Playing the Player

by Lea Santos

Madeira straightened. “Harold, my man.” She grinned, genuinely pleased to see the reporter. They clapped palms together, hooking thumbs, then pulled each other into a warm, back-pounding hug. “Long time, no see, old man.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “How’d you enjoy the auction?”

  “Definitely newsworthy.” Harold hoisted his slacks higher up on his hips, lifting his chin toward the stage. “You brought in a pretty penny up there.”

  “Yeah,” Madeira said, without much enthusiasm. “Thanks to the Post.” This small talk seemed a deliberate effort on both their parts to skirt the real issue—Gracie. Madeira knew she should be thrilled that they’d raised so much money for EMS, but all she could think of was the rigid set to Gracie’s spine when Madeira had asked her to stop bidding. She’d meant to save her from making a huge, unnecessary donation to the event. Had she insulted her instead? God knew, they’d both been given more than their fair share of pride. “Listen, did you get a chance to talk to Gracie before she left?”

  “I did.” Harold pursed his lips, his gaze both intelligent and assessing. “She mixes a mean 7-Up.”

  Madeira tried to laugh but the sound that emerged rang more like a morose choke. She covered it by bending over to collect some trash from beneath one of the tables, stuffing it into the trash bag she’d hung on the back of a nearby chair.

  “What’s up with you and Grace, anyway?” Harold asked. “I asked her earlier and she didn’t have much to say.”

  More evidence of her ambivalence? Madeira’s heart sank, and she shrugged nonchalantly. She didn’t want to come off like a lovesick pup. “Nothing’s up. We’re friends. Gracie is dating other women. I’m busy with work.” She raked a hand through her hair and gave her best player smirk. “You didn’t expect some stupid newspaper set-up to lead to lasting love, did you?”

  To Madeira’s surprise, Harold looked crestfallen. “Well, to be honest, I’d hoped.”

  Madeira narrowed her gaze. “You’re serious.”

  “Sure. Forty years behind the reporter’s desk has jaded me, Madeira.” Harold flipped a hand. “That story about you and Grace…well, I won’t lie. At first, I bitched incessantly about having to write fluff. But meeting the two of you…seeing you together? It lifted my tired, old spirits, which are usually a bunch of surly curmudgeons.” He uttered a regretful sound out of the side of one cheek. “I really thought you two had something special.”

  Yup, that one hurt. “Yeah, okay. I did, too. But we were both wrong.” Madeira’s defenses pulled up like drawbridges. “This is one fairy tale that was doomed from the beginning. I’m just not Gracie’s type, bro. Never will be.”

  “Well, you gave it the old college try,” Harold said, after a moment of studying her face.

  “I did.”

  “Nothing wrong with accepting the truth and moving on.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Madeira lied.

  The old reporter gave a mock salute. “Good luck, Madeira. If you ever need anything, you know where I am, okay? I mean that.”

  “Yeah.” They shook hands once more, then Madeira watched him go, the words replaying in her head. Harold was right. Difficult decision or not, Madeira knew the time had come to abandon the chase once and for all. Sadness draped her like a coffin blanket. She’d made the mistake of falling for a woman who didn’t want to be caught, at least not by her. That was her cross to bear. But if Gracie wanted a future with Layton, or some other woman…well, Madeira loved her enough to respect her wishes.

  It might kill her, but she had to let Gracie go.

  *

  The week dragged on like a bout of influenza: achy, weak, and hopeless. She and Gracie hadn’t talked.

  Madeira said a prayer of thanks that she and Simon had agreed to work the early day shift that week, if only for the distraction of traffic and the excuse of not being a morning person to explain her sullen behavior. The sun shone brightly in the east Colorado sky on Friday. Madeira hid behind her dark sunglasses and brooding silence. The radio had been dead for several hours. Simon, who wasn’t much of a morning person himself, didn’t seem to mind the lack of conversation.

  The auction had been an overwhelming success, bringing in double what they’d expected. Madeira’s coworkers were touting her as some kind of a hero, but what the fuck had she done? The Samaritan Soul Mate publicity hadn’t been her doing. Britt Mullaney only bid on her because she thought she’d get some hot sex from it. Madeira didn’t deserve the kudos she’d received, and she didn’t want them. All she wanted was Gracie.

