Collide

“Oh, sure. We could do that.” She sounded a little brighter from the invitation.

I didn’t think she’d actually take me up on it. My mom didn’t like to drive long distances by herself. If she did come, she’d bring my dad along. Not that I didn’t love my dad, or want to see him. In many ways, he was easier to get along with than my mom, because no matter what anxiety he had, he kept it to himself. But it wouldn’t be a girls’ day out with him along, and he tended to get cranky about staying too long when he wanted to be home in his recliner watching sports. I didn’t even have cable yet.

“I saw him a couple days ago, Emm.”

I paused with a large book on cathedrals in one hand. I’d have to adjust the shelves in one of the bookcases if I wanted to stand this book upright. It was meant for a coffee table, for display. I flipped through the pages, considering if I should just sell on Craigslist. “Who?”

“Tony,” my mom said impatiently.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Mom!”

“He looked good. He asked about you.”

“I’m sure he did,” I said wryly.

“I got the feeling he was wondering if you’d … met someone.”

I paused in unpacking, with another heavy book in my hands, this time one called Cinema Americana. Another yard-sale find. I was a sucker for a bargain, books my downfall. Even ones about subjects I had no interest in. I guess I always had the notion I’d tear out the illustrations and put them in frames to hang on the wall. Proof I really did have no appreciation for art.

“Why would he even think that?”

“I don’t know, Emm.” A pause. “Have you?”

I was about to say no, but a flash of striped scarf and a black coat filled my mind. The floor tilted a little under me. I gripped the phone tighter. The book was suddenly too heavy in my sweating hand; I dropped it.

“Emm?”

“Fine, Mom. Just dropped a book.”

No swirling colors, no citrus scent biting at my nostrils. My stomach churned a little, but that could’ve been the leftover Italian food I’d had earlier. It had been in the fridge a little too long.

“It wouldn’t be such a bad thing. For you to meet someone. I mean, I think you should.”

“Yeah, I’ll make sure every guy I meet knows my mom thinks I shouldn’t be single. That’s a surefire way to get a date.”

“Sarcasm isn’t pretty, Emmaline.”

I laughed. “Mom, I have to go, okay? I want to finish unpacking these boxes and do some laundry before I go to my friend Jen’s house tonight.”

“Oh? You have a friend.”

I loved my mother. Really, I did. But sometimes I wanted to strangle her.

“Yes, Mother. I have an honest-to-goodness friend.”

She laughed that time, sounding better than she had when the conversation started. That was something, anyway. “Good. I’m glad you’re spending time with a friend instead of sitting home. I just … I worry about you, honey. That’s all.”

“I know you do. And I know you always will.”

We said our goodbyes, exchanged I-love-yous. I had friends who never told their parents they loved them, who’d never said the words after elementary school. It was something I was glad I’d never grown out of and that my mother insisted upon. Even if I knew it was because she was afraid not saying it would somehow mean she’d have lost her chance to tell me one more time, I liked it.

The book I’d dropped had opened to someplace in the middle, cracking the binding in a way that made me sigh unhappily. I bent to pick it up and stopped. It had opened to chapter called “Seventies Art Films,” on a full-page, glossy black-and-white photo of an unbelievably gorgeous face staring directly at the camera.

Johnny Dellasandro.

Chapter 02

“Which do you want to watch first? What are you in the mood for?” Jen pulled open the door on what proved to be a cabinet full of DVDs. She ran a fingertip along the plastic cases with a ticka-ticka-tick and stopped at one, looking over her shoulder at me. “Do you want to ease into it or plunge right in?”

I’d brought along the Cinema Americana book to show her and it lay open on the coffee table in front me, opened to the page of Johnny’s gorgeous face. “What’s this picture from?”

Jen looked. “Train of the Damned.”

I looked at it, too. “That picture is from a horror movie?” “Yeah. Not my favorite of his. It’s not very scary,” she added. “But he does get naked in it.” Both my brows raised. “Really?”

“Yeah. Not quite full frontal,” she said with a grin as she bent and plucked a movie from the shelf. “But, man, those seventies foreign movies were pretty graphic sometimes. It has a lot of blood and gore in it—will that bother you?”

I’d spent so much time in hospitals and emergency rooms that nothing much bothered me. “Nah.”

“Train of the Damned, it is.” Jen pulled the DVD from its case and slipped it into the player, then tuned the television to the right channel and grabbed the remote before taking a place beside me on the couch. “The quality’s not so good, sorry. I found this one in the bargain bin at a dollar store.”

“You’re a super Dellasandro fan, huh?” I shifted to keep the bowl of popcorn from spilling and leaned to take another look at the picture.

I hadn’t told Jen about letting the door slam in Johnny’s face, or how I’d already spent an hour staring at this photo, memorizing every line and curve, dip and hollow. His hair in the picture was pulled back into a thick tail at the base of his neck, longer than it was now. He looked younger in the picture, of course, since it had been taken something like thirty years ago. But not much younger.

“He’s aged well.” Jen peered over my shoulder as the first wobbly sounds of music filtered from the TV’s speakers. “He’s a little heavier, has a few more lines around his eyes. But mostly, he still looks that good. And you should see him in the summer, when he’s not covered up with that long coat.”

I sat back against the couch and pulled my feet up beneath me. “Haven’t you ever talked to him?”

“Oh, girl, hell, no. I’m too afraid.”

I laughed. “Afraid of what?”

Jen used the remote to turn up the sound. So far, the only thing on the TV screen had been a title dripping blood and a shot of a train chugging along a dark track winding through tall and jagged mountains. “I’d word-vomit all over him.”

“Word … ew.”

She laughed and put down the remote to grab a handful of popcorn. “Seriously. I met Shane Easton once, you know him? Lead singer for the Lipstick Guerrillas?”

“Um, no.”

“They were playing at IndiePalooza one year down in Hershey, and my friend had scored backstage passes. Ten or fifteen bands, something like that. Hot as all hell. We’d been drinking beer because cups were a dollar fifty and the water was four bucks a bottle. Let’s just say I was a little drunk.” “And? What did you say?”

“I might’ve told him I wanted to ride him like a roller coaster. Or something like that.” “Oh, wow.”

“Yeah, I know, right?” She sighed dramatically and popped the top on a can of diet cola. “Not my most shining moment.”

“It could’ve been worse, I’m sure.”