The Turning Season (6 page)

Oh, but someone's sitting at the table, watching my approach. Ryan. I feel my heart give a traitorous leap; I feel my blood, briefly, turn to glitter in my veins. But I manage to mold my expression into one of muted pleasure, the look you might wear any time you unexpectedly encountered an old friend with whom you shared a long but casual history.

He stands up at my approach so he can give me a chaste kiss on the forehead, but I feel his lips burn against my skin. I manage to be smiling when he straightens up and grins down at me. Ryan is slim but muscular, with a runner's build. No matter what he wears, even a T-shirt and jeans, he manages to produce an air of relaxed elegance. His sandy brown hair is streaked with sun. It's straight and cut short except for the strands that fall into his eyes with a boyish charm. He looks like he should be modeling yachting attire for a J.Crew catalog, except he's not quite pretty enough. His skin's a little rough, his nose has been broken, his front teeth are slightly crooked. And there's an expression deep in his blue eyes that makes you think, if he wanted to, he could beat up all the other sailors on the boat and pitch them overboard without a moment's remorse.

There's just enough of a break between songs for us to exchange a snatch of conversation.

“Celeste told me you guys were going to be here tonight,” he says. “I thought I'd come say hi.”

“You look good,” I say.

“You look really sexy,” he replies. “I have to think Celeste picked out your clothes.”

“Asshole,” I say in a pleasant voice, and we both laugh.

“Those were two different statements,” he clarifies. “You look sexy
and
I think Celeste picked out your clothes. You'd look sexy in a tracksuit.”

“So how've you been?” I ask.

“Good. Traveling a little. Just got back from Denver a couple days ago.”

“What's in Denver?”

Before he can answer, the band launches into another song. Ryan smiles and spreads his hands apologetically, and I nod and shrug. He points to the pitcher and raises his eyebrows.
Can I have some?
I don't see a clean glass on the table, so I pour more beer into my own glass and hand it over. He drinks the whole thing straight down, then leans over to shout in my ear.

“I'm going to get another one! You want anything?”

“Can I just have some ice water?” I shout back.

He rolls his eyes, but nods, unsurprised. While he fights his way through the crowd toward the bar, I munch on the pretzels the waitress left on the table. They're stale.

Ryan returns a few minutes later, trailed by our waitress, whose tray is loaded down with another pitcher of beer, two glasses of water, and a plate that holds a burger and fries. Ryan puts his lips to my ear and says, “Wanna split it? I'm hungry, but not that hungry.”

“I'm
starving
,” I exclaim. “Thank you!”

We share the food, nudge each other a few times to point out people we think look particularly ridiculous on the dance floor, and trade a few other unimportant observations the next two times there's a break in the music. I'm trying to decide if this is the most uncomfortable half hour of my life when Celeste and the blondes return to the table. Celeste throws her arms around Ryan and gives him a big kiss, which he enthusiastically returns.

“Denver International Airport,” she demands. “What gate did you fly out of?”

He squints, trying to remember. “B22.”

“So did I!” she cries. “Last time I was there! But they changed it at the last minute from B11, so I practically had to
run
down the terminal.”

“That's exactly what happened to me!”

“Oh my God, you two are
almost the same person
!” I say.

Ryan grins and Celeste mouths the word “bitch” at me. One of the other women says, “It
is
spooky how much they're alike.”

He turns to her with a warm smile. “Hey, Rain,” he says, or at least I think that's what he says. Rain? Her name is
Rain
? That's worse than Karadel. “You look good.”

She giggles. “So do you.”

The band plunges into some weird techno piece with a throbbing beat, and Ryan holds his arm out to Rain, a questioning look on his face. She nods and they head to the dance floor, where they instantly begin energetic gyrations. It might be my imagination that the other two blondes wear envious expressions as they watch them go.

Celeste's attention has been caught by something else. She pokes one of her friends and nods at a table a few yards away. I can read her lips as she asks,
Who's that?
But I can't hear what the girl shouts to her over the pulse of the music. I follow Celeste's gaze to see who looks so interesting.

