Moondance

by Judith Arnold

  Evidently, the couple at table three weren’t good with it. The first time the song had played, they’d both looked startled and uncomfortable. The second time, they’d stormed out of the tavern. Maybe if they’d stuck around, the jukebox would have forced them to listen to the song a third time. A fourth. However many times they needed to hear it.

  Or maybe it was just a fluke. The jukebox was ancient and mysterious. It played the songs it wanted to play, as if it were a stoned late-night deejay on an oldies radio station. Maybe “Moondance” had nothing to do with that couple at all. Maybe they’d stormed out because they were pissed off way beyond what a twenty-five cent reimbursement could resolve.

  The front door swung open, and she glanced toward it, half expecting the couple to return—to ask her for a quarter, or to acknowledge that they needed to hear “Moondance” yet again. But it wasn’t the local woman and her handsome guy entering the place. It was Gus’s own handsome guy, Ed Nolan, finally done with his shift on the Brogan’s Point police force for the day. He walked across the room, avoiding the half-dozen couples on the dance floor who were swaying to the schmaltzy strains of “Unchained Melody.” Planting himself on a stool directly across the bar from Gus, he winked.

  They’d been a couple long enough for her to know every crease in his square face, every laugh-line, every worry-line. She knew the way his eyelids sagged when he was tired, and the way one corner of his mouth hitched up higher than the other when he smiled. She knew that when he stopped by in the afternoon, he wanted coffee, but at night he preferred a Sam Adams draft.

  She knew that, day or night, he wanted her.

  If the jukebox played “Moondance” right now, she knew he wouldn’t want to leave—unless it was to take her to bed.

  Closing time was a few hours away, so they’d have to wait. But she winked back at him and said, “Come here often?”

  ***

  Cory couldn’t blame his sleepless night on the bed in his room at the Ocean Bluff Inn—except for the fact that he was the only person in it. It was too large for him alone. He wanted company.

  Not just company. He wanted Talia in that bed with him.

  The room was charming, quaint but not cloying. White curtains framed the two windows, which overlooked some flowering bushes, a path leading through long, stringy beach grass, a strip of white sand and beyond it the ocean. The bed was a four-poster, the solid maple furniture glossy from a recent polishing. This wasn’t like the accommodations he would have found at one of the chain hotels down on Route One, one of those sterile cube-shaped rooms filled with boxy laminate furniture, white walls, and ugly artwork in cheap metal frames, the sort of environment that tweaked to life the dormant graffiti artist inside him. Not that he went around spray-painting tags on the bland décor he encountered in most hotel rooms, but he was tempted.

  The Ocean Bluff Inn didn’t tempt him to do anything but wish he had a woman with him to enjoy the plush mattress, the overstuffed feather pillows, the cool cotton sheets.

  Not just a woman. One particular woman.

  His ex-wife.

  Christ, what was wrong with him?

  He shoved himself out of the bed Monday morning and staggered to the bathroom to take a leak and splash some water into his face. Maybe he should have stayed down in Boston, even if he would have paid twice as much for a room with one-tenth the character this room possessed. Maybe he shouldn’t have driven the extra miles north to Brogan’s Point yesterday.

  But Wendy was his daughter. He wanted to see her. He could drive back and forth between here and the city to take care of his business there. Why not stay somewhere that might allow him to spend a little more time with his girl?

  If only staying here didn’t mean being close to Talia, too. He and she had managed just fine without seeing each other for the past decade and a half. Chats on the phone, emails, the occasional letter—they’d made it work. They’d raised their daughter to honor and respect both her parents. They’d made sure she got the orthodonture she needed, the education, the love. They’d made sure she didn’t make the same stupid mistake they’d made when they were her age.

  Or maybe they had nothing to do with the fact that Wendy wasn’t pregnant at her high school graduation, the way Talia had been, and that she’d be able to attend college unencumbered by a new baby. Maybe Wendy had just gotten lucky.

