He leaned back, waiting. Ginny studied his face, his wide mouth and the crow’s-feet around his gray eyes. Something shimmered between them, soft and pale and ethereal, as if the time–space continuum had suddenly been rearranged.
Silly.
“I think,” she said, “that you like Tyrion, too.”
He grinned.
Rain kept falling. They kept talking.
It was almost four hours later that Ginny spied the time. “Oh, my gosh! I have to go. My poor dog must be crossing her legs by now.” She jumped up and stuck out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Jack.”
“You, too, Ginny.” He shook her hand gravely. From this angle, she could see the silver strands in the waviness of his dark hair. “Take care, now.”
“You, too.”
She forced herself to turn and walk away. As she was about to open her umbrella and dash through the rain, she heard him call her name. “Ginny!”
He jogged over and gave her a piece of paper. “My cell-phone number, in case you have any trouble on the road.”
“Thanks.” The paper felt hot in her fingers, and she pushed it deep into the pocket of her jeans. “See ya.”
He saluted. She felt his eyes on her all the way to the trailer.
Chapter 12
Willow met her at the door, tail wagging urgently. “Come on, baby,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I just got to talking.”
Her dog leapt down, blinking sadly at the rain. Ginny tried to cover her with the umbrella as they headed for the edge of the parking lot, and both of them got soaked, but Willow squatted in the dark, peeing on a wildflower for what seemed like five minutes. She shook herself, looked at Ginny for direction. “Let’s get out of this rain, huh?”
They jogged back and Ginny backed into the trailer, holding the umbrella over the dog. “Shake it out here, Willow.” She shook herself to illustrate, but Willow only gazed up at her with a doleful expression. Why are you making me stand out here in this mess?
“Oh, all right. Come on.” She backed into the hallway to let her dog come in, looking around urgently for something to drop over Willow.
There, sitting at the table, was a woman. Her hair was swept away from her face, and she drank a martini from a perfectly shaped glass. “What are—”
Willow shook, hard, sending water everywhere. Ginny flung up her hands. “Argh!”
Heart pounding, Ginny dived for the afghan draped over the sitting area, looking back over her shoulder at the woman.
Gone.
Willow shook again, head to toe, splattering Ginny’s face and mouth. “Stop, stop, stop!” She dropped the afghan on Willow’s back, trying to minimize the damage, then wiped her muddy paws with a dish towel and rubbed her down with the afghan. Willow slid out of her grip and shook again, this time without damage to the surroundings. Ginny realized her heart was racing.
She frowned at the table. The light glowed softly from an overhead spot, faintly blue. The woman must have been a trick of the light, some strange imaginary dream.
A ghost, Ruby would say.
A wish to have company, Christie would say.
Her imagination, that’s what Ginny would say. She grabbed a roll of paper towels and wiped down the surfaces splattered with Willow’s rain shake—the front of the fridge and stove, the legs of the table, the floor; even the window got a few splatters. She wiped it off, closed the blinds, made sure the door was locked.
Shivering, she threw away the paper towels, gathered up the dish towel and afghan to be washed, and stripped out of her clothes to shower.
But for a moment, standing naked in her trailer, she thought of Jack’s hands, his seasoned mouth. She touched her breasts, her belly, wishing…
When she realized what—or, rather, whom—she was thinking of, she snatched her hands away and turned on the water, scrubbing her skin to warm it up, forcing herself to think about Lavender’s farm, about the next leg of the trip.
Afterward, snuggled into her pajamas, she made a cup of tea, curled up in the kitchenette, and dialed home.
Matthew answered on the fourth ring, groggy, and only then did Ginny realize that it was eleven o’clock at home. He would have been in bed for an hour. “Hello?” he said. “Ginny, are you hurt?”
“No, I’m sorry. I just mixed up the times. I’ll call tomorrow.”
“Christ, I’ve been asleep for an hour.”
“I know, I’m sorry. Really, go back to sleep.”
