Hank & Chloe

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  Hannah and Kit caught up. “Hey, Chloe, isn’t that Hank?”

  “Yes, goddammit.”

  “Such language. I thought you were—”

  “It’s over.”

  “You want me to tell him to get lost? I can.”

  “No, no.” She was quiet a minute. “He bought new boots and wants to learn to ride.”

  A wicked glint sparkled from Kit’s green eyes. “I get to teach him.”

  Hannah woofed, and Chloe put her on a down command and told her to stay. She sat fifteen feet up from the arena, head resting on her paws, but eyes wary. She wouldn’t budge for foot or vehicle traffic, and sneaked nips at the bandage when she could manage it without Chloe noticing.

  “Keep your heels down!” Kit ordered Hank, and Chloe smiled, expecting the usual beginner’s reaction, wincing and straining. His left ankle had always troubled him—some old Boy Scout hiking injury he’d told her about—and she could imagine it throbbing painfully inside the stiff new boots. Every time he tried to make personal conversation, Kit cut him off with a new command.

  “Why isn’t Chloe teaching me? I paid for her.”

  “I’m her assistant,” Kit said. “That part comes later, if you’re good enough. I have to decide if you’re good enough to stay in this class or not. Let’s see you move Molly into a jog now.”

  He did, his hands quiet on the reins, his leg pressure applied deftly, not too much. Molly started up fast, and Hank settled back in his saddle until she found a gentleman’s jog, the quietest of gaits, the cowboy’s preference for an all-day ride.

  Kit shot Chloe a look. Now what? Chloe shrugged.

  “You say you’ve ridden before?”

  “A long time ago.” Hank pressed his lips together and sat the jog for six circles of the arena.

  “You can ask her for a lope if you’re feeling up to it.”

  Hank nodded, and Chloe watched him press his outside leg into her barrel, and Molly make a fairly smooth transition into the lope. He held the reins in his right hand, his left resting quietly on his thigh. She reminded May to lift her butt out of the saddle and stole another quick glance at Hank.

  About now he should be aching. The least of his worries would be his tender balls; his spine should be feeling jarred into compression that would require a chiropractor to set it right, and his head was supposed to throb painfully in this much sun. That was the way of first lessons; they hurt. If a new student managed to finish one whole hour, he’d remember his sunglasses and not to eat so much breakfast next time—if he came back. That was about all she expected from a first lesson, getting down a few simple ground rules. Hank didn’t know any of those rules. He was a natural rider, his long legs draped gracefully in the stirrups, his back straight enough to chalk a plumb line. He was relaxed.

  He looked her way across the arena but didn’t try to get her attention. He was marking his corners, dropping his inside shoulder, trying to make each turn more fluid than the last one. Molly was flummoxed; she was used to mixed signals, the shrieks of the uninitiated, exercising her constitutional right to dump the unlucky few who vexed her beyond reason. If he gave her ample reason, she might buck, but even if he fell off, Chloe had the uneasy feeling he would get right up, dust himself off, assess his error, and get back in that saddle. Hank loosened his grip on the reins a little and made a decent transition into the trot, circled twice, and slowed into a long-reined walk.

  “I feel jerky,” he said to Kit. “It’s been years. I’ve forgotten so much.”

  “You want to try backing through an L?” Kit asked. “Hang on while I set up the cavalettis.” She arranged the poles into an L shape and Hank backed Molly through them, bumping one pole twice.

  “She’s always a little stiff first thing in the morning,” Kit said. She shielded her eyes from the glare as Hank circled the arena at a lope. “Don’t start showing off! You’re supposed to walk.”

  He lengthened his reins, and Molly obediently slowed.

  Kit’s voice—was that how she herself sounded to her students—arrogant, pushy? Chloe walked to the center of the ring and got after her couple. They were holding hands across their horses and talking. “Jeff and Cat,” she said. “This isn’t the ‘Newlywed Game.’ One of you change directions, and let’s see some action besides the hormonal. Figure eights, and I want you to drive into the corners as you cross them, okay?” She moved out of the way and went back to the fence. Hank rounded a corner, then passed by the gate, where Chloe sat on the top rail. “How am I doing?” he asked.

