Home Free (3 page)

“Do you want to come in?” I had a horrible
thought and smacked myself on the forehead with the palm of my
hand, narrowly missing my left eye with the house key. “Oh shit,
you’re not gay, are you?” Look, my husband left me for another man.
I’m obviously not the best judge of these things.

He smiled and shook his head no. “Not gay,
but I have to get up at four tomorrow to start a new job, and after
this morning I’m not sure I’m ready to see you at that hour.” He
bent down and kissed me, just kind of brushing his lips to mine,
said goodnight, and trudged back to the truck. I went inside and
locked the door behind me.

The frightening first impression could
probably be overcome in time. The important thing was that he liked
girls. It’d be much more problematic to overcome not having a
penis, if that’s what he was looking for. I figured eventually I’d
raise my standards to include more than heterosexuality, but for
now, the fact that a guy liked breasts was at least as important to
me as whether he had a job or scratched himself in public.

I woke up Saturday with a plan. Since the
master bedroom was still a construction zone, I was sleeping in the
middle bedroom, but I had been using the master bath anyway. First
on the agenda was a nice, long shower, and I took full advantage of
all of the shower massage’s many uses. I dried off and wrapped my
hair up in the towel turban-style while I did my makeup, including
blush and everything. I didn’t want my mother thinking I was so
unattractive I had driven Max to the other team. I blow-dried my
hair so it was shiny and smooth and sleek, a look that was popular
back in southern California but that was probably still ten years
away from Minter. Minter was stuck in the permed, big-hair heyday
of the eighties.

Next on the agenda was food. I had nothing in
the cupboards and less in the fridge. I went out to the driveway
because I didn’t have enough room in the garage for the Element and
hopped in. I dialed Pauline on the cell phone as I drove.

“Hello?” She sounded sleepy. I checked the
clock on the dash. Seven-fifteen. Oops. Hopefully she was
alone.

“Where do I shop for food in this town?”

“Hello. Shop-N-Save on Olive. It’s Saturday,
right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Okay, good, so your sister-in-law won’t be
at work.”

“She works there?”

“Yeah, she’s the grocery manager.” I paused
and Pauline continued, “Your brother works at an insurance company.
I can’t think of the name, but he’s a partner so it must have
Jordan in the name somewhere. And he’s running for office.” Duh!
I’d seen little signs in a few manicured front yards that said
“Jordan for Supervisor,” but I’d had no idea it was that Jordan.
Probably my mother had mentioned it, but sentences beginning with
Brian
usually faded to white noise in my brain before the
thought could be completed.

“Okay, thanks Paul. I have to go to the
folks’ for a barbecue this afternoon. Wanna come over?” I felt like
I was twelve.

“Nope, I have a date tonight and no offense,
but I don’t consider an afternoon with your family foreplay.” I
couldn’t argue with her there, so I hung up and headed in the
direction of Shop-N-Save.

An hour later, I had a fully stocked kitchen,
right down to the condiments. I had gotten coffee at Starbucks on
the way back and now I poured myself a bowl of cereal and cut up a
banana on it and then drowned the whole mess in two-percent milk. I
ate it at the counter, sitting on a barstool, and then took my
decaf mocha latte and squeaked my way down the hall into the office
to make some money.

The great thing about graphic design in this
day and age is that you can work for anyone, anywhere. I can
transfer files electronically, and with existing clients, I never
even have to show up for a presentation. I can just email them my
sketches and ideas. My goal was to acquire local clients as soon as
I could, but I had enough work from southern California to pay the
bills, at least for now. I picked up a file folder and rifled
through it. First Baptist Church/Temple Beth Shalom in Westminster
had hired me a couple years ago to design their respective logos
and letterheads, and I continued to work for them on a monthly
basis doing layouts for their bulletins and newsletters. It was
basically boilerplate stuff, but I tried to be creative and
innovative in my use of color and design elements. The Jewish High
Holy Days were approaching, so I thought I better get to work on
their materials. I booted up the computer and waited for Adobe
Illustrator to appear onscreen, sipping my latte and gazing out the
window. I could already see little waves of heat rising from the
street.

