This Lullaby(89)

Just as I thought this, I saw him move across the open doorway of Flash Camera, recognizing him immediately from his gangly, crooked walk. Well, I thought. Perfect timing. I downed the rest of my champagne then checked my lipstick. It would be a good feeling to deal with this one last thing and still be home on time for dinner.

“Where you going?” Talinga called after me as I opened the front door. She and Amanda had now turned on the stereo we kept in the shampoo room and were dancing around the empty salon, both of them barefooted, while Lola helped herself to more cake. “You need more champagne, Remy! This is a party, after all.”

“I’ll be back in a sec,” I said. “Pour me another glass, okay?”

She nodded, then poured herself one instead, while Amanda cackled, swaying her hips wide and bumping into a display of nail polishes. They all burst out laughing, the door falling shut on the sound when I walked out into the heat.

My head was buzzing as I crossed the parking lot to Flash Camera. When I came in, I saw Lucas behind the counter, working the developing machine. He glanced up at me and said, “Hey. When’s the prom?”

I started at this, then realized he was talking about my corsage, which was now hanging kind of limply, as if it, too, had consumed a bit too much champagne. “Is Dexter around?”

Lucas pushed back his chair, which was on casters, and rolled a bit, sticking his head through a door in the back. “Dex!” he said.

“What?” Dexter yelled back.

“Customer!”

Dexter came out, wiping his hands on his shirt, with an easygoing, can-I-help-you kind of smile. When he saw me it shifted, but just a bit. “Hey,” he said. “When’s the homecoming dance?”

“Weak,” Lucas mumbled, pushing himself back to the machine. “And late.”

Dexter ignored this, coming up to the counter. “So,” he said, picking up a stack of snapshots and shuffling them, “what can we do for you? Need some pictures developed? Perhaps an enlargement? We’re running a special on four-by-sixes today.”

“No,” I said, talking over the sound of the machine Lucas was working, as it made chunk-chunk noises, spitting out someone’s precious memories. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Okay.” He kept messing with the pictures, not really looking at me. “Talk.”

“How was D.C.?”

He shrugged. “Ted threw a fit, the whole artistic integrity thing. Stormed out. We managed to sweet-talk them into another meeting, but for now we’re stuck doing another wedding tonight while we’re left hanging. In the lurch. Happening a lot lately, it seems.”

I just stood there for a second, gathering my words. He was being kind of a jerk, I decided, but pressed on anyway. “So,” I said, “I’m leaving soon, and—”

“I know.” Now he looked at me. “Next week, right?”

I nodded. “And I just wanted to, you know, make peace with you.”

“Peace?” He put the pictures down. The one on top, I saw, was of a group of women posing around a quilt, all of them smiling. “Are we at war?”

“Well,” I said, “we didn’t exactly part well the other night. At the Quik Zip.”

“I was kind of drunk,” he admitted. “And, uh . . . maybe I wasn’t dealing with your Spinnerbait relationship quite as well as I might have.”

“The Spinnerbait relationship,” I said slowly, “has now been terminated.”

“Well. Can’t say I’m sorry about that. They are, like the biggest suckjob band, and their fans—”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I know. Hate Spinnerbait.”

“Hate Spinnerbait!” Lucas mumbled.

“Look.” Dexter leaned across the counter at me, “I liked you, Remy. And maybe we couldn’t be friends. But, God, you sure didn’t waste any time, you know?”

“I never wanted it to be ugly,” I told him. “And I did want us to be friends. But it just never works. Never.”

He considered this. “Okay. I think you’re right. Maybe we’re both a bit at fault here. I wasn’t exactly honest when I said I could deal with us being friends. And you weren’t exactly honest when you said, you know, that you loved me.”

“What?” I said, a bit too loudly. It was the champagne. “I never said I loved you.”

“Maybe not in so many words,” he said, shuffling the pictures again. “But I think we both knew the truth.”

“No way,” I said, but I could feel it now, that loose end slowly winding up, closer and closer to tied tight.

“In five more days,” he decided, holding up his open hand, “you would have loved me.”

“Doubtful.”

“Well, it is a challenge. Five days, and then—”

“Dexter,” I said.

“I’m kidding.” He put the pictures down, and smiled at me. “But we’ll never know, right? Could have happened.”

I smiled back. “Maybe.”

And there we had it. Closure. The last item of so many, eliminated from my list with a big, thick check mark. I could almost feel the weight of it lifting, the slow, steady feeling as all my planets aligned and everything, at least for now, was right with the world.