by Maryl Jo Fox
“You’re kidding. Ever since you walked up, I wondered if you were the famous Frank Breckenridge Scotty’s told me about.” She smiles tauntingly. “So you are the one.”
“The one what?”
“I’ll never tell.”
“Maybe I need to shine up my reputation a little.”
“I like your reputation just the way it is.”
“Do you now?” He folds his arms across his chest.
“Yes, I do.” She’s sputtering again.
“Now look, I haven’t proposed yet.” He’s deadpan.
She looks puzzled, then laughs that full-throated laugh again. “I like a man with a sense of humor. You and I will get along just fine, Frank Breckenridge.”
“I’d bet my life on it.” He checks her name tag again.
She flushes the most appealing peach pink and extends her hand. “Stella Shapiro.” He takes her hand, lingers with it.
He needs to get hold of himself. “See you around, Stella.” His voice is low, almost a whisper. He hands her the rope, steps close enough to smell her musky fragrance again. He gets serious. “Why does Scotty let you perform in his casino?”
“He played the Stage Manager in Our Town in high school. Never got over it. I keep it real short and don’t do it often. I don’t cut into his profits.”
He nods, backs away, looking briefly into her eyes, and turns to leave. Glancing back, he sees her staring at him.
After sleeping at Scotty’s, Frank fritters away the next morning. He takes a long, hot shower, goes to the mini-mart for orange juice, whole wheat bread, a pack of cigarettes, and a dozen eggs, stowing them at the uprooted house. Clara’s working her shift at Desert Dan’s. He thought he’d surprise her with the food. He’s feeling more sympathetic toward her this morning, and the wasps are nowhere in sight.
Still restless, he brings out a sponge and bucket of water to wash dead bugs off the trailer cab—crusty corpses spattered on the windshield. His whole life he’s been spectacularly inattentive to such matters, and here he is washing off a vehicle and laying in stores of food. He’s filled the morning only to delay the moment of seeking out Stella again.
He puts the pail and sponge back under the sink and washes up. He’ll just walk the itty-bitty streets full of trailers and pastel apartments until he finds her.
When he said he was a horse wrangler, et cetera, she ran her fingers through one side of her hair, smiling like the sun just came out after a hard rain. It was the most welcoming smile he’d ever seen. But he can’t imagine she’d want anything to do with some rough rider who never even went to college. He liked her rope trick, liked what she said, but he wonders if she, or anyone these days, still believes we’re all linked. Then too, she can’t be more than thirty-five. He’s forty-six. But he’s not totally hopeless. He’s been a closet reader all these years. Times when his social life stalled, he’d pick up paperbacks here and there, mostly from friends: The Guns of August, Working, All the Pretty Horses, Catcher in the Rye, A Farewell to Arms, Roughing It, Life on the Mississippi.
All morning, his mind’s been nattering on like this. “Just shut up, fool,” he says, kicking gravel, burrowing his fingers deep in his Levi’s pockets.
Now he’s on Royal Drive. Window signs say, “Don’t tread on me,” “Warning: In case of the Rapture, this car will have no driver.” He loves these signs; they make him laugh. A mother with her baby wrapped in a rebozo comes out of a trailer, a low-lying ponytail hanging down her back. The woman smiles at Frank; he smiles back. Down the block, Stella comes out of a small gray trailer, carrying a plastic bag full of something. She doesn’t see him. She has a distant look, like she’s thinking about something.
He hates it that he’s nervous. But how can he not be, when her auburn hair swings loose around her shoulders and her swaying hips and air of composure make her look like a goddess. He watches from a distance, hidden beside a toolshed. She’s walking quickly. He follows her, mumbling, “OK folks, here we have Frank, the teenage stalker.” She enters Jackpot Video.
On dull nights with Union Pacific, he would find a video store in some town and browse the aisles, checking out the latest release playing on the big overhead screen. Always he would look for some woman to pick up. Sometimes he found one. If not, he would drift back to his motel room to read or watch TV, ending up with an ashtray full of cigarette butts when he couldn’t resist the pull of nicotine.
