by Elise Sax
“We have work to do,” Silas countered. “The press is under attack. We will not be silenced,” he bellowed.
Adele hit him hard over the head with the menu and walked to the kitchen.
Silas leaned forward and counted on his fingers. “Who, what, where, how, and why. Can you remember that?”
I nodded.
“No! You’re not going to remember that. You’re in the journalism game now, boss. Write down everything. Everything. You get me?”
I nodded.
“No!” he yelled, again. “I gave you a reporter’s notebook. Get it out, now. A reporter is always writing in their notebook. Facts. Write the facts. So, what’re you going to write?”
I pulled the reporter’s notebook out of my purse. “Everything,” I said.
“Good girl. Good boss. Adele! What does a man have to do to get coffee in this dump?”
“A man could ask nicely,” she said and brought the coffee over.
“So, what do I write about at the pool? Do I just watch or should I ask questions?” I asked Silas.
“You watch. You ask questions. And when you’ve got the who, what, where, how, and why figured out, you leave. Then, you write it down in three-hundred words. Lead sentence is the most important. Lead paragraph, second important, until you get down to the I-don’t-give-a-fuck part. Got me, boss?”
“You keep using that boss word, but I don’t think you know what it means.”
Silas punched me in the arm and laughed. “You’re all right, boss.”
Adele put two plates down on our table. “Smoked trout hash with green chilies and sourdough toast,” she announced. “So good, you’ll slap your mama.”
I drove the three blocks to the Goodnight rec center. I was fine when I was sitting down, but every time I took a step, I would gasp for air. Goodnight was set up a lot like Santa Fe with old, squat buildings on short streets around a plaza, but the comparisons ended there. Santa Fe was a rich, vibrant city full of artists. Goodnight was a dying town with a nuclear fallout problem.
Nuclear waste or not, breathing or not, I was feeling optimistic. I was on my way to my first reporting assignment, and it made me feel like I was in control, helping the Gazette become profitable so that my new life could be sustainable. Still, my one-minute journalism class from Silas wasn’t filling me with self-confidence.
“Who, what, where…” I repeated, as I parked on the street. Damn it. I had already forgotten the rest. A woman knocked on the passenger window, and I stepped out of the car.
“Are you from the sheriff’s department?” she asked.
“No. I’m with the Gazette.”
“Oh, that must be why you’re not driving a sheriff’s car. Do you have a gun?” she asked, hopefully. I shook my head. “Oh, well. Mabel has a cattle prod. Normally that would do it, but Norton’s got a few more pounds on him than a bull.”
“I’m here for the pool reopening?” I said like a question.
“Me, too,” she said walking back into the rec center. I followed her. “I’m Nora. I work over at Goodnight Bank. Are you the crazy woman who bought old man Simmons’ house?”
“I inherited it. He was some kind of distant cousin. And I’m not really crazy. My husband gaslighted me and put me away.”
“I heard you ate a live lizard.”
“What?”
It was a small rec center, and we walked through it to the outside where there was a pool and about twenty people standing around holding pool noodles and assorted pool equipment. Everyone was focused on a fracas by the diving board. A tall woman around sixty-years old with a long, narrow nose was pointing a cattle prod at an enormous man wearing a Speedo bathing suit and holding a large, inflatable duck.
“This is a family place!” she yelled at him.
“That’s Mabel,” Nora told me. “And that’s Norton, the one with the duck, and the cleavage.”
“I have a family. I’m a family man, and I want to swim,” Norton countered.
I took my reporter’s notebook and a pen out of my purse. What, where, when, how, and why, I reminded myself. “Is Mabel in charge of the pool?” I asked Nora.
“And the rec center and the library and half of the town.”
“Here I go,” I muttered and clicked my pen, holding it over my notebook. I walked toward Mabel, making sure to keep a safe distance away from her cattle prod. “Hello. I’m Matilda Dare from the Goodnight Gazette. Can you tell me about the pool reopening? Whoa!”
Standing next to Mabel, I got my first frontal look at Norton. The view from the back had been impressive enough, but the front had a whole lot happening.
