The All You Can Dream Buffet

by Barbara O'Neal

Ruby half-smiled, looking right at Hannah. “Apparently not.”

  Hannah studied her face. “Are you the one who had leukemia when you were a kid?”

  “Hannah!”

  Ginny couldn’t help it—she smiled and reached for Valerie’s hand over the seat. It’s okay.

  “I’m curious!”

  “Val, we’re good. Just watch the road and leave us alone, all right?” Ruby turned her attention back to Hannah. “I’m the one.”

  “What if you get it back and the baby has no mother?”

  “That would totally suck for me, but I have a dad who is the greatest father in the world, and he’d take care of her.”

  “It’s a girl?”

  “I hope so. I’d like that. I never had a sister, and it would be fun to have girl energy.”

  Ginny carefully kept her eyes on the road outside, feeling the air around them grow cold suddenly. Moment lost, she thought.

  But Hannah said, “I had two sisters. You know that, right?”

  Ruby nodded. “I knew your mom when it happened. I went to the funerals. Lavender and I both did.”

  “Not you?” Hannah poked Ginny’s shoulder.

  “No, I didn’t go.” A waft of something moved over her chest—regret, maybe. Shame. Or both. “My husband was very much against it, and at the time I didn’t—” She broke off. “Never mind.”

  Hannah chewed her gum. “It was terrible. Not as terrible as having leukemia, though. At least it only lasted one day. Leukemia lasts a long time, right, and you have to have chemo for ages and lose your hair?”

  Valerie turned around in her seat, but before she could say anything, Ruby repeated, “Val. We’re good.”

  “Let them talk,” Lavender said quietly.

  “I was sick for seven years, off and on,” Ruby said. “I lost my hair and once I had to be in the hospital nearly all the time for about three months.”

  Ginny had a vision of a tiny, frail Ruby, all blond hair and big eyes, and her heart ached.

  “And now you’re okay completely? How do you know?”

  Ruby lifted her shoulders. “You don’t ever know, I guess, but I haven’t had any cancer for twelve years, so that pretty much says they finally got it all. I had a bone-marrow transplant when I was fourteen, and that did it.”

  “Did you know kids who died?”

  “Yes,” Ruby said simply. “Lots of them.”

  “Does it really hurt to die that way? I read that it did, that cancer chokes your whole body so that everything hurts a lot.”

  Ruby paused, her crystally-blue eyes on Hannah’s face. She didn’t flinch away from the direct eye contact but instead gave it all of her attention, something Ginny would have found difficult. Hannah stared back, popping her gum as if she didn’t care.

  Clearly holding Hannah’s challenge, Ruby said, “Yes, it hurts. Sometimes for a fairly long time before you finally die. It’s a pretty cruel way to go.”

  For a long moment, Hannah was silent. Her hands hung over the seat, her nails painted with black polish that had chipped in several places. “I used to worry that my sisters hurt a lot at the end, but somebody told me it happened so fast that they probably didn’t even know it happened.” She paused. “That they died.”

  “I don’t know about plane crashes, but that sounds true to me,” Ruby said.

  Hannah shrugged. “I guess we’ll never know.” She flung herself back into her corner and plugged in the earphones.

  Ginny glanced at Ruby, who also met Ginny’s gaze without guile. They both leaned back in the seat. Ginny could see the side of Val’s face, where tears dripped silently from her jaw.

  Chapter 24

  The first stop was the phone store, where Ginny replaced her drowned unit for a hefty fee. She carried it to a bench outside the store, and while she waited for the others, who were browsing in the shops along the strip mall, she checked her voice mail.

  There were twenty-seven messages, which for her was a tremendous number, even for a couple of days. When she clicked on them, thirteen were from Matthew.

  She frowned. He hadn’t called her at all before she lost the phone. Had something gone wrong?

  A heat of resistance welled up against listening to the messages. Even if it was trouble, she just didn’t want to talk to him, didn’t want to ruin the day with his voice.

  The other messages were a mix—a handful each from Valerie, Lavender, and Ruby, two from her daughter, one from her mother, and one from a Boise number she knew would be the backblogger who now hated her.

