Part 12 (1/2)
”Sure. We can drive home tonight. Or get a room somewhere.”
”I'm not going with you.”
Calvin stares at her, confusion on his face. She wants simply to tell him, it's over. It was over before this weekend and it's definitely over now. Say it kindly, and firmly. But it's the wrong place, the wrong time, everyone is here, the bouncer is repeating his orders. Alice calls her brother's name, waiting for instruction. He waves Alice away, and she files out with her entourage: a deflated Dorian, leaning on Cicely for balance, Benjamin fake-puffing on a cigarette, Nick and some other guys and girls from the party who have been audience to the entire spectacle. The last thing Ruby hears is Dorian telling Benjamin, ”You're a s.h.i.+t-stirrer. That's what you are.” Benjamin just laughs.
Then they're gone. All but Calvin. ”I'm waiting here with you.”
”My purse is in the club.”
Calvin looks at the bouncer, who says, ”You can send one person back in. Not her-” pointing to Ruby, ”or her-” Joanne.
Wendy says, ”I'll go,” and scurries away, flas.h.i.+ng a hand-stamp to the guy at the door, a new guy who must have taken over during the chaos. Ruby wonders if she can trust Wendy to come right back, to not get distracted. She realizes she has no choice. go,” and scurries away, flas.h.i.+ng a hand-stamp to the guy at the door, a new guy who must have taken over during the chaos. Ruby wonders if she can trust Wendy to come right back, to not get distracted. She realizes she has no choice.
Everyone waiting in line has been watching. Between the street-lights and the full moon, the whole scene could be taking place in the bright middle of the day. She's given them quite a show. She scans the gawking faces of strangers greedily lapping this up.
And then she sees Chris.
Chris Cleary, sitting on the hood of a parked car, not even half a block away, arms at his side, legs dangling. His eyes are on her.
She has to look twice, because she might be mistaken. This might be some other boy in pegged black pants, an old pinstripe blazer, a red T-s.h.i.+rt, some other new-wave clubgoer. How long has he been there, watching?
He lifts a finger to his lips. Shhh Shhh, he's telling her.
Calvin hasn't seen him. He's in the midst of a transaction with the bearded bouncer. Slipping him money. Sealing his man-of-the-moment status.
Joanne-finally set free from the bouncer's grip-shakes her hair, smoothes out her clothes, makes her way to Ruby. ”Was that him?” she asks.
”Who?”
”The one you were dancing with. With the tie? Was that him him?”
”No.” Ruby has to smile, it's so absurd. ”That was so not him.”
”Look, you can totally stay with us tonight.” Joanne's voice, post-uproar, is startlingly composed.
Calvin steps between them. ”Rubes, you're not thinking straight. You're drunk, right? Where have you been?”
”I'm not going anywhere near Dorian or your sister or any of those people.”
”Okay, sure, I get it. But come on,” he pleads. ”I can't let you go with these girls. I'm responsible for you. Your overnight bag is in my car.” He touches her arm, pulls her toward him. He seems to want to hug her. She won't, she can't. It feels cruel to withhold this affection. He helped her out, he's still her boyfriend. But he's guilty by a.s.sociation: his manipulative sister, evil Dorian, Benjamin the s.h.i.+t-stirrer s.h.i.+t-stirrer.
And Chris is here. Hiding in plain sight.
”I'll get my bag from you tomorrow,” she says. ”I need some personal s.p.a.ce.”
Calvin swears, slams one fist into the other palm and spins around-he nearly b.u.mps into Wendy, who has reappeared with Ruby's purse-and then he starts to walk away, down the street. He takes no notice of Chris, still on the hood of that other car, observing Calvin with a serene detachment that she finds breathtaking.
That's when she knows without a doubt that he's waiting for her. For the right moment. This thing she's been looking for all night-it's close at hand.
Calvin turns suddenly and strides back toward her. He's seething.
”I said I'll call you tomorrow tomorrow,” she tells him.
”I don't get it, Rubes. I don't f.u.c.king get it.”
Joanne jockeys back into position. ”Um, Alvin? Do you speak English? Because I think Ruby's being pretty clear? She needs some s.p.a.ce s.p.a.ce.”
”Jesus Christ! Who is this tramp?”
”Who the f.u.c.k are you you?”
Their raised voices have alerted the bouncers, who begin a new, snarling approach. ”Just go, Calvin,” Ruby says.
He turns and continues down the block, and this time he doesn't turn back.
She's free now.
She looks over at Chris, also watching Calvin disappear. After a moment, Chris hops off the hood, which is when she begins to make her way over to him.
Joanne and Wendy call her name, their voices overlapping. Ruby gestures over her shoulder-Wait-and takes another step toward Chris. Then another.
She can't take her eyes off him. What she sees is the young man he is now-a wiry frame draped in outsider's black, his hair jagged and mussed, his face worldly and strained-layered on top of the boy he was back then, the tender stranger who clasped her hand while they prayed aloud amid incense and votive light, who whispered to her over the phone from his bedroom beneath his model airplanes. Layered like transparencies are all the pictures she created from the stories he told her about his life: The time he wore a four-inch silver cross around his neck and endured the taunts of kids at the mall who called him Jesus Freak. The time he painted his nails in the bathroom, gulping up the fumes-as close as he let himself get to the stimulants that had been forbidden to him. The time he put his hand down his pants and rubbed until he had an o.r.g.a.s.m, while she, on the other end of their phone call, pressed down on her clint clint and let him hear her earliest attempts at pleasure. and let him hear her earliest attempts at pleasure.
Their conversations had grappled with the question of s.e.x. They talked about being each other's first, and only. Would G.o.d forgive them if they did it? The real sin was in sleeping around, wasn't it? Treating your G.o.d-given body like something dispensable? (Though Jesus loved even the prost.i.tutes seeking forgiveness.) Wouldn't G.o.d understand s.e.x done in the name of love?
They made plans.
But everything ended without warning, his phone disconnected.
There were no more conversations. She'd been abandoned-the displacement that follows a catastrophe.
She had always blamed him. He could have found her, if he'd tried.
She had dammed up the memories. Maybe that's why she didn't recognize him at first. He'd been banished to some unreachable part of her mind. Until this deluge, tonight.
He meets her with arms outstretched. Their hands touch. Cold fingers braid together.
”You figured it out,” he says.
”I didn't recognize you at first.”
”It's unbelievable. On this weekend of all weekends.”
”I've been walking around looking for you.”
He shakes his head. ”You can't imagine-”
”What?”