The Ice Age Page 2

  Once back in the room we didn’t really say much. Gunther rolled an assembly line of joints with a series of jerky movements that had none of his usual joint-rolling grace or finesse. He was glaring at his hands, glaring at everything they touched. I mumbled ‘sorry’, and he snorted. I didn’t think I’d done anything hugely wrong, but it was late, I guess. He must have been looking for me for a while. But as far as I knew we were both entertaining ourselves. That was his idea. I thought he was having a night on the town. Or on the roadhouse, as it were. And me…well, as Glorie announced huskily when I stood staring at her traveling portrait, you’re only young once.

  He seemed back to normal by the next morning, when he was doing all his morning things. By the time we got into the car he was a lot sunnier, for him. He seemed to have seen something funny in it. He smiled; not his usual beaming, but he glanced a weakish grin my direction. ‘So our little girl is growing up,’ he said. ‘I think you can do better than Random Farm Boy.’ We drove a ways further, past another doughnut sign, with faded, chipping paint. ‘Perhaps, a little more discerning.’

  We didn’t deviate from routine for a couple of weeks at least, after that incident. We each seemed to be making a concerted effort to keep things as regular as possible. We didn’t even make fun of people, or towns, or signs. We didn’t complain about the boringness of anything. We preserved it. We damn near cultivated it.

  I just wanted to crawl back into that bubble of safeness, that cocoon of hugging walls, smoke, and gazing at Gunther; basking in his benevolence, and dreaming of the promise of ultimate freedom he might deliver. For his part, I think he was trying to regain his composure, his suave air. I think he was largely succeeding.

  We were on sort of an artificial roll. I say ‘artificial’ because we weren’t quite ourselves. We were both a little nervy. But that didn’t seem to hurt us. The fact that we weren’t so locked into our comfy groove together meant we were able to put more of our individual vibes out into the world. We managed to charm our way through several towns. People were actually starting to think I was his nice little daughter. We weren’t creeping people out anymore.

  Maybe we’ve been getting too charismatic for our own good. Because we decided to hit the town again last night, and this time together. People thought it was cute I was hanging around. But then Gunther started talking to a pretty lady at the bar. I’d been sitting at the booth for a while, and it didn’t look like he was ordering us any food. In fact, it looked like he was buying them both a drink. And she was laughing.

  I never have much money of my own, so when I need to buy my own meals I usually head for a vending machine. Vending machines must be romantic beacons for me, because when I got to this one there was a nice-looking boy there; kind of punky with dyed black hair, and sort of a shy slouch. He was buying an oversized chocolate chip cookie. We said ‘hey’. He said that was his dinner. I got a candy bar and said, ‘Mine, too.’

  The candy bar was gross. He said I should have gotten a cookie; his was good. And filling. I said I didn’t have enough change. So he talked me into letting him buy me one, and we went outside and sat on the curb by the parking lot. His talking was more interesting than the farm boy’s. I didn’t know what he was on about half the time, but at least he sounded like he knew, sounded smart. He was talking about music and anti-mainstream stances. He didn’t ask me any dumb small-talky questions. He mostly just talked about himself.

  By now I thought it was time we got to the kissing. He was a boy, and I was pretty sure that’s what boys want. I leaned in, but he didn’t seem to get the point. In fact, he kind of melted into an even more closed posture. He was almost folding in on himself. We talked some more, and then he got onto the subject of how girls like me never like guys like him. I asked him what a girl like me was, and he didn’t elaborate. He just stayed all slouchy. I definitely had to kiss him now. To make him feel better, and to show him he was wrong. So I did, and he seemed kind of startled, but then warmed into the kissing nicely. He wasn’t as pushy as the farm boy. He was softer. This was nice. I got all tingly faster. We stayed out there in the parking lot like that for a while, swapping spit and lightly pawing each other. He said a few nice things to me, about me being pretty and all that. Then he said we should go back to his room. Apparently his parents had got him his own room, with a balcony and everything. I thought that seemed like a bad idea, and I knew Gunther would be upset. In fact, that suggestion brought me crashing back to earth. I said I better go, and went back to our room.

