by Pamela Morsi
“And I’ll do better in a hotel job?” Amber was unconvinced. “It’s the lowest pay scale in the city.”
“It’s the same as retail,” Gwen assured her.
“But with no sales commissions,” Amber pointed out.
“Depends upon what you mean by that,” Gwen said, chuckling. “If I can pick up that extra cash, so can you. Between the two of us, we’ll have furniture and a car and clothes. I tell you, Amber, this is our chance.”
Amber didn’t like the sound of that.
“You said it would just be once,” she reminded Gwen. “We were just going to take the money to get the apartment. Now it’s sounding like we should become regulars at this.”
“Just until we get things rolling,” Gwen assured her. “We get the apartment and get settled in, get us a car. Then we’re back to doing what we want to. And who we want to.”
Amber felt the queasy tightening in her stomach once again.
“I don’t know, Gwen.”
“You don’t know about what?”
“It’s hooking, Gwen,” Amber said. “We can call it partying or picking up guys, but it’s hooking.”
“Get real,” Gwen said. “It’s not like we’re going to be drug addicts standing on a street corner in boots and a thong.”
“That’s just a stereotype,” Amber said.
“We’re not going to have a pimp, or do payoffs or even take calls,” Gwen said. “We’ll just meet guys at the hotel and agree to see them later. That’s all it amounts to.”
“People go to jail for that.”
“Oh, puh-leeze,” Gwen replied. “At least in jail we’d be living on our own.”
“That’s not true and it’s not even funny,” Amber said.
“Damn it, Amber,” her friend said, angrily. “Do you think that you can just go on drifting forever?”
“Drifting? Gwen, if we look that up in the dictionary, we’ll see your face, not mine.”
“Hey, I’m the one putting a deposit on an apartment,” Gwen told her. “You’re just my potential roommate. And I’m not about to let you live off me like you live off your mother.”
“I’m not doing that,” she said. “I pay my way in this house.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” Gwen countered facetiously.
“Just because I don’t want to be a prostitute doesn’t mean I’m not willing to work,” Amber said.
“Selling panties for eight bucks an hour,” Gwen answered. “That’s what you call work.”
“I make commissions,” Amber pointed out. “Retail is a tough job.”
“You don’t know from tough,” her friend countered. “You’ve had it padded and easy all your life.”
“What are you talking about?” Amber was incredulous. “I’ve been working since I was sixteen.”
“Is that violins I hear? Gag me. You started working just to get out of the house, Amber.”
“My dad was sick,” she answered.
“Yeah, he was sick and so you couldn’t be the center of the world anymore,” Gwen said.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“I know about you. You were this blond suburban princess,” Gwen continued. “Anything you wanted was just handed to you, like you deserved it. You still think you deserve it.”
“That’s not true,” Amber insisted.
“It’s true that you think you’re better than me,” Gwen said. “You think you’re smarter, classier, more worthy than me.”
“I just happen to have some self-respect,” Amber countered. “I’m not some kind of slut.”
“Oh, you’re not some kind of slut?” Gwen feigned incredulity. “Aren’t you the one who deliberately got herself pregnant just to get Mommy’s attention?”
“That is untrue and unfair,” Amber told her.
“You had to pick a black guy you hadn’t seen before or since to really stick it to them,” she went on.
“Shut up!” Amber said. “I was drunk and I liked the way the guy looked. Jet was completely an accident.”
“Your baby was payback,” Gwen insisted. “You expected to get a car for your sixteenth birthday and you’ve been in permanent whine mode ever since. You had your baby to piss off your mom.”
“And you had yours to try to trap some loser into marriage,” Amber shot back.
“Go to hell!”
“You first.”
“At least I’ll go in style with my own damned apartment.”
Amber hesitated momentarily over that. And then burst out laughing. Gwen joined her.
“We do have our demons,” Amber said, by way of apology.
“I just want mine to rest in a better crib,” Gwen said.
“I need to think about all this, Gwen,” Amber told her. “I just feel like it’s rushing things. I need some time.”
“How much time do you have?” Gwen asked. “I thought you were all going to be out on the street by the end of the month.”
“Yeah, right,” Amber replied. “I keep forgetting. Or I keep trying to forget, I’m not sure which.”
“I’m ready to move,” Gwen said. “If you’re not moving in with me, I need to find somebody else.”
Amber understood perfectly.
“I’ll try to give you an answer this week,” she promised. “I’ll let you know about the apartment and the job and everything.”
“Okay,” Gwen said. “I just want you to remember, this may be your last chance. I’m sure it’s mine. If I don’t get out now, I maybe never will.”
Amber hung up the phone with that thought still lingering in her brain. She might be trapped. It might be too late already.
She walked over to the coffee. She didn’t want to think about Gwen. She didn’t want to think about moving out, leaving Jet. She didn’t want to think of any of those things. But she was going to have to. She was going to have to think about the future.
She had stopped doing that. When she realized that her father had no future, her family had no future, she’d stopped thinking about a future for herself. Gwen was right. She was drifting. It was not an altogether unpleasant way to live.
