You Only Get Letters from Jail Page 10

  “I know it’s you. Nolan from Andrew Jackson Junior High.”

  I nodded and tried to breathe through my eyes because they were the only things open.

  “It’s me, Ivy. Ivy Greenway. You have to remember me.” She smiled at me and I did remember her. She was my girlfriend in eighth grade. Ivy—my friends used to groan and grab their nuts, tell me how badly they wanted to climb her, ask me if she was poison. She was the first girl to put her tongue in my mouth and to take mine even before I was sure that I was ready to give it.

  “I remember you,” I said. I cleared my throat and swallowed something thick that I would’ve rather spit.

  She tucked her hair behind her ear. “You’re not smiling,” she said. “Was I that bad?”

  A car rolled to the curb behind us and two guys in heavy jackets got out. They both pulled wallets from their back pockets and stood near us, lined up and waiting their turn. Ivy pushed her receipt into her purse and I saw the white edge of twenties go with it. “Go ahead,” she said to me.

  “What?”

  “I’m done. You can have the machine.”

  I shifted my weight and moved my feet a little bit, as though I was caught between stepping forward and turning to leave. The two guys looked at me. Over their shoulders I could see my mom’s Plymouth down the street waiting for me. I could hit it at a dead run and I might be able to get past the guys if I swung wide, but it would be impossible to run without raising my arms, and as soon as the knife came up for its first slice of air, I had a feeling that I would be kissing asphalt and getting to know these guys a lot better. There was sweat on the back of my neck, under the hood of my sweatshirt, and I was cold.

  “I left my wallet in the car,” I said. I nodded toward the street and both of the guys turned to look at the Plymouth. Then they turned back and looked at me. “Go ahead,” I said.

  They each gave me a hard stare and I felt their eyes drop and slide down the front of me. I didn’t flinch. I exhaled through my nose and the air came out in puffs of steam like stallion snorts. I paced the breaths—easy in and easy out. Their eyes touched off me and skipped around but they didn’t land for very long. The shorter one stepped past me and then they were both past me, and I could hear them settling up with the machine.

  “You taking two?” the shorter one asked.

  “Three,” the tall one said. “Might as well.”

  My mouth watered and I thought about what it would take to drop both of them and double down, and I realized that it would probably take a .38 and I didn’t have a gun.

  In the time it took for me to fantasize taking the guys down with a knife, doing some kind of karate move, they had settled up and were gone and Ivy had dug a cigarette out of her purse. “You don’t happen to have a lighter, do you?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Damn. I should’ve asked those guys. They totally smelled like weed. Did you smell them? Jesus.”

  I shook my head again. All I could smell was the dirty paper scent of money.

  “We probably could’ve got a dime bag off of them,” Ivy said. “I don’t know why I just stood here and passed that up. Damn.” She pinched her cigarette between her front teeth and started digging through her purse again. “You don’t happen to have any weed, do you?” she asked.

  I shook my head. The knife handle was getting sweaty, and I hadn’t realized how heavy it would get after holding it awhile. The longest that I had ever had one in my hand was when I was helping my mother chop vegetables in the kitchen.

  “Does your car have a lighter?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I guess so,” I said.

  “Can I use it?” She held up her cigarette. She started walking down the sidewalk toward the Plymouth. I heard a siren but could not tell which direction the sound came from, or how close it might be. I wondered what kind of emergency was happening while I stood there with my mom’s knife squeezed tight to my leg. Ivy stopped and looked back. “Are you coming?” she asked.

  She waited for me to catch up to her, but I hung back a few steps so that she would be less likely to notice my knife-handed lockstep. “It’s freezing,” she said. “I hope your heater works.”

  I imagined us sitting in the Plymouth, parked at the curb with the engine going so the heater could run and Ivy’s window cracked so she could ash her cigarette over the glass while I watched busloads of old women stop in front of the cash machine so they could all take a turn at the money.

