Talk of the Town

by Mary Kay McComas

  Best of all, she wasn't thinking of tripping or bumping into anyone or falling down. Gary was there. He'd catch her. And her sense of security went beyond physical accidents. Emotional bumps and ego bruises. Gary was there. He'd bandage them, let her lean on him until she was strong again. She knew these things about him instinctively, and, yet, in the back of her mind lurked the question, how long? How Long? HOW LONG?

  Gary, on the other hand, wasn't asking any questions. He was a planner by nature. "Last in Love" would be their song; the melody was slow enough for them to dance to on their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Harley would be there with his kids; maybe a couple more carrot tops with their children—he made a mental note to look into additional children. He touched her hair and envisioned it streaked with gray, silver, copper, and gold. He'd be a rich man. He sighed contentedly.

  Lu couldn't believe they were leaving all the fun so early, the bar not closing for thirty more minutes. Then she was totally bowled over when Gary bent low to kiss her on the cheek and thank her for coming.

  For a split second Rose thought she saw tears welling in Lu's eyes. But then she laughed, warned them to set the parking brake if they weren't going straight home, blinked, and the tears were gone.

  They walked the road back, a thin misty fog lending a romantic quality to the shadows and lights. Bill's was locked up tight, and the parking lot was empty except for Gary's truck. She hardly noticed that he opened the door for her again, but was acutely aware of the chilliness when he let go of her hand.

  An atomic bomb couldn't have shattered the tension inside the cab. What could they say to each other during the twenty-minute ride home?

  "I had a really good time."

  "Me, too."

  "Lu's a character, isn't she?"

  "She sure is."

  What about kissing? Should he? Should she let him? Would it put her back on the defensive? What would it feel like? Anything close to what it felt like simply thinking about it? Would he expect more, or realize that she was merely curious? Good Lord, what about diet-soda breath?

  Redgrove was asleep when they drove through, so missing Harley's bedroom light going out as they turned the corner would have been hard to manage.

  Gary laughed softly in the dark beside her.

  "He doesn't trust me yet either," he said idly. The "yet" and "either" stung a bit.

  "It's not that," she said, feeling a need to explain, wishing she had a blind faith in something, in anything inside her somewhere. "We're just not used to—"

  "It should be that way," he interrupted. "It's okay. You don't have to trust everyone who comes along; you're smarter not to, especially if they're asking for as much as I want."

  He deliberately parked the truck on the scarred concrete where the gas pumps once stood, under the burnt-out floodlight, blocking any view of them from the street and the rooms above.

  "And what are you asking for?" she asked, her voice seeming too loud when he cut the soft purr of the engine.

  He stared out the windshield for a second, then shifted his weight on the seat to face her.

  "I want it all, Rose." "All" left her baffled. He'd have to get specific. "I want to be your lover, your pal, and your partner. Harley’s male influence and Earl's . . . Earl's .-. ."

  "Speech therapist?"

  He laughed. "Yeah. Earl's speech therapist. I want to be a part of your life. I want you in mine. I want a lot from you, Rose, and I'm more than willing to give you a lot in return. Including time."

  "Time for what?"

  "To get used to having me around."

  Ah, why'd he have to ruin it? she wondered, semi-sick to her stomach, stiff in her chest. She couldn't remember becoming as fond of anyone as quickly as she had Gary. He was sharp arid witty. Bright and dedicated. She enjoyed his company, felt good around him. Wasn't that enough? She didn't mind holding hands or dancing with him. And it was kind of fun to wonder what it would be like to kiss him; if his lips were as soft as they looked; if they'd send chills through her body the way his breath against her neck did; what his rough hands would do to her sensitive breasts, to the warm skin on her inner thighs. . . . But she could control herself. She was controlling herself. Why couldn't he?

  The cab was suddenly a little too warm, and she didn't have any answers for him anyway. She decided to get out.

  He came around the front of the truck and met her at the front door.

  "I have to go home tomorrow." This didn't surprise her. She'd been waiting for him to tell her he had to leave. "On business. I'll be back on Wednesday." He paused as if he expected her to say something. "Can I see you?"

