One Night With You

by Gwynne Forster

  He put the soap on the shelf, came back upstairs and headed for the front door without saying anything.

  “Mr. Maguire!” She spoke sharply, and he stopped, turned and looked at her with an expression that questioned her impudence. “Sorry, but I wanted to get your attention. Thank you for helping me. You were raised to be gracious. So was I, and I’d appreciate it if you would at least accept a cup of coffee or tea, or a glass of milk, in case you don’t drink tea or coffee.”

  He stared at her for nearly a minute, and when a half smile formed around his lips, she nearly grabbed the banister for support. What a mesmerizing man! “Thank you for a cup of coffee. I hope it isn’t instant. I get that at home.”

  She took a deep breath, recovered her equilibrium and said, “You’ll smell it in a minute.”

  To her surprise, he followed her to the kitchen and took a seat. He pointed to a loose board at the base of the radiator. “Why doesn’t this surprise me?”

  “What? Why doesn’t what surprise you?”

  “That board hanging loose down there in a brand-new house. This builder is known for his shoddy work. I’ll bet if I went through this house, I’d find a dozen things wrong with it.”

  She got two plates, cut two thick slices of chocolate cake, got forks and napkins and put them on the table with the cake. “The coffee will be ready in a minute. What do you know about Brown and Worley?”

  “Plenty.”

  She put the coffee in front of him. “Would you like milk and sugar?”

  “Milk, please.”

  Something wasn’t right, and she had to find a way to pry from him the information that he was obviously in no rush to provide.

  “Did you buy a house from Brown and Worley?”

  “This cake is delicious. Did you make it?”

  “Yes, I did. You didn’t answer my question. But if you’d rather not…”

  “Brown and Worley built an apartment house that I designed.”

  She stopped eating the cake and looked at him. “So you’re an architect. I gather they did a poor job. Tell me what happened.”

  “Part of the building collapsed, injuring a number of people. The builders swore in court that they followed my design to the letter and brought numerous witnesses who attested to their competence. One man could not stand up to some of the most exalted building firms in this part of the country, at least two of which were owned by Worley’s cousins. I lost a class-action suit, my home, my wife and every dime I had.”

  “Especially not one black man,” she said under her breath, but he heard her.

  “That, too.”

  “How long ago was that?” she asked him.

  “A little over six years.”

  “Did you know at the time that the witnesses were Worley’s blood relatives?”

  “No, and neither did my lawyer. I discovered it a couple of months ago while surfing the Internet for anything that would help my case.”

  “Did you print out what you found?”

  “Yeah. Of course I did.”

  “Then you can reopen the case, but you have to do it within a year of the date on that printout. You may claim the Discovery Rule, which says you may appeal on the basis of new and relevant information. If you were bankrupt when the statute of limitations applied, you may appeal as soon as you get funds.”

  “Thanks. That’s good to know. Mind if I ask how you happen to have this information?”

  “I’m a judge.”

  His whistle split the air. “Where do you preside?”

  “Beginning Monday, I will be the presiding judge at the courthouse up the street. I’m looking forward to it. Would you like some more coffee? I made a full pot.”

  “Thanks.” He drank the second cup quickly.

  “I expected that, in a town this size, people would be friendlier,” she said and related to him her experience with the store clerk who resented being asked if she lived in Queenstown.

  “They’re hospitable, Ms. Rutherford, but you walked into a problem.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked him, and at the memory of her neighbor’s comment about the group that marched up to Albemarle Gates, its members beating drums and blowing a bugle and a trumpet, fear seemed to settle in her.

  “This building is sitting on sacred Native American burial grounds, and sixty percent of the people in this town and the surrounding areas think you’ve sided with the builders who committed this sacrilege.”

  “What will I do? I didn’t know anything about it.”

  “Be careful, especially when you’re out at night.”

