by Amber Foxx
Mae turned to see his outstretched arms, too late to say yes or no to a hug as he squeezed her and practically lifted her off her feet. If she’d been a smaller woman he probably would have.
He released her, the smile stopping short of full fearless abandon and beginning to fade. “I hope—sorry. I mean that—if that was—too—” His face now serious, he hugged himself, hands nervously massaging his forearms, his eyes wider and darker. “Too much?”
“Kind of.” She didn’t want to hurt him or alienate him, but she didn’t want to encourage him, either. “You’re like five pounds of sugar in a two-pound sack. Too much, but sweet.”
He seemed on the verge of another explosion of some sort, but managed to contain it, or else it was so strong he couldn’t even get it out. With a flicker of The Smile, he ducked his head, his hands on the railing, and gave himself a little liftoff. When he landed again, he faced her and said, “Shopping? I’m so hungry I could eat the arse end out of a low-flying duck.”
Chapter Eleven
Mae needed food, and Jamie hadn’t eaten all day—again. She still had to get him to contact Wendy, and needed to keep an eye on the health of his road-smacked head. It looked like she was committed to more time with him.
“We’ll go if you take the money.” Mae led the way back indoors, picked up the cash one more time, and handed it to Jamie with Wendy’s card. The way he’d told the driver he couldn’t pay for the bumper—as if a cyclist hit by a car should have to—made her think he was as short on cash as on survival instinct. He was too accident prone for a normal person, and he had to be up to his ears in medical debt, with the surgery on his hip. To her relief, he put the money in his pocket without protest. “You can use it to fix your bike.”
“Yeah. Reckon.” He followed her through the house, out the back door, and through the garden to the driveway. “But I’ll put a little into dinner. I’m not broke, y’know. Don’t want you to think that, just because I don’t have insurance.”
They got into the car. “I didn’t say that.” She suspected a borderline lie. “But if you’re cooking, I’m buying. Give me directions. Where am I going?”
As they started out of the driveway, he asked, “You want the big Whole Foods or the little Whole Foods? I like the little one. Get lost in the other.”
“There’s two?”
“We’re healthy here, what can I say? Well, I’m not exactly a health nut, but y’know, in general, we are. I could live on chiles and chocolate, beer and beans. The four major food groups.” He gave her The Smile. “You want some spicy food? I can do some real New Mexican something for you. Don’t have my cookbooks, but I can riff.”
“We can stop by your place and get a cookbook.”
“Waste of time—most of ’em are in storage. Only got one with me. Had to move twice, put a load of crap in my parents’ attic, and they’ve got the place rented out to a bloke who’s on his sabbatical doing research here.” He looked out the window, told her where to turn. “Hate going in there and bothering him and his family.”
“Is that where your helmet is?”
“Yeah.”
“You should go bother him. You could get hurt.”
He tapped the glass, pointing out a bareheaded young woman cycling past. “Lots of people don’t wear ’em.”
“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.”
He continued to watch the street, and all she could see was the back of his head, his hair now tangled and knotted. “Van’s not fond of going to Tesuque,” he said.
“Where’s that?”
“North on 285. Not that far, but—you heard the van.”
“I need to go to a Ford place.” She couldn’t believe she was about to propose doing something with Jamie, but since Hubert was partial to Ford products, she knew something about them, and had noticed that Jamie’s ancient van was a Ford Aerostar. “Your check engine light is on, and I need an oil change after that drive from Virginia. You could show me the way and get the van checked up at the same time. It doesn’t need health insurance to go to the hospital.”
“Nah. Scared they’ll tell me it’s terminal.”
“You know if you keep putting things off, they don’t go away. You need a manager. You need your helmet. You need to get the van fixed. You need to eat before noon or midnight or whatever you’re doing these days. What’s the matter with you?”
“My check engine light is on.” He cracked himself up, several loud bursts of hah-snort-hah, and then slumped, fidgeting with the seatbelt. “My whole fucking life. Check engine.”
Jamie directed Mae to the smaller of the two Whole Foods stores. While she shopped for what she wanted, he made suggestions for their dinner, chattering happily about favorite recipes.
