The Hotel Eden(11)

“Drive by,” she whispered.” Just keep going.”

“What?” Keith said. “If I do that Brian won’t see you.” Keith could see Brian leaning against his scooter in the driveway. “Is that guy always early?”

Keith turned the next corner, and Barbara sat up and opened her door. “I’ll go down the alley.”

“Cool,” Keith said. “So you sneak down the alley to meet your boyfriend? Pretty sexy.”

She gave him a look.

“Okay, have fun. But there’s one last thing, partner. I’ll pick you up at four to deliver these bowling balls.”

“Four?”

“Four a.m. Brian will be gone, won’t he?”

“Keith.”

“It’s not a date. We’ve got to finish this program, right?”

Barbara looked over at Brian and quickly back at Keith as she opened the truck door. “Okay, but meet me at the corner. There,” she pointed, “by the postbox.”

SHE WAS THERE. The streets of the suburbs were dark and quiet, everything in its place, sleeping, but Barbara Anderson stood in the humming lamplight, humming her elbows. It was eerily quiet and she could hear Keith coming for two or three blocks before he turned onto her street. He had the heater on in the truck, and when she climbed in he handed her a blue cardigan, which she quickly buttoned up. “Four a.m.,” she said, rubbing her hands over the air vent. “Now this is weird out here.”

“Yeah,” Keith said. “Four o’clock makes it a different planet. I recommend it. But bring a sweater.” He looked at her. “You look real sleepy,” he said. “You look good. This is the face you ought to bring to school.”

Barbara looked at Keith and smiled. “No makeup, okay? It’s four a.m.” His face looked tired, and in the pale dash lights, with his short, short hair he looked more like a child, a little boy. “What do we do?”

“We give each of these babies,” Keith nodded back at the bowling balls in the truck bed, “a new home.”

They delivered the balls, placing them carefully on the porches of their friends, including Trish and Brian, and then they spent half an hour finding Mr. Miles’s house, which was across town, a tan split-level. Keith handed Barbara the ball marked WALT and made her walk it up to the front porch. When she returned to the truck, Keith said, “Years from now you’ll be able to say, ‘When I was seventeen I put a bowling ball on my chemistry’s teacher’s front porch.’”

“His name was Walt,” Barbara added.

At five-thirty, as the first gray light rose, Barbara Anderson and Keith walked into Jewel’s Café carrying the last two balls: the green beauty and COSMO. Jewel’s was the oldest café in the city, an all-night diner full of mailmen. “So,” Barbara said, as they slid into one of the huge maroon booths, “who gets these last two?” She was radiant now, fully awake, and energized by the new day.

The waitress appeared and they ordered Round-the-World omelettes, hash browns, juice, milk, coffee, and wheat muffins, and Barbara ate with gusto, looking up halfway through. “So, where next?” She saw his plate. “Hey, you’re not eating.”

Keith looked odd, his face milky, his eyes gray. “This food is full of the exact amino acids to have a certifiably chemical day,” he said. “I’ll get around to it.”

But he never did. He pushed his plate to the side and turned the place mat over and began to write on it.

“Are you feeling all right?” Barbara said.

“I’m okay.”

She tilted her head at him skeptically.

“Hey. I’m okay. I haven’t lied to you this far. Why would I start now? You know I’m okay, don’t you? Well? Don’t you think I’m okay?”

She looked at him and said quietly: “You’re okay.”

He showed her the note he had written:

Dear Waitress: My girlfriend and I are from rival families—different sides of the tracks, races, creeds, colors, and zip codes, and if they found out we had been out bowling all night, they would banish us to prison schools on separate planets. Please, please find a good home for our only bowling balls. Our enormous sadness is only mitigated by the fact that we know you’ll take care of them.

With sweet sorrow—COSMO

In the truck, Barbara said, “Mitigated?”

“Always leave them something to look up.”

“You’re sick, aren’t you?” she said.

“You look good in that sweater,” he said. When she started to remove it, he added, “Don’t. I’ll get it after class, in just,” he looked at his watch, “two hours and twenty minutes.”