He's pretty easy to pick out. He's a long, lean guy resting his long, lean body against the table, his back to it, his elbows on the edge. He's wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, cowboy boots, and a leather belt with a big buckle in the shape of a longhorn bull. His hair is as black as Alonzo's, but straight, a little shaggy, and his face has that fallen-angel beauty that instantly lets you know he's trouble. You can almost see the sad little clattering shells of broken hearts trailing behind him and curled around his ankles in a forlorn heap.

Just the type Celeste likes.

There are two others at the table with him, people I vaguely recognize. One's a local guy, kind of a troublemaker. He owns a junkyard off of 159 on the opposite side of town, and he's always being cited for some kind of property-law infraction. He's not as handsome as the stranger, but they look enough alike that I guess they might be brothers. The woman at the table, I think, is the junker's wife. She's dressed in a black shirt that's as low-cut and clingy as mine, she's wearing a lot of makeup, and she doesn't look happy to be here. I can sympathize.

From Celeste's expression, I think she's trying to figure out a way to introduce herself to the new guy, but it's a little too early in the evening for her to simply walk up and ask him to dance. I wouldn't bet against that happening within the hour, though. Right now, she just watches him for a few meditative moments while she sips at her beer. Then she sets the glass on the table and heads to the dance floor, the other blondes in her wake.

I finish up the French fries, watch the dancers, drink the last of my water, and wish I was at home by myself with my dog and my DVDs. When the next song is equally loud and has an even heavier beat, I stand up and head toward the door for some cool air and a break from the sensory overload. No one who knows me will be surprised that I have briefly left the scene.

I step outside and take a deep breath. The scents of asphalt, diesel fuel, and back-alley trash clog the air, but I still perk up a little just at the contrast. Why did I let Celeste talk me into this? If we had brought
my
car to the Square, I could just drive home now. Surely Ryan or Rain or perhaps the handsome stranger would take Celeste home. Surely there is no reason for me to spend another minute in this place, in this town. In fact, at the moment I can't think of a reason I'd ever need to come into the city of Quinville again.

“Hey,” says a man's voice behind me, and I spin around, electrified with a moment of terror. The bulky shadow moves into the light and I recognize Joe the bouncer.

“Sorry, didn't mean to scare you,” he says.

I give a shaky laugh and pat my throat. “I didn't mean to overreact. I just didn't realize you were here.”

“Till the place closes,” he says. “Two
A.M.
”

“God, I hope I'm gone long before that.” My voice is glum. I wouldn't be surprised if Celeste plans to stay till every light in the Square goes out.

“You're not having a good time?” he asks.

“I'm not much of a party girl,” I confess. “I don't really like bars. I only came here tonight because—well—I mean, you have to get out of the house
sometime
.”

He nods, like that's a reasonable statement. “I like bars, but the dark, smoky, quiet kinds. You know, where you sit and have a beer and talk to someone. Maybe play darts or watch the ball game.”

“So if you don't like places like Arabesque, why are you working here?”

He shrugs and perches on the edge of his high stool. I have the distinct feeling he sits so he doesn't seem like such a large and menacing presence, which makes me warm to him even more. Although, of course, he might just be tired.

“Needed a job and this was a job I could do,” he says.

I lean against the brick wall of the building, which still holds heat from the day's unexpectedly high temperatures. Now Joe and I are face-to-face and both of us are in enough light that we can see each other's expressions. “I wouldn't think being a bouncer at a dance club would pay enough to cover the rent,” I say.

“No,” he acknowledges. “I do some other part-time stuff. A buddy of mine runs a trucking company, so I drive some routes when he needs help. Over the summer I worked a few hours on the night shift at Home Depot.”

It all sounds kind of aimless, not to say shiftless, but he strikes me as a generally more solid type. “You ever give any thought to a more permanent kind of job?” I ask.

He grins. “Well, yeah. All the time. I just haven't figured it out yet.”

I laugh. “What did you do before you moved to Quinville?”

“I was a cop up in Joliet.”