He looks through the store window, doesn’t see her, steps inside. The video is at medium volume in the small store—gunshots, screeching brakes. She’s talking intently to the owner, back by the tiny office. Neither looks up.
He walks out, having just missed looking like a fool. He crosses the highway, looks at the quiet hills in the distance, wondering what to do. Minutes later, she emerges, carrying an even larger bag of videos. She sees him and calls his name.
“Hello!” he says in mock surprise.
She smiles, stops. “It’s the man with the flying house!”
Buoyed, he crosses the highway again and walks toward her with quick, sure strides, trying to tame a wave of desire. She’s wearing yellow capris, a white T-shirt, and sandals, her hair in loose waves around her face before it cascades in back.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you look damnably healthy?” He reaches to take her bag of videos.
She pulls the bag away. “Did anyone ever tell you that women carry their own bags these days?”
His confidence is returning. He just needed to see her, talk to her. This is crazy, he thinks. He taps her bag. “So, you like movies and theater.”
“The only games in town.” She points to the bag. “Like here’s Being There, with Peter Sellers. Seems like a good time to see it again. I love its politics.” She pauses. “Or have I offended you?”
He laughs. “I generally stay away from politics. They all seem like a bunch of nitwits to me.”
She nods. “It’s really bad.”
“What else you got in there? I missed Being There. Missed a lot of movies. Too busy being the Marlboro Man.” He mimes lighting a cigarette with his Bic, mimes a languorous draw, tips an imaginary cowboy hat.
She laughs. “I have to say, you look very sexy when you do that, even though, for God’s sake, that’s supposed to be the wrong thing to say these days.” She’s looking at his lips.
He takes a deep breath. “Lots of things are supposed to be the wrong thing to say these days. Like ‘Baby, you’re so sexy I can hardly stand it, and you are not even smoking.’” The words tumble out of him.
Laughing, she flicks her hair back in a gesture of pure animal health. “Let’s stick to the movies right now. So tell me. What’s your favorite movie?”
A little smile curls his mouth. “Sure. Easy. The Deer Hunter. I still watch it every chance I get. Too bad Cimino’s out in the wilderness somewhere. I actually tried to find out about him. I think I saw him up in Sun Valley once. A damned genius. Looked like hell.”
She nods. “I loved that movie too, except the wife kept sending her husband socks after his leg was blown off.” She rolls her eyes. “Cimino must think women are ditzy.”
“Right. She wasn’t getting with the program. I never thought about that before.” They walk in silence. “OK, your turn.” He looks at her humorously, as if to say, Don’t worry, I’ll play this little game with you.
“Too many, too many,” she laughs. “Blade Runner, Stage Coach, High Noon, The Last Metro, Singin’ in the Rain, All That Jazz, The Sorrow and the Pity, Dog Day Afternoon. This conversation could go on for hours. I’m all over the place with movies.”
“How about High Noon? A classic.”
She takes a mock-heroic pose. “Honor. Courage. Grace Kelly shoots a bad guy to defend her man after she’s denounced violence.” He raises his hand to see if she’ll give him a high five. She does, laughing. “Oh my god, where did my feminist credentials just go?”
“Your feminist credentials are just fine.”
They walk sl
owly in the tattered matte desert, share a speaking silence as they approach her trailer. “Are you hungry?” she says tentatively. “I mean, it’s lunchtime. Are you free, Frank?” She stops, as if surprised at herself, then plunges on. “I’ve got a mean taco casserole in the fridge.”
“I’m free. I’m hungry. Been a few days since I had a home-cooked meal.”
“Thought so.” That welcoming smile again. “Let’s talk about you and theater. You did a theatrical thing just then, lighting your cigarette like the Marlboro Man, tipping a cowboy hat. Mostly your expression. You’re a natural.”
“Now look, everybody knows about the Marlboro Man. That doesn’t count.” He wants to touch her hair, but it’s too soon.
She leans close. Her breath smells like peppermint. “Maybe we can work on something more original then.”
