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Choices The first time I saw the bastard was at the Old Settlers celebration. Once a year, everybody in Bisbee spent a few days looking at brown pictures of their grandparents standing outside one room adobe huts, or getting the old folks outta the old folks’ home and shouting questions about the old days into their hearing aids. Then on Sunday afternoon, a big picnic in the park on the other side a’ town, open to anybody and everybody. The VFW organized games for the kids, and scared up a local band to torture the music lovers. Everybody in town and all their relatives for miles around showed up with covered dishes and quilts to sit on. And there were always some strangers in the dinner line, shoveling down the free food; even if you knew every single person in the county, there were always people at the picnic you didn’t know. Always a few. This particular stranger had been in town for a couple days before that, but I hadn’t run into him yet. Nobody will admit to inviting him to the town celebration, but Bisbee’s a friendly town; it coulda been anybody. Hell, if I’d met him in those coupla days, I mighta done it. Or I might not a’. We didn’t hit it off. I guess that might be partly because of the way we met, but then if he wasn’t the sorta fella he was, we wouldn’ta met that way, would we? I was loading my plate for the second time. Already made my way through fried chicken and ham and potato salad and scalloped corn and baked beans, this time I was looking at cherry pies and brownies, angel food cakes with icing and those little bread things with sugar all over ‘em. Nah, not doughnuts---those other things. Lois Larsen was on the other side of the table. “Oohh, Bud, there you are, I’ve been saving this piece of coconut meringue just for you!” She batted her eyelashes, and stuck the damn thing at me, and I figured I had to take it or hurt her feelings. Coconut’s not my favorite thing, and anyway, it looked funny, kinda green, and pretty watery…..but I had the plate in my hand, and then what was I gonna do? She squeezed my hand after she handed me the fork, and kinda giggled. “You haven’t been by to see me for a month a’ Sundays,” she said. You woulda thought we were friends. Or something. In fact, I’d never “been by”; the only thing we had in common was her stupid little dog, that got washed down a storm drain during a rain. Charles heard it yapping from the vent on the corner next to the park one day after school. Herbert called Lois to tell her her pooch was found, and alive, and I got elected to go down in the sewer and rescue it. The damn dog shoulda been happy to see me; he wasn’t any bigger’n a rat himself, and he looked half drowned. He’d been washed through the drain pipes from across town, another good rain and he woulda ended up in the reservoir. “Don’t bite me,” I said. He backed up and snapped at me. One of the rubber boots I’d borrowed from Herbert slipped on something squishy, and then I was on my butt with filthy water up to my waist. “Shit.” That was when the dog yelped like something bit him; splashed over to me, and tried to climb up on my shoulders. Which was the reason the dog and I were standing in the street being hosed off when Lois drove up. I had to take off the boots, they were full of sewage, and the socks; but if I’d known she was coming, I wouldn’ta taken my shirt off, I woulda left the stinky thing on, just because. I shoulda discouraged her right then, but I was hoping the kiss on the cheek she gave me was because she was grateful her dog (“little Rory, little sweetums”) was alive. Tried to ignore the hand that slipped off the dog and landed on my chest. How was I supposed to know she was gonna start shadowing me? Seemed like every time I turned around after that, there she was. She leaned across the table of food, put her hand on my forearm and kinda rubbed. Real slow. Looked at me with that look, that, if I was single, I mighta been happy to see. She wasn’t bad looking, and cooking ain’t everything. But I was a married man. You know? And my wife was just a few feet away. And about a dozen other ladies were standing all around. Dammit. “Mrs. Larsen,” I said, and put my pie plate down on the table. “I think we need to have a talk.” She said she was a Mrs., that’s what everybody called her, but you couldn’t prove it by me. She was alone when she moved to town. Nobody knew what happened to Mr. Larsen. He just wasn’t around. She smiled like I’d said something nice. “I’d like that, Bud. And you don’t need to be so formal. I know you know my first name.” “I’ll stick with Mrs. Larsen. And I think maybe it’d be better for you to call me Deputy.” Then I didn’t know how to start. I haven’t had much experience with telling women to lay off. You know how there can be conversation all around you, lots a’ people talking, and then out of the noise, you hear one phrase from one person, real clear? Or just one word? While I was standing there, trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t be cruel, I heard “Lynn White” behind me, clear. Turned around, and a fella I didn’t know was standing there, talking to Dewey. They were looking at Lynn, sitting with Norma and her fiance from Haverly and the kids, next to the empty spot where I’d been sitting. The stranger had a little smile on his face, and he said, “Yeah, I’m sure I know her. From L.A.” “Yeah? She ain’t lived there for