Misplaced Innocence (8 page)

If there had been even a hint of disappointment it ruptured quickly into another million-watt smile when he said he couldn’t stay but would have really liked to. Not for the first time, Jared wished he had it in him to be utterly cruel and destructive so he could run around breaking all these young things’ pretty little hearts and never feel one iota of remorse about it. But, he knew that wasn’t the case, and so he just continued to stumble along, putting one foot in his mouth after the other.

He made his escape to his car as quickly as possible, waving jerkily at Jenny, an obligatory response to her wave as she stood by the mailbox, waving gaily like he hadn’t just completely blown her off. Of course, he hadn’t really. At least, not to anyone except himself.

He had never been happier to pull up to the dilapidated farm house. He found this oddly compelling, since a little more than twelve hours earlier he had wanted to be anywhere else except crouched on the ugly linoleum floor clutching the back of his head. Well, Jenny Doorman had a way of putting things into perspective for a man. At least he’d gotten a free breakfast and emerged commitment-free from Charisma’s. Every time he looked at Jenny he felt like he was promising her five more years and a ring. He had no intentions of ever giving that to anyone again, certainly not Jenny Doorman. He would be crying himself to sleep every night. Especially if she kept up these panicky phone calls about nothing. Of course, he highly suspected such phone calls would stop if he were somehow committed to her. He tried not to think about that too much, because then having a relationship with Jenny would begin to have some kind of merit, and he really didn’t want to think about that at all. He grabbed the bag of locks from the front seat and headed toward the door.
 

He was surprised to find it locked. After all, he’d lived in Carlton for … well, for too many years really, which was why he didn’t like thinking about how he had somehow managed to find himself back there again when he had tried for so long to get away. Some things, he was learning, didn’t really happen the way they were supposed to, no matter how much planning went into it or how inevitable a happy ending seemed. But, Jared couldn’t remember the last time there had been a break-in in Carlton. In fact, usually neighbors would come by and leave things for each other. Charisma had lived in Carlton long enough to know that. Heck, anyone who lived in Carlton for more than a week knew that. It wasn’t as if it were a big secret.

Jared knocked on the door. No one appeared initially, but he opted not to start picking the lock again. It might take him a while to learn the ropes, but once he did, he didn’t make the same mistake twice.
 

The door swung open, and there was Charisma, smiling brightly and looking overly relieved that he was at the door. “I brought some locks,” he said lamely, thrusting out the plastic bag in her direction.

She took the bag from him and moved back inside, waiting for Jared to follow her. Scruffy greeted him with a wag of her tail and a lick to his hand as Charisma emptied the plastic bag on the kitchen table. Jared watched, fascinated. She was rooting through the locks like she had just emptied a Christmas stocking, holding each one up to the light and studying it.

“I don’t know anything about locks,” she finally said after looking at one in particular for a few minutes.

“Oh?” Jared asked. The way she had been twisting them in her hands and holding their heft anyone would have thought she was a professional locksmith.
 

“Not a thing. I thought the one I had was just fine.”

There was a pause, then another ‘Oh?’ this one drawn out. He watched her continue to sort through the locks. Anyone who thought that lock had been a fine lock really didn’t know anything about locks. But, again, this was Carlton and really, the last thing on anyone’s mind when they were building was what kind of lock would be really effective against any intruders. Most of the time they were worrying about what color they would paint the outside, or whether they wanted wall-paper or paint. Everything else was an afterthought; especially what kind of lock would go on the front door.

She finally stopped sorting through the locks, turning them this way and that in the light as if they were some sort of precious stone, and looked up at Jared. “Well, you seem to know what you’re doing here, so why don’t you just choose which one you think is best. Or ones. We can put them all up, if you want. Whatever you think is best.” She flashed another huge smile. “While you do that I’ll just go get the mail and take a shower.”

She walked away as if that were a perfectly normal thing to say. Had it been Jenny, Jared wouldn’t have doubted it was an invitation. Well, except for the mail thing. He wasn’t sure even Jenny would ever say anything like that. And that was saying a lot.
 

