Part of my writing had even amounted to transcribing the chat I’d overheard in as close to verbatim as I could manage. I’d read somewhere a few months before that the more times you remember something, the more inaccurate that memory becomes. Since then I’d suffered from this low-level paranoia that some of my most cherished childhood events hadn’t happened, or hadn’t happened as I recalled them. I knew I was going to be remembering this scene a lot, and didn’t want it to lose accuracy.
Not that this memory was one to cherish. It was one to agonize over. It seemed I had struck out about as hard as I could on the Clint front. First, Nora is the first person to ever hear Ben refer to himself as my boyfriend. Second, I learn Clint is both not available and not desirable.
But the part of the conversation I kept coming back to all day, kept reading and rereading on my computer screen, was the part where he talked about ‘long-term potential.’ Reading those words gave me this ridiculous little thread of hope to cling to. I found myself trying to explain away the rotten things he’d said with the rationale that there was nothing wrong with casual sex if both parties were consenting. Who’s to say Clint wouldn’t settle right down once he did find someone with the qualities he was looking for in a life-partner? So what if his tone discussing his love-life had sounded about as passionate as someone recapping the day’s activity in the stock market? Maybe he just hadn’t found the right person yet.
By happy hour, I was sick of myself – sick of mooning over a transcription of a conversation I hadn’t been supposed to hear, sick of daydreaming about Clint instead of Ben, sick of remembering Clint’s lean form leaning against the haystack. I needed to focus on Ben. Ben was real. Ben was attractive and interesting. Ben had good taste in wine.
Except one glass in I’d somehow devolved into telling Ben all about my morning with the horses, skirting as close as I could to the subject of Clint without actually raising it.
“I’m trying to impress upon you that I was slightly impressive this morning.” I made a grand gesture with my wine glass as I spoke.
It was a lie, of course. I didn’t think I’d even managed to impress the calf.
Ben grabbed my ankles and pulled, dragging me down the couch until I was flat on my back, then swinging himself out from under me so he was lying on top. “I’m already impressed with you.” His tone was serious. He’d set his wine glass down and he took mine from my fingers, placing it on the coffee table next to his. He was always so careful not to spill the wine.
He kissed me.
I thought of that morning. I thought of walking into the barn the same way I really had, seeing Clint leaning against the bales. Instead of hesitating in the entryway, I strode up to him, wrapped my hands around his neck, and pulled him down to kiss me. He was a taller man than Ben, and he wore tall heeled boots, but he bent to meet my lips as soon as he got over his surprise. His kiss was fierce and passionate. The thrill of it raced through my veins like fire. A moment later, he heaved me onto a stack of bales with as little effort as he moved hay, swinging himself up and on top of me. I could feel his belt buckle pressing into my stomach.
On the couch, Ben slipped his hands under my shirt. In my head, Clint did the same. I arched my back as a small moan escaped me. I could feel the heat building between our bodies, the pulse of our kiss quickened.
In my apartment, my phone rang. The fantasy shattered, and I turned my head. Ben’s lips trailed onto my neck. “Let’s pretend we can’t hear it.” His words were mumbly against my skin.
“It’s my mom.” I was one of those nerds who customized my ringtones so I knew who was calling without having to go look. I squirmed until Ben rolled aside, removing his weight from my chest. “She never calls me unless something’s wrong.”
I reached for my phone, ignoring his quizzical look. I answered just in time to prevent the call from going to voicemail.
“Erin,” my mom said when I answered. I didn’t like her clipped tone.
“What’s up Mom?” I sat, trying not to look at Ben and attempting to straighten my twisted shirt.
“I got a call from the police. They arrested some dog thieves.”
“And?” This seemed like good news, but Mom sounded anything but happy.
“They caught the thieves after tracing back from a suspicious sale. They found a warehouse where there were almost a hundred show-quality dogs in kennels, all probably stolen.”
I waited, sitting forward on the couch and resisting the urge to pepper her with more questions.
“But the thieves had somehow gotten wind the police were coming, and started letting dogs loose.”
I realized my heart was pounding, probably from a combination of what I’d been doing with Ben/Clint and the suspense of this unnecessarily drawn out tale.
“They think about 20 dogs ran off the property before the police arrived, but they have four Bull Terriers. One is a female but they think there is a chance one or two of the other three are Boswell or Norman.”
“That’s great news!” My voice was too loud in the quiet of the apartment.
“But they’re not,” my mom said. “They sent me a photo. None of those four dogs are familiar to me. They’re bringing them down, though, and want me to come by the station to be sure.”
“Bringing them down from where?” I said, my heart beginning to sink.
“Florence,” my mom said. “That’s where the warehouse was.”
There was a silence on the line. I looked up at Ben, who was watching me with a curious expression. I asked the looming question. “What happened to the dogs the police didn’t recover?”
My mom was silent for a long moment before answering. “They ran off into the desert.”
