by Pamela Morsi
“Unoccupied? I’ve been here for nine years,” Red told her.
“Yes,” Ms. Richmond said. “But as there is no current lease agreement in effect, it was assumed that the building was empty.”
“I’ve been paying my rent every month,” Red pointed out. “I don’t miss, I’m not ever even late.”
“Yes, that’s what I understand from Receivables. I’d be happy to make a note of that here on the record.”
“Ah...thanks,” Red answered, “but I don’t see how that affects the price of pork bellies.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“How does that help me?” Red explained without the sarcastic idiom. “I’ve got a ton of heavy equipment out back making a whole lot of noise and ripping up the river access to my patio. Both of those things are bad for my business. Can you make them stop?”
“Well, no,” Ms. Richmond answered. “We don’t want them to stop. Your building was purchased in a bundled block for redevelopment. The potential for that redevelopment is tied directly to the River North expansion.”
“They’ve been talking about that River North expansion for years,” Red told her. “It’s not ever going to happen.” There was a long silence on the other end of the line. “You’re the one who is saying that the construction is up to your back door,” Ms. Richmond observed.
The woman had a point, one that Red was not at all crazy about.
After more discussion, Ms. Richmond suggested that someone from Project Management call her with an update on the building’s status.
Red acquiesced to that, but not happily.
After hanging up the phone, she walked outside onto her much-abbreviated patio. The place was amazingly quiet. All she could hear was the sound of Cam’s fiddle drifting down from the apartment. The tune was not a familiar one, but it was intense and sweet, stirring her heart.
The heavy equipment was sitting in silence and none of the orange-vested workers were around. Red didn’t know if they’d taken off for lunch or for a week. It was one of the notorious truths of San Antonio construction that the crews for tearing things up and the crews for putting them back together were often not well coordinated. A well-traveled street could be torn into a nasty detour that strangled traffic for months before the repairs even got started.
Red desperately hoped that wouldn’t be true here. As it was, things were bad. Between the truncation of the patio and the relocation of the stage so far inside the property line, she’d lost three tables. That added up to a loss of at least a thousand dollars in receipts every week. If she could let one of the waitresses go, it would lower the overhead. But that would put too many tables on the staff that was left. And she couldn’t know yet how moving the stage closer would impact the inside business. Those customers who came more to socialize than for the music might not be able to hear themselves talk.
Red felt her insides tightening up with the uncertainty. When things got tough, this patio and the view of the river had always calmed her. But nothing about backhoes and orange tape was calming.
She closed her eyes, trying to see it again as it was. The shady morning patio, the sounds of the rippling water, the rustling of the trees on the opposite bank. But the scene in her mind was no longer the San Antonio River but Cayou Creek, near Piney Woods, and her daddy was sitting beside her.
“Did Mama just not love us anymore?” she asked him.
“Oh no, that wasn’t it,” he answered. “Your mama is just not like all the other mamas. She needs different things. Things I couldn’t give her.”
“You gave her what you had,” Red defended.
Her father shrugged. “That’s all in the past. She has a new husband now and you and I are going to have to be happy about that. We’re going to be happy for her. You think we can do it?”
Red nodded. “I can be happy about it. Now she won’t be here yelling all the time.”
“Your mom loves you. She just has a hard time showing it.”
“Are you sure, Daddy?”
“I’m as sure about it as anything, my little Red.”
“You shouldn’t call me Red. Red’s a color, not a person. It’s silly.”
He laughed. “I like being silly,” he told her. “And I like being with you.”
“You won’t ever go away, like Mama?”
“I won’t ever go anywhere,” he assured her. “You can count on it. Day and night I’m going to be right here on this farm, loving and protecting my favorite redheaded girl.”
That hadn’t been true, of course. He’d died. She didn’t blame him for that. But once he was gone, nobody had ever been there to protect Red again.
Lost in thought, Red was startled as a pair of arms wrapped around her waist. It was Cam. The warmth of him, the strength of him was so welcome that she relaxed in his arms, still pliant from the memory of her father.
“I heard you upstairs playing your fiddle,” she said.
He pulled her back tight against his chest and gave her a kiss on the throat. “I was just practicing.”
“It was real pretty,” she said. “What’s it called?”
The side of his face was against her temple and she could feel him smiling. "Concerto for Violin number 2 in D Major. ”
She laughed lightly. “Not exactly a catchy title.”
“Yeah, a honky-tonker would have come up with a better one, for sure.”
“Is it one of the songs from your day job?” she asked. “Something you’re editing?”
“It’s Mozart. He doesn’t need all that much editing these days.”
“How come you practice Mozart, if you’re going to be playing Willie Nelson?”
“That’s Woody Guthrie’s fault,” he answered.
“Woody Guthrie?”
“Where were you just now?” he asked her, changing the subject. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you, but when I walked up here, you looked to be a million miles away.”
“Not a million,” she answered. “Just a few hundred...and about four decades.”
She felt him go very still. Immediately Red was on her guard. The gentle moment grew tense.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he answered. “I thought you were about to tell me something.”
