“You’ll warm up a little with my body heat,” he said. He crouched in front of her. “You’re in charge of the water, for me and the dogs. Put it in your backpack and climb on—piggyback.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Connie. What am I going to do if I break your back?”
He threw her a look over his shoulder that said, “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Let’s think about this,” she said. “You don’t have to impress me. I know you’re very strong. If I could just lean on you...”
“That’ll take too long. Besides, I have to be able to carry seventy-five pounds up fifteen stories to stay qualified. This will be easier, so let’s do it. Come on.”
“All right,” she said. “It’s your funeral.”
“That was unnecessary,” he said. He hoisted her up, settled her with a couple of bounces. “How’s that feel?”
“I feel fine. How do you feel?”
“Like we’re going for a long walk,” he said. “Hang on to Molly’s leash. I’m not chasing her. Come on, Beau! Let’s do it.” And off he went. After ten minutes or so, breathing harder than he had been, he stopped and lowered her to the ground. He was a little raspy. “Little rest. Water please.” He shook out his limbs, stretched his back, drank some water, crouched in front of her again.
“Take a little more time,” she said.
“I’m ready.”
“Really, take a little more—”
“Come on,” he said. “I don’t want to be doing this all day.”
“All right, all right.” She climbed on. “Is there anything I can do to make this easier?”
“Tell me a story,” he said.
“A story?”
“Tell me your story, then. When did you decide to move out here? And from where?”
“A couple of months before I got here. Cal had been after me. He and Maggie wanted me to come. I wasn’t sure that was a good idea so I thought about it for a while.”
“But you came. From where? And why?”
“You’re very nosy,” she said. “I was living in Des Moines in a little house with some roommates. My parents live on a farm in the southern part of the state. I’d been through a series of dead-end jobs and I knew I needed to do something different. And I missed Cal. He’s my favorite sibling and we were really close growing up.”
“What kind of jobs?” he asked.
She sighed. “Seriously bad jobs. I had some college—about three years that took me about six to get because I had to work. I went to school in Michigan and when Cal’s wife died and he left the state, I—”
“Wait! His wife died?” Connie asked.
“You didn’t know that?”
“No, I didn’t know that!”
“Three years ago. They were married about eight years, I think. She was a lawyer, too. They were very happy, but she had scleroderma. It’s—”
“I know what it is,” he said. “It’s awful, that’s what it is.”
“Yeah, the poor woman. My poor brother. After she died and he left Michigan, so did I. About six months later. But he was off on some odyssey to find himself and there was no place for me in that. So, I went back to Iowa, kicked around for a few months near the farm, took a couple of jobs I hated but paid decent and had benefits. Over the last year and a half I waitressed, cleaned airport bathrooms, worked in a couple of nursing homes. The worst job was in a recycle center, separating stuff. Handling garbage, basically. It was awful. My life was going nowhere so coming out here to see if I could make sense of things didn’t seem like a bad idea. Cal made sense of his. I think it all came together when he found Maggie.”
“Maggie’s cool,” Connie said. “Didn’t you have a guy?”
She laughed. “Oh, Connie. No, there wasn’t a guy...”
“Why’d you say it like that? Like it was a dumb question?”
“It wasn’t a dumb question,” she said. “I don’t have a good answer, that’s all. I went out with some guys but... Okay, here’s the deal—I can’t pick ’em. That’s all. If I met some guy I liked, odds were excellent he was a loser. There you have it.”
“Describe ‘loser,’” he said.
“Come on, don’t ask me that. You’ll just find out how really incompetent I am and I’d rather you think I’m smart and nice.”
“I do. Describe loser.”
She took a deep breath. “Liars. Cheaters. Guys with bad habits or mean personalities or nasty tempers.” Or psychopathic stalkers, she thought. That was the real reason she’d left Des Moines suddenly. She thought she saw him there. She wasn’t absolutely sure but she saw a guy at a distance, about a block away, who was a dead ringer for Derek Cox. She decided this invitation of Cal’s couldn’t have come at a better time.
Connie just marched on for a while, silent. Contemplating. “Not one good man?” he finally asked.
“Well, the problem could be me,” she said. “I saw Colorado as an opportunity. For self-examination. For renewal. A fresh start.”
“Because you’d like to find a good guy,” he said.
“I’m not looking for a guy. Definitely don’t want to find another loser,” she said with a laugh. “Really, I love my life as one person. And now that I have Molly, I feel so connected. Molly is so wonderful. A little naughty and in the most innocent way.” The dog looked up at her. “Yes, I’m talking about you. She loves to please. She smiles, she honestly does. When she emerges from puppyhood she’ll be the most magnificent dog alive.”
Connie grunted.
“Need a rest?” she asked.
“Nah, I’m good. Just seems like since it takes so little to make you happy, you should’ve found the right guy years ago.”
“Maybe I’m finally changing, Connie. Wanna tell me about your girl?”
“My what?”
“Your girl. Don’t you have a girl?”
He snorted. “I have a lot of girls.”
She laughed. “That figures.”
“What do you mean, figures? I go out, okay. I have girls I go out with but I’m not in a relationship.”
“Well, that figures...”
He stopped walking and let her slide gently to the ground. “Water,” he said.
She pulled a bottle out of her pack and watched as he took a drink, then squirted water in both dogs’ mouths. He went through his shaking-out-limbs and stretching maneuvers again, took a few deep breaths, a little more water, then presented his back. “Up you go.”
“Are we almost back?” she asked.
“Not far now,” he said. And off he went.
A few minutes passed before he said anything. “I had a girl a few years ago. Couple of years ago, I guess. It didn’t work out.”
Sierra didn’t say anything.
“I guess she had a short attention span. She—”
“I don’t need to know,” Sierra said.
“Someone else came along, got her attention and that was the end of that. Since then I’ve just been going out for fun. Just friends, you know. There hasn’t been anyone serious is all I’m saying.”
“Okay, fine, you don’t have to explain.”
“I know! I’m not explaining. I’m telling you because you told me and that’s what people do!”
“Stop it. You’re going to get all out of breath.”
“I’m fine.” He went quiet again. “We might have that in common, you know.”
“What?”