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.
“Damn what?” I asked.
“Well, just to say, Johnny Gamble is Johnny Gamble.”
A specific area in my chest squeezed at the way she imparted that obvious but still confusing information.
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“He’s Johnny Gamble of Gamble Garages. Did he tell you that?”
No he didn’t tell me that.
And suddenly I was embarrassed about something that I hadn’t liked all along.
But it was worse since Deanna knew more about a man I’d slept with than I did.
Serengeti was getting fidgety, so I used my hand on her to lead her out of her stall, and once in the corridor, she trotted out the open bay at the back, directly into her pasture.
I moved to Amaretto as I shared with Deanna, “No, he didn’t tell me that. I mean, we talked but we were also doing other things.” I let that lie. It did, weighty between us on the phone, before I went on, “I don’t know what that means.”
Even though it seemed like I did. Something seemed familiar about that.
“You haven’t lived here long enough,” she murmured while I opened Amaretto’s stall and moved in for some quick pats before I let him loose. Louder, Deanna said, “You know the gas station in town?”
Oh yes.
That was where I’d seen it.
“He owns that?”
“That and seven more of them across three counties. None in the city, just in the counties. Some of them are like mini-mart stores. All of them sell gas and do work on cars.”
Wow.
That was impressive.
“He inherited it from his dad, who inherited it from his dad,” Deanna told me.
No less impressive.
Following Amaretto to the pasture, I stopped at the side of the open bay, leaned on it and watched my horses, reunited, nose each other familiarly.
“I’m not sure why this would earn a ‘damn,’” I shared.
“Because Johnny Gamble is also the Johnny part of Johnny and Shandra.”
I stilled.
Johnny and Shandra.
The bath salts crystalized in my mind, clear to the point it was almost like they shimmered in the air before me.
“Sorry?” I whispered.
“Total movie, romance movie, but one written by a man seeing as it did not have a happy ending.”
Oh God.
“He’s gorgeous. She was a knockout,” Deanna continued. “When they got together, not sure anyone was surprised. He was into her. She was into him. When I say that, he was into her and she was into him. We’re talking Romeo and Juliet. Lancelot and Guinevere. Scarlett and Rhett.”
My stomach sank.
“With the crappy ending to match,” she carried on.
“What happened?” I was still whispering.
“No one knows. One day, it was just over. She was gone, he remained. No one’s seen her since. But we’ll just say everyone freaked. That was not the ending they thought would come of that. Everyone, including me, was sure there’d be mini-Johnnys working in his garage who would grow up to set all the girls’ panties on fire, and mini-Shandras he’d treat like princesses who would grow up to be prom queens and break all the boys’ hearts. When this didn’t happen, I think even Pastor Thomas thought God had dropped the ball.”
My stomach still in my boots, my heart started beating really hard.
“Since then, again no big surprise, and it’s been years, there’s been no one for him. Every female in Matlock steers clear. Not like he goes out trying to bury his sorrow in every soft spot offered up to him. Just that, the first few who went there in hopes they could mend the broken heart, soothe the savaged soul, got seriously burned.”
Got seriously burned.
I’d just finished being seriously burned but not by a guy like Johnny. By a guy like my dad.
I hadn’t had the experience, but I suspected having it happen from a guy like Johnny would be worse.
By a lot.
“You said it’s been years?” I asked.
“Babe—”
“Maybe he’s—”
“Baby girl, listen to me,” she whispered fiercely. “After what happened with Kent, if you found a guy, I’d be at your back, rooting for you, glad you’re back in the saddle, hoping for the best because you deserve it. I’m not sure I know anyone who deserves it better. So this conversation is not easy to have.”
“Do you think he—?”
“I think you’re sweet as sugar, cute as a button and he’s a man. He gets a load of you, he’s not gonna think, ‘Best be careful I don’t mess with this one. She’s sweet, cute and sensitive as all get out and my ex burned me so bad I’ll never recover, so I should leave well enough alone.’ He’s not gonna know about that sensitive as all get out part. So he’s just gonna go forth to get him some.”
“He’s coming over for dinner tomorrow night,” I blurted.
“Say what?”
“He’s coming over for dinner tomorrow night. I’m making him Crock-Pot chicken enchiladas.”
“You’re pulling out the enchiladas, which means you dig him and he’s good in bed.”
He was very good in bed.
I also dug him.
“They’re easy to make, Deanna, they just taste like they aren’t.”
