Red’s Hot Honky-Tonk Bar (11 page)

Her terrible day had somehow dissolved into a distant annoyance. And it felt strangely like progress for Bad Grandma to have become Silly Grandma.

To: [email protected]

September 16 4:24 p.m.

From: [email protected]

Subject: School

hi Mom! I love you 2! Thanks 4 the email. I always remember how busy you are, but if I don’t hear from U, well its bad. But I did so its good. Daniel sends his love 2. Course he’d never say anything, cause he just doesn’t. He still cries at night sometimes but dont worry. He wouldn’t let nobody hear him. He tries to be a big boy like you told him.

School is great. Its like the school on the base but bigger and different. My teacher is very cool. Her name is Ms. Gomez. She looks like she could be someone on tv. She has the most awesomist clothes ever. Mixon says she must have a rich husband because teachers don’t make enough money to afford hot cature. Hot cature means fashion. Mixon knows a lot about fashion. She is not in my class, but everybody knows her. She pretty much runs the school. At least among the girls. The boys are enemies so they don’t count. Mixon doesn’t like my clothes much. And I don’t think she likes me. But she REALLY likes Ms. Gomez and Ms. Gomez likes me so its all even-steven.

The bad grandma is doing some better. We don’t see her so much now that we have school. But why does she half to dress like that. Its embearussing. I miss Abuela. I miss U 2!

Keep drinking your orange juice and email me when you can. Dont worry about us. I am taking care of Daniel and me fine.

Livy

W
hen Merton, Wythe and Stone Development Properties finally got back to Red, the news was even worse than she’d imagined.

“The mixup seems to be that the property you’re leasing was listed as unoccupied,” Claire Richmond, associate contracts representative, told her.

“Unoccupied? I’ve been here for nine years,” Red told her.

“Yes,” Ms. Richmond said. “But as there is no current lease agreement in effect, it was assumed that the building was empty.”

“I’ve been paying my rent every month,” Red pointed out. “I don’t miss, I’m not ever even late.”

“Yes, that’s what I understand from Receivables. I’d be happy to make a note of that here on the record.”

“Ah…thanks,” Red answered, “but I don’t see how that affects the price of pork bellies.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“How does that help me?” Red explained without the sarcastic idiom. “I’ve got a ton of heavy equipment out back
making a whole lot of noise and ripping up the river access to my patio. Both of those things are bad for my business. Can you make them stop?”

“Well, no,” Ms. Richmond answered. “We don’t want them to stop. Your building was purchased in a bundled block for redevelopment. The potential for that redevelopment is tied directly to the River North expansion.”

“They’ve been talking about that River North expansion for years,” Red told her. “It’s not ever going to happen.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

“You’re the one who is saying that the construction is up to your back door,” Ms. Richmond observed.

The woman had a point, one that Red was not at all crazy about.

After more discussion, Ms. Richmond suggested that someone from Project Management call her with an update on the building’s status.

Red acquiesced to that, but not happily.

After hanging up the phone, she walked outside onto her much-abbreviated patio. The place was amazingly quiet. All she could hear was the sound of Cam’s fiddle drifting down from the apartment. The tune was not a familiar one, but it was intense and sweet, stirring her heart.

The heavy equipment was sitting in silence and none of the orange-vested workers were around. Red didn’t know if they’d taken off for lunch or for a week. It was one of the notorious truths of San Antonio construction that the crews for tearing things up and the crews for putting them back together were often not well coordinated. A well-traveled street could be torn into a nasty detour that strangled traffic for months before the repairs even got started.

Red desperately hoped that wouldn’t be true here. As it was,
things were bad. Between the truncation of the patio and the relocation of the stage so far inside the property line, she’d lost three tables. That added up to a loss of at least a thousand dollars in receipts every week. If she could let one of the waitresses go, it would lower the overhead. But that would put too many tables on the staff that was left. And she couldn’t know yet how moving the stage closer would impact the inside business. Those customers who came more to socialize than for the music might not be able to hear themselves talk.

Red felt her insides tightening up with the uncertainty. When things got tough, this patio and the view of the river had always calmed her. But nothing about backhoes and orange tape was calming.