“See? See?” Mabel shrieked at Norton. “Even the loony girl is shocked by the sight of you. Now, put a top on or you have to go.”
“I’m a man, Mabel. And I need to feel free. I like the water to touch my body. My skin. It’s a sensory thing. Are you trying to deprive me of my sensories?”
“But you have boobs!” she yelled. She was right. He had boobs. They weren’t the expected man boobs situation of most large men. They were boobs. Beautiful D-cup breasts. I was a B-cup, and my left boob was bigger than my right. But Norton had it all going on. He could have been a boob model, if there was such a thing as boob models and if no one minded the thick patch of black hair on them.
“Body shamer!” he yelled. “Sensory depriver! I gotta be me! I gotta be me!”
“This is a family pool! It’s not the Playboy Mansion!” she countered.
“My body needs total immersion in the water without fabric getting in the way. Fascist!”
“Pervert!”
“Commie!”
“Degenerate!”
“Brown shirt!”
“Weirdo!”
“Uptight middle manager!”
It was a boob standoff. It was like a protest at a nude beach but with a twist. What would Bob Woodward do in these circumstances? Would he continue the interview? I was pretty sure he would.
“Did you enlarge the pool, or was it just replastered?” I asked Mabel, averting my eyes from Norton’s cleavage, which was no easy task. She didn’t answer, distracted by movement near the door to the rec center.
I looked over, too. The sheriff had arrived with a deputy. He was a very tall man and big, but not like Norton. Like John Wayne. He was wearing jeans, a blue button-down, boots, a cowboy hat, and a big, gold sheriff’s star on his chest. His eyes flicked to me and then to Mabel, who was waving him over. The deputy with him was a young, slim woman weighted down by her uniform and a heavily laden utility belt. But I didn’t look much at the deputy. My eyes were fixed solely on the sheriff.
Here’s the thing. I never wanted another man in my life. Never. I had had a man, a husband, and he turned out to be a killer. He also married me in order to get an inheritance and put me away in a funny farm. So, obviously my radar wasn’t good about men. If I liked a man, it probably meant that he was a lying, no account murderer. Or worse.
Yes, maybe I had trust issues. Maybe I had been burned once and should have let it go, and whatever the universe threw my way, I should have welcomed with open arms. But my husband was a killer! He married me to get an inheritance, and he gaslighted me and sent me off to a funny farm!
So, damned right I had trust issues. All kinds of trust issues.
If he had a penis and was good-looking, I couldn’t possibly trust him.
And guess what. The sheriff was good-looking, and he had a penis. I was sure of it. And when our eyes met for only a fraction of a second, I knew I was doomed. Damned chemistry. It’s every woman’s enemy.
But I was going to be strong. I was going to resist chemistry. So, I focused on Norton’s boobs.
“Hey there, Amos,” Mabel said to the sheriff. “I’m trying to reopen the pool, and Norton insists on being Bo Derek.”
Amos the sheriff nodded at Norton. “Mornin’,” he said. His voice was deep and gravelly, and I could feel one of my ovaries spur into action, shoving an egg down my fallopian t
ube in hopes of getting some Amos action.
Traitorous ovaries. I couldn’t trust them, either.
“Amos, I like the feel of the water on my body. It’s a sensory thing. You gotta cook, and I gotta let my body be free,” Norton told him. Amos nodded, again.
“But look, Amos! Look!” Mabel sputtered, gesturing toward Norton’s gorgeous, hairy rack.
“Freedom!” Norton yelled, raising a hand in the air and making his right boob jiggle like twenty pounds of Jell-O.
“For the love of Pete,” Mabel groaned.
The crowd was growing restless. It was a hot summer’s day, and the water looked inviting.
“We can do this a couple of ways,” Amos said, calmly. His cowboy hat was pushed low over his face. I knew that his eyes were a smoldering dark brown that a woman could get lost in, but for the moment, his face was downturned, thankfully hiding his eyes. “You can do what I tell you to do.”