  Too bad, sucker.

  The EMS community might have scored big, but she still felt like loser of the year. Even this job she’d come to love so much didn’t seem to mean quite as much without Gracie and the rest of the Obregon extended family in her life.

  Jesus, Madeira had never even kissed Gracie, she realized, with a stab of pure pain. Cállate! Let it go.

  She braced her boot-covered foot on the dashboard and leaned her head back, trying to pinpoint exactly how she felt on this Friday, day six of the post-Gracie portion of her miserable life.

  Sad?

  Lonely?

  Bereft?

  She pondered it. Actually, Madeira didn’t feel any of those emotions. She didn’t feel anything, and that’s what scared her. It was as if Gracie had been her conduit to the world of deep feelings, and now that she was gone, Madeira had been cast adrift.

  Gracie had tilted her whole world on its axis, sent her reeling. But time healed, no? She still had her friends, though she’d been more out of touch with them in the past two months than she’d been in years. With a little work and distance, though, she might be able to get back into her pre-Gracie groove. It had worked for her before. No reason why it couldn’t work for her again.

  After work, she’d call Kita or Carmen and find out when they planned to go out next. She had to get back in the saddle if she ever expected to gallop freely again.

  The radio crackled, pulling her attention from her ruminations. “Rescue eight-seven-three, copy a call.”

  Simon accelerated automatically as Madeira reached for the mic hooked on the dashboard. “Eight-seven-three, by.” She pulled a pen out of her shirt pocket, quickly scribbling down the address and info on the legal pad fastened to the front of their run clipboard. Three minutes later they arrived on the scene of a core zero in a small home. A double EMT unit had already arrived and begun resuscitation efforts, but they’d called for paramedic assistance. Based on the details provided by dispatch, she and Simon didn’t have much more of a chance of saving this patient than Madeira had of reviving her relationship with Gracie.

  Laden with life-saving equipment, Madeira and Simon trotted into the open house, and Simon immediately took charge of the scene. Madeira hung back, monitoring the equipment and supplies, since she was the junior EMT on scene. Their patient was an elderly woman, older than DoDo, her body wasted by cancer.

  Madeira squatted beside one of the original EMTs on scene, Becky Braden.

  “She was gone when we got here,” Becky whispered, so only Madeira and Simon could hear. She lifted her chin toward the patient’s distraught husband, who hovered on the other side of the room between two police officers who had responded to the call—standard procedure. “We’re working her for the husband, period. I’ve never seen a guy quite so broken up. He just doesn’t want to believe she’s gone.”

  Madeira glanced up at the gaunt old man who had to be staring ninety in the face. He shifted unsteadily foot to foot, every few seconds emitting out a grief-stricken groan. His thin skin gleamed pale and diaphoretic. Most of all he looked broken. Madeira got to her feet. “I’m going to check the husband’s vitals. Maybe get him out of the room.”

  “Good idea,” Simon said.

  “What’s his name,” Madeira asked Becky.

  “Mr. Harris,” she said.

  Madeira crossed the room, touching Mr. Harris on the forearm. The man barely took notice of her, his focus centered on
the body of his dead wife. “Is she going to be okay?”

  Madeira’s heart sank, and she met the police officers’ sympathetic gazes for a moment before giving her full attention to the old man. “They’re working on her, sir. How about you let me take your pulse and blood pressure? We’re worried about you.”

  “Not me, hon. Not me. Her.” The old man continued to half moan, half cry, but he didn’t resist when Madeira guided him gently into the kitchen.

  “She’s been ill, you know,” Mr. Harris said, his tone hollowed with grief. “Cancer, that damned disease. I take care of her. I’ve always taken care of her.”

  “Of course you have.”

  “She was fine when I checked her earlier. Fine. I told her I loved her, and she said she loved me, too.”

  Madeira guided Mr. Harris to a chair, a well of sadness springing inside her at the utter emptiness in the man’s tone. She wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Mr. Harris’s thin, drapey arm, trying not to notice the man’s vacant, shell-shocked stare through the doorway into the living room. In an effort to distract him as she inflated the cuff, Madeira asked, “How long have you folks been married, Mr. Harris?”

