She smiled a little. “Inside this moment, inside last night, I think you’re exactly right. But I need to get straight with a lot of other stuff.”
He wanted to protest, but a voice inside spoke, cold and clear: Whatever she thinks is wrong, she’s not even got the half of how bad it is. You’re a cold-blooded liar. Let her go before you crush her. He swallowed hard. The bell that tolled was tolling for him, and maybe she could hear it ever so faintly.
“Ginger, maybe you’d better go. You may be right about us. You’re better off without being involved with me. I can give you a long list of women who’ll back me up on that.”
She shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s—”
“Trust me, it’s absolutely that.” He pulled her close, one last time. Make it count, remember the details.
He stared into those green eyes. He parted his lips, just so, and kissed her slowly. She opened her lips and pressed her mouth to his. He wanted to be gentle, but she met him with raw need.
He found himself falling into the kiss, felt her hands grasping at him, slipped his hands under the mane of hair and down her delicate spine—
He stepped back. “Stop.” He heard it come out of his mouth. “If we’re ending this, you need to go. I can’t do this.” He wiped his mouth, tried to catch his breath.
She nodded. “I know.” Her eyes were wet with tears, but she looked at the ceiling. “I’ll go get dressed.”
She disappeared into his bedroom. He paced in the kitchen, and when she emerged, he was disappointed to see she wasn’t wearing his shirt anymore.
“I’ll go then. Thanks, Fender, for everything.” She held her hand up a little, in a halfhearted wave good-bye.
“It’s best this way. You don’t need to get mixed up with me, Ginger. I promise.”
She turned her back on him and left.
Another Fender Barnes disaster. Typical. The day suddenly felt very long in front of him, and he was hard-pressed to find a point to it.
Chapter Fourteen
THE HOLE IN HIS LIFE opened up just about then. Fender closed the shop for a week. He sat at home in the bedroom at the foot of the bed, smoking—a habit he’d given up years ago. Or he slept. He told Pop he was sick and asked him to stay away. He screened his calls and didn’t answer when it was Sam.
Ginger never called. He was glad, actually. He wasn’t sure what he could say to her. The truth was out of the question. It was too screwed up to explain. He’d sometimes sit in the empty bathtub in his clothes and try to come up with a solution. He always thought pretty well in the tub. He was too afraid of the mold ring to actually take a bath, but he sat there, trying to solve the situation until he felt as if drops of blood were forming on his brow.
None were, and neither were solutions. He was scared. None of the other women he’d been with were important. But it was better this way.
One night, he decided not to stay home anymore. Somehow it seemed logical to go out to the Rendezvous and see Pop. I should get on with my life. Women are women. Maybe if he could get one of them to wrap her legs around him, he’d feel better about everything. She wouldn’t even have to have a nice name. Or be very pretty. Just some bitchy young thing who could wake up and leave him like the dog he was.
So he showered, but he didn’t shave. And he went down to the Rendezvous. Pop saw him when he walked in and waved him over. It was always the same booth, the vinyl with the worn buttons.
“How are ya, Pop?” Fender waited for the tirade about the family business and the prodigal son pissing it all away. But Pop’s eyes looked warm.
“I’m fine. How’re you?”
Fender settled into the booth. It could swallow me up and take me away, maybe. He kind of hoped this. Maybe with enough liquor, it could. “I’m fine, Pop. I’ve been sick, I told you. Where’s the waitress? I need to get a drink.”
“She’ll be over in a second. I hope you’re feeling better. You look pale. Maybe you should come stay with me. I could cook for you.” He seemed to be trying to look inside Fender’s head. It was annoying.
“Stay at the house? With you?” Fender didn’t mean to sound so rude. “I’m sorry, Pop. It’s a lovely offer, really. Thanks for worrying about me. I just don’t think I feel like playing bachelor with the old man right now. I’m not well.”
“That’s the whole point. Look, I’m not going to twist your arm. But you could come stay. Let’s leave it there. An open invitation.”
Fender felt like he might cry. “Thanks, Pop. I appreciate it.” He sat there, quiet for a minute. Pop stared at the crack in the Formica table. When the waitress came up, tray in hand, Fender tried a brighter tone. “Okay, now we’re in business.” He handed her a credit card. “I’m going to need an open tab, please.”
