Althea kept her attention on her tea. “So why are you telling me all this?” Is she being disloyal to him, or just practical? She doesn’t know me. What is their relationship? He’s Ted’s cousin.
Glo shrugged and stirred her tea for a moment. “I guess because you’re a neighbor and I don’t want you hurt. We, Ted and I, plan to stay here. We really like our place and we have a plan, or are forming a plan, to bring back a lot of it into production. We’re talking with the lawyer about finding a way to buy the farm. Miles said we could possibly contract with you about selling produce.” She glanced up, down again. “We don’t want any bad feelings, even when Miles moves on.” She sighed. “As he always does.”
“I think I can keep my business separate from my private life. I have so far. And I’d like to talk about produce. Miles mentioned pears?”
Surprise was plain on her face. “Really? I didn’t think he paid any attention to such things. Yes, we may have a nice crop of pears, several varieties, and a couple of plum trees. We’ve been talking to the county extension agent about them. He’s very nice and he’s been a big help.”
Althea smiled. This was certainly a safe neutral topic, and Glo seemed to be genuinely enthused about the farm. “That agent, was it Clay Somers? He’s a good man, knows a lot. He’ll be a big help to you. I’d love to talk about the pears when they’re ready.”
Glo pushed her chair back and stood up. “I do have to get home. Ted will be wanting his supper and there are chores to do.” She held out her hand. “It was nice to meet you, Althea. I’m sorry if I upset you.”
“You didn’t.” She accepted Glo’s weak handshake. “I don’t think my—relationship if you want to call it that—with Miles will go anywhere. I don’t think he’s my type and he’s just amusing himself because we both like old music.”
She picked up her purse. “But that may be the difference. Not many people do. And the only thing he’s serious about is his music.”
“I’m glad you stopped. I’ll walk back to the stand with you. I still have to close up.”
Standing in the parking space watching Glo leave, Althea wondered . . . Just how much did she want to see Miles again? And did all this make any real difference? Didn’t most young men sow their wild oats, as they used to say? Play the field looking for the right mate? Just how much did those past events matter anyway? She had had boyfriends, although none had gotten serious. And just how serious do I want to get this time? Do I have time for such things?
She didn’t know. And when would Miles be back? She didn’t know that, either, only that he had said he would.
Miles had impressed Ed, who had a lot of respect for capable people, people who could do things with their hands. Fix things. She was sure they had not discussed computers. Ed wouldn’t even have one if Connie hadn’t wanted email to keep track of their family. She wondered, for a moment, just what Ed and Miles had talked about in addition to the pump and the irrigation system. Miles, she was sure, would try to pry information out of her usually taciturn cousin.
What had he wanted to know, and what had Ed told him? That wasn’t something she could ask.
She finished closing the stand and walked back home. She had a lot to think about.
MILES AND ALTHEA
“It just doesn’t fit properly,” Miles said. He ran his fingers lightly over the strings on his guitar producing lilting little riffs. “No matter what I do, and I’ve tried about everything.”
“What doesn’t?” Althea asked. With half-closed eyes, she leaned comfortably back against the stone wall behind them, leaving a space between them. She was grateful for an excuse to take a moment of rest in the shade of the big oak trees, out of the bright Saturday afternoon sun, even if it was Miles who offered it. She knew his music making was growing on her, breaking down any resistance she might have to his charms. In spite of what Glo had said.
It was actually too hot be working in the garden, but there was always a lot to do, and she never had time enough to accomplish everything she wanted. Miles’ arrival had interrupted her weed pulling, but she stifled her annoyance, admitting to herself the need for a break. She knew she was covered with sweaty dirt and certainly not at her most attractive.
Miles sighed elaborately, concentrating on his fingering. “Putting Althea into ‘Bonny Eloise.’ I tried it. The names have the same number of syllables, but it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t sound right.”
She straightened and looked sideways at him. “What?” She remembered what Glo had said about his composing a song for her. “Why do that?”
He sighed again, shaking his head. “I thought it would work but it just doesn’t.” He strummed a few bars and then sang the chorus of the song putting her name in place of Eloise.
She agreed silently that, indeed, it didn’t work. Putting the accent in the wrong place sounded weird, and besides, she wasn’t a belle of anything or anywhere. “So why did you do that?”
He faced her directly, soberly meeting her gaze. “You have such pretty blue eyes. Like Eloise.”
She felt her face reddening and was momentarily tongue-tied.
The twinkle was back in his eyes, and the annoying little twitch at the corner of his lips. “You really are bonny, you know.”
“Now, really . . .”
He put his hand lightly on her arm. “You put yourself down too much, Althea. A farmer you might be, or maybe consider yourself one, but you are a very pretty girl. You seem to forget that.” He sang something about a wealth of auburn hair and laughed softly.
She didn’t recognize the song and couldn’t answer. She didn’t consider herself a girl anymore. Twenty-six is so old.
“And a very desirable one.” He put a finger on her cheek and brushed lightly. “Under the dust.”
