by Jill Barnett
A minute later Jud and Cale were on the court in their street clothes, paired off in teams, Cale and Dane against Matt and Jud. That lasted about five minutes. Matt walked off first, Dane right after him. Matt used his shirt for a towel and dried off his face and neck. He looked at Dane. “You owe me two hundred bucks. Jud lost it first.”
“I know. I’d have thought he’d have had more control tonight.” He looked at the court. “Did Dad just take a swing at him?”
“Yep. Too bad he missed. Shoot . . .” Matt slung his shirt around his neck. “Hey, Jud! Stay with him! Keep your eye on the ball! Don’t lose him! You can do better than that!”
Jud flipped him off, then almost tackled Cale to steal the ball and score.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Laurel said.
Dane turned, clearly puzzled. “You haven’t?”
“Well, I take that back,” she said, watching Jud trip Cale and run for the net. “Maybe when I was changing channels and hit a wrestling match on the WWF.” It exhausted her to watch them and she stifled a yawn. This wasn’t the way she imagined ending the first date she’d had in almost two years.
Matt looked down at her. “This could go on for a while. You want me to take you home?”
She looked at the court, where Jud slammed the ball into Cale’s back. “This is painful to watch. You two should be ashamed of yourselves.”
“Nah,” Dane said. “They like it. I’ll go with you. I have early shift tomorrow.”
She said good-bye to Victor and followed Matthew and Dane up to the house, but paused at the patio doors and looked back. From everything she could tell, Jud hadn’t even noticed she’d left.
It was a short drive home and they kept her laughing, and argued good-naturedly over everything from who was the better player to who would walk her to the door, settling only when they both did. Inside in her kitchen, she could still hear them egging each other on as they walked along the side of the house. She poured herself a glass of water and listened until their voices faded and the car pulled away. It was a long time before she turned off the lights and walked upstairs. She didn’t turn on the light in her bedroom, just kicked off her shoes and curled into an overstuffed chair near the windows. She had not run this time. She’d faced her past, faced Cale and Jud together, even faced his two sons, all the time knowing Cale really had three sons.
Cale lay sprawled in the middle of the basketball court he had built for his sons, the overhead lights glaring into his face and blinding him, his heart pounding in his chest, clothes torn, sweat dripping off his temples and down over his ears, his body feeling pretty much as if it had been beaten with a two-by-four. He took two long deep breaths that burned in his chest, and he was just getting the feeling back in his feet and legs.
“I’m too old for this,” Jud groaned next to him. “I need CPR.”
“Call an EMT, asshole. I’m struggling enough for my own air.” They both were panting like bulldogs. “Did I win? I never saw the last shot.”
“You didn’t see it? In that case, I won.”
“Bullshit.” Cale found enough air to laugh.
“Who wins the bet?”
“Do you need the money?”
Jud laughed. “No. Do you?”
“No.”
Jud flung his arm over his eyes. “Those lights are murder.”
Cale grunted something, then lifted his head off the concrete.
Victor was sitting on a chair alone. Cale sat up, resting his arms on his bent knees, and looked down at Jud, who hadn’t moved. “You can turn out the lights, old man. Your fun is over.”
Jud raised one arm and waved it in the air. “Happy birthday, Victor!”
“Oh, shit.”
“What?” Jud turned to him just as the lights went off.
“Your date’s gone.”
Funny how Jud was on his feet a second later. “Laurel?”
Victor was walking away but stopped. “Matthew took her home about forty-five minutes ago.”
Cale limped off the court behind Jud, who was suddenly very quiet. They moved silently toward the house and met Dane and Matt at the door, each holding an extra beer.
“Here, you look like you need this,” Dane said. “Can I borrow two hundred bucks?”
“What for?”
“I lost a bet with Matt.”
Cale turned to Jud. “Pay up. I won. You owe me two hundred bucks.”
Jud opened his wallet and handed Cale the cash, which he gave to Dane, who handed it to Matt. He folded it and tucked it into his shirt pocket, and looked at Jud.
“You owe us big-time, Jud, for taking home your date,” Dane said.
“The date you monopolized all night along? You’re turning out to be worse than your father.” Jud walked inside and flopped down on a chair, and some part of Cale hoped he’d blown it with Laurel.
“Don’t worry so much,” Dane said. “She was just tired. She didn’t seem upset.”
“Just amazed by your deftness with sportsmanship.” Matt laughed.
“Who?” Victor walked out of the kitchen.
“Mrs. King,” Matt said.
Cale thought he heard wrong. “Who?”
“Mrs. King. Laurel,” Matt said simply.
“She was married to Beric King.” Jud sipped his beer.
The King woman’s records . . . call and set up a TEE for the King woman . . . I don’t talk about it much, but I had valve replacement surgery seven years ago. Conversations ran through his mind with the realization that Laurel was Lofty’s special patient.
“Hey, Pop?” Dane called him into the kitchen and said quietly, “Isn’t that the name of that heart patient whose records I looked at the other day?”
“Yes, but you can’t say anything.”
“I know that,” his son said with irritation. “Why do you think I called you in here?”
“Sorry.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Help her.”
