Talk of the Town (8 page)

"Earl was a lumberjack most of his life. Before the fight to save the redwoods. My dad was a teenager when Earl got pinned under one of them and broke his back. He bought into the gas station as an independent dealer with the insurance money and every dime of his savings and he . . . he and my dad worked it until . . . Well, the oil embargoes in the seventies and eighties were hard on all the independents."

"So your family stayed on and you started building art in the garage?"

"Eventually," she said, uncomfortable with the details of her childhood. "I was a welder at a chain-link fence factory up until three years ago. When it closed down, Lu, ah, Lulu gave me a job, and that's when I started the bigger sculptures. The little ones were for fun. A hobby. Just something I enjoyed doing."

He thought about reiterating the differences between the sculptures she loved and those she was doing because she felt she had to, but decided to let Harley do it and stay out of it. He had her talking to him, and there was so much more he wanted to know about her.

He'd chosen Bill's BBQ Bar and Grill not for the originality of its name but for its menu and atmosphere. It was perched on a pier overlooking the water and had soft lights and tablecloths. Not much, but nothing to spit at in this neck of the woods. And Rose could order anything she wanted, from spaghetti to fish to steak.

Choice had been important. And only because he sensed that Rose hadn't had, didn't have, or wouldn't allow herself to have too many choices. It was just a feeling he couldn't shake, despite the fact that she was a tough little cookie who knew her own mind and wasn't afraid to voice it. She was an odd combination of reserved and straightforward, an intriguing mixture of compliant and rigid, and he wanted to know why.

"Lu's been to every restaurant within a hundred miles of Redgrove. She's our local expert. She says it's to check out the competition, but she just likes to eat. I think she said this place had great food," Rose said, looking around, feeling horribly underdressed even though denim seemed to be part of the dress code.

It better have great food, Gary thought, amazing himself at how much he wanted to impress her. Their gazes caught above the menus and she smiled, but he could see she was uncomfortable.

"This isn't a great place, is it?" he asked, leaning across the table and speaking softly. "We can go somewhere else."

She bent over her menu to whisper back. "Don't you like it? I've never been anywhere as nice, but if you want to go somewhere else . . ."

"No, no. I like it fine. I just thought you . . . well, you look a little uneasy."

She smiled and lowered her eyes away from his.

"I am," she admitted, looking back at him. "I don't do this very often. I'm afraid I'll spill something."

"You don't eat out?" Where had she been all her life?

"Sure I do. Every chance I get. At Lu's or McDonald's. Not in nice places like this and not with . . ."

"Not with what?"

"A date. A man."

His smile was slow in coming to his lips, as his body was suddenly tingling with excitement. Her confession aroused a sweet ache inside him. He'd never had better news.

"Don't worry about spilling. If you do, I'll spill something, too, and then we'll both look stupid. How's that?"

She laughed softly. "I'll be careful."

His hesitation to say more was so brief, she hardly noticed it.

"As to your being here with me, I guess I could probably tell you not to think of me as a real date . . . or as a man, but then I'd be at cross-purposes, wouldn't I?"

A trick question, she decided, and left it unanswered.

"Tell me about your furnace," she said hastily.

"My furnace?"

"The thing you're building that's making everyone mad."

"Oh," he said, leaning back to relax in the arms of the chair.

The waitress came before he could start. He ordered salmon and Rose asked for flounder.

"Would you like wine?"

"Wine?"

"To drink with dinner?"

"No, the water's fine, thanks. But you go ahead."

"You don't drink." It was a statement.

The waitress was walking away. Rose shook her head slowly and bowed her head.

"My dad drank enough for both of us," she said impulsively, instantly regretting it. What would he think of her now? Not that she cared, she reminded herself, then added fuel to the fire. "He drank himself to death, in fact."

"I'm sorry."

He
was
sorry. She could see it in his eyes. There was sorrow and something else. It was as if he understood that it hadn't been her fault, that it had nothing to do with her, that the sins and diseases of the father weren't always delivered on the children.