  She shrugged. "I'll probably be here."

  She made an intense study of the new marks on her white sneakers, pretending that she couldn't feel him watching her.

  "Rose." She looked up. The softness in his voice brought her gaze to his. "I'll be back."

  An unreasoning fear rose up within her. What if he didn't come back? What if he was like everyone else? What if there were a car accident? What if he picked up a homicidal hitchhiker? What if he had a weak heart? Lord, what if he were crushed under a few tons of trash? Or simply disappeared? What then? What if she were doomed to wonder forever?

  She flung her arms around his neck and locked his lips to hers.

  Gary's shock was brief. He hardly wasted a second before looping an arm about her waist and threading his fingers into her soft and gloriously red hair. Where a pianist would shake his fingers loose of tension, he shuddered a sigh, nibbled her lower lip, then purged his restraint with a clean sweep of her honey sweet mouth.

  Acting on her impulses was going to be the death of her. She could remember her mother telling her so as she stepped away slowly, feeling weak and debilitated— and as if she might like to die.

  "It's . . . nice to have that over with, isn't it?" Gary said, laughing softly, teasing her gently, as if he could see the havoc in her soul.

  She shook her head, disgraced.

  "Ah, Rose," he said, folding his arms around her rigid form, unable to stop himself. "I'm glad you did it. One of us had to, and I would've looked like a masher."

  "Now I look like one," she mumbled into his sweater.

  "No. You can't," he said, stroking her hair. "Only men can be mashers; women are something else. I read that somewhere."

  Awk! He was an impossible man, she decided again, stepping away. He had an answer for everything, and when he didn't he'd simply make something up.

  "I should go in," she said. Already she was beginning to wish she'd paid closer attention to the kiss. All she could remember was how shockingly wonderful it had been, none of the specific details of it.

  She opened the door and walked inside. It was always open, because the lock had rusted years after they lost the key to it.

  "I'll see you on Wednesday." He paused. "Would you like to eat out again?"

  "On a Wednesday?"

  "It happens."

  Of course it did. She worked Wednesdays till ten.

  "I work that night."

  "Okay. I'll come late and walk you home."

  She was going to remind him that she worked across the street, but he knew that. He was teasing her. She smiled.

  "Thank you for the nice time."

  "You're welcome. And thank you."

  She closed the door quietly, needing something ordinary to concentrate on. She climbed into the shadows of the stairwell, waiting for the sounds of his leaving, then turned and plopped down on the third step from the top, and buried her face in her hands.

  "He's a garbageman. He's a garbageman," she began to chant, wishing he'd come back, hoping the yen in the pit of her stomach wouldn't last long. "He's a garbageman. ..."

  There was a soft rapping-on-glass sound at the door. He was back. He was holding the little potted rosemary plant; she could see it from her hiding place. The soft rapping came again. She stood on trembling legs and went down the steps to the door.

  "You forgot this," he sai
d, holding the pot out to her. The tips of their fingers touched as she took it, and lightning shot up her arms and down her spine.

  "Thank you," she said, making the mistake of looking at him, of meeting his gaze. Oh dear, did she look as eager to kiss again as he did? Did her attraction show as badly? Was her desire as raw? Her hopes as obvious?

  Yep.

  She watched as his face came closer and closer, mesmerized, shocked by the tenderness and affection in his expression, the longing and the need—for her. For her.

  His lips brushed hers, returned to press lightly, sweetly. Something warm and devastating swept through her, made her tremble. She felt his hands at her shoulders as her weight sagged against the door frame for support. His lips became urgent, his mouth hot and demanding, taking what she had forgotten how to give. He blew gently on nearly cold embers of passion, nursing them carefully, skillfully back to life.

  Heat rose up within her. In her heart she could hear the walls of the dam cracking and bursting apart. She felt the power and strength of her pent-up emotions as they came crashing through the barriers.

  Gary pulled away, looking as numb and confused and overwhelmed as she felt. Her chest was heaving; she couldn't get enough air. Her hands were shaking.