The tab had lengthened, and the evening, too, when Fender spotted Sam at the door of the bar.
“Oh shit. Pop, get the waitress. I’ve got to go.” The last thing he needed was for Sam to bring Pop up to speed. And he wasn’t going to listen to the lecture. It was all over anyway.
Pop looked puzzled, maybe afraid. “I’ll go find her.” He made his way through the narrow bar to the wait station. Fender noticed Sam stop and talk to Pop. Pop pointed over to Fender. So much for avoiding the lecture. He looked around for a waitress he could grab.
Too late. Sam stood in front of him. “Hey, Tiger. What’s up? Drinking for Jesus, I see.”
“Something like that. I was just going.” Fender tried to stand up and leave, but he lost his balance and caught hold of the table.
Sam closed in, protectively. “Sit down, Fender. We’ll get you into a cab in a minute. Let’s chat.”
Fender felt claustrophobic. “Don’t hover! You’re not my mom.”
“No, I’m not, and praise heaven for that.” He sat across from Fender in the booth. “What’s going on, pal? Where’ve you been? What happened with Ginger, the night she came to the Rendezvous?”
Fender was silent. He was running away from all of this, and everyone wanted to drag him right back into it.
Sam leaned back in the booth. “Okay. No more talk about it, I promise. I think I know what’s going on, so maybe I’ll join you, how about that? The cab won’t get here for another twenty minutes or so. That’s long enough for me to try to catch up.” He chuckled. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you like this. A real bender’s what this is.”
“Yeah, whatever.” The room had started to pivot a little, and a sore mood settled onto Fender like a thick vapor.
Sam chuckled again. “Not a bender. It’s a Fender Bender! How come I haven’t thought of that before? God, that’s kind of funny.”
Fender didn’t think it was very funny. He leaned across the booth and punched Sam straight in the mouth.
Chapter Fifteen
LEAVING FENDER THAT MORNING had hurt. And the weeks passing hadn’t made Ginger feel better about it. But it was best this way. She’d not told him about Brad, and she didn’t know how. She couldn’t start something new until she made peace with all of her feelings. But it hurt, the look in Fender’s eyes.
Summer’s approach actually made things worse. When she’d previously been single, Ginger had worked summers as a lifeguard, teaching swimming lessons to the same little children she taught to ski in the winter. But the last few years, Brad had encouraged her to stay home, hang out with him when he got home from the clinic. He’d liked that he could pay the bills. He’d kind of bragged about “taking care of her.” She hadn’t really known what to think of it. Sometimes she felt safe, protected. It’d been nice to sleep in and read and do other things she was always too busy for in the winter. But she could take care of herself.
Now she had to. The prospect of marking the anniversary of Brad’s death alone was unthinkable. She realized that part of her had hoped to lean on Fender when the date came. It made her even more lonely to acknowledge that.
As summer began to unfold, the days warmed. The soil dried out, and the sun shone on the foothills
and turned them lush green. Ginger tried to fight back the feeling of being swallowed up. She took Zoë on long walks and tried to savor the sun and the warmth and be grateful. She did her best to move forward, even though the point on the horizon wasn’t much to look at.
Part of that moving forward had to involve a job, and it seemed easiest to go back to the pool. She’d lifeguarded for several years at Cassia Pool. She called up the City Rec director and had her old job back in fifteen minutes.
The first day of the season came quickly. They opened the pool in May before the kids were even out of school for the summer, and Ginger quickly remembered how she always enjoyed the quiet routine of the early season. She’d open the pool in the cool of the mornings, but never got in the water until later. It was frigid in the mornings, and the only ones who could ever seem to stand it were the old ladies who came every Tuesday for water aerobics.
Her first morning back, Ginger crouched by the side of the pool, taking small samples of water to check the chemicals. Sometime that morning the other lifeguard was supposed to come by to train with her. She heard the metal gate out front swing open and looked up.