That widens my eyes because that certainly seems like a nice, upstanding sort of career. “Why'd you quit?” I have a terrible thought. “Or—”
Get fired.
“Never mind.”

“They didn't kick me out, if that's what you're thinking.”

“Sorry.”

“I liked being a cop. Maybe I was a little too idealistic at the beginning, but I thought we were doing some good. I liked going to the high schools, talking to the kids. I didn't like being the first one on the scene at car accidents and murder scenes, but I figured that was part of the job.”

Clearly there's a major “but” coming. I wait.

He shrugs again. “My partner shot and killed a guy. He was shooting at us, it was self-defense, my partner was cleared of wrongdoing and back on the job right away. But I—” Joe shakes his head. “I realized I couldn't do it. I couldn't take aim with my gun and kill a human being. And when you're a cop, you have to be prepared to take a life. So I turned in my badge.”

The story makes me like him even more. I'm all in favor of less killing, but there doesn't seem to be a way to say that that doesn't sound hokey. “And why'd you leave Joliet for Quinville?”

“Well, there wasn't a reason to stay in Joliet anymore,” he replies.The way he says it makes me think something besides the job had gone sour. A relationship, maybe. “And my buddy said I could drive for him till I figured out what else to do, so Quinville seemed as good a place as any.”

“And has it been?”

His round face creases into an expression of equivocation. “I guess it could be,” he says. “But so far I kind of feel like I'm just marking time.”

I can understand that. I'm familiar with the sensation of being poised on the edge of tomorrow, always anticipating the big event that will give shape and meaning to the following days. “Yeah, but you know what they say. Life is what happens while you're waiting for life to happen.”

He wrinkles his nose in dissent. “I always thought that was kind of dumb.”

I laugh. “Well, my
point
is, you shouldn't waste too much time, or it will all be gone before you've accomplished anything.”

“Thanks for the cheerful thought.”

“Yeah, you can see why I'm not exactly the type of person to be hanging out at bars frittering my time away.”

“So what about you?” he asks. “What brought you to Quinville? Or were you born here?”

The true story would pop the eyes right out of his head, but I can tell a well-honed variant. “Nope, I grew up in Barrington. Kind of a ritzy suburb outside of Chicago. My dad was an art dealer and he was always going to little small-town art gallery openings, trying to find the next, I don't know, Thomas Hart Benton or John Singer Sargent. And a few years ago, he went to a gallery in Champaign and met an artist named Cooper Blair, and he
loved
his stuff. So my dad started repping him, and our families became friends. Cooper lived with Janet, who ran a veterinary clinic off of Highway W. I used to spend summers working with her, and then I took classes, and then I took over the business when Janet decided to retire.” I shake my head, as if I'm still surprised by the vagaries of life. “I mean, I never would have thought I'd be happy living out in the middle of
nowhere
, but I find the life suits me.”

“You don't miss the big city?”

“Well, Barrington's pretty far out from downtown Chicago. It's not like I was down at the Loop every night, anyway.”

“Do you go back much? Visit your family?”

“My parents are both dead.”

His face instantly changes. “Aw, I'm sorry to hear that. That must be tough.”

I nod and don't answer. Because of course it's tough. I still miss my father every day; he was such a large, powerful presence in my life. Smart and forceful and utterly determined. Once he set his sights on something, he invariably achieved it. He's the one who convinced Janet to open the clinic here—he picked out the property, he paid for it, he helped furnish it. He believed that our small circle of shape-shifting friends needed a haven, a place where they could come for rest and healing, and he was going to see that place built if he had to put it together with his own hands.

Well. He really thought
I
needed a refuge. I was in my hormone-fueled teens then, and taking on bigger and wilder shapes every few days, and he was deeply afraid for me. Barrington isn't downtown Chicago, that's true, but it's a highly developed urban setting, and it's hard to hide an elephant on your back lawn. He was happy enough to found a clinic for the shape-shifting community at large, but he would not rest until he built a place where I could live in safety. I think the first time I ever saw him relax was the day Janet officially opened her doors to clients.