Makin' Whoopee

by Billie Green

  "That's cold, Sara. Really cold." He glanced at the paper, then back to her face. "So when are we going to check out the Morrison place?"

  She looked up, frowning slightly. They had just acquired the listing for the old house a few miles outside of town. Since it had been empty for nearly six months, they needed to check its condition and arrange for repairs, as well as list its prominent features.

  "I thought we could go after lunch if that's okay with you." She glanced at her watch. "But we can't spend more than a couple of hours out there. Mrs.

  Dunn said she might come by late this afternoon so I can take her out to look at the place on Swiss Avenue."

  "That'll work. We can take the Chevy and fly like the wind."

  "Like hell we will. We'll take my car. That way I know we'll get there."

  "Come on, Sara," he said; his voice low and coaxing as he leaned closer. "It's a gorgeous day. I can let the top down . . . the Montana countryside flying by . . . the wind whipping your hair around. Doesn't that sound seductive? It's damn sure got me all hot and bothered."

  She laughed, admitting to herself that it sounded very tempting. "All right," she said. "But if that junker you drive gives up the ghost while I'm in it, I'll never forgive you."

  He slowly ran a finger down her cheek. "Trust me, kid," he said softly. "Would I let anything happen to you?"

  Suddenly Sara wasn't sure they were still talking about his car. As though compelled by something beyond her control, she looked into his eyes. For a moment she was lost in the blue forever she found there. The mysteries in his eyes pulled at her, drawing her in against her will. I'll get lost in there, she thought.

  She abruptly pushed back her chair and stood. "I've got to talk to Irma," she said breathlessly. Without looking back she rushed out of the room.

  In the kitchen she found the housekeeper busy with lunch preparations. Irma looked up briefly as Sara entered the room, then went back to her work without comment. Sara poured herself a glass of orange juice and leaned against the counter.

  After a moment she asked, "How is Marilyn?"

  "Better yesterday," Irma said, still chopping. "But that doesn't mean anything. It comes and goes. Sometimes she goes right off her head. I worry about the baby."

  The older woman paused, and Sara had the feeling she was uncomfortable. If she was right, this was a first. Nothing threw Irma. Sara honestly believed her housekeeper's expression wouldn't change if she found that the President was coming for dinner.

  "What is it, Irma?" she asked in concern.

  Irma laid down the knife and turned to Sara, a determined expression on her face. "How would you feel about my bringing the baby here once in a while, so I could watch it when Marilyn's feeling bad?"

  Sara blinked. "The baby . . . here?"

  A baby in her house. Sara felt dizzy. The thought of a baby here shocked her. She had spent a lot of years avoiding children of any size. In a completely adult world it was easy to tell herself that she didn't really like children, that she didn't actually want any of her own. She could convince herself that she was totally committed to her career. After all, she had figured a thousand times, it was a new age. Child-bearing was not a requirement anymore. Today's woman had a choice, and didn't have to feel unfeminine because she chose not to be a mother.

  The whole thing sounded good in theory. And it worked just fine ... as long as she didn't have to have firsthand experience of what she was missing.

  Too many things were changing too fast, she thought, running a hand through her hair. She hadn't even worked out the problem of Charlie, and now life was throwing her another curve. She was constantly being knocked off balance. How would she be able to get anything done, knowing a forbidden delight was stashed away somewhere under her roof?

  She couldn't do it. Irma could take time off if she wanted, but Sara couldn't allow her to bring the baby here. She couldn't let it matter that Irma took pride in the fact that she had never missed a day's work. She would simply have to figure something else out.

  "I'd keep the baby out of the way."

  Irma's stiff, proud voice brought Sara's gaze back to her housekeeper. The older woman's chin was held high, as though she had been caught in the act of begging.

  "You'd never even know there was a baby in the house," she added.

  Sara was immediately ashamed of herself. How could she put her petty foibles ahead of this woman's pride? She forced a smile. "I'm sorry, Irma. I didn't mean to sound negative. You just took me by surprise, but . . . well, sure. If you think it's necessary, why not?"

