Part 12 (1/2)

”That's okay.” She sounded a little too relieved, and she hung up a little too quickly.

I stood breathless with triumph, my hand still curled around the phone. He was there, and he was with her because she looked like me. Arlene had been a fetal kind of pretty back in high school. If she put on a little weight, grew some b.o.o.bs, learned to smile, we'd be even better matched. I felt my whole body flush. Jim Beverly remembered. He was hearing me every time she spoke in that thick accent, touching me every time his hands reached for her slight, pale body. I could go to Chicago, knock on Arlene's door, and Jim Beverly would open it. He was living with the shadow, but I was his real thing. I could knock on her door and take him back. Easy as that.

The four days after I knew where Jim was were the hardest of all. Thom could smell it in me, a deep-set, bubbling purpose. He had no idea what it was, but he was dead sure he didn't like it. I picked up every extra s.h.i.+ft at the gun shop I could get and even instigated a dinner with Larry Grandee and Margie. I volunteered Thom and me both to clean out his mother's garage. I kept us too busy to give him time to ponder, too public for him to tear me open and read the new name written on my heart and lungs and guts.

The morning of Thom's Houston trip felt like the tail end of a countdown. While he was in the shower, I slipped outside with a razor-sharp fillet knife and cut our phone line. When he came out, rubbing his hair with a towel, I had the receiver in my hand and I was glaring down at the phone.

”Our phone's gone out,” I said, my back to him, tapping and tapping at the b.u.t.ton in a manufactured pout.

Thom had to come over and tap the b.u.t.ton himself and hold up the receiver and shake it and hear no dial tone. He said a few choice words, and I laid a soothing hand on his damp shoulder.

”Never mind, you'll miss your flight. I'll call from a pay phone and get a repair guy.”

”When we land, I'll call you at the store,” Thom said.

”I'm not working today,” I said, and he gave me a long, level stare, too many wheels set turning in his brain for my comfort.

Driving him to the airport, I had to work hard to keep my hands still on the wheel, to not jiggle or twitch. I put my gaze on the road, and the car ate the last miles between me and a brief window of freedom.

”Baby, your eyes look overbright. Are you sick?” Thom asked.

”I'm fine,” I said.

”You're so quiet,” Thom said.

”I'm fine,” I repeated, and then I veered sideways into a gas station parking lot, opened my door and leaned out and threw up all my breakfast.

”Yeah, you look fine,” Thom said.

I flapped one hand back over my shoulder at him and puked some more.

When I finally sat up, he was looking at me with one eyebrow up, his expression a hybrid of concern and I-told-you-so. ”Do you need me to stay home?”

It was mostly a courtesy, as it would take a disaster on a par with one of Egypt's ten plagues for Joe to let his eldest off the hook for this trip. A delicate wifely puke out a car door wasn't going to rate. Even so, I practically hollered, ”Lord, no!” at him.

I said it way too fast, way too fervent. There was a pause between us, and in that s.p.a.ce, Thom swallowed a whole bag of thunderclouds. They didn't seem to be agreeing with him. ”You seem pretty set on getting your husband out of town,” he said. His whole body flexed like a fist, closing and tightening beside me.

I gulped, pitiful, and added, ”No woman wants her best fella watching her throw up. I can't think of a thing more likely to kill the air of mystery.” I gulped again and tried to look wan. Wan should have been an easy sell, tense as I was, thick as the air in the car had become.

”But if you're sick...,” Thom said. Heavy emphasis on if. Who is he Who is he had climbed into the car with us, and that question had the power to keep Thom home, Joe or no Joe. had climbed into the car with us, and that question had the power to keep Thom home, Joe or no Joe.

The hanged man card was coming, and there was no stopping it. I could only hope to put it off and get him on that plane. Then I'd go get Jim and set him like a wall between us.

”Maybe I'm not sick at all,” I said, desperate. ”Maybe this is something else? We've been trying awful hard.”

He didn't know what I meant for a second, and then his eyebrows came together. ”This fast?”

”Why not?” I said. ”Maybe we hit it right out of the gate.”

”You think?” Thom asked, and I saw a faint easing in the line of his arms and shoulders. I dropped wan and tried to look bloomy.

”Sure. According to Larry, the Grandee sperms are so ever-lovin' mighty, he knocked up Margie by standing upwind and thinking about Cindy Crawford. Maybe it runs in the family.”

His eyes brightened and he leaned in to kiss me without thinking. I put a hand up over my mouth. ”Yick, no, baby. I need some gum,” I said, and he actually laughed.

Two hours after Thom and Joe's flight left, I was on a plane of my own to Chicago, throwing up again, this time into a wax-lined airplane sick bag. I'd lucked into having someone's unflappable granny for a seatmate. She patted my back and said, ”There now, get it all out. You'll feel better.” Then she made me drink a fizzy water.

I got off the train from the airport at a stop that was smack in the middle of downtown Chicago. I stepped out of the station into a steel grid that seemed to grow straight up out of the concrete, towering all around me. The streets were dead straight, cutting the buildings into orderly blocks. I had a map of the city, and I'd planned a route to Arlene Fleet's apartment. I walked quickly, swinging my outsize macrame purse. Along with all my regular purse things, it held a change of clothes, a can of pepper spray from Grand Guns' stock of lesser weaponry, and a ticket that said Ivy Rose Wheeler would be flying back to Texas tomorrow.

