Let Loose (3 page)

“In my day, a girl did herself up right for
something like this. Are you planning on that?”

Uh, yeah, well... “I suppose.”

“You suppose? You have a date?”

A great deal more uhing echoed through my
brain.

“You don’t, do you?” The tickets fluttering
in a light breeze, she shook her head.

She looked so knowing and unfairly
empathetic, I had to defend myself. “I have a boyfriend. He’s
just...”

“What? Too busy to take you?”

More head shaking. “If five marriages have
taught me anything, it’s that you can’t let a man take you for
granted. Are you letting him do that?”

Me? Let someone take advantage of me? That
was just... I dropped my gaze to the snow.

“Carol!” she bellowed, causing me to jump and
almost lose my balance on the recently cleared walkway.

The door to the house opened, and a woman
probably pushing 80 herself, but with orange hair that would have
made Carrot Top pea green with envy, peered out at us.

“Carol,” Ethel assured me. “Never turns down
a girl in need. Now get inside and we’ll teach that boyfriend not
to send you off by yourself. You’ll have a team of mushers waiting
on you once Carol’s done with you.”

I stared at Carrot Top’s next of kin and then
back at my Jeep. I’d done the makeover thing before and it had gone
okay, but...

“Get.” Ethel tapped me on the shoulder with
the coyote’s head. Then, after opening the door so Kiska could join
us, she prodded me in the back and forced me into a house that
smelled of stewed meat and massive quantities of peroxide.

The next night, I arrived at the fund-raiser
tugging at my brand new do. The cut was fine, not all that
different from the shoulder-length layered look I’d been sporting
since high school. But the color... that’s what made me wonder if I
should have kept my hat on despite the 80 plus temperature inside
the hotel conference room where the
On Tap for the Silver
Trail
fund-raiser was being held.

The place was packed. Half the employees of
my ex-employer,
The Helena Daily News
, were there. I
started to approach them. Then I spotted the editor, Ted Brown. Ted
and I had an interesting relationship, one that usually involved
him insulting me in some way or another. With my newly blue hair, I
decided looking for another crowd might be wiser and easier on my
ego.

A few feet from them was one of my neighbors,
Craig Ryan. He was talking to some other men I recognized from
auctions, but none of whom I really wanted to socialize with when
we weren’t all holding bid cards.

I was also, however, beginning to feel a bit
awkward. It’s one thing to walk into an auction alone. I was fine
with that, but this fund-raiser was way too much like a party, and
I was beginning to feel like a prom reject.

Rhonda, God bless her, spotted me before I
lost all my moxie and headed back out into the cold. She was
wearing her usual uniform of sack dress and winter foot gear, aka
faux sheepskin boots. Her red hair was loose and shiny and...
normal.

“Lucy!” She stopped, open-mouthed, in front
of me. “Your hair—”

Betty, wearing a hat that looked an awful lot
like my brother’s pet goose, Pauline, sidled up behind her. “Is
blue,” she announced while bending her neck side to side, in an
unwitting impression of the goose.

I waited, my breath frozen in my chest. I
never did anything out of the ordinary with my appearance. Sure I’d
been known to put on a flapper dress at Betty’s urgings, but only
because I knew wearing one at that time, for the jazz fest, would
in no way make me stand out.

How Ethel and her hairdressing buddy Carol
had talked me into blue hair, I didn’t know.

Betty stalked around me, taking in my look
from all angles. “It isn’t Marge Simpson blue,” she noted. “But
definitely...” She pulled me by the arm until I stood directly
under a spot light. “...blue.”

“I—” Rhonda started.

“Love it!” Betty finished.

“Me too!” Rhonda grabbed me by the forearms
and jumped up and down, like a tween at the latest heart-throb’s
concert. “I can’t believe you did this.”

I couldn’t either, but seeing the pride on
both of their faces made me proud too, giddy actually. I laughed
and joined Rhonda in her up and down hops.

And hopped directly into the back of a
lumberjack. Or at least a man with a lumberjack-worthy
physique.

He turned around ten seconds after I did, and
I came face to face with my skijoring friend.