It was Bode. Bode of the chewed parka. They’d worked on being friends, skiing together when they saw each other, going to lunch downtown. When he’d complained about having no luck finding work for the summer, Ginger’d suggested the city rec department. But this was a little too cozy, maybe. Of all the pools in the city…“Shit,” she said under her breath. Skiing and shopping for records together was one thing. Working together for a whole summer, where there was no avoiding him, that might be another thing altogether.
He looked thrilled. “Ginger! You’re the other lifeguard? Wow. I get to work with the bad-ass girl.” He smacked her on the back, a big smile on his face. She almost fell over under his enthusiastic shoulder clap.
She took a step back. “Bode. You’re a lifeguard?”
Maybe he heard a note of worry in her voice, or maybe he realized she wasn’t as enthusiastic as he’d been, because he looked at her for a minute, his hand resting on the top of his head.
“Yeah. It’s cool, you and me working together, isn’t it? We’re a team.”
She nodded and put out a hand. “A team. Of course it’s cool. You can buy me new vinyl with your paycheck.” He took her hand and shook it hard.
Ginger relaxed. They spent the rest of the day going over pool rules and how to handle the chemicals, then cleaning the pool deck with bleach. The work felt really good. Bode worked hard, too. Maybe she could put up with him for a summer.
As the sun crested in the sky, they began to sweat, and Ginger felt the moisture pool between her shoulder blades and under her breasts. She and Bode had stopped talking after some pleasantries and worked side by side, quietly. Now he stood and stretched.
“Ginger, is it okay if I get in the pool?”
“Yeah. When no one else is here, it’s not a big deal.” She set aside the scrub brush and sat back on her butt, giving her knees a rest from the concrete.
He pulled his T-shirt over his head and dove into the deep end. She could see his shoulders and arms pull against the water. They were lean and brown.
She realized she wasn’t working anymore, just watching him. Bode surfaced, and she went back to scrubbing.
Chapter Sixteen
ALL OF LIFE HAS ITS CYCLES, and even as summer swung into full effect, it was hard to ignore the upcoming anniversary of Brad’s death. The Frisbee boys in the park had appeared again. Ginger tried not to look at them. Where was her head, thinking she could date before Brad was even dead a year?
It’d been too soon, and she’d been shallow and selfish to try. Brad deserved a little respect. How could she have been willing to forget about him so hurriedly? Even complain about him. And Fender didn’t want her anyway.
During their days at the pool, she talked out a lot of this with Bode. He was very sweet. He understood that she hadn’t been ready to date. That explained their disastrous date, she told him. Even her dog had known it wasn’t time yet to move on. Now she and Bode were friends. She told him how scary it felt after Brad died and how nice Fender had been to her. But they also decided he must have sensed she wasn’t ready and backed off.
Which was different than the theory Molly offered up to explain Fender’s silence. She was less than complimentary. Fender rubbed Molly the wrong way; Ginger could see that. So, she avoided that tirade-inducing subject when Molly was around.
Sometimes, though, her attempts to live mindfully were sabotaged. She’d be teaching a swim lesson, and Bode would jump in the pool to cool off. Or the Frisbee boys would miss a wild toss and run into the street to retrieve the disk, their bare chests coming dangerously close to her front yard.
She didn’t know what to do. Her stomach remained a quivering knot. She didn’t feel back to normal yet, and she wanted to be. She still felt off her game. She wasn’t at her strongest, and the anniversary was coming. It frightened her.
At home one night, she lay on the couch with the screen door open. The evening air had cooled and began to flow into the living room, bringing with it smells of cut grass and sweet hyacinth. She tried to remember the name of the neighbor who’d planted all of those hyacinth bulbs as she closed her eyes, letting the smell and the cool air settle on her eyelids.
A touch on the arm awakened her. Fender stood above her, next to the couch. She tried to sit up, but couldn’t. Lying there, she felt her heart pound. He didn’t speak. She looked at his eyes as he sat down on the edge of the couch. She tried to raise an arm to touch his face, but it was as though she was lead-heavy. She couldn’t move a toe, much less her arm.