“Hey, what’s going on in here?” Matt asked with Jud on his heels.
“They’re probably cooking up some new bet.” Jud tossed his empty beer into the trash. “Like your father doesn’t make enough money.”
“And you’re so poor.”
“Go home. Both of you,” Cale said, only half joking. “Take Victor home. He’s beat and so am I.” It took time to get rid of them all, for Matt and Victor to drive off, for Jud to stop pacing and finally leave, and Dane to go to bed. At half past two Cale sat down in his study and stared at the phone for a minute, then called Lofty Collins anyway.
It was about five forty-five on Sunday evening, damp and cold because the fog had rolled in about three. Laurel stood at the open refrigerator, her cat, Henry, weaving in and out between her legs. “What do we want to eat? Chicken in peanut sauce?” She looked at the cat. “Maybe? Okay, how about lamb chops? No, huh? Sun-dried tomatoes and spinach pasta with goat cheese?” She paused, then opened the freezer. “This blissful carton of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream?”
Henry whined.
“Good idea. No dishes to clean. Just a spoon and your bowl. We can eat in front of the fire.” She grabbed a spoon, took out a small Pyrex dish for the cat—it took an act of God to separate Henry from his Ben & Jerry’s—and reached for the ice cream.
The doorbell rang.
“Right at dinner time. Perfect timing. What will they be selling tonight? Wrapping paper? Coupon books? Chocolate? Henry, get ready to attack. Someone is coming between us and our Chunky Monkey.”
Laurel flung open the front door and stood face-to-face with Jud. She took a long breath. “I knew I shouldn’t have shown you where I live.”
He shifted and looked past her. “I heard you talking to someone. Am I interrupting?”
“Yes.” She used the spoon to point at his feet. “A vitally important conversation between my cat and me.” Apparently Henry’s idea of an attack wasn’t the same as Laurel’s. He was rubbing up against Jud’s leg. “Okay,” she said, waving the sp
oon in the air. “The truth is out. I’ve become one of those women who lives alone and talks to her cat. Tomorrow I shall wear purple.”
Jud rubbed Henry’s ears and looked confused.
“Never mind. You’d have to be a woman to get the joke.” She leaned against the door and crossed her arms protectively, tapping the spoon against her side. “Why are you here?”
“I owe you an apology. I don’t usually abandon the women I take out.”
“You were busy.” She was glad she sounded flip.
“Yeah, busy making an ass out of myself.” He looked honestly contrite.
“That’s true. At least you can admit it. Some people would blame everyone else.”
“Some people?”
“My ex was never wrong.”
“As I get older, I find I’m wrong more than I want to be.” He laughed a little. “Hell, I think I knew the game had gotten carried away when it was happening. Old habits, I guess.”
Hesitating for a second, she looked down at the cat, a discerning creature who always ignored strangers and her ex. She opened the door wider. “Come on in.”
“Wait. Give me a minute.” Jud turned and ran to the alley.
She heard the tweet of his remote, then looked down at herself She was wearing black yoga pants, a white sports tank, and a gray zippered sweatshirt. She stepped out of her old pink flip-flops with their dirty imprints and kicked them into the corner behind the door. Henry sat on the brass threshold. Both of them were obediently waiting. What was wrong with this picture?
A car door slammed and Jud came back around the corner with a bottle of wine and a white plastic sack from Chang’s. He held up the takeout. “Peace offerings.”
“Well, that was worth waiting for. I’m starving.” She closed the door behind him. “It smells wonderful. Come on into the kitchen.”
He followed her inside and set the food on the island while she took down plates, serving spoons, and a tray. She tossed him the wine opener, set two wineglasses out, and opened the food cartons. Inside were chicken lettuce wraps, steamed vegetable dumplings, honey crispy shrimp, brown rice, and spicy green beans.
“Okay.” She planted her palm on the island and the other on her hip. “This is no lucky guess. These are all my favorites.”
“I called ahead.”
She stuck spoons in the cartons. “How did you know I eat there?”
He tapped his head with a finger. “Great mind.”
“I don’t think so. I didn’t just fall off the tuna boat, Jud.”
He handed her a glass of wine. “I saw the cartons in your office kitchen the day we had lunch.”
“You were there what? Five minutes?”
“About.”
She picked up the tray of food and started for the front room. “Well, that was observant,” she called out over her shoulder.
“I’m always observant.”
She set the tray down on a low table and tossed a couple of floor pillows down on the rug for them to sit on. “Sure. Really observant. That’s why you never saw me leave with Matthew last night.”
“I owe Matthew for that.”
“Yes, well, it gave me the chance to find out all kinds of things about you.”
“Like what?”
“This is great wine.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“Yes. I am.”
“Tell me.”
“I love Pouilly-Fuisse.”
“I remember.”
Time and the years disappeared, replaced by the image of the crooked front stoop of a small apartment building in LA, where a case of expensive French wine sat with a note that started Dear Jailbait. She felt something deep and elemental, the jagged edges of feelings she couldn’t control, even though she tried. She couldn’t even turn away, and she knew everything she was thinking was raw and open and there for him to read if he looked for it.
