The Lies They Tell(18)
Inside, everything was ecru tile and stainless steel. Tristan led her straight to the open shower area and twisted a knob, bracing one hand against the wall as the spray came down on him. Pearl moved back, watching as he slid to the floor and sat with his head hanging, letting the water soak through his workout clothes. She felt like a voyeur staying, yet she didn’t dare leave, instead standing back by the sinks until he finally lifted his head.
She brought him a towel from the shelf. “Are you going to be sick? I can get the trash can.”
Eventually: “No.”
“You need water.”
“I have some.” He swallowed, nodded over his shoulder to the lockers, closed his eyes. “Seventy-eight.”
Pearl went to his locker, unsurprised to find it was one of the only ones without a padlock. She reached into his gym bag, touched folded clothes, travel-size toiletries, a bottle of water. When she gave it to him, he drank half without stopping, downed the rest a moment later. He was still pale, with faint, shocked shadows beneath his eyes, but when he looked at her, the keen focus was back, the sensation of being under a 400x microscope lens.
“You should eat something.” She suddenly felt very wrong being here, where the air smelled like men’s soaps and acrid cleanser, where anyone could walk in and find them together.
He stood, now with only the slightest sign of weakness, and went around the corner. Pearl took a step forward, stopping abruptly when she saw, over the chest-high partition, that he was getting undressed.
His voice caught her at the door. “Nobody ever said your name. Last night, on the boat.”
She didn’t turn. “It’s Pearl.”
Tristan remained silent so long she had to look back. He now stood at the partition, watching her. His shoulders and pectoral muscles were chiseled, not an ounce of extra flesh on his frame. His skin gleamed damply under the fluorescents. “Thank you.”
He said it without inflection. She barely nodded, lifting her gaze from his body a moment too late, knowing he’d seen. She left the fitness center quickly, not slowing her step as the desk attendant came out of the women’s locker room pushing a cleaning cart and stopped to stare after her.
Seven
THAT NIGHT, PEARL jerked awake in the bluish darkness of her living room. The digital clock read 12:18 a.m. Her phone was ringing. She put it to her ear, staring unseeingly at the TV, which she’d fallen asleep in front of two hours ago. “Hello?”
“Pearlie?” Dad sounded distant, muffled.
She swung her legs to the floor. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, but . . .” Voices in the background, a bellow of laughter. He was borrowing the Tavern phone. “Don’t think I can make it home.”
“It’s okay.” Her words were quick. “It’s fine. Hold on. I’ll be there.”
No good-bye, just a soft fuzz of distant music and bar noise, then the disconnect.
Sleep addled, she crept around, looking for her flip-flops and car keys. She stepped out into the night.
The Mermaid Tavern was the bar’s original name, and you could still read the letters on the sign, if you squinted right. What had first opened as a whimsical watering hole for tourists had, over the years, been claimed by local hard-core drinkers. It was as if their hopelessness had drained the place, weathering the periwinkle-and-lavender-trimmed paint job to gray, starving the window boxes to dirt.
Pearl hesitated outside the door, clutching the strap of her shoulder bag as she stared at the figurehead of a bare-breasted mermaid mounted by the door. The siren, collecting lost souls. Like the rest of the building, she was chipped and peeling, her right hand carved to grip the pole of the “open” flag like a pike. Pearl steeled herself, pushing through the door into the smell of booze and fried bar food.
Inside, there was recessed lighting over the bar, and green-shaded lamps above the pool table, where dark shapes hunched and leaned and drew from glass steins. They knew Pearl here; she was allowed as far as the stools, where Dad always sat.
She put her hand on his shoulder; his head hung down, nearly resting on the bar. “I’m here. Let’s go.”
“You need any help getting him into the car, dear?” The rusty voice of Yancey Sanford spoke into her left ear, and every nerve in her body revolted. The big man spilled over the stool beside her, grizzled gray curls covering the tops of his ears, eyes shiny with drink and mocking good humor. “I tried to cut him off, but you know how it is. He goes on a tear sometimes.”
Saying nothing, Pearl drew her shoulder up automatically, making a barrier between them. “Dad, time to go, okay?”
He finally turned to her. For a moment, she expected a different face, somehow unfamiliar. Maybe monstrous. Too many horror movies with Reese; he was the same old Dad, only bleary-eyed, and somehow gone from her. Belonging more to these people, the same ones you stood in line with at Godfrey’s Market and the Citgo station, their faces seamed with cold weather and monotony and drink. “Yup. Okay.”
“Sure you gonna make it, bub?” Yancey’s voice rose for the benefit of the other drinkers, who chuckled, craning their necks as Dad navigated the stool, holding on to Pearl’s arm. “Now, don’t give that girl of yours any grief. She’s awful good to cart you around.” More laughter.
Bullshit. They were the ones: buying Dad shots after he tried to cut himself off, encouraging him to give in, to drown it all so they could have a night’s entertainment and some gossip to spread around town tomorrow. Pearl tugged too hard, making Dad stumble, then slid her arm around his middle, propping him up.