The Denver Cereal (4 page)

“
He calls these his ‘get
lucky’ boots. They’re probably a little big for you, but you can
stuff some tissues in the toes. Just put them on, honey, and you’ll
have a good time,” Jill said.

Megan touched Jill’s arm
and helped her step into the black pumps. “Thanks,” Jill said to
Megan. She looked up to see every eye was on her.

“
I guess that’s it,” Jill
said.

“
No, it’s not.” Steve
yelled from the back of the room.

“
Oh.” Jill
nodded.

In her heart of hearts,
Jill had hoped Trevor would see their happy pictures and change his
mind. She let out a breath. He wasn’t going to change his
mind.

Megan was right, as
always.

Trevor only saw dollar
signs.

Lowering her head to cover
her last hope exploding in her heart, she unbuttoned her shirt.
Reaching into her shirt, she retrieved a folded piece of paper.
Candy gave her the long-stemmed, white rose.

“
This is our wedding
present to you, Trevor.” Her eyes full of tears, Jill’s voice
caught on the words. “We terminated your parental rights. You’re
not Katy’s daddy anymore.”

“
No, Jill. No.” Trevor
shook his head back and forth as his voice rose in desperation.
“No, you can’t do that.”

“
You haven’t even seen her
in six months!”

“
I . . .”

“
It’s done,” Jill said.
“You signed the papers when Mike had you sign the financial
papers.”

“
Then it’s legal,” the
lawyer in the back of the room yelled.

“
We’re leaving, which
means you high-class people don’t have low people to serve your
dinner or your drinks or even play in your band. Pete said if you
bring your invitation to the Pete’s Kitchen on Colfax, he’ll feed
you dinner as a freedom present to me.”

“
Good luck, Trevor,” Jill
said.

She gave Trevor the rose,
and she couldn’t resist the magnetic draw of him. She kissed his
lips. He moved to draw her deeper, his lips pulling at hers, but
she shifted away from him.

“
I’m not yours to kiss
anymore. No matter how much I love you . . .” Her
voice, barely above a whisper, caught and tears dropped. “You chose
someone else. I had nine wonderful years with my soul mate. That’s
more than most people have in a lifetime. I have no right to
complain.”

She put her hand on his
chest and she nodded.

“
Good night.”

As she embarked on a hip
swinging trip across the floor, someone clapped. She looked over to
see Jacob, then his father clapping. The rich people began to cheer
for Jill. She blushed and left the room.

“
That’s the girl, isn’t
it?” Jacob’s dad asked.

Jacob nodded.

“
She is very much like
your mother.”

Jacob watched Jill through
the glass wall as she rode the escalator down from the Seawell
Ballroom.

“
She’s really just
herself.”

“
You are a damned fool if
you don’t snatch up that woman,” his father said under his breath.
His weeping daughter came over to him.

“
Now, sugar,” he said. “I
told you not to gloat about stealing someone else’s
man.”