  Gunther wasn’t there. He came in just after dawn, looking disheveled and weary. He avoided looking me in the eye and flopped onto his bed, fetal position. Clothes and all. This room had twin beds, instead of two double, or one double and one cot. He stayed like that until he got up to take a shower. He went through his morning routine, and eventually looked very refreshed. He was calmer than he has been of late on today’s drive, and even more polite than usual.

  He returned and kept to his civilized ways and his reclusive rituals for a while after that night. He was reading good books and talking about ideas and ideals with me, just like old times, smoking away. I was typing loads on the tacky typewriter, smoking with him. We had some interesting discussions, and sometimes when we were stoned I could make him laugh a lot, then he would beam. And, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned, I like it when he shines those eyes on me. I felt comfortable again, but I wouldn’t say I felt the old safety.

  The next few days’ driving was affable and chatty. One thing I probably haven’t stressed about Gunther is that he is very down to earth. For all his cultured-ness, he likes talking my crap with me. He likes hearing my silly stories. He’s got a few of his own. He’s quick with a laugh, or rather, quick with a sharp-toothed grin.

  We didn’t collect as many suspicious looks when we stopped for meals, as we passed through this latest assortment of localities. We were comfortable. Maybe it was also the fact we weren’t in the middle of the country anymore. It’s less scary-weird when you get closer to the edges. People are just more normal. You don’t feel followed by countless pairs of accusing eyes, hovering just out of sight. Walking down Main Street in Averageville Anywhere, Middle-of-the-Country is like walking through a clearing, feeling that all around you, the trees, bushes, hell…sky, are full of things itching to pounce.

  Gunther says that is the folly of a country so large, and so insular. It becomes its own planet. The parts that aren’t visited enough by outside influences repel those influences when they come across them. So they just get more and more stuck in their own strange way of being. I’m from a small town myself, but, being closer to one of the edges, I guess it was a little more idyllic.

  We were coming into the desert now, and the landscape was interesting to look at. There were still a lot of farms dotted about, so it wasn’t moonscape desert. We’d get into that later. It was good to have a change of scenery. All those strip malls and scrubby trees were starting to hurt my eyes. I’d spent half my time just watching Gunther drive: staring out ahead serenely, hypnotizing the road with those cool beams.

  I spent less time typing during the evenings that accompanied these days, and more time studying Gunther. He was so used to me now he didn’t seem to notice, or mind. But then he never seemed to mind anything. That was probably why I felt so safe with him, and why all that safety came like a rush when we first started spending all this time together. There were no sudden moves, no shifts or jolts, he was just smooth, just there. It was like being under water. I’ve made him mad by now a few times, obviously. That burst my bubble a little, but it also made him more human. We had a comfortable closeness now, definitely. But he still kept a dignified distance. Just far enough for me to contemplate him. I know we like each other’s companionship. I sometimes thought it was kind of pointless, having random make-out sessions in nowhere towns with boys I didn’t even know. There was an arbitrariness and lack of taste to these encounters. It seemed dumb to pick them over someone classy like Gunther. I
couldn’t tell if it bothered him. He was pretty cool and contained, and had his own occasional encounters, so it was hard to tell. By now I had gotten a taste for the kissing, and was starting to wonder what it would be like to kiss him.

  We seem to be zig-zagging across the country. We certainly aren’t moving in a straight line. Gunther has a few friends scattered around the place. Quite a few really, for a reclusive sort. We’ve been stopping here and there to visit these various characters. You’d have to be a little out there to know Gunther. And then we stopped in other places and I didn’t know why. I get the impression it has been a while since he’s visited these people, these spots, and that’s part of why he is going out of his way. Getting to the far coast where the living is better is simply a bonus now, a minor detail. At this point I’m along for the ride.

