The Promise of Paradise

Chapter Four


Ash tucked the Paradise Chronicle under one arm and locked her door. She skipped down the steps and then paused for a minute in front of Eddie’s apartment. Yesterday she’d passed it a few times as she carried the rest of her things upstairs, and it had only watched, a solid brown door with nothing but quiet behind it. Today, though, it studied Ash as she stood there. It hid possibilities, ones she wanted to know more about. Maybe I should say hello. Say thanks for last night. She raised her hand to knock.

He’s different somehow. She thought Eddie West would be like most other good-looking guys she'd known, interested in himself and not much else. A memory of fraternity brothers tossing around a football and grilling on the quad during her undergrad days flashed into her mind. Eddie looked like a Sigma Chi, strong and masculine, the kind of guy who dated a different girl each week and won over his professors’ hearts with a wink and a smile. Sigma Chi brothers didn’t date girls like Ashton; they asked them for class notes or directions to the library. Then on Friday nights, they shared their drinks and their beds with blushing sorority girls or dark-eyed, mysterious graduate assistants who drank port and read Eliot.

Eddie had mentioned that he’d gone to tech school for a couple of years, opting to work on cars full-time as soon as he turned twenty. Okay, so he wasn’t really like a Sigma Chi, not formally educated anyway. Still, there was something about him, something about the way he watched her with thoughtful eyes, that made Ash suspect he had more intellect and common sense than half the people she’d met at Harvard.

That’s why I have to be careful, keep my distance. I can’t let him find out who I am. I can’t let anyone.

She let her hand drop away from his door. He’d probably gone to work, anyway. She hadn’t heard him leave, but to her surprise she’d slept well, a long eight hours without waking once. Stepping onto the porch, she glanced down at the classified ads. She’d found three possibilities this morning and circled them in red ink, a declaration of her decision to stay in Paradise, at least for now. She’d figure out how to explain that to her parents when the time came.

“Waitress needed immediately for busy jazz club. Experience helpful but not necessary. Apply at Blues and Booze, 53 Main Street.”

Paradise had a jazz club? A busy one? Ash smiled. She’d spent a couple of years sloshing coffee at the campus java joint; did that count as experience? She left her car at the curb and decided to walk. Three blocks later, the numbers on Main Street crept from forty-one, Lana’s Plus Palace, to forty-five, a used bookstore, to forty-nine, Lou’s Sub Shop. Oh, right. Eddie mentioned this place last night.

Ash slowed and peered into Lou’s front window. A solitary cook in a stained white apron stood behind the counter, rolling dough. In front of him, a display case showed row upon row of deli meats, cheeses, and colorful salads. Her mouth watered, and she decided she’d stop by on her way back and pick up some lunch.

The sandwich shop sat on the corner of Adams Street, an alley barely wide enough for one car. Still, accustomed to busy Boston avenues, she glanced both ways before crossing it. On the other side, she found herself in front of a tall, narrow-fronted building with smoky windows. “Blues and Booze” read the neon sign above the door. She shaded her eyes. “Eleven to midnight,” announced a paper sign in the window. Someone had scrawled “Help wanted” beside the hours.

She checked her watch and reached for the doorknob.

“Hello?” The word echoed in the space and fell away. To her right, a long bar stretched halfway across the room, ending at a curved doorway. Beyond the arch of the doorway opened another, larger room, draped in shadows. Chairs sat upside down on tabletops, skeletons in the darkness. At the far end of the restaurant she spied a thin strip of yellow underneath yet another door.

“Hello?” she called again and took a few more steps inside. This time the door in the dining room swung open, and a thin figure emerged.

“We’re not open yet.” A male voice, hoarse and curt, broke the stillness.

“Oh.” She looked at her watch again. “I thought you opened at eleven.”

The man walked toward her. Narrow-faced, with a chapped nose and black eyes, he peered at Ash and coughed. A navy blue apron was tied over wrinkled khaki pants and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Yellow teeth crowded into a crooked row behind thin lips. Ash’s stomach crawled into her throat, and she took a step backwards.

