“But who can say what’s real for a dog? Hunting with his pack, herding a flock, defending his territory, or parading around a ring? He’s been bred from lines of show dogs. It’s all he’s ever known.”
“You know what they say about old dogs learning new tricks. People can change. So can dogs.”
Dante was watching the road, as all the cars tried to leave the parking lot at once. Louisa wasn’t sure if he was speaking of the dog or of her, who was as much out of her element as the terrier. Nah, the guy was a handyman. What did he know about metaphors?
He was waving to all the SUVs and vans as they pulled out. All the kids—and their mothers, particularly their mothers—waved back and smiled and yelled good-byes.
He must know everyone in the whole town, she thought, and wondered what that would be like, walking down a street and recognizing someone. That almost never happened in Manhattan, so people stopped looking at each other. Well, now she knew a few more people, and a ball team.
“You looked like you were having fun,” he said when they were clear of the ball field.
Louisa had to ask herself about that. Watching inept children destroy their psyches in inane games of skill and chance? She was surprised when the answer was: “Yes, I did enjoy it. Thank you.”
He laughed. “Don’t thank me. The kids were the ones who put on the show.”
“But I liked Francine, and spending time with Aunt Vinnie and getting to know your nephew, too.”
“Francine talks too much but she has a good heart.”
“That was obvious. But I meant thank you for inviting me, for encouraging me to go. You were right.”
They were stopped at the light on Main Street and he reached over to pet the dog, in her lap. “I usually am.”
“If your head gets any bigger you’ll bump it on the truck’s roof.” But she smiled. He chuckled, and it was a nice sound.
“So what was I right about this time?”
“That I was hiding, I suppose.”
“You were nursing your wounds, like an injured bear. It was time to come out of your den.”
“I would have, eventually.”
“And missed a sunny spring afternoon and kids having fun. Life’s too short to let chances like that go by. But now I am sounding like an old graybeard. And you were right, too. It was none of my business what you do, or don’t do.”
Louisa stared out the window, wondering how this stranger, this backwoods bumpkin, got so wise, or so easy to talk to. Maybe she had spent too much time alone, after all. She stared out the window, almost speaking to herself. “I was afraid to go out.”
“Good girl. At least you recognized it.”
“I’m no girl.” But his words felt good, as if someone really understood.
“Pardon. My mistake. You are an ancient crone. So what were you afraid of? Meeting Harold in the street?”
“That’s Howard. No, I was afraid everyone would laugh at me, I guess. Or give me those ‘poor dear’ looks, wondering what was wrong with me that my fiancé did a flit.”
“That’s just pride. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that vanity is a sin?”
“Wrong church, I suppose. My mother always said people will think what they want, no matter what, that bad thoughts were their problem, not mine. The premise is easier than the practice.”
“Your mother is a wise woman. Look what she’d be missing if she worried about what people said about her and Bernie.”
Talk about sin, he knew about her mother and her rest-home Romeo? “I forgot, you must have met them at the…ah, party.” When Louisa was too traumatized to speak to the guests. “Bernie is good for my mother. She’s happier than she’s been in years, and I am glad for her.” Mortified that her own mother was shacking up with a septuagenarian, but glad.
“Even if people talk?”
“Like she says, talk can’t really hurt her, and now she is not so alone.” The dog made up for some of Louisa’s own loneliness, but his conversational skills were somewhat lacking. Then again, he never disagreed with her or told her to be quiet when he was watching the business news on TV. She rubbed the spot behind Gally’s collar that he liked scratched, and was rewarded with his shiver of pleasure. Thank goodness some males were easily satisfied. “Pride is poor company, I am finding.”
The very virile one behind the wheel made a snorting sound. “You don’t have to tell me about that.”
