“So you’re not a complete monster,” she said.
“Mostly, but not complete.”
It felt safe now to relax a little. They were out of her zone, where people might look at them and wonder. She settled back into the seat, which had excellent lumbar support and a seat warmer.
Nick argued that there were certain houses in Willard Park that could be torn down to the betterment of the town. “They’re ugly, right?” She had to agree. The sixties and seventies had been unfortunate years architecturally.
He slowed down as they approached Winterset, a community not unlike Willard Park, where tear-downs on quarter-acre lots sold for a million plus. People were replacing the older houses with bigger versions. “All of the benefits, none of the decay, none of the outmoded wiring, no tiny closets and miniature bathrooms,” Nick said.
They walked around, Nick pointing out big porches and gabled roofs, Allison nodding. He had a point.
“They’re nice houses,” he said.
“They’re like Sears houses on steroids.”
“So you agree with me.”
She laughed. “I guess.”
“I knew you were my kind of gal,” he said, which she found embarrassingly flattering. His kind of gal. What was his kind of gal? How could Kaye and she both be his kind of gal? How could a comment both feel sexist and sexy at once?
He put his hand on her lower back and he steered her down another street. Well, it was mostly on her lower back. His fingers extended a little below that, touching the top of her ass. Did he realize he was touching her ass? Her coat was long, so he might just think he was touching her back. Which, in itself, was somewhat intimate. She thought he would take his hand off once they’d gone around the corner, but he didn’t. Nor did she make any moves to remove it for him. It felt kind of nice to be touched by a man, even if it was accidental.
“Let’s get coffee,” he said after they’d had their fill of the neighborhood, and they drove to the drive-through Starbucks near Winterset. Pumpkin lattes and pumpkin bread in hand, they parked in back, the only car there on this cold day. He put the car in park and left the engine running. They drank in silence for a while, the windows starting to fog up, the warmth in the car meeting the cold outside.
“Pumpkin lattes are better than crack,” he said.
“Have you ever tried crack?”
“No. You?”
She laughed and took the pumpkin bread out of the bag. “In my perfect world, pumpkin would be in season all year long.”
“I’d like to live in that world,” he said. He was looking at her.
She broke the slice in half, and gave him his.
“I don’t know why they put pepitas on it. Walnuts and pumpkin are like peanut butter and jelly. The perfect combo,” she said.
He smiled, then leaned toward her, over the console where their pumpkin lattes sat, and kissed her.
She pulled back, looking at him with surprise. Nick Cox had just kissed her. And she wanted to kiss him back. There was no part of her that didn’t. Okay, there was a very small part, but it was microscopic, nearly undetectable. She couldn’t remember the last time she had partaken of a good, juicy kiss. It was high time. And was it so wrong? If her husband was on a sexual sabbatical? She looked out the windows, and, once she’d confirmed that the glass was sufficiently steamed up for no one to see in, she kissed him. After all, a kiss was just a kiss.
Kissing a man told you a lot about his lovemaking style, she’d found in her not-all-that-extensive dating life in college. Nick kissed her like he wanted to eat her face, and she kissed back the same way, resisting an urge to bite. His hands were in her hair, on her neck, pressing against her throat just a little bit, just enough to heighten the sensations in other parts of her body, then a hand slipped under her coat and onto her right breast and gave her nipple a squeeze.
“Ouch,” she yelped through her kissing lips. And, shocked into realizing what exactly it was they were doing, she pulled away.
Nick, too, seemed a little surprised. He leaned back into the driver’s seat and ran a hand over his hair. He looked at her, and she looked back, both of their expressions a little scandalized. “Well!” he said.
“Well!”
“Some coffee break!”
“No wonder Starbucks is so popular!”
They both started laughing.
“I better get you home.”
He put the car in gear. Her entire body was humming. It felt nearly audible, it was so strong. She felt like a human tuning fork. Did he?
“Look,” she said as they drove back down Wisconsin Avenue. “Why don’t you just drop me off at the dry cleaners.” No need for the neighbors to see them returning together.
“The dry cleaners?”
“Yeah. Just. Yes.”
So he pulled up to the dry cleaners and she opened the door, looking back at him.