a while. Maybe you got her mixed up with somebody else.” “No, I knew her pretty well.” And his smile got a little bigger. “She in business here in this little town?” “Well…..” Dewey’s forehead wrinkled. “Yeah, she’s got a shop.” The smile turned into a grin. “You’re shitting me. A shop? I guess I ain’t been giving this place enough credit.” I have to admit I forgot about Lois. “Dewey,” I said. “I think your Aunt Ruth’s calling you.” “Aunt Ruth??” He looked more confused than before. “I don’t think so, Bud, you know she’s been in the--“ “Dewey.” “What?” “Take off.” “Oh.” He looked from me to the stranger and back. “Okay. Umm…..you want me to---“ “No.” “Right. Well, I’ll just….I’ll just see about some a’ that red cake over here…...” The bum knew exactly what I was gonna say. He was just waiting for me to say it. “I heard you say you know Lynn.” “Uh-huh. A happy coincidence, seeing her here, huh?” That smile annoyed the piss outta me. “I think you made a mistake. I don’t think that’s the woman you remember.” He didn’t bother to argue about it with me. “Is it a secret, about her? Don’t you worry,” he said. “I know how to keep a secret.” “There ain’t no secret for you to keep.” “Everybody’s got a secret, friend. Everybody in the whole world. Sometimes you get lucky and find out some of ‘em. Now Veronica over there….’scuse me, Lynn,” and he grinned again, “She had a pretty good racket going in L.A. I don’t know why the hell she’d come out here.” He shrugged. “People do some funny things. You’d be surprised.” Outta the corner of my eye, I saw Dewey sit down next to Lynn with a plate full a’ red cake. I didn’t have to watch ‘em, I knew he’d tell her about the stranger that knew her from L.A. And I knew just what she’d think about that. The stranger looked. I figure he saw her turn dead white, or maybe he saw Becky climbing on her lap, pulling on her collar. He shoulda figured it out right then. He was a smart guy. He looked back at me. “And what’re you doing? Making sure she don’t jump into somebody else’s stable? You don’t need to worry, I ain’t in that business, friend.” “I ain’t your friend. I ain’t anybody’s pimp. There ain’t any secrets for you to find out.” “If you’re not her bird dog, who are you?” “I’m telling you, you got the wrong woman. That’s my wife.” He threw back his head and laughed. I don’t always do the smart thing. Sometimes I just do what I feel like doing. I guess it wasn’t smart to hit the bastard. It didn’t look like it bothered him at all. “I’m good at finding out things,” he said, and picked himself up off the ground. Rubbed his jaw. “Something I like to do. And now I know something I didn’t know before.” He grinned; grabbed his hat and slapped it against his pants leg. “See? Everybody’s got secrets.” Damn. All the conversations stopped when my fist hit his jaw. Total silence. The ladies serving their covered dishes stared at us and whispered behind their hands. That didn’t seem to bother him either. He settled his hat on the back of his head and walked around to the other side of the table of desserts. From the far side of the park, the band started their version of Jail House Rock. I couldn’t look at Lynn yet. The bum picked up a handful of sugar cookies. Touched Lois--on the shoulder, a little caress, sorta, and he whispered something to her; she looked startled. A smile at her, a smile at me, and then he walked toward the lines of parked cars. When I looked back at the table where she’d been sitting, Lynn was gone. Remember when Lynn wanted another baby so bad, and cried all the time? Yeah. She was pretty much over that by the time the picnic rolled around that year. She’d asked the Doc to give her some pills to make her feel better, and he did that, little white ones; and she stopped crying, yeah, but she wasn’t much good for anything else, either. Sorta foggy. You know? So I took ‘em away from her. Then he prescribed something else, and that was better. Some. She still wasn’t the same woman I married. Happy and laughing is one thing; giggling every five minutes for no reason is something else. The Doc said we oughta give her body time to adjust to the medicine before we made decisions about it, but I said no. I decided I’d rather have the old Lynn, even soggy, instead of the Lynn we had while she was taking the damn pills. So when Lynn wanted to try again, I put my foot down. Hard. She was real mad at me for a while, then the crying came back for a little while, and then she seemed to get over all a’ that. More like her old self again for the past several months. Couldn’t say for sure I knew how she was gonna react to this, though. She got up and left, left the kids, without a word to anybody; looked like a bad sign to me. I wasn’t sure if this was one of those times when she left because she wanted me to come after her, or if she actually wanted to be alone….but it was too important to let it go. Too important to wait until tomorrow to talk about it. I asked Norma and her fella if they could watch the kids a while, and they said they would. I told Norma everything was ok, even though I didn’t know if it was, just so she wouldn’t worry. She let lotsa little things worry her back then. Yeah, this wasn’t exactly a little thing, but she didn’t know that. We’d left the car parked in between Jones’ dusty old pickup and Norma’s blue shark. (Charles started calling her car a shark after he heard someone talking about the fins on the