  "Thanks," Irma said. The single word was gruff but sincere. "Doctors are supposed to be so smart, with all that college and training, but they still don't know half of what my ma knew about female trouble."

  Ah-ha, Sara thought. The mysterious female trouble again. It was Irma's favorite topic, and although Sara had once tried to pin the older woman down to a specific definition, she had discovered to her amusement that the symptoms of the mystical ailment ranged from a headache to drooling schizophrenia. Being a woman was a wondrous and awesome thing.

  "So you think her problem is . . . uh, female trouble?"

  Irma made a characteristic sound that was somewhere between a horse fresh from a water trough and a dying seal. "Anybody with a lick of sense would know that. Marilyn's always been delicate down there. I knew the first time she got her woman's complaint that there was going to be trouble."

  This was Irma's favorite story. She related it often and with relish, as though it were a moral tale from which every listener could benefit. Sara knew it verbatim, but listened patiently.

  "About a week before her first period, Marilyn was at an amusement park in California—the one they tore down after that fat man got killed on the Flying Octopus." Irma always related this part in a voice heavy with meaning, as though the unfortunate man's death had something to do with her niece's continuing pelvic problems. "Marilyn didn't even know where she was. She got lost from her friends and ended up with a sailor in the House of Horrors. As soon as my sister, Voncile, wrote me about it, I told her right then and there, 'Marilyn's going to have female trouble all her life.' It was plain as day to anyone who knew the signs." She shook her head at the foolishness of people who didn't listen to her. "Now, Harmen—Marilyn's husband—is a good sort, but he's just a boy. He doesn't know how to cope with Marilyn's spells."

  Irma began to wash vegetables vigorously. "Two kids playing at marriage. When they moved out here, I told Voncile I'd watch out for them, but it's not easy. Young people all get newfangled ideas."

  Irma always talked about Marilyn and Harmen as though they were children. "How old are they, anyway?" Sara asked, gazing at Irma over the top of her glass.

  "She's twenty-one. He's twenty-four."

  Not exactly babies, Sara thought. "Didn't the doctors say she has a recurring infection?"

  "Doctors." Her tone was abrupt and filled with contempt. "Didn't they tell my cousin Winifred that all she had was a virus?" This was Irma's second-favorite story. "I told her, 'Winnie, you mark my words, that's no virus. It's your ovaries acting up.' And what did the doctors tell her the very next week?"

  "That her ovaries were acting up?" Sara guessed, recognizing her cue.

  "Exactly," Irma said with satisfaction as she pulled the core out of a head of lettuce. "Winifred learned to listen to me. And so did Haroldine Simpson."

  Oh, Lord, Sara thought. Moral tale number three. But before Irma could get started, the doorbell rang, and Sara allowed herself an audible sigh of relief. The story of Haroldine Simpson— whoever she was— was particularly gory, and Sara didn't know if her stomach was up to it.

  After the older woman left the kitchen, Sara sipped her orange juice, smiling wryly. Irma had been with her for two years, ever since Sara's purchase of the house. Irma's husband had passed away two years before that, and in order to keep herself busy, Irma had become general factotum to Sara and counsel to anyone who happened to come within le
cturing distance.

  Her personality was down-to-earth and remarkably even-keeled. No highs and lows for Irma. As far as Sara knew, her sister, Voncile, and her niece, Marilyn, were her only immediate family, but in her own bland way Irma cared about everyone she encountered in her structured life.

  "Gotcha!"

  Sara jumped, spilling her orange juice, when Charlie appeared before her. Placing his hands on either side of her, he trapped her against the counter with his body.

  "You can't run away forever, Sara m'Love."

  "Don't be an idiot," she said. She tried to move sideways but found herself blocked by his arms.

  "Define idiot," he said, and suddenly he was lifting her so that she was sitting on the counter and he was standing between her thighs.

  "Let me down," she said firmly.

  "Didn't anyone ever tell you the story of the Princess and the Idiot?"

