Brick by Brick

by Maryn Blackburn

  He stroked my hand. “It’s like magic was real.” He petted my fingers with his thumb. “Don’t think I’m mistaking it for sex. I’ve had great sex before, a few times, and it’s great sex, not magic.”

  Jamie took my other hand and squeezed it twice, hard. Extra love. I returned it. The silence extended in a cool, peaceful blanket over the three of us.

  My mind began to sleep wander. Gage turned on his side. Already I could make out his smile in the darkened bedroom. “All I want out of my life is to work and to come here when I can, soak up the magic, and hope it lasts until I can get back. If that’s okay.”

  “Of course,” my husband and I said in a single voice. My dark-adapted eyes could see James’s smile too: lots of extra love in here tonight. Magic. Beneath the sheet on the other side, Gage kneaded my hand against his chest. I felt his heart pounding hard. He inhaled to speak, let the breath go, inhaled again.

  His voice was as soft and sweet as chocolate in summer. “I know I’m saying this too early, and that it could scare you, but I already know for sure, so I should say it. I love you.”

  The memory of James saying those words for the first time flooded in. He’d cooked dinner for me here in this house, not expertly, and we’d taken our wine to the patio. The smell of damp grass and brick, his blond hair white in the moonlight, the warmth of his body, the bricks he’d laid by hand solid, smooth, and enduring beneath my bare feet; it all came back. I’d cried with happiness then too. “I love you enough for two,” he’d said and squeezed me twice. Extra love.

  “Both of you,” Gage added.

  James reached over my body to rest his hand on Gage’s biceps.

  “I’m serious.” Gage cleared his throat. “It’s the only thing I’ve got that’s worth anything. You don’t have to answer, just know it.”

  James squeezed his arm, three times.

  Three!

  I waited until they both slept, then climbed out of bed, not caring if I woke them both. In petty spite, I read a novel Cynthia had loaned me instead of baking for anybody.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Gage and Rowan met with Cynthia and Doug’s realtor. Afterward, she joined me and Cynthia for coffee at Crave while Gage went to the gym.

  “So, was she all right?” Cynthia stirred the half-and-half into her coffee. “I wish they’d give you a real spoon instead of some stick.”

  “I can’t tell yet,” Rowan said. “Professional enough not to get flustered by Gage being all famous, but her eyes had these dollar signs, like in old cartoons?”

  “So she’s going to show you all the expensive houses and make a huge commission?”

  “Not if I can help it. I don’t want some big house with a desert view.”

  “Then tell her.” Cynthia inhaled the scented steam wafting from the big mug.

  “I tried. But Mrs. Ruiz knows Gage could afford it, easy. As an investment, maybe it’s good for Gage, and she’d get a huge commission. But what about me?”

  “Why does he want you to get that kind of house?” I felt like I had to ask.

  Rowan turned to Cynthia. “Did anybody tell you I’m fresh from rehab?”

  “No. Natalie said you had some personal problems that seemed to be much better. My impression was that you might be bipolar.”

  “No such luck.” Rowan wrinkled her nose like a teenager. “Gage doesn’t say, but I think he thinks if I’m isolated, I won’t get drugs. News flash: if I’m out in the desert, I’ll have a car and drive to get them, if I want them. Which I won’t.”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t mean it that way.” Was I?

  “Maybe. But even if he thinks I should live like rich people, I just want a nice little place, like single women my age have. Could you make him see that? Please?”

  Gage didn’t like the message when I passed it on, but agreed that Rowan’s wants mattered more than what he wanted for her.

  She and Mrs. Ruiz went out without Gage, but they took me along for the second visit to Rowan’s favorite.

  The house was a few miles from the university, in a quiet neighborhood favored by professors and working couples. A big orange tree filled the small front yard, which had long since given up on grass, and shaded part of the driveway.

  The stucco walls were thick, the windows small, the shadowy inside twenty degrees cooler even though the power was off.

