Chapter 35

Roxie relaxed in an upholstered chair at the foot of the bed in the motel room. She was watching Cal while he slept. They had only planned to stay three or four hours, but six hours had gone by and Cal didn’t show any signs of waking up.

Roxie dozed off next to Cal for a while after their love making, which commenced right after Cal had checked them in and they found their room. Sometime later she slipped out of bed to use the bathroom. Cal didn’t move a muscle. Roxie decided to get dressed and sit in the chair rather than risk waking him. It gave her a chance to think about everything.

Cal had told her all about his trip to New York City the day of their aborted date and the late-arriving plane flight that had started the whole disaster with Bubba rolling. He told her about his father’s heart episode, too, that had prevented him from looking her up at the Bluebird the next day.

All-in-all, she had to admit that a reasonable person would have to see it Cal’s way. But as she sat in the chair watching Cal sleep she knew there was more to think about.

“I wonder if I did the right thing to go to bed with him.”

Hadn’t they just been talking about her ‘being a slut—or not being one’? Cal seemed to be quite open-minded about that, which was not normal for him. This little episode had all the potential to change his mind back to where it once was. She had maneuvered them into jumping in with both feet at the very start of everything. Maybe they should have waited, enjoyed the chase—for a little while, at least.

But it all seemed so right at that moment, and she didn’t notice Cal voicing any second thoughts about it.

“I’m glad we did it, no matter how this all turns out.”

As she looked back on it, she remembered that she really enjoyed it. She could tell that Cal was not very experienced. It had, more-or-less, been her assumption from the start and it didn’t seem to matter at all. And, she had certainly been in bed with men with more exciting physiques, although Cal wasn’t bad in that department.

“There was just something sweet and nice about it,” she concluded. “I wouldn’t ever have wanted it any different.”

She couldn’t remember any times when she’d been able to say that, and (as she reminded herself) she’d given herself more than her share of chances to do so.

“Well, I’ve been angling for this all summer,” she thought, “and I finally got it.”

With that, she stood up from the chair and headed to the bathroom. Although Cal looked like he would be asleep for who knows how long, she was sure that he would wake up soon, and then he would want to be back on the road.

“It would be a shame to let a good shower go to waste.”

Roxie dried herself off after her shower and came out of the bathroom wrapped in her towel. There was a dresser and mirror across from the bed. She found her hairbrush in her suitcase and began brushing her wet hair.

She could see the bed in the mirror’s reflection. Cal sat up, his bare upper body visible. His lower half was still under the covers, but Roxie already had seen it.

“Hello, big boy,” she said. “I thought you were never going to wake up.”

“I heard the shower running,” Cal answered. “What time is it, anyway?”

“Just past nine-thirty,” Roxie answered.

“At night?”

“Of course,” she assured him. “Look out the window. It’s dark outside.”

Cal fell back on the bed and rubbed his eyes.

“I was thinking that we’d be pulling into Appleton right about now,” he said.

Roxie shrugged. She was waiting for Cal to say something about their festivities earlier that afternoon, but he didn’t. She watched him rise out of the bed, naked. He didn’t try to cover himself, but she couldn’t quite tell what he was thinking. She observed that she was only clad in a bath towel—a situation that could change at any moment.

She stepped forward as he was passing by on the way to the bathroom and gave him a kiss on the cheek. She waited to see what he would do.

“Roxie, about earlier” he said, “uh, I don’t know exactly how to say this. You know ... you know, I’ve ... well, you know, I’ve never done this before.”

She giggled a little bit and stepped closer to him. She could tell that he like the feeling of her body pressing against him. Men always did. She kissed him again, this time on the lips, and then stepped back.

“It’s his turn to do something,” she thought.

“We have to get on the road, Roxie. Sorry.”

She looked down and saw that he had begun covering up with his hands crossed over his groin. Roxie wasn’t fooled. She’d seen men enough to know what that meant. She wanted to laugh again but stifled it.

“You might as well take a shower. We’ve still got a long drive ahead of us,” she told him. “I already took one.”

He disappeared into the bathroom and she went back to brushing her hair. She knew he was right, of course. They hadn’t meant to stop so long, but nature had taken its course. There were times when she had been with men when the refusal of a second helping in a paid-for motel room would have made her lose her temper. This was Cal, she remembered, and he was a bit different.

She began putting on her clothes and wondered what Cal meant by ‘never having done that before’. Was he talking about stealing an afternoon in bed with a woman in a motel room? Maybe it was more. She heard the shower begin to run inside the bathroom.

