, but Keefer outran him and then bounced into the parking lot of my complex. I caught my breath, not knowing whether to cry or laugh.
“Get movin‘,” he ordered.
I jumped out of the truck and ran up the stairs. Just as I reached the apartment door, I heard the phone ringing inside. I threw it open and charged in. Kathy Ann had just picked up the phone.
“Here she is,” she said, a look of shock and surprise on her face.
I swallowed down a throat lump that would choke a horse, and as calmly as I could manage, said, “Hello.”
“What’s wrong with you now?” Mother darling asked.
“I think the Chinese food was bad.”
“It didn’t bother Cory or me.”
“Maybe I just had a nervous stomach.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re listenin‘ to me for once at least. We’re doin’ real well here. The owner knows people who he says he’s goin‘ to invite to hear us now that he has heard us more, especially me. I really think I’m goin’ to make it, Robin.”
“Good for you, Mother darling.”
She was quiet.
“I was hopin‘ you’d change your tone and your ways.”
“I am,” I said. “That’s a promise.”
“Okay, Robin. I’ll see you later.”
“I’ll be asleep, I’m sure,” I said, and hung up.
Keefer was standing in the doorway. I nodded, and then I laughed and he laughed.
“How’d you get here so fast?” Kathy Ann asked.
“We took the bus,” he said.
“The bus?” She looked at me and then at him. “You liars.”
We laughed again, and then Keefer heard something and turned to look down at the parking lot.
“Oh, no,” he said.
I stepped forward and looked down with him. There was a Nashville police car, its bubble light going, parked right behind Keefer’s boss’s truck. The two policemen got out, and one directed a large flashlight at the right front area of the truck. The other turned and looked up, so we backed into the apartment and closed the door quickly.
“What’s happening?” Kathy Ann asked.
“Shut up,” Keefer said. “Put out the lights, quick.”
“Why?”
“Just do it,” he said, and she and I went to every lamp and switch and turned off the lights.
We stood waiting, no one speaking, but the sound of my breathing and Keefer’s loud enough for us all to hear. Moments later, we heard footsteps on the second-story landing. We held our breath.
“Who is it?” Kathy Ann asked.
“Shut up,” Keefer snapped.
We waited.
There was a very loud rap on the door, a rap made with a police stick for sure, I thought.
“Open up, it’s the police,” we heard.
“Oh, my God,” Kathy Ann whined.
“Jesus,” Keefer said.
“We’re going to have that truck towed and impounded if you don’t open this door,” the policeman threatened.
“Damn it,” Keefer said. “Okay, put on the lights,” he told Kathy Ann. She was too terrified to move, so I did it. Then he opened the door.
“That your truck below?” the policeman asked him immediately.
“No. It belongs to my boss,” Keefer replied.
“Step outside, please,” he said. He looked in at us. “You, too, ladies,” he added.
“Why?” Kathy Ann whined.
The policeman just stepped aside for us to come out and we did. The three of us stood on the landing with both of the police officers.
“You were driving that truck a few minutes ago, then?”
“Yes,” Keefer said.
“Which one of you was in the truck? C’mon,” he said, “the man lodging the complaint saw two people.”
Kathy Ann was actually trembling.
“I was,” I confessed.
“You know it is a serious offense to leave the scene of an accident?” he asked Keefer.
“What accident?”
He smiled.
“You’re not going to stand there and tell us you don’t remember hitting another vehicle, are you? The other vehicle’s paint is on the truck.”
Keefer looked at me.
“I told you I thought
I might have hit something,” he said.
“I didn’t think you had,” I said.
The two policemen stared at us a moment.
“Let me see your license,” the first policeman asked Keefer. He took out his wallet and produced it.
“This your apartment?” he asked Keefer.
“No.”
“Whose is it then?”
“My sister’s music partner,” I said. “We’re living here temporarily.”
“Where are your parents?”
“They’re dead,” I said, glancing at Keefer, who tried to hide his eyes.
“And where is your sister now?”
“She’s performing at a dance club.”
“What’s the occupant’s name?” the second policeman asked.
“Cory Lewis,” I said. I could feel cold tears coming into my eyes.
“And your name, miss?”
“Robin Taylor.”
“All right. For now, we’ll take Mr. Dawson here and you, Miss Taylor, to the police station.”
“Can I bring the truck back?” Keefer asked.
“Not until the matter is settled,” the policeman said.
“Well, why do you have to take her, too? I’m the one who was driving,” he said.
“Procedure,” the policeman replied. “She was a witness to the events. Maybe next time you’ll think about all the ramifications that occur when you break the law. Let’s go,” he said. Then he paused. “How old are you, miss?”
“I’m sixteen,” I said.
The second policeman took his cell phone off his belt.
“Where is your sister performing?”
I started to speak and then realized I didn’t know. I really didn’t know. They never had told me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “She forgot to tell me.”
“I would think,” the first policeman said, “that you would have realized by now how serious this situation is.”
“I’m telling you the truth.” I turned to Kathy Ann. “Did she tell you where she was working when she called earlier?”
She shook her head like someone who was incapable of speech.
“All right, come along,” the policeman said.
Kathy Ann remained in the doorway.
“What should I do?” she called after us.
“Go home,” the policeman told her.