❂
“Would you like me to wrap this up for you?” I lifted the small oil painting I’d just rung up off of the counter, and gave its new owner a questioning look.
The woman standing in front of the register treated me with suspicious squint, as if I was teasing her somehow. “It’s not a gift,” she said, slotting her credit card back into her overflowing wallet and dropping it into a leather purse that likely cost as much as a month’s rent at my apartment complex.
“We use protective foam and brown paper, so the frame doesn’t get dinged before you can get it home.”
The woman waved a weary hand and turned away from the counter, as if I had suggested something outrageous and she didn’t have the energy to argue with me. I carried the painting to the back room.
Midway through my wrapping job, I heard Anne arrive. A moment later, the sounds of animated conversation drifted back to me. By the time I returned with the wrapped painting, the unfriendly woman was smiling. I handed her the painting, which she took without acknowledging my existence. I beat my retreat to the back room as Anne walked the woman to the door.
It was Monday, and I was exhausted. I’d gone with my mother to the kennel where the Bull Terriers were being held, and they had turned out not to be Boswell and Norman. It was obvious even to me, although the police had seemed skeptical, insisting we hang out with the dogs for a few minutes ‘just to be sure.’ This had made my mother furious.
After leaving the kennel, my mother had informed me that she was going to drive to Florence and search the area. She’d offered to drop me at my apartment on her way out of town, but I’d insisted on going with her.
So we’d arrived in the desolate town of Florence, Arizona close to 10:00pm. The wine and the drive had combined in my empty stomach into something that was no longer sitting well. We’d spent hours combing the outskirts of the town, windows rolled down, yelling “Boswell, Norman. Come!”
Needless to say, they hadn’t come. On the way home, I’d had to have Mom pull over so I could be sick on the side of the road.
I heard the jingle of the bells on the front door as I ran the ATG dispenser along the back of the frame I’d been in the process of closing up when the unfriendly woman had arrived. A moment later, Anne appeared in the doorway,
dressed in white capris, platform sandals, and a breezy black tank-top. “Nice work,” she said. “That’s a good way to start the week.”
The little oil had been by a well-known local artist, and its sale alone was enough to mean the gallery would have a decent week. “Don’t thank me,” I said. “She marched right in and asked to see Gary’s stuff. When I started to tell her about his process, she told me she’d prefer to look alone.”
Anne’s eyes narrowed as she looked at me. Her mouth curved into a mischievous line. “I hope the reason you look like you could use eight more hours of sleep is because you’ve been taking my advice about your cowboy crush?”
I thought of the steamy but interrupted interlude on the couch the night before. “Unfortunately,” I said, cutting a piece of backing paper and setting it onto the frame, “I am exhausted because my mother got a lead on her dogs and dragged me to the booming metropolis of Florence in the middle of the night, where we spent hours driving around disrupting the sleep of the locals.”
Anne’s expression turned serious. “Oh, I’m sorry Erin. If you need to go home….”
I thought of the way I’d spent my Sunday afternoon (staring at my transcription of Clint talking about his girlfriend). The last thing I needed was more unsupervised time in my apartment.
Before I could answer, my phone beeped. It was sitting on the work table. Anne didn’t care if I sent and received texts while I was on the clock. Still, it made me feel a bit awkward to hear one come in with her standing there. She seemed to sense my discomfort. “Anything good?” She gave the phone a meaningful look.
I reached for the phone. The text was from Nora. “So sorry busy tomorrow. Clint will fill in same time.”
I stared at my phone, my tired mind somehow unable to process this turn of events. Clint would fill in? As my riding instructor? I felt suddenly unsteady on my feet.
“Erin?” Anne said, her voice filled with concern. “Are you ok?”
I couldn’t speak. I handed her the phone. She read the text and lost the worried look. She set the phone back on the work table and gave me a wicked smile. “That sounds like a promising development.”
“Or a horribly embarrassing one,” I regained my voice and motor skills, picking up a razor to trim down the edges of the backing. “This is a disaster. I’ve only had three lessons with Nora, and only during one of those was she actually trying to teach me anything. He’s going to see I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Anne had not lost the satisfied smirk. She leaned against the doorframe. “Most men like nothing more than the opportunity to show off their expertise.”
I thought of Clint’s wordless chin thrust in the tack room, followed by the unhelpful comment, ‘It’s a snaffle.’ This memory did nothing to ease my doubts. “I’m not sure he’s the teaching type.”
The gallery phone rang and Anne straightened. As she turned to leave, she said, “I can’t wait to hear how it goes.”
❂
I walked into my apartment and tossed my purse onto the couch, hanging my keys on the hook by the door and sinking into my favorite armchair. I’d texted Trace a few hours before to cancel our standing Julio’s date. I didn’t feel up to the crowds and the Olivia photos and the drinks. My stomach was still unsettled. As I popped the footrest on the chair, my phone buzzed. I gazed at my purse, on the other side of the living room, and considered ignoring it. But a moment later I heaved myself out of my chair.
