Monkey Wrench

by Nancy Martin

  Then he released her gently, setting her back down on her heels.

  “What was that for?” she whispered.

  “I’m not sure. I thought you wanted it.”

  “I thought you wanted it.”

  “Well, no harm done, right?” He grinned and ran one fingertip down her cheek—a touch that was quick and light, but just as powerful as a punch. Susannah swayed and caught her breath.

  Obviously aware of his effect on her, Joe flashed her another smile as he turned to the closet to find his own coat. It was a navy duffel coat, warm and serviceable. He slid into it while ushering Susannah out the front door.

  “’Night, Gina!” he called back into the house.

  “’Night, Daddy! Have fun!”

  “We’ll be back before eleven.”

  “I’ll study till then.”

  Joe laughed under his breath and shook his head. “See what I mean?” he said to Susannah. “The kid lies like a rug.”

  “Maybe she really will study,” said Susannah, relieved to have something to talk about.

  “Sports Illustrated, no doubt. But it is Saturday night.” Joe took her arm quite naturally as they started down the porch steps together. “I hope you don’t mind riding in my pickup.”

  “I could have driven my car....”

  “I like to be behind the wheel.”

  “You like to be the boss,” Susannah shot back lightly.

  “My wife used to say I’d make a good president, except that I’d have to do everything myself.”

  Susannah appreciated the tight pressure of Joe’s grip on her arm. It made her feel secure, even brave. “I saw a photo of your wife in the hallway. She was lovely.”

  “Yes, she was,” Joe said promptly. “In lots of ways. I still miss her.”

  Susannah was surprised to hear him speak so bluntly and unselfconsciously, but it was a pleasant quality in a man. She let him guide her to his pickup truck, parked in the driveway by the garage. It looked battered and well-used, but when Susannah slid into the passenger seat she noticed the vehicle was clean and as carefully maintained as everything else in Joe’s life. He closed the door and walked around the truck, humming.

  The drive to the theater took twenty minutes, for it was located in the next town, Belton. Joe drove sedately and asked Susannah a few questions about her grandmother and the house repairs he was going to make. Those were safe subjects, and Susannah was glad to answer him—glad he wasn’t making her uncomfortable by talking about the spontaneous kiss that had happened in his hallway. She wasn’t quite sure what had happened, since she didn’t usually allow such familiarities on a first date. But Joe was unusual. Definitely unusual.

  During the ride, Susannah was glad Joe had to keep his eyes on the road—and off her. It gave her time to relax. While he drove, she stole glances at his profile, illuminated by the dashboard lights. In the half-light, she decided, he was even more attractive than ever. His dramatic profile and curly hair were those of an operatic hero.

  And his voice in the small confines of the truck—! His laughter tingled in her ears, and his quiet murmurs sent shivers of some nameless emotion quivering into the deepest recesses of Susannah’s body.

  What does he have up his sleeve? she wondered. If he’s already got a lady friend, why is he taking the time to get to know me? Is he trying to reach the same kinds of conclusions about me that I’m trying to reach about him?

  The theater lay midway along the main street, and Joe found a parking space a block away.

  “The movie’s not going to attract a big crowd,” he said, slipping the truck into the space.

  “Oh?” With some apprehension, Susannah asked, “What movie are we seeing?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? It’s La Traviata.”

  “What?” Susannah asked, surprised that he’d mentioned the name of an opera. Surely some hotshot Hollywood filmmaker had given the same name to a karate movie. Susannah asked apprehensively, “What’s it about?”

  “It’s an opera. Oh, don’t worry. It’s got subtitles,” Joe assured her, surprising the heck out of Susannah. “It’s had mixed reviews, but who cares about the production values and acting? It’s the music I love.” He sang a couple of bars, then looked at Susannah with brows raised. “You do like opera, don’t you?”

  She couldn’t stop a smile. “I know very little about opera.”

  He blinked at her in amazement. “You’re kidding. Not even La Bohème? The Barber of Seville?”

  “I’m sorry.” Susannah spread her hands helplessly. “When I think of opera, I think of huge women wearing braids and Viking helmets. I’m almost completely ignorant. But not,” she said hastily, “unwilling to learn. It sounds like fun.”

  His gaze grew warm again. “Aha. At last, a willing pupil. Gina refuses to appreciate opera. But tonight, Miss Suzie, you will be transported.”

  And she was, in a limited way. The tiny theater—one of four that the old Belton cinema had been remodeled into—was completely empty except for one elderly man wearing a Siberian fur hat, which he didn’t take off during the entire movie. Joe felt free, therefore, to whisper occasional asides to Susannah during the two-hour presentation.

  The music was magnificent, she had to admit. And thanks to the subtitles, Susannah could follow the plot without too much difficulty. Joe explained the subtleties of the story and characters, and Susannah appreciated his soft murmurings in her ear when things became confusing.

  “It was wonderful!” she declared when the credits had rolled and even the man in the Siberian hat had left the theater.

  “You’re not just saying that? I know opera can be an acquired taste.”

  “I enjoyed it very much,” she said honestly as they climbed into their coats and drifted out the rear doors with the crowd coming out of a more popular movie. “How did you come to love opera so much?”

