Shimmy Bang Sparkle(67)

It was the perfect distraction.

I put the lid on the bottle and tucked it back in my bag, then pretended to dust off my hands. “All in a day’s work,” I said as I reached out my hand for him to lead him the two feet into the bedroom.

Together we got comfy in bed, enveloped in the pink satin sheets. With his forearm hooked over my hips, he pulled me close like I was part of him. He nestled his head against the pillow, with his chin touching my shoulder. His breathing became deeper and more peaceful, and I let myself relax into his arms. I was just on the dreamy warm edge of sleep when I whispered, “I love being with you,” expecting nothing but the crickets chirping as an answer.

He had heard me, and his hold on me tightened. He gave me a kiss on the side of my neck.

“Me too,” he said, his voice low and thick with sleep. But even still, it made me melt like warm chocolate in the sunshine.

That night, as I fell asleep, I didn’t have to imagine being back in the Big Wide Open. We were there, together. Big Dipper and Little Dipper, spooning under the desert sky. The crickets chirped outside, and the wind rustled the apricot trees. I felt happy. I felt content. I felt like it was all going to be OK. And like I would never be alone again.

“I think you might be the one,” I whispered. But he had already fallen asleep.





32

NICK

I felt like a new man when we pulled up to Alvarado Auto the next morning, because I’d heard her say it.

The one.

When she’d said it, I’d been fucking stunned. Shocked and speechless, too flattened to say a word. But I hung on to it even in my dreams. She’d gone there, when I hadn’t been brave enough to tell her I was there too.

I walked into the shop feeling like life was as it should be, which was more than I ever expected to have.

To be safe, I put five quarts of radiator fluid on the counter. The old guy behind the register had eyes so wrinkled, it seemed like he had to struggle to keep them open. On his mechanic’s jumpsuit was a name badge that said MR. ALVARADO, carefully sewn on with irregular stitches.

Very slowly, he picked up one quart of fluid and typed the amount into his ancient cash register, the plastic brittle and yellow, the keypad cover smudged with engine oil.

Taped to the counter was a real estate agent’s write-up of the place. Commercial use only, 0.5 acres. Inventory included.

God damn, what I wouldn’t give. One day. One day.

One quart went into the bag. Then he went through the whole thing again, typing in the price as his mouth moved very slightly when he entered the numbers. He punched the enter button, and the bell inside the register made an old-fashioned ding!

I considered the three quarts that he had yet to ring up, and the clock on the wall, half an hour slow. I considered Mr. Alvarado, now trying to free the edges of a plastic bag from one another with dry and wrinkled fingers.

We were in the land of endless horizons and long days, where time didn’t matter like it did in the city. Where a quick stop by the mechanic’s might end up taking . . .

He clicked his tongue, and the numbers on the register disappeared, one by one, as he backtracked to the beginning.

. . . a hell of a long time.

But amazingly, it didn’t piss me off. The noise of Mr. Alvarado hunting and pecking on the number pad lulled me into a Zen peacefulness. Nothing could’ve made me mad that morning. I had Stella and the open road and a very real sense that things were changing for me, for the better. Because of her. Not one day, but now.

I turned to see her jogging across the street. She was back in her disguise, but today it was leggings with a short denim skirt. As sexy as she was all dark and naughty, I liked her even better like I’d seen her this morning. Hair in a tangle, no makeup. Just Stella, pure and simple.

She had a paper bag and two coffees in her hand from the café that had been closed yesterday afternoon. In the cab of the RV, Priscilla leaped from the passenger seat into the driver’s seat, planting her small paws on the horn just hard enough to make a sudden and very loud Beeeeeeep.

The noise of the horn started a chain reaction behind the register, startling Mr. Alvarado so badly that he hit the wrong button and overcorrected by accidentally opening the register, which flustered him so much that he tossed the quart of radiator fluid into the air. It cartwheeled away from him, ricocheted against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s tube-socked cardboard leg, and spun at my feet. I grabbed it from the ground and handed it over. He took it from me and very slowly recommenced entering all the prices. Starting from zero.

But with his finger hovering over the keypad, he paused, smiling as he watched Stella play kissy-face with Priscilla through the windows of the RV. “Is that your lady, son?”

My lady. The lady. “Yes, sir,” I said as I reached for my wallet in my back pocket. I was seriously ahead of the game. There were still four more quarts to go. We might be here until dinner at this rate. But the only thing I was really in a hurry to do was get back to her.

“Your wife?” he asked, now clutching the quart to his chest, like some memory long gone had come back to him.

It was getting harder and harder to separate the story from the truth, and I didn’t want to anyway. “We’re on our way to get rings right now.”

As I said it, I imagined us together at Albuquerque City Hall. Us going out for a nice dinner after. Us making a life together. I wanted it so bad, I could almost taste it.