He was sorting through the locks himself, deciding which lock would work best on the door and whether or not he should just line them up one after the other along the doorframe – that would stop anyone, especially him, from ever thinking that picking the lock was a good idea – when she walked back into the house and hurried to the bathroom, her mail clutched to he body. Maybe all the locks were a good idea after all. It seemed like something Charisma would definitely approve of. Certainly, any person who horded her mail and ran to the bathroom to read it, probably would love the idea of endless locks on the door. He could hear the click of the lock on the bathroom door and the sound of the water running. Hell, maybe she even read her mail in the shower. He sighed, grabbed the bag of locks and headed toward the door.

~*~

The hot water hit the tile floor of the shower, drops of water bouncing up and splattering across the bathroom floor. Charisma sat on the edge of the toilet seat, watching steam fill the small bathroom, hiding the ugly turquoise of the tile, as she sorted through the new mail.

She sifted through the junk mail twice, just to make sure she hadn’t somehow missed it. But there was no empty envelope with a smudged postmark. There was nothing that she wouldn’t have expected to get in the mail a week ago, and for the first time Charisma wondered if maybe she was overreacting to the situation. Maybe she had just made the whole thing up and none of this had ever happened.

But, she remembered the envelope, opened and on the floor, waiting for her to pick it up. She remembered the tingle that had surged up her spine when she’d heard the lock on the door twisting without her permission. That had been real enough.
 

She sighed and tossed the mail into the wastepaper basket before undressing and stepping into the shower. The hot water eased some of the tension out of her shoulders and back, and washed away the past few days.

She stepped out feeling markedly better, and smelling like vanilla instead of fear and anxiety. She pulled on her faded blue jeans, one of the many spattered with paint and stains, and a dark t-shirt. As long as Jared was here, being productive, and more or less protecting her from her imagination, she was going to sit down and do some painting. A woman had to work, even if she didn’t want to. She sighed, wiping the mirror clean so she could see her reflection and pulled her hair into a less-than-tidy ponytail.

Scruffy was stretched out on the floor next to the front door. Even from the hall, Charisma could hear Jared cursing under his breath and mumbling beneath the sound of metal scraping on metal. He was hunched down next to the dog, a screwdriver in one hand as he studied his finger. As an afterthought, Charisma brought the box of Band-Aids from the bathroom.
 

“Here you go,” she said, tossing the cardboard box to Jared. Between the screwdriver, the dog, and the wounded finger, Jared barely managed to catch the box. He mumbled something that definitely did not sound like a thank you, and went back to the door jam, different pieces of shiny metal scattered around his feet and the dog. Scruffy opened one eye lazily, as if acknowledging Charisma’s presence, but didn’t even bother to raise her head. “I’ll be in my office,” she called over her shoulder as she left the rag-tag pair by the door.

“That’s the dead animal room, right?” she thought he might have said, but she didn’t turn back to correct him. Instead, she settled into her spot behind the big drafting desk and started laying out her supplies. Already she felt a little more calm, and by the time she had paper in front of her and brush in her hand, everything slipped away and she felt, for the first time in a long time, normal.

Jared leaned back to admire his handy work. Now there was a piece of beauty. One lock after another, different finishes and sizes, lined the front door. He stopped admiring the door and took a minute to admire his hands, band-aids wrapped around multiple fingers and one long scratch across the back of his left hand. He didn’t remember it happening, and he wouldn’t have noticed it except for the trickle of blood that caught his eye. He found himself hoping beyond reason that there were no more doors in the completely sealed house and Charisma wouldn’t ask him to do anything else even remotely connected to a tool box. Apparently, a few years away from Carlton could completely erase all the handyman work he had acquired over the years. It was funny how hired help could really do that to you. That, and a landlord.

He stood up and stretched. He had been crouched on the floor longer than he’d realized, and there was a sudden sharp pain in his back and a dull ache in his legs. The stretch did little to relieve either hurt. Scruffy stood and
 
stretched, too, shaking off sleep and following Jared as he made his way toward Charisma’s office.
 
