The Drifter(82)

“Have you got a reunion coming up?” asked Nina, desperate to change the subject, as she picked through her garbage to see if she could salvage the remains of her breakfast. “Man, those are tough. But you don’t have anything to worry about. I swear, Liz, from some angles you don’t look a day over thirty-seven.”





CHAPTER 22


KUMQUAT TREE


September 24, 2010

Betsy saw Ginny sitting on the porch, barefoot, in the same beat-up Levi’s she’d had since college. Her hair was shorter now. It grazed the tops of her shoulders and was a duller shade of brown with a few grays sprouting up from the top, coarse as electrical wire. She’d heard voices coming from inside the house. Boys, two of them, ran through the open doorway and into the yard with a wiry, black-and-white terrier trailing behind them. The dog came up to inspect Betsy’s shoes, barking to announce the presence of a stranger.

“Fletch? Is that you?” said Betsy, crouching to scratch the chin of the tiny stray dog Ginny found in high school and gave to Nana Jean. “How are you still around?” When she got closer, she could see the accordion lines around Ginny’s eyes, the same high, angular bone structure, but speckled with a spray of faint age spots the crept up from her cheeks. She was watching the children play and she was laughing, that same, short, sharp laugh, head thrown back, mouth gaping. Catching flies, as always.

“Come here, you little scruff,” she called to the dog, scratching his bony head. Ginny started peeling oranges for the boys’ snack, wiping the juice on her T-shirt.

“Remember the time,” Betsy said, the words lazy, drawn out, “when we climbed that kumquat tree? It was spring break, right? What year was that?”

Key West. The two of them had rented bikes and circled that tiny, overstuffed island at least five times. They’d made it to the southernmost point. Ninety Miles to Cuba, read the sign, but all they could see in the distance was a couple of catamarans and a few drifting cotton ball clouds. They’d found a tiny hammock shop and climbed into the display, strung between two banana palms, listening to the sound of the birds and loving that they’d managed to sneak away from the crowd of drunks they’d arrived with. Later, they pedaled down to Duval Street for the sunset and a guy who Ginny recognized from her Statistics class offered them a pot brownie, which they split without much hesitation. He wandered off to buy a beer and when he returned to the spot where the three of them had been standing, Betsy and Ginny had slipped away. A few blocks down the road, the two friends met some old queens on Harleys who said they liked their smiles, and then invited them to join in a round of Rum Runners at a sidewalk bar, which they did. And just before the light disappeared completely, they found the biggest kumquat tree either of them had ever seen. Not that they’d seen many kumquat trees. And they climbed to the highest branches that would support their weight. Why the kumquat tree was so hilarious was hard to say. But they stayed up there until Betsy had to pee. It was always Betsy who broke first.

The wind blew Ginny’s hair into her mouth and she brushed it away. “I miss you,” Betsy said. Ginny looked her in the eye, holding her gaze longer than Betsy could bear. She looked away and thought, “Just say it. Say you’re sorry. Say that it should have been you. Say that you should have spoken up before it was too late.”

The boys ran back inside the house until their laughter grew faint and Ginny followed them.

“Wait,” Betsy thought. “It isn’t over yet.” In the background, she heard a man’s voice, the sound of a radio coming from inside.

“It’s been over for a while now,” said Ginny, standing in the doorframe, letting the screen slam loudly behind her.

She shot awake and her knee slammed against the tray, knocking her plastic cup and a single round ice cube onto the royal blue carpet of the plane. She could feel her heart thumping through her shirt, electricity shooting from her spine to the beds of her fingernails. Her mind raced to remember where she was.

“We’ve begun our descent into the Tampa airport,” continued the pilot’s voice over the intercom. “Flight attendants, prepare for arrival.”

The air was heavy with clouds, of course, since it was September and the Florida fall was still at least a month away, which made for a rough landing. Off the plane, in the pastel-drenched Tampa airport, she stared at the manatee mosaic on the wall as she descended on the escalator to ground transportation. She felt an odd connection to the gentle but doomed creatures, floating along the stream in all of their passive awkwardness, defenseless to the speedboats that sliced their flesh with their angry props.





CHAPTER 23


REUNION


September 25, 2010

In a cracked and weedy parking lot next to a Starbucks, attached to a church or a school or some other unremarkable single-story brick structure identical to hundreds of others that dotted the Tampa landscape, Betsy stood with her coffee in hand. It was 9:15, fifteen minutes before the scheduled meeting time to board the bus and make the two-hour trek to Gainesville, and she stood alone near the center of the lot. She’d forgotten how small the city was and left the hotel with too much time to spare. The taxi driver dropped her in the empty lot, but not before he asked her to check the address twice.

“This is it,” she said. “I think. I’m starting to believe this is all a bad dream. I’ll call you if it turns out I’m right.”