The Palmer Pool

16 | Show Your Face

I awoke to the patter of rain on a rooftop. Cool, damp air and the sound of waves crashing drifted through an open window and the smell of coffee rose up the stairs. The room was unfamiliar; with sloped ceilings, ivory walls and simple wood furnishings. I flung off the sheet and the crocheted blanket covering me, and saw that I was still wearing my red dress with Pete's grey sweatshirt over it. My purse was sitting on the nightstand. Pete must have brought it in from the truck. I grabbed it and found a bathroom at the top of the stairs. After struggling to turn the knob to get a trickle of water out of the faucet, I splashed my face. The water smelled like spare change.

I snapped a piece of gum from the package to temper my morning breath and descended the creaking knotty wood stairs. Pete sat at the kitchen table with a cigarette in his hand and a whirl of smoke over his head. He was staring at something on the table in front of him that was hidden from my view by a coffee mug and glass ashtray full of crumpled cigarette butts. Sally was curled up like a caterpillar at his feet.

"Good morning." I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered, feeling the chill that had crept in overnight. "How long have you been up?"

"I didn't sleep." He walked over to a desk and picked up the handset of a clunky black rotary style telephone. "Phone your mother," he demanded brusquely.

"Why?"

"You didn't go home last night. Don't you think she's worried about you?"

"I can't."

"Why not?"

He looked at me differently; with distrust and possibly even fear. And then I knew that somehow he knew and that what we had the day before we'd never have back again.

"I don't know how to use that kind of phone," I stated slowly.

His face paled and he held his finger over the dial.

"Then tell me your number," he urged.

I backed away, slowly shaking my head.

He replaced the handset with a metallic clang and rubbed the purple shadows beneath his eyes. Then he pulled a boxy lighter with a dull chrome plated finish from his pocket, flicked the hinged top and lit another cigarette with a shaking hand.

"I couldn't wake you up. You're impossible to wake up once you fall asleep. I didn't know where to take you. I tried to find out your address." He slid a small plastic card across the tabletop toward me. My smirking face stared back at me from a blue square.

It was my driver's license.

"Where did you-," I started, my voice low and hoarse.

"Your purse."

I hoped that I wasn't stupid enough to bring my driver's license, with my birth date on it, back to 1953. I ripped my purse open and noticed that the tiny side pocket was unzipped. The last time I used the clutch was when I went to a Lana Del Rey concert with Sophie and Laura the summer before. After the concert, I couldn't find my license and assumed I'd lost it. I got a new license and hadn't thought about the missing one since.

"Where did you get this?" he asked. I snatched at the card, but he slid it out of my reach. "Is this a joke or something?"

"Yeah, it's a joke. Obviously."

"But what's the point of it?"

I shrugged.

"The address on this is the second house I took you to that day you couldn't remember where you lived.  When you fell asleep that time, I knocked on the door, but the lady who lived there said she didn't know you. So I couldn't take you back there last night. I called the operator to look up your last name and called all the Brooks numbers in the county. Nobody knew a Vanessa Brooks." His eyes were wild and feverish as he took a long drag from his cigarette and tapped his finger on the card. "Is this- I feel so stupid asking this- is that really the day, the year, you were born?"