15 Tales of Love (8 page)

Relieved, she said, “Oh.”

“So, shall we go fight over another book?” When she didn’t speak, he added, “My name is Aaron Weis. Lonely bachelor in search of a lonely damsel.”

She laughed in spite of a resolve not to. She had never heard a line like that one. “Elenora Watson,” she said. “Lonely again.”
There,
that’s vague enough.

He said, “Ah.”

She turned away. “I think I’ve read all of the Nevada Barr’s they have here and will have to find something else.”

“Have you read Tony Hillerman? Or Robin Paige? They both write a good murder.”

“Why don’t you look at what’s there and suggest something?”

He followed her into the stacks.

She found him knowledgeable and willing to talk about a wide variety of mystery authors. She decided to be brave and chose two. He made his choices and followed her back to the desk.

“That was fun . . . Elenora.”

“And thank you, for the help.” She smiled at him and left.

Elenora decided that it was a pleasant interlude, but nothing more. She had a routine to follow, no time for a dalliance, and she could not trust men.

But on the following Friday, Aaron was again by the circulation desk when she emerged from the therapy session, a session she had found more helpful than before, offering her some hope.

“Greetings again, fair lady,” Aaron said. “And did you enjoy your books?”

“I finished one, and I’m halfway through the other.”

“How can you stop half way through a good mystery?”

“I have to when I don’t have time to read.”

He sighed elaborately. “Work does cut into the play time, doesn’t it?”

“Very much.”

“Well, we aren’t working right now, so how about a cup of coffee after you pick out a book? We can talk favorite authors.”

She knew she would enjoy that. It had been a long time, but she hesitated.
Do I want to get involved again? Can I trust anyone? Somebody I don’t know?

He said, “I don’t bite. At least not usually, or very hard.”

She laughed. “And I haven’t heard you bark, either.”

Aaron did talk about authors over the coffee and éclairs in the little coffee shop, and he didn’t pry into her reasons for therapy. He left Elenora at her car with a promise to meet her the following week. He didn’t ask for anything beyond that, so she agreed.

But he gave her something to look forward to. It had been a long time since she’d thought beyond the following day’s routine.

By their fourth sharing of coffee and pastries, Elenora was comfortable enough to talk a little about herself. Aaron had told her he worked in construction, usually operating a bulldozer or some other piece of heavy equipment, and that he had an associate’s degree in business science
, “
in case I ever get around to running my own company, which I never will.” He
had dated a few women in the past, none seriously,
followed the Red Sox faithfully, played miniature golf, and read murder mysteries in his spare time.

“I’m not nearly that interesting,” Elenora told him. “I’m a secretary at the newspaper office, got divorced a few months ago, and I’ve never played golf of any kind.” She added, apologetically, “I never had time. My father didn’t believe in sports or that sort of thing.”
And neither did Clive, at least for me. He had his nights out with the guys. At least he said it was the guys.

“Why don’t we give it a try? What do you do for exercise?”

“Housework, mostly.”

He looked at her over his coffee mug. “How much time can that take? You live in an apartment.”

She sighed and explained the routine.

“So that’s why the therapy session, to break out of the rut?”

She nodded, not looking at him.

He said, “Hmm. How long does it take to do one day’s cleaning?”

She knew she did a lot more than necessary because it had been required when she was young and she didn’t know any other way. “I could probably do each section in half an hour.”

“So, do both day’s cleaning on Tuesday. We’ll go play miniature golf on Wednesday right after work, then have some dinner.”

She felt the tightening in her chest. “I don’t think I could.”

“I think they call it transference. The job is still done, if you do it in the right order.”

She remembered the baking of the biscuits and that it hadn’t affected her.
And I do want to go.
“I don’t know. I suppose I could do the cleaning when I got home.”

“I suppose you could.”

She found miniature golf to be fun, although she came nowhere near achieving par for the course.

“It takes practice,” Aaron said as they left the clubhouse. “I play this course fairly often with a couple of nephews.”

Elenora said shyly, “I’d like to try it again.”

To ease her conscience, she did a quick straightening of the living room before she went to bed. She slept soundly, crediting it to the unusual exercise.

“So what is it with the dirt?” Aaron asked her over their third dinner together.

