Bad Ideas Page 10

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jules saw Trudy turn away from them and look toward the wide grey river. He thought he could see her shoulders begin to shake.

  Because a little progress would be nice for a change

  This was exactly what Jules needed: progress. Just a little progress for a change. Maybe it wasn’t too much to ask after all. He was standing on a long windblown asphalt track near a clutch of factories in Chicago. Or close to Chicago, anyway. Sammy stood there beside him, bouncing on the balls of his feet, hands in pockets. The car came inching out of the garage in the distance trailed by three guys in coveralls. The car, a Lincoln Continental, was butter yellow and gleaming. The two wings attached to the doors were painted to match and glinted with brilliant chrome trim. Jules sighed. It was a thing of beauty. The rumble of the engine was deep and steady and loud as hell.

  “You have a suit with you?” one of the mechanics asked Jules. After a pause: “Like, a fire-retardant suit?” Jules did not have a fire-retardant suit with him. On this trip. Or at all.

  He was on a budget. Or, at least, he used to be. Now he was just trying to stem the flow, trying to keep the hole from getting so deep it swallowed him up. Jules had never been good with money. Before he made his TV deal, he had spent every penny he earned — and substantially more — on the fake car and his “promotional tour.” And when he made his TV deal, he made a bad deal. His compensation would be based on a (small) portion of profit. As costs increased, his potential reward was reduced. And the costs were incredible. Beyond anything he had ever imagined. But at least he would get a large lump sum when — if — he completed the jump. They were no dummies at that network.

  Jules shook his head, the wind blowing his hair around. “That’s OK. You can use mine. Might be a bit snug, but it’ll do.” The man jogged away from Jules, back toward the garage.

  Jules estimated that the mechanic was about six inches shorter than he was and about twenty-five pounds lighter. Oh well.

  There was a cameraman there, of course, to capture Jules struggling to zip up the suit. The zipper was stuck, unflatteringly, right at the bottom of his belly and would go no further. The shoulders were very tight, and every time he shrugged or bent at the waist, the back seam was pulled a little farther up between his buttocks. He hoped there would be no shots of him from behind.

  Or from the side.

  Or from the front for that matter.

  He gave up on the zipper and put on his helmet. The only thing that would make him feel better about anything was driving that car as fast as it would go.

  Jules sat in the driver’s seat and strapped in, struggling to pay attention to the instructions of the mechanic. Frankly, it was not that complicated.

  It was just a car.

  You still had to steer with the wheel and you still had to step on the gas. There was a button for the rocket booster and a button for the parachute. What was important, apparently, was timing. And not to use the parachute to slow down, unless he absolutely had to — it was kind of a single-use thing and it was expensive. Just get it up to speed and then start to slow down right away. It was just a test, so he could get the feel of it. They talked through it again. The mechanic ducked out of the driver’s side window and stood back from the track.

  Alone inside the car, Jules was sweating, talking to himself. Finally, he said: “One, two, three, go!” and pushed the pedal to the floor. Fast! The car was so fast. He pushed the booster, and he felt like he was flying. He could barely hold on to the wheel. The world flew by in a blur on either side of him. He was laughing and tears were streaming down his cheeks. “Woo-hoo!” he yelled. “Yeee-haw!” He fucking loved this rocket car.

  And then he heard a crack.

  In the rear-view mirror, he saw a flash of butter yellow on the track behind him.

  The car turned sideways but the momentum was still carrying it forward down the track.

  He fumbled around for the parachute button, hitting the dash a few times before getting it right, and then he hit the button — one, two — three times before anything happened.

  A giant blossom of white fabric, a snap of his head against the headrest, the screeching of tires. And a long, long terrifying skid to a stop.

  A shambling walk back to the start in his ridiculous tight suit.

  A wandering harvest of parts and pieces and debris.

  And a slow, rattling tow back to the garage.