“You came.” A smile curved his lips. His chin
dimple, I couldn’t help but notice, was just as cute right side up
as it had been upside down.

“Yes.” It was all the response I seemed to be
able to manage.

“And she brought friends.” Rhonda, never one
to be intimidated by a chin dimple or any other male-associated
dimple for that matter, moved forward with Betty scant seconds
behind. Both held out their hands.

I stood stiffly in place, feeling awkward and
fighting the urge to grab at my hair with both hands.

Neither Rhonda nor Betty shared my
affliction. They barged on, getting information from my rescuer at
a rate that made my newly blue head spin.

I stood by as he introduced himself,
revealing his name - Martin, and his point of origin - Canada.
Rhonda, of course, had always had an (unvoiced to me) burning
desire to visit Canada, where I guessed she envisioned herself
snuggled in wool and...

“You’re a musher?” she dithered.

My eyes narrowed and my lips twisted. It
wasn’t that I was jealous. I had a boyfriend, after all, but then
so did Rhonda. At least last we’d talked she’d had her eye on some
new man or another. Honestly, it was hard to keep track.

But this male was mine. In a strictly
platonic way, of course.

“Martin,” I announced. “Skijors.” I preened a
bit at that, confident that neither of the others had any clue what
the sport entailed.

“Great exercise,” Betty piped in. “Everett,
my husband, goes out whenever he can with our dogs.”

I stared at Betty open-mouthed. The closest
thing to a dog that I knew of Betty or her husband owning was her
fox stole.

“Well, he did, once, with friends.” She
flounced her boa and tried to look unconcerned, but I was on to
her. And here I’d thought Rhonda was the only predatory female I
needed to watch.

On cue, my best friend moved in. She placed
her hand on Martin’s arm and went for his weak spot. “Are those
your dogs? They’re gorgeous.”

Following her gaze, I saw the three dogs that
had visited my house two days earlier lying on the floor at the
head of the room. All three lay with their snouts on their paws and
their eyes moving back and forth in their heads as they tracked the
movement of the people milling around them.

With more gushing from Rhonda to fuel us, we
moved as a group closer to the dogs. While she oohed and ahhed some
more, I continued the conversation, showing my extensive knowledge
of Martin by sharing that he was also camping at the campground
near my house.

Rhonda looked duly impressed. “In this
cold?”

Martin smiled. “The trailer has a
heater.”

Rhonda fluttered: hair, eyelashes, hands and
voice. “But still... that’s so...”

Her expression finished the sentence for her.
I elbowed her in the side to cut off the actual words.

“Well, last night was my last night. The dogs
and I ran the first part of the trail once. Now it’s Red’s turn.”
At my questioning look, he explained. “He’s The Silver Trail
organizer. We’ve been taking turns running potential legs of the
race. Now that we’ve settled on starting at Moose Creek, he wants
to run that first leg again before I head back to Canada so we can
discuss it.”

He looked at Rhonda and Betty. “That’s why
I’m here, to help Red with the planning. Anyway, tonight I’m moving
into a hotel. Then once Red is confident, I’ll be heading back to
Canada.”

The three of us made matching sad faces.

A man’s voice came over the speakers telling
the poster contestants to move to the right of the stage. Betty
quickly trotted off, leaving me alone with Rhonda and Martin.

The musher, after explaining to Rhonda which
position each of his dogs occupied when pulling a sled, looked back
at me. “That malamute of yours would make a great skijoring
partner.”

“Really?” The idea startled me some. I mean
Kiska was big and obviously a Northern breed, but skijoring?
“Doesn’t that take training?” And the desire to
work
?

“Not as much as you’d think, especially if
you have an experienced teacher.” He smiled.

I glanced around, sure someone had walked up
behind me, but no, the smile was for me. Rhonda, squatting next to
the dogs, cocked her head and raised both brows. I could feel the
questions building up behind her blue eyes, ready to be fired off
at me like peas out of a pea-shooter.

“I go most days. You could join me.”

I didn’t look at Rhonda. I couldn’t, not and
answer too. “Uh, sure.”

