Touch a Wild Heart

by Vella Munn

  “I don’t know what he realizes,” Chela said as Jeff was getting into his car. She stepped back, holding her breath as blue smoke billowed out from the tail pipe, and then waved the college student off. If only Magadan were more like Jeff. Jeff took college and coaching and pinching pennies seriously, and yet he bounced through life with an openness that Chela had been drawn to from the first day she met the young man. There probably wasn’t anything about Jeff that he wouldn’t tell her if she asked.

  The difference was she didn’t want to know everything about Jeff.

  Chela was climbing into her Jeep when the truck with its oversized tires pulled in front of her vehicle and stopped inches away, making it impossible for her to leave. She waited as Magadan cut his engine and walked over to her.

  “I missed the game.” He pointed back toward his truck. “I bought a few treats for the boys. Do you think we can get the stuff to them?”

  “They have another game on Wednesday,” Chela supplied. Then, “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I know. I just like spending money on people I like. Do you have time to shop for that dress we were talking about?”

  “What?” Chela glanced down at herself. There were grass stains on her knees, her tennis shoes were dusty, and she knew her hair was no longer the smooth length Magadan had caressed the other night. “I can’t. And— Magadan, I can’t let you do something like that for me.”

  “Why?” His eyes echoed the challenge in his voice.

  “Because I’ve never had anyone buy something for me like that.”

  Magadan shook his head. “And you’re a liberated woman who wouldn’t think of letting a man buy a trinket for her. What would that be—compromising yourself?”

  “I don’t know. I just can’t let you do that.” Why was it so hard for her to organize her thoughts?

  “Is that so? Well, maybe I have a say in that. What if I just show up one day with a dress under my arm? You’d have to accept it gracefully, even if it isn’t what you want. It’d be a lot better if we went shopping together.”

  “I can’t.” Chela stuck out her stained leg for emphasis. “They won’t let me try on a dress looking like this.”

  “You have a point. Tomorrow. I’ll pick you up at your place about five.”

  “I don’t want you to,” she objected. “I don’t need a dress like you’re talking about.”

  “How do you know what kind of dress I’m thinking of? Besides, I’m not buying a lobster dinner for someone looking the way you do right now. Five. At your place.” Magadan turned around and started back toward his truck. Chela started to open her mouth but changed the words as they came out. “It’s good to see you,” she said softly instead. “I didn’t expect—”

  “That’s me,” he threw over his shoulder. “Mysterious.”

  At first Chela wasn’t going to let Magadan take her shopping for a dress she didn’t need. Then she was, because, right or wrong, she had always wondered what it would be like to have one truly exquisite dress. Magadan shouldn’t pay for her clothes, she kept telling herself. But why not? He wanted to do it. Maybe they’d never have that expensive dinner. Maybe this was all some joke he was pulling on her.

  Despite her conflicting emotions, Chela hurried through her afternoon lessons the next day and came home to clean up before Magadan was due to arrive. She decided against the white eyelet dress, thinking that he deserved to see something else on her. She grew desperate rummaging through her sparse belongings. At last she grabbed the blazer, blouse, and straight skirt she’d bought for when she had to meet with the school officials. The confining fabric around her thighs and long sleeves over arms used to being free felt wrong, but Chela had nothing else to wear. As she glanced at herself in what passed for a mirror in her bathroom, she realized that her hair was all wrong for the outfit. She should have it piled up in some kind of sophisticated style, but doing sophisticated things with her hair was a skill she had never learned.

  Why was she putting herself through this? Chela asked herself. She didn’t belong in a dress shop looking for a dress that was a world removed from migrant life.

  The knock on the door came right at five. Chela took a shaky breath, tried to concentrate on taking short steps that wouldn’t strain the narrow skirt, and opened the door.

  Magadan was wearing jeans and a short-sleeve rugby shirt with the two neckline buttons opened. He glanced at Chela’s outfit and slowly shook his head. “You remind me of how I felt when I was a boy and my parents bought me a suit. Do you really want to wear that?”

  “I don’t have anything else! If you don’t like it…” She turned away from him, flushing.

  “Hey. Calm down. You even sound like I did. I was afraid my friends would see me in a tie and laugh at me. You look fine. Very professional. It just isn’t what I think of when I think of you.”

  “What do you think of?” she challenged. “Am I some waif you need to put decent clothes on?”

  “I think of a beautiful young woman who would knock everyone’s eyes out if she didn’t go around with grass stains on her knees.” Before Chela knew he was going to do it, Magadan had taken her arms in his large hands and was pulling her close for a kiss on the forehead. “Don’t worry. You look fine. I like everything you wear.” He glanced down at her with a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Most of all I like you with nothing on.”

  Chela buried her head in Magadan’s chest, not asking herself why she was so quick to assume this trusting stance. She loved feeling his arms around her arms, his lips on her hair. Women did lean on men, and men leaned on women. It wasn’t such a hard lesson to learn after all. “I haven’t heard from Kohl,” she said after a silence that spread over several minutes.

  Gently Magadan pushed her away, although he still held on to her. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

  Neither do I, Chela admitted to herself as they were closing the door to her house behind them. Kohl, the catalyst that had brought them together, was unimportant.