She closed her eyes, trying to see it again as it was. The shady morning patio, the sounds of the rippling water, the rustling of the trees on the opposite bank. But the scene in her mind was no longer the San Antonio River but Cayou Creek, near Piney Woods, and her daddy was sitting beside her.

“Did Mama just not love us anymore?” she asked him.

“Oh no, that wasn’t it,” he answered. “Your mama is just not like all the other mamas. She needs different things. Things I couldn’t give her.”

“You gave her what you had,” Red defended.

Her father shrugged. “That’s all in the past. She has a new husband now and you and I are going to have to be happy about that. We’re going to be happy for her. You think we can do it?”

Red nodded. “I can be happy about it. Now she won’t be here yelling all the time.”

“Your mom loves you. She just has a hard time showing it.”

“Are you sure, Daddy?”

“I’m as sure about it as anything, my little Red.”

“You shouldn’t call me Red. Red’s a color, not a person. It’s silly.”

He laughed. “I like being silly,” he told her. “And I like being with you.”

“You won’t ever go away, like Mama?”

“I won’t ever go anywhere,” he assured her. “You can count on it. Day and night I’m going to be right here on this farm, loving and protecting my favorite redheaded girl.”

That hadn’t been true, of course. He’d died. She didn’t blame him for that. But once he was gone, nobody had ever been there to protect Red again.

Lost in thought, Red was startled as a pair of arms wrapped around her waist. It was Cam. The warmth of him, the strength of him was so welcome that she relaxed in his arms, still pliant from the memory of her father.

“I heard you upstairs playing your fiddle,” she said.

He pulled her back tight against his chest and gave her a kiss on the throat. “I was just practicing.”

“It was real pretty,” she said. “What’s it called?”

The side of his face was against her temple and she could feel him smiling.
“Concerto for Violin number 2 in D Major.”

She laughed lightly. “Not exactly a catchy title.”

“Yeah, a honky-tonker would have come up with a better one, for sure.”

“Is it one of the songs from your day job?” she asked. “Something you’re editing?”

“It’s Mozart. He doesn’t need all that much editing these days.”

“How come you practice Mozart, if you’re going to be playing Willie Nelson?”

“That’s Woody Guthrie’s fault,” he answered.

“Woody Guthrie?”

“Where were you just now?” he asked her, changing the subject. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you, but when I walked up here, you looked to be a million miles away.”

“Not a million,” she answered. “Just a few hundred…and about four decades.”

She felt him go very still. Immediately Red was on her guard. The gentle moment grew tense.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he answered. “I thought you were about to tell me something.”

“Tell you what?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Something. Anything.”

“No,” Red assured him. “Nothing.”

Cam gave a light chuckle. “When I met you, you were so different from any woman I’d ever gone out with. Those girlfriends were constantly telling me everything that came into their heads and trying to pry out every thought I’d ever had. You never asked me anything. You never told me anything.”

“And you liked that,” Red pointed out.

“I did,” Cam admitted. “I did like it. But I don’t anymore. I want to tell you things, I want you to tell me things. Why don’t we do that? Why can’t we do that?”

Red freed herself from his grasp.

“If you want to play Twenty Questions, go find some twentysomething. I’m past those kinds of games.”

“I don’t want to play games, either,” he assured her. “And the last thing I’m interested in is some little chickie. But for just an instant there, it was like you were about to say something, reveal something, give me a hint of who you are and how you got to be that way.”

Red secured her defenses and switched tactics. “I’ll tell you what I am. I’m horny. And I’ll tell you how I got that way.
You haven’t jumped my bones in nearly two weeks. Do you think I’m some bored wife, perfectly satisfied with a five-minute poke once a month. I’ve got to get me a little. And if you’re not available, I may have to start trolling the other cowboys who come into this place.”

Cam delivered a sharp, flat-handed slap to her backside.

“Ow!”

“Just swatting the armadillo, ma’am,” he said. “It’s getting a bit rowdy.”

“That’s not going to help,” she said. “It needs to get bounced on a bed till it’s too tired to wiggle.”

“You’d better be careful,” he warned. “You may get more than you can handle.”

“Oh, you just trust me, cowboy, I can handle you and you’ll love every minute of it.”

