The Pretty Lady and the Cowboy (Songs from the Heart)

by Lee, Dana

  But I got out and let him slide in. I had nothing to lose. I just wanted to get going. At that moment I didn’t care if that meant a guy was better with my own car than I was. I wasn’t looking to make any sort of feminist statement. I just wanted the engine to start.

  He turned the key. Sput-sput-sput-sput-sput-sput. I could hear the engine trying to turn over, but nothing was happening.

  “I think you may have flooded it,” he finally said. “Just let it sit for a few minutes and we’ll try it again.”

  A few minutes. He might as well have said “a few hours.” He walked over to take care of another customer and I got back into the driver’s seat and tried to keep from banging my head against the steering wheel. I did some hatha breathing exercises from my yoga class. I tried hard to empty my mind as I silently chanted “Om.”

  It didn’t work. I thought about that scene from Goldfinger where the villain takes some hapless goon’s car to the junkyard and crushes it to the size of a coffee table. I imagined Old Ray crushed down to that size. Ah, the revenge would be sweet!

  With the engine off, I could hear the car’s clock ticking. I practically had to sit on my hands to keep myself from trying to start Ray up again. And again and again and again and again and again. I knew that once you’d flooded the gas line, you just had to wait until the car was ready to start. But knowing that is one thing and forcing yourself to have the patience to wait is another.

  The clock said 11:47 when I finally let myself try to start Old Ray again. I turned the key, fully expecting to hear the same frustrating sound of an engine that won’t turn over. But by some miracle, the old car started. I didn’t know whether to kiss it or kick it.

  In the end, I didn’t do either one. I put it in drive, turned it around, and headed back to the highway as quickly as I could. Maybe, I kept thinking. Maybe there was still a chance.

  I remember the year Santa had promised me a two-wheeler, big-girl bike when I sat on his knee in the middle of December. For the next couple of weeks, I must have asked my mother at least twenty times a day if Christmas was going to be the next day. No? Well, how about the day after that? There was nothing I could do, nothing anyone could say, that would hurry time along for me that year.

  Driving down the highway alone in near pitch darkness, time seemed to move even more slowly than it had the Christmas I finally found my very own bicycle under the tree. There were no other cars on the road either in front of me or behind me that might keep me even distant company. I lost all sense of time, all notion of distance as I pushed on from one exit to the next and then to the next. I tried to picture Levi’s face, tried to imagine his arms around me, his lips on mine, but all I could see before me was the seemingly endless stretch of roadway.

  It was well after midnight when I finally reached the exit that would take me to the casino. At least now there were streetlights illuminating the roads. I was making my way down the long driveway that led to the parking garage, when I noticed a small stream of cars moving in the opposite direction. The stream grew steadily. My heart sank as I realized what that meant: Levi had sung his last encore, the crowd had cheered his performance one last time, and now, some still humming the songs they’d heard, some playing newly purchased CDs on their car stereos, they were headed home.

  Somehow I must have believed that the Levi McCrory magic would make everything work out. I kept driving and parked the car in the first empty space I saw. He had to be here somewhere, changing his clothes, packing up, chatting with friends. And waiting for me my heart was screaming out. He had to be there somewhere waiting for me. I ran through the parking garage to the casino entrance, and kept running toward the concert amphitheater, swimming upstream against the tide of people who were leaving.

  The crowd slowed to a trickle as I reached the lobby, then the entrance to the theater. No ushers stopped me or asked for my ticket, but why would they? The show was over. Security guards were still positioned on either side of the stage. What could I say that would convince them to let me go backstage to find Levi? That my heart was breaking? That I loved Levi McCrory? “Sure, honey, you and the other couple of thousand women who were here tonight,” they’d probably say.

  Men and women in green cleaning uniforms were coming down the aisles now, pushing huge trash cans on wheels, picking up the programs and food and drink containers that the fans had left behind. Off to the side I could hear an industrial size vacuum cleaner working on the theater carpeting.

  On stage, all was dark. The carnival lights that had given Levi’s performance such an air of fun and festivity had all been turned off. The roller coaster that had delivered him onstage was empty. The set still looked like an amusement park, but it had that spooky, deserted feeling theme parks get when the season is over and all the rides are empty and silent.

  Without Levi there, the magic was gone. I picked up a program and looked at his picture. It seemed that was as close to seeing Levi as I was going to get that evening.

  With a heavy heart, I made my way back through the casino. All the adrenaline that had been pumping as I raced down the highway, ran through the parking garage, and tore through the casino, had left me. I felt deflated, like a party balloon the day after a party. Without the Levi McCrory magic, the casino looked like nothing more than a depressing and lonely place where hundreds and hundreds of people who pinned their hopes on winning the big jackpot were disappointed with sad, steady regularity. Today I was one of them: I had gambled on love and I’d lost.

  Somehow I managed to remember where I had left the car. I climbed in, collapsed over the steering wheel, and cried my heart out. I don’t remember ever feeling the despair I felt just then, sitting by myself in Old Ray, not even when my father passed away. I don’t know how long I sat there, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  Then, when I couldn’t cry any more, I found grief giving way to anger. I was just plain mad. I was angry at myself, at Levi, at the world in general, and in particular at the sentimental jerk who had said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. What a dope he must have been.

