Lost and Found
August 16, 1999
28 days until LA
The rink and bowling alley were closed until one on Mondays, but J.B. was home for a long weekend, earning some extra cash. The owner had promised to give him a hundred dollars if he could fix the marble run by the entrance. It was a metal thing, an intricate series of chutes and windmills and pulleys, that had been broken longer than I could remember.
I watched him through the glass door. He was kneeling, parts and tools spread on a towel. I liked his face, so serious, so intent on his task.
When I finally knocked, he grinned and ran over to let me in. “How long’ve you been spying on me?”
“Not long. Can you take a break?”
“Definitely.” He kissed me, a strangely chaste, hands-free kiss. We usually couldn’t control our hands—they roamed, dug, petted. “I’m greasy.” He held up his smudged palms.
“I don’t mind.” I examined the marble run. “Any luck with that?”
“Getting close.” He sent a heavy silver sphere down a slide at the top and we watched it traverse its little course. It made its way through the contraption, gliding along ramps and into tunnels, merrily swinging on a miniature trapeze, getting scooped up by a long metal stick like a metronome with a cunning basket on top.
“Whee,” I said softly, following its ride in the basket. Then, abruptly, the silver ball stopped, tripped up by a ridge in front of a sloping tunnel. “Aw, poor little guy. How frustrating to make it so close.”
“I’ll get him to the finish. Need to make this ledge lower, here. What’s in the bag?”
“Our lunch. Ham-and-butter sandwiches. And brownies. I thought you’d want a break from nachos and mummified hot dogs.”
“How long can you stay?”
“I have a babysitting job at two. Are we really alone?”
“See any other cars?”
“Nope.”
We walked down the long, carpeted hallway. The two of us had never been alone in the rink before. Even at the end of the nighttime skate sessions there was always someone there besides J.B. People cleaning up in the snack bar, or Andy, the owner, looking stressed through the glass door to his office.
J.B. headed for the snack bar but I tugged him toward the dark rink. “I have a better idea.” I pulled the picnic blanket from my backpack and kicked my Nikes off.
* * *
“What are you in the mood for?” he called from the DJ booth.
“Bach. ‘Goldberg Variations.’ But I doubt the rink has that.” I’d been trying to master part of it on piano for a year but had put in woefully little practice time since J.B. and I got together.
“Sorry, no Bach. But let’s see how close I can get.”
I recognized drowsy steel guitar, the opening chords of “Walkin’ After Midnight.” Patsy Cline. The beginning of a four-song Patsy medley the rink played on ’50s night. The glitter ball began to spin, layering the rink in shifting white lights.
“How’d I do?” He slid over in his socks.
“Perfect. This song always makes me wish I knew how to waltz.”
He pulled me to my feet. “But we can slide.”
So we slid to Patsy. We dragged and pushed each other, did a sock-foot crack-the-whip, competed in a distance contest. We slid until our stomachs were growling.
After we ate we lay on our backs, looking up at the spinning fake stars and listening to “You Belong to Me.” I picked out the notes on the rink with my hand. “Remind me to get this sheet music sometime.”
“Did you reserve that music room at school for next year?”
“Mmm-hmm. Ten hours a week free if you’re a music minor.”
“Good.” He leaned onto his side.
I swept a lock of hair from his eyes.
He kissed my bare shoulder. “Salty.”
“Andy should charge for this.” I closed my eyes. “Rent the place out for...”
“What?” He murmured into the hollow between my shoulder and neck.
I dug my fingers into his hair. “Rent it for...” His mouth slid higher. “For private dates...”
“I’d rather save it for us,” he said, his mouth traveling up my neck, jaw, chin. Taking my lower lip between his. I forgot where we were until we rolled off the blanket and I felt the cold surface of the rink under my back. We rolled back onto the blanket, onto the little island we’d made.
I gripped his hand, he pressed back. And I knew.
It was daytime. We were both sweaty, in grubby work clothes. No candles, no fireplace. I had to leave in an hour for babysitting. “Now,” I said.
“Here, though? Exotic, but maybe not the most comfortable. And if someone comes in early...”
“Andy’s office?” I said.
“It’s locked.”
“I know where.” I pulled him by the wrist across the rink, onto the carpet. To the storage room behind the arcade, the one holding the big box of lost-and-found clothes. Coats and sweaters and scarves left behind, never claimed. “I always wondered what happened with lost-and-found stuff nobody came back for.”
“This might be a first.”
We made ourselves a big, buoyant nest of forgotten clothes, draped the picnic blanket over it. With the door shut, there was only a faint glow on the floor from the rink lights. But we could still hear Patsy’s lonely contralto singing “I Fall to Pieces.”
* * *
I was too on edge to let go completely in our narrow, dark hiding place. He tried to hold off, to help, but though his fingers were well acquainted with what I needed now, it was a lost cause right then. I whispered, “It’s okay,” and he sank into me one last time, spoke into my neck: “Vyou. Itso. Itso.” I love you. It’s so. It’s so. He shuddered and cried out.
After, I curled up on his chest. Sticky, marveling, proud.
“You didn’t come,” he said. “I wanted you to so bad.”
“I was thinking too much.” I brushed his wet hair off his forehead.
“Did it hurt a lot?”
“A little,” I admitted, my hand drifting down to where it had stung, mostly at the beginning.
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“It wasn’t as bad as they tell you.” I sat up, my hands on his shoulders, my thighs around his abdomen. He circled his hands around my waist and closed his eyes, and we playacted for a second, moving our hips. “I wish I didn’t have to go,” I said.
“You have no idea how much I wish that... God, you’re. It’s.” He leaned up. “Can you get away after babysitting?”
I leaned forward so he could take my nipple in his mouth, pulled back. Leaned forward again. “Maybe my babysitting job will get miraculously—keep doing that—extended.”
“And maybe.” His voice hummed into my breast. “Maybe I’ll—is this nice?—call in sick.”
“Yes. It’s nice. Keep. Don’t.”
His mouth was now fully occupied, and I was intent on my small, rocking movements. Though some separate, vigilant part of me was on alert for sounds outside our lost and found, and wishing we had all afternoon, I was able to stop thinking. Just long enough.
* * *
We checked into a cabin in Pinecrest at four. Hard workers, for seven hours we devoted ourselves to contrasts, comparisons, combinations. We resisted sleep even though we were both exhausted.
When we drove home it was after eleven. It was a chilly, breezy night, but we left the windows down. J.B. and I clasped hands, hanging on even when he shifted gears.
I leaned against the window. Smiling, letting the wind dry my still-sweaty hair.
J.B. parked a block from my house so my parents wouldn’t hear his engine. “I love you,” he said, lacing his fingers with mine through the truck’s window.
“I love you, too.”