  There were also three from Jack. One was from two days ago. “Hey, Ginny.” His voice was deeper, richer on the phone, pouring right from the speaker into her ear, as intimate as if he’d licked her earlobe. The sound struck her so hard that every inch of her skin turned a bright hot red, the color steaming invisibly into the air, and she had to close her eyes to hide the lust boiling in them.

  “Listen,” he said, “I looked up your phone number from the contact information on your website. There is a big fire up here in Idaho. They’ve closed the interstate and there’s a traffic jam that’s causing all kinds of trouble. Hoping maybe I’ve caught you before you get too far down the road. You can detour up through Idaho Falls and Montana, which is what I’m doing. Maybe I’ll see you along the way. Take care. Give me a call when you can and let me know you’re all right, will you?”

  The next was clearly a response to that crazy text she had not sent. “I got your text and I’m headed back to find you. Wish you’d pick up—pretty worried.”

  For a moment she looked over the parking lot, frowning. How could she possibly have sent a text from a dead phone when she was passed out on the floor with a fever of God-only-knew what? She’d have to throw this puzzle out to the others and see what they made of it.

  The third was from right after breakfast yesterday, after the kiss. “Jesus, Ginny. I know you can’t get this message right now, but maybe you’ll hear it eventually.” A pause. She could hear him breathing quietly. Could hear some sounds in the background, maybe his engine.

  Ginny bent around the phone, as if to create a private room. His voice rolled down her skin, the ragged edges somehow rousing every cell in her body, pricking elbows and wrists and throat and belly and the soles of her feet. She pressed her finger against her other ear to shut out everything else and closed her eyes.

  “I’m having trouble thinking of what to say,” he said at last. “I just keep replaying that kiss, the way you tasted, the sounds you made, and all I want is to do it again. Kiss you. For about ten years without stopping. That’s probably a totally idiotic thing to say and you probably think I’m a crazy stalker, but, I swear, nothing like this has happened to me in twenty years on the road.”

  Another pause. Long, with the engine and a song playing in the background. “I want to see you again. Please.”

  Ginny pressed end and held the phone in her hand, feeling it burn her palm. Her skin itched as if it were about to sprout vines and flowers.

  And yet.

  There were those thirteen messages from a man she had promised to love, honor, and cherish forever. He cherished her, or at least he wanted to keep being married to her, which might or might not be the same thing.

  “Wow, that’s a pretty intense scowl,” Ruby said, sitting down. She had a bag in her hand. “Bad news?”

  Ginny looked at Ruby. On impulse, she said, “Listen.” She pushed the message from Jack, the last one.

  Ruby bent her head and a twitch touched her lips, then her eyes widened. “Whew,” she said. “That’s one killer voice.” She handed the phone back. “Do you want to tell me more about it?”

  “He’s a trucker I met the second morning. He was at the rest stop and wanted to pet Willow. And then I kept running into him. And then—this weird thing happened—which I haven’t figured out yet, but I want to get everybody’s feedback—and he kind of rescued me when I was sick, and then the next morning …” She took a breath, trying to keep the kiss saf
ely corralled, away from the incendiary points in her body. “I kissed him. Or he kissed me. Or something. And I want to feel guilty, but I don’t, Ruby. I don’t! What’s wrong with me?”

  “You have a bad marriage, that’s all.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Ruby made a quizzical face. “You’re not really asking that?”

  “I didn’t think I talked about it all that much.”

  “Oh. Sorry. Maybe I misunderstood.”

  Ginny sighed. “No, you’re right. It’s miserable.” The word weighed a thousand pounds, and she bent over to put her face in her hands. “Miserable. I have been miserable for ten years. Twelve. More! That’s why I started the blog. That’s why I bought the trailer. That’s why I’m here. I really, really, really want to leave him, start over, find out what the rest of my life should look like.”

  Ruby put a hand on Ginny’s back. “And that’s why you kissed a man who has a voice like a rock god.”

  “This isn’t about men or sex or falling in love. I need to figure out who I am, without being somebody’s wife or girlfriend.” Ginny shook her head. “But I’m very, very, very attracted to him. It’s wrong. I know that.”

