Crybaby Ranch (21 page)

I
told Tessa about Deak approaching me in the bar. “I felt so unaware of myself and my surroundings that night, I could have been drooling for all I know. And if I was, Deak was overtly enchanted by it. How do you figure? I'm much older than he is.”

“But you look really young,” Tessa said. “And you're full of vitality.”

I rolled my eyes at her. “You're full of something else. Come on, what's the deal? You hear about younger guys with older women a lot lately.”

Tessa said, “Okay then, consider dysfunctional young men as the deepest blessing of middle-aged women and enjoy him.”

And I do.

Most nights, Deak and I carry food and drink to his motel room after the final set. We throw back the covers to expose the white expanse of laundered sheets and lay out our food as if we were picnicking on snow. Prop up our pillows and stretch out on the bed. Shoes fly across the room first, next socks, Levi's, and shirts.

The lack of decoration in this motel room puts me in touch with the impersonal places I've kept within myself. Those universal shrines of femininity at which I haven't yet left personal tokens of favor.

My body had been the climbing post of the toddler Beckett, my lap his nesting box. But these leaps of intimacy were claimed without the prerequisite experiences of birth and recognized motherhood, because Delinda was expected any day to claim her child. In the same way sex with Erik was artificially accelerated to parental lovemaking without the leisure and uncertainty of new romance. As if after a proficiency test, the professor registered me in the advanced class.

“A match flame of a romance,” Tessa prescribed many months ago, “something you can blow out at will.”

It's odd to be mature enough to recognize I am filling in the blanks of my youth, yet still enjoying the process with naive abandon. I bodysurf waves of desire as Deak's mouth opens and nears my breast. I glimpse the edge of a tooth between his lips and feel a surge as the glint of light bounces off it. His touch is all I imagined, my response more than I expected. I am absorbed by this huge physical rush, this pooled awareness of the two of us. The word
desire
repeats itself over and over in my mind, undulating around my head as if it were writhing on a water bed. It's such a sweet word. I am tugged deeper and deeper into its sibilance.

After we eat and make love, I lie in bed and stare at a black-and-white framed photograph of a moose standing in leafless aspens. Snow hock-high, no shadows, no apparent source of light. At first I didn't like the motel room, how it exhibits a lack of personal taste—anybody's. Now I feel grateful for the way the walls recede from consciousness, even the way TV noises from other rooms seep into our space. It's like eating at a fast-food chain: There is no flavor to object to in this room.

Only years from now am I likely to fully understand the meaning of this brief romance. I am not meant now to do more than drink deeply, swallow whole, laugh, and sleep afterward. I am certain I provide something for Deak as well; after all, he pursued me. And as much as I need his exuberant pursuance, I believe he has needed to win me over. So I give myself to him knowing I am salve to some unseen injury, even while the exercise of my giving is cure to me.

We play doctor.

As Deak sleeps I rise gently from the bed and gather the used plastic forks, the containers, and empty soda bottles. I'm often surprised at Deak's wisdom. He writes most of the group's music, a poet alert to the world around him. Yesterday we spotted an old dried nest beneath the eaves of the bar. Deak pointed to it. “A piñata of wasps,” he said. Hummingbirds, he tells me, make a sound as if they were blowing kisses.

As the earth's frost line drives deeper and deeper toward its center at winter's end, and its skin layers with snow and ice and fragrances remain dormant, my body thaws, core outward. My skin melts beneath Deak's skiing fingers and the fragrances of my hair and body steam.

The planet winters and my body summers.

It's written in the small print of our contract that this romance ends with the gig. Yet my experience is larger than my previous assumptions about temporary romance. Larger, too, than an outlet for lust, a good break from the final dreary years with my ex-husband, or even a distraction from the loss of my mother—all remarks made by my coworkers as more and more people spot me sitting at the band's table during sets this past month.

“Thought I'd drop by and check out your new boyfriend.”

Though I am completely taken by surprise to hear Caro's voice beneath the band's music, I don't react at all. She stands behind my right shoulder.

“May I sit?”

Without turning to look at her, I push out the chair across from me with my foot.

Standing beside the chair facing Deak, she removes her gloves and coat as languidly as if she were doing a striptease for the band.

“Yum,” Caro says once she finally sits down. “They all look juicy as chicken legs. Which one's yours?”

“None of them are mine. I date the lead singer.”

“Can I have him when you're done?” She grins. “Just gnaw him down to the bone and toss him my way.” She signals the waitress and orders a Scotch, then says, “Just kidding. Three men—I couldn't handle.”

“You mean four, don't you?”

“Whatever. Two men are ideal. They balance each other.”

“So who are you cutting out?” I think I know the answer, but it wouldn't hurt to hear it from her that Bo is out of her life. I take a sip of beer.

“Benj.”

“Benj?” My beer goes down the wrong way. I inhale some of it and cough. I repeat hoarsely, “Benj?”

“He's a loser.”

“No. Bo is. I mean, I figured by your standards you would think…”

“Bo's going places. If he'd only listen to me. I've got these people back home in Oklahoma who want his sculpture. They're building practically a damn plantation house, with gardens and terraces that go down to the river.”

Caro's drink arrives. She shovels items from her deep leather shoulder bag onto the table until she finds a pink plastic tampon holder, one of those that used to come free in the economy-sized box. She pulls its two ends apart and separates a hundred-dollar bill from a roll of others.

“Anyway,” she says, dropping her change into her purse bottom, “these people have seen my photos of Bo's work and want a few pieces for the terraces—his new work is stunning. But Bo is so prickly with me lately. I can't get a deal going with him.” She scoops handfuls of stuff back into her soft, pouchy bag. Her final load includes a pair of purple silk underpants. “I was hoping you'd have some ideas.” She takes a sip of her drink and looks expectantly over the top of her glass.