“So, actually you mean we can do this one way,” Norton said. The sheriff lifted his head and shot Norton a look. Totally John Wayne. Norton swallowed. “Fine.”
Mabel smiled. “Thank you, Amos.”
Amos nodded at her. He didn’t talk much, and it suited him. With so much swagger and hotness, he didn’t need to say a word.
“I’ll get my shirt,” Norton said.
Norton moved to get his shirt. I stepped out of his way at the precise moment he dropped his inflatable duck. My foot landed on the duck, and I went flying. My survival instinct kicked in, and I grabbed for support, determined not to fall.
Unfortunately, the closest thing to grab onto was Norton’s boobs. I grabbed on with both hands. “I’m sorry,” I cried and pushed away from him, horrified.
“No problem,” he said and then he stepped on the duck, too, and he lost his balance. He teetered, trying not to fall, but he was going over, and he was going over on me. I put my hands out to stop him and whacked him hard in the man-boobs.
They were like magnets, and I was helpless not to touch, hit, or squeeze them. It was like not trying to think of something and then thinking of it.
Norton yelped, unable to regain his balance. “Save yourself!” he yelled, and then he was on me, and we both went over, inaugurating the reopened pool.
I hit the water on my back with Norton’s chest smothering my face. As we went down, down, down to the bottom of the deep end, I thought: So this is how I’m going to die. Drowned under an enormous man in a Speedo.
I willed him to get off me, but he was struggling, too, and it dawned on me that maybe his rubber duck was not a toy but a flotation device and he didn’t know how to swim. Lying on my back in the deep end, I wasn’t having a whole lot of positive thoughts flash through my mind. I had hoped that he would float up, but there wasn’t that much floating going on. I had exhaled on impact, and now the last of my oxygen was going fast.
Just as I was giving up hope, Norton flew off me, and a second later, a strong hand grabbed onto my arm and yanked me up out of the water. The sheriff had saved me, picking me up and letting me down gently at his feet on the deck.
I sat on the cement like a wet dishrag, dripping all over the sheriff’s boots. Norton climbed out of the pool and looked down on me with concern.
“I guess you’re right, Mabel,” he said. “I’m too distracting shirtless. She couldn’t keep her hands off me.”
“I told you,” she said, looking down at me, too. “She went after you like you were potato salad on the Fourth of July.”
“She squeezed me like she was making lemonade.”
“Like she was honking in traffic.”
“Like she was picking apples.”
“Are you okay, honey? You don’t need CPR, do you?” Mabel asked me.
“I…didn’t…I, mean…I…oh, forget it,” I said and kept dripping.
“It’s fine,” Norton bellowed, as if I had lost my hearing. “You just took in some chlorinated water. You might have diarrhea later, but it’ll pass. Ha! Get it? Pass?” I didn’t answer. “I don’t think she hears me. You know, I heard she dressed as a bunny rabbit and ate only carrots for a month.” He inspected me, like he was looking for traces of leftover bunny.
“I heard she thought she was Wonder Woman and lassoed a high school track and field team at their practice,” Mabel said.
Boy, journalism was a bitch.
Chapter 2
“This doesn’t mean you don’t have to wear a shirt!” Mabel yelled at Norton, forgetting about me for a moment. He finally acquiesced and put on a shirt and jumped back into the water. The rest of the people took that as their cue to jump in and join in on the fun. I was still dripping on the sheriff’s cowboy boots. My purse and my reporter’s notebook were at the bottom of the pool.
“I don’t think this ever happened to Carl Bernstein,” I moaned.
“Get the girl’s belongings,” the sheriff told his deputy. He yanked me up, and taking my hand, pulled me into the rec center, to a small room with a table covered in deli platters. “Stay here,” he ordered and walked out.
He was a man who was used to being obeyed. And this time was no different. I obeyed him and stood in place, dripping on the linoleum floor. A couple minutes later, he came back with a towel and a little bundle of dry clothes. He handed me the towel, and I dried off.
“This has never happened to me before,” I said, squeezing the water out of my hair.
