Isn't It Romantic? (11 page)

23

I
mitating prestidigitation, Dick reached deep into his picnic basket and produced two baguettes, any number of cheeses, ripe strawberries and pears, a Château Latour 1992, and Tiffany glassware and plates. “Wanted you to feel right at home,” he said. Including all of nature in his widened arms, he said, “Chez Richard's.”

Natalie knelt with him on the blanket, sinking into the soft cushion of grass.
“J'aime beaucoup les pique-niques
.” (I like picnics very much.)

“I have somethin' I wanted to show ya.” And from the picnic basket he pulled out a zip-locked bag. Inside it was an old journal that he opened as carefully as an Empire butter-fly's wings before handing it across to her. With a waiter's screw he twisted out the cork in the Château Latour as he said, “Journal that the Frenchman kept when he was trapping yonder, once upon a time. Had it handed down to me from my great-grandfather. Mrs. Christiansen read it to us in school.”

Natalie read aloud, “
Je suis heureux de
. . .”

“Afraid you've got the advantage of me,” Dick said.

Natalie translated: “‘I am happy to flee an old, tired world, its stomach sour with spite and corruption. In this land I feast on sunshine and wind, wide horizons I cannot reach, skies so full of stars they are on fire. With joy I feel the teeth of ice, the scourging rain, the sun that sears my skin into copper.'”

She was touched. She turned a few pages. While Dick poured wine for her, she translated, “‘My lust was once like weather—fleeting, insistent, little understood. In this wilderness I have density, quiet, and meaning. Here I am never alone. At night the wind tells stories. Nor do I lack for books when I can read the changing plot of the skies.'” She paused. “It's beautiful.”

Dick surveyed the wide countryside of his residence. “Yes, it is.”

She handed the journal back to Dick but he wouldn't have it. “I'd like you to keep it,” he said.

Cherishing it against her chest, she said, “
Oh, merci! Merci beaucoup!
” She hesitated. “
Mais non!
It is too precious. An heirloom. You have kept it in your family for so many years.”

“Kinda like to keep it there. In the family, I mean.”

She understood his implication. She was perplexed.

With some embarrassment at his forwardness, Dick settled onto his elbow and observed her. Natalie demurely declined her head and considered the open palms that were so passive in her lap, as if they were inked with questions that required immediate attention. A stone was nagging his side and his free hand scoured underneath the picnic blanket to find it and toss it toward Frenchman's Creek.

They heard a tell-tale whimper from Pierre.

Natalie got up with consternation and saw Pierre's linebacker build and his wetly see-through Jockey briefs, water swiftly rushing around his ankles, holding his hurt head and weakly smiling in his shame at trying to spy on them. She asked, “
Es-tu blessé?
” (Are you hurt?)

With sudden energy Pierre tore at some fledgling willow trees near the horses. Heavy dirt clods were attached to the roots. “Weeds everywhere!” he said. “I have been taking down them.”

“High time someone took care a that,” Dick said.

Pierre had no idea what to do with the saplings so he pitched them to the side and hit Owen. They heard a groan from him as he stood from his hiding place, also in his sop-ping underwear and not a pretty sight. Owen penitently smiled and said, “We're just cleaning up.” And then he foremanned Pierre. “Looks like we're about finished here,
mon frère
.”

“
C'est vrai
,” Pierre said. (It's true.) And he scowled at his fiancée.
“Nous avons fini
.” (We are finished.)

Owen and Pierre sloshed back to Owen's vineyard.

Natalie faced Dick and knew that all that was about to be said—the hurtful
I cannot
, the healing
Wish I could
—was at the moment impossible to bring up. “We have to talk,” she said. “But not here.”

“We could meet tonight.”

“Yes?”

“I'll sneak away from Owen's party,” Dick said.

Natalie was surprised. “Mrs. Christiansen, she is having a party, too!”

Dick went to get the horses. “You know that bulletin board in the café?”

“‘Good food we charge you for, bad advice you get free'?”

“That's the one. You put a note there saying where and when.”

“When?”

“Yep.”

“No. When shall I put the note?”

“Oh. I'll look for it after five.”

Owen seemed to have had second thoughts as he turned on the far bank of Frenchman's Creek, for he saw Natalie sorrowfully packing up. He yelled, “But you haven't eaten the food!”