  Trudy

  Because you never know what you might see in the moonlight

  Trudy had the night off, and Jules said he wanted to make the best of it. They had barbecued burgers and eaten them on the back porch, listening to the crickets and drinking beer. “I have something to show you.”

  “It had better not be that fucking ramp.”

  “Nope. It’s almost as good, though.”

  He led her down the steps by the hand. “Come on,” he said. “It’s a bit of a walk.”

  They cut across the field behind the house and crossed the highway. Trudy’s clothes were already soaked with sweat. Her bare feet rubbed against the insides of her sneakers. “My God,” she said. “How far is it?”

  “It’s worth it,” he said. And he led her across another field to a rutted lane lined with trees. As the sun set, bats swooped high above them between the trees, and stars started to blink silver in the dark blue sky. She wanted him to slow down. She hustled up behind him and grabbed at his hand. “Where are we going?”

  “Not far now.” She planted her feet and pulled him to a stop, shoved him back against a tree and pressed against him, looking into his face. God, he was beautiful. That smile. She kissed him, biting at his lower lip. She ran her hand down over the front of his jeans, squeezing him through the fabric. “Wait,” he said.

  He nudged her ahead of him down the path and pointed to a break in the trees ahead. They ducked through, thorns catching at their legs. They climbed a low fence and stumbled into a hayfield. She had no idea which direction they were facing any more. “Jesus Christ, Jules. What the hell are we doing?”

  He ignored her and kept walking. It was dark now. So dark she couldn’t see it until they were almost at the edge. A swimming pool. In the ground. In the middle of a field. She couldn’t believe it. It was rectangular, maybe twenty feet long. A row of cement sidewalk around the edge. That was it. No fence, no deck. No house in sight. What a terrible idea, she thought, to put a pool in the middle of a field. The surface of the water was covered with hay clippings and leaves and milkweed pods. There were probably frogs in there. Crickets were singing in the dark. “Whose is this anyway?”

  She looked over at him and he just shrugged. He pulled his shirt over his head, kicked off his shoes and hopped from foot to foot as he took off his jeans and threw them behind him on the prickly cut hay. He stood there, smiling at her, his white skin shining in the moonlight, his hands on his hips, and his erect penis standing out from his body like a tusk. Trudy wondered how many people she knew had ever seen this: a naked man in the moonlight. In all his glory.

  Glory.

  That word from hymns and anthems. For the first time in her life, Trudy had an inkling of its meaning. She wished she could take a picture of him. Just to look at now and then and remember. She kicked off her shoes. She pulled her T-shirt over her head and took off her bra. She took off her shorts and her underwear and ran toward the pool, leaping in a gangly awkward dive into the water, letting herself sink down to the bottom as the air bubbled out of her nose.

  She heard the muffled thump of his body hitting the water, and a few seconds later she felt his hands on her waist and they floated up to the surface together. When they kissed, water ran down their faces, their hair plastered to their foreheads.

  Frogs grumbled in the grass all around them, and the silver stars glinted on the surface of the water in tiny white sparks.

  Because nobody will ever love you enough

&nb
sp; Trudy was lying on her back, staring at the pale blue cracked ceiling of Jules’s bedroom. A bare bulb hung from the centre of a bulging round plaster medallion with a snaky braided edge. Their breathing was still heavy, and they were covered in sweat. The electric drone of cicadas came quivering through the open window, but no breeze. Trudy pulled a corner of the sheet just across her hips and turned her head to the side, away from him. She couldn’t stop thinking about the jump. Every time it was called off she felt better. Every time it was back on she felt sick. Like a terrible countdown being stopped and started. It was killing her. When she started to speak, her throat felt tight like it was closing. Like her body knew she should not say what she was about to say and was trying to stop her. Her voice sounded thick.

  “You can’t do it.”

  Jules was smiling to himself, almost asleep. “What?”

  “You cannot do it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The jump. You can’t do it. There’s no way.”

  “You better believe I can do it.” Jules seemed startled, not quite angry. He pushed himself up on his elbow to look at her.

