I’ll Be Fine!
Thirsty Work — Chapter 21: when you’re not the real girlfriend
Two young women from California travel to New Orleans in search of redemption after the death of their mother. Carolee thinks she will show her little sister the world, but what they find in the barrooms of the French Quarter at Mardi Gras is more than she knows how to handle, or could have imagined back home. This is the twenty-first chapter of the novel Thirsty Work.
When I woke the next morning, everything was different — again. There were the usual bodies scattered across the floor and mattresses, wheezing and snoring. But their faces no longer inspired my affection. Their stories didn’t pique my interest. I’d already heard them all.
Howie, I saw, hadn’t pulled his sleeping bag next to mine. And I knew even before I asked him that it wouldn’t prove convenient for me to visit him at his parents house in Boston right now, as Cathy and I had hoped. They probably wouldn’t be delighted to meet me. They probably preferred a certain refinement in their guests — people who had heard of the Seven Sisters.
I was the first one up. And after taking a shower in the rusted stall I pulled on some almost-clean clothes and began the slow and vaguely satisfying ritual of packing up. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I was going somewhere. I put my clothes in my cloth bag. Packed up my toothbrush. My frying pan. My journal. My guitar. I rolled my sleeping bag neatly. First folding it in half, then curling the edge up over and into itself, tight and smooth, like a snail shell. I tied it good and tight.
As my pile of belongings grew, the others rose from their beds. Some showered, some made coffee, some started sorting through their things.
“You guys leaving today?” I heard Doug ask Peter in a sleepy drawl.
“Yeah, we’re heading out just as soon as we get the bus loaded up.”
“Are you going back home? Or back to college?”
“We’re going to swing by Philly and see the folks before we head back out to Stockton. I’m off until next semester. How about you?”
“I don’t know,” Doug put his hand on his bare shoulder. Shrugged. “I might take off with these lovely ladies for awhile. They want me to visit them in Bloomfield. Then again, there’s two more weeks paid on the rent in this flat; so I might just stay here and use it up.”
I felt a flicker in my gut, pictured Doug and me left behind in the flat. Then I saw him leaving me behind to visit Aunt Viv on his own. I saw her face buried in his shoulder. His hand on her waist. The black hairs on his knuckles. I turned back to packing my bag.
Cathy was excited to tell everyone about her upcoming adventure — the trip to Connecticut that she was making with Carl in an 18-wheel truck. He was already out, picking it up. He must have left before I got out of bed. Her face was glowing.
“How about you?” Howard finally got around to asking. I tried to act casual.
“I don’t know,” I looked up at him sideways. “I guess I’m kind of at loose ends. Do you have any ideas?”
I saw a tension enter his face, an almost imperceptible pull backwards. “Well, no. Not really. I’d invite you to visit me in Boston, but I’m not sure when I’ll wind up there. I’m going to kick around on the highways for awhile.”
“Hmmm,” I nodded. Waited. Nothing.
I picked up my sleeping bag and carried it outside. I tried to ignore the flutter of excitement I felt when Howard followed me out to the car. I opened the back of the Volkswagon and slung the bag in.
“I could drive you there. If you wanted,” I said, straightening. “Then I could meet Cathy in Connecticut and she wouldn’t have to come all the way back here to join up before we head home. We could take the Northern route back, see something different.” I stepped closer to him. Put my arm around his waist. “I wouldn’t have to meet your parents. If you didn’t want me to.”
Howard pulled me into an embrace and for the length of his kiss I felt a wash of relief and affection. When he pulled away, my face was flush with it. As soon as he saw that, his own turned dark.
“I’m sorry, Carolee. It just can’t work that way.” His hands were still on my shoulders.
“Why not?”
“Because of something I…Oh shit,” he dropped his hands and looked away from me, toward the building. “I should have told you this a long time ago, but I didn’t want to spoil things. This Mardi Gras has been so perfect. We’ve been having so much fun.” He looked at me for agreement, his face empty of shame.
“What should you have told me?”
“I have a girl back in Boston. She’s been waiting for me. She’s expecting me back any day now. So that’s why you can’t come.”
It wasn’t that bad. In the silence that fell after his words, I found I didn’t care about him anyway. He wasn’t handsome. He wasn’t kind. He wasn’t even particularly smart. But here he stood, rejecting me, right out on the sidewalk. He’d had the sweetest part of me and given it back.
“Shit.”
“Listen Carolee, maybe I can come and visit you in California,” Howard offered. “I’m only planning on staying home for a couple of months. You could write me with your address and…”
“Write you? I could write you? What’s your girlfriend gonna say about that?”
“We have a pretty open relationship — outside of Boston.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck me?” Howard was incredulous. “Carolee, I’m just trying to make things right here. There’s no need to get mad.”
“No, Howard, maybe YOU don’t have to get mad, but I do. I DO have to get mad!”
Howard put his hands up in front of him. “Whatever you say,” backing away from me as if from a crazy person. I envisioned shooting him in the forehead. There wouldn’t be much blood, at first. Just a deep black hole. Small and round. His body would fall heavily to the sidewalk with a dull, thud.