“Maybe someday, he’ll tell me.”

Cal was so mysterious, so complex. In another way, he was so simple. Maybe that was part of it. She would ponder the extent of his experience with women some other time. She was more interested in what he might have been thinking about at that moment.

After a while Cal opened the bathroom door. He walked out into the bedroom and began putting his clothes on. Roxie waited for him to say something—just anything that might give her an inkling about what might have been on his mind. He was buttoning his shirt when he broke the silence at last.

“Why don’t you take your things and go down to the car? I’ll go check out and meet you there and we’ll be back on the road.”

She had already packed her small suitcase, which she picked up. Cal hadn’t brought in anything. She put her key card on the dresser alongside his. Then she stepped through the door and into the hallway and made her way to the stairwell.

“I guess what’s on his mind is getting the hell out of here!”

There had been other times when men had been treated to the best of her and then decided that once was enough. Men were like that, she knew, and some things never change.

She walked to the Mustang and waited in the dark. She drew one of her last cigarettes out of the pack and lit it up. She breathed the smoke in deep, waited for the nicotine to relax her.

“Why be bitter?” she asked herself.

She had begun the day alone, been together with Cal for a time. She was alone again. Life wasn’t a continuous script, but a book of short stories, each separate from all the others. This day served to prove what she had thought all along.

She had warned herself against bitterness but couldn’t help that it had crept into what she was feeling.

“Smoking is bad for your health.”

She hadn’t expected Cal to check out so fast and lost in her thoughts she hadn’t heard him approach the car, either.

“Finish it if you want to,” he said. “I’m going to look at the map. Just get in the car when you’re done.”

It was a little bit annoying, Cal’s invitation and order, rolled into one.

“I already know enough not to smoke in your car,” she said to herself.

She stayed silent but wished she had yelled it at him. If it had been someone like Junior she would have. Why Cal was different was an inch or two beyond her understanding. She looked at the cigarette smoldering between her fingers. It wasn’t even half-smoked but it didn’t seem to be doing its job anymore. She flicked it away and climbed into the car.

The Mustang was already idling. The engine was snarling a deep growl, matching her mood. Cal backed out of the space, put the car in gear and eased out of the motel lot. It didn’t take long to find their way back on the interstate, heading south.

“The way I read the map,” Cal said, “I think we have about seven hours ahead of us. That would put us in Appleton at about four or four-thirty in the morning. What do you think, Roxie?”

“I guess so,” she answered. “Whatever you say.”

They rode along a while further. Roxie couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“Cal, about this afternoon...” she began.

In the dark she saw Cal snap his head around to look at her. It was too dark to make out his expression.

“About this afternoon,’ she repeated, “you know, about us being together...”

“Yes?” he asked.

“Well about us doing it this afternoon, I just want you to know that you don’t have to feel obligated in any way. It was nice. I wanted to do it, and we did. I’m glad we did it, but that’s as far as it has to go.”

“Oh,” she heard him say in the dark.

She couldn’t tell what that meant. Maybe if she could see his face she would be able to tell. There was a span silence and in the void she began to assume she knew his answer.

“Are you sure you want it that way? I was hoping for something different,” he said.

“What do you mean?” she gasped.

“I was just hoping, you know ... hoping ... well, that we might start seeing each other, go out together. Maybe things could work out for us.”

It had been a long time since Roxie had doubted that she knew by heart every big or small factor that made a man do and think what he did. But, then there was Cal and he was a different story.

“He’s just beyond predicting,” she told herself.

“Why, that would be fine, Cal, just fine with me,” she answered. “I only wanted to say that you weren’t obligated, that’s all.”

“I don’t see it as an obligation. It’s more like ... well, it’s what I want if you’re willing,” he confirmed.

She wiped a tiny bead of perspiration from her forehead. One thing that she was learning about being with Cal was that approaching the edge of the cliff was going to be a routine thing.

“Or maybe I’m not seeing the true edge of that cliff,” she wondered.

Events had driven them on a strange route to get to where they were, but they had arrived in their own way. She had a big question left to ask but pondered if it might have been better to leave it alone.

“But I got this far by taking a few chances,” she reassured herself.

So, she summoned her nerve once again and edged her way out toward the edge of the cliff.

“But, why Cal, why...”

“Why what?” he interrupted.

“Why were you so cold to me when you woke up? You know, we could have stayed in the room a while longer. I was sure ready, and I think you were, too.”

Cal didn’t answer right away. Once, Roxie might have thought that she said the wrong thing, but she was learning fast and knew Cal would answer soon enough.