She sits down next to me.
“And part of me is okay with it, if he stays there, if I never see him again.” I pause for a few seconds. “But there’s another part of me…that isn’t okay.”
She lays a hand over mine.
“I just want to be okay.”
“You will be. Give it time.”
“How much time?”
She smiles at me a sad smile. “I don’t know, Paul.”
And I suppose I’ll have to be okay with that. I turn to her and look at her with a new respect. With new eyes. She’s not the same as she was before. More than just my old maid aunt.
I fling an arm around her neck, hugging her. She pats my shoulder, and even that isn’t the same. I don’t think I’ve ever hugged her in my life.
I pull away suddenly and wipe the wetness from my eyes.
She stands up. “You should get some sleep.”
“I will.”
“You’ve got work tomorrow.”
“No. No, I’m off.” I look up at her. “Do you want to do something?”
She beams at me. “I’d like that.”
“Okay. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Paul.”
Then she leaves me alone, with my thoughts, with my unokayness, and tears that pour in a strange relief and happiness I shouldn’t really feel, and I can’t explain, but exists just the same.
It’s probably because I keep looking at his empty balcony.
And dark windows.
And the unfinished letter on the bedside table.
And just when I think I’ve got it all under control, I’ll catch the scent of something with an orangey spice. Or I’ll see the Lifebuoy soap in the aisles at Eckert’s. And Aunt Amy drove us by the King Tut Drive-In, and I couldn’t explain to her why I needed to go home and be alone for a little while. Why I needed to just lock myself up in the guest room and just lie there. For hours. It’s just little things like that, silly things that wouldn’t have mattered to me at all before, but mean so much now, heavily hanging around my neck like links in a chain.
I don’t want to let him go.
But at some point, I’ll have to, won’t I?
On a Saturday night, the soda fountain has quite a crowd. School kids blowing off steam, some of them older, wearing sweaters with colors from the university. The music is loud. There’s a new Bobby Freeman song, and it has several repeats throughout the evening. But the giggling and gossip and flirtation drowns it out, and I work behind the counter with Billy.
Billy yammers on and on while we mix up milkshakes and make root beer floats. He’s got a constellation of freckles all over his cheeks, and an aw-shucks-smile to charm the panties right off the girls. And he doesn’t seem to get the hint when I walk away from him and all his yammering. He gets on this tangent about a transistor radio he wants his folks to get him for Christmas.
“But not that hunk of junk from the hardware store,” he says. “No sir. It doesn’t have the right antenna. And do my folks know that? Heck no. They’re so square they’re practically cubes.”
I go looking for a spill at the other end of the counter. Billy follows me.
“Cube heads, is what I call them,” he says, distractedly wiping at a glass and not getting any of the water stains off. “That’s what I’m going to say from now on. The Cube Heads. But, gee, wouldn’t it be swell if they got me that Magnavox from the Sears Roebuck?”
I look around at the crowd, almost pleading for anyone to come up and ask me for a cream soda. Or better yet, a hot fudge sundae. Anything that takes a while and gives me something else to do.
