“I am,” Kendall said.
“At my school?”
“No, at a college.”
“I’m going to college.”
“I’m sure you are,” Kendall said, looking down at her, smiling.
“’Hey, Professor, we’re done here. Do you want to play a few holes on the course with us?” Cooper asked, the kids around him staring up at her, waiting for her response.
“No, maybe next time,” she said.
“See you around, then,” he said.
“Yeah, see you around,” Briana said, eyeing her—and was that speculation she saw staring back at her?
“Nice to meet you all,” Kendall said.
“Sure, nice to meet you too,” came back to her in various forms from all the children.
She watched their motley crew walk over to the cart area and disappear from her view. A few minutes passed before two carts rolled out. Briana was driving one of the carts, her little sister and Hector in the seat beside her, while LaDerrick drove the other one, Huey sandwiched between him and Cooper. Barnabus-the-golf-instructor was another addition to her list. Barnabus-the-potential-friend-with-benefits was turning into a very interesting guy.
#
Second week of June
The second Monday of the month was the official day for tour taking and beer talking over at the Coopersville Brewpub. Kendall knew this because Myra had reminded her of it often, as in every day for the last week, and she hadn’t stopped there. She’d called up Cooper and asked him to put Kendall’s name on the list for the upcoming tour—Myra, the unrelenting matchmaker.
So here she was at the front door of the Brewpub to learn about beer making from the best of the best, according to Myra anyway. Beer was turning out to be a much more complicated endeavor that she’d initially thought. From the Internet research she’d done, she’d learned that beer making and its different styles had traveled across the pond from Europe. Immigrants had moved to the US in search of better lives, and they’d brought beer recipes from their homelands with them, making pre-prohibition America a patchwork of communities and neighborhood beer flavors.
All that variety had come to an end when politicians, who thought to curb the sins of mankind by outlawing the making and drinking of spirits, enacted prohibition. All but a few independent brew-makers were able to rebuild afterwards, and a few regional brewers began to buy up their smaller brethren until only a few huge beer brewers and distributors were left.
Starting in the 1960s, independent men had commenced brewing beer in their garages, which had eventually blossomed into small local breweries. That, along with eventual changes in the law, allowed the craft market to develop and the brewing of richer and more diverse beer to grow. The market for craft beer was small compared to the total beer market, a mere 6 percent of the total, but it was growing, taking beer back to its independent roots.
Kendall entered the pub, looking around for the tour group, but mostly she was searching the room for him. She found the sign for the tour near the brewing-room door. There were three men waiting there.
Cooper had just cleared the door leading from the back when he saw her. He smiled and had to mentally restrain himself from rubbing his hands together in anticipation. She was clearly softening toward him. He was putting his all in his pursuit of her, which was surprising to him. But it was working. They’d been seeing each other daily, whether at the Brewpub or at Myra’s; then she’d caught him with the kids last Friday, and he could read it her eyes, in her smile. He was so close, one blow, and it didn’t need to be hard either, and she’d be his, all legs and arms open, all warm welcome for the rest of the summer if he wanted, and hell yeah, he wanted. Whatever, was what he told himself whenever he started to think his interest might be in something more than short-term sex. He brushed those thoughts aside and kept the image of her in his bed foremost in his mind.
“Are you all here for the tour?” he asked when he reached the group. A round of yeses, her mixed in with the others.
“I’m Cooper, the main brewmaster. I’ll be leading the tour today,” he said, introducing himself to the men standing next to her. Mike, Jay, and Kevin were their names. Kendall had already introduced herself to them.
“Most of our time will be spent in the room located behind you, getting to know the equipment we use to make beer. Then we’ll get to the fun part, the tasting part, which is the real reason you all are here, right? The free beer at the end. I understand, it’s a highly attractive prospect,” he said, chuckling. “Just a fair warning, though, and I’ll remind you again before you start tasting. Like most craft beer, the beer brewed here is typically much more potent than what you may be used to, unless you’ve been drinking craft beers for a while,” he said, smiling.
#
“Sorry I’m late,” a woman said, interrupting Cooper’s speech, all breathless, like she’d run over, hair loose and flying around her head, wearing a really nice dress, expensive, that flowed around her body. Kendall recognized her. She was a waitress here. She saw her almost daily, although the woman had never waited on her personally. Cooper was usually the one who served her, the Colonel, and Myra. This woman had always smiled at Kendall, though, whenever their eyes had met, and she’d been polite in all their interactions. The waitress took her place near the back, behind the men.
“Not a problem,” Cooper said. “So, everybody, let me introduce you to Celeste, the newest waitresses to our pub. All new hires have to make the tour, which is why Celeste will be joining us today.”
Kendall watched him as he glanced quickly at Celeste again. And why does it seem like there is more to that story, Kendall thought. It was an instinctive something she felt but couldn’t explain.
“So who knows what the ingredients are for beer?” Cooper asked, scanning their faces.
Celeste raised her hand, kind of tentative, a sheepish smile on her face. It was endearing, causing the men around her to smile.