Out of sheer habit, I smiled at the folks coming down the sidewalk toward me, but their gazes slid off sideways like my skin was slicked in grease. They didn't look back. Everyone who pa.s.sed was doing busy things: a man barking into his mobile phone, a gaunt woman who almost hit me with her swinging briefcase, a herd of pretty girls in jeans and clacky shoes. Everyone was going to their own places, as orderly and single-minded as ants.

They were like the moving pieces of a beautiful machine, each a cog that churned and clicked its chilly teeth against the teeth of other cogs, uncaring. It was nothing like small-town Alabama, where the local paper did a human interest story if someone's mama released a particularly loud fart in church.

Even in Amarillo, I was someone known and noticed. h.e.l.l, I was Joe Grandee's daughter-in-law, and he was on three billboards, five times larger than life and grinning like a possum, cradling a gorgeous shotgun. Over his head, black letters read, ”You know Joe!” And across his chest it said, ”Grand Guns. For Amarillo's Big Shots.” Joe's outsize eyes seemed to track me anytime I drove past one of those boogers.

Around town, especially with Thom, I felt watched by all the folks who did, indeed, know Joe. But this place had swallowed Arlene Fleet up for more than a decade. I felt a twinge of something ugly in the deeps of me, and it shocked me to realize it was envy. Back in high school, if anyone had told me I'd be marching past a fifty-story Chicago building one day, s.h.i.+vering in a peasant blouse and envying Arlene Fleet, I'd have laughed until something busted.

She was such a skinny, creeping critter, twitchy as a rodent. As a child, I'd been capable of envy for orphans starving to death in far-off darkest China, but never once had I felt a green yearn toward Arlene Fleet's life. Her mama bounced in and out of the nuthouse, and a bat-c.r.a.p crazy mother seemed a flat step down, even from a willfully missing mother like my own.

Now she'd come to this foreign place and let it eat her up until she was unseeable inside it. I realized I was, too, for the moment. No one on planet Earth had any idea where Mrs. Thom Grandee was. If a car smashed into me and killed me, Ivy's ID would lead nowhere. For this one day, a thousand miles from home, I'd been swallowed, too.

My route led me out of Chicago's skysc.r.a.pered center. The foot traffic was lighter here, and the sleek steel buildings gave way to Greek restaurants and coffee shops. The walk to Arlene's had looked much shorter on paper. I wished I had taken the time to figure out a bus route. The held-over cold of the sidewalk came up through Ro Grandee's trouser socks and thin-soled flats, until each step felt like the sidewalk was stinging me.

I stopped in front of a video rental place to check my map. The store was about the size of a walk-in closet, and it had an age-faded feature poster of Flashdance Flashdance still in the front window. That movie had come out when I was a teenager. I found myself staring at the display, puzzled, disoriented, as if moving toward Arlene had moved me back in time to high school and leg warmers and spiral perms. still in the front window. That movie had come out when I was a teenager. I found myself staring at the display, puzzled, disoriented, as if moving toward Arlene had moved me back in time to high school and leg warmers and spiral perms.

A scroungy guy with about fifteen visible tattoos was sitting on the sidewalk. ”It's a front,” he said, as if I'd asked about the poster out loud. ”They have a huge back room full of p.o.r.n.”

He had a blanket spread on the ground beside him, canted back a ways into an alley. He raised his eyebrows at me and gestured at a jumble of objects on top. ”See anything you like, doll?” It seemed the blanket was a store. Everything sitting out on it was inventory.

In the middle, I saw a pair of scuffed-up yellow boots. They stood up tall among fake Coach purses and sc.r.a.ps of silk fronting like Hermes scarves, and they were the only things that looked comfortable with themselves. Even their dings had a mellow b.u.t.tercream glow, and they were my size. I could see the number in faded print inside the lip.

I found myself pausing, drawn, my cold feet aching. The only pair of boots I owned had kitten heels. They rested in my closet with strappy sandals and flats with bows, all the dainty accompaniments to Ro Grandee's ruined wardrobe.

Ivy Wheeler is a woman who wears cowboy boots, I decided. And I would know. After all, I'd just had a taste of what it might be like to be Ivy Wheeler, unmoored and unknown, eaten by a city. I decided. And I would know. After all, I'd just had a taste of what it might be like to be Ivy Wheeler, unmoored and unknown, eaten by a city.

I squatted by the blanket. A dollar sign and the number 40 had been scrawled across an index card leaned up against the pointy right toe. Too much. I touched the card with one finger and said, ”If they fit, I'll give you half that,” to the tattoo boy.

He sized me up, taking in my macrame bag, my ancient jeans, trying to read my money. I lowered my head, looking down at Ivy's boots.

He didn't say anything, so I started to rise. Then he spoke up. ”Gimme the twenty. Whether they fit ain't my problem.”

Most of my remaining wad was in a Ziploc bag in my underpants, but I had three twenties and some smaller bills tucked in different spots, each miniroll trying to look like all the cash I had. I chose the twenty in my bra, just to mess with him. Pulled it out slow.

He cool-boyed it right to the end, and then his eyes s.h.i.+fted, taking an involuntary glance south. His gaze flicked back almost instantly, but I had one eyebrow up, waiting for him. He grinned at me, caught, the smile crinkling the blue star he'd inked on his cheek, and we liked each other for a second.

I kicked off my flats and left them on the sidewalk like bits of shed skin. The boots slid on so easy, it was as if some other girl with feet shaped like mine had walked in them for a year, breaking them in for me, readying them for this moment. As I walked away, tattoo boy was already putting my flats on the blanket to sell to someone else who needed a change.