Last Dance at Jitterbug Lounge

by Pamela Morsi

  “It sounds like fun,” he said, hedging. “But I’d better get back to the office.”

  She pouted, but she didn’t press him.

  “Who were all those ‘emergency’ phone calls from?” he asked, deliberately changing the subject.

  “Oh, just some of your cracker-barrel relatives,” Dana answered. “Believe me, I read Laura the riot act for putting them through on your line. The last thing you need when trying to negotiate a deal with a man like Butterman is the entire Clampett clan distracting you with questions about their cement pond.”

  Jack chuckled. It was the truth that the only time he ever talked to his aunts and cousins in Oklahoma was when there was trouble with their swimming pools.

  “My family are the Crabtrees not the Clampetts,” he said. “Am I supposed to call them back?”

  “I told Laura to have them call your wife,” Dana said. “Family is really in her job description, right?”

  Jack nodded tightly.

  “Actually, Claire called back twice,” Dana reported. “I told her that you were busy with an important client and she’d just have to deal.”

  Jack gave his assistant a glance, aghast. He wouldn’t have wanted to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.

  “Did Claire say what they wanted?” he asked.

  Dana shrugged. “I’m sure it was nothing. You know how it is for those women who are trapped at home. They get piddling little concerns all out of proportion. I’m sure she can handle whatever it is on her own. I mean, she used to do my job, so she’s obviously capable. She’s probably just checking up on you and needed a little reassurance. Give her a call.”

  Jack flipped open his phone to do just that, but he hesitated. Dana refused to put her call through—Claire would be mad as hell. It was one of the unfortunate facts of his life that his wife and his assistant were not on the best of terms. There was no open warfare, but the undercurrent was unmistakable. The whole situation didn’t make sense to Jack. When Claire decided to stay home with the kids, she’d hired Laura to replace her on the job. Laura did fine in the office, but was often intimidated by the clients. Then, one day Dana had shown up at his office and insisted he give her a chance at sales. She had worked out fabulously. Claire should be pleased by that, but somehow she was not.

  Jack considered just bypassing his wife and calling Aunt Viv to see what she wanted. Of course, it could have been Aunt Sissy, though last he’d heard, the old woman was in a nursing home. Aunt Opal had died the same year as Jack’s grandmother. And Aunt Jesse didn’t have a pool. Then he realized that no matter who it was, he didn’t have any of their phone numbers in the directory of his cell. He hit the speed dial for the office. It was picked up on the second ring.

  “Swim Infinity, this is Laura.”

  “Hi, Laura, it’s Jack,” he said, deliberately smiling into the phone. He knew the receptionist was a little bit afraid of him. He always tried to put her at ease. “Dana and I are on our way back. And we’ve got good news. We made the deal.”

  “Oh, great!” the receptionist replied.

  “Listen, do you know which of my aunts called this morning?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t your aunt…wait a minute.” He could hear her shuffling through papers. “The man said he was your cousin, Bernard Halsey from Cat-a…Ca-ta…”

  “Catawah,” Jack finished for her.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” she said. “There’s a family emergency. I gave him Mrs. Crabtree’s number like Dana told me. I told him that she would take care of it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Mrs. Crabtree has called several times since then.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Jack sighed. He really needed to call Claire but didn’t want to do it in the car with Dana. If they were going to have a fight, he wanted to be in the privacy of his own office.

  The small pink car made the exit off Interstate 10 and onto the 1604 Loop. Immediately the traffic got worse. As they slowed to a crawl, Dana rolled down her window.

  “Get your fat-butted Navigator out of my way!” she hollered to one driver. “That rusting pile of junk should be taken off the road,” she screamed at another.

  Jack held himself very still. Riding with Dana in a traffic jam was like taking his life in his hands. He didn’t want to be shot in a road-rage incident, so he tried not to make any sudden movement. A hot-tempered cowboy might hesitate in killing a pretty girl like Dana, but he knew they’d kill him just to see if the gun worked.