“It was Aunt Edie,” Elenora said. “I found out later she had mysophobia, a morbid fear of dirt. She mostly took care of me when I was little. I couldn’t have a speck of dirt on my hands or anything.”

“Ah. And what has your therapist said about that?”

“Not much, just to try to work around it, keep telling myself it’s not true until I believe it.” She grimaced. “She said to find a place where I can work in a garden maybe, have some fun getting dirty. I couldn’t.”

He said, “Ah,” again, then asked, “She didn’t talk about rationalizing?”

“What?”

“Turning your fear into something else.”

“How?”

“Remember one of Murphy’s laws: In order to get something clean, you have to get something else dirty. So no matter what you do, something is always dirty, even if it’s the water you wash down the drain.”

She gaped at him.

“And,” he added, “remember that you can get an awful lot of things dirty without getting anything clean.”

“Oh. Where did you learn all that?”

He shrugged without looking at her. “My sister’s problems?”

“Oh.”

Elenora kept the Murphy’s Law in mind and continued to combine the cleaning days, keeping Wednesday for Aaron or reading. She skipped washing the floors on the next Thursday.
I’m only transferring the dirt to the water, not getting rid of it
. It left her uneasy, but she persevered and kept her inhaler at hand.

“It is sort of working,” she told Aaron.

He grinned at her, a grin she was beginning to find very endearing. “So shall we try something more daring?”

“Like what?”

“Take off a whole weekend. Go away somewhere, and skip all the routines.”

She found the idea exhilarating and terrifying. “Go where?”

“Your choice. What would you like to do?”

She said, scarcely above a whisper, “Go to the beach. I went once for an afternoon when I was young.” She looked up at him. “It won’t be crowded now, this late in the fall. And I’d love to look at the foliage.”

“Go for it. I can free up almost any weekend.”

She hesitated, the fear coming back. “Let me think about it.”

She thought about it, long and hard, analyzing her feelings. Both for Aaron, whom she admired and was beginning to rely on for his strength and kindness to see her through her problems, and spending a weekend with him.
Just what will he expect of me? Can I do that?
Is it too soon? Is that all he wants of me
? She knew she needed the vacation to ease some of her aching emptiness, a change of scene to help her grow stronger. Clive had refused to consider a trip to the beach. Or anywhere else not business related, and he said she couldn’t join him on those trips, not even the one he made to Las Vegas for a conference.

With Aaron’s strength, his support, his composure, he won’t mind if I have a bad spell. He seems to know all about them and doesn’t care. He’s been such a big help!
She knew love was close, if she only dared.

She saw the ad in the Sunday paper. A resort on the southern Maine coast had been recently renovated into a four-season facility and was offering special October foliage weekend packages.
That’s only a few hours away, and we could drive up the coast one way and inland on the way back—and the color is only a little past peak here.

She made the reservations before she could change her mind, reserving two adjoining rooms.

“Sounds great,” Aaron said. “Let’s start early, get back late.”

The chosen Saturday was a glorious end of October day with bright sunshine, clear blue sky, and a light breeze, perfect beach weather. They stopped several times on their way north to walk along the water’s edge as the tide receded, testing the frigid water with a hesitant toe. Among the litter of mussel and quahog shells at the water’s edge, Elenora found an unbroken sand dollar.

“I’ve always wanted one,” she said happily. Admiring its smoothness, she added it to the other shells she had found. She smiled up at him. “This is so nice. What I always wanted to do when I was little. And when I got older, too, and never could.”

She wrapped her sand dollar in several layers of napkins and packed it carefully in her bag. “I have a safe place on a shelf for it and will keep it forever to remind me of this trip.”

“We can find more on another day.” He slipped his arm around her shoulders and squeezed lightly. “I put in my order for this weekend. I aim to make it all perfect for you.”

She laughed, responding to his light mood.

They arrived at the resort in late afternoon and found the luxurious accommodations all that Elenora had pictured, large rooms facing a balcony overlooking the water.

On the advice of the reservation clerk, Elenora had made dinner reservations at the café on the observation deck for Saturday evening. “It’s very popular,” the man had said, “especially now with the full moon over the water.”