  "Charlie," she warned in a steely voice.

  "Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess. She lived in a faraway land. A land where it was against the law to laugh. She had read about laughter, but since no one had ever taught her how, she thought it was just a rumor."

  "Charlie."

  "Wait. I'm just getting to the good part. One day she was walking in the garden—it was a sad garden, because no one ever laughed in it, and it's a scientific fact, verified by thousands of documents, that giggling makes plants grow. Anyway, it was her birthday and she was thinking how dull it was ... no kind of birthday for a princess. She didn't know that at that very moment an idiot was fighting dragons—frowning, crabby dragons—just to get to her side. Finally he fought all the dragons and burst into the garden. Their eyes met, and there was a long silence. And then he reached out slowly and . . . tickled her like this."

  Sara squealed when Charlie began tickling her. "Stop that!" she protested, gasping, and tried to push his hands away.

  "Okay," he said immediately, then clasped his hands behind her neck and brought his lips to hers. All the laughter died away as her hands came up to push at his shoulders.

  But her hands had a mind all their own. Without her permission, they clasped his head to hold him close. Sara couldn't lie to herself now. She had been dying for this all week.

  He moved closer, molding her body against his. And when she felt the hard maleness of him pressing into her, she had to swallow a moan of pure desire.

  "Did you say something?" he murmured, then sucked gently on her lower lip.

  She pulled away from him. "What? No, I don't think so," she whispered breathlessly. "What did it sound like?"

  He slid his lips down her neck. "It sounded kind of like, 'Oh, Charlie, you're wonderful. Don't ever stop.' Did you say something like that?"

  Laughing huskily, she pushed her fingers into his hair, holding his lips against her. "No, I didn't."

  He raised his head and leaned his forehead against hers. "Someone said it," he insisted, rubbing her nose with his as his fingers slid beneath her buttocks and lifted her against him. "Maybe it was me."

  He brushed his lips across hers, refusing to deepen the kiss even when her fingernails dug urgently into his scalp. "Charlie . . . Charlie. Irma's coming back. I heard the front door close."

  "She'll have to wait her turn," he said, then deepened the kiss at last, his mouth absorbing her gasp of pleasure.

  "I'm serious," she said when she could finally speak again. "What would she think if she saw us like this?"

  "She would probably think a gorgeous woman was being thoroughly kissed and cuddled by a charming, handsome—in an unostentatious way—man."

  She pulled one of his curls. "You've never been unostentatious in your entire life, and if Irma catches me sitting on her breadboard, I refuse to take the blame."

  When the housekeeper walked back into the kitchen, Sara was standing casually by the counter, her face flushed, her hair disheveled. Charlie stood at her side, holding out a metal cheese grater.

  "—and of course," he was saying, "this is one of the main hazards of the kitchen. Next to the wire whisk—which can leave some really ugly marks—I would say this little devil causes more accidents in your average American kitchen than anything else." He smiled. "Anytime you want to know more about safety in the kitchen, just let me know."

  Sara was shaking with suppressed laughter, but Irma didn't more than glance at them before she resumed her preparations for lunch.

  "When are we going to start our affair, Irma?" Charlie asked cheerfully, reaching around the older woman to steal a carrot.

  She slapped his hand. "When you see blackbirds flying backward I might give some time to a no-good filmflammer like you."

  "You tease," he chided, and shook his head sadly. "I think we need more honesty in our relationship, Irma. You've got to stop beating around the bush. These games you modern women play are confusing for a poor country boy." With a wink at Sara he left the kitchen.

  As soon as she felt reasonably calm, Sara went back to her office, but her mind kept straying from her work. She could have killed Charlie for throwing her life into turmoil. Things had been fine the way they were before. Why did he have to start messing around with their relationship? It took every bit of her energy, mental and physical, to keep up with the business. She couldn't afford this kind of distraction.

  Placing the heels of her hands on her desk, she drew in a deep breath. She refused to let this happen. She would fight it, just as she had fought other unseen enemies in the past. Picking up a list from her desk, she went back to work.