  I put the key in the ignition, fully expecting the car not to start. That would be a fitting end to my evening, waiting alone in the nearly empty parking garage for an AAA tow truck to arrive. But by some miracle, Ray started right up without even a sputter. I headed back to the highway.

  By then it was very late, nearly the middle of the night by my usual standards. I drove slowly, only wanting to make it back to my place so I could crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head, and see what I could do about forgetting that this week had ever happened.

  The night was dark and out here away from any city lights, I could see a million stars in the clear autumn sky overhead. In my rear view mirror, I could also see another vehicle some way back on the road behind me. I was glad not to be completely alone.

  I turned on the radio, slowing down a bit so I could find a classical FM station. I didn’t want to risk hearing the sound of Levi’s voice singing any of the songs I had treasured. And as I slowed down, the vehicle in my rear view mirror grew closer. It was a big bus, maybe taking weary gamblers back home, I thought. But when it pulled up on my left to pass me, I could see emblazoned on its side, in huge ornate letters, the words:

  LEVI McCRORY: THE TEN CITY TOUR

  I watched the bus as it sped past me into the night, towing behind it an all-too-familiar black limousine.

  Chapter 18

  Jess and I signed the papers and made it official in December. We were partners now, ready to change the world together one runner at a time.

  “For better or for worse,” Jess said, hugging me as we left our attorney’s office.

  “Well, let’s just make sure it’s for richer not poorer,” I said. But she was right. Our partnership was a marriage of sorts, a joining together toward a common goal.

  “You got that right,” she said. “Here’s to fame and fortune, heavy on the fortune!” We frequently joked abo
ut our “when we’re rich” fantasies, but we both felt lucky to be doing something we loved and we knew that money really wasn’t the object. We shared a kind of missionary spirit about running and it seemed to be infectious—our clients came back regularly, and they invited friends who invited more friends.

  Jess and I had invested heavily in redesigning the store to include our Wall of Heroes. We were proud of all the names of famous runners who had visited the store and left a few words of inspiration and often an autographed photo on our wall.

  And there were the names of those everyday heroes who had achieved ordinary and often extraordinary goals—the editor of the local newspaper who had discovered that running could help ease the tension of constant deadline pressures or the team of mothers with newborns who ran together daily, the infants lulled to sleep by the motion of their jogging strollers. And many, many more.

  I’m proud to say that Ally’s name was on the wall. She had always been faster than I was when we were kids, always beat me at tag, always left me behind to be the “rotten egg.” I had fanned the flames of that old competition a bit and soon she was beating the pants off me in local races.

  And, of course, that was helping with her other problem. She’d had two relapses with an especially bad one after a Homecoming Weekend party, but she was moving in the right direction at last. She helped out at The Finish Line a couple of times a week and did particularly well working with the younger runners. Dan had done a great job of teaching her the subtleties of fitting running shoes and I had a feeling it wouldn’t be too long before he asked her out. I hoped she’d say yes.

  Jess and I together had negotiated the new terms of our lease. There had been an increase, but not as large a one as the landlord had originally suggested. We had agreed to the slight hike in rent with the understanding that there would be no further increase over the next three years.

  And then we’d just hunkered down and worked like crazy. We did as much as we possibly could ourselves. We wrote our own advertising, kept our own accounts, designed our own window displays, and even took to doing our own cleaning so we could save and reinvest as much as possible. In theory, we each took one day a week off; in reality, we were both there almost constantly. Even on my day off I’d almost always look in after my morning workout. And then I’d somehow end up staying, organizing the stockroom, fixing the sink, doing any of a hundred and one things on a never-ending list.

  Being busy easily kept me from doing two other things: one, dating, and two, even thinking about dating. I’d gone out on a couple of runs with guys I knew from the gym, and I could tell that with just the slightest hint on my part they’d ask me out. But I never gave them a hint of any sort. They were running buddies, and that was all I wanted, all I could handle.

  I tried not to think about Levi, but when I did, I felt like a fairy-tale princess in a sort of fractured fairy tale. I’d had been kissed by the prince and awakened to the magic of romance, and then I’d been left in the forest to fend for myself while the prince rode off on his next quest.

  Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but there was something about seeing Levi’s bus disappearing down the highway that dark October night that had made my heart close down. I couldn’t risk romance. Maybe someday I’d be able to, but not yet.

  At Thanksgiving, Auntie Esther had teased me about devoting too much energy to the store. She said with her usual wry humor that being a spinster like her must somehow run in the family. But she must have seen the hurt on my face because she abruptly dropped the subject and didn’t bring it up again.

  I didn’t talk about Levi to anyone, not even to Jess. But there was a place in my heart that ached with longing to feel his lips on mine, his arms around me. All the work in the world couldn’t make that ache go away.

  # # # # #

  The weather had been very mild early in December; we’d even had a few days when the temperature neared sixty degrees, so until the actual winter solstice, no one seemed to take the season seriously or to consider the fact that Christmas and Hanukah weren’t far off. But suddenly, winter was officially here and even though the weather was still unseasonably warm, crowds of shoppers began lining the streets in our small town.