  Ruby’s hand moved in a circle, smoothing the prickly skin. “I have faith in you. I know you’re going to make the right decisions.”

  Ginny looked up at her young friend, into her serene expression. “Thank you.”

  “Anytime.”

  She straightened. Looked at her phone and the thirteen messages from Matthew. “I have to make a couple of phone calls. I’ll be done in a few minutes.”

  “No problem.” Ruby dropped her hand back into her lap. “I think we’re going to grab some lunch as soon as we finish at the theater, so you don’t have to get all wrapped up. Just let them know you’re safe.”

  Which was the easy way out. Ginny called her daughter, whose voice mail picked up. “Hi, sweetie. I wanted to let you know I’m safe and all is well in case you tried to call me. I dropped my phone in the dishwater and ruined it, then got caught in the Idaho fire and had to detour around it. But I am now safely in Oregon with my friends.”

  She paused, her eyes focused on the tree-covered ridge directly to the west of where she sat. “Thanks for the encouragement, Christie. I have discovered so much about myself on this trip, and, honestly, I never want to go back to Kansas again.”

  The messages from her friends she could skip, and she’d listen to the one from her mother later. There was only one thing left to do, so she clicked on the first voice mail from Matthew, left Thursday afternoon at 3:12 P.M.

  “Hey, Ginny, we have a problem with the air conditioner. Do you know where the paperwork is?”

  At 5:04: “Hoping to get in touch with you today about that paperwork. You’re probably driving. Call me later.”

  At 8:45: “I’m going to bed. Don’t bother to call me.”

  At 6:00 A.M. yesterday: “This is getting weird, Ginny. What are you doing that you can’t answer your phone at six o’clock in the morning? This is crap.”

  At 7:00 A.M., 9:42 A.M., 11:23 A.M., 1:50 P.M.: “Call me.”

  At 5:25: “I’m going out with the guys. Don’t bother to call me, not that you’ve bothered. Jeez, Ginny, I keep hearing that there’s a fire in Idaho, and you’re being so independent. How the hell do I know if you’re okay?”

  At 7:21, slightly tipsy: “I’m here at the White Horse with Joe Kim and Grange, and I was just thinking how long we’ve been together, me and you. Remember that game against the Duke Dogs when I threw a sixty-seven-yard pass and we went to eat at Sizzler afterward and the waitress snuck us drinks? Those were good times, babe. Good times.”

  Ginny remembered. They’d been giddy with triumph and youth. They ate steaks and drank margaritas served in lemonade glasses because the waitress, all of twenty-two, was hot for Matthew and had listened to the game on the radio. Ginny got drunk and three hours later threw up in the bathroom at Grange’s house, because his mother worked the greyhound tracks outside Wichita and never got home until three or four. Nobody had been available to drive Ginny home, so she’d slept on Grange’s plastic-leather couch, huddled beneath a coat because everybody else was passed out.

  Good times. She’d given him a blow job in the bathroom while he played with her nipples under her shirt.

  Suddenly weary, she didn’t know how she could listen to the rest of the messages. He’d left three more that night, the last at one in the morning, when he’d no doubt been well beyond slightly high and into full drunk. He didn’t do it often, but there was no way he’d been up at one and not been drunk.

  Instead, she listened to the voice mail from her mother, left early this morning. “Ginny, I don’t know what nonsense you’re up to, but you can’t just leave your husband. He’s a good man and a good provider, and you’re out of your mind to divorce a man who loves you when you’re middle-aged. Kelly Lambrusco got away with it because she’s built like a brick you-know-what, but that’s not you. You want to spend the rest of your life alone?”

  As she listened, she shook her head. “Mother, what in the world are you talking about?”

  And then, with a sense of doom, she remembered the email she had written but not sent to Matthew, about never returning to Kansas and wanting a divorce. Had she accidentally hit send instead of save?

  With a shaking hand, she scrolled past the earlier voice mails from Matthew to the ones left this morning. “Ginny, I just got your email. What are you talking about?” He sounded irritated but not angry. “Is this about all those phone messages I left you last night? You know I was drunk. It didn’t mean anything, and it’s sure not worth a damned divorce. You’ve gone crazy on this trip, and I don’t understand a thing you wrote. Call me.”

