My heart skipped a beat and my lips formed the word, “Really?”
He hooked me at the waist again, pulled me from his truck, opened the door, and after I climbed inside, he tossed his phone at me.
I bobbled it but caught hold of it while he said, “Code, eight, nine, one, two. Program you in. Call yourself. Program me in. I’ll call you later.”
Then he slammed the door and started around the hood.
I didn’t know what he did for a living.
But I did know the code to his phone.
I bent my head to it making the herculean effort not to do it smiling so big, I broke my own face.
He climbed in beside me, roared the truck to life and I looked up from programming myself in his phone in order to catch him put an arm around my seat so he could twist to see where we were going as he reversed in a big arc in the huge space beside his house.
Johnny Gamble then set us on our way to my car.
We were well down the dirt road, I was done with all my programming, when I said softly into the cab, “I’m sorry I messed up so big over eggs.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he replied.
“I lost my mom so I know—”
His fingers curled tight around my knee and he cut me off. “Put it out of your head. Only things I want in your head are you getting inspired about what you’re gonna feed me tomorrow night and what you’re gonna give me after.”
“Do you like chicken enchiladas?”
“Yup.”
“Do you like olives?”
“Yup.”
“Do you like sour cream?”
“Yup.”
“On a scale of a little bit of cheese goes a long way to cheese fanatic, where do you sit?”
“Fanatic.”
We had something in common.
“Do you want beer or wine or something else?”
“Beer.”
“Well, that’s dinner sorted,” I muttered.
He burst out laughing, slid his hand up my thigh and kept it resting there.
I let out a relieved breath.
Johnny stopped, checked, then pulled out of the dirt road onto the paved road.
And he took me to my car.
Be
Izzy
WHEN I GOT in my front door, my dogs attacked me.
This wasn’t surprising. Except for me going to work and out to an occasional social engagement, they usually had me all to themselves.
After I gave them rubdowns, I let them out and went in search of my cats.
They were far less excited to see me.
I still gave them scratches.
I looked in on my birds and then went to the back porch. I took off the cute sandals I’d worn to the bar last night, dropped them on wood and pulled on my Wellington boots that were black and had big pink roses, blue leaves and tiny yellow flowers on them.
I headed to my stable with my dogs at my heels and my phone in hand.
I now had three things I had to do that day. Call Deanna. Change the sheets on my bed. And go back into town if I needed anything to make dinner for Johnny tomorrow night.
My schedule was this free, my time just my own, because I’d lived a disorderly life with a hard-working, hard-playing, hard-loving, hard-knock mother who, through choice and situation, taught me that stability was people, not places and things.
The way my mind worked, it violently rejected that idea. So when I left my mother’s home, I sought order and stability in almost every aspect of my life to the point I planned times when I’d allow the former of those two things not to be available.
Along the line, I’d hit on the perfect model in which to order my life when I read an article somewhere about how to use useless time in order to free up useful time, make it non-stressful, but most of all, free.
This was, get chores out of the way during time you’d likely just waste sitting in front of the TV, so when the weekend came, it was yours.
To that end, one night a week, I dusted. Another, I vacuumed. Other nights, I cleaned the bathrooms. I did one load of laundry a night until it was done. Every two weeks, I added doing the ironing. And if I had to run errands, I divvied them up and ran them after work in the city before I got home. Except grocery shopping, which I did every Friday evening, hitting Macy’s Flower Shop first—which stayed open late on Fridays—so I’d have fresh flowers around the house for the week, before going to the store and then home.
The only thing I left was changing the sheets on my bed every Sunday, so when, in the evening, I’d had a long hot shower or soaked in a long hot bath, given myself a fresh manicure, pedicure and a lengthy facial, I could then eat the extravagant meal I cooked myself while reading, coloring or watching a movie, and after, slide into cool, clean sheets.
For a person who craved order, having this schedule was like nirvana. The only weekend chore was Saturday morning’s mucking out of the stalls and then I was free.
Free to be disordered.
Free to putter in my garden and with my flowers in the summer months.
Free to bake breads and make jellies and infuse flavored vodkas and gins.
Free to go back into the city and wander in a mall or down a shopping street, get a lovely lunch or treat myself to a nice dinner.
Free to linger over my Sunday facial, the only thing my mother kept scheduled and ordered for all us girls (if she was off work that was), saying, “If you take care of nothin’, my beautiful queens, take care of your skin.”
Of course, she made our facials back then out of oatmeal, honey, bee pollen and avocados she carefully scrimped and saved to afford.
But we had girls’ night facial nights every Sunday she wasn’t at work, and on the rare occasion Mom was in the black and could also afford a bottle of fingernail polish after we’d run out of the one before, we did manis and pedis too.
This meant when Mom died, instead of doing it at age forty-six and looking forty-six, she did it at forty-six, and until the pain and poison aged and withered her, she’d looked thirty.
Tops.
This was why her boyfriend at the time had been thirty-two.
I wondered how old Johnny was.
Perhaps a question he’d answer tomorrow night.
I hit the stables. The dogs began to roam and sniff the space like they’d never been there before when they were there daily. I was sure to secure the gate behind me before I moved toward Serengeti’s stall in order to let her have some time in her pasture after I hit go to contact Deanna.
“Izzy?” she answered.
“Hey, I’m home,” I told her.
“Okay, well . . . how are you?”
How was I?
Johnny’s behavior explained by the sad fact it was the anniversary of his father’s death, but still explained, and he was coming over for dinner the next night, not to mention, after not being affectionate (at all, unless you counted sitting me on the countertop, which I kind of did) after the last time we’d had sex, he made out with me at the door of my car for a good, long, happy while—I was great.
“I’m great,” I told her, opening Serengeti’s stall and moving in, lifting a hand to pat her jaw while she moved her nose to snuffle my neck and blow at my hair.
“Damn,” Deanna muttered.
My hand arrested on Serengeti and I focused on Deanna.
“What?” I asked.
“Damn,” she repeated.