by Wendy Webb
“I think I met him today,” I said to them. “The man LuAnn and Beth were talking about.”
“Oh?” Jason said, raising his eyebrows.
“We came out of the shower rooms at the same time.”
Jason and Gil exchanged a glance. “The Illustrated Man?” Jason said. “Do tell!”
I couldn’t help smiling. “Why do you call him that?”
“Didn’t you notice?” Jason lowered his voice to a whisper. “He’s covered in tattoos!”
I could feel my face heat up. “I did notice but didn’t see much,” I said. “I didn’t want to look too long.”
Gil let out a hoot. “I know! You want to figure out exactly what the symbols are, but you don’t want to stare like a crazy person.”
The three of us shared a laugh.
“So, what’s his story?” I asked. “Who is he?”
Jason leaned in and took a sip of his wine. “We don’t really know,” he said. “LuAnn has been uncharacteristically tight-lipped about him. He got here a week or so ago. We haven’t met him properly. He comes and goes at all hours. All we know is that the man is ungodly handsome.”
“The smile,” Gil added.
“The smile!” I could feel myself blushing. “He smiled at me, and it was like I was paralyzed. I felt like I was back in middle school.”
They both laughed at that.
“He never socializes,” Gil said. “He hasn’t been to happy hour since he got here. I don’t know if he’s met—” Gil’s words were stopped short by the Illustrated Man himself walking into the room.
He was wearing a long-sleeved black T-shirt, tight enough to outline his muscled physique, and faded jeans with black boots on his feet. The three of us fell silent as he walked through the room toward us. I noticed others watching him, too. All of us held our breath as he drew closer, and I realized he was walking toward me.
“We didn’t get a chance to be properly introduced earlier,” he said to me, his eyes twinkling with humor.
Had I ever seen that before? Did eyes really twinkle? Yet that was what it seemed to me, at the time. He held out his hand, and I took it. Electricity shot through me when skin met skin.
“I’m Brynn Wilder,” I said, glad I remembered my own name even as my words were stumbling over each other. “I’m here for the summer. I just arrived.”
“Hello, Brynn Wilder,” the Illustrated Man said. Gil shot Jason a look. “I’m here for the summer, too, depending on a few things. I’m Dominic James.”
I just stood there for a moment, holding this man’s large, strong hand, staring into his impossibly handsome face. I could not come up with any words with which to respond. Thank goodness Jason jumped to my rescue.
“Jason Lord,” he said, extending his hand to Dominic, who squeezed mine and gave me a wink before taking Jason’s hand in his. Jason went on. “All of us summer residents should know each other. This is my husband, Gil.”
“Hello!” Gil smiled at Dominic, his next words coming out in one long, quick stream. “We’ve seen you coming and going from time to time but just haven’t had the chance to meet. We’re in the suite at the end of the hall.”
Dominic nodded. “Oh, yes,” he said. “LuAnn told me about you. Glad we’re finally getting a chance to meet. I’ve been busy tying up some loose ends before the summer really gets going and haven’t been too sociable. I’m sorry about that.”
Jason and Gil both went through a chorus of “Don’t be silly!” and “Think nothing of it!” before Dominic broke in.
“It looks like I’m the only one without something to drink,” he said, turning that electric smile at Gary.
Jason pulled a face at me behind Dominic’s back, and we started giggling silently like children in church. Gil pinched Jason’s arm and gave him a mock scowl, quieting us down before Dominic turned back around toward us, holding a beer. He raised it slightly at the three of us.
“To the beginning of summer,” he said, his voice so deep and low it sounded like velvet. I clinked glasses with him and wondered exactly what this summer might hold.
CHAPTER FOUR
After happy hour wound down and people trickled off to their shops, restaurants, and homes, Dominic excused himself to make a phone call. Jason, Gil, and I found ourselves alone at the bar, finishing up the appetizers.
“Okay, so that was interesting,” Jason said, raising his eyebrows. “He was really nice, don’t you think?”