This was a mistake. Definitely a mistake. She wasn’t cut out for a job in a place like this, a pampered girl from Boston’s west side, and she knew it. Who was she kidding? She’d call home this afternoon and ask for money, deal with her parents’ anger and disappointment somehow.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ll come back later.”

“No, wait,” he said, and this time his voice was kinder. “You here for the job?”

She hesitated.

“Listen, you got any experience at all, you’re hired. Hell, you don’t got any experience, I’ll probably hire you. Got no luck finding help in the summer when the college kids go home.” He untied his apron and tossed it onto the bar. “So?” He pulled himself onto a barstool, lit a cigarette and waited.

Ash took one more look around and swallowed what little pride still hid in her heart. “Yes, I’m here about the job.” She hoped he wouldn’t try to shake her hand in hello. She could only imagine where his had been. Thankfully, he only nodded and blew a long stream of smoke toward the ceiling.

“Great. You ever work in a restaurant before?”

“Sort of. I worked behind the counter at a coffee shop for a couple of years.”

The man took a long draw on his cigarette and considered. “Okay. What’s your name?”

“Ashley Kirtland.” It became a little easier, every day, to say the made-up name. “Ash.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask her for a reference. She could only ask Jen to lie for her so many times this week.

“Marty Evers. You want the job, come back at five tonight. I got another sorta-new girl, been here about two months. She’ll show you the ropes.” He sucked at the cigarette until it was a reddened stump between his fingers. “You available full time?”

Ash hadn’t thought about that. Did she really want to spend forty hours a week in this place? “Days or nights?”

“Some of both. Course, you make more money at night. Tips ain’t so good during the day.”

“That’s okay. Yeah, I’m available full time.” What the hell. It would keep her mind off the messiness of the rest of her life.

“Good.” Marty grabbed his apron and retreated back toward the kitchen. “Five o’clock,” he repeated.

“Five o’clock,” Ash agreed. She ran one finger along the dark wood of the bar. She needed a job. She needed to pay rent without asking her father for help or dipping into her trust fund. What difference did it make where she worked? It was only for a couple of months, anyway.

Your parents are going to kill you. Jen’s words, as clear as if her best friend had walked into the bar and stood beside her, echoed inside Ash’s conscience. It was true. A Kirk daughter, hauling trays of food around a seedy jazz club? She’d be the disgrace of the neighborhood if anyone found out back home. Well, maybe not. Her father had been filling that role the last few months. Not sure she could top his fiasco unless she started working the red light district.

Ash shook her head. That thought hurt, so she stopped it. Instead, she stepped into the sunshine and let the day cheer her.

* * *

A stop at Lou’s for pasta salad and tomato soup, and Ash returned home. Home. The word sounded funny inside her head. She stood in the middle of her living room and looked around. Last night, after Eddie left, she’d laid out her faded but beloved Oriental rug and hung two Monet prints on the wall above the couch. Already the place looked better. Warmer. Another throw rug in the hallway, and it might actually feel like her own space.

She ventured into the kitchen and gazed out the window. Should she? The roof beckoned her, sun-dappled and secret. Jen had been right. The bird’s eye porch was the best part of the apartment. Out there, she could escape. She could think. She could watch the world from above without it staring back at her. Ash grabbed a napkin along with her lunch and hauled herself across the sill.

The day was quiet, breathless in the heat. She watched the street for a while as she chewed, but nothing moved. Even Helen remained inside. Content for the first time in what seemed like forever, she allowed herself to relax.

God, she’d fallen apart when the news about her father broke. He’d tried to claim a set-up, a political framing, but how did you argue with the facts? A gram of cocaine in the glove box of his private Benz. A point-oh-nine on the breathalyzer test. Worst of all, a nineteen-year-old prostitute in the seat beside him, made up to look twenty-five but playing the lost little girl as soon as the first news camera appeared.

Her mother had defended him, as always. Ash finished her lunch and crumpled her napkin into a tiny ball. The space in the center of her chest ached. Was that what it meant to be a politician’s wife? Smiling for the camera and denying any wrongdoing? Ash had no intention of letting that happen to her. Ever. She’d be the politician, but never the passive wife, never standing at home while her husband ran around behind her back.

