Talk of the Town (12 page)

"I can't talk serious to a woman wearing a welding mask. I'm sorry. All I can think of is Darth Vader." She closed her eyes and prayed for patience. Then she reached up and removed the hood. "Ah, much better," he said, almost reverently, his gaze brushing over her red hair and clear pale skin, flushed with heat. "So beautiful."

Then he was kissing her. It was a second or two before she realized where the sudden burst of bliss was coming from. With one gloved hand full of welding hood and the other pushing feebly against his chest— and two more hands reaching out from somewhere deep inside her to pull him close and hold him near!— something snapped in the middle, and she came untied in his arms. She dropped the mask as if she were a beaten prizefighter, throwing in the towel.

After all, toe-curling kisses were not meant to be rejected. Really. It was unnatural. Instinctively one gave into the tingles and chills shooting through one's body and the warm coil of need twisting low in one's abdomen. Intuitively one sought the source of the pleasure and allowed an inborn greed—found in all of us—to seek out more of the same delight. Demand it even. And when one's mind was reeling beyond discriminate thought and the sensations began to ebb away, leaving one weak and breathless, it was the most natural thing in the world to rest one's head on a broad shoulder and wonder at the sound of another heart beating as fast as one's own. The most natural thing in the world. Truly. Look it up.

Gary held her in his arms, rocking her gently, sensing the chaos inside her. As a matter of fact, it didn't make much sense to him either. Of the, let's guesstimate and say, one hundred women he'd taken an interest in over the past twenty years, he'd
wanted
to love them all. He'd tried really hard with a couple of them, and had married one once, believing that respect and friendship were as good as it was ever going to get. Then one bright sunny morning he had spied Rose atop a pile of trash, and falling in love had been as easy as crushing an empty cereal box. Did that make sense?

Now his poor Rose was struggling. Not with falling in love, that was happening on its own. He could see it in her eyes and feel it deep in his bones. Nothing in his life felt more genuine or critical than loving Rose. But Rose simply didn't, or couldn't, understand it.

"Maybe you shouldn't fight it so hard," he murmured, her hair tickling his lips. He rested his chin on the top of her head. "Maybe . . . maybe just trying to enjoy it will make it less scary. Love's not always a bad thing, you know." He paused. "I can't tell you it doesn't hurt, you know it does. I can't promise I won't hurt you, because I might. But I can tell you that you'll never know for sure unless you come out on this limb with  me.”

She looked up, as if she had something important to tell him, but then she bowed her head and stepped away.

"I've been out on that limb before. It's not very strong," she said, removing her thick apron and tossing it onto the work table with her gloves.

"No," he said. "You've never been out on this particular limb. You might have tried a couple that were weak, that failed you. But every chance you take is a different limb. It might look the same, but you don't know what it's made of; you don't know how strong it is until you try it."

She had the sudden image of her Tree of Chances looking something like a stock of bamboo in tall grass.

But something in his words rang true in some deep dark pocket of hope she'd hidden away years earlier. He wasn't like anyone she'd ever known before. For one thing, his persistence was remarkable. She knew her cold shoulder had frostbitten a few men's fingers over the years. He seemed impervious to it. In fact, it amused him—which was something else about him she liked. He made her laugh and feel young. She hadn't felt so young since . . . since she was young. Over the past week she'd taken to daydreaming and fussing in front of the mirror, and adding three caps of bubble bath to the water instead of her usual, practical one capful. He'd reintroduced her to anticipation, excitement, sexual desire, and whistling before breakfast. He was almost enough to make her want to shimmy to the top of her bamboo shoot and risk the wind trying to blow her off.

"Rose?" She turned to look at him. It might have been her imagination, but he looked to be standing a little taller, a little straighter than his usual loose and casual stance. The word "determined" came to mind. "You might have noticed that I have ways of getting what I want. My mother says I'm like a junkyard dog with a new bone when my mind is set on something. My brothers say … well, I won't tell you what they say. You might have a fair idea already." His smile was borderline sheepish. "I operate my life by dancing around and talking fast until people's minds are spinning. Then, while they're staggering around, dizzy and out of focus, I do what I want. I build incinerators and get environmental protection laws passed through the state legislature and rezone properties for landfill and . . . well, pretty much anything else I want to do. The thing is, I don't want to bully you into anything you're dead set against. But I'm not going to make it easy for you to get rid of me either. I don't give up without a fight."