“Water, grains, hops, and yeast,” Celeste said.
Cooper smiled. “Thank you, Celeste,” he said. “Yes, that is correct. Beer is, at its heart, a simple recipe, one that requires water, grain, yeast, and yes, hops. But they came later.”
“We all know what water, grain, and yeast are, but what are hops?” Cooper asked, scanning their faces again.
Celeste’s hand went up again. “It’s where beer gets it bitter taste.”
“Right,” he said. Kendall glanced over at Celeste again, whose eyes were on Cooper.
“Right, hops are the most recent addition to the beer-making recipe. They are cones of the hop plant, a preservative that keeps beer from growing sour. It also brings the bitterness and the aroma that you find in beer,” he said, starting his spiel.
Kendall tuned him out for a minute, her eyes returning to Celeste, who stood smiling, her eyes still trained on Cooper, as though pearls would appear from his mouth like raindrops any minute. Okay…what is up here? Kendall wondered again.
“And now on to the tour part of our tour,” Cooper said, bringing her attention back to him. He opened the door leading into the brewing room and allowed them to precede him inside.
#
“Who is Celeste?” Kendall asked her aunt later on that night.
She and Myra were sitting at the table for an end-of-the-night tea-and-brandy-drinking session, a tradition she was starting to enjoy a little too much. Myra said it helped her sleep better, and Kendall had to agree with her.
“How do you know Celeste?” Myra asked.
“I met her today on the tour, and I’ve seen her working at the pub.”
“I’ve never met her, although I knew she was living and working here now. I’ve seen her at the pub too. Luis hired her; he does all the hiring for the pub and the bingo hall,” Myra said.
“Did you know that Barnabus and Celeste lived in Europe once? He worked there for a while to learn how to brew beer,” Kendall said. Celeste had shared that information with the tour group, along with other
nuggets of Cooper-and-Celeste information.
“Yes, he was out of the country for a while. He left not long after high school. He ended up living there close to five years, and he only came home when he found out that his daddy was sick, dying of cancer. Even then, he didn’t move back to Coopersville right away.
“I heard that Celeste grew up just up the road from here from a small town of less than a few hundred people. I don’t know how she came to be overseas, but that’s where they met, and she returned to the US with him. I believed they lived together for a while in that condo his daddy owned in Austin. When it looked as if Cooper Two would not be beating his cancer, Cooper moved back here permanently and took care of his daddy until the end. Celeste didn’t come to Coopersville with him. He never said anything about her or what happened between them, and I never asked.”
“Really?” Kendall said, not sure how she felt about Barnabus having such a long history with a past girlfriend, one who was still around and very, very pretty. “He never brought her here to meet you?”
“No.”
“Interesting,” she said.
#
Tuesday night
Cooper’s phone was ringing, and it was very late, that he knew. He lifted his head from his pillow to read the clock on his night stand, which confirmed that it was indeed late—2:45 in the morning late, or early, if you preferred that view. He reached for his phone. Who in the hell? his only thought.
“Hello,” he said.
“Cooper, could you come over here, quick?” a woman’s voice, partially registering through the fog in his head.
“Celeste?” he asked.
“Yes. The fire alarm is going off, and I don’t know how to stop it.”
“What?”
“My fire alarm won’t stop ringing,” she said.
What the hell? he thought. “Find the red button on the outside of it and push it in,” he said.
“Okay, would you stay on the phone while I do that?”
“Yep,” he said, rolling over onto his back, eyes closed so that he could go back to sleep without having to really wake up, listening to the noise in the background, the loud ringing of a smoke alarm gone awry. It stopped a few seconds later.
A few minutes later she returned. “Thank you, Coop—” she started to say, but the alarm sounded again.
“There it goes again. It’s been doing that for a while now,” she said.
“Just take the battery out of it,” he said.
“What if there’s a fire? Can you come over here and check it for me? I know it’s asking a lot, but if everything checks out when you look at it, maybe you can remove the battery yourself,” she said.
“It’s almost three in the morning, Celeste.”
“I know and I wouldn’t ask, but—”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” he said, hanging up, choosing the shorter solution to ending this thing. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his night on the phone discussing fire alarms. He pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, spent a few minutes in the rest room, slid his feet into a pair of sneakers, and grabbed a spare battery he kept on hand. He made his way across the street. Celeste met him at the door, dressed in a T-shirt, which she’d apparently slept in, and a tiny pair of shorts.
He entered her home, walking past her and over to the kitchen, where he found the alarm in exactly the same location where his smoke alarm was kept and replaced her battery. While he did it, he looked around her home, which was clean and tidy. No sign of smoke or a fire anywhere.
“Okay, it that doesn’t work, I’ll have someone replace it for you tomorrow. Let me know. No, on second thought, call Luis,” he said, correcting himself. “He’s the one you should call when you have problems. Do you have his number?”
“Yes.”
“Anything having to do with the maintenance of your rental is his responsibility.”
“Thanks, Cooper,” she said.
