Karin was still sitting at her desk when Michelle knocked on
her office door.
“Now, how did I know that you would still be here?” Michelle
teased. Karin didn’t answer, but just moved out of the way so Michelle could
come in. “Does the word Finnegan’s mean anything to you?”
“I know I said I would come out and I will…” Karin said. She
ran her fingers through her hair and then sat down and moved some papers back
and forth. She wasn’t really getting any work done anymore, she was really just
pretending.
“What is so important that it can’t wait until tomorrow?”
Michelle asked. “Every work day must come to an end.” Michelle had dropped out
of high school and gone to cosmetology school. She only worked enough hours to
pay for her tiny efficiency apartment, drive a nice car and keep herself in new
shoes. She didn’t understand Karin’s need to work for anything more than that.
“Nothing,” Karin answered. “There’s really nothing that
can’t wait. I just feel better when I’m working. Are you sure you wouldn’t
rather hang out in a dirty apartment on Birch Run and we can chat while I paint
the kitchen?” She asked Michelle with a grin.
“Um, yeah, I’m sure,” Michelle answered. “Now, let’s go.
There’s a hot Irish dancer I need to meet,” Karin stepped into the bathroom and
ran a brush through her long brown hair. It had been up in a braid all day and
now she let it hang over her shoulders in waves. She paused for a moment and
looked at her reflection, then she gathered up her hair and put it back up into
a bun.
“Someday, you’re going to let me do something with all that
hair,” Michelle said when Karin came out of the bathroom.
“Someday…”
Finnegan’s was crowded as usual, not just with the summer
crowd, but also filled with locals. It was mostly a tourist spot because of its
location on the main avenue just three blocks from the beach, and the drink
prices kept the local heavy drinkers away.
“How about a booth?” Karin suggested. They looked around for
an empty table, and Michelle pointed to a small one in the middle of the club,
at the edge of the dance floor. Karin wrinkled her nose, but followed her
friend.
“I guess it’s better than sitting at the bar,” she said.
“Hey girls,” Kelley, a waitress asked with her mouth full of
gum. “Usual?” she asked waving two menus in the air. She had taken to
monumentous gum chewing when the restaurant owners had decided that smoke
breaks had to be outside, which meant that Kelley couldn’t have a cigarette and
still keep an eye on her tables. Karin and Michelle confirmed their usual drink
orders; Kelley made a few scratches on her order pad and left.
“So, are you going to spill it now, or do you want to have a
few drinks first?” Michelle asked, leaning in toward her friend.
“How about the short version now and the long version after
about a dozen drinks,” Karin said. “You know about the Bennett’s house,” she
said and Michelle nodded. Kelley returned with their drinks, and Karin took a
few sips before continuing. “Mrs. Bennett died this morning,” Karin took
another drink. “Maybe subconsciously she knew that it was time to go before
anyone told her that her home had been destroyed. It probably would have killed
her anyway.”
They sat silently sipping their drinks for a few moments,
and then Karin shifted in her chair and leaned forward. “On a lighter note, my
first showing this morning was Jay Palmer.” Michelle’s eyebrows went up. “…and
his wife,” Karin finished. Michelle’s mouth dropped open. They chatted about
old times while they finished the first round of drinks.
“You girls need a refill?” Kelley asked when their glasses
were nearly empty. They nodded. “Anything else?”
“Who’s dancing tonight?” Michelle asked.
“The group from Holland is here again,” Kelley replied.
“Is he still married to the girl his parents set him up
with?” Michelle asked Karin after Kelley left.
“I don’t know, but I don’t think so,” Karin said. “If I
remember right, her name was Linda and this girl is Samantha. But, I could be
wrong.”
“I heard his dad died a few years ago,” Michelle said. “Maybe
that let him off the hook with the whole arranged marriage thing, and he went
out and got a new wife.”
Karin didn’t respond. She took a drink, and then another.
“Hey, are you okay?” Michelle said. “You suddenly look sick.
Did you eat dinner? You’re not drinking on an empty stomach, are you?” Michelle
stood up and waved to Kelley. “Hey we need a menu, we’re gonna order some food.”
Karin held up her hand and shook her head. “I’m fine,
really,” she said. “I just want to remember him the way he was when we were
together. I don’t want to think about him having a second wife. I never wanted
to think about him having a first wife.”
“I think you’ve put this poor boy on a pedestal that he can’t
live up to,” Michelle said. “In fact, you know what I just realized? You have
been stringing along this fantasy of the perfect guy and you keep comparing all
the guys you meet and no one can live up to it. That’s why you turn down
everyone who asks you out. You’ve already got a beau,” Michelle paused to take
a drink. She set down her drink, a little harder than she meant to, but hard
enough to emphasize her point. “The problem is Kar, your boyfriend is
imaginary.”
Karin rolled her eyes. “I don’t have an imaginary boyfriend.”
“I stand corrected. You have an imaginary husband, thus the
ring on your finger.” Michelle pointed to Karin’s left hand as she leaned back
in her chair. Karin fidgeted with the ring.
“You know why I wear that,” Karin said. The ring had
belonged to Esther Marquette, Karin’s teacher and mentor. Esther had owned the
apartment building where Karin lived in eleventh grade with her mother. When
they couldn’t pay the rent and were about to be evicted for the umpteenth time,
Esther gave Karin an opportunity to work off the past due amount, so that she
could stay in the same school through graduation. Esther taught her everything
that she knew about fixing up old houses and dealing with tenants. One of those
lessons that Karin hadn’t really understood until she’d been in the business
for a few years is that people who rent assume that landlords are rich.
One applicant had told her, “We haven’t paid our rent for a
few months, but our landlord doesn’t need it, she goes to Florida every winter.”
Karin had found that men would approach her with that same
assumption and be looking for her to be some kind of Mommy Warbucks. They had
no idea how hard she worked or how little money she actually took home at the
end of the day. But, Esther had tried to warn her and had shown her the wedding
ring that she always wore, even thirty years after her husband had died. She
said it gave men a reason to respect her distance. When Esther’s diabetes
caused her fingers to swell up, she had given the ring to Karin and told her to
wear it always.
“I know, I know,” Michelle said, noticing tears in Karin’s
eyes. “I loved Mrs. Marquette too.”
“She told me to wear it until the right man came along and
gave me a real one.” Karin said.
“Well, maybe that’s him now,” Michelle said, looking over
Karin’s shoulder.
Karin refused to take the bait and didn’t turn to look. “I
don’t really think this is the kind of place where I’ll meet the man I’m going
to marry.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Michelle said with her smile growing
wider. “You might want to give this one a chance.”
“I’m not going to look.” Karin said and leaned back in her
chair to enjoy her drink. But, she couldn’t help feeling like someone was
watching her, and the more Michelle stared at the space behind her, the more
she couldn’t stand not to know. She set down her drink on the table and sighed.
“I’m going to the bathroom.” As she stood up and turned
around, she nearly walked right into the same blue shirt that had cornered her
that morning. She looked up to see his green eyes looking right into hers. She took
a deep breath of his smell. She loved that he still wore Polo, but this scent
was deeper. It was a smell she would always remember. From the first time she’d
been near Jay, he had reminded her of her grandfather. He always smelled like soil
and hay, no matter how much he washed or splashed on after shave. It was as
though the years of working on the farm had permeated his skin. It was the
smell of a hard working man, something that was rare in this little beach front
town of Dunewood.
“Oh, sorry, excuse me,” she finally said and turned to walk
around him to the restrooms.
What happens next? Find out here
What happens next? Find out here
No comments:
Post a Comment