A rustling on the other end. “I’m awake now. You might as well tell me where you are. Is everything going all right?”
She imagined him sitting up in bed, shirtless. He slept in his boxer shorts only, which was sometimes torturous since his body was in good shape from regular workouts, and he rebuffed any of her attempts to touch him or cuddle up when he was next to her in bed. “So far so good. I ran into weather a couple of times but got through it.”
“Where are you now?”
“Utah. I was trying to get to the Great Salt Lake, but it’s been really windy today, and now it’s raining like Armageddon, so I finally gave up and pulled in to a truck stop.”
“That’s smart. I heard about the weather on the news and worried about you a little bit.”
“You could have called.”
A long silence. “I guess my feelings were hurt.”
Ginny stretched out her toes, feeling the pull along her calves and ankles. “That was never my intention.”
“I know. Are you having fun?”
“Um … sometimes, yes. Sometimes it’s a little lonely, but I have Willow and the people on the blog, commenting. I’m hoping to get to Idaho and one of the bloggers tomorrow, then probably the farm on Friday morning.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“How are things there?”
“Nothing new, Ginny. The same old things. I get up and go to work and come home and eat a TV dinner and watch some TV and go to sleep.”
“You could go have dinner out, you know.”
“I will, probably. Just expensive.”
“Right.” Something that had been puffing up a little like a balloon as she listened to his familiar voice suddenly deflated. “Well, I’m sorry I woke you. I just thought I’d check in so you wouldn’t worry.”
“Try not to call so late next time. It’ll be hard to go back to sleep.”
She sighed. “I’ll make sure. Good night, Matthew. Tell my mom I’m fine.”
“Wait, Ginny. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that like it sounded.”
“It’s fine. Good night.”
“Good night.”
She pressed the off button and sat with the phone in her lap, staring toward her bed, where a lamp on the wall cast a warm pool of yellow light. Tears, quite surprising, ran down her face, unchecked, and the yearnings of two decades seemed to well up all at once, making her skin burn. She loved her husband, or at least she had at one time, but she couldn’t go on like this.
Twelve years ago, Matthew had given up sex. He didn’t actually come out and say that. He just stopped having sex with her. Ever.
At first she’d been bewildered—until then their sex life had been healthy, if a bit routine. It was never quite enough sex for her taste—she’d rather have indulged a couple of times a week, where Matthew preferred once a week, or even once every other week sometimes—but it was good when they tangled themselves. He was a good-looking man, the envy of her friends, and worked out with his old football buddies at the local cinder-block gym, giving him that chest that looked so sexy when he stripped off his staid insurance-man shirts. He had just the right amount of hair and strong pecs, smooth, muscled shoulders. Once upon a time she had enjoyed surprising him in the shower and running her hands all over the rounds of flesh. Arms, shoulders, chest. So sexy.
One December he slipped on the ice at work and fell, hard, breaking his right arm so badly it required surgery and rupturing two disks in his back. The arm healed over time. The back gave him trouble for years. It could still give
him agony now and then.
Somewhere during the healing period, Ginny realized they had not had sex in several months. Understandable, considering, but she was hungry for intimacy, for the connection and pleasure and everything of sex.
Matthew turned away.
And he had been turning away ever since. She had tried everything. Sexy nightgowns, of course, and surprising him in the shower, which ended so badly that she never tried it again. He refused to see a marriage counselor. He refused to talk about it at all. Said he just didn’t feel like it.
She tried reason. She tried anger. She suspected he might have developed some impotence with his back injury and suggested Viagra, which infuriated him.
She wanted to talk to her friends about it, but mostly they complained about how often they didn’t want to have sex and how their husbands were always chasing them around, suggesting scandalous acts. She could not face their pity.
There were two choices after that: accept it or leave him. She was thirty-four years old—which in her world was pretty old—with a teenage daughter and a job as a supermarket baker. What could she give Christie on her own?