  After several days of lazy driving and laid-back stopovers, we’ve kicked back into gear. Gunther high-tailed it all day to get to this town where his friend Murray lives. When we got there it was well past dark, and his eyes were squinty and strained. He looked tired, and I thought not very excited to see an old friend. Some things are more of an obligation, though. When we got there Murray was sitting on the front porch in a rocking chair. It was all woodsy and dark. There was a warm orange glow filling the inside of the cottage, lighting up all the rustic clutter. He got up and gave us both a warm welcome. Gunther handed him a package wrapped loosely in cloth, or leather or something. Murray laughed heartily, then nodded, put it in the pocket of his big suede coat, and led us inside. That old shack was such a stereotype I thought it looked like a movie set. It amused me someone actually lived like that, full-time, all year round. This wasn’t some fishing trip. He actually had a real moose head on his wall. And rifles. There was a roaring log fire, tartan blankets scattered everywhere, and of course, a bear skin rug that I thought looked like road kill. I don’t really like dead things.

  We sat around the big log table for ages. Murray served up a fairly substantial meal, which consisted of meat, meat, and more meat, with some bloody gravy, and a mash on the side that may have once been a vegetable. Those two were drinking red wine. I was on cherry soda. Gunther can hold his alcohol, but Murray was starting to talk a whole lot of shit that I didn’t care to hear. Stuff about Gunther’s playboy past; what a stud he used to be, how many delicate hearts he shattered as he fucked his way through a smorgasbord of hot babes of all description. And in perfect accompaniment to these orgies were all the drugs. Was there anything he hadn’t tried, any path he hadn’t merrily sauntered down? I stole a glance at Gunther. I didn’t like to hear his dignity affronted like this. He looked weary, but unfazed. At length he said, ‘Yes, I suppose I was a bit of a hedonist back then.’ Murray raised his glass as far as his fat arm could stretch above his fat stomach and exclaimed, ‘What a life, what a fucking life!’

  Murray didn’t look so good this morning. Last night, lit by firelight, various lamps, and the rosy glow of red wine in his cheeks, he was heartily robust. Standing in the hallway outside the bathroom door, in a white(ish) wifebeater with a towel over his shoulder, he looked like a surprised albino walrus. Doughy and pallid, with whiskers puffing out everywhere and tiny pink bloodshot eyes.

  ‘Hello, sunshine,’ he said.

  I said ‘hi’.

  He made Gunther and me pancakes, and he made a hell of a lot of them. It was quite a production. It was nice to be in a house again, even if it was a house full of weirdo dead trophies and innuendo. It was still cozy. And all that crap about home-cooked meals being incomparable is true. Gunther said something to that effect, and I was just thinking the same thing. You can’t go wrong with a six-inch stack of pancakes.

  Still, it was good to get back on the road. It’s become sort of a home in itself. I asked Gunther if he had really done all that stuff Murray said he had back there. Gunther said basically, yeah, although it wasn’t quite as heartless, or soulless, or lamely macho as Murray made it all sound. He said back then if he wanted to try something, he tried it. He satiated his appetites and curiosity, but not at the expense of others. Like attracts like, he said. Suddenly I didn’t feel so bad about it all, didn’t feel like Gunther was in any danger of falling from grace. It was devil-may-care. Fearless. Almost gallant.

  He said, ‘I just had too much energy.’

  I said, ‘But it’s probably made you a lot calmer now.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he gave a little snort. ‘Or maybe just tired.’

  Our next stop was a terribly bright diner perched on a hill, in kind of a cute, bland, medium-sized town. It looked like a plastic gingerbread house, although I don’t think that was intentional. The waitress not only added to the effect, she brought it right over the top. She had on a hot pink, body-hugging minidress uniform. The name Taffy was sewn on a badge that teetered on the precipice of one of her ginormous tits. I suspect she had on one of those pointy 1950s- style bras. Those two blinding hot pink horizontal peaks were just jutting out like no one’s business. It’s like they were trying to make some kind of statement, irrespective of the rest of her.

