CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
REUNION
It was a silent walk to the bungalow and as we approached I could see Jim’s face in the window, scanning the lot. A small part of me screamed out for violence; to rip into Jim’s eyes and tear out his soul and scramble his brain until it was massless gelatin. But mostly I felt calm and assured that whatever would happen was for the best, and to believe.
Jim was pacing the floor, gun in hand, when Teresa came in and sat immediately down on the couch.
I sat next to her. She was using great wisdom in keeping her mouth shut. Three times she looked up and opened her mouth as if to speak, only to close it again. It was a battle, one I was sure she would lose along with her teeth. Women, given the choice between a beating and silence, would take the beating every time.
"What am I supposed to do now?" Jim said, breaking the silence rhetorically. "You don't come to see me in jail, when I do come home it's to find you packing, and after I send you out for money you come home with nothing. What am I supposed to do now?"
She kept quiet.
Jim stopped moving and raised the gun slowly, aiming it at her head with one eye closed, dead eye. "I asked you a question."
She looked in his eyes, not acknowledging the gun as she spoke. "I'm afraid."
"You should be. This close, I couldn't miss."
"No," she said quietly. "I'm not afraid for me. I'm afraid for you."
He looked at her, puzzled. "Afraid for me? When I have this, there's nothing I'm afraid of. Tell me, who do I have to be afraid of?"
She shook her head. "No one. Not a person."
"The cops?"
"No.” She swallowed. "I'm afraid for what you've become. What I've become. Look at us." Her voice rose in volume, the last few words almost yelled, and Jim’s body jerked. “What are we doing? How did it all get like this?"
He almost looked hurt. "What's wrong with this place?"
"Not the place. Not the streets. Not the cops. Us. What happened?"
Jim dropped his arms, the gun pointing harmlessly at the floor. His face was blank and void of comprehension, perhaps deliberately so.
Teresa turned her body toward him, gripping the end of the couch. "Do you remember when we met? Remember your friend Zack was dating my friend Darcy when we lived in that dumpy duplex? He'd asked you for a ride getting over there and you rode him over on your Harley."
Jim's head moved slowly down, then up. Yes.
"I'll never forget the sound your bike made when you pulled up to the door, right up to the steps," she said with a slight smile of remembrance. "I thought it was an earthquake. The walls and windows rattled so much I started banging on the bathroom door to tell Darcy to get out, and she comes out from her shower wearing nothing but a towel, soaking wet and madder than hell. She went out to tell you and you all laughed at me, then you came in. You almost didn't fit through the door."
The corners of Jim's mouth moved in an almost imperceptible smile as he nodded again, remembering with her.
"I got you a beer and we sat at the kitchen table while Darcy and Zack went into the back room. You told me all about your bike and how you'd put it together and how you wanted to own a shop one day. I told you where I'd grown up and all the things I wanted to do and places I wanted to see. Then Darcy and Zack came out of the back room barely dressed and I wished so much that they would leave so we could talk, but you had to go."
Jim nodded. "I called the next day."
"I remember," she said. "You called the next day and we talked for another hour before you came over to take me for a ride on your bike. I was so excited. I'd never been on a Harley before. When you got there I ran out and jumped on and held on tight."
"I remember." He smiled now.
"And we took off down the street. I'd never had a feeling like that, of so much power under me. It was such a high."
"You laughed the whole time,” he said, nodding. “I remember that."
"It was the most fun I'd ever had in my life, sitting there and holding you and watching the world speed by."
"She was a good girl."
Teresa's eyes glistened and she sniffled as tears slid down her face. Jim took a half-step toward her, raising his arms, then noticed the gun in his hand and stopped.
"We went so many places together," she said, wiping her arm across her face. "It didn't matter where as long as we were together. And after you moved in, you brought the bike into the living room so I could sit on it while watching TV."
"We did other things on it," Jim said.
Teresa almost blushed. "I didn’t forget that, either."
"Those were good times," Jim said, adding the end abruptly. "Nothing lasts forever."
He wouldn't meet her eyes as she asked: "Why not?"
"You can't go back," he said, shaking his head. "I've heard that before. Too many years. Too many days."
"But we're the same people."
He met her gaze, looked her over, met it again. "Who is?"
"We are. I know we are."
"You're not."
She flinched at the words.
"And I'm not,” he said, maybe in contrition. “Those were two other people. I don't even think they were us."
"They were," she cried, "they were."
"Then how--?" He looked around, lost in his world. "How did this happen? I don't want to know them anymore."
"If we could only get back. Start over."
Jim's fingers curled around the gun.
Teresa got up and walked to him. "We can try."
"No."
"Why not?"
Jim snorted. "Money. It's all about money. It’s always about money."
"We didn't have it before."
"We always needed it before."
"Not a lot. Even after you got hurt." She looked up worriedly, as if wishing to get the words back.
"You think it's my fault."
"I didn't say that."
"Because of the accident. My back. That's when it all started, when I hurt my back and couldn't work."
She touched his arm. "I don't care how..."
"I know what you think." He shook her off. "That I'm useless because I can't work and can't..."
"I never said that."
"I knew what you were thinking. I could see."
She grabbed his arm tightly this time. "It never mattered. It never made any difference. I loved you. I still do. Can't we find it again? Can't we go back to the way it was?" She was crying now. "It seems so far away, but I know it's not. I dream about it when I dream and I know it was more than that. It was real. It was us."
She buried her face into his chest and cried into it. After a hesitant moment he put the hand without the gun on the back of her head gently. But it was a few more minutes before he relaxed his grip on the gun.
He pushed away suddenly and walked quickly to the door.
"What's wrong?"
"I've got to go."
"Why? Where?"
He shook his head with his back to her. "I have some things to do."
"I want to come."
"You can't."
"Please."
He shook his head.
"Then, I'm leaving. I have to."
Jim looked up at the ceiling and breathed out, then he turned. His voice was quiet and his face sad at the seeming inevitability of it all. "No." He started for the door. "You can't do that, either."