Later, however, that same man invaded my dreams. He was big and strong and handsome and healthy, and I hated him for all of that. When he reached out to me in my dream, I ran.
Chapter Two
On Wednesday afternoon, a delivery truck blocked the middle of Billings Avenue and traffic in the single lane backed up as a car ahead of me waited for a parking place.
I was early for work and in no particular hurry. Glancing around, I noticed two men standing at the back of a pickup truck on my side of the street. They appeared to be engaged in animated conversation. The one with his back to me wore a slouch hat, old-time dungarees and a T-shirt. He had muscular arms and broad shoulders which narrowed nicely to a trim waist. I had a distinct feeling of déjà vu.
What in the world was happening to me? Under normal circumstances, I didn’t study strange men so closely. Nor did I usually indulge in lustful thoughts which probably would be considered ridiculous in a woman my age, not to mention one in my situation. My thoughts reminded me of the young, hormonal female I had once been. I have always held the fit male physique in high regard.
Secretly, at that moment, I hoped that man had had a wife in his bed that morning to appreciate how companionably a body like his fits a woman. I didn’t chastise myself for that rather sensuous thought. It was a very private, very personal observation, not one I would even have shared with Charlie back when he was his old self. Philosophically, I forgave myself and continued appreciating that compelling figure.
I didn’t hear a noise nor was I aware of anything that might have drawn the man’s attention, but something did and he suddenly turned all the way around to face me.
I was startled as our gazes collided through my windshield and I had a vague recollection of the man. He swept off his hat and ran his fingers through his thick white hair. It was him, the fellow from the walking track. He scowled directly into my face for a moment, as if trying to remember who I was. In those seconds, his rugged countenance darkened and he frowned as if demanding to know what was I looking at.
I aimed my full attention at the stagnated traffic and the man turned back to his companion. A moment later, however, he pivoted slowly to look at me again. I slanted a glance his direction. As our gazes locked for the second time, his indignant frown eased to puzzlement and his eyes narrowed. Did he know me?
Without really intending to, I allowed my eyes to remain riveted to his. No, we hadn’t met. I just enjoyed looking at him.
It was a private joke, on me, I thought, but the man’s face softened and his eyes narrowed even further as a lazy smile lifted his features from comely to downright gorgeous. Suddenly, this very attractive man was flirting with me... again. And, again, I went topsy turvy, feeling as giddy as a school girl. The euphoria didn’t last, of course, replaced by guilt which came in a rush.
Had I turned into one of those ridiculous older women who eyeballs every man as if he’s dessert?
Again, I diverted my gaze, embarrassed by our bold, surprising exchange. The car in front of me inched forward but I was already closer to that particular pedestrian than I cared to be and saw no reason to advance another yard or two. I tried to concentrate on the traffic, disciplining myself not to look at him again.
Abruptly, the car causing our delay abandoned the coveted parking space and took off, freeing the rest of us to continue on our way.
As I rolled even with the stranger, I risked one last peek. He had propped his elbows on the back of the truck, assuming much the same pose he had on Monday night on the bench. And he crooked a finger beckoning me, grinning and arching an eyebrow, extending another blatant invitation and indicating clearly that he recognized me.
I bit my bottom lip until it hurt and blushed furiously, scarcely able to ignore his laughing eyes as I gunned the car and flew off down the street. I felt completely moronic and wondered what Charlie would say about his staid old housewife behaving like a teenybopper.
Of course, Charlie could no longer communicate his reaction, even if he somehow understood my disjointed explanation of these screwball little encounters.
Oddly enough, my sagging spirit soared. I seemed to leach energy from these oddball run-ins with this cocky stranger.
The lift passed quickly enough and I was again relegated to the daunting hopelessness which had plagued me off and on for the past several years.
Thank God it was Wednesday. Thursday was literary club, my most reliable reprieve, the gathering at the bookstore where I checked my sorrows at the door for a couple of hours and reclaimed them later, after the respite of hobnobbing with my fellow classic book enthusiasts.