She’s playing with him, but he falls for it, gets weak at the knees. He tries for a sober tone. “Scotty says you want to put a big theater tent in the vacant lot.”
She looks at him. “Scotty told you that?”
“But the house is in the way.” His look is serious.
She stops. “It’s not in the way. It’s the house that fell from the sky. We could build an interesting theater piece around that house.” Her step is buoyant as they reach her trailer. “These days, a movable house is a good thing to have in case of trouble. See? Ta-daaa!” Flinging out her arms, she heralds her small, dented aluminum trailer. He loves her high spirits, but he also liked her seriousness with the Saudi father and daughter.
Inside, she sets her bag down, turns on a fan, goes into the kitchen. “Make yourself at home, Frank. You like margaritas? I’ll fix us some margaritas.”
“Always ready for a margarita.”
He looks around. The place is tiny. He’s six feet. The ceiling is a bit of a squeeze. If he stamped good and hard, the whole shebang would rattle. The living area has two hot pink velvet armchairs and a purple chenille loveseat. The colors make him smile. The coffee table is piled high with magazines and newspapers, mostly The Salt Lake Tribune and the New Yorker. Two crammed bookcases line the walls, bed and bath down the hall.
He walks around with a silly grin on his face. The walls are plastered with movie posters, theater posters, enlarged glossies. You can’t even see the fake knotty pine paneling under all the posters: Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, Gary Cooper in High Noon, Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel, Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush and Modern Times, Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Shall We Dance—Fred in a tux, elegant, tails flying; Ginger in a spangled gown.
He whirls around from the posters. “You like dancing?” In high school, his dancing was legendary. Stella’s loading a tray with margaritas, chips, and salsa.
“Do I like dancing?” She sets the tray down, waltzes toward him. He takes her hand in the small, rattling space between the breakfast counter and the purple chenille loveseat. As if they’ve done this for years, they twirl, come together, separate, hum in unison “Dancing in the Dark,” “Sophisticated Lady,” “September Song,” “Dancing Cheek to Cheek.” The words to the old standards just roll out of them, Frank’s baritone to Stella’s contralto. He forgot he knew these tunes, his parents’ favorites, played plenty at the house. Normally he’s a Jim Morrison man.
He’s also forgotten about dancing like this. This is pure play. Before, he used his dancing prowess strictly to seduce. But now, almost forehead to forehead with him, Stella moves like she’s on an electric sidewalk, smooth as a Black Russian, like she can match any move and it’s all a wonderful joke. He continuously tests her. They can’t help laughing. He slides into slo-mo rumbas, sambas, a waltz, a he-doesn’t-know-what, and she follows like she’s joined at the hip. Taking Astaire and Rogers’ lead, he throws in little teasers—heel-toe-tap, heel-toe tap. They’re flushed, exhilarated, a light sheen of sweat on their faces by the time they stop, the finish marked by a long pause held in regular dance position for who knows how many beats, their bodies close until he leans her backward and she holds on tight and their arms slide around each other and they kiss as easy as breathing, then laugh and kiss some more, and it’s wonderful—hot and sexy and good. He brings her upright and they laugh, keeping it light in all their surprise.
“I love to dance,” she says.
“No kidding.”
“Never found a partner before.”
“Now you have.”
“It’s been kind of lonesome out here in the desert.”
“Me too. Back there. Everywhere.”
The moment extends, too delicate for words or anything else. They’re both a little scared.
He says, “How’d you land here, stay here? You could go anywhere you want.”
“Nevada’s a blank slate. Full of possibilities.”
“Possibilities,” he says. “Yes.”
Her eyes flicker up at him. “How about those drinks? They’re going to get sloppy.” She moves into the kitchen.
He sits on the purple loveseat, watching her. Something about the way she moves, sensitive like she’s got antennae, but also a little resistant, like she’s saying “convince me,” and then these showgirl colors, hot pink armchairs and purple loveseat along with a couple of lime-green pillows bordered with sequins. Sequins, for God’s sake. Her furnishings belong in a Broadway dressing room. Everything combines in his head to make him so ready for her that he has to take deep breaths and pick up the black eight ball on her coffee table to distract himself. He’s afraid to ask it a question, but the eight ball answers anyway when he turns it over: “Try again another time.” That’s a good answer, an answer he needs right now. He feels calmer by the time she joins him with the margaritas, salsa, and chips. The taco casserole in her microwave is beginning to smell like heaven.