  Cory stepped into the shower, relieved that it wasn’t one of those old-fashioned claw-foot-tub jobs with the shower curtain suspended from an elliptical metal ring like a halo above the tub. Old-fashioned ambiance was nice, but Cory had his limits, and one of his limits was having a real shower. His first apartment in New York City had been a fourth-floor walk-up in Alphabet City, with a tub in the kitchen. He’d hated it.

  He’d had so little money then. Lucky for him his scholarship grant had enabled him to get through four years at the Rhode Island School of Design with only a small debt, and his mother had chipped in toward the monthly payments until he’d landed a job with an ad agency. He’d hated that job as much as he’d hated the bathtub in his kitchen, but the salary had enabled him to pay off his loan and send Talia regular child support checks. He’d felt guilty about not being able to contribute more toward Wendy’s care—and even guiltier because Talia had never nagged him about it. She hadn’t turned into a bitter, resentful shrew, hiring an attorney to send him warning notices, accusing him of being a deadbeat dad and threatening jail if he didn’t pay more. Occasionally, she would send him an email saying, “Your check arrived.” Most of the time, he’d simply see the canceled check in his bank statement. She rarely thanked him, but then, she didn’t think he deserved to be thanked.

  She was right about that. Did a father deserve to be thanked for doing what he was supposed to do? Was just barely meeting your obligations enough to merit a medal and a ticker-tape parade?

  He wished he could have done more during the early years. Fortunately, Talia’s grandmother had come through for her and Wendy. And Cory’s mother sent a check now and then, when she thought of it.

  Eventually, Cory and two other colleagues left the ad agency and formed Tek-Palette. Eventually, Tek-Palette started earning a solid profit. Eventually, he was able to be as generous toward his daughter as he’d always hoped to be.

  The amazing thing was that, during those early, rough, hand-to-mouth years, Talia had never kept Wendy from him. He would spent the weekend with Wendy at his mother’s house in Rhode Island. He’d find activities for them that were dirt-cheap or free—library story hours, outings at Roger Williams park, drives to the beach at Narragansett. He’d bring stacks of scrap paper and low-wax crayons or watercolor paints, and they’d draw whatever they saw—both in front of their eyes and inside their imaginations. They’d eat peanut-butter sandwiches and Italian ices, and he’d give Wendy rides on his shoulders, and she’d shriek with joy.

  That was then. Now, he’d write five-figure checks to a university for his daughter. Now he drove a Miata. Now, he lived in an apartment with a living room, a bedroom, a kitchen alcove and a bathroom that contained all requisite plumbing.

  Soon, if everything worked out right, he’d say good-bye to that apartment and find a home somewhere in the Boston area. Close to Tek-Palette’s new Boston headquarters. Close to his daughter.

  Close to Talia.

  That wasn’t part of the plan, of course. His proximity to Talia was, if anything, a negative. If he lived near her, he might see more of her. And if he saw more of her, he might want her in his bed.

  After so many years, after all the hurt and then the numbness of the scar tissue they’d both grown over their wounds, there was no reason he should still want her. He’d been with plenty of women since the divorce, attractive women, sexy women, women better suited to him. Women who understood his creativity, who accepted the fact that he was, in his own way, a little crazy. Women who didn’t have the sort of hang-ups a girl might develop after having spent twelve years being educated by nuns. Women who didn’
t hate his guts.

  Why had he kissed her? Granted, she was still an amazingly attractive woman. He admired the job she’d done raising Wendy, her strength in having beaten huge odds to go to college, her professional accomplishments. But he hadn’t kissed her because she was a successful businesswoman. He hadn’t kissed her because she was a good mother. He hadn’t even kissed her because her eyes were so large and hauntingly dark, and her mouth was so lush.

  He stood beneath the shower’s hot spray, letting the water pound against his scalp. He wished it could wash away the absurd notion that he’d kissed Talia because of an old rock song. Moondance?

  Yeah, he was crazy. Not crazy like his mother, not trippy-hippie loopy, not carefree and ditzy. But the way he craved Talia, his ex-wife, the woman who’d accused him of being selfish and egotistical and pretty much useless, as far as she was concerned… There was something crazy about that. Something crazy about the fact that, even standing in the shower, the water pounding like pellets against his skin, he had a boner just thinking about the way Talia had felt in his arms last night.

