I was asleep before I could remember any of the rest of it. But then I was awakened sometime later by a series of dreams that slipped away before I could remember them. They weren’t nightmares.
Fate saved those for the next day.
“David?”
I said it softly, standing above him at the couch where he had spent the night as promised. Geof had supplied him with pillow and blanket, I saw. I also saw that the kid apparently slept nude—unless there were bikini briefs hidden beneath the scant bit of blanket he hadn’t tossed off. You always hear how sweet and vulnerable people look when they sleep? Not this kid. He looked tough, guarded, frowning even in slumber. His sleeping fists were clenched as if he could wake up throwing a punch.
“David?”
I hesitated to shake him awake since that meant touching him. Don’t be silly, I scolded myself, and then shook his bare shoulder. Just as his eyes opened, he moved a knee, and the blanket remaining on top of him fell off. Since David made no move to cover up, I quickly bent down, picked up a handful of yellow wool, and threw it over him.
“What?” he said sleepily, his eyes mere glints.
“What time’s your shift today, David?”
At the Amoco gas station where he worked.
“Nine to four,” he mumbled.
It was now seven A.M.
“Can you meet me at Judy’s House at five o’clock?”
“Humph.” He rolled the other way, sticking his face in the back of the couch and leaving part of his ass uncovered again. I didn’t know if that was yes or no, or if he’d show up, or if he’d even really heard me. My guess was, the overall answer was no. Well, hell, I’d find somebody else to do me the favor. I didn’t care to remain standing there in my living room staring at his bare butt. Especially since it was a better than even chance that he was playing flasher on purpose, to embarrass me.
In the kitchen, I said to Geof, “We could start getting calls from girls. Women.”
“For David?” He looked disbelieving.
It was true, the kid was no social lion.
But I thought of the tough young face that was—when we met him—spotted badly by acne. We’d propelled him to a dermatologist, who’d prescribed medicine that was revealing a face that had always been … interesting … and was now edging damn close to good-looking. I suspected that David—with his intelligence, dark moodiness, motorcycle, wicked wit, and tragic orphan aura—might soon have a certain heart-pulling glamour in some female eyes. And that wasn’t even counting his inheritance, which was hefty. And invested. I recalled, too, what I’d seen when the blanket fell away.
“Yes,” I said, smiling—I thought—to myself. “David.”
“Why are you grinning like that?” My husband’s tone was gentle, provocative. “Thinking of last night?”
“That. And how much David reminds me of you, in some ways.”
“Really?”
He was pleased.
As well he should be, I thought, this time keeping my smile completely to myself.
It was Friday, an October beauty like the day before, only warmer. Plenty warm enough for me to lower the top on the Miata. As the breeze blew me into town, I felt renewed, if still a little stiff and a lot sore.
Following another impulse—already being pulled along, perhaps, by an invisible thread spun by the weaving spider of fate—I decided to drive by the town common on my way into work.
What I saw there excited me so much I just had to stop and park, facing my car into the common where I could overlook all the activity. I hadn’t expected our volunteers to start any construction until the next day, but it appeared that a few eager beavers had jumped the gun, bless their enthusiastic hearts. I saw both men and women out on the green, and they were surrounded by high stacks of lumber, which meant they’d been at it early, picking up the wood—mostly cheap plywood—hauling it, unloading it.
Now they were hoisting their hammers and screwdrivers to build the booths and other temporary structures for the festival.
The ringing music of construction filled the morning.
Church bells to my ears.
Our common was nearly identical to many other old New England towns: basically seven square acres of grassy park and parade ground ringed by restored or reconstructed, historically accurate buildings. The settlers who founded our town set off a common area, then built a church at the edge of it, then a house for the minister, then a school, and then the leading citizens got their pick of the best sites for their homes, facing the green. At the Port Frederick Civic Foundation, I’d had a hand in arranging the financing of the restoration of those original structures.
