An Unexpected Grace

by Kristin von Kreisler

  Who asked your opinion? “I want the barrier, not the opening.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  Lila led Adam down the hall to the master bath, which had a shining marble floor. A camel could have hosed down in Greg’s giant shower, and hamsters could have nested in Cristina’s monogrammed towels’ thick pile.

  Adam opened the glass door, removed the showerhead from its hook, and extended the flexible hose. “This’ll do,” he said.

  He set down his bag as if it were a briefcase and he and Lila were about to discuss a business plan. But as Grace sniffed his loafers, he unbuttoned his jeans and unzipped his fly.

  Lila blanched, then froze. Adam must have noticed, but he ignored her. He kicked off his shoes, pulled off his brown socks, and with one quick motion, slid out of his jeans. Black Watch plaid swimming trunks flapped against his thighs.

  Lila felt like someone trying to keep eye contact in a nudist camp. As she leaned against the sink, her Horny Guttersnipe, the cousin of her Pleaser and Crazy Aunt, could not help but notice Adam’s manly, naked legs. When he took off his sweatshirt and tossed it on the wicker table next to Lila, her Horny Guttersnipe also couldn’t help but note the strength of his arms and the patch of brown hair on his beautiful chest. She cried, Tee-hee! We’re talking “hunk” here!

  Lila forced her eyes to Adam’s face. She told herself that, after Yuri and Reed, she might not trust men, but she had not gone blind, and she could not expect herself to clump through life without finding a man like Adam attractive. Nevertheless, she promised herself that being physically drawn to him did not mean she was vulnerable, and, after all, he was there only to help Grace—and at most he and Lila would be casual acquaintances. She repeated these things to herself as Adam opened his duffel bag and pulled out a hair dryer, a bottle of dog shampoo, a brush with steel bristles, and, finally, four towels, each of which was neatly folded into thirds.

  “Did Martha Stewart do your laundry?” Lila asked.

  He gave her an odd look. “What?”

  “Your towels. How a person folds towels says a lot about him.”

  “Oh, that.” He bent forward and turned on the shower’s faucet. “My dad taught me to fold them that way. He learned it from his grandmother.”

  “I thought maybe you’d grown up in a five-star hotel.”

  “Nope. A Pennsylvania fruit farm. No stars, just apples.”

  Hauling crates must have built up his muscles! Lila’s Horny Guttersnipe winked at Lila and chortled.

  Adam ran water over his hand to test the temperature. “Are you always sarcastic like that? Towels, hotels?”

  “Are you always judgmental?”

  “Not always.” Smiling, Adam rested his fists, akimbo, at his waist. He glanced around the bathroom and said, “We can’t wash a dog who isn’t here.”

  Only then did Lila notice that Grace had sneaked away.

  As Adam adjusted the water, Lila went to retrieve her from her hiding spot under the bed, where she never went anymore. When Lila lifted the bed skirt, Grace peered out at her with a wary expression, which informed her that whatever she and Adam had planned, Grace wanted none of it. At the same time, though, she thumped her tail on the floor.

  “Come on, Grace. You may as well give in without a fight.”

  She averted her eyes as if she did not understand what Lila was asking, and, further, she believed Lila was addressing some other dog under the bed.

  Lila did not want to tug Grace’s collar even though her neck had healed. So Lila wheedled and hinted of a future chicken-skin reward until Grace finally wriggled out and allowed herself to be led to the bathroom. As Lila unbuckled Grace’s collar and set it on the counter, Lila’s Horny Guttersnipe again noted Adam’s bare chest.

  “Let’s do it.” Flinch. “Um, let’s give Grace a bath,” Lila said.

  “You ready, girl?” Adam asked Grace as she panted and looked wary again.

  When he bent down and nudged her into the shower, her toenails clicked on the tile. He stepped in with her, and Lila rolled up her jeans to her knees and stepped in too. She and Adam crowded together.