A bouncy sixties pop song played on the store’s music system, its lyrics ranging from oowah ditty to happy every day, a silly love song if one had ever been sung. Mae noticed movement beside her as she started to pick up a package of whole wheat tortillas from the refrigerator case. Jamie was dancing. Not toe-tapping, but full-out dancing. Embarrassed, she turned to suggest he stop, but he grabbed her hands, making her drop the tortillas, and led her, cuing the steps. “Triple step, triple step, rock back, yeah, you got it, just keep that going, even when I turn you—” He spun her and pulled her back to him. “Perfect, love, you’re fucking brilliant. A natural.”
It was her first time dancing with a man who could lead, unlike the freestyle get-up-and-boogie dancing she was used to, but Jamie guided her so effortlessly she couldn’t tell where his touch ended and her own movement started. It was both fascinating and disorienting.
He sang along louder than the store’s speakers as they danced beside the coolers in the wide aisle at the back of the store, and other shoppers genially gave them space. A store associate in a Whole Foods apron, passing with a product in hand, called, “Go, dude!”
No one apparently minded, but it was hard for Mae to let go of her reserve and fully enjoy herself. Dancing in a grocery store with a peculiar man she’d known for two days was off the map. To do it she had to shift gears into a part of her personality she hadn’t met before.
As the song ended, several shoppers applauded. Mae, slightly breathless from exertion at high altitude, began to giggle. They had actually done this. Niall would be pleased. She had cut loose.
Jamie hugged her, and she felt the full frontal heat of him so suddenly she could neither resist nor return the embrace. He said, “You’re a quick learner, love. We’ll have to dance again.” He let her go and turned back to the refrigerated case. “Where were we? Tortillas?”
“Yeah.” At a loss, she pulled back into her known self and known space. Something had happened that she wasn’t ready for. She didn’t even want to know what it was. “Why don’t you pick up everything for dinner and I’ll get what I need for the rest of the week and meet you up front?”
“What? Was the dancing wrong? Should I not do that? I mean, we were having fun, I thought, y’know, and now you— I’m sorry.” He crashed. “You want to go off separate.”
She did. She wanted time out from him in a big way. He didn’t seem concussed after all, and she regretted agreeing to shop with him and letting him cook. She still needed to understand more about what his problems were, to spend that much time with him.
“We need to talk.”
“Now?” A hint of fear tightened the muscles under his eyes. “I mean, if you want to, I can ... Look, I’m really sorry. I like to dance.”
“I’m not mad at you for dancing.” She sighed. “We’ll talk while we shop. But you have to stay focused, all right? Don’t run off on some tangent. I seriously need to ask you some questions.”
But as they walked along, picking up food, wine, and spices, Mae had to keep interrupting Jamie’s raptures about some particular brand of dark chocolate or organic coffee, to initiate her serious questions. She got two words out each time before he cut in with a distraction, placing things under her nose for her to smell, o
r going into ecstasy over free samples of green chile guacamole.
A clerk behind the deli counter called out, “What? Cooking? No take-out?”
“Got someone to cook for,” Jamie answered, beaming.
He talked to strangers, too, chatting about the joke on someone’s T-shirt or admiring a hat, leaving a swath of smiles around him. Did she really want to ask him something to find out if he was dangerous? It seemed unlikely now. Or poor? The questions were shifting. A poor person hardly shopped at Whole Foods so much the employees knew him, or had a fitness center membership. He made less sense by the minute.
When they got to the produce area, she watched him select garlic and onions and hot peppers. The image of his hands sweeping his chopped vegetables aside, the knife slammed into the cabbage, came back. It was hardly full-scale violence, and yet it was destructive and out of control.
Mae needed either to do a psychic search and see the whole story soon, or ask him. She had an aversion to looking in on people without their willingness, though, and disliked it when it happened by accident. People had a right to be left alone, not intruded on by her visions. Hubert had held that against her once he knew the sight was real, and so had her mother. If her own safety was at stake, though ... A foolish thought. Jamie had been in the garden last night and tucked a blanket around her and left. Then today he’d aimed his bike right into that car. If he was likely to hurt anyone, it was himself.
