"Where are you from?" she asked.
He smiled. "Anaheim."
"I meant—"
"Saudi Arabia," he said. "My parents had an opportunity to leave when I was sixteen. We moved first to Beverly Hills, and then to Anaheim." He smiled at her again. "Where are you from?"
Nowhere. "We moved around a lot when I was a kid," she told him. "Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana. If the town had a bar, we lived there. See, I'm a second-generation drunk. I come by it naturally."
"But you don't drag your daughter from town to town, bar to bar," he pointed out.
"Yeah, I just want to."
"But you don't," he said again, in his gentle voice.
Mary Lou hugged her knees tightly to her chest. "My husband's girlfriend's in town. I'm pretty sure he's going to see her tonight."
The lawn guy was silent, and Mary Lou glanced at him. He was watching her, his expression finally somber, his eyes sad. "And this is why you wish to punish yourself... ?"
"No," she said. "This is why I wish to get shit-faced drunk—so I don't have to think about him fucking her."
He blinked at her foul language, but that was the extent of his reaction. He was just too goddamn relentlessly serene, and for a moment, Mary Lou hated him for that. She hated everything, everyone.
Except Haley.
"Maybe you need to ask yourself why you stay with him when his actions make you want to drink," he said.
"I love him," Mary Lou said, but the words sounded hollow to her.
"Ah. Maybe you should confront him, then, tell him you don't want him to see this woman anymore."
"I have." She couldn't believe she was telling the Robinsons' lawn guy some of her deepest, most miserable, most pathetic secrets. "He just denies it. He says he hasn't seen her since we got married."
"Maybe he is telling the truth."
"She's in town. I saw her. And he called to say he wouldn't be home tonight. I don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out."
He was silent then.
"Just so you know, I wasn't looking for the keys so I could go drink," she told him. "I wanted to find them before it gets dark because I need them. But I wasn't going to the Ladybug, I swear. I was going to take a shower, and then go pick up my daughter from day care. That's why I need the keys. To fetch her back home."
"And maybe tonight you'll use those keys to drive yourself to an AA meeting?" he asked.
She nodded. "Definitely."
"That's very good."
"You wouldn't happen to know any that last all night, would you?"
He sat for a moment, just looking at her with those dark as midnight, bottomless-pit eyes, as if he were trying to make up his mind. He finally reached into his pocket, took out a worn leather wallet, and pulled out a slightly bent business card.
"This is my home phone number," he told her as he handed it to her with her keys. "I'm at home every night after nine-thirty. If you need someone to talk to, even if it's late..."
YARD WORK, the plain white card said in a simple font. IHBRAHAM RAHMAN. It was followed by his phone number.
"I'm not sure—" Mary Lou stopped. If my husband would approve, was what she'd been about to say. But that was a lie. Sam wouldn't give a shit if she took this man's card and called him up every night of the week.
"Thank you," she said instead.
Chapter 6
THERE WAS A telephone in the bathroom, so Joan didn't have to get out of the tub when it rang. She knew who was calling, though, because she'd already received her nightly update from her boss, Myra, who was acting as Brooke Bryant's current "handler."
Brooke's visit to Houston was going as well as could be expected—whatever that meant. There was something going on that Joan hadn't been told. Which made her job just that much harder to do.
Myra reported that they'd be in San Diego on schedule. "Oh, and find Brooke an escort for the admiral's party— the one being held at the hotel," she'd commanded. "Find her someone loaded with medals. A captain or a commodore or—"
"Or a Navy SEAL?" Joan had asked.
"Yes! Even better, make him a war hero."
"I think they probably all are at this point," Joan had told her.
She now waited three rings before she picked up the phone. "Hello."
"Hi, Joan, it's Mike. Muldoon," he added, as if she got dozens of phone calls all of the time from dozens of different Mikes.
She'd been expecting his call. A man didn't work his ass off to become a Navy SEAL by lying down and accepting failure. Even if said failure was as insignificant as an inability to be an acceptable liaison to the White House public relations assistant in charge of publicity ops for the president's unconventional daughter.
"Okay, Muldoon. Let's hear it," she said. "Make it good, expend a little emotional energy, maybe even shed a few tears, and I won't call your CO in the morning."
He laughed with what sounded a lot like relief. Had he really been worried? "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet, Junior. You've got at least fourteen hoops to leap through before you can start thanking me." She stuck her toe up to the faucet to catch a drip, waiting to see how Junior would go over this time around.
He didn't even acknowledge it. "I am sorry," he said. "It wasn't my intention this afternoon to frighten you."
"Oh, boo, hiss," Joan said. "You sound completely insincere. Try again. Maybe with a little wobble in your voice. 'Oh, Joan,' " she demonstrated. " 'Please, please forgive me for being such an incredible, unbelievable asshole today. If you don't forgive me, why, I'm going to crumple into a little heap right here in the lobby of the Team Sixteen building and cry my little heart out.' "
He laughed. "I can't say that because I happen to be calling you from home. But I am really sorry," he said. He didn't sound quite as young over the phone. "You were right—you were absolutely right. I was showing off. I wanted to impress you. I wanted to, urn..."
Joan waited, dying to hear this, remembering his voice in her ear. You feel pretty perfect to me. He hadn't sounded too young then, either.
He took a deep breath. "Well, I wanted to—"
But then she didn't want to hear it. She couldn't stand to hear it. There was no way on God's green earth she could have a clandestine fling with a twenty-five-year-old Navy SEAL— even after her job here was over and she officially went on vacation. She couldn't do it. She would look too pathetic. Because it was too pathetic.
