Swept Away

by Robyn Carr

  Snuggling was something she never did. She hadn’t had a relationship that lent itself to closeness. Sex, yes. Intimacy, no.

  He never stirred when she got up at four-thirty to go to work, or when she ran the shower and let Alice out in the yard. She scribbled him a little note and headed for the diner at sunrise.

  Buzz was in the grill and there was no sign of Adolfo. “Our cook isn’t coming in today?” she asked.

  “He’ll make it sooner or later, but there’s no hurry. So. You and Alex? Huh?”

  “Just friends, Buzz. He’s right next door is all.”

  Buzz chuckled and his belly jiggled. “Good thing my neighbors don’t kiss me like that. I live next door to old man Roberts. Bristly chin, very few teeth.”

  Jennifer put on her apron. “But what a great party, huh? Adolfo has such a wonderful family. So many fantastic friends.” She tried to keep the sigh from her voice. “I can’t imagine.”

  “Tell me about it,” Buzz concurred. “But we shouldn’t complain, Doris. We have to play the cards we’re dealt.”

  She leaned her elbows on the counter. “You ever feel ready for a new deck?”

  He seemed to think about that for a moment, then shook his head. “Naw. I don’t think I could be any luckier. Nor happier.”

  “What are you happiest about?” she asked.

  “Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, I have a lot of fun. I have good friends and I make the absolute most out of what I got. This is just a little diner, and it keeps a lot of people happy and well fed. I don’t know what more I could ask for.”

  “I was thinking about family....”

  “I think of all of you as my family.” Then he smiled broadly, nodding his head so sharply that the haylike thatch of hair flopped on his forehead. “I keep you irritated enough, don’t you think?”

  Elbow on the counter, she leaned on her hand. “You never married.”

  “Never found anyone who would have me.” He chuckled. “Except Adolfo.”

  “You two are like an old married couple. You’ve been together a long time, haven’t you?”

  “Over twenty-five years. He’s good people.”

  “The whole family is wonderful. How do you do that? Create a family like that?”

  “They stick together, the Garcias. They work together, help each other. And, they never give up.”

  “You know, Buzz, I don’t think I’ve told you this, but you gave me a great opportunity here, with this job.”

  “This crummy job?”

  “It’s good work. I needed something like this. Needed to slow down and take a long look at my life. It was time for a change.”

  “Well,” he said, wiping the counter in front of her. “We aim to please.”

  Because she couldn’t shake the memory of leaving Alex in her bed, the morning dragged by. Adolfo finally showed up at a little after nine, looking a little worse for wear but pleased with himself. Hedda showed up early, a bunch of pictures torn from the magazines in her notebook for Jennifer to ooh and aah over. And then finally it was time to go home. Even after a long introspective morning, she still didn’t know what she was going to say to Alex.

  She was saved from that challenge. At the bottom of her note he had written, “I had a great time, too. Had to go in to work, but hopefully that means I’ll be home a little earlier. I’ll give you a call. And my cell number is 555-7678.” It sounded as though Alex was moving into a relationship.

  Louise had said, For advice about men, ask Rose.

  After Alice’s constitutional, she tapped on Rose’s door. “Are you busy, Rose?”

  “I was going to go shopping, but it can wait if you need something.”

  She took a deep breath. “Can you tell me about Alex?”

  Rose’s eyes took on a special light and she smiled. “Come in, Doris. Let’s have a Coke.”

  Alex, Rose told her, bought the little house on the other side of Louise about twelve years ago. He was a brand-new, twenty-three-year-old police officer in the city, single and pleasant to be around. Then a couple of years later a beautiful young woman appeared—the new wife.

  “We weren’t close friends at that time,” Rose said. “So we didn’t know that Alex was engaged and we weren’t invited to the wedding. When Patsy showed up, I swear the whole street brightened. She was so effervescent, so alive. It was easy to tell that Alex had never been so happy. We saw a lot more of him in those early days. I imagine it was because he wanted to be home with his pretty young wife whenever he could.”

  “What happened to her?” Jennifer asked, quite sure she was going to hear the tragic story of a love gone wrong, leaving Alex devastated.

  “One day we noticed the young woman was gone and Alex’s house seemed to be shut up tighter than a tick. If it hadn’t been for seeing him go to and from work now and then, we’d have thought he moved.”

  “What happened?”

  “She left him. Or he threw her out.” They sat at the kitchen table with their sodas on ice and Rose leaned closer. “Alex was a very junior police officer at the time—a uniformed officer. He didn’t have much seniority so he worked nights and weekends. But his wife was not alone and lonely—when she wasn’t out until late at night, she had company in. She always seemed to make it home before Alex showed up, and her company would always leave before he got home. I was the one that pointed it out to Louise, and you know what she said?”

  “I can’t imagine,” Jennifer said.

  “She said I had a dirty mind. Phoo.”

  Jennifer thought about that for a while. “Poor Alex,” she said softly.

  “There hasn’t been a woman in that house since. I’m not saying he hasn’t dated—I wouldn’t know about that. But if he’s brought anyone home with him, he snuck them right past Louise and me. Now, Louise might mind her own business most of the time, but I’m on the neighborhood watch. And I mean watch.”