“Who?” Gil asked, brushing an unseen piece of lint off his shoulder.
Jason threw a piece of salami at him. “Who.”
The three of us shared a laugh.
“I don’t want to be Captain Obvious here, but wow, that is one handsome man,” I said.
“Tell me about it,” Gil said. “He’s unsettling.”
I took a sip of wine. “Has anyone asked him the question?”
“The ‘Why are you in Wharton all summer?’ question?” Jason asked. “No, I haven’t. This is the first time we’ve talked to him.”
Gary emerged from the kitchen and poured a drink for himself. He popped some cheese into his mouth. “I’m all prepped for the dinner rush,” he said, “but I don’t think we’re going to have much of one tonight. Too early in the season yet.”
Jason narrowed his eyes at him. “Do you and LuAnn know why Dominic is in Wharton?”
Gary smiled. “I plead the Fifth,” he said. “Listen, my policy is a guest’s business is their business. I don’t get involved.”
“I’ve never seen him before, so I’m assuming he’s new to Wharton,” Jason pressed.
“Fifth,” Gary said, calmly taking a sip of his drink.
“He had to have heard about LuAnn’s from someone. It’s not exactly on the map.”
“F-I-F-T and H.”
Jason shook his head and took a sip of wine, scowling at Gary. “Remind me to use you if I ever need an alibi.”
Although I wanted to know more about Dominic, I appreciated Gary’s level of discretion. There was clearly no use in asking any more questions.
Gil glanced down at his watch, tapped it, and gave Jason a look.
“Oh!” Jason said, pushing himself off his barstool. “We’ve got dinner plans.” He leaned down and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “Brynn, you are lovely. I’m so glad you’ll be here with us for the summer. See you tomorrow?”
“I’ll be around,” I said as they hurried out the door.
For the second time in one day, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Go back to my room? Wander around town? Neither sounded like great options.
“Want some dinner, doll?” Gary asked me.
Doll. Nobody had ever called me that. It was so 1950s that it made me smile. I liked it.
“Whatcha got?” I asked him.
He leaned over the counter. “Everything on the menu is good here, because I make it myself when those kids who call themselves my cooks aren’t around. But for the special tonight, I’ve been roasting a pork shoulder all day with Mexican spices, and it smells like heaven. It would make a mean burrito if you’re wanting one.”
“Ooh, that’s tempting.”
“LuAnn herself likes a concoction she calls a taco salad burrito,” he went on. “It’s basically a taco salad, with the pork, lettuce dressed with chipotle ranch, tomatoes, and onions, along with refried beans and melted cheese, wrapped in a tortilla. Sour cream, guac, and salsa on the side.”
That was all I needed to hear. “Yes, please,” I said, not remembering the last time I had eaten anything that decadent.
“You go sit at that four-top by the windows, and I’ll whip it up for you,” Gary said, disappearing into the kitchen.
I did as I was told. Sitting there on my own, with nobody to talk to, nobody to take care of, nothing to worry about, I gazed out the window and let my mind simply exist in, and appreciate, the present. I was here in a beautiful little town for the summer. This boardinghouse was filled with nice strangers who might become friends as we got to
know each other. I exhaled, realizing I was at peace for the first time in a very long time.
Gary emerged from the kitchen with my plate and set it in front of me.
“This burrito is as big as my head.” I smiled up at him.
He laughed. “That’s how we do it here. Enjoy, doll.”
I noticed some other patrons coming through the door. The dinner rush was starting, and Gary was back on the clock.
I dove into the rather large slice of heaven on my plate and watched the streetscape as I ate, people coming and going up and down the block, everyone laughing and having a good time. There was a positive vibe here. I was glad to be part of it.
Later, after polishing off that enormous burrito, I thought about taking a walk, but in the end, I made my way back up to my room, snuggled into bed, and flipped on the television. I made a mental note to stop in at the bookstore the next day. Reading for pleasure with nothing more important to do. What a delicious idea.