  She’d never thought of clothes shopping as an adventure. But with Magadan with her, Chela was looking forward to the next hour. She’d think about whether it was right or wrong later.

  Obviously Magadan had given serious thought to what they were doing. He drove to an expensive dress shop in a small mall at the base of the east hills. Chela hesitated momentarily, uneasy as always about going to that part of town. But she’d come this far, she couldn’t back down now. When they were inside and waiting for the saleslady to join them, Magadan admitted that he had little experience with such things. “I feel like a bull in a china shop. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I just know I’ll know when I find it.”

  Chela was too busy looking around to pay much attention to what Magadan was telling her. Unlike the department stores she went to when she absolutely had to have something to wear, there were few dresses on the racks. But something about their placement and the tastefully made-up mannequins told her Magadan was thinking in terms of more money than she’d ever spent on herself before. Next to the counter with the cash register were a few displays of jewelry, fragile gold necklaces, large dinner rings, bejeweled dinner bags. Chela gulped nervously. What was she doing here?

  She didn’t have long to ponder the question. Magadan took over with the air of someone who’d handled all kinds of situations in his life and was equal to this one as well. He told the petite, middle-aged saleslady wearing a tailored dress that he was looking for something that could be dressed up for evening wear and yet versatile enough for less elegant occasions. “Something that highlights her coloring and lets her wear her hair the way it is,” he said as if Chela were a mannequin herself.

  If the saleslady saw anything unusual about either Chela or Magadan, she kept her thoughts to herself. “With that coloring you can wear anything,” she said, smiling expansively at Chela. “In fact, I know just the dress.” Before Chela could open her mouth, the clerk was steering her into a dressing room. Chela had barely removed her
blazer when the clerk returned with a cloud of peach fabric draped over her arm.

  The dress, Chela admitted even before she was in it, was the most exquisite thing she’d ever seen or felt. The fabric, according to the clerk, was a crepe, which gave it its soft drape. There was the barest hint of sleeve, which left most of Chela’s long, slim, dark arms exposed. There was no collar; instead the delicately shaded bodice fabric crossed in front and was caught in a gathered waistline concealed by a sash belt. The crossed fabric dipped low enough to expose just a hint of breast, a fact that both embarrassed and intrigued Chela. The gathered skirt was the palest peach near the waistline but steadily darkened until it reached a vibrant hue at the hem, falling above knee length in front but dipping to midcalf on the sides.

  “Perfect,” the clerk breathed. “I’ve had a lot of women try this dress on, but most of them look washed out in it.”

  Chela was concerned about only one thing. “How much is it?”

  “Don’t ask,” the clerk laughed.

  If Magadan was taken aback by the dress’s price tag, he didn’t show it. In fact when Chela emerged from the dressing room, he didn’t say anything for more than a minute. As she nervously modeled the garment, he stared at her without blinking, his eyes darker than she remembered. Finally he said something about her needing shoes to go with the dress and then rose to accompany the clerk to the cash register. Confused, Chela hurried back into the dressing room and quickly changed back into her blazer and skirt. Why had she agreed to this insanity? she wondered. Magadan had shown more enthusiasm over ice cream. It was all wrong. He shouldn’t be buying her clothes. But when she came out, Magadan was looking at a slim gold chain. Wordlessly he held it up to her throat and then nodded.

  They were back in the car and heading toward the shoe store the clerk suggested before Magadan spoke. “You didn’t even try on anything else.”

  “Did you want me to? Magadan, how much did it cost?”

  “That’s my secret. It would have been worth it no matter what it cost. Do you have any idea what you look like in it?” His voice held a note of awe.

  “No. You didn’t say whether you liked it or not. If you’re regretting—”

  Magadan pulled over to the side of the road, took her in his arms, and kissed her with an intensity that spread quickly through her body. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” he whispered as he was reentering the stream of traffic.

  Chela glanced at him and then, not trusting her emotions, concentrated on the road. Beautiful? Was she really beautiful? The way Magadan said it, she believed him.

  It took Magadan twice as long to settle on a pair of shoes as it had to purchase the dress, but Chela, who had always thought of clothes buying as a necessary chore, didn’t grow impatient. She still couldn’t quite believe that this money was being spent on her by a man who kept a part of himself separate from her, as she did in turn. She wondered how they could be deriving such obvious pleasure from what they were doing this evening when they still circled around each other like wary strangers in much of their relationship.

  At last Magadan gave the nod to a pair of high-heeled shoes that Chela wasn’t sure would hold together because the straps were so thin. He sighed deeply as he was putting his change back in his wallet. “I think I need a beer. This has been an exhausting expedition.”

  Five minutes later they were in a dimly lit but elegantly decorated bar where business people came to unwind or share a quiet meal. Chela let Magadan steer her into a booth and even let him order a glass of wine for her. “It isn’t lobster, but why don’t we have dinner here,” Magadan suggested. “Unless you want to invite me over to your place to eat.”

