that can be walked on for centuries, then sanded back to newness, once this stuff gets scratched, it can only be ripped out and replaced. And if you can’t afford to do that, you just have to live with it.
I start to get out and Dori opens her door as well. I tell her that it might be better if I go alone.
“Good point. Don’t want to look like we’re ganging up on her. I’ll be in the car. Just wave if you need backup.”
“Thanks, Dori. Really. Thanks.”
She waves my gratitude aside. “Eh, you’d do the same for me.”
As I approach the wagon from the side, I plan out what I am going to say. Mentally, I dial in a calm yet forceful tone as I rehearse how I will tell Aubrey that there is a problem at the bank and we have to go. Right this very second.
Aubrey will, of course, be embarrassed by my very presence. She’ll lean down and hiss through the window, “I’m working. We have customers.”
Tyler will pause in his microwaving activities and ask her what the problem is. Then he’ll stand beside her, maybe wrap his arm protectively around her, a united front against the threat that is me.
I don’t care how big a scene I have to make to get her to come with me. I don’t care if I make her so mad that she seethes like a bad nuclear reactor rod. As long as I can get her into the car and to the bank, she can melt right through the burgundy plush upholstery. If a little China Syndrome is the price I have to pay to collect what Martin owes us, and get her the hell away from Tyler Moldenhauer and out of Parkhaven, then I will gladly pay it. Martin owes us both so much more, but if college tuition is all we’ll ever get, I’m going to make damn sure we collect every cent we have coming.
At the lunch wagon, I duck behind a guy I assume is a carpet layer from the knee pads he has strapped on over a pair of jeans flocked with fuzzy beige carpet fibers. I don’t want to lose the advantage of surprise. Through the order window, I catch glimpses of Aubrey’s slender torso. Everything from the shoulders up and midthighs down is obscured. I always hated that, the way her crotch was practically at eye level with every goon who ordered a burrito. It gave me the creeps, like seeing her in one of those places in Amsterdam where the girls waited behind picture windows.
Girding for battle, I pump both my fear for Aubrey’s future and the adrenaline overload released when I was ambushed by Martin’s voice into the edgy pugnacity this showdown will require. By the time the carpet layer steps out of the way, I am ready to dive through the window and drag Aubrey out by the throat.
Except that it’s not my daughter’s face that leans down into the order window and asks, “Know what you want, hon?” Though she has the body of a teenager, the woman asking for my order has to be forty at least. A hard forty. A forty who could be selling corn dogs in a carnival midway.
“Is Aubrey here?” I stand on my tiptoes and crane into the order window to see if Aubrey or Tyler is hiding inside. The only other person, though, is another carny-looking individual, a younger woman in a tank top that shows off ropy muscles bright with gaudy tattoos, stretching up to pull a tower of Styrofoam cups off a high shelf.
The young woman turns, catches my frantic investigation, and regards me with a hostile gaze that I classify as lesbian hatred for a straight suburban breeder. A crown-of-thorns tattoo encircles her neck. “Something we can help you with?” she asks suspiciously, as if I might be about to whip out a subpoena.
“I’m looking for Aubrey Lightsey. Or Tyler? Tyler Moldenhauer?”
The two women exchange looks. Crown of Thorns answers, “You mean that chick and her boyfriend used to have this wagon?”
“Used to?”
The older woman speaks up. “Oh, yeah, they gave notice to Pete. What? Week ago? Ten days? They’re gone.”
NOVEMBER 2, 2009
I am standing at pickup/dropoff, reading The Scarlet Letter for the essay that is due in English on nature imagery, and I am sweating because we’re having a weird late fall heat wave. Mostly, though, I am holding a book in front of my face so