Lamb

So you see, none of this was planned. This is the kind of unforeseeable map that arises one bright little city at a time. It’s about letting go of the clench in your forehead and letting your heart steer. And it isn’t as easy as it sounds.

In the hotel lobby, everything was white. The floor of bleached ceramic tiles; the high frosted ceiling supported by smooth, ash-colored marble columns. Tommie stared around as if she’d been transported to another world.

“Are you afraid?” he asked in the elevator.

“No.”

They rushed silently upward.

“Are you being honest?”

“I’ve never been anywhere like this.”

“I know.”

“Are you really rich?”

The doors opened.

“Now listen,” he said as he walked her down the corridor. She pushed the hair out of her face. Like a little woman. “This is just an intermediary step, right? This trip is not for certain. We’re going to do this in stages.” He unlocked the door with the plastic card and held it open for her. “And maybe not at all.”

The room was warm and dry and smelled of citrus and balsam and clean linen. The creamy whites of the down comforters and painted walls were softly lit. Outside the giant panes of glass the dark sky was lifting and cracking apart. Lamb and the girl stood together near the door a moment, as if the room were intended for some other couple.

“Do you want the bed by the window or by the bathroom?”

“Duh, window.” She went in.

“Good.”

He opened the armoire and turned on the television, searching the channels. “What do you like? You like cartoons?”

She rolled her eyes. “Please.”

He tossed her the remote and rezipped his jacket.

“Are we going someplace?”

“I am. To get supplies.”

“For the road?”

“Yes,” he said. “For the road.”

“How long will it take to get there?”

“Two days.”

“How can we make it back in five nights?”

He looked down at his hands, then moved his mouth as he counted in his head. “This is exactly why we’re doing this in stages,” he said. “So we don’t do anything stupid. It might actually be seven nights. Or ten.”

“Can’t I come with you now?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Three reasons. First, because it’s warm in here. And we don’t want you getting sick. Second, I want you to be alone for an hour or so. You know how to get home from here, more or less?”

She gave him a blank look, so he opened a drawer in the little white desk and took out the binder of guest information. “Here.” He put four twenties on the desk. “That’s for a cab home. And a little extra.”

“I don’t want to go home.”

“I want you to think about it. I want you to take this hour and think real hard about whether or not you should stay and wait for me. This will look a lot to other people like I’m kidnapping you. Right?”

“Oh.”

“It will. I’m fifty-four years old, and you?”

“Eleven.”

He inhaled. Christ. He’d taken her for thirteen at least. Eleven. That was closer to five years old than it was to eighteen. Her friends did not look eleven. The blond one—she could’ve been sixteen. He looked at his hands. At the floor. He did not look at her when he gave her the last reason.

“And three, here you are,” he said, “alone in a hotel room with a stranger. And eleven.”

“But you’re not a stranger.”

“Well. Maybe you feel a little funny.”

“I don’t feel funny.”

“Maybe you’re just not letting yourself feel funny. Think about all the ways this situation could make a girl your age feel. Okay? Say okay, Gary.”

“Okay, Gary.”

“And then, if you choose to stay, I want you to make this room yours. Do some rearranging. Put your shoes over there, and wash your face, and mess up the pillows. Make it like it’s your own room. So when I come back, it’ll be like you’re inviting me into your room, okay?”

“You’re weird.”

“Maybe so. But I know what I’m talking about. And if you don’t want me to come in when I get back, you can hand me my stuff and I’ll go get another room. Right?” He’d meant to sound forceful, convincing, but he was almost whispering.

“That won’t happen.”

“Just say okay, Gary.”

“Okay, Gary.”

“And if I come back and you’re gone, I’ll understand you’ve gone home. And no hard feelings, okay? It wouldn’t mean we can’t—you know—hang out. Like before. Say it: no hard feelings.”

“No hard feelings.”

“Good. Good girl.” He squinted at her. “Are all seventh graders eleven? I mean, your friends look a little old for their age.”

She shrugged. “I’ll be twelve in December.”

He looked down at the floor and nodded.

“Can I ask you a question?”

He sat on the edge of the other bed.

“What if I want to come home? Not like I will.”

“I’ll put you on a plane. Straight home, first class.”

“Okay.”

“And I’ll buy you a little purse, and fill it with money and snacks and a magazine or comic book. And I’ll send you on your way.”

“Okay.”

“It’ll be an open door, all the time. If you decide you can’t bear the drive back with me, if you decide I’m just like some mean old uncle, too strict, or if I preach too much, I’ll buy you the plane ticket. I give you my word.”

“Okay.”

“It’ll be just like vacation, so you can see some other things. Something other than this sad place.”

She nodded.

“You’re not like your friends, are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re not,” he said. “You believe that?”

“If you say so.”

He grinned. “That’s my girl. So we have a deal?” He turned over his palm and spat in it, and extended his hand. She snorted, and grinned, and spat in her own hand, and they shook.

Lamb left her in the white hotel and drove back toward the city, away from the last broken reaches of daylight as rain clouds threaded with neon blue in the rearview mirror. The girl would be there when he returned. Not because she wanted to go but because she wouldn’t take the initiative to call a cab.

He turned into the parking lot of Tommie’s building and pulled up to the front. There was a different security guard—a heavy young guy in cheap black pants and a windbreaker with the same corporate logo on the breast. Already balding and pale and bereft of all those heartbreaking nights a young guy like him should be suffering. A young guy only has so many nights in him during his tenure on planet Earth, and he ought not squander them alone in ruined parking lots, bothering people. He came right up to the driver’s side of the truck.

