by R. B. Conroy
Joe took a deep breath, looked out over the golf course and smiled. On the whole, Joe’s life was very good right now. The empty spots in his life left by the death of Adele were starting to be filled in a big way by the charismatic Susan. He felt energized again and he looked forward to each day with renewed enthusiasm.
His life with Adele had been deep and rich. It would always be the defining relationship of his existence and he was certain that she would be happy that he had found another person to share his life with--something she had encouraged during their last night together in the hospital. He smiled when he glanced at one of the lovely rose bushes she had planted a few months before her death. Even from her grave, the wonderful Adele was still giving back to him.
Always a man of faith, and with the morning sun warming his shoulders and tears forming in his eyes, a humble and grateful Joe scooted off his chair and fell onto his knees next to the slate partition that bordered his patio. He laid his elbows on top of the two foot wall, and lowered his head. He clasped his hands together and with the Sandhill crane crowing in the distance and the soft morning breeze rustling through his gray, thinning hair, Joe Stone began to pray. “Thank you, Lord, for all of my wonderful years with Adele and thank you Lord for bringing Susan into my life. She means so much to me. And please, please be with my young friend, Willie. Help him to find the peace that seems to be so missing in his life. These things I ask in your name Lord, amen.”
Chapter 21
“One hot dog and a Bud Light. That will be $6.25, please.” Susan made eye contact and grinned at the sweaty golfer as she slid the dog and beer across the counter.
The golfer, wearing a bright red golf shirt and khaki shorts laid a crinkled twenty on the counter. “Just give me ten back,” he ordered.
Susan’s brow lifted, “Why, thank you, Aaron.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Harris, for always greeting me with a smile and a kind word. Even when I’m hacking it up out there, I always look forward to seeing Mrs. Harris in the snack bar.”
“What a sweet thing to say, Aaron. And Susan, please call me Susan.”
Aaron grinned, “Okay, Susan.” He grabbed his hot dog and beer and hurried to a nearby table to join the rest of his group.
Susan enjoyed her job at the golf course. She loved the light-hearted flirting and friendly exchanges with the many golfers who frequented the popular course. She had felt particularly perky at work lately due to her personal life moving into high gear. She and Joe had been having a wonderful time together lately and had recently moved to the intimate stage in their relationship. While not the tall handsome, man she had envisioned in her dream, she found Joe to be attractive with nice eyes and an appealing smile. Kind, generous, and very wealthy, he was exposing her to things that she had never experienced before. The beautiful country clubs, the fine restaurants, the elaborate homes, and most of all, classy refined people with whom she was associating was more than a girl could hope for. Sometimes she had to pinch herself to be certain that she wasn’t dreaming.
Although her life was looking up, all wasn’t perfect in Cinderella’s life right now. As wonderful as life had been since Joe came on the scene, it was getting more and more difficult for her to return home each night to her Formica countertops, second-hand furniture, and dingy surroundings. Still broke all the time and falling deeper into debt, Joe had offered her a weekly stipend to ‘help make ends meet’, but the proud Susan wouldn’t accept it. What she really wanted was for Joe to ask her to marry him, or at least ask her to move in with him. The chances of that ever happening seemed remote after Joe announced to her one evening, when returning from a movie at Brownwood, that he could never marry or cohabitate with anyone. He recalled for Susan the vow he had made to himself that night in the hospital to never remarry again or live with anyone out of wedlock.
Susan was devastated, thinking her chances of living in The Villages with a rich man had been suddenly snatched away from her. Always the fighter, she wasn’t giving up on the idea and was given some new hope by a conversation she and Joe had one evening over dinner with the gang.
* * *
Joe nudged Susan that evening and pointed at the couple across the table from them. “Hank and Sandy make such a nice couple,” he said.
“I agree, they are a handsome couple, indeed,” Susan replied.
“They live together over at Bridgeport.”
Susan was stunned, “They what?”
“They live together at Hank’s place at Bridgeport. Hank’s not the marrying type, says that marriage makes things too messy.”
Susan was elated that Hank and Sandy weren’t married. It gave her the opening she needed to bring up her and Joe’s situation. “So…uh how long has this been going on?” she asked, not wasting any time.
Joe smiled at Susan, “Not too long. Old Hank’s got a lot of money and he likes to play the field. I think they’ve been living together for about six months.”
Susan sat up and leaned forward, “How do you feel about that?”
Joe’s brow furrowed slightly, he glanced down at the table and fiddled nervously with his fork. “Well, I’ve always thought that living together was a cop-out, just a way to avoid the commitment of marriage, and it is certainly against the tenants of the Catholic Church; but recently, things don’t seem so black and white to me anymore.”
The tilt of the head by Susan begged more information.
The always perceptive Joe picked up on the subtle gesture and continued. “I think it depends on the circumstance of each relationship. I don’t see a hard and fast answer anymore.”
