by Murphy, R.
“Yup. Just like the boat trip after the concert. We’re really getting good value for the money. It’s going to be so much fun.” I finished my coffee and searched the room for our waitress and a refill.
“I’m looking forward to the boat trip, but I’m a little iffy about the opera. Which one is it?”
“I know it’s one of the standards. Carmen, I think. It’s somewhere in our paperwork.”
David took my hand again. “What I’m looking forward to more than anything is spending some nice relaxing time with you when I can focus on you and nothing else.”
I stroked his hand softly. “I’d like that,” I said as I smiled at him. “Although I’m not sure how much free time we’re going to have that weekend. It sounds pretty packed.” The waiter dropped off our bill, which I snatched, breaking the mood. “Nope, remember I’m treating. We’re celebrating my tax refund.”
“Okay, okay, okay. I wouldn’t dream of fighting you on that one.” David held up his hands in mock defeat. “We’d better get going. I’ve got another five a.m. bottling call tomorrow morning.”
“Those rocks aren’t going to throw themselves into a wall either, so I’d better get going, too,” I said, shimmying over the booth’s plastic cushions.
“Remember, just keep telling yourself it’s fresh air and good exercise.”
“Yeah, right.”
After a few minutes of good-nights by his truck, we drove our separate ways, David, to settle into the well-earned sleep of the just, and me, to toss and turn all night thinking about the Algonquin.
How can I explain this? Short version: I had already planned on visiting the Algonquin during my Manhattan weekend. Long version: I hoped to find Bob there, which wouldn’t exactly be easy to explain in the middle of dinner with David. I knew, based on my last weird visit to the hotel, that Bob had some attachment to it. Our working theory was that he had once been some kind of participant in the Algonquin Round Table, a collection of bright young writers, actors, critics, and artists back in the Roaring Twenties. We’d never exactly pinpointed Bob’s original identity because of his spotty memory and the stacks of badly organized paper files in the afterworld. But if there was one place in the world where I could hope to run my ex-ghost to ground, it was the Algonquin. I had already planned to visit the hotel, come hell or high water. (‘High water.’ Huh, interesting. Talk about Freudian slips . . .)
Chapter 5
Catch a Wave
I discovered a new love over the next two cold, wet, strenuous weeks—my heating pad. My days fell into a rhythm: up early, a hurried breakfast, and out into the lake before the waves started churning the sediment. I’d spend an hour or two heaving rocks into my primitive wall. First, while still dry, yesterday’s rocks from their overnight berths on the beach. Next into the lake to throw today’s rocks onto the shore. Sometimes Stan would mosey over and, between the two of us, we’d get up the larger rocks and layer them into my budding wall. Then into the house, stripping off most of my clothing right inside the kitchen door, and upstairs to take a hot shower. After I’d showered and changed, I’d settle on the sofa with a cup of hot coffee and the heating pad snuggled into the small of my back. Ahhhhhhhhh, bliss. Maybe I should have iced down my back first, but that seemed redundant after spending hours in a frigid lake. I added another item to my private, and ever-lengthening, list of indulgences: good chocolates, wine, cookies, coffee, books, and my heating pad.
After a while I’d force myself off the couch and be productive for a few hours writing, cooking, cleaning, whatnot. Then, late in the afternoon, David would often come by after he’d put in a very full day at the winery and I’d go through the whole lakefront/rock drill again, this time with him. No way would I let him work in my lakefront without me standing alongside. A couple more hours in the water, another hot shower, and another cuddle with my heating pad while watching nighttime television. I probably don’t need to say this, but I’d be in bed, dead to the world, by nine every night. I lost five pounds and many episodes on television during those two weeks. And I didn’t feel, to be honest, that I had much to show for all my hard work. A little ridge of rock wall now ran the length of my lakefront property, but it was a very little ridge, and Crooked Lake is a very big lake. As futile as all our labors might ultimately prove to be, though, at least I slept so hard at night that I didn’t wake up and hear the storm waves pounding on my shore. Or spend much time worrying about Bob. For a while, anyway, ignorance and exhaustion were bliss.
Katie phoned one evening while I dozed with my heating pad in front of the TV. She could visualize my lakefront project. She just didn’t understand why I bothered to do it. “But, Roz, don’t you see?” she protested, “if it comes to a battle between you and the lake, the lake will always win. Always!”
“What do you want me to do, Katie?” I responded as I rolled into a sitting position and tried to focus. “Just sit back and watch my house get flooded? I’ve got to try to fight it. At the very least, all this exercise knocks me out, and I’m not pacing through the night worrying about my situation.”
“That’s true, I guess. As long as you don’t catch pneumonia or hurt your back again you’re probably not doing any harm with all this stupid rock moving. The big question is, though, will all this work make any difference?”
“I know, I know, I’m Don Quixote tilting at windmills,” I said resignedly, clicking off the TV and padding into the kitchen to lower the thermostat before heading to bed. “At least I’m doing something and it’s helping me sleep so no harm, no foul.”
“If you say so.” There was a brief pause while Katie shifted the conversation’s gears. “So, when will you get here next week?”