Louisa would never have put Dante Rivera and loneliness in the same sentence. She knew he was divorced, but she also knew there were maybe ten women looking for every unattached man. Maybe twenty, if he was as attractive-looking as this one. And she’d seen how every female between sixteen and sixty smiled at him as if he were a free sample at the bakery counter. No, she did not think he suffered from lack of confidence or lack of companionship. Oh, yeah, a man with his own business—looking after other people’s houses was a business, wasn’t it?—his own truck, such as it was, and a respectable family in town, was going to have to look real hard for a dinner date. Sure. Louisa bet women brought him casseroles and cakes all the time.
“Oh, Mr. Rivera,” Louisa could imagine them saying, “thank you for fixing my trellis. Do you think you could look at my shower? It seems to be dripping.” Hell, hadn’t she been thinking of ordering a pizza to go with his beer? And those cookies…
Even if he couldn’t change a lightbulb, the man was bound to have a harem of women waiting on him or on his phone call. He liked kids and dogs. What more could a female want in a man? She doubted they’d let him coach the kids if he was a drunk or a druggie. He had dimples, for Pete’s sake! And a strong chin, even white teeth, and thick black hair. Chances were the women in the town, or the entire county, were lined up thirty-deep to become the next Mrs. Rivera, or the next mistress. Louisa decided she’d save her pizza money and eat a frozen dinner. Alone. She was not interested in joining the queue, not at all. The playboy could have his beer and go spend the night with whichever willing bedmate was first in line.
Alone, Dante Rivera? Hah.
Louisa must have made a similar snorting noise to his, for Dante looked over at her. “What, you think a woman has exclusive rights to injured pride and hurt feelings?”
“Of course not. Male pride is one of those forces of nature women are taught not to fight, like heavy surf and undertows. I just cannot imagine you feeling embarrassed or ashamed by a divorce, or being shunned by other women. Not even Paumonok Harbor could be so backward as to find a broken marriage scandalous or offensive to their moral precepts.”
“You haven’t heard about my divorce then.”
She sat up straighter, or as straight as she could with the dog in her lap. “I do not gossip about my neighbors. I find that offensive.”
“And Aunt Vinnie wouldn’t have told you.”
“There’s that, naturally.”
He stopped at a crosswalk to let a black Lab tug an attractive young brunette toward the opposite corner. She waved and called, “Hi, Dan, see you Saturday?”
“Right.”
Louisa’s dog was much better trained, she told herself, and far handsomer.
“There’s a beach cleanup on Saturday. Ingrid and her husband organize it.”
Ingrid had a husband? “Nice-looking dog.”
“Hmm.”
A few blocks went by and they were almost at Louisa’s house before she finally asked, “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Well, aren’t you going to tell me what happened to make your divorce so gossip-worthy? I know that’s being nosy, but you did bring it up yourself. Besides, after the hints you’ve dropped, I am imagining the most outrageous possibilities. I’m sure Francine will tell me the next time I see her.”
“That’s not gossiping?”
Louisa thought about her own sister. “Not if it’s your cousin. Then it’s family concern.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t tell you the minute you sat next to her.” He exhaled audibly. “My wife left
me.”
He must have been an ogre for a woman to walk out on him. Louisa wondered what he’d done, and inched a little closer to the door.
“For another woman.” He looked over at her instead of the road. “If you laugh, I’ll drive you and the mutt back to the ball field and leave you there.”
“I wouldn’t laugh,” she said, choking to cover the telltale sound. “And there is nothing so terrible about that. It happens.”
“Not in Paumonok Harbor, it doesn’t. You cannot imagine what it was like to walk into the Blue Fin for a beer.”
“Like facing the caterer and the photographer and the justice of the peace at my wedding?”
“They didn’t fall off their bar stools laughing, did they? Or impugn your manhood? Your attraction for the opposite sex, that is. Gads, I break out in a sweat just remembering those first weeks.”
“You lived through it.”
“A better man, as Aunt Vinnie would say. One who understands invisible wounds.”
“Did you love her? Besides having your pride shattered?” Louisa gasped. “I am sorry. I have no right to ask such personal questions.”
“It’s all right. I think the way Susan left was worse than the loss itself. We were friends, though. I thought so, anyway, before her lawyers started putting their hands in my pockets. In fact, she said that’s why she was moving out. She liked me too well to keep cheating on me.”