  “Bovine-mobiles to the slow lane, dipshit!”

  You could take the girl out of Dimmit County, he thought, but you couldn’t take the Dimmit County out of the girl.

  It was nearly another half hour before they made it to their exit. The showroom was just off Stone Oak Parkway. It was modest by business standards, but that’s how it was intended. Jack wasn’t building hundreds of cookie-cutter pools. He was willing to let other companies do that. He was building unique, high-end poolscapes. So while his offices needed to be comfortable and elegant, he didn’t need or want to sell tubs of chemicals to people passing by on the street.

  Jack had designed the courtyard in front. It had a three-tier waterwall at one end that ran into a narrow river and off the infinity edge at the end of the building. A wide, Asian-inspired covered bridge connected the parking lot to the offices. It was opulent and eye-popping. When clients saw it they thought to themselves, or voiced aloud, the sentiment that if he could do this with such a small space, he could do fabulous things with their huge backyards. In truth, the narrow confines were a lot harder to get right. Jack likened it to building a ship in a bottle. It was easy to overwhelm small spaces and make an area too busy.

  Beside him Dana was chattering about the Butterman deal and how quickly they could get to work on it. As soon as they stepped into the front door, they were surrounded by congratulations.

  Swim Infinity had one full-time construction crew composed of Jack’s handpicked laborers. If they needed more crews, they subcontracted and his people ran the show. Having your own crew was more expensive, but Jack believed it improved quality control.

  All of his guys were shaking his hand and slapping him on the back.

  “Laura told us you got the contract with Big Bob,” Crenshaw, the crew chief said. “We thought we’d come grab you up and make you take us all to lunch.”

  Jack chuckled.

  “How come you’re not out working at the Pershing site?” he asked. “Isn’t that what I’m paying you for?”

  The crew chief shrugged. “We’re waiting on a delivery and you know how crazy it makes the homeowners when they see us just sitting around.”

  Jack nodded.

  “So we thought we’d do an early lunch, and when we found out about the new job we decided to drag you along with us.”

  Jack grinned. He was honestly pleased to be invited. It wasn’t that long ago that the job of crew chief was his. He was glad that the guys still thought he was one of them.

  “Come on, boss,” Miguel, a twentysomething with a baseball cap and ponytail, implored him. “My wife’s put a fried egg sandwich in my lunch pail. I know you can do better than that.”

  Jack laughed and feigned reluctance as the guys dragged him away. He waved goodbye to a smiling Laura and a left-behind and pissed-off Dana. They headed out in the crew chief’s truck to Take-a-Taco.

  He completely forgot about returning his wife’s call.

  The way Claire saw it, she had two options. She could pace the floor for the rest of the afternoon, silently screaming at her husband. Or she could load her kids up in the minivan and go get help. She chose the latter.

  Not that it was the easier choice. Zaidi, who was nine, had shut herself off in the solitary peace of her bedroom with a new Harry Potter novel.

  “Just leave me alone,” her daughter insisted. “What good is a summer vacation if I can’t do what I want!”

  “It’s time off from school, not a holiday,” Claire answered. “And ev
en if it were Christmas, your birthday and Halloween all rolled into one, you can’t stay at home by yourself.”

  “How come I never get to do what I want to do?” she countered.

  “Because you’re a kid,” Claire stated firmly. “When you grow up you’ll get more choices than you even want.”

  Claire knew that was cold comfort now.

  “You can bring your book, but you have to get in the car.”

  With a huff of disgust disguised as a sigh, the little brunette with the long French braid and her daddy’s flashing eyes, stomped out to the garage.

  The twins were equally troublesome. Peyton and Presley, both six, were as close as a brother and sister could be. They could hardly bear to be separated, yet they argued and bickered almost constantly.

  Claire had decreed it time for the kids’ bedrooms to be divided by gender instead of age. That meant that Peyton and Zaidi switched rooms. The hew and cry of all three children still reverberated on a daily basis.

