The Turning Season (13 page)

Joe scoops up the ball and lobs it to Alonzo, who's already in place at the top of the key. “Play to twenty?”

“Sure,” Alonzo says. He rises to his tiptoes and throws a graceful perfect curve that makes no sound as it clears the rim.

“Son of a bitch,” Joe says.

And Alonzo laughs.

I'm still in shock at that unexpected sound when I hear much more familiar noises behind me—tires crunching through the gravel, a car door slamming. I tear my eyes away from the action to see Bonnie striding away from her station wagon and over in our direction. Her eyes are fixed on Joe with such intensity that I'm surprised he hasn't lost all ability to concentrate on the game. I move to intercept her and we end up standing about ten feet away from the court.

“Who's that?” she asks in a low voice.

“Joe McGinty,” I say, grateful that I learned his last name as I was filling out Jezebel's paperwork. “I met him last week, and today he brought his dog out for me to look over.”

“Yes, but who
is
he?” she demands.

What she means is,
Can I trust him with Alonzo?
And, honestly, I don't know. I like his smile. I like his mix of openness and humor and insight. I like his tenderness with his old Lab and his playfulness with the young puppies, because I'm predisposed to think well of anyone who loves animals. I like that he flirts with me and makes me feel fizzy as a dropped can of soda. But none of that would offer any reassurance to Bonnie.

“He's a bouncer at a club in the Square. Used to be a cop in Joliet,” I say. “He's lived here about a year, holds down a couple of jobs. But I don't have any other details.”

She nods briskly. She's never taken her eyes off him, and now she strides forward again, clearly intent on disrupting the game. Alonzo has just called out “eight-four” and received the ball back from Joe, but as soon as Bonnie stalks up, he stops all motion and merely waits.

“Good afternoon,” she greets Joe in a neutral tone of voice. “I'm Bonnie Logan, Alonzo's foster mother. And you are?”

He offers her his hand, which seems to disarm her a little. “Joe McGinty,” he replies. “Nice to meet you. My buddy and I coach in a basketball league at the Y, and I was just asking Alonzo if he might want to try out. We have our first practice for the season this Friday night.”

She makes no pretense at subtlety. Well, I'm not sure subtlety is a skill Bonnie has ever mastered. “Certainly, if he's interested, but not until I know more about
you
,” she says. “Why are you coaching young boys? How do I know there's not something
wrong
about you?”

Alonzo bounces the ball exactly once.
“Bonnie,”
he says in a choked voice.

I'm sort of amused that even Alonzo can be embarrassed by a parent, or someone who's acting in that capacity, but Bonnie doesn't glance his way. “All kinds of sick and twisted men take jobs as priests and coaches and youth advisors just so they can get close to children. I will
not
have a pervert around my kid.”

Now Alonzo looks down at the ground, shaking his head, but I think I can see the ghost of a smile on his face. I think it's the phrase
my kid
. It pleases him. Someone claiming him, someone fighting for him. It's something he might never get used to.

Not looking remotely offended, Joe nods and assumes a serious expression. “No, you're right, you can't be too careful,” he says. “We meet at the Y, and there are always two adults with each team at all times, and no adult is allowed to be alone with one of the players. If you want to have a private conversation with one of the kids, you have to do it where everyone can see you, even if they can't overhear.”

“Who's the other coach?” she asks.

“Mark Carson. He owns Carson's Trucking, has two boys who are going to play on the team.”

Bonnie relaxes a little. “I know Mark. His oldest daughter was in some of my classes when I was teaching middle school.”

“I think he'd vouch for me,” Joe adds.

Her gaze sharpens again. “Why do you
want
to be coaching young boys?” she asks. “Do you have kids of your own?”

Joe scratches the back of his head. I don't think he's at a loss, exactly, he just hasn't had to articulate his reasons before. “Mark asked me last year if I wanted to be his assistant. I hadn't lived in Quinville that long, I was kind of bored, I know a little bit about basketball, and I thought it might be fun,” he says. “And I didn't have anything else lined up for Friday nights and I wanted to do something but sit home and feel sorry for myself. All of that still holds true
this
year. And no, no kids. Not yet.”

“Well—it sounds all right,” Bonnie says grudgingly. “If Alonzo's interested.”

Everyone looks Alonzo's way. He handles the pressure by keeping his eyes down and dribbling the basketball a couple times. “Sure,” he says offhandedly. “Might be fun to try.”

“You know Mark's youngest boy, what's his name?” Bonnie says.

“Dillon,” Joe supplies.

Alonzo nods. “He's cool.”