back. It looked more like a whale to me than a shark, but Becky picked up on it, and nobody wanted to argue with her about it, ‘cause it was pretty hard to win an argument with Becky. So it was The Shark from then on.) Our Buick that didn’t look like anything but a car wasn’t there. Couldn’t see asking anybody for a ride. I walked, hoping to hell she’d be home when I got there. It was always in the back of my mind, the first few years in Bisbee, that somebody might show up who knew Lynn from L.A. Pretty sure it was in her mind, too, but we didn’t talk about it. Nothing to talk about; we both knew what we’d have to do. It didn’t happen, and I guess eventually I just forgot about it. We settled in and let the past slip into the dust behind us; felt pretty safe and secure. After all that time---felt like a kick in the gut. Arbutus drove up next to me and stopped, when I was about halfway home. “How come you left the picnic? And what are you doing walking?” she said. “Your car is idling rough again.” “I know that.” She looked down the street for a second. “Well, go around and get in, what are you waiting for?” She drove without asking me anything till we were just a few blocks from the house. “Who was that fella?” Couldn’t tell her what I didn’t know. She wasn’t really asking who he was, anyway. She was waiting for me to tell her what was going on, something I probably woulda done any other time, any other situation. When I didn’t answer, she didn’t look at me again. Looked straight ahead and didn’t say anything else till she pulled over to the curb, and set the brake. “Here we are,” she said. “Looks like Lynn’s already home.” I took a breath and let it out. “I can’t tell you anything right now.” “I see that.” I didn’t wanna get out and leave it like that. “Arbutus--“ I couldn’t come up with anything. Didn’t wanna lie. Couldn’t tell the truth. “You know me.” She thought about it. “OK.” She reached over and patted the back of my hand. “It’s not my secret.” She nodded. “OK,” she said again. “You let me know if you need anything.” “I will.” I leaned toward her, kissed her cheek--cool, dry, smooth where I touched her. Her eyes closed, and she turned her face toward me. The faint caress of her breath on my face was warm, her eyes when she opened them again were dark, her voice was soft and low and not like her everyday voice at all……. ”You’d better get out,” she said. “Before Lynn wonders why you’re not coming in the house.” There was that thing between us again, that thing……She wasn’t saying what she really meant, but she didn’t have to. I knew what she meant. So I got out. “I’ll talk to you in a day or two,” I said. She smiled. “Sure.” Lynn was upstairs, in our bedroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed. I stopped in the doorway. Put my hands in my pockets. I couldn’t read her face, I couldn’t tell what was going through her mind. She didn’t help me, either. No tears, no smiles, no words, no nothing. “Don’t worry,” I said. “He’s not anybody to worry about. He won’t talk, he wants something. Even if he says anything, who’s gonna believe him?” Her dress had pretty little crystal buttons all down the front. Sparkly. She unbuttoned the top one, then the next one. Another one. “Lynn.” All the buttons undone, the dress shrugged off her shoulders; she stood up and walked to me. And kissed me, in her underwear, there in the doorway with the door open. Kissed me with her whole body, just about. Put her hands on my neck, kissed me harder, deeper, if that’s possible…….pushed my jacket off me and let it fall on the floor. Pulled my tie off, unbuttoned my shirt……. “Lynn." And then her underwear was on the floor, too. “Kiss me,” she said. I thought I was. But OK, baby, whatever you say…….I tried harder. She got my shirt off, worked my undershirt up toward my armpits……..I tightened my arms around her and took a step toward the bed…… I hadn’t walked a long way before getting a ride with Arbutus, not more’n a mile or so, but my bad leg was tired. And we weren’t paying attention to what we were doing. And I think our legs kinda got tangled up. I tried to twist as I fell, so I’d be the one to hit the floor insteada her; we landed sideways. I didn’t get a chance to ask her if she was alright; she was all over me right away, biting and licking, her tongue in my mouth, her fingers working on my belt buckle……and then she pulled me on top of her, her arms and legs curled around me. I tried to give back as good as I was getting…..and even if I’d wanted to stop and discuss it, it was too late for that. No stopping now. When I could talk, I said, “You don’t have to worry about me.” She moaned and buried her face against my neck; thrust her hips at me. After another minute or so, I stopped doing what I was doing. “Baby.” I pushed her hair away from her face. We were both sweating, quivering, panting. Her eyes were shut and she pulled at me. “Lynn. You ain’t gonna lose me. Not ‘cause a’ this bum.” “Bud.” Her eyes opened. I expected they’d be full a’ tears, but they weren’t. They were dry. “Yeah, baby.” “Don’t talk.” So we didn’t talk for a few more minutes. Then, “Oh God, Bud…..” I’m pretty sure I didn’t answer her. She groaned, and squeezed me hard. When she spoke, I could hardly hear her. “Oh, baby,” she breathed in my ear. “Fuck me.“ Uh-huh. Thought I was doin’ that…. “Harder.” OK. “Love me.” Always, baby. Always.
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