"My mom died in a car accident when I was nine and . . . and my dad got worse than ever after that. Earl was more of a father to me."

"Does he ever talk?" he asked with enough insight into her growing years to know that dredging them up would spoil her evening.

"When he wants something," she said, smiling. "He likes you."

"He told you that?"

"Of course not. But he does recognize your comings and goings. Harley and I just sort of fade in and out of his peripheral vision while he's watching TV. He saves up his requests for when we happen to pass by."

"Was he always like that?"

"Pretty much," she said, fondness softening her expression. "He likes to pretend he's deaf so we won't bother him, but he's always the first to show up when we need him."

"That's when it counts," he said, wanting to dig further and further into her life. Aware, suddenly, that
he
wanted to be the one to show up when she needed someone. "And what about Harley's father? Where is he?"

She shrugged indifferently. "I have no idea."

"He doesn't help out?"

"Why should he?" Gary looked startled. "Harley was my choice. He left some money to help pay for the abortion, but . . ." She shrugged again. Harley was the best decision she'd ever made, and nothing else about him mattered.

"I thought you were divorced," he said, more to himself than to her, recalling finally that Earl, Rose, and Harley all had the same last name. It had explained her reluctance to get involved with another man. Being an unwed mother would explain it, too, but . . . “You were young."

"Not so very. I was nineteen," she said, and then because talking to him was as easy as slipping on ice, she added, "I'd run away from home twice by then."

Gary was starting to feel punchy. He hadn't dreamed he'd be opening such a huge can of worms. She was by far a much stronger woman than he'd imagined. Her life made his seem like a picnic—and it pretty much had been, he thought. If the worst things that ever happened to him as a kid were being called
garbage boy
because his dad rode on the back of a sanitation truck and having to endure endless jokes about the origins of everything he'd ever owned, then his childhood
had
been a picnic.

"Why?" he asked, feeling nosy and half afraid she'd be offended and not answer, but asking anyway.

"Why what?"

"Why'd you run away from home?"

"Well, Redgrave looks a lot better to me now than it did in those days. Back then I thought it was hell on earth. Everyone knew everyone else's business. My mother was gone. My dad was a drunk. And Earl ... Earl said I could do anything I wanted to do, if I wanted to do it bad enough. So I left."

"Just like that?"

She nodded and smiled at her foolishness. "I was fifteen the first time. I hitched to San Francisco. It only took a week to spend all the money I'd saved while I was looking for a job. But who was going to give a scrawny little kid a job? The second time, I was seventeen and a half and calling myself eighteen. I worked truck stops and bars where it was legal, from here to Chicago."

"Why'd you come back?"

"I was homesick . . . and pregnant with Harley. Earl sent me bus fare. He always has money stashed around somewhere."

"Was your dad alive then? When you came home?"

"Oh, yeah. Between the two of us, Redgrove was a regular soap opera for a while."

"He was mad? About Harley? And you’re running away?"

"No, not really," she said passively. "He just made sure that I knew that Earl's disability check couldn't handle another mouth, much less two more, and he went on drinking. That's when I went to work at the fence factory."

Gary stared at her for a long moment, then glanced away, shaking his head. “You sound so impervious to it all."

"Do I?" she asked, searching inward. "Maybe I am now, to parts of it. It's been a long time, and things have changed. And it was a long time before I noticed that not everyone was growing up the way I was. I didn't know it was supposed to be different." She smiled. "What about you? You grew up wanting to be a garbageman. That must have been a surprise to your teachers."

As it happened, nothing Gary did ever surprised his teachers. His older brother had paved a path for him at school—so his dreams of becoming a trashman weren't unheard of—and it wasn't long before his teachers and friends received their first few injections of his shocking personality, which soon came to be expected rather than startling.

He was a surprise to Rose, however. Constantly. The next few minutes included.

He was almost timid in telling her about growing up between his two brothers with a mother who made sure he washed behind his ears and ate his lima beans, and a father who spent years coaching junior league football after work. And he could hardly look her in the eye when he disclosed that his mother had taken a job and his father had worked an extra four nights a week as a janitor to get them through college.

