A Delirious Summer Read online

  I figured there was no time like the present. “So, Marlena, where’re you from?”

  “Charlotte,” she said. “Same place as my fiancé.” And she flashed me her ring and moved on.

  2

  From two thousand feet, South Carolina looked harmless. We were descending over a lake, a golf course, and the manicured lawns of suburbia. U.S. Air’s landing gear groaned into place, a startling sound given the fact that we’d only been in the air for forty minutes. Suits and ties dominated the 6:00 p.m. flight from Atlanta, and many of the suits were looking frazzled. A dozen hands smoothed the same haircuts as we approached the runway. I hadn’t had a haircut in months. People told me I had the kind of hair that looked better with length. But just to mock the suits I pushed some locks behind my ears.

  Since takeoff, no one around me had said a word. To be fair I hadn’t initiated anything either—that many briefcases intimidated me. I was sure they contained lots of important briefs, maybe classified company data, maybe pics of spouses and children and loyal dogs. To my chagrin, I had no such pictures. I preferred to travel light—my carry-on bag was a harmonica, asleep in the key of G and resting snug in the pocket of a favorite blue madras shirt.

  My hiking boots felt heavy on my feet, and after the suits had cleared out, I was the lone pair of jeans departing flight 229 into the gray-walled terminal of Greenville-Spartanburg. Out of the tunnel and into a main corridor, I played spectator to the many forms of reunion: kids hugging daddies; husbands kissing wives; incoming captains greeting outgoing captains. I dragged my independence past them all and made the best of a hugless arrival.

  First one down the escalator, I arrived at the baggage carousel and sat on thin blue carpet, my back against a concrete column. Around me small crowds gathered and departed, pinstriped arms pulling obedient luggage. I watched the bags diminish until the carousel was circulating my tattered suitcase past an audience of one. After watching six more revolutions I got up off the floor and plucked my luggage from its lonely orbit.

  If there was a Steve Cole in this airport he had not shown himself timely. I sat back down against the column and began to blow into my carry-on bag. One bar of blues proved that airport acoustics were terrible, so I hauled my suitcase outside and sat on the curb. It was still daylight and very humid, very June. Across the drop-off lane, the tame rays of a tired sun turned the security guard yellow. Like the briefcase crowd, he made no effort of welcome.

  Disheartening, coming all the way from Ecuador and not having one person acknowledge my presence.

  There were ways to change that.

  I began a slow melody of wandering pitch, a tune whose main theme was one of exploration. Soon the guard looked over from his post and nodded, like he welcomed the distraction of music.

  Within minutes, several of the briefcase crowd had gathered outside, listening in, edging closer, as if they couldn’t figure out if I was waiting for a ride or if I was a curbside regular playing for tips. To keep them guessing I began playing louder, adding various head bobs and grimaces to my act. Soon the security guard saw what was happening, and he surprised me when he seized the opportunity to toy with the suits. He came strolling over and, right in front of them, dropped a quarter atop my suitcase. He winked at me, then turned and hustled back to his station. I kept playing, looking off across the parking lot as if this was routine.

  That one shiny quarter resting on a tattered suitcase must have been too much pressure for the businesspeople. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one blue suit nudge another. The first leaned down, set a five on my suitcase, and stepped back beside his buddy. Not to be outdone, another suit stepped forward and contributed a ten, his Rolex flashing as he gave me a thumbs-up.

  Figuring that they now deserved the full spectacle, I played even louder, adding nose scrunches and a tapping of foot to my sunset vaudeville.

  Fifteen dollars for five minutes of music?

  Nothing else about furlough would be so simple.

  But I couldn’t keep the money. After the suits left, I got up from the curb and walked across the darkened lane to speak to the guard. “Here,” I said, holding out the cash, “it was your idea.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “No, no. You’re the musician.”

  “But I insist.”

  He crossed his arms, shook his head again. “Nope. Can’t take it.”

  “Then we’ll split it.” I stuffed the ten in his shirt pocket and kept the five. “Deal?”

