Tell Me When It Hurts (10 page)

Connor paused as he buttered the last piece of bread and took a bite. “First thing I did was get this big map of the United States and set it out on my kitchen table. For four months, that thing sat there next to a few travel books. I studied that map and those books like I used to study the Dow Jones averages. I read everything, cross-referenced towns and local economies, checked property values, and basically put together a grid comparing the three or four locales that came up as my finalists.

“
After that, it was almost a toss of the dice, and I finally decided on Wyoming because it was so darn beautiful.
Well, there it is,
I thought. Just like the Dow Jones: forty percent logic and sixty percent emotion. I sold my Beemer, bought a pickup, and headed out. And that was the end of the penthouse. Once I bought the ranch, I was about as far from Fifth Avenue as you can get in the continental forty-nine.”

“
But it was good in the long run, right? You got off the speeding train?” Archer asked, leaning forward with her arms resting on the table.

“
Well, I got six of the things I love most in the world, so I guess it was good,” replied Connor, dabbing at his mouth with his big yellow napkin.

Archer cocked her head. “Those things being . . . ?”

“
Millie, Alice, and the city girls.”

“
The
city girls
? Assuming they’re not four hookers from Laramie, they are . . . ?”

“
My sheepdogs. My first purchase after the ranch and Millie. They’re Great Pyrenees, and I’ve only lost two sheep to coyotes since I started up, which is unheard of. Most ranchers lose one percent of their herd yearly to local varmints. Dallas, Savannah, Boston, and Tallahassee, I call them.”

“
Ergo, the city girls. Cute,” commented Archer. “How about Millie? Did you ride as a kid?”

“
Yeah, right. As if the McCalls had access to a stable.” Connor smiled at the impossibility of it. “No, I started riding when I was fifteen. I worked at that berry farm I told you about. It was just north of Boston. They kept six or seven horses just for fun. I worked there every summer through high school, and it became almost a second home to me.

“
Mrs. Rose, the owner, treated me like family. She let me ride anytime I wanted. I had a favorite—Sabrina—and I rode her every free minute. Man, I loved that horse. Pretty little gray mare. For whatever reason, I loved riding and everything about horses. My father thought it was stupid—you know, that I would do that when I could be playing baseball. No chip off the old block. Another disappointment for him. But anyway, that’s how I started.”

Connor stopped and took a sip of his wine, feeling a bit melancholy at the mention of Mrs. Rose’s farm. “Anyway, when I moved to Wyoming, I got Millie from the rancher next door. He was trimming down his herd and had too many horses. She was only five at the time, and I loved her sweetness, I really did, and she adjusted to the ranch like she’d always been there. After working cattle, she probably found the sheep pretty easy. They don’t kick or charge at you and are pretty docile compared to an angry steer. Yeah, old Millie and I bonded, and the rest is history.”

Archer nodded. “I know what that’s like. And Alice?”

“
Alice. Alice is the love of my life—to date, anyway. She’d give her life for me without blinking, and I just might do the same. I never had a dog as a kid. Never had a dog when I was moving and traveling, and now I have this canine partner who lets me control things—and God knows, I’m controlling—but who’s always interested in what I have to say, is always loyal and accepting of me without wanting to change me, and loves me unconditionally. It doesn’t get much better than that, does it?”

Archer looked at him and said quietly, “No, it doesn’t.”

CHAPTER 10

By the fourth night, when Archer knew that help was not strictly essential, Connor showed up with fresh flounder, two potatoes, broccoli, and an apple pie. Archer devoured her share.

“
Soon you’ll be sprinting again,” Connor said as they sat down at the table, plates in hand. “You and that chubby Lab of yours.”

“
Hey, that’s not chub—she’s got big bones.”

“
Hah! I’ve heard that one before.”

Hadley lay flat on the floor next to Archer’s chair, as if attempting to conceal her “chub,” tail thumping, eyes cast upward.