  There were Christmas lights in some of the store windows, and the sidewalk reflected back reds and greens and blues. I wished that Christmas lights never had to come down, but there was something naked about strings of bulbs left exposed in the daytime, and their only good moment was when the sun set and the light left the sky and they came on, strand after strand, blinking quietly. Ivy tripped on a crack in the sidewalk that I didn’t see—the concrete had been splintered and raised in an odd angle so that the two panels were no longer flush, and she hit it just right, her left foot going first, and her ankle rolled and instead of going down, palms out and ready, she grabbed for me, took two handfuls of sweatshirt, and I did what came naturally and reached out to catch her. My hand had gone numb from the elbow down and I didn’t know that I had dropped the knife until I heard its dull thud on the cement, handle and then blade, a muted clatter that didn’t sound metal at all. Ivy looked down but I didn’t.

  “Jesus,” she said.

  We stood there for a minute, most of her weight pressed against me, her left ankle still on its side and my sweatshirt knotted in her fists. We were clouded in the steam from our breath, and when it finally cleared and she was able to stand upright, shake me loose, I moved the knife a little with my foot, poked at it as though I were checking a snake for life.

  Ivy reached down and picked it up. She held it out toward the light in the window next to us so that the blade glowed weak blue. “This is a big knife,” she said. She kept it in her hand and walked the rest of the way to the car, and when she was beside it, she waited for me to unlock and open her door as though this was prom night and the dance was over and instead of the table centerpiece or a mint tin stamped with Dream a Little Dream, our party favor was a twelve-inch Wusthof, the handle black with a red trident, our school colors and the weapon of our mascot—Home of the Tritons.

  When I shut her door and I could see her through the window, the cigarette that she’d dropped when she stumbled, wrinkled but not crushed, the knife on the dashboard, I thought about running. My legs ached with the urge. A car passed on the street and I wanted to raise my hand and block my face from its headlights, but I looked into them instead, full force with both eyes open until they passed.

  I swung my door open and folded myself into the seat. Ivy had the lighter pushed in and was waiting for the pop. “It works without the engine on,” she said.

  I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel and stared at the lighter, too.

  “Any second now,” she said.

  The car smelled like mildew from where the rear power window leaked. I tried keeping a towel below it, but when the rain came, there wasn’t much that I could do. By December it was a water trap and created a constant smell of wet and damp that I got used to. The lighter popped and Ivy pulled it from the dash, sucked her cigarette to life, and the smell of mildew faded in favor of smoke.

  Ivy exhaled loudly. “Perfect. Sometimes you get to the point where you want this taste so badly, you know? I mean, maybe people who don’t smoke just don’t get it—the way these just taste good—that first puff when you know you’re finally getting a cigarette you’ve been waiting for. I can’t explain it.”

  I could feel the sharp edges of keys in my front pocket and I was reminded of the sharp edge of knife on my thigh, and I fished the keys out and set the ring in my lap but didn’t move to start the car.

  “I only smoke Lucky Strikes,” Ivy said. She held up her cigarette and squinted one eye against the smoke so she could admire it. “Back in the twent
ies they used to advertise Lucky Strikes as a way to lose weight—you know, have a cigarette instead of a cookie. Women were chain-smoking them to their filters.” She exhaled and reached for the window crank but there was nothing but the armrest and the button.

  “They’re electric,” I said.

  She cupped her hand under the tip of her cigarette and waited.

  “Sorry,” I said. I fumbled the key to the ignition and turned it so that the window could come down. Ivy tipped her cigarette over the edge and I watched the ash fall and stick to the drops of moisture on the glass. I knew that by the time she finished her cigarette the passenger side of the car would be peppered with gray.

  “So women were smoking these things like crazy and staying skinny and Lucky Strike’s sales went up something like three hundred percent. You gotta admire that. That’s why I smoke them.”

  I could hear the soft click of the keys as they dangled from the ignition, and the sound became quieter and quieter as the motion ran out of them. Outside of the car the street was empty and the cash machine was nothing more than a strip of light under an awning. It was getting later.