  Her knees wobbled, and she plastered herself to the doorjamb to keep from falling when he reached out to caress her cheek with the soft skin on the back of his fingers. She swallowed hard at the hunger in his eyes, and felt pain in her chest at the adoration.

  "Good night, Rosemary," he murmured.

  She nodded slightly, unable to speak, ravaged by so many emotions, she couldn't feel anything. She stood there like a cigar store indian . . . maybe more like a plant stand, she supposed, taking in the scent of rosemary, holding the pot close as she watched him drive away. She was frowning. She had the distinct feeling she was forgetting something.

  SIX

  Waiting for Wednesday wasn't wise. She knew this. But not thinking about it was like trying to put out the fires of hell with an empty bucket.

  Making coffee at the diner, she wondered how he would arrive on Wednesday night. In some outrageous and ridiculous fashion, no doubt. In sparkling sequins, maybe, barely outstriding a cheering crowd of adoring fans to bend her back over his arm and kiss his seal of ownership upon her lips? Sigh. Or on a dazzling white horse, with trumpets blasting as he rides into town, sweeps her off her feet, and gallops away into the sunset? Sigh. Sigh. Or would he descend slowly from the sky in a brightly colored balloon, lift her into the basket, kiss her, and turn up the gas for their getaway? Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.

  "Allergies?"

  "What?" She looked over her shoulder at Lu, who was counting out change in the cash register.

  "You sound as if you're having trouble breathing. Are your allergies acting up?"

  "I don't have allergies," she said, stepping down from the stool she'd used to reach the top of the coffeemaker.

  "It's probably all the smoke and fumes from that torch you use. I'll bet it's harder on your lungs than cigarettes. You should have it checked out."

  "I'm not sick." I'm an idiot, she added mentally. I'm interested in a man. A garbageman, no less. Another big deep sigh. She went off to clean the restrooms before they opened for breakfast. Her whole day was pretty much in the toilet anyway.

  ~*~

  She tightened the vises holding the curved portion of a bed frame at a right angle to the wrought-iron candlestick she'd found at the All Bright dump the week before. Not that it looked like a candlestick anymore. She'd cut off the top and bent the four rods out a little, as if it were blooming.

  What on earth could she say when she saw him again? She had less than twenty-four hours to come up with some calm, polite but firm—very firm—way of telling Gary she couldn't see him anymore.

  "I like you," she said aloud to practice an uncompromising tone of voice. "I like you a lot. More than I thought I would . . . no, more than I thought I could." She paused. "Better," she muttered inside her mask, wanting every word to be perfect. Truthful and absolute, but not cutting. "But this isn't going to work out. I'm set in my ways. I'm used to doing things my way. There just isn't any room in my life for you."

  "There's no room in anyone's life for 'em," Harley said from the doorway, startling her. It was a favorite game of his since childhood. "They're too big. I've been telling you that. Who's going to put something like that in their living room?" he asked, long-legging it across the concrete floor, assuming that she'd been talking to her sculptures. "They're okay. I mean, they're not a piece of sheet metal with four holes in it, not as lame as most of 'em in that book of yours. They're sort of interesting. Different. But they aren't beautiful, Mom. Not like the others." He wrapped a supportive arm around her shoulders and added, "You can talk to 'em all you want, but I don't think it's gonna help. They're not like flowers, you know."

  ~*~

  "Those flowers out front are beautiful," she told Lu one morning. "When did you plant them?"

  "They're perennial. They come up every year."

  "They do?" She looked out the window at them. "Were they there last year?"

  "Every year since I bought this place. Where have you been?"

  Rose couldn't tell her.

  ~*~

  She spent too much time Wednesday morning wondering what to wear. Generally she wore her red apron over jeans and some sort of shirt, with her worn-out sneakers. But for no reason she wanted to think about, that particular Wednesday she felt like wearing something a little different, a little nicer. . . . For no good reason.

  Her room looked like Harley's by the time she decided to go with her newest blue jeans, a green plaid cotton oxford shirt, and her good white sneakers with the black smudges across the toes. She'd have to be careful not to get gravy or spaghetti sauce on them. You couldn't blast Lu's spaghetti sauce stains out with dynamite.