He leaned over and gave her a light goodbye kiss. The kind a husband would give a wife. The kind a lover would give a beloved. But they weren’t either of these things. She relived that moment now, a less complex thing to relive than their harried make-out session. A warm, soft kiss.
It was bad, what they did, no doubt. Poor Ted would be so hurt if he knew. Even if they were living more like siblings than lovers right now, there were still those pesky vows. But it wasn’t a terrible thing, was it? Well, a little terrible, but also a little wonderful. When was the last time her body had lit up that way? It was like being on a diet, she thought. A diet in which someone handed her a bowl of chocolate mousse, and she’d had a small taste. A taste was not the end of the world.
“Allison. Hello, Earth to Allison,” Rainier was waving at her, trying to get her attention.
“What? Sorry,” Allison said, her face heating up as if Rainier might have heard her thoughts.
“We’re going to try the shooting scene one last time,” Rainier said, but Grant’s phone rang. He went outside to take it.
Rainier’s clipboard bounced off the doorway, missing Grant by a few inches. “Go home. All of you. Better yet, go to the hearing. It might be the only chance you get to perform this year.”
Allison put her character shoes and script in her bag.
“I’m going to cancel this show. I swear,” Rainier said.
“It’s not a bad idea,” Allison said.
“You too?”
“We suck, Rainier.” She suddenly understood why Jillian favored the word. It was more satisfying than “stinks.” More to the point.
Rainier laughed. “Ready to testify?”
“Ted’s representing us.”
“Ted? You’re the actor in the family.”
“He’ll do fine. He’s been practicing.”
“Practicing. Where does that get you?” he said, casting a cold eye at the actors. Allison gave him a hug.
Her mood lifted the minute she walked amid the lit-up houses outside. Most of the townspeople seemed to be coming out, the adults walking toward the school en masse, the younger teenagers heading off to various houses to babysit. She ran into Jillian at the intersection of Walnut and Tunlaw.
“Where’s your coat, honey?” Allison tried to kiss her, but Jillian dodged her.
“It’s not cold.”
“It’s winter.”
“I’m fine.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Why do you always think something is the matter!” She skulked off, toward the Davenport-Gardners’ house.
Jillian had been irritable since last week, when she came home with pierced ears. Allison went over and over it, trying to figure out how she and Ted could have handled it better. As far as she could tell, they had been model parents, listening without interruption to Jillian’s story about her secret friendship with Lindy and their clandestine trip to the shopping mall.
Allison had been disturbed by Jillian’s lack of candor, but it seemed designed to protect her and Ted rather than offend. It didn’t seem worth punishing her for. All in all Jillian
was a good kid. Even good kids messed up sometimes. Ted was less forgiving. He looked at Jillian with such a hurt expression that Jillian burst into tears. Soon Allison was consoling both of them.
The ear piercing was a disappointment for Allison, who had pictured going to a nice jewelry store to get them pierced on Jillian’s sixteenth birthday. She’d imagined helping pick out earrings that Jillian would treasure, earrings in which she might walk down the aisle one day. Instead, Jillian’s experience had been tawdry. A mall kiosk. Cubic zirconium baubles. Apparently Kaye had given her consent, which was a serious lapse in judgment.
But who was Allison to judge Kaye? She’d kissed the woman’s husband! What kind of person was she?
She spotted Ted and Terrance near Peanut Place. Their gaits were identical. She felt terrible, seeing Ted. Poor Ted. “Yoo-hoo,” Allison called.
Terrance gave her a bear hug.
“Ted’s going to say my name at the show,” Terrance said.
“It’s not a show, Terr. It’s a hearing,” Ted explained. Allison could hear in his voice that it wasn’t the first time he’d said this.
“He’s going to talk about brothers and stuff. About the old days,” Terrance said.
“You can wave if you want to, to let the audience know who you are,” Ted said.
“I’m going to wave at the show,” Terrance said.
Ted sighed. Allison moved in between them, linking arms with them like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. She kissed Ted’s cheek, cold from the night air. “New hat?” she said, touching Terrance’s Smokey the Bear ranger’s hat. “Going to put out a few fires?” She smiled at Ted, but Ted didn’t smile back. She kissed Ted again. “You’ll be fine. Everyone’s on your side.”