  I ordered pancakes again, which amused us both, but that’s all I was in the mood for. Taffy leaned over Gunther every time either of them spoke, straightbacked, chest out, topless-dancer style. She had long yellow blonde hair, which she dangled over him. I think it tickled his face. She looked like she belonged in a heavy metal video. Gunther said he was waiting for the band to pop out, and wondered if we were going to have to start lip-syncing. It was all kind of hilarious, but damned if it didn’t make me a little jealous. She had on the highest heels of any waitress I’ve ever seen. I thought all waitresses wore flat shoes. But I didn’t see many customers so I figured she must go out the back and put her feet up a lot. Then again, some women can wear heels all the time; they really are that glamorous.

  After that we were in for another long stint of serious driving. Gunther’s brow was really furrowed for this one. We were headed for this lady’s house, Stephanie. Gunther said her husband died a few months back. He didn’t say how. He was a fine man, he said, and there would be a lot of sadness in this house.

  She lives in a bigger town than most we’ve visited so far, more of a smallish city. It’s not very lively, though. Kind of industrial and basic. Stephanie lives in the suburbs, in a two-storey house with a cute front porch and a small yard that spills into the neighbor’s.

  When we pulled up she was standing on the porch, wearing a billowy sun dress. She had long brown hair that fell straight down in subtle waves, with a fringe just over her eyes. I thought she cut an attractive figure up there. She was managing a little smile.

  We got out of the car and headed straight for her, didn’t start unloading or anything. She gave me a dazed glance, and kind of fell into Gunther’s arms, all floppy like. She just stayed there for a while until Gunther began to extract himself.

  ‘You look well,’ he said.

  She didn’t say ‘Thanks’ or ‘So do you’, or anything polite like that. She just gave him a tired, exasperated look that took her a while to make.

  Gunther introduced us girls, and she showed me to my room; a puny box at the end of a hallway decked out in D.I.Y. picture frames and random crocheted thingies. I got the feeling she wanted me to stay there. Maybe she just assumed, me being a teenager and all, that I would want to hole up in my room. Naturally that was not the case, and I went downstairs again to check out the house and hear what those two were talking about. She’d be fixing us a snack soon, I figured.

  When I got down there, Gunther was making three cups of tea. Stephanie took three sugars. That was a lot for a skinny lady, I thought. I thought a lady like that would be all princessy about watching her figure. I took her tea in, and Gunther came in behind with ours. I perched myself on the far end of Stephanie’s couch. Gunther sat across from her in an armchair.

  He said, ‘So please, Stephanie, tell me how you have been.’

  There was a long pause, during which I thought she shot me a grumpy
look.

  ‘Oh, all right considering, I guess,’ she said at length. ‘I’m hangin’ in there.’ Then she looked at me and snapped, ‘Would you like to watch some TV?’

  I said, ‘No thanks, that’s OK.’

  And Gunther said I was perfectly capable of carrying on an adult discussion, and grasping her unfortunate situation. Which was nice of him, I thought, because I hadn’t given him much of an indication that I cared one way or the other.

  She said it was hard with Ward gone. He hadn’t prepared, so there was the financial hardship. She missed the companionship. Apparently they had been having their problems, and she felt it was a bad note to leave things on, for all eternity. I pictured a bad note, resonating. Eternally. That must be an uncomfortable feeling. I wondered if she meant to be that poetic, but it didn’t seem so, it seemed like her words were just tumbling out.

  Gunther was sitting back in his chair with one leg crossed over the other, listening with his usual air of attentive stillness. It must be nice for her to talk to Gunther, I thought. It must be nice to be sitting there in all his attention.

  She still hadn’t offered us any snacks. And then she started drinking. Gunther declined, which isn’t like him. He always accepts the hospitality of his friends. He likes his ‘social rituals’. Maybe that’s a leftover from his hedonistic days. I know what he’s on about, though. I was a cigarette smoker for a little while. Me and my friend Heather started smoking the day she turned eighteen. It was always more fun smoking with someone else; offering the pack, lighting their cigarettes, getting them to light mine…

  Gunther rose and stood over Stephanie, who was clutching a glass of straight Southern Comfort with both hands. He asked if he could make us anything to eat; would she like anything, was there perhaps a restaurant nearby. Pizza place?