Dick yelled back, “You can have it!”

And like a huge dog, the third-string tackle plunged into the creek and hungrily thrashed across.

24

L
ate that afternoon in Mrs. Christiansen's rooming house, Marvyl, Iona, and Natalie were in the yellow kitchen, trying to make ambrosia, but it seemed just a greenish horror with orange, pink, and white things surfacing and submerging as they mixed. Iona went to the sideboard and got out a walnut serving tray and cheese slicer attachment that Marvyl had purchased on the Shopping Channel.

Mrs. Christiansen said, “We don't have to go overboard on the cheeses, Iona. I've never had any complaints with Cracker Barrel.”

Natalie was dismayed but deferential.

Mrs. Christiansen turned. “But this is a party for you, dear. What would
you
like?”

“Oh, please. You should go to no trouble for me. Anything.”

With annoyance, Iona said, “Well, in that case. Cocktail wieners?”

With matching annoyance, Natalie faced her. “
Melon.
”

“Pigs in a blanket?”

“
Oeufs farcis.
”

“Oofs pickled,” Iona said.

She was getting peeved. “Artichokes.
Artichauts à la grecque
.”

“Yuck. What about those whatchamacallits, Grandma. With peanut butter?”

“No peanut butter,” Natalie said.

“So much for ‘Whatever you want; no trouble.'”

Mrs. Christiansen said, “You don't have to have anything you don't like, child. It's your night.”

“
Anguilles à la provençale,
” Natalie told Iona.

“Which is?”

“Eels.”

Mrs. Christiansen was holding up at eye level a wooden spoonful of ambrosia. She turned to face Natalie with concern. “Oh my dear. Eels?”

“Why
not
eels?” Iona screamed. “She's got everything else she wants!” And then she rushed out of the house to the front yard. She executed four different but equally fierce Tae Bo kicks and punches, then inhaled deeply and hurried over to the Main Street Café.

Opal was ironing behind the pink Formica counter while a trucker from Sidney nursed his coffee. Opened before the trucker was an individual-sized box of Captain Crunch cereal and he was pinging crunchies one-by-one off his water glass with his finger. Carlo was hunched at the far end of the counter and was whining over an impossibly complex origami construction.

“What the hell's that?” the trucker from Sidney asked.

“Swan,” Carlo said.

“What's it for?”

“Well, place-card holders, for one.” He took a moment to sit back and get a new perspective on the problem. He surreptitiously eyed a nearby Scotch tape dispenser.

Opal warned him in sing-song, “Cheat-ing.”

Iona snuck into the café through the kitchen screen door, but Opal saw her as she lifted her steam iron. “Iona!” she said. “How's the shower coming together?”

“We're having a great old time,” she said. With some uneasiness she added, “I just remembered a . . . thing I wanted to post.”

The trucker went on pinging cereal against his water glass as Iona tacked her note to Pierre on the bulletin board. She waited by it uncertainly for a moment. Carlo's knees were jiggling as he folded down a wing of the origami and hopefully held it up for Iona's appraisal.

She gave it the attention it warranted, and asked, “Anybody been in here this afternoon?”

Carlo scrunched a little as he confided, as if she ought not to have brought it up. “Opal's in the kitchen. . .
. Crawfish soup?”

Opal asked, “You looking for someone in particular, honey?”

“No. Just asking.”

The trucker said, “
I'm
here.”

“Yes, you are,” Opal said. “And I want to thank you for that.”

Iona left.

After a moment, Carlo sauntered over to the board, unfolded the tacked up note, and read it aloud. “Mrs. C's, midnight. Room number three.”

“Sounds to me like a ron-day-vous,” the trucker from Sidney said.

Opal ironed. “In Marvyl's house? Hah!”

Smirking, Carlo folded the note and tacked it up again, thinking,
Welcome to my spider's web
.

The trucker faced Carlo. “Which door, you say?”

Opal told him, “Drink your coffee, buster.”

Natalie entered the café just as Iona had. She seemed distraught. Opal and Carlo looked at one another. The trucker turned in his booth.

Opal said, “We must be having a full moon tonight.” And to Natalie she said, “How's your day been?”

“Very nice. Good. Excellent.” She hesitated.