  “It’s small but it’s not,” Mrs. Ruiz explained, leading us around even though we could see nearly everything from where we stood. “Only two bedrooms, but the living room and master bedroom are spacious, and the second bedroom isn’t tiny. Eleven or twelve by fourteen? It could be a nice office, a guest room, or media center.”

  “She means a place for TV.” Rowan grinned. “I’m learning to translate.”

  Mrs. Ruiz smiled thinly. “The kitchen’s been updated, but the bathroom…” She faltered.

  “Is classic,” Rowan said.

  “You are good at this,” I said.

  Mrs. Ruiz wasn’t getting any commission from me, so she didn’t fake a smile. “Yes, ‘classic,’ with what appear to be the original fixtures.”

  “Why has it been on the market so long?” I asked. Something must be wrong with it. The price, or some structural defect, maybe both. Or would a funky, corroding bathroom do it? A pair of them hadn’t stopped James, just brought the price within reach.

  “The reason is also ‘classic.’ The owners passed away, and their children all live out of state. They’ll divide the proceeds on sale, but apparently can’t or won’t act or spend to make that sale happen faster.”

  “What would they be doing if they acted or spent?” Rowan asked.

  “You’ve seen comparable houses. What do they have that’s different?”

  I didn’t like the way Mrs. Ruiz talked down to Rowan, but I didn’t want to upset either of them by speaking up.

  “Fresh neutral paint, first and foremost,” Mrs. Ruiz lectured. “Landscaping, front and back. They should tear down that eyesore of an outbuilding. Remove these old curtains—don’t touch them, they’re rotting on the rods—and put up blinds. New tile and carpet. Wash the windows. Gut the bath and start over.”

  “All either hard work or expensive.” Rowan sank her teeth into her lip. “Is the price negotiable for a cash buyer?”

  It was, and the closing was quick as well. Within the week, Gage and Rowan co-owned a house in Tucson.

  * * * *

  “You know,” I told Rowan as she helped me with dinner the day of the closing, “I actually like interior painting.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but I need to do this for myself. You don’t want to be an enabler, do you?” Her voice held a wink. “Besides, you’re already feeding me every night.”

  “I keep finding cash under the flap of my purse, so I’m pretty sure Gage is feeding you, just indirectly.” It was far more than I was spending for groceries, but I was grateful to have the extra. My checking account had nearly two hundred dollars more than it had this time last month, which meant James never noted a switch to the cheapest meals I could provide.

  “That’ll be true the day he cooks dinner or cleans up after. Not just carrying in plates. He’s sheltering me, though.” He’d switched hotel rooms, renting a two-bedroom suite for himself and Rowan until her house was livable. If she had any comment on how many nights he never came home, she kept them to herself.

  He made a point of spending time with her too. Whether he stayed over or not, in the morning he went to the gym, then to the hotel to clean up. They’d discuss her plans for the house that day, ending with lunch together. Once she went to the house, he read scripts and made phone calls.

  “Next is James providing clothes, huh?” I held out a pinch of cloth from my sleeve. “Hope you like Target.”

  “He’s doing better than clothes. He’s hooking me up with everybody I need to fix the stuff I can’t do myself. Mostly they’re cool, let me hang around. I might try to set some of the tile myself.”

  “Let
you? Guys don’t mind a pretty woman watching.”

  She shrugged. “I bet it’s that they know James will hear about it if they’re late, or rude, and he’ll never throw work their way again. Don’t piss off the big dog.”

  We both turned to look at him, slumped heavy-lidded on the sofa, pretending to watch the Twins game but really taking a nap. His hair was getting long, the ends damp from his after-work shower curling on the neck of his T-shirt, the top layer fluffy dry, bleached almost white from the summer sun.

  “He doesn’t look too threatening,” she said.

  “Wait until a crew spends the whole day cementing the wrong brick in place. His face turns the most gorgeous shade of purple.”

  “Gage just gets dark pink, with this big vein in his forehead.”