  A beat passed.

  The man’s watery brown gaze came up to meet Madeira’s, his chin quivering with pain and loss. In those eyes, Madeira saw a love so deep it was bottomless.

  “Forever,” Mr. Harris whispered, in a shaky, bereft tone that left no doubt in Madeira’s mind that losing Mrs. Harris was well and truly the end of this old man’s world. “We’ve been married forever.”

  A zing of recognition moved through Madeira and her extremities went ice cold. The depth of love in this house stunned her utterly silent, and she realized one thing: crossing paths with Mr. and Mrs. Harris on the day death separated them was one sign she didn’t intend to ignore. Love this pure, this meant-to-be, didn’t come along too often, and only a fool would ignore it.

  Madeira didn’t want to be a fool anymore. Not where Gracie was concerned.

  She continued to work with and talk to Mr. Harris, but inside Madeira’s brain, something shifted. Despite the risks to her heart and pride, she had to lay out her feelings to Gracie once and for all. Perhaps they had a chance at a forever like the Harrises.

  Perhaps not.

  But Madeira had to get Gracie’s attention, had to let her know how much she loved her, had to try…before simply walking away.

  *

  Catching her attention would be the difficult part, Madeira realized. Gracie was so damn gun-shy, she couldn’t see past her protective walls to what stood right before her. So Madeira had to do something flashy, something that would stop Gracie short, make her think.

  Madeira racked her brain all day until inspiration hit, and it wasn’t until lunchtime that she found a spare moment to pull it all together. When they arrived in the ambulance bay, Simon went in ahead of her. With shaking fingers, Madeira dialed. The phone didn’t even make it through one ring.

  “LePoulet.”

  “Harold? Madeira.”

  “Hey, dumpling. What’s up?”

  Madeira didn’t waste any time. “You remember telling me to call you if I needed anything?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, I need you now.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I may not be the woman for Gracie, but she’s the only woman for me.”

  Harold laughed, the sound tired. “I could’ve told you that months ago.”

  Damn. Everyone seemed to have realized how perfect she and Gracie were for each other except the two of them. She smoothed a palm down her face. No time for regrets. The time wouldn’t have been wasted if it all worked out. “I wouldn’t have listened. I needed to find out for myself. I needed…some kind of a sign.”

  “At least you’ve come to your senses.”

  “Yes. Now I just need you to help me bring Gracie to hers.”

  “Never let it be said that Harold LePoulet chickens out of a tough challenge. Lay it on me.”

  Madeira smiled.

  This would work.

  It had to.

  “What’s the deadline for Sunday’s paper?”

  *

  A meteor hit her bed, jostling her bones and rattling her brain in its cage. Grace groaned.

  “Get up.” The meteor poked her. “Read this.”

  Wow. The meteor had a voice, and the fucking thing sounded like Lola. What an unfortunate and yet apt metaphor for the pathetic state of her passionless life. Grace covered her head with a pillow, praying she could sink back into oblivion for another several hours. At least when she was asleep, her dreams allowed her to be with Madeira instead of away from her. Consciousness served no purpose to the seriously depressed.

  “Get out of my room, Lola.”

  Instead, she bounced. “Not until you read this, Sister Mary Sunshine, so you might as well get it over with.”

  Grace lifted the corner of her pillow and slit one eye barely open. “What in God’s name possessed you to wake me up this early on a Sunday?”

  “The newspaper.” Lola grinned.

  Covering her face again, Grace marveled at her sister’s chipper audacity. “The paper will still be out there waiting for me at noon. Get out.”

  “It might be,” Lola said, in a sly tone, “but by then Ms. Right will have missed her chance.”

  Off came the pillow. Grace squinted into the brash sunlight, orienting herself to the room. Lola, smiling from the end of the bed. DoDo, beaming from the doorway. Something was definitely up. Her heart began to thud and she scrambled up to prop against the headboard, knees pulled up to her chest. “What are you talking about?”