  Ivy pinched her cigarette between her lips, squinted an eye, and picked the knife up from the dashboard. “So, is this for personal protection, or are you just paranoid?”

  I reached for the knife but she held it back and out of my reach. I would’ve had to slide across the seat to take it and it seemed like too much distance to cross. There was an entire section of brown vinyl between us, and a third seat belt, and so I dropped my hand and let her keep it.

  “It’s my mom’s,” I said. I folded my hands in my lap and looked down at them.

  “So, you’re taking it out for a ride? Getting it some air?”

  I felt hot and confined. “It’s a long story,” I said.

  “Well, considering you don’t have a radio in here, we don’t have much else to kill the time with.” There was a hole in the dash where the radio had been—a decent aftermarket that one of my mom’s boyfriends had installed as a birthday present. I told her that it had gotten stolen when I was at school; somebody popped the lock and yanked it. She had been disappointed and angry and told me that it wasn’t safe to drive her car to school and afterward I found myself freezing my ass off and walking in the half dark to get to first period on time, but I got forty bucks to pawn it outright, and I had managed to roll that forty into about two hundred, on a streak, until last weekend and a bad Sunday.

  “Do you know what point spreads are?” I said.

  Ivy held her cigarette out and poked at the paper with the tip of the knife. “Maybe,” she said. “Something about sports, right?”

  “Betting sports. Basically it evens out the chances of either team winning by adjusting the score. But that’s not important.”

  “But it’s important enough for you to have your mom’s knife.”

  “Okay, last Sunday I put everything I had on the Patriots game against the Jets—took the spread at plus 8.5 with the Patriots as the favorite—I mean, playing at home, on a roll—and with the Jets out a starting running back and Pennington throwing like shit, they’d have to put the ball on the ground and New England’s defense against the run was going to shut the Jets down. It was a sure thing.” I unlocked my fingers and flexed them. I had been squeezing them together so tightly that my wrists were numb.

  “It was a sure thing? I take it that it wasn’t.”

  “I also bet the under.”

  “You lost me,” she said.

  “What it comes down to is that I bet on one game and I lost two ways, and now I owe this guy Richie Dobkins a hell of a lot of money and he’s going to serve me up a lot of pain when I can’t pay him in the morning.” My voice almost cracked but I cleared my throat and caught the waver.

  Ivy’s cigarette was impaled like a bug on the tip of the knife and she raised the blade up so she could take a drag like she was smoking a roach. She held it for a second and then exhaled toward the window, and the window steamed over until the smoke rose and cleared. “So this is personal defense in case the guy jumps you, right? Get him before he gets you and all that.”

  I looked out my window at the street and saw a small dog walking down the sidewalk on the opposite side. It was a wiry dog with dark hair and it sniffed at the doorways and posts but did not linger. I couldn’t see a collar on him, but the way that he walked made me think that he knew where he was going.

  “I just need some money,” I whispered. The dog lifted his leg against a parking meter and then kept moving west. I felt something sharp in my thigh. Ivy was pushing the knife into my jeans.

  “You were going to fucking rob me,” she said. “You were gonna what . . . take my money? Stab me?” She pushed on the blade and I thought I could feel my jeans open up to let the point through.

  “It wasn’t like that,” I said. I tried to edge away from her but I was pinned against the door. “I didn’t know it was you.”

  She pushed the knife again and this time I felt it go beneath my jeans. “So if it hadn’t been me—say it was some other woman—you were gonna wave this knife at her and scare the shit out of her and take her money? Because you lost a fucking bet?”

  She pushed the knife again but there wasn’t much pain. “I guess so,” I whispered.

  Ivy pulled the knife back and tapped the blade against the dashboard. “That is fucking ballsy,” she said. “I mean, totally insane, but absolutely Clint Eastwood. I love it.”

  My lungs felt like two tiny sacs that couldn’t hold more than a puff.