Hell, now she didn’t even want to be a politician. She’d spent her entire life watching how everyone, the people of Massachusetts, and the reporters themselves, had at first loved her father and then lambasted him. They worshipped him, put him into office with the biggest majority the state had seen in fifty years. And then they were the first ones to parade his mug shot across every television channel and newspaper in the city the moment he slipped up. Did she want a life like that for herself? No way.

Ash made her way back into the kitchen. She couldn’t think about it anymore. The sorrow and frustration would give her a migraine and land her in bed for two days. With a couple of hours until she had to return to Blues and Booze, maybe she’d attack the mold growing behind her toilet. That chore might be disgusting enough to take her mind off all the problems back home.

Someone knocked on her door, and Ash froze. Oh, God. They found me. The media followed me to Paradise and now they want a statement. With a hearing scheduled for later this summer, the story would be building again, after the relative calm of the last few weeks. She eyed the door. She’d thought New Hampshire was far enough away, but who knew what those vultures were capable of? They’d camped outside her apartment in Cambridge until Colin called the police. Of course, that was when he’d still lived there. When he still cared. She hugged her elbows. All she wanted was to be left alone. Was that too much to ask?

She tiptoed to the door and looked through the peephole. Eddie. Thank God. She pulled open the door in relief.

“Hi.”

Today her downstairs neighbor wore jeans and a faded red T-shirt with the words “Frank’s Imports” across the pocket. His feet were bare. He lifted the edge of his shirt to wipe his forehead, and Ash caught a glimpse of a six-pack hiding underneath. Damn, he looked good. Even preoccupied with thoughts of her father, she couldn’t deny that.

“Hi yourself. Everything okay?”

“Fine. Come on in.”

“Thanks.” A wide smile brightened his eyes, revealing a dimple.

God, he’s even better-looking when he really smiles.

“How’s the job search going?” He pointed to the paper, lying on the floor beside the loveseat.

“Ah, I found one.” A vision of the darkened Blues and Booze flew into her mind, and Ash grimaced.

“Yeah? But that’s not a good face.”

“No, it’s okay.” She willed away the image of the manager's yellow teeth. “It’s waiting tables in a restaurant downtown. Blues and Booze. You know it?”

“Sure. Great little place.”

“Really?” She leaned in the kitchen doorway. “Seemed a little...I don’t know. Strange.”

He chuckled. “You probably talked to Marty, the manager.”

She nodded.

“Marty’s dad left him that place ‘cause no one else in the family wanted it. He’s got a sister who works in real estate down in Boston, and a brother out in California. Marty just made it through high school and didn’t have the gumption to do much of anything. Actually, he’s done all right for himself. That place always does a good business. Decent clientele. Any place on Main Street is safe enough, anyway. You don't need to worry about that.”

Ash listened to him talk. She liked the way his mouth moved and the way his strong fingers rubbed a soft spot under his chin. “That makes me feel about a hundred times better. Thanks.”

“When do you start?”

“Tonight. Five o’clock.” A thought, brave enough to scare her, came from nowhere. “You should stop by.”

He smiled but shook his head. “I’d like to, but I have to work the odd shift at the garage tonight. Three to ten. Frank stays open late one night a week.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get going. Just wanted to see how you made out.”

“Oh, okay.”

“But let me know how it goes. I'll stop by another time. Promise.”

She nodded. “Sure. Have fun at work.”

“Fun? Don’t know about that.” For a moment he stood in the doorway, and though neither one spoke, something bounced between them. Eyes met, then dropped, and Ash felt an orchestra of butterflies begin a symphony in her stomach. Eddie winked and headed out the door.

Ash sank to the floor and leaned against the loveseat. What was going on here? Somehow in the last twenty-four hours, Eddie West had slid into her life, smooth and easy as water winding its way down rocks on a lazy spring afternoon. She tried to decipher it, to understand the feeling of familiarity that emerged when they were together. It wasn’t just attraction, though some of that hung over them too. It was almost as though they’d known each other a long time ago and were now trying to make up for all the years they’d been apart. She’d never sensed anything like it, and she wasn’t sure how it made her feel.

She scratched her nose and wondered if it were possible to have a soul mate.