One day down in my Wharton summer. I can do this, I said to myself, exhaling. I can do this.
I awoke to find my room bathed in moonlight. I hadn’t pulled the shades when I had finally turned off the TV and gone to sleep, preferring to lie in my bed and look up at the sky full of stars through the window. I sat up, took a sip from the glass of water on my nightstand, and settled back under the covers.
“Hellooo?”
It was a voice as thin as tissue paper. I shot up, looking around my room. The moonlight shone in through the windows—there was the dresser, my closet, the door to the hallway (latched, I could see from my bed). I shook my head, not sure I had heard anything at all. Maybe it was the remnant of a dream.
“Hello? Is anybody here?” There it was again, scratchy and thin, as though it were coming from another time.
I slipped out of bed and grabbed my robe from a hook inside my closet door. I drew it tightly around me and padded up to my door to listen. The knob turned and rattled, first tentatively, slowly. Somebody was trying the door.
“Will you let me in?” the singsongy voice said. “Please, won’t you let me in?”
Would I let her in? Oh, hell no! I was frozen, staring at the door. Is this what Dominic was talking about earlier when I had met him at the showers? Was this the haunting? I watched as my doorknob turned back and forth, back and forth. Click, clock, click, clock.
Someone was trying to get into my room.
Then, a scuffling out in the hallway. Urgent voices, in whispers. Jason? I couldn’t be sure who it was, and I certainly wasn’t opening the door to find out. I listened as the voices seemed to make their way down the hall, fading until they disappeared.
I stood there for a good long time, my ear to the door. All was quiet. Wasn’t it? I let out a breath I wasn’t even aware I had been holding.
I had the urge to open the door to ensure the hallway was really empty, but I thought better of it. That’s what they did—monsters, ghosts, the undead—they waited quietly until you decided to check if they were gone. I’d seen enough movies to know that. I chuckled a bit at this silly thought and slipped back into bed, my robe still belted tightly around me.
But I lay there, my eyes wide open, my pulse racing. It took a while for my breathing to slow and my eyes to feel heavy once again.
As I was drifting off, not quite asleep yet, a dream came bubbling out of wherever they come from. It was one of those lucid dreams—I have them often—in which I commented to myself, almost like I was the narrator, about what was happening in the dream.
A woman I didn’t know, a lovely blonde older woman, reed thin, dressed in cream-colored slacks and a sweater set, was standing in front of the house where I grew up, a 1950s split-level home on a wooded lot not far from a meandering creek in the suburbs of Minneapolis. She was smiling at me, beckoning me to come closer.
“Hello,” she said. “I have something to show you.” She gestured to the door of my house. “Go on in.”
I walked through the door. The foyer was just as I remembered it, a short set of stairs on the right, living room on the left, kitchen straight ahead. I took a few steps into the living room—the rust-colored shag carpet looked new, as did the sofa and armchair with big rust-colored flowers that my mother had bought when I was a kid. I hadn’t thought of those in years.
I looked out the front window and saw all my neighborhood friends, children as they were decades earlier, playing. Some were running through the front yards, others were riding their bikes in lazy circles on the street. I glanced back at the new carpet and sofa, and out again to the kids outside. The year was somewhere in the late 1970s.
Two little girls were standing on the bridge that spanned the creek. I watched as they dropped sticks over the side and ran across the street to the bridge on the other side, peering down at the water. Pooh Sticks, we used to call it. Whoever’s stick drifted under the bridge the fastest won.
The girls on the bridge looked over at me, seeing me peering at them from our front window, and waved. And that’s when I saw it. One of them was my best friend, Jane, who lived across the street. She had a pixie cut, and she looked like one, too—blonde, blue-eyed, beautiful.
The other girl was me. I actually remembered the pants my little dream self was wearing. White denim jeans with colorful flowers embroidered on them. I had a pair like those when I was in the fourth grade. Look at that, I said to myself. I haven’t thought of those pants in decades.
