Richard Ford - Rock Springs

“What about me?” Starling said. “Did I come? Or did I stay here? What about little Jackie?”

“Louie didn’t mention either one of you, isn’t that funny? I guess it slipped his mind.” Lois smiled and put her arm on Starling’s arm. “It’s just baloney, Eddie. Trashy talk.”

“I wish he was here now,” Starling said. “I’d use a beer bottle on him.”

“I know it, hon. But you should’ve heard what this little girlfriend said. It was a riot. She’s a real Ripley’s.”

“She’d need to be,” Starling said.

“Really. She said if Louie ran around on her she was going to sleep with a black man. She said she already had one picked out. She really knew how to work Louie. She said Louie had a house full of these cheap Italian carpets, and nobody to sell them to. That was his big deal he needed a partner for, by the way — not a very big market over here, I guess. She said Louie was thinking of selling them in Idaho. Good luck with that, I said. She said — and this would’ve made you laugh, Eddie, it would’ve truly — she said it’s a doggy-dog world out there. Doggy-dog. She was real cute. When she said that, Louie got down on the floor and barked like a dog. He dropped his pistol out of his whatever-you-call-it, his scabbard, and his beeper”—Lois was laughing—“he was like a big animal down on the floor of the bar.”

“I’m sorry I missed it.”

“Louie can be funny,” Lois said.

“Maybe you should’ve married him, then.”

“I did marry him.”

“Too bad you didn’t stay married to him instead of me. I don’t have a beeper.”

“I like what you have got, though, sweetheart.” She squeezed his arm. “Nobody would love me like you do, you know I think that. Reiner was just my mistake, but I can laugh at him today because I don’t have to live with him. You’re such a big mamma’s boy, you don’t want anybody to have any fun.”

“I’d like to have a little fun,” Starling said. “Let’s go where there’s some fun.”

Lois leaned and kissed him on the cheek. “You smell awfully nice.” She smiled at him. “Come on and dance with me, Ed. Justice demands that you dance with me. You have that light step. It’s nice when you do.”

Lois walked out onto the little dance floor and took Starling’s hand. He stood close to her and they danced to the slow music on the jukebox, holding together the way they had when he’d first known her. He felt a little drunk. A buzz improved a thing, he thought, made a good moment out of nothing.

“You’re a natural dancer, Eddie,” Lois said softly. “Remember us dancing at Powell’s on the beach, with everybody watching us?”

“You like having men think about you?” Starling said.

“Oh, sure. I guess.” Lois’s cheek was against his cheek. “It makes me feel like I’m in a movie, sometimes, you know? Everybody does that, don’t they?”

“I never do.”

“Don’t you ever wonder what your ex thinks about you? Old Jan. That was a long time ago, I guess.”

“Bygones are bygones to me,” Starling said. “I don’t think about it”

“You’re such a literal, Eddie. You get lost in the lonely crowd, I think sometimes. That’s why I want to be nice and make you happy.” She held him close to her so that her hard, flat hips were next to his. “Isn’t this nice? It’s nice to dance with you.”

Starling saw now that the bar was decorated with red, white, and blue crepe paper — features he’d missed. Little curlicues and ribbons and stars hung from the dark rafters and down off the shaded green bar lights and the beer signs and the framed pictures behind the back bar. This was festive, he thought. Lois had fixed it, it showed her hand. Before long a crowd would be in, the lights would go up and shine out, the music would be turned up loud. It would be a good time. “That’s nice,” Starling said.

“I just love this,” Lois said. Her head was on his shoulder. “I just love this so much.”

On the highway toward home, Starling passed the hippies he had seen at the campground. They were heading in now, the women on the rear seats, the men driving fast, leaning as if the wind blew them back.

In town, a big fireworks display staged by a shopping mall was beginning. Catherine wheels and star bursts and blue-and-pink sprays were going off in the twilight. Cars were stopped along the road, and people with children sat on their hoods, drinking beer and watching the sky. It was nearly dark and rain had begun to threaten.

“Everything’s moved out to the malls now,” Lois said, “including the fireworks.” She had been dozing and now she leaned against her door, staring back toward the lights.

“I wouldn’t care to work in one,” Starling said, driving.

Lois said nothing.

“You know what I was just thinking about?” she said after a while.

“Tell me,” Starling said.

“Your mother,” Lois said. “Your mother was a sweet old lady, you know that? I liked her very much. I remember she and I would go to the mall and buy her a blouse. Just some blouse she could’ve bought in Bullock’s in San Francisco, but she wanted to buy it here to be sweet and special.” Lois smiled about it. “Remember when we bought fireworks?”

Starling’s mother had liked fireworks. She liked to hear them pop so she could laugh. Starling remembered having fireworks one year in the time since he’d been married to Lois. When was that? he thought. A time lost now.

“Remember she held the little teenies right in her fingers and let them go off? That tickled her so much.”

“That was her trick,” Eddie said. “Rex taught her that.”

“I guess he did,” Lois said. “But you know, I don’t blame you, really, for being such a mamma’s boy, Eddie. Not with your mamma — unlike mine, for instance. She’s why you’re as nice as you are.”

“I’m selfish,” Starling said. “I always have been. I’m capable of lying, stealing, cheating.”

Lois patted him on the shoulder. “You’re generous, though, too.”

Rain was starting in big drops that looked like snow on the windshield. Lights from their subdivision glowed out under the lowered sky ahead.

“This weird thing happened today,” Starling said. “I can’t quit thinking about it.”

Lois slid over by him. She put her head on his shoulder and her hand inside his thigh. “I knew something had happened, Eddie. You can’t hide anything. The truth is just on you.”

“There’s no truth to this ,” Starling said. “Just the phone rang when I was leaving, and it was this kid, Jeff. He was in some kind of mess. I didn’t know who he was, but he thought I was his father. He wanted me to accept charges.”

“You didn’t, did you?”

Starling looked toward the subdivision. “No. I should have, though. It’s on my mind now that I should’ve helped him. I’d just finished talking to Reiner.”

“He might’ve been in Rangoon, for Christ’s sake,” Lois said. “Or Helsinki. You don’t know where he was. It could’ve cost you five hundred dollars, then you couldn’t have helped him anyway. You were smart, is what I think.”

“It wouldn’t matter, though. I could’ve given him some advice. He said somebody was in jail. It’s just on my mind now, it’ll go away.”

“Get a good job and then accept charges from Istanbul,” Lois said and smiled.

“I just wonder who he was,” Starling said. “For some reason I thought he was over in Reno — isn’t that odd? Just a voice.”

“It’d be worse if he was in Reno,” Lois said. “Are you sorry you don’t have one of your own?” Lois looked over at him strangely.

“One what?”