  She sank into her chair, unaccustomed to the feeling of defeat that pervaded her. With a deed and a mortgage, she couldn’t walk away from the house. “Thanks for the warning. I’ve been here barely two weeks, and I’m in trouble. I don’t like the sound of this. Tell me, what do you do now?” she asked him.

  “I just got a job with Marks and Connerly, my first job as an architect since that debacle, and I’m lucky to have it. I’d better be going. Thanks for the coffee and cake. Both were delicious.”

  She wanted to detain him, but she knew instinctively that it would be the wrong move. Reid Maguire was a loner, and every sentence he uttered seemed to struggle out of him. Grudgingly. “Thanks for the company,” she said as she walked to the door with him, “and for the help.”

  He glanced down at her from beneath his thick, curly lashes and smiled with seeming reluctance. “It was my pleasure.”

  He left without saying another word. Didn’t he know how to say goodbye, or did he have some kind of superstition about it? Holding a conversation with him was as easy as getting a politician to tell a straightforward, uncoated, denuded truth.

  She raised her right shoulder in a limp shrug. Damned if she was going to let him bamboozle her every time he rearranged his face into a provocation for female capitulation. She’d like to meet the woman who walked out on that man. She watched his lilting strut as he crossed the street on his way home. Maybe he wasn’t sex personified, but, to her, he was a tantalizing tidbit. Or, perhaps she’d been working in the boondocks too long. However you sliced it, Reid Maguire looked to her the way upstream salmon looked to a hungry bear.

  A judge! Was fate playing games with him, putting him on his honor? If Kendra Rutherford presided in Queenstown, chances were fair that she would hear his case against Brown and Worley, provided he managed to bring it to trial. She hadn’t been reluctant to give him good advice, and he meant to follow it, but the less he saw of her, the better it would be for both of them. He’d spent six long years on Philip Dickerson’s estate, during which time he hadn’t wanted a woman and hadn’t touched one. Before Myrna walked out of his life, he hadn’t been celibate or even considered it since he was thirteen, but his disappointment in Myrna had so embittered him that he couldn’t have made love with a woman if his life had depended on it. Yet, the minute he saw Kendra sprawled out on the ice, relaxed and yielding to her inability to get up, much like a dying man submitting to the inevitable, his libido had returned with a vengeance.

  It wouldn’t have concerned him too much—after all, a man wanted to know that he could cut the mustard if he wanted to, but she knew he was there, and she knew it the minute she looked at him. That made the nagging desire that afflicted him when he saw her more difficult to ignore. But he had a long way to go before he could consider tying up with a woman; he meant to clear his name and reestablish himself, both of which could take years. By that time, Kendra Rutherford would have long forgotten that Reid Maguire existed.

  He walked into his bedroom, pulled off his jacket and hung it up. He wouldn’t mind having some more of that wonderful coffee she’d made. “Oh, damn. I left my drawing pad in her house. Too bad. It’ll just stay there. I’m not going to give her the impression that I left it as an excuse to go back there. I’ll use some plain bond paper.” He remembered that a former classmate had settled in Caution Point and telephoned him.

  “Marcus, this is Reid Ma
guire.”

  “Great guns! How are you, Reid? It’s been years. Are you in town?”

  He explained where he was, where he’d been and the reason for his call. “I can’t even begin work, because I know nothing about Caution Point. What kind of place is it?”

  “We’re right at the edge of the Albemarle Sound, a sleepy town that looks old. You wouldn’t want to put anything like the Sydney Opera House here. New buildings are usually dark-red brick or cement, and almost none are glass-fronted. Trees everywhere, park benches and wide streets. The tallest building is around eight stories, and we have only a few of those. I’m glad to know you’re back in business, man. When you come here, I’d like you to meet my family.”

  “I’ll let you know. Thanks for your help, Marcus.”

  He hung up, satisfied that he could acquit himself well. The structure shouldn’t be ultramodern, but neither should it be standard. He decided to produce a design that resembled a huge multi-level private house with a glass-and-cement exterior. Trees would surround its front and sides, and every long walkway would have two-way moving walks with comfortable, built-in seating at strategic stops. He warmed up to the idea, and was still hard at work at two o’clock the following morning.