  He surprised himself by laughing. Here he was, thirty-seven years old, feeling just as turned on by Talia as he’d felt when he’d spotted her at Charise DiMarco’s party one balmy autumn evening nineteen years ago.

  Definitely crazy.

  Chapter Six

  Talia tried to focus on the weekly schedule spread-sheet. She had all her aides lined up and slotted, some in Brogan’s Point and some in adjacent towns. The Salem accounts were giving her a headache. Expanding into that city had taken a lot of nerve, and she didn’t regret it. However, it complicated her life exponentially. Salem was more than twice the size of Brogan’s Point, densely settled, and filled with residents who celebrated the town’s reputation as a center of witchcraft during Colonial times. No fewer than six of her clients there insisted they were witches. Which was fine; they could pursue whatever religion or cultural practice they wanted, as far as Talia was concerned. When they wanted to hire an aide to help them burn bonfires in their back yards, though, Talia had to draw a line. Shopping excursions, trips to the dentist, light housekeeping and meal preparation, yes. Bonfires? No.

  Her eccentric Salem clients notwithstanding, she was thrilled by the way First Aides had grown. She could deal with touchy, fussy folks. She could convince them that relinquishing their car keys didn’t mean they were over the hill, that relying on others didn’t mean they were feeble, that accepting help meant not that they were near death, but on the contrary, that they were pushing death farther into the future.

  I wish Grammy could see me now, she thought, taking a scalding sip of coffee from the oversized mug on her desk. Grammy had had her touchy, fussy moments, but she’d never felt threatened by her granddaughter’s assistance—possibly because she’d provided so much assistance with Wendy in return. Grammy had been Talia’s staunchest supporter when Talia had launched First Aides from a desk in the smallest bedroom of the saltbox colonial Grammy had settled in when she’d married Talia’s step-grandfather. Grandpa Lou had died just a few years after their wedding, and Grammy had sworn off marriage at that point, claiming that burying two husbands was quite enough. But she’d remained in Grandpa Lou’s hometown of Brogan’s Point, in the barn-red clapboard house located in a quiet neighborhood a few long blocks from the town beach. The house had four bedrooms; Grandpa Lou had raised his children with his first wife in that house and remained in it after the kids moved out and his wife passed away. Grandpa Lou had willed the house to Grammy, and she’d done the same thing he’d done, remaining in the house after she’d been widowed.

  The house had been too big for Grammy to live in alone, but a fine size for Grammy, Talia, and Wendy to live in together. “I could use the company,” Grammy had said. “And the help. I’m too old and tired to vacuum and mow the lawn.”

  “You’re not old,” Talia had argued, although she’d gratefully accepted Grammy’s invitation to move in. Things had grown ugly between Talia and Cory, and she’d been unable to trust Cory’s mother with Wendy. So she’d packed up her toddler daughter, moved to Brogan’s Point, and taken over the vacuuming and mowing.

  Stepping inside the house that first day, fifteen years ago, Talia had felt her blood pressure subside. The anxiety that had gripped her while she’d been living with Cory’s mother had relaxed its hold on her. The sea breezes had soothed her. Grammy’s steadiness and competence had allowed her to stop worrying about Wendy’s safety. Grammy could take care of Wendy, and Talia could take care of Grammy.

  It had worked perfectly. Wendy had loved Grammy as much as Talia did. Since Wendy was essentially missing one grandmother—Talia’s relationship with her parents never healed after they’d booted her out of their house—Grammy served as a second grandmother, along with crazy Tina Malone. And really, having one nutty grandmother was okay, as long as the other grandmother—or great-grandmother—was sane and stable. Unlike Tina, Grammy understood that three-year-olds should drink milk, not wine, with their dinner, and they should not run outdoors in bare feet when there was snow on the ground, and their hair had to be brushed every day, whether or not they liked it.

