Bonnie Nadzam - Lamb

“A guy and his kid. Like his granddaughter?”

“Yeah. No. Like his daughter.”

He nodded. “And if somebody asked you, you could look them in the eye and say that’s what we are?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s practice.” He let go her hand. “Hey, kid, who’s that guy you’re with?”

Tommie straightened her neck, looked off into the middle distance. “What guy? Him? You mean my dad?”

They both laughed. “You’re good,” he said. “You’re very good. You could be an actress.”

“Thank you.”

“It wasn’t a compliment,” he said. “Hey. We could be a guy and a girl pretending to be an actor and an actress. How about that?”

She scrunched up her nose. “You’re confusing me.”

“You make it so easy to do.” He laughed and she crossed her arms but she was grinning. “And you’re sure you want to drive all the way through Iowa with me? And into Nebraska and Colorado and all the way out to that great ridge of rock?”

“Yeah.”

“And I’m not kidnapping you. And I don’t want to hug you or kiss you or be, you know, that way.”

“I know.”

“Good. So we’re really on?”

“On.”

“I’m serious, Tom.”

“Me too.”

“Then Rocky Mountains, here we come.” He extended his hand, and again, they shook.

While the girl was in the bathroom at a Chevron in a travel stop off I-80, Lamb bought two postcards and walked outside to the edge of the broken asphalt where trash and weeds grew in a ragged line and broken glass glittered. It was hot, and everything looked new, lighter, open. He was cut loose from the world, off the screen. He lifted his face into the heat, turned on his phone and checked for messages as he watched the front of the Chevron. He stepped over a flattened silver can, its label bleached by sunlight. A plastic straw. A yellow paper burger wrapper. He dialed Linnie.

“I got your message. I’m sorry I missed you.” The sun was high and it seared off the windshields and mirrors of cars in the filling station lot. A man in a blue jumpsuit was hosing down the lot beside a gas pump and the water sprayed like liquid light. “Are you set to go? Let me know if you’re coming.” Tommie stepped out, shielding her eyes with her hand and looking for him. “I want you to picture me thinking of you, Linnie. That’s how it will be. Call me. I have my cell. It’ll be on when I’m not out of range.”

He shut the phone as the girl approached him. “Who you talking to?”

“One of my many bosses.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“No. Why? Are you?”

Just outside of West Des Moines, set back among the ash and oak and a dozen miles off the interstate, no neighbors but a filling station and a mom-and-pop burger joint where they cut the french fries themselves, there’s a little motel spread out in fourteen tiny green cabins like game pieces on a sloping grassy board. The parking lot is breaking apart, gradually elevated by a plain of grass rising up beneath it, lifting and bearing the asphalt away as a giant sea drains off the edges of a newborn world. Each cabin is neat and newly painted. Behind the desk in the little office, they rent you rolled-up bath towels and sell nickel bars of white soap. It is as though the hands of all the Midwestern clocks had done nothing for fifty years but spin on battery-powered bolts.

“This is the world’s most perfect motel.” Lamb drove the Ford onto the uneven lot. “Now we know we’re on our way.”

There were twin beds in cabin number four. The girl sat on one of them and kicked off her filthy Keds.

“You need some new shoes.”

“I know. My toes are popping out.”

“Didn’t your mother take you shopping for school shoes?”

“Not yet.”

“Let’s put it on the list of necessary supplies. Make a mental note.”

“Okay.” She leaned back into the pillows. “I’m pooped.”

“Aren’t you going to let me turn down the bed for you?”

“Turn down the bed?”

“You’re the kind of girl,” he said, walking between the beds, “who ought to have some poor old guy turn down the bed for you every night of your life.” She laughed, but he was very solemn and waited for her to stand. He lifted the pillow and folded the heavy striped bedspread down to the footboard, then turned back the corner of the white sheets and bright blue woolen blanket into a neat triangle.

“This is like my grandma’s.”

“Michigan?”

“Yes.”

“That’s where your mom is from?”

“Yep.”

“Are you missing home?”

“No. A little.”

“That’s good,” he said. “If we’re going to be partners, we have to be square with each other, right?”

“Sure.”

He hit his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Boy am I stupid.”

“What?”

“Pajamas. We forgot to get you pajamas. A girl can’t sleep in her blue jeans.”

“I slept in my clothes at the other hotel.”

“And you shouldn’t have. It was an inexcusable oversight, starting our trip that way.”

She put her hands on her jeans. “But these are brand-new. Spanking clean.”

“Spanking clean?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “I’ll step outside and wait two minutes, okay? I’ll count to sixty twice. Very slowly. I’ll honor each number fully: thirty-two, thirty-three—just like that. You take off your slacks and fold them on the back of the desk chair, and scrub your face in the sink. Use a washcloth. And soap. Then in bed. In the morning we’ll do it all backwards.”

“Slacks?”

“Look,” he said, “give me a break?”

She heard him outside the door counting. Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight. And she did everything just as he said, washed her face with the little rectangle of perfumed soap, thirty-six, thirty-five, and a thin white washcloth, and combed her hair with her fingers, twenty-one, twenty, and checked her profile in the mirror this way, then that, and pulled back her T-shirt tight and checked for breasts, then got undressed, nine, eight, and stretched out her legs under the cold white sheets.

When Lamb stepped back into the room, he stopped short. He walked between the beds and reached for a lamp switch shaped like a small brass key. He looked at the girl’s jeans and T-shirt on the floor.

“There are your clothes.”

He bent over and retrieved them, one piece at a time, folded them, and placed them over the back of the chair, and gave her a look with his eyebrows arched.

“Got it.”

“You look so clean and fresh,” he said. “Belly full of pizza. Happy, yes?”

She nodded.

“Good,” he said. “That’s my job. Keep you happy. And you can help by telling me when you’re not. Or when you think you might not be. Right?”

“This is the life.”

“You’re sweet.” He picked up a paper sack and withdrew two plastic cups, one purple and one green, with cartoon characters dancing around the rim. “It’s all they had.”

“SpongeBob.”

“If you say so.”

He took out a red cardboard quart of whole milk and filled the cups, then took the pillow off his own bed and propped her up, touching her shoulders and the back of her head. Arranging her just so. Then he put one plastic cup of milk in her hand.

“Let me see you drink that,” he said. “God, you look good. You look just like the perfect… little person. Go on. It’s good for you.”

She smiled at him.

“Don’t you like milk?” he asked, alarmed.

“Sure.”

“But you think I’m treating you like a baby, don’t you? I’m not. A young woman like yourself needs milk for her bones.”

He raised his cup and she hers. They drank.

“I was really smart to get that milk.” He grinned. “It was just what you needed in that twin bed.”