  As he ran the showerhead over Grace’s chest, Lila patted Grace’s light auburn haunch. Once her front half was soaked, Adam and Lila changed places. He wetted‘ down her back end while Lila comforted her from the shoulders up. He poured shampoo into his hand and gently worked it into her fur, and Lila lathered her up the best she could with her good hand. When Grace looked like a vanilla-frosted cake, Adam rinsed her; dingy gray foam gurgled down the drain. So he and Lila soaped and rinsed again—and Grace stood there, law abiding, but anyone could see from her face that she wasn’t thrilled.

  While Adam and Lila worked together, they were quiet. At first the silence seemed slightly hostile, but then it grew companionable, as if they’d long bathed dogs together. Lila didn’t mind sloshing around with him. After they finished hosing down Grace for the second time, Lila liked how solicitous he was, gently helping Grace out of the shower.

  Immediately, she shook the water from her fur and splattered the cabinets and walls. “Way to go, Grace,” Adam joked and threw a towel over her back so she looked like a small jousting pony.

  He handed Lila another towel, and, together, they rubbed Grace down. Then, side by side, he dried her with his hair dryer, and Lila swiped at her fur with his grooming brush. When they finished, the Argonauts would have turned their ship around to collect Grace’s fleece. She practically sparkled.

  “Thanks for coming over,” Lila said. You’re not as bad as I expected.

  Adam smiled as he put the cap back on the shampoo. “I appreciate your help. I hadn’t counted on it.”

  After his kindness toward Grace that morning, something needed to be said about his fence. Lila told him, “I was wrong not to let you know sooner I was keeping Grace. I’m sorry. I know I put you out.”

  “You did,” he said without giving Lila an inch of slack, and tossed the shampoo into his duffel bag. “But I was going to build a fence eventually.”

  While Lila swabbed water off the walls and cabinets and picked fur out of the shower drain, Adam dried himself off with his last clean towel, pulled his jeans up over his bathing suit, and shrugged into his sweatshirt.

  “If your arm hasn’t healed in a couple of weeks, we need to bathe Grace again,” he said.

  “I’ll be strong enough to do it myself.”

  He leaned against the sink and put on his socks and shoes. “You don’t like to be alone in the house with me, do you?”

  “Oh . . .” Gulp. “I don’t know . . .”

  “Are you afraid of me or something?”

  “Some.”

  “I’m not Charles Manson.”

  “You’re a man. Men shoot people.”

  “So do women. If I wanted, I could be scared of you.”

  “I’d never hurt anybody.”

  “Neither would I,” Adam said. “You afraid of getting shot again?”

  “Wouldn’t you be if someone had tried to kill you?”

  “Maybe.” Adam stuffed his dog-grooming tools and soggy towels into his bag. “You know your chances of two unrelated men trying to kill you in one lifetime?”

  “No.” Lila shook her head.

  “Okay. Take nine left-handed Peruvian nuns. They’re rustling hippos across Siberia. You with me?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Your chances of another man shooting you again are less than those nuns running you down in your living room at 9:07 tomorrow night.”

  Lila pictured nuns in wimples and habits, prodding hippos whose hooves were sinking into snow. She laughed. Hard. Something in her chest cracked open to the sun. Adam laughed too. Grace, who was sitting at Lila’s feet, looked up, startled.

  “I don’t think Grace has ever seen me laugh before,” Lila said.

  “It’s time she did.” Adam hoisted his bag onto his shoulder.

  When Lila and Adam headed toward the kitchen, Grace followed close on his heels an
d made clear she didn’t want him to go. At the end of the hall he turned around. “If you come with me, I’ll show you the dog park.”

  Lila cleared her throat. Adam as hunk-at-a-distance was one thing; Adam as trustworthy man was another. “I don’t take Grace downtown,” she lied.

  Adam frowned. “You have to take her to the park. She needs exercise.”

  “We could run into Marshall.”

  “He hates dogs. He’d never be at the park. Besides, he works Saturdays. Today he’s miles from Mill Valley.”

  “I don’t want to risk it.”

  The outside edges of Adam’s eyes scrunched down. Obviously, he suspected Grace’s safety wasn’t what he and Lila were talking about. “We could leave her here and go by ourselves.”

  “I’ve got work to do.”

  “And she’s got a leg to strengthen.”

  “I’ll strengthen it.”

  Adam patted Grace good-bye and opened the front door. “You can’t stay scared forever.”