Again, in confusion, she found no answer.
He put the guitar carefully on the ground beside him and leaned closer, and slipped his hand gently up her arm. “Eloise you might not be, but you aren’t Althea, either. That doesn’t suit you.”
She didn’t move away. His nearness created feelings she didn’t want, but it had been a long time since she had felt anything like this, and the heat was making her languorous. It wasn’t distressing, so she tried to keep her voice light, bantering. “So what am I? Or who am I? If I’m not Althea.”
He slipped his arm around her shoulders but didn’t pull her closer. “Thea, I think,” he said, “but Bonny Thea isn’t quite it, either. I need to find another word, a different name, for you. One that fits.”
She wondered about the song he had written. Glo had called it pretty, but had implied that it was a new composition, not just new words to an old song. “So what do you have in mind?”
“I’ll have to think on it. Carefully. Very carefully.” He tightened his grip suddenly, pulled her closer and kissed her, lightly but lingeringly. Then, loosening his grip but not moving away, with his mouth close to her ear, he whispered, “I need some inspiration. Something beyond the taste of wine or honey. That’s been done too much and you are different.” He rested his face against her hair. “So very different.”
She didn’t pull away. She couldn’t. “So what do I taste like?” It was an odd idea, tasting somebody. But it was intriguing, appealing to her sense of music, of poetry, a sense she thought she had long gotten past, buried with her dream of playing the piano.
He pulled her against him again, held her cheek lightly against his shoulder. He asked dreamily, “How do you put a flavor on a gentle summer rain? Or the taste of rosebuds covered with dew?” He paused a moment, his hand lightly caressing her arm. “Or the scent of wildflowers in your hair? The whisper of a breeze through tall grass? The flavor of starlight or the sensation of drowning in moonlight?” He sighed again, elaborately. “All of that has been done before, so often and so well by other poets. I need something
new and different, just for you.”
With her face against his chest, Althea was aware of his scents – masculine smells of cologne or aftershave, a little acrid sweat, and another undefinable faint aroma she thought of fleetingly as pheromones, a term remembered from an otherwise forgotten biology class—what it was that attracted butterflies to each other across vast distances. And that lure was now attracting her to him. It was something beyond poetry, his handsome face and lyrical voice, his whispered endearments. She let herself be drawn to it, surrounded by it, totally immersed by the newly awakening sensations.
Miles laughed and broke the spell that had engulfed her, shattering the illusion of mating butterflies.
“Maudlin,” he said. “You are a real person, a beautiful girl, here in the sunshine of a too hot afternoon with too much work to do. And I’m talking about dew covered roses. In the starlight when you prefer rain.”
She pushed herself away from him and leaned against the wall again, still partly enmeshed in his enveloping spell and savoring it. “I like dew covered roses. And moonlight.”
“But you are really thinking about rain covered cornfields and pumpkin patches.” He faced her but didn’t reach for her. “Am I trying to make you into something you aren’t? Am I just imagining you as part of some ballad?”
She met his gaze, felt herself drawn again into their mysterious gray-green depths until she feared drowning, but she could not resist. “And what am I, then, other than just a woman?”
He closed his fingers around her arms and held her away from him, looking deep into her eyes. He sang softly, sweetly, “Althea in the Rain on Thursday, in the arbor among the blossoms. Scented drops from roses in her hair. Face uplifted to life-giving mist, washing away the day, refreshing her soul . . .” He stopped and added in his normal voice, “And mine. I never appreciated the restorative power of the rain before. I never really liked it.”
Althea closed her eyes feeling the music in her heart. Refreshing it. Restoring her. “That’s beautiful, Miles.”
“It isn’t finished.”
She asked, “Will you play it for me? Sing it again?”
“No.” He shook his head. “No. not until it’s complete.”
But Glo said he had written it, sung it for them. Althea in the Rain on Thursday. She asked, “When will that be? Or is it just a composer looking for perfection?”
He grimaced. “Composers and writers always look for perfection, for that perfect word or description, or the right rhyme. And they never find it. They are never satisfied.”
“Sometimes it’s up to the listener to decide whether it’s complete.” She wanted to hear the song again, to relish it, memorize it, hold it in her heart. “Don’t you think?”
He shook his head. “No. Creativity belongs to the creator.” He released her, reached down, and picked up his guitar again. “That song is still mine.”
She leaned back again trying to regain her poise. “But you could play it again? For me?”
He ran his fingers across the strings, watching them and not her. “It’s not finished.” He glanced up at her. “But since you asked.”
He found the chords he wanted, strummed lightly, and softly played the gently haunting melody. “That is how I see you,” he said, keeping his attention on the guitar. “How I picture you. In the arbor in the rain in the twilight. But I don’t have it right. Not yet.”
She said again, “It’s beautiful, Miles. I’m flattered that you would write it for me. Really. Nobody ever did that before.”
He put the guitar aside again. “I want you to feel more than flattered.” He pushed himself to his feet. “And I have to get going. Rehearsal, you know.” Then he glanced in her direction. “And I suppose you have things to do?”
