Table

by ML Mystrom

  “It’s just saying grace, baby girl. The odd couple here kinda have a thing about it at meal times.” His voice was velvety low and calming.

  It was just a hand and there were other people in the room. I could do this. I held my breath as I reached the last few inches to slip my small hand into his large one. I felt the warmth from his palm as he lightly clasped my fingers. He winked at me and bowed his head. I barely heard Carol say the prayer, acutely aware of the man next to me. He wasn’t holding me hard, but I felt every cell in my body focus on that one point of contact. He didn’t make a big deal of it. He dropped my hand just after “amen” and started eating one-handed, still holding Angel over his shoulder.

  The two sisters nattered on about the garden, farmers’ market schedules, and other stuff. I started eating and somehow managed to clean off the plate. After breakfast, Carol took over the kitchen, clearing the table and loading the dishwasher. Table cooed at Angel as he disappeared into the back of the house, presumably to change the baby and put her down for a morning nap.

  Martha got up and announced it was time to go pick tomatoes. “Daylight’s burnin’. Time to get crackin’.”

  I followed her out to the garage and helped her load supplies and garden tools onto an ATV. I congratulated myself on getting through breakfast. Now it was time for me to earn my keep.

  Three

  I parked the ATV and pulled out the hoe, spade, and digging fork. It was late morning and Martha was at her house watching the baby and I was working in the garden solo for a bit. She wanted the soil turned around the tomato plants as well as some of the squash, zucchini, and other vegetables harvested for the North Asheville Farmers’ Market held on the UNC-Asheville campus every weekend. I’d been here for two weeks and had learned a lot about the people I was essentially living with.

  Martha was the younger of the two sisters and was bold and outspoken. She wore bright clashing colors always and was constantly moving, working either in the giant garden, the chicken coop, or the house. She didn’t ask if you wanted anything to eat or drink, she just put it down in front of you and expected you to take it. Carol was sweetly southern and always wore some sort of pastel dress or skirt. Her standard answer to anything was to “pray about it.”

  I was expected to sit at the table every morning for breakfast, but I was on my own in the afternoons and evenings. I was invited to dinner more than once and the one time I took them up on their offer, Martha greeted me at the back door with a cold beer from a local brewery while Carol scolded her for “encouragin’ the consumption of spirits.” I wasn’t sure beer qualified as “spirits” but for Carol, it did.

  I saw Table sometimes in the mornings, depending on his shifts at work. I found out he was a tattoo artist and worked part-time at a local tattoo parlor, mostly in the evenings, but occasionally he worked a day shift. I saw him more than once from a distance, cutting the enormous lawn area, fixing a loose gutter, under the hood of a car, and other maintenance jobs around the farm. Occasionally he joined Martha and me in the garden. Any free time he had, he spent with his daughter, caring for her, playing in the yard on a blanket, shaking rattles and cooing at her. I didn’t see him with the blonde woman again. I was usually awake when he came home from a night shift, and I’d watch him pull into the parking area of the yard and go directly into the main house. This didn’t mean he hadn’t had any company, it just meant he wasn’t bringing it home.

  My life had become routine but tightly scheduled. I woke up early and worked the garden with Martha before the heat of the day settled in, then I spent the rest of the day working with Constanza at whatever house cleaning she had booked, and then either worked the garden again in the evenings or did other chores around the farm and house. Constanza was a beautiful Mexican-American woman, close to my age in her midthirties, single, with more energy and life than I ever hope to have. She’d named her cleaning business Hurricane Connie and it showed in her speed and thoroughness at each and every job. She didn’t act like a boss and treated me as an equal even though she was paying me. My first job with her, she told me upfront to call her Connie and wanted to know when we were going out on the town. I still hadn’t gone anywhere with her, but she was determined to be a friend. Truthfully, she was wearing me down, as I didn’t have any real friends and could probably use one.