  Lila rewarded Grace for her cooperation in the bath by feeding her cheddar cheese and chicken skin on a slice of wheat bread. She downed it in two bites and looked up at Lila with moist eyes to beg for more.

  “Maybe later.” Lila ran her fingers through Grace’s fluffy gold fur.

  Lila made herself a cup of lemon-ginger tea, sat down to paint, decided she didn’t really want to paint, went to the refrigerator for an apple, changed her mind, took the apple back to the refrigerator, returned to the table. She rested her chin in her hands and stared out the window at an airplane crossing the sky like a trout who’d lost her stream. Lila got up and turned on NPR but concluded that she didn’t want to think about rising interest rates, so she clicked off the radio.

  “I can’t let some man stir me up like this, Grace.”

  Twenty minutes later Adam was back at the front door. He had changed into dry jeans and an oxford shirt, which was open at the top—and any woman in her right mind would have rejoiced at his alabaster-pillar neck. He was holding a brown grocery bag, which Grace gave a thorough sniffing.

  “I’ve solved your problem with Grace,” he said, stepping into the entry before Lila invited him in. “Turn around and close your eyes.”

  She couldn’t do that. Not for a man who stole dogs, and Grace was by the front door. “Why should I turn around?”

  “I have a surprise. Trust me. You’ll like it.”

  I don’t trust you. That’s the point. But Lila was curious enough to go ahead and turn around. She could always grab Grace if she heard Adam lead her outside.

  Adam’s grocery bag rustled, and Grace squeaked. More crinkles of paper. Shuffles of paws.

  The wait started to feel like Lila was standing in line for the last hot fudge sundae to be served in America. “What are you doing?”

  “Something great. You’ll see.”

  Lila sighed an impatient sigh.

  Finally, Adam said, “Okay, now you can look.”

  When Lila turned around, Grace was wearing shaggy black-and-white-splotched fabric, anchored to her back by elastic around her belly and neck. Stuffed white-felt horns, attached with a chinstrap, stuck out above her ears. Hanging down her front legs were white strips of material with black hooves printed on the bottom, held in place by strings tied above her paws.

  Grace did not know that she was now a Holstein, but she must have sensed Lila’s delight at the outfit. She straightened to her very best posture and tossed back her head, like a model on the cover of Vogue.

  “Grace can go downtown now. Marshall won’t recognize her,” Adam said.

  “Yes, he would. Even if you covered her up with a sheet, he’d be suspicious of any dog you were with.”

  “Maybe, but I told you he’s nowhere near Mill Valley today.”

  “Then why the cow disguise?”

  “To humor you.”

  Lila smiled. “Where’d you get it?”

  “At a thrift store. I bought it for my niece’s dog for Halloween.”

  “You go to thrift stores?”

  “All the time.”

  25

  Surrounded by a chain-link fence, the dog park was a grass field, large enough for soccer games, with dead, trampled patches. A bed of scraggly day lilies grew behind a spigot and concrete drinking trough. Beside it, a woman was reading a newspaper on a weathered wooden bench and ignoring what must have been her black Lab, who galloped across the grass to Grace.

  Hey! You’re a delicious babe! he panted. He whined and pushed his face toward her. His black-spotted tongue swung from the side of his mouth; you could tell he was about to lick her somewhere. Grace might have snapped at him, but she only flattened back her ears.

  When he rudely sniffed her bottom, she whirled around and gave him a look that said, Oh, pul-eeze! She sat down and leaned against Lila’s leg.

  She waved her arms at him. “Shoo! Shoo!”

  Unwilling to give up, the Lab practically inhaled Grace’s armpits.

  “Don’t get worked up. He’s trying to meet her,” Adam said. “She needs to make friends.”

  “Not with a pushy, insensitive dog. He’s coming at her too fast.”

  As if he intended to come at her faster, the Lab drooled on Grace’s Holstein spots. Oooooo! What a luscious cow!

  Grace gazed across the field as if she’d left her body and would stay away till the thug was gone.

  Adam looked on with an indulgent smile. “Grace isn’t scared. She’s shy. This is new to her. You’re being overprotective.”

  “After all Grace has been through, she needs protection. Can’t you see she doesn’t like him?”