“Keep cheating?”
“That’s what I asked, too. Anyway, she likes me well enough to want me to father her children. Hers and Cora Alice’s. Artificially,” he quickly added.
The poor man! Louisa rethought her decision about the pizza. He’d lost his wife, maybe his house and his life savings, along with the respect of his peers. The least she could do was offer him a hot meal. Pizza counted as that, didn’t it?
“So do you think you and Hobart can ever be friends? After all, he didn’t marry you and then leave you with bills and a baby like Francine’s husband.”
“Now that I look back on the relationship, I don’t think Howard and I were ever friends. We were a couple and then a habit, following the expected paths until he took a detour. So I guess I was lucky. But no, I wouldn’t want to be friends with such a misguided maggot.”
“That’s understandable enough.”
He pulled into the renters’ driveway, past the old oak tree that was starting to leaf out, despite all the missing limbs. “Are you sure you need that fence up tonight?” Dante asked. “Champ doesn’t look like he’s going to run off.”
The dog had lain down, his rear end on Louisa’s lap, his head on Dante’s thigh. He didn’t stir, not even when the truck stopped.
“I suppose not. But tomorrow…”
“I’ll be here.”
Louisa opened her door to get down, pushing the dog off her lap. Galahad whined and crawled more onto Dante’s side of the truck. Embarrassed, she said, “I guess he likes going for rides.”
Dante stroked the terrier’s ears. “Guys like trucks, huh, Champ?”
Louisa didn’t want to reach over to grab Champ—Galahad’s—collar, not when the collar was resting against a man’s stomach. Which reminded her: “I did promise you a beer, though. And I was going to order in a pizza.”
The dog wagged his tail as if he understood the word “pizza” and was ready for the crusts, despite everything he’d eaten this afternoon.
“I have a lot to do.”
“But now you don’t have to help me with the fence.”
“I can use the time to catch up on some of my other chores.”
Louisa was not going to beg. “All right, then. I’ll see you tomorrow. When, so I am not out walking the dog?”
He heard the disappointment in her voice, and knew how much he’d hated eating alone until he became used to it. He was going to have to accept, despite his vow not to get any more involved with this female. Instead he said, “I really can’t stay.”
He really couldn’t. Not after the dog puked on him.
Chapter Twelve
He wasn’t coming. Oh lord, he wasn’t coming.
Louisa was having a nightmare. Not the kind that makes no sense unless you pay someone to make up an interpretation, or the anxiety-wrought dreams of being late for an appointment you didn’t have, or missing an English Regent when you’d been out of high school for ten years, or being lost in a traffic circle. This was the half-awake kind of nightmare that endlessly repeated the worst times of your life until you were wide-awake, heart pounding, mouth dry, tangled in the sheets.
He wasn’t coming. He was never coming, and everyone was pointing at her, laughing. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t go on by herself. He had to come!
Oddly enough, the man she was waiting for, almost praying for in her dream, was not Howard. He was Dante Rivera, and he had a leather carpenter’s apron on, with tools hanging all over it. Louisa sat up suddenly, eyes wide open. She didn’t need any divinator to tell her what that image was about. Good grief, Dante Rivera.
Then she heard it, the pop-pop-pop of a staple gun. No wonder she had dreamed of him. He had come, as promised! Louisa had meant to be up hours before Dante said he’d arrive, with coffee brewing and eggs and toast ready to cook. She’d been up half the night with the dog, though, out in the yard with her flashlight, wondering if there was a 911 number for dogs. The stars were out, brighter than she’d ever seen them in the city, and somehow she was not half as fearful as she’d been, outside at night. Maybe she was too worried about her dog to think of prowlers and perverts and predators, oh, my, lurking in the brush.
Now Galahad was fast asleep at the foot of Louisa’s bed. He hadn’t even barked at the noise, but he was whuffling in his sleep, not moaning anymore.