I was startled by a loud knock at my front
door, and I realized I had been on quite a roll and had lost track
of time. I glanced at the little clock at the bottom of the
computer screen. Wow, one-thirty. I looked out the office window
and saw a red Minter City Fire Department pickup parked out front.
Probably here about the weed abatement notice. The front yard was
crunchy yellow grass, but at least I’d cut it to normal lawn-length
now, and I’d set the automatic sprinklers so they were watering
daily and little blades of green were starting to peek through here
and there. I walked towards the door, yelling as I went.

“I’m coming! I cut down all the weeds in the
back yard, too, and I’ve been watering so it’s not so dry.” I
fumbled with the deadbolt. “Hold on, you can come see for
yourself.”

I wrenched the door open and stopped short,
staring dumbfounded at the man on my front porch. I was pretty sure
my heart stopped beating, and I had to lean against the doorjamb to
keep my balance.

Danny Salazar stood looking at me with the
hint of a smile on his lips. He looked a lot like he had the last
time I had seen him, twelve years ago, only kind of more so. His
jaw was a little squarer, his muscular six foot frame seemed even
more powerful and at the same time a little leaner and maybe
harder, his curly black hair a little shorter. He was half
Colombian and half Irish, and had the bronze coloring of someone
with a perpetual, even suntan. The fire department captain’s
uniform threw me somewhat because I was used to seeing him in jeans
or a baseball uniform. But he could have been wearing a tutu, and I
still would have recognized his eyes. They were brown flecked with
gold, adding to the overall catlike appearance, and though they
were more lined now I would know them anywhere. Danny had the kind
of expressive eyes that, if you knew what to look for, would tell
you exactly what he was feeling. I’d seen them dark and hard as
ball bearings, and I shuddered even now at the memory. But I’d also
seen them warm and soft and playful. Today the smile on the lips
didn’t reach the eyes. Today the eyes were wary.

“Hello, Lex.” Honestly, the sound of his
voice was almost enough to give me an orgasm right there on the
front porch. It was deep and kind of rough and damn sexy. Danny was
the only person who ever called me Lex. He had once called me
Alexis, never Alex.

I nodded. I seemed to have lost the capacity
for speech, something my mother would never believe.

“Are you going to say something?”

“Shit.” I had imagined this encounter
possibly a million times over the past twelve years, and in all
those times, not once did I start out with “shit.” I was beginning
to have a really bad feeling about this.

Danny waved some papers at me. “Can I come
in?”

Duh. I motioned him in and led him to the
living room, where I gestured vaguely at some furniture, indicating
he could sit. He took the couch, and I sat in the chair across from
him and smacked my hand to my forehead to jar my brain into
working, sort of like when you slap a hysterical person to get them
to focus. It worked, kind of.

“So I guess you’re here about the weeds.”

“Well, I do need to sign off on the
paperwork, but mainly I came to check out the rumors.” He was still
half smiling and watching me closely.

“I am getting divorced, I did buy this house,
I don’t have kids or a criminal record, I’m not insane and I’m not
dying. I think that’s about it.”

He raised his eyebrow into a little question
mark and asked, “Jack Murphy?”

I sighed and shook my head. “He’s just doing
some work around the house.”

“Uh-hunh.”

None of this was going the way I’d imagined
it. And I’d imagined it lots of ways. Sometimes, I was righteously
indignant and yelled and threw things and made my point. Sometimes,
he picked me up and carried me off to ravish me like in some
romance novel. Sometimes, I slugged him in the stomach and told him
to go fuck himself. That’s the trouble with reality, I guess, it
never really goes the way you plan. But at least my faculties were
returning and now, in addition to shock and animal lust, I was
beginning to feel other things. Like pain and anger and a primitive
need to hurt back. I knew it was juvenile, but there it was.

“I didn’t know you were back in Minter.”
Let’s get that straight -- I didn’t move here because of you,
buddy.

“Yeah, about three years now. Too many knee
surgeries to keep playing.” He’d been a catcher, went to college on
a baseball scholarship and then played a few years in the majors,
for the A’s. I had seen a couple of his professional games on
television, but it wasn’t easy for me to watch him.

