Just This Once

by Judith Arnold

  JUST THIS ONCE

  “Judith Arnold has a wonderful voice that keeps the reader smiling throughout!” – The Best Reviews

  Copyright © 2003 by Barbara Keiler

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  To learn more about the author, and to sign up for her newsletter, please visit her website.

  ***

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  About the Author

  ***

  Chapter One

  Leaning out over the platform and staring down the tracks wasn’t going to make the train arrive sooner. But Loretta leaned and stared anyway, and prayed for the 7:51 westbound to chug into the station so she could say good-bye to Nicky, climb aboard and go home.

  She wished she could tune him out, but she’d learned long ago that her family was un-tune-out-able. “It’s not like I care or anything,” he droned. “It’s your life. You wanna throw it away, that’s your choice. It’s nothing to me.”

  “I’m not throwing my life away,” she argued. “Come on, Nicky. Today is my birthday. Back off.”

  “Yeah, it’s your birthday. The big twenty-nine, baby. The last year of your youth. After thirty, it’s all downhill.”

  “Maybe in your case,” Loretta needled him. “You’ve sure gone downhill in the past few years.”

  He ignored the dig. “We’re talking about you. Where the hell are you going with your life?”

  Where the hell she was going with her life was back to Manhattan, if the damned train ever showed up. She wished Al had driven her to the station instead of Nicky. As the oldest, Nicky seemed to feel a special obligation to lecture his wayward sister. He loved playing the role of the wise elder, although his propensity for dressing like Gilligan, in plaid shorts and inverted sailor hats, disqualified him for any mantle of wisdom, as far as she was concerned.

  “All I’m saying,” he continued as she gazed desperately down the tracks, “is, your first reaction shouldn’t always be no.”

  “I don’t want to meet your friend, Nicky, okay?”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s a dentist.”

  “Like this is a bad thing. I’m a dentist. Al’s a dentist. Dad’s a dentist. What’s the problem?”

  The problem was that Nicky, Al and Dad were dentists. Dentistry was the family trade, and her family’s reaction, when she had militantly refused to take even a basic biology class in college, let alone anything that might smack of pre-dentistry, was, “That’s okay—she’ll marry a dentist.”

  She had no plans to marry a dentist. It wasn’t as if she was ever going to lose sleep over where her next plaque scraping was coming from. One of the reasons she’d become engaged to Gary had been that he’d been in advertising. A worthless occupation, according to her family, but what did she care? It wasn’t dentistry.

  So now her brother was trying to fix her up with a professional colleague. He thought Loretta would have a good time sharing drinks and dinner with some guy who got paid to stick his fingers into other people’s mouths.

  “Kathy vouched for Marty, didn’t she?” Nicky reminded her. “She said he was nice.”

  “She said he was brilliant and he looked like Mel Gibson, only taller. Yeah, right.”

  “Are you calling my wife a liar?”

  “I’m just saying maybe she was trying a little too hard to sell me on this buddy of yours. Tell me the truth. Does he really look like Mel Gibson?”

  “Well...” Nicky considered. “He’s taller.”

  The distant rattle of the train tickled her ears. She perked up with all the excitement of a dog hearing the whine of a can opener.

  “Just this once, okay? Let me give him your number. It’s nothing to me, but you could do worse. You have done worse. Not to mention any names, but Gary. Okay? Marty Calabrese is a nice guy.”

  “Gary was a nice guy, too,” Loretta argued, meaning it. Her family would never forgive him for having broken up with her at a late enough date that they’d had to sacrifice half the deposit they’d put down at the Roslyn Harbor Inn, but Loretta had forgiven him long ago. In fact, once she’d gotten over the shock, she’d realized she was grateful to him for figuring out that if they didn’t love each other, getting married might not be the wisest option.

  “You know,” she added, wishing the train would glide up to the platform already, “I don’t need my brothers soliciting dates for me. I can get dates on my own.”

  “Yeah? When was the last time you were on a date?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know.” He would like to know, she admitted silently. He’d love to know that it had been weeks, months—and going club-hopping with Bob from work one evening when he’d been between girlfriends didn’t really count as a date, because they were just pals. Nicky would love to know that she was everything her family feared: twenty-nine and single, with no prospects in sight, no wedding bells ringing on the horizon, no suburban tract house and two-point-three kids in her foreseeable future.

  She wouldn’t object terribly to having a husband someday, and even a kid or two. She wasn’t too keen on the suburban tract house, but she was sure her parents would give her a pass on that if she’d do the marriage and children thing. But God, the pressure! They just wouldn’t let up—and now that she was twenty-nine, it was only going to get worse. Loretta didn’t respond to pressure well. When anyone—especially her blood relatives—applied it, she dug in her heels. As long as they pressured her about marriage, she was going to stay single.

  Nicky peered down at her, all six brawny feet of him, and gave her a smile that displayed his extremely white teeth. He’d be handsome if he took off the dorky hat and did something about the paunch budding above his belt. “It’s just that you’re my sister and I care about you. And it bothers me that you won’t keep an open mind about things.”