“They’re the kind of thing any normal girl, like you, would make any normal guy she likes so he’ll think, ‘Man, this woman can cook. I get all that sweetness in my bed and before that I get to eat like this? I better grab hold and do it tight.’ But just to say, Izzy, this guy is not a normal guy. This guy is a guy ruined for all other women by a knockout of a redhead with long legs and big boobs who was almost as sweet as your sugar, but I only say that because I know you and I didn’t know her except in passing. A redhead who he’ll be hung up on forever, even when nature calls and forces him to settle down in order to procreate. The next one will be numero dos. Runner up. Second best.”
Runner up.
Second best.
I did not have red hair.
I was blonde. Of a
sort. It was dark blonde, like an amber-ish blonde-brown.
But I was not a redhead.
I did have relatively large breasts and long legs though.
“They were that in love?” I asked quietly, my voice tight.
“I love Charlie with all my heart and soul, you know it, baby girl, but any time I saw those two together, they were so happy, so close, so damned sweet, they gave me a toothache I wanted for myself. So yeah, they were that in love. The air turned hazy and pink around them, they were that in love,” she answered gently, her voice kind.
I looked to my boots.
“Izzy?” she called.
“I like him,” I told my boots.
“I only know him in passing too, but I still know he’s that guy. The kind you can’t help but like. He’s solid. Dependable. From good people. His brother took off before Charlie and I got to town and I heard he’s a bit of a wild one. But I knew the man, and Johnny Gamble’s dad was like that too. Those men are men who fix your car even if you can’t afford it and let you make payments that won’t bite too deep. They sponsor Little League and girls’ softball and Pop Warner teams, and even coach those Pop Warner kids. Heard somewhere there was this ex-con, local screwup who no one trusted, but he gave him a job and the man stayed on the straight and narrow, probably doing it just to give loyalty to a man who took a chance on him.”
She paused.
I waited.
And after she took an audible breath, she kept going.
“And he might like you too. It might be that time where he’s decided he needs to move on from the love of his life and find someone to settle down with. But I’m not Johnny Gamble’s friend. I’m your friend. And you deserve to be the love of someone’s life. Not the one who followed that first act, and you get it good because you got yourself a good man, but you don’t get it how you deserve it.”
I looked unseeing to the pasture. “He had bath salts in his bathroom.”
“He had what?”
“He’s really, you know, a guy. And he had this pretty glass jar with blue bath salts in his bathroom.”
Deanna said nothing.
“Do you think they’re hers?”
“I think this is . . . when you found out, and you’d find out, it just sucks that it’s me who has to tell you . . . the kind of question you’d be asking yourself a lot if things go far beyond this dinner tomorrow with Johnny Gamble.”
“Should I . . . do you think I should tell him I know about this and talk to him about it?”
“I don’t know. Did you guys hook up or did you guys connect?”
I knew what she was asking and answered honestly, “I don’t know.”
“You’d know, Izzy,” she said softly.
I would.
I would know.
He told me about his dad and he gave me the code to his phone and he got mad when he thought I was scraping him off.
But he also talked to me about not wearing panties more than once, and at the time it just seemed sexy and thrilling and flattering, but it could just have meant that he didn’t want any obstructions when he was ready to get back to the real reason he was spending time with me.
“Honestly, Izzy,” she said carefully, “I was hoping you’d get my texts last night so I could stop you from letting anything happen. I’ve seen the man. I’m chocolate with a taste for nothing but chocolate but I still can see clear that man is fine. And if I knew you to be a girl who could go out and get herself some without her head getting in a tangle about it, I wouldn’t have texted back anything except not to worry about your menagerie. But you’re not that girl. You might want to try it out but that’s an outfit that will never fit. Like me and skinny jeans. They look tight on other sisters, but I look like someone squirted me into denim sausage casings.”
I wanted to smile.
But with all she was saying to me, there was no chance of a smile.
“So I’ll just say, be careful,” Deanna continued. “You’re a sweet chick but you aren’t stupid. You’ll see things as they are, especially now that you got all the info that you need. Take care of you and just play it by ear. But most important in that is, take care of you. There’s a man out there for you, Izzy, who’s gonna be your Charlie. He’s gonna treat you like the queen you are and you should accept nothing less. If I’m wrong about Johnny Gamble, I’ll be happy to pour barbeque sauce on them and eat my words. Just . . . be careful.”
“I will.”
“You want me to come over?” she asked.
Deanna said I was sweet but she was even sweeter. She liked to say I was white chocolate. Take a bite of me, I’m so sweet, I’ll make your jaw ache. And she was bitter chocolate, take a bite of her and get a caffeine rush.
But she wasn’t.
She was the finest truffle you’ve ever tasted. The kind you let melt in your mouth, and as it does, you pray it’ll never melt away.