“And the fireman outfit?”

“We like to call it a uniform. I got my
master’s degree in fire science while I was playing ball.” He
grinned like a little kid. “You know how boys always want to be
firemen when they grow up.” He seemed happy, or at least content,
and I felt my eyes stray involuntarily to his hands. No wedding
ring. He caught me looking and shook his head. “I was engaged once,
right after college. Didn’t work out.”

I nodded, and an awkward silence began to
unfold. I glanced at my watch. I didn’t actually care if I was late
to my parents’, but I had too many emotions to figure out, and I
couldn’t do it with him sitting there staring at me and looking
more amazing than ever.

“I have to go, my parents are expecting me
for a barbecue.” Neither of us made a move to stand. Our eyes
locked and held.

Danny spoke, his voice quiet. “You’re still
angry.” It wasn’t a question.

Damn straight. “Angry? About what?”

He sighed. “That I left.”

“Jeez, Salazar, we were kids. Things that
seem so important when you’re seventeen aren’t even a blip on the
radar when you’re twenty-nine. Don’t sweat it. I’m not losing any
sleep over you.”

He kind of looked like he’d been kicked in
the stomach, which was my goal but didn’t make me feel as good as
I’d thought it would. He nodded slowly and stood to leave. His eyes
looked tired, and I thought about stopping him, apologizing and
starting the whole conversation over. I reached for his arm. A key
turned in the lock, the front door opened and Jack Murphy’s voice
boomed into the living room.

“Hi honey, I’m home!”

Unfuckingbelievable. I dropped my head into
my hands and squeezed my eyes closed.

The guys did the macho hand shaking, back
slapping thing and Danny left without another glance at me. Jack
sensed that there was something going on but couldn’t figure out
what and since I didn’t know myself, he cheerily went about
measuring and writing numbers on a piece of paper. I drank a glass
of water to drown the butterflies in my stomach, contemplated a
belt of something stronger before I had to face the family, decided
against it, then yelled goodbye to Jack, locked up the house as I
left and got in the car.

My neighborhood used to be called Gregory
Estates. Even when the homes were new,
estates
was gross
hyperbole. Over the years, as the area decayed, the name fell out
of use. The houses, like most of the houses in Minter, are
one-story ranch style tract homes. My street, Shasta Drive, used to
be a dead-end, which made it nice for kids playing in the street
and worked to keep the property values up slightly. About fifteen
years ago, they had extended the street out to meet the next
crossroad, and traffic got heavier, families moved out and it
became more of a rental neighborhood. There was a meth lab a few
houses down that had been busted a number of times. I was hoping it
wouldn’t explode, as meth labs are prone to, and take my house with
it. The place across from me had two rusted-out Camaro bodies in
the driveway and housed a man who evidently owned no shirts. But
some of the houses had been bought, like mine, by younger
professionals or young families, and the street was starting to
show signs of new life. My next door neighbor, who had come over
with some cookies the first day I moved in, was a single woman
named Debbie who worked at the post office, had a few too many cats
and liked to decorate her yard to the point of the ridiculous. Now
that Independence Day had passed, I was waiting to see what she
would do. I couldn’t think of a holiday between July fourth and
Halloween, but what did I know? She was removing the red, white and
blue whirly-gigs from her lawn as I pulled out. I honked, and she
smiled and waved a little American flag at me.

My parents’ house was about a mile and a half
from mine, in an older but nicer part of town. Twenty-second Street
was an old, wide, tree-lined avenue filled with families when I was
growing up. A few months ago Kevin had finally moved out, the last
of my generation to leave the street, but a lot of the same parents
still lived there. It was a middle-class neighborhood of modest
means, old-fashioned family values and a desire to keep up with the
Jones’s. People parked in the driveways or on the streets because
garages were used as workshops, craft areas or places for the
husbands to hang out and smoke cigars without incurring the wrath
of their wives. If someone in the neighborhood bought a fancy new
car and parked it inside their garage, they would be shunned for
being too big for their britches.