My head is tipped as I listen to Caro talk—a robin listening for a worm. Her purposes are always self-serving. I say, “He and I haven't seen each other for several weeks.”

“Oh, right. That's one reason I'm here. I have orders to tell you that I know Bo is in love with you…cha-cha-cha. If I fulfill this little duty, Bo will not tell Dickie. Our deal.”

Caro takes another sip, then looks around. Her gaze ends with the band. “God, your singer really is darling. I know you won't tell me how he is in bed.”

“You know me pretty well.”

“I know you can help me out with Bo, if you want.”

“Me?” I've got the fingers of both hands splayed across my chest. Is she a lunatic? “Caro, I don't think so.”

“Listen, Bo can get all the work he wants. These people have houses all over the world. And friends. He just needs to be spurred.” Caro pokes at her ice cubes with a coral-painted fingernail. “That's the difference between Bo and Dickie. Bo has trouble getting started with work. Dickie can't stop. Dickie needs to be lassoed and dragged in the dirt every once in a while just to get his attention. But with Bo you have to keep your rowels spinning.”

“Rowels?”

“Little pinwheel deals? On the spurs?”

I tip my chin up as I catch on. I am dying to hear about Bo's new work, but I'm afraid my need to know is too apparent. To cover up I say, “And Dickie dragged in the dirt?”

“That's how I get his attention. For instance, I'll tell Dickie about Benj.”

“You will? Everything?”

“He'll love it. He comes out the winner.”

“You're kidding.”

“If I don't get a ring out of it, I'll eat that mangy vest you're wearing.”

I look down. I'm wearing an old wool vest with four odd pockets across the front that Deak passed on to me because I took such a fancy to it, like O.C.'s beat-up hat.

“We'll probably go someplace for a second honeymoon.”

“And Bo? How's he feel about this?” I just need to say his name.

“You two will end up together,” Caro flutters her fingers dismissively at Deak. “Eventually. But Dickie doesn't need to find out.”

“Find out. He has known about you and Bo for months.”

“Find out that there's
no
me and Bo.”

“You want Dickie to think…?”

“I see why you hooked up with a kid.” Caro arches her eyebrows. “Just your mental pace. Yes, I want Dickie to think Bo and I are still an item.”

“But why?” I hope I'm not shouting.

“Never mind. It works for us. All I ask is that you don't set Dickie straight. I mean, go ahead and deny it. He'll just think you're stupid or something.” Another finger flutter. “Just don't give me away. Oh, hell, you never would. You're as bad as Bo. Two of a kind.”

As bad as Bo. Two of a kind. Caro thinks she's insulted me. Isn't it just like her to ask for a favor and try to insult me at the same time? Oh, boy, and she's not leaving Dickie. She's not leaving Jackson Hole, and she's not going back to Oklahoma. Just to be sure I'm stuck with her for life, I ask, “You're not leaving Dickie? Not ever?”

“How could I do better than Dickie?”

 

While Deak sleeps in the motel room, I run hot water into the tub, spilling a capful of his shampoo in to make bubbles. Earlier, about three a.m., Deak and I skied. Just the two of us silently swishing the unplowed road to Jenny Lake at the base of the Tetons. Most of our times together are in the middle of the night when Deak's work is done and his energy high.

I squeeze the water out of my washcloth above my stomach and watch it make rivers down my skin, then dip the cloth to soak up more water. I'm not entirely clear why I'm not bored out of my mind after six weeks with Deak. Instead, I glow. I chime. I can't wipe the grin off my face. Deak is good for me. Maybe Deak is me. Some young and playful maleness I'm only now allowing expression. Maybe I am Deak's mature female self, accepting, approving. And maybe I've just been hanging around Tessa too long to come up with such theories.

Part of me finds relief in the distraction of Deak; part of me feels a building anxiety about not calling home to check on my mother. I don't work with my beads and have little time for the solitude I've come to treasure. One of these days I am going to miss my self.

Soon birds will begin to stir in this last hour of darkness. I yank on the plug chain, stand, and reach for a towel. Like punctuation throughout my days and my nights, I think of Bo. As I tuck myself into my side of the motel bed, I recall the truck grinding up the ranch road, past my cabin, yesterday. Its bed was loaded down with peeled logs. Bo is beginning work on Crybaby Ranch.

As Deak shifts position and groans into deeper sleep, I pick through the magazines on the floor beside the bed and browse an article in
Outside
comparing river sandals. Maybe I'll buy a pair for the summer. I hear they are easy to stand in for long hours at the bookstore. Deak burrows deeper into the covers; his head disappears.

I lift Deak's wrist, lying alongside my hip, and look at his watch. Almost noon. I sit up higher on my pillows, bend my knees and prop the magazine against them for some intentional reading on hiking trails in Hawaii.

Deak shifts beneath the covers. He is lying on his stomach halfway down the bed like a dog might. Now I feel his breath between my legs. Now his tongue.

This makes me think of an old cartoon in which a bride-to-be was addressing envelopes for her wedding invitations while propped up on the sofa just as I am in bed. When she needed an envelope licked, she lowered it between her legs for her future husband to include in his work.

I have no envelopes for Deak to lick and wouldn't want to distract him from his main project if I did, but I continue reading.

In Hawaii you can hike cloud forests, wet, tree-covered slopes. Colorfully feathered birds flit among exotic varieties of moist, broad-leafed plants, like darts of light, like quick tongues. Deep into the dark foliage a distant waterfall crashes to earth from a high, craggy cliff. As you walk closer the force of its gushing vibrates the soles of your feet, travels up your thighs, and reverberates inside you as if your skin covers a drum. A throbbing drum.