  "New shoes?" Danny O'Brian asked when she entered the diner. It was three in the afternoon, and he was still out to lunch.

  "No. They've got smudges. See?"

  "Sure look new," he insisted.

  "Well, they're newer than my old ones, but they're not brand new."

  Lord above. You'd have thought she was wearing diamonds and pearls. Any minor deviation from the norm, and tongues started wagging. Next they'd start thinking she was dressed up for something special.

  "That's a nice plaid with that red hair of yours," Emma Motley, Redgrove's postmistress, commented kindly.

  "It's not new either. What is this sudden interest in my clothes? I wear shirts and sneakers every day, and you don't say anything about it. What's so special about today?" she asked, a bit testy. "I've had this shirt for six years. I just don't wear it often. . . ."

  Her voice trailed off when she noticed that her attitude was drawing more attention than her clothes.

  "You know," Lu said, poising a pencil at her lips thoughtfully. "I don't think I've seen you wear that particular shade of lipstick before. What's it called?"

  She fought a sudden impulse to chew it all off.

  "She don't usually wear lipstick, does she?" Emma asked, seeming confused. "Nor rouge neither, come to think of it."

  "Who's this we're talking about now," Lucy Flan-nary asked, entering the diner. She walked up to her usual stool at the lunch counter and set her purse on the seat beside her, saying, "Martin is driving me crazy today. We ordered in some new summer cottons, and he's over there mixing and matching the colors with all the blues here and the reds there, and the oranges and the yellows, and ‘is this more red or more orange?’ he asks me. ‘Is this one more green or blue?’ I rue the day that man retired. I swear he's going to drive me to drink. I'll have a cherry cola, Lu. Now, who doesn't wear rouge?"

  "Rosie," Danny and Emma said together. Emma nodded, "Nor lipstick neither."

  Lucy considered Rose for a moment, then said, "Well, sure she does. What's the matter with you? Not that she needs to with that fine redheaded complexion she's got, but she always lo
oks really pretty on Sundays when she brings Harley to church and when she goes down to see that artsy fella in the city and for the church socials and . . . well, for most special events."

  They all looked at Rose. She could almost hear the gears in their heads grinding and screaming, metal against metal, as they tried to recall exactly what it was that was so special about that particular Wednesday. It was deafening.

  "It's lipstick, for crying out loud!" she exclaimed, her hands palm up in front of her. "A little powdered blush. That's all." She pointed an accusing finger at Lu.

  "She wears it all the time. And eye shadow too."

  But you're not Lu was written all over their faces.

  "It's nothing. A whim. Oh, you people are impossible. Think whatever you like," she said confidently, knowing that Gary wouldn't come until closing time and that her lipstick would be long gone by then. She took a clean red apron from the linen cupboard and snapped it smartly before tying it around her waist. Her arms akimbo, she addressed Lu in a businesslike fashion, "What's the dinner special?"

  Strange. Fried chicken with potatoes and thick, sticky gravy, kernel corn, and biscuits seemed to appeal to almost everyone in town that night. Lucy left to close up the fabric shop and returned with Martin to have dinner at the diner. Danny O'Brian called his wife from the hardware store and said he'd treat her to a dinner out if she'd meet him at Lulu's about six-thirty. Some of the fishermen came straight from their boats at sundown, families in tow. Several lumberjacks, old buddies of Earl, moseyed in with their wives and children.

  By eight Lu had called Harley and Earl on the phone and sent them after buckets of the Colonel's chicken in Arcata. And could they stop at Safeway for potato flakes and instant gravy? Maybe a few more cans of corn and those tubes of biscuits too? And be sure to come to the back door. . . .

  Rose was too busy to be suspicious until she noticed that they were lingering over their desserts and she was pouring gallons of coffee by the cup. Why weren't they leaving? She looked at the clock. Nine-thirty. They closed at ten-thirty. Gary said he'd come late. If they didn't start leaving pretty soon, they'd all be there when he came and ...