  That was not atypical of summers generally. Changes in routine, no matter how welcome, always caused a certain amount of upheaval. It would have been nice, Claire thought, not for the first time, to be able to complain about it. To whine and unload at the end of the day had always been one of the sweetest perks of being with Jack. He’d always been able to make her laugh at her problems. But she hadn’t mentioned a word of this to him. She knew exactly what he would say.

  “In the new house, all the kids will have their own bedrooms.”

  And then she knew what she’d say.

  “I’m not moving into that house, Jack. Not now, not ever.”

  Claire locked up as the kids got situated in the van. By the time she took her place behind the steering wheel, a seating argument was already in progress.

  “I’m not sitting on this side of the car,” Presley insisted. “I’m sitting on the other side.”

  “This is my side,” Peyton answered. “Mom decided last week.”

  “That was last week—it doesn’t stay the same forever.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “No, it doesn’t!”

  “MOM!” they both pleaded simultaneously.

  Claire wasn’t listening. The check oil light had come on two days ago. She was praying that the car would start. She’d meant to take it somewhere immediately, but she’d had to get the twins to their swim meet. And then they’d barely got out of there in time to make it to Zaidi’s piano lesson. Afterward the twins were starving. By the time they’d finished dinner and Claire had cleaned up the kitchen, it was too late to find any kind of auto repair shop open. So she had put it off until yesterday, which was even worse. Then this morning she’d gotten the call from Bernard and she hadn’t thought about it again until she sat down in the driver’s seat.

  “The sun shines in on this side,” Presley complained. “I’m not sitting over here anymore.”

  “Dumbface, the sun shines in on both sides. It depends upon what direction we’re going,” Peyton snapped back.

  “Mom! Peyton called me dumbface!”

  Claire turned the key and after a little sputter, the engine started. She had to go directly to Mister Auto. That had to be her first stop.

  “I’m not a dumbface,” Presley told her brother.

  “No, I guess not,” Peyton agreed snidely. “You’re more like a poot breath.”

  “Don’t you call me that!”

  “Poot breath.”

  Presley struck her stubby little finger up her nose and then threatened Peyton with it. Her brother did likewise.

  “Oh gross!” Zaidi screamed from the farthest backseat. “Mom, they are doing snot attack.”

  Zaidi’s voice was the only one that could get Claire’s attention.

  “Stop it!” Claire scolded them all. “Everybody just stop it. Presley, buckle up.”

  “I want to sit on that side,” she said.

  “This is my side of the car,” Peyton piped in. “You said so.”

  “I did say so,” Claire agreed. “Presley, buckle up. And the next time I hear anything about snot attack, you’re both going to time-out.”

  Neither looked particularly threatened by that. They were getting too big for time-out. Claire wasn’t sure what came next in terms of disciplinary strategies. Prison? The rack? Claire didn’t have a clue. By the time Zaidi was their age, she was already obedient—pouty, but obedient. The twins didn’t even seem headed in that direction.

  She pulled out of the driveway slowly, carefully avoiding the big crack that had opened up just inside the curb. Claire hadn’t figured out how to do a repair. It was on her list of things to figure out. Like how to fix the broken garbage disposal in the kitchen. How to seal the windows in her bedroom that let in cold air. And how to deal with the leak in the bathroom lavatory beyond putting a bucket under it and emptying it regularly. Those were all things that were on her list.

  So was, how to get your husband to return an emergency phone call. It was his family after all, not hers.

  She glanced in the rearview mirror as she headed down the street and saw her beautiful children behind her in the seats of the minivan. It was their family, she reminded herself.

  Claire was a great believer in family. It was something that had always been in short supply in her own life. Her father was a career diplomat, her mother brilliant and charming at his side. As their only and adored child, she got to see the world. They had lived and worked sometimes in distant provinces, sometimes in palaces. Claire had learned art and culture and history with her parents. And she learned loneliness from boarding school. She had been determined to make sure that her children grew up in an ordinary home, a simple family place that was filled with love.