Shocked at the sudden change in Joe’s attitude since their conversation just a few days ago, she paused for a moment and then replied, “What if a couple our age were in a relationship and one of them had vowed never to marry again, yet they were very close and truly enjoyed each other’s company? What then?” Susan’s eyes grew wide, awaiting his reply.
Joe chuckled uneasily, “In that case, with marriage out of the question, I think the couple involved would find it extremely difficult not to consider the possibility of living together.” He reached over and laid his hand gently on hers. “Do you agree?”
“I think if they both were in agreement, it would be a wonderful idea.”
“In your hypothetical, Susan, do you believe they both would be in agreement?”
“I know she would.”
Joe slipped his hand under hers gently caressing it. “Well then, we must assume if they are so very close, that the man would also consider such an arrangement when the time was right.”
Delighted with the totally unexpected prospect of living with Joe, Susan didn’t push the ‘when the time was right’ reference, trusting that it would happen in due time. She smiled, “I think it would be wonderful for both of them.”
“It’s a tantalizing thought,” Joe replied.
A look of contentment filled Susan’s face as she thought back to that evening.
“Hello, Susan!” She was shaken out of her thoughts by a golfer standing at the end of the counter and grinning from ear to ear.
“Oh, so sorry, Eric, I was thinking about something.” She hurried to the end of the counter. “What can I do for you?”
“I need change for a five. I owe lover boy over there two bucks.” The pudgy golfer handed her a five and nodded toward his smiling friend sitting with a group at a nearby table.
“No problem, I have a lot of singles today.” She counted out five singles and handed them to Eric.”
“Appreciate it!”
“My pleasure.” Susan stuffed the five in the cash register and straightened the napkins in a recently filled holder. Getting her bearings again, she glanced out over the room to assess today’s crowd. It was late afternoon and the room was buzzing with activity, with the golfers reliving their best shot of the day, or grousing about course conditions or slow play. With most of them already served, Susan continued busying herself. She grabbed a plastic bottle and sprayed
a mild cleaning solution on the counter, ripped several sections of paper towel from a roll she kept behind the counter and began wiping the counter clean. She bumped into a pair of badly worn sunglasses laying on the far side of the cash register. She recognized them right away. Those belong to Willie. He had stopped by earlier that day and left his sunglasses lying next to the register. She picked them up and stuffed them in her apron. She would take them home and give them to him the next time she saw him.
Susan had noticed some improvement in Willie’s behavior since he started doing odd jobs for Joe. He seemed a little calmer, not quite as irritable as before, and the money he was earning was certainly coming in handy. Willie hadn’t hit her up for money for several weeks and Susan was pleased with the cordial relationship that Willie had forged with Joe.
Regrettably it wasn’t all rosy with Willie, she was becoming more and more concerned about the company he had been keeping lately. Never the best judge of people, Willie had become friends over the past several weeks with one of the men who helped take care of Joe’s yard. He was a dark, brooding young Hispanic man they called Tito. Willie told his mom that he and Tito had gone out to the clubs a few times and that was about it. When she commented that she thought he looked like trouble, he just laughed and said that his new friend was okay, you just have to get to know him.
Susan hoped that things would remain okay in Willie’s often unstable world. Her life was good right now and she didn’t want problems with Willie to derail her new found happiness. Her dream life in The Villages was coming closer and closer to reality. The very thought of losing it sent chills up her spine.
“Those are mine, I paid two hundred for them,” a darkly tanned golfer holding a twenty dollar bill in his hand grinned at Susan.
“I don’t think so, Allen, not these old glasses. I’d fashion you in a pair of Ray Bans” She quickly set the spray bottle under the counter, “How’d ya hit ‘em today?”
“78 today, can you believe it?”
“Congratulations, Allen, that’s great!”
“Yeah, it’s the first time I’ve broken eighty all year.” He raised his hand for a high-five.
Susan tapped his hand and beamed, “Bud Light?”
“You got it, babe.”
“Coming right up.”
Susan lifted a Bud Light from the cooler, snapped it open and set it on the counter. “That will be….”
“I know, I know, darling, $2.50.” The friendly linksman plopped a five on the counter. “Keep the change.”
“Why, thank you, Allen.”
Susan peeked at her watch. It was 3:50. She would be off work in ten minutes. She hurriedly grabbed the spray bottle from under the counter and finished wiping the counter top. Susan was anxious for the work day to end. She was looking forward to a late afternoon game of golf with Joe and his friends and then dinner at a nice restaurant. She had arranged her schedule so she could be off at 4:00. That gave her and Joe time to play nine holes and have dinner with the group on nights that she and Joe didn’t clean at the real estate office. This was one of those evenings and she was excited.
It had been a busy day and a good day for Susan. She pulled her tip bottle full of bills and change off the counter. The wads of cash felt good in her hand as she emptied out the contents and began sorting the crinkly bills. She neatly stacked the bills on the area below the countertop and then dumped the loose change into a moneybag with the rest of the day’s take. She slipped a rubber band around the stack of bills and stuffed them in the bag also. She never counted her tip money in front of the customers, thinking it was tacky to do so. She would count it after dinner, but she knew from experience that if she filled her tip bottle twice, her take for the day would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $100--a good day.