The man with the microphone made another
announcement, this one saying that the presentation was about to
begin. Martin excused himself, gathered up his dogs’ leads and went
to the small raised platform that was to serve as a stage.

Rhonda sprang to her feet. “Uh, sure? Did you
just agree to a date? What about Peter?”

What about Peter? It was a good question, but
not one that pertained to this situation. “It isn’t a date,” I
declared, pulling at my hair. “It was just a general invitation. An
‘if you’re around’ kind of thing. He was being polite.”

Rhonda nodded her head in a slow and
deliberate way. “Yeah, keep telling yourself that.” She picked a
plastic cup filled with beer off of a table and took a sip. “When
did you say Peter was coming back?”

“Not until this weekend.”

“So after your skijoring
lesson
.”

The emphasis on lesson was really unneeded. I
was about to tell her so, when the man with the mic bellowed again.
Luckily for Rhonda, it was time for the winner of the poster
contest to be announced, saving my best friend from being soundly
put in her place for her unfair assumptions.

We walked to the stage where Betty was
standing next to two men, another woman and a girl who couldn’t
have been more than twelve.

Seeing us approach, she sidled up next to me
and whispered, “Did you see the competition?”

“Competition?”

“In the poster contest.”

“Oh. No.” I immediately rose on my toes and
tried to see past what I guessed were Betty’s competitors to the
easels lined up on the stage.

“About as exciting as a trombone solo.”

From her tone, I took that to mean she wasn’t
intimidated by the other artists’ work.

“Nothing but dogs and snow. I added a little
pizzazz to mine.”

Betty pushed Rhonda and me forward until we
were only a few feet from the stage. A man wearing a flannel shirt
and khakis stood behind the microphone, and behind him was the row
of posters.

I recognized Betty’s work immediately.

“You don’t see many mushers in pink,” I
commented.

“Or wearing a boa,” Rhonda added.

Betty ran the pad of one finger over her
brow. “Nothing wrong with showing some diversity.”

The man with the microphone introduced
himself as Red Benson, the race organizer Martin had mentioned. He
was also, it seemed, president of the local sled dog club, the
Silver Sleds. He thanked the crowd, then walked around the easels,
giving us a chance to appreciate each work for a moment.

I could feel Betty beside me, concentrating
so hard on her easel that I expected her poster to rattle and shake
as Red strolled past it.

“Our judge this year chose to stay anonymous,
but let’s just say her generosity and history of support is, as
always, appreciated, and to give her time by judging these...” He
glanced over the submissions and for a moment seemed to forget what
he was going to say next. “...works, in addition to continued
financial contributions, is truly generous.”

There were some mumbles in the crowd, a few
titters too. I pressed my lips together and prayed Betty didn’t
pick up on the general lack of appreciation the group of tipsy sled
dog supporters seemed to be sharing.

“And this year’s winner is...”

I bit my lip and held my breath. Betty
clutched at her dress until a few beads popped off and fell onto
the floor.

I glanced at Rhonda and she looked back at
me, both of us thinking the same thing,
if Betty didn’t win
again
...

“
Pretty in Pink
by Betty
Broward.”

Rhonda and I exhaled, while the crowd
inhaled,
loudly
.

Red glanced at the poster and cleared his
throat. “The judge found Betty’s work...” He pulled a card from his
pocket and read, “Lively.”

There were more mumblings behind us, and I
shot a look at Rhonda. She nodded, indicating she was ready to dive
on Betty if things got ugly.

Betty, however, was too busy celebrating to
notice the crowd’s lack of support. She twirled in place, did a
little Charleston step and shook her head back and forth,
performing a literal shaking of her tail feathers.

Then with a wink and a grin for Rhonda and
me, she made her way to the front where she grabbed Red in a bear
hug and posed with embarrassing enthusiasm for pictures next to her
poster.

Ten minutes later she was back beside us,
waving an envelope in the air. “Five hundred dollars and free
dinner at the Lincoln Lodge.”

Looking somewhat relieved at Betty’s exit
from the stage, Red returned to the microphone. Two men removed the
losing posters and added a new poster-sized board covered with a
wool blanket to one of the recently emptied easels.