Knee High by the 4th of July (20 page)

I hurried home to
get shaved and perfumed—no beer and eggs in my hair this time—and was ready like a rocket for him. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it 100 percent. It went without saying that this was my last shot at a healthy relationship, of course. If it didn’t work with Johnny, it was the nunnery—or a quick trip back to the Cities to finish my grad program and become a dried up, cat-collecting, fist-shaking, asexual English professor. I had pulled Dr. Lindstrom’s note back out after I had arrived home from the Return of the Chief party:

Dear Mira:

You are missed! I hope you haven’t gotten so involved in the active animal rights movement up there in God’s country that you can’t give us a hand back here. I need a research assistant this fall, and you’re my woman. Pay is meager, but your tuition would be free. Is it a deal? Respond at your convenience, as long as it is before August.

Sincerely yours, Dr. Michael Lindstrom

Smoothing the note on my counter top, I made a deal with myself. If Johnny came tonight, I would give him a chance. I would open up to him in every way I could. If he didn’t show, or he came and turned out to be like every other guy I had ever been with except for Jeff, I was packing it up and moving back to the Cities. No one could say I hadn’t given Battle Lake a chance. But oh, did I hope that Johnny would do right by me tonight.

I tried to read and watch TV but spent most of the time squirming and beaming at my animals. Johnny Leeson was going to be with me tonight. I watched anxiously for the telltale headlights down the driveway, the clock ticking a happy beat. The beat, however, soon became monotonous, and then taunting. At first, I consoled myself by pointing out that Johnny had just said “tonight,” and not given a specific time. Then, I moved on to worrying. Johnny was a decent guy, and he would have called to cancel if he could have. By 11 pm, however, I had decided that Johnny had had second thoughts. Fine. That’s fine. It probably would have had a terrible ending anyhow, with me finding out he was a lousy lover, or emotionally distant and unable to commit to a relationship even though we both really liked each other and had buckets in common, or a collector of toenail clippings.

That’s what I was telling myself as I walked past my front door, angrily ripping off the cute T-shirt I had chosen just for the occasion, the one that actually made me look like I had boobs. When, I wondered fiercely, would relationships with men stop being painful experiences I had to learn from and instead be a nurturing relationship I could grow in? Never. Absolutely never. I rubbed hot tears out of the corner of my eyes, angry at myself for even getting my hopes up. It was the cloister for me, or maybe a job teaching English at a rural technical college.

That’s when the first knock came. I jumped away from the door and pulled my T-shirt back on. I hadn’t heard or seen a car. Then the second knock came, and my heart and loins did a little leprechaun kick. What was on the other side of this door was going to decide whether I returned to the U of M to be Dr. Michael Lindstrom’s research assistant or whether I stayed in Battle Lake a little longer.

Instead of waiting for the third knock, I ripped open the door, naked hope in my eyes. The hope quickly turned to shock, and then confusion. Actually, I shouldn’t have been surprised at the body before me. This was Battle Lake, after all. Anything can happen here, and it usually does.