It was the heart of a modest historical district, nowhere near on the scale of a magnificent place like Williamsburg, but still, our own pride and joy.
The heart of the festival would be there, on the common, but it would also run down the connecting streets and—everybody hoped—profitably bleed its spending money into the stores that would remain open for festival hours all weekend.
A lot of people—not to mention charities—stood to make a lot of money, if all went well. The chamber of commerce was estimating that a half-million dollars could pour into Port Frederick in two days, but then chambers of commerce are supposed to exaggerate, everybody knew that. It was their job, I supposed. My own projections, which I’d laid out for the town council months before, were closer to half that figure, but then I may have erred on the conservative side.
That was my job, I supposed.
I saw the builders were starting with the first thing we’d need, after the ticket-taker’s booths, which was the speaker’s platform, dead center. There, at ten A.M. a week from tomorrow, Mayor Eberhardt would officially open the First Annual Autumn Festival. Various sponsors had tried to persuade me to get up there with her and give a speech on behalf of the foundation, but I had demurred, making light of it by saying that the person running the show should remain backstage so no dissatisfied festival-goer could throw brickbats at her. In truth, it was only that I thought the city should be the star that day, with me and my pals (except Mary) merely working as invisible stagehands.
After all the speechifying, our local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union would be taking over the platform to sponsor a sort of Hyde Park Corner, where anybody could pay a buck to declaim in public their constitutionally protected views on any subject. Well, what the hell, I’d thought, when they’d first proposed the idea: This is Massachusetts, we’re supposed to be inflammatory. But now a wry thought occurred: would Pete Falwell pay a dollar to denounce Judy’s House—or the festival—or the mayor—in public?
No, I decided, smiling to myself, Pete would rather see me elected mayor than to give a cent to liberal lawyers.
The speaker’s platform was only big enough for one person at a time to mount it. I counted four steps leading up about four feet to a rectangle of wood no more than six feet long by four feet wide. As I watched, two carpenters—God only knew what they really did for a living; they could be doctors, lawyers, or even real carpenters—raised a tall wooden stake until it towered over them, and they affixed it to the floor of the platform. And that, I supposed, was where the ACLU would nail their posters.
Vaguely, I was aware of another car driving slowly by.
When its brakes squealed infinitesimally, I glanced in my side mirror. It was a huge, old-fashioned Lincoln, two-tone blue, four doors. I watched the driver lumberingly maneuver the immaculate tank around until he could back it in right beside me.
We were driver to driver, mirror to mirror.
Electronically, he lowered his window.
“’Morning, Roy.”
I knew the car, “Gertrude,” and the man, Roy Leland.
“You feel safe in that little bug, Jenny?”
“Safe? From what, Roy?”
He was another of my elderly ex-employers, the retired president of a grocery wholesale conglomerate and an immensely wealthy, former friend of my
father. But not our enemy, not like Pete. I used to enjoy big, blustery Roy, irredeemably chauvinistic though he undeniably was. I figured, on this brilliant morning, that I still did. Get a kick out of him, that is. Roy was smoking one of his football-field-length cigars, living proof—so far—that not everybody who smoked died a dreadful death. Roy was too ornery to die that way, I figured, which was fine with me. Fortunately, the breeze blew his fumes back into his own car.
“From getting squashed in traffic by somebody bigger than you are,” he rasped. All of my old men trustees had acted paternally toward me when I worked for them—as they acted toward all women—but Roy was the gruff kind of father figure who would bully you in lieu of actually displaying any affection. “I never let my own kids have any convertibles. Not safe. Muggers. Thieves. Rapists. Slash your top when it’s up, slash you when it’s down. Not safe.”
I smiled at him. “Yeah, but I’m wearing my seat belt, Roy.”
Roy never smiled much, merely squinted his small, cunning eyes in his meaty red face.
“Miss Lucille called me last night,” he announced.
I nodded, waited, breath held.
