Talk of the Town

by Mary Kay McComas

  Oh no. Instant headache.

  She heard Lu chuckling in the-kitchen and looked up as she plopped a cherry atop a root beer float.

  "What's so funny?" she asked, praying Gary wouldn't do anything stupid like . . . smile at her when he got there.

  "I was just wondering if you were planning to wear lipstick again tomorrow. The special is liver and onions."

  She gave her a torpid look.

  "Why are they doing this to me?" she whispered miserably. "Don't they have televisions? Don't any of them collect stamps or go bowling or knit or have anything else more interesting to do than to watch me?"

  "In a word, no,'' she said. The look on Rose's face tore at her heart, and she took mercy on her. "Look, honey, don't let it get to you. They love you."

  "Right."

  "They do. And you've been asking for this for . . . well, for at least the ten years I've known you."

  "What are you talking about? Asking for what?"

  She set the float on the counter and leaned into the window as for as she could. "I haven't done anything."

  "My point exactly. Rosie, honey, you've been walking a very fine, very straight line for the past fifteen years. You've kept your nose too clean, your life too quiet. Too mistake-proof for too long. Gary's the first exciting thing that's happened to you since Harley was born. They just want to share it with you, is all."

  "Is all?" She would have said more—something about the right to privacy and the unprincipled practices of small-town gossipmongers—but the bell over the front door jingled and she had a temporary heart attack.

  Harley and Earl walked in, looking around the diner with great curiosity. Several people at the lunch counter moved down a space so they could take the last two seats side by side.

  "Hey, Mom. What's happenin'?"

  "Nothing. Is your homework done?"

  "Yeah. What's goin' on here?"

  "Nothing. What are you doing here? Why aren't you getting ready for bed? Earl, do you want an iced tea?" The old man gave her a quick nod.

  "He was worried," Harley said, speaking of his grandfather. "Couldn't figure out why there were still so many people over here at this time of night. Thought you might need more chicken or somethin'."

  "I don't know why everyone's still here, honey," she said, extra loud. "You'd think they were all watching for a circus to come through town."

  Harley grinned, a Redgrover born and bred.

  "Well, it's not coming," he shouted back at her. "The ringmaster called to say he couldn't make it tonight. He'll be here tomorrow."

  The low moan of disappointment that rumbled through the diner set Rose's cheeks ablaze. And when people started reaching for their jackets and sweaters and pushing their sleepy children to stand and leave, tears of embarrassment gathered in her eyes. The words "stood up" drifted through the air once or twice, and she wished the linoleum floor would open up and swallow her.

  The jingle of the bells over the door set off an angry alarm in her head.

  "The special tomorrow night is liver and onions," she called to her neighbors as they left. "And if you stay for the show, you'll have to buy tickets!"

  "Harley!" She yelled loud enough for him to hear her at the back of the garage where he'd been banging a basketball against the wall for the past two hours. She was holding a heavy piece of six-inch metal tubing above her head. "Har-ley. Come help me." The pounding on the wall stopped, but the throbbing in her head continued. "Hustle it."

  She caught a movement to her left through the small window in her mask. "I broke my vise. See if you can find another, will you? And hurry, please, this is heavy." Tools clinked and clanked behind her, arid her arms grew weaker by the second. "Hell's bells, just forget it," she snapped with instant regret. Earlier he'd likened her disposition to Godzilla on PCP, and it was extremely irritating every time she proved him right. "Come hold this and I'll find it."

  The weight was released immediately, and she looked up to make sure he had a good hold, but the hands she saw weren't Harley's. She twisted her neck sharply, and painfully, to meet Gary's eyes through the window of her mask. Her heart jumped into her throat.

  "Where'd you come from?"

  "What?"

  "Where'd you come from?"

  His eyes twinkled in at her. "Heaven?"

  She let go of the pipe, stepped around him, and pushed up her mask on the way to her work table.

  "What are you doing here?" she asked.

  "Nothing much. Until you started screaming, I was shootin' hoops with Harley. But then I came running in here to rescue you."