  Then undoubtedly Rose knew where Alex had spent the night last night, she thought.

  “Has he ever told you what happened? With his wife?”

  “I’ve never asked,” Rose said. “It was clear that whatever it was, it was very painful. He was a long time in coming around. It was a couple of years later when he was cutting his front lawn—he just kept going until he’d cut all three lawns. It’s not as though they’re very big. Then one day he trimmed all three front hedges. Then some spring flowers appeared around our doors, so Louise and I had him to dinner. The help with the lawns was never negotiated—it seemed to coincide perfectly with our lawn boy going off to college.”

  “But you’re very close now....”

  “We’re friends, Doris. But he doesn’t confide in me.” She smiled a little wistfully. “We actually have a good time together, Alex and I. I’m very careful, you see—I don’t want him spending all his time with old women.”

  “But he seems to have a wonderful life!” Jennifer protested. “I’ve met his partner and her husband. He personally introduced me to half of Adolfo’s family and everyone in the neighborhood—he knows everyone. He may not be married or dating, but he has a very full life. You can’t deny it.”

  Rose lifted just one finely arched brow. “Is he dating now?” she asked.

  Jennifer didn’t answer right away because she was deep in thought. How was it possible this attractive and sensitive and funny man hadn’t had a significant woman in his life in at least eight years and now, suddenly, a couple of months after meeting her he was ready to take a chance again? On her? What would he say if he knew what her life had really been like? “I don’t know,” she said softly.

  “He seems a little preoccupied with you,” Rose said.

  “I don’t know,” she said again.

  “Save all that coyness for someone else, darling. I can see right through you.” She sto
od up from the table. “We should have a little wine now. Loosen your tongue.” She went to her wine rack and turned bottles until she found one she liked.

  “Louise warned me about you. She said you’d get me drunk and make me talk.”

  “How is the old girl?”

  “She’s having a high old time. There’s one thing that’s so crazy, Rose. I always ask about Rudy, but all Louise will ever say is that he’s just the same.”

  Rose was in the process of pulling out the cork and her hand froze. She turned to look at Jennifer, a most peculiar expression on her face. “Oh, my dear,” she said finally. “We really do need that wine.”

  “Why? What is it? This whole thing is so strange. She did say she was going to see her son, Rudy, didn’t she?”

  Rose poured two glasses of wine and took her seat again. “I think what she said was, she was going to be near Rudy. You see, Doris, Rudy is dead.”

  * * *

  “Louise’s history is fascinating. And tragic. She married a California engineer in the forties. Harry was his name. They had only one child, Rudy, born just a year after they married. Louise was first a teacher and then, after going back to college for her Ph.D. with a baby in a stroller beside her during most of her classes, an academic. They were true intellectuals, bohemians. Harry and Louise lived as equal partners before that was fashionable. But it wasn’t easy to get an education and pursue a career while also a wife and mother. I suppose that’s why she went in the direction of women’s studies and women’s literature.

  “They did a great deal of traveling back then, and spent several years in Europe, mostly London. Harry worked for the Department of Defense as a consultant, which took him all over the globe, and Louise was welcomed at international universities in her studies.”

  “She must have been a formidable academic,” Jennifer said.

  Rose smiled. “Sometimes, Doris, you remind me of her. Your choice of words. Brings you quite a bit above what one would expect from a waitress in a diner.”

  “Well, I read a lot.”

  “Hmm. Well, Louise’s son, Rudy, loved London. He went to boarding school there in his teens, and although he went to UCLA, he also did two years at Oxford. It was always his plan to finish postgraduate studies in England and perhaps live there at least a few months of every year. Louise was crazy about that idea.

  “But then there was a rift. Vietnam. Harry had served in World War Two, did government work for many years and was, at least in that regard, a conservative. When your number comes up, you go. Not so Rudy, who protested the war. He burned his draft card. They had bitter arguments, but in the end Rudy left the country for England and denounced the U.S.”

  “He was a draft dodger,” Jennifer said, fascinated.

  “That’s right. Now, Louise wrote to him daily and she signed the letters Mom and Dad, but Harry was not getting over it. He didn’t write to Rudy and he rarely read the letters Louise received. After being away only four months, Rudy was killed in London as he stepped in front of a cab. Among his personal effects were instructions to bury him in England.

  “Louise went to England alone to bury her son because Harry was determined to bring Rudy back to the States. Harry had this thoroughly irrational belief that Rudy might have been safer in Vietnam. Here she was—stuck in the middle even after Rudy was dead. It was the darkest time in her life—her only son gone and her beloved husband still furious with him.

  “Needless to say, this wasn’t good for their marriage. Louise hated that Harry couldn’t bend a little, and Harry hated that Louise could so easily forgive their son’s disloyal politics.

  “By then Harry was nearly sixty, ten years older than Louise, when he took an engineering job in Boulder City. It was the early seventies and he didn’t expect to be there for long, so Louise stayed in Southern California at UCLA and Harry went back and forth. Their marriage was strained, their grief was deep, and life for them was hard. Harry’s angry heart soon gave out and he died suddenly in his sleep. In his personal effects were the instructions to bury him in Boulder City. It was like retaliation.”

