Joe Lansdale - Lost Echoes

A really good-looking angel, but with features that are, well, a little devilish. A really fine mouth, thick lips, and you know what some anthropologists say—the reason women with full lips are attractive is that the lips, they remind us of those other lips, down there; and man, maybe that’s true. And her hair, it was black, black, black, and long, long, long, the eyes, big doe eyes, and she’s leaning over me, and she’s just absolutely fucking gorgeous. And I’m trying not to look down her shirt, which is hard, because she’s right there bending over me, and she looks so frightened, and those breasts are banging together like two wrecking balls.

She says, “Oh, shit. Are you all right?”

“Sure,” I say, and I’m witty, Tad, get this, I really said this, said: “The concrete broke my fall.”

She grinned.

Let me tell you. She has the most beautiful teeth you have ever seen. A brand-new piano doesn’t have ivory like that.

Nice teeth.

She puts out a hand, and I take it, and she helps pull me up (strong girl), and I grin at her, and she says, “Really, you okay?”

I tell her, “Yeah, I’m fine. You ought to see how I look when I jump out of a plane without a parachute.”

Okay, I was reaching. But it wasn’t bad, and she laughed a little, and she started helping me pick up my books and recover my papers, put them in my backpack.

Then she sees the papers.

She says, “You got old man Timpson for Psychology.”

“Oh, yeah,” I say.

“Well, I’ll tell you a little something: He talks stuff in class, but if you take notes, it doesn’t do you that much good.”

“I’m finding that out.”

“Yeah, he gives tests on the book. You can forget his lectures. Read the book from cover to cover, and that’s the test.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Now I’m really looking at her, Tad, and she’s got on some really tight jeans, and there are no bulges. She looks like a model. A movie star. A goddess.

“Well,” she says, and she’s really smiling at me all the time she’s saying this, “I’d take you out for coffee, to make up for the fall, but I don’t want to keep you from class.”

And you know what, Tad? I’m thinking, she kind of likes me. Maybe I’m not too ugly after all. You know, maybe I’m all right. And I think, what the hell, and say, “I’ve been known to miss a class now and then. Especially since I know now the tests come from the book.”

So now get this. I go over with her to the student lounge, not even thinking about places that might hide bad memories, bad moments, and she buys me coffee. Two creams, no sugar, Sweet’n Low. We take our coffee just alike.

I know. It’s a little thing. But it’s a start. I’m beginning to get a sense of things here. I’m feeling comfortable.

And we talk.

We’ve got a lot in common, Tad.

The coffee business. It was a good sign.

We talked until I missed all of that class, and then the next, and she looks up, glances at her watch, shrieks. She’s missed a class too. She had one during the next hour. So I’ve missed two and she’s missed one, and she says, “Well, we’re screwed now. Why don’t we just go to lunch?”

I’m thinking, you know, we’d go there, on campus, but we walk out to her car—and here’s a big flash: I’m not even thinking about the bad places. Not even once. I’m thinking about her. Hanging on her every word.

And she’s smart, Tad. Did I say that? Smart. I can tell by the way she talks. She’s not some airhead.

But we get in her car, which is some cool ride, by the way, brand-new, and we go to lunch at Cecil’s. You know the place. Kind of nice. Nothing fancy, but the food’s good, and when we finish I’m worried about the money, see, but I’ve got just enough to pay for us both, but she says, “No. I still owe you for that fall. You get the next.”

And she pays, Tad.

Well, there’s not much to tell after that.

She dropped me off at my car, said, “See you,” but it wasn’t a dismissive kind of “see you,” ’cause I got her name and phone number, and let me tell you her name. It’s Talia McGuire. Isn’t that just the coolest name?

Talia.

I like saying it and I like writing it. Talia.

So I don’t want to be a drunk like you.

I don’t want you to be a drunk anymore like me.

I want us both to quit. I want you to teach me how to find my center while you find yours.

P.S. I hope this letter doesn’t embarrass you too much. I know looking it over, I feel a little queasy.

Help.

18

That evening Harry drove over to Tad’s, parked at the curb, went to the front door. There was a letter slot there. He took a folded envelope out of his back pocket, looked at it.

On the front he had written in big block letters: TAD .

He slipped the letter through the slot and turned away.

Inside the house, Tad, drinking a beer from the can, heard the letter slide in.

He went to the door, looked out the peephole.

Nothing.

He went to the window.

He watched Harry’s back as he walked away briskly.

Tad started to go to the door, call out to him.

But didn’t.

He feared it might interrupt his drinking.

He put the envelope on the table, sat in a chair at the dining room table, and kept sipping at his beer, considered when he should break out the whiskey, maybe get some Kleenex, shell the old corncob.

Nah. All that drinking. It would be too limp.

He might just watch some TV.

Course, he had already gotten up once to go to the door, see who was out there. Getting up twice, he had to give that some consideration.

You didn’t want to overdo it, this getting up business. Not when you had drinking to do.

Besides, the channel changer was far. He had left it in the kitchen. Why he had been carrying the channel changer around was beyond him, but from the dining room table, he could see it lying on the counter. Waiting for him.

“Come get me, Tad,” it called.

Course, he got it, then he had to find the TV.

He looked at the envelope on the table.

If he opened it, he might get a paper cut. Might be best just to let it lie, call in the paper cut squad, have them open it for him.

Was there such a thing?

Really ought to be.

A whole team, glove wearing, so they could open letters and not get cut, a bunch who would do it for someone didn’t want to take the chance.

A paper cut, it could be downright annoying.

Under certain circumstances it could even get infected and you could die.

He patted the letter and let it lie.

Tad took a long drag on his beer, held the can up, said, “Yee-haw. Ain’t life grand.”

19

Harry went over to Joey’s that night. He was surprised at himself for doing it, but the girl, the fine girl, Talia, had emboldened him. Still, he thought he’d stay out of the toilet, make sure he was drained good before he went over. Didn’t want to go there and have his new confidence shaken by the rattling of a toilet lid.

Joey’s place wasn’t much worse than his own, actually. It was down a back alley behind some buildings that looked like a place where Death might go to die. The alley smelled of urine and vomit, and there was a drunk or a bum or a drunk bum always laid out against the wall on a piece of cardboard. It was his home, that stretch of concrete, that piece of cardboard, or one like it. When it rained he was somewhere else, but most nights, when it was warm, he was here.