Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay

by Babette de Jongh

  The dog named Georgia looked back but didn’t retreat. “You don’t belong here. Go home.”

  Wolf lowered his elbows to the ground and flattened himself in submission. He sent a silent message to Georgia. “I can’t go home. I am being punished. My people left me here, and I think they will come back for me. I have to wait.”

  Georgia sat, panting. “What did you do wrong?”

  Wolf didn’t know. He waited for Georgia to ask a different question he might know the answer to.

  “Georgia,” the woman’s voice called out, still high-pitched with anxiety but softer and sweeter than before. “Girlfriend, what are you doing in there?”

  Her voiceless reply: “I am talking to the gold-eyed dog-thing.”

  So. She could tell he wasn’t fully dog or fully wolf. She turned her fierce gaze on him, but the white tip of her thick brown tail flickered a greeting.

  “Georgia.” The woman’s voice sounded sharp again, the tone veering between fear and love. “Get back here.”

  Georgia stood. “Abby is calling me. I do what I want, but it is time for me to go. You can stay.” She turned tail and trotted back to the woman.

  Wolf put his head on his paws and ignored the hungry rumbling of his belly.

  * * *

  With a last parting shot in the one-sided argument, Georgia bounded out of the cat’s-claw, her gray speckled coat covered in damp yellow petals.

  Abby’s concern evaporated. “Did you tell ’em?”

  Georgia sneezed, a gesture that looked like an emphatic yes.

  “Good. Can we please go home now?” Abby waited for Georgia to trot past, then closed the wrought-iron gate and fastened the padlock. “What in the world were you barking at?”

  Georgia danced around Abby’s feet, whining and yipping as if she had important information to share.

  Reva claimed that anyone could communicate with animals, and she’d given Abby a hundred-thousand short tutorials. But as Reva had often said, practice and trust were essential ingredients, and Abby had to admit that she hadn’t provided either of them. So if Georgia was trying to say something, Abby didn’t get it. She petted the good dog’s silky head. “Whatever it was, I’m sure you took care of it.”

  But an image of watchful gold eyes made Abby’s shoulders twitch. Georgia barked, tail wagging, reminding Abby that daylight was fading fast. “You’re right. It’s time to feed critters and toss the ball.”

  In the big barn with its hand-painted sign—Welcome, Bayside Barn Buddies—above the open double doors, Abby poured feed into various bowls and buckets, humming along with the faint melody coming from the new neighbor’s stereo. It played loud enough for her to hear the tune, but not loud enough for her to recognize the words. After seeing him on that motorcycle, dressed in black leather, she might have expected him to be the sort to play abrasive music with abusive lyrics loud enough to rattle the windows.

  Maybe he would be a good neighbor to Aunt Reva, who had never quite fit in here in Magnolia Bay. Though she had married a born-and-bred resident of the area, her hippie clothing and unusual talent of telepathic animal communication made most people around here act a little standoffish. When Reva’s husband died two years ago, her chance of blending into the clannish community died, too. A good neighbor next door would be a blessing for Reva, and Abby should do whatever she could to facilitate that relationship.

  She should bake a loaf of the secret-family-recipe pound cake and offer it to the new guy as a welcome to the neighborhood. It’s what Reva would have done. Even though she wasn’t really accepted around here, Reva remained unfailingly polite to everyone.

  Removing her barn boots, Abby set them in the boot tray inside the back door, then padded into the old-fashioned farm kitchen and poured a glass of merlot.

  Georgia sat, front paws in prayer position, a blue tennis ball in her mouth.

  “You’re right. It’s ball time. But let’s check on the kitten first.” Abby went into the white-tiled laundry room with Georgia at her heels. The kitten growled and spat and hissed, all the purring and promise of yesterday forgotten.

  “Baby,” Abby chided. When she stuck her fingers through the bars, hoping to calm the kitten with a caress, it scrambled into the cardboard hideout, knocking over the food dish on the way. Georgia set the ball down long enough to eat the scattered kibble off the floor. Then she snatched up the ball and streaked through the dog door onto the pool patio.