  “My father was a tenor.”

  “A tenor? You mean a real opera singer?” Susannah was astonished.

  “Yes, a real singer.” Joe grinned at her expression. “He performed all over the world. Not in the largest concert halls in the most important roles, but he did have a respectable career. His favorite role was Don Giovanni. He sang in Venice twice—probably his career highlight.”

  “My goodness, how wonderful! And you followed in his footsteps?”

  “Not exactly.” Joe’s smile grew nostalgic. “I didn’t have what it took. And my father died when I was quite young. I never really knew him well, to tell the truth. But I listened to his recordings for hours and that’s how I picked up most of what I know.”

  “I’ve heard you sing,” Susannah said shyly. “You sound marvelous to me.”

  “Thank you, Miss Suzie, but I know my limitations. I’m afraid the only performances I’ll ever give will be in the shower.”

  “You’re better than that,” Susannah said, but she did not press him further. As they got back into Joe’s truck, she asked with genuine curiosity, “Will you tell me more about your family?”

  He talked offhandedly during the ride back to Tyler, telling Susannah about his younger brothers and a sister who all lived in Chicago. His mother was also living, for she had married young. Her husband, Joe said, had been twenty years her senior, but she—a young girl in Palermo—had fallen madly in love with him and married the older Italian-American man despite her family’s objections. He’d brought her to the States and fathered four children. When he died at the age of forty-seven, she raised their children single-handedly, without benefit of any life insurance policies. Joe’s father, it seemed, had gambled away most of his earnings as a small-time opera star.

  “It was tough on her,” Joe said, “but I don’t think my mother would have it any other way. She likes to work. Even now, she helps out in soup kitchens, and at the church, teaching English to immigrants.”

  “She must be a remarkable woman.”

  “She is.”

  “And your brothers and sister? Do any of them sing?”
/>
  “No, we had all seen the underside of the glamorous life,” Joe said without a trace of bitterness. “None of us wanted a career in music. My brothers all work with their hands—Carlo is a stonemason, Anthony owns an auto body shop that specializes in foreign cars and Frank is a sculptor. My sister Gina is a chef in a restaurant.”

  “You named your daughter after your sister.”

  “My wife did, actually. She and Gina were friends and grew up together. That’s how I met Marie in the first place. She came home with Gina all the time when we were kids.”

  “So you married your childhood sweetheart?”

  “I guess so,” Joe replied, in a tone that indicated he had ventured as far as he wanted to go into that story for one night.

  “So how did you end up in Tyler?” Susannah asked.

  “Oh, that’s not a very interesting tale. I had been a carpenter in Chicago, but I didn’t like working for somebody else. I didn’t like working for the crooked operations, and that’s just about all there was at that time. I went to night school and became an engineer so I could get into another line of work. After Marie died, I needed a change of scenery, so I shopped around for another job and ended up applying at Ingalls Farm and Machinery. It was the best offer I had, so I came.”

  “But you didn’t last at Ingalls, I notice.”

  He sent her a smile. “I didn’t, did I? I guess I still hadn’t gotten over that part about working for somebody else. I started moonlighting—doing fix-up jobs. Pretty soon I was swamped with calls from people who wanted me to build them something, so I started working for myself.”

  “And you’ve done pretty well, I understand.”

  He laughed. “Oh, I’m keeping one step ahead of the bankers. And I’m putting a little money away for Gina’s education, so I feel pretty comfortable.”

  “Sounds like your life is in order.”

  “Well,” said Joe, “I won’t go that far.”

  Joe was surprised to find himself talking so freely to Susannah Atkins, of all people. He had expected to be attracted by her all evening—especially after that first glimpse of her standing in his kitchen in her fire-engine-red sweater and snug jeans. But he hadn’t expected to find her such a good listener. She seemed truly intrigued by the things he talked about.

  But good conversation went two ways, so he switched the subject. “How about you?” he asked. “How come you left Tyler?”

  Susannah sighed and gazed out the truck window for a moment. Her pensive look had a melancholy quality all of a sudden, and Joe wondered if he’d inadvertently said something to upset her.

  “I’m not even sure now why I left,” she said musingly. “To look for something I couldn’t find at home, I guess.”

  “Did you find it?”

  “I wasn’t sure what to look for. I’m still not.”

  “What is ‘it,’ exactly?”

  “My life,” she said wistfully. “Things you already have—work and family and your interest in opera, things that you value. But I...well, sometimes I think I’ve botched things along the way. Despite my success, I haven’t really got what I want out of life.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HE HEARD HER LAUGH abruptly, as if uncomfortable with the intimacy of the moment. “Oh, that sounded pathetic, didn’t it?”

  “Not really.” Still serious, Joe said, “Sounded like you’d like to make some changes.”

  Susannah was silent for a little longer, and Joe glanced at her. She looked thoughtful and said, “I would, but I’m not sure how.”

  “A woman with your kind of success ought to know how to unbotch her life.”

  She smiled sideways at him, shyly. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But I can’t help feeling sometimes that my... my success, as you call it, was just accidental.”

  Joe snorted. “Are you kidding?”