The girls ran off the bridge and down the riverbank toward the water—an act strictly forbidden by our parents—and I knew they were going to make a game of walking across the creek under the bridge on a beam that ran the length of the creek bed, maybe seeing some crayfish or bullheads along the way. The idea was to get all the way across without slipping and falling into the water. I hurried to the door and poked my head out.
“Watch out for the turtle!” I called to them.
When I was a kid, the entire neighborhood of children took a collective breath when the enormous ancient snapping turtle who lived somewhere under that bridge decided to walk across the road from one side to the other. It was a living, breathing reminder that danger lurked in that dark water, danger of all kinds.
I glanced across the street at the house kitty-corner from ours, and saw that the garage door was open and several parents from the neighborhood, young couples who were about my age now but had seemed so old to me when I was a child, were gathered there. Everyone had a drink in hand. Many were smoking.
One of the men was flipping burgers on a grill in the driveway while the others supervised earnestly. There was my dad, holding court as he always did, telling stories that had the other men in stitches. He looked so young and handsome, dapper in his short-sleeved, red-and-white-striped shirt. I watched as he turned his gaze to the group of women who were standing near the makeshift bar, and he caught my mother’s eye and smiled. She lifted the drink she was holding, beaming back at him. He lifted his. A private toast amid a crowded party. So like them.
My mother. She was wearing a brightly colored sleeveless sundress printed with big psychedelic flowers. She was wearing flats—uncharacteristically, since she wore heels every day—her dark hair in curls around her face. She held a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other, and she was laughing.
I often thought she had a Jackie Kennedy air about her—sophisticated, always dressed to the nines. She bought her first pair of jeans when she was in her eighties, and then went hog wild and got a jean jacket, too, embroidered with flowers like the ones on my white pants. But on this day, and for most of my childhood, she was Jackie O.
She looked across the street and saw me watching her. She smiled. “Mom,” I whispered.
“You want to go back, but you can’t.”
I snapped my head around. There, sitting on the couch in front of the window, was my grandma. She had lived with us while I was growing up. She rarely went along when my parents socialized with the neighbors, preferring to stay home with my brothers and me
instead.
She had died when she was ninety-one, after suffering a series of ministrokes. I went with her to the hospital when she had the first one, a TIA they called it. She had been sitting on the couch in our living room, in the same place she was sitting now in my dream, telling me a story, but then her words stopped in midair. Her amused expression dissolved into one of confusion and even fear. She held my gaze for a terrible moment in which time seemed to stop. It was like she was paralyzed.
“Gram?” I had said. “Are you okay?”
She just stared at me, unblinking, but I knew her eyes were pleading with me to do something.
“We need an ambulance,” I called out to my brother, my mom, anyone who was within earshot. “Now.”
She had come back to herself by the time we got to the hospital and was joking and laughing with the nurses. One of the nurses, clipboard in hand, asked her about the medications she was currently taking.
“I don’t take any medications,” my grandma had said.
The nurse had turned to me and, in a stage whisper, asked, “What meds is she on?”
My grandma winked at me, and I smiled back. “None,” I said. “She hasn’t been to the doctor since my mom was born. Sixty-five years ago.”
The nurse looked at me, openmouthed, and then left the room. I could hear her talking to the other nurses. “I’ve got an eighty-eight-year-old woman who isn’t on any medications!”
That was my grandma. A feisty, funny Finlander, a daughter of immigrants. She never took any sort of medication with the exceptions of a white chalky mint when she had an upset stomach and a hot drink of brandy and honey when she had a cold.
Many people in my culture don’t get the experience of living with their grandparents, and that makes me feel sorry for them. She added so much laughter to my life. When my parents imposed rules on my headstrong teenager self, Gram was my confidante and sounding board and, oftentimes, my partner in crime. When I would come home as a broke college student, she was always the one who would slip a folded twenty-dollar bill into my palm, giving me a wink. “Have fun with it,” she’d say.