Sex Happens

by Carol Soloway

  Once they arrived at the airport, she pointed to the hangar. “You can let me off, and I’ll walk to the entrance.”

  “No. I’ll park and walk you in.”

  “Luke, I’m fine.”

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, an edge to his voice. “Are you ashamed of me?”

  She stared at him. “Of course not.”

  After Luke parked his truck, he took her backpack and then they walked toward the private terminal adjacent to John Wayne Airport.

  Alex approached a tall mustached man at the counter. “Are you Ed?”

  Ed looked up and smiled. “Yes. And you are …?”

  “Dr. Alex Rose, the chiropractor.”

  “Can I ask you a personal question?” Ed asked.

  She saw Luke clench his jaw. “One hundred and ten pounds,” she said. “And my backpack weighs eight.”

  “Thanks, Doc.” Ed continued with the calculations in order to distribute the weight evenly on each of the three airplanes.

  Alex reached for her backpack from Luke, took it, and thanked him for the ride.

  “Call when you get back. I’ll be here in twenty minutes,” Luke said but didn’t leave. He pressed her to him and looked over her shoulder, surveying the group.

  Engaged in animated conversation, three women entered the airport and approached the counter. They greeted Ed, and he put his arm around the one with the ponytail, announcing, “We’re ready to roll.”

  “Be careful.” Luke kissed her and left the terminal.

  As she turned to proceed to the plane, she felt a jolt, then stumbled and fell. A man bent down, gripped her arm, and helped her up.

  “Are you okay?” he asked in a gentle, deep voice.

  “I’m fine,” she said and looked toward the window. With all the people milling around in front of the window, she couldn’t see whether Luke was still watching.

  “I don’t usually walk around with a backpack full of medical supplies and then bump into a pretty woman.” He smiled, a kind, gentle smile.

  She smiled back at him.

  “The least I can do is carry your backpack.” He reached for her backpack.

  She turned and saw Luke was still watching through the window. “I’ve got it. I don’t want to give you another weapon,” she teased and then walked to the tarmac and boarded the six-seat Cessna.

  The man who’d accidentally knocked her over took the seat next to her. “My backpack’s stowed away, so you’re not in any danger.” He winked and extended his hand. “I’m David.”

  “Alex,” she said and looked up into his warm green eyes, the color of old-fashioned Coca-Cola bottles.

  They shook hands.

  As the engine roared, the plane vibrated. Alex clicked her seat belt and then clutched the arms of her seat.

  “Nervous?” David asked, noticing her white-knuckled grip on the armrest.

  She eased her hold on the armrests. “I’m always a little tense during the first few minutes in a small plane. You?”

  “I’m used to every plane there is.” He described some of the encounters he’d faced in his native Israel. Then he told her he was a gynecologist and had been with the Flying Sams for several years.

  As they talked for the first hour of the flight, Alex ignored the horrific turbulence. She was amazed at how she and David spoke so effortlessly. When she’d first seen him in the terminal—or rather, had felt him grasp her arm to help her up—she’d thought he was ruggedly good looking. Now, sitting next to him, she had to admit she was attracted to him and thought he’d be the perfect escort to accompany her to Judi’s daughter’s upcoming wedding instead of Luke.

  ◆◆◆

  Finally, their plane landed.

  After Ed parked on the strip of dirt a quarter mile from the clinic, Alex looked at the barren fields interrupted by tiny white stucco houses. The rustic doors revealed a pallet of peeling yellows and greens peeking through more recent applications of paint.

  Five volunteers exited from each of the three planes and started to walk down the dirt road toward the small village. Like the characters in the Canterbury Tales, each volunteer carried items particular to his profession: the dentist carried extraction tools and cold-water sterilization equipment, Alex had her adjusting board and a roll of headrest paper, and David’s backpack was overflowing with speculums and Pap smear kits.

  To keep the weight of the plane down, the volunteers had been instructed to bring as few toiletries and clothes as possible. The women had also been asked to donate old underwear for the village women. While packing, Alex had thought about poverty so bleak that one would appreciate the gift of someone else’s used bras and panties.

