by Love, Aimee
Aubrey fixed herself a drink and walked out onto the dock, sacrificing a view of her n
ew mailbox, but gaining a cool breeze off the lake. She kicked off her shoes and sat at the end of the dock, dangling her feet in the cold, crystal clear water and sipping from her tumbler.
“Hey!”
She looked up and saw Joe sitting in almost the exact same position on his dock across the lake. The only difference was that he was holding a fishing pole and drinking a beer.
“Hey,” he called again, waving.
“If you come over here and fish, you can have a situational beer,” he hollered.
She cupped her hand to her ear and pretended she couldn’t hear him.
He stood up, propping his pole against the bucket beside him so that the line stayed in the water, and formed his hands into a megaphone.
“BEER?”
Aubrey looked down at the nearly empty tumbler in her hand and ignored him. The last think she needed was to have lowered inhibitions and a visit from Joe. He was hard enough to handle when she was sober. Her cell phone rang and she pulled it out of her pocket and took the call, grateful for the distraction.
“Hello?” She asked warily. She glanced across the lake, but Joe had vanished from his dock.
“Hello, sunshine.”
The voice was intimately familiar, but not the one she had been expecting.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to call me that anymore,” she told him to cover her shock.
“Was that in the decree?” He asked innocently.
“Page 4, right below the part about who got the china,” she told him, smiling against her will. As much as she hated to admit it, it was good to hear his voice.
“So, how are you Jason?” She asked.
“I’m doing good. This new project manager is giving me hell at work, but I’m good. You?”
Aubrey looked down at her scratched and bruised arms and thought about the many ways she could answer that question. She was on the verge of settling for a platitude when something grabbed her foot and she let out a squeal and yanked her legs up onto the dock. She looked over into the water, expecting a snapping turtle, but instead saw Joe break the surface a few feet away, grinning hugely.
“Got you!” He crowed, grabbing the ladder and pulling himself up onto the dock. He was wearing nothing but a pair of unbelted khaki cargo shorts, and the wet, heavy fabric and water laden pockets pulled those down so that they barely hung to his hips. Where a lesser man might have allowed a few inches of boxer shorts to poke out, Joe had taken the road less-traveled and apparently eschewed underwear all together. There was nothing to obstruct the view of his washboard stomach except a light sheen of water. Her eyes were drawn to his hip bones, protruding slightly and angling in toward his groin and to the delicate path of pale, curly hair that led from his navel down.
“Hello?” Jason asked. “Are you there?”
She snapped back to herself and averted her gaze as Joe flopped onto the dock beside her and the wet shorts clung to him in an alarming fashion.
“One second,” she said into the phone and then hit the mute button.
“Can you fill this up for me?” She asked Joe, desperate to get rid of him.
“Sure,” he said, standing back up and taking her tumbler. “Whatcha drinkin’?”
“There’s a pitcher in the fridge,” she told him. “Help yourself.”
He trotted off and she un-muted the phone.
“Sorry,” she told Jason. “Someone just came over.”
“Oh,” he sounded deflated.
“What’s up?” She asked him.
“I was kind of hoping to come over myself. Maybe have a drink and talk. I miss you.”
She sighed. His new girlfriend must have dumped him.
Joe returned with two tumblers and she was suddenly very grateful for his presence.
“I’m sorry, Jase. I can’t.”
“Maybe some other time?” He asked doggedly. “How about tomorrow. I can come pick you up and we can go out to dinner and catch up.”
She took a long drink and smiled at Joe. He sipped his tentatively and his eyes flew wide open. He gave her a thumbs up and took a long gulp.
“I’m not doing anything for dinner tomorrow,” she told Jason. “But I don’t think you’re going to want to come pick me up.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’d need a plane ticket to get here in time,” she told him, relishing the long silence that followed.
“Are you on vacation?” He finally asked. “I thought you said someone just came over.”
“I’ve moved,” she told him.
“Moved?” He stuttered. “Moved where? You didn’t say anything to me about moving.”
“We aren’t married anymore,” she reminded him. “I don’t have to consult you.”
“I know,” he told her mournfully. “I didn’t mean it like that. I guess I just thought we’d still get together and have drinks in the evening.”
“If you wanted to chat and have drinks with me in the evenings, then you shouldn’t have convinced me to give up my career so we could be together and then left me three months later for a teenager.” She was surprised at her own vehemence.
Joe laughed silently and gave her another thumbs-up sign.
“She wasn’t a teenager,” Jason said defensively. “She was twenty-two and you’re the one who left me.”
Aubrey didn’t trust herself to say anything.
“I thought you said we could still be friends,” Jason said quietly.
“I lied,” she told him and disconnected the call.
“That your ex?” Joe asked.
She nodded, mildly ashamed of her behavior.
“I wish you hadn’t left it off like that,” Joe told her seriously.