“And you practice at the Y on Friday nights?”

“Yes, ma'am. Seven
P.M
. Practice is scheduled to last two hours. There's an ice cream place next door, and last year we'd all go over afterward to get a cone. But you can pick him up right at nine, if you'd rather.”

“We'll see how it goes,” Bonnie says. “Thank you for including us.” She holds out an arm as if collecting Alonzo. “Go get your things. Aurelia's making dinner and you've got lessons tonight. Time to get going.”

Alonzo nods, makes a bounce pass to Joe and says, “See ya,” as he heads toward the house. A few minutes later, they've bundled themselves into Bonnie's car, waved good-bye, and set out for Quinville.

Not until then do I trust myself to speak. “I suppose I should apologize for her rudeness,” I begin.

“She wasn't rude,” Joe interrupts. “More parents and guardians ought to be that—that
fierce
when they're sending their children off to be with strangers. Might save a lot of heartache down the road.”

I glance up at him and find his expression perfectly sincere. “I think Bonnie would be that protective of any child who fell under her care, but Alonzo's a special case,” I say. “I don't want to go into the details, but he was badly abused. And if Bonnie has anything to say about it,
nothing
bad will ever happen to that boy again.”

“I liked her,” he said.

I smile. “She's one of my favorite people in the world.”

He smiles back, but the expression is speculative. “So is she that protective of
you
?” he asks. “Can I expect another inquisition if she thinks we're dating?”

I'm surprised into a laugh. “No, it's Aurelia you'd have to watch out for then. Her partner.”

I see him register the fact that Bonnie's gay, but he merely nods. Just another piece to fit into the human puzzle, another stray bit of information to help explain the world. “Well, it's good to know you have somebody watching out for you. Everybody should.”

“Do you?” I ask.

He whistles and pats his thigh, and the black Lab trots over and lifts her head to be petted. “I have Jezebel,” he says.

“I meant, someone who could visit you in the hospital if you ended up in traction.”

He laughs. “Sure, the whole family would caravan down from Joliet if they thought I needed something. Otherwise they leave me to my own devices.”

I'm dying to ask if any of them would interrogate a new girlfriend, should he happen to acquire one, but I don't know if he's looking for a girlfriend or if I'd want to be that girl if he was. So I leave the words unsaid.

Instead I glance at the sky as if I am trying to judge the passage of time by the angle of the sun. “It's getting late,” I say. “Should I invite you in for something to eat or—”

“Nah, I need to get back,” he says. “I'm doing a short run for Mark up to Chicago tomorrow, and I need to get organized.”

I'm half relieved and half disappointed. It's been such a chaotic afternoon that I need a little solitude to review it and decide what I think about my several visitors. But I'm not nearly tired of spending time with Joe.

“Well, travel safely,” I say. “And I'll see you Saturday.”

He grins down at me. “Can't wait.”

I
e-mail Celeste to tell her I have a date for Saturday night because that's a rule we established long ago: Never go out with a strange man without telling your best friend who might have slit your throat when you turn up dead. I can't keep up with Celeste's dizzying assortment of boyfriends, but I do always save the e-mails she sends with the relevant information, only deleting them once she's dropped that particular guy from her life.

Practically the moment I hit send, my phone rings. It's Celeste, of course, wanting to discuss my wardrobe options, but I steadfastly refuse to let her bully me into wearing something from her closet. I also won't tell her where we're meeting for dinner because I don't want her “accidentally” running into us while we're at Paddy-Mac's, something she's entirely capable of.

“Honestly, you'd think I'd never gone out with a guy before in my life,” I complain as she starts giving me advice about topics to avoid and precautions to take.

“Well, gee, let's see. How many people have you dated in the past five years? Two?
Including
Ryan?”

“Three. You're forgetting Luke.”

“Who—oh, the shape-shifter dude who looked like your dad.”

“He did
not
look like my dad!”

“Well, he was at least ten years older than you.”

I shake my head. “Hanging up now. I'll call you sometime Sunday.”

“Not too early. I'm going out with Rain and some of the other girls Saturday night.”

“Celeste. I would
never
call you early on a Sunday morning.”

I hear the laugh in her voice. “Have fun.”

*   *   *

S
aturday morning I feed and water all the animals, clear out my e-mail, completely discard the outfit I had decided to wear and put together an entirely new ensemble, which I also discard after lunch. This is ridiculous; my guess is that Joe won't even
notice
what I have on, so any carefully calibrated nuance of presentation will be wasted on him. But the high-necked white turtleneck seems too virginal, the tight black cashmere sweater too come-hither, the red blouse with the denim vest too hoedown, the twin-set too librarian. And I'm
not
wearing a dress and pumps to a pub. In the end, I go back to the black sweater, but cover it up with a casual jacket, and complete the look with black jeans and a pair of boots. I do change belts three times, and necklaces twice, but in the end I'm reasonably satisfied with my appearance.