  She surveyed the school-turned-clinic. Unlike Jon’s nursery school, there was no playground with swings or monkey bars with rubber mats covering the concrete. The five classrooms lacked everything considered standard for children in Alex’s world. She decided she had to help the village children. They deserved the same chance her children had. After her custody case was over, she would find sponsors to help create a scholastic program for this school. And given Seth’s love for education and his kindness, he’d probably help.

  Twenty or thirty patients were already lined up outside the schoolhouse. Mismatched clothing seemed standard attire, as were huaraches, the sandals with soles made from old tires.

  Since there wasn’t any waiting room, the patients stood, fanning themselves with the manila folders that housed their medical records.

  Alex bent down, opened her backpack, and pulled out a plastic bag brimming with underwear. She handed the bag to Carmen, the school’s headmistress and clinic director.

  “Gracias,” Carmen said and led Alex to a tiny classroom.

  Hanging from a wire, a solitary light bulb covered in dust gave off a sickly yellow glow. Folding chairs lined one of the walls. On the opposite wall, a near-empty bookshelf stood beside a section of chipped paint. A pencil sharpener jutted from the wall at waist height, and broken crayons occupied an open wooden box on the shelf. The six-inch globe on the lone desk announced the existence of a world beyond this village.

  Alex placed a sheet of headrest paper onto the adjusting bench. The green vinyl covering on the bench was cracked in so many spots that it looked like a mosaic. Her first patient, Hector, a cherubic-faced toddler with straight black hair still wet from bathing, entered the room with his mother.

  “Hola,” Alex said in greeting.

  “Hola,” the mother replied, pointing to her son’s feet.

  Alex examined the pigeon-toed child and then adjusted his hips. In Spanish, she instructed the mother to take her son to an orthopedist.

  “Ya fuimos.” The mother explained how she’d already taken Hector to an orthopedist who’d prescribed a special brace, which she couldn’t afford.

  Alex told the mother to take a pair of shoes, put them on a wooden plank at a 45-degree angle, and then nail the shoes to the plank of wood. Hector would have to wear them every night.

  “Gracias, gracias,” the mother said.

  Patting Hector’s head, Alex thought about how happy he’d be with just one of the toys her boys left lying on the floor, tired of them after only a short while. She was definitely going to find a way to help the children of this village. If everyone who could afford it dedicated himself to just one person in a village, the world would be so much better, she thought and placed the next piece of headrest paper on the adjusting table.

  As patients streamed into Alex’s room for the next two hours, she worked tirelessly.

  “Doctora,” Carmen called out from the kitchen directly across the hallway from Alex’s room. “Por favor, venga por su almuerzo.”

  Alex squeezed into the tiny kitchen where four women were crowded near the oven preparing lunch for the volunteers. With a little girl clutching her legs, a thick-waisted wo
man in a print polyester dress with a zigzag pattern was stirring a pot of beans. Another woman with shiny black hair flowing down her back was rinsing plates. A third woman was drying the plates and handing them to Carmen, who doled out tamales.

  “For you.” Carmen handed Alex a plate filled with tamales smelling of sweet corn.

  “Gracias.” Alex took the plate, turned, and saw David.

  “This is the real reason we come here,” he teased, pointing to his plate overflowing with tamales and beans. He winked at her.

  She smiled. He seemed nice, but Alex was certain that a handsome, professional man like David would never stay with her. Instead, he’d be lured away by someone like Linda, the woman who’d taken Gabe from her. Then she caught herself. Gabe had destroyed her life, but she couldn’t let the sting of his rejection continue even in his absence.

  She wondered whether David had seen Luke kiss her at the airport. Alex knew that, to the casual observer, she and Luke were an unlikely pair. But for her, their attraction was as tangible as paper clips to a magnet. With Luke, she was sensual and uninhibited. Luke equaled sex, pure and simple. It was the smell of his spicy shaving lotion, his minty hair cream, even his musky scent after tennis that had attracted her. But most of all, she loved the sweet taste of scotch and soda on his lips.