“Locks are done,” he said from the doorway, trying not to stare at the dead animals lined up in rows, or notice that some of them were wearing ridiculous outfits and oversized sunglasses.
 

Charisma looked up from her paper, putting down a paintbrush to push back a lock of hair that had escaped from her ponytail. She squinted at him, as if bringing him into focus, and he found himself wondering if she wore glasses. Or maybe she squinted at all the boys. What did he know? “Oh that’s just wonderful,” she said, flashing another big smile at him. So big he could see she had a dimple on the left side of her mouth and teeth that were so straight he suspected she might be wearing a retainer. “Was it difficult?”

“No, not difficult at all,” he said, but felt her eyes traveling over the band-aids on his hands and suddenly wanted to hide them behind his back – an urge he hadn’t had since he was maybe eight and his mother had noticed an entire batch of cookies had somehow disappeared from the counter where they were cooling and his hands had been covered in chocolate smudges. He could almost see the same mixture of disapproval and suppressed laughter in Charisma’s eyes that he had seen in his mother’s.
 

“Is it getting late?” she asked, twisting her body so she could look out the big window. Light had begun to settle into a hazy darkness, and Jared tried to focus on the blending colors instead of suddenly noticing the shape of Charisma’s body beneath the thin fabric of her t-shirt. For someone so little, she had the nasty habit of wearing clothes that completely hid what shape she had. Except of course, when she was twisting around on the high stool, stretching toward the window to see what time it was, instead of checking the clock he could see was on the desk in front of her. The cotton was pulled tight, and he could see the curve and fullness of her body beneath the material.

He snapped back to things other than Charisma’s body beneath the t-shirt when he noticed she was staring at him expectantly. He had the sneaking suspicion she had asked him a question he had failed to hear and answer. “Sorry?” he said.

She actually rolled her eyes. “I said, ‘are you hungry?’ It’s getting close to dinner time. I’m going to make something to eat. If you would like to stay for dinner, you’re more than welcome to.”

“Oh,” he said, and for the first time, the word sounded weak on his tongue, and he hurried to say something that sounded remotely more intelligent. “That sounds great. All those locks can really make a guy hungry.”

She almost smiled, but didn’t. “Okay, I’ll be right out.” She picked back up the paintbrush and bent back to work, as if he weren’t still standing next to the door, and he knew he’d been officially dismissed. He turned back awkwardly toward the living room and settled down onto the sofa, Scruffy jumped up beside him and heaved a sigh as if she were commiserating with having to wait on dinner until Charisma felt like putting down her work. There was dedication. He reached over and scratched her behind the ears. “Tell me about it,” he said as the dog lowered her head and closed her eyes.

He had almost given up hope of ever having dinner and was reconsidering his decision to stay when Charisma finally appeared from the Dead Animal Room, as Jared was beginning to affectionately call it. No wonder she was so crazy, spending all that time with all those dead animals. He would be, too.

“So,” she said as she opened the refrigerator and started to rummage through whatever he had brought the night before. He didn’t even really remember what had been in the grocery bag. Things had kind of blurred around the time he’d taken the beating with the pot. “What did you have in mind for dinner?”

“Whatever you have in mind to make, I suppose.” He tried not to be offended that Scruffy jumped off the couch and made a beeline for the open refrigerator door. It wasn’t easy, but he knew a dog was a dog and that, at this point, he was about ready to beg at the refrigerator door, too.
 

“I have an onion,” she said, reappearing from behind the refrigerator door.

He waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. “Do you have anything to eat with the onion?”

She laughed, the sound tinkling nicely off the tiled counters in the kitchen. “How’s some spaghetti sound? I’ll throw it in the sauce.”
 

“That sounds just fine.” at least it was better than eating the raw onion alone. She started rooting though some of the cupboards procuring a box of spaghetti and spices and in a matter or minutes the stove was on and dinner was beginning to cook.