He waved as he left, but he didn’t look back as he made his way back home.
#
Having finished work for the day, Cooper pulled out of the pub’s parking lot and headed over to Myra’s for their usual Wednesday TV night. He turned onto 1341, scanning the streets as he drove. There were a lot of people out, shopping at the local shops, going to Ann’s for ice cream, heading to dinner, or whatever, all the usual daily-living stuff. It was a habit of his, this scanning the streets of Coopersville, watching out for the people in town, looking out for signs of trouble, making sure everything was as it should be.
He wasn’t the law, nor did he wish to be. He left the local law enforcement alone. He didn’t trust them much, a residual feeling from his childhood. He didn’t want to be tied to them; that reminded him too much of Senior, and how he had once exchanged money for favors.
He made the right onto Locust Street and moved his mind over to Kendall. He smiled. He’d seen her every day this week. She still refused to admit she liked his beer. True to his word, he’d brought over a new one each day for her to taste, and true to what he’d expected, she’d made some trite comment about each one before ordering her tea. The professor was nothing if not entertaining.
Tonight, if he was lucky, it would be her and him on the left side of Myra’s home, hidden from view by those two very large bushes growing there. If she wouldn’t come to him, he could work with coming to her, just as he done before. Yes, he would have preferred his bed, his home, but he could be flexible, inventive even. He could push her in between those two bushes and let nature take its course. He only needed a few minutes—five, ten tops.
He turned onto Myra’s street, noticing the increased energy pumping through his veins; it did that around her now—his blood picked up speed, his muscles flexed, and one muscle in particular was beside itself at the thought of having Kendall again, and it really didn’t care where. He laughed at himself, at this growing need for her, smiling as he turned into Myra’s drive.
#
Kendall was sitting in one of the chairs on the front porch, her bare feet propped up, searching the Internet for mobile homes up for resale. Hopefully that would be the cheapest way to proceed. She’d spent this week trailing around her aunt, the same as last week; the only difference was the recipients of Myra’s help.
Yesterday’s trip had been up to Austin to check out a woman living in one of Austin’s domestic-abuse shelters, and it was the reason behind her current search for a mobile home. Sandy, that was the woman’s name, had had to leave everything behind except her two little girls, and in a month her time at the Austin shelter would end. She needed help with everything, a place to live, a job, clothes, food, and furniture—the works. So here Kendall sat, at Myra’s request, searching for mobile homes on the Internet.
And she was back to her question of the source of Myra’s money, although she hadn’t brought it up to either Aunt Myra or Cooper. Purchasing a mobile home, renovating Sonny’s home, helping kids like Destiny meet their college financial obligations—well, it was quite a bill to foot.
She heard the sound of a car door being slammed and looked up. Barnabus was here for his weekly TV watching and sit-down with her aunt. She watched him from beneath her lashes as he made his way over.
She looked up as he stepped onto the porch, and her body did what it always did when she saw him up close—it started to transform itself into liquid. “Aunt Myra is in the back, getting ready for your weekly program,” she said, pleased that she at least appeared calm on the outside.
“You’re waiting on me?”
“In your dreams, Barnabus,” she said.
He laughed and sat down in the chair beside her, stretching his legs out in front of him. He was dressed in his usual way, shorts, T-shirt, sandals on his feet.
“Who is Celeste?” Kendall asked. It popped out of her mouth without any planning, and so much for Myra’s money concerns being at the top of her list.
“A new waitress at the pub.”
“Besides that. What is she to you?”
> “Someone I used to know,” he said.
“As in, someone you’re getting to know again?” she asked.
“Nope. She’s an employee among many others employees of the pub.”
“An old girlfriend, though, right?”
“An old fiancée, actually,” he said, smiling as he turned to face her.
“Really,” she said, smiling back at him. “I like forthcoming men. Aunt Myra told me you’d probably come clean about her if I asked, that you had nothing to hide, and that’s good to know.”
“And it matters to you because…?”
“Curious. I mean, if I decided to hang out with you again—you know, not that I’m saying that I will, but if I did—I take my men one at time.”
“That’s good to know. It’s the same for me, in case you were wondering,” he said. He checked his watch. It was about time for him to head on inside, although he was quite comfortable sitting out here with her.
“You coming in?” he asked.
“You’re Myra’s support system, aren’t you?” Kendall asked.
“Yes, and so are Luis, Juan, and the Colonel, but you know that,” he said.
“I don’t mean in that way. I know you look after her. I have this other theory about you,” she said.
“Really,” he said, his gaze fixed on hers.
“Really,” she said, mimicking him. “I think you’re like the Papa Noelle of Coopersville,” she said.
“The who?”
“Santa Claus. The big man on campus, the foundation to help the poor and indigent.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve spent the last two weeks following Myra around. I know where and how she spends her money, but I don’t think she’s alone in her goodwill trips.…She can’t be. It’s too much for her to be in it alone, at least financially. So who has the necessary funds to help her? You want to know what I think?”
Games We Play Page 17