  She wouldn’t keep an open mind? It was Nicky and the rest of her family who were close-minded. But the train was squeaking to a halt at the station, and she saw no reason to get into an argument about open minds with him. “Okay, look. I’ve got to go,” she said, sounding much too relieved.

  “Yeah, well, think about it, would you? He’s a really nice guy. It wouldn’t kill you to spend an evening with a nice guy.”

  “Uh-huh.” She rose on tiptoe to kiss Nicky’s cheek, then started toward the door, trying not to sprint.

  “You got your ticket?” he called after her.

  “Yeah, I got it. ’Bye, Nicky. Thanks again for the book.”

  “Kathy picked it out,” h
e reminded her.

  “Well, thank her again for me.” She stepped onto the train and waved, then entered the car and let out a long, weary breath. Though the car wasn’t packed, most of the bench seats held at least one passenger. The only unoccupied seat was the backward one just inside the door. She dropped onto the stiff upholstery, stifled a groan and closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to view all the passengers staring at her from the forward-facing seats.

  The book Nicky and Kathy had given her for her birthday was called The Secret To Success In Love. Her brother Al and his wife had also given her a book, entitled Two By Two: How to Find Your True Partner In Life. Her parents had given her a simple gold bracelet with a small heart-shaped charm hanging from a link. She’d understood the message they were conveying with their sweet gift: poor Loretta didn’t have a man in her life to give her a romantic bracelet for her birthday, so her parents had to step into the breach.

  The gifts had prompted her to request a refill on her wine. It was her birthday party, after all, and if she needed vast quantities of wine to survive the day, so be it. If ever she’d shared her family’s yearning for her to have a boyfriend, it had been today; with a boyfriend, she could have begged off the family barbecue her parents had insisted on hosting in her honor. “Sorry, Mr. Wonderful is taking me out for dinner tonight,” she could have said, and they’d have been so ecstatic they wouldn’t have minded that she wasn’t spending her birthday with them. Or else she could have brought Mr. Wonderful with her to her parents’ raised ranch in Plainview, and he could have been her ally. He and she could have exchanged amused glances whenever the discussion veered to tartar treatments or quadrant cleaning, or her mother aimed sly criticisms at her: “So, Loretta, are you ever going to get a haircut?” or “So, are people still threatening to tear each other limb from limb on that show you work for?”

  But she’d attended the party alone, because alone was her current social status. After faking delight over her presents, she’d dined with her family on grilled steaks and salad and bruschetta and more red wine, followed by a too-sweet golden cake from Rocco’s Bakery, the white frosting decorated with pink roses and the words, “Happy Birthday, Dear Loretta,” as if her family might need some help with the lyrics when they sang the traditional birthday song. Nicky’s and Al’s kids had run around the lawn after dinner, squealing and howling, while the adults had remained seated on the deck, where they’d been dive-bombed by mosquitoes which seemed passionately attracted to the pungent smoke from the citronella candles her mother had lit and placed on every available vertical surface. Her father had drunk quite a few toasts filled with unsubtle hints: “Here’s to my grandchildren—the beautiful grandchildren I already have and the ones Loretta will give me someday,” he’d announce before taking a long chug of his Valpolicello. Or “Here’s a toast to my birthday girl, whose beauty is so overwhelming she scares the men away.”

  Loretta could think of plenty of things more overwhelming—and scary—than her beauty. Her family, for instance.

  The train jerked forward twice, then started rolling steadily down the track. Her seat was on the side facing away from the platform, so she didn’t bother to search for Nicky as the station slid away. He probably hadn’t waited to watch the train’s departure, anyway. She’d bet he was halfway back to her parents’ house by now, anxious to grab Kathy, Alyssa and Trevor—whom Loretta had nicknamed “Terror” because, at age four, he was still deeply ensconced in the terrible twos—and drive them home. Al and Cindy and the twins were no doubt already back in Syosset, because Cindy lived by a strict schedule. Asked if she was hungry, she always checked her watch before answering. If the twins acted cranky and it wasn’t nap time or bedtime, she would blithely dismiss their fussing. “They can’t be tired,” she’d say. “It’s not seven-thirty yet.”

  The train picked up speed, clicking and rocking rhythmically as it carried its riders to Penn Station. Although it was only early June, Loretta guessed many of the passengers were returning home from weekends at their summer retreats on the eastern end of the island. The railroad’s northern line was inconvenient to passengers from the Hamptons and Fire Island, but plenty of city dwellers maintained weekend properties on the North Shore. A few Sundays from now, this train would be even more crowded than it was tonight.