She had given in to romantic thoughts of moonlight on the beach, walking along the damp sand hand in hand with Aaron.

“The deck is up on the third floor,” she told Aaron as they walked into the lobby. “We can take the elevator.”

He didn’t answer her and when she reached the elevator she stopped and looked back. Aaron was standing still, staring at her, his face suddenly ashy white.

Alarmed by the expression of horror on his face, she asked, “Is something wrong?”

He shook his head, but she could see the sweat on his forehead. “Are you ill?”

He looked down, then up at her, a sheepish grin on his face. “I didn’t want to tell you. I wanted to be the big hero, the one who helped you overcome your fears, make you dependent on me, but I can’t.” He looked away. “The reason I knew about the group therapy—it wasn’t just my sister. I . . . I’m terrified of elevators. They can make me faint, so I avoid them.” He paused. “I stopped going to the sessions. I was too embarrassed. I’m sorry. I’ve failed you.”

In that moment she knew she loved him for admitting his weakness, and she was more concerned for his discomfort than her own. She realized what his help had meant to her, how much she had come to depend on him, how much she wanted to help him as he had helped her, to stay with him.

She could have said, “
Then we’ll just take the stairs,”
but she smiled at him and held out her hand. “Come, hold my hand, close your eyes, and think nice thoughts. We can get through it together.”

SOMETIMES PSYCHIC

Arlena Corwin’s problem was probably minor when compared to some people’s tragedies and the general ills of the world, but because of it, people tended to set her socially apart. She refused to term her ability a talent, but once they had sensed it, people mentally moved back a step, even if they said otherwise. Men friends were the worst, and she wondered if she intimidated them. She hadn’t had a regular male companion in several years, not since Kenny had moved too far away for comfortable interaction and had found another love.

She tried to compensate for the loneliness with work, but it didn’t help very much. She was what she had been born with and she had to live with it, hide it as best she could, and keep hoping somebody somewhere out there would understand.

Arlena could sometimes know the immediate future, but never when it made any difference. She frequently sensed, for instance, before opening the mailbox that she had gotten a rare letter from her brother or one of her favorite cousins, and often—painfully—how a ball game would end if her team were going to lose, in which case she had to continue to cheer and hope along with everyone else. She knew with certainty what she would receive from her parents for her birthday, no matter how they had tried to conceal it.

This forecasting did not, unfortunately, extend to lottery numbers, rain on parades, or election results. She took some good-natured ribbing from relatives who were aware of her ability and asked about lucky numbers or weather for vacation trips, but usually laughed and didn’t believe her answers. She sometimes wondered if there was a way to cultivate the ability, make it into something useful, but where did one find a psychic teacher, the sort one read about in sci-fi magazines?

Arlena had, on a few occasions, known of an event somewhere in town, but hadn’t mentioned it. That knowledge would make her sound odd, suspect even, and certainly not to be believed. Once as she drove past a pickup truck parked beside a back road, she had sensed that its driver was in the woods, dead from a self-inflicted wound. How could she tell anyone that? Who would believe her? Arlena had simply known it, not how she knew it.

When the man was found a day later, she knew it was too late to say anything. But it wouldn’t have made any difference if she had mentioned it to the police chief when she first saw the truck–the man was already dead–and she didn’t want to implicate herself, or her friends.

She had discussed it once with her pastor, an older, understanding woman named Rachel.

“There are many things in this world that we don’t understand,” Rachel said. “Accept the gift as part of you, and it is a gift, and may someday be of use. We aren’t given gifts for no reason. Besides,” she added, smiling, “the scientists tell us that we use only a small part of our brains. Who knows what we are capable of?”

She learned that some of her other odd sensations were not unique. “Sometimes I meet someone for the first time and I don’t like him or her, for no reason that I can see,” she said to her friend Ellie Moran one evening over the coffee and pastries they occasionally shared. Ellie was currently into the occult, including the Tarot and some other arcane forecasting Arlena didn’t inquire about. Until recently, Ellie had been a devotee of a moon goddess. Arlena always found her interesting, but had never discussed her ESP experiences with her, nor did she intend to do so.