Sure, she would enjoy it immensely while it was happening, but she'd look back upon it with great embarrassment. After it was over, it would become a total cringe-fest. Especially since said twenty-five-year-old Navy SEAL had been specifically assigned to keep her entertained. She would forever wonder if she had been just a job or a true adventure.
And so would the rest of the world.
So instead of hearing what exactly he wanted, she cut him off. "You know, I've been thinking about why I freaked out this afternoon, and the truth is, I wouldn't have been so upset if I didn't like you so much. If I didn't already really value your friendship" she clarified quickly. "I wasn't lying when I said that it felt like you were my long lost little brother. You're a great kid, Mike," she enunciated carefully, heavy on the K and D so he'd be sure to understand, "and I want very much for us to continue to be friends."
Silence. Joan closed her eyes tightly, praying that he wouldn't push the issue. Praying that maybe she had been wrong about the news flash he'd sent her up on that cargo net. She was sure that he had been hitting on her, despite his denial. He couldn't have sent a more clear message if he'd used semaphore flags.
But, please God, maybe she was wrong.
He finally spoke. "Then you'll meet me for lunch tomorrow? I'm going to be busy right up until about 1130, but what do you say we meet at Bellitani's at noon? It's an Italian place right on the water here in Coronado."
Lunch was good. Lunch was decidedly the most non-romantic meal of the day. Joan turned on the water, letting more hot into the tub as she refused to be disappointed.
Well, okay. Honesty time. A very tiny part of her was disappointed. But it was the same small part that had been disappointed that time she went to Niagara Falls and didn't give in to the urge to jump over the fence and into the water churning below.
"Great," she said. "I'll see you tomorrow."
"Great," Muldoon echoed. "Oh, and Joan?"
"Yeah?"
"Next time you call me Junior, I'm telling Mom."
"That was Joanie on the phone, calling from Coronado— Vince stopped short at the door to their bedroom.
Charlie was fast asleep, curled up on their bed, surrounded by a packet of old letters tied up with ribbon and a small pile of cloth-covered books.
Letters from James.
And her journals.
The first time he'd seen that notebook with the roses on the cover was decades ago, as she hurriedly cleared her things from her bedroom to make room for him there.
That was after he'd done a nosedive onto the Persian rug that covered the worn floorboards of Senator Howard's office. It had been day four of waiting for five short minutes of the man's nonexistent time.
Vince had protested as stridently as possible as Charlotte brought him home with her in a taxi, which perhaps wasn't very strident considering he was shaking with fever and unable to stand on his own two feet. Aside from going to a hospital, the last thing he'd wanted to do was to remove her from her own bedroom, in her own home.
"Our spare room is very small," she informed him as she helped him slowly climb the steps to the front porch of her apartment. It was a two- or three-family house—he couldn't tell how many apartments it held just by looking—and although the entire place needed paint, it was neat as a pin. "We can't possibly take care of you in there—not much fits besides the bed."
The spare room was sized to hold a baby's cradle, he'd later found out. It was a room Charlie and her husband James had never gotten around to using, thinking they had all the time in the world to start a family.
"Mother!" she shouted as she maneuvered him around the screen and pushed open the door to the house. He looked up to see a gold star hanging in the front window. Someone in this house had lost a son in the war. "Edna! I need help!"
A woman came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. "Oh, dear Lord!" She rushed toward them.
"I just need to sleep," Vince said, as Charlotte and her mother-in-law half carried, half pushed him up the stairs of their house. "I don't want to trouble you any further. Please, you've already been more than kind bringing me here."
"He flat out refused to go to a hospital," Charlotte told her mother-in-law. "I didn't know what else to do."
"He's barely a child," Mother Fletcher said. She was a large-boned, gray-haired woman with a booming voice that reminded Vince of the nuns in his grammar school.
"I'm twenty-one," he felt compelled to say. "Old enough to—"
"Old enough to go to war and get shot, apparently," Charlotte finished for him tartly. "Like most of the young men in America today. In here. In my room, Mother."
It was two against one, and together they efficiently removed his overcoat and gently pushed him into Charlotte's bed.
God, the sheets smelled just like her. He just wanted to close his eyes and sleep forever, with Charlotte Fletcher's sweet perfume giving him beautiful dreams.
"That uniform's got to come off," Mother Fletcher told Charlotte in that voice that would have been perfect for the stage. Now, however, it only managed to drill its way deep inside his throbbing head. "Where are your injuries, young man?"
His right leg and his hip, in places that were private. There was no way he was going to let either of them see the bandages, let alone his wounds. "Just gotta sleep," he said, as the room swam. And both Charlotte's and the elder Mrs. Fletcher's faces—one young and one old, but both lined with worry—swirled and faded.
Vince came to as naked as the day he was born and only slightly more lucid. Lucid enough, though, to realize that he was partially covered by a sheet, but, God, only partially.
Mother Fletcher was wiping his forehead with a cool cloth, and Charlotte—oh, shit! She was re-bandaging his thigh. Jesus, it hurt. But the pain was nothing compared to the sheer embarrassment.
"He needs a doctor," Charlotte said. "He needs penicillin."
"I'll call Dr. Barnes." Mother Fletcher disappeared. Leaving him alone in the bed of the woman of his dreams— who literally had to move his balls aside to bandage his leg.
"No," he said. "No doctor."
Charlotte looked up at him, startled. Her eyes were so blue. "You're awake."
"Can't go to the hospital. They'll send me away from Washington. I... need my clothes. Where are my clothes?" He tried to pull his legs away from her while still keeping that sheet covering him. He tried to sit up, but she pushed him back down, pinning his shoulders.