She nodded. “A lot to do.”
“So I won’t ask for any more of your time. Right now.”
She wondered what he had intended. Was he going to ask me out to dinner? To go with him somewhere? Do I want to do that? Even after this? “Do you have a concert date? I’d go and listen.”
He shrugged. “If an occasion comes along. Some harvest festival or something. That’s what we usually do. Farmers’ markets and such.” He grinned crookedly. “That’s how we are. Spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment. No real schedule.”
And that’s what you are. Unpredictable. Unreliable. That was a word Glo had used. She got to her feet. “Let me know if you are playing somewhere.”
“I will do that.” He glanced her way, met her eyes for a moment. “And I’ll be back.” He paused a moment. “To write another verse of the song.”
She liked the implication and wanted to ask when that would be, but she didn’t. She watched him walk away toward the road, under the oak trees to a break in the stone wall. He glanced her way before he went through. She did not return his casual wave.
Nor did she return to her weeding. She went home, took a long shower, and made a cup of tea. But all the time she could hear his song in her mind and heart and wished that she could play by ear.
ALTHEA AND BARRY
Thursday morning was payroll day, not Althea’s favorite part of the job, but the self-storage company had only a half dozen employees, so it was not too time consuming. She was immersed in the weekly paperwork when the office door was pulled open. She looked up with surprise at Barry Sanford. He had been paying his monthly rent by check and it wasn’t due for another week. She couldn’t recall having seen him since their last date. She had pushed him into the back of her mind and not given him any thought since.
He smiled hesitantly, only half smiling at her. “Hi, Althea. I haven’t seen you lately.”
“It’s been awhile.” Probably last June. They had been casually dating for a few weeks and had seen a couple of movies and had gone to dinner at an expensive new establishment in the neighboring town, then to a club and danced. He was a marvelous dancer. She had thought then that their relationship could develop into something more, was beginning to hope it would, but he had not called her again. She had felt his loss until, she just realized, she had met Miles. And she didn’t want to think about him, either.
Barry didn’t look directly at her. “I’m taking all my stuff out of storage.”
He sounded odd, a little stiff. She said, “Oh?”
“Yeah. I’ll pay up my bill now and come around tomorrow with a U-Haul and get everything.”
She remembered. In June he had been sharing expenses with an unmarried brother. It was apparently a long-term, mutually satisfactory arrangement and he had never mentioned a desire to do anything different. She asked, “Do you have a new job? Are you moving away?” She meant have you found a new partner, somebody else to live with? But she couldn’t ask that, and she didn’t really care.
“Oh, no. It’s just my brother’s getting married pretty soon and he’d kind of like the apartment just for them.” He hesitated, looking somewhere beyond her. “And I don’t blame him. She’s a nice girl, but not one I’d want to live with. And they don’t want me there, anyway. Even if they didn’t say so.” He paused again, still not looking directly at her, and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I came here today because, well, you’re not here on Friday, and I wanted to see you again.”
And why was that? Why didn’t you call me after our last date? I waited for you. Althea pushed her paperwork aside. “Sit down for a minute while I find your file.” He sat awkwardly in the chair by the desk across from her. “I intended to call you after the last time we went out, but . . . you know, well, work and all got in the way.”
That sounded like a lame excuse. It had been almost three months. She pushed herself out of her chair and walked to a file cabinet on the other side of the small cluttered room.
“That does happen.”
He kept his gaze on his hands. “Yeah, well, I’m sorry. I rea
lly did mean to.”
Althea pulled a folder from her file drawer and regarded him speculatively over it. She sat down again and located the lease he had signed. She considered him, glancing sideways at him. He was a nice looking man, in an average sort of way, not with Miles’s flamboyance, of course. Few of the men she knew had that. Barry’s hair was medium brown and curly, shoulder length and shaggy, somewhat unkempt. He wore the current fad of looking unshaven without having a real beard, and his facial hair was sort of reddish. He was taller than average, lean, but not muscular. He didn’t look like the kind who would frequent a gym, and he had never mentioned any form of exercise other than dancing. She said, “That happens to all of us,” and waited.
He looked up at her, obviously swallowed, and almost stammered. “I wondered, could we take up again where we left off in the spring?”
She concentrated on the file folder to hide her surprise, and to give her a moment to consider. “Why? Why didn’t you call me? I waited.”
He mumbled again, “I’m sorry. I did mean to call.” He looked up again but didn’t meet her eyes. “I guess I was a little afraid. Afraid maybe we were getting too serious too soon. I didn’t know.”
She waited again. Didn’t know what?
He changed his position in the chair, sat a little straighter. “I guess that’s really why I got my own apartment. A place for me. Where I can take all those things my grandparents left – the stuff out there in the unit, the things no one else in the family wanted. The furniture I remember from when I was young. Maybe get rid of it and start over.” He stopped, his face reddening, obviously embarrassed. “I want a place where I can meet with my friends. Like you.”
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