  “Lovely.” He was too. Unaware of my gaze, Gage was just being himself, half watching a baseball game he didn’t care about, half watching James nod, rouse, and nod again.

  His small, bemused smile turned into a real one when he caught me staring. “Something I should be doing?” he asked in a hushed voice.

  “I’m awake,” James said.

  “Sure you are,” I said. “What’s the score?”

  Gage laughed and came into the kitchen. “It’s every American man’s right to fall asleep in front of a baseball game.”

  “I know. I just wish he didn’t have a death grip on the remote. Here, juice this lemon.” I had to show him how.

  * * * *

  The August monsoons came, impressive short thunderstorms that sometimes knocked out the power or caused brief flooding of low-lying streets and underpasses. A desert drive a few days after revealed a carpet of grass and blossoms that would soon bake brown.

  Gage learned where we kept candles and flashlights and not to open the freezer, and Rowan learned that repairs and renovations take electricity.

  “I just have an impromptu little party with whatever workmen are at the house,” she said, “even if the only power they were using was the lights. I get out chips, a six-pack, usually Coke, a tray with candles, a deck of cards. It’s fun.”

  Gage scowled when she said the word Coke.

  “The drink, bonehead! Anyway, we play gin—the game, not the drink, still-a-bonehead—or poker. Friday I won over two dollars!”

  “Almost ready for Vegas,” James said.

  Rowan signed up to audit two classes at the university’s fall semester, although Gage nixed her plan to walk despite the heat and bought her a car.

  “I bullied him,” she said, messing up his hair. “It had to be used, at least two years old.”

  “And it had to be blue.” Gage tousled her hair right back, but it didn’t provoke her. “Do you know how many better cars she ruled out for the crime of being beige or white?”

  “If I’m going to drive this car for the next five years, I want to like it. That’s a crime?”

  “Five years, hah,” Gage said. “I’m replacing it in three.”

  “You animal!” It was good to see them together, both happy and healthy, even though I’d never known Rowan any other way.

  James was terribly busy with the Rincon work, still coming piecemeal, each patio or structure a low-paying test. “They’ve got somebody else doing walkways from the parking lot,” he fretted aloud. “I can’t compete with minimum-wage guys, and if I tell Kline it’s bad work, it sounds like sour grapes. I just hope it rains really good and he sees my brick stays right where we laid it while theirs doesn’t.”

  “All hail the monsoon,” Rowan said. “Let’s plan a bunch of barbecues and picnics, and wash our cars. We’ll make it rain for you.”

  Gage took on some of James’s duties, lugging out the trash without being asked, watering our little patch of grass in the backyard where our nieces played, pulling weeds invading our desert landscaping, filling my car with gas, and most of all, paying me some much-needed attention.

  He tried to hide his disappointment the many nights James took over the dining room table to draw up plans, write up bills, or do his accounting. “Since the television would bother him, I read,” I told Gage. “It’s reruns anyway. Want to borrow a book?”

  “I’d rather, but I’ve got a script in the car.” We sat in companionable silence in the living room, both watching James work and smiling at each other when we caught the other one at it.

  It was James’s most handsome time of year, his top half lightly tanned despite religious application of sunscreen, his hair floppy in twenty shades from white-blond at the top to light brown underneath, his body its leanest from hard work in the heat, shirtless if it was a construction site rather than someone’s home.

  Gage’s gym time was paying off. His agent would be impressed at how hard his body had become, although Gage said he’d gained a few pounds and hardly changed measurements at all.

  They’d probably leave my doughy behind if I didn’t get busy, I scolded myself. They’d find an anorexic model. Or simply each other.

  Still, life was good.

  Gage and Rowan drove his car to California, where Gage would meet with his agent while Rowan packed herself for the move to Tucson. “Take me all of an hour. I don’t have a lot left,” she admitted.

  I thought I saw Rowan’s handiwork in the trip being the week of our tenth anniversary, and Gage’s stamp of approval when she brought over a bottle of French champagne just before they left.

