“That’s what you did with Bernie,” he’d told her.
“How do you know?”
“Because I listen when you’ve talked about the men in your past.”
“You asked me!”
“That’s not the point. The point is that you tossed them all away—like used tissues.”
“Not all. There were survivors, a few who lived to tell the tale.” She thought of long-ago Will. But then, too, hadn’t he suspected something like what Jesse was saying, something that scared him so that he moved on? Then she mugged a mouth like the devouring shark her husband accused her of being. “You’re full of shit, Jesse.”
But perhaps there was a bit of truth in his words—an idea that, when she thought about it, made her more than a little uncomfortable.
* * *
It was early December, and getting out of the canyon on weekends was impossible, the roads clogged with flatlanders driving to the mountains to cut their own Christmas trees.
“You better start early if you’re going to get across the highway,” Emma said.
“That’s what I’m doing.” Jesse was pulling on a flannel shirt, a jacket. “I just need to run up to Skytop first. I left some measurements.”
“Where did you say you were going to be all day?” She asked it lightly, as if she were inquiring about the weather.
“Place in Oakland I want to check out, has Victorian salvage.” Just as lightly he asked, “Sure you don’t want to go?”
How polite we are, she thought, in our conspiracy not to stumble over the body of Caroline which might as well be lying on the rug here between us.
“No, thanks. I don’t think so.” There was a time, oh, there was a time, when she would have pulled on a jacket and jumped into the truck, happy as Elmer to be taking a ride. “Today I’m going to run down to Boccia’s. Tony’s talking about doing a cookbook and wants me to help him test some recipes.”
“Great,” Jesse said. She knew he wasn’t listening to her. His mind was already on his first destination, Caroline’s apartment in Palo Alto.
“Have a good time.” She waved him out the door. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
He turned on the heel of his boot and gave her a look.
Emma smiled brightly and blew him a kiss.
* * *
She hated being late. Jesse was just out the door, and once again the washing machine had exploded. The chipmunks thought it was a larder, had filled it with nuts. Now water had backed up and blown out the hoses.
Where was Jesse when she needed him? By now, screwing his little sweet patootie.
But on the other hand, if she lived alone, there’d never be anyone to help.
And then on the third hand, she said to herself, stripping off her pants, soaked from the washing machine, and struggling into another pair, why don’t you just shut the hell up?
She grabbed her bag loaded with cookbooks and raced out the door.
At the end of the canyon road she could see the line of traffic to the highway ahead. From the valley side were station wagons full of children with expectant faces. Big green firs on wheels rolled down from the hilltop. Damn! She was never going to get out.
Finally someone waved her and the van behind her into line. She should have called Tony Boccia: “Christmas trees are clogging the road, and my washing machine was full of nuts.” She looked at her watch. She’d never make it.
Then she glanced into her rearview mirror. The man in the van behind her waved. Who the hell was that?
She crept forward a foot.
Bump. Bump. Her tires made a funny sound. Probably a broken Christmas-tree branch.
The van behind her tooted. She glared into the rearview mirror. “I’m doing the best I can, you bastard.”
He honked again. Okay. Okay. She rolled forward another foot. Bump. Bump.
Then a tall man with long white-blond hair was leaning down looking into her face. Her heart leaped. Will! No, no, she’d made this same mistake before. But where, when?
“You know you’ve got a flat?” By God, listen to that. He was Southern! When he smiled, a gap showed between his two front teeth. “And now I get to return the favor,” he said. “Three, four months ago your husband pulled me out of the ditch.”
That was it! He was the man at the door that day she and Jesse had made love stoned, the day Rosalie had called her about Daddy.
She looked at her tire, left rear, flat as a fritter. Horns sounded.
“Goddamned flatlanders,” she said. “Why can’t they buy their Christmas trees in stores like other people?”
“Minor Daniels,” the man laughed and extended his hand. His sea-foam eyes crinkled at the corners.
“Where are you from?”
“Up at the top of the hill. I bought the old Bradley place.”
“Before that?”
But his answer as to his origins got pushed aside by a man yelling, “Get that thing out of the road.”
“Some Christmas spirit!” Emma volleyed back.
“Here,” Minor said, still grinning, “let me push you off.”
He did. Now their vehicles stood side by side at the level pull-off by the highway pay phone. He opened his hand for her car keys. “Shall I?”
“Be my guest.” His head disappeared inside her trunk. “I appreciate your help, but I hope this doesn’t take very long.”
“What?”
She raised her voice. “I said, ‘I hate to sound ungrateful, but I’m in a hurry.’”
“Well,” his head reappeared, “I could change your tire a hell of lot quicker if you had a spare.”
“Shit! I forgot!” She slapped herself in the forehead as she remembered the tire she’d left at the station in Los Gatos the week before. She looked at her watch. “I’m never going to make my appointment.”
Minor reached into his jean pocket and handed her a dime.
“What’s this for?”
“Call,” he said, pointing at the phone.
* * *
“Now.” Minor wiped his hands on a red bandana. He’d insisted on checking her oil while the station attendant changed her tire. “How about a cup of hot chocolate?”