“Tried to blackmail me into making some goddamn television appearance.” He made it sound as if Miss Grant had asked him to dance naked with her around the common at noon. “Can’t help you, Jenny. Wish I could. You know that.”
I knew he meant it, but I felt a sinking disappointment for myself and embarrassment for my darling old teacher. Why had I placed her in a position where any of these old guys could say no to her?
“Why can’t you, Roy?”
He was blunt. Always. It was liberating, I’d found. So I was always blunt right back at him.
He chomped down on the stogie, speaking through semi-clamped lips. “Don’t like change, Jenny.”
I knew that, knew it of all of them.
“Like things to stay the way they are, way they’ve always been.” He jerked the cigar out of his mouth and used it to point behind him to the activity on the common. “Too much for this town. You know what your problem is, Jenny?”
“Didn’t know I had one, Roy.”
“You think too big.”
I stared at him, startled.
“Too goddamn big,” he repeated. “Things get out of control when they get too goddamn big.”
I said, matter-of-factly, “Out of the control of you and Pete and the other men, you mean.”
He squinted at me in what was nearly a wink. But he wasn’t joking when he replied, after only the briefest of pauses, “One thing you’re not is stupid.” He placed a beefy fist around his gearshift. “No hard feelings between you and me.”
“No,” I said. But what I was really thinking was, Screw you, and the dinosaur you rode in on. However, that blunt I wasn’t; it wouldn’t have helped, and my late mother wouldn’t have approved of my being rude to Roy Leland, who only meant to be nice to me.
With a friendly chop of his left arm, which was his version of a good-bye wave, Roy lumbered his old blue boat out of there, his rejection taking some of the glow of the morning with him. Would Miss Grant have any better luck with the other two remaining trustees?
I began to wonder if, in asking her for such a major favor, I had … thought too big … for my britches.
9
I SANG “OH, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING,” ALL THE WAY INTO THE office, even if the lyrics weren’t quite accurate, since “everything” wasn’t “going my way.”
There was a man waiting for me at Judy’s House, and he barely had on any britches at all. I observed that the minute I walked in, seeing him at first only from the, um, rear. It seemed to be a developing theme to my day, I thought, recalling my bare husband in the morning and David, after that.
Not a bad running motif, actually.
Smiling, I quietly crossed my office carpet to within a few feet of the visitor. This fellow, whoever he was, looked about five feet ten inches tall, maybe a hundred and sixty pounds and most of that lean muscle. I knew that, because I could see so much of it. He wore a sleeveless khaki-colored T-shirt and matching short-shorts rolled up to just under his tight ass, and heavy-duty hiking boots with thick heather socks. For those few seconds, I was treated to a great view of tightly muscled calves, knees, and thighs, as well as big shoulders, forearms, and biceps and also whatever those other muscles in the upper arm are called. He had curly black hair cropped very short, and I saw a hint of beard from where I stood behind him. Either this was a true outdoorsman and athlete, or else it was somebody who spent more time at a gym than most people did at their jobs.
I coughed, discreetly.
He turned his face, showing me more tan, the full beard, an accompanying moustache, dark eyes that looked excited to see me, and a wicked grin.
A strangely familiar wicked grin.
“Cain,” he said, and held his arms wide as if he expected me to run into them. “I’ve come back to you. Did you miss me? Of course, you did. Well, everything’s all right now. Come to Daddy.”
“Oh, my God,” I said, and then I matched his grin. “Oh, my God!”
“Greek god,” he corrected, and he waggled his fingers as if urging me into the embrace he still held open to me. “Give us a hug, Cain.”
Laughing, I did just that, though I quickly stepped away for self-protection: partly, to protect my bruises, but also because I knew better than to get any part of my anatomy too close for too long to Lew Riss, old friend, former reporter for the Times, irrepressible and perpetually horny egotist. But this “Greek god” was no Lewis I had ever seen before. The one I remembered was a scrawny, dope-smoking, wise-cracking, feverishly intelligent, and ambitious … jerk. Of whom I had always, and against my better judgment, been fond nonetheless.