The text was from Ben. “Have a fun girl’s night!”
I scowled at his sweet message and threw myself back into my seat, not bothering to text him back to let him know I wasn’t out. I stared out the window for a moment, then called my mom. The house phone rang and rang until the answering machine picked up. I tried her cell.
She answered around the sound of wind. “Erin?” she said. She always seemed surprised when I called her cell phone, as if it was something normal people did not do.
“Hi Mom.” I could hear road noise in the background. “Where are you?”
“Florence,” she said as a car horn blared in the background. “People here aren’t the friendliest.” The connection was crackly and her words cut in and out.
I pictured my mom creeping along the shoulder of the Superstition Highway with the window down, calling for dogs that were certainly nowhere nearby. I felt my heart sink. “Don’t you think it’s about time to head home?” But before she could answer, the call dropped. I resisted the urge to hurl my phone at the wall.
On the one hand, I couldn’t blame her. More details about the dog thieves had been disclosed, and it looked like the warehouse in Florence had been the hub of a well-orchestrated operation that had been running in Tucson and Phoenix. All the dogs the police had recovered had been valuable, many with wins and recognition in their breed registries. The police thought there was a good chance these were the people who had taken Boswell and Norman.
Which meant my mom’s two Bull Terriers were loose in the desert, lost and alone. It was not a heart-warming thought. I could hardly blame my mother for terrorizing the town in an effort to find them before they died of heat exhaustion.
Suddenly, I couldn’t sit in my apartment all night. I walked to my computer and turned it on, pulling up the poster Ben and I had made, and loading a fresh stack of paper into my printer.
Half an hour later, I carried a stack of posters and a roll of masking tape to my car. In the car, I sat indecisively for a moment, then fished my phone out of my purse. I sent Ben a text. “Up for an impromptu trip to Florence?”
I turned on my engine and cranked up the AC. The interior of my car was stifling, even though my parents had overruled my desire for a green car and purchased me a white one instead, saying it would be a lot cooler in the summer.
I stared at my phone, feeling sweat bead on my upper lip. Ben wrote back. “Italy? I’m game.”
“Arizona. More poster hanging.”
“Sure. Be right over.”
“I’m in my car. What’s your address? I’ll pick u up.”
There was a long pause, and I wondered if Ben had to look up his own contact information. Another text came in a few minutes. “Not at home. At your place in 10.”
I waited, trying to ignore the jealous little part of my mind that started to wonder what he was doing not at home at 6:00 on a Monday evening. I diverted myself by turning on the radio.
Nine minutes later, Ben’s truck rolled into my apartment complex. He parked, leapt out of the driver’s seat, and jogged to my car. He grinned at me as he settled in beside me, leaning over to kiss me on the cheek. “What happened to girl’s night?”
“I canceled it.” I put my car in reverse and maneuvered out of the parking lot. “I hope I didn’t pull you away from anything interesting?”
Ben turned to look out the window, and I remembered how getting details about his life when he wasn’t with me was about as easy as walking a perfect circle on horseback. I never seemed to be able to get any concrete information out of him. I waited as I pulled onto the road, thinking he would offer up some answer. Instead he said, “I’m always up for more Erin time.”
I considered pressing the issue, but decided it would make me seem clingy. Instead, I filled him in on the Boswell and Norman situation while we drove. “So,” I said, stopping at a stoplight. “I realized there’s a decent chance someone around Florence will see them and pick them up. Mom’s been up there two days in a row, driving around and calling for them, but it’s a lost cause.”
Ben was silent, and I turned my head to look at him. He was wearing a charcoal gray t-shirt that made his hair look particularly blonde. He was giving me this funny look. “What?”
“You’re a good person,” he said. “A good daughter.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but fortunately the light turned and I could look back at the road.
❂
“I gather you used to run barrels.” It wasn’t phrased as a question.
I ran a quick
mental check of what I knew Clint knew about it me.
It wasn’t much.
I hadn’t told Nora many details about my previous experience with horses, and Clint nothing at all, but here he was, tossing this at me as if I was wearing a label on my shirt.
I was once again astride the stolid Duke, sitting in the slanted morning sunlight in the outdoor arena at the Tipped Z ranch. Clint was across from me, sitting on his buckskin horse, who I had learned this morning was a mare named Penny. That was all I had learned this morning, because so far Clint had said exactly nothing to me other than to answer when I asked his horse’s name. I had arrived to find Duke and Penny saddled in the barn aisle. Clint had handed me the reins without a word, and walked off.
I had followed him, walking through the gate he held for me feeling more self-conscious than I had on my first date. I had mounted when he’d mounted, and now here he was, throwing this out at me with no preamble whatsoever.
I tried to make light of it. “How can you tell?”
