The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories, 1978-2008 by Erdrich Louise

Author:Erdrich, Louise [Erdrich, Louise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adult, Contemporary
ISBN: 9780061536076
Amazon: 0061536075
Goodreads: 5768860
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2009-01-06T08:00:00+00:00

Best Western

I WAS A straight-A high school English student working my way through community college when I ditched it all and ran away with Ricky Zachs, the lead tenor in the Flathead Valley choir. My voice was adequate, that’s all, but I was a fair piano accompanist. Ricky and I formed a duo, the Midnite Specials, and through an agency we booked ourselves to play hotel lounges, wedding dances, and live-music bars from Oregon to the sad, black, forest towns of upper peninsula Michigan. I was a clear alto. My voice had no range, no upstairs, but I knew just how to dress for the spotlight and for my weight. I wore zircons on my fingers so my hands, on the keyboard, glittered. Home Ec had taught me where to vertical-stripe and where to drape, showed me accent points, the tricks of choosing jewelry pieces to draw attention toward good anatomical features and divert the eye from others. I was the visual asset, but Ricky’s voice carried us. An Irish lilt, a touch of Hungarian soul, even moments of clear falsetto, it had everything, the whole of Europe I used to think, a world about which Ricky didn’t know any more than I did, except he was it, a blend that gave him a haunted, wavy-haired look. When he sang “Volare,” he was passionate. At the same time he was darkly wholesome with his big square face and preacher-clean smile.

I had always been the kind of girl that people called attractive, never pretty; the kind who worked for every bit of notice that she got, who never took appreciation for granted. I was the kind of girl who’d go on a date that consisted of six rounds of miniature golf. I fell in love all the time. I couldn’t help it. Movie stars, rock stars, even faces in commercials. Football captains, all the assistant coaches, civics teachers, then professors. I nursed unrequited affection until Ricky Zachs. He’d been one of those I’d worshipped from afar, not that he was always handsome.

The thing about Ricky was he had an ugly childhood. All through grade school he was the one the others herded out, the skinny boy who’d give up without a fight, cry, tattle, eat dirt. Then he blossomed into a hunk. In eighth grade, he joined the football team and paid people back. He had no friends exactly, yet everyone was awed by him. By the time we were out of high school, he’d run the gamut of available girlfriends down to the little swaybacked sophomores. He was at loose ends after graduation, working resort clubs here and there, when he noticed my thick blond hair.

“How come we never got together back in high school?” he wondered. “Where were you?”

I was about the only girl left he’d never taken on a date, but I said nothing. I never told him how I’d watched him, just wishing. It was luck. I was the last one left and maybe that helped. He talked of eloping, not putting up with church and community bullshit, a wedding, all that.

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