  “Right behind you,” Abby promised. She set her wineglass on the dryer and stripped naked, then threw her clothes in the washer and turned it on. She took her swimsuit off the hook by the door—and had an epiphany. She was alone here! She could go naked if she wanted to. She hung the swimsuit back up and grabbed a towel. Feeling a slightly naughty sense of exhilaration at her secret indecency, she carried her wine outside and eased into the gently bubbling hot tub. Naked. Totally and completely naked.

  It seemed like she was the only human in the universe.

  So why couldn’t she manage to relax? She ducked underwater to get her hair wet, then slid up onto the seat, tipped her head back, and willed her tense body to let go. Every muscle, every tendon, every molecule was clenched like a fist ready for battle.

  Georgia dropped the ball and nosed it toward Abby’s wineglass. Abby tossed the ball a few dozen times, then plunked it into the hot tub where Georgia wouldn’t go. “No more playing.”

  Georgia settled on her haunches, elbows to the ground and feet pointing straight ahead in the classic cattle-dog pose. Eyeing the floating ball the way her ancestors had once eyed flocks of sheep, she waited patiently for Abby to make the next move.

  Abby sipped her wine and surveyed her aunt’s domain. Three—no, four—cats lounged within sight: Max, the big, gray tabby; Princess Grace, the elegant Siamese mix; Glenn, the black-and-white-spotted feral with a notched ear; and Jessie, another gray tabby with a notched ear. The others were all off doing cat things. Across the fence that separated the parking lot from the blue clapboard farmhouse, the petting-zoo animals rested in the big, red barn. Down the hill toward the bay, an owl hooted, answered by its mate a short distance away.

  If Reva had been here, she would have told Abby what the owls were saying. “I’m here,” probably. And “I’m here, too.” Animals weren’t always running off at the mouth like humans. Most often their calls back and forth were quick check-ins establishing location and well-being.

  Family keeping up with family.

  Something her parents had never seemed interested in. When Abby spent summers with Reva and Grayson, her parents hardly ever called. When Abby graduated from high school, they exchanged their three-bedroom house for a top-of-the-line home on wheels and offered to pay a year of storage fees for her stuff until she could “get the hang of adulting.” When she graduated from college with a business degree, they didn’t come; they’d been too busy avoiding the hot Louisiana summer by touring every campsite in Oregon.

  When Abby cut herself adrift from her own life, she should’ve known to ask Reva for help first. Reva was a generous and forgiving Mother Earth, while Abby’s father (Reva’s brother-in-law) made Narcissus look like a philanthropist. Abby’s mother, well, she was more like a ghost. Even when she was there, she wasn’t really. Winston Curtis was the dense magnetic planet that kept his wife’s dimming star from spinning off into oblivion. Whatever he said, she echoed, because she wasn’t a whole person without him. Full of their customary thimbleful of compassion, they had advised Abby to tighten her bootstraps.

  So when she found herself sitting in a leaking dinghy watching her bridges burn behind her, and her parents had given unhelpful advice but no actual help, Abby had asked her aunt Reva for a patch of uncharred earth on which to land. “Yes, of course,” her aunt had replied without skipping a heartbeat. “You’re welcome to stay for as long as you like.”

  Family taking care of famil
y.

  Abby thought of the little girl she’d met today—Angelina—and hoped that if the child couldn’t be with her family, at least she lived with people who loved her. Everyone, human or animal, deserved a home in which they knew unconditional love and acceptance. Abby thought of the child she’d had to leave behind in order to save herself, and swallowed a mouthful of wine along with the worry and regret that never left her mind. That it wasn’t her child didn’t make it better.

  With the comforting bulk of the house behind her, Abby leaned her head back and let her feet float up. A couple of early stars winked on in the deepening sky, and solar lights glittered off to the left, lighting a flagstone path to the aviary and the pavilion. Straight ahead and down the hill, a fenced pasture surrounded the swimming hole whose brown water glittered dimly as the sun’s last ray disappeared beyond the horizon.

  The granddaddy oak Abby remembered from every summer of her childhood stood guard over the wooden dock. Fifty feet up into its fern-covered branches, a tire swing’s hefty rope was tied so older kids could swing far out over the pond before letting go.