Clint squinted. His hat was pulled low, and his eyes were bright in the tan of his face. I wondered why he didn’t invest in a pair of sunglasses. I didn’t say this, though. I was finding Clint considerably more intimidating without his sister present. “Your legs.”
I leaned to the side and looked at my legs. My heels were down, and the horse hadn’t taken so much as a step yet. Also I was still wearing my ridiculous fake cowgirl boots, which I had not yet had a chance to replace.
I tried to think of some witty rejoinder, but could come up with nothing.
“I could throw a loop around your ankle,” Clint added, unhelpfully, as my silence stretched. I looked from the toe of my boot back to Clint. He patted the rope tied to one side of his saddle. “Pull you right off your horse.”
I gave a weak little laugh, failing utterly to see his point. I didn’t doubt he could rope my ankle, but didn’t that have more to do with his roping skills than my riding? And what on earth did it have to do with me running barrels as a twelve-year-old?
Clint didn’t appear to move, but his horse stepped forward, walking at a steady pace until it had covered half the distance between us. Then it stopped. I had no doubt Clint had asked the horse to do both things, but I hadn’t seen his hands or legs so much as twitch.
A breeze kicked up and stirred the hair at the nape of my neck. The Tipped Z ranch was preternaturally silent. I racked my brain for something to do with my legs other than what I was currently doing.
Clint waited for so long I was afraid he wasn’t going to say anything else, ever. Finally, he added, “Look at my legs.”
I thought wistfully of Nora. Nora did not stop talking during a lesson. There were no pregnant pauses, no painful stretches of silence while she waited for me to fumble towards what was clearly an obvious concept.
I looked at Clint’s legs. He was wearing his chinks, and the toes of his boots were dusty and well-worn where they poked through the stirrup. “Could you rope my ankle?” he said.
For a second, I thought he was raising the issue of my non-existent rope-handling skills, but then it came in a flash. Clint’s legs were draped over his horse in a soft bend. There was no space between his calves and the horse’s sides.
I glanced back down at my own feet, and saw what he meant. My legs were braced in my stirrups. My heels were down, but there was a good three inch gap between my ankle and Duke’s dappled side. I relaxed my legs, surprised when I realized how much tension I’d had in those muscles.
“Good.” Clint said. “Now he knows where you are.”
I couldn’t help but think Duke had likely known I was on his back even before I was touching him with my calves, but somehow got the idea Clint was not in the mood for flippant commentary. I kept my mouth shut. Clint added, “Keep them like that the whole ride. Seat, legs, hands, every time you ask him to move. Now, walk.”
I gave Duke a little squeeze with my calves and he amiably began to walk. I drew in a deep breath and tried to get myself to relax. Clearly, Nora and her brother had a different teaching style. That was all. This was going to be fine.
We hadn’t taken more than two steps before Clint said, “Stop.” I pulled back on the reins and Duke stopped. I looked over to see a pained expression on Clint’s face. He looked as if he’d witnessed someone run over a cottontail rabbit with a truck. Deliberately. I took another deep breath.
He walked his horse a few steps forward so he was once more facing me. Again, I didn’t see him move. “What did I say right before I asked you to walk?” His tone, at least, was patient.
I scrambled to remember. “Keep my legs down?”
“Seat, legs, hands,” Clint said. “Look at Penny. I’m going to ask her to walk, then stop.” With a slow, deliberate movement, Clint set his reins down, looping them around his saddle horn and crossing his arms over his chest. Penny started walking. She walked a compete circle around me and Duke and stopped when she and Clint were back where they had started.
“What did I move?” Clint said.
I had been a good student in school, with history being the one exception. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about history as a whole, it was that I didn’t see the point of memorizing specific dates. This was usually only a problem on tests, but during my sophomore year I’d had one particular teacher who had loved to ask impromptu questions of the class during lectures. I had lived in fear of his calling on me, because every time he asked me what year the Berlin wall came down, or what year Martin Luther King was shot, I could only gape at him and fumble around in my textbook until he called on someone else.
That was how I felt with Clint. I had seen him move nothing. I had watched his feet, and they had not budged. His hands were clearly out of the picture. I felt that old panicky sensation of not knowing the answer to what was obviously not a difficult question.
“I’ll go again,” Clint said. I stared at his calf, convinced I’d see some little wiggle or tap. But Penny started walking, passed around my one side, then the other, and stopped again in front of me. I wanted to cry with frustration.
Clint read my blank look, and gave up. “My hips. My hips are what moves. My seat changes, so she knows to go. It’s only if she doesn’t go that I use my legs. Watch again.”
I raised my eyes to Clint’s slim, Wrangler-clad hips and thought about other ways in which their movement might be interesting. I tamped the thought down as Penny started walking again. They looped around in front of me. I watched, and I saw it: a little tilt in the pelvis, a shift in his seat position. Penny stopped. “I exaggerated that time so you could see.”