* * *
It was dark and nearly seven o’clock on Thursday evening as I jogged from the parking lot toward the bookstore. I didn’t want to miss any of the discussion. Footsteps echoed as they approached from my right. As I moved faster, so did they. Both my shadow and I nearly broke into a run as we converged on the first set of double doors. Suddenly a man’s arm shot in front of me and pulled the door open. As I glanced around, startled, he stepped back, grinning from ear to ear. Good Lord. “Thank you,” caught in my throat and I froze. It was him. Again. How did this keep happening?
Looking smug, he nodded me inside.
I had not been that close to him at either of our previous encounters, yet I had thought him nice looking. Close up, he was devastatingly handsome. His thick, white hair emphasized a healthy, tanned complexion which, in turn, enhanced the deep, iridescent blue of his eyes.
How did we keep running into each other? And in such diverse places. Was the guy stalking me? I risked a quick, appraising look, scowling into his face. Other patrons were forced to come and go through the opposite door as we stood blocking the one. Did men stalk middle-aged women who frequented bookstores? I doubted it. I cast one more suspicious look. No way. This was not a man who had to stalk women of any age. More likely, he would be fighting off some groupie mob hanging around after him.
My thoughts seemed to have developed a stutter as a mimicking thought followed. From a distance, I had thought him attractive but this guy was more like stunning.
He gave me a cautious, questioning smile which prompted a ridiculous thought. His teeth gleamed white. His eyes were too blue. Eyes and teeth all seemed to twinkle with those little stars that mark the teeth and eyes of cartoon character heroes like Dudley Do-Right.
What in the world was wrong with me?
Weirdly enough, this Adonis looked unsure of himself. Of course, he had no way of knowing his little courtesy with the door was the highlight of my day or that our odd encounters made my pulse race and my heart do flips. As gorgeous as he was, why in the world did he look so unsure?
It was that uncertainty, however, that earned him my best, most approving smile. Since Charlie had been incapacitated, I had not been on the receiving end of much chivalry. I suppose the demise of mannerly men in this country has been a natural result of the feminists’ march to equality. I was a throwback. A woman who had been pampered and catered to most of her life, I had no desire to be reduced to equal.
I wanted to reward this man’s gallantry and did so by chiming a most sincere, “Thank you.”
His smile freshened, giving him the enchantment of any Prince Charming. “You’re welcome.”
We had just exchanged our first words. Of course, it was our third meeting. He was beginning to look familiar.
He followed me to the second set of doors and again reached in front of me.
“I’ve got it,” he said.
I laughed. “You might have a promising career as a doorman. You’re very good at it.”
He hesitated, not opening the door immediately, thus drawing my attention, before he raised his chin and gave me a phony warning look, eying me over the bridge of his marvelously straight nose. “Don’t even think about tipping me.”
I love a good, spontaneous comeback. “That false pride may cost you a lucrative career, young man.”
His laugh was warm and, again, r
eflex. Some people consider my sense of humor strange, but he got it, which just added to his growing list of refreshing attributes.
Having dallied long enough, when he finally opened the door, I scurried passed him and on to my meeting in the cookbook alcove.
Thirty minutes later, he browsed through the area, glanced at me and did a double take when I smiled. He grinned self-consciously. In his signature jeans, denim shirt, and cowboy boots, he didn’t look like a man who frequented the cookbook section often, or an upscale bookstore or a literary discussion group any time, for that matter. I turned my attention back to the review. When I looked again, he was gone.
Twenty minutes later however, he sauntered through again, shot me a hasty look and crooked his index finger, indicating I should join him. When I shook my head, he grinned playfully, winked and waved good-bye.