“No, I’m good. I just . . . well, with Kent doing the things Kent did and me not being the kind of girl who does this kind of thing, now this, I don’t know. I mean, we had a night together, he made me breakfast. He’s coming over for dinner tomorrow. We exchanged numbers. But he didn’t ask me to be the mother of his children and pledge the rest of his life to me. I haven’t even known him twenty-four hours.”
“You’re also not a risk-taking girl. It took you five seconds flat to decide to adopt Dempsey but it took you six months to research buying your new car. God willing, you’ll have Dempsey far longer than you will that Nissan. I’m hoping you get what I’m saying, so I’ll repeat, be careful. Treat Johnny Gamble like your Nissan. Do not adopt him like a member of your menagerie because they’re glad to have a home, someone to love who loves them in return. Not sure that’s what Johnny Gamble is looking for, but bottom line, that isn’t all you should be looking for from a man.”
My eyes were on the boxer mix I got as a puppy a year ago. Dempsey. He had white feet and a white flash on his chest that slid up to his white snout, the rest of him was red fawn.
He was grown up now, beautiful, all mine, and one of the reasons Kent had lost his mind eight months ago and broke down the door to my house.
The other reason was that Kent was creepy, stalkerish, pathologically possessive and possibly insane.
I’d adopted Dempsey when I was with Kent, so somehow Kent got it into his mind that when I ended things with him and refused to start them back up he should have Dempsey, so he set about taking him.
Sadly for Kent, not so much for me, Dempsey didn’t like Kent breaking down the door, shouting down the house (anytime he did that), but evidently Dempsey was fed up with it that night. To wit, Dempsey mauled the heck out of Kent’s arm while my other dog, Swirl, attacked his leg. All this as I was frantically talking to the 911 operator.
After the “attack,” Kent then tried to make me have Dempsey and Swirl put down.
Fortunately, the cops saw Kent for what he was, what with the breaking down of my door and all, thought Dempsey and Swirl were the bomb and refused to press the issue.
Unfortunately, Kent got an attorney.
Fortunately, the judge saw it the cops’ (and my) way.
Unfortunately, Kent continued to be such a nuisance, I had to sell my little house and move to Matlock.
Fortunately, it meant I had my horses not stabled elsewhere but right outside my back door.
Unfortunately, all this meant I headed into Home last night and met Johnny Gamble who I’d like to think could be someone special in my life but who might just be a really great memory.
“Izzy, are you there?” Deanna called.
“I’m not thinking I’m made out for the hook-up kind of life,” I muttered.
“Oh, baby,” she crooned. “You sure you don’t want me to come out there?”
“No, but maybe next Saturday you and Charlie can come over so I can make you something a whole lot better than chicken enchiladas to thank you for taking care of my zoo today.”
“You don’t have t
o do that.”
“Yes I do.”
She let that sit for a moment before she replied, “Yeah, you always do.”
Deanna and I worked together. Deanna and I met at the office. Deanna and I moved up the ranks together. Deanna and I were both directors of different departments now.
I’d been at the hospital with her after her mother had her stroke. She’d come to the hospital with me repeatedly when mine was dying of cancer.
I’d also been there when Deanna met Charlie. I had stood at her side when she married him.
She’d been there when I met Kent. And she’d stood at my side while we stood about five feet behind Charlie’s back when Charlie stood in my doorway with a baseball bat and told Kent if he showed at my place one more time he’d cave his head in with that bat.
Deanna was very black, very round, very beautiful, and even though I adored the younger one I got by blood, Deanna was also the big sister I’d always wanted to have.
Needless to say, with my life, and Deanna’s, me wanting to have it together so bad it was an obsession, her having it together naturally, there were a lot of thank-you dinners from me to her in our past and there probably would be a lot more in our future.
“See you tomorrow at work and we’ll be there Saturday for one of Izzy’s delicacies,” she told me.
“Great, doll. See you tomorrow.”
“That you will, later, babe.”
“Later, Deanna.”
We hung up but I didn’t move, watching my horses roam their space, my dogs doing it with them, Dempsey with Swirl, my old boy, the senior member of my zoo, my Bernese mountain dog mix I’d rescued about a year after I graduated from college.
I’d come to Matlock thinking, after losing Mom, after my sister married a loser, after what happened with Kent, that I’d hit this little farmhouse on three acres and hit heaven.
Johnny and Shandra.
Well, there it was. Johnny was probably removed not only because he was having a rough day, which was the anniversary of his dad’s death, but because he was remote so as not to let anyone think they were getting in there because my sense was he was that kind of guy. He might have burned a few women after Shandra, but he’d know that and in future have a mind to it. I could only guess that was true, but with his gentlemanly manner, I figured it’d be a good guess.