So she stayed. She closed off that part of her life with a sigh of regret and spoke to no one about it. No one knew. Not her mother or sisters, none of her friends, not the Foodie Four.
No one.
Sitting in her trailer with the phone in her lap, she became aware of her body, her skin. She thought of the trucker and wondered how it might be to kiss a mouth like that, a stranger’s mouth. What it would be like to have sex again, after all these years.
Ashamed, she pulled her camera over, plugged the cord into the laptop, and started to upload photos. It was this pursuit and the blog that had saved her. After a time, she forgot the sound of the new man’s voice and lost herself in the world of light and color and shape that was photography.
What would she have done without it the past few years?
A gentle knock sounded at the door, so quiet she was sure that the knocker—and she knew exactly whom it was—was being careful not to wake her.
For a long moment, she made no move at all, except to look at the door. Willow growled softly in warning, her usual response and one Ginny appreciated. She thought about the way Jack had laughed when she made a joke and the way he looked at her. Directly, and as if she was something worth looking at. Her restless skin said it would be dangerous to have his breath in here, rustling over her, and she knew it was not appropriate to let him in when she was wearing only her pjs.
Faintly, she heard the sound of that jazzy song, and with half of her mind she tried to place it while she stared at the door, wondering whether to open it. A World War II dance tune, maybe. But where was it coming from?
The very, very quiet knock on the door came again. Ginny pressed a palm against her throat, feeling her heartbeat flutter unevenly against the pad of her index finger.
Should I?
Shouldn’t I?
One thing that did not cross her mind was that he was dangerous. Somehow, she knew in her deepest gut that he was not. He was aging and a little weary and maybe opportunistic, but not dangerous in the sense of killing her in her sleep or raping her if she decided she didn’t want to have sex with him.
If? Did that mean she was considering it? Because what else did a man really want if he showed up at your door at ten-thirty at night?
Ginny stared at the door. When she thought she heard him leave, she crept to the door and flicked the curtain aside. He was walking away in the rain, his head bent, his shoulders hunched and wet.
She let him go.
The Flavor of a Blue Moon
a blog about great food…
Summer!
At the market this morning were piles of small dark-green watermelons, tumbled together like basketballs in cardboard bins. I drifted over in answer to the little cries they sent out, rolling them to find the sugar marks, the bleached yellow spot where it sat against the earth, face toward the hot sun of Mexico. These were crisscrossed with rows of paler green, and I picked them up one at a time, weighing each by balancing it in my palm, until I found the heaviest for its size, and then thumped it, listening for the watery reverberation that tells you it’s ripe and ready.
Three more I chose this way, and I have just cut the first one open. It made a thwacking, sucking sound before it cracked in half, revealing deep-red flesh. With the edge of my knife, I slivered off a paper-thin slice from the very center of the fruit and popped it into my mouth—and, oh, readers, it was like diving into a cool river in the heat of a long hot afternoon, like splashing into a lawn sprinkler when you’re five, like watching fireworks explode overhead.
It is sweet, it is summer, it is watermelon.
Facts: Watermelon is not only delicious, it is astonishingly good for you. Low in calories, packed with vitamin C, beta-carotene, lycopene, magnesium, and B1 and B6. It is also a mild diuretic, which is helpful if your ankles swell in summer humidity. Try some with a sprinkle of salt, or use a melon baller to mix up cantaloupes, watermelon, honeydew, and whatever other fruit catches your eye.
But here is my favorite recipe for a watermelon salad. The nutrition here is off the charts, and it is also enormously delicious, because there is absolutely no point in nutrition without delight.
AVOCADO AND WATERMELON SALAD
Serves 4–6
Dressing
½ red onion, very thinly sliced and separated into rings
2 T peach white balsamic vinegar, or champagne vinegar if you like
1 T mixed peppercorns, crushed
1 tsp coarse salt
½ cup olive oil
Mix together and let stand at least one hour.
