She wasn’t sure. “Only that when we are in the grip of these strong emotions, it’s important to use our heads, Shorty. Not only our hearts.”
“With you there.”
“I would only suggest that you be sure. Sure that this woman is so very bad. You are drawn to her for a reason—I believe that. And the reason isn’t simply to torture yourself. So you must find out who she really is.”
“Okay. How do I do that?”
“Ask her?”
“Ask her?”
“Could you do that?”
“Well, not in so many words. Not like, ‘Okay, level with me—did you steal those horses?’ ”
“She stole horses?”
“She mighta.”
“Isn’t that—a hanging offense?”
Shorty chuckled, such a warming sound, and Molly slid lower in bed, stretching her legs. “Prob’ly not anymore,” he allowed. “But if she did steal ’em, I might string her up myself.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. No. I think you are . . . quite a gentle person.”
“You do, huh.”
“I do.”
“What if I told you . . . Nah, forget it.”
“What?”
“What if I told you I did something real bad. Once.”
“I would say, welcome to the world. The human race.”
“I’m not talking about a mistake,” he said, and the sudden harsh anger in his voice made her sit up. “I’m talking about somebody dying. You hear that? Because of me. My fault.”
She kept her own voice calm and steady. “In what way was it your fault?”
“ Aw, hell.”
“In what way, Shorty?”
“It was—bulls. A rodeo. Everybody liquored up. My—best buddy, somebody I cared a lot about, but I was drunk, and—hell, I’m not getting into this.”
“That’s all right.” She could easily imagine foolishness and drunkenness, a reckless dare, a calamity. An accident. “You were young, yes?”
“No. Twenty-eight.”
“Oh, Shorty.”
“Bullshit. Young, that’s—sixteen. I was a goddamn grown-up.”
“All right. All right.”
“Look, I’m sorry, I don’t know what got me started on that.”
“It’s on your mind.”
“Not really.”
“Always. Just under the surface.”
A pause. Then, “Yeah, okay. Whatever you say.” He tried to snarl the words, but there was so much pain, Molly’s heart felt pierced.
“I say it’s time. I don’t know how long ago this happened to you, but it’s time. It’s mean of you to hold on to it this long.”
“It’s what?”
“It’s unkind. If this awful thing had happened the other way around, you’d have forgiven your friend by now. Long ago, in fact.”
Silence.
“Wouldn’t you? Admit it.”
“That’s sorta beside the point.”
“It’s exactly the point. Why are you being so cruel? This is not like you. You are going against your own nature. You are not a hard, unforgiving person. You’re not. Shorty? Talk to me.”
“Where’re you gettin’ all this?”
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly.
“You don’t know me from—Adam.” From shit, he’d been going to say, but he wasn’t angry anymore. If nothing else, she’d talked him down from that. She wanted to do more than that, though. But how? Did she even know what she was talking about? No, but she knew a good man when she met one. Psychic-schmychic, as Charlie would say. She knew a good man when she met him.
“It’s such a waste of your spirit, this self-hate. This bitterness inside. It stunts you. How can you forgive anyone else, of anything, until you forgive yourself?”
No answer, but he was listening.
“It’s a kind of pride, isn’t it? Not to accept that you can make mistakes? That you can be just like everyone else?”
“I can make mistakes. Oh, believe me. I got no trouble accepting that.”
“You just can’t forgive yourself for them.”
“Forgive and forget, no. I can’t do it.”
“I didn’t say anything about forgetting. That’s easy. How much harder to forgive and remember.”
The quiet between them was easier this time. She listened to his slow exhalations of breath, moved by them somehow, and wished she knew better words.
“Dear one,” she said very quietly. “Listen. This is important. Have mercy on yourself.”
Shorty made some sound.
“Please don’t take this the wrong way. I know it’s impudent, but important also. Listen.” She had to whisper past the lump in her throat. “I forgive you.”
Utter silence. Not even breathing. She’d gone too far.