Carlo and Opal stared at her. He folded and crimped his origami. Opal continued to iron. Carlo got the fold he wanted, put his hand flat over it, and pounded on his hand with his fist.

Natalie skittishly jumped. She asked, “This afternoon, has anybody been in?”

The trucker said, “
I'm
here.”

Natalie considered him, puzzled but polite. She crossed to the bulletin board and pinned on a note. All perused her. Carlo raised his eyebrows at Opal, who shook her head from side to side. Natalie spun around, as if paranoid, and they all averted their attention. She speedily exited.

Carlo wended his way to the bulletin board and hawkishly peeked at Natalie's note.

The trucker opined, “Time was when a lady had a right to her privacy. Not no more apparently.”

Carlo read, “My room. Number four. Twelve o'clock.”

“One of them group things,” the trucker said.

Opal asked, “Would that be
A.M
. or
P.M
. do you think?”

And then handsome Dick Tupper appeared through the front door, giving everyone a pained smile.

Without enthusiasm, Opal asked, “So, Dick. What brings you here?”

“Wanted to look at the bulletin board.”

“I gotta get me one of them things,” the trucker said.

Dick pulled a handwritten note off the board and looked around as those with him in the café stared. Carlo went back to his origami. Dick asked, “That a peacock?”

“No, it's paper,” Carlo said. “Folded many times.”

“Well. Have a nice evening, you all.” Walking out the door he stopped to peruse the area at his feet. “Cereal on the floor here.”

Opal shot the trucker a look. Sheepishly he commenced returning the Captain Crunch, one-by-one, to their little box. When he completed his clean-up, he held up the box, but when he shifted his feet, they heard a small crackle.

And then Pierre walked into the café in his tuxedo. He seemed stunned to see everyone peering at him expectantly.

“So,” the trucker from Sidney said. “You got a note?”

25

A
t Owen Nelson's bachelor party that night, Pierre was both horrified and fascinated as he looked at the foods: Cheez Whiz, Slim Jims, Hostess Snowballs, beef jerky, caramel popcorn, Chex party mix, Vienna sausages in cans, boxed Ritz crackers with peanut butter pre-applied, Suzie Qs, malted milk balls, mashed potatoes and gravy, French bread pizzas, and, just for Monsieur Smith, escargots. Still in his tuxedo, he sniffed each food item, including the Cheez Whiz can, while Owen, in party clothes, tapped a keg of beer. Hearing trucks drive up, he smiled expectantly and one man after another walked in: Carlo Bacon, Dick Tupper in his finest cattleman's clothes, the Reverend Dante Picarazzi of Saint Bernard's Church over there on Third Street, Orville Tetlow of the highway crew, the huge doughnut lover named Biggy, the trucker fond of Captain Crunch, Bert Slaughterbeck, the winner of the demolition derby, Chester Hartley, who won the Kiss-a-Pig Contest, other Main Street Café
habitués
, and, strangely, the guys in the scuba gear Pierre first saw on the See America bus. Each yelled as he entered, “Go Big Red!”

Orville said, “Wow! You really lay out some table, Owen. Looks like you got the whole shebang here.”

Admiring his food, Owen said, “Well, maybe half a she-bang.”

And Dick said, “Probably closer to a kit and kaboodle.”

 

At Mrs. Christiansen's shower for Natalie, Chopin's piano music was playing as a variety of Seldom's older women clunked their aluminum walkers along the hallway floor and handed wrapped presents to Natalie. She was flabbergasted by their generosity and she smiled as they said, “Good evening!” “What a pretty dress!” “Oh, I love showers!” “What's that I smell cooking?” and so on. Natalie, with each gift, said, “
Merci
.” She said, “It is very nice being queen of The Revels.”

 

Owen hunched forward in his chair and his audience hunched forward on the sofa to hear him over the noise. “A guy scores tickets to a Nebraska football game. Full house as usual, third largest city in the state and so on. All the fans wearing red. Chills run up and down the guy's spine. Tears well up in his eyes. But I digress. The guy notices that amid the hordes there are thirteen empty seats, all in one spot, with one fella sitting alone, smack dab in the middle. Well, he was too curious to let it go so he goes down to that row of seats just before kickoff and he asks the fella why they're empty. The fella gets this forlorn look and explains that he and his wife—”