  “Happy anniversary to you both. This is a gift from Gage,” she said, holding the bottle aloft. “But the glasses are from me. Don’t ask me to come in or anything. We’re leaving in a half hour.”

  “Make sure he doesn’t speed,” I said.

  Our anniversary ritual repeated what we’d done for our first: Chinese takeout and a movie. “Is it too decadent to end the evening with a bottle that might cost as much as we’ve spent on all our anniversaries combined?” I said.

  “Maybe. But it’s damned fine wine.”

  The sex afterward was good too, I suppose, but it wasn’t great. Although neither of us said it, I think James missed the spark of performing with me for Gage’s pleasure, and finishing with Gage once I’d had enough.

  “I love you, Nat,” he murmured. “Happy tenth.”

  He rolled over and slept almost immediately, but I lay awake, wondering if we were all right, as a couple, or if the crack Gage had started was growing so wide it would split us apart.

  James loved me. No doubt about that. Did he love Gage too? Probably. More? I didn’t know and was afraid to ask.

  I didn’t need to ask which partner he preferred for sex. Being with Gage, doing things that were “forbidden” was obviously exciting and new for James, far hotter than the same old thing with me.

  So I hid my bitterness when Gage returned, all smiles, and James gave them back with equal intensity. “How’d it go?”

  “My agent had me take off my shirt, right in the office.”

  “Did you tell him the only people who can lick those nipples are the Bedwells?” James said.

  “Then he told me to beat it, he had to get on the phone to see if it was too late for this action role.”

  “I could have told him how hard you are,” James said.

  “So could I.” Neither of them glanced in my direction.

  “I told him he could have been trying to get me that role because he knew I’d be ready for it by the time filming started, and that if he didn’t have that much faith in my professionalism, maybe when our contract expires I should move on to someone who does.”

  “Attaboy.” James clapped a congratulatory hand on his shoulder.

  “Anyway, it’s down to me and one other actor. I don’t know who, just that he’s ‘difficult.’ Which can mean anything. I really hope I get it, but I don’t want to leave you—two,” he added. “But I’m already looking forward to welcome-home sex.”

  “Don’t forget send-off sex,” James said.

  “And phone sex, like that time we…” Gage didn’t finish his sentence, lost in the memory for
a long moment. Did that memory include me?

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  In early October, Rowan’s house was done. She refused my offered help to move her things from storage. “What I want from you,” she said, “is a night we can have dessert and the grand tour no matter how busy James is.”

  I picked Friday, since he often gave himself the night off.

  The orange tree in the tiny front yard, though trimmed, still shaded the house, but the dead grass and living weeds were replaced with low desert landscaping and a terra-cotta walkway with irregularly spaced art tiles.

  Inside, she’d made the place more than cozy, fully charming, whimsical yet adult, without any of that excessive “cute” factor some single women bring to decorating. “Wow, Rowan, this is great!” I wondered if my place would be half so nice if I’d never met James. “Really, really nice. Have you considered a career in design?”

  “Hah. It’s not that hard when you’ve got a blank check. Not that I didn’t save Gage a buck here and there. I set a lot of the tile myself.” She gestured toward the new bathroom. “Dave’s a good teacher.”

  I walked in, admiring the Mexican tiles and hammered-tin ceiling.

  “Dave’s going to ask you out, if he hasn’t already,” James said. “He called, to clear it with me.”

  “You’re kidding. What are you, the construction godfather?” My laugh echoed in the bathroom.

  “I got the impression he thought Rowan might be my girlfriend on the side and he didn’t want to step on my toes by asking out my mistress. What do you say, Rowan? You busy later?”

  “I’m your mistress,” Gage said. “Your mister?”

  “Dave and I went out already. We had fun. I like him.”

  “He’s a good guy,” James said.

  “Show them the back,” Gage said.

  Outside, the deep-but-narrow backyard had been landscaped to include a small waterfall, plentiful shade, and a covered path from the main house to the small building the real estate lady would have had demolished.

  “Welcome to my place,” Gage said.