T. Boyle - Drop City

The waitress saved him. She was there, short skirt, two breasts and a face, hovering over him. She wanted to know if she could get him something to drink. And was he going to have lunch today?

Pamela was drinking iced tea. The menu lay facedown beside her plate.

“I think I'll have a beer,” he said, “an Oly,” and for some reason he was looking at Pam instead of the waitress, as if he were asking permission or trying to calibrate her response. “And-I'm sorry, did you order yet?”

“No,” she said, “but go ahead. You know what you want?”

He had a cheeseburger, medium rare, with everything on it, fries, and a salad with ranch dressing. She glanced up at the waitress without even lifting the menu from the table. “I'll have the same,” she said, with a grin. “And a beer sounds good.”

“Oly?” the waitress wanted to know.

“Yeah,” Pamela breathed, and she was looking at him now, at Sess, looking right into his eyes, “Oly.” As soon as the waitress was out of earshot, she said, “So, are you prepared to turn right around and drive back this afternoon, because I'm all packed and ready and there's no sense in wasting any time-you know, another night in the city when we could be out in the bush, in your cabin, I mean. You're on the Thirtymile, right?”

He just stared. Things were moving way too fast-but wasn't that the way he'd envisioned it in his fantasies, she lying naked on the bed beneath his window, her skin as white as Ivory soap against the deep pile of his furs, her limbs spread wide in invitation? “I was going to pick up a few things at the hardware and the grocery, and I was supposed to…” He drifted off a moment and gave her a strained smile. “For Richard, Richard Schrader. You know, because he let me borrow his truck-”

The waitress arrived with their beers and there was a moment of silence as they watched her go through the ritual of tipping and pouring. Someone let out a bark of laughter from the next table over. A pair of silver canoes slid by on the far side of the river.

“I know Richard,” Pamela said, and his heart froze inside him.

“You don't mean-was he one of the ones?”

“No,” she said, as abruptly as if she were taking a bite out of something, and she shook her head emphatically. “Not Richard, no way. Remember, I'm a practical girl here and the whole point of this is I want somebody to love me, sure, but somebody who can take _care__ of me, know what I mean? In the bush. Somebody-_like you__-who knows his way around, who has the survival skills, who's a real woodsman and not just some townie wanna-be.”

Was he blushing? The compliment went right to him. He lifted the beer to his lips, took a sip and watched her eyes as if they were fish under the surface of the ice or ptarmigans in a clump of willow, something he was hunting, a brace of geese or old squaws. Suddenly he was Mr. Confidence. Suddenly he wanted to get up from the table and lift the whole deck, the whole restaurant, right up on his shoulders, just to show her what he was. “Is it fair to ask who I'm up against then? And what seed I am in this tournament?”

The smile drew down to nothing. “Richie Oliver and Howard Walpole,” she said. “Just them. And you. And you know what, Sess?” Her hand was on the table now, lying there, palm up, like a double-spring Victor trap with the snow blown bare of it. And what did he want? He wanted to be caught, he did, he was praying for it every day and night of his life, and he reached out and slipped his fingers through hers. “No, what?” he said.

“You've got nothing to worry about.”

He didn't remember much of the ride back, just a sensation of floating over the road as if he were in an airplane instead of a car, Pamela in the lotus position on the seat beside him, her bare legs glistening in the sun through the window. They were both feeling good, convivial and full of high spirits, and just about everything he said made her laugh and show her teeth. The country unfurled before them like a camouflage jacket, gray and green and brown, and they saw goshawks and Brewer's blackbirds wheeling overhead. At one point, just before the turnoff for Boynton Hot Springs, they stopped to watch a fox hunting in the bush alongside the road and he had to fight down the impulse to shoot it with the.22 Richard kept under the seat for just such an opportunity as this-the fur was worthless this time of year, but it would have been fresh meat for the pot, and he _was__ on trial here, after all.

“Look at the way he pounces,” she said, leaning out the window so far he thought she was going to fall. “Just like a dog playing with a ball.”

“What he's doing,” Sess said, and he slid across the seat to look over her shoulder, so close now he could smell the soap she used on her skin, “he's trying to scare up whatever might be hiding under the bushes, you know, voles, grasshoppers, maybe a fat juicy wood frog or two-”

She turned to him now, and she was right there, her face inches from his, and he had to back off, he had to, and she could chalk that up in the credit column under his name. Let her make the first move. Sure. Let _her.__ “Sounds appetizing,” she said, smiling wide.

Reddening, he slid back across the seat and put the truck in gear. “You hungry?” he asked. “Not for frog legs, I mean, but something like a steak or a sandwich, maybe a couple more beers to celebrate? Because by the time we get to the cabin, I mean, and unload all this stuff, feed the dogs and see what the garden looks like, I don't know if we're going to have time to-” He trailed off. With her here, actually here, living and breathing and watching him out of her eyes that were like two guided missiles homing in on his, he couldn't really get much past the picture of walking her in the door of the cabin. After that, the screen went blank.

But she said sure, sure she was hungry, and twenty minutes later he was escorting her up the bleached wooden steps of the Three Pup, as proud as if he'd made her out of clay and breathed the life into her himself.

It was eight o'clock in the evening and the sun was right there with them, showing all its teeth. The trees were staked to their shadows, the guest cottages that hadn't housed a guest in ten years sank quietly into the muskeg, birds flitted over the decaying snow machines scattered across the yard. There was the rattle of the generator, and beneath it, the whine of the mosquitoes-they were there, of course, always there, ubiquitous, but by now the daytime crew had gone home to sleep off the effects of breakfast, lunch and dinner, and the night shift had taken over. He swatted half a dozen on his forearm and flapped a protective hand round the crown of Pamela's head as they pushed through the screen door and the perpetual gloom of the place rose up to envelop them.

Half the town was gathered at the bar, including Richard Schrader and Skid Denton, who must have gone home in the interval because even he couldn't manage to drink straight through for nine and a half hours-or could he? As soon as they walked in, a general roar went up, people showing off their wit with comments like “Look what the cat dragged in,” and a couple of the guys whistled at the sight of Pamela. Who whirled round, her hands outstretched, and did a little pirouette for them. Reticence was not one of her drawbacks, that was for sure.

They had a beer at the bar, and he luxuriated in the sweet proximity of her, in the blond bundle of her hair all coiled up in a no-nonsense braid, in the grip and complexity of the muscles of her legs, in her smile. He bought her Beer Nuts, Slim Jims, pickled eggs, and they each had a shot to go with their beers while Lynette fried up a pair of steaks for them, the holster riding her hip like an excess flap of skin. It was a moment, all right-so glorious and pure he never wanted to let go of it.