  I pulled on work gloves as I knew I’d be pulling weeds and that could sometimes be tough. I’d already had several encounters that left my hands raw and bleeding; some of those grasses could be sharp as knives. I popped a wide-brimmed straw hat on my head to keep off the sun, loaded up my arms with the tools, and started walking through the tree line to the garden.

  Promptly into an invisible spiderweb.

  I screamed in panic as the sticky filaments covered my face and dropped everything as I swiped at the mess, hoping the web’s occupant hadn’t been hanging there in wait and was now somewhere on my body.

  A roar of laughter finally caught my attention. Table was sitting on the big faded red tractor, a backhoe attached for the potato harvest, clutching his stomach and nearly falling off the machine. For a few minutes, he was incapable of speech.

  “I—you—damn, baby girl!” He kept laughing and wiping at his eyes. “That was the funniest shit I’ve seen in a while.”

  It probably shouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but watching his handsome face smiling wide with unbridled mirth did me in. Instead of joining in on the joke, I felt humiliated.

  “I’m sure you’ve run into a spiderweb before. It’s not that funny.” Anger flared through me. He was making fun of me and I really didn’t appreciate it. Right then, I hated him. “And I’m not your ‘baby girl’ or baby anything to you. I’m just the hired help for the season.”

  He kept laughing as he put the tractor in park and jumped down from the high perch. “Yeah, I’ve run into webs before. Easy to do here. Just never realized how fuckin’ funny I looked while doin’ the spider dance.”

  He slapped his arms around his body to demonstrate. He was wearing only a white tank and torn, dirty jeans but still looked hot.

  I huffed and bent down, reaching for the stuff I had dropped. I could feel my face getting flushed and conflicting thoughts ran through my mind. I was mad and embarrassed but trying to convince myself he was really just joking. I wanted to laugh with him at my own expense and at the same time, I wanted to run away from him and hide. I was so distracted that when he crouched down next to me, I jumped back, falling on my butt in the process.

  “Take it easy, Lori. I ain’t gonna bite.” He picked up a wide hoe and the basket of bags and shifted them to one hip. He rose above me, and I had to swallow the sudden intimidation I felt by his tall presence. His deep chocolate brown eyes regarded me before he reached out a hand to help me up. “Didn’t mean to startle you. As far as the nickname, well, it’s a habit, like callin’ someone darlin’ or sweetheart. I don’t mean any offense.”

  I stared at the hand in front of me. My impulse was to take it, but my mouth got ahead of my brain. “I don’t need your help,” I spat, and shuffled off the ground, brushing dirt and debris from my worn jeans.

  Table’s thick brows came together. “What the hell? Did I do something to offend you?”

  I knew his confusion was real, but I couldn’t stop myself. Yes, I was mad and I didn’t know why. Rage burned in my gut and I lashed out at him mainly because he was a handy target.

  “I saw you banging a woman the first night I moved in and haven’t seen her since.”

  He blinked and the look on his face changed from confused to angry. “Yeah, I was with Charlotte for a night. She was into it and I was into it. What’s your problem?”

  “A one-night stand, eh? Typical. She’s probably one of a long line of women you use when needed and then discard when you’re done.”

  “What the fuck?” He dropped the stuff in his hand to the ground. “First of all, lady, it ain’t none of your business who I fuck, when I fuck, and why I fuck! My d
ivorce was final that afternoon and Lottie wanted to help me celebrate. If you were watching the show, then you know I didn’t force her to do anything she didn’t want to do and I made damn sure she came, and came hard. More than once! I don’t know what the fuck your problem is, but I suggest you get over it or put your ass in your van and get the hell out!”

  My heart was pounding and I could feel my face drain of color at his anger. I managed to stem the flow from my mouth as Table stomped off and mounted the tractor. With an angry roar, the machine fired up and crawled back down the pathway to the main part of the property.