THE ALL-PURPOSE ROOM WAS SO CROWDED THAT THE WINDOWS HAD steamed, blurring the white lights on the houses outside. People scrambled for seats like kids playing musical chairs. The high school cheerleaders, enlisted to help, escorted newcomers to the back, while the elementary school chorus stood on the steps of the stage, singing about Santa, dreidels, and Kwanzaa in turn.
Nina Strauss, legs crossed and mouth firm, sat in the second row, phone in hand like a weapon. Two seats beside her were vacant, saved with a spread-out coat. People kept pointing to the seats to see if they were available, but Nina shook her head no. Allison waved to Lucy, who was handing out coffee and enormous white frosted cookies shaped like elephants to anyone who could edge close enough to her card table. Joan, the yoga teacher, gave out bright orange flyers that read: IMPROVE YOUR SEX LIFE WITH TANTRIC YOGA!
Soon the chorus members were marched off, replaced by the mayor, a woman so tiny that only her glasses and tight curls were visible above the lectern. “Nice to see so many of you . . .” The mic squeaked and cried, as if to protest all of the heated words that soon would be spoken into it. “. . . probably won’t get to fifty, but we’ve given them out in the hopes that . . .”
Numbers had been handed out to the first people who signed up to testify. Everyone else had been invited to submit comments in writing. Speeches would be timed. A yellow light would blink a warning when they had thirty seconds left, and a red light would turn on when the time was up.
Bad sex, Allison thought, considering the mayor. No, good. The mayor was funny looking, it was true, but her husband, whose shirt pocket always had a smear of blue ink at the bottom, was just as odd. They both wore Keds with their suits. Kinky sex, she suddenly thought, surprising herself, but yes, it seemed right.
Sex was on her mind these days, no doubt. More than ever. She had to make sure she never got in a car alone with Nick again. Maybe she had to make plans never to talk to him again, never to be in a contained space alone with him ever again. If they had done as much as they did in two minutes, what might happen if they spent ten minutes together? A lot. The answer was a lot. She would avoid him. Forget collaborating on the book. She couldn’t allow herself to be tempted. The next time she saw him, she would look away.
Suzanne squeezed in the gym door. She appeared to be pinned to the wall, the room was so packed. Allison waved to her, to show her she’d saved a seat, but the room was too crowded for her to make her way over. She made an apologetic face at Allison and sat in one of the two seats near Nina.
The mayor spoke to the residents seated on the side of the stage who held the first five numbers. “Please state your name and address and speak clearly into the mic. Number one?”
“I’m Edna Stant, and I live at 3405 Pecan Place. I’ve lived there for forty-two years.”
Mrs. Stant lamented the lost trees and her formerly dry, now frequently flooded basement: the result, she’d been told by three experts, of construction runoff. “My house is constantly in shadow because of the new house.”
She was followed by Lucy in a cowboy hat. Lucy signaled to a high school kid sitting at the upright piano, who started in with a little intro. Allison recognized it immediately. The Annie Get Your Gun song “I Got the Sun in the Morning and the Moon at Night” became “I Got No Sun in the Morning and No Moon at Night.” Lucy couldn’t sing well—it was all the more evident when she was doing a solo—but she received an abundance of laughter and applause nonetheless. “Really, people,” she said afterward. “Isn’t this planet in enough trouble?”
The next several speakers supported the moratorium, including many who had added on to their houses already, but then a rash of anti-moratorium folks came forward. Allison’s assurance that a moratorium would be a shoo-in was suddenly called into question. She thought of election night 2016: that ghastly realization that things were going the other way. Ted would curl up and die if the moratorium was voted down. After speaker number fourteen—a newcomer with two bedrooms, one and a half baths, and four kids—a murmur filtered through the crowd.
The door by the stage, which had been locked when Allison tried it, had opened and there was Nick Cox, sleek in a long leather coat. People moved aside to let him pass. His boots squeaked on the linoleum floor.
