by Pat Henshaw
Oddly, he looked miserable.
“Hey, no problem, man. Why should I blame you for where I am and where I’ve been? I don’t know if there’s a god or whatever, but that woman picked you, and you made the most of it.” The happiness in my voice burst out into the room and wrapped around us. “You should have told me right away.”
“I couldn’t. I felt too guilty when I saw you were still here.” He hung his head like he’d done something wrong.
“So tell me all about it. Where’ve you been? What’ve you been doing?” I knew the story would be better than any of the ones I made up as I lounged in the seats, looking up at the big screen. This story was true.
It took me a few minutes to reassure him that I didn’t hate him because he’d caught a break and I hadn’t. He was so afraid that I’d hold his life against him. But I finally convinced him that knowing he wasn’t dead and I didn’t have to mourn him anymore made it all worthwhile.
“Miss Faraday, Adelaide, wasn’t a rich woman, but she was well-off. Her fiancé during college left her for another woman, so she immersed herself in her designs. She had a knack for making simple clothes that made heavy-set women look beautiful. By the time I graduated from college with a business degree, she had built up a huge clientele, selling clothing to national chains.” He took a breath, and I saw this as my chance to interrupt.
“No. Wait. I don’t care about her. What about you? Where did you meet her? Where did you live? Did you go right into high school? What happened?”
He gave a laugh.
“Oh, okay. Me?”
I nodded and glanced up at him. He still looked worried.
“Father Navarro, you remember him? He was head of the shelter at the time. He asked me to go to the Heights where a woman needed someone to clear out a garage. He drove me out there and told me I’d be sleeping in the woman’s guest bedroom above the garage until the project was done. So I agreed, but I was scared shitless. I mean, she could have been the mass murderer of teenage boys.”
I remembered Navarro, an old priest who thought everyone was decent and honest and got burned more times than not. I’d liked the old guy. He was the one who got me my first odd jobs at the Orpheum.
“Anyway, we got to know each other, Addy and I. She’d just inherited the house from her mother’s third husband, a crotchety old man with a lot of hobbies. She hadn’t known him very well, so we bonded going through his collections. He was into stamps and coins, porcelains and pocket knives, exotic feathers and rocks. Pieces of the collections spilled all over the house, so the first job was to put the pieces together and then figure out whether she wanted to sell them or donate them. Then she started talking about me going to school and my future and, well, not taking me back to the shelter when the job was finished.”
I broke the silence while he took a breath. His story wasn’t going to be a short, easy one. We needed a little break.
“You want something to drink?”
He shook his head at first, then shrugged.
“You want to know what I want more than anything in the world?” He looked so serious that I almost told him to lighten up. We’d found each other again. Or rather he’d found me. Everything was okay now.
“What do you want more than anything in the entire world?” I could hear the lilt in my voice, and evidently so could he since he smiled and then laughed.
“Stand up.”
Okay, so more than anything, in the entire world, he wanted me to stand up. Easy enough.
I stood, and he lunged at me, hugging me, holding me like we would never be parted again.
“God, I missed this.” His voice slurred like he was holding back a torrent.
I could feel my eyes blurring. Yeah, I knew what he meant. I missed this too.
How many hours when we were teens had we sat at the shelter or here in the Orpheum and held each other? Everything would be okay when he wrapped his skinny arms around me. I was bigger, taller, stronger, but his arms around me made me believe everything was going to be all right, no matter how crappy and ugly things looked at the time.
“Oh, thank God. I’m home.” He sighed at the same time I did, and I repeated what he’d said.
AFTER WE got a drink, kissed some, and finally sat back down, he gave me the whole story, how the woman had adopted him, saw him through school, and promised to take him to the shelter to see if he could find me and introduce us. When they got there, Navarro had died. The guy who replaced him, a real prick who never learned anybody’s name because he was too busy on his mission to save us, wouldn’t have known me from the next street-savvy teen. He let Randy look around, then tried to get a donation from Addy. They’d never returned because she convinced Randy that I’d gone back to the streets and it was an impossible task to find me.
But he remembered our refuge and, after she died last year, had taken his inheritance and bought the Orpheum against the counsel of just about everyone. He knew if I was alive, I’d be back if only to wander the lobby and touch the walls.
When he recognized me and I didn’t know him, he started a plan of action to win me and start our life together. Win me? Hell, I was easy. There was no winning about it. I was his. I’d always been his.
“So what’s your big plan?” I asked either later that night or early the next morning.
“You want to see?”
We’d spent hours getting to know each other again, taken a nap or two in between lovemaking, and now he was chipper like an eager squirrel. We both groaned when we got up from my single bed, then laughed about feeling so old before our thirtieth birthdays. We dressed and walked out into the lobby, where workmen were peering into the windows.
Most people probably would have called it the Walk of Shame, but I saw it as the Walk of Glory. We paraded in front of them arm in arm. Randy opened the front door a crack and told them to all go home. They had the day off with pay.
As they laughed and hooted and hollered, ambling away, Randy led me to the attic stairs.
“What? Where are we going? No hard hats?” I asked.
He laughed. “That was just to keep you from coming up and finding my Christmas present.”
With a grand gesture, he opened the door to our new home. He’d converted the dirty, dusty space into an apartment. The huge windows above the marquee overlooked the busy downtown street. The vast space inside was divided into a couple of bedrooms, a kitchen, and a great room with its sloped ceiling and the curved bank of windows.
“We’ve got a house in the Heights that we can live in most of the year, and a cottage at the shore. But I thought maybe we could live here during the Christmas season and watch all the classics downstairs. After all, it’s the most wonderful time of the year.”
We kissed as he explained how he wanted a row of Christmas trees in front of the windows so that everyone coming to the theater could see their lights.
“Don’t you just love Christmas?” he asked.
Did I lie? No way. I told him it was my favorite time of the year.
PAT HENSHAW, author of the Foothills Pride Stories, was born and raised in Nebraska and promptly left the cold and snow after college, living at various times in Texas, Colorado, Northern Virginia, and northern California. Pat has found joy in visiting Mexico, Canada, Europe, Nicaragua, Thailand, and Egypt, and relishes trips to Stowe, Vermont, and Eugene, Oregon, to see family.
Now retired, Pat spent her life surrounded by words: teaching English composition at the junior college level; writing book reviews for newspapers, magazines, and websites; helping students find information as a librarian; and promoting PBS television programs.
Two of her fondest memories include touching time when she put her hands on the pyramids and experiencing pure whimsy when she interviewed Caroll Spinney (Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch). Her triumphs are raising two incredible daughters who daily amaze her with their power and compassion. Her supportive husband keeps her grounded in reality when she threatens to drift away while writing fiction
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Talk to Pat at:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pat.henshaw.10
Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/author/show/6998437.Patois
Book website: whatsinanamenovella.blogspot.com
Website: patbooked.blogspot.com
E-mail: [email protected]
By Pat Henshaw
Blame It on the Fruitcake
The Orpheum Miracle
FOOTHILLS PRIDE STORIES
What’s in a Name?
Redesigning Max
Behr Facts
When Adam Fell
Relative Best
Foothills Pride, Vol. 1 (Author Anthology, Print Only)
Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS
www.dreamspinnerpress.com
Published by
DREAMSPINNER PRESS
5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Orpheum Miracle
© 2016 Pat Henshaw.
Cover Art
© 2016 Paul Richmond.
http://www.paulrichmondstudio.com
Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or www.dreamspinnerpress.com.
Digital ISBN: 978-1-63533-166-0
Published December 2016
v. 1.0
Printed in the United States of America
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