  He peeked into his pocket. “Okay. Deal.” He peeked again and smiled. “We’re open tomorrow night as well.”

  The boredom alone convinced me to practice. Since no more spectators were left, my second curbside effort was choppy and experimental. I was revising it a third time, adding more low end, when an orange Jeep came fast into the drop-off lane. It swerved into the pickup lane and screeched a tire. The security guard turned and glared as the Jeep braked quickly to my left. Through the windshield, the driver looked at me there on the curb and mouthed a one-word question. “Neil?”

  I nodded, pointed at him with my harmonica, and mouthed, “Steve?”

  Out of his Jeep and over to greet me came a stocky guy in khakis and a white collared shirt all sweaty at the armpits, its logo hinting at engineering. Steve was square-jawed and unshaven, although his dark hair was neatly trimmed. “Man,” he said, extending his hand, “I thought you’d be skinnier from living in the wild and having to eat bugs.”

  I shook firmly and laughed. “Nah, Jay and I ate lots of smoked piranha.”

  “Really?”

  I tucked the harmonica in my pocket and flung my suitcase into the back of his Jeep. I spoke over the roof. “No, not really. I lived in the city—Quito, near the equator.”

  His reply came back through the interior. “So that’s why you’re tanner than me. And sorry I was late. Was answering emails and just lost all track of time. How was the commute from Charlotte?”

  “From Atlanta. And it was just lots of suits.”

  I climbed into the passenger seat, which held an assortment of CDs. Curious as to what was popular, I examined them for familiarity but dismissed them as alien. After relocating them to the backseat I found a rental guide for beach homes and was shocked at what a week would cost in summer.

  Steve veered down the on-ramp and sped us toward the interstate. “Yeah, Neil, we got lots of suits here. Lots of BMWs too. What kinda car do you drive?”

  “I don’t own a car.”

  My admission was met with a confused silence. He eased us into the right lane. “You gotta have some kind of ride, somewhere . . . don’t ya?”

  “Jay said I could use his old Blazer, said it was under a tarp in your backyard.”

  “It’s under a tarp all right. Been there ever since he left to go play missionary with Allie.” Steve shifted into fifth and sped us toward the heart of Greenville. As an afterthought, he asked, “Do ya think Jay makes a good missionary?”

  I’d debated that question while flying across the Gulf of Mexico. There was really no definitive answer. “Actually, I think Jay would make a great circus clown, but he does bring a certain enthusiasm to the position.”

  Steve laughed knowingly. “You’re gonna need some enthusiasm to get that Blazer started. Hasn’t been cranked since January.”

  He merged us onto I-385, then onto North Main, past old homes, restored homes, and a smattering of fixer-uppers. Steve’s house was somewhere between restored and fixer-upper. The brown brick looked recently pressure washed, as did the sidewalk and the driveway. His carport contained an assortment of well-used sporting goods. A basketball goal—lofted on a pole to the side of the driveway—appeared shorter than regulation, its rim bent forward as if suffering from too many dunks. “It’s no palace,” Steve said, pulling into the carport, “but you can walk to downtown from here.”

  My stomach growled. “Can we head for a drive-through?” I asked. “I’ve really missed American burgers.”

  Steve shook his hea
d no before cutting the engine. “Nope. We’re having a cookout. I figured that since you’ve been dining on all those insects, I should feed you well.”

  “And you invited some friends over, right? And some of them are women?”

  He yanked up the parking brake. “It’s just you and me, bro. Unless my friend Ransom shows up. But surfer dude has a kid now, so it’ll probably be just you and me.”

  Disappointed at the guest list but moved by the generosity, I let pass the fact that he’d been a half hour late to pick me up. “I was hoping you might invite some girls over. I haven’t been on a date in seven months, one week, and two days.”

  Steve left his keys in the ignition and opened his door. “You keep count?”

  “Yeah, you?”

  “Three months and three weeks for me.”

  I climbed out and spoke over the roof again. “We’re pathetic.”

  He showed me to a sea-green bedroom. The room contained window blinds but no curtains, bookshelves with no books, and a single bed with no sheets. I’d brought sheets, but I couldn’t get over the room color. “What’s with the paint?” I asked.