Allison felt her heart catch. Was it her heart? Maybe it was another more netherly organ. She wasn’t in love. But she was in lust all right. It was good she was in the middle of the row or she might have gotten up and hurled herself at him.
“What?” Ted said, frowning at her.
“Nothing,” Allison whispered hotly.
“Ssssssss,” someone hissed, prompting the mayor to come forward.
“Let me just remind everyone that we’re all neighbors here,” she said.
GRANT WAS HIGH. HE HAD BEEN HIGH AT REHEARSAL, AND NOW HE was more high, having lit up behind the town hall after Rainier told them to go home. He was careful to find a dark spot well amid the trees. You had to be careful in Willard Park these days. Everyone was spying on everyone else, desperate to find a juicy tidbit for Lucy’s bulletin board. If only they could figure out who the tree cutter was. He felt like all of it would stop then, the graffiti and the spying, all of the crazy nonsense. The tree cutter was the head honcho.
His plan had been to go by the house to get Suzanne and go to the meeting, but being high had inspired him to go the long way so he could admire the lights on the houses. Everyone else was headed in the opposite direction, toward the school. Soon the town was deserted, save for him—and, as he saw when he looked on the Coxes’ porch, the beautiful Kaye Cox. She was sitting on an outdoor sofa, like a fairy princess in her wonderland of white lights.
“Where’s your prince?” he called from the sidewalk.
“At the meeting,” she said.
“Aren’t you going?”
“Nope.”
“Why?” He came up the walkway to the porch and sat beside her. She smelled like cotton candy.
“Because I don’t get it. Does that sound stupid to say? Because maybe I’m stupid. That’s what I’m starting to think. I mean, who gives a Sam Hill about how big the houses are? Do you care? Do you think I’m stupid for thinking it’s all stupid?”
“I kind of think it’s stupid too.”
�
��Well, high five!” she said, but she didn’t make the accompanying hand gesture.
“Do you smoke?” he said.
“Cigarettes? I quit.”
“Weed, actually.”
“Oh! No. I mean, not for years. Nick’s more of a drinker, you know? But, hey, you go on ahead.”
So he did, and as he held the smoke in his lungs, letting the weed work its magic, she took the pipe and inhaled. They both held their breath, then let out a cloud of smoke at the same time.
“I like the smell,” she said. “It makes me think of high school.”
“I’ll bet you were the homecoming queen.”
She clapped her hands. “I was!”
“I thought so.”
“And my boyfriend was homecoming king. That was the best time of my life. Is that bad to say? The worst years were when I was eight till high school, then high school was the best.”
“You didn’t like being a kid?”
“My mom died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She was a great mom. I’m not a great mom. I’m a bad mom. If I was a good mom Jakey would be able to have a conversation with people and Lindy wouldn’t be so snotty. They didn’t used to be this bad.”
“What did she die of?”
“Breast cancer. Nobody told me she was going to die, not even when she was in the hospital. She’d been in before, so I didn’t think it was a big deal, but one day I came home from school and Daddy was sitting in the living room and he said, ‘Mommy died.’ I didn’t get to say goodbye.”
“That’s awful.”
“He was just trying to protect me. That’s all. He didn’t like to see me sad.” The tears in her eyes caught the shine of the Christmas lights.
“I liked my high school years the best too.”
“See?”
“See what?”
“I don’t know!” She laughed, and he did too. “Why is everyone so mean here?”
“I don’t know. They are.”
“Right? My friends at home would not believe how things are, if they were to see. They would not believe it. I mean, I was the girl there. The one. My college girlfriends were my sisters, so I didn’t feel it so much, not having a mom. That doesn’t change once you graduate. Sorority sisters are your sisters forever. Or they’re supposed to be.” Sadness crept into her face, but it disappeared when she started talking again. “Our house was the center of everything, kids running in and out all the time. All my sisters hanging out. We had a whole refrigerator of sparkling wine and snacks—that’s how fun it was. Everyone was always welcome and they knew it, right? We had a big outdoor pool and a bunch of lounge chairs. It’s hard to see them all on Facebook having fun without me. I guess I had an idea it wouldn’t be as much fun without me there, but, well, it looks like it is.”
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