  I released the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and nearly collapsed as my head spun. My hands and body were shaking and I wrapped an arm across my churning belly. I tried to control it, but it was too much. I bent over and vomited, retching and heaving. This was not the first time my mouth had gotten me into trouble. I really did have a good thing going here and was almost in the clear. I didn’t need to mess this up any more than I already had. I needed to buck up and apologize and hopefully keep my place.

  I managed to work through my panic attack with long hours of hard labor in the garden. The sun was bathing the sky in peaches and mauves when I caught Table as he was mounting his bike to go to work at the tattoo parlor.

  “Table!” I called. Time to put on the big girl panties.

  He looked up at me and scowled blackly but didn’t say anything as I approached.

  “Look, I’m sorry I lost my temper at you earlier today. I was embarrassed for you to see me run into the spiderweb and I thought maybe you were making fun of me. I lashed out. I know you weren’t and I had no right to throw your private business in your face like that. Please accept my sincere apology.”

  He stared at me for a moment, his mouth turned down in a frown. “How long did it take you to come up with that pretty speech?”

  This was not going to be easy. “I’m— I don’t have any close friends and I’m not very good at social cues. I take stuff too seriously sometimes and I shouldn’t. It’s my fault I overreacted and I’m really sorry for taking it out on you.”

  His face lightened up a bit. “Takes a strong person to admit when they’re wrong. Apology accepted, but that don’t mean I expect it to happen again.” Table’s demeanor was stiff, but at least he wasn’t mad at me anymore. At least I hoped so.

  “I’m sorry for goin’ off on you so hard. It caught me wrong, but that’s no excuse to talk to a woman that way. The better man in me would’ve just walked off. Let’s just bury it and plant something on it. You take care of your business and I’ll take care of mine. As long as you do right by the odd couple, I’m good with you staying here. Yeah?”

  I took a breath to apologize again but managed to keep my mouth closed. Either I was forgiven or I wasn’t and I absolutely was not going to beg for it. I gave him a little nod of agreement and then turned to go up to my room. I didn’t look back when I heard his bike start up and he drove off.

  Table pulled into the parking lot closest to Asheville Ink where he worked at night. His days were a combination of working around the farm as needed and spending time with his daughter, and nights were spent working at the tattoo parlor. He felt sleep deprived most of the time, but his time in the military had trained him to push through. Every once in a while, he was able to get a night out with the small Asheville chapter of the Dragon Runners MC, but this was rare. The members here were still brothers, but it wasn’t the same as his home club in Bryson City. The local amateur boxing league wanted to see him return to the ring, but so far, he hadn’t had the desire to try.

  Lori was something he hadn’t expected. For years, the little room over the garage had been “rented” to whichever cousin needed a temporary place to crash. He hadn’t heard until he came home that his grandmother and great-aunt were now using the space for an income or bartered help. Table had made some calls and discovered the other grandchildren in the area hadn’t known of this development either. It was not surprising that many people would take up an offer bartering work for rent, but farm work was hard and not many could handle it, especially with his grandmother’s high standards. He hadn’t realized how much help the two old women needed now and how dependent they were on other people. Still, his grandmother was always up at the butt crack of dawn, surly as hell and ready to work. Lori was up early as well. She had jumped in with both hands, never complaining and always getting the job done. Table had noticed she didn’t sleep much more than he did, as her lights were usually on when he came home from his late work shifts.

  Lori. Secret woman. Quiet. Kept to herself and then some. Table had asked his buddy, Blue, who was a deputy back in Bryson City to do a background check on the woman who was living with his two elderly relatives. Just as he’d suspected, the name and social security number listed on the handwritten contract were fake. Lori Matthews did not exist. Why he hadn’t run her off yet was a mystery even to him, but there was something about those eyes of hers. Haunted was the word he used when thinking about her. The bad cut and dye job on her hair was clearly DIY and didn’t suit her at all. She paid cash for everything, and while that kind of made sense since she was working cash jobs, he wondered if she had a bank account at all. Was she hoarding all her earnings in the room over the garage? Table had met people with wanderlust before, and he’d also met people who were just plain running from something. The latter tended to be quiet, kept to themselves, and stayed ready to move on at any moment. Like Lori.

