Paul Kavanagh - Not Comin' Home to You

She said, “You’ll never guess how big a thrill this is for me. I mean having coffee. I’m not allowed to drink it at home.”

“Why not?”

“It’s all tied up with being a whore like my sister. I don’t smoke or wear makeup so they can’t put their foot down about that, so they made a rule that I’m not allowed to drink coffee. ‘This fucking town.’ I’m not going to say that any more. I don’t like the way it sounds, coming from a girl. And you don’t like me to say it, do you?”

“Let’s just say I’m glad you’re not going to say it any more. I’m glad you don’t smoke or wear makeup.”

“You are?”

“But you can drink all the coffee you want.”

“Could I have some more? Thank you.”

“Did you really mean it? About not going back home.”

“I meant it. I still mean it. I should’ve left before this.” She looked at her coffee cup. “Only I’m glad I didn’t leave before today.”

“So am I.”

His hand covered hers. It was the first time he had touched her. She raised her eyes to meet his.

He said, “Do you have a boyfriend? Anything like that?”

“I told you. I don’t have anybody.”

“Because I’d like us to be together.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Yes.”

“I feel like crying. Don’t worry, I’m not going to. I don’t cry much. I can’t believe this. I don’t mean I don’t believe you. But all this. That it’s happening.”

“Finish your coffee.”

They both liked: country music, hours just before dawn and just after dusk, holding hands. They both hated: sloppiness, cruelty to animals, people who talked but couldn’t listen. They were in the car, driving on back roads south and west of the town. The sun was down, the sky already quite dark. The car radio played the same song they had heard in the restaurant.

The song echoed and echoed in her mind. It was a song a man would sing to a woman who had wronged him, but to her it seemed that Waylon Jennings was singing it for her, to her parents. She was going to spend the rest of her life not returning to that house, to this town. No matter what happened, she was not going back.

She did not know what would happen.

So far, what had happened could have more easily happened in a dream. Except that in her dreams fulfillment was never quite within reach. Her most frequent dreams were of two sorts. In one, she was naked in public places, very intent on getting from one place to another, and never quite able to cover herself properly. People would stare at her and turn away, annoyed with her for appearing nude before them. In her other standard dream, she was trapped someplace very high and had to descend steep staircases and clamber over treacherous catwalks and narrow ledges. She never actually fell, but neither did she ever accomplish the descent, for each staircase led to another ledge, each catwalk to another suspension bridge or rope ladder, and the bottom was never within reach. So no, this was not like any dream she had ever dreamed, but it had the insubstantial quality of dreams.

And if she had not dreamed this, she had certainly entertained it in fantasy. It was not merely that he was the nicest boy she had ever met, nor that he was obviously pleased with her and happy with her company. More astonishing than that, more literally fantastic, was that she became in his presence a different person. Indeed, she became her own self. She was able to talk to him. She could speak words and thoughts that had previously been locked up inside her. And, at times like this, she could be silent, they could both be silent, while he drove with one hand on the wheel and the other in hers and she leaned back and closed her eyes and the interior of his car became all she knew of the world.

“Why do they call it Grand Island?”

“What do you mean?”

“The town. It’s not very grand—”

“You know it.”

“And it’s not on an island, as far as I can see.”

“Oh. No it’s not, but — which way did you come into town? From the south?”

“Came up on 281.”

“Well, you know where you cross the North Platte? You cross it once and then you have to cross it again? That’s the island. It’s, I don’t know, forty or fifty miles long. That’s the grand island that the place got its name from.”

“But that’s a pretty good piece south of here, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh. But there’s no town on the island, so they fastened the name on the nearest town they could find. Except it’s not the nearest.”

He started to laugh and she laughed with him. She said, “There are a lot of names like that. My high school’s a new building, and the blackboards are green because it’s supposed to be better for your eyes. And they write on them with yellow chalk. But they still call them blackboards.”

“When by rights they should call them greenboards.”

“Right! Only nobody ever does, and nobody ever notices how silly it is. Or they’ll talk about drinking out of a plastic glass.”

“And if it’s plastic it’s not glass. Let me think. Oh, I knew a man once who would talk about this old hound dog of his, and he’d say, ‘I tell you, that coon dog of mine is a real son of a bitch.’”

“People don’t even think what they’re saying.”

His hand tightened on hers. “People don’t think what they’re saying, or what they’re doing, or much of any damned thing. I’ll tell you something. I don’t care much for people, the bulk of them.”

“Neither do I.”

“They don’t know how to use their minds or their bodies or their lives. You can just walk right through them. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“Sometimes I think I’m, oh, I don’t know.” She waited. “I think sometimes that I’m different from everybody else in the world,” he went on. “That I can do just about anything I want by concentrating, by using myself properly.” He laughed suddenly. “Now just hear that old boy carry on! Lord, don’t he give a person a powerful earful.”

“I like when you talk like that.”

“Southern, you mean? I guess I always talk like that, don’t I?”

“No. Your voice and all changes a lot.”

“I guess I sound like where I’ve been. And I’ve been all over, one time or another.”

“And I’ve never been anywhere.”

“Well, you got time.”

She wondered if he would take her with him. They were not going anywhere now, just circling around, enjoying the car and the evening and each other’s company. But in the morning she would leave town, and she thought it not impossible that he would want her to go with him. She was certain they would not be together very long, because she could not believe he would want her for very long, but she could accept that. She felt wonderful while she was with him. She would settle for that for as long as it lasted. And, when he did not want her any more, she would at least be far from Grand Island and out of the state of Nebraska and on her own. The hard part, she knew, was getting out in the first place. Once she was gone, it would be very easy never to return.