As Archer took her first sip of crisp white Chardonnay, she leaned forward and looked at Connor, eyes narrowing. “So tell me, McCall, are you just showing up here to get free use of my major appliances, or what?”

Connor smiled. “Well, that was the second draw, I must admit. The first was that cordial welcome you gave me. Yeah, that first chat we had at your back door—actually,
through
your back door, since you never did open it—made me feel real warm and fuzzy all over. I was drawn back here like a moth to a flame. Yup, I knew I’d come to the right place to regroup.” He masked his grin by taking another bite of flounder.

“
Very funny. I get it. But you know, your style could use some work. That ‘Aw, shucks, ma’am, howdy neighbor’ thing was kind of hokey, you know. I don’t get any company up here, and for all I knew, you were some freakoid escapee from an asylum for the criminally insane.”

“
Jesus, I looked that bad?”

Archer stopped eating and peered at him longer than necessary. “Well, now that you mention it, you do have a kind of crazed look in your eyes. In fact, you sort of remind me of that guy—”

“
Okay, okay. But don’t you get lonely up here?”

“
Nope,” she lied. As she spoke, she remembered dinner parties at the long claw-footed dining table in West Hartford, friends laughing and glasses clinking. She remembered setting the table, picking just the right tablecloth and napkins for the occasion, the right flowers. She remembered the hugs at the end of the evening, and lovemaking with Adam after the dishes were done.

“
So, are you ever going to call me by my Christian name?”

Archer looked at him. “Hm-m, I don’t know, McCall. It’s an old habit. I call a fair number of the men in my life by their last names. Think of it as a term of endearment.” She tossed a napkin at him. He caught it and laughed.

In reality, her defenses had crumbled under the onslaught of his disarming presence. Fighting against his entreaties was like warding off a friendly golden retriever who, despite repeated stern rebukes, refused to take offense and go away. She liked the way he told a story straight, even when it cast him in a bad light. She liked his self-effacing jokes and the way he stopped to stroke Hadley just because she was there.

Archer had to admit, a man who kept a scrapbook with a picture of his boyhood horse, who read about father-daughter relationships though he’d never met his daughter, and who listened to Enya had to have
something
going for him. If this Wyoming sheep rancher turned out to be an ax murderer, so be it. There were worse things in life than being killed by an ax murderer posing as a Wyoming sheep rancher.

* * *

After the fourth evening, getting together for dinner was part of their day. When Archer got back on her routine of errands to the store and fetching the mail, she’d look at her watch as the afternoon shadows lengthened. Even her weekly trips to the movie theater had become the two-o’clock show instead of the four thirty show—it seemed important to be home for dinner.

They had had this de facto arrangement for three weeks and two days. Archer now closed the bathroom door in case Connor should poke his head in the front door unexpectedly, and she moved her “personal items” from the open metal shelf above the toilet to the cabinet under the sink. Her laundry was folded and stacked in her drawer promptly, instead of sitting for days in a pile at the end of her bed.

She kept expecting Connor to ask more of her—more conversation, more intimacy, even—but he remained undemanding and seemed to look to her for clues to their daily pace. Most nights, while making dinner, he was quiet when she was, chatty when she wanted to be, as he worked around the kitchen in a methodical, unhurried way. He would leave at night the same way: just tip his hat, whistle for Alice, pick up his lantern, and close the door gently behind him.

It was early Wednesday evening when Connor, with Alice at his heels, walked into the front yard just as Archer was coming up the driveway. She turned off the engine, opened the driver’s door, and bounced out of the car. Her dark straight hair hung to her shoulders. Usually she pulled it back in a big tortoiseshell barrette, but today it swung loosely from side to side. She wore blue jeans, black clogs, a navy blue T-shirt, and an oatmeal-colored cardigan sweater.

