The Trouble with Joe

by Emilie Richards

  The night she had first met Joe had been a little like this one. It had been late spring, but hot, anyway, so hot that she had spent the day drifting from one air-conditioned room or vehicle to another. Until she had met Joe, her life had consisted of nothing but slow, graceful passage from one comfortably colorless moment to the next.

  Now, despite all the problems that confronted them, she remembered that night. And, despite everything, she smiled.

  * * *

  “OH, SAMANTHA, NOT the red tonight. It’s too bright and too low cut. I’ll never understand why you bought something so unsuitable.” Kathryn Whitehurst surveyed her daughter as she spoke, assessing her hair, her tasteful makeup, as well as the dress in question.

  Samantha watched her mother silently tick off the details of her appearance. The red, a muted watermelon shade, was perfect with her pale blond hair and alabaster skin, and the sweetheart neckline just highlighted the subtle swell of her breasts. But it wasn’t worth an argument. Kathryn had rigid standards for everything, but particularly appearance. As long as Samantha conformed, she and Kathryn could pretend they were the perfect mother and daughter. Samantha could be the flawless pearl bracelet to her mother’s flawless double-strand choker.

  “I’ll wear the blue dress you bought me in New York,” Samantha said.

  “Well, hurry.” Kathryn’s tone implied that changing was Samantha’s idea entirely. “Your father will be here in a few minutes, and you know how he hates to wait.”

  “I’ll just be a minute.”

  In her room Samantha tossed the red dress onto her bed and found the blue in the back of her closet. It was the insipid hue of a cloudy sky, and once it was on and she surveyed the effect, she scolded herself for giving in to Kathryn’s whims. She was twenty-one today, and she still couldn’t stand up to her mother—or her father, for that matter. In fact, after twenty-one years of doing exactly what was expected of her, she couldn’t stand up to anyone. She was a well-bred child turning into a well-bred woman. She had nothing but a well-bred future to look forward to.

  Back in the living room she watched her mother’s expression darken. The red silk flowed under her fingers as she held it out in apology. “The blue dress needed cleaning. I’d forgotten. But I softened this with the Hermès scarf you gave me. Don’t you think it’s better?” She smiled, encouraging her mother to compromise, too.

  “I think you look very nice.” Fischer Whitehurst came through the door just in time to hear her. “Imagine. You’re twenty-one today.” He didn’t hold out his arms for a hug, but to his credit he didn’t extend his hand, either. He just smiled—distant, reserved, eternally polite Fischer Whitehurst who, of Samantha’s two parents, was slightly the colder.

  “Our reservation is for seven. We’ll have to hurry.” Kathryn turned toward the door. “There’s still time to change your mind, Samantha. We could eat at the club if you’d rather.”

  “Oh, let’s try La Scala,” Samantha said, looking toward her father for support. “I’m really in the mood for something different.”

  He held out his arm. “It’s your birthday.”

  It was her birthday, a momentous one, and because it was, she had dutifully agreed to let her parents celebrate it with her. They had offered a party, something tasteful—and abysmally oversize—at their country club, with a band, champagne and a midnight supper buffet. She had countered with a plea for a small family dinner at a new restaurant in Georgetown.

  Kathryn rarely set foot in Washington. Chevy Chase was already too close to the sprawling, brawling heartbeat of the nation. She still longed for her childhood home in proper suburban Charlotte, as she had for every day of the thirty years of her marriage. She could pretend she was still living in the genteel South if she didn’t have to get too close to the purpose of Chevy Chase’s existence: Washington, D.C., the city where her bank-president husband oversaw a financial empire that had weathered two hundred years of political wars and rain-forest summers.

  Now Kathryn gathered her jacket and tightened her lips into a line. She was obviously unhappy about Samantha’s choice, but she would go, because it was expected.