  Nights after tennis, when they’d go back to her house, he’d take a shower. She’d delight in the way the water would glisten on his chocolate chest when he walked from the shower to the bedroom, ready to have her.

  “Doctora,” Carmen called to her, interrupting her thoughts. “Many patients.”

  “Gracias,” Alex said and went back to her classroom-turned-examination room.

  Everything was going smoothly until Sofia, a little girl with the saddest face Alex had ever seen, walked into the room. After Sofia’s dad explained how his daughter had fallen and injured her arm, Alex gently touched the girl’s hot, swollen arm.

  “No tocame!” Sofia shrank back against her father, obviously in pain.

  “It could be fractured.” Alex shook her head. “You need to take her to a hospital for x-rays.”

  The father held out his hands, palms up and lowered his head. “No tengo dinero.”

  Alex explained how important it was for his daughter to see an orthopedist. Alex knew if Sofia went unattended, her arm wouldn’t heal properly. The growth plate could be affected, causing her arm to become deformed. She could even develop osteomyelitis, a bone infection.

  The little girl tugged at her dad’s hand. He bent down to her, and she whispered in his ear.

  Avoiding eye contact with Alex, the father said, “Sofia say it no hurt.”

  But Alex saw something in Sofia’s eyes—a plea for help. Alex understood the little girl had probably learned she should never ask her father for more than he could give her. Alex recalled how she had trusted her own father and how she’d never betray him even after discovering his life had been a lie.

  “Let me see what I can do,” Alex said and went to the pharmacy, where she grabbed a spool of tape and several tongue depressors. She returned to the room and splinted Sofia’s arm. After Alex finished, Sofia gazed up at her with a sweet, sad face that made her trip worthwhile. But Alex also knew that setting the child’s arm in this manner wasn’t a guarantee that the bone would mesh properly. The little girl really needed to see an orthopedist and have x-rays taken. For now, this was the best Alex could offer, and the on-site pediatrician would have to give Sofia antibiotics—that was, if they had any left in the pharmacy.

  Treating children whose parents were unable to pay for the medical treatment they needed made Alex ache. She yearned for her own children. Gabe’s portrayal of her as a danger to the boys was wrong. She was capable of taking care of them.

  Pushing herself to forget, Alex worked zealously until just before sunset, when Carmen announced the clinic was closed. As the grateful villagers started their journey home, the volunteers returned to their planes for the ten-minute flight to El Sueño Dulce—“The Sweet Dream”—the only hotel in Guerrero, Mexico.

  CHAPTER 27

  Ensconced in her seat on the flight to the hotel, Alex glanced at David and then looked down at his left hand. There was neither a ring nor the telltale band of white where a ring no longer rested.

  Ed landed the plane on a tiny patch of concrete and maneuvered it down the rock-strewn runway. He pulled into a spot between the two other Flying Samaritan planes on the strip of concrete that served as the Guerrero Airport.

  The volunteers deplaned and made the five-minute trek across the sandy, tumbleweed-covered field to the hotel. Looking like the Bates Motel in Psycho, the rundown, one-story structure was right on the Sea of Cortez.

  As the pilots, doctors, nurses, and interpreters entered the dark lobby of El Sueño Dulce, two stray dogs wandered between them, sniffing at them. To the right, a warped wooden table which was collapsing in the middle, served as the registration desk. Two weathered wicker chairs completed the lobby.

  Dropping their luggage on the concrete floor, the tired volunteers leaned against the soiled wall across from the makeshift reception desk. Except for the whir of the high ceiling fan, everyone was quiet while they waited for Zeke, the internist and volunteer coordinator, to speak to the clerk.

  Zeke shook his shaved head several times before returning to the group. “They gave away our rooms. We’ll have to sleep on the beach,” he told the volunteers.

