Aerogrammes and Other Stories - By Tania James Page 0,61

Barb as their witness, as well as Lucille, Hank’s former cleaning lady. Throughout the ceremony, Lucille stared at Hank in a dreamy daze, as if witness to a miracle. Afterward, they all stood outside the courthouse, glowing, and even Barb produced a close-lipped smile. “Thank you,” Lucille whispered in Gina’s ear, with a clenching hug. “Thank you for bringing him back to us. Call me when you need a cleaning.”

Lucille then made the mistake of trying to hug Hank. No one had told her that Hank couldn’t be hugged; one could just as easily plant a kiss on a breeze. In her attempt, Lucille lost her balance and fell forward onto the sidewalk. Hank and Gina helped her to her feet, while a shaken Lucille brushed the gravel from her knees. “He can touch,” Barb lectured, arms folded, “but he can’t be touched.”

After the wedding, Gina and Hank entered a period of sweet, cyclical domesticity. Sundays were Gina’s favorite day, when she would bake muffins or biscuits while Hank sat at the breakfast table, reading the newspaper. Though he couldn’t eat, he loved the smell of baked goods. (“The Bundt cake was my favorite part of your Bio Video,” he told her.) Whether or not her cakes and muffins turned out, Hank was happy so long as the air was laced with butter and burnt sugar.

While the batter rose in the oven, Gina listened to Hank tell of the city as he had once known it. In high school, he lived around the corner from the Hilltop Theater, in the East End of town. The Hilltop was where he took his girlfriend on dates. He also liked hanging around Benny’s Billiards, where he’d shoot pool or play cards or work the pinball machines until his mother called and had Benny send him home for dinner. There was no point in lying to Mrs. Tolliver about where he’d been; she knew by the traces of oil on his shoe soles, the same oil that Benny used to wax his floors.

Here, he laughed just like Jeremy—Hah!—a single huff that punctured her heart.

To Hank, Gina confessed her hope to someday open a sophisticated beauty parlor that would double as a bar. She had heard of such a place in New York, where a woman could sip from a martini in one hand and receive a manicure on the other. Why not in Louisville? She was sick of salons with names like Swift Clips and Mane Attraction. She envisioned a black-and-white tiled floor, counters edged in chrome. Hank loved the idea. He suggested a jukebox and maybe, on some nights, a live band. “I’ll keep an eye out for spaces to rent,” he said.

They talked all morning, until 11:00, at which point Hank gave her a brisk kiss on the cheek, put on his hat, and headed out the door.

After he left, Gina would garden, or watch TV, or try a cardio hip-hop DVD, hoping he wouldn’t come home early and catch her in action. She had quit her job at Swift Clips, but she still made occasional house calls to her oldest clients, the ones for whom driving had become a hazard. Several of the women remembered Hank Tolliver. When Gina told Mrs. Fenton about Hank and his girlfriend going to the Hilltop Theater, Mrs. Fenton laughed. “Girlfriend or girlfriends?” she said. “I don’t think he could keep track of them all, that old sly boots.”

Whatever she did during the day, Gina always made sure to be home by 8:00 sharp. At that hour, a humid coolness would sweep through the house and a vapor would creep up the mirrors. She would hurry down the stairs, tracking the scent of smoked dirt as it grew more potent, until she found Hank hanging his trench coat in the closet. He always greeted her the same way: “Hey, kid, where ya been?”

But Hank seemed preoccupied in the evenings. Sometimes they played a board game or watched a movie, but most of the time he was in bed by nine. “All that walking,” he’d say, though he never explained where he went, never asked her to join him. He simply wished her good night and retired to the guest room. In the contract, he had ceded the master bedroom to her, an arrangement she now regretted. She had never lain in a bed so big it made her lonely.

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Over the next few days, Gina began to wake up earlier, thumping down the hall in the hopes