  “Nice hands—you ride well.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” Back he went to Kit, who stopped him and explained how to execute the side pass. Most times, a beginning rider would yank rather than lay the reins across the horse’s neck. Sometimes Chloe had to get right up behind them on the horse and show them which was the outside leg and which was the inside before they assimilated the concept that the two worked together in turning a horse. Hank made two wrong moves, shook his head, then had the pass down pat. Molly was in love with his quiet moves.

  When his back was turned, Kit turned to Chloe and threw up her hands. “He doesn’t do anything wrong!”

  “Just let him walk off, I guess.”

  She was still feeling out of sorts. It wasn’t breakfast—she hadn’t eaten anything—Hugh’d made her so angry she’d forgotten to grab an apple or anything for lunch. She pressed a hand to her belly as if that might quiet it. Behind her, Hannah had the bandage chewed off now and was tossing it up and down in some grand game of catch as she stayed, technically, on the down command. Terrific.

  “We could knock off a little early,” Hank was saying, “since this is my first lesson.”

  “Dream about it,” Kit said. “You’ve still got fifteen minutes left. Around here we give you your money’s worth, partner. Trot some more. Trotting’s the best thing, boy, it’ll develop your seat in no time. A dozen laps of that. Start counting after this lap.”

  Am I that bad? I am. Chloe sent her loving couple off on a stable walk to cool out their horses. They’d gotten half her attention today, and it was pure luck nothing had gone wrong. Now they would go down to Mexico, rent the worst possible string horses on some beach, and probably get pitched into the foaming, romantic sea. They held hands across the horses’ backs, separating only to ride around the immovable Hannah. May was jumping her last two-foot-high rail; the grin on her face reached several feet higher than that. She completed her jump and reached down to give her horse a neck pat. Will I be like that when I get old, Chloe wondered, tough, and sharp as some sixty-year-old cheddar? Ten thousand dollars, Jack Dodge had said. I will get old. Someday Kit will think I’m full of shit and turn on me, or worse yet, outgrow me. I don’t know what the hell we’re doing on this planet besides hurting each other and burying our best friends.

  At last Hank was allowed to walk Molly off.

  “Ten laps cool down, then reverse direction and ten more,” Kit said. “Remember to bend her as you go. Those serpentines I showed you, in and out, in and out. Use your leg to tell her, don’t rely just on neck-reining. When you’re done, we should probably give her a bath since it’s such a nice day. I’ll show you where the stuff is. Meet me down by the wash racks after you finish your laps, okay? And always dismount when you exit the ring, and remember to close the gate after you.” She gave Chloe a wink and slid under the fence.

  “I miss you,” Hank said when he passed by Chloe at the gate. She tapped Molly’s rear end with her cane, and the mare took off in a lope. “Pay attention when you’re on horseback,” Chloe said. “The horse is a potentially dangerous animal.”

  He leaned forward slightly and held onto her mane, riding the lope until Molly ran out of gas. “Not half as dangerous as some women.”

  Chloe let herself down slowly into the sand and unlatched the gate for him.

  She looked up into his face, the sober jaw, the little mustache carefully trimmed with the scissors she kne
w he kept in the drawer next to the bathroom sink. “You’re not as tough as you think you are,” he said and turned away, got down off Molly, patted her neck, and led her through the gate.

  She shut the gate behind him. Probably he believed that saying I love you would solve anything. That didn’t surprise her, but the way he rode did. She could never have imagined it, those soft hands so firm but gentle on the reins. From the back he looked like an old hand, and she could imagine him twenty years from now, riding the exact same way, the horse beneath him calm and responsive, the women he passed on trail turning back for a second, maybe even a third glance.