  That’s what Jack wanted, too. They’d talked about that the summer they’d spent together as lifeguards at the pool, the summer they had fallen in love.

  “I’m not like my parents,” Jack had assured her. “I’m not interested in having my photo in the Around Town pages. ‘Dr. and Mrs. Van Brugge seen at the fabulous midtown gala, donating a fabulous check to the fabulously worthy cause of the Society for the Prevention of Hangnails.’ Thank you so much, dear Dr. Van Brugge.”

  His gushingly theatrical pronouncement made Claire giggle so hard that she snorted.

  “At least your parents are only stuck-up as a hobby,” she pointed out. “For my folks, it was a career choice. ‘Ambassador and Mrs. Keeding wear traditional ceremonial dress at the coronation of tribal leader Katu wo Watu in the small African emirate of Bango Cheeputti.’”

  Jack laughed and slung his arm around her neck pulling her closer. “I am so lucky I found you,” he told her. “I was beginning to think I was the only person in the world who doesn’t want to be rich and famous.”

  Claire shook her head. “No, rock stars are rich and famous. That’s very low class. What our parents and their friends want is to be wealthy and renowned.”

  “You’re right,” Jack agreed. “That sounds so much better.”

  This time they laughed together.

  “I’m just an ordinary working guy and that’s all I ever want. And I don’t need a country club membership, though they do have a very nice pool. I just want a job I like, a wife who loves me and a couple of healthy kids.”

  She’d already believed she was falling for him. That confession had sealed the deal.

  They were seated together, as they had been so many nights after closing and cleanup, at the edge of the pool, their feet dangling in the water. There was something about those evenings together with a sky full of stars and the gleam of moonlight on the water.

  Sometimes they kissed. Sometimes caressed. And as August hurried toward September they allowed themselves a sexual intimacy that even now, after twelve years of marriage, could still cause Claire to blush.

  It had always seemed unbelievable that he could be hers so easily. Every female eye between thirteen and eighty-three followed him as he passed. His long, lean swimmer’s body attracted attentio
n, but it was his easy smile that made him such a favorite.

  “I love you, Claire,” he’d told her beneath those stars. “I need you. All I ever want in the whole world is you.”

  That was so long ago. Now it seemed that Jack wanted much more.

  The sound of Peyton’s voice snapped her out of her reverie. “I thought we were going to Toni’s house,” he said. “If we are going to Toni’s house, the sun would be on Presley’s side of the car.”

  “We’ve got to stop at Mister Auto,” Claire told them.

  “Noooooooooooooo.”

  The groan was unanimous and in unison.

  “I hate Mister Auto,” Presley said.

  “Do it later,” Peyton begged.

  “I can’t do it later. I have to do it now,” Claire told them. “We have to take care of the minivan. If something happens to it, we won’t have any way to get you to swimming and piano and T-ball and Sunday school.”

  The twins continued to whine.

  “Ugh.” The sound Zaidi made was a blend of disgust and disbelief. “It’s not like we’re in love with this beat-up old minivan,” she said. “You should get Daddy to buy you something new.”

  “We need a car like Dana’s,” Peyton said. “Have you seen the car that Dana has? It is so cool.”

  “I know,” Presley agreed. “Dana has the best car in the world. Mom we should get a car like that.”

  Peyton snorted derisively. “Mom can’t have that kind of car. It’s for cool people who are young and hip. Mom’s way too old and fat.”

  “Hey!” Claire was stung by the words. “That’s a mean and hurtful thing to say to me.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Peyton dodged. “I just meant you’re like a mom and moms are not all hot and cool and stuff.”

  “Hot or cool?” Presley correctly snidely. “You should make up your mind.”

  Claire ignored that. “It doesn’t matter how you meant it,” she continued. “Hurtful things even spoken casually are still hurtful.”