Walk on Water by Josephine Garner Page B

that why he drove a Mercedes now, to be safer? Wouldn’t that be like closing the barn door once the horse had run away? What had the texting teenager been driving? He was dead.
    “Corollas have a good track record,” I said.
    “They do, they do,” agreed Brian.
    “And decent gas mileage.”
    “German cars get good mileage, particularly on the highway.”
    “Oh yes the autobahn. You think they have our kind of rush hours?”
    “Pretty and smart, I see,” said Brian chuckling pleasantly.
    “And a little pooped right now,” I added.
    “Oh—I’m sorry,” he quickly replied. “I’m talking your ear off and keeping you up passed bedtime.”
    “That’s okay,” I assured him. “I called you.”
    “So how ‘bout it, dinner this week?”
    Football and fast cars, but I didn’t sigh out loud. He’d probably take me somewhere nice. It wouldn’t be good if the show opened and closed on the same weekend.
    “How ‘bout I call you,” I countered. “And we’ll set something up.”
    “In demand too,” Brian surmised. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”
    I chattered something about his own schedule being busy too and got us quickly to goodbye before some kind of truth leaked out by word or tone.
    Minutes later I was saying my prayers. I crawled into bed. Because I usually had a harder time falling asleep on Sunday nights, out of habit I turned on the TV and found a sitcom rerun, then set the TV timer for thirty minutes. I didn’t make it to the first commercial. When I woke up the telephone by the bed was ringing and the television was off. Sleepily I reached for the phone.
    “Hello,” I mumbled.
    “Never let it be said I don’t keep my word,” a man’s voice came to my ear.
    I sat up straight up, my heart racing.
    “Luke?” I asked.
    I must be dreaming. It was Sunday night. We didn’t talk on Sundays.
    “Just under the wire,” he chuckled. “But a promise is a promise.”
    “What promise?” I asked.
    “You must have had a good time last night. You don’t remember I told you I’d call you today?”
    Because it was his shot and the winner was going to get the prize. My heart was settling down.
    “We don’t talk on Sundays,” I said.
    “Now why is that?” asked Luke.
    “I-I don’t know.”
    “Could it be because you never call me?”
    “I call you. I called you last night. But you were too busy to talk.”
    “Am I detecting a tone?”
    “No. You were just busy that’s all.”
    With another a woman. His prize . Like old times.
    “I was that,” said Luke. “And I won too.”
    “So did you like your prize?” I asked dryly.
    He laughed a little.
    “I did,” he said.
    Suddenly my eyes filled with tears. I didn’t want to do it again. I didn’t want to hear another one of his quasi-confessions involving another woman with whom I would silently compete and to whom I would inevitably lose. But I couldn’t help myself either because I wanted him. I wanted Luke’s voice waking me up like this in the middle of the night, and his stupid clever repartee over meals in expensive restaurants that he could easily afford. I wanted a place, any place in his life.
    “Are you there?” Luke asked.
    Yes . Where I would always be. Right where he had left me. And he would leave me.
    “I’m here,” I answered, grateful for the cover of darkness and the separation of phone lines.
    “Thought maybe we got cut-off or something,” he said.
    God—I despised his coolness. He knew it wasn’t in my power to cut him off. He had done that, and married Christina, so that I had had to wear that stupid pink dress, and ludicrous happy smile like it was one of the best days of my life.
    “No,” I said to him now.
    “So we’re going to change the rules about Sundays?” he asked. “About calling each other I mean? I wouldn’t dare interfere with your family time.”
    “You get together with your folks too,” I reminded him.
    “I do,” he concurred. “But with us it’s more hit and miss. And a lot