At that moment, I supposed rather sadly that he was probably walking out of my life for good. Still, he had provided yet another breath of fresh air in my stale existence and I was again grateful. In those moments, he had elevated my morale which was, apparently, starved for male attention. This was simply one more ridiculous little occurrence I would like to have shared with Charlie, who had once teased me with similar smiles and elevating behavior.
I had a sudden, chilling feeling of disloyalty for entertaining Charlie and this charming stranger in the same thought.
Stop that.
I wasn’t going to burden myself with a lot of guilt over enjoying the way a stranger boosted my morale.
Still, to quell my niggling conscience, I cut my beloved discussion group short and drove to the convalescent center.
Charlie was sleeping peacefully. Except for being thinner, he looked much as he had in all our lovely years together. Oh, how I missed him. I missed love in my life. With both families gone, for years Charlie had been the only person who actually said, “I love you,” to me.
I swiped at the tear which trickled to my chin and got out of the room before I made any noise to disturb his slumber. In the car, I admonished myself again about the futility of grieving for a life and a lifestyle that was gone for good, and for love, too, of course.
After work on Friday, I went directly to the center. Again, Charlie was sleeping, this time sitting straight up in a wheelchair. A towel was tied around his chest to keep him upright, but his neck was crooked as his head lolled against one shoulder. When I tried to straighten him to avoid a crick in his neck, he groaned as if I were hurting him. I retreated, then sat down facing him, trying to get comfortable in the straight-backed chair.
I sat for a long time staring at the shell of my once-robust husband and wandered in that lovely garden of memories, back to those halcyon days of early marriage when our lives blossomed with such promise and where we made bouquets of exotic plans.
* * *
Having logged a dozen beautiful years of wedded bliss, as my biological clock sputtered, Charlie and I had taken one last, hard look at the possibilities of parenthood. Days of agonizing brought us to a non-decision. I would quit the pill and we would yield ourselves to fate. After all the soul-searching we went through in reaching that difficult non-decision, nothing happened.
Disappointed after several months, I called my gynecologist. He advised me to relax.
“Take a trip,” he said. “A honeymoon cruise. Enjoy each other. Pregnancy is not as easy as it looks, particularly for A-type, driven people. Loosen up. Develop some regard for leisure.”
We immediately scheduled a cruise. And we disciplined ourselves to relax, even did relaxation exercises with tapes. Learning to enjoy unstructured time is not easy for habitual hard chargers.
In spite of our most devout efforts over the next several years, however, children did not happen.
Something else did, instead.
The awful disease Charlie had fought all his life to disregard, flared in him. When tests came out positive, all other projects were forgotten.
Sitting there in Charlie’s room, monitoring his effort simply to draw breath, I realized again we were better off childless. Our present difficulties were all but unmanageable. They would have been worse with a child, particularly one who might carry Charlie’s genetic flaw. Watching him die was torment enough. I knew I should be glad we had failed in our attempts at parenthood, still, I was miserably lonely with no one to hold... or to cry with... or to love.
My doldrums returned with a vengeance.
Chapter Three
Leaving the convalescent center early, I had a sudden, overwhelming desire for a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. It seemed all right to allow myself one little extravagance. I didn’t have any bacon at the apartment, of course. Was out of bread, too. Hadn’t bought a tomato or a head of lettuce in weeks. I had only one necessary ingredient: mayonnaise. I could stop by a grocery store. Nothing important waited for me at home, only a set of tedious interrogatories which needed to be typed. I preferred thinking of food.
I would purchase one package of J.C. Potter thin-sliced bacon, a loaf of seven-grain bread, Romaine lettuce and one vine-ripened tomato. My mouth watered.
I pushed my buggy to the meat aisle only to find a hulking form hovering over the bin containing my bacon of choice. I took a deep breath and held onto my patience. I could wait. How long could it take a person to pick up a package of bacon and move along?
From the back, the guy looked comical. He wore bib overalls over a chambray shirt with the sleeves cuffed up, and run-over work boots. For some reason, his clothing, common in the nearby rural areas, made me smile.
