by Pamela Morsi
Red felt the blood drain from her face. It was what she wanted for him. It was what he deserved. Standing behind the bar, she grabbed a towel and began wiping down the pristine surface so that she wouldn’t have to look him in the eye.
“No hurry,” she told him. “It’s not like guys have the biological clock that gals do.”
He reached across the bar and grasped her wrist, stopping her deliberate distraction and forcing her to look up at him.
“Different people have different kinds of clocks, Red,” he told her. “I think we both set ours running when we still should have been in that timeless-childhood place.”
She looked askance at him and defended her feelings by lashing out.
“Well, I know I had to grow up in a hurry,” she said. “But it seems to me that you’re still just a big kid.”
An unhappy line appeared on his forehead, and she knew that she’d hurt him. She’d meant to do it. Now she wanted to take it back. The phone rang and saved her from attempting to.
“Red’s Hot Honky-Tonk.”
“Uh…hello. I’m…I’m looking for Daniel Lujan’s grandmother. I was given this number….”
“I’m his grandmother.”
“Oh, great! Hi! It’s Sarah. Sarah Carson. Mia and Elliot’s mom. I met you at Howdy Night.”
“Oh yeah, sure,” Red answered, vaguely recalling the woman with the baby in a stroller.
“I’ve had a terrible time getting in touch with you,” she said. “Nobody answers your phone in the mornings and in the afternoon and evenings, it’s always the babysitter, and she is as closemouthed as the CIA. I swear, if you hadn’t become, like, the latest gossip in town, I never could have tracked you down.”
The last statement was accompanied by a fairly frantic giggle.
Red didn’t know how to respond to that. Cam had warned her that she was going to get talked about. She’d been the subject of gossip once before and she didn’t like it.
“Is that why you called?” Red asked. “To let me know that my name is being dragged around Alamo Heights?”
“Oh no, no,” Sarah assured her quickly. “I called about the Cupcake Committee. I went ahead and signed you up and…well…Could I come in?”
“Huh?”
“I’m actually parked outside,” Sarah said. “I didn’t want to come in unless…unless you really are inside.”
“Come on in,” Red told her. “It’s usually pretty safe this time of day.”
She slammed down the phone shaking her head.
“What’s up?” Cam asked.
“We’re being invaded by your homeys,” she answered.
Red walked around the bar and over to the front entrance, assessing the cleanliness of her skintight jeans and her low-cut lace camisole. She held the door open and waved her visitor inside.
Sarah looked much the same as she had on Howdy Night. Dressed in designer slacks with coordinating blouse and expensive shoes, her accessories included a Fendi bag on one arm and a six-month-old boy on the other.
“Hi, oh my God! Your hair! It’s, like, incredible hair.”
Self-consciously, Red attempted to smooth it down. “I guess it must be humid today.”
“No, no, it looks great. Is it natural? Oh, it must be. I am so jealous.”
“Uh…thanks.”
“I’m so sorry to barge in on you. I hope you’re not too busy.”
“It’s fine,” Red said. “Not much happening this time of day.” She indicated the less than half-dozen customers scattered around the room.
Sarah glanced at them, but her gaze was caught immediately by Cam.
“Oh wow!” she exclaimed with a giggle to Red. “So it really is true. You two are a couple. That is so cool!”
Red didn’t get a second to answer that as Sarah immediately stepped forward to offer Cam her hand.
“I’m sure you don’t remember me,” she said. “I used to be Sarah Endicott. I was a junior when you were a senior. Go Mules! I married Brad Carson. I think you were in Boy Scouts with him.”
“Oh yeah,” Cam answered, nodding vaguely.
“You were in Boy Scouts?” Red asked rhetorically.
Cam ignored that. “It’s nice to see you again, Sarah,” he said. “What’s Brad up to these days? I haven’t seen him since high school.”
“Oh, he’s a real-estate attorney with Isaccson and McNulty. He just made partner.”
“Sounds good. Those Eagle Scouts always turn out well. Say hi to him for me.”
“Oh, I can’t,” Sarah protested with a whisper. “He’d have a fit if he knew I was down here. But as soon as I heard about this place, I was dying to come here.”
Cam flashed a smile that was definitely feigned as he shared a glance with Red.
“So, now that you’re here, what do you think?” Red asked.
“Oh, it’s great. I used to go to places like this when I was in college,” she confessed. “Drinking too much and listening to honky-tonk. There was nothing I liked better.”
“Well, you are welcome to drink too much and listen to music here anytime,” Red said.
Sarah giggled again and it was all Red could do not to roll her eyes.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” Red asked.
“Is there someplace we can sit?”
Red glanced at Cam.
“Go ahead, I’ll take care of the customers,” he said.
Red led Sarah toward the back of the building. Normally, she would have taken her out to the patio, but the construction workers were noisy. Instead, she took the corner booth. It was a good distance from everyone else and slightly secluded from the other patrons.
“How’s this?”
Sarah nodded agreement. “Do you have a high chair?” she asked. “I could strap Elliot in and give him some crackers and he’d be just as happy here as anywhere else.”