“Some watchdog you are,” Louisa grumbled as she threw on jeans and a T-shirt, telling herself that she deserved the rotten night, for being such a bad dog owner. She might not have known about chocolate, but cookies and ice cream and potato chips and hamburger? That could make anyone sick. Louisa felt queasy just thinking about it, and what else Gally might have picked up from under the bleachers. Then she thought about her dog being sick in Dante’s truck, on Dante’s leg. She felt worse. Nightmare worse. Cup of hemlock worse. Crawl back into bed—no, crawl under the bed—worse, and never come out.
But he came back. What, was he running for sainthood, or mayor? He wasn’t interested in her, Louisa knew. He’d have accepted her invitation yesterday otherwise. Or else he would have suggested another night for pizza and beer if he truly was busy. As a matter of fact, Louisa did not think he liked her at all, most of the time. He was nice enough and helpful, but with a sense of distance and dread, as if he was only being friendly for Aunt Vinnie’s sake. That was fine. Louisa was not interested in him either, except as a handyman, of course, and as a masterpiece of masculinity.
Louisa couldn’t a photocopy, much less a masterpiece. But she could look. This morning Dante had on khaki cutoffs and a tan T-shirt with the picture of a fish on it. No tool belt or apron, just firm, muscular legs, a flat stomach, and a broad chest. His dark hair was tousled by the morning breeze, and he was laughing.
There were worse ways to start the day, Louisa thought as she put on the coffeemaker, the extra one from Howard’s apartment that he’d decided was hers. He’d kept the better one, of course.
From the kitchen window, she could see that Dante had come with the proper tools and Rico, who had a wife and a girlfriend, according to Aunt Vinnie. She supposed that meant the two men had a lot to laugh about. They were talking in Spanish, which surprised her. Not that Rico spoke his native tongue, of course, but that Dante was so fluent. He was a wizard with the power staple gun, too, keeping to a steady rhythm while Rico held the chicken wire against the new fence posts. Louisa and her bent nails could never have done such a good job, nor so fast. The mesh was going to be strung before the coffee was ready.
She wondered if she could hire them to fix the roof. Aunt Vinnie had said Dante
looked after a lot of houses, but maybe he had a little time. Louisa could not pay him what the rich summer people paid, of course, but if she got the part-time job at the library… Who was she kidding? She’d never be able to pay a professional. As soon as she was back on line she was going to start selling her jewelry, just to buy gas and groceries. Most of her severance package from work had gone to pay off the catering hall, and she had foolishly, confidently signed a letter of resignation. Now she couldn’t get unemployment benefits, especially when her old company would likely take her back. She would go back to work where Howard still worked, where they’d thrown her a retirement/wedding shower, when pigs flew. She’d starve first, damn it. And while she was cursing, she damned herself for seven kinds of idiot for not taking Howard’s “severance” check. Pride might be poor company, but it made a mighty thin soup too.
She barely had enough extra money on hand to tip Dante and Rico for the job they were doing today. Granted they would put their hours on the bill for the next-door owner, but putting up the chicken wire on the new fence ought to be her expense. Her mother had agreed to pay for whatever materials Louisa needed to fix the cottage, but they hadn’t talked about hiring people other than plumbers and electricians. Louisa had thought she could do the rest of the repairs, but the roof? She’d have to ask when her mother and Bernie got back from Arizona, where they’d gone to visit his relatives.
Meantime, she could offer the workmen breakfast. Dante drank his coffee black. Rico preferred tea. Both had breakfasted hours ago and turned down her scrambled eggs. Could you reheat the leftovers in the microwave? Louisa did not know, but she’d try. She would not feed them to the dog. “It’s dog chow for you from now on, Champ. That is, Galahad.”
Dante went back to his truck—“No problem. I just hosed the whole thing off’—to fetch something. Louisa noted that his pickup was older than Rico’s, who was supporting two women, and wondered briefly if Dante was still supporting his former wife.
“This was in the back closet,” he said, handing her an answering machine. “I got a new one with the portable phone attached. I think this still works, but I couldn’t find the directions. You plug the phone jack in—”
Love, Louisa Page 9