“
But
Daddy . . .”

~~~~~~~~

2 weeks later

“
He’s been here every
night,” Candy said to Jill. They met in motion behind the counter
at Pete’s Kitchen.

“
So?” Jill replied.
Leaning through the cook’s window, she pointed at the check.
“Jos
é
, can you
make sure those hash browns are a little crispy?”

“
You should talk to him,”
Candy continued. She filled two coffee mugs and walked toward the
floor.

“
I told you, Candy. He’s
in love with some married girl.” Jill called after her.

Candy shook her head. She
was almost to the booth when she turned back to Jill. “Go talk to
him.”

Jill straightened her
bright pink uniform with its little white apron and walked over
toward Jacob. He was reading the newspaper at the counter. He
looked up to watch her walk over to him.

“
What’s up?”

“
I was wondering if you
would marry me, but I’d take a date or a conversation or maybe
another kiss.” Jacob’s face flushed with emotion. “How was that?
I’ve been practicing.”

“
Very smooth,” Jill
replied. “What about the married girl?”

“
What married
girl?”

“
The one you’re in love
with?”

“
Oh, her. She’s
divorced.”

Jill sat down on the
barstool next to him.

“
Why aren’t you with her?”
She knocked him with her shoulder. “You should go get
her.”

Jacob’s eyes held Jill’s.
In one fluid movement, he kissed her lips. Surprised, Jill pulled
back to look at him again.

“
You okay, Jill?” A beefy
cook appeared across the counter. He scowled at Jacob.

“
Yeah, Risto. Thanks. I’m
okay.”

Jill smiled at Risto. He
leaned into Jacob and Jacob sat back on his stool.

When the cook turned away
from them, Jill asked, “I’m the girl?”

“
From the moment I laid
eyes on you nine years ago.” Jacob nodded.

Blushing bright red, Jill
looked away from Jacob.

“
I’m not very lucky at
love. But I guess you know that,” she said. “I promised myself —
well, and Megan — that I wouldn’t ever even date again, let alone
fall in love.”

“
Give me one chance. We
don’t even have to call it a date. In fact, it won’t be a date. I
can take you to a movie or . . .”

“
I’d like to go to the
zoo.”

“
What if I take you and
Katy to the zoo tomorrow?”

Jill blushed.

“
I don’t know. I’ve read
it’s not good for babies to have other men around. But I can’t
really afford to take her, so . . .”

“
No romance, no
hanky-panky, no date. Just the zoo. Well, maybe some lunch and the
zoo.” Jacob held his hand out for her to shake.

“
Lunch and the zoo sounds
like a date, but okay.” Jill shook his hand.

“
When do you get
off?”

“
In an hour,” Jill
said.

“
Can I take you home? I
mean, in my truck . . . I know you walk to work. Or
we could walk. I mean, it would be great if you would let me take
you to my home, but I don’t want to be too
forward . . . move too fast or
. . .”

Jill laughed. Walking back
to her station, she said, “Sure.”

The non-date looms

“
Four more
hours.”

Jacob tapped his alarm
clock to make sure it was working. In four hours, seven minutes,
and thirty seconds, he would pick up Jill and Katy for a trip to
the zoo.

Sick of staring at the
ceiling, Jacob got out of bed. Sarah, his three-year-old yellow
Labrador retriever, lifted her head from the covers to watch him
walk across the wood floors to the bathroom. Sarah’s tail thumped a
rhythm against the bed when he returned. He wandered across the
open space to the refrigerator. Retrieving a bottle of cold water,
he plopped down in a sagging armchair. The pre-dawn light greeted
him through the ancient leaded glass windows. Sarah wandered over
to him.

“
Okay, I’m nervous,” Jacob
said.

Sarah shook her entire
body and barked one sharp bark.

“
You’re absolutely right,”
Jacob said.

Pushing himself from the
armchair, he went to his closet to dress. A few miles pounding the
pavement would help. He could burn at least an hour running in City
Park.

Then what?

Jacob and Sarah jogged
down the long flight of stairs from his third-floor attic apartment
to the front door. Sarah sat while Jacob fumbled with the door,
then with the security door. Like a gentleman, he held the door for
Sarah. She romped to the slip of grass lining the flagstone
sidewalk. Jacob locked the doors and then stretched while Sarah
finished her business.

Turning on his heart rate
monitor, Jacob noticed he had wasted another fifteen minutes. He
groaned at his own impatience. He had waited nine years to even
talk to Jill, and today . . .

Unable to finish the
thought, he whistled for Sarah. Passing through the iron gate, they
set off down Race Street. They walked one short block. Turning
right onto Sixteenth Avenue, they took off toward East High School.
Jacob and Sarah fell into a slow, time-burning jog to warm up. They
made their way down the City Park Esplanade. Nodding to the grand
lady of the Thatcher Fountain, they ran into the park.

The exertion helped
unravel his anxious mind. As his feet worked the pavement, his mind
drifted to memories of Jill.

His mother, Celia, and her
best friend, Delphie, had gone to Pete’s Kitchen every Friday night
after their Herbs and Arts spiritual group. They prayed for Celia’s
health from six to ten and then celebrated with pancakes, eggs, and
sausage. A professional tarot reader, Delphie read the cards one
night and said his mother would meet someone significant. Celia
joked that she would meet a handsome man who would fill her last
year on earth.

They met Jill.

Jill had just started
working at Pete’s Kitchen. She was young, bright, and always
smiling. His mother and Delphie watched her blossom. Jill used to
tell Celia and Delphie that they were replacements for her mother.
Like good surrogate mothers, they bought the puppy Scooter as a
wedding present.

Every Saturday morning,
Mom and Delphie regaled Jacob with Jill’s latest adventure. From
arguments with Trevor over having a baby to whether or not she
should quit high school, Jacob had a ring-side view of the infamous
Jill’s life. That’s what he called her, ‘the infamous
Jill.’

But Jacob couldn’t care
less.

Freaked out by his
family’s implosion, he focused on playing high school sports,
getting laid, and partying with his friends. Sure, he moved into
his mother’s three-story money pit, which he called “the Castle.”
Yes, he knew that cancer ate the very core of his mother. Of
course, he went to visit his father’s sec-witch-ary’s day-old
infant.

These family matters were
simply a break between sports, sex, and friends. See the
sec-witch-ary’s baby, start as a safety for the East High Angels
and trounce their arch-rivals Montbello High. Go with Mom for
chemo, go get laid later. At eighteen-years-old, Jacob was
handsome, popular, and completely self-absorbed.

Turning up Twenty-Third
Avenue to run the steep incline of the Park Hill Golf Course, Jacob
remembered the day he met the ‘infamous Jill.’

The doctor told his mother
she wouldn’t see Easter. In response, his sister refused to return
from UCLA for her “fucked up family.” Of course, his parents’
divorce was final, so Dad was marrying his
sec-witch-ary.

And Jacob tore his ACL
playing weekend warrior Ultimate Frisbee. Surgery and rehab kept
him off the track field that spring. Angry and bored, Jacob filled
dumpster after dumpster with Castle junk. Pulling up moldy carpet,
Jacob realized the carpet continued into an almost hidden room.
Jacob yanked, pulled, and pushed his way into a gorgeous,
birch-paneled office space.

Climbing roses and
Virginia creeper, covered the leaded windows, giving the room a
green cave-like feel. Bright birch peaked through decades of dust
on the floor and the bookshelves lining the walls. After a week of
cleaning and filling the shelves with cut flowers, he and Delphie
moved his frail mother’s hospital bed into the gorgeous room. To
celebrate, they all walked to Pete’s Kitchen.

Now Jacob racked his
brain. He didn’t remember the walk to Pete’s, the wait for a table,
or even what he ate. He only remembered Jill. Jill was so excited
to see his mother and Delphie that she never looked at him. Her
hair was short, her hips were round,
and . . .

Was it love? That’s what
he called it now.

His mother never left the
house again. After her death, he couldn’t handle her favorite
restaurant, Pete’s Kitchen. He graduated from high school and left
Denver forever. Or so he thought.

He picked the farthest
college away from Denver, Bowdoin College in Maine. As he had
during high school, he played sports during the school year and
worked as a carpenter in the summers.

But he remembered the
girl. That amazing girl.

He spent time with a lot
of girls, but no woman held his attention for long. His last
girlfriend told him he was haunted and should “get help.” It wasn’t
until he moved back into the Castle and started playing midnight
hockey that he saw Jill again. She was pregnant, exhausted, and
more beautiful than he remembered.

And today he was going to
spend the day with Jill and Katy.