James Hynes - Next

But he never loved her. So that when she dumped him — or rather when he walked in on her fucking one of her housemates in her bare little room up under the eaves on Jefferson Avenue and she sat up on the mattress without even bothering to pull the covers up, she smiled and just kind of shrugged at him, and he just kind of shrugged back. Because that was the same summer he was in love with the Philosopher’s Daughter, and what he sees now in Kelly/Joy Luck/TGWWLL is the best of both worlds — both Lynda’s effortless sensuality and the imperious passion of the Philosopher’s Daughter, or at least the passion the Philosopher’s Daughter said she was looking for — and now this is his last chance, while he’s still young enough, fit enough, good-looking and charming enough to persuade a girl possibly half his age that, despite what Ian did to her — that feckless asshole — and despite what the Philosopher’s Daughter told him — that vain, heartless bitch — he is capable of tenderness and passion.

Kelly’s veering from Lamar Avenue now, away from the waterfall rumble of traffic crossing a bridge over the river, toward a pedestrian bridge running parallel to it. Under the shadows of the exhausted, drooping trees along the riverbank, Kevin can see figures improbably jogging along a dirt trail. Kelly pauses at a crosswalk to slam a lamppost button with the heel of her hand, then sprints across without waiting for the light. Kevin jogs to catch up, sweat pouring off him, his own scent rising like steam from the open collar of his wilted shirt, and this time he reaches the crosswalk just as the signal flashes WALK. Kelly disappears under a wide spiral ramp that descends from the end of the pedestrian bridge, and Kevin hangs back at the edge of the running trail, his heart pounding from the heat, his exertion, his excitement. In the shadow of the bridge and the trees it’s just as hot as it is in the sun, like being stuck in a windowless, airless room. Two runners in opposite directions labor past each other on the trail, dust puffing behind their shoes: a bare-chested young man in skimpy shorts, his calves and thighs bulging, and a firm-limbed young woman in a sweat-splotched sports bra, her taut muscles gliding under her skin, her blond ponytail swinging metronomically, the hem of her shorts — the Texas state flag — swaying like a bell. Kevin notes the rictus of effort on their faces, the knotted foreheads, the tightened mouths; it’s almost like they’re having sex with each other, but they pass without a glance. Beyond them, even the river looks exhausted — a dull, unmoving sheen of olive green. These people, Kevin thinks, these jogging Texans, they’re like a whole other race of creatures, subtropical übermenschen genetically engineered to run in the heat, killer androids from the future walking through flame. It makes him even hotter to watch them; he can feel his shirt clinging to him like wet tissue. He glances at his watch; it’s nearly twelve o’clock, but then he remembers that he didn’t set his watch back, which means it’s only eleven here, but even so, his interview is at two. What does he think is going to happen if he actually catches up to Kelly? For an instant Jiminy Cricket nearly gets the upper hand — she just broke up with her boyfriend, you idiot, like, ten minutes ago, so go back the way you came, scuttle from coffee shop to air-conditioned coffee shop, drink lots of iced tea, let your shirt air out, and act your age —but then he sees Kelly again, on a flight of stairs that rises to the pedestrian bridge under the winding ramp. Her back is erect with rage and hurt, but her walk is still as feral as a cat’s, a stain of sweat plastering the back of her camisole to her spine.

He’s tugged forward by the sight, he can’t help himself. He’s never felt this excited about Stella, not even at the beginning. Stella was an accident, a mistake, and now she’s practically living with him. She’s even talking about children, for God’s sake. In the car on the way home from Gaia, the same frigid February night they’d run into Beth, Stella was quieter than usual as they crawled through the dark toward home. She held their dinner — two fat slices of turkey loaf — on her lap, under the roaring heat vent to keep it warm. Normally she’d have been talking a mile a minute, restlessly dipping into their takeout and eating crumbling pieces of turkey loaf with her fingers, but instead she sat with her cap pulled down to her eyebrows and watched the blurred lights of oncoming cars and the snow gliding in long streaks toward the windshield, all the while making those abrupt little gestures that meant she was having a conversation with herself in the Stella Continuum. At last she sighed and turned to him, and he thought: this won’t be good.

“What?” He shifted in his seat, his parka hissing.

“We haven’t talked about kids,” she said.

Wherever Beth was at the moment — Kevin realized with a pang that he had no idea anymore where she and Noah lived — she was picking up the vibe of this conversation, hearing it in real time over whatever jungle telegraph women are hooked into and, of course, laughing her ass off. Joining her from wherever he was, was McNulty, though his laughter was less sarcastic and triumphant and I-told-you-so, and more rueful and world-weary and I-been-there-buddy. Back when they were both working at Big Star, McNulty had somehow managed to score a younger girlfriend for a time, a tall, spooky redhead, and he’d gotten her pregnant. He told Kevin about it late one soporific weekday afternoon when they were both at the cash register. McNulty wreathed his head in a cloud of cigarette smoke as if he was trying to hide behind it.

“Is she going to have it?” Kevin dropped his voice, even though there were no customers in the store. He could only wonder what that would be like, to be a father at McNulty’s advanced age of forty.

“No,” said McNulty, wearily rubbing his face. “I’m paying for an abortion.” He breathed smoke. “Least I could do.” He sucked the smoke back in. “But she doesn’t want to see me after that.”

Kevin stammered something, but McNulty only shook his head and stared through the swirling smoke as if at something on the horizon. “The thing is,” he said, “at my age, if you want to hang onto a younger woman, you have to be willing to give her children.”

Only now did he focus on Kevin through the blue haze.

“I don’t expect you to understand this now,” McNulty said, in his diffident stoner drone. “But someday, you will.”

And now, Kevin did. In the stifling silence of the car, the tires of his Accord crunching over packed snow and the chains of the cars in the opposite lane rattling like maracas, Kevin thought of all the things he could say. We haven’t talked about kids? I’ll say we haven’t! And we’re not going to! Not now, not ever. It was one of those heart-freezing moments, when they wait to let you have it until you’re in an enclosed space, with no place to run. (When Beth cornered him in the bath, for example.) What are you talking about — kids? Are you crazy? We’re not like that, Stella. Their relationship was predicated on a cute meet and a blow job, and maintained on the basis of a lot of semisincerely enthusiastic sex. But of course he couldn’t say that, so he said nothing, listening to the chains of the oncoming cars clinking at him like Marley’s ghost.

“So what do you think?” she said.

His mouth was so dry, he wasn’t sure he could speak, even if he wanted to.

“I’m almost fifty,” he said at last.

“So?”

“So, figure it out. Say we start tonight, I’d be fifty-one by time the kid would be born. That means I’d be”—God help him, was this true? — “nearly seventy before he graduates from high school.”