  “She will if you’ll let her get used to him.”

  “I don’t think she likes the park.”

  Ignoring Lila’s concerns, Adam took off Grace’s cow costume and unlatched her leash. “Come on, girl!” He started running across the grass.

  As the Lab chased him, Grace trotted after them and slowly caught up. She limped, but nothing like before Betsy had worked on her leg—and the more Grace ran, the stronger she looked. Right before Lila’s eyes, Grace seemed to get more limber.

  Soon she was circling the park with Adam and the Lab. The sun sparkled on her golden head and swishing tail, and she was glowing with energy and health. She looked more beautiful than Lila had ever seen her.

  And Grace was smiling. Whoopeee! Look at me! I’ve never been free to run before!

  Adam shouted, “What’d I tell you? She loves it here. You should have brought her here every day.”

  “I know.” With regret at having been so wrong, Lila stuck a fork into her steaming slice of humble pie. She gladly took a bite and swallowed.

  Thankful to Adam for introducing Grace and her to the park, Lila agreed to have lunch with him without stopping to consider what it might mean. Only when they got to the La Luna Café did it hit her that she was practically on a date with a man she hardly knew. Oh, my. Well . . .

  Tired from running, Grace curled up under the outdoor metal table. As people bustled by with shopping bags, a waiter in a stiff white jacket that pulled too tightly across his chest came to take Adam and Lila’s order.

  “Smoked turkey on wheat. Mayo, mustard. Whatever you’ve got, put it on. And a bottle of water. Everything to go,” Adam said.

  The waiter scribbled in his pad and turned to Lila. “And?”

  “I’ll have the camembert on wheat with avocado and sprouts. No, wait. That’s too much fat.”

  “Live it up. It’s Saturday,” Adam said.

  “Is the tuna salad organic?”

  “I’ll have to ask.” The waiter gave her a look that said asking was an imposition.

  “Never mind. I’ll have the sliced chicken. Whatever.”

  “Drink?” the waiter asked.

  “Do you have bottled tea? Oh, forget that. I’ll have water like his.”

  The waiter disappeared before she could change her mind again.

  “You obviously have trouble making decisions,�
�� Adam said.

  Only when I’m nervous. “There’s a lot to choose from.”

  Adam tossed his menu on the table and tilted back his chair on two legs. “Let’s get this getting-to-know-you thing over with fast, all right?”

  “Are you type A?”

  “I don’t like wasting time on small talk. Okay if I ask you questions?”

  “Depends on what you ask.”

  Adam shooed away a yellow jacket that landed on his wrist. “So where’d you grow up?”

  “Santa Fe.”

  “Siblings?”

  “I wish.”

  “Was it hard being an only child?”

  “Not too bad. My parents threw fantastic birthday parties. One year my father built a teepee for my slumber party.”

  “So you were spoiled?”

  “Hardly. And you just sounded critical again.”

  Adam chuckled. “Sorry.”

  Lila smiled. With her thumb and index finger, she twirled the teaspoon on her paper place mat. “Any siblings on your Pennsylvania fruit farm?”

  “Two brothers. Thank God there were three of us because my mother made us take care of her garden. She grew enough veggies to feed Bach’s twenty kids.”

  “Imagine folding their towels.”

  “I don’t even want to think about it.”

  “Are you a musician?”

  “Nope. I teach astronomy at Sonoma State.” As a busboy clattered dishes in a metal bin, Adam crossed his arms over his chest. “The first time I looked through a telescope, I had to keep refocusing because Mars was traveling across the sky so fast. I couldn’t get over the motion and silence up there in the dark. Blew me away.”

  So there went the uptight engineer with mechanical pencils lined up in his shirt pocket. “I’ve never looked through a really powerful telescope,” Lila said.

  “I can show you sometime.”

  An image of her and Adam—squinting through a lens, close together in the dark—flashed through Lila’s mind, and her Horny Guttersnipe leapt up on the table and tangoed. Her spike heels clicked around the place mats and her feather boa floated in the air. Lila urged her, Get yourself under control. Breasts jiggling, her Horny Guttersnipe threw back her head and chuckled with abandon.