by Ren Benton
“So hurry up and lock down that bore you didn’t want three years ago.” Camille’s smile for the young waiter who came bearing tribute made him blush and back away, dazed, after laying the feast before her. She took the adoration as her due and twirled a strip of bacon like her scepter. “You’d think the bore would appreciate how much you hate surprises. Did he say what prompted his sudden interest in matrimony?”
His rationale was very... sensible. Ivy would rather keep the whole truth to herself than volunteer what Jen would consider unassailable logic in his favor. “Basically, neither of us is getting any younger, and it’s not like the offers will get more frequent as we wrinkle and sag.”
“Romantic,” Camille opined around a mouthful of fried potatoes.
“Marriage isn’t about romance.” Jen injected the last word with scorn.
“Mine is. I got it in writing. If I wanted a damn roommate, I’d have put up a flyer at church.”
Jen gave up on converting Camille to her side and appealed to Ivy exclusively. “Jared is a decent man.”
“You keep using that word.” Camille refused to be excluded. “Von is as decent as they come, but he manages to do it with spice, whereas Jared has the kick of a bowl of plain oatmeal. I forbid Ivy to submit to a lifetime eating nothing but plain oatmeal when she hasn’t even tasted an enchilada.”
Jen picked at her muffin. “The last time I had an enchilada, it gave me diarrhea.”
While Camille wheezed with laughter, Jen reached over to squeeze Ivy’s forearm. “Think of the children.”
Ivy’s insides shriveled. That was the cannon sitting in the background during her little slapfight with her dilemma, waiting for someone to light the fuse.
Camille’s laugh dried up. “Which children?”
“You know which. God forbid, if something happens to Holly, Ivy’s going to inherit those four kids. She needs a dependable” — Jen emphasized the word to prove she knew one other than decent — “man to help her raise them.”
Camille leaned forward, eyes deadly. “She’s already languishing in the burbs with a mortgage and a minivan like a prematurely middle-aged soccer mom because her sister drops her litter on her doorstep twenty days out of every month. Those kids go to the best public schools in the county because they passed criteria for living with Ivy. She has given enough without yoking herself to a prematurely middle-aged soccer dad on behalf of someone else’s children. Right, Ivy?”
Her nieces and nephews could not be left out of the decision. They had a shortage of reliable men in their lives, and Jared was as reliable as he was decent and dependable. Ivy’s income was adequate — with strict budgeting — to provide for them to the extent she did, but she worked on commission, and her paychecks waxed and waned in too precarious a fashion to support four kids full time.
They would only get more expensive as they got older.
A second income, particularly the substantial, stable one of a regional bank manager, had been one of the earliest entries in the pro-marriage column.
She would be ashamed of herself for thinking in such mercenary terms if Jared hadn’t introduced the topic as a motivating factor during his proposal. In fact, he’d placed so much emphasis on the benefits to the children if she did what he wanted, she couldn’t help but note some resemblance to Holly.
He hit her in the guilt center — think of the children — but had nothing to say to her as a woman. He hadn’t gone down on one knee because they were equals. He hadn’t offered her a ring because if she insisted on a trinket between saying yes and I do, she ought to choose it herself and get one she liked.
And no doubt pay for it, too. It would be, after all, a whim of hers, not a mutually beneficial purchase warranting joint investment.
She had promised him an answer when she returned home, but Camille wanted one sooner. Ivy couldn’t provide it. “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.”
“We’re leaving tomorrow,” Jen prodded, as if a reminder of the time pressure would clarify the issue on the spot.
Ivy had twenty-some hours to make the correct decision — and to come to terms with that decision if it didn’t take her happiness into consideration.
She shoved her book into her bag and stood, sending the hem of her skirt swishing across the top of her sandals. “Then I should spend the rest of the day soul searching.”
Camille swirled a hunk of waffle in a puddle of syrup. “If you find oatmeal in your soul, keep searching.”
Jen gazed up at Ivy with soft, hopeful eyes. “I know you’ll do the right thing.”
Ivy fingered the neckline of her blouse to confirm its position well below her collarbone. The eyelet ruffle hadn’t crept upward, so it must have been the sense of inevitability tightening around her neck like a noose.
2
Ivy struck out from the hotel on foot, leaving her friends to their separate pursuits — their only common one being tugging her in opposite directions.
The town was a quarter-mile stroll from the hotel via a narrow road shaded by towering palms and tamarind trees. She stepped off the pavement to clear the way for a taxi delivering more guests to the hotel.
An anole on a nearby branch stuck around to flash his red neck fin at her.
She was flattered to be the object of an interspecies courtship. Then the wind blew her hair over her eyes again and revealed a more likely explanation — the little lizard was posturing, not flirting, made insecure at the sight of a red fin many, many times the size of his.
“Be that way,” she told him. “I have too many men to deal with already.”
The anole darted deeper into the cover of the leaves.
Ivy continued walking, the better to aid in the digestion of the food for thought she’d just served herself. How pathetic was it that she considered one man too many to deal with?
Nearly as pathetic as the flash of a neck fin being the most romantic gesture a guy had ever made toward her.