  But she worked hard at every task thrown at her by his grandma, completing it to the letter no matter how tough. He’s been watching her closely and had never seen her drunk on the job, nor had he observed any signs of drug use. She had never brought home a man either. He couldn’t judge anyone, as he himself had experienced some skirmishes with the law, both when he was in the military and when he got out. He had decided that as long as she continued to take care of his grandma’s needs, she could stay.

  However, her reaction this afternoon was telling. He’d gotten a glimpse into her brain when she burred up at him over his mirth at the spiderweb thing. Her fear in reaction to his anger and her clearly negative opinion of his night with Lottie didn’t sit well with him. He didn’t need her judging him. Moreover, something about her intrigued him. She was a tightly wound mystery behind thick walls, and even though she kept a serious lock on sharing anything about herself, his protective instincts were kicking in. His gut told him she needed help. He would do what he could and handle her with kid gloves for the moment; however, if he got even a hint that whatever troubles she might have would affect his family, she was out of there faster than a goose could shit.

  Four

  “What else do you have to do on a Saturday night? Wash your hair?” Connie snorted while wiping down the last kitchen counter. The odor of bleach wafted through the air.

  “Yes, that’s right, I’m washing my hair. All night.” I rolled my eyes as I wrung out the rope mop, pressing hard on the squeezer handle of the bucket.

  “Hmph.” She sniffed again. “Your hair’s too short to take all night. You should only take ten minutes or so in the shower, and most of that time is to shave your legs. Give me another ten minutes to touch up that nasty dye job and you’ll be ready to go out tonight in no time at all.”

  I sighed. Connie had been after me for several weeks to go out on the town to one of her favorite hangout bars, called A.W. Shucks. She was also itching to get her hands on my hair and wardrobe, wanting to make me up like a living doll. So far I’d been able to put her off, but I was running out of excuses.

  “Come on, chica, you’re too young to hold up your life. You gotta get out there and live a little!”

  If only she knew.

  She was looking at me with such pleading in her brown eyes, I finally acquiesced. “All right, I’ll go out tonight.”

  Connie whooped and danced in a circle, waving her yellow-gloved hands in the air. “Yes, ma’am! You come to my house around seven. Anita
and I will get you sorted. It’s gonna be fun!”

  That was how I found myself out with Connie and her sister, Anita, at a local bar. In the past, I’d been in some five-star hotel bars or ones with private club memberships, but I’d never been to a place like this. I’d always thought a bar was a small, dark place with a few tables and a long counter with slumped-over people drowning their lives in liquor. This place turned out to be so much more. It had at one time been a warehouse for a local cotton mill and had been converted into a bar that was more like a nightclub. The bar itself was in the middle, in a huge U-shape and surrounded at the top with flat-screen TVs showing every sports channel known to man. The sound was off and the stats were displayed at the bottom for people to read while drinking and listening to music. There were pool tables, darts, and other bar games, and local bands on Friday and Saturday nights.

  And people. Lots of people. It seemed like the entire population of Asheville was there tonight. Some were dressed to impress, while others were more casual. There were couples and groups, and where some seemed to be focused on flirting or drinking, others looked to be there just to relax after a long work week or catch up with friends.

  I hadn’t really known what to expect when I drove up to Connie and Anita’s house earlier, but I had a blast. It had been such a long time since I had fun while bonding with other women. Anita was a hairdresser and had taken one look at my head before sitting me down and bringing out her shears.

  “Whoever’s been chopping at your hair didn’t do you any favors, chica,” she declared while combing and snipping. “The color is way too dark for your complexion. Damn, this stuff is thick! You should let it grow out some and give me more to work with.”