  Samantha was touched by the route their driver took to get to La Scala. Melwin, the friend and confidant who piloted her father’s limo, drove past national monuments lit by floodlights and along the Potomac where falling cherry blossoms littered the ground like drifts of snow. The route he’d chosen added twenty minutes to the trip, but she shushed her father when he tried to complain. Samantha knew the trip was Mel’s present to her, and she was enchanted.

  She and Mel had made this trip before—often, in fact—throughout the lonely years of her childhood and adolescence. To her parents Mel was simply an employee, a poorly educated but trustworthy nobody. To her he was the grandfather she’d never known, the fantasy caring uncle who brought her silly gifts or tickled her under her chin.

  Mel had always done what he could to brighten her life. In his second week of employment he had taken one look at her long face and promised a treat if she would smile. Her dancing lessons had mysteriously slipped away that day—her parents had never known—in favor of a drive like this one. Melwin had told her stories about the city he loved, and in the process brought history to life for her.

  That trip had been the first of many. Through the years they had eaten ice-cream cones at shabby neighborhood groceries, fed pigeons—and the occasional vagrant—in downtown parks, watched fireworks on the mall and traced tear-stained fingers over the name of Melwin’s son on the Vietnam memorial.

  Now Mel was trying to teach her something again.

  By the time they arrived at La Scala, Samantha felt renewed. By Mel’s subtle rebellion, his carefully plotted course, he had reminded her that she could have a different, more colorful future. She was officially an adult. Their trips to Washington no longer had to be secret, nor did her thoughts and feelings. She could be the woman she wanted; she could be free if she gathered a little courage.

  He winked at her as she got out of the limo, and she winked back. Mel was retiring soon to go live with a daughter in California. She was going to miss him.

  “I’ll have a drink,” she said, after the maître d’—who obviously recognized her father’s name—had settled them at the nicest table in the house. The restaurant was subdued by her standards, but wildly frenetic by her parents’. Roman pillars flanked the cavernous marble-paved room, and despite the use of wooden beams and dark Oriental carpets, laughter and high-volume Puccini echoed off every surface. The cuisine was Mediterranean, with an emphasis on herbs, olive oil and garlic. The air itself was a fragrant enticement to eat heartily, to experiment and savor.

  “Champagne?” her father asked. “Dubonnet on the rocks?”

  “Bourbon. Straight.” She didn’t look at her mother. “Make it a double.”

  A male voice responded. “Only our best bourbon. We age it in casks Davy Crockett nailed together right before he left for the Alamo.”

  She looked in her mother’s direction and saw a man looming larger than life at her side. He was dressed in black with a pleated white shirt that was so bright against his olive skin it almost hurt her eyes. He smiled at her, as if he understood exactly what kind of statement she had been trying to make. Something warm and liquid curled lazily inside her.

  For a moment she couldn’t respond. He was long and lean, and he stood like a man so confident in his own powers that serving others was nothing more than a small, thoughtful gift of himself.

  “Make it a triple,” she said.

  He laughed, and the sound sparkled through her bloodstream, like the bubbles of the champagne she had refused. “Only if you promise to let me drive,” he said in a low, distinctly dangerous voice.

  Her mother made a small, distressed sound. There was a clear line between the server and the served, as clear to Kathryn as the difference bet
ween Chevy Chase and inner-city Washington. She spit out her own order and her husband’s without asking his preference, then she waved the man away. “I don’t know where you heard about this restaurant, Samantha.” She massaged her forehead, as if she could erase the past few moments. “But it’s really not our kind of place.”

  Samantha sat back. She felt alive; she felt daring. She felt bratty. “I don’t think we have a kind of place. This is my kind of place. You have your kind of place. I was in the mood to share.” She smiled her sweetest, most innocent smile. “Loosen up, Mother.”

  By the time she was halfway through her bourbon, her parents were speaking only to one another. Since she found she preferred it that way—and wondered why she had never realized it—she was free to sweep the room with her gaze in search of Joe. He had introduced himself with impressive flair when he returned with their drinks, and rattled off a history of La Scala, along with a varied list of special appetizers. He hadn’t deigned to look at anyone but Samantha during his entire recitation.