“Don’t you have to open the front door in fifteen minutes?” he asked.

“Some things can wait and some can’t,” she told him. She ran her hand down the front of his jeans. “And it seems to me that we’ve got an emergency situation growing here.”

“You are really going to get it.”

“Please, oh please, pretty please.”

Cam bent down, grabbed her behind he knees and hoisted her over his shoulder like a sack of feed. Red laughed as he carried her across the patio and up the stairs.

In the apartment, Cam tossed her on the bed.

Red reached to her waist to unbutton her tight jeans. To her surprise, Cam grabbed her hands and pulled them high over her head as he lay down on top of her, fully clothed.

His face was directly above hers, his mouth only inches away. She parted her own lips in expectation. When the kiss didn’t come, she opened her eyes to see him looking at her.

“You almost managed to pull it off again,” he said.

“What?”

“I know what you’re doing,” he whispered.

Red frowned. “What I’m doing about what?”

“About me,” Cam answered. “About getting close to me. I’ve figured out how this works for you.”

Red frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“Oh, yes you do,” he said. “Or at least unconsciously you do. I’d be willing to let you get by with saying it’s not intentional.”

“What is not intentional?”

“This,” he answered.

Red still didn’t get his meaning.

“Every time we’re getting close, every time you are about to tell me something, every time your heart is exposed, it ends up like this. Us on a bed or a chair or a table, rocking our brains out.”

Red laughed. “Sounds like heaven to me.”

Cam rolled over to lie beside her, but kept her hands gripped tightly in his own.

“I get it,” he said. There was no humor in him. His tone was factual. “A lot of women throw up defenses against sex. Your defense
is
sex. It’s like a secret weapon for you.”

“I don’t use sex as a weapon.”

“Oh, yes you do. You know perfectly well that it’s the one thing that answers all the questions in a guy’s head. It’s the one move that always changes the subject.”

Red started to wiggle away. Cam clutched her body with one muscular thigh.

“Years ago I was at an old honky-tonk in a near-dead oil-boom town,” he told her. “There was a tableful of poker
players and the money pot was getting pretty full. All of a sudden one of the players, a moderately attractive woman, just pulled her shirt off. She’s sitting there bare-breasted at a tableful of men, with money on the line. And every last one of them dropped his poker face. She won the pot because they couldn’t keep their heads in the game.”

Red shrugged. “Men think with their dicks. It’s not news.”

“No, it’s not,” Cam said. “But it’s not me.” He let go of her hands and sat up on the bed. “I love having sex with you, Red. Making me want you? Heck, all you have to do is walk into the room. But I think I’ve made it clear, I’m not a disinterested sex buddy. I want to do you because we’re both craving each other. I want to satisfy you from that red hair on your head to the soles of your feet. But I want it to be because you want me. Not because you’re feeling threatened enough to throw up a big distraction.”

Red rose to her knees on the bed and huffed in frustration. “What is the deal with you?” she asked. “Why can’t you be like other guys?”

“Because my Red deserves a lot better.”

Cam leaned forward and kissed her on the bridge of the nose, then stood up and walked to the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Downstairs,” he answered. “Take your time, comb your hair. I’ll unlock the door and man the bar until you get there.”

“Uh…thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he answered. “And just so we’re clear, nothing I do for you is ever owed to me or paid for by services rendered. Understood?”

She nodded.

“Good,” he replied. “Now, put your pretty armadillo on ice for a few hours and I promise to grill it to well-done later.”

As he walked out of the room, Red found herself surprisingly turned on. There was something about a man who wouldn’t be manipulated that was amazingly sexy.

She ran her hand across the jean-covered tattoo on her backside.

“You are so lucky,” she told her armadillo. “Cam is the best boyfriend you’ve ever had, both in bed and out of it.”

He was going to make some woman a great husband. It wasn’t the first time she’d had that thought, but it was the first time that she was bothered by it. He
would
make a good husband. And the way he was with Olivia and Daniel, he was going to make an excellent father, too. That’s what he deserved. And, she realized with sadness, that was what she wanted for him.

As that realization settled in on her, the source of her sadness became suddenly clear. She was in love with him.