Paid to Trespass, part three
After a grueling day of work the next day, I hurried home to shower and put on clothes that weren’t covered with grime and bits of weeds that had been slaughtered by my weed-whacker. Dom and Jason had asked me what I was up to after work and I told them I was going for a milkshake with Colleen and maybe an evening showing of Jurassic Park at the Ilius Mall a couple towns over but that wasn’t true.
I was in my room drying my hair and looking for a clean pair of socks to wear when my dad came in without knocking.
“Where are you going?” he asked me.
“Out,” I said.
“How was work?”
“It was work.”
“Have you given any thought to what’s going to happen after this summer job is over?”
“Maybe I’ll join the army?”
“They wouldn’t take someone like you. They don’t take potheads.”
“Maybe they’ll get desperate.”
“I’m serious.”
“I am too. Maybe I’ll get a job in Syracuse.”
“I’m just saying, you better start making plans now.”
“Dad, I have two jobs right now. I’m working. I’m making money and putting some away for savings like you told me.”
“Throwing hay for Mr. Cooley three weekends doesn’t count as a job,” my dad said. “I’m talking about something steady. You’re 18. Maybe that doesn’t mean anything to you but soon the world is going to knock you on your ass and your mother and me won’t be there to pick you up.”
“I’m already knocked down on my ass.”
“You put yourself there.”
“I’m going out. Colleen’s waiting.”
“Girls want to be with someone with a future. Maybe she isn’t saying so now but soon she’ll start asking where your head is at. You better have a good answer.”
“She’s not that scary, like you’re making her out to be. Nobody is.”
“Alright. You’ll find out about people pretty soon. You haven’t really met people yet, not the real ones.”
“Thank you for acquainting me with reality.”
He looked around my room, at my CDs laying around the floor and my Porno for Pyros poster and my bed that looked like a person in need of an exorcism slept there. He walked over to it and before I could stop him he looked down the space between the mattress and the headboard at the pile of empty beer bottles that had collected there.
“What are those?”
“What are what?”
“That means you have a problem. When you’re hiding bottles. Stop drinking my beer.”
“You did far worse when you were my age.”
This silenced him because he knew it was true, and he stalked out of the room. He went to watch TV in the finished basement. M*A*S*H was on.
I got in my car and drove to the Lucky Five Inn which was next to the post office, right near where Main Street intersected with Brown Street. I parked my car in the parking lot. Nobody would notice it there in the cars that started accumulating after happy hour. The Lucky Five Inn wasn’t really an inn, they didn’t have rooms you could stay in overnight, it was just the name. It was a tavern where everybody got together and played pool and they’d have live music, people from my high school who put together bands after graduation. Really square shit for baby boomers.
I had my backpack which had the Erica Jong book I’d lifted from Belinda’s house. I hadn’t read it, just looked through for the dirty parts. I thought about whether I’d admit to borrowing it or just skip it back on the bookcase when she wasn’t looking after she invited me in.
I knocked on the front door and while I waited for her to answer I did a quick check of my reflection in the window set next to the front door. I looked sharp. Better to leave the backpack strap off my shoulder, didn’t want to look like a kid.
“Hey,” I said when the door opened.
It was a man with a moustache. Not Belinda. His eyebrows were thick and gathered, confused as to who this was on the front porch.
“What do you want?” he asked. His voice was raspy from tears of cigarettes. He was in a denim shirt. He was in his late 30s. Harry Berenson.
I did some quick thinking and knew I had to make it seem like I’d never been there before.
“I’m from the village department of public works,” I said, hoping my words didn’t sound too rushed. “We’re checking water meters in the neighborhood, for this quarter.”
He looked at me. I fumbled around in my backpack—lucky I brought that, it still had my badge from the village in it. I hadn’t turned it back in to the water clerk yet like she’d asked a few days prior. I showed Harry Berenson the badge.
He didn’t look like any suspicion had been dispelled. “It’s around the back.”
“Ok,” I said, and started walking around the garage. The black convertible was there in the driveway and I guess I should have known it was his.
When I went to the pool area I went right to where the meter was hidden in the shrubs. I’d neglected to read it when I’d had a drink with Belinda a few days ago, so on some level I’d needed to come back for legit reasons. I didn’t have the binder with all the cards in it but I had a pad of paper where I wrote down the numbers.
I saw a figure to my right as Belinda came out of the sliding glass door to go to her lounge chair by the pool. She wasn’t in a bikini; she had on a blouse and some shorts that had small anchors on the pockets. She saw me and did not seem taken aback my my presence there, or not that I could tell. She smiled and shook her head as if to ruefully dismiss the crazy goings-on in the world.
“They raised the water rates,” Harry said, coming out of the house onto the patio. “Didn’t they?” He was addressing me.
“He didn’t do it,” Belinda said. She put on her sunglasses.
“He works for them, he should know,” Harry said. “You don’t even know what you’re checking on?”
“No, I just take down the numbers and hand ‘em over to the water clerk.”
“We’re the only house on the block with a pool,” Belinda said to both me and Harry. “The reading is probably through the roof because you insist on filling the pool twice instead of once in the summer. We should invite the whole neighborhood to swim and charge a fee.”
Harry looked peeved at this. “You’d like that,” he said to Belinda.
“You could invite all your lady friends,” Belinda said to Harry. Then she turned to me, “You could come too. You could bring all your friends with you, especially any girls you know. My husband would love that.”
Harry went back in the house after glaring at me.
“Isn’t it a little late in the day for village business?” Belinda asked me.
“I went through town once a couple days ago but forgot to get yours,” I said. “I think a storm came through and I got off the street, I was worried about getting hit by lightning. I got distracted.”
“I bet you’re easily distracted.”
“Well, I got your number now.”
“I’m glad.” She lowered her sunglasses and I could see the deep indigo eyes even through her squint.
I racked my brain for one or two more comments, something to communicate and push a flirtation just one interval over the line that would be deeply concealed behind something realistic and formal that a meter reader might say, in case Harry Berenson were listening. But I couldn’t think of anything to advance my case. I realized that Belinda could have blown my cover to her husband if she’d wanted to toy with me. But she kept it a secret for her own amusement, and that amusement was evident on her face as she replaced the sunglasses and rested her head, sign for me to go. I wanted to stay with her but I couldn’t.
I spent the car ride home thinking about ways I could see her again. The meter reader deception would only work once. That was my one get out of jail free ticket and I’d used it up. If I were to see her again it would either need to be left to fate or I would have to get creative. My dad had said women wanted to be with someone with a future. Yes. He was right. But although I was younger than him and he’d been around the block for decades longer than me, I knew far more than him. I intuited it. Women want to be with someone who could get creative to make that future come to pass. The cunning art of making time. I was letting Belinda know I had style to me. And that I would find a way to be with her no matter what the obstacles were.