Barbara Samuel (6 page)

Not that she ever would have indulged them. Even at her very worst, she’d never done anything to harm Joy, although the judge had seen it differently.

The flight was finally announced. Luna jumped up, and Kitty squeezed her hand. “Remember, sweetie, all a child needs is love.”

Luna nodded, her heart swelling up in her chest. They jockeyed into position with the others in the waiting area, straining for a glimpse of Joy.

She didn’t even see her until she stood right in front of her. “Mom. It’s me.”

Luna blinked at the pierced, Kool-Aid-dyed red-and black-haired ex-blonde who stood before her in a fishnet shirt, bell-bottoms, and black fingernails. A glittering blue stud shone from beneath her lower lip. Luna blinked, a thousand things rushing through her mind— mainly wondering what to say and how to handle the new look and what had brought it on. But they were all crowded out by the stinging swell of love and relief— she was really here! Here!—and the genuine, unmistakable happiness in Joy’s pale blue eyes.

Flinging her arms around Joy, Luna squealed a little in happiness, loving the feel of thin arms around her neck, squeezing hard. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you!” she cried.

Joy clung a long time, fiercely. “Me, too,” she breathed. “Totally.”

When they got back to Taos, Joy was wiped out, and Luna led her to her new bedroom. She seemed to genuinely like it—Luna had painted the walls a vivid turquoise and found some kitschy Day of the Dead accessories, a lamp made of a grinning skeleton and a mirror framed with bones and skulls.

“I’m sorry it’s so small in comparison to what you’re used to,” Luna said, opening the closet to show her the shelves inside, “and I know you’ll want to add your own tastes, but the windows are great. Look.” Yanking aside the curtains at the east window, she showed her the view of Taos Mountain, rising above a tangle of scrub oak. And to the north, a view of the creek.

“It’s perfect, Mom. Really. I love the Day of the Dead. You’re so artistic.” Joy rubbed her fingers over a distressed dresser. “I’d love to be able to do this stuff.”

“It’s easy. I’ll show you. For now, why don’t you have a little nap.
Everybody
is coming to see you tonight.”

“Good.” She yawned and sank down on the bed. Luna headed for the door.

“Mom,” she said, and Luna turned, smiling. “I am so glad to be here. Thank you.”

Luna blew her a kiss.

In the kitchen, she turned on some quiet music to keep herself company as she made a potato salad. It was the only thing in the world she put together that rivaled the stellar skills of her friends and relatives. The particular recipe had come from one of Marc’s elderly aunts, a southern treat. As she minced celery and onion, boiled potatoes in their skins, and chopped eggs, Luna hummed along with the CD, letting it repeat as she worked.

She had just slipped the bowl into the fridge and was thinking of a quick shower when a knock came at the
door. Expecting Allie, her best friend, she had a tease about impatience on her lips when she opened the door.

But it wasn’t Allie—it was Thomas Coyote. “Oh,” she managed brilliantly, and stood there with the door handle under her right palm, staring at him. There didn’t appear to be any other words currently available for speaking, not anywhere in her brain.

And the only thing that made that okay was that he didn’t seem to have any words, either, so they stood there, staring at each other for what seemed like five minutes.

Luna had forgotten how it felt, this piercing kind of attraction. Forgotten the funny, loose need to gather in a thousand details of a man’s person and hoard them for later remembering. She greedily absorbed the look of his neck at the opening of a white Henley, a triangle of dark smooth skin where the buttons had been left open, the crown of his head, tossing arcs of whitish gloss from the dense blackness of his hair, his mouth, wide and unsmiling …

“Uh, hi,” she said, and it came out a little froggy. “Sorry. Brain lock. I didn’t expect to see you.”

Duh. She closed her mouth, stepping back to gesture him in.

“I just came by to thank you properly,” he said, and it was only then that she noticed he carried a canvas tote bag, the kind the market paid customers five cents apiece to use for groceries. “I brought you something.”

“Please, come in.” She stepped backward into the living room, acutely aware of her bare feet, of the rumpled look of the blouse she’d been wearing all day. She couldn’t even imagine how bad her hair probably looked—she’d reined it into a scrunchy to get it out of her way for cooking, but it had a mind of its own and
didn’t much like to behave. She forced herself not to raise a hand to it. “You didn’t really have to do that.”