  “My God, she must have been devastated!”

  “Devastated and suddenly alone, with her son buried in England and Harry buried in Boulder City. So Louise sold her California house at a very tidy profit and moved. She was only fifty then and healthy as a horse—a very sad horse. But she was a much sought-after academic in the field of women’s studies, which was just blossoming. She bought a house in Boulder City and a flat in London, where she spent anywhere from three to six months a year.”

  “She divides her time between Harry and Rudy?” Jennifer asked, wiping a tear away. “Even though they’re both dead?”

  “I know,” Rose nodded. “Makes her sound like a flake, doesn’t it? But somehow it gives her comfort. Not that she’s caught hanging around cemeteries too often. The thing to understand about Lou is that she needs so little. Give her a good big dog, a library, a pad of paper and pen, and she can entertain herself for decades. I know she adored Harry and Rudy, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t plan her life around them. She traveled, studied, wrote. She was an independent woman with a family.”

  Jennifer blew her nose. “I wish I had known all that. I wouldn’t have kept asking about her son.”

  Rose laughed. “That’s funny. Her saying he’s just the same.”

  “It’s awful.”

  “Well, you should give her hell. Shame on her. Acting like she’s visiting her son when he’s been dead thirty years. That woman. She can be so out there.” She sighed. “But then I probably seem a little over the top, too. Not too many women of my generation go to such lengths to remain single.”

  “Weren’t you ever tempted?”

  “Of course, darling. But I knew myself too well. I couldn’t be tied down.”

  * * *

  Rose poured more wine and began on her story. As a young woman, Rose was determined to be discovered as a great dancer. There was but one small problem. She wasn’t.

  She was a fairly good dancer, though. She shook the dust of Nebraska off her heels when she was eighteen and headed for New York City. She could hold her own in a chorus line and she had the impossible delusion that she was going to be a star. It didn’t take long for her to come to her senses. The only jobs she could hold in New York were backup dancer or chorus-line member on short runs, and she couldn’t afford to live in the city. She borrowed some money and made her way to Los Angeles, where anyone could be a star.

  Anyone but Rose, it would seem.

  At the ripe old age of twenty-three she took a trip to Las Vegas, which at the time was just a little oasis in the desert with a few nightclubs and casinos. Most of the town and virtually all of the gambling was being run by the mob. Rose had become frustrated with New York and Los Angeles, but it had never occurred to her to relocate until she saw an ad for a hostess at the Sands Hotel. She checked it out and learned that all that was required of her was that she dress in glittery clothing and greet people. She took the job.

  Jennifer said nothing—but she was stunned to hear that their beginnings were so similar. They were hostesses.

  Over the next several years Rose did a variety of things in Las Vegas, from dancing to managing young dancers. She found that the less she wore, the more money she made.

  “Rose, you were a stripper!”

  “Well, from time to time. But we did a much better job of it then. We never got completely naked. And if a man so much as suggested that I sit on his lap, he’d be removed from the club. It’s quite a bit different now.”

  She met a lot of celebrities and dated rich men who were fond of throwing their winnings around. It was customary to give the woman at your side, who brought you luck at the tables, a nice cash tip. Rose was far from famous, but she was definitely living the high life.

  Of al
l the men she kept company with when she was in her twenties, only one really captured her heart. He was an air force pilot stationed at Nellis Air Force Base at the edge of the city. He was sweet and handsome and asked her to marry him. He wanted to go home to Wisconsin to the family farm, settle in the same small town he’d grown up in, surrounded by aunts, uncles and cousins, and breed up a flock of kids.

  “I still think about him sometimes,” Rose confessed to Jennifer.

  “You said no?”

  “I did. I said no.”

  “But you loved him!”

  “Yes, but I didn’t think I could live the life he was describing. I was a kid during the Depression. I grew up in a house with squabbling parents who had nothing, never could seem to scrape together enough money for even a decent pair of shoes, and I was bound and determined to live better than that.”

  “Maybe he was a rich farmer,” Jennifer suggested.

  Rose’s eyes glanced upward as if remembering. “I was young, but for the first time in my life I was wearing fine, fancy clothing, going to parties with rich people and celebrities. I bought a car—a convertible—and rented a house with a swimming pool. I just couldn’t imagine wearing overalls and going out to the chicken coop to gather up eggs for our breakfast.”

  Jennifer bit her lip and said nothing.

  “I couldn’t convince him to give up the idea of that simple life and stay with me in Las Vegas, a booming town. He hated it here. And although I cried when he left, it wasn’t long before I had another man in my life—a rich and generous one. I was respected, well paid, never lonely. I moved to Boulder City when I was only forty, though I continued to work in the city. I might not have a pension, but I have a nice little nest egg. I did well for myself.”

  “Do you ever regret your decision?”

  “Do I ever! Do you know what that rat bastard did? He spent about six months on the farm and then got a job with United Airlines. Do you know how much money airline pilots make? Especially the older ones who started flying way back when? I might’ve lived with the many of my dreams, not on a farm but in high style, and had six children to boot!”