D) All of the above
I circle D. Final effing answer.
He sticks his camera in a duffel bag and straps it around his chest. “I’m Beck,” he says, stepping up onto the porch and throwing an arm around my shoulder. “Her disapproving big brother.” He turns sideways, mere inches from my face. “I thought I told you to wait for me in the parking lot, sis.”
Pushing my bangs out of my eyes, I’d pay literally, probably, I don’t know, maybe four hundred dollars for five minutes of prep time in a mirror right now.
“Oh, right,” I say. “Sorry . . . bro. Forgot.” My usual witty vocabulary seems to have regressed into mushy, fragmented infant-speak.
Beck sighs, leans in toward Moses. “She’d lose her arm if it wasn’t attached.”
“Head,” I mutter.
“What?”
“I’d lose my head if it wasn’t attached.” I roll my eyes, praying it looks sisterly.
“What did I say?” asks Beck.
“You said arm.”
He gives a psshh. “I don’t think so.”
“Walt?” I say.
Without looking up from his cube, Walt corroborates. “The new boy said ‘arm.’”
Beck shrugs and turns back toward a bewildered Moses. I can almost hear the rusty wheels churning in his head, processing our little production. From somewhere behind him, he pulls out another apple and cracks a bite.
“You said cash, right?”
WALT TOSSES HIS old suitcase in the bed of the truck; we pile in and pull out of Moses the Apple Eater’s front yard. Beck mentions food, to which Walt and I hastily agree. On top of being insanely hungry, I’m not relishing the idea of exchanging stories with Beck. I’d love to know who he is and where he’s going (not to mention how he got from the Greyhound bus yesterday to the Independence police station today), but I’m sure he’s wondering the same about me. We’ll catch up, but we’ll do so with full stomachs.
At Walt’s prodding, Beck pulls into a line of cars at a fast-food place called Medieval Burger. When this trip is over, I’m going to have to look into one of those trendy full-body cleanses, something to detox all this processed meat out of my system.
“Did they even have burgers in the Middle Ages?” I wonder aloud.
“Oh, sure,” says Beck. “Nothing more refreshing after a long day of crusading and pillaging and walking through the mud and what have you.”
Oh God, he’s witty. “The Middle Ages were quite damp, weren’t they?”
“And dreary.”
Walt flips on the vintage turn-dial radio of the old truck and scans the waves. Landing on a Reds versus Cubs baseball game, he claps his hands and leans in to listen.
The line inches forward, stops.
“So?” says Beck.
I turn to find him looking at me, arms crossed.
“So what?”
“How about a name, for starters?”
“How about your name?”
“I already told you. It’s Beck.”
“I just figured that was, you know, an alias or something.”
Before he can respond, his cell phone rings. Pulling it from his jacket, he checks the caller ID and answers. “Yeah, hey.” Pause. “No.” Longer pause. “Claire, listen . . .”
I become inexplicably interested in the analogue clock in the dashboard. It appears to be broken, as neither hand is moving. Interesting. Inexplicably so.
“It’ll just take a few minutes,” he says. “I know.” Pause. “Okay, Claire.” Short pause. “Thanks.” He hangs up.
Color me intrigued.
“So.” He glances sideways. “What about that name?”
I’m ready this time. “What, you mean—for the truck? Fabulous idea.” I twist around, look through the cab window, and tap my chin. “I’d say he looks like a Phil.”
Beck smiles. “I have an uncle named Phil.”
“No shit.” I pat the dashboard. “Uncle Phil it is.”
We pull up to the speaker, and I wonder if Beck is as grateful for the interruption as I am. One of us is gonna have to break eventually.
We give our orders and drive up to the window.
“Here,” I say, taking a twenty from Kathy’s can. “I got this.”
Beck doesn’t even put up a fight, which is both mildly curious and annoying. We pull into an empty parking spot while he divvies out Walt’s burger and fries, then his own. “So,” he says, folding up the bag.
“Umm, my food is still in there.”
“Oh, I know. And you’ll get it—but it’s gonna cost you.”
“You mean more than the twenty bucks I already dished out?”
Beck unwraps his burger, takes a bite, and nods. “S’good, too,” he says, his mouth full. “Real . . . medievally.”
I smile, wondering whether I’d rather punch him or jump him. “And what exactly does medieval taste like?”
He holds up the bag with my food in it. “Care to find out?”
I’ve never been part of a conversation like this, where my heart is jelly and my brain is in my shoes. I should be pissed at his boyish antics, but right now should is miles away.
On the radio, the broadcasters discuss an impending rain delay. Blissfully engaged, Walt digs into his fries; Beck is already halfway done with his burger. I roll my eyes, sigh in my most overly dramatic tone, and offer my hand across Walt’s back. “Fine, I’ll go first.” Beck takes a bite while shaking it, and if I thought his look was stunning, his touch is downright majestic. “I’m Mary Iris Malone . . . but only my mother gets to call me Mary.”