13 Little Blue Envelopes(27)

Without her, I’m boring. You don’t get it because you have stories.”

“Everyone has stories,” he said dismissively.

“Not good ones, like yours. They aren’t as interesting. You got arrested. I couldn’t have gotten arrested if I tried.”

“It doesn’t take a lot of effort,” he said. “Besides, it wasn’t getting arrested that was the problem.”

“Problem?”

He drummed his fingers on the table, then turned and

looked at her for a moment.

“Okay,” he said. “You told your story, might as well tell you mine while we’re here. When I was sixteen, I had a girlfriend.

Her name was Claire. I was worse than David. She was all I thought about. Didn’t care about school, didn’t care about 116

anything. I stopped mucking about because I was spending all my time with her.”

“Why is that a problem?”

“Well, she got pregnant,” he said, flicking the edge of the table with his finger. “And that was a bit of a mess.”

It was one thing to know Keith had had sex. That should

have been obvious since he was Keith, and not her, not so painfully virginal. But pregnancy was a step beyond anything she could really process. That implied a lot of sex. So much sex. So much that he could say it all casually.

Ginny looked down at the table. Obviously, she knew these things happened, but they never happened to her or to her friends. They happened on TV or to people in school who she didn’t know. Somehow, those kinds of stories always trickled down to the general populace months after they happened, giving the people involved a permanent, shiny veneer of

maturity that she would never, ever have. She couldn’t even drive after ten o’clock at night.

“Are you horrified?” he asked, glancing over. “It does happen, you know.”

“I know,” she said quickly. “What happened? I mean, did

she—?”

She caught herself short. What was she saying?

“I’m not a dad, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said.

Well, yes. That was exactly what she was so cleverly asking.

This was why nothing ever happened to her. She couldn’t handle the excitement. She couldn’t even make it through a conversation about something serious and sexual without blowing it.

“It’s a fair question,” he said. “I offered to leave school and 117

get a job. I was ready to do it, too. But she didn’t want to leave school, so she decided there was only one thing she could do about it. I can’t blame her.”

They rode in silence for a few minutes, both rocking slightly in time with the train and staring at the poster for the train’s

“Get some food!” promotion, which featured a picture of a bald man who was the “pork king of the north.”

“The problem,” he finally said, “was that things were never right after that. I kept trying to make it better, to talk to her, but she didn’t want to talk to me about it. She just wanted to get on with her life. So she did. It took me months to get the hint. I was a mess. But now everything’s sorted.”

He smiled brightly and folded his hands on the table.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, once you go through something like that, you

learn. Went on a bit of a bender after that. Stole a car—just took it around for a few hours, don’t know why. Wasn’t even that nice. Then woke up one morning, realized that I had to take my exams and that my life was still going on. I got myself together, got into school. Now I am the rabid success that you see before you today. Just want to make my plays.

That’s all I need. And see how it’s worked out? That’s how I met you, isn’t it?”

He threw his arm around her shoulders and gave her a

friendly shake. Again, it wasn’t overly romantic. This gesture had a “good dog!” feel to it. But there was something else, too.

Something that said, “I’m not just here because you give me big handfuls of cash for no reason. Things are different now.”

Maybe it was the fact that he kept his arm there for the rest 118

of the trip home and neither of them felt the need to say another word.

Half an hour later, they were standing on the platform at Kings Cross, waiting for the tube.

“Almost forgot,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his jacket. “I have something for you.”

He produced a small windup Godzilla, which looked exactly like the one from Mari’s house.

“Is that from Mari’s?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“You stole it?”

“I couldn’t help it,” he said, smiling. “You needed a souvenir.”

“Why did you think I’d want something that was stolen?”

Ginny felt herself stepping back, away from him.

Keith stepped back a bit and lost his grin.

“Wait a minute. . . .”

“Maybe it was part of some art piece!”

“A major work ruined.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ginny said. “It was hers. It’s from her house.”

“I’ll write her a letter and give myself up,” he said, holding up his hands. “I took the Godzilla. Call off the search. It was me, but I blame society.”