Happiness Key (17 page)

“That’s a little like diving in to save a dolphin,” Gladys said. “Bay’s the star of our swim team.”

“Swim team.” Now Tracy remembered the introduction to the woman in the Speedo. Joan Somebody or other. Swim team coach. The noise next door had been practice, not classes.

“Well, okay, I didn’t know,” Tracy said. “But better safe than sorry. I really didn’t have time for a swimming test.”

“You hired a real corker here,” Mr. Mustache told Gladys, finally sucking in enough air to speak. “Nearly knocked us over, every one. And it’s not the first time she’s been trouble for us!”

Tracy wondered if employees got severance pay after eight hours on the job.

“Nonsense,” Joan said, in a voice three degrees chillier than Tracy’s. “She saved the three of you from going down like bowling pins.”

Joan still hadn’t released Bay, and now she turned back to him. “And that was it. We’re finished. This young man is off my team. For good. And I would suggest he be banned from the summer program, too.”

Tracy had been with her right up to that point. But she was watching Bay’s expression. She expected tears, pleas, but Bay looked triumphant. For some reason, that moved her more.

She reached over and gently loosened Joan’s grip on the boy’s shoulders. Then she bent over so she and Bay were eye-to-eye. “That’s what you’re after, isn’t it, kiddo?” she asked quietly.

He squinted at her, his gaze rebellious now. “I hate this place. I hate everything here. I don’t want to be here.”

“That’s not true,” said a masculine voice, and not one that belonged to any of the old men.

Tracy recognized the drawl. She straightened and turned to Marsh, who was standing, with his arms folded, next to Gladys. He had probably dropped in to see his son swim, then taken the necessary detour. “What’s the alternative if he doesn’t come here?” she asked.

Marsh was in his official lawyer garb again, and he was glowering. “A babysitter.”

“No!” Bay wailed. “No! I’m going to New York.”

“So that’s the deal,” Tracy said. “He’s trying to get kicked out so he can spend the summer with his mother.”

“It appears so.”

“Mr. Egan, is there a place for Bay in New York?” Tracy asked. “Will his mother take him?”

Marsh’s frown deepened. “I don’t think this is the right—”

She waved him to silence. “Bay needs to hear the truth loud and clear, and witnesses won’t hurt. If his mother can’t take him—” she very carefully did not say “won’t” “—then he needs to understand that. Infuriating me or Joan won’t buy him a ticket to Manhattan. And running away won’t help, because his mother will just send him back. If I understand things, Bay has two choices. Being here, where he can enjoy himself for the summer, or stuck at home with a sitter.”

Marsh did not look grateful, but he gave a curt nod. “Bay already knows New York is out of the question. His mom is going to be traveling on business for most of the summer.”

“I could go with her!”

“She is not going to leave you in hotels by yourself,
Bay. It’s just not going to happen. She’s told me, and she’s told you.”

“Now look,” Tracy said, leaning down so she and Bay were eye-to-eye again, “I get what you’re doing. And really, you get an A for effort. I can see a lot of planning went into this. But can you see this is just not going to work? Causing all this uproar isn’t going to get you anything except eight hours of Nickelodeon every single day. This is your last chance to turn things around.”

He was blinking back tears. “Why do you care?”

She considered. “I have no idea. Really, my life will be a lot easier if you don’t come.”

He appeared to consider that. “So…what do I have to do?”

“Grovel.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Say you’re sorry and really, really mean it. Then tell us you’ll try to be on your best behavior. Because, you know, if you’re not, you’re out of here. And make no mistake, kiddo, it will be my call. I don’t feel sorry for you, and I can evict you from this program without breaking a sweat.”

“I just wanted to go to New York.”

She had the oddest desire to put her arms around him, an inclination so foreign that she almost didn’t recognize it. “Yeah, I know. But let’s put your talent for planning to better use, okay?”

He was silent for so long that she thought he wasn’t going to apologize; then his shoulders drooped. “I guess I’m sorry.”

“You guess?”

“Yeah,” he said without looking at her. “I’m sorry. And I will, you know, be nicer.”

She straightened and looked at Joan, pushing strands
of wet hair off her cheeks as she did. “Will you give Bay one more chance?”