Ellie waved a carefully manicured hand at her. “That just means you met him in some other life and he did you wrong, or something. I know lots of people who have had that feeling sometimes, including me. It’s like walking into a new place and getting the feeling you’ve been there before. A past life thing.”

Arlena laughed. That idea was interesting, but she didn’t believe it. “I must have known some pretty miserable people.”

“Didn’t we all?” Ellie asked.

On Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings Arlena volunteered at the town library, doing whatever the librarian needed. The job was a pleasant break from her regular, and frequently boring, work as an assistant office manager for a wholesale food company, and it brought her in contact with other kinds of people. She kept hoping that she would finally meet that someone who would understand and accept her as she was and the library seemed a good place to look.

Supper hours on Wednesdays were usually slow, with few patrons dropping by until after seven. Consequently, she was surprised by the man who wandered in around six. She thought of him as “wandering” since he appeared lost.

She said, “Hi, is there something I can help you with?”

He turned toward her and she realized that she had seen him in the library before, but had never spoken to him.

“Maybe.”

“What are you looking for?’

“Something to read while I’m on call at the ambulance bay.” He smiled slightly. “Something light.”

“Mysteries? Crime stories?”

He shook his head. “I get enough of that in real life, and the author usually doesn’t get it right. They make it sound exciting but it’s either routine or awful.” He paused a moment. “Maybe something science fiction. Fantasy maybe?”

Arlena smiled. “Sure. They’re over here.” She turned away and led him into the stacks.

He finally selected three fantasy novels. “In case one doesn’t hold my interest. Some nights are pretty quiet.”

Arlena took the chosen books to check them out. “Do you have a card? A patron number?”

“Oh, sure. I’m Phil Meyer, live in town, number 276.”

She handed him the books. “I’m Arlena Corwin, and I volunteer here sometimes.”

“Us volunteers,” he said. “I started that way. But it kind of grows on you.”

She considered him after he had gone, and decided he was good looking in a pale kind of way: very blond, fair to almost whiteness, tall and thin, a young thirty-something. He was in her age bracket, but totally opposite to her more solid brunette darkness. Being between relationships, as she sometimes thought of herself, had left her down on men in general, and at loose ends. Kenny’s departure left her thinking of men in the abstract, not as particular people. She wished her psychic ability could predict relationship outcomes, but it didn’t. Phil didn’t raise any negative feelings, though
. I must not have known him before.

She went back to arranging the kids’ books and didn’t think of Phil Meyer again until he showed up on the following Wednesday.

“These were pretty good,” he said. “I’ll try a couple more.”

Arlena noticed that he really smiled this time, a very nice smile that extended to his gray eyes.

He asked, as he handed her his selections, “Do you work here every Wednesday?”

“Usually, and Saturday mornings.”

“Um. I work on Saturdays, usually on call.”

She considered how to casually continue the conversation, but he turned away and didn’t say anything else. She thought about asking around about him, but didn’t. If he lived in town, somebody she knew must know him, but she didn’t pursue it.

But on the following Wednesday, he was back at the library again, and she realized she was pleased to see him, and that she had been subconsciously waiting for him.

“These worked for me,” Phil said, handing her the three books, “but do you have any other suggestions? This space stuff can get tiresome, and I don’t like the alternative history idea. If I’m reading Civil War, I want the North to win.”

“So do I. I read biography, local history.” She hesitated. “Some romances if I like the author, and what they call cozy mysteries, but in those the protagonist is usually a woman. An amateur and somewhat inept.”

He laughed. “That doesn’t sound like my thing, but let’s look at some history.”

He had chosen two books when his pager beeped. He reached for it, looked at it, and said, “Damn, I have an ambulance call.”

Startled by the pager, Arlena said, without stopping to think, “It’s an accident out on the River Road. Two cars. And somebody’s hurt.”

He looked up and stared at her.

Flustered, she stammered, “It just came to me. Things do sometimes.”

He put the pager back in its holder and turned toward the door. “Yeah. I’ll pick up the books later.”

She watched the door close behind him, felt his skepticism, and was hurt, but not surprised.

Well, that’s the end of whatever that might have led to
.
Why couldn’t I keep my mouth shut? What must he think of me, especially if I’m right?

She knew she was right. She almost always was. It was scary. She hoped the person in the accident was not too badly injured.