  That wasn't what she meant, but she knew he knew that. Why couldn't he just answer her questions? Couldn't he simply start explaining the whys and the wherefores without her having to ask specifically where he was and why he hadn't come the night before? She kept her back to him, torn between an everlasting gratitude that he hadn't shown up at the diner, and eternal loathing for having stood her up in front of nearly everyone she knew. She vacillated between an unmistakable joy and excitement at seeing him again, and the dull ache of common sense in her head that was advising her to run for her life.

  Okay. She was a little confused.

  She tossed heavy tools back and forth on the table, then glanced over her shoulder at him. "How long have you been here?"

  "A couple hours, I think You were working, so the kid offered me the opportunity to work up a good sweat." He didn't look sweaty. He looked big and healthy and handsome. "He's got one hell of a slam dunk. He's good."

  "He should be. I've spent a small fortune on basketballs for him to bang against that wall over the last nine or ten years. It's a wonder they haven't come all the way through yet," she said, though she had never really begrudged Harley his basketballs. Last season he played on the varsity team as a high school freshman, and no mother could have been prouder than Rose Wickum.

  "Not to change the subject," he said mildly. "But I hear you missed me last night."

  "What?" Her voice broke and squeaked as she spun around to face him. Would this nightmare never end?

  He chuckled, adjusting his hands on the pipe so he could turn and see her better. "Would you mind taking your hood off? All I can see is your eyes. You look like an owl in there."

  "Yes, I would mind." Her face was on fire. "I'm working."

  "Is that what you're looking for there?" he asked, holding the pipe with one hand and waving a finger of the other at the table.

  "Don't drop that now," she said, scanning for the spare vise in a hurry. "I don't have a solid weld on it yet." She found it. "And I didn't miss you. I was glad you didn't show up. Did Harley tell you what happened?"

  He bowed his body to let her in front of him, closer to the joint she was working on, and watched her long, thin fingers deftly fit and fasten the clamp. He liked her hands. They were graceful, strong, and sure. They were talented hands.

  "He said the whole town missed me last night. I guess I assumed that meant you did too."

  "That's your problem," she said, grunting as she tightened the clamp with all her strength. "You assume a lot."

  "Humph. I wasn't aware that I had a problem. Another false assumption, I assume."

  The digging humor in his voice told her that if he thought he could get away with it, he'd put his fingers to her ribs and tickle a smile to her lips.

  She took a deep breath.

  "At least this way we can talk in private," she said, turning to face him. "You can let go now."

  He did, and he let his arms fall down behind her, skillfully catching her in his embrace.

  "Are we going to talk serious?" he asked, peering through the opening in the mask at her.

  "'Yes," she said, acting indifferent to his nearness while her pulse raced. Fighting him would only make him think she cared, or was a little too excited, or that she enjoyed being there too much. Indifference wouldn't tell him anything. "Very serious. This has got to stop. I can't—"

  "I can't talk serious to a wo
man wearing a welding mask. I'm sorry. All I can think of is Darth Vader." She closed her eyes and prayed for patience. Then she reached up and removed the hood. "Ah, much better," he said, almost reverently, his gaze brushing over her red hair and clear pale skin, flushed with heat. "So beautiful."

  Then he was kissing her. It was a second or two before she realized where the sudden burst of bliss was coming from. With one gloved hand full of welding hood and the other pushing feebly against his chest— and two more hands reaching out from somewhere deep inside her to pull him close and hold him near!— something snapped in the middle, and she came untied in his arms. She dropped the mask as if she were a beaten prizefighter, throwing in the towel.

  After all, toe-curling kisses were not meant to be rejected. Really. It was unnatural. Instinctively one gave into the tingles and chills shooting through one's body and the warm coil of need twisting low in one's abdomen. Intuitively one sought the source of the pleasure and allowed an inborn greed—found in all of us—to seek out more of the same delight. Demand it even. And when one's mind was reeling beyond discriminate thought and the sensations began to ebb away, leaving one weak and breathless, it was the most natural thing in the world to rest one's head on a broad shoulder and wonder at the sound of another heart beating as fast as one's own. The most natural thing in the world. Truly. Look it up.