  The Finish Line was running a special promotion: Make a contribution to the annual New Year’s Day Polar Bear Plunge that we sponsored as a fundraiser for the local women’s shelter, and we’d give you a free Finish Line cap decorated with two furry polar bear ears. It did our hearts good to see those polar bear ears popping up all over town.

  Then early on the morning of December 23, before the store had even opened, Jess popped her head into my office. We had both gotten there early that morning to prepare ourselves for the final two-day onslaught of determined shoppers. I was sipping a cup of herb tea and finishing a bran muffin.

  “Can I pour you a cup?” I asked her. She was giving me a strange look, as if she wanted to tell me something but couldn’t decide how to get started. This wasn’t like her. She never had any sort of hidden agenda and she never had a problem letting me know exactly what she thought, which was why she was so great to have as a partner.

  “Thanks, no,” she said. “I just wanted to let you know something.”

  “Okay, shoot,” I said. I couldn’t imagine a topic that would make Jess this hesitant to begin.

  “It’s about Levi,” she said. I knew she had friended him on Facebook; I knew she followed him on Twitter, even now. And I knew she had deliberately avoided mentioning his name the last couple of months. I had told her about my final midnight drive out to the casino the night I tried to see him one last time. I had tried to make it sound like a funny adventure. But Jess knows me too well and I’m sure she saw through me in a heartbeat.

  I felt my cheeks grow hot, whether with embarrassment or fear I’m not sure. I tried to keep the emotion out of my voice. “So what’s new with him?” I asked, as casually as I could manage.

  “That’s just it,” Jess said. “Nobody knows. The rumor is that he’s back in rehab somewhere.”

  I could hear the excitement building in her voice as the italics crept in.

  “I just Googled his name half a dozen different ways and every time the first automatic suggestion Google makes is ‘Levi McCrory rehab.’ I must have read about a dozen message boards and there’s conjecture all over the place but I couldn’t find out anything for sure.” She stopped and looked closely at me. “I guess I was hoping he’d been in touch with you—that you knew he was okay.”

  My heart ached with longing, with wanting to hear Levi’s voice, feel his touch. I would have given anything to know that he was safe and well. I tried to keep my voice steady. “Sorry, girlfriend,” I said, “I haven’t heard anything. Looks like it was a good thing I said good-bye to him when I did.”

  “Right,” she said. I had the feeling she was a little embarrassed at having come in here with the news. She made some remark about making sure we had change in the cash register and said she’d see me later, backing quickly out of my office.

  And I tried to tell myself one more time, as I’d been trying to tell myself for weeks now, that I was better off this way, better off without him, better off not worrying about him.

  Then I caught a glimpse of my princess shoes up high on the corner shelf where I’d tossed them just to get them out of my sight the morning after my casino “adventure.” And the memories came flooding back: Levi’s smile, the scent of his aftershave, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he laughed, the passion of his embrace, the romance of his kisses, the tender way he had made love to me… and his songs, those magical songs that made me believe.

  I stopped myself. I couldn’t bear thinking about it all again. It had happened; it was over. End of story already. Let it go.

  I stood up abruptly and headed out to open the store.

  The day went by in a blur. It seemed a lot of people were getting and giving running shoes for Christmas—or socks, shorts, bras, tee-shirts, tights, pan
ts. The runner’s GPS was a huge item this year. We were already out of stock on the caps that held headphones for iPods. From what people were telling me, a lot of people were making New Year’s resolutions that included running. Music to my ears!

  All the stores in town stayed open until nine that night and by that time, Jess, Dan, and I had been there almost twelve hours, so we were ready to drop. Ally had even come in to help for a while in the afternoon. We were running low on some sizes by now, but there was nothing I could do about that until after Christmas. We all staggered out of there as soon as the last customer left, knowing we had to get back by ten the next morning for the final day of the holiday rush.

  I gave Jess a fist-bump as we left. “We’re doing this, girlfriend,” I said.

  “And to all a good night,” she replied. It didn’t make a ton of sense, but I think we were both too tired to care.

  # # # # #

  When I looked out my window the next morning, it was still dark, but I saw that a few flakes of snow had started to fall. Perfect! Snow on Christmas Eve. For some reason, Christmas just doesn’t feel as Christmas-y without at least a little snow, at least in Connecticut. Probably in Texas the natives had other ways to make it feel like Christmas. I stopped myself before I could continue that thought. I had gotten pretty good at heading myself off on any subject that could directly or indirectly lead to Levi.

  I was too tired to do a whole free weight routine, but I went through the motions with a few upper body exercises, then headed off to the shower. Plenty of hot water indoors, snow outdoors—it doesn’t get better than that in December. The sight of the snow falling put me in a festive mood, so I put on a sparkly red sweater over a white shirt. That didn’t seem to go with my jeans, so I traded them for a pair of black wool pants. It was a little dressy for selling shoes, but, hey, I was in a holiday mood. I pulled on a pair of warm boots and went out to start the car.