If he had a gauntlet—or even a dirty old work glove —he might have thrown it at her feet. But Rose wouldn't have picked it up. She didn't need to. She was ready to surrender.

She was aware of a crushing loneliness within her. A singleness that made her feel small and exposed and defenseless. It was a feeling she'd first experienced when her mother had died. A spectator sensation, as if she were an all-star player watching the game from the sidelines. And here was the neighborhood boy asking the new kid on the block if she wanted to play. Here was a welcoming hand, waving her off the bench and into the circle of the living, the feeling, the loved.

"We're having fish for dinner," she said, walking past him toward the stairs.

"What kind?" he asked, watching her, sensing that he'd won the battle, very aware that the war was far from over.

"Red snapper."

"With capers?"

"Nope. Secret family sauce."

“What's for dessert?" he asked, following her up the stairs.

"Something sweet."

SEVEN

As wars went, theirs was like trying to get a tan by candlelight. It simply wasn't happening.

"Go ahead. Ask him," Lucy said, flicking her fingers first at Rose, then in Gary's direction. He'd taken to hanging around the diner for two-hour lunches, sometimes staying on to have dinner. Within a matter of days, he'd been assigned his own swivel chair at the lunch counter and weaseled himself into a prominent position in Redgroye society. "Can't hurt to ask," she insisted.

"Ask me what?" he said, returning to his seat after a lengthy long-distance call from his office in San Francisco. There wasn't a speck of dust on the old pay phone in the corner these days. Lu and Rose had all but forgotten it was there until Gary started taking calls on it, explaining that three quarters of what he did was done by telephone and one phone was as good as the next. When someone finally asked why he didn't have a cellular phone, he said he'd had four and lost them all.

"Lucy and Martin co-manage the Rangers, and they want to know if you'll try out," Rose said, picking up a set of salt and pepper shakers in one hand and pushing the black metal napkin holder and sugar to one side so she could wipe the counter underneath them with the other.

"Do I have to ride a horse?" he asked.

"It's baseball," she said, working her way down to him. "The Redgrove Rangers. We've come in second place to the Eureka Eagles two years in a row now. This year we're taking them to the cleaners."

"You play baseball?" he asked her, his eyes round with wonder. She also read murder mysteries—his favorite; loved butternut ice cream—his favorite. She thought the dream sequence on
Dallas
was a cop-out; that almost any anonymous, basically honest, apolitical Joe Schmoe with a high school education could balance the national deficit within twenty-four months; that Anita Hill got a raw deal—and he did too. She preferred to get her world news from newspapers and not television; she ate fruit chews at the movies instead of popcorn;
and
she played baseball?

"This girl lives for baseball," Lu said, pushing through the kitchen door, carrying a rack of clean glasses. "She cried for a week when Harley dropped out of Little League and took up basketball."

"Too much pressure," Emma Motley said, straightening the collar of her postal uniform. "He was smart to see that he couldn't play as good as his mother."

"He was eight years old," Rose said in Harley's defense. After so many years she still felt a little guilty for taking him to her games while he was struggling to develop his own skills. "Harley's good at whatever he wants to be good at, which is basketball . . . and video games . . . and anything else that doesn't have a thing to do with his education."

The ten-man lunch rush chuckled.

"So?" Lucy asked, leaning forward to look down the counter at Gary. "Do you like baseball or don't you?"

"Did Matty Mathewson pitch three shutouts in the 1905 World Series? Did Babe Ruth ever clout a hundred and twenty-five homers in an hour? Did Ty Cobb hit over four thousand in the major leagues? Was he the best base stealer ever? Was Willie Keeler—"

"We practice on Mondays and play on Fridays," Lucy broke in. "Six o'clock sharp both nights."

"I won't play unless I can have first base or shortstop," he said, as if he were negotiating a major league contract.

