by Lass Small
In their conversation, Andrew found himself adopting JoAnn’s contemplation of going back in time and what she’d take to that time. Men tend to do that sort of adaptation of women’s ideas. “If you were transferred back in time, what would you take with you?” he asked his sister.
Lu slid her eyes over to Rip and said, “Rip.”
They touched hands and grinned at each other in a cutoff manner that excluded Andrew entirely. So he said, “What utensils. What would be important to you to have along?” And he added with some endurance, “—besides Rip.”
The lovers shared their laugh.
Try as he did, Andrew didn’t really get anything meaningful from the two. They were in .La-la land. They were cheerful and reasonably courteous, but actually they mostly ignored Andrew.
Even the dog ignored Andrew. The visit was saddening. He meant nothing to any of them, at all. Lu had been raised to be courteous and she skimmed along the edge of that manner.
Outside of deadly looks that would shrivel Andrew into backing off, Rip tended to ignore the guest altogether.
They wouldn’t always be thataway. Andrew asked the pair, “Have you quarreled as yet?”
“Endlessly.” That was Rip as he smiled at the flower who was Lu.
Lu explained, “He wanted me to cook.” She laughed over that one.
Rip replied, “She learned.”
Lu bragged, “I make all sorts of...toast...and I can open... cans!”
Rip’s laughter was along with hers.
Under the table, the dog was silent. Andrew still had whole, unbloodied ankles. There are times when such is a plus.
Would Buddy ever come back to him? Andrew wondered. But he was smart enough not to try to lure his dog out from under the table. The dog’s being there, hidden, was a clue that the dog felt he’d vanished.
How sad.
The dog probably felt he was the only real defense of the two he’d chosen.
And Andrew remembered a time back a way that he’d been ill and lying—about dead—in his blankets by a low fire, at night, and the wolves came. Buddy had held them back with snarls and attacks. He was a good dog.
When Andrew finally rose to leave, Lu came to him and bugged him. He looked beyond to Rip who wasn’t as committed to Andrew as he was to Andrew’s sister. Rip was territorial. He wanted Lu. He was courteous and shook hands, but he hadn’t accepted Andrew as kin...yet.
Andrew allowed his ex-dog to be silent and hidden.
He left, carefully using the cane and strode back to the ranch house just a while away. No one seemed to be around. JoAnn wasn’t in her room, and Andrew couldn’t find her. He finally asked one of the cleaning women.
She replied, “I’ll call Clara. She helped Miss Murray pack.”
Pack? Andrew’s entire body system became rigid. Pack? Leave? To where?
So Clara showed up and smiled as she—
“Where is JoAnn Murray?”
“She went to visit a friend out east, as I recall. She talked to Mrs. Keeper.”
Andrew walked on off, just like that. He burst into Mrs. Keeper’s office and asked everybody there, “Where is JoAnn Murray?”
And Mrs. Keeper replied by herself, “She’s gone to a friend’s house for a card party?” The TEXAS do-you-understand questioning statement. “I believe it was a bridge tournament.”
“Where.” Not even a question. Just a demand.
“I don’t believe she mentioned that, but some of her clothes are still here. She’ll be back.”
“When?”
“Dear boy, I have no idea. I didn’t speak with her. She just wrote a note and left. It must have been sudden. With bridge, that way, it could have been a last minute fill-in.”
“Did she leave a note for me?”
“Not that I recall. Have you looked in your room?”
He actually left without replying. That made Mrs. Keeper smile and raise her eyebrows at her secretary.
But Andrew found there was no note there from JoAnn in his room. No note...nothing. He was sundered. She was his!
How could she leave so carelessly? He thought that as he hunted down the cleaning crew and made them go through all the wastebasket trash to be sure there hadn’t been a note for him from her.
There was none.
Rosco told Andrew with naked eyes, “We don’t never throw away anybody’s notes even if they’re three weeks laying around. If they’re not crumpled up and torn up and put in the wastebasket, we don’t touch nothing that’s a note or a letter. We know better.”
“Do you know where she went?”
Rosco inquired carefully, “Who?”
“Miss Murray.”
“That one. Nope. We didn’t pay no mind.” He turned aside and hollered, “Hey! Nick?”
There was a negative reply. That one called back. “He ain’t here. Want him?”
And Rosco replied, “Yeah. Get him.” Then he said to Andrew. “If there’s anybody that notices anything, it’s Nick. We’ll talk to him.”
And Andrew said—He actually said, “Thank you.”
While that didn’t waggle Rosco, at all, it should have. It was the first time in Andrew’s whole, entire life that he’d voluntarily said the words. That probably showed he was earnest and really needed the information.
What had ever boggled Andrew before then?—other than his father. His costudents in England?
Nick was found. He came with some interest and curiosity. Andrew was talked about in the crew. He was...different. He’d been an asinine clod in demanding that he be waited on by the crew. They’d fixed that. But it’d taken Mrs. Keeper to help them straighten him out.
So Nick was careful and very relaxed. He’d have to hear what this pilgrim wanted.