Doubtful, I looked down at Duke. He had his ears cocked to the sides and appeared to be dozing.
Clint spoke as if reading my mind. “That horse is as sensitive as this one, and even if he wasn’t, you should ride him as if he was. For stopping, your pelvis should be like you are sitting now, rotated back. For forward movement, you should sit straight up in the saddle and open your hips. Now try again.”
I prepared myself, thinking about my legs in contact with Duke’s sides, and my pelvis.
I tilted my pelvis so I was sitting up straight in the saddle, thinking walk with all my might.
Duke’s ears came up, and he started walking.
❂
“The man is insane,” I said to my mother. “He seems to think I have control over every single muscle in my body.”
It was Wednesday evening, and I was at home, talking half to vent my feelings on my disastrous lesson with Clint and half to fill the silence. My mother had been driving to Florence every day. Boswell and Norman were as lost as ever, and it was still two more days until my father came home.
“You do have control over every muscle in your body.” My mom said this without smiling. Her face had a tired look. Her eyes were distant. I knew she’s be alright if the dogs were never found. My mother wasn’t the sort to let tragedy derail her. Still, this was taking its toll. I bitterly thought it would have been kind
er if the cops hadn’t told her about the warehouse. Boswell and Norman stolen because they were valuable was one thing. Boswell and Norman wandering through the desert, dying by degrees, was quite another.
I gave her a look and leaned forward to load a slice of cheese onto a cracker. I had made the cheese platter, trying for some sense of normalcy. Mom had yet to join me in eating anything. “Well of course I do, but I mean like really precise control.”
Mom didn’t respond. She was doing the thing where she was staring blankly into the desert. I stopped talking, my mind wandering back to my time on horseback with Clint. I appeared to be a glutton for punishment. Even though the lesson had been a disaster, even though a sane person probably would have been well over the Clint thing by now, I was more obsessed than ever.
The lesson had seemed to go on forever, and I had realized once I got back to my car it had felt long because it had gone on for an hour and a half. An hour and a half of “wiggle your left toe,” “block his forward movement, no, be gentle,” and “release release release.” Clint had made me feel like I’d never even seen a horse before.
But he’d also made me feel something else. There were these little glimmers throughout the ride, moments where I forgot about how hot Clint was, how much I wanted to haul him off his horse and see what was underneath the chinks, moments I forgot to overthink everything he was telling me. In those moments, I felt something with Duke. I’d ask him to disengage his hindquarters and he just would. It would happen with a sort of smooth grace, as if Duke had been waiting all along for me to ask the right way.
And every time that happened, Clint would say, “There.” He’d say it in this soft, satisfied tone that made gooseflesh rise on my arms.
After the lesson, he’d said almost as little as he had before. But he’d helped me untack and let me lead Duke back to the pasture. Then he’d walked me to my car and tipped his hat and I’d shoved one of the leftover Boswell and Norman posters into his hands because I’d been unable to think of anything else to say or do. And I’d driven home and had a feverish day of thinking about Clint on horseback and Clint not on horseback.
“How’s Ben?” My mother turned away from the view of the mountains, making an obvious effort to rally. “When do I get to meet him?”
“He’s fine.” I brushed cracker crumbs off the bench next to me. “He helped me with the posters in Florence.”
“That was nice of him.” My mom leaned forward and put some cheese on a cracker. She went still again, turning her head once more towards the open desert. She sat in stiff silence for a moment, then sighed. She turned back to me. “You know what I can’t get out of my head? That stupid book about the two dogs and a cat that travel all across Canada to get home.”
“The Incredible Journey?”
“Yeah. One of the dogs was a Bull Terrier. I keep thinking they’ll pull it off, somehow. I’ll look up and see them bounding out of the wash. But I know it’s impossible. Between the heat, the lack of water, the cactus….” She shook her head, setting the cracker down so she could pick up a napkin to dab at her eye.
“Oh, Mom.” I left my chair to sit on the bench next to her, putting my arm around her shoulders. “We need a distraction.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket, and texted Ben.
“The flowers are for your mother.” Ben said this half an hour later, stepping through the gate where he would have usually been accosted by an enthusiastic canine greeting party, and stooping to kiss me on the cheek. He moved his lips close to my ear, adding, “You have a monopoly on kisses though. And there’s more where that came from.”
I felt a shiver race up my arms, and had a sudden flashback to that morning. When we’d been untacking Duke, there had been a moment when Clint had reached up to take the saddle off. I’d been standing by Duke’s shoulder, adjusting the knot on his halter, and Clint’s shoulder had been so close to mine, I could feel the heat in his shirt. All he’d have had to do was rotate his highly communicative hips, and his lips would have brushed my forehead.
I shoved Clint out of my mind and took Ben’s hand, leading him around the back of the house to where my mother was looking expectantly over her shoulder. She rose to greet Ben, the flowers were handed over, and introductions were made. I could see by Mom’s smile and the fact that she brought out her favorite vase that she already liked him.
