Bread Alone (40 page)

“You finish it.” Just a breath, then, “Laura was there.”

“Did you talk?”

“No. She was with somebody.”

“How did that make you feel?” I curl back down on the futon, balancing my cup.

He leans his head back against the chair and laughs. “You can take the girl out of California, but you can’t—”

“Okay, okay. I just thought you wanted to talk about it. If you don’t, fine. Why don’t you put the tape on?”

“Because I’m reading and I don’t want you to be distracted. You can listen to it later.”

I close my eyes and listen as Mac becomes Nick Carraway, lost in the glittering world of the Buchanans, and I recall hazily that after reading
Gatsby
for the first time when I was sixteen, I wanted to change my name to Jordan. Now he’s at the part where Daisy tells Nick about the birth of her daughter. “ ‘And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’ “

He snaps the book shut. “Sorry. I’m really tired.”

“That’s what happens when you stay out all night. Go home and get some sleep. Leave me the book.”

He tilts his head from side to side, rubbing the back of his neck. “God, I’m stiff.”

“Come here. My dad always said I gave good neck rubs.”

“Don’t go ripping anything.”

“Sit down and shut up.”

He lowers himself to the floor, stretching his long legs out in front of him, and I sit cross-legged on the bed, massaging the stiff cords at the base of his skull. Everything’s fine until I start thinking about it. Mac and I don’t touch each other. It’s an unwritten rule with us. A little nudge with an elbow is about as far as we’ve ever gone. Now I remember why.

Because I’m imagining my fingertips on the smooth curve of his back. I’m staring at the hollow where his neck joins the shoulder, wondering how it would feel under my mouth. God, no, this is all wrong. I need a friend, not more complications.

“Okay,” I say, too cheerfully. Slap his shoulder. “That’s it. I’m a little sore. I guess everything really is connected to your stomach muscles.”

“Thanks.” He doesn’t get up or turn around.

When my mother was trying to teach me piano, she explained about the
una corda
pedal, the one on the left. When you depress that pedal, the entire action and keyboard shift just slightly, nearly invisibly, to the right, so that the treble hammers strike only two of the three strings. The pianist continues playing just as before, but the music is different, softer. That’s how the world has just shifted.

A knock on the door makes me jump, sending a twinge through my incision. Mac scrambles up.

From my angle, I can’t see the porch. I can only see Mac’s face, the neutral expression that drops like a curtain after the play. He steps back and Gary walks in, both arms hidden by giant bundles of pale yellow roses.

I find my voice. “Gary! What are you doing here? I’m sorry. This is my friend Mac McLeod. Gary Travers.” They exchange some kind of genetically encoded male information at a glance and then Gary shifts the flowers so he can shake hands.

Just so nobody misunderstands, he bends down to kiss me. I try to make it a short one.

“I better get going.” Mac picks up his denim jacket.

I look around Gary and the roses. “Mac? I’ll talk to you soon.”

After the door shuts behind him, Gary off-loads the roses onto the
kitchen table. He hangs up his leather jacket and sits down next to me, taking both my hands.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“Because there was no need to. I figured I’d be seeing you next week. How did you know?”

“I talked to your mom yesterday. If I’d known, I could have been up here taking care of you.” He lifts my hands to his mouth.

I give him a smile that’s meant to be reassuring. “All my friends have been taking care of me.”

“Like Mac?”

“Yes, like Mac. He’s the one who took me to the hospital when I got sick.”

He runs a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Wyn. Maybe I shouldn’t have barged in like this, but when your mother told me you’d had emergency surgery, I panicked.”

“You and my mother.” I smile. “It was all I could do to keep her from getting on the next plane up here. But I’m fine. I’ve had my stitches out, and it’s just a matter of resting until everything finishes getting stuck back together.”

“Then that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

The way he holds my face in his hands, as if I were some treasured work of art, is guaranteed to neutralize any leftover pockets of insurgency. His kiss is gentle but insistent, and it makes me want to do things I know I can’t do yet.

He painstakingly cuts the stems of all the roses and arranges them in my only container, a galvanized bucket. There are so many that they look embarrassingly spectacular.

“Thank you for the flowers. They’re beautiful.”

“I’m glad you like them.” He dries his hands on my dish towel. “I’ll just go out to the car and get my bag.”

My eyes open wide. “Your what?”

“My bag. My suitcase.”

“You mean you’re staying here?”

“Well, yes. Unless you don’t want me to. I arranged things so I could be up here all week.”

“My place is so small …” I feel like my protest is not only feeble, but petty and ungrateful. “You won’t have room to—”

“I’m here to take care of you. I won’t get in the way, I promise. I have a few phone calls I have to make tomorrow, but for the most part I’ll just be your devoted slave.” He bends down to kiss me. “By the way, I hope you don’t mind, I gave Erica and the kids your phone number. And a few people at work. I told them they could reach me here.”

He disappears out the door.

I can stand it for a week. I mean, he rearranges his whole schedule, comes up here with all these flowers. How can I throw him out?

For dinner, he heats up some of CM’s soup. He brought a loaf of Paisan extra-sour sourdough with him and two bottles of a Napa Valley cabernet. It’s like he doesn’t remember that I make bread for a living or doesn’t believe that the Northwest produces perfectly good wines. Or maybe I’m just too grouchy.

I do enjoy watching his butt while he’s standing at the sink washing dishes, a pillowcase tucked into his belt because I don’t own any aprons. At some point, he turns around with his sleepy-eyed smile.

“What are you laughing at?”