“You’re not the only one with a girlfriend. You know that, Howard? I have a boyfriend too! Back in Stockton. I have a very good boyfriend who wants to marry me. But I thought, when we made love, that meant WE were having a relationship. I thought it meant those OTHER relationships would have to change.”
Howard shook his head. “I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression. Maybe your boyfriend is disposable but Mary’s been my girlfriend since we were little. I’m not going to let her down.”
I would have grabbed him. I would have grabbed him around the throat and squeezed the life out of him with my fingers if I’d thought I could accomplish it. I didn’t love him. I HATED him. No, I didn’t hate him. I didn’t fucking care!!!
Still I turned to my little blue Volkswagon wagon and kicked it with the solid toe of my Tony Lama boot. I made a dent in the door and hurt my foot. Then I started hopping up and down on the other foot, grabbing my hurt foot with my fingers, almost losing my balance and making animal sounds.
Howard took a tentative step toward me.
“Get away from me” I shrieked. “Fucking asshole!”
I tried not to notice the faces at the window, watching. I flung the door open to my little car, got inside and slammed the door behind me.
Howard turned and went back inside the flat.
I sunk down in my seat, put my head to my knees, and tried to cry for a minute, as much because my foot was throbbing as anything Howard had said. Then Cathy came out to the car. I was sitting in the passenger seat, so she walked around to the driver’s side. “Are you okay, Carolee?” she asked, climbing in beside me.
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
“I guess this means you’re not going to be visiting Howard in Boston?”
“Nope.”
“Well listen, I talked to Carl, and you could come with us, if you wanted. There’s room for three in the truck. I has a whole little bed behind the cab and everything. Real deluxe.”
“That sounds like a whole lotta fun, all cramped up inside a tiny cab and trying not to get in your way.”
“But Carolee, I really want to go with Carl on this trip and I don’t feel good about leaving you alone behind here.”
Cathy’s hair lifted slightly in an uncommon breeze and I saw for a moment just how beautiful she’d become. Did that happen in the last three weeks? Or had she always looked this way — like a grown woman? Her cheeks had smoothed out, her lips filled, eyebrows rounded. There was a softness in her cheeks where there had been a hard edge before. As I studied her face, the spray of freckles, the round pink nostrils, I felt grateful that she was still waiting for my blessing, that she still considered me the leader on this trip. God knows I didn’t feel like it.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” I pulled my dignity together. “I’ll be fine! I can just stay here with Doug. The rent’s paid for two more weeks. Or Sally said I could stay with her. I might take her up on it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course!”
She reached across the stick shift to hug me and I found myself holding on for a little longer than was comfortable. “Just one thing,” I said as she pulled away from me.
“What is it?”
“You get back here safely, okay? No more than two weeks from tomorrow. Sally and I will have a good time, but I’ll be ready to head back home by then.”
“Okay, Carolee. I promise.”
Cathy turned to leave the car and I felt a rush of fear. I’d brought her out here, 2,000 miles from home, and now I was letting her go off without me. What if something happened? What if she didn’t get back? How would I even know how to find her?
“Cathy wait!” I grabbed her arm.
She turned back, alarmed.
“I want you to call me every day. You can call Matassa’s, where Sally bartends, and if I’m not there you can leave me a message about where you are and what kind of progress you’re making. Okay? So I won’t have to worry?”
“I’ll try,” she intoned, pulling her hand out of mind. “Just don’t worry!”
“And Cathy,” I grabbed it back. “One more thing.”
“What now?”
“I know you love Carl and think he’s the greatest and would never do anything to hurt you. But the truth is, that we don’t know anything about this man.”
“What are you trying to say?” she frowned.
“I’m not saying he’s a bad guy. I’m not saying anything. But please, just for me, do me one little favor.” Her eyes narrowed with suspicion as she waited to hear it. “Please just keep some money in your purse that you don’t tell him about. Will you do that for me, Cathy? Just keep aside enough money to get you back here on a Greyhound bus. That way, if anything goes wrong, you won’t be helpless.”
“You are so fucking paranoid.”
“Maybe I am. Maybe I am. But Cathy, I am responsible for you. If anything happened to you, I couldn’t survive it. Please do this one little thing for me. Tell me you’re going to do it!”
She groaned as if I had handed her a heavy burden. “Okay.”
I felt my muscles unclench and let go of her hand. But this time it was she who hesitated before leaving, her hand resting lightly on the handle of the door.
“Talk about being responsible, what happened to you last night? I couldn’t find you anywhere. You never came back from the bathroom. I was worried that something bad happened.”
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, looking down at the floor. “I wasn’t feeling good. I should have said good-bye. I walked home.”
“All that way?!?”
Now the energy in the car traveled in the opposite direction. I edged away from Cathy, pressing my back against the window. She leaned into me.
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” I shook my head. “I mean something, but not to me, and we shouldn’t get into it right now. Oh look,” I pointed at an enormous truck that barely fit on the street edging towards us. “Carl is back.”
Cathy gave me a frown.
“I’ll tell you about it later. I promise. You better run.”
“Okay. If you mean it. If you’re sure you’re going to be all right here.”
“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
She leaned over and gave me a hard hug. “You take care of yourself,” she said. “I’ll see you in two weeks.”
“Two weeks.”
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