  On Sunday morning, Kendra went to one of the churches nearest to Albemarle Gates, a big, white-brick Baptist church on the corner of Albemarle Heights and Atlantic Avenue. African-Americans made up the bulk of the worshipers, and the smaller fraction consisted of Latinos, Native Americans and a sprinkling of whites. She sat in an aisle seat about midway, and it stunned her that when the collection was taken, the usher moved the basket past her so quickly that she did not have a chance to put in the twenty-dollar bill she held in her hand. When he retrieved the basket, he lifted it above her head, so that she knew his action was deliberate, that he did not want her to contribute. Whoever heard of a Baptist church turning down money?

  Still shocked by the usher’s deliberate snub, at the end of the service she attended the coffee hour in the hope of meeting some of the parishioners. However, to her chagrin, no one spoke to her. She left and trudged up the hill, hunched over against the wind that whipped in from the Albemarle, blowing her breath upward to warm her face. Finally, she ran the last few steps to her house.

  The phone rang shortly after she entered her house. “This is Kendra Rutherford,” she answered and remembered that she’d better stop identifying herself when she answered the phone, for she was sure to encounter local hostility in the course of her work.

  “Hi. This is Claudine. Where were you? I rang you a dozen times.”

  “I went to church.”

  “See any nice guys?”

  “Don’t make jokes. If I had, I doubt they would have spoken to me.” She told her sister about her experience at church. “I won’t be going back there.”

  “Maybe they take seriously that biblical passage that reads, ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’”

  “I wish I thought it. I’ll have to find out what’s behind this. It’s not normal.”

  “Sure isn’t normal for a church to reject money. Why don’t you ask one of your neighbors about it?”

  “Maybe I will.”

  Reid Maguire didn’t care to be friendly, but she wasn’t asking for friendship. Tomorrow morning, she would be a stranger, perhaps an alien, on display among a people who, so far, hadn’t shown her civility, not to speak of graciousness, the only exception being a man who’d come to town two weeks before she did. She needed information, and if he didn’t want to provide it, she was going to give him an opportunity to refuse. She wasn’t timid, and she didn’t know anyone who thought she was.

  Kendra put on her storm coat over jeans and a red cashmere sweater and headed across the street. After checking the list of tenants on the board in the mailroom to find the number of his apartment, she walked down the hall to the garden apartment in the back of the building and rang the bell.

  The door opened almost at once, and Reid peeped out at her. Both of his eyebrows shot up. Then he opened the door wide and stared at her. “Uh…Hi. What’s up?”

  “I know you’re busy, and I know you don’t want to be bothered, Mr. Maguire, but you’re the only person I’ve seen in this town who seems willing to give me the time of day. I’ve been snubbed royally, and before I’m a sitting duck on that bench tomorrow morning, I want to know what’s going on here.”

  He stepped back and opened the door a little wider. “Come on in and have a seat.” He showed her to a comfortable and very masculine living room. “If you’ll excuse me a minute, I’ll be right back.”

  She glanced at his bare feet and the jeans rolled up to expose his ankles and well-shaped calves, and took a seat. Evidence that he might be less than peerless, and therefore accessible, was not something that she needed. The man was neat, she observed as she looked around, and he had good taste. He’d furnished his apartment well, and without spending a lot of money.

  She’d surprised him, and he didn’t try to hide it. Thoughts of what could have run through his mind when he saw her sent the blood rushing to her face. He returned wearing shoes, his jeans had been unrolled and a plaid, long-sleeved shirt had replaced the short-sleeved T-shirt.

  “Sorry I can’t offer you coffee, unless you’d settle for instant.”

  She disliked instant coffee. “It’s not my favorite, but if you make it strong, it isn’t too bad,” she said, wanting to be gracious.

  “I’ll boil some water.” He was back in a few minutes with two mugs of coffee. “If I remember, you drink yours straight. What’s the problem?”

