Читать книгу You Believers - Jane Bradley - Страница 12

Molly Flynn panted hard in the last stretch of her five-mile run. Her house was in sight. Time to sprint the last quarter mile. Then she saw the guy with the dog at the end of the street. She stopped, slowed to a walk. If she sprinted, she’d meet up with him, but if she went real slow, he’d have to keep moving and be on the side street if he really was out just to walk that dog. He lived just a little ways over, and of all the trails and streets he could take, he always seemed to pick her street. She didn’t like the way his eyes traveled up and down her legs, over her arms, her chest. He never really did anything she could say was wrong, but it was like he was making fun of her somehow. She knew without speaking to him that he was a jerk.

She saw him look her way as if he might wait for her. She pretended not to notice and crouched down to retie her shoes. For God’s sake, it was a nice neighborhood. A girl should be able to run in shorts and a sports bra without feeling like the neighbors would jump her bones first chance they got. She looked up, saw him bend and pat the dog like he was speaking to it. Then, without another look her way, he moved on. Thank God. He was so not her type, cute but a little too lean with these tight muscles, like all he was made of was muscle and bone. He looked like some kind of guitar player, wannabe rock star. He had the looks, all right. “But not my type,” she said out loud as she walked toward her house. She hoped he’d gotten that message by now. She ignored him whenever she drove by him while he was walking that damned dog on the sidewalk. He’d let the dog shit anywhere, never once picked it up. He might live in the neighborhood, but it was clear to most everybody that he didn’t belong.

By the time she reached her house, he was out of sight, so she didn’t pretend to fiddle with the lock; she just pushed the front door open and walked in. Her mother had fussed at her for not locking the doors. But a five-mile run with a house key dangling from your wrist, who needed that? She was sweaty, and the sudden rush of air conditioning gave her a chill. She grabbed her hoodie from where she liked to leave it on a chair by the door—her mother didn’t like that either, said the living room was a place for greeting people, not a place for throwing down your clothes wherever convenient. She pulled the hoodie on as she headed to the kitchen for a bottle of water. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate, her coach always told her, so when she wasn’t running or drinking water, she was usually needing to pee.

She went to the bathroom, washed her hands, studied her face in the mirror. She’d forgotten to put on sunscreen, and her skin was so delicate. It was something her mother had told her: “Freckles are cute on a girl, but not on a woman. They start to look like age spots after a while, and you’re too pretty for that.”

Molly Flynn had the face of a Botticelli angel. People often told her this. She was striking in a way that could make strangers walk up and say things like, “You have the face of a Botticelli angel.” It always made her blush, but she’d learned to just shrug, say “Thanks,” and turn away. She had looked up Botticelli’s art at the library one day and had to admit there were similarities: the fair skin, round face, delicate lips, long hair that kind of rippled down the shoulders, and big, dreamy eyes. Yeah, she was kind of like that. But she wasn’t impressed. It was just a lucky mix of her mother’s Italian and her daddy’s Irish genes. And these days, looking like a Botticelli angel wasn’t exactly the hottest thing. She’d studied the magazines for what was hot, and she was not. Her thighs were too thick from all the running and gymnastics, her ass just a little too, well, round. They’d never pick her for the J. Crew catalog. She was glad Matt loved her just the way she was. He said women in the fashion magazines looked scary, while she looked real and hot and sweet.

So she looked like some old Italian painter’s idea of an angel, the same painter who would’ve painted Jesus with blond hair and blue eyes. What did art know about anything anyway? It was all just somebody’s idea of things.

Molly wasn’t big on angels, like many of her friends. They’d buy little statues of angels to keep on their bedside tables, little angel bookmarks, posters; one of her friends even had an angel tattoo on her belly, a sexy little angel. “Great place for a guardian angel,” Molly had said with a laugh. “Think that will keep the boys out of your pants?” But her friend had just given her a sly look, said, “Oh, no, it’ll make ’em want to come a little closer for a good look at what I have.”

Molly thought that was trashy, but she didn’t say so. She knew the way to keep her friends was to keep half her thoughts to herself. Like church. Most of her friends went to church. Mostly Baptist, and they were always trying to bring her along. But she got out of it by saying she was Catholic; she had her own faith. Right. They used to be Catholic, which meant her dad could run around all he wanted as long as he confessed, said a few Hail Marys. All that faith in God hadn’t done her mother any good with the breast cancer. No, it was a good doctor and a plastic surgeon who’d saved her from that. Her mother had learned a few things from how the church and a husband could fail you. She went to a women’s support group every Wednesday night—an excuse to drink wine and gossip, but it made her mom strong. She’d learned a few things there and kept repeating them to Molly: “Believe in this world, not the next, Molly. Keep your body fit, your mind sharp, and your money invested. If your wits don’t save you, nobody will.” With her mother’s words in mind, she remembered what day it was and hurried down the hall to her room. Molly sat at her computer to log on to the college website to see if the class she wanted had any openings yet.

Down the street, Jesse unhooked the leash from his dog and let him run through the woods alongside the trail. He needed to run. He thought about the girl. Yeah, she’d seen him. And what was with that stopping and bending down to tie her shoes? He let the dog run and sniff and pee on just about every tree in those woods. Dogs did that. Marked turf. He loved that dog, his muscled chest, the way his fur glimmered in the light, loved watching him run through those woods like the wild thing he ought to be.

