Not This Guy -2-

“You done showed them your bongos,” she said.

The trucker who came in next was lean and tall -- several inches taller than I used to be, which meant considerably taller than I was now -- and he spotted me at the counter from the door and came that way with the unhurried directness of a man who generally found that moving toward what he wanted worked out well for him.

Vonzell tried to warn him off with her glare. He settled on the stool two over from me, one empty between us.

“Hey darling,” he said. “Where you headed?”

“She's not headed anywhere with you, Rollie Blankenship,” Vonzell said. The shoofly motion she made with the coffee pot slopped hot coffee on her own hand. Ow!

I reached into my water glass without thinking, pulled out an ice cube, held it across the counter. “Put this on it,” I said. “Right now.”

“I know, I know,” she protested. We dealt with that. When I looked up, the trucker was smiling at me. Blue eyes, the specific faded blue of something left in the sun for a long time. A good smile with patience behind it.

“Sweet thang,” he said. “I'll take you anywhere you want to go.”

“She don't want to go anywhere with you,” Vonzell said. To me, lower, “Believe me, you don't.”

“My stuff is at the motel,” I said. Which was not a refusal, I noticed, even as I said it.

“The Silver Springs?” he said. “You ain't a mermaid, are you?”

“That's crystal springs has got the mermaids!” Vonzell snapped. Then to me, “He's got you hip-moh-tized already, Missy.”

“Missy,” said the trucker. “You already been introduced to me. I'm Rollie Blankenship. What's your name?”

I opened my mouth. Thirty-eight years of being Guy Wendell, and what came out was, “Gwen,” I said. “Gwen Wendell.” That sounded stupid, but it was said.

Vonzell cut her eyes sideways and said nothing.

Rollie extended a weathered hand across the empty stool. “Gwen Wendell,” he said, tasting it. “That's pretty. Where you from?”

“Milwaukee, originally,” I said. “But I've been in Rockford.”

“Long way from home.”

“Uh, huh,” I agreed, feeling stupid.

Vonzell went to make more coffee and rattled things doing ir.

Rollie's order came up without him ordering it -- three eggs scrambled with cheese, two sausage patties, grits with a big pat of butter, and a pecan waffle on a second plate. Johnny had seen the truck in the lot and just started cooking. Rollie ate with the focused efficiency of a man on a schedule, and I watched him and thought about things I didn't have words for.

Before Rollie arrived, Vonzell had addressed the shirt situation. She'd taken five minutes, retrieved a spare bra from her locker. “Too small, a 32C, I shoulda asked your size,” she said. “Come to the back with me.”

I followed, and she improvised in the back room by the utility sink, unbuttoned the shirt, twisted the tails into strings and tied them in front under the breasts. It changed the situation considerably. She also repositioned the Braves cap. I'd looked in the utility room mirror, and the bourbon voice said, very quietly, “Lord. Lord, that’s me?”

“Mm-hm,” Vonzell said, “That’s all you, missy-wearing-her-man’s-shirt. Where is your old man?”

“I dunno,” I confessed.

Then she led me back out to the counter and I sat, careful not to look down because it might attract someone’s attention.

Too late. The four truckers in the big booth were already attentive. One of them was beating out a rhythm on the underside of the table. The Maple Leaf Rag?

“Knock it off!” Johnny bellowed from the grill.

All four of them burst out laughing, and I nearly slid off the stool.

Vonzell leaned in to whisper, “You done showed them your bongos,” she said, “and now they all want to play the drums.”

The bourbon voice laughed before I could stop it. It was a warm laugh, warmer than the one I remembered having. But damnit! Bongos? I’d never heard that before. Am I giggling? I wondered. I looked sideways to avoid looking at my bongos.

Rollie finished the eggs and made progress on the waffle. He had a quality of presence that was doing something I couldn't entirely account for -- not loud, not pushy, just there, solid and faintly amused by everything. The blue eyes came back to me every few minutes from the waffle or the coffee or the middle distance.