  Gary held her in his arms, rocking her gently, sensing the chaos inside her. As a matter of fact, it didn't make much sense to him either. Of the, let's guesstimate and say, one hundred women he'd taken an interest in over the past twenty years, he'd wanted to love them all. He'd tried really hard with a couple of them, and had married one once, believing that respect and friendship were as good as it was ever going to get. Then one bright sunny morning he had spied Rose atop a pile of trash, and falling in love had been as easy as crushing an empty cereal box. Did that make sense?

  Now his poor Rose was struggling. Not with falling in love, that was happening on its own. He could see it in her eyes and feel it deep in his bones. Nothing in his life felt more genuine or critical than loving Rose. But Rose simply didn't, or couldn't, understand it.

  "Maybe you shouldn't fight it so hard," he murmured, her hair tickling his lips. He rested his chin on the top of her head. "Maybe . . . maybe just trying to enjoy it will make it less scary. Love's not always a bad thing, you know." He paused. "I can't tell you it doesn't hurt, you know it does. I can't promise I won't hurt you, because I might. But I can tell you that you'll never know for sure unless you come out on this limb with me.”

  She looked up, as if she had something important to tell him, but then she bowed her head and stepped away.

  "I've been out on that limb before. It's not very strong," she said, removing her thick apron and tossing it onto the work table with her gloves.

  "No," he said. "You've never been out on this particular limb. You might have tried a couple that were weak, that failed you. But every chance you take is a different limb. It might look the same, but you don't know what it's made of; you don't know how strong it is until you try it."

  She had the sudden image of her Tree of Chances looking something like a stock of bamboo in tall grass.

  But something in his words rang true in some deep dark pocket of hope she'd hidden away years earlier. He wasn't like anyone she'd ever known before. For one thing, his persistence was remarkable. She knew her cold shoulder had frostbitten a few men's fingers over the years. He seemed impervious to it. In fact, it amused him—which was something else about him she liked. He made her laugh and feel young. She hadn't felt so young since . . . since she was young. Over the past week she'd taken to daydreaming and fussing in front of the mirror, and adding three caps of bubble bath to the water instead of her usual, practical one capful. He'd reintroduced her to anticipation, excitement, sexual desire, and whistling before breakfast. He was almost enough to make her want to shimmy to the top of her bamboo shoot and risk the wind trying to blow her off.

  "Rose?" She turned to look at him. It might have been her imagination, but he looked to be standing a little taller, a little straighter than his usual loose and casual stance. The word "determined" came to mind. "You might have noticed that I have ways of getting what I want. My mother says I'm like a junkyard dog with a new bone when my mind is set on something. My brothers say … well, I won't tell you what they say. You might have a fair idea already." His smile was borderline sheepish. "I operate my life by dancing around and talking fast until people's minds are spinning. Then, while they're staggering around, dizzy and out of focus, I do what I want. I build incinerators and get environmental protection laws passed through the state legislature and rezone properties for landfill and . . . well, pretty much anything else I want to do. The thing is, I don't want to bully you into anything you're dead set against. But I'm not going to make it easy for you to get rid of me either. I don't give up without a fight."

  If he had a gauntlet—or even a dirty old work glove —he might have thrown it at her feet. But Rose wouldn't have picked it up. She didn't need to. She was ready to surrender.

  She was aware of a crushing loneliness within her. A singleness that made her feel small and exposed and defenseless. It was a feeling she'd first experienced when her mother had died. A spectator sensation, as if she were an all-star player watching the game from the sidelines. And here was the neighborhood boy asking the new kid on the block if she wanted to play. Here was a welcoming hand, waving her off the bench and into the circle of the living, the feeling, the loved.

  "We're having fish for dinner," she said, walking past him toward the stairs.

  "What kind?" he asked, watching her, sensing that he'd won the battle, very aware that the war was far from over.

  "Red snapper."

  "With capers?"

  "Nope. Secret family sauce."