Joan sighed. “I was sort of counting on him for the butterfly at our next meet.”

“He’s that good, huh?”

“He’ll be good if he gets his act together.”

“Gladys, what do you think?” Tracy halfway expected Gladys to say she thought Tracy ought to clean off her desk.

“I think Bay can stay.” She crooked a finger at Tracy, and while Marsh went to his son and put his arm around Bay’s shoulders, Tracy joined Gladys, who was walking back toward the courts. With relief, she saw that the old men had disappeared.

“I think you can stay, too,” Gladys said quietly, “but now the shuffle board is gunning for you. They have clout. Find a way to keep them happy. You understand?”

Tracy wondered how her life had come to this.

By the time a bedraggled Tracy drove home, showered and dressed, then drove back into town to buy what she needed to entertain Lee, she wasn’t even sure she wanted company. But explaining how she had ended up in the rec center pool fully clothed sounded ridiculous. So she shopped for brie and fresh fruit, chilled white wine and the ingredients for vodka martinis. The supplies put a hole in her budget, but she reminded herself that she had a job now. Until the next catastrophe.

There was just enough time to finish making herself and the house presentable before Lee tapped on her door. She let him in, admiring a patterned blue silk shirt that brought out the mesmerizing blue of his eyes.

“I couldn’t resist,” he said, holding out a grocery bag. “These just came out of the water, and the sauce is my favorite. It’s made locally.”

She kissed him on the cheek and took the bag. Inside she saw steamed shrimp and a jar of cocktail sauce. “What a treat. I just realized I’m starving.”

“Were you planning to sit outside? I can take everything out.” He followed her into what passed for a kitchen.

“Let’s put the shrimp on a platter with a bowl of sauce.” She gestured to the counter. “I have cheese, fruit, crackers. It’s starting to sound like a meal.”

While she opened the wine, Lee deftly assembled everything. They discussed the martinis, but agreed to kill the bottle of wine instead.

In a few minutes they were sitting at the funky old metal table that had come with the house. Tracy had covered it with a forest-green cloth, and filled the center with an assortment of flowers and candles from the grocery store. Now she lit citronella candles that were scattered in some of her larger shells around what passed for a patio and settled across from him.

Lee had already poured the wine. “To neighbors.” He lifted his glass.

“I never thought I’d be toasting to that.” They clinked.

“Well, you were a surprise, too. I never expected a beautiful woman to move into this place.”

She smiled the smile she’d learned at her mother’s knee. “The beautiful woman didn’t expect it, either.”

“You’ve had a lot of changes in the past few years.”

“It took upheaval on a grand scale to make me look at my life.”

“So are you? Looking at it?”

“Well, occasionally.” Since self-examination was still relatively new for her, she hated to discuss it like a hobby she really wasn’t very good at yet. “And how about you? You’ve had a lot to cope with.”

“Let’s toast to moving on.” They clinked again.

They chatted about his day, then the houses he hoped to sell, the dismal state of the Florida economy, the cost
of gas. The shrimp was gone, and the wheel of brie she had drizzled with butter and sprinkled with sliced almonds was almost a memory, before they pushed away from the table.

Tracy had indulged in two glasses of wine. Considering she’d eaten very little all day, the wine had gone straight to her head. Lee, too, seemed more relaxed than the wine warranted. The slightest thing sent them howling. She finally told him about diving into the pool to rescue a boy who could probably swim circles around her. When he laughed again, she had to admit that now, hours later, it
was
kind of funny.

By this time the sky was almost dark, with only vague tracings of light where the sunset had been. Tracy had turned on the radio. Now the local oldies station was playing disco hits from the seventies and eighties.

“You weren’t even born yet,” Lee said, when she started to hum along to “Jive Talkin” by the Bee Gees.

“When I was little I used to entertain my parents’ friends doing songs and dances from
Saturday Night Fever.
I was supposed to be the disco Shirley Temple, only I can’t sing.”

“Well, I was in high school, and I won the disco contest.”

She giggled. “Did you have a white suit, like John Travolta?”

“You’re laughing at my white suit?”

“Are you kidding? I bet you were hot. I bet all the girls wanted to dance with you.”

He got to his feet. “Come here and find out.”

Now she really was laughing. “No, really?”