  She didn’t mind riding backward, except for having so many pairs of eyes aimed at her. She deliberately shifted her focus to the two passengers sitting directly across from her: a young, chichi woman with spiky platinum hair, skin-tight black apparel and an impractically small purse, and a man in faded and grass-stained blue jeans, a baggy gray T-shirt, scuffed sneakers and a scruffy day-old beard darkening his angular chin. His hair was tawny, the sort of pale brown that would probably brighten with blond highlights during the course of the summer. His eyes were downcast as he pored over some papers bound into a folder. A leather tote stood on the floor between his legs.

  If she hadn’t spent the better part of the afternoon being badgered by her parents, brothers and sisters-in-law about her pathetic single state, she might have considered the man attractive, his disheveled apparel notwithstanding. But she had spent the afternoon being badgered, and she refused to think about men at all.

  She directed her gaze back to the platinum-blond woman across from her. The woman’s sandals had such thick platform soles, Loretta figured she would have been just as well off strapping a couple of wooden blocks to the bottoms of her feet. The instant the woman’s eyes met hers, she glanced away.

  A conductor shambled down the center aisle, and Loretta produced her ticket for him. He asked to see a photo ID, and she showed him her driver’s license, even though in the picture she had the pained look of someone trying to force out a sneeze. The conductor took her ticket, handed her license back and exited the car.

  She rummaged through her tote—not a classy leather one like the man’s, but a beige canvas bag with “Royal Caribbean” silk-screened on it, a souvenir from her parents’ last cruise. Her mother had tried to give the bag to Loretta, but the last thing she wanted—with the possible exception of two books on how to capture men—was a cruise ship tote. Her mother had insisted that she borrow it to carry the books home. “You can always return it, if you feel so strongly,” her mother had pointed out.

  Loretta felt strongly. She’d return it at the first opportunity—which would likely be within a week or two, when her parents decided to host another family barbecue to see if they could coerce her into accepting a blind date with Marty Calabrese or some other equally qualified dentist.

  She pulled out The Secret to Success in Love and flipped open the book. The table of contents was both pedantic and alarming: “From Captivation to Capture.” “The Overlap of Love and Need.” “Power and Empowerment in the Love Relationship.” “The Twenty Tricks of Enthrallment.” Enthrallment? If that was a real word, it shouldn’t be.

  She glimpsed the blond woman removing a cell phone from her undersized purse. Loretta would have lifted her book higher, providing the woman with a little privacy for her call, but then everyone in the entire car would see the front cover of the book and think she was a loser. Instead, she lowered the book to her knees, bowed her head, and pretended to be engrossed in the twenty tricks. Trick number one was to be honest. Trick number two, she learned by skimming ahead a few pages, was to conceal the depth of one’s interest in a potential lover. So much for honesty.

  “Hi, it’s me,” the blonde said in a perky soprano. “Yes, it’s me. Where am I? I don’t know. I’m on the train.” She paused, then said, “Yes, I know I’m on the train. I don’t know where we are, though. Somewhere on Long Island. Maybe Westbury? Someplace like that. I don’t know.” Another pause, and she said, her voice a tad shriller, “Because I’m on the train. We left Hicksville and we haven’t reached Mineola yet, so I’m guessing—well, I’m on the train.”

  Loretta lifted her gaze. The woman’s lips were pursed and her brow formed a cute little den
t above the bridge of her nose.

  “Because the train is moving,” she explained to the obviously dense person on the other end. “So we’re not in Hicksville anymore. We left the Hicksville station about ten minutes ago. So we should be getting to Westbury soon, or is it Carle Place?… The Long Island Railroad,” she clarified. “Yes, right now. I’m on the train this very minute.”

  Her voice wasn’t that loud, yet it resonated in the little enclave formed by the facing bench seats. Loretta gritted her teeth and glanced toward the man in the grass-stained jeans. He glowered at the blond woman. Loretta noticed that his eyes were green and his eyelashes were surprisingly thick.

  “Right now,” the woman said. “The train is moving, so I don’t know where we are. Maybe we stopped in Westbury already. I don’t remember. Does Westbury come before Mineola?” She sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe thirty miles an hour? Maybe forty? So I could be about ten miles from Hicksville, or maybe more. It could be less. I don’t know. The train is moving, so even if I knew where I was right this minute, by the time I told you I’d be somewhere else…. Yes, I’m on the train. I think our last stop was Hicksville. We haven’t stopped since then. Right now we’re moving. So by the time I figured out where I was, I’d be somewhere else.”

  That struck Loretta as interestingly existential. Where were they? Not where they’d been one minute ago, not where they would be one minute from now. Then again, she didn’t care, as long as she wasn’t in her parents’ backyard.

  “Hicksville,” the woman said, her voice growing louder. “Hicksville and Westbury. Somewhere. I don’t think we stopped in Westbury yet, but maybe we did. How should I know? I’m just here, on the train. Somewhere.”

  Abruptly, the man leaned toward her, swiped the phone out of her hand and held it to his ear. In a voice that was low but steel-tough, each word carefully enunciated, he said, “She’s on a moving train somewhere between Hicksville and Westbury.” Then he hit the disconnect button and handed the phone to the blond woman.