His thin arms in the long sleeves caught her eyes. He was so lean she could see every subtle movement of the flexors and extensors in his forearms showing through the soft cloth as he handled peppers, examined them, put one back, chose another. Hot weather and long sleeves. Might be sun protection, but he didn’t even wear sunglasses, and his usual hat had too little brim to be anything but a way to control his hair. He might be a cutter. Sad, but more in keeping with his personality than violence against another.
“Hope you like hot,” he said, spinning the plastic produce bag with peppers in it, and tying the top. The Smile. “In New Mexico, pain is a flavor.”
Pain is a flavor. Maybe it was a regional joke, but maybe it fit with the shape of his mind. “Not too hot,” she said. “I don’t like to hurt myself.”
“Wish I didn’t.” He steered the cart toward the checkout, and she laid a hand on his arm, stopping him, trying to voice the question. It wouldn’t come out. “What are you looking at?” he asked. “What’d you think I meant?”
“I’d been wondering about you ...” She let him go, and they joined a line, framed by racks of health and spirituality magazines. She said so softly only he could hear, “Have you ever done something to hurt yourself?”
“Bloody hell. Is that—is that what you thought I meant? Fuck. All I meant was like, y’know, eating a whole pan of brownies or something. Hurt myself.” He placed his hands against his belly with a weak smile, and then turned away from her. As they waited in silence behind a long slow order, he curled over on the handle of the cart, his face disappearing behind his cloud of hair. As his hair fell forward, Mae saw an ugly scar high on the back of his neck, toward his right ear. It couldn’t be self-inflicted, could it? Not unless he’d had a Van Gogh moment. “Jesus.” His voice sounded tight, short of breath.
“Are you all right, sugar? Is it your head?”
He said nothing. He might be concussed after all.
“Jamie, are you dizzy? Do you feel sick?”
Pushing past the other people in the line, he rushed from the store, barely missing a display of melons. He collapsed at a table, head on his hands. To Mae’s relief, a store employee who’d been putting carts away stopped and sat with him. It was like the episode in the bar. What he’d called having a wobbly. How often did he feel this way? And what had he done to hurt himself? It had to have been something worse than pigging out on a pan of brownies to trigger this reaction.
Mae finished her purchases, keeping an eye on Jamie through the window.
She parked the grocery cart next to his table and thanked the store employee who had sat with him. The woman left and Mae took her seat. Jamie looked up. “Minor wobbly. Nothing serious. My head’s all right. Sorry I scared you.” The smile seemed intended to reassure her. “Shall we cook, then?”
“Not yet.”
“It’s hot. The veggies will wilt.”
“Jamie. You're taking over my life and I need to know what’s the matter with you. You worry me. All I meant to do was get you in touch with Wendy, and get you to sell your music to Deborah. I wasn’t trying to take you home with me, and here we are shopping, and—”
“I thought you liked me.”
“I do, sugar. I do. But ...” It hit her what was happening, and it troubled her. “I’m starting to rescue you.”
He broke into a sixties Motown song, Rescue Me, dancing to it in his chair, and she laid a hand on his arm, quieting him. She was getting the hang of his avoidance mechanisms now, and not letting them distract her as much.
“Let me explain. When I was eighteen, I married a smart, funny boy who wanted to be a writer. My first husband. He drank too much, he couldn’t be faithful, but all I could see was this mess I could clean up and rescue, this great artist I knew was in there somewhere. I think there’s a word for it—codependent. People like me who get wrapped up in taking care of messed-up people. I’m afraid you’re kind of a mess, and I’m getting all tied up in trying to help you.”
“I’ll be stuffed. You’re fucking kidding. I was trying to help you.”
“What?”
“Seriously. To clean the house. To show you around Santa Fe. To cook for you. To keep you company so you’re not lonely all by yourself here. Why’d you think I need help? I mean, I hit my head, all right, fucking stupid, but—but I’m all right. Basically. I mean, I’m not like your ex-husband.”