Forgetting about that case of wine didn’t mean she had forgotten what it had led to. What good did it do to lie to yourself? His image had always lingered in the back of her memories, in that safe dark place where she could hide everything so she wouldn’t have to think about why she hadn’t been free to love him. What did that say about the two of them, that she had forgotten so much while he remembered so much?
She set her wineglass down and he poured her some more. “Thanks.” She paused, then looked at him. The man on that basketball court last night did not think about things; he ran on sheer instinct and huge emotion. That was Jud. “You were set up, you know.”
“What was set up?”
“Dane and Matthew set you up last night. Those two worked you like precision machinery.”
He just stared at her.
“They had a bet going. That’s why they kept cutting in and interrupting us.” She saw the realization hit him.
“They are dead men. Damn . . .” He wasn’t really angry, didn’t look dark or glowering but as if he wanted to laugh, and she remembered why all those years ago she had fallen so fast for this man. “That’s pretty inventive of them,” he said. “Why do I have the idea that this wasn’t the first time?” Then he did laugh. “I’m impressed. Hell, I wonder exactly how long they’ve been doing that to us.”
“I think for a long time.”
He shook his head. “That explains a lot of things.”
“Like what?”
“Like why you let me in here so easily tonight after what happened.”
“I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for a sucker.”
They both laughed, then in the lapse of silence that followed, Laurel stood and picked up the dishes. He took the tray into the kitchen but brought a new bottle of wine back with them. She sat on the sofa, pulled her knees up, and tucked her feet under her.
As if they had done this a hundred times, he walked right over to the fire, squatted down easily, and poked at it, then added more wood. He sat with her, poured the wine, and kicked off his shoes, then crossed his feet on the coffee table and looked around the room. “This really is a great house. Those high ceilings and the crown molding. You don’t see Heatilator fireplaces much anymore.”
“I love the detail.”
“I’m surprised your ex didn’t fight you over this place.”
“He didn’t dare.”
“That bad?”
“It’s too long a story to tell.”
“I have all night.”
The images that flashed through her head were unwelcome and X-rated. He could say a few words and get her all twisted up inside.
“He seems to be a man who knows what he wants.”
“Yes, well, he always has. Confidence is not his problem, just the opposite. The French are a very determined people. Stubborn.”
“You’re a stubborn woman.”
“I lived in France for twelve years. No one is more stubborn than the French, especially if they’re wrong.”
“But you married one of them.”
She looked into her wineglass, as if there were magic in there that would hide her from the truth. “Yes. I did. He is a dramatic man and a brilliantly talented chef.” Her marriage to Beric had been painful, his constant need for attention a strain on their marriage. Over and over he put her in a position to choose between Annalisa and him. Too often he would run to someone else, using the excuse that he didn’t get what he wanted and needed from her. “He taught the sauce class.”
Jud laughed. “The sauce class?”
“Beric is a master at sauces.” She smiled. “He’s actually a master at everything. Just ask him. He can talk about himself for hours.”
“And that was why you married him?”
“No. Of course not. I was kidding, somewhat. I was his protégée. He was a master chef. It didn’t take long for things to become more complicated. In many ways, it was quite wonderful. His family took me in. They were, are, all quite the strong personalities. I’d never been around a big, loud family like that. It was like being surrounded by a bunch of
helium balloons, so different from the life I had known. I think at that age I was young and free, and being in France was wildly romantic.”
“How long were you married?”
“Too long. But I would do it all over again for Annalisa.” She faced him. “I’m not proud of my mistakes.”
“You’re too hard on yourself for the choices you’ve made.”
“So say you.” She laughed. “You don’t have to live with them.”
“I live with more mistakes than you could ever know, Jailbait.”
And she understood he was talking about her. “So what about you?”
He shrugged. “What do you want to know?”
“You never married?”
He shook his head.
“Never came close?”
“I’ve had some long-term relationships. I lived with a couple of women. One for over four years.”
“What happened?”
“She wanted to get married. She was a great girl, in corporate finance. Sharp as can be. I think I really cared about her.” His voice drifted off.
“What happened?”
“I couldn’t commit to her the way she wanted. I tried, but I kept postponing the wedding.” He took a sip of wine and said, matter-of-factly, “BanCo has been my life for a long, long time. She knew that going in, but it got old for her. She finally gave up and married an English professor who writes poetry. I went to one of his readings in Westwood a few years back.
“I think in the end she wanted to get far away from the corporate world. I get a Christmas card every year. Jan is a bank manager in a small town in Washington and apparently quite happy.”
“Do you have any regrets?”
“A whole lifetime of them.” He laughed. “The latest one being that I didn’t bring you home last night.”
“You’re forgiven.”
“Good.” He finished off his wine, set the glass down, sat back, and then turned to her.
Neither of them spoke. The silence was fast changing from awkwardness to something else, a taut line of emotion between them. She wanted to speak, to be bright and funny, with words to make them laugh and that would quickly cut off this complicated thing that was spiraling between them.
But she couldn’t think when he looked at her that way. In the back of her mind was a vague sense that this was what she wanted. This was why she had opened the door.