  Beyond, rolling pastureland led down to a wide strip of marshland that bordered the bay a few miles away. A boat’s motor made a whining sound in the distance; someone night-fishing or checking trotlines.

  Abby heard a munching sound and peered into the gathering shadows. At the property line between her aunt’s farm and the new neighbor’s estate, two long, curving horns bobbed in rhythm—a goat with his head buried in the privacy hedge. “Gregory.” Out again, that bad, adventurous goat. “You could teach Houdini a thing or two.”

  Ignoring the goat—she could figure out how he’d gotten out of the pasture and into the yard tomorrow—Abby stood and set her empty wineglass next to her towel. The cooling night air tingled on her bare skin, raising goose bumps. She stepped onto the diving board, bounced a few times, and dove into the cool water.

  * * *

  Quinn sat by the pool in the gathering dusk. The frogs’ mating song blended nicely with his new favorite song, “Any Man in America.”

  He felt kind of bad that tomorrow he would destroy the frogs’ happy habitat with pool chemicals and a scrub broom. But maybe frogs also needed to learn about getting too comfortable and feeling too safe.

  The Blue October song ended. Silence…then a strange rustling noise in the privacy hedge. Was crazy Old Ms. McDonald snooping on him? He eased to his feet and padded over, planning to surprise the old bat.

  The hedge shook. He pulled apart a couple branches and met two blue eyes with strange-shaped pupils. He jumped back. What the fork?

  He bent down and encountered a devil’s face, complete with horns. “Maaa,” the thing bellowed.

  “I’ll be damned.” Quinn picked up a stick and poked it through the hedge-covered chain-link fence, right into the goat’s nose.

  “Maaaaa…” The goat bolted, leaving a perfect, goat-head-sized peephole into his new neighbor’s backyard.

  The sparkling-clean pool glowing blue, lit from within.

  The kidney-shaped patio surrounded by globe lights.

  His next-door neighbor’s perfectly proportioned body diving naked into the swimming pool.

  “Whoa.” Quinn stumbled back, tripped over something, and fell on his ass.

  He wouldn’t be able to think of her as Old Ms. McDonald anymore.

  Chapter 4

  It didn’t surprise Quinn that he had trouble falling asleep that night, even though he had worked hard all day. Visions of his neighbor’s slim, toned body and wavy brown hair followed him into fitful dreams.

  In the first dream, she popped up from his frog-filled pool and wrapped her green-scaled mermaid arms around his neck. Pulling him into the murky depths, she showed him her magical cave of hidden delights. He knew she intended to keep him there forever, and he wanted to stay, until he realized with a shock that he couldn’t breathe underwater.

  Lungs convulsing, he broke free and kicked for the surface, but strong tendrils of seaweed dragged him down. He hacked at the seaweed, which turned into the dismembered arms and grasping fingers of all the other men she had lured under and destroyed.

  He woke gasping for air, his legs tangled in the stiff, dye-smelling sheets on his new king-size bed. He got up and staggered to the kitchen, where he drank some water and shook off the lingering shreds of the dream’s strange eroticism. When he went back to bed, sleep eluded him at first. He flipped and flopped like a gutted fish until the deep-throated burp of mating bullfrogs sang him back to sleep.

  In the next dream, the woman next door wore the same yellow bathrobe and cowboy boots he’d seen her in this morning. She stood beside his bed, her hawklike eyes devouring him, but he didn’t care. He knew she had some kind of mojo that was working on him, but he lacked the power to resist whatever magic she possessed.

  Willing to die, he flung back the sheets.

  She dropped the yellow robe and straddled him, her muddy boots digging into the new mattress. She rode him hard, waving a cowboy hat and yelling “Go, Bayside Buddy, go!”

  Exhausted, he woke after dawn, disturbed by the strident wails of restless donkeys. He kicked free of the twisted sheets and sat on the edge of the bed.

  Maybe he should admit defeat, sell this place for exactly what he’d paid, and go to work for another builder. Who cared about all the time and money spent getting his contractor’s license? Who cared about crafting his own business as an independent contractor? Who cared about polishing up this old gem of an estate and reselling at a hefty profit?