She accepted her share of the blame for the lack of romance in her life. Her practicality nullified the value of the standard gestures. She hadn’t worn jewelry since learning the hard way that an earlobe relinquished an earring much more readily than a baby’s fist. She preferred plants with roots to cut flowers that shriveled and died within a few days. Given her struggles with her weight, she didn’t want a box of chocolates.
Okay, she wanted the chocolate, but not the shame and self-recrimination included in every box at no extra charge.
But there were plenty of possibilities apart from the stereotypical diamonds-roses-candy portrayal that fit conveniently within every thirty-second commercial that aired around Valentine’s Day. Either the men she dated were too unimaginative to think outside the heart-shaped box, or they used her practicality as an excuse to eliminate frivolous gestures altogether.
The pattern culminated in her one and only marriage proposal being based on Jared’s need for a wife to advance to the next stage of his career and her suitability for the position because she was inoffensive.
It had to be the first time the word inoffensive had been employed to seduce a woman into marriage. For the sake of women everywhere, she hoped it didn’t catch on. If sensible meant choosing to be boring, inoffensive meant too lacking in passion to be anything but.
She had plenty of passion, but she spent so much time compensating for her sister’s excesses, being a stable influence on the kids, and sucking up to clients, everyone who came into her life saw only sensible, responsible, inoffensive Ivy. When she found a rare private moment outside her service to others to express herself, men accustomed to her public face felt deceived.
I expected better from you, Ivy. This side of you makes me uncomfortable. Please go back to being boring.
So she packed away her passion like a winter coat she would have no use for anytime soon.
She came around a bend in the road and spotted an explosion of red that put her hair to shame. Their cab driver had called the marker at the edge of town a fla
mboyant tree. Its mantle of bright red flowers obscured a background of feathery leaves.
As Ivy passed beneath the branches, she touched a hand to the trunk and wished for some of that flamboyance to rub off on her for just one day.
The street she traveled cut through the market square, which had a carnival atmosphere. Merchants manned rows of stalls, hawking generically tropical kitsch made in China to tourists obliged to run the gauntlet to reach the hotel.
Ivy avoided eye contact with the vendors and wove around shoppers and strategically placed obstacles without slowing. The day before, Jen haggled five bucks of junk down to fifty dollars here. To stretch her budget, Ivy counted on better value for her money in shops that didn’t vanish at the end of the day.
In a pirate-themed shop owned by a diver and self-proclaimed treasure hunter, she purchased a gold doubloon for her oldest nephew. The low price seemed unlikely for genuine gold with historical value, but the real gift for Blake would be fact checking the story on the card that came with the coin and figuring out how to validate the gold. Real or not, discovering the truth would be a triumph for him.
Heather wanted her own Bag of Infinite Holding, though she couldn’t lift Ivy’s off the floor. Another shop had a tote sized proportionately for a seven-year-old, hand painted by the proprietor with bright hibiscus blossoms. On her way to the cash register, Ivy spotted a perpetual motion toy with dolphins jumping through waves. It was inappropriate for a child of four, but Lily loved dolphins and was gentle with everything she touched, so Ivy took that, too.
Baby Cole thus far remained untainted by materialistic vice, and her dad scowled when she spent money on him, so shopping for them wasn’t on the agenda. Cole would be overjoyed crumpling his siblings’ wrapping paper, and the biggest chunk of pie or cake ensured Dad felt no neglect when gifts were dispensed to the rest of his family.
That left Holly and Mom.
Ivy used to agonize over shopping for her sister. One Christmas, she scoured the internet for the precise make, model, and color of MP3 player Holly bemoaned being unable to locate. She drove across state lines and bought it from a guy whose store was the back of his rusted-out van, which might also have been his residence.
Holly’s reaction upon opening it? They’re coming out with the new version in March.
Ivy had an epiphany as she watched her foray into black market electronics being cast aside like a crushed bow: no gift from her would ever satisfy Holly. Her response to a flawless diamond the size of her fist would be identical to her response to a ring Ivy got out of a gumball machine for a quarter.
Her goal shifted from the impossible one of pleasing Holly to merely preventing Holly from complaining she’d been left out. Shopping subsequently became much easier. Any bit of junk would do.
She found a sea glass necklace that would play beautifully off her sister’s green eyes, accepted the inevitability that Holly would hate everything about it — including that it wasn’t valuable enough to pawn — and moved on to the challenge of adding to her mother’s special collection.
Tucked in an alley near the café where they’d eaten dinner the night before, a gilded sign overhead promised objets d’art within. A bell tinkled as Ivy stepped through the door. A young woman wearing a name tag as glittery as the store’s sign smiled in greeting without interrupting her discussion with another customer.
Ivy was content to browse on her own. Asking for help finding the sort of item she sought was likely to get her tossed back into the alley.
She explored the perimeter of the store, admiring hand-dyed silk scarves, gourds transformed into lacquered bowls and vases, netsuke-like miniatures carved from avocado pits, and a stunning necklace dripping with multiple strands of creamy baroque pearls. She was tempted to finish all her gift shopping for the rest of the year here and splurge on something for herself, but the inventory was too refined to suit her immediate needs.