  Lola smiled, flipping the personals page of the paper around to face her sister. She’d drawn a large red circle around an ad with the bold header, IN SEARCH OF MS. RIGHT. Curiosity seized Grace. “Give it to me.”

  Lola did as she asked, and Grace read.

  IN SEARCH OF MS. RIGHT

  Plush, single brown stuffed female in search of her Ms. Right. Must be a teddy bear of a gal, color unimportant—in fact I’d prefer you rather faded with time, life, and experience. Mismatched button eyes a must, and I’m a sucker for a purple neck ribbon. If you’re a bear who has seen heartache and disaster, but you’re ready to take a chance on true love, then meet me today at noon, at The Fool’s Last Chance Cafe, downtown.

  Grace crumpled the paper in her lap, stomach in knots. She wanted to believe…wanted to hope, but almost didn’t dare. She quickly reread the ad, then speared her sister with a narrowed, distrustful gaze. “Did you do this, Lola?”

  Her sister spread her arms and gave her an incredulous look. “Why in the hell would I place a personal in the ‘teddy bear seeking teddy bear’ section of the paper? Which, by the way, didn’t exist until today.”

  Indeed. Why would anyone…except Madeira?

  She picked up Ms. Right, clutching the little bear to her chest. And why would Madeira place such a preposterous ad, unless she—?

  Grace’s heart soared. It wasn’t a sign, it was an invitation.

  One last chance for a fool like her, one she didn’t intend to turn down.

  Laughing, her sister and DoDo cheering her on, Grace tore out of bed to get ready.

  *

  It was four minutes past noon when Grace entered the small, dark café in central Denver, Ms. Right peeking out of the top of her backpack. She paused in the entrance to let her eyes adjust, then scanned the very Irish decor of the virtually empty pub. Dark walnut tables and banquettes filled the room, smoke from the kitchen hanging on the sunbeams angling weakly through the leaded glass front windows. Two women shared the window table, and an old man sat reading Tom Wolfe in a side booth.

  In a far back corner sat Madeira, a furry brown teddy bear at her side.

  Grace melted.

  She shook her head, a smile on her face. What kind of woman would place a personal ad for a bear? A perfect woman, she realized. A heart stealer.

  Madeira stood
as Grace approached, warmth in her eyes despite the wariness. When, at last, Grace stood before her, neither one of them seemed ready to speak.

  “Hi,” Madeira said finally, brushing the backs of her fingers down Grace’s cheek.

  “Hi.”

  “I miss you.”

  Grace’s chin quivered. “Me, too, you.”

  “I’m glad you came.”

  “Yeah, well”—she slid into the booth and pulled Ms. Right from her backpack—“Ms. Right hasn’t quite mastered her driving test since she lost her original button eyes. Plus, there’s that no opposable thumbs issue. So I had to chauffeur her.” Grace propped Ms. Right against the condiment caddy.

  To her surprise and pleasure, Madeira slid into the booth next to her, caging her between the wall and her own chest. Grace blinked as a wave of emotion rocked her. “Maddee, what is this about?”

  “A sign.”

  “What?”

  “I had a sign. One of DoDo’s.” She waved her hand. “It’s a long story, time for that later. First—” She swallowed, then reached for the bear she’d brought along, setting it on the table to face Gracie’s Ms. Right. “I figured I needed to marry the old girl off if I ever wanted to take her place. Ms. Old-school Right? Meet Ms. New-school Right.”

  Grace laughed. “That’s sweet, but you’re not making a whole lot of sense,” she whispered.

  Madeira sighed, hanging her head forward for a moment. When her face lifted again, her expression was ravaged, pleading. “Aw, hell, Gracie. We both know I’m nobody’s Princess Charming. I’m the furthest thing from perfect, and God knows, I’m probably not even close to being your Ms. Right.” Madeira’s jaw ticked, and she splayed one hand on her chest. “I’m just a woman, faults and all. A woman with a past, sure, but—”

  Grace ached for her. “Maddee, you don’t have to—”

  “No.” Madeira held up a palm to stop her. “Let me finish. I’ve held this in too long to stop now.”

  Grace nodded, tears welling in her eyes, love filling her heart fuller than she’d ever imagined it could be.