  CHAPTER

  21

  The balance of Hank’s silk shirt hardly made a dent in the five one-hundred-dollar bills she took out of the check Dodge gave her—the sheriff’s department’s monetary apology for her trouble. Before depositing the remainder in a savings account—her first—she asked if she could hold the cash equivalent in her hands. Ten thousand dollars. “You know, it probably seems like nothing to you guys, but it feels like I won the lottery,” she told the bemused bank manager, who took the single packet of banded bills back into the safe. “Except the money’s so clean it looks fake.”

  Before she had the saleslady box and wrap the shirt, she stuck three hundred fifty dollars inside an envelope, and tucked that into the pocket. She took the package by the college. Holding it under her arm, she walked it by the eucalyptus trees and boxwood shrubs, the gum spots on the asphalt, the flattened empty Dorito bags, the music of student laughter erupting from the classrooms with the bright orange doors. She used her cane to push up those steep stairs to his office and paused a minute to study the closed door before she set the package down. An index card taped to the door bore a neatly typed schedule of his time there, the hours he was in class, his office and home phone numbers. A part of his life, that was coming to a close, if what he’d said to her about budget cuts was true. School would be over in a matter of weeks. What would he do then? Get another teaching job far away, sell that Irvine place and disappear from her life entirely? She’d given him the gate; it was stupid to start having second thoughts now. He had office hours any minute, and he’d be the type to show up for them early. She set the box down, smoothed the brown paper once, and went down the second staircase, just in case he was coming up this one. She walked around the Agriculture building to avoid running into him. Three hundred fifty wasn’t all he’d spent on her, not by long odds, but paying on your debts was the proper thing to do.

  Out by the Agriculture building, three of Phil Green’s students were grooming his colt. Two adoring girls were brushing his fuzzy mane, and one lanky Asian boy was frowning at the girls’ oohing and aahing. Baby Thunder had grown into most of his features in the last five months. He was starting to get a little studdy—nipping, arching his neck proudly, annoying the few sheep and the single skinny calf housed in the barn. Chloe took a good long look at the legs. Gabe had done all right. He would make a fine saddle horse, once they gelded and taught the beast some manners. Who would Phil get to break and train? Not one of those sixty-day wonders, please God. She’d leave him a note—Vess Quinlan—he was still one of the best, but it would mean moving the baby to Elsinore for the duration. No hurry just yet. The students were starting to look at her, whisper among themselves, maybe remembering her from last year’s lecture on horsemanship. She smiled, pushed her cane ahead of her, and went to the truck.

  “Customer at your table,” Lita said.

  Chloe looked up from the misbehaving coffee filter and saw an angry Hank, one fist full of cream silk, the other one sprouting hundred-dollar bills. “You take him, Lita. Looks like he’s one hell of a tipper.”

  Lita set down her icewater pitcher. “No.”

  “No? What do you mean? I can’t ask you to save my ass one time?”

  Lita walked past her into the kitchen.

  She finished the nonsense with the filter and turned the machine on. Coffee water sprayed the front of her T-shirt. Her T-shirt was soaked. She sighed. Picking up her order pad, she went to the booth Hank had taken, opened her pad to a fresh green page, and waited.

  He laid the shirt down and the bills on top of it. “You can’t erase us, Chloe.”

  “You’re likely to get a grease spot on that silk, and I paid a lot of money for it. Why don’t you pick it up, Hank?”

  “This isn’t about money or shirts.”

  The ceiling fans whirred overhead, and Chloe felt dizzy. “Did you want something to eat? If not, maybe you should go.”

  “I want you back in my life. Sit down at this table with me and let’s talk it out.”

  Rich and Lita stood like a pair of transfixed squirrels, heads peering through the cubby where he took the orders. She gave them the finger and looked back to Hank. His hair had that little cowlick in the back where he’d sometimes forget to brush. The skin around his eyes was lined; he hadn’t slept well or much lately.

  “The avocado omelet is always a good choice. Filling enough for a light lunch, or a hearty late breakfast. We have a new soup, tortilla, it’s real good, but you might want to add a few peppers.”

  “Chloe, sooner or later you’re going to have to trust somebody besides that dead horse trainer.”

  She pressed her lips together. “I can get you a patty melt, I know you like those.”