Before I leave, I track down Daniel, lying in his usual morose state in the barn. I crouch down by him and lift his muzzle so his eyes meet mine and I can be certain he hears me.

“I'm going into town,” I tell him. “My
plan
is to come back tonight, but if I die on the road, you have to shift into human shape and feed everybody. You got that?”

He beats his tail once against the floor, wearily, then yawns in my face. I take that as a yes. “See you later,” I tell him, and then I'm on my way.

I've allowed way more time than I need to get to town, so the sun is still shining mightily as I speed down the empty expanse of W and turn onto the more crowded lanes of 159. I'm happy—I'm actually dancing in my seat a little when the oldies station plays a Go-Go's song. I laugh out loud when “Footloose” comes on. It seems like a sign.

I kill time at Walmart when it turns out I'm forty-five minutes early, but even so I'm parked and walking into Paddy-Mac's about ten minutes before the hour. I like the place the minute I step inside. It's mostly dark paneling and low lighting augmented with a few neon brewery signs, but it has a warm, welcoming vibe to it, a little rumpled, a little mischievous. It makes you feel like it should be easy to have a good time here.

I hadn't even looked for Joe's truck on the nearby streets, so I'm surprised to find him already at a booth, nursing a beer and perusing a magazine. I slip into the seat across from him before he realizes I'm even in the restaurant. “What is that,
Guns & Ammo
?” I say in a teasing tone.

He looks up, a smile breaking across his face. I can hardly describe how good it makes me feel to know that someone is so delighted to see me. “No,
Soldier of Fortune
,” he retorts.

“I'm not sure I know what that is.”

He laughs. “All about mercenary soldiers and militia for hire.”

I feel my eyes widen. “
Really?
That's what you're reading?”

He holds it up so I can see the cover.
Consumer Reports.
“Just joking. Though I
have
leafed through the occasional copy of
Guns & Ammo
.”

A young waitress has materialized at our table. She's got dyed red hair pulled back in a ponytail, a fleur-de-lys tattoo on each wrist, and three silver hoops in each earlobe. She's wearing a hand-lettered name tag that says
RACHEL
; it's decorated with ink drawings of cats. I like it that Paddy-Mac's doesn't make its employees conform to a conservative dress code. “Can I get you something to drink?” she asks.

“Definitely,” I say in a faint voice. “Something with alcohol. Beer or—I don't know.”

“This is our first week to offer a new hard cider, and it's been pretty popular so far,” Rachel answers.

“Oh, that sounds good. I'll have that.”

She drops off a food menu and heads back to the kitchen. Joe and I regard each other across the table.

“So how've you been?” he asks. “In the—let's see, seventy-two hours since I've seen you last?”

“Good. Nothing too exciting has happened in the past three days, though, so we'll have to talk about the way more distant past if you're hoping I'll say anything entertaining.”

“Nothing exciting has happened to
you
, maybe,” he says. “But
my
life has been full of drama.”

I laugh and settle back against the padded bench. “Do tell! How was your trip to Chicago?”

“Not bad until I got on the Dan Ryan Expressway to find traffic at a dead standstill. Some big accident just off the highway. Three hours, just sitting there, nobody moving an inch. Drivers started getting out of their cars and talking to the people around them. Sharing food, sharing water bottles. I think I saw one couple meet, fall in love, and decide to get married while we were all just waiting.”

“Sounds horrible.”

“It was that,” he agrees. “On the other hand, none of us were dead, and it turned out that six people died in the crash. So it was hard to be too upset after we heard that.”

“Well, now I'm depressed.”

“Sorry,” he says. “That was meant to be more of an I'm-grateful story than a life-sucks story.”

The waitress brings my cider, which is amazingly good. When she recommends the beef stew and biscuits for dinner, I instantly agree. Clearly this girl knows what she's talking about.

When she leaves, I pick up the conversation exactly where we left it. “I try to do the grateful thing instead of the bitter thing,” I say. “When I have a bad day—when I'm worried about money—when things just go wrong, I try to count up all the ways I'm lucky. It helps me shake off the mood.”

“Living in America in the twenty-first century,” he says instantly. “Running water, penicillin, and the Internet.”

“I usually count up more specific blessings,” I say. “Good friends, a wonderful house, and work I love.”