But that was all years ago, as many as eight or nine.
“Lewis?” I said, from a cautious distance. “Is it really you?”
“I’ve come back for you,” he repeated comically, “just when you had given up all hope that you would ever see me again.”
“In your dreams, Lew.” I laughed.
He smirked his old lascivious Lewis Riss smirk. “Oh, you’ve been in many of my dreams, Cain.” We’d never been lovers—not a chance—but it was not for lack of effort on Lew’s part. “Are you still married to that fascist?”
“Yes, still married to the cop, Lew.”
And suddenly I was delighted to see him, this blast from the past, this distraction from my festival, this impossibly annoying man who could make me laugh even when I wanted to wallop him, and I limped back for another careful hug. He didn’t appear to notice my careful movements, but then Lew Riss had never been notably observant of other people’s feelings.
“You never could resist me, Cain.”
Lew smelled, deliciously, of fresh air.
His body gave off a furnace of heat, supplying a reason for his attire apart from sheer exhibitionism alone, which I wouldn’t have put past him. He’d always been a show-off, fighting to get his byline into print as often and in as large type as possible during the brief years when he’d worked in Port Frederick. Lew was perhaps the only truly extroverted print reporter I’d ever met, and for that reason—and others having to do with a certain softness in the area of ethics—he’d seemed a bit of a fish out of water in journalism, to me. In fact, he had that in common with Ardyth Kennedy, I suddenly realized: heavy in ambition, light on content. But Lew was a lot more likable, to me at least, than Ardie. His boyish charm could wear on you, but at least he did possess redeeming qualities. Maybe it was his intelligence. No, more likely that plus his sense of humor, always a saving grace.
“I could resist you.” I pulled back and made a show of examining him, as ostentatiously as possible. “But that was the other Lew Riss, that skinny, scruffy fellow. This man—” I placed my open right hand against the massive pad of muscle below his left shoulder and pushed in. It gave slightly, as a slab of beef might. “—may be more difficult to resist. Lewis! You’re gorgeous! Look a
t these muscles, look at these legs, get a load of this chest, girls, and look at this hair!”
“My hair?” His hands jumped from me to his own scalp. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s combed. It never was before, that I can recall. I like the beard. I love the moustache. Okay, I’ll admit that you used to be kind of cute, in your own degenerate way, but this is the biggest transformation since Beauty kissed the Beast.” I walked completely around him, slowly, insultingly, doing my best to accomplish the impossible, which was to embarrass him. “Who got hold of you? A woman? Had to be a woman. She must have been an aerobics teacher. What have you been doing for the last—how many years is it?—besides working out with weights? You’ve become Sylvester Stallone since I’ve seen you. Where’d all these muscles come from? Why are you walking around half naked? And what are you doing back in my town? Are you still working for a newspaper? Did you ever win that Pulitzer you wanted? Lewis!” Coming around in front of him, I grabbed hold of his upper arms with both of my hands and shook him until he rocked on his feet. It wasn’t easy to do. “You used to be such a wimp, and now you’re a bullock! What are you doing here?”
He was preening, not in the least self-conscious.
“Sit,” he commanded me. “Uncle Lewis will tell all.”
I took him by his meaty hands and led him over to one of the love seats and risked my own virtue by seating myself right next to him. Lord, he radiated warmth like a space heater. He put an arm over the back of the love seat, behind me, and I allowed his hand to drape itself lightly over my shoulder. It felt brotherly. And, besides, I could always punch him, if he tried anything Lew-like.
“I’ll get to the personal history,” he said, in a voice that was all of a sudden pitched lower and slower than I remembered, more like a man’s instead of an overgrown boy’s. He smiled, half mocking grin, half sincere. Sincere? Internally, I blinked. Lewis? Even half was half again as much as there used to be. “You probably think I came back only to see you, and God knows normally that would be the only reason to return—”
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