The Hotel Eden(10)

“Your lab partner will meet you tonight at seven o’clock.”

“Keith,” she said, taking the stir stick from him and prodding the undissolved sulfur, “I’m dating Brian. Remember?”

“Good for you,” he said. “Now tell me something I don’t know. Listen: I’ll pick you up at seven. This isn’t a date. This isn’t dinner. This is errands. I’m serious. Necessary errands—for your friends.”

Barbara Anderson rolled her eyes.

“You’ll be home by nine. Young Mr. Brian can scoot by then. I mean it.” Keith leaned toward her, the streams of baking acrid sulfur rising past his face. “I’m not lying to you.”

WHEN SHE GOT to the truck that night, Keith asked her, “What did you tell Brian?”

“I told him I had errands at my aunt’s and to come by at ten for a little while.”

“That’s awfully late on a school night.”

“Keith.”

“I mean, why didn’t you tell him you’d be with me for two hours?” He looked at her. “I have trouble lending credibility to a relationship that is almost one year old and one in which one of the members has given another an actual full-size, roadworthy motor vehicle, and yet it remains a relationship in which one of the members lies to the other when she plans to spend two hours with her lab partner, a person with whom she has inhaled the very vapors of hell.”

“Stop the truck, Keith. I’m getting out.”

“And miss bowling? And miss the search for bowling balls?”

Half an hour later they were in Veteran’s Thrift, reading the bowling balls. They’d already bought five at Desert Industry Thrift Shops and the Salvation Army store. Keith’s rule was it had to be less than two dollars. They already had PATTY for Trish, BETSY and KIM for two more of Barbara’s friends, an initialled ball B.R. for Brian even though his last name was Wood-worth (“Puzzle him,” Keith said. “Make him guess”), and WALT for their chemistry teacher, Mr. Walter Miles. They found three more in the bins in Veteran’s Thrift, one marked SKIP, one marked COSMO (“A must,” Keith said), and a brilliant green ball, run deeply with hypnotic swirls, which had no name at all.

Barbara was touring the wide shelves of used appliances, toys, and kitchen utensils. “Where do they get all this stuff?”

“You’ve never been in a secondhand store before, have you?”

“No. Look at all this stuff. This is a quarter?” She held up a large plastic tray with the Beatles’ pictures on it.

“That,” Keith said, taking it from her and placing it in the cart with their bowling balls, “came from the home of a fan of the first magnitude. Oh, it’s a sad story. It’s enough to say that this is here tonight because of Yoko Ono.” Keith’s attention was taken by a large trophy, standing among the dozen other trophies on the top shelf. “Whoa,” he said, pulling it down. It was huge, over three feet tall: six golden columns, ascending from a white marble base to a silver obelisk, framed by two embossed silver wreaths, and topped by a silver woman on a rearing motorcycle. The inscription on the base read: WIDOWMAKER HILL CLIMB—FIRST PLACE 1987. Keith held it out to show Barbara, like a man holding a huge bottle of aspirin in a television commercial. “But this is another story altogether.” He placed it reverently in the basket.

“And that would be?”

“No time. You’ve got to get back and meet Brian, a person who doesn’t know where you are.” Keith led her to the checkout. He was quiet all the way to the truck. He placed the balls carefully in the cardboard boxes in the truck bed and then set the huge trophy between them on the seat.

“You don’t know where this trophy came from.”

Keith put a finger to his lips—“Shhhh”—and started the truck and headed to Barbara’s house. After several blocks of silence, Barbara folded her arms. “It’s a tragic, tragic story,” he said in a low voice. “I mean, this girl was a golden girl, an angel, the light in everybody’s life.”

“Do I want to hear this tragic story?”

“She was a wonder. Straight A’s, with an A plus in chemistry. The girl could do no wrong. And then,” Keith looked at Barbara, “she got involved with motorcycles.”

“Is this her on top of the trophy?”

“The very girl.” Keith nodded grimly. “Oh, it started innocently enough with a little red motor scooter, a toy really, and she could be seen running errands for the Ladies’ Society and other charities every Saturday and Sunday when she wasn’t home studying.” Keith turned to Barbara, moving the trophy forward so he could see her. “I should add here that her fine academic standing got her into Brown University, where she was going that fateful fall.” Keith laid the trophy back. “When her thirst for speed grew and grew, breaking over her good common sense like a tidal wave, sending her into the arms of a twelve-hundred-cc Harley-Davidson, one of the most powerful two-wheeled vehicles in the history of mankind.” They turned onto Barbara’s street, and suddenly Barbara ducked, her head against Keith’s knee.