And what wasn’t to like? Ben looked good in the soft evening light, his forearms showing to advantage below the rolled up sleeves of his pale checked button-down shirt.
We settled back into our seats and my mother and Ben began to rattle through the basic questions. Where do you work? Where did you go to school? Do you like your job? Oh that’s interesting, I didn’t realize people did that. It was a relief for me, at least, to sit back and listen. I already knew most of the answers on both sides, so didn’t have to pay much attention.
Then I heard Mom say, “And do you ride?”
I looked up, a twinge of nerves activating in my stomach. I didn’t like it when Ben and Clint overlapped, even when it was only conversationally.
Ben looked surprised. “Horses? No.” He gave a little laugh that suggested only people with a strange disregard for their own heath ride horses. Then he added, “But I think it’s great Erin is getting back to it. So many people are always waiting until tomorrow.” He put his on my hand, which was resting on my leg.
My mother beamed at him. “Erin’s had ‘seize the day’ down since the moment of her birth.”
They both laughed, and Ben’s hand gave a little squeeze.
I thought of another moment from my lesson. I’d been having trouble getting Duke to step his hind underneath him, and Clint had been telling me to reach back further, to get my leg behind his balance point. When I’d gotten it wrong a few times in a row, he’d swung off Penny, walked up next to Duke and wrapped his large, warm hand around my calf.
I’d turned to putty in the saddle.
He’d adjusted my leg and cupped my boot-heel in his other hand, raising it towards Duke’s side. Duke had stepped over before the heel even touched him.
Clint had been back on Penny before the blood in my veins had stopped surging. He’d said, “Leather soled boots with a good heel are ideal for riding. Smooth leather, no rubber at all except on the heel.”
I thought of his strong, calloused hand on my ridiculous blinged out cowgirl boots and vowed to go shopping before I set boot on the Tipped Z again.
“Which reminds me,” I said, hoping to contribute to the conversation in such a way as to suggest I was, in fact, existing in the present with the rest of the world, “I need some new boots. The ones I’ve been wearing aren’t cutting it.”
Most mothers love to take their daughters shopping. This was not the case with mine. My father had been the one to go with me to pick out my prom dress. Mom gave me a mild look and said, “Maybe Trace can get a babysitter.”
“I could go with you.” This came from Ben, and I realized my tactical error too late. In trying to make conversation, I had made it seem like I wanted company on my boot buying excursion.
❂
“Do they all have rubber soles?”
It was Friday afternoon, and Ben and I were in Western Warehouse, systematically going down the rows of boots and finding them lacking. Clint had said two things: leather sole, good heel. So far we had yet to find a single boot that met even the first requirement.
Most of the boots on the wall, in fact, made the dance-style boots I’d been wearing to my lessons look positively understated. There were some that were a little more utilitarian looking, but they all had rubber soles. Every single one of them.
“Here’s one.” I looked over at Ben. He held a boot in his hand. The toe was black, and looked demure enough, but when he tipped it in my direction I could see the top was an elaborate montage of lacy inlays and paisley shapes. But it did have a leather sole, and a good heel.
Ben handed it over. I slipped it on my foot. The fit was ok. I walked aro
und in it for a moment, made awkward by the fact that my one leg was now 2 ¼ inches taller than my other.
Ben picked the other boot off the shelf and examined the tag. “How much are they?” I said.
“$529.”
I stopped walking. “What?”
He checked the price tag again, as if it might have changed in the last three seconds. “Yeah,” he said. “$529.”
“As in, five hundred and twenty nine dollars?”
“Plus tax,” Ben put in helpfully.
I had the boot off my foot and back on the shelf before you could say ‘Cotton Eyed Joe.’ I gazed at the row of footwear in despair. Computing complex sums in my head had never been my gift, but it didn’t take a genius to know the price tag on those boots was out of the question if I wanted to eat for the next two months.
Ben was still holding the other boot, gazing into the dark tunnel of its upper as if there was a fascinating world of dancing pixies in its depths. When he spoke again, his voice was low and strangely hesitant. “Erin,” he said. “I could get them for you.”
If I had been uncomfortable a moment before, it was nothing to what I’d felt now. I sat down on the wooden stool with built-in mirror that was placed in the aisle to facilitate removal and reinstallation of footwear. I pulled my socks off. “Ben,” I said, feeling panicked all of a sudden. It would be the most horrible form of irony for Ben to spend over $500 on a pair of boots I intended to wear while swooning over a hot cowboy. “No, you can’t do that.”
“I’ve been meaning to get you something,” Ben said. “Really, it would be fine.”
I shoved my socks back into my purse and slipped my sandals on. I knew that Ben had a good job, and $500 to him was not at all the same as $500 to me. But still. I turned to him. “No, Ben. Just no.” It came out a whole lot more harshly than I meant.