If Phil came back for his books, it was at a time she wasn’t at the library, and she didn’t see him again.

On a nice Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks later, after she left the library, Arlena drove to her parents’ home, located some distance from the village on a back road. She intended to visit for a while, but they weren’t at home. She was met in the yard by the family German shepherd, Prince Hal, carrying a well-chewed Frisbee.

She accepted the disc and threw it across the lawn. The dog bounded after it and brought it back. He dropped it at her feet and stood expectantly, wagging his tail, waiting for her to throw it again.

“Sorry, Hal,” she said, “I’m not up to games right now, but, if you’d like, we can take a walk. I need some fresh air and exercise.”

Hal was more than agreeable. They walked along the dirt road, the dog running back and forth, inspecting the shrubs along the road, nosing happily into the weeds. A car came toward her, an older model sedan in a startling shade of turquoise blue. The car slowed as it passed her, and she saw that the driver was a middle-aged, beginning-to-bald man. She didn’t know him. He stared at her as he passed, making her uncomfortable. She walked on, gripped by a sudden chill along her spine.

In a few minutes the car came back, and slowed beside her. She looked at him and was suddenly swept by revulsion, a sense of evil. She stepped to the side of the road and began walking faster.

The car kept pace with her, but she determinedly ignored it. The car window was open and the man was leaning out of it, his hand almost on the door handle. “Wait,” he said, “I want to . . .”

Another car came along, one Arlena recognized as belonging to a village resident. The driver glanced at her as he slowed to pass, then nodded at her but didn’t stop.

Prince Hal came back from wherever he had been and stopped beside her. He stared at the man, growling, which surprised Arlena; Hal generally loved everybody. The man looked at the dog and pulled his arm back into the car. “I’m looking for Bowden Road,” he said, stammering a little.

“Just keep going to the stop sign and turn left. It’s a little ways.”

Hal bared his teeth, growling deep in his throat.

“After you turn left, it’s out that way a mile or so.”

The man revved his engine and sped off, spraying gravel. Arlena put her hand on Hal’s head. “Thanks, buddy,” she said. “I didn’t like him, either. There’s something bad about that guy.”

The dog stayed beside her, walking with her until they were back home.

She remembered Ellie’s comment about meeting people from other lives and laughed to herself. Pure imagination, but the feeling of disquiet stayed with her. Her parents had returned from shopping, and she stayed for tea.

Two hours later, on her way home, she stopped at the convenience store in the village and was surprised by the unusually large number of people gathered there.

“Little Doria Smith has disappeared,” the clerk told her, obviously enjoying being the purveyor of bad news. “She was supposed to be home a couple of hours ago. They’re out looking for her.”

She recalled the girl as being about ten and lived near her parents’ home, farther out on the same back road.

“She left her uncle’s house to ride home but she never got there,” the clerk said. “They found her bicycle in the bushes beside the road a little while ago.”

A cold sickness settled in the pit of Arlena’s stomach. She asked, “A hit and run accident maybe?”

The clerk shrugged and turned toward another customer. “The police aren’t saying.”

Arlena took her bread and milk and went back to her car. In spite of a growing reluctance to do so, she drove to her parents’ home and then past it. About a half mile farther on, she saw several people in the road and two police cruisers parked by the roadside. There was an ATV on a trailer behind a pickup truck. She drove slowly past them, and noticed an old woods’ road on her left, an over grown track left by some long ago logger and now used by hunters and hikers. Doria’s bicycle was in the ditch to one side.

She knew then, with chilling certainty, where Doria was, and that no one would find her. She pulled to the side of the road and stopped to consider it.

What can I do
?
If I tell them, they will think I had something to do with it. If I don’t, she could die there. And who would believe me anyway?

She sat in her car, caught in a fit of violent shivering. An ambulance passed her slowly and parked in front of her. Two men climbed out. One, she saw, was Phil Meyer. She recalled that he said he worked on Saturdays. She got out of her car and walked toward them, still uncertain about what to do.

She said, “Phil?”

He turned toward her and stopped, looking closely at her. “Are you okay, Arlena? You look sick.”

She asked, knowing the answer, “No sign of Doria?”