  “Lots of people could do what I do. It’s not that difficult to conduct my program.”

  “I couldn’t do it. In fact, I don’t know anybody who could. You’ve got the right combination of looks and brains and personality.”

  “You’ve seen my show?”

  “Who hasn’t? Oh, I admit I’m not a regular viewer, but I’ve caught bits and pieces over the years. It’s neat.”

  “Well, thanks. I guess I’m feeling inadequate these days.”

  Joe mulled that over for half a mile and suddenly found himself driving into Tyler. “Hungry?”

  Susannah smiled. “Yes.”

  “I meant to take you out to the Heidelberg, but it’s getting late. How about a burger at Marge’s?”

  “It’s exactly what I’m in the mood for.”

  Joe parked and they walked across the street to the diner. Though it was Saturday night, the small restaurant wasn’t that crowded. A family of four sat at one table, empty dessert plates in front of them while they chatted, and there was the usual contingent of high school kids. Only one waitress was on duty, and between customers she was filling salt and pepper shakers by the counter.

  Joe took Susannah’s coat and hung it with his own on the rack by the door, then went to join her at the booth nearest the front window. From that vantage point, they’d be able to look out at the street and see the corner of Gates Department Store. As usual, the store windows were beautifully decorated for the season.

  But the department store windows couldn’t have rivaled the front window of Marge’s Diner at that moment. In her red sweater and touches of gold, with her soft blond hair and gentle expression, Susannah Atkins could have been a young Mrs. Claus as she gazed out at the snowy street.

  Her eyes looked so dreamy that when Joe approached the table, he couldn’t help asking, “What are you thinking about, Miss Suzie?”

  She turned to him and smiled guiltily. “Onion rings.”

  Joe laughed and slid into the seat opposite her. “I imagined you were dreaming about Christmas in your hometown.”

  “That, too,” she said. “Food was a big part of the holidays when I was growing up. We made cookies by the truckload, not to mention a goose and all the trimmings. But just now I was thinking of my mother’s onion rings. They were works of art.”

  “Then we’ll have onion rings tonight,” Joe declared, waving off the menus when the waitress approached. “The lady and I would like to have hamburgers, onion rings and—what else? A milkshake?”

  “No, no, just coffee for me.”

  “Coffee for the lady, and I’ll have a milkshake. Chocolate, please. And do you have any pie left tonight?”

  The waitress smiled. “Pumpkin.”

  “Perfect. Save me a piece.”

  Snapping her notebook closed, the waitress sketched a salute. “Consider it saved. Your dinner will be just a couple of minutes, Mr. Santori.”

  When the young woman was gone, Joe leaned his elbows on the table to drink in Susannah’s face. She smiled back at him, no longer tentatively, but with a genuine gleam of pleasure in her eyes. It almost took his breath away, until he remembered he should be cautious with her.

  “So tell me about yourself,” he said. “Tell me about growing up in Tyler.”

  It took some coaxing, but Susannah talked. She explained the circumstances of her youth—her mother’s early widowhood, then her death from an illness Susannah did not divulge. Although clearly regretful of losing her mother and father, Susannah appeared to be devoted to her grandmother, who’d taken custody of Susannah when she was ten. As Joe listened, he began to wonder if Rose Atkins had perhaps shielded her sensitive granddaughter from many things during her youth. From the sounds of it, Susannah had led a very sheltered childhood.

  Unlike many girls from small towns, she had not gone off to college and lost her head when confronted with so much freedom. On the contrary, she had devoted herself to studying and had graduated with a teaching degree.

  “But jobs in home economics were hard to come by, so I took a part-time gofer’s job at the television station.”

  Joe nearly choked on his hamburger.
“A gopher’s job?”

  With a smile, she said, “Sure. I was the one they sent to ‘go for’ coffee or ‘go for’ paper clips or anything else they needed.”

  Joe nodded. “I get it. And someone discovered you sitting in the station commissary in a tight sweater and made you a star, right?”

  Susannah laughed. She was eating her meal with gusto, but rather than munching on her hamburger like the average human being, she broke it into little pieces and nibbled them bit by bit. It was very dainty and highly erotic, Joe decided. He couldn’t take his eyes off her fingertips, her lips, the small flashes of her even white teeth. She was mesmerizingly delicate.

  “Nobody made me a star but myself,” she said. “One day the woman who did the weather report on the noon news didn’t show up. She had gotten a better offer from another station and left without telling anyone—she left a letter of resignation on the boss’s desk, but of course it got lost. So I stood in for her at the last minute, because I was the only female working at the station and the weather forecast had to be done by a woman in those days.”

  “You must have been pretty good.”

  “Not bad,” she said modestly. “After a few months, I suggested trying a household-hints segment on the noon news.”

  “Your idea? It must have taken some guts to propose it.”

  “You better believe it.” She smiled, slightly flushed. “The station was run by very grouchy men, but I was too young to be afraid of failing. Anyway, the household-hint thing took off like a rocket. My popularity grew, and the grouchy men gave me my own show when a soap opera got canceled.”

  “And the rest is history. ‘Oh, Susannah!’ became a hit.”