Then he said, “So you’re a priest now?” with a shaky laugh, and the tension broke.
She laughed with him. “A priest, a Gypsy. Whatever you please.” She risked being earnest one last time. “Mostly I hope I am your friend.”
“That you are,” he answered in the same light tone. “So tell me, ma’am.”
“Romy.”
“Romy. How’s your love life?”
A pretty obvious change of subject. Timely, too; she’d trespassed far enough into his personal territory. “Ah, Shorty,” she said, laying her Romy voice on thick. It made it easier to talk about herself, something she rarely did with callers. With Shorty, though, it felt natural. And like the least she could do. “Ah, Shorty, I am very unlucky in love.”
“Ever been married?” he asked.
“Yes, but I was quite young.” Twenty-one—not that young. “You?”
“Nope.”
“No one special?”
“Not really. Nobody to ride the river with.”
“Ride the river with. I like that cowboy expression.”
They sighed in unison, then laughed a little. They seemed so in sync now, it prompted her to say, “I have a man in my head these days, but he is no good for me. In fact, he makes me crazy.”
“Whaddaya like about him?”
“Nothing! He is nothing except good-looking. He is not even nice to me.”
“Dry gulch him. You don’t need a sidewinder like that.”
“I won’t be seeing him again. But it’s not so easy to forget someone who has crept inside you, is it? Your bad woman, your horse thief, she’s not so easy to—dry gulch, am I right?”
“You’re always right.”
“That is true, Shorty. That is so very true.”
“Except when—”
“No need to qualify.”
She could hear him smiling. A long, comfortable silence passed. “Late for you,” he said at the end of it. “Reckon I oughta let you go.”
“Yes.” But she was sorry.
“I’ll call you up again.”
“I hope so.”
She waited for him to say good-bye. Instead he said, “Thanks. I, uh . . .” Long pause. “I’ll think about what you said.”
A cowboy, a manly man, leader of others—she could only imagine what it cost him to say that. “Just be kind to yourself,” she said softly. “Dear one.”
TEN
“I was just thinking about you.”
“That’s what you always say.” Molly got a Coke from the fridge and carried it out to the front porch, Merlin in her wake. “You can’t be thinking about me all the time, Aunt Kit.”
“I’m always thinking about you right before you call, because I always know it’s you.”
“Plus I always call on Sunday.”
“What are you insinuating?”
“Nothing!” They both laughed. “So how are you? How’s your arthritis?”
“You know, I don’t appreciate that.”
“What?”
“The first thing you think of when you think of me is ‘old lady with arthritis.’ It’s only my big toe.”
“That’s not the first thing I think.”
“Sh
aquille O’Neal has arthritis in his big toe.”
“You know what you don’t do enough of, Aunt Kit?”
“What?”
“Complain.” She thought of all the little inconveniences her aunt only mentioned in passing, if at all. Like the virtual abandonment of the second floor of her tiny house, for instance, because the steps were too much for that arthritic big toe. All the little indignities, the gradual scaling back of a once-full life.
“Complaining’s for losers,” Aunt Kit said. “How was Cardiac Day?”
“Heart Attack Day. It was fine.”
“What went wrong?”
Molly sighed. “Don’t do that. Don’t read my mind.”
“I’m not, I just thought you sounded . . . discontent.”
Discontent. The very word. “No, I’m fine, and Heart Attack Day was fine, everything’s fine.”
“Well, if that’s your story, you’re entitled to stick to it. When you’re ready, feel free to tell me what’s wrong.”
“Thanks, but what makes you think—Oh, never mind.”
“Molly, I know something’s wrong. Has been for weeks.”
She tried not to think about her house. Don’t think about the house. Don’t think about the house. “Oh, it’s this Oliver guy,” she blurted out, purely to throw Aunt Kit off. “Charlie’s grandson.”
“The stuffed shirt?”
“He thinks I’m . . . It’s complicated, but he doesn’t have a good opinion of me, and I know it shouldn’t matter, since he’s a jerk, but it does.”