“You can sing along.”

“‘Night fever, night fever…’”

“You’re right, you can’t sing.”

“I play a mean game of tennis, though. My mother capitalized on that with more success.”

He held out his arms. “Let’s see if you can dance.”

She accepted the invitation as if they had always slow danced together under a whirling glitter ball. Now Chris de Burgh was singing “Lady in Red,” and Lee pulled her close.

“We can save the spins for later.”

She snuggled against his chest. His body was hard and lean. She hadn’t forgotten how much she liked the feel of a man holding her tight. CJ hadn’t been much of a dancer, and after the divorce, the possibilities for dance partners had dwindled right along with her financial prospects.

“You would look great in red,” he said.

“I’ll wear it next time.”

“You look great in anything.” He rested his cheek against her hair, and they moved slowly to the music.

Maybe she should have stopped at one glass of wine. She was feeling woozy, or maybe that was just the effect he was having on her. She liked everything about this. The way he held her. The way he smelled, something faintly spicy and expensive, definitely not overdone. And the faint physical suggestion that he might be as turned on as she was.

The song ended at last, and the deejay, a woman with a sensuous voice, began to chat.

Tracy stepped back, but Lee didn’t release her.

“Want to wait for the next one?” he asked.

“What’ll we do in the meantime?”

When he kissed her, his lips were warm and practiced. He tasted like brie and shrimp and the sweet tang of a moderately priced sauvignon blanc. She leaned into him
and kissed him back, and while the kiss lasted, she forgot everything that had brought her to this place.

She was ready for another, convinced she needed at least one more, but when he started all over again, she found herself moving away. She had taken the step backward before she realized it. He looked puzzled, and not pleased.

“My head’s spinning,” she said. “Long day, too much to drink.”

“That’s one explanation.” The frown turned into a smile, seductive and very masculine. “There could be a better one.”

“Definitely that, too.” She struggled to put her feelings into words. She was still surprised at her own reaction. “I like you. I like kissing you. I’m just not ready for more tonight.”

“Well, that’s a shame.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

“I understand. It took me time to get over Karen’s death.”

“I guess divorce—” She cocked her head, realizing what he had said.

He seemed to realize it, too. “Not that I’m over it,” he said. “It’s just not as immediate. Something like that takes forever, I guess.”

“I guess.” She thought that was a perfectly adequate explanation. He couldn’t have meant to sound blasé about his wife’s tragic death only, what, a year ago?

“It’s just that at some point, you have to start moving on,” Lee said. “Even when you’re still hurting. I guess I’m starting to.”

She was not mourning her spouse. As she thought about it, she realized that, instead, she was mourning her own culpability, her acceptance of a marriage that had
been a balloon filled with hot air. When the balloon exploded, there was nothing left to keep. And she didn’t want to make the same mistake. She wanted to believe she had taken something away from her divorce besides Happiness Key.

Lee glanced at his watch. “If I leave now, I can still say good-night to Olivia. She worries when I’m home late.”

She didn’t apologize. They’d had fun, then she’d slammed on the brakes, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t hit the accelerator in the future.

“I’m so glad you came,” she said, and meant it.

He smiled, and his gaze lingered on her lips. “So am I.”

As they rounded her cottage, they chatted. “I did want to ask you something,” she said at the edge of her lawn. “I know you worry about Alice. It’s one of the things I like so much about you. But she really seems to come alive when she’s with us—us being the neighbors.”

“Really? When has she been with you?”

She explained about the impromptu memorial service for Herb. “She brightens up when she contributes,” Tracy said. “I know you’re afraid she’ll get more confused, but I hope you won’t mind if we involve her a little in the search for Herb’s family. It seems to do her good.”

“I think it’s wonderful you want to help.”

“Good, then you’re fine with it.”

“I wish. But I’ve seen this up close too many times. She has good days and bad, but I can tell you that the moment she feels any pressure to perform, she falls apart. She regresses. Sometimes we don’t hear a word from her for days.”

“That’s awful.”

“I don’t want relapses. You can understand? We take
things a step at a time. I stay in close touch with her physician.”

“I promise we won’t put any pressure on her.”

“It’s probably best to keep something of a distance. Until she’s better and seeks you out on her own.”