Busy cleaning, the usually attentive Susan didn’t notice that a man wearing rather dark clothing, sporting a full beard and long wavy hair which was pulled back into a poorly created pony tail, had approached the end of the table.
“Hello, Suzie.” His face was deadpan.
She zipped the moneybag shut and then looked closely at the man’s face. At first she didn’t recognize him, but only the people she knew well would ever call her Suzie. Then a bolt of fear shot up her spine. “Oh my, Dusty, is that you?”
Chapter 22
Susan was shocked to see her ex-boyfriend, Dusty, at the golf course. His scruffy appearance seemed so out of place among the nicely dressed golfers in the clubhouse. The look on Dusty’s face told her that something was wrong. He wouldn’t dare come to her work unless there was a problem--they hadn’t spoken in over six months. She had noticed some missed calls from him recently on her cell, but she didn’t return them. She was afraid that it might create problems in her new up-scale lifestyle if she reconnected with someone like Dusty.
“Why haven’t you been returning my calls, Suzie?”
Susan felt warm under her arms; her voice was jittery. “Well…uh, maybe my voice mailbox is full. I…uh don’t check it like I should.”
Dusty chuckled sarcastically, “I’ll bet you’re getting the messages from that rich guy in Sunset Ridge.
Jolted, Susan glared daggers at Dusty.
“It’s my new job, Suzie, I repair sprinkler heads and that man’s got a lot of sprinkler heads. I’ve been to his house several times. I saw ya get out of that big Mercedes the other day.”
Susan felt a tap on her shoulder; she spun around quickly.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Harris, I didn’t mean to frighten you.” A nicely tanned young girl wearing snug white shorts beamed at her.
“Oh no, no, Tabby. Everything is all set. I’ve counted my drawer and filled in my timecard. It’s all yours.” She gave the teenager a quick hug and walked out from behind the counter just as two golfers approached the counter.
She turned toward Dusty. “Let’s go outside; we can talk out there.”
“Lead the way.”
Susan, obviously upset by the unexpected visit of her troubled ex-boyfriend, walked briskly toward the door to the parking lot with Dusty in close pursuit. Once outside, she picked up the pace trying to put some distance between her and Dusty. “My car is in the back corner of the lot,” she said curtly.
“I saw your car and parked right next to it. This place is a little too nice for me and my old car, so I bailed over to the corner and parked where the employees park.”
Susan was beside herself. She rued the day she ever got involved with him. She thought back to that day, some ten years ago. At that time he had a fairly good job at a local semi-conductor plant near Pine Lakes and she was a shift manager at a Seven/Eleven. He looked much different then--he was clean-shaven and dressed very nicely. They were at a Super Bowl party that day and a mutual friend introduced them. She thought he was nice and kind of cute. He had a certain edge to him, but she liked that in a man. He asked her out the next day and they soon became a couple.
It was good at first. He was fun and a good dancer. They spent their days working hard and they spent their evenings perusing the many night spots in the greater Pine Lakes area. Many of their evenings were capped off with a visit to one or the other’s mobile homes for a lengthy session of aggressive and erotic lovemaking. Many of the sexual techniques that she was using on Joe now, had been learned during her many hot nights with Dusty. Unfortunately, at the height of their exhilarating sex life, Susan mistook sex for love and made a tragic mistake--a mistake that is still haunting her to this day.
One night after some particularly acrobatic lovemaking in Dusty’s spongy waterbed, Dusty lit a cigarette and brought up the subject of the two of them possibly buying a house together. The suggestion got Susan’s attention right away. Tired of living in one beat up mobile home after another, the idea of owning her own home sounded intriguing to Susan. She listened intently as Dusty went on to explain that his Aunt Brenda had just gone in a nursing home and she was trying to sell her small, but nice, three-bedroom house located just outside of Pine
Lakes. “It’s a steal, we can grab that baby for just a nickel on the dime” he exclaimed with his half-smoked cigarette flapping as he spoke.
A little naïve, to say the least, in the ways of real estate ownership, they both agreed to jump in with both feet. After being rejected several times by local banks because of poor credit, especially Dusty’s, they were finally able to secure a loan. The final sales price was $70,000. “We got that house for half of what it is worth!” Dusty bragged. Susan wasn’t so sure--the house needed quite a bit of work. Maybe seven cents on the dime. she thought at the time. Before she knew it, Susan was in a title company signing mortgage papers and closing documents and on the fast track to becoming a homeowner. Little did she know of the long term consequences of this innocent decision, made in the heat of passion while lying naked in a waterbed.
Dusty paused near the trunk of Susan’s car. “The bank’s on my ass big time.”
Susan brushed past him and started for the driver’s door. “That’s not my problem.” She felt his hand slide under her arm. He grabbed her and swung her around.
“The hell it’s not!” he shouted.
She shook free from his grip, her eyes were on fire, “Keep your hands off me, you son-of-a-bitch!”