When she smiled at him, with the flaming red and orange leaves of the Berkshires as a backdrop, Connor thought she looked beautiful. He moved closer and felt a sudden weakening as she smiled up at him, eyes shining. He wished mightily for the first time in his life that he were a spontaneous, damn-the-consequences kind of guy who could sweep her up into his arms and carry her to the bedroom.
Steady, old man,
he thought to himself,
you’re a bit long in the tooth for the Rhett Butler routine
.

“
Hey, where’ve you been?” he asked, strolling up to the Jeep, noting that Hadley was sitting on the porch. Hadley usually went everywhere with Archer.

“
To the movies,” she replied. “I go once a week—Wednesdays, matinee. I told you, I’m a movie freak.”

“
No kidding! You’ve been holding out on me. Where is there a theater around here?”

“
You know, McCall, the Berkshires aren’t the end of the earth. We have theaters. You just have to drive thirty minutes to Pittsfield.”

“
A revelation. What did you see?”

“
Return to Me
. It’s about a man whose wife dies, and he donates her heart to a woman who needs a heart, and . . .” She stopped and laughed. “I know it sounds stupid, but it was terrific. I loved it. Minnie Driver and David Duchovny. By the way, I only see things with happy endings. It’s my one requirement,” she said as they walked side by side up the path to her cabin. “And the wife had been training a gorilla in sign language at the time of her death, and the girl gets the heart, and they meet. And she has this grandfather who’s played by Carroll O’Connor . . . and then . . .” She broke off, laughing, and pulled the screen door open and went in, with Connor two steps behind her, holding the door for the two dogs.

The next week, they started matinee Wednesdays. Selecting a movie became a serious project for Tuesday night dinners, with a full debate ensuing over the contenders. Connor and Archer would open the morning paper to the theater page, spreading it across the pine table.

As it turned out, they had similar taste in movies. They loved
Miss Congeniality,
thought
A Beautiful Mind
was terrific, and found
Training Day
a bit overrated, although Denzel was great.

“
I heard that one is really violent,” said Archer.

“
No, it’s not supposed to be that bad. I heard Bruce Willis is really good in it.”

“
Ebert and Roeper hated that one, and I usually agree with them.”

“
Yeah, but I read an article about Uma Thurman and how they made this movie. It sounded really good—happy ending, too.”

They saw every good movie that came along, sometimes twice, and a great many forgettable others. They loved the classics and shared a weakness for sentimentality.

“
I love every cliché in the book, especially when good wins out,” Archer admitted.

“
Yeah, me, too. And I have to admit, I love a good love story—the more sentimental, the better.” Then, catching her look of surprise, he added, “Hey, I’m sharing deep feelings here. Just go with it.”

She looked down and smiled. “Fine. As long as you don’t have to kill me now.”

He chuckled.

On the way home, they debated whether the movie had any quotes that would become timeless. By accident, a word game developed between them: slipping a movie quote into conversation to see if it got by unnoticed. Both were sharp, and both were cutthroat competitors. Points were tallied at the end of the week, and the loser cooked dinner the following week.

“
I think when Jack Nicholson says, ‘What if this is as good as it gets?’ will be a classic,” commented Archer after they saw
As Good as It Gets—
second time for both—at a theater in South Hadley.

“
Hmmm, maybe, but it’s kind of bland, you know. A really good one has to stand on its own, be totally unique. You know, like when Lauren Bacall says to Bogie, ‘You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? Just put your lips together and blow.’ Now,
that’s
a memorable line.”

Invariably, when they got there the theater would be almost empty, except for a handful of seniors. They always ended up sitting off to the right on the aisle, ten rows back. Occasionally, Archer would throw a kernel of popcorn at Connor when he was engrossed in the movie. He would ignore it until a scene held her rapt, then throw a kernel back at her. That would then start them each tossing popcorn and shushing the other.

On occasion, they leaned together conspiratorially to share a comment or a joke, or Connor would brush Archer’s hair back to whisper a witty observation that wouldn’t hold until the ride home. Archer would shiver and lean in closer, sometimes giggling like a tenth-grader on a date. Sometimes she took Connor’s arm to emphasize a point.