The Drifter(50)
The lone customer in the shop, who now appeared to be perpetually, chronically irritated, cleared her throat to get Betsy’s attention and held up a teacup.
Hold on. There’s a teacup emergency.
“May I help you?” Betsy asked.
“I have a question,” the woman said. “This teacup is missing its saucer.”
“That’s technically a statement, not a question, but you’re right,” said Betsy. “It is missing a saucer. That’s why we’re selling it on the half-price table for fifty cents.”
Betsy picked up her pen and got back to the letter.
I have to do something extreme, Gavin. I don’t have a choice. I know that I only have $820 and I’m still afraid to leave my house after dark, but I have to get out of here. My mom has a morbid collection of newspaper clippings that she keeps in a folder on her desk in the kitchen. (I had no idea how Goth she was.) But there are no new details. Caroline called once but I can’t call her back. She’s still pissed at me for spacing out at the funeral. But you know I couldn’t deal. Have you seen her? I know I’m always desperate for details. Sorry. I just ate a piece of Publix cake for lunch and now I am crashing, hard, from the sugar. I hope this letter makes it to you before you get here. I have big plans for the big 2–1. We’ll go to Sharky’s on the pier and I will buy you a shot every time a Jimmy Buffett song plays. It’s going to be huge. Then, I’ve got two more papers to write and I’m done. I’ll get my diploma by mail. How’s that for a major college graduation flameout? My professors don’t know how to deal with me when I call, you know the emotionally fragile girl who lost her best friend thing. So I’ve just been plowing through the work and sending it in. This semester might be my best shot at straight A’s, right? Right? It’s a pity party but I’m putting on my best dress and going. My mom wants to see me graduate, the whole cap and gown thing, but I am not ready to go back. Not even by next month. I know that the killer is gone, and that no one else died after Ginny. But what if he comes back? Until they catch this guy, I won’t be able to sleep. And Gainesville? I’m not going back. I’m getting as far away from that place as possible.
The customer left without buying anything, and the wooden door slammed behind her with a jangle from cheap wind chimes.
That brings me back to that amazing thing I mentioned before: I’m moving to New York. At least, I want to move to New York. And I want you to come with me. Maybe we can figure out the careers we’ve dreamed about all of our lives together? Are you in?
Betsy paused for a moment, considering what she was proposing. She wouldn’t have the nerve to say it over the phone or ask him in person, so this was the only way.
I’m actually totally, deadly serious.
Anyway, sorry for the novella. Pretty soon I’ll have to start springing for a second stamp. Write me, please! I need to know that people are out there among the living, buying things that are new or newish, not stuck among the half-dead, wondering how to feel alive again.
Lots of love,
Betsy
CHAPTER 13
THE BIG PLAN
December 31, 1990
Betsy sat cross-legged on the spot of the warped, sloping floor nearest the radiator. Everyone else in the apartment, the ten other stragglers who chose to ring in 1991 downing cheap whiskey in the railroad apartment of Gavin’s high school friend Ari on 3rd Street and Avenue B, were complaining about the heat. The harsh, dusty warmth blasting from the paint-encrusted tangle of pipes felt just fine to Betsy. Even a few inches away from it she was shivering, and tempted to dig her coat out of the pile on Ari’s bed to wear indoors. Only the fear of being mocked by Ari’s friends, all fellow NYU students who were, collectively, quick-witted and cynical in a way that Betsy found incredibly intimidating, kept her from doing it. She was afraid to open her mouth, to utter anything at all that might reveal that she was the hick they all assumed she was, and would rather lose a toe or two to frostbite than admit she was freezing in that airless tomb of a room. She’d first noticed she was cold in South Carolina, the day before yesterday. Or was it yesterday? She couldn’t remember. They stopped at a gas station so she could use the pay phone and she hadn’t been warm since.
Betsy was outside of Charleston before she worked up the nerve to call her mom to announce that she and Gavin were moving to New York. She had rehearsed her short speech across the eastern edge of Georgia and for a few excruciating minutes her mom listened to it in silence. It wasn’t until Betsy got to the part about calling with an address when she got settled that she was interrupted.
“You don’t even have a warm coat,” Kathy said. “Where in God’s name are you going to live?”
“Gavin’s got a friend in the East Village,” she said. “We’ll stay with her until we can find a place. Once I get a job.”
Betsy pictured her scowling in the silence on the other end of the line.
“I got that leopard coat at the shop, you know with the big collar,” she said, wondering why she was talking to her mom about lapels on a pay phone in the parking lot of a Waffle House off of the highway. “I can buy another one. Some gloves, you know, the usual.”
“You know that I can’t help you right now,” said Kathy, sounding smaller, more distant than the five hundred miles between them. “If you’re stuck, you’re stuck. I won’t be able to bail you out.”