“You looking for somebody, man?”

Lamb’s pulse raced up his neck and down his arms, the taste of his own breath foul in his mouth. “Is this Roosevelt Road?” He pointed at the six-lane. “I seem to have gotten turned around.”

The man shook his head. “No, man.”

“I need to go west?”

“You can’t make a left turn here.” A small, round woman with chin-length grayish-brown hair tilted sideways a little beneath the weight of a huge canvas satchel swung over her shoulder. Lamb watched her walk by as the man gave him directions he didn’t need, and he became very, very still.

Perhaps it was in this moment that Lamb made up his mind, when he came right up against the emptiness. And who’s to blame him if he then turned completely—shoulders, face, hands, pelvis—to the girl? She pulled him back into himself and into a concrete world that, frankly, David Lamb wasn’t quite ready to surrender. He wasn’t ready to surrender the story he thought he was in. Not in the way this parking lot and this pasty thin-haired man had just somehow rendered not only possible but necessary.

Lamb wanted the greasy cars and the soft white bed at the hotel; he wanted to stuff ice cream and roast turkey down the girl’s tiny gullet until she puked laughing; he wanted the pain of seeing Cathy on the arm of some other man, some gentle-hearted egghead in a fleece jacket and with a beautiful red dog because she deserved those things; he wanted cold fingers and hot coffee and fried eggs and he wanted Linnie’s wine and he wanted Linnie again, her body pressed into his and the envy of men’s faces when he entered a room with her; he wanted snow disappearing into the cold pewter spill of Lake Michigan in December and he wanted headaches and sleepless nights and waking up knowing he had a heart because it was spinning in a mechanical whir behind his ribs. And he wanted all of these things twice: he wanted them, and he wanted knowing he was getting them.

He rolled up the window against the security guard and took a left-hand turn out of the lot, sped down the street and onto 90 and into the city. He called Linnie from outside her narrow brick town house, and in less than a minute she was standing inside the gold-lit doorway in a sweater and her wonderful blue jeans, her dark hair all around her.

“I can’t stay long.”

“I know.”

“I’m heading out of town for a bit, Lin.”

“To the cabin?”

“Tomorrow. For a few weeks.”

“Am I invited?” She took his coat. “Come sit. Wine?”

“Please, Lin. You’re invited everywhere. Can we fly you out? Over the weekend? Will you come?”

“Of course.” She set two glasses on her tiny kitchen table.

“I knew you would,” he said, and leaned back, and looked up at her.

“Of course you did.”

Ninety minutes later at the Residence Inn, Lamb unmade his bed, packed his belongings, ordered room service, and called Draper, who he knew was loaded down for the month, and invited him to dinner.

“Can’t do it, Davy. Next week?”

“Good. Next week. Call me when you’re freed up?”

And he called Draper’s wife. Left her a message. Invited her out to the cabin too. He ate half the salad and half the halibut and set the tray on the floor by the door. Then he loaded up the truck and left the hotel.

At a deserted Kmart halfway back to the white hotel he packed up for the road. Warm clothes for the girl, bottled water, bubblegum, potato chips, soda, paper cups, apple juice, crackers, Slim Jims, Oreos, a bag of apples. He put a quarter in a junk machine and turned the metal key and pocketed a small plastic ring in a big plastic bubble.

When he stood at last before the door to their room, he took a single long breath, ran his hand through his hair, and checked his fly. He knocked before walking in.

There she was, the white down blanket pulled over her head like a cape. Like she was a little old lady, a thousand years old, propped up on a mound of six or seven giant pillows. She gave him a silly grin. “This bed is awesome.”

“What are you doing?”

“Just sitting here.”

“No TV?” He carried the plastic bag of clothes to the foot of her bed.

“Just imagining things.”

“What things?”

“You know. How you imagine you’re different than in real life. Like you have longer hair. Or you’re smarter. Something like that.”

“And you’re still here,” he said.

“Ta-da.”

“Are you the best girl in the world, or what?”

She scrunched up her face.

“I bought you a sweater,” he said, “and some blue jeans.”

“You did?”

“I’m going to make you a deal. Every time the temperature drops ten degrees, I’ll buy you a new sweater.”

“Will it be cold?”

“At night and early morning.” He opened the bag and took her things out. “I’m sorry they’re from Kmart. We’ll get you nice things when we have more time.”

“Are we in a rush?”

“We just want to make good time, right?”

She nodded and took the sweater from him and put it against her cheek. “It’s soft.”

“It’s a good color for you.”

“My mom says it’s not.”

“Well, moms don’t know everything.” He took out the jeans and removed all the plastic tags and set it all up for her at the desk. “For the morning.”

“Thanks.”

“You hungry?”

“Nope.”

“You ready to hit the sack?”

“Sure.”

“You want a bedtime story?”

“I’m not six.”

“I know how old you are. Who doesn’t like a bedtime story?”

“I’m too old.”

“Well, I’m going to help you get over that. You’re lucky you found me. I’m going to keep you on the straight and narrow.”

“Sounds boring.”

“That’s what everybody thinks. Now come on. Did you wash your face?”

“Yes.”

“With soap?”

They both looked at the bathroom counter where the hotel soap was stacked in a pile of three shiny paper squares. The girl groaned and stood up. “What are you, my dad or something?”

“That’s a good way to think of it. That’s exactly how I want you to think about it.”