Thomas and Sarah (California, part II)

part two-this goes after California. -g

Thomas and i sit across from each other in the pink-and-oak truckstop booth, our menus between us. As i try to decide what i want, i swing my feet back and forth, the soles of my sneakers whisking against the tile floor. The booths are just tall enough, and my legs just short enough, that if i sit with my knees against the counter i can swing my legs. "What're you getting?" Thomas asks, not looking up.

I give the menu a final once-over, then flip it closed and slide it to the edge of the table. "Hash browns."

"That's all?" he asks, glancing up.

"Yeah," i tell him. "You getting the usual?"

He slowly closes his menu. "Yep."

"Good, my hash browns'll be nice and greasy."

Thomas looks up at me, puzzled. "What?"

"Yeah, they usually cook them in the same grease that they cook your eggs and stuff in, so when they come, they're swimming in grease."

He nods. "Ah. That's pretty gross."

"But it tastes pretty good." He only shrugs at that.

The waitress comes then. Her name is Kimmy, and up until last week she had a walking cast up to her knee. She's petite and short, shorter than me, and knows us by sight if not by name. Tonight she takes our order, smiles, and tells us as always that we know where the drinks are.

I light a cigarette, pulling the ashtray over from its place between the sugar and the bowl holding the little plastic cups of creamer. "Let me have one of those?" Thomas asks. I toss the pack over to him.

"You smoke?" i say as i hold my lighter up towards him, gesturing with it a little.

"No," he replies, and leans forward to light his cigarette on the flame i'm offering. I push the ashtray towards the center of the table and then turn, putting my back against the wall and my feet up on the bench, looking out at the rest of the restaurant.

There are only seven other people here excluding Kimmy, the guy who wanders around sweeping and mopping various sections of the floor, and the cook i've never seen. Two girls are sitting about three booths behind me, both studying and writing silently. On the wall perpendicular to the one i'm leaning against, about twenty feet away, sit an older man and woman. They're probably in their early forties, and are sitting on the same side of their table, their feet propped up on the booth across from them, laughing and talking animatedly. Three tired, baseball-capped men are sitting in the trucker's section, two at the counter, one in a booth, smoking and drinking coffee and talking in low, road-weary voices.

Thomas and i don't say much as we smoke. Kimmy returns, filling up his coffee cup before i even realize that it's empty. "More orange?" she asks me as Thomas reaches for the creamer. "I'm good, thanks," i tell her.

Thomas starts singing along with the radio. "I just wanna dance with yew," he twangs. I laugh. I have to laugh?it's too funny, in a lonely country western sort of way. He puts out his cigarette and smiles back at me, a shadow of the wicked grin he usually flashes. He stirs his coffee, the spoon clanking against the inside of the cup in time with the music. It's too late at night for them to announce the titles of the songs, much less who's singing them, and i'm suddenly too shy to ask Thomas what it was he was singing.

I'm stuffed up, and i keep making trips to the bathroom to blow my nose. "How can you live out here," Thomas asks, "when you're so damn allergic to everything?"

"It's been a bad year for allergies," i protest. "I never had allergies before this year."

"Yeah, whatever," he says. "I guess a lot of people are really stuffed up this year." I sniff in agreement.

Kimmy appears next to us, her arms laden with our food. She sets down a plate of hash browns in front of each of us, then lays down a plate of eggs over easy, white toast and sausage patties in front of Thomas. We dig in. The hash browns are greasy, soggy, just the way i like them. For a while neither one of us says much of anything, eating.

I'm about halfway through my hash browns when Thomas says something through a mouthful of food.

"What?" i ask, resting my fork on the edge of my plate. He holds up one hand and chews, then swallows.

"Adriana called this morning."

I've been waiting for this for the better part of an hour and a half, since Thomas showed up on my porch looking tired and nervous and asked if i wanted to come here with him. "How's she doing?" i ask, trying to act nonchalant. I fail, mostly because i haven't heard anything from Adriana in the two weeks she's been gone. I take a bite of my now tasteless hash browns and wash them down with the last of my soda.

"She's good, i guess. She hasn't found a place yet?she's still living with her aunt. We didn't talk that long. She was at a pay phone, paying with quarters."

He doesn't go on, so after a minute, i venture "She's still in San Francisco, then?"

"Yeah. She says if she can't find a job or anything there she might more north, upstate or to Oregon or something."

I flag Kimmy down. "I think i'm going to switch over to coffee," i tell her.

"Sure thing, sweetie," she says. A minute later, i have a full steaming cup of coffee in front of me. I crack open one of the plastic creamer things and pour it in, then hold my spoon over the cup and dump sugar on it until i have a mountain, precariously balanced in the small silver bowl. I dump the sugar in and stir. My coffee turns a pale shade of brown, a ghost of its former self. Ordinarily, Thomas would make some crack about how my coffee isn't coffee anymore, but tonight he stares at his pale, pasty eggs as though they had just insulted his mother or his manhood or both.

"She really likes it out there, doesn't she?" i ask softly. He taps a creamer packet back and forth between his hands and doesn't look up.

"She loves it," he sighs. "I don't think she's coming back, Sarah."

He continues before i can think up anything to say to that. "She's not going to come back. I knew that when she first asked me to go with her. I knew that the day she left. Hell," he laughs softly, "i knew that the day i met her." He sounds like he's trying to convince himself.

"It's not your fault she left," i tell him.

He runs a hand over his short hair. "I keep telling myself that, but i guess i always hoped she'd stick around. Shoulda known better, i guess."