“You. In your makeshift apron with your buns of steel kind of rolling back and forth. And I’m not laughing, I’m smiling. Enjoying the after-dinner show.”

“You better not talk like that if you can’t follow through. Remember the theory of rising expectations.”

When he’s finished with the dishes, he takes off his Top-Siders and stretches out next to me. One of Mac’s tapes is playing, one of the less raucous ones.

“Don’t you have anything more romantic than Otis Redding?”

“I think the Big O is pretty romantic. You have to listen to the words. The way they work with the music. If you insist, I think there’s a Frank Sinatra up there. I know there’s an Ella Fitzgerald.”

Pretty soon Ella’s singing “Every Time We Say Goodbye” and I’m trying not to think about the first night Mac took me to Lofurno’s. Gary pushes up the sleeve of my sweatshirt and tickles the bend of my elbow.

“God, that feels good.”

“When are you going to be seaworthy again?” he asks, nibbling my earlobe.

“I don’t know. The post-op instructions were kind of vague. All it said was something about gradually returning to your previous level of sexual activity. And they don’t even know what my previous level was. I could be Truck Stop Annie.”

“ ‘Gradually’?” His breathing kicks into second gear. “If we have to work up to it, maybe we should start slowly. Now.”

“I don’t think so.”

“How about if I just touch you?”

I smile. “How about if I just touch
you?
You’re the one with a gun in his pocket.”

His breath catches when I run my hand down the ridge in his pants. He unbuckles his belt. I ease the zipper down, and slip my hand inside, freeing up Junior. From the way he jackknifes when I scoot down and take him in my mouth, I surmise that Erica wasn’t into oral sex. After the initial shock, he settles down and lets me make him happy. His Class-5 excitement is a turn-on, but his gratitude leaves me feeling vaguely uneasy. Like most men, he has no idea what to do if he can’t direct.

“That was incredible,” he breathes when he’s holding me later. “I wish I could make you feel good.”

“Gary, you
are
making me feel good. I like the way you hold me. It doesn’t have to always be about orgasm, you know.”

Apparently, this is a novel concept to him.

The phone rings at seven in the morning and he grabs it before I can even roll over. He spends fifteen minutes going over interview questions for new employees.

“Be sure to give everyone the sheet on drug testing. And let me know how many good candidates we’ve got. If we don’t get at least six, we’ll have to run the ad again.”

By this time, I’m wide awake. I dread having to get my body clock synched up again when I go back to work. When he crawls back under the covers and tries to get chummy, I give him the evil eye.

“You know, since this is my house, I think I should answer the phone.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want it to wake you up.”

“How could I sleep with you reciting your entire employee handbook?”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s just—it could have been my mother or something.” She probably would’ve been ecstatic to call and find him here, but I don’t say that.

“You’re right. I won’t answer it unless you ask me to.”

Around noon, he showers and gets dressed. “I have to go to a very short meeting.” He looks worried. “Are you going to be all right here by yourself?”

“Of course. I’ve been mostly by myself since I came home. People wander in and out and leave me food. I eat, sleep, get fat and lazy.”

“Do you feel up to going out tonight?”

“Possibly. Go to your meeting; we’ll talk when you get home.”

“You want me to heat up something for your lunch before I go?” He shifts that soft leather jacket from one hand to the other.

“No, I can do that. I’m supposed to be up and around more. Go on, scram.”

When he’s gone, I’m exhausted. Like I’ve been onstage or at least on display for the last twenty-four hours. In the bathroom, the only traces of him are a few stray whiskers in the sink. Everything is wiped up, screwed on, nailed down tight. I run hot water in the tub, until it’s about half full, and sit on the edge to sponge myself. I clean my puckery incision and pat it dry per the instructions they gave me. It doesn’t hurt that much anymore, but looking at it when I touch it makes my salivary glands twang like too tight guitar strings.

I putter in the kitchen, wash out the coffeepot, make myself a peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat—walnut bread. I take Ella off the boom box and put on the new tape Mac brought me. “Bo Diddley’s a Gunslinger,” Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen.” My mind reaches for something. A phantom idea it can grasp, but not hold. Like a wet bar of soap in the shower.

Then Jackie Wilson starts winding out “Doggin’ Around.” The way he hits that high “Yeah” and slides down into good-man, feelin’-bad blues gives me goose bumps.

“You must be feeling way better. Sounds like party time.” CM flings open the door.

“I feel pretty—” The word dies in my mouth when she flashes a diamond solitaire under my nose. “Oh my God.”

There’s a cavernous silence. “Is that all you can say?” She laughs.

I put up my arms for a hug. “Congrats.” I want to smile, but my face is numb. Come on, Wyn. This is your best friend and she’s ecstatic. Lie. “I’m really happy for you.”

“Yeah, I can see you are.”

“I’m just … stunned. So when did this happen?”

She holds her hand out and turns it from side to side so the sun shaft coming in the window makes rainbows on the wall. “Pretty righteous rock, don’t you think? Last night.” She flops into the club chair. “He just came walking in the door with a bottle of Dom Perignon and some roses and I said what are we celebrating and he said—”

I’m wondering, since he’s not working at the current running
moment, but living off CM, where the hell he got the money for a diamond and Dom Perignon.

“Gee, I hope I’m not boring you.”

I look at her. “CM, please don’t be mad at me.”

She smiles, but I can see her heart’s not in it. “I’m not mad. I guess I just expected you to be thrilled or something.” She shrugs. “Maybe that’s asking too much.”