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“Well,” he said, as he turned back toward the windshield and used the lever thing on the steering wheel to change the truck from going backward to going forward. Putting it in gear, I suddenly remembered—that had to be what he’d just done.
He started driving down the driveway toward the highway into town before he continued. I studied his face, the red of the sunset making him look, frankly, like a god. When we got to the end of the driveway, and I’d started to think he would leave it at well, he suddenly turned to me and winked, just like he had done in the kitchen.
“I guess,” he said, “a handful means a girl who’s got a bit too much going on for her own good.”
My mouth opened as if to reply, but Cal had already turned back toward the road and started to pull out of the driveway—and I had nothing to say, either. I couldn’t argue. I had a lot going on, at least inside. I guessed one way of looking at my unbelievably stupid decision to steal the earrings might involve wanting to do something dramatic on the outside to demonstrate to myself—and the world—that the way things worked in modern life didn’t work for me.
Up to that moment I probably would have told anyone, including myself, that I had shoplifted because I didn’t have enough going on in that utterly boring life in the subsidized dorm with the subsidized unemployment allowance. Without apparently meaning to, though, Cal Perkins had just offered me what felt like an insight into my own mind.
I didn’t like it. Or maybe I told myself I didn’t like it, because how dare he be right about me? Worse, if Cal were right, it would mean Jake and Shelly were right, too: I was a handful.
That absolutely couldn’t be true, because if I were a handful, it would mean…
It would mean I belong in Grasskiln, where men like Jake and Cal can make sure I get the discipline I need.
I looked down at my hands in my lap, as the truck picked up speed along the highway. A few moments before, I had almost felt happy. I had returned Cal’s smile.
Like an idiot.
I stole a glance at him.
Sure, he’s fucking gorgeous. But he just tried to tell you about yourself—he tried to tell you that you belong in this fucking crazy town.
“Where are we going?” I asked him, trying to break myself out of the thought circle that I could see would only make me unhappy.
“My house,” he told me, looking over with a quick smile that turned into a slight frown at the hard expression I had fixed my face into. “I’ve got a couple great steaks waiting to go on the grill.”
To my dismay, my mouth started to water immediately. Annoyed, I turned to look straight out the windshield so that I wouldn’t even know if Cal had his eyes on me.
“Not a restaurant?” I asked, trying to put just a tiny note of city-girl contempt into my tone.
Cal laughed. “Nearest restaurant is two towns over,” he told me. “Hour’s drive.”
“Oh,” I said. I couldn’t keep a little disappointment out of my voice. I hadn’t been to restaurants more than a handful of times, and I had always thought that if I ever had an actual date, of course he would take me out to eat. Especially for the first date.
I tried desperately to figure out what to think about this first date, and about Cal Perkins, and how to act toward him. The idea that he wasn’t even taking me to a restaurant pushed me towards a sort of silent resistance. I remembered with a twist of my stomach about the reports Cal and Jake were going to file about my ‘conduct,’ though. I had no desire to go back over the arm of Jake’s easy chair, anymore than I wanted to give Cal any excuse to make use of his apparent right to discipline me himself. But I could simply go along, and ‘behave myself,’ couldn’t I? Get through it and make it clear that I didn’t belong in Grasskiln?
“How about this?” he asked, though, his voice easy and pleasant. “If we hit it off, we’ll take that drive over to Heathville and eat at the Lion’s Mane in a few days. It’s a good restaurant, too. I mean, I don’t know what you’re used to, like that fine dining stuff you see on TV or whatever, but they make a hell of a burger.”
I looked over at him, despite myself.
“Would you like that?” he asked, glancing in my direction before returning his attention to the road. I thought I could see in his eyes that the sudden change in my face, the way I had set my mouth into a tight line, had confused him.
“Sure,” I said, trying to keep my voice as neutral as I could.
Don’t fall for it, I told myself. He’s just trying to…
To what? Make me feel good? What could be wrong with that?
Everything. I don’t want to feel ‘good’ in this bizarre town.
Cal’s house, in a cute little subdivision on the edge of town, wasn’t big. I could see, though, as soon as he pulled into the driveway and the garage door opened like magic, that he took really great care of it. Even the garage looked as neat as a pin.
“Potato salad is ready to go,” he said, when he had turned off the truck. “How do you like your steak?”
“I… I don’t know,” I said. “Medium? That’s when it’s still pink, right?”
Cal smiled. “That’s right. Beef’s pretty expensive in the cities these days, I guess.”