He hesitated before crossing the threshold, as if her living room was the part of the map that warned, “There Be Dragons Here.” Gingerly, he stepped inside. Luna ducked her head and noticed the shape of that long, sturdy thigh beneath his jeans and thought how muscular his work probably made his body. As he passed, a silver hoop peeking out from below his hair caught her eye, and beneath it, the round of a burly shoulder beneath cotton. When he stopped in front of her, she tried, really tried, to avoid looking at his hair, but there it was, a heavy black braid she wanted to unlace, spread apart, see how it fell when it was free.

He halted in the middle of the living room, next to the coffee table, and he looked enormous in contrast to her things. “Would you like to sit down?” Luna asked. “I have some soda in the fridge.”

The bag hung at his side and he looked around the room, slowly, taking it in. Luna wondered what he thought of the colors a lot of people thought were too strong, if he liked the paintings, if he would be comfortable on the couch. She found she was twisting her fingers together, but it was somehow comforting and she didn’t stop. He looked up at her. In that wonderful, husky voice, he said, “You really smell good.”

“Oh, it’s probably potato salad. My daughter has just arrived and I’ve been cooking.”

His mouth didn’t do more than twitch. “I’m pretty sure it’s not potato salad.”

Luna finally laughed, let her twisting fingers go. “Sorry, I’m being an idiot. In case you can’t tell, I … uh … well—” She took a breath and raised her head, looking at him like a grown-up. “I’ve seen you around
all over the place. I’m kind of flustered to be actually talking to you.”

“Me, too.” There was a directness, a relief, in the way they looked straight at each other finally, eye to eye, wondering what it might mean, letting it just be there. “I’m divorced,” he said suddenly, and then as if aware how bald it sounded, “So you don’t get the wrong impression.”

“How long?”

Thomas ducked his head, looked inside the bag he carried. “Two years come October.”

“It gets easier.”

“It’s not hard now.” He lifted a shoulder. “It’s my second divorce. I got the whole thing figured out now.”

She nodded, seeing with a little sinking feeling how hard it wasn’t, seeing it in the rigidness of his mouth trying not to frown, the blankness of eyes that didn’t want to show how sad they were. “Not your choice, I take it?”

A shrug.

Mmm. Maybe it was better this way. The last thing she needed was a great man to show up just when she had other things to take care of. A man on the rebound was a dangerous thing indeed, and one of Luna’s unbreakable rules was no one still in love with an ex. Not to mention he had
two
ex-wives. That didn’t look good on anyone’s résumé. And a really bad choice for her, when she had her goals so firmly in hand.

She took a step back. “Why don’t you come in the kitchen and have a soda, Thomas? It’s the good stuff.” To lighten the tension, she added, “My favorite is the vanilla cream, but I’m betting you’re more of a root beer kind of guy.”

Light came back into his eyes, appreciation of the subtle, silly joke. “Vanilla, huh?”

Beautiful eyes, she thought with regret. Such a velvety brown. “You betcha.”

Thomas followed her without really intending to, dutifully lugging the canvas bag of green chile stew he’d ladled out of the pot his grandmother had cooked on his stove today. Luna’s was a very old house, a territorial adobe with a jutting bench circling the set of windows at the east end of the kitchen. There were striped turquoise and purple and yellow pillows lined up along it, and a low pine table. “Nice,” he said. “You’ve done a lot of work in here.”

“Thanks. Yes, I have. It took me almost a year to get it ready to live in.”

In the background, some music played quietly, and he frowned, trying to place the notes. “Hey, I know this. ‘White Bird.’” He narrowed his eyes.
“It’s a Beautiful Day
, right?”

Genuine pleasure lit her face. “Right.”

The music, exotic with violin, changed the spirit in him, gave him a sense of possibility, but didn’t erase his awkwardness. He put the bag on the table and for something to do, took out the plastic bowl of chile and a thick foil package of tortillas, watching Luna move around her kitchen in her baggy shorts. He noticed again that her legs were very muscular. No bulging thighs or anything, but the long thin ropes across calf and knee that showed in every movement. She took glasses out of the cupboard—purple glass with yellow rims—and swung around to get ice. When she bent, he didn’t quite have the strength to avert his gaze from the shorts riding up on her thighs. She gave him a fizzing glass full of root beer and he smelled it happily, letting the spray touch his nose before he drank of it, deeply. So good.