So Andrew asked, “Nick, do you know anything about Miss Murray leaving and why?”
“She said she’d be back in a couple of days. That was about all we ever heard. She just took one bag, but none of us knows where all she went. Did you ask Mrs. Keeper?”
“She suggested that I contact you all. She didn’t know.”
It was then Andrew caught their attention. They studied him. He was silent as he looked thoughtfully out a window. He mentioned, “Women are strange.”
The men laughed but the one woman was huffy. She said, “It’s men who louse up this planet!”
Andrew considered her. “You may be right.” He said it kindly. It wasn’t what he should have said, but it was better than what he might have said.
In the three days that he waited, Andrew had a lot to think about. Actually it wasn’t really three—whole—days. The lapse in time just went to the third day. It was very similar to his being trapped under his horse.
That whole, entire time, Andrew paced the wide, shaded front porch of the Keepers’ house. Or he sat on one of the lounge chairs. It was not extended, it was rigidly upright so that he could see down the driveway as far as was possible.
Why her?
Why was he so triggered by that JoAnn Murray? And her image cleared in his mind. It’d been there all along anyway, now he really looked at her. In his mind, he watched her flirt and laugh. He saw her reading a book and looking up at him in a discarding manner.
He saw her looking around outside, as they walked, with her hair blowing around the edges of her hat. He watched her walk and place her feet one at a time in the jumble that was the dish of cacti and rocks and scrubby trees.
His mind watched her speak to other people. And he saw her face as she looked at him. He saw the straw in her hair after he’d made love to her in the stable.
She was magic.
Why had she left him without any note or call or contact? That bothered him especially. It was some time before his mind mentioned that he had left the Keepers’ house and walked into the little town to see his sister. He hadn’t left a message for JoAnn, telling her where he’d be and why.
It was his own stupidity that caused all this tension! It was a lesson to himself. He needed better c
ommunication.
He did not want to be like his useless father.
That was especially catching to Andrew. If he wasn’t to be like his father, then he needed to... communicate with other people. Be a part of them.
So he didn’t ring the bell for help, he got up and went into the house and found the library. There he found a pad, a pencil and an envelope.
He took those things out to the porch and surveyed the entrance road yet again. It was empty. Well, there was the man who mowed the lawn and that man’s woman who trimmed things—precisely. There were dogs out and about.
He missed Buddy.
Then he went on looking and realized how busy it all was. He’d never before seen how very busy everybody was!
He was not.
He walked or sat. He had no involvement in anything else. Just...himself. How odd to realize that.
So he wrote a letter to his father and asked questions. How could he guide his life better? How could he mean something to this time? And he told his father about JoAnn.
Then he tore that all up and just wrote as to where he was and that he planned to go to the yearly gathering at his old school in England.
Now, that was interesting. Why in this world would he want to go to a place he had so badly wanted to leave?
He spent some time considering that, and understood that it had been the only nurturing he’d ever received. He’d been just like most of those other boys, removed from families and allowed to be taught and disciplined by experts.
Then Andrew began to remember what all he’d learned at that strict place. The manners, the discipline, the learning of how to cope with anything.
He knew how to cope. He’d been taught to be in charge. He did not need to try to punish his father any longer.
Ahhhhh. So that had been his problem. And Andrew sat and considered what an ass he’d been in trying to catch his mother’s sole attention.
For a man of his age, he was a little slow in learning. In understanding. He would take JoAnn to England for the reunion of all the scholars. How many would he know? How many of his teachers would still be there?
He could at least show someone else where he’d been and what it’d been like there. And he gradually realized what all he’d been taught. That patience, the care, the molding of him that he’d rejected...until now.
—and he finally faced the fact that he had not been rejected by the students there, it was he who had rejected the approaches of the other boys.
Andrew had only been rejected by his own father.
His whole life had been in rebellion of his father. He’d deliberately not mixed with the others because he was so jealous of his mother being entirely claimed by his father. And he’d allowed that to rule his stupid life.
The rejection of today was going back two hundred years, riding a horse and being asinine. He really was a jackass.
Because of his concern for JoAnn, Andrew had had the time to sit and watch for her, and in that unused time, he’d begun to understand his own life.
He would go to England for the reunion. Who would he know? And he thought back and remembered faces.
As Andrew sat there, he began to remember names. Names of his teachers, names of his classmates. There was the snaggletoothed, uh, Trevor! By golly, Andrew wondered, would Trevor be there? Trevor... what? And he got out a small leather book and opened it to a clean page.
He finally had five names...and her car came up the winding driveway.
JoAnn was there.
Andrew put the small, leather book into his pocket as he stood up.
She looked at him coldly out of the car window—and she drove on back to the garages.
So Andrew went around the horse and followed. She was already in the garage when he arrived. She was climbing out of the car. She slammed the door. She didn’t look at him. She opened the trunk, and he reached past her for her suitcase.
She said, “I can carry it. Give it to me.”
“I beg your pardon for not telling you where I would be. I went to see my sister over in the town. She really loves Rip. I don’t believe you’ve been up in Rip’s plane to look at the land with him, have you?”