  “No.” Trudy could barely push the words out, her throat felt so tight. She was clenching her jaw. “I mean, I don’t want you to do it. Don’t do it.”

  “Oh, Trudy. Please. Please don’t do this.” Trudy knew what he was thinking. Now this. The stupid ramp, the stupid car. Another delay. The constant threat of losing his TV deal. And now, this.

  Then, out of nowhere, these words came out of Trudy on a wave of salty, bitter tears. And they come out loudly.

  “Why?” said Trudy, bunching the sheet in her fists. “Why doesn’t anyone ever LOVE ME ENOUGH?” She was out of the bed, grabbing her clothes from the floor, face reddening. Did she mean this? Was it really her true feeling? That nobody ever loved her enough? How pathetic! How embarrassing. She felt so ashamed, she covered her face with her T-shirt. She skidded away from him as he tried to grab her and pull her back into bed. He was talking to her, but she threw her clothes back onto the floor and put her hands over her ears. It was getting silly: he was chasing her around the room now.

  She bolted for the door and ran down the hallway. She could hear Jules pivoting to follow her, tripping over himself, as she took a hard left into the bedroom at the end of the hallway. The room that James and Mark shared when they were there. She pushed the door closed and sat on the bed. She was sweating.

  The room was dark, the blinds drawn. In most ways it was like Jules’s room: dark, rough floorboards, and a high ceiling threaded with cracks. But there was an oriental rug, stained. Brass incense burners and candle holders on every surface. Cowboy boots by a mirror draped with belts and rope. Jules opened the door slowly, the hinges creaking, a smile breaking across his face.

  “Fuck off.”

  Jules laughed. Then he took a running leap and tackled her onto the dark red chenille bedspread. He was tickling her, poking her. He pulled her naked body back against him, put his chin on her shoulder and whispered in her ear.

  “Nobody ever loved me enough, either, Trudy. Poor baby.” His hand was between her legs now. She laid her head back against his shoulder. “We’re just two poor, poor little babies.”

  Because there is no point in lying

  Claire was always lying. That’s what Trudy thought. Always. She lied to Mercy, to Trudy, to herself. To her own parents. To everyone at work, everyone she met in town. She lied about how much money they had, how long Tammy had been gone, how soon her lover would return to her. How good their lives were, really. She lied and lied. What was the point? Why bother?

  Or she was crying. Lying or crying, one or the other, depending on the day.

  Today was a crying day.

  There she was when Trudy got home, collapsed in a lawn chair by the back door, head in hands, crying her heart out. It made Trudy feel tired to see her there. It sucked the life out of her. She squeezed her mother’s shoulder as she walked past her and into the house. Mercy was kneeling on the couch, a Barbie doll in each fist. She had the dolls facing each other, balanced on their tiptoes on the arm of the couch. She shook them a bit so their hair swung around.

  “Grandma’s crying again.”

  “I saw that.”

  “She says my mum should’ve come home by now.” Mercy bent the Barbies at the hips and seated them on the couch beside her. Trudy rummaged in her purse for her cigarettes and a lighter. She lit one and blew smoke at the ceiling.

  “She says Jules is gonna die. If he does the jump.” Mercy waved at the smoke in the air with both hands. “We should stop him and run away. The three of us together. And Grandma Claire, too.”

  Trudy nodded. Probably. Probably they should stop him from trying to jump the river and run away together.

  Mercy was probably right as usual.

  Because you think you’re so fucking good

  Trudy walked across the concrete floor toward her machine in the yellow-green light of the factory. Her head felt as light as a balloon. Her vision was blurry. She had spent too many days with Jules. Too many days arguing and fooling around instead of sleeping. Putting Mercy in front of the TV with her Barbies or leaving her with Mark and James for a couple of hours here and there. Pretending anything could possibly come of it all. Pretending she was someone else from somewhere else living a different kind of life altogether. She could pretend all she wanted, but most nights she still ended up here in this concrete vault, trying not to sew her fingers together.