Red shook her head. “Sorry, no high chair. I do my best not to serve these guys that really do look underage.”
She reached out and touched the chubby fellow’s cheek. To her surprise, he offered her a great big toothless grin.
“I’ll just sit him on my lap,” Sarah said, scooting along the seat.
“He seems like a pretty easygoing guy,” Red said.
“And thank God for that,” she replied. “Mia has always been such a drama queen. I deserve a child that’s, like, more centered. Elliot is practically Buddha compared to her.”
Red thought the comparison might be apt. He was fat and happy and bald. And, at least initially, he seemed content to sit on Sarah’s lap, beating crackers into small pieces and then stuffing them into his mouth.
“I hope you don’t mind me dropping by, but I did have to see you and I was really curious about this place,” Sarah said. “It’s really pretty amazing. And this is yours? It’s your business?”
“Yes.”
“Was it, like, a family business or did you get it from your husband or something?”
The young woman’s questions seemed strangely genuine, as if she was really interested. For once Red decided not to evade the answers. If she did, Sarah would undoubtedly keep asking. Red figured one really stark, honest reply would be stunning enough to shut her up.
“No, I built it myself,” Red told her. “I had a kid and figured I needed something more steady than lap dancing. I saved my money and opened this place. You might say I pulled myself up by my G-string.”
Sarah’s eyes got huge. But rather than being shocked into silence, she was stunned into speech.
“Oh my God, that is so…so heroic,” she said. “I mean it. You are just my hero. It’s like…like, real feminism.”
“Feminism?”
“Absolutely,” Sarah replied. “You went into a man’s world and turned a den of misogynist exploitation into something that empowered you and your child. I so admire that.”
“Misogynist exploitation?”
“Absolutely,” Sarah said. “It is so hard to swim against the tide. And when I
see a woman succeeding at it, I’m just so impressed.”
“Well, thank you,” Red replied, uncertain.
“I tried something like that, you know,” Sarah told her with a sigh. “When I went off to college I was determined to major in Women’s Studies. My mom was just horrified! She said that only lesbians do that. And that I’d lose my chance with Brad. He’d been my escort the year I was Duchess of the Sublime Virtues at Fiesta. And you know your escort is really your family’s first choice for you. Mom didn’t want me to mess that up. And I just said to her, I’m not a lesbian, but I am going to study this and you just might as well get over yourself.”
“I guess you told her,” Red replied, a bit confused as to where Sarah was going with this.
“And it all worked out well for me anyway,” she said. “Brad and I got back together just before graduation and had a beautiful wedding just like my mom had hoped. So all’s well that ends well.”
“Congratulations.”
Sarah giggled again. It was not a particularly attractive behavior, but Elliot seemed to like it and began to giggle, as well.
“So I was thinking about that,” Sarah said. “And when I heard the gossip about you and Cam, I thought this is going to be even so much better than I thought.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, the Cupcake Committee, didn’t I make that clear?”
“No, not quite.”
“Well, I really need someone to help,” she said. “I signed up for it before I knew who was going to be the committee chair and now no one else will sign up. But as soon as I heard about you and Cam, I said, this is somebody who won’t be afraid to take on Tasha Shakelford.”
“Who?”
“Tasha Shakelford. She was Tasha Godfrey.”
Red continued to look at Sarah, completely clueless.
Sarah leaned forward dramatically, causing some complaint from Elliot.
“Tasha Godfrey was Cam’s high-school steady,” Sarah revealed. “He was her Fiesta escort and her family was completely sold on him. Then they mysteriously broke up and no one would say why. I don’t think she ever got over him. Shake Shakelford went to Edison, for heaven’s sake. Alamo Heights girls might date guys from Edison, but they never marry them.”
The would-be rebel was so clearly horrified at the thought that Red had to disguise a chuckle as a cough and hide a smile behind her hand.
Elliot began to dislike the whole crackers-in-a-booth thing. And Sarah had to rush to get through the rest of her talk as quickly as possible. The bottom line was that the Cupcake Committee, including Red, would be serving up the refreshments at Harvest Party on October 31.
“We can’t call it Halloween,” Sarah explained, “because we don’t do religious holidays. Of course, it’s really kind of an anti-religious holiday, I guess. Unless maybe you’re, like, a Wiccan or whatever. Well, anyway, we call it Harvest instead of Halloween, but it’s still orange and black. We do mostly pumpkins. No ghosts or witches or black cats. That could scare the children.”
“Okay,” Red answered, suddenly wondering about Daniel’s fascination with vampires.
“I’ll take care of getting everything ordered,” Sarah said. “If you’ll just be there to help me set up and serve, then Tasha won’t be on my case. You know, she just can’t stand me.”
A few minutes later she was rushing out with all the starry-eyed enthusiasm she came in with, stopping for only a moment at the bar to speak to Cam.
“Oh, I really like her, Cam,” Sarah said. “I don’t care what anyone says, you two are just perfect for each other.”
While he was still searching his brain for an appropriate response, Sarah turned and attempted to hug Red, half squashing Elliot in the process.
“See you soon. See you both real soon.”