Tracy didn’t explain that Alice had done just that. She heard the distress in his voice, and the concern, and she didn’t want to trouble him more. But she thought Lee was wrong. Alice had seemed more confident after spending time with herself and the others. She hoped if that continued, and Alice continued to enjoy being with her neighbors, it would only help. By then, Lee, too, would see the difference.

She rose on tiptoes and kissed him on the lips. “Thanks for the shrimp.”

He put his hand behind her head and kissed her again. “Thanks for the wine.”

With regret, she watched him walk away. Still, it was regret mixed with something else. She thought that extra ingredient might spell relief.

Wanda liked it when the men who regularly called SEDUCED graduated. That was how she thought of it. Sometimes they found a real flesh-and-blood woman they could spend time with. Sometimes they moved into retirement centers or assisted living, where there were better cures for loneliness than telling stories of sexual prowess to a woman they would never meet.

In the past month, two of her regular customers had moved on. Unfortunately, one had been due to a fatal heart attack, but luckily not while he was on the phone with her. Lainie had broken the news, and they’d held their own private moment of silence before Lainie gave
her the numbers of a couple of new men who sounded as if they would be Wanda’s type.

She always put her oldest customers at the top of her list, and they knew it. A man grew to trust her. He knew she would be there when he needed the contact. So she was cautious about accepting new callers. Tonight, though, with two recent vacancies, she blocked her own number, as she always did, then tried the first number on her new list. The phone rang five times, and she got a recording. The voice was a woman’s, an old one at that. Since Wanda wasn’t in the habit of leaving her name and number on answering machines, nor in the habit of talking to married men, if she could spot them, she hung up, scratched him off her list and tried the second.

The telephone rang three times before a man picked up. He sounded far away, and Wanda wondered if he was on a cell phone.

Wanda started every conversation the same way, by making it clear exactly who she was and why she was calling. Her greeting was also a warning that the client was now being charged by the minute.

“You’re being seduced,” Wanda said.

“I was hoping I would be.”

The man had a gravelly voice. She pictured Batman from the most recent movie and hoped this guy was half as good-looking as Christian Bale.

“So what are you doing?” she asked. “Me, I’m lying on the sofa, wearing my favorite nightgown.” She never said negligee anymore, because once, when her mind had wandered to the way Ken was neglecting her, she’d mistakenly called it a negligent.

“I’m sitting in my office, staring out the window.”

“This a work number?”

“You don’t have to worry. I’m all alone here. Nobody will overhear us.”

“Well, that will be up to you. I can’t control that end of things.”

“Tell me about yourself.”

Of course she knew better than to tell the truth. “Who do you want me to be? I can be a blonde. A brunette. I can look like Julia Roberts or Christie Brinkley or even Madonna, only not in one of those pointy bra things.”

“Who do you
really
look like?”

Carol Burnett popped into her mind—Carol Burnett as the beleaguered Eunice, at that—but that hardly fit the situation. “Blond, sleek and sexy. A woman you
don’t
want to take home to your mother.”

“Too bad. I’ve always liked the homemaker type.”

“Blond, sleek and sexy in an apron, then. And your mama still wouldn’t like me, but only because I cook better than she does.”

“So what do you like to cook?”

“Pies,” she said, without screening her answer.

“Man, I love a good pie. Tell me about them.”

This was certainly unique, but Wanda knew that every man got into the calls at his own speed. And this was refreshing for a change. She was tired of describing more intimate parts of herself that did not exist.

“Key lime’s my very best. But I bake a coconut cream that’ll make you think you died and went to heaven.” She didn’t add that the last one had almost sent her there. Vomiting for two days was not in the least romantic.

“Anybody ever done that? Died and gone to heaven while you were talking to them?”

“Not died,” she said coyly. “But a man or two’s said these phone calls are heaven-sent.”

He laughed, a laugh as husky as his voice. “I like a woman with a sense of humor.”

She filed that away. Not everybody did. Some men were sure you were laughing at them. This one had a stronger ego.

“Tell me about you,” she said. “What are you like? What
do
you like? I’m here, just listening away.”

“This doesn’t get old?”

“If it did, I wouldn’t do it.”

“It doesn’t bother you that you can’t see me? That you can’t tell a thing about me?”