  Tina had let Wendy’s hair go unbrushed for a week once. Talia had been so busy with her job at the convenience store, she hadn’t noticed. On her morning off at the end of the week, she’d tried to run a comb through Wendy’s silky curls. The comb had snagged and several teeth had broken off. Wendy had howled. Talia had ultimately been forced to take Wendy to a salon to have the knots and snarls cut off. “I asked Wendy if she wanted a natural look, and she said yes,” Tina had defended herself. As if a two-year-old knew what a “natural look” was, let alone understood why having her hair regularly brushed was necessary.

  Of course, Talia had been the one forced to deal with her shrieking child. While Talia had wrestled a brush through her daughter’s matted hair, Tina had shaken her head and said, “I’d never put her through that kind of pain.”

  Wendy had recovered from the trauma, and Talia had taken over Wendy’s grooming. Just one more responsibility on her list, one more thing Cory couldn’t be bothered with and Tina couldn’t be trusted with. Eventually, Talia had recovered from the trauma, too. She hadn’t thought about it until…

  Until Cory had barged into her life and told her he wanted her to take on his mother again—this time as a client, with him paying for Talia’s services. She couldn’t imagine any payment that would compensate her for having to deal with Tina.

  She forced her attention back to the spread-sheet on her computer. It looked as if everyone was lined up pretty well. Andrea wasn’t available on Tuesday, but Helen adored Andrea, and Talia could probably talk her into doing her shopping on Wednesday so Andrea could drive her wherever she needed to go. Two quick phone calls, one to Andrea and one to Helen, and everyone was satisfied, including Talia.

  Her coffee had cooled off enough not to blister her tongue. She took a sip, then pushed away from her desk. She was still wearing the oversized T-shirt she’d slept in last night, with her robe over it, the sash tied snugly around her waist. It was a kimono-style robe, a rich burgundy hue with lace trim edging the neckline and hem. Wendy had bought it for her for Mother’s Day a couple of years ago. Talia would never have splurged on such a pretty robe for herself. She felt luxurious in it, like a lady of leisure—even if she could scarcely remember what leisure was.

  The flip-flops on her feet didn’t do much for her lady-of-leisure image, either, she acknowledged. She needed fluffy fur mules, and a satin peignoir instead of the oversized Brogan’s Point Boosters T-shirt she’d caught when an air cannon had fired the shirts into the crowd at last year’s homecoming game. The shirts the cannon had fired were all sized men’s large. But the price was right, and the cotton was soft and comfortable, so Talia didn’t complain that the shoulder seams fell halfway down her arms and the hem dropped nearly to her knees. It was perfect for sleeping in.

  The doorbell rang.

  Sh
e glanced at her watch. Eight-thirty. Too early for any of her employees to be showing up. At this time of the morning, they were usually getting their children off to school, or else regrouping after having accomplished that feat. First Aides employees were not women who were racing to their own jobs. They worked part-time, with flexible schedules. That was why they chose to work for Talia’s company.

  Sighing, Talia lifted her mug and headed downstairs, her flip-flops slapping against the hardwood steps. Sunlight streamed through the beveled glass sidelights flanking the door. She saw a shadow on the brick front porch. Stepping closer to the door, she saw whom the shadow belonged to.

  She should have known Cory would show up sooner or later. If he was in Brogan’s Point to spend time with Wendy, why wouldn’t he come to Wendy’s house? He might have come later in the afternoon, though. Didn’t he realize Wendy would be in school now? True, this was Senior Week, and she wasn’t going to be spending her day seated at a desk, having knowledge stuffed into her. But she’d be there.

  And he was here. It dawned on Talia that he’d never been to his daughter’s house before this moment. Wendy had always spent time with him away from Brogan’s Point. Talia and Cory had both known things would go more smoothly if they didn’t have to see each other.

  Things would be going much more smoothly if they hadn’t seen each other last night, Talia thought with another sigh.

  She cracked the door open. “Wendy left for school forty-five minutes ago,” she said.

  In the bright morning light, Cory looked terrible. Well, not really. Clad in neat jeans, a button-front shirt, a blazer that emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and a pair of scuffed leather sneakers that reminded her he was still a scruffy artist at heart, he looked tall and fit and ridiculously handsome. But his eyes were puffy from sleeplessness, and his jaw was clenched with tension. No hint of his smile teased his lips.