Wanting Rita (14 page)

He grinned, darkly. “But now, thanks to Rita, we are in favor in this town. Rita has made the Fitzgerald name respectable. Well, at least Rita and my wife are respectable. And Rita is making money and, if she’s smart, she’ll save it; maybe go to New York or L. A. and really hit the big time. Really make some money. Be one of those top models who goes on to be a big movie star. Wouldn’t that be something, Mr. Lincoln?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, squirming.

He sighed deeply and shook his head a little, as if shaking off a disturbing dream. He eased back and sighed again and his chin lowered to his impressive chest. “You kids go on now. We’ve had our little get-to-know each other talk. We’ve had a good long talk, didn’t we, Mr. Lincoln?”

“Yes sir.”

“Go to your movie now.”

Frank looked at his daughter. “And you, Rita girl, look ravishing.”

Rita turned away, in a frown of discontent.

Chapter Eight

My father’s library suddenly filled with sunlight, but by the time I stood, stretched, and blinked away the old images of Frank and Betty Fitzgerald, the sunlight had vanished again. I stepped to the window and watched as the sun played hide and seek with chunky gray clouds. Pushing open the back door, I stepped down onto the red brick patio, took a deep breath and felt a humid breeze. I shaded my eyes, peering at the slivers of sunlight that cast the distant pond in an artificial metallic sphere.

I glanced at my watch. It was nearly 12:45. The estate auction agent was due at 2 o’clock. Back inside, I went to the kitchen, searching the maple cabinets for anything to snack on, shuffling through coffee filters, bags of nuts, packages of chocolate chip cookies (Dad’s favorite) and cans of soups. Finally, I found an old Clif Bar—Crunchy Peanut Butter. I tore it open and munched it while I made more coffee. I felt groggy and lethargic. From Rita’s reproving glare back at Jack’s Diner, it was clear that she didn’t want to see me again. For those few excruciatingly long seconds, she seemed to burrow into me with her probing, wounded eyes, as if working some magic to banish me forever from her world, past and present. But then, what the hell should I care anyway? I had always existed on the periphery of her life, always an afterthought, maybe a distraction, while she slithered through shimmering currents of seduction; the siren, the mermaid, seeking her true hulking beachcombing mate: Dusty Palmer.

Why had I gone to Jack’s anyway? I should have known better. I’d had a grueling week of 13 hour days, with little sleep, and the last thing I needed was to resurrect antique emotions that should have been exorcized years ago.

But it was seeing Rita again “that way” that cut me sharply—that ripped away the stitches, exposing the old buried adolescent sores. You think you’ve outgrown it. “Hey, I’m grown, dammit! I’ve got the years, the degrees, a marriage to prove it! I’ve grown way beyond all that stuff.” I heard the dialogue in my head, like a script from a bad TV movie.

“She was just a girl I dated three times in high school when I was barely 18 years old! I’m 33 now, a respected doctor that people rely on, who makes careful but rapid decisions, who takes control and urges others to do the same. I help heal people.”

My emotions are balanced and mature, my passions “commingled,” as
Hamlet
said.

And blessed are those whose blood and judgment are so well commingled that they are not a pipe for fortune’s finger to sound what stop she please. Give me that man who is not passion’s slave and I will wear him in my heart’s core.

I poured coffee into my favorite old mug: the big red one. Printed on it were the words “I Don’t Like Nobody Who Likes Me.” I grinned, reflectively. Rita was right. I had been a little shit.

I stared out the windows at the scattering sky, studying the blue patches, the gauze of gray and white clouds, the soaring diving birds, which skimmed the tops of swaying oaks and elms.

There I stood, leaning back against the kitchen island, looking out through the same windows I’d looked out of when I was 17: the library windows, the kitchen windows, my bedroom windows. Had I ever really left this house?

With the smallest amount of effort—no, not effort—ease—with frightening ease, I could feel that old emotion, reborn, now crying out for attention, gasping for air, desiring, with a vengeance, Rita Fitzgerald. How was it possible that the anger and hurt—the teenage despair and frustrated desire—had never dissolved or grown a callous? How was that possible?