“Uh-huh,” he said. He was better looking in a small space and smelled like a mixture of testosterone and juniper.
“I’m a very tidy person. Organized. I don’t fall in public pools with my clothes on, holding on to…you know.” I picked up some bologna from a deli platter and put a piece of it in my mouth.
“Uh-huh.”
“I never thought I was Wonder Woman or a bunny rabbit,” I continued while I chewed. For some reason, I felt I needed to clear up my reputation to him. “That was my husband who said I was crazy. I mean, ex-husband. Well, technically still husband. He’s making the divorce take forever. He’s in prison because he’s a bad guy. A killer. He said I was crazy. But I wasn’t crazy. Totally not crazy.” I sounded crazy. A total wackadoo. And my mouth was full of processed mystery meat, and I was so aroused standing near the sheriff that my wet clothes were steaming.
“I think the deli platter is for later,” he said.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, scooping up a few more pieces. “I’ll just take a couple more. It’s a big platter, and it’s really good bologna.”
He narrowed his eyes, focused on my mouth, which was chewing a half pound of Oscar Meyer. If I didn’t want to ever get involved with another man, I was doing a great job at making that happen.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “This isn’t some kind of symptom of shock that I’m not familiar with, is it?”
I picked up more bologna and then thought better of it and dropped it back down on the deli platter. “No, I’m fine. I had a momentary need for deli meat, but I feel better now. I’m ready to finish the reporting on the pool reopening. Would you like to make a statement about it?”
He pushed his cowboy hat back on his head and scratched his forehead. “I never want to make a statement, Miss…”
“Dare. But that’s my husband’s name, and we’re not going to be married much longer and then I’ll be single. Actually, I’m single now.” Shut up, Matilda. Shut up. What the hell is the matter with you? I looked at the bologna, longingly. “What was I saying?”
“I have no idea. I got lost.”
“Right. Right.” I was getting lost, too. I could barely look him in the eye because every time I did, I blushed. He was tall and all manly man, and I was having some kind of allergic reaction to him, which was making me run at the mouth. “Matilda. You can call me Matilda. Because that’s my name. Oh, shit,” I said and grabbed some more bologna.
“Matilda,” he said, as if he was tasting the name in his mouth. “Matilda Dare. Sort of single. Not crazy. Overly fond of bologna. Flustered. Got it.”
/> And then he was gone.
My heart was pounding in my chest, and I leaned against the wall, trying to catch my breath. I wanted to kick myself for losing it in front of a man. I had decided to never get involved again, but my traitorous body obviously hadn’t gotten the message. But worse than that, it was my first real day in Goodnight as a representative of my newspaper, and I had completely humiliated myself. I had squeezed a strange man’s boobs. I had fallen into the pool with my clothes on. I had eaten half of a deli platter. Everyone thought I was certifiable, and I was beginning to agree.
No matter how much I had failed, I wasn’t a quitter. I knew what I had to do. I was going to get back out there and get the story.
The dogs were waiting for me when I parked the car back home. I stepped out of my car with my bag of wet clothes and belongings. I was wearing a Happiness is a giraffe t-shirt and what looked like a pair of junior high boy’s athletic shorts. Abbott, the old beagle, jumped all over me, and Costello, the black lab, sat down and looked up at me with his sad doggie eyes.
I was a sucker for sad doggie eyes. I had never had a dog before, and I had assumed that I would find a home for Abbott and Costello, but they had taken to me immediately. And I had taken to them, too. They were wonderful company in the new house in the middle of the night when it was quiet and I felt the loneliness close in on me.
Abbott and Costello were prodigious at giving me guilt, however. So, I wound up feeding them twice as much as I should have, and I walked them at least three times a day. And a few times in the middle of the night because I was a terminal insomniac. The house was nestled in a forest, and I had begun to explore it with the dogs at night.
“What?” I asked the dogs, as I closed the car door. “I fed you breakfast, already. What is it? Did you miss me? I was on assignment, working on my first story for the Gazette. You’re going to be so proud of your mommy. I’m sorry I left you, though. Poor lonely dogs.”