"They just had their forty-fifth wedding anniversary a few months ago," he said, finishing off the last of the wine in his glass. "We got together and gave them cruise tickets. That's where they are now, somewhere in the Caribbean, buying souvenirs for Christmas presents."

"And having a wonderful time," she said, warming to the affection in his voice when he spoke of his family. She didn't think it was fair to envy him his parents, but she couldn't help hoping that maybe someday Harley's eyes and voice would be soft and gentle when he spoke of her.

"You're staring at me," he said, uncommonly self-conscious.

"I'm amazed."

"By what?"

"By what a sweet man you are."

"Sweet?" he asked, pretending to have a bitter taste in his mouth, making believe that he couldn't feel the uncomfortable warmth seeping into his cheeks. "I spend days trying to sweep you off your feet with my all-male charm and studly physique, and you're amazed by sweet?"

"Those are pretty amazing, too," she said, her gaze wandering across his broad chest and straight, thick shoulders; lifting to his mouth and then his eyes once more. "But sweet gets to me."

It would have been the wine talking, she thought, if she'd had any. It had to be the night. The excitement. It would wear off and tomorrow she wouldn't care if his heart were made of pure cane sugar from Hawaii.

"Well, getting to you is my prime objective here, so . . . sweet it is," he said in his best debonair voice. He gave her a libertine look. "Would you like something
sweet
for dessert?"

She chuckled. "I couldn't eat another mouthful."

"Hmmm. You like sweet, and I love women who talk dirty. We were made for each other," he said, teasing her, his eyes hooded, a sly smile on his lips.

Dirty? Her? What had she said?

"Oh! No, I didn't mean—I thought you meant . . ."

He started to laugh. "I'm sorry," he said.

"But you walked right into that one, and I have no self-control. Would you like some coffee?"

"No," she said thoughtfully, enjoying the relaxed, untroubled calm inside her and reluctant to disturb it by getting rewired with coffee. "But maybe some fresh air. Could we walk a little?"

Perfect. Gary loved it when a plan came together.

FIVE

The ocean had a way of fooling people into thinking it was something gentle and benevolent. Slow lapping waves lulled you into forgetting that the water could rise up and swallow you whole. Unseasonably hot spring days deceived you, too, allowing you to hope that the evenings would be warm as well, but they never were.

"Take my brother's operation as an example," he was saying as he removed the sport coat he'd worn over a cable knit sweater and jeans. "He can pull off enough methane gas from three million tons of garbage to meet the needs of eighteen thousand homes for the next fifteen years." He held out his coat and waited for her to slip her arms into the sleeves. "Huge underground pockets of methane gas, just sitting there waiting to explode or leak into the atmosphere and destroy the ozone."

"So you think these waste-to-energy programs are the answer to pollution," she said, tingling as her muscles uncoiled in the warmth left in his jacket.

By the lapels, he turned her to him and began to button her in. "I think they could be part of the answer, yes. A small part;"

"Then why are people so upset about your incinerator?"

"They don't understand it. All they know is that burning garbage has been banned in this country for the last fifty years." He took hold of one arm, then the other, rolling up the jacket sleeves. "And rightly so. The old furnaces released dioxin and acid gases into the air."

"Those cause cancer, right?"

"Among other things," he said, casually slipping his hand around hers as they walked on, heading north as if by random choice. "But the new ones burn hotter; even glass and pottery melt and crumble. For every ten truckloads of garbage, there will be one full of ash to bury."

"So, where's the energy?" she asked, going over it in her mind. "Didn't you say it was a waste-to-energy thing . . . or is burning the trash down to ash considered energy saving?"

“No, no. The incinerator will be an energy source," he said, pleased to explain to her. "Water, running through rows of pipes on all sides of the furnace, picks up the heat and eventually expands into a powerful steam. That's channeled through more pipes to keep an electrical generator spinning, like a steam engine."