My third date with Rita began in silence, rose to a heightened madness, and then fell into disaster.

We hurried away from her house, from her fearsome father and her ice queen mother. I drove the speed limit, glancing quietly at her. Rita sat erect and smoked, trying not to show that she was shaken. She didn’t turn on the radio. She didn’t speak or move, except to inhale and blow the smoke toward the windshield, as if to test me. A rolling fog gathered, but I didn’t roll my window down. I wanted her to know that I was an ally, because I was. Besides, there was no doubt in my mind that she was spoiling for a fight and I wanted no part of it. Her energy was prickly and defensive. Her gaze fixed. She was trembling.

After we had passed through town on our way to the interstate, Rita rolled down her window and flicked the cigarette away. She presented her face to the rushing wind and closed her eyes. Her hair snapped and played across her face. The cigarette smoke fled the interior, like a retreating ghost.

I had turned onto the interstate en route to the theatre when Rita finally turned her fierce eyes on me. “Fuck the movie!”

I lowered my voice, the way my father did. “Okay…Where to?”

“Who cares!?”

I was quiet.

“Why do you always drive so damned slow!?”

“I don’t always.”

She turned away. “Take exit 19!”

“Okay. Where are we going?”

“Holiday Inn.”

I drove without talking. When I saw the exit and the brilliantly lit billboard ad for the Holiday Inn, I slowed down. “This it?”

Rita lit another cigarette. She nodded.

Minutes later, I pulled into the lot and parked near the entrance. I cut the engine and waited until she finished her cigarette.

“I have a credit card,” I said.

She laughed, but it was bitter and then loud. “Of course you have a credit card, little Alan James. Your daddy and mommy wouldn’t let you out of the house without a big old credit card now, would they? No, no, no!” Her voice turned acerbic. “You won’t need it. I know the night manager.” She shoved open the door and got out.

She walked briskly toward the entrance, not waiting for me. I got out and followed, concerned and anxious. She was already inside, talking to a pudgy night clerk with a bushy black mustache, when I came up to the blond lobby desk.

“Alan James, this is Robbie Styles. Robbie Styles, Alan James.”

I nodded sheepishly and he grunted something, allowing his shifting eyes to ignore most of me and land instead, with pleasure, on Rita. She blossomed with coquettish charm and a forced cheery voice. It was a bad performance, but ole Robbie sure liked it.

“So Robbie, here’s what I need,” Rita said, blithely. “A bottle of vodka, some OJ and a key to get into that beautiful heated indoor swimming pool of yours.”

Robbie’s white, round floppy face dropped into alarm. He sank and whispered. “I can’t do that, Rita. Well, I mean, not the vodka. Come on…you know that. The pool…?” He looked at his watch, working on a solution. “In about fifteen minutes, when it closes to the guests, I’ll let you in, but you’ve got to be quiet.” He passed me a disparaging glance. “…And no messing around? I mean none, Rita.”

Rita leaned in close. “Robbie…” she nodded to me. “Alan James has money.” She turned to me. “How much cash do you have, Alan James?”

I shrugged.

Rita held me in her domineering gaze. “Come on, Alan James, how much?”

I stammered. “About eighty.”

Rita smiled triumphantly. “Okay. Good. Robbie, Alan James is going to give you about eighty dollars for that bottle of vodka and OJ. Now I think that’s a damn good deal.”

Robbie raked a puffy hand through his thinning 40’s something salt and pepper hair. “Rita… I… I mean.”

“Come on, Robbie. You know me. Have I ever trashed this place? Have I ever caused you any trouble?”

“No, but you…” he stopped, throwing me a nervous glance. “You were with somebody older. Somebody of age. Of legal age.”

She laughed. “Robbie. Alan James, here, is wise beyond his years. He may be only 17, but he’s actually more like 40. I mean, it’s kind of like dog years with Alan James. He’s so conservative, worried and uptight that he just gets all older and wiser the more you get to know him. And he barks and yaps and fusses…And he follows me around, sniffing and whining and wanting. Well, anyway, you get the picture.”