  She pulled the phone away from her ear. He thought his messages were making her crazy? She started to scroll back, but Lavender was striding toward her. “Trouble at home, gal?”

  Ginny couldn’t decide whether to laugh or frown, so she did both. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Will it keep?”

  She’d been out of touch for three days so far. Another few hours wouldn’t kill anybody. She stood. “Yes.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 25

  Ruby instantly loved the smell of the local theater’s backstage area. They were meeting a wardrobe mistress who a friend of Valerie’s had put them in touch with. The place smelled of dust and time and wax, and she felt she could almost see the ghosts of dancers from performances past swirling around, their toe shoes tapping with authority against the wooden floorboards.

  A willowy woman in her sixties met them at the back door. “Oh, my gosh,” she said, touching her throat. “Valerie Andrews. I’m so thrilled to meet you.”

  Ruby thought, She’s famous! Which she’d sort of known, but it was funny to see it like this. Ruby knew Valerie through her wry, down-to-earth, also-famous blog on wine but had never known her as the dancer she’d been.

  “Hello, Mrs. Tinker. I’m so grateful to you for this.” From her bag, Val pulled a wrapped gift. “Just a small token of appreciation.”

  “Oh, thank you! Call me Bette.” Her fine skin showed a high blush over her cheeks and down the sides of her neck. She was obviously so happy to meet this famous dancer, and it made Ruby want to squeeze the wardrobe mistress tight. “Would you mind signing a program for me? I saw you dance twice, and I saved one of the programs.”

  “I’m so touched, I can’t even tell you!” Val exclaimed. “Of course I’ll sign it.” She tugged Hannah forward, and for once the girl put on her manners instead of an attitude, holding out her hand and smiling politely as Val said, “This is my daughter Hannah.”

  “How do you do,” Hannah said.

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” Mrs. Tinker said. “Are you a dancer, too?”

  “No. That was my sister Louisa.”

  “Oh, yes. Right, the one who—er, well, I’m so sorry for that loss. For both of you.
”

  Hannah’s spine went rod straight, making her taller by two inches, and Ruby stepped forward, grabbed her hand, and squeezed it with a bright smile up at the girl.

  Lost in the awkwardness, the woman wrung her hands, looking for a long moment between Valerie and Hannah, then back to Val.

  Gently, Valerie said, “You have set aside some tutus for us to try?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes. Come this way.”

  Ruby held on to Hannah. “She meant well.”

  “I know. I wasn’t going to say anything.” She tugged her fingers away. “I’m not an idiot.”

  Ruby leaned in and nudged her with an elbow. “This is going to be such a blast. Don’t you think?”

  “I guess.”

  The woman led them to a door that she unlocked with a key attached to her wrist. “This is the storeroom,” she said, and they followed her into a room lined with tutus and costumes in every imaginable style and color and length. “What kind of things were you thinking of?”

  “Goddesses,” Ruby said. “We want to be barefoot goddesses.”

  “Ah.” Mrs. Tinker’s eyes narrowed and her lips pursed, the computer of her brain sorting through the options. “Mrs. Andrews, I’d love to fit you first. What were you thinking?”

  Valerie shook her head. “I have no idea. Will you choose something beautiful for me?”

  “May I?” She pressed a hand to her chest.

  Ruby said, “She wants to be queenly. Can you come up with that, maybe with a crown?”

  “Odette!”

  “Swan Lake,” Valerie said to the others. “That would be perfect, Bette. Lead the way.”

  “The rest of you can take a look if you like. Handle things carefully. We’ll be right back.”

  Ginny and Lavender just stood there. Ruby swept forward, grabbing their hands. “C’mon, Hannah! You, too.”

  “I don’t know what to look for,” Ginny protested, yanking back to avoid being swept into Ruby’s scheme. “This is weird. Maybe I don’t want to wear a tutu!”

  “Oh, it’ll be fun.”

  “For you, Ruby.” Ginny’s alarm was scribbled over her forehead, on her mouth. “I don’t like dress-up games.”