“I’ll get there Tuesday, about three, spend Wednesday with Pop and Milly, and then head into the city Thursday morning. Did you buy your Carnegie Hall tickets yet?”
“Sure. We printed them out on the computer. Bill, Amy, and I will be up there in the balcony, cheering you on. He doesn’t know it yet, but Bill’s taking us out for dinner afterward.”
“You know I’ll be doing the boat trip around Manhattan with the chorus after the concert, right?”
“Oh sure, and we’ll miss having you join us, but that’s no reason Bill can’t take his wife and daughter out in the city for a nice dinner. We don’t always have to rush straight home.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“Should be. So I’ll look for you next Tuesday afternoon. Have a good sleep, Roz, and I’ll talk with you in a few days.”
“Love you, Katie.”
“Love you, too.”
Chapter 6
Mouse Ho
Very odd, when you stop to think of it, how much havoc a little, bitty mouse will wreak with most women. Mice scamper from us in terror if we just yell at them but, instead, an atavistic urge compels us to jump on furniture and shriek at the top of our lungs. Strange how a newly discovered rodent goes to the top of the list of items that horrify most women—axe murderers, ghosts, poverty, and mice. Frankly, I think mice-terror plays a leading role in motivating resolute single women to rethink their options. At least, that was the case with me and David.
One frigid March morning I struggled out of bed, pulled on as many layers of clothes as I could find, and wended my way to the kitchen. I say ‘wended’ because the word reflects the way I basically feel my way to the coffeepot first thing in the morning, bumping into walls and tripping over my own feet. At last I made it to the caffeine mother ship and started brewing a pot.
My half-closed eyes blearily scanned the kitchen while I waited for that first ambrosial cup and I noticed something odd. I’m not the world’s best housekeeper, mind, but I do manage to keep my kitchen counters wiped down and mostly crumb-free. This morning a mess of crumbs over by the toaster caught my attention. Even worse, I noticed a tiny piece of uncooked lasagna noodle buried in the crumbs
and it had been—what?—at least a month since I’d made lasagna. Where had that fleck of pasta come from? I bent over for a closer look and saw a couple of telltale brown dots. Yecchh, a mouse. A mouse who had been burrowing in the crumbs beneath my toaster. Does it get any more disgusting than that?
A cup of bleach and a pair of rubber gloves later, I sat down with my coffee to think. I can cope with a pretty diverse spectrum of crises—ghosts, bills, eroding lakefronts, spiders, writing deadlines—but mice? No way. We all have our breaking points, and mice were mine. Slowly I dialed David’s number.
“Hey, sweetie,” he answered cheerfully. “What’s up with you so early this morning?”
“I think I have a mouse,” I answered.
“You might. With all this cold, they’re looking for places to stay warm. Where? In the kitchen?”
“I think it found some crumbs underneath my toaster. And a piece of lasagna noodle that must have gotten away from me weeks ago.”
“Just go to the hardware store for mouse traps or I could probably find some around here somewhere. Use peanut butter to bait the trap. Mice love peanut butter.”
“But, David,” I repeated ominously, “It’s a mouse.”
The silence on the other end told me David finally absorbed the enormity of the situation.
“Okay, Roz,” he said cautiously, a man feeling his way through the land mines. “Tell me how I can help you with this.”
“If I set a trap and catch a mouse, I’ll have to deal with a mouse corpse. Or even worse, what if it’s not dead and it’s screaming or something. I can’t do it, David, I just can’t. I draw the line at torturing mice.”
“Okay, hon, I see your point,” he said slowly, continuing to feel his way, “but I’m still not sure how I can help.”
“Could you come over and stay the night in case there’s a mouse in the morning?” I blurted out. There. I’d finally said it. We’d been tap-dancing around spending the night together for weeks and there it was, finally out on the table.
“If you’re asking me to spend the night, Roz, you already know the answer. I don’t care why.”
“Yeah, I know.”
David continued without any hesitation. Definitely, a man with a plan. “So how about I bring over a pizza, some wine, and a few mousetraps about seven and we’ll have a nice romantic evening. Do you have peanut butter?”
Did I have peanut butter? What thrifty person doesn’t have peanut butter? “I’ve got it,” I replied. “Do you have those ‘Have a Heart’ traps? I don’t want to kill the mouse, I just want it out of here. And if you’ll bring the wine, I’ll handle dinner. I think I can do a little better than pizza.”
“I’ll see if I can find some of those special traps, and I’ll see you at seven. And, Roz,” he said softly, “I’ve been looking forward to this evening for a long time.”
“Me, too,” I replied, just as softly, only a little surprised to find out it was the truth.
That day I took a break from my usual lakefront-rebuilding schedule. After a quick drive into town for groceries, I put together a chopped salad and a hearty chicken cacciatore. Once I’d prepped dinner, I prewarmed the bathroom with my handy-dandy space heater and showered with the last of the perfume-scented soap from my previous life, shampooed, conditioned, scrubbed, shaved, plucked, and lotioned just about every inch of my body. I dug to the very bottom of my lingerie—read: underwear—drawer and pulled out the lacy set of bra and panties I’d bought in Paris on a business trip (Yikes! Ten years ago!). Amazing. They still fit! All my hill walking, snow shoveling, and adventures with rocks and shale over the past few months had maintained my skin tone fairly well, too.