He rested his hand on her again. The hair on her arms prickled, charged by his touch. His hand glided up her forearm to her shoulder. Fender stared her straight in the face as his hand slid under the material of her blouse. She felt his fingers at the strap of her bra. Ginger looked down at his hand. Her blouse was open now, and the edges of its deep purple silk made her skin look stark white. His hand rested on her breast. Every part of her blazed fire, and she felt nervous sweat on her lip. She looked up at him to plead for action, more touch, his body pressed tight to hers.
Then, standing over Fender’s shoulder was Brad. He watched.
She woke up and fell off of the couch. She sat on the floor. The room was empty.
Chapter Seventeen
FENDER REMEMBERED APOLOGIZING repeatedly to Sam, but not much else from that night. Someone made the decision that Fender would be staying with Pop for a while, and Fender didn’t protest. The thought of going back to his very quiet condo made him nervous.
Pop, for all of his annoying habits, was a gracious guy. He didn’t lecture Fender. The day after the outburst, Fender awoke on Pop’s couch to rustling and bumping noises coming from his old room. He got off the couch (which took quite an effort, considering that his head was a very swollen and sore watermelon balanced on a thin toothpick) to investigate the ruckus.
When Fender had declared his independence and moved out of the house, Pop had turned his old bedroom into a study. He’d furnished it with an outdated console TV, two very comfortable La-Z-Boy recliners, and an old turntable. He liked to play old LPs and watch boxing on ESPN2 with the sound turned down.
When Fender entered the room, Pop was in the midst of dragging one of the hulking recliners into a corner. A small cot stood by the doorway and pillowcases and sheets draped the other recliner. The stack of dusty record jackets was gone—maybe Pop had hidden them in the closet. It made Fender’s heart hurt. Pop was always good to him, no matter what kind of asshole behavior he exhibited.
“Pop, did you drag that cot up from the basement alone?”
Pop was busy scooting the recliner into the corner. “It’s not very heavy, Fender. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“It wouldn’t have been a big deal.” He wasn’t sure what else to say, and Pop was quiet. They set up the cot.
Pop never did ask what was wrong, not
that week or the week after that. Fender assumed he’d pieced together the facts with Sam’s help. But he didn’t bring up Ginger, or the ring, or anything else. The matter seemed to just hang in the air, waiting for someone to grab it and pull it down into a conversation. It was the second houseguest at Pop’s, but Pop didn’t acknowledge it.
Fender tried not to think about the whole thing, but he couldn’t avoid it. By day, it hovered in the corners of the room, up by the cobwebs on the ceiling, but at night, it sat on his chest like a large animal. He had trouble breathing with it crouching on him like that. He didn’t really sleep with it there.
Fender tried to get better, or find a solution, but he was stuck. It was determined that he was still “sick” and that Pop and Sam could fill in for him at the store. Fender didn’t talk to Pop much. He slept through the day, catching up on the sleep he missed at night. When evening came, he sat on the back stoop and smoked. If he wasn’t smoking, he ate cereal and watched movies from the seventies on the TV in his room.
One night, he sat on the back porch eating a bowl of cereal in boxers and one of Pop’s old bathrobes. When he finished the cereal, he sat for a moment. A cat appeared at the back of Pop’s yard. It must have squeezed through the fence, behind the hydrangeas. He called it in a quiet voice. Pop had been asleep for a while, so it was probably three o’clock or so.
The cat approached Fender warily. Then it smelled or spotted food and trotted over with more purpose. Fender set the cereal bowl down at his feet, and the cat began to drink the leftover milk. It was small, with tiny paws. It had gray fur and black tabby markings. Its front feet were white and the back ones tiger-striped.
The cat lapped at the milk. Otherwise, the night was very quiet. He reached down to pet the cat, which flinched in fright, but settled back down to the milk when it realized Fender meant no harm.
Fender sat there, petting the cat and looking up into the darkness. High clouds were lit with moonlight. They glided above the earth, headed to the horizon. The sky was a strong blue, illuminated also by the reflection of the moon. The moon itself had tendrils of clouds twisted across its face. The night was so clear, Fender thought he could make out individual craters on the moon’s surface. He breathed in deeply, and the cat began to purr, arching its back to get the full benefit of Fender’s petting.
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