"I'm first base," Rose told him, all but putting up her dukes to defend her position.

"You'll have to try out for shortstop against Joe Spencer," Lucy said. "We don't play favorites."

"Joe Spencer? The guy who owns Mike's Auto Parts? He's only got one leg," he said, trying to get a clear picture of the competition.

"Hell of a mechanic," Danny said, wiping his fingers and mouth free of french-fry salt and ketchup with a paper napkin. "But he's a little slow behind the pitcher. Better in the outfield."

And so it was that the King of Trash became a Redgrove Ranger, her teammate, committed for the baseball season.

It wasn't a great deal of time, but it was more than she'd let herself hope for. She had to keep reminding herself that as wonderful as it was to have him around— to look forward to seeing him each day, to laugh with him, to talk and hold hands and share a sunset with him, to feel his lips on hers and to experience emotions with such intensity that it frightened her, to be so incredibly happy—it wasn't going to last forever. She was determined to enjoy Gary minute by minute for as long as she could.

You see, Rosemary Wickum knew the truth about herself. She was a single. She had no match, no mate, no soul companion. It wasn't the life she would have chosen, but it was the life she got, and she'd accepted the fact that no one would stay in her life forever. Especially if she loved them.

Nobody stayed. Not her mother. Not her father. Not Harley's father. She'd grown up alone. Raised her child alone. It seemed logical and fitting that she grow old alone.

That was probably why she loved Earl so much, even if he was an old poop. And why she cherished every battle, every joke, every hug she shared with Harley. The time they were giving her to love them was a gift, and when they were gone all she would have were the memories.

Gary slipped neatly into that niche as well. She was falling hard and deeply in love with him, but he wouldn't stay. Why would he? Earl stayed because she was living in his house and he couldn't get away from her. She was also a convenience. Harley stayed because she was his mother and for a while yet he needed her. But she hadn't been enough to keep her father from drinking himself to death, hadn't been a good enough reason for her mother to live, hadn't had whatever it would have taken to get Harley's father to marry her. . . . Why would Gary stay?

She was only average height with unruly red hair, and she probably wasn't as strong as Earl said. She had no college education, lived in a gas station, worked in a diner, and dreamed of turning scrap metal into something beautiful. It wasn't a bad life overall. However, upon close scrutiny there wasn't much in her life that would induce a man, particularly one as energetic as Gary, to stick around.

No, her time with Gary was a gift. Maybe something she'd earned after so many years of being alone. An oasis in her journey across life's desert. Whatever. She wasn't going to meddle with it or question it or measure how long it was. It was enough, more than enough, more than she'd expected to be in love again, to feel silly and happy and young. It was a gift.

~*~

It wasn't long before the announced sightings of Rose and Gary walking hand in hand on the beach were as old and predictable as rain in the weather forecast. The townspeople encouraged the two of them to play catch in the street—they were both a little out of shape after the winter. They smiled when they saw Gary and Harley talking and shadowboxing as they walked to the Safeway on some errand for Rose.

Of course, it was Gladys Ford's job to keep an eye on the comings and goings of Gary's pickup truck. She lived in the small upstairs apartment over her daughter's shop: Betty's Boutique, Hair and Nails, Open Tuesday thru Saturday, 8 to 4:30.

"Lands alive, they were doin' some heavy-duty window steamin' in the truck last night," Gladys told Betty first thing when she came up the stairs to check on her mother that morning. "He still ain't staying though. Can't figure it out. Nice, good-lookin', healthy boy like that. . . . Don't know what little Rosie's thinkin', leadin' him on. Lord knows she wasn't playin' hard to get when she got young Harley-boy. Sat in the truck awhile after she went in last night. Must be painin' him some to leave her every night."

"Mama," Betty said, turning red faced.

"Aw, there ya go, Miss Priss. A man's got feelin's, too, ya know. 'Member, I told ya that's how I got my first clothes-washin' machine from your daddy. Didn't touch him for a whole two weeks and presto! There it was all bright and shiny and new come Saturday mornin'." She laughed and slapped the arm of her wheelchair with her hand a couple of times.