That wasn’t a bad idea. “Sure, come on up to the house, and I’ll make us some.”
“Let’s go to my place instead.”
Emma paused. She couldn’t go to his house with this man whom she hardly knew, even if he looked like Will, even if he was a neighbor.
He saw the look on her face, and his gap-toothed grin reappeared. “I meant over the hill to my restaurant in Santa Cruz. You have the time?”
“You own a restaurant?” With his long hair and round gold-rimmed glasses, he didn’t look like any restaurateur she’d ever seen.
“Yeah.” He laughed. “Half of La Rosita, at the marina. I keep my hand in a few other things too.”
“Like what?”
“Ah—Southern women. You-all never give up, do you? Get in the van and while we drive over the mountain I’ll tell you my whole life story.”
Emma thought about it. The road beside them was still filled with Christmas trees, happy families, smiling kids. She’d rescheduled her meeting with Tony. Her husband was off with his lover. The morning mist had cleared. It was going to be an absolutely gorgeous day.
She locked her car and turned to Minor. “Why the hell not?”
* * *
“Where are you from?”
“South Georgia,” he said. “Little town you never heard of.”
“I used to live in Georgia.”
“I thought you might’ve.”
“So try me.”
“Dexter,” he said.
“Nope.” She shook her head, then pointed at herself. “West Cypress, Louisiana.” She paused. “How’d you get to be called Minor?”
“My daddy’s Major. Really Beaufort Marion Daniels the Fifth. I’m the sixth. My son’s the seventh. We call him Seven. All the men in my family have nicknames.”
; Through the van’s windows an apple orchard paraded in uneven rows down the side of a hill.
“Like Big Beaufort.”
“Little Beaufort, Major, Minor, you got it.” He lit a cigarette, pausing two beats. “Your folks still living in West Cypress?”
Emma nodded.
“How they cotton to Jesse?”
“They don’t know about him.”
Minor laughed. “You never told them he’s black?”
“I never told them I’m married.”
“Whowhee! That’s some brass. They’d have a fit, right?”
“A screaming hissy.”
“What other skeletons you hiding, woman?”
She just smiled. That’s for me to know, Bubba, and you to find out.
* * *
They sat at the bar of the Rosita sipping spiked Mexican hot chocolate. Minor had made the drinks himself.
“What else do you do?”
“Fried chicken,” he said. “Best pecan pies and fried chicken in the whole world.”
“I make the best fried chicken.”
“Challenge you to a cook-off sometime.”
She shook his hand. “Deal. And other than chicken?”
Minor pushed back on his bar stool, tilting himself almost supine with his long legs. “I can see you’ve heard the gossip. I’m going to have to come clean.”
“Well, I heard something. But I can’t remember what.”
“Mercy, woman, that’s no good. That’s like not remembering the punch line to a joke.”
“Are you going to tell me or not?” Emma made a ferocious face.
He laughed. “Where do you want me to start?”
“At the beginning.”
As she said it, Emma realized that she was curious about this very attractive man who reminded her so much of Will. She liked it that he kept smiling at her with his crinkly eyes as if she pleased him all the way down to the tips of his cowboy boots. “Half my youth was misspent hanging out at the Dexter truck stop listening to tales of open roads and memorizing country- and-western tunes. When I got out of reform school”—and now she knew he was lying; for reform read military, no, prep school—“I pulled myself together and went to Emory—”
“I went to Emory.”
“Couldn’t have. I wouldn’t have missed you.”
Emma sniffed. “I didn’t date undergraduates.”
“How the hell old are you anyway?”
“Thirty.”
“I’m thirty-two.” Minor figured for a minute. “In a hurry to get out of West Cypress?” He lit another cigarette and then grabbed her arm. “Isn’t this too pretty a day to be inside? Drink that thing down and let’s go for a sail on my boat.” He pointed down to the marina. “That one there.” It was a beauty.
Moments later he gave her a hand aboard.
“It’s a shame to give a boat this beautiful such a silly name,” she said, reading the word Grits painted on the side.
“Ain’t it?”
* * *
“And then I did my hitch of alternative service ’cause I didn’t want to go kill Vietnamese who’d never said a bad word about my momma.”
“Where?”
“Hospital in Atlanta—mostly peeled potatoes for two years.”
“Made you want to go into the restaurant business?”
“Naw. Made me want to kill.”
They both laughed.
“After that did lots of stuff. Played guitar fair-to-middling well. Traveled in a band for a while, Looney Toona. Got married. Had a baby boy. Went on tour. My wife got bored. We got divorced. Ended up here in California.”
“You married now?” Emma held her breath.
“Yep, she’s an actress—down in LA.”
“Your son’s with her? He lives down there?” (You’re married, too. Remember?)
“He is now. Seven bounces back and forth, be here for the summer.”
(She too?) “Why don’t you all live together?”
“Sometimes we do. But I don’t like it down there—where her work is. Too easy for me to get in trouble. I find enough here to amuse myself.”
“Ought to be easy for a man who can fry chicken.”