The bell over the door tinkled as another shopper entered.
She turned toward the sound to guide her to the exit — and then she saw it.
On a shelf of honor at the center of the store rested a sixteen-inch curved rod of worm-riddled mangrove root with a bulbous prominence at one end.
Perfect.
She heeded a placard that encouraged handling the merchandise and lifted the sculpture from its resting place to search for a price tag.
“Is there any chance you’d put that back on the shelf and walk away?”
She turned to face her questioner. The tilt of her head required to meet his smoke-gray eyes indicated his height topped six feet by an inch or two. The same wind that snarled her hair had affectionately tousled his raven locks. A rueful smile carved the suggestion of a dimple in one tanned cheek.
Tall: check. Dark: check. Handsome: check plus.
The odds of most women complying with any request he made were high, particularly when voiced in that low, intimate tone, but he underestimated the stakes of her acquisition of phallic bric-a-brac. “Do you work here?”
“I wouldn’t for long if I discouraged purchases. I saw it yesterday and planned to come back for it if I couldn’t find anything more obscene.”
“I take it your search was unsuccessful.”
“Alas, I was unable to locate anything in excess of two feet.”
Confirming there were no better options was the wrong tactic to persuade her to relinquish the prize, but her continued possession didn’t stop him from staring at it.
A downward glance explained the intensity of his interest. She gripped the wood near the base with one hand while the other absently stroked the satiny polished surface. Mortified, she dropped her stroking hand.
Unsupported, the heavy shaft fell between her breasts.
His eyes crinkled at the outer corners.
Prickly heat sped up her neck.
He took pity on her. “If it makes you feel better, when I picked it up, I had an overpowering urge to find out if it could be played like a flute.”
Now that he mentioned it, the hole placement did suggest irresistible whistling properties. She whispered, “Oh, dammit.”
“I dare you to do it.”
What’ll you give me if I do?
Her heart thudded against her chest in protest of the idea of flirting with a man astronomically out of her reach. Accidental embarrassment was difficult enough to recover from. Deliberately making a fool of herself would haunt her for the rest of her life.
She ignored his dare like a sensible adult but challenged herself to see how long she could hold his attention — in honor of her deal with the flamboyant tree. “Do you suppose it came out of the water this way or received help measuring up to its potential?”
“I asked the artist last time I was here.” He inclined his head toward the woman laboring over a sale to the high-maintenance customer. “She didn’t seem to grasp to what potential I referred.”
“Oh, come on.”
“I doubt she would grasp that, either.”
Ivy compressed her lips to stifle a snicker.
His attention settled on her lips for a moment before returning to her eyes. “I suppose there’s a minuscule chance someone in this world is that pure-minded, but I’d guess her inscrutable poker face enabled her to retire from the gambling circuit at an early age, buy a private island, and amuse herself selling pornographic knickknacks to tourists looking for something pretty to take home to Aunt Mabel.”
She took offense on the owner’s behalf. “This is a respectable establishment. There’s nothing else pornographic here.”
“Really?” One dark brow edged upward at her hopeless naiveté as he swept a palm toward a bowl displayed on the table behind her.
A glistening flower had been painted on the interior surface of the bowl. “There’s an inherent female sexual quality to flowers. You can’t blame that on lewd intent.”
“I forgot the view is different from a woman’s perspective.” He reached beyond her, his arm so close she felt his
warmth against her skin, and rotated the bowl one hundred eighty degrees on its stand.
From the new angle, the act captured midpenetration was clear. Her mother would melt a credit card in this place. “This woman is a genius. I wonder if she has an online store.”
She flipped the sculpture over to check the flat end for more information. The sticker there told only the price, and when she saw that, she nearly threw the thing at her rival.
For a hundred and twenty bucks, penis ought to come with prime rib and a concert.
Before she could concede, her stomach gave an audible gurgle. Dangerously low blood sugar would explain the reckless words that tumbled from her lips. “I’ll let you have it if you buy me lunch.”
She had no bargaining position. If he declined, she couldn’t spend that much money to restore a shred of her lost dignity. All he had to do was wait for her to slink away in disgrace.
“Deal.”
He must be desperate for reasons she couldn’t begin to fathom to agree without any attempt to negotiate. She handed over the loot. “Congratulations?”
His mouth pulled to one side as he took it into his hands. “Thank you?”
For him, the shopkeeper abandoned the customer she’d been doting on when Ivy entered the store. She wrapped the hunk of wood as if it were made of blown glass, keeping up a steady stream of chitchat throughout the procedure.
Ivy was sure her fawning had looked as painfully obvious to any observers, but at least she was getting lunch out of it.
The shopkeeper wrote something on the receipt — probably her phone number — and released him until they met again.
He joined Ivy at the door and noted her struggle to contain her amusement. “What?”
“Not a thing.” Being hit on twice within five minutes was such a mundane occurrence to him, he thought nothing of it. She held open the door for him in deference to his precious cargo. “Shall we?”