She stirred her coffee and set the spoon on the counter. As she brought it to her lips, she turned and caught sight of someone in her peripheral vision. Momentarily startled, she turned to see Jet, quiet as a mouse, sitting at the kitchen table.
“I didn’t know you were here,” Amber said.
The little girl was still in her pajamas, but she looked wide awake.
“Can I have a pop-tart?” the child asked.
“I thought Gramma didn’t let you eat those for breakfast,” Amber said.
Jet shrugged. “You do.”
It was irrefutable logic. Amber ignored it.
“Why don’t I fix you some oatmeal,” she said.
Jet didn’t look too sure.
“I love oatmeal,” Amber told her. “But it’s only good when you fix a big pot. Why don’t you go out on the step and see if Wilma wants some, too.”
“Okay,” the little girl said as she got up from her chair.
Amber began rooting through the pans under the cabinet.
“Mama?”
Jet was hesitating by the doorway, standing on one foot.
“What honey?”
“Why am I an accident?”
At first Amber didn’t realize what the child was talking about. And then she recalled her conversation with Gwen. She wanted to slap herself. She never wanted Jet to imagine that she was anything but totally loved from the moment of conception. It was bad enough that she’d carelessly brought a child into the world who she couldn’t afford to care for and who had no father. It was criminal to add to that any feeling of being unwanted.
Amber deserted the utensils and walked over to squat next to her daughter. She put her hands on the child’s narrow shoulders and looked the little girl in the eye.
“Accident is not exactly the right word,” she told her. “Sometimes we say things and we don’t find e
xactly the right word.”
Jet nodded, though she didn’t appear convinced.
“You were not an accident,” Amber assured her. “You were a surprise.”
Jet thought about that only for an instant before breaking into a smile.
“A surprise? Like a birthday surprise?”
Amber grinned at her. “That’s it, exactly,” she said. “It was your birthday and you were our birthday surprise.”
12
Max laughed at something she said. Wilma loved to hear him laugh. He did it exceptionally well. It was a rousing bass that started deep down inside him and flowed through his whole body. It was as pleasant to watch as to hear. Wilma was keen on doing plenty of both.
After a little initial clumsiness that first day, Max had quickly gotten into the game. He was obviously enjoying himself.
The two were seated across from each other in the corner booth they both now considered their own. Wilma was munching on a hot pastrami sandwich and drinking a beer. Max always ordered the special. He was eating a less than healthy portion of chicken fried steak, smothered in gravy.
He had waited to order until she arrived. They had made no prior arrangement to meet. None was even suggested. But after only a few days, he’d begun to expect her.
A really good game player, Wilma knew, would have pulled the rug out from under him and not shown for a day or two, just to make him wonder.
Wilma wasn’t all that keen on playing. She liked being with him. And she was old enough to realize what a gift that was. She didn’t want to waste any opportunity to be with him by evoking any tired scheme. Besides, Max seemed impervious to scheming. Like her, he’d pretty much seen it all.
Unlike her, he didn’t seem to be able to ferret out any information about who she was. Or he wasn’t trying. That worried her a bit. They had shared few details of their personal lives beyond names. At first Wilma encouraged it to be that way. For good reason.
Wilma needed to be deliberately vague about who she was and how she lived. If he found out she was Ellen’s mother, Ellen was certain to find it out as well. And though Max might suspect she had ulterior motives, Ellen would be absolutely certain of it. And being the forthright, honest, principled woman she was, she would spill the beans immediately.
So she had hedged, eschewed and dissembled. Perhaps he’d taken his cue from her, but he never asked anything about her past or revealed much about his own. That was unusual. It was Wilma’s experience that most men talked about themselves, their possessions and their work. In that order.
Max rarely spoke of any of those things. And Wilma found it very refreshing to discuss subjects that were significantly less mundane.
“I think there has to be some kind of divine plan,” Max said as he picked up his iced tea. “Or at least I hope there is.”
His glass had made a wet ring atop the table. He carelessly wiped it away with a paper napkin.
Wilma shrugged. She wasn’t in complete disagreement, but she was a good deal more skeptical.
“There might be or there might not. What difference does it make?” she asked him.
“Oh, I guess it makes me feel safer,” he replied, thoughtfully. “The direction of a life can be turned one hundred and eighty degrees on a dime. I guess it feels better to me to believe that there is some purpose in all of it.”
He was certainly right about that.
“I’ve never given it all that much thought,” Wilma admitted. “But I’d venture to say my daughter is in perfect agreement with you.”
“Really? Tell me about her,” he said.
Wilma had never really talked about Ellen before, but it seemed safe enough to do so in a general way.
“My daughter was never like me,” she said. “I have never been quite able to get my ducks in a row. She’s had her whole life set up just so neat and tidy.”
“Do you envy that?”
Wilma shook her head. “No, I can’t say that I ever did,” she answered honestly. “And in the last few years, things for her have just gone to hell.”
Max tutted sympathetically. “Too bad,” he said. “But, sooner or later, it happens to all of us.”
“All of us?” Wilma wasn’t so sure.