A state trooper walks by, heading towards the back room where the cops congregate from time to time. The metal pinned to his uniform and hanging from his belt shines brightly in the muted fluorescence of the room.

"We really didn't talk much," he starts up again. "She just kept plugging quarters into the phone and we just kept sitting there, not saying much of anything. I think she was trying to not talk too much about California. It's not like we ever talked that much anyway." He pushes at his food with his fork, scooting pieces of egg and sausage around the greasy plate. It occurs to me all of the sudden that i'm not afraid of Thomas anymore.

"At least she called?" i ask him.

He stares at a spot above and beyond my head as if he didn't hear me. I fork a couple more bites of food into my mouth. "I told her it's over."

I set my fork down and wipe my mouth on my napkin, my eyes never leaving his face. "What'd she say to that?" i ask him, slowly. He looks down at his hands, and for a moment all i can see of him is the top of his head, the short bristles of his hair standing on end, floating above the blue of his shirt.

"She said that that's what she called to tell me, she just couldn't figure out how to say it."

"So you just got to it first."

"Yeah, pretty much." He sighs. "I knew it was coming."

"Doesn't make it any easier."

He shrugs, then looks at the check and takes out his wallet. "Let's get out of here."

Kimmy rings us up at the register out front. A haggard, stubble-faced man in dirty jeans and a flannel shirt is standing at the quarter machine, staring at it. As Kimmy punches our bill in, he pulls out a handful of change and digs through it, then begins dropping quarters into the machine, hoping they'll push more quarters off of the edge that they're balanced on and into the chute than he puts in. His quarters fall with a lifeless plunk, but nothing comes out the bottom. The man shrugs and turns away.

"Everything okay?" Kimmy asks us, and although i know she's just asking about the food, i'm tempted to say no. "Fine," i tell her. Thomas says nothing, but hands over his money. "Just a little tired," i add.

"Yeah," she says, "try working graveyard and having four kids. I'm pretty tired myself." She hands Thomas his change, then picks up her rag and heads back into the trucker's section. I think about what she said as i follow Thomas out to the parking lot. I don't know how she does it.

We climb up onto the high seat of his pickup truck. As Thomas starts the truck, i roll my window down. The wet, sweet smell of hay hangs in the darkness like a prayer. It's almost fall. We coast out of the parking lot and start rattling down the highway, heading towards the lights of the quarry that shine like a beacon, beckoning us towards home. I lean my head against the glass of the half-open window, watching the dark fields pass us by, trying to figure out how old Kimmy might be. Neither of us says a word.

Thomas pulls up in front of my house and stops the truck. I look over at him as the wheels stop, and i realize that he's a million miles away. I reach over and squeeze his arm lightly before i step out of the truck. It's all i can think to do.

"Goodnight," i say before i close the door. He sort of half-waves in reply. I close the door and he shifts into drive and pulls away, gravel from the shoulder bouncing off of the undercarriage of his truck.

I've got this picture of Thomas that he doesn't know i have?i don't even think he knows that it exists. It's a picture Adriana took of him one day while he was fixing her car. You can't really see his face?it's half-buried in the innards of the machine?but i kept it anyway, and that's sort of how i feel now as i watch him drive away. It's as though i'm looking at a photograph, and the person in the picture has no idea that i can even see him.

*falls over, overwhelmed by his sis's talent*

I'll have to get back to you as far as specifics, but I'm damn impressed.

I just discovered this board (thanks Eris) but yours was the first thing that I read gollum. Lemme just say "WOW!" I dont know if you remember or not, but a long time ago, when I was first on STP and you were appearing there, you wrote a poem named Chris. That was my favorite poem ever and it made me really like your writing. Now, I can say that I dont really like it, I love it!

*still very impressed*
I love your attention to detail.

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Branflakes, the ninja lesbian milk getter flirt.
The one called "brain" and "brainflakes" and....
"One thing I've never been is straight, dear girl." Katchoo, SiP
"If ever you need naughty good things, just let me know..."-Starkyld
"With you around, Bran? It would take Starky less than a second before she is in trouble."-Fenix
I'm tired of the silent majority. Silence equals death.
Life is what you make it.

I liked the first part very much gollum. I wasn't even anticipating more because it worked well by itself. Like your other stories, it could stand alone without more because of the ability to capture images. Your prose reminds me of poetry in that way.

thanks, everyone. glad you liked it.

Oz--*blush* thanks :) that's one of my favorites too.
Jace--yeah, and there's more after this one, too (probably going to be 5 or 6 parts in all). one of the reasons i've posted them separately is that i'm hoping to be able to write them to stand alone, but still be connected--like chapters, sort of.

thanks for the comments, everyone. one question: do the aside characters--the cop, the guy at the quarter machine--seem too random, or do they work?

-g

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Sometimes i think everyone on this board is crazy. The rest of the time i'm sure. -Dan :)
somehow i see [gollum] clinging to a tower and rousingly calling for a new world order. -starky

Yeah, I'm a real prize. Tonight, I'm a bronze medal.

I think they work fine. I really like this, gollum. I like the style and I'm interested to see how things turn out. I wonder if a little more description of the locations wouldn't go amiss. The pace of story is quite slow, and as Bran said you've got a nice eye for detail, so perhaps taking a little time to go over the surroundings (I mean, don't go insane or anything) might help. Just a thought. I hope there's more.

[This message has been edited by Ersby (edited September 12, 2000).]