“And sail. Which I’m doing a pisspoor job of.” The mainsail was flapping. “Get ready to come about.”
Emma ducked under the sail as Minor maneuvered it to the other side of the boat.
“And then?” she asked.
“Then? After Looney Toona, you mean? Then I got involved in selling dope.”
Emma tried to keep her face straight. Minor laughed.
“Not hard stuff. Just marijuana in wholesale lots. I’d go down to Mexico and arrange for shipments in through Scotts Valley airport.”
“I always thought those Scotts Valley stories were just that— stories.”
“Well, the Feds believed them. That’s where we got caught. Yep.” He played with a rope. “Served my time in Lompoc, two years.”
(He’d been in jail!)
“Yep.” He smiled, reading her mind. “Sitting right before you is a genuine jailbird. Peeled a hell of a lot more potatoes. But all the while my money was doing pretty well in the stock market. Kept in touch with my broker by mail.”
“The money you made dealing grass?”
“Yep. They can put you away, but if they can’t find the bread they can’t make you give it back. So when I got out, I put some of it in the restaurant, some in that health food store down on the plaza. And I putter a little in mountain real estate.”
“Good Lord.”
“Shocking, huh? But I’m reformed. Now I do good works.”
“Like what?”
“I fund part of the day-care center in town and volunteer one day a week. I like little kids.”
Emma shook her head. A Grade-A Southern talespinner and bullshitter. She’d met his kind before—well, similar, but hardly ever as cute.
* * *
The late-afternoon sun felt wonderful on her face. The hell with her complexion. Emma lay on her back on the deck as they slowly headed back toward the marina. Her eyes closed.
“This has been a wonderful day,” she said.
“We’ll have to do it again sometime.”
She’d love to, but she couldn’t.
“We can invite Jesse to come along next time,” Minor said.
Emma sat up and stared Minor straight in the face. He winked.
* * *
“Did you find anything at the salvage place?”
Jesse had awakened her getting into bed. She squinted at the clock. Eleven. The sea air must have knocked her out. She’d already been asleep for a couple of hours.
“Some old school lamps with long brass rods and white globes. Now go back to sleep.”
She did and dreamed of Minor giving her a hand off the Grits onto a bamboo dock in the South Seas. Out of the midst of a welcoming party marched the king. He was wearing a grass skirt, a big grin, and looked exactly like Marcus from West Cypress—now San Jose. Jesse was not in the dream.
But it was Jesse she snuggled up against when in the dream she and Minor began making love. Minor whispered, “Hey, darling,” into her ear while rubbing a hand across her behind. “Great fanny.”
“Ummmm,” Emma murmured.
“Well.” Jesse awoke, hard against her. “What a pleasant surprise.”
* * *
“Meeting Rupert for lunch tomorrow,” Jesse said the next Saturday. “Want to join us?”
“Nope. I’m going to stay home and work on some of Tony’s recipes.”
Neither of them ever mentioned Caroline. The affair was now five months old.
Emma had barely closed the door behind him when the phone rang.
“What do you think about this rain?” Minor asked.
“Who is this?”
“Don’t play coy with me, woman. You’ve been hearing my sweet Southern voice in your dreams.”
(How did you know?) No, she didn’t say that. Instead she said, “You shouldn’t b
e flirting so shamelessly with a married woman.”
“A pretty woman whose husband shouldn’t leave her alone so much.”
“How do you know I’m alone?”
“Because I have a telescope aimed right at your front door.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Would I kid about a thing like that?”
“Prove it.”
“Put down the phone for a minute and walk out the front.”
Emma never knew what got into her. She slipped out of her robe, opened her front door, and stepped naked onto the flagstones.
“Whoowhee!” he yelled when she picked the phone back up. “Hold it right there, lady. I’ll be down in a flash.”
* * *
“No.”
Minor slipped his hands under her robe. Now he opened it. “Come to Daddy,” he breathed. “What sweet little breasts.”
She shook her head again; her heat was rising fast.
He ran his fingers up and down her body, avoiding the obvious places.
“No,” she repeated.
His head rose. “Why not? Jesse won’t be back until tonight.”
“How do you know that?”
He never stopped touching her, here, there, but not there, ever so gently. She was fighting to keep her hands off his zipper.
“Take me to bed,” he said. He gave her his hand. “Take me because you want me.”
He leaned over and licked her eyes, her nose. She began to tremble. She had to distract herself or she was lost.
“How do you know how long Jesse will be away? He just went to the store.”
“No, he didn’t. I know where he went, and so do you.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve followed him.”
Emma pulled back from Minor then and stared into his eyes.
“I was curious because I’ve wanted you from the first time I saw you, when you came to the door in this robe”—he looked to where he’d thrown it on the floor—“with the smell of sex all over you.” Emma leaned against his chest and closed her eyes. “That was August tenth—four months and ten days ago. It’s five days till Christmas, Emma. I’m a mighty patient man, but I’m ready for my Christmas present.” He tickled her ear with his tongue. “Won’t you be my Christmas present?”
Keeping Secrets Page 28