This fellow, however, lingered, examining one package after another. Occasionally he added one to a growing collection balanced on his left arm.
The distinctive odors of the convalescent center wafted up from my clothing. I needed to get home and bathe before preparing my feast. As I stood there waiting, fatigue, depression and hunger all caught up with me at once and I blamed this dilatory stranger.
The man suddenly peered back over his shoulder. Familiar, icy blue eyes stared at me for a moment like a blue jay regards a pesky squirrel. Of course. Who else had I expected it to be but my nemesis, again injecting himself into the big middle of my life?
This could not be happening. Not again.
Judging by the number of groceries in his cart, he had been in the store long before I arrived. I never shopped in this particular market, so he could not have known I would be there, therefore, he could not have planned this random meeting.
He must have experienced a similar series of thoughts because, looking startled, he tossed his whole armload of carefully selected packages back into the bacon bin, straightened and turned to stare down at me, intensity in those piercing blue eyes.
I was amazed all over again by the man’s size. He stood easily six-foot-three or four and was impressively muscular. He appeared to be much bigger at that moment, face-to-face and glowering, than he had benignly holding the door for me at the bookstore the night before.
In an effort to fill the awkward void as we each evaluated the other and collected our thoughts, I glanced at the bacon bin, then back at him. “What are you doing?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Tryin’ to find the one with the most lean. Isn’t that how you’re supposed to pick bacon?” His words were gruff but a shimmer in those blue eyes indicated he was only about half serious, as if he were making fun of his own intensity.
Because his annoyance seemed mostly put on, I reached around him, grabbed one of his rejected packages of bacon, tossed it in my buggy and moved off briskly. I had made clean my escape before my laughter spewed. I could not help it. Our meetings were unsettling and they just kept happening. Also, it was gratifying to see a grown man who could laugh at himself. This guy was turning out to be my new best friend. Obviously we had a lot in common since we kept turning up in the same places.
With a cleansing sigh, I went after the other items which were somehow less important than they had seemed before.
“Aisle Fi
ve is open,” a voice announced over the public address system just as I turned toward the checkout stands. I hurried, only there was one person ahead of me. Guess who?
Concentrating on loading his selections onto the conveyor belt, he didn’t notice me at first. When he glanced up, he didn’t look particularly surprised to see me.
I gave him a cautious smile. “I see you found the leanest bacon.”
“It’s okay, but you got the best one.” He looked serious but the blue eyes twinkled. I was pretty sure he was kidding.
“Do you want to trade?”
He arched an eyebrow and his expression became playful. “Nah, you came by it fair and square. But I never want to hear you say Fisk Reed is not a gentleman.”
I held up a hand, palm toward him. “I promise.”
“What’s your name? I wanna know who’s taking the pledge.”
“Rose.” My jaw nearly dropped. I had no idea where that came from. My name was Jan. Jan Hartley. I didn’t even know anyone named Rose.
He scanned the items in my buggy. “You’re not buying much, Rose.”
I cast an appraising glance at his grocery cart. He was right. By comparison, mine looked anemic.
He squinted. “So, what you do think?”
“Are you boycotting produce?”
“I don’t like rabbit food much. Look at you. You’ve only got bunny chow in there. Except for the bacon. The one I hand picked.” He puffed up as if pretending I had somehow deferred to his superior judgment in the matter of the bacon.
The clerk interrupted our little exchange. “That’ll be sixty-four ninety-three.”
Fisk’s mannish scrawl ran over the lines on his check and I smiled as I watched. This guy momentarily cured my blues every time we met, which was turning out to be often.
I felt a genuine sense of loss when he gathered his sacks and left without saying good-bye. He seemed like a really nice person. Funny. Kind. I particularly liked it that he was so healthy looking. Not like Charlie. My mood darkened. Life really wasn’t fair.
Chik~Lit for Foxy Hens Page 2