I asked Vonzell for the check, just to not be watching Rollie.

She nodded toward the big booth. “Them boys paid it.”

“Least we could do!” one of them bellowed.

“Damn right,” Rollie muttered between bites, with a look in their direction.

“No offense Rollo -- you wasn't here and we didn't know.” And someone started with the rhythm on the table again, another ragtime beat. Johnny shouted something with no vowels and they stopped.

“Know what?” I asked no one.

Rollie put down a five-dollar bill and stood up. He was very tall from where I sat. He extended his hand, and I put mine in it, my hand looking small, and he led me toward the door.

“Oh,” I said.

Vonzell watched us go through the glass.

.

* * *

The motel room smelled like air conditioning and the ghost of my navy suit. Rollie moved through it like he had permission I didn't know about.

I don't remember much about the next few hours except that the spring had apparently been generous in every direction, and whatever thirty-eight years as Guy Wendell had failed to teach me, the body seemed to have its own ideas about, and I liked them.

Rollie slept. I lay next to him and looked at the ceiling fan turn and outside, Florida went about its business, and the nine o'clock meeting assembled itself gradually in my mind -- the Army Corps of Engineers conference room, the sales materials in my briefcase, Walt back in Rockford expecting a call with results.

I had missed it.

What the hell, I thought. No one had planned on meeting me. They'd planned on meeting Guy Wendell, and Guy Wendell was not available. I snuggled into the curve of Rollie's arm and went back to sleep.

* * *

The second time I woke up, it was because I wanted to, which was new information to me. I felt things in places I hadn’t used to have places.

I looked at Rollie and he rolled over to smile up at me. “I’m ready,” he said.

We moved together, and it was quick and good with my heels on his shoulders, and I made noises I don’t think I’d ever made before. What is happening to me? I wondered. “Oh,” I said aloud. “I think I’m getting fucked out of my mind.”

We laughed when we had breath to, and we kissed, a lot. Kissing someone with beard stubble was entirely new to me, and it turned out I liked that, too.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“I dunno? Does it matter?” I said.

He looked at the clock and said, “My load is due in Clearwater by eleven.”

I giggled.

“Not that load,” he said and tickled me under my ribs, under my boobs. “The load on my truck.”

“What time is it?” I asked as he rolled away from me, and I put my hands on his back, so strong, so hard.

“As near ten as no matter,” he said.

I wanted to ask if I could come but I knew the answer to that.

“He looked at me with his faded blue eyes in the morning light. “You can come with me,” he said, “or you can stay here, I guess.”

I thought about the rental Buick in the parking lot. The sales materials in the briefcase. Walt at the office in Rockford, and the quarterly numbers, and my apartment that smelled like nobody was ever home.

“I have something to tell you that you should know,” I said.

“Tell me on the way,” he said, and got up to help me pack.

We put Guy Wendell's things into Guy Wendell's suitcase -- the five shirts, the two pairs of pants, the Walgreens shampoo that didn't cause itching, the suntan lotion, the bug cream. I folded one shirt differently than Guy would have, just to see. Rollie retied the shirt-tail bra with matter-of-fact hands, no commentary, and I noted this for later. The Braves cap went on last.

Rollie pushed me back to get a good look, then adjusted the cap a quarter-inch.

The day clerk was a different teenager doing different homework. He looked up when we came through and looked back down. That was that.

Guy Wendell’s suitcase went in the back of the cab and Rollie boosted me up to the seat. I liked the feel of his hands on my waist and squealed to let him know that.

The truck smelled like diesel and distance and something underneath both of those that I was starting to think of as just Rollie. He went around to the driver's side and we pulled out onto the highway.

The Waffle Barn went past the window. I could see Vonzell through the glass. She raised a hand, not quite a wave. I raised mine back.

“Okay,” said Rollie, moving the gears smoothly. “Tell me.”