  She told him of her experience in church that morning and reminded him of the supermarket clerk’s rudeness.

  “I see. Look, Ms. Rutherford. Out here, African-Americans stick with the Native Americans, and you’re the only African-American who’s bought a town house in Albemarle Gates. According to what I’ve learned, there’s been contention about that place from the time Brown and Worley posted a sign stating the intent to build. For the last three years, there’ve been riots, fighting, sabotage, strikes and picketing about that place. The Native Americans went to court, but as usual, they lost. Nobody cares about Indian graves. In fact, this country has a sorry record in dealing with Native Americans. Period.

  “It’s too bad you’re stuck in that mess, but I don’t know how you’ll get out of it. Around here, feelings run high about that site, and from what you’ve told me, the locals seem to feel that you’ve taken sides against them.”

  “This is quite a pill.”

  “It is, but I don’t think you should explain to people that you were unaware of the controversy. Seems to me, they ought to know that.”

  “Well, I thank you. Now that I know what I’m up against, I’m really worried. I’d better go before it gets dark.”

  “Don’t be afraid. I’ll walk you across the street.”

  She leaned toward him. “Succeeding in this post is so important to me, and here I am in the midst of a political battle. I asked for a change, and this is what I get.”

  “What were you doing before you came here?”

  “There are a lot of little towns and hamlets whose populations aren’t large enough to warrant a full-time judge. I traveled among the small towns and hamlets in two counties, visiting each at least once monthly to try the cases on the docket. As judges go, that’s about the lowest job. After five years, I demanded a change, and this is what I got.

  “Reid—I hope you don’t mind if I call you Reid. And please call me Kendra. As I was saying, I didn’t have a life. I had no friends of any kind, because I couldn’t cultivate them. I rarely saw the inside of my apartment for two consecutive days. I decided I deserved better. I came here with arms open, ready to embrace the world and everybody in it, and I got my first dose of rejection.”

  He propped his left foot over his right knee. “I can easily imagine that. You seem very young for a judge.”

  “I’ll be forty in a couple of days. I’d ho
ped that my sister would come up to be with me, but she’s preparing for a show, and can’t spare the time.”

  “Can’t you go to be with her?”

  “It’s a thought. We could at least have dinner together.” Each time she caught him looking directly at her, he shifted his gaze, except when he was talking to her.

  “You had five wasted years,” he said. “Oh, I know you can rationalize that as years of learning, but I suspect you didn’t need to learn what you experienced in country courtrooms.”

  “Not all of it, or even most of it, but I did learn that there’s something beautiful about simple people who see life and themselves accurately and who don’t shy away from the truth, not even when it reflects adversely upon them.”

  “I met a few such individuals working on an estate during the last few years.”

  “What did you do at that estate, Reid, if you don’t mind saying?”

  “Philip taught me to be a groom. I worked on his farm and in his orchards, but mostly with his horses. I couldn’t have made it back this far, if I hadn’t had refuge on Philip Dickerson’s estate. The man literally saved my life, and then helped me back on my feet. He wanted a dormitory for the men he’d salvaged, so I designed one and supervised its construction. Those guys live in splendor now. Philip gave us bank books and deposited a high percentage of our salary in it weekly. Since we had no expenses, our savings added up quickly because he paid us standard wages. He had rules, but those rules helped to strengthen every one of the twelve men who worked for him.”

  “Does he make any profit?”

  Reid’s fondness for Philip Dickerson showed in the warmth of his smile. His face radiated pleasure, captivating her. “Absolutely. Every man there would go to the wall for Philip. He treated each of us as if we were his blood brother. He and I became really close. I miss him.”

  Reid caught her staring at him, and she glanced away. “I’ve…uh…ruined your Sunday afternoon, Reid. Thanks for being so nice. I’d better go.”

  He stood when she did. “You haven’t ruined my afternoon and another thing, Kendra. I’m not all that helpful. I mind my business and stay out of trouble.