Sunday July 11, 1988
It’s a bone dry ninety-three degrees and Nick thought the country breeze would provide sufficient cooling as he rides through the country. At this point it’s starting to feel like a trek for survival.
He headed out just a couple miles to the west of town then south, late afternoon, not a cloud in the sky, and stopping at someone’s house would be an admission of poor judgment. Some water should help, and there’s a gas station up ahead where this road meets the highway that has fountain drinks and hopefully some sense of mercy.
Tim had just shipped off after his big weekend at Hector’s, which makes things that much crazier. This drought is supposed to relent soon, at least there’s a chance, but probably not the heat.
Maybe now they would get less of the hangup calls, assuming they are trying for his brother, always eager to answer. Nick had recently started avoiding the phone as much as possible. Jenna Wern had a habit of ringading-dinging at the worst possible moments after he had paid her a passing complement at a lunch table toward the end of the year, a freshman who claims she’s going to be married before graduating high school. One time he started up a Saxon tape on his headphones and held it to the phone for a few seconds and she suddenly had to yield the phone to a sibling or such. Works every time.
Although sometimes he would hear from Sabrina, his chemistry table partner this past year and a refreshing contrast to most girls since she just wanted to catch up and laugh a while. Times like those, albeit rare, made it kinda nice that they hadn’t gotten an unlisted number.
This summer had been a lot like five summers ago, his room was generally not habitable till an hour after sundown, except this had been a dry heat for which air conditioning helps little, but the tradeoff was a cool crossbreeze upstairs most nights. Worst case he had to couch surf or camp out in the den.
Once in a while a lonely, latent cottonwood bloom floats by without a care in the world. Nick wishes it could tell a story, then wishes it could carry him home.
The routine of being on his own for Sunday mornings has set in, he gets to sleep in and his grades have improved, stays out of trouble. His folks have settled into a new church and he goes to some of the dinners and events, everyone seems comfy with this arrangement.
The irony is how, well, pious he feels these days, staying focused on what seems important, not interfering with anyone, far as he knows, helping out at home, headed to some sort of college, probably what he’s always known at the bench, except hopefully for benevolent purposes, not that he has any regrets about what he’d revealed, just of what it put the family and others though.
Almost out of sweat and with skin slightly tingling in the breeze, this purpose brings him to the Amoco along the state route he’d have to follow briefly to the edge of town. After leaning his bike just outside the doors, he barges into the A/C to a near-empty store and asks if they can spot him a cup of water.
“Oh help yourself, cups of water are free, get one as big as you want.”
“Thanks I sure need it, I’ll be sure to give you some business when I can.”
“Nothin’ to it, rest a while before you head back out.”
So he looks around a couple minutes then starts to feel chilled, then heads back out after chugging most of the water. He hates to toss the ice so he folds the cup best he can and tucks it in the back of his shorts, which feels surprisingly refreshing, then heads on.
This part of the trip seems downhill and downwind, nuthin to it, and once in town the sight of familiar trees actually makes things seem cooler.
Back at the ranch his folks are in their fabled poise but just reading, TV makes too much heat.
Ned speaks up first, “Another few minutes and we were gonna come looking.”
“I got some free ice water at Amoco.”
“Ahh, well how about taking rides early morning?”
“Yeah but what will I do in the afternoon?”
Ned just shakes his head.
Irene, “You can always call some girls.”
Nick moans clear up the stairwell.
She goes on, “Was it something I said?”
After a shower Nick flips on the oscillating fan he’d been assigned and tries some radio, nah, oh, finds a decent dub of Whitesnake from what seems like a lifetime ago, just last year, and succumbs to that a while in headphones.
He thinks of trying to ring Vance to see if he ever hits the city pool, even in the morning would be decent, who knows.
After chilling a while he nukes some nachos, a fine Sunday PM tradition and consumes them in the shady rear deck. The house on that side faces to the street perpendicular to his and he used to rake leaves for Mrs. Wellingham, who, in turn has a niece in her early 20s and not at all threatening, but then they tend to be pretty quiet, Irene has talked to them just a few times over the years.
Tonight calls for mindless reruns, at least there’s Tracy Ullman and Garry Shandling, and maybe another quick ride at some point.
After filling his mason-jar mug with cold water for the night stand he debates whether some release is in order, and it has been three days, which seems about right. Inspiration has been few and far between this entire year, let alone when February brought a touch of anxiety, understandably worse this year, after months of nuclear winter.
There was simply no one he really wanted to touch, or look at carnally, at least in the practical sense. When at the height of inspiration, like last year leading up to the September Apocalypse as he’d come to know it, having recovered from the phone tapping deal, there was purpose, this year, it’s something for which he didn’t know the word: malaise. It will be a full year past soon and he’s thinking that anniversary will help him move on.
But it seems the carnal notions, for Nick, are as far divorced from purpose as ever, now that the romance of first discovery have long passed.
Still, let’s take a taste of the well, just after the lights go out, must be a dozen gals float by, some his age, some older - he has to fight thinking of poor helpless Donna in her bath chair - but then some of the divorced ones they’ve met over the years, hmm…what if one of them needs help with a car stereo or…this part is never easy…one thing leads to another, but what’s the one thing at the beginning?
Eventually, when the moment draws near, out of the either, yeap, that night last year when he tried something, with that gal, now on the other side of the galaxy, although, the more this happens, the less embarrassing that moment seems.
In his last waking moments, after cleaning up, he thinks it might be nearing time to check in on Deke.