“You’re in love with him. Oh, honey.”
“What? No! Are you crazy? No, no, no, no, no, no, no.”
“But if he doesn’t have a good opinion of you, he is a jerk, so get over him.”
“It’s not altogether his fault. It’s partly Charlie’s fault—but I am over him, I was never—on him. In love with Oliver? Ha-ha-ha! Don’t make me laugh.”
“That was the phoniest laugh I ever heard.”
“Because you’re not funny.”
“Have it your way. What are you doing today?”
“Don’t you know?”
“You’re studying for tomorrow’s final. You took a break to call your oldest living relative, but now you really have to get back to work.”
“How does she do it?”
“So I will graciously let you go. Next time you call, though, we’ll read the cards, see where this thing with Oliver’s going.”
“I’m graciously letting you go right now,” Molly said, and hung up.
Monday afternoon, after her Attachment and Affect exam, she checked her voice mail on both phone lines. Three people had called Madame Romanescu, including Donette, the lady whose husband was a dog; she left a long, rambling message and asked for a card-reading tonight. Poor woman—but she was money in the bank. On Molly’s regular line, two people had left messages : Mrs. Nathanson, saying thanks for house-sitting, and Oliver Worth, saying:
“Hello, this is Oliver Worth,” in his stuffed-shirt voice. “I got this number from my grandfather—I hope it’s Krystal Smith-Jones there. Uh . . . ah . . .” Throat-clearing. “I was wondering if we might meet for coffee or something. I’d like to speak with you about Charlie. I’m sure you can understand that it would set my mind at ease to know we both have his best interests at heart.”
Coughing. Paper rattling. A calendar? No, he’d have that on a BlackBerry.
“I happen to have a free hour tomorrow afternoon. Do you know the coffee shop in Dupont Circle called Bardot’s? If that’s all right, let’s say four o’clock. Call and let me know if you can make it, please.” He rattled off three numbers, home, office, and cell, and hung up.
Molly called the cell and got his voice mail. “Oliver, this is Krystal. Number one, I’m busy tomorrow, and number two, even if I weren’t, getting downtown at that hour would be incredibly inconvenient for me. I live in Kensington, you recall. So—the answer’s no, I just can’t take the time to set your mind at ease. Sorry.”
“I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”
“Hm? Who’s this?”
“It’s Molly,” as if he didn’t know. “Charlie, why did you give Oliver my number?”
“Hm?”
“I said, why did you—what if he’d—what if my voice mail message gave my name, not just my number? What if I’d said, ‘Hi, you’ve reached Molly McDougal’? The jig would be up!”
“Hah. Never thought of that.”
“Why did you give him my number anyway?”
“Why not? What happened?”
“Nothing, he . . . nothing. He wants to talk to me. Wants to have coffee.”
“Well, that’ll be nice.”
“No, it won’t—I told him no.”
“How come?”
“Charlie! Oliver doesn’t like me. He thinks I’m . . . he thinks I’m . . .”
“What? What?”
“He thinks—I’m your paramour!”
Startled silence. Then a laughter explosion that went on so long, it turned into a coughing fit. “Whooo,” Charlie ended on a high note.
“Are you finished?”
“If only it was true,” he wheezed. “If only it was true. The mystery would be solved.”
“What mystery?”
“It’d be you who’s been thinking about me.”
Molly blew air through her lips. Pbbbb. Hopeless. “What am I going to do with you?”
“So what’s wrong with having a cuppa coffee with my grandson?”
“We don’t like each other.”
“You don’t like Oliver? Why not?”
“He’s mean.”
“He is not. You think so? No. He got beat up, still recovering. Taking a helluva long time, if you ask me.”
“Recovering from what?”
Charlie took several deep, sighing breaths. “I’m not allowed to talk about it.”
Frustrated curiosity had her practically dancing in place. It took every fiber of will to say, “Never mind, then. Of course I wouldn’t want you to betray a confidence.”
