I'm Your Girl. J.J. Murray

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СКАЧАТЬ sure five hundred will be enough?” I had wanted to tip him real nice with my body. I had wanted to climb Mount Maxwell. I still do.

      He had looked at me with those sleepy eyes of his. “My wife says I shoulda asked for more.”

      His wife. Of course he had a wife. She has to be the happiest woman in world history. She probably has an orgasm every time Robert opens the front door to their house.

      “She say one of our boys needs him some braces, and my oldest daughter needs her car fixed.” That added up to at least four children. Robert Maxwell was a potent man.

      I had felt terrible for taking advantage of him just to save me some money, so I had paid him $750 cash after taking an advance out on my MasterCard. I had reached up to shake his hand, and I had watched my hand disappear into his. “Take care,” I had said, hoping to see my hand again.

      “Call me anytime.”

      And I do. I call that man, a real man that only the Lord God in the highest heaven could make. I have Robert Maxwell’s number on speed dial, and I call him every time something inside or outside the house breaks, just to see him in the flesh.

      I even break stuff…just because.

      Hmm.

      I think I’ll need him to redo my sidewalk. It’s all pitted like the surface of the moon. Yes. He’d have to break it up with a jackhammer or sledgehammer….

      That makes me dizzy just thinking about it. And maybe I’ll get some real cigarettes this time, you know, to support Virginia’s economy.

      But can I see the sidewalk from my bedroom window? Hmm. I may have to get comfortable in the living room. But can you pour concrete in December? I bet you can’t.

      What else can I break around here?

      4

      Jack

      Merry Christmas, Daddy….

      “Stevie?”

      I sit up too quickly and hit my head on the slats for the top bunk of Stevie’s bed.

      Again. When will you learn?

      How did I get here?

      You were drinking heavily.

      I only had three—

      Five.

      Okay, five mugs of eggnog. At least I won’t need breakfast. I’ve already had my dairy and eggs for the rest of the week.

      I look up at the torn black lining under the top bunk. One little hole, and Stevie had found it, taking one tiny finger and rrrrrrrr-ip. And instead of fixing it properly, I had only duct taped the sides and put a few pushpins here and there.

      It did the job.

      But it looks tacky.

      I’m a grown man sleeping in my boy’s bed. Funny, I hardly had to do that when he was…when he was here. Noël did most of the soothing in this house, whispering him back to sleep whenever he had a bad dream. He would call out only to her in the night.

      And here I am calling out to him in the morning.

      Merry Christmas, Jack.

      What am I going to do today? There’s no need to check the mailbox since it’s a holiday. That’s one of my few daily errands. It takes forty-seven steps to get to the mailbox. The fact that I know this makes me sad.

      It took you forty-three yesterday.

      It was cold. I had to move fast.

      I’ve been waiting for my first novel to come out, a romance of all things, as if romance will ever happen to me again. I had waited too long to find a wife, to start a family…and to buy a safer vehicle than that van.

      Stop thinking about that van.

      I go to the kitchen and turn on the coffeemaker before I realize I haven’t put in any coffee. The water that drips into my cup is slightly brown and smells like coffee, but it tastes like…hot brown water. Instead of searching through the mess I’ve made of the kitchen pantry for the coffee, I take a tea bag I used yesterday and dunk it into the water. It should be good for at least two more cups.

      You’re going to need vice grips to squeeze out any flavor.

      Probably.

      I return to the living room and plug in the lights of the tree before curling up on the love seat with my “coffee water tea.”

      “It’s a nice tree, honey.”

      It never was, but Noël was always looking for something positive to say. The four trees I bought for us before…the accident…leaned right or left, were too bushy or had bald spots, or were too short or too tall.

      One even had a bird’s nest.

      Yet, after we decorated those trees, they always looked better—in Noël’s eyes, anyway—than any tree in any window in the neighborhood. We used to walk through the neighborhood looking at other people’s trees, and though there were many grander than ours, Noël always said, “It’s a nice tree, honey.”

      “Thank you,” I say now. “Thanks…honey.”

      Change the subject. You’re already out of Kleenex.

      I’ll use napkins.

      You’re out of them, too.

      Oh. Paper towels?

      Just the part stuck to the roll.

      I’ve killed a lot of trees.

      You’re the champion of the forestry industry. Think about the novel.

      My novel has been sent out to reviewers, and my agent, Nina Frederick, is supposed to be sending their reviews to me the second she gets them. My editor, Trina Lozell, has told me to keep my fingers crossed, but I’m not superstitious. “It’s a great summer read,” Trina says.

      Then why is it coming out in April?

      Beats me.

      My book will finally be on the shelves in bookstores after all those late nights away from Noël and Stevie. I had wanted to make it big as a writer to allow Noël to stay home with Stevie instead of working as a medical transcriber at Roanoke Memorial. And if the money was good enough, I could quit teaching and write full-time.

      All those dreams…and only mine came true.

      Until the insurance money runs out.

      All those dreams!

      Change the subject, Jack! What’s left of the paper towels will feel like sandpaper on your nose!

      And I’m all out of lotion.

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