“Tell you what?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Something. Anything.”
“No,” Red assured him. “Nothing.”
Cam gave a light chuckle. “When I met you, you were so different from any woman I’d ever gone out with. Those girlfriends were constantly telling me everything that came into their heads and trying to pry out every thought I’d ever had. You never asked me anything. You never told me anything.”
“And you liked that,” Red pointed out.
“I did,” Cam admitted. “I did like it. But I don’t anymore. I want to tell you things, I want you to tell me things. Why don’t we do that? Why can’t we do that?”
Red freed herself from his grasp.
“If you want to play Twenty Questions, go find some twentysomething. I’m past those kinds of games.”
“I don’t want to play games, either,” he assured her. “And the last thing I’m interested in is some little chickie. But for just an instant there, it was like you were about to say something, reveal something, give me a hint of who you are and how you got to be that way.”
Red secured her defenses and switched tactics. “I’ll tell you what I am. I’m horny. And I’ll tell you how I got that way. You haven’t jumped my bones in nearly two weeks. Do you think I’m some bored wife, perfectly satisfied with a five-minute poke once a month. I’ve got to get me a little. And if you’re not available, I may have to start trolling the other cowboys who come into this place.”
Cam delivered a sharp, flat-handed slap to her backside.
“Ow!”
“Just swatting the armadillo, ma’am,” he said. “It’s getting a bit rowdy.”
“That’s not going to help,” she said. “It needs to get bounced on a bed ti
ll it’s too tired to wiggle.”
“You’d better be careful,” he warned. “You may get more than you can handle.”
“Oh, you just trust me, cowboy, I can handle you and you’ll love every minute of it.”
“Don’t you have to open the front door in fifteen minutes?” he asked.
“Some things can wait and some can’t,” she told him. She ran her hand down the front of his jeans. “And it seems to me that we’ve got an emergency situation growing here.”
“You are really going to get it.”
“Please, oh please, pretty please.”
Cam bent down, grabbed her behind the knees and hoisted her over his shoulder like a sack of feed. Red laughed as he carried her across the patio and up the stairs.
In the apartment, Cam tossed her on the bed.
Red reached to her waist to unbutton her tight jeans. To her surprise, Cam grabbed her hands and pulled them high over her head as he lay down on top of her, fully clothed.
His face was directly above hers, his mouth only inches away. She parted her own lips in expectation. When the kiss didn’t come, she opened her eyes to see him looking at her.
“You almost managed to pull it off again,” he said.
“What?”
“I know what you’re doing,” he whispered.
Red frowned. “What I’m doing about what?”
“About me,” Cam answered. “About getting close to me. I’ve figured out how this works for you.”
Red frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Oh, yes you do,” he said. “Or at least unconsciously you do. I’d be willing to let you get by with saying it’s not intentional.”
“What is not intentional?”
“This,” he answered.
Red still didn’t get his meaning.
“Every time we’re getting close, every time you are about to tell me something, every time your heart is exposed, it ends up like this. Us on a bed or a chair or a table, rocking our brains out.”
Red laughed. “Sounds like heaven to me.”
Cam rolled over to lie beside her, but kept her hands gripped tightly in his own.
“I get it,” he said. There was no humor in him. His tone was factual. “A lot of women throw up defenses against sex. Your defense is sex. It’s like a secret weapon for you.”
“I don’t use sex as a weapon.”
“Oh, yes you do. You know perfectly well that it’s the one thing that answers all the questions in a guy’s head. It’s the one move that always changes the subject.”
Red started to wiggle away. Cam clutched her body with one muscular thigh.
“Years ago I was at an old honky-tonk in a near-dead oil-boom town,” he told her. “There was a tableful of poker players and the money pot was getting pretty full. All of a sudden one of the players, a moderately attractive woman, just pulled her shirt off. She’s sitting there bare-breasted at a tableful of men, with money on the line. And every last one of them dropped his poker face. She won the pot because they couldn’t keep their heads in the game.”
Red shrugged. “Men think with their dicks. It’s not news.”
“No, it’s not,” Cam said. “But it’s not me.” He let go of her hands and sat up on the bed. “I love having sex with you, Red. Making me want you? Heck, all you have to do is walk into the room. But I think I’ve made it clear, I’m not a disinterested sex buddy. I want to do you because we’re both craving each other. I want to satisfy you from that red hair on your head to the soles of your feet. But I want it to be because you want me. Not because you’re feeling threatened enough to throw up a big distraction.”
Red rose to her knees on the bed and huffed in frustration. “What is the deal with you?” she asked. “Why can’t you be like other guys?”
“Because my Red deserves a lot better.”
Cam leaned forward and kissed her on the bridge of the nose, then stood up and walked to the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Downstairs,” he answered. “Take your time, comb your hair. I’ll unlock the door and man the bar until you get there.”
“Uh...thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he answered. “And just so we’re clear, nothing I do for you is ever owed to me or paid for by services rendered. Understood?”