“Good health,” he adds. I nod, but inwardly disagree. I'm
not
thankful for my body, and that's the truth; I feel like I live with a severe disability that has shaped every single aspect of my life. Not that I'm planning to admit that to Joe at the moment.

He sips at his beer. “So what sorts of things put you in a bad mood?” he asks. “What makes a ‘bad day' for you?”

“Stupid things, usually,” I say. “Long lines, heavy traffic, ungrateful clients, automated voice menus when I'm trying to reach a live person, tax bills that I'm not expecting. Flat tires. Broken air conditioners. Dropped cell phone calls.” I take another swallow of the cider. I
love
this drink. “Like I said. Dumb stuff.”

He leans back and considers me for a moment. “Yeah, none of those seem all that terrible,” he says. “I have to think there's other things that bother you and you just don't want to talk about them.”

I pause with the cider bottle halfway to my mouth and regard him in silence. How would he react if I listed for him all the issues that really depress me, all the details that scare me and worry me and tear at my heart?
Turning into a wild animal in my father's backyard. Living in fear that someone will discover that I am living a lie. Seeing everyone I love die too young because shape-shifters have short and violent lives.

“Well, I guess we all have things that bother us that we don't like to talk about,” I say quietly. “I mean, what makes a bad day for
you
?”

“When I was on the force, it was seeing the awful things people could do to each other,” he answers readily enough. “Murders. Abuses. Stuff I sure don't want to talk about
now
when we're supposed to be having a nice conversation. These days— Well, if I read about some of those same things in the news, it'll get to me, but not as much. These days, what bothers me tends to be more personal. You know, what am I doing with my life, have I totally screwed it up, will I ever figure it out? That kind of stuff.”

“You don't
seem
to have totally screwed up your life, but I don't know what you left behind in Joliet,” I say cautiously.

“Busted marriage,” he says. “And a job I was good at, but couldn't take anymore.”

“I knew about the job,” I say. “I guessed about the marriage. What happened?”

He shrugs and looks away. “She wanted a bigger house and I didn't. She wanted to move to Chicago and I didn't. She wanted to go out five nights a week and I didn't. She was a lot
livelier
than me all the time, if you know what I mean. She used to say that she brightened me up and I steadied her down. But after a while I think she started feeling that I was
pulling
her down. Holding her back. I was a lump and she was a butterfly.”

I am listening sympathetically until the very last line, and then I have to strangle a laugh. “I'm guessing that's something she actually said to you.”

He nods. “Yeah, there was a lot of stuff along those lines, but that's the phrase that sticks in my head.”

“Well, so far you don't seem like a lump to
me
,” I say. “But I don't know you that well.”

“And you don't seem like a butterfly,” he replies. “Good as far as it goes.”

I've actually been a butterfly once, as it happens, and it was as carefree an existence as I can ever remember. But overall, I don't consider my transformations as some manifestation of my basic temperament. I'm just not that random and experimental. “What
do
I seem like?” I ask.

He studies me a moment, either trying to figure it out or trying to put it into words. “The high school valedictorian who turns out to be a racecar driver in her free time,” he answers. “You know, someone who works hard and is super responsible, but then turns out to have this really unexpected secret life.”

It's all I can do not to choke on my cider. He's got the specifics wrong, but he's dead on target in the general sense. “Wow, that makes me sound more interesting than I ever thought I was,” I reply.

“Oh, I think you're pretty interesting,” he says. “I figure the more I learn, the more interesting you'll get.”

That might be true, if I had any intention of letting him learn exactly what my secret life entails. “But we were talking about you,” I say, turning the subject. “And whether or not you've screwed up your life. What would you want to do if you were starting over?”

“Still working out that part,” he says. “In the meantime, I do odd jobs and hang out with friends and let the days go by.”

“And you coach basketball, too,” I remind him. “Speaking of that, did Alonzo come to practice last night?”

“He did.”

“How'd it go?”

“Not bad. He was pretty quiet—waited for me or Mark to tell him what to do, didn't trash talk with any of the other kids, kind of kept to himself. But he played pretty well and he seemed to enjoy himself and he said he'd be back next week, so I figured it was a win.”

“Did he go out for ice cream with everyone else?”

Joe shakes his head. “Nah. Bonnie came in with him and sat in the bleachers and watched us the whole time. I swear, she didn't blink once. Then she took him straight home afterward.”

I muffle a laugh. “Did any of the other parents stay during practice?”

“Sure. A half dozen, maybe. Though most of them were on their phones or their laptops instead of watching the kids play.”