  She hadn’t known that white bean soup with anise-spiced sausage could sound like an aphrodisiac, but it had, coming from Joe’s lips. Words like calamari, risotto and tortellini had taken on the cadences of poetry. She had wanted to dance to them, twirl her Hermès scarf in wild gypsy abandon from a vacant tabletop as he regaled her with phrases like Provençal bouillabaisse and Casablanca couscous.

  “Samantha, you’re making a fool of yourself over that waiter!”

  She noted the way her mother hissed her name and wondered if this was new, or if she was just aware of it now because of the fire of fine Kentucky bourbon and a stranger named Joe in her bloodstream.

  “How can I be making a fool of myself?” she asked. “I’m sitting here listening to you and Daddy talk.”

  “You’re watching everything that man does!”

  “Well, he’s a gorgeous male animal, and any woman worthy of the name would do exactly what I’m doing.” She smiled lazily. “Watch him yourself, Mother. It’s better than cardio.”

  “I think you’d better stop at one drink, Samantha,” her father said.

  “I think I need another.”

  She had several, each time smiling more seductively at Joe as she gave her order. His eyes were midnight velvet, a dark caress against her bare arms and throat and the hint of flesh just under her primly tied scarf. His teeth were a white slash against his skin, and they flashed only for her—and often. She was deeply in love before the salad and desperately in love by the time the bones of her oregano-scented lamb had been whisked away.

  Her wrist and the side of her breast tingled where he had brushed them as he delivered her salad. Her heart sped unevenly because he had stood beside her, close, so very, very close, when he had taken the same salad away.

  “I’d like dessert,” she said when her father prepared to signal for the check.

  “Your behavior has been disgraceful.” Kathryn pushed her chair back, as if she might leave before they paid.

  “I am having dessert.” She pronounced the words slowly. She was immediately impressed with her own vocabulary. Her statement seemed to hang in the air, like the words of a comic-strip character. She tried another. “I am having a life, too.” She liked the sound of that one. “My own life. I am twenty-one today.”

  Her father put his hand on hers. It was an uncharacteristic gesture, and there was no affection in it. She knew he was upset, and somehow, that pleased her. “Come on home now, Samantha. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow it won’t be my birthday.” She leaned toward him and found that the room shifted subtly. “Today is my birthday,” she said gravely. “I’ve been good for twenty-one years, and it’s been such a burden.”

  His voice grew even colder. “You’ve had too much to drink. We’re going home.”

  “You’re going home. I’m staying for dessert.”

  “Just how are you planning to get back?”

  “In a taxi.” She considered. “Or I might not come back.” She shrugged. “I don’t have to, do I? Amazing. I really don’t have to.”

  “We’ll take a taxi.” Her father stood and signaled Joe. “We’ll leave the car here for you. But I’m telling Melwin not to let you leave unless it’s with him. Do you understand? You can stay here and make eyes at that...” He stopped himself, possibly just on the verge of an ethnic slur.

  “Nice young man?” She narrowed her eyes. “Take this.” She fumbled with her scarf and threw it clumsily to her mother. “And tell Melwin I might be very, very late. I might eat two desserts. Maybe even three.”

  Joe arrived at the table. “I’m sorry. Is there a problem?”

  Her father thrust a credit card at him. “Take this, add your tip and whatever else she orders to the bill. If the card doesn’t come back with my daughter before midnight tonight, I’ll have you fired and investigated. Do I make myself clear?”

  Samantha watched Joe’s expression freeze. She was horrified, but before she could find the right words, Joe was towering over her father.

  Joe found the right words with no problem.

  Her father turned white, as if the suggestion for what he should do with his credit card had been meant literally. The rest of the exchange was a bourbon haze in Samantha’s head. The maître d’ arrived; the maître d’ left with her parents, apologizing profusely as he went. The maître d’ returned before she could form the words to apologize to Joe, who still looked frozen with rage. The maître d’ told Joe to gather his things and never darken the front door again.