Once Sarah and child were outside, Cam turned to Red.
“What was that all about?”
She shrugged and then answered with dramatic emphasis. “I’m secretly being inducted into the Society of the Cupcake Committee.”
“Oh, really?” Cam answered.
“And you’ll never imagine why.”
“Okay, why?”
“Because I am the potential nemesis of your past flame, Tasha Godfrey.”
“Tasha? That was about a hundred years ago,” he answered.
“That’s not as long ago as you think,” Red told him. “Apparently, she’s never recovered from when you broke up with her.”
Cam laughed and shook his head. “The way I remember it, she broke up with me.”
“Really? Why would she do that?”
The emotions that flashed momentarily on his features were startling, serious, sobering. But they disappeared so quickly and completely Red wondered if she’d imagined them.
Cam smiled broadly, deliberately. “I guess she wasn’t just perfect for me, the way you are.”
16
The hole being dug behind the honky-tonk got deeper and deeper.
“Are you guys planning to bury a convoy of Mexican buses down there or what?” Red asked Ernie one morning over coffee.
The foreman chuckled. “We’re going down about twenty feet,” he said. “So we’re making it wide and we’re making it deep.”
“Twenty feet!”
“Twenty feet down from the natural bank,” he clarified. “Twenty-five from behind this property.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Red told him. “Why would the river need to be so wide and deep here?”
“Oh, the river won’t be much wider than it is downtown,” he said. “And the depth will only be about six feet. But we’ve got to get low enough that we can move river traffic this far uphill. The only way to do that without a lock system is to get everything down on the same level.”
“But that will create a giant bluff off the back of this property.”
Ernie nodded and took another sip of coffee. “It’ll be all rocked up real pretty,” he assured her. “The masonry fellows on this crew are just exceptional. There’ll be stairs at the Eight Street corner to get down to the walkway. And just a few hundred yards north, they’re planning a dock where you can catch a river taxi.”
“I don’t want a river taxi,” Red told him with disgust. “I want a view of the river.”
He laughed. “Then you’re going to have to buy one of the fancy residential units they’re putting on this street. Avenue B will be mostly two-story row houses, with a couple of high-rise condominiums thrown in for perspective.”
“I’ve heard all that,” Red answered, waving away his words. “They’ve been talking about that for years. But changing a whole neighborhood owned by hundreds of different people. It’ll just never happen.”
Ernie shrugged. “Maybe not,” he admitted. “Though developers keep picking it off piece by piece. Some said the river would never get up this far, but you can look out your back door and see how that has come to pass.”
He was right about that, Red worried. She’d still not received any contract from the new owners of her building. She wanted to kick herself for the mistake she’d made with the last owners. Instead of fighting the higher price, she should have pushed for a long-term lease. She should have asked for ten years!
But of course, she knew why she hadn’t. A ten-year lease gave the landlord an excuse to allow a building to run down. And her building already had plenty of problems. She’d thought she’d needed the option to walk away to keep him on top of things. Now, everything was different.
“I’m going to quit thinking of the back area as a patio. It’s going to be more like a terrace,” she told Cam. “I need to put up a wall along the back. At night, with people drinking, it’s just a matter of time until somebody stumbles through that construction netting and falls into the big hole.”
Cam nodded in agreement.
“I could put up something temporary, but that would just add to the cost,” she said. “I should go ahead and solve the problem now. If I put it off or come up with some
semisolution, it will just waste my time and money.”
Red considered that thought for a long moment before adding, “Of course, the two things I absolutely don’t have are time and money.”
“Maybe you could take out a small business loan?”
She shook her head. “Banks are notoriously stingy with alcohol-related businesses,” she said. “Besides, you’d have to be an idiot to loan money to someone who doesn’t have a lease agreement or any kind of long-term guarantee. No one is going to want to invest in a business that could be shut down tomorrow.”
“I would,” Cam told her.
They were lying in bed in the upstairs apartment, sneaking a few moments together before she had to open up.
“I’ve got some cash saved up,” he said. “It’s not a fortune, but it would be enough to do some renovation on the patio.”
Red was touched. But she was uncomfortable, as well. Men did not rescue her, they abandoned her. That was a reality that she couldn’t afford to lose track of. Cam was melting her heart and she fought back with humor.
“Cowboy, you’re confused. You’re supposed to offer the woman money before you get her panties off. Not when you’ve ridden her so hard, she hasn’t got the strength to even look for them.”
He grinned and wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close. “To paraphrase a line from The Graduate, ‘Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to distract me,’” he teased.
“Is it working?”
He kissed her and then replied, “Think about it, Red. A thousand bucks could do a lot, especially if we round up some buddies to work for a few free beers. I want to help.”
“You’ve helped too much already,” she answered.
“If you won’t let me give it to you, it can be a loan or a share in the bar.”
“I don’t share my bar.”
“Think about it,” he insisted. “You’re too smart a business-woman not to even consider the option.”
She didn’t get much time for consideration. The changes just kept coming.
That very afternoon, a beautiful fall day with a scent in the air that reminded one of pep rallies and football games, a safety inspector walked across her patio and closed it to public access.