He sounded so rational, it took her by surprise. She’d expected a more emotional overreaction. “I didn’t say you were.” Since he was being rational, she felt it was safe to ask. “But you seem a little self-destructive.” She didn’t want to admit to the psychic intrusion. It made people uneasy, even angry, if they knew she had seen some private part of their lives. “When I asked if you’d ever hurt yourself ... Like, what’s that scar on your neck?”
“I didn’t try to cut my fucking ear off.” He grinned. “I’m a trauma magnet, I told you. We were in Bali, and they have all these dogs that eat the offerings to the gods in the streets. I was about four, five, not sure—can’t keep track of my childhood. Anyway, Haley and I went outside for like ten minutes without Mum and Dad, and I picked up this puppy. I thought it looked sick and I wanted to take care of it.”
“You picked up a rabid puppy?”
“Yeah. Stupid. Scared of dogs now, but I wasn’t then. Haley was screaming at me, ‘Don’t touch it,’ and it went for me. At least it was only a puppy. Dog could have killed me. Still, fucked things up for the family for weeks. Taking me for those shots—fuck, that was bad. Had to have plastic surgery on my ear, too. So we ended up back in Perth early. Cut Dad’s research short. Thanks to me.”
He blamed himself, as if he had done something bad.
“You’ve had a hard life, haven’t you, sugar?” He shook his head, looking away. “A lot of accidents,” Mae went on. “But have you ever, on purpose—”
“You don’t give up, do you?” He met her eyes, bordering on angry. “All right. Yeah, I did. Once. Once. I had a bad spell in college. It’s been seven or eight years. Come on. I don’t want to talk about it, it’s past and over. Let’s cook.” He stood, shifted to a softer tone and a half-smile. “Don’t want to blight your trip with my old miseries. You leave when?”
She rose also, and they started for her car with the cart. “After I catch up with Muffie.”
“We should dance tomorrow, then, and go to Ruth’s opening Thursday. And I can take you round some of the galleries then, too, if you like. Won’t take over your life, though, I promise. Not unless you want me to, of course.”
Mae ignored Jamie’s broad, suggestive smile and wink, and opened her car’s trunk. That was cartoon flirting. It wasn’t serious. “You’re sure we’ll see Muffie at Ruth’s opening?”
“Fuck, yeah. She’s as big an attraction as the art.” He placed a bag in the trunk, straightened up, and looked suddenly blank. “Bloody hell.” He sat on the bumper. “Get a thing, I don’t care what ...”
“You light-headed, sugar? You need food?”
“Yeah. Sorry.” She reached into a bag and grabbed a pear, handed it to him. “I think that’s all,” he said. “Don’t think my head’s cracked. Sorry.” He bit into the pear, eyes closed, and fell silent, eating.
“Better?”
He nodded, slurped at the ripe pear, and opened his eyes, wiping a drizzle of pear juice out of his beard with his free hand. “Yeah. It’s fucking perfect. Like, the best thing I ever ate.”
This spell was different from the one in the store. No panic. Making sure he didn’t get dizzy again, Mae watched him walk to the passenger door and get in, and then finished loading the groceries and returned the cart. When she got into the car, Jamie had eaten the pear down to the skeletal core, which he dropped out the window with the word “biodegradable.”
He tipped the seat back and closed his eyes. Within seconds of the car starting to move, he fell asleep.
Something told her not to let him sleep with a possible concussion, though she wasn’t sure where she got the idea. Anyway, in the car she had him captive and could try again to get him to contact Wendy. To wake him gently she reached to turn on the radio, and remembered Jamie’s music was in the CD player. She turned that on instead, and he stirred.
“Bloody hell, you listen to me.” Dreamy, dazed, he smiled. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“Deborah gave these to me. It’s beautiful music. Healing.”
“Thanks. It’s meant to be.” He sat straighter. “I used to volunteer with the music in medicine program at UNM hospital—they have singers and musicians do concerts, or sing or play next to someone’s bed, help them feel better. I knew what it was like to be the bloke with the pain, y’know, so I wanted to help make it go away. But most people who don’t feel good don’t have someone show up and sing to them.” He looked out the window, running a finger back and forth over the rim of the door. “So this was for them.”