  Steve stood in the doorway and gripped the frame on both sides. “I had an extra gallon after a beach project last May.”

  He left to tend to dinner as I installed my sheets. From the looks of things, I’d be sharing the room with a Chicago Cubs baseball poster, five fishing rods, and two goldfish dubbed Hawk and Pig. Across their bowl—as a sort of reminder or plaque, I wasn’t sure—the names were written on a piece of masking tape. Pig was the fat one.

  I was about to unpack my suitcase when hunger got the better of me, which was not unusual. Like temptation, its strongest trait is consistency.

  Steve’s back deck was old and rectangular, and the setting sun seemed not to bathe it in orange but to faintly airbrush the edges. While his grill flamed behind him, Steve tore open a package of shish-kebab skewers. Before us were marinated chunks of steak, tiny tomatoes, bites of chicken, and red potatoes, all waiting patiently on his glass-topped, outdoor table. When he went back inside to get drinks, I took over preparations and soon had four kebabs fully skewered. Not that I claimed a talent for cookery, but in Quito I’d experimented with the fiery art of kebabbing—it was my regular Tuesday meal.

  From the deck I scanned the backyards of middle-class neighbors before pronouncing them rich. The lack of clotheslines and the absence of iguanas reminded me of how far I’d come. The preponderance of fences confirmed that my homeland was still quite territorial.

  Steve had changed into shorts and a gray softball jersey when he came out on the deck with two cold cans of Fanta Grape. He handed me one, then picked up a kebab and set it on the grill. “Neil, you’re the first roommate I’ve had who’s helped cook dinner.”

  I adjusted the flame and watched it rise to tickle our meal. Satisfied, I tried to size up this new roomie. He looked beat. “You look weary, señor.”

  Before offering comment, Steve topped off a second kebab and dunked the tip, which was weighed down with three hefty chunks of steak, back into the marination. “Deadlines, Neil. Just a steady flow of uncompromising engineering deadlines.”

  “More taters?” I knew nothing about engineering.

  “I’m just glad tomorrow is Saturday. Engineering can be very—”

  I rotated both the skewers and the conversation. “It’s Friday, man. Forget work. You didn’t plan any female interaction this weekend?”

  Steve plucked his grape soda from the table and sat down in a lawn chair. “That’s the dilemma of this town. Great job market; confusing girl market. Didn’t Jarvis tell you what’s happened?”

  “He only mentioned that a few of your church’s single women had begun wandering a bit.”

  “Not just wandering,” Steve said. “They’ve become downright elusive.”

  After turning the skewers again, I went to the table and stabbed two potatoes and three chunks of steak, topping them off with a single tiny tomato, another raw totem pole of culinary delight. “Did ya scare ’em off? Or are they just playing hard to get?”

  Steve set his drink on the deck and sunk into his chair. “Hard to find. It seems, Neil, that the women’s new favorite activity is an extreme sport called denominational hopscotch. They think that’s how they can meet a man.”

  “How ’bout yourself?”

  “I have no interest in meeting a man.”

  I was half smiling at his wit while I tended the kebabs. “I meant have you ever hopscotched to meet women?”

  He paused and thought about it. “Once or twice.”

  “Any luck?”

  Steve sniffed the grilled air, then took a long swig of his drink. “I felt outta place. After being Presbyterian all my life, being Pentecostal was disorienting. They’d stand when I wanted to sit, then yell when I wanted to doze. Doesn’t that sound disorienting?”

  “Very.” In the distance a train chugged away. No whistle, just the rumbling clatter of wheel on rails. “How far away is that?” I asked, up on my toes and straining to see.

  But there was no answer. I turned and saw that Steve had gone inside to fetch something from his kitchen. He came back out on the deck with paper towels and an unmarked jar of something reddish.

  “What is that?” I inquired.

  He opened his jar and took a long, hard sniff. “El Grande Mystery Sauce.”