I felt myself blush red with humiliation.

Rita batted her eyelashes playfully. “So…Robbie, do we get the booze or not?”

He considered it, then shook his head. “I can’t do it, Rita.”

Rita’s face actually became ugly with rage, as if she’d quickly put on an evil mask. “Listen, Robbie,” she said, low and threateningly. “Get me the damn vodka! I’m in no mood to argue. Just get it! Okay!? GET IT! I know the owner of this shit house and believe me, I’ll call him right now and tell him you just tried to rape me. You got me, you fat chicken shit?”

Robbie’s face passed through a range expressions: shock, anger, disgrace, and finally, resentful consent. “All right, Rita.” His voice broke. “Okay, if that’s what you want.” His eyes glowed with shame. “You two wait in the car for about 15 minutes, then come around to the pool. I’ll have the…bottle for you.”

Rita regained her beauty and curtsied. “I take it all back, Sir Robbie, sacred knight of the Holiday Inn. You are not a chicken shit at all, sire, you are a gentleman, and a Don Quixote de la Mancha, who has just rescued his dear, wayward and undeserving Dulcinea.”

Robbie lowered his eyes and turned away from her, busying himself with the row of mail slots, but not really accomplishing anything. He finally stopped moving at all and just stood there, head bowed, as if in prayer.

Rita gave a peculiar smile and turned to me. In the blue mirror of her eyes I saw a profound sorrow and defeat. “Shall we away to the car, old Alan James?”

In the car, we waited in silence. Rita smoked, distracted and agitated. I stared, hard, into the middle distance. I wanted to say something—I wanted to tell her what a bitch she had been, heartless and unfeeling. I wanted to hold her, comfort her, but her harsh words had frightened me and I was still recuperating from their sting. I turned and looked at her fully. She faced me, only briefly, with contemptuous eyes. I saw a layer of impenetrable hardness and fear—the stare of a trapped animal.

“We could run away, Rita,” I finally said. “You’d never have to see your father again.”

Then she surprised me. While trembling, she broke into a lavish smile that glorified the atmosphere. “Oh, my shimmering knight, Alan James Lincoln…”

Fifteen minutes later we approached the glass enclosed pool and found Robbie waiting nervously by the door. None of us spoke. He inserted the key, swung open the door and nodded for us to enter.

“The vodka bottle and orange juice are under a towel near the diving board.”

Rita avoided his eyes. “Thanks, Robbie.”

I reached for my wallet.

“I don’t want your damn money,” he said, bitterly.

Robbie ignored Rita, closed the door behind us and shambled away.

The emerald water shimmered under dim overhead lights. The silence intruded, seemed accusing. The smell of chlorine reminded me of childhood vacations in Florida and the west, where in route, motel swimming pools were oases from long hours of driving.

Rita slowly circled the rectangular pool, arms laced behind her back, taking in the little corner palm garden, the white ribbed pool chairs, the tables and diving board. There, she stopped. Pausing, she raked a strand of fallen hair from her left eye, bent forward and lifted the lush royal blue towel. She took the bottle of vodka and tucked it under her right arm. With her free hand, she managed the quart container of orange juice and some clear plastic cups. She stepped to a nearby table, placed them there, and twisted off the top of the vodka with a little wince. I stood twenty feet away watching her.

“He forgot ice, Alan James. Would you go get some?”

I spotted a gray metallic ice machine near a portable bar. I filled a plastic container and took it to her. She mixed a screwdriver and handed it to me. I took it. She mixed another for herself. With her glass raised, she touched mine. “To Don Quixotes and Dulcineas.” She threw back half of it. I sipped.

“Alan James, you really should go easy on that aftershave. When used sparingly, it’s seductive, when abused, it’s a weapon.”

“I could say the same about your good looks.”

She shot me a heated glance. “What does that mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Oh, here we go again!” she said, making a grand sweeping gesture. “Once again, the great and perfect Alan James disapproves of Rita.”