  “Nights get pretty cold,” David said.

  “I’m sure they’ll give us some blankets,” Zeke promised.

  Alex had stayed at El Sueño Dulce before and was familiar with the now-much-coveted Spartan rooms with mismatched, scratchy linen.

  Zeke tried to quiet the group. “We can complain all we want. They said they’re sorry, but they didn’t receive my reservation request this month. There’s a fishing excursion in town, and every room is taken. So we’ll just have to improvise on the beach.”

  “I don’t camp,” one of the dental hygienists said.

  Thomas, a pilot who kept his trailer parked near the hotel, said, “You can all wash up in my trailer, but my wife and kids are here this weekend, so we don’t have any sleeping room.”

  “Not working for me,” the other dental hygienist said, agreeing with her colleague.

  Zeke thanked Thomas and asked about supplies. Thomas assured the group that he had enough blankets, chaise lounges, and drinks for everyone. The doctors, interpreters, and two other pilots smiled in appreciation.

  The pharmacist insisted, “Zeke, you have to tell them we book the rooms every month. Go and demand they give us our rooms.”

  Zeke went back to the clerk. After negotiating, he returned to the group and told them the clerk had offered to give them a free dinner, but that was all the clerk could do.

  Resigned to camping on the beach, everyone followed Thomas to his trailer amid good-hearted jeering about the reservation mix-up. Walking along the pristine aquamarine Sea of Cortez, Alex was at peace, calmed by the sand sifting through her toes and the water lapping at her ankles.

  When they finally arrived at Thomas’s trailer, he unlocked the storage unit and took out folding chairs. Everyone grabbed chairs and placed them in a circle around Zeke.

  Thomas introduced his wife and children, and then his wife went back inside to make drinks for everyone.

  Margaritas in hand, the volunteers listened to Zeke read the clinic statistics: “The pilots put up ten shelves and fixed two lights, the dentist performed fourteen extractions, the gynecologist examined eighteen women, the pediatrician treated twenty-one children, and the chiropractor adjusted thirty-eight.”

  Everyone applauded after each tally, and Alex felt appreciated, a real team member.

  After a review of the clinic’s statistics, the group went back to the hotel and took their seats at the tables assembled on the concre
te platform. Alex faced the ocean, and David selected the seat directly opposite her.

  They feasted on oysters and shrimp encrusted in a golden covering—an amazing meal for the broken-down hotel with the makeshift reception desk that was caving in. The village fishermen delivered seafood daily, and the cook prepared it to perfection. The group used to stay at another rundown hotel that was also a fifteen-minute plane ride from the clinic, but now El Sueño Dulce was the only remaining hotel in the area.

  While they were enjoying the seafood, the hotel clerk came over to the table and announced that the hotel now had one vacancy. Everyone agreed to give it to Frank, one of the pilots and the most seasoned volunteer.

  “Does anyone else want the room?” Frank asked.

  Everyone protested.

  “The least I can do is share it with someone,” Frank offered.

  No one answered.

  Alex longed for a room, a shower, and a bed. “Do you snore?” she asked, feeling bold.

  “Don’t think so.” Frank moved his glasses up the bridge of his nose, his wrinkled face a reminder of the handsome man he’d once been.

  “I’m in,” she heard herself say.

  “You go, girl,” the dental hygienist said. “If I had the nerve, I’d be in his shower right now.”

  After saying good night to her fellow volunteers, Alex followed Frank to their room. When he opened the door, the smell of cleaning fluids assaulted her. She surveyed the two single beds with mismatched floral pillowcases and sheets topped with checked blankets.

  She dropped her backpack on the nearest bed and asked, “Mind if I shower?”

  “Help yourself.”

  She entered the bathroom and pushed the shower curtain aside. When she turned on the hot-water faucet, cold water pelted out. She showered quickly and then dressed in her long gray jersey nightgown, sorry she’d obeyed instructions to bring bare essentials and hadn’t packed a robe.

  “That was fast,” Frank said.