  She began to cry.

  “Come on, sweetheart.” She looked up and Joe was bending over her. “You’re coming with me.”

  It was the best idea of the night. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of it herself. Her tears stopped immediately. “I’ve led a very repressed life,” she said.

  His face unfroze, inch by inch. In a moment he was howling with laughter. He put his arm around her and helped her stand. She leaned against him and realized that she fit as if she had been measured for this position by a master tailor. “I don’t think I’ll be very good at sex,” she confided. “I’m too upper class. You know, saltpeter in the boarding-school food. Too many perfect marble statues of David in Rome and Paris. A real man probably looks deficient.”

  He hugged her more tightly. “You’re going to have some morning tomorrow. What’s your name?”

  “Samantha. Samantha Whitehurst.”

  “Yeah, I know the last part.”

  They were outside, and she didn’t know exactly why and how. She only remembered a sea of shocked and fascinated faces, parting, as if by Moses’ command. “I think I love you, Joe.”

  “I had the bartender water your drinks, Sam. Not a one of them was a double. You’ve only had three drinks tonight. That’s all.”

  “Would you kiss me?”

  He stopped in the shadows just outside the welcoming glare of La Scala’s floodlights. Around the corner traffic roared down Wisconsin Avenue, and not too far in the distance she saw Melwin standing beside the family limousine.

  “Is that the three drinks talking?” he asked.

  She remembered that she had thought his voice was dangerous. Now it was even more so. “No.”

  “Are you slumming tonight? Because I know who your father is. I was told in no uncertain terms back there, just before Gino fired me.”

  “Slumming?” The word had no meaning.

  “Why do you want me to kiss you?”

  “Because...” She looked up at him, and suddenly the world stopped spinning. She rested her hands against his shoulders. They were broad, and as solid as the earth. “For twenty-one years I’ve done what everyone else wanted me to. For the next twenty-one I’m doing what I want.”

  “What if I tell you that for the next twenty-one years you’
re doing what you want...with me?”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t have time to. He brushed her lips with his, as if giving her time to change her mind. He was warm, and his scent was as provocatively male as his smile. Her lips parted immediately, pleading for more. He pressed against her with the same passion that had been building in her all night.

  She wasn’t frightened, and she wasn’t repressed. She wasn’t even herself. The woman who kissed Joe back had never been to boarding school and never seen a statue. She was the woman inside Samantha who had known, from her first glimpse of Joe Giovanelli, that she had found the man for her.

  Chapter Three

  “THERE WON’T BE enough food. I could roast a steer and twenty suckling pigs, and there wouldn’t be enough food.” Sam fussed over the dining room table, which groaned under the weight of casseroles she had made and frozen over the past month and platters heaped with deli meat and cheese.

  North Carolina sunshine lit even the darkest corners of the room and bounced off brightly colored balloons and streamers. Last night Sam had stored everything precious and fragile in closets and locked the laundry-room cupboard and medicine cabinet. The house was ready for a family party.

  Joe lounged in the doorway. “Mama’s bringing a turkey, a vat of spaghetti and ten pies.”

  “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “She didn’t tell me that. But I know my mother. And everybody else in the family will bring food, too.”

  “It still won’t be enough.”

  “You’ve never understood. It’s always enough. It’s just that the Giovanellis eat everything in sight. It’s a custom. You put out too much food, we eat too much food. It’s simple.”

  She stood back from the table and pretended to study it, but she studied Joe from the corner of her eye instead. He wore dark shorts and a madras sport shirt unbuttoned at the neck. His black hair hung straight and sleek over his forehead, and her fingers itched to brush it back. Not because she didn’t like the effect, but because she wanted to touch him, yearned with everything inside her to touch him with that kind of casual we’ll-always-be-married confidence that until six months ago she wouldn’t have thought twice about.