“Why?” She asked, draining her tumbler and leaning back on her elbows.
“Because if him calling is the situation that calls for these,” he held up his tumbler, “then I think you should encourage him to call a bit more often.”
“I was drinking these before he called,” she pointed out.
“What are they?” He asked her, rolling onto his side to face her.
“They’re mint juleps. Two parts bourbon, one part simple syrup, mint and a lot of crushed ice.”
His brow furrowed.
“You mean all the time Vina was sitting on the porch sipping on these she was drinking nearly straight bourbon?” He asked incredulously.
Aubrey nodded.
He rolled onto his back and they lay in companionable silence, crunching the ice from their drinks and watching the bats come out and flit above the water, taking their nightly toll on the insect population.
“What happens if you catch something?” She asked, pointing with her toe over to his fishing rod, still propped on the other dock.
“I practice what I call contemplative fishin’,” Joe informed her sagely.
She looked over at him.
“I don’t bait my hook.”
She shook her head in wonder, trying to fathom the motivation for fishing if you weren’t trying to catch anything.
“If you sit on the dock with a beer,” Joe explained, “people come up and bother you. If you sit with a beer and a fishing pole, they leave you be but the fish bother you. An un-baited line means you get left alone by everybody. Gives you time for contemplation.”
She never would have guessed that any of Joe’s actions involved that much thought.
“It’s karaoke night at The Home,” she told him impulsively. “Would you like to go?”
He smiled and stood up, passing her his tumbler.
“I’ll come back and pick you up in ten minutes,” he told her.
He narrowed his eyes and searched her face for any sign of subterfuge.
“You tryin’ to ditch me again?” He asked her seriously.
She shook her head and grinned to reassure him.
“I’ll get dressed and be over for you in a few minutes, I promise.”
“You better,” he told her and dove into the lake, gliding back to his own dock with steady, powerful strokes. She watched until the twilight swallowed him up, admiring the play of the muscles in his shoulders as he swam, and then went inside to get ready, reminding herself for the hundredth time that she wasn’t interested in him.
Aubrey dressed in a thin cotton sundress that was soft enough not to chafe her raw stomach and did what she could with her make-up to look less like a train wreck survivor. She drove over to Joe’s and tapped the horn.
He popped out of his RV wearing a dry pair of his ubiquitous khaki cargo shorts and a short sleeved Hawaiian shirt open halfway down his chest.
Aubrey pushed a button and her window slid down.
“Do you want to drive?” She asked him.
“I offered,” Joe pointed out.
“I didn’t realize how stiff my arms were,” Aubrey admitted.
“Just give me a minute to clean out my truck,” he said.
She opened her door.
“You can drive mine,” she said and, seeing the havoc the recent rains had caused with his dirt driveway, she scooted over the center console instead of walking around. She plopped her bottom into the passenger seat and pulled her legs over the gear shift, making her skirt ride up even higher. Joe averted his gaze politely.
“You know,” he told her conversationally as he squeezed in and adjusted the seat as far back as it would go. “If you keep doin’ stuff like that I’m gonna forget Vina threatened to kill me dead if I laid a hand on you without an invitation.”
Aubrey blushed. She had wondered why Joe hadn’t made any advances and especially after the call from Jason, it did her ego good to hear it wasn’t her appearance that had put him off.
He leaned out to pull the door shut and there was a loud crack. Years of training kicked in automatically and Aubrey grabbed his shirt collar and yanked him back into the car, hunching low behind the seat herself and holding his head down.
“Some boys can’t wait to let off their fireworks is all,” he mumbled into his own shoulder. “The fourth is this weekend.”
She released him and sat up straight, thoroughly embarrassed.
“Nice to know you got my back, though,” he told her with a smile, shutting the door.
“You can drive a stick, right?” She asked, eager to change the subject.
He nodded.
“Nice to know you can, too,” he grinned rakishly and put the car into reverse, pulling carefully out of the driveway and heading at a sedate pace toward Placid Crest.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The parking lot was crammed and Aubrey was glad they’d taken her car. Joe was delighted at being able to pull easily into a spot that everyone else had abandoned as being too narrow, the suburban in the next spot having parked half over the line. They walked
up to the door and got buzzed in, then went in search of karaoke.
The halls were deserted and most of the rooms they passed were empty. Aubrey figured only a few people preferred reruns of “Everybody Loves Raymond” to watching their friends and neighbors humiliate themselves. They rounded a corner and almost collided with Helen’s wheelchair.
“Hi,” she said listlessly. “Can you help me?”
“Why sure,” Joe told her. “Whatcha need?”
“My ankle hurts,” Helen told Joe, tugging up her polyester slacks at the knee to reveal a bony expanse of leg. A hospital ID tag was affixed just above the joint of her ankle and it had rubbed the skin raw.
“It’s too tight,” Helen whined pitifully. Aubrey stood close behind Joe, remembering Vina’s warning and ready to pull him back if Helen turned vicious.