  After lunch they drove several miles to the north of Billings in Charlie's convertible. Sara teased him about owning a wreck, but silently she admitted that even if the wind was a little chilly, it was an exhilarating ride. Charlie was wearing his leather jacket and cap. He was right—it definitely made a statement. Smiling to herself as she noticed the stares from people in passing cars, she decided the costume looked natural on him. All he needed to make it complete was a long white silk scarf.

  It took the better part of two hours for them to finish their tour of the big, empty house. Once a millionaire's retreat, the fifty-year-old building was what an unimaginative ad man might have called a fixer-upper. Sara would have to find the right person for it. With a little love and a lot of cash it could be brought into its own again.

  As they explored, they listed anything that could possibly be a selling point, from basketball goal to hand-painted ceramic tiles.

  Afterward they headed back toward town on the same narrow roads, driving past seas of golden grasses. Sara saw all this, but her mind was still on the house they had just left. She really loved this aspect of her job. Dealing with people was necessary, but the exciting feature, the part that could take up too much of her time if she let it, was the houses themselves. Every time they got a new listing was like Christmas morning for her.

  They had just passed an old-fashioned, gingerbread house when the car made a jerking motion . . . then it sputtered and stopped.

  After a tense moment, Sara turned to look at the man beside her. "You wouldn't really do this to me. You couldn't."

  "Uh-oh," he said slowly.

  "Uh-oh?" She threw up her hands in disbelief. "Is that all you have to say? We're stranded miles from town, and you come up with a brilliant comment like 'Uh-oh.' "

  "How about 'whoops'?"

  "Charlie."

  "Ah, come on, Sara," he said, his cocky smile adding to her annoyance. "It won't take a minute to fix."

  "You mean it's done this before?" she asked, outraged. "And you made me ride in it?"

  "Well... it hasn't done exactly this. But whatever it is, I'm sure I can fix it."

  She stared at him for a moment. "If I say that I have more faith in your car than in your word that you can 'fix it,' will that tell you something?"

  Grinning broadly, he stepped out of the car. Five minutes later, his head appeared over the top of the opened hood. "Okay, now try it."

  She slid into the driver's seat and
turned the key. The engine spun several times but refused to catch. Grasping the steering wheel tightly to keep from screaming, she gave him a look that should have made him drop dead in his tracks—or at least reel a little from shock.

  He slammed the hood down, and, wiping his hands on a purple print handkerchief, walked around the car to stand beside her. "That's what I was afraid of."

  "Is it fixed, Charlie?" she asked carefully.

  He looked away.

  "Charlie."

  "There was a house a little ways back—that cute gingerbread thing. I'll walk back and call Slim the Slime. He's a genius with cars. He'll come out and have it fixed in no time," he said brightly.

  She gritted her teeth. "I don't trust you," she said in a low voice. "I don't trust your car. And I have never—call me old-fashioned if you want to—trusted anyone named Slim the Slime. Call Triple-A."

  The last part of her monologue was said to Charlie's back, and his only reply, thrown over his shoulder, was, "Relax. You take everything too seriously."

  She leaned her head back against the seat and laughed helplessly. One of these days she would kill him out of pure exasperation. No, she admitted silently. She wouldn't do that. She had accepted him a long time ago. And when you accepted Charlie Sanderson, you accepted all of him. Suddenly Sara had the awful feeling that if he ever walked out of her life, she would never laugh again.

  In a surprisingly short time Charlie was back. "All taken care of," he said as he slid into the passenger seat beside her.

  Sara didn't even look up. She let the obvious silence fall between them. Maybe she did accept Charlie and his quirks—she might even like them a little—but that didn't mean she was going to make it easy for him.

  After a while he said cheerfully, "Nice day, isn't it?"

  Silence.

  "Sun's shining, birds are singing. Yes, sir, it's really a nice day."

  Digging an emery board out of her purse, Sara began to file her nails.

  He turned in the seat and leaned forward to watch. "You missed the pinky." Using his index finger, he lifted it to show her.