Salad
2 ripe avocados, skinned and cubed
½ single-size watermelon, cubed
Spinach leaves, stems and spines removed, chiffonaded or torn into bite-size pieces
Toss all the bits together; serve with a garnish of basil or mint leaves. Feast!
Chapter 13
After two full days of cooking with Lavender, Ruby was wiped out. Her arms were tired and her back ached slightly, and, of course, her belly swished and swashed, making her feel vaguely ill.
She needed a nap.
The kitten slept on her head, purring. Ruby closed her eyes and let that sound of richest contentment rumble through the casing of her skull. It lulled her to sleep.
She dreamed she was in a room with an IV drip attached to her arm; she could hear a beeping somewhere and the watery sound of the PA system. She knew it well, this room, with its falsely cheery sheets and the monster in the corner. In her dream, she scowled at it, a dragon-looking being with slanted pupils in red eyes, and the fire of pain licked at her feet, her joints, her hands. As she stared, the monster began to lumber toward her, breath fetid and dead with the children it had already consumed. No! she cried in the dream.
The force of the cry shook her back into her bed. Her cozy, soft bed in her camper, full of colors you never saw in a hospital—gold and silver and copper and rose, patterns swirling over everything. Extravagant, comforting.
The kitten made a tiny mewing noise as Ruby stretched, the cat’s heart beating with fragile teeniness into Ruby’s ear. Peaceful.
Ruby turned her face to nuzzle the kitten, letting the nightmare go. It was an old one, a dream she’d had a thousand times as a child, the monster creeping forward to steal her away.
No surprise that she was having the chemo dreams. All this throwing up was quite reminiscent of those days. At least she wasn’t miserably nauseous all day every day, for weeks on end.
The kitten roused herself suddenly, jumping off the bed to go to the door of the camper. Ruby had found a harness in town, and she rolled off the bed, attached the leash, and opened the door.
The kitten rushed for a butterfly lifting up from a wildflower, flipping madly to grab the beautiful creature right out of the air. Her body was as graceful as the wind, her claws extended, paws wid
e, and she flew back to earth with her prize.
“No!” Ruby cried. But it was too late. The kitten swaggered along the grass, so plainly strutting that it seemed evil and funny at the same time.
“Dang it,” Ruby said under her breath.
“What in the name of Zeus are you doing?” Noah said.
He’d come up the path from the distillery, carrying a shovel and a rake in gloved hands. His hair was covered with a hat, and his worn shirt had rolled-up long sleeves.
“This kitten showed up the other night. A coyote was chasing her.”
“So you’re going to keep her on a leash, are you?”
“Why not?”
“Have you ever met a cat, of any kind, anywhere?”
“Of course I have.” The kitten dropped the butterfly. It fell on the ground, dead, and the kitten poked it with a white-tipped paw. It fluttered slightly, and she pounced again, hard. Part of a wing broke off. Ruby felt slightly nauseous. “I can’t keep watching this.” She made a move to take the butterfly away, but Noah grabbed her arm.
“This is what cats do. They hunt. They kill things. Sometimes they eat them, but sometimes they just torture them. They like to race around and leap high and swish through the grass, like little Ninja Girl here.”
“Little Ninja Girl,” Ruby said, laughing. It suited her, with her sleek black body. “How old do you think she is?”
“I know exactly—eight months. She was born in the barn. Her daddy is a big feral guy who paces the woods like a panther.”
Ruby realized this was as much as Noah had ever spoken to her, and, curious, she tossed out another question. “Is the daddy a black cat, too?”
“No,” he said, and his eyes scanned the woods as if the tom might appear. “He’s a dark-gray tabby, with one notched ear. I’ve seen him take down squirrels like they’re moths.”
“Wow.” The kitten tired of trying to revive the butterfly and rustled through the grass. Only her tail and the leash, trailing out, were visible.
The All You Can Dream Buffet Page 10