  The train faded out as we prepared to eat. I pulled a second lawn chair around his outdoor table, and with little talking we each finished off two kebabs before reloading our skewers. Steve went to the grill with a skewer in each hand and set them diagonally across the top. “Medium?” he asked.

  “Medium well.”

  He then produced a small brush from his back pocket and began spreading his mixture on the already marinated meat. This seemed like overkill, but I let it go, still contemplating the hopscotch. Surely there had to be some value in picking one denomination and sticking with it. As with cell phone plans, I’d prefer to know the parameters in which I operated.

  “Steve-o, you gotta tell me how all this got started.”

  “Shish kebabbing?” he asked, manning the grill again. “Probably third century BC.”

  “Not shish kebabbing, man. Church hopping. I don’t recall much of that when I lived in Richmond.”

  Steve reached for his soda, and after a deep swig he suppressed a burp. “This is pure speculation, but I believe it started with emails. I have inside knowledge of an email list that circulates around Greenville. Get this, Neil—it actually ranks our largest churches as to the volume of single men. Only single women, of course, can get the updates.”

  Now I knew what Jay had meant when he told me he’d left one jungle for another. I’d only been in town for two hours, but already I could sense this city had an air about it, like all was not right, the Bible Belt missing a loop. Maybe two. I squashed my aluminum Fanta can, dropped it on the table, and watched it wobble to a standstill. “Jay didn’t tell me this was epidemic.”

  Steve returned to his lawn chair and sat heavily on the nylon. “I’m tellin’ ya, Neil, it’s gotten worse since Jarvis left town. Much worse. Even my friend Ransom and his wife have been hopping, trying out different nurseries for their kid.”

  Puffs of smoke uncoiled from his grill, and after watching them fade over dark suburban skies I got up and resumed the duty of chef. “And you think women are more prone to this behavior?”

  “It’s biological, you can bet on it. Two weeks ago at singles class, we had only eight people—seven guys and Lydia.”

  “Good odds for Lydia.”

  “Yeah, well, the week before that we had thirty-three. How would you explain it?”

  “I dunno. Everybody went to the beach?”

  “Nope. Twenty-six of those thirty-three were women. I counted.”

  “And you still got no date this weekend? Man, you’re beyond pathetic.”

  The air smelled hot and meaty. One by one I plucked the kebabs from the gr
ill and served my host his seconds. After a chew and a swallow he pointed at me with his fork. “It’s the hopscotch, Neil. I’d never seen most of those women before. They were all just scoping . . . I could tell.”

  I turned off the gas. “Maybe so, but you still gotta explain how you didn’t manage one date out of all that.”

  Steve looked embarrassed, and his answer was slow in coming. “My ex—Darcy—was one of those girls. Sometimes it’s awkward for me when she’s around.”

  “So why’d you two break up?”

  Moonlit and yawning, Steve stretched his arms high overhead before lounging back in his chair. “Darcy is two inches taller than me and ten times as complicated. As for what happened, I can hardly explain it. One day we were sitting in this Mexican restaurant, munching on a second bowl of chips and salsa, when she blurted out that dating me lacked all momentum, that it was like trying to water-ski behind a canoe.”

  “Ouch.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Really? You said ouch?”

  “Ouch. Right there over the chips and salsa.”

  Lingering scents of grilled kebabs filled the air as I leaned against his deck railing and scanned the neighborhood. I was warming to Greenville, and also to this new roommate, who seemed, well, almost normal. “So, you two weren’t having fun dating?”

  Steve began his answer with a shrug and a frown. “I thought we were having fun. But I still can’t believe she said a canoe. She could’ve at least said a tugboat, something with an engine.”

  “So what happened to y’all?”

  “Who knows. Maybe I wasn’t sure where it was going. Maybe I was too busy performing high maintenance on the skis.”

  His comments had me wondering if all the girls in this town were high maintenance. Regardless, there was still the matter of earning money. I had little savings, certainly not enough to live on for eight weeks. The language school paid a salary during the school year, but it never went far. In fact, it went about as far as the plane ticket to Carolina. “On Monday I’ll be looking for a part-time job.”