“Happened five or six years ago, maybe more. He was going out with this gal in California. Not sure how serious it was then, but o’ course it’s a huge deal now.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“They went to a party, and at the end, she was soberer than he was, so she got to be the designated driver.”
“Oh no. . . .”
“Yeah, some other drunk plowed into the driver’s side, killed this girl instantly. Oliver thinks it shoulda been him. That’s it, that’s all—he was sitting in the wrong seat—but he can’t let it go.”
“Oh, Charlie, how awful.” She’d known something old and dark was holding him back, she’d sensed it in that first phone call. Guilt—what a useless emotion. She thought of Shorty’s guilt over the death of his buddy at the rodeo. What made it so hard for some people to let go of guilt, even when it was misplaced and undeserved? So far, nothing she’d read in her psychology books explained that.
“Don’t tell him I told you.”
“Of course I won’t.”
“ And trust me, Molly—he’s a nice boy.”
“So you say.”
“Have coffee with him! You’ll see.”
“Oliver? Krystal again. I find that a tiny window has opened in my busy schedule. I can meet you tomorrow, but not downtown and not at four o’clock. At five thirty, I’ll be walking a large brown dog in Boyds Park, which is a little park in Aspen Hill. A long way for you, but that’s where I’ll be. So . . . maybe I’ll see you. Or not.”
ELEVEN
After only five minutes of catching, occasionally even returning, the tennis ball Molly threw for him, Pancho was a wet, muddy mess. It wasn’t raining now, but it had for most of the day, and the clouds still looked low enough to touch. Boyds Park, except for a few slouchy, cigarette-smoking teenagers, was deserted.
So it wasn’t hard to guess whose purring, low-slung sports car glided into the gravel parking lo
t at 5:35 and parked under the dripping trees right next to Molly’s car. How did he know the Pontiac was hers? She pretended not to see him, kept heaving the soggy tennis ball for Pancho, but after a few seconds of intense self-consciousness, she gave up the act and began to walk in Oliver’s direction.
She’d resisted the impulse to dress up for him, a choice she now regretted. Bitterly. He looked like . . . not a model; too real-looking. Like a model’s friend, maybe. The one you liked better because he wasn’t perfect, but still pretty damn good. Muscular, not muscle-bound; fit, not trained. He wore lightcolored slacks, an impossibly soft-looking white sweater, and loafers, undoubtedly Italian. And she had on rolled-up jeans, a T-shirt that said, “Ask me about my vow of silence,” and flip-flops. Life wasn’t fair.
Pancho, the dog she was currently walking for a client, had designs on that white sweater, she realized almost too late. “Pancho! No!” She made a run at him, grabbing his collar a second before he could plant his feet for one of his ecstatic vertical greetings. “Down. Hi. Down!”
“Hi.” Oliver looked more amused than annoyed, and that was her undoing. His face when he smiled—God, it disoriented her. Why was it, again, that she didn’t like him? He was looking at her with a strange, intense expression, almost as if he didn’t recognize her, or he’d been expecting someone else. Pancho found the tennis ball and headed for him, snout at perfect crotch height, but Oliver foiled him with a deft twist of the hips and a lightning-fast grab. Empty-mouthed, empty-headed, Pancho panted up at him, waiting. Oliver drew back and heaved the ball about six miles farther than Molly ever had and, after a stunned second, Pancho vanished in a blur.
“Hi,” she started again. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
“Why not?”
“Oh . . .”
“Too many cocktail parties? Too many congressmen to bribe?”
She was about to take offense when she realized he was teasing. “Don’t confuse me with Charlie,” she said, grinning. “I don’t believe everything he tells me.”
“Good thing.”
Now that she’d introduced the subject, she expected him to launch into the reason he’d wanted to meet—to make sure they both had Charlie’s “best interests at heart.” (Code for “Get lost, gold digger.”) She was ready to bristle again, and was surprised when he only said, “Shall we go for a stroll?”
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