Mosquitoland(63)

Pull it together, Malone.

We spend the next fifteen minutes watching Walt crack up at an old episode of I Love Lucy. Beck’s phone rings, and while he goes outside to take the call, I decide to brave the shower from the Shire.

It’s far from ideal, which is to say I have to hunch over the entire time, and the water isn’t quite as hot as I’d like, but it’s a shower, and I’m grateful. Afterward, I pull out the last of my clean clothes, including Mom’s old Zeppelin tee. Slipping into my stained jeans, I peer into the foggy mirror and do what I can for my hair. After a few tussles it’s not half-bad. The cut really took, it seems. More rakish than mod, maybe, but still . . . not bad. I give myself a once-over.

Things could be better: the jaw, the nose, the cheekbone, still too Picasso.

Things could be worse: people pay millions for Picasso.

Millions, Mim. You’re worth millions.

By the time I open the bathroom door, I don’t feel like complete shit, which is really saying something. “Have you guys thought about din—”

On the television, Lucy is stomping grapes at a vineyard, but no one is watching. The room is empty.

I cross the carpet in my bare feet (avoiding stains like landmines), and peer through the curtains. The truck is gone. Beck and Walt are gone. They’re gone. I let the curtains fall back in place. They’re gone. It’s a heavy weight—I feel it in my shoulders first, sinking like an anchor into the depths of Mim. They’re gone. My elbows, heavy. My hands and hips, heavy. My thighs, my knees, my feet, heavy, heavy, heavy. They’re gone. I am sinking into myself, falling to the bottom of this immense heaviness. It’s an ocean. They’re—

The door opens.

“Hey, hey.”

Walt enters, carrying a plastic bag. Beck is right behind him, holding a plastic bag of his own. Walt sits on the bed, pulls out some Combos and a Mountain Dew, and laughs as Lucy picks a fight with another lady in the grape vat.

“We got hungry,” says Beck, digging around in his bag. “Went out for gas station dinners. Hope you like beef jer—” He stops when he looks up. His face changes, and while I’ve learned most of his looks, this one is new. “You look . . . nice, Mim.”

The smile takes root in my stomach; it grows, weaving up through my chest and arms, shoulders and neck, before blooming in my face. I locate the only word between what I want to say and what I should say. “Thanks.”

After our gas station dinners, Beck decides to take a shower (gulp), and Walt promptly falls asleep. I turn down the volume on the TV and drop on the couch as another episode of I Love Lucy begins. Eventually, Beck emerges from the bathroom, wearing a clean gray V-neck and jeans. His hair is wet, and while I try not to picture him in that tiny shower, all making-it-work and whatnot, I just can’t help myself.

“I don’t watch this show very often,” says Beck, “but chick seems to be quite the troublemaker.” Lucy is currently stuffing pieces of chocolate down her shirt. “I don’t really get it.”

“It’s . . . sexy slapstick?”

Beck looks back at the screen, baffled. Lucy has her mouth full of chocolates now, like a chipmunk preparing for winter.

A chocolate chipmunk.

“That’s supposed to be sexy?” says Beck, plugging his cell phone in by the nightstand.

“Yeah, I don’t get it either. I guess back in the fifties, most girls were busy, you know, balancing books on their heads and baking pies. Knees were sexy back then, too, I think.”

“Knees?”

I nod. “And Lucy showed a lot . . . of knee.”

Beck crosses the room, reaches for the light switch. “You need this?”

I shake my head, yawn, and curl my legs up on the couch. In this new darkness, Beck sits next to me, and together we watch the lost art of Lucille Ball while I try my best not to jump Beck’s bones.

“You ever notice how motel rooms all smell the same?” he says.

I swear he and my mom would be friends.

“Moth’s shoe,” I say.

“What?”

“My mom, when she was younger, used to hitchhike through Europe.”

“Wow, really?”

“She’s British.”

“Oh.”

“Oh-nothing. It’s still awesome.”

“Right. I mean, sure. It is.”

“Anyway, she stayed in a bunch of hostels and said they all smelled the same. Like a moth’s shoe.”

Beck sniffs the air. “Yep, that’s it.”

Walt’s snores are a freight train, but we’re too tired to laugh.

“Speaking of moms,” says Beck, “I told mine. On the phone. Just now—or, before, I mean.”

It takes me a second to put his sentence back together. “You told her what you’re doing? About Claire and everything?”

He nods.

“What’d she say?”

“She said—” Walt turns over in his sleep, grunting. Beck runs his hands through his wet hair, and lowers his voice. “She said I’m making a huge mistake, dropping out of school. Said I should come home. She said a lot, actually. You know what she didn’t say? ‘How’s Claire?’”

His pain is visible, even in the dim light of the television. “What’re you gonna do?”