Two days later, Stella says she’ll drive Frank to Twin Falls on her day off. He wants to buy Clara a used Honda Civic like the one she had to sell in order to drive the U-Haul from Eugene. Plus she needs a new cell phone. Dropped her old one in dishwater right before they left Eugene. Normally Clara would get her own car and cell phone, but she’s been sitting around shell-shocked since the move and can’t seem to get anything done yet. She will pay him back quickly, he knows. She hates debt. She just needs to get reconnected, he thinks. Maybe then she’ll forget about the cursed wasps and let them go. He doesn’t want to dwell on the wasp episode or her refusal to talk about their family.
He walks over to Stella’s early from Scotty’s and finds her crouched on the kitchen floor in old jeans and a T-shirt, repairing the faucet under the sink. “Leak and a jammed pipe. Driving me crazy. Almost done.” He’s transfixed. Her strong haunches, bare arms radiant with electric little hairs in a delicate wash of freckles—he’s never seen a woman repairing a sink. The sight arouses him. She’s focused and quick, removes the leaky pipe with strong twists of a pipe wrench, shortens the new piping with tubing cutters, tightens both ends with new gaskets, tests the water flow again. “Done,” she says without fanfare. “I’ll go change.” They kiss lightly.
He sits at the small kitchen table, trying to recover from the sight of her working this way. He hears the shower going, tries not to think of her beautiful body with water running down it. On the table is a sketch of some structure, a building with pillars and a huge rounded skylight. It looks like a church or a civic building.
She comes out from her bedroom in a blue sundress that gives him pause. Go slow, he tells himself. They pile into her red Mustang. Gently he touches her damp tousled hair as she pulls onto 93 North. He likes her strong square hands on the wheel. She’s a confident driver. He’s comfortable with her in some fundamental way and they’ve hardly met.
He asks how she landed in Jackpot. She smiles. Well, she jumped in her Grandpa’s car after his estate was settled, headed out from San Francisco to try her hand at theater in New York or film in L.A. She’d decide which city and vocation after she got on the road. But sh
e got waylaid taking routes she’d never been on, plus she had car trouble in Jackpot and heard Scotty needed a waitress. That was a year ago.
Grinning, Frank says he’s wandered around himself, always looking for something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Now he has the money to think about it a little, and his old friend Scotty said he could work the change booth if he wanted to.
And the posters? Her dad was a Hollywood stuntman and her mother did makeup. He left her for a gorgeous young girl and got killed in a motorcycle accident when Stella was seventeen. She and her mother fled to San Francisco to live with the grandparents. Her mother ran off with a potter from Bainbridge Island, so Stella stayed with her grandparents through college and joined the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
“Street improvs fit me to a T. I like to raise hell. The little piece you saw was just a warm-up.”
He looks at her. “I’ve done my share of hell-raising.”
She has a slow grin. “Why am I not surprised? So why the house?”
“That’s all she has.”
He thinks about this a minute, then tells her the sad tale of 1963, hints at his womanizing as he looked for something that made him feel . . . alive.
She looks at him. “Someone who made you realize you were just sleepwalking before.”
Slowly he takes her hand, kisses her open palm. “That’s it.”
Her eyes water with surprise. She has decelerated from eighty to fifty, her knuckles pale on the steering wheel.
He says, “Let’s change the subject or we’ll get in an accident.”
“So what are we doing, Frank? This is crazy.” She glances at him. “I’ve been watching you. You take things in and have a calm head. You don’t bullshit. I feel I can trust you. Help me out here. Everything is going way too fast.”
“Baby, I’m as lost as you are. We got to take it easy.”
They drive in silence. He says, “What was that drawing on your kitchen table?”