  Unfortunately, he cared.

  Flipping this place and making a profit wasn’t just about flipping this place and making a profit. It was about rebuilding his relationship with his son. It was about showing his ex-wife that she’d made an even bigger mistake than he had. It was about making a new life for himself in Magnolia Bay and establishing his construction company as a valued member of the business community.

  He couldn’t quit now. He couldn’t quit ever. He had to make this thing work.

  While the coffee perked, he ate a slice of cold, leftover pizza and slipped a granola bar into his back pocket for later. With a decent playlist drowning out the zoo sounds, he carried a strong cup of black coffee and a legal pad outside. He sat in a folding stadium chair by the murky green pool and made his to-do list.

  1. Get the truck and empty out the crappy apartment.

  2. Drop off the apartment key.

  3. Unload the truck.

  4. Buy pool chemicals, weed killer, telescoping loppers.

  5. Buy mortar and sand to fill cracks in the brick facing.

  With a plan in place and caffeine in his system, Quinn felt slightly less like killing himself. He battled through a tangle of trees and vines and weeds to the property’s edge. The distant view of the bay reassured him that he hadn’t made a horrible mistake. Despite the noisy neighbor, this place sparkled with possibility and had the potential to triple or even quadruple his investment.

  As long as he could find a buyer who suffered from significant hearing loss.

  * * *

  Abby woke to the donkeys’ loud, discontented braying. Disoriented, she sat up and glanced at the clock. “Shit.” She rocketed out of bed like a pebble from a slingshot, dumping Georgia and Max the tabby onto the floor.

  Nine a.m. already. The donkeys complained for good reason. Saturday morning coffee by the pool would have to wait. Her phone, plugged in by the bedside, displayed a slew of text messages, not that she had time to view or respond to them right now.

  And wasn’t there something else she was supposed to do today? She looked around the bedroom and chewed on a fingernail, waiting for her brain to kick in—and it did, sending a flood of adrenaline to her belly. Shit! She’d forgotten to call the vet’s office yesterday. “Calm down,” she said out loud. “It’s not the end of the world.”<
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  The vet closed at noon on Saturdays, and that was their busiest day of the week. It would be too late to get an appointment now. Maybe that was just as well; it would take till noon to get the morning chores done. She promised herself that she’d make the call first thing Monday morning.

  In the Daffy Duck boxer shorts and faded tank top she’d slept in, she put on barn boots and headed outside with Georgia and Max. When she walked into the barn, the hollering donkeys and ponies hollered even louder. A swarm of cats leaped onto the wide shelf above the food bins, yowling in anticipation.

  Moving quickly, Abby scooped food from painted metal bins into matching color-coded buckets. (Aunt Reva had left nothing to chance.) Abby filled a green five-gallon bucket for the goats and sheep, a red one for the geese, chickens, ducks, and peacocks. Then, the single-buckets: blue for each of the ponies. A pink one for the bunnies’ communal bowl. Purple for the mini zebu, and orange for the potbellied pig.

  She fed the whining donkeys first. Outside in the chicken yard, she scattered chicken scratch and left the gate open so the chickens and ducks and peacocks could spend the day foraging. She fed the aviary birds and hosed down their concrete floors, then tossed flakes of hay into the pastures and let the barn animals out to graze.

  Sweaty and tired, Abby decided shoveling poop could wait until after coffee. She set up the coffeepot and hit the button to perk. She had just removed her boots when a deep bellow of human rage galvanized Georgia, who sprinted across the yard and squeezed under the fence. A second later, her sharp barking joined the new neighbor’s angry expletives. Abby ran barefoot along the hedgerow fence toward Georgia’s hysterical barking.

  A donkey’s cry made her heart race. How had Elijah gotten into the neighbor’s yard? Then she saw how. “Oh shit.” She climbed over a section of crumpled wire fencing and burst through a thick tangle of vegetation into a scene of mayhem and hysteria.

  The new neighbor charged toward Elijah and flung his hands in the donkey’s face. “Shoo. Get out.”