He was acting like they were friends? She was offended and irritated. But he walked beside her carrying her case...and he talked.
He had asked pardon and told her of going to Rip’s and why. Would she forgive him?
She looked at him. That was why she’d left some of her clothes here. She had wanted another look at this creature.
He could easily tell that she was still angry. But she wasn’t shouting at him, or swinging her purse at his head, nor was she refusing to walk alongside of him.
He asked, “How did the game go?”
“The game?”
“Wasn’t it a bridge marathon that you were dragged to to fill the empty chair of someone else?”
That surprised her. “Yes.”
“How did it go?”
JoAnn wondered, when had he ever wanted information from someone else? He’d only talked about himself. He was interesting, but he was very much interested only in himself.
This was a breakthrough? She looked at Andrew. He smiled at her. He said, “I was afraid you wouldn’t come back. I searched for you everywhere and even made the crew let me go through all the day’s trash so that I could know you did not leave me a note when you left. Why didn’t you? I was sundered.”
He’d noticed she was gone? He was upset that she was? She said, “Since you left no note as to where you were, I didn’t think you’d care where I was.”
Andrew stopped and took her against him. JoAnn was a bit stiffened. He told her in a low voice, “I was afraid you wouldn’t come back. I didn’t know where to find you. They said you weren’t at your home.”
And she began to understand him. Or—was it just sex. Men do tend to try to keep some handy woman around for that.
He said, “Come with me. It’s been at least a year since I’ve seen you.” He smiled down at her so kindly with shared humor.
But she wasn’t lured especially. The bridge game had been dead heat and serious. Some women are thataway. It had been hell-bent the whole entire time!
She said, “I’m exhausted.”
“I know exactly how to relax you. I’ve played cutthroat bridge myself. I can save you.” He grinned and his eyes danced.
And she said, “Baloney.”
He lifted his hands. “You’re assuming wrong. This is a rubdown that loosens tired muscles and allows you to sleep. Let me.”
That “Let me” was suspect. She allowed him to turn her and she went along, he opened the door for her to enter the house.
There was not one person anywhere around—at all—in their whole, entire trip to his room.
She asked logically, “Why are we in your room and not mine?”
“I have the ointment here.” He said that. He smiled kindly. He suggested, “Would you like to strip in the bath? You can take this towel with you. Or...I could help you.”
His concern was open and gentle and very, very sly.
She inquired, “Has this worked very often?”
“I’ve never before tried it. Which way will it be? I’m harmless.”
Those last two words made her eyes dance. She said, “Harmless.” She tasted that word as she watched him. Then she said, “Of course.”
He said, “After that bridge tournament, remembering all those cards and who played what how and when, you must feel a bit hyper and tense. You need to relax. There is an ancient Middle Eastern massage that relaxes someone that tense. Let me help you.”
She coughed rather fakely. It would have been to cover a laugh? And she bit her lower lip.
He took off his shirt and trousers. He slid out of his shoes and left his socks on because they wouldn’t interfere. He explained before she could question. “Helping someone else relax is hard work, and I sweat.”
Sure.
So she did allow him to undress her. She was curio
us just how he would...handle all this and exactly how he’d manipulate her... how—practiced—he was.
He was either dead stupid or a hambone. He was awkward. He tried to get her skirt off without unzipping it. He pulled her shirt off over her head and it caught, because it wasn’t unbuttoned. He was really inept.
Or...he was remarkably sly.
Ten
For a man of Andrew’s age, it was interesting for JoAnn to witness his remarkable lack of knowing the handling of a woman. He was so earnest and careful. He breathed oddly.
It was supposed to be from exertion, not lust.
He struggled so well to get the garments off JoAnn. Andrew was earnest. He had to wrestle with everything on her. He acted as if he’d never done it before. At his age?
Well, maybe the woman had disrobed herself? Saved him the time? Been eager? JoAnn turned jealous. She asked, “How many women have you undressed?” And she lifted her eyebrows gently as she waited for his reply.
Andrew looked at her blankly. He considered. He frowned. He asked, “Am I all that bad at it?”
“You appear to be quite engrossed.”
“Engrossed.” He frowned as he thought about it. “I’m gross?”
“No. You’re awkward.”
“Well, I could go out and find somebody in the crew who could get this done, but I—hush—I hesitate to allow anybody else to put his hands on—your clothing.” Andrew waited a tad and then explained, “Their hands might not be clean.”
She laughed. She looked at him. She was amused by him. She became more tolerant. She asked, “Shall I help?”
“No. This is my job. I’m soothing you.”
“You’re wrecking my hair.”
He looked at her head of mussed-up hair very seriously evaluating it. “It looks fine. A little tumbled, but okay.” His male hands smoothed her hair. He pulled it straight down and along her head as he “neated” it. Yes.
Fortunately, JoAnn was not at all insufferably aware of her hair or how it was on her head. She felt pretty anyway, and which way her hair was blown or moved was of no real interest to her.
JoAnn watched him.