“What’d you bring me?” she asked.

“Chile.” He put the offerings on her counter, remembered his
abuela’s
reaction to his bringing it over. “I gotta ask what you ever did to my grandmother.”

“I don’t know that I ever talked to her before last night.” She made a face. “She was furious with me then.”

“She wasn’t going to let me bring this over.”

“I thought she was going to beat me up in that kitchen, I swear. I don’t know why, but she did not want to come out.” She pulled off the lid from the Tupperware container of green chile stew and inhaled deeply, closing her eyes. “Wonderful.” Picking up the foil package beside it, she put that to her nose, too. “And homemade tortillas.” He liked the way she said it, not a question, a statement.

He nodded.

“God, I can’t think of anything I like better. And the chile’s still warm.” She opened the package and peeled off a soft, fresh, thick tortilla, rolled it up, and dipped it in the bowl, then bent to catch it in her mouth without dripping it on her clothes. “Excellent.”

Thomas watched with an almost helpless sense of attention. He stared at her mouth and spied her tongue and watched as she chewed, and looked at her breasts beneath her simple, pink button-up shirt and at her thick, riotous hair captured barely at all in a ponytail.

She looked up at him. Soberly. Like she knew something.

“How long you been divorced?” he asked roughly.

“Ages. Another lifetime.”

“Your daughter lives with her dad?”

“Until now. It was for the best at the time.” She brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. “Do you have kids?”

“No.” And then he added something he hadn’t told anyone else. “She’s pregnant now, though. My ex. Gonna have a baby in December.”

“Bet that’s kind of hard.”

Thomas breathed in. “I don’t think about it.”

“Mmmm.” She smiled, the slightest bit skeptically. “Is that so.”

He relented. Told the truth, which was a strange thing to do these days. “Guess I haven’t had much chance, really. You’re the first person I’ve said it out loud to.”

She put her hand on his. Thomas, without knowing why, turned his palm upward to meet it. “You know,” she said, meeting his eyes, “I’m sure you think you’ll die of the pain sometimes, but it gets better eventually. Just takes time.”

They were standing closer together than was usual for strangers and he wondered why she didn’t move away. The air changed around them, just like that, in a second, and it was so heavy it should have been dark purple. He noticed the curve of her neck and wanted to smell it.

Even as he was bending toward her, he knew he would regret it. But he did it anyway, leaned in and bent down far enough to kiss her. He didn’t close his eyes and neither did she. It wasn’t long. It wasn’t tongues or even any movement, just the press of lips, so intimate and yet not. And for one tiny space of time, he felt hope—it smelled like potato salad and hung like the possibility of violin. But then he saw her eyes, deep and dark, large and round, not long and slanted—and pulled back with a jerk, feeling like an idiot. “Sorry.”

“You’re just lonely, Coyote.” She patted his hand like an auntie, making him think he was the only one who’d felt that crackle in the air.

“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “I guess.” He turned toward the door. “See ya.” He made it to the door, the tatters of
his pride trailing from his stiff neck. What the hell was that, anyway? On the porch, he stopped to breathe in the air.

Luna spoke behind him. “Thomas.”

He turned.

She pushed open the screen door and braced it against her shoulder, then held out her right hand. It trembled visibly. She put the other in front of her and it was shaking, too. “I don’t need anything in my life,” she said in a voice so husky he nearly had to lean over to hear it, “that can make me feel like that. Okay?”

And that, he understood. He nodded. “Good night, Luna.”

“Everybody calls me Lu,” she said, waving a hand.

“No,” he said, “it’s supposed to be Luna.”

After a quick shower, Luna sat on the front porch with a wide-tooth comb and a bottle of spray detangler, working on her hair. Not the easiest task in the world, but she managed to get it into a semblance of order by the time Alicia Mondragon pulled up in her battered red Fiat, a completely impractical car she nursed along through hundreds of dollars of monthly minor and major repairs. She waved one thin arm at Luna and turned off the radio, then the car—if the radio was on when she tried to restart, it might overload the delicate electrical system—and climbed out. Her dog Jack, a mixed-blood German shepherd with an unabashed sense of his own lovability, leapt free and raced across the lot, happily nosing a neighbor’s black cat who’d been visiting, then licked both of Luna’s wrists and dashed back to Allie. Luna laughed.