  Chela thought of tomato soup and cheese sandwiches and gave him a rueful grin. “I don’t think what I have to offer can hold a candle to this.” She glanced around, her nerve endings recording the dark interior with walls that reminded her of a cave. She should be anxious and uncomfortable, wanting to flee the place for the familiar surroundings of an orchard and fresh air, but the anxiety she expected to flood over her didn’t come. As Magadan reached across the small table and took her cool hand, Chela realized that he was responsible for her relaxed, comfortable feeling.

  “I didn’t think about your not liking closed-in places,” he said. “Let me know if it gets to you.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered. No, it wasn’t getting to her. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to reveal enough of herself to admit that he made the difference. “Have you been here before?” she asked, skirting around her thoughts.

  Magadan nodded. “A few times. A lot of business deals are made here. I hope you like the wine.”

  It was Chela’s turn to nod. So he was skirting around certain things, too. It shouldn’t bother her. She should be used to that quality in him. “I’m not much of a drinker,” she admitted. “I’ve tried what the migrants drink, but it gives me a headache.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s probably aged at least a week. This is different.”

  Magadan was right. The cool liquid slid easily down her throat and settled in her stomach. Chela hadn’t finished her first glass before she realized she would have to limit what she drank on an empty stomach.

  It wasn’t lobster and drawn butter, but the steaks and salad the Blue Max restaurant served tasted better than anything Chela had eaten in months. When a couple of men came over to talk to Magadan and stole glances in Chela’s direction, she dropped her eyes and concentrated on her meal. Did it bother Magadan to be seen with her? She had no skill in small talk and shied away from flirting glances. Despite her skirt and blazer, she knew her world was light-years from the one she was in tonight.

  “It’s a rat race,” Magadan said after he’d finished talking to the men about a shipping problem one of them was having with his business. “I don’t know why I got myself wrapped up in this. Sometimes I wish I was back in Mexico.”

  Chela lifted her eyes to meet Magadan’s. “You mentioned Mexico before. Was that where you learned to speak Spanish?”

  “I learned before I went there. I knew I was going to be hiring Mexican labor and needed to be able to communicate with them.” He sighed. “That’s history. I’d rather forget that time.”

  “Why? You didn’t like the poverty?”

  Magadan acknowledged her challenge. “It isn’t all poverty. Chela, I wasn’t going to tell you this because I’ve a pretty good idea what your reaction will be. But I was involved in drilling for oil in Mexico.”

  “Oil?” Chela frowned and then stiffened as realization sank in. The discovery of oil in Mexico had turned out to be the country’s downfall. Too much money too fast had hit the country, overheating a shaky economy until inflation became a runaway plague. Yes, much of the blame had to be absorbed by the Mexican government for borrowing capital at high interest rates. But when the oil companies discovered that the bottom was dropping out of the oil market and shut down, they left a staggering unemployment rate behind. “You owned an oil company?”

  Magadan nodded, reluctantly, it seemed to her. “Not by myself. I didn’t have the capital for that. But I was the head of a group of businessmen who invested in a company. I was the one who moved to Mexico to oversee its operation.”

  “And you pulled out when the bottom dropped out of the market?” Chela stopped eating.

  “That’s what a businessman does. He regroups, redefines his options.”

  “And to hell with those you leave behind?” Chela pushed back her plate and stared across the small expanse at the man. “You landed on your feet, your workers didn’t,” she accused. “You aren’t unemployed.”

  “No, I’m not. Chela, look, I’m not proud of what happened in Mexico. I didn’t know what would happen to the economy there.”

  “Didn’t you!” With effort Chela kept her voice low enough so those around them couldn’t hear. “You said you’re a businessman. I can’t believe you didn’t know what the risks might be.”

  “I do now.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.”

  “Isn’t it!” she spat at him. “It’s just a shame you didn’t have the foresight to provide some job security for your employees.” Chela didn’t want to say anything more. There were thoughts, emotions, pounding in her brain, but they didn’t need to be said. All she wanted was to be alone, to think, to get away from Joe Magadan.

  He didn’t stop her. As Chela pushed herself to her feet and made her way quickly through the narrow aisles, she could feel his eyes boring into her back, but Magadan didn’t dome after her.

  Good! She didn’t want him to! Chela wanted to walk alone through the now-quiet streets. She didn’t care that her house was five miles away and she would have to walk in shoes she wasn’t accustomed to. It would take at least five miles for her to sort out the few sentences Magadan had spoken.

  So his and other companies had gone into Mexico with promises of employment and easy money for hundreds of workers. For a while the country had reaped the benefits of the unaccustomed boost to its economy, the money the government was spending on capital improvements. Everyone was raking in the money—for a little while. And then the bottom dropped out of the oil market and the Mexican people were left to pick up the pieces.

  Magadan had regrouped, redefined his options. He wasn’t suffering from the consequences.

  How could she think the man a humanitarian? Chela asked herself. What a joke that was! Let him have his secrets. Let Magadan figure out what he was going to do with Kohl after she told him she didn’t want anything to do with him.

  Kohl! No. As an image of Kohl entered her mind, Chela realized she couldn’t back out of the commitment to trap him now. Kohl was the chain that would continue to link her to Magadan.

  Men like Kohl couldn’t be allowed to continue their evil ways. It would take people like Chela and Magadan to stop them.