As I rummaged through my jewelry box for a pair of sparkly earrings, I came across Bob’s ring. I paused for a moment and sat on the bed, holding it and wondering what my ghost would make of all of this. Deep inside I knew he wouldn’t like it at all. But Bob had been gone for months and life on this frozen shore got very lonely. If I ever did find him, I hoped he’d understand. Then again, who knew if I’d ever even see Bob again? I liked David—very much—and smart, good-hearted, good-looking guys don’t come along too often. And, lest we forget, this was a mouse we were talking about here. Feeling resolute, I put the ring away, finished dressing, and ran downstairs to set the table.
Promptly at seven, the doorbell rang and David let himself in. After bounding down the stairs two at a time, he headed straight toward me and I slammed into his arms, right into the chill of winter that lingered on his coat. His lips nestled in my hair and I murmured, “You must be freezing.”
“Not anymore,” he said, holding me close. After a few minutes, when he finally had a chance to shuck off his coat, he said, “I tried two hardware stores for those special traps, Roz, but they didn’t have any. I ordered some, but they’ll take a week so I picked up some regular traps because I didn’t think you’d want to wait.”
“You got that right,” I said as I brought the fragrant chicken to the table.
Such a lovely evening! Neither of us seemed to have much appetite for my nice dinner, though, so it went back into the fridge, virtually untouched. We did finish the wine, which made it kind of funny when it came time to bait the mousetraps. Try spreading sticky peanut butter on three aggressive mousetraps when you’re half-snockered and you’ll see what I mean. We’re lucky we didn’t lose any fingers.
Details? You want details of what happened later? I don’t think so. A lady never tells. Suffice it to say that my long-unworn, lacy Parisian lingerie finally received the appreciation it deserved.
I’d forgotten how wonderful it feels to wake up spooning next to a warm man in a chilly house. Limpet-like, I’d glued myself along David’s toasty back, my arm over his stomach. He turned over, smiled, and took me in his arms. “It was worth the wait,” he murmured, kissing me on the temple.
I snuggled into the lightly furred dip in the center of his chest and murmured, “You’re right.”
“Why don’t I grab a shower first, and then I can scope out the mouse situation downstairs while you’re taking yours.”
“Uggghhhhh, don’t remind me.” I cuddled in closer. “I’m not ready to deal with mice yet.”
“No?” David said, a grin breaking out on his stubbly face. “Did you have something else in mind?”
Turns out I did have something else in mind. And it turns out he was more than happy to oblige me.
A while later we finally did get to shower, and I listened anxiously while David checked out the kitchen downstairs. “Did you see a mouse?” I called down to him.
“A little one,” David yelled back. “He probably got in looking for warmth.”
“I don’t care,” I said, tying my robe as I walked into the kitchen.
David dropped a plastic bag with the trap and mouse into the trash, saw the grimace on my face, and started tying up the whole bag to bring it out to the garbage. “If you’ll show me where you found the mouse, I can wash everything down with bleach before we fix breakfast.” He pointed to an area by the toaster and took the garbage outside while I scrubbed.
Later, over bacon and eggs, David said, “You know, sweetheart, I hate to mention it, but there are probably more mice where that one came from. I’ll look for their hole and plug it with steel wool if I can find it, but I should set a few traps every night for a while just to make sure we get them all.”
I shuddered and bit my toast. “Can’t we just set a whole bunch of traps and catch them all in one night?”
“Wouldn’t work,” David said as he smeared jam on his third slice. The man had built up quite an appetite last night. So had I, for that matter. “Once there’s a mouse in a trap the others won’t come near it.”
“Really? I never heard that before.”
“Oh, sure, everybody knows that.” David winke
d at me.
“Huh. So you think maybe you should stay over pretty much every night for a while.”
“Pretty much.” He grinned. “Who knows how many of the little critters there might be. Why, I could be staying over for days, weeks, even.” His smile broadened.
“Very funny, Scheherazade,” I said.
“Scheherazade?”
“The lady in the Arabian Nights. She had to marry this sultan who used to sleep with his brides on their wedding nights, and then he beheaded them in the morning. He went through a lot of brides before Scheherazade came along. To stay alive, she would start telling him a story every night but she’d leave him with a cliffhanger until the next night. The sultan would never behead her because he always wanted to hear how the story ended. Eventually he fell in love with her. Not exactly my idea of great husband material, but each to her own.”
“You think I’m using the mice to keep staying the night, huh? Dragging out the whole process?” David’s eyes sparkled with mischievousness. “My motto here is: ‘whatever works.’”
I sniggered into my coffee, got up, put my arms around him, and kissed his cheek. “Notice I’m not objecting to any of this.”
“I know you hate mice, sweetheart, but personally I’ll always be grateful to the little critters.” David hugged me and said, “I’d better get going with my day. So I’ll see you later?”
“I’m going to get some writing done and work on the rocks for a while this afternoon.”
“Then I’ll come over about four to help with the rocks and the mice.”