Only the Rain(13)

But that night after the naked girl we were both sitting up in bed with the little TV on, and underneath the sheet she slid her hand over and laid it on my thigh. I knew if I sat there and did nothing, after a few minutes or so she’d move her pinkie finger a little, enough to touch me where it counts. In most cases, though, about thirty seconds of her hand touching my skin is enough for me, and before you know it she can tell how interested I am. And I’m always interested.

This night, though, she didn’t get any reaction whatsoever when she first touched me. My head was pounding with too many thoughts, all of them bouncing around inside my skull like billiard balls. Why did I take that money? And what was I going to do with it now? I couldn’t hide it from Cindy forever. And what if somebody at the bank said something to her about the plant closing?

Silence is the same as a lie, Gee used to say when she was trying to get me to confess to some little thing. Like who ate the candy bar supposed to be in Pops’ lunch. Who left the cap off the milk bottle. Stuff that in the end was pretty easy to confess to.

But there wasn’t going to be anything easy about these new confessions. I should have come out with it all right then and there. I just wasn’t thinking straight. She had a hand on my thigh and I knew what she was leading up to, and I also knew I couldn’t sit there and wait until she made the next move either, because she’s the kind that always takes even the smallest rejection personally. I have to be very careful when it comes to that. I mean, even something like, “Honey, I’m too busy right now to listen to what your customer did today” will bring tears to her eyes. So I had to find some way of tiptoeing around letting her know I was in no mood for making love.

“We have any flu medicine in the house?” I asked.

“Aren’t you feeling good, babe?”

“I’ve had the chills ever since I got home. And my body feels like somebody’s been punching on me all day.”

“There’s Children’s Flu and Cold,” she said.

“Will that work on me?”

“I don’t see why not. Maybe double up the dosage. You want me to get it for you?”

“Stay in bed, I’ll get it.”

I went into the bathroom and made a little noise and then I went back into the bedroom making a face and smacking my lips. She said, “What did you do, drink out of the bottle?”

“Out of the cap,” I said.

“Which is now on top of the bottle.”

“We’ve all got the same germs, baby.”

“Except for the new ones you put in the medicine.”

“Isn’t that medicine supposed to kill those germs?”

She looked at me and shook her head but she couldn’t hide the little smile.

I told her, “I’m going to make a cup of tea, see if that will warm me up while the medicine goes to work. You want one?”

She shook her head no and said, “Get something to wrap up in.”

“I’ll get my coat out of the closet. Is it only me, or are you cold too?”

“I’m fine. The air conditioner is set at seventy.”

“It’s only me then.”

“Get the thermometer and I’ll take your temperature.”

“Watch your show. I’ll be okay.”

That money in my saddlebag was all I was able to think about. One minute it seemed like a birthday present waiting to be unwrapped, and the next minute like a ticking time bomb. I kept asking myself, what kind of a person are you to have done such a thing? I’d think, that girl probably can’t even remember what you look like. Then I’d hear the house creak and I’d go stiff and sit there waiting for the door to be kicked in.

Plus I kept wondering about whose money it was I’d taken. I knew that girl wasn’t in charge of the place. She was there to keep watch over things, her and the dog. And I guess maybe she kept watch a little too closely, so close that some of the stuff she was watching got inside her.

I’d never thought of myself as a thief before. Sure, every now and then when I was a teenager I’d sneak a couple dollars out of Pops’ change jar, but I was relatively sure he knew I was doing it. He even said to me from time to time, “If you’re short on jingle, go grab yourself some out of my jar.” Taking ten dollars one time was probably the worst I’d ever done.

But I’d taken a lot more than that this time. And without anybody giving me permission to do so. I didn’t like what that said about me. But what I didn’t like even more was not being able to take care of my family.

Gee used to say that everything happens for a reason. In her mind, it was God’s reason, of course, and that didn’t always mean we were going to like it. Sometimes He put temptation in our path to see how we would handle it. In which case I’d failed an important test.

On the other hand, God’s always been a contradiction to me. I’d say to Gee, “Doesn’t God know all there is to know?”

“Of course He does. He knows every hair on your head.”

“Then why doesn’t He know when somebody is going to give in to a temptation? Why doesn’t He stop it before it happens?”

That was the one thing she never could abide from me, questioning God’s almighty wisdom. And it was the one thing I never could keep myself from doing.