  “What's for dessert?" he asked, following her up the stairs.

  "Something sweet."

  SEVEN

  As wars went, theirs was like trying to get a tan by candlelight. It simply wasn't happening.

  "Go ahead. Ask him," Lucy said, flicking her fingers first at Rose, then in Gary's direction. He'd taken to hanging around the diner for two-hour lunches, sometimes staying on to have dinner. Within a matter of days, he'd been assigned his own swivel chair at the lunch counter and weaseled himself into a prominent position in Redgroye society. "Can't hurt to ask," she insisted.

  "Ask me what?" he said, returning to his seat after a lengthy long-distance call from his office in San Francisco. There wasn't a speck of dust on the old pay phone in the corner these days. Lu and Rose had all but forgotten it was there until Gary started taking calls on it, explaining that three quarters of what he did was done by telephone and one phone was as good as the next. When someone finally asked why he didn't have a cellular phone, he said he'd had four and lost them all.

  "Lucy and Martin co-manage the Rangers, and they want to know if you'll try out," Rose said, picking up a set of salt and pepper shakers in one hand and pushing the black metal napkin holder and sugar to one side so she could wipe the counter underneath them with the other.

  "Do I have to ride a horse?" he asked.

  "It's baseball," she said, working her way down to him. "The Redgrove Rangers. We've come in second place to the Eureka Eagles two years in a row now. This year we're taking them to the cleaners."

  "You play baseball?" he asked her, his eyes round with wonder. She also read murder mysteries—his favorite; loved butternut ice cream—his favorite. She thought the dream sequence on Dallas was a cop-out; that almost any anonymous, basically honest, apolitical Joe Schmoe with a high school education could balance the national deficit within twenty-four months; that Anita Hill got a raw deal—and he did too. She preferred to get her world news from newspapers and not television; she ate fruit chews at the movies instead of popcorn; and she played baseball?

  "This girl lives for baseball," Lu said, pushing through the kitchen door, carrying a r
ack of clean glasses. "She cried for a week when Harley dropped out of Little League and took up basketball."

  "Too much pressure," Emma Motley said, straightening the collar of her postal uniform. "He was smart to see that he couldn't play as good as his mother."

  "He was eight years old," Rose said in Harley's defense. After so many years she still felt a little guilty for taking him to her games while he was struggling to develop his own skills. "Harley's good at whatever he wants to be good at, which is basketball . . . and video games . . . and anything else that doesn't have a thing to do with his education."

  The ten-man lunch rush chuckled.

  "So?" Lucy asked, leaning forward to look down the counter at Gary. "Do you like baseball or don't you?"

  "Did Matty Mathewson pitch three shutouts in the 1905 World Series? Did Babe Ruth ever clout a hundred and twenty-five homers in an hour? Did Ty Cobb hit over four thousand in the major leagues? Was he the best base stealer ever? Was Willie Keeler—"

  "We practice on Mondays and play on Fridays," Lucy broke in. "Six o'clock sharp both nights."

  "I won't play unless I can have first base or shortstop," he said, as if he were negotiating a major league contract.

  "I'm first base," Rose told him, all but putting up her dukes to defend her position.

  "You'll have to try out for shortstop against Joe Spencer," Lucy said. "We don't play favorites."

  "Joe Spencer? The guy who owns Mike's Auto Parts? He's only got one leg," he said, trying to get a clear picture of the competition.

  "Hell of a mechanic," Danny said, wiping his fingers and mouth free of french-fry salt and ketchup with a paper napkin. "But he's a little slow behind the pitcher. Better in the outfield."

  And so it was that the King of Trash became a Redgrove Ranger, her teammate, committed for the baseball season.

  It wasn't a great deal of time, but it was more than she'd let herself hope for. She had to keep reminding herself that as wonderful as it was to have him around— to look forward to seeing him each day, to laugh with him, to talk and hold hands and share a sunset with him, to feel his lips on hers and to experience emotions with such intensity that it frightened her, to be so incredibly happy—it wasn't going to last forever. She was determined to enjoy Gary minute by minute for as long as she could.