Ben looked startled, then downcast. He set the boot back on the shelf.
I looked around. We were surrounded by racks of boots. George Strait was on the radio, and chose that moment to say, “I aint’ rich, but, lord, I’m free.”
I stood for another moment, feeling an intense need to escape. “I think we should go,” I said.
It was an awkward drive home. I made a few half-hearted attempts at conversation, but Ben was subdued. He wasn’t not responding, but his normal cheerful manner had vanished. As he navigated his truck into the parking lot of my apartment complex, it occurred to me I still didn’t know where he lived.
He didn’t pull into a parking spot, even though there was an empty ‘guest’ space next to my Hyundai.
I opened the truck’s door, then looked over at him. He was staring out the front windshield, his expression closed and distant. I said, “Ben, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a jerk. Thank you for shopping with me.”
He turned. His smile was forced, but he leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. “It’s ok, Erin. It’s not your fault.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Clearly, it was my fault. Things had been going fine up until the point I’d bitten his head off for offering to do something nice for me.
I stepped out of the truck and dragged my purse out from where I’d stashed it behind the front seat. Ben said, “I’ll call you soon.” I nodded and closed the door. He drove off, brake lights winking as he went over the speed hump near the swimming pool. Then the truck engine revved higher and his black tailgate disappeared around the edge of the front office.
I stood in the sunlight, blinking, until I realized my eyes had tears in them. I squinted down at the ground, telling myself it was nothing. Ben and I had had our first fight, was all, and first fights were bound to happen, sooner or later. Weren’t they?
That’s when I saw the envelope. It lay at my feet, a plain piece of mail, the kind everyone gets every day. It had a little plastic mailer window in the front, and the logo of a law firm where the return address belonged. Someone must have dropped it getting out of their car.
Glad for something to do, I picked it up and took a step towards the office, then realized if it was a neighbor I knew I could slip it under their door.
I read the address, and my heart seemed to stop beating.
BENJAMIN AND KIM KELLER
3429 Painted Trail Blvd
Tucson, AZ 85748
I stared at the envelope. Keller was Ben’s last name. I knew that. I’d seen it on his emails plenty of times.
But who was Kim?
❂
“He’s married,” I said. “That’s the catch. That’s the problem with this great guy who has been going around seeming perfect in every way imaginable. Married. He married four years ago. I looked up the court records.”
I was at Trace’s house. I had driven over straight after the internet had confirmed my worst fears, surprised to find myself teary-eyed and shaken. I hadn’t dropped in on Trace randomly since some time partway through her pregnancy, when she’d made it clear unexpected visits were no longer all that welcome. I’d texted her on the way, to warn her, not giving her a chance to back out. Sometimes you just need to talk to your best friend.
She’d met me at the door with a concerned expression and a hug, and led me to the living room, where Olivia was holding court in a playpen full of stuffed animals. “Forgive the mess,” she said with self-conscious laugh.
I could see an open diaper bag sitting near the front door, and a pale green towel of the kind new parents must always have within reach draped over the arm of the couch. Otherwise, the house was spotless.
Trace and Andrew lived in one of the new subdivisions that had sprung up all over the edges of Tucson like pigweed after a rain. It was a bit cookie-cutter for my taste, but the ceilings were high, the windows were large, and the interior was a welcome cool after the crush of heat outside. It was more than one step up from my apartment, so who was I to judge?
We’d settled onto chairs in the living room, Trace perching on the edge of hers, her eyes on Olivia, as if the extra second it would take for her to get out of a reclined position might make the crucial difference in a case of choking or suffocation by stuffed animal.
I hadn’t waited for her to ask what was wrong. I’d blurted it out. Now it hung there in the air between us, the horrible truth, all the more three-dimensional now that I’d said it out loud.
“Married?” Trace said. “Are you sure he’s not been divorced? You know how long it takes the mail to adjust to that sort of thing. I still get things addressed to Trace Cox, even after all this time.”
She had a point, but I’d already thought of that. “I searched the records, under his name and hers. No divorce. Nothing.” I paused, staring out the living room window, which overlooked an empty street lined with a row of identical entryways and closed garage doors. “And it explains a lot. Why we’ve never gone to his house, for instance. He always comes to me.”
Trace was frowning. Olivia laughed and flung a toy at the mesh side of the playpen. It bounced back towards her, something inside its stuffed body rattling.
We sat like that for a while. Trace was clearly trying to come up with some other way to explain the incriminating piece of mail. But there wasn’t any way. Ben was married. Every time I’d kissed him, every time we’d gone on a date, and that day we’d tumbled into my bed while dinner got crispy, he’d been cheating on his wife.
The thought made me sick to my stomach.
Finally, Trace sighed. It was a sigh of defeat. “I’m so sorry, Erin.”
Somehow, that made it even worse. I found myself blinking back angry tears. “The stupid thing is I don’t even like him. I mean, I do like him, but I haven’t been sure how much. All I seem to do is fantasize about this….”