“Don’t tell me that hasn’t happened to you,” he said.
Wilma shrugged. “Yeah, but I always figured that I deserved it.”
Max chuckled lightly. “You probably did!”
Wilma accepted the good humored jibe before taking another swig of her beer.
“I’ve certainly made a wrong turn or two in my time,” she told him.
Max turned more serious.
“The truth is, Wilma,” he said. “I don’t hardly think that any turn in life is particularly a wrong turn.”
Wilma eyed him skeptically. “Everything is beautiful, in its own way.” Her tone was deliberately sarcastic.
He laughed out loud at that. “Wouldn’t go that far,” he admitted. “But I do think that if life’s a road map, far too many people are trying to get on the expressway.”
Wilma smiled at him. She liked his eyes. She liked his voice. She liked his long lean frame in his Western cut suit.
“You would, I suppose, suggest a road less traveled,” she said. “I don’t think that’s original with you.”
“You’re likely right,” he said. “Not much in this world is original with me.”
She chuckled politely at his self-deprecating humor.
“I’m not saying that people should necessarily avoid the main roads,” he explained. “They just have to be aware that the expressway is still under construction, so to speak. You’re going to find detour after detour, and you may just end up running out of gas somewhere.”
Wilma considered the analogy, nodding. “Honestly, that sounds more like me than my daughter,” she said.
“Really?”
She nodded. “But I’ve always likened my life more to a game of musical chairs,” Wilma said. “I’ve been going around in circles, landing somewhere just because the music stopped and there was an open seat.”
Max looked at her thoughtfully.
“It’s a fun game,” she told him.
“I suppose so,” he seemed to agree. “But just when you’re getting comfortable,” he said. “The music starts up again.”
Wilma smiled, then nodded with resignation.
“That’s true,” she said. “It’s very true. I have to give my daughter credit. She’s always wanted security and stability. She went after it whole hog. And she still keeps that goal firmly in mind. Even if it’s further away now than ever.”
“Maybe she just needs to redefine the meanings of those words,” Max said. “I’ve had to do that a time or two.”
Wilma shook her head, disbelieving. “You impress me as a man who knows exactly what he wants and goes after it.”
Her words were true, but they were also the kind of statement designed to make most men puff up with pride and bluster into false modesty. Max was clearly not most men.
“There’s a truth to that these days,” he admitted. “But I swear I was forty years in the wilderness getting to this place.”
“Now that’s hard to believe,” Wilma said.
Max gave a little shrug. He appeared to be paying a lot of attention to the use of his steak knife. Wilma knew it was a diversion.
“So are you going to tell me?” she asked. “Or leave me to imagine that you crawled through mosquito-ridden, snake-infested jungles on your hands and knees just to get to this bar?”
He laughed again, just as she knew he would. “Are you saying this bar isn’t a mosquito-ridden, snake-infested jungle?”
“This is San Antonio,” she reminded him. “Mosquito-ridden, snake-infested are attributes more commonly associated with Houston.”
He rewarded her caustic wit with a chuckle.
“Come on, now. Confess,” she coaxed. “How did you get to be the gravy-sopping cowboy you are today?”
Max looked down into h
is glass and shook the ice in his tea, but didn’t hesitate to answer.
“You’ve mistaken me, ma’am,” he said in a low intimate drawl. “I’m not a cowboy. I’m a certified public accountant.”
Wilma feigned surprise. “I take it that was one of those sudden turn-on-a-dime experiences that you hoped was a divine plan.”
He nodded and then took a swallow as if girding himself to tell the tale.
“I wanted to be a cowboy, all right,” he told her. “It was my ambition from the time I was big enough to straddle a fence rail and pretend to be on horseback.”
Wilma smiled at him.
“I came by that quite honestly,” he said. “My dad was a cowboy and his dad was a cowboy and back as far as anybody could remember the men of the family had always been cowboys.”
“A fine tradition,” she pointed out.
Max raised an eyebrow. “A cowboy’s life is rough, poor and unmercifully short,” he said.
Wilma nodded. “I’ve seen all those old John Wayne movies, too,” she said.
“And it was even more complicated than the Duke ever let on,” Max said. “The days when they kept full-time ranch hands on a place was a thing of the past when I was still a child. These days a big spread might keep a manager, but the working hands are part-timers, college kids or dirt cheap day labor.”
“You couldn’t be content with that,” Wilma said.
Max didn’t argue. “Any fellow with any grit or ambition gets his own ranch and runs his own cattle,” he said. “That’s the only way to ever make it pay.”
“So why didn’t you do that?” she asked.
“I flat-footed couldn’t afford it,” Max said. “Most of the big cattle ranches came into being when land was cheap. I found out mighty quick that if I wanted my own place, I’d better be well-heeled enough to lay down a fortune for it.”
“Weren’t there loans?” Wilma asked. “Ranching is like a small business, isn’t it? You can borrow money to get started.”
“It’s a really risky small business,” Max answered. “The profit margin on ranching is so small you can barely keep up with the interest. And if beef prices go down for a couple of years…well, you’re busted.”