  Dream dissolved. Reality reinstated.

  As she got closer to her workstation, she could see that for the third time this week someone had tampered with her machine. It was completely encased, mummified, in white thread. Like a fly in a spider web. Trudy sat down in her chair and stared at it, trying to process how much time, how much patience, must have gone into this endeavour. Winding and winding the thread around the machine — how many times? Hundreds? Thousands?

  Lunatics. Fucking morons.

  There were murmurs behind her, from the back rows, the cheap seats. It was both amazing and depressing how similar the set-up in the sewing room felt to every classroom she was ever in as a kid. Her, hunched over at the front of the class, trying to focus on her work while listening for a rustle behind her, waiting for something to sail through the air and hit her in the back of the head. She picked up her scissors and started cutting through the thread. She had to cut through one thin layer at a time. It made a tearing sound as the blades worked their way through. Like the sound of cutting through bandages.

  Trudy knew why she was being harassed. She was being punished for the number one small-town crime: Thinking You’re Good. As in: You think you’re good, don’t you? Everybody knew that she had put her name in for the dayshift. Another fantasy. Another case of Trudy thinking she was good. But she knew she didn’t have a chance. She didn’t have the seniority, wasn’t productive enough, was always causing trouble. And then there was Mercy. Even with school starting in September, Trudy and Claire both working days would leave Mercy home alone for two hours or more. It could never work.

  At the end of her shift, as Trudy was punching out, Jeannie appeared beside her. “How’s your bullshit boyfriend, Trudy?”

  “Shut up, Jeannie.”

  “Thinks he’s something special, eh? Thinks he’s Superman or something. Looks like a fucking loser to me.”

  “You would know.”

  “Because you’re so much better, right, Trudy?”

  There it was. You think you’re good, don’t you, Trudy?

  “Yup.”

  “Because what?” Jeannie had followed her out to the parking lot, the late summer sun making the asphalt slightly soft under their shoes. Trudy kept walking, looking straight ahead. She could see her car at the end of the lot. It had been wrapped in toilet paper, streamers of it fluttering in the breeze. And someone had upende
d a garbage can onto the hood, its former contents scattered on and around her car: a browning apple core, a used Maxi pad, some crumpled up foil, banana peels, and pop cans.

  “Why, Trudy? Why do you think you’re so much better than the rest of us? Wait. Let me guess. Is it your job? No, that can’t be right.” Jeannie feigned confusion, looking up at the sky, tilting her head to the side.

  “Fuck off, Jeannie.” Trudy kept walking.

  “Is it your fancy clothes, your nice house? No, can’t be that . . . your high level of education? Nope, not that either.” Jeannie threw her foot out to the side, kicking Trudy’s shin so that she tripped and lurched forward. Trudy turned her head to the side as she fell to save her face and her bare shoulder skidded painfully across the pavement.

  “Oops! Sorry, Trudy!” Jeannie turned to walk away, but Trudy lunged across the pavement to grab her by the ankles. Jeannie pitched forward onto the ground, flat on her chest, the air knocked out of her lungs with a thud, a percussive hoof issuing from her mouth. Trudy was on her now, sitting on her back, using both hands to pin Jeannie’s wrists to the ground. Here we go again, she thought. She suddenly felt very tired. Her body felt like lead. She grabbed a handful of Jeannie’s coarse rusty hair in her fist and yanked her head back. She bent down, her face beside Jeannie’s cheek.

  “Jeannie, please just fuck off. Or I will kill you.” Jeannie was silent, glaring sideways at her. “I don’t know why you even give a shit what I think, Jeannie. Why do you care?” She let go of her hair. “Just leave me alone, OK?”

  As Trudy got up and walked toward her car, Jeannie rolled onto her back. When she finally caught her breath, she sat up and yelled, “Cunt! ”

  Trudy did not turn around; she let this pass through her. Oh, Jeannie and her clever repartee.