Olivia let out a sudden wail. Trace leapt out of her seat, stooping over the playpen to see what the problem was. To me it had sounded like a happy wail, but then, I wasn’t the mom here.
Trace adjusted the blanket Olivia was sit on, and set the rattling toy back within reach. She sat down again. “I’m sorr
y,” she said, looking over at me. “You were saying?”
I was almost relieved. I’d been on the verge of telling Trace about Clint, which I didn’t want to do. Trace’s over-mothering had also shifted my emotional state from weepy to annoyed. It was a welcome change.
I waved a weary hand. “I should have seen it coming, is all.” I sighed, looking back at the blank scene out the window. “And now I have to tell my mom.” It figures I would put two and two together mere days after inviting Ben to the house.
“You should talk to Ben first,” Trace said. “You at least owe him the chance to explain.”
“I don’t owe him anything.” I said this in as fierce a tone as I could muster.
Trace was looking at me with the cool, steady gaze that always made me squirm.
I sighed. “But of course, I’ll talk to him.”
“If it is true, you’re better off without him.”
The comment made me smile bitterly. Thanks for that one, besty. Really useful insight there. I couldn’t decide which was more upsetting: Ben’s betrayal, or Trace’s utter lack of interest in it.
I left Trace’s a half an hour later. Olivia had gotten fussy, and I had found myself growing less comforted by the minute. As I walked down the sidewalk that ran from her front door to the street, I was surprised to note I was growing less sad and more angry. When I got into my car, I turned the key in the ignition and sat for a moment, sweating as the AC started to do battle with the heat. I sat, staring at the empty streets of the subdivision. As I sat, I grew more angry, and as I grew more angry, a strange sense of resolve built up in my mind.
I reached for my purse, and pulled out the envelope. I stared at it for a moment, then punched the address into my phone.
“Do a U-turn,” the chirpy robotic voice instructed as I set the phone on my passenger’s seat.
I did a U-turn.
Six minutes later, I was in a different subdivision, though if I hadn’t just made the drive from one to the other I might not have known that fact. Like Trace’s, this one was full of uniform houses with well-groomed fronts and flat roofs.
“Your destination is on the right,” my phone informed me.
Heart pounding, I let my car drift up to the curb.
Ben’s house was a lot like all the other houses on the street. It had a little covered entryway at the front with some faux stone around the door.
My heart was hammering and my hands were sweating, even though the interior of the car had cooled off.
I killed the engine. I didn’t give my righteous anger time to be dissipated by rational thought. I picked up the envelope, left my car, and marched up to the door of the house.
As I walked through the heat, I tried to anticipate all possible outcomes. Perhaps Ben wasn’t home. He might have called some buddies and gone out drinking. He might, at this moment, be sitting in a bar complaining about me. He might be home but drunk, sloppy with the sting of my refusal to let him buy me boots.
But somehow it never occurred to me his wife might answer the door.
I rang the doorbell and waited in the still, hot, evening, and was completely unprepared when a blonde woman cracked the door and said, “We don’t accept solicitations.”
I was so startled, I almost missed my moment. The door was swinging closed again, nearly there, when I said, “Wait. I’m not selling anything.”
The door paused in its closing, but didn’t reopen.
“I think I have some of your mail.” I held up the envelope like an all access pass to the true secrets of Ben Keller.
The door swung back open, and I could see the woman in full now. She was tan and slender, with a large, high chest strapped into a bursting tank-top. She said, “Oh, ok.” She didn’t smile or apologize for trying to close the door in my face. She extended a hand. Her nails were painted an electric blue. I handed her the envelope, and she looked at it.
I was starting to think I’d gotten the wrong house, that maybe there was some crazy explanation for all of this after all, some way out for Ben that I hadn’t seen. Any moment this woman’s forehead would crease and she’d hand the envelope back, saying something about this being the wrong house, the wrong Ben, revealing how I’d leapt to the wrong conclusion.
But then I heard his voice drifting in from the other room. Ben, unmistakably. “Kim,” he said. “Who is it?”
Kim began to close the door again. “Nothing,” she said. “Just someone returning a piece of our mail.”
She wasn’t going to ask my name or extend the transaction with any sort of small talk or chit chat. The door was closing, blocking out the tile-floored entryway it had briefly revealed.
Perhaps it was better this way. Clearly, Ben had a wife, and he lived with her. There was nothing else to say. I should leave: walk from his front door to my car and never answer a phone call or a text or email from him again.
The door was almost closed. I was about to turn to go, and then I saw him walking out of a doorway into the hall, face showing nothing more than mild curiosity. He was looking at Kim’s back saying, “Did you even say thank….” As he spoke, his eyes shifted to me, and I saw his face register a mix of surprise and horror.
The door closed, and there was the sound of the dead bolt turning.