Joe squatted down and examined the tag. It had a snap with a plastic cover that didn’t seem designed for easy removal. He tugged at it experimentally and Helen let out a little moan and flinched away.
“Cut it,” she begged.
Joe stood up and looked around. “Maybe there are some scissors at the nurse’s station,” he suggested.
“No,” Helen insisted in her dreamy, plaintive voice. “Use this.” She leaned forward and pulled out a cheap butter knife that she had secreted between her back and the wheelchair.
“I don’t think that will get the job done,” Joe told her regretfully.
Aubrey reached into her purse and pulled out a Swiss Army knife. She folded out the scissors and leaned down, snipping off the anklet.
“Thank you,” Helen breathed euphorically, reaching down and smoothing her pants back into place. Joe grabbed the anklet off the floor where it had fallen and looked around for a trash can.
A young black orderly, her pink scrubs wrinkled and stained, appeared out of one of the rooms and hurried over. She snatched the butter knife from Helen’s lap and rounded on Aubrey and Joe.
“Did you give her this?” She demanded.
“No, ma’am,” Joe assured her.
She turned back to Helen.
“Did you take this from the dining room?” She asked Helen.
“Would you like to rent a horse?” Helen asked her.
“Where did this come from?” The woman demanded, not falling for it. She held the knife up for Helen to see. “Everybody knows not to give you nothin’ sharp!”
“I have a horse I’d like to rent you,” Helen told her, smiling listlessly.
“Come on,” the orderly told her, going around to the back of the chair to push Helen back to her room.
As soon as she was out of her line of sight Helen reached a hand up to her face as if to scratch it and surreptitiously put a finger in front of her mouth in the universal ‘shush’ sign. She gave Aubrey and Joe a conspiratorial wink.
The orderly gave them a knowing look and shook her head, turning her eyes to heaven.
“Come on Miss Helen,” she told her. “Let’s go see what’s on TV.”
Aubrey and Joe found the main lounge just in time to hear the closing bars of ‘Mandy’ being tunelessly sung by a sour faced old man who leaned heavily on his walker. He went back to his seat amid a half-hearted smattering of applause from the dozen or so people in the audience. They saw Vina, Germaine, Edna and Betty occupying the room’s only two sofas and headed over.
“Where is everyone?” Aubrey asked. “The parking lot was full and the halls were empty. I thought this place would be packed.”
“You musta come in the south hall door,” Vina observed.
“I came in the same way we did last time,” Aubrey said.
“That’s the south hall,” Vina confirmed. “They’re doing check-outs in the north hall for the holiday weekend and there’s a line of cripples and families with screaming kids a mile long.”
Aubrey looked at Germaine.
“Your family isn’t checking you out?”
Germaine shook her head. “No, thank god. A weekend at the beach with those bratty great-grand kids of mine would kill me for sure. Lilli is the only one of my descendants that’s amounted to anything.”
“Who’s next?” A young man at the front of the room hollered as he fiddled with the karaoke machine. He had long, greasy, brown hair pulled back with a baseball cap and wore a black Metallica T-shirt.
When no one answered, he smiled in satisfaction and started packing up.
“What?” Vina looked at her watch. “We can’t be done yet!”
“I’ll take a go at it,” Joe told her and he walked to the folding table in the front and started flipping through the books of song lists.
“We can’t check you out?” Aubrey asked Germaine.
“Nobody but Gerald,” Germaine assured her sadly. Gerald was Lilli’s father and although selling his little dry cleaning business in town and running off to Asheville had turned out to be an excellent move for him - he now owned a whole chain of stores there - he was still bitter that his daughter’s infamy had forced him to flee. The fact that Germaine took Lilli’s side in the matter had only made things worse.
“Do you have his cell phone number?” Aubrey asked.
Germaine nodded and dug into the enormous handbag that rested at her feet.
“It won’t do no good,” Vina told her. “He’s a complete sonofabitch.”
Germaine nodded in agreement, but she fished out her wallet and pulled out his business card, handing it to Aubrey.
Aubrey punched in the number and Germaine and Vina scooted over so she could sit on the sofa between them.
Joe let out a triumphant, “Hot damn,” and pointed out the song he wanted to the kid who was managing the machine.
Aubrey cupped her hand around her phone to try to screen out the noise as someone picked up on the other end.
“Hello, am I speaking with Mr. Gerald Kleckner?” She asked in her most officious and soothing tone. “This is Lieutenant Commander Guinn. I’m the morale officer at VAMC Mountain Home, the Veteran’s Hospital.”
“No sir, nothing like that. We’re organizing a Fourth of July picnic for Veteran’s and their families. My records show that your mother has attended a number of our functions over the years, but when we tried to reach her this time we found that her number had been disconnected. Your number is listed as an alternate contact.”