She nodded.
“Good,” he replied. “Now, put your pretty armadillo on ice for a few hours and I promise to grill it to well-done later.”
As he walked out of the room, Red found herself surprisingly turned on. There was something about a man who wouldn’t be manipulated that was amazingly sexy.
She ran her hand across the jean-covered tattoo on her backside.
“You are so lucky,” she told her armadillo. “Cam is the best boyfriend you’ve ever had, both in bed and out of it.”
He was going to make some woman a great husband. It wasn’t the first time she’d had that thought, but it was the first time that she was bothered by it. He would make a good husband. And the way he was with Olivia and Daniel, he was going to make an excellent father, too. That’s what he deserved. And, she realized with sadness, that was what she wanted for him.
As that realization settled in on her, the source of her sadness became suddenly clear. She was in love with him.
14
Red was standing at a long bar. A very long bar. She couldn’t see the end of it. But then, she was focused on the beer spigot. She was drawing glass after glass of golden draft. Pull down the lever. Watch the mug fill. Set it on the counter. Grab another glass. Pull down the lever. Watch the mug fill.
A buzzing jerked her momentarily awake. She was dreaming. And it was the very worst kind. Dreaming about working always made her wake up tired.
She wanted to dream about something else. Something bright and sunny. Maybe something with Cam’s arms around her. That thought had her smiling languidly.
The buzzer went off again and she realized that it hadn’t been in her dream; it was someone at the front door. Her first thought was to just ignore it. Then it occurred to her that it might be Cam. If so, the kids would normally open the door. Maybe they were asleep, too. Or more likely playing in the backyard.
Groaning, she rolled over to where she could reach the window shade. She pulled it back slightly and peeked out. Standing on her porch was a skinny, buttoned-down old lady in beige slacks, tailored blouse and Gucci loafers.
“Real-estate agent or neighborhood petition?” Red wondered under her breath.
She was not in the mood.
“Go away!”
The woman startled at the response. Red quickly let the shade drop.
She should have just kept quiet. She knew that. She’d spent way too many years living over the bar. In more civil localities you weren’t supposed to yell at people on the porch.
The buzzing began again, this time more insistently.
“Oh cripes!” Red complained as she pulled the pillow over her head to drown out the noise.
Mentally she went through the list of who this person might be and what good reasons there could be for getting up and opening the door.
Could it be someone from the school? No, not on Saturday morning. Anyone from the military would be in uniform. No, it was undoubtedly a do-gooder or a door-to-door saleslady. Red was certain that no person she had any need to talk to would show up on the porch. It was one of the frustrating realities of working late nights. Most of the world assumed that if they are awake, you should be too.
She stayed right where she was and ignored the buzzer. Eventually she heard unhappy footsteps retreating to the curb. Red stretched. She wanted to go back to sleep, but she was completely awake now.
The idea of coffee began to sound good to her, so she rolled out of bed and headed for the kitchen.
The morning sun shone through the windows, giving the room a glow that was surprisingly welcoming. Red didn’t like mornings, but one like this could win almost
anybody over.
The quiet of the place felt unfamiliar. Red found the rattling of the spoon against the coffee can to be like a clanging bell in the silent house.
Hadn’t her home been silent for years?
It wasn’t silent these days. Olivia was constantly haranguing her about something. And even Daniel was more verbal these days, constantly chattering to his sister in Spanish, though he’d yet to say even one word directly to Red.
She poured the water through the coffeemaker and waited.
The kitchen could be correctly described as a mess. The sticky evidence of toaster waffles for breakfast was everywhere. Red avoided sitting at the table, which had pancake syrup dribbled in several places. Instead, she stood at the kitchen sink, gazing out into the backyard.
Olivia was jumping rope. She was apparently trying to perfect the backward crisscross, and she was doing a pretty good job.
Daniel had piled up a small pyramid of stones and was lobbing them like grenades at a paper target that he’d hung on the back fence. Red was glad to see him engaged in a very boylike activity. He was such an anxious, frightened little guy. She worried about him. She hated seeing him curl into that ball, trying to make himself disappear. But he was a likable kid and he was going to be as good-looking as his dad. Fortunately, unlike Mike, Daniel was smart and generous and thoughtful. And being raised almost exclusively among women could be a good thing.
As Red stood there watching, suddenly all hell broke loose. The woman Red had seen on her front porch came charging into the yard, waving a broom like a weapon and screaming like a banshee.
Red was out the back door like a shot, racing toward the intruder. From the corner of her eye she saw Olivia, stunned and frozen to the spot.
Daniel was not frozen. His eyes wide with terror, he was running as if all the demons in hell were after him. He grabbed on to Red’s leg as if she was a lifeline and then hid behind her.
“What the devil are you doing in my yard?” Red yelled angrily at the woman.
She continued to approach, unintimidated. She was perhaps twenty years older than Red. Her perfectly coiffed updo and line-free Botoxed forehead were in sharp contrast to her angry narrowed eyes and the line of her mouth as she answered through clenched teeth.