His cell phone buzzed. His mother. She’d been completely on his ass since he’d stayed at Mike’s that night. He answered. “I’m walking Luke; I’ll be right home. Yes, ma’am,” he said. He clicked off the phone. He’d forgotten to edge the sidewalk after he’d mown the grass. Everyone else in the neighborhood had a lawn service. But oh, no, his parents had him, not a good boy but the bad boy, the one they’d bought on sale and couldn’t take back to the store. He called his dog, and he came running and stood at Jesse’s side while he clipped the leash on. He crouched, patting the dog’s side with firm, loving smacks. He ruffled the dog’s ears, bent close, whispered, “We’ve got a job to do, Luke. Let’s go.”

Molly looked at the clock. Just after 5:00. Perfect timing, she thought. It was the last day for students to pay their tuition; as of 5:00, those who hadn’t paid would be purged. Purged, she thought. It was an ugly word, as if the great computer system vomited out the poor ones who didn’t have the money, whose financial aid hadn’t come. So they were purged from the classes they’d registered in—no money, no class. The world isn’t fair, she thought, and that really did strike her as a sad thing for a moment. It wasn’t fair, but at least now there was a chance she could get into that afternoon section of the pedagogical theory class she needed. She was already in the night class, but she wanted her nights free to spend more time with Matt: dinners, movies, tennis at the club. She was trying to talk him into ballroom-dance classes, but he was resisting that. What she really wanted to tell him was that they needed dancing classes so they could dance at the wedding, really dance, not just wiggle and bounce around the way so many did. She wanted a real wedding with real dancing, even though Matt hadn’t done anything like propose.

She clicked on the website for course options and started scrolling down the list of classes open and closed. She stared at the monitor as the list of sections rolled up on the screen: “Closed. Closed. Closed.” In her introduction to psychology class, Molly had learned something about mind over matter, a theory that thoughts had energy, could actually change things in the physical world. Visualize, she thought, even though she didn’t really believe in such things. Magical thinking, she called it. But what the hell, she’d try it. She sat back, sipped her water, and closed her eyes, saw names blinking off enrollment lists. Blink. Blink. Blink. Students were being purged, names blinking out one by one as the system’s program sought out the ones who hadn’t paid. “Amount due” meant blink, gone. Sorry, Molly thought, then sat up, watched the screen.

She glanced up at Matt’s picture on her desk. He looked goofy with the snorkeling mask shoved on top of his head. But what a smile, a Brad Pitt kind of smile, just a little bit mischievous and sweet. She whispered to the picture, “I dare you to like ballroom dancing.” It was a game they played, getting each other to try out new things. She had learned kickboxing, and he’d learned just a little bit of French, just enough to get by when they went to Paris one day. They took turns choosing things they’d never done before. Her mother worried sometimes about just how far Molly would go, had made her promise to always ask permission before she did anything too crazy like bungee jumping or leaping out of planes. Molly didn’t know where she’d draw the line at too much risk. Molly had a belief, another thing she’d learned from her mother: Never let fear keep you from what you want. That was what she wanted to teach her students one day, fearlessness, faith in your own strength, curiosity—these were the things she wanted to teach the world, along with long division, and reading, and writing, and geography.

She stared at the computer screen, thought, Come on, come on, feeling like a gambler watching the balls whir around a roulette wheel. The unseen programmed intelligence was playing God now, choosing who was in and who was out while Molly sat in purgatory, eyes fixed on the screen, waiting for the word Open to appear. She stared at the line with the section she wanted: Tuesday/Thursday, 4:10 to 5:25. She stood, paced, waiting. She wanted dance lessons with Matt on Wednesday nights, not some pedagogical theory class. She wanted Matt to twirl her, dip her, lift her, her legs flying through the air. She wanted—that was her problem, her daddy had told her—sometimes she wanted too many things.

Molly stopped. She could feel it. She turned and looked toward the screen. “Open.” She sat and signed into the course, then clicked for her registration list to see if the course was really there. Yep. Done. She stood as the printer clicked and hummed out proof of her new schedule. Perfect, she thought as she glanced out the window of her bedroom to the sunny day. Her mom would be happy. Since the divorce her mom had come to believe in grabbing pleasure. Now she was doing it with tennis lessons, yoga classes, book clubs. They lived together more like roommates than mother and daughter, but her mom still played the mom three nights a week, making supper for Molly, good-mom suppers like baked chicken and fried pork chops. Sometimes Molly felt she was the luckiest girl in the world.

Then she saw him, with that dog. Coming back down the sidewalk. She thought, You don’t even live on this street. If she could get the double-paned windows open, she’d lean out and give him the finger. But instead she moved back from the window, stood to the side so he couldn’t see her. He paused in front of her house, looked at her car. Lots of guys liked to look at her car—that was one reason she’d picked it. She knew she looked good in it, her red hair flying all around when she drove with the top down. He bent and spoke to his dog while he looked at the house, and Molly had a sudden urge to duck away from the window. She thought she really ought to listen more to her mother sometimes. Lock the door. Park the car inside the garage. Be a little more careful.

He gave the dog some quick, hard pats, then stood, walked on. Molly watched until he disappeared down the street. Geez, she thought, lighten up. He’s just another horny guy after your ass. He was a neighbor, just a neighbor. She’d seen him help his daddy, working out in their yard. Just a guy, she thought. Just a jerk. But there was something in the way he studied her house. She felt a chill, pulled on her sweat-pants over her shorts. The guy with the dog was gone, but something made her walk downstairs and lock the door. She glanced at the blinking lights of the security system she and her mother never used. Her mother was from rural Pennsylvania, where no one locked doors, where no one had anything worth stealing. Her daddy used to yell about their indifference to security: “I work my ass off to buy all these things, and you two don’t care enough to lock them up.” Her mother would just shrug and respond: “We live in a gated community. We have a security guard by the road who keeps an eye on every license plate that goes in and out of this place. What can happen here?”