  “That’s right—you know what I like, don’t you? You like it too. We like each other rather splendidly, I’d venture to say, and it seems fool-hardy to let one misunderstanding throw away incredible sex, all those quiet good times, Chloe, goddammit, I can’t just stop loving you because you tell me to.”

  Several men from the city crew turned in their booth to watch. They looked like a singing group, in their orange shirts with the oval name tags. “Patty melt?” she repeated.

  Hank sighed, threw up his hands.

  She carefully penned the order, sent it back to Rich, and told him to stop gaping. “You’re a fool,” Lita said. “You make me want to throttle you.”

  “Both of you mind your own business.” She waited on the city workers, busied herself with setting up tables, folding napkins, the whole time feeling Hank’s eyes follow her around the small restaurant. The ceiling fans chopped at the static air and blew their stilted conversation into a blended mess of confusion.

  She served him the patty melt, brought him a side order of potato salad, a dill pickle, more water. He never reached out once to touch her, and she was thankful, because if he had, she might have broken down like an old jackknife, folded herself into his lap, and cried hard. When she turned the check face down on the table, he laid the money over it, all three hundred fifty dollars.

  “Whatever made you think you could buy me off?” he said. And then he was gone, out the door, adios, mama.

  CHAPTER

  22

  The bright blue sky was cloudless, quiet, the kind of spring day that advertised summer three weeks before the term’s end, dangled it in front of students and caused them to call in bomb threats in order to steal a day at the beach. The sun beat down pleasantly on the back of Hank’s neck as he crossed the green quad. Students hailed him and he waved back, a smile playing automatically beneath his twitching mustache, the same as it had for years. Where were earthquakes when you needed them? Angry gods with fists full of lightning bolts? A conflagration was certainly burning in the region of his chest, and the great flood threatened to spill down his face and level him, right there on dry land. She pushed him away because he’d betrayed her trust. He wanted to gut buildings, go after her, scream out her name, and carry her bodily out of that damn café. Instead, he crossed the campus at his usual quick clip, retrieved his mail, miraculously missing Karleen this once, walked back to his office to pick up his notes for his next lecture, and surprised Asa, half asleep on the threadbare office couch.

  “What’s the trouble?” Hank asked him as he shut the door. “Hangover? Bethany’s cooking?”

  “Oh, Bethany’s cooking, all ri
ght,” Asa said, scratching his head. “Cooking it up in our bed with some twenty-year-old lifeguard.”

  Hank paused. “I see.”

  “No, Oliver, you don’t really see. Not until you walk in on it and observe your wife’s legs wrapped around some tanned guy’s bucking ass do you really begin to develop a sense of vision.”

  “So did you wipe the floor with him?”

  “No, I watched them roil around for awhile, then I gave them a round of applause. I swear I could hear a pop when the son of a bitch pulled out of her. Ran like hell, too, right out the door and onto the boardwalk, hugging his little red Speedos in front of his yank. We never should have moved to the beach. Nobody wears clothes.”

  Hank smiled, opened the file cabinet, and took out his lecture notes. “Did you two work it out?”

  Asa lay back down on the couch and rubbed his face. “We argued all night, then she took off for Daddy’s, no doubt to tell him what an aging ogre I am. Says she doesn’t know if she can stop seeing the lifeguard. Says she has energy for him, like the guy’s some kind of fucking toaster oven, I swear.”

  “So why aren’t you at the beach house?”

  Asa smiled. “Apparently my darling frau used most of the rent money for partying with the nose-candy crowd, so we were asked to ‘vacate the premises,’ as they say. I’m hanging my hat here until the Credit Union opens.”

  Hank zipped his briefcase shut. “I might be able to help you out in that area, Asa, if the Emerald City isn’t too offensive to your sensibilities.”

  “What about your roommate?”

  “Hightailed it back to the campgrounds.”

  “Jesus, I’m sorry. She take anything of value?”

  Hank patted his chest. “Just the old clock. I’ll live. You want to bunk at my place?”