  “Oh my God, I had no idea that you were this kind of guy. I mean, where was all this when we were going out in eighth grade?”

  I shook my head.

  “Remember that time we made out in your bedroom when your mom was gone and you got all freaked out?”

  “I didn’t freak out,” I said. I wanted to rub my leg. I needed to feel for a puncture mark through my jeans, broken skin, blood.

  “You freaked out. We were kissing, tongues and everything—and you got a total hard-on and when I reached down and touched it you jumped up and went downstairs and turned on the TV.”

  I remembered kissing Ivy, and there had been a lot of hard-ons, and I couldn’t imagine that if she’d offered to touch it I would’ve turned her down.

  “I was totally willing to have sex with you that day,” she said.

  I touched my thigh with the tips of my fingers but I couldn’t feel a break in the fabric. My leg was not warm with blood.

  “You missed your chance.” She smiled at me and I wasn’t sure if she winked or if she had something in her eye, but I was suddenly tired. I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. “I have an idea,” she said. “You know where the Loaf ’n’ Jug is on Twin Oaks? Out there past the three-way signal?”

  I nodded.

  “Take me there. I have a really good idea.”

  I looked at her but didn’t move. I had thirty-six bucks and that would get me enough gas to drive three hours in any direction. I tried to imagine all of the possible ways the radius might extend if I were at the center of the circle.

  “Come on. I’m not kidding. You’ll be so happy, I swear.” She reached over and patted me on the leg and I tried to measure if there was any pain. Just because I couldn’t feel my leg bleeding, didn’t mean that it wasn’t. I turned the key and the ignition caught and the engine turned twice and fired. Ivy pulled the control on the heater to high. “I have to be honest, though.” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the noise of the fan. “Before, when I said that stuff about getting weed from those guys—I was just kidding.” She smiled and rubbed her hands together in front of the vent. “I’ve never gotten high—I don’t even know for sure what pot smells like. I don’t know why I said that I did.”

  The Loaf ’n’ Jug sat on a weed patch of yellowed grass about a mile past the last trailer park and fifty yards from sheet-metaled wrecking yards, chain-link fences, and a Pick-n-Pull that offered a
free yard shuttle on a flatbed trailer behind a GMC dually on Saturdays and Sundays so you didn’t have to walk the lot. The asphalt was potholed and littered with crushed cans and bottles and chip bags and candy wrappers and cardboard beer cases and enough plastic six-pack rings to strangle a hundred seagulls at the dump. When we were parked and the engine was off and ticking, Ivy turned toward me and put her hand on mine, and even though it was warm and dry as paper, I had to stop myself from sliding out from under it and folding my hands in my lap, where they belonged.

  “I’m gonna do this for you, okay? So don’t worry about it. This place keeps their entire day of sales in the register—they don’t even drop the cash until they close out at night. There’s hundreds in there. Maybe thousands.” Her hand squeezed mine and I could feel the bones in her fingers. “It’s the easiest money in town. I swear.”

  I shifted in the seat and the springs under the vinyl squeaked. Ivy dropped my hand and then she moved out of my reach and took the knife and the dome light came on before I could say anything, and then she was out of the car and pushing the door of the Loaf ’n’ Jug open. It opened without sound. I watched her walk to the counter, but it was hard to see her behind the warning signs and ID laws and MasterCard logos and beer ads and Shoes Required stickers on the door. I tipped my head at an angle, but I could see only segments of her—the bottom of her jacket, the back of her left leg, an elbow. I tried to piece them all together to make a picture of her inside at the counter, but I couldn’t remember if she was right-handed or left-handed and the knife kept switching position. She was in there for a long time.

  I looked over my shoulder at the empty road behind us and I waited to see flashing lights in the distance, red on blue, but there was nothing but Christmas lights at the wrecking yards and pinpoints of white sodium globes peppering front lots like low-hanging stars. There was fog in the fields, suspended above the patchy weeds, and it shifted and broke up as bursts of breeze blew through it.