Love in a Small Town (30 page)

The next instant he saw the rear end of a station wagon approaching at a fast rate of speed. He jammed on the brakes, then sat there gripping the wheel with sweaty palms and berating himself for poor driving.

Keeping his eyes on the road, he drove past the water tower and pulled off onto the shoulder. He twisted and looked through the back window . . . up at the water tower, hazy in the sun and with old paint whizzing off it.

He had been fifteen, almost sixteen. The days of his invincible youth. He had climbed up the tower ladder with a half-filled gallon of paint, and the wire handle had cut into his hand. It had been just after midnight, in the summer like now, although he didn’t recall the date. Man, how sweaty his hand had gotten on the rungs of that ladder. If he had thought at all of the possibility that he might fall to his death, the thought had been a fleeting thing. He had been intent on impressing Molly. He could still remember the look of surprise and awe on her face when she had seen what he had done. The way she had looked at him, like he was next to God. After all these years, covered over by several layers of paint, the words remained:
TOMMY LEE LOVES MOLLY.

As he watched, a workman began sanding away the
T.

Turning forward, he shifted into gear and headed back out on the road. The next thing he knew, he was turning the Chevy into the gravel lot of Smith’s Fruit Stand and Nursery. He had gone four miles and not remembered anything along the way.

He came to a stop in front of the stand’s red-and-white awnings flapping in the wind and found himself staring at lines of flowering plants. He got out, went over, and walked down a row of tiny bushes, until he came to some with small yellow flowers. Really pretty delicate flowers. Molly liked yellow flowers.

“You wantin’ some roses?”

Tommy Lee looked up. A withered old woman almost hidden beneath a straw hat came toward him. She looked more like a man, dressed in overalls and with a mustache, but he decided she was a woman because of her voice and the pink shirt.

“Is that what these are?” he asked. He’d thought so, but he wasn’t certain. They looked so small.

“Yes, siree. Miniatures. Keep ‘em on the porch or in the house, or most anywhere.” That she could lift the pot so easily amazed him. “These’s my favorite. Ain’t they the prettiest thing? Dainty and refined, yep, my favorite. Hello, there, little honey.” The old woman tilted her head, talking to the plant now, telling it how beautiful it was and how she loved it.

Tommy Lee bent and snatched up a plant. “I’ll take this one.”

He drove off with the little thing on the floorboard. Every now and then he looked down at it. It shimmied with the motion of the old truck. It had cost him under eight dollars, another eight for the fancy basket he’d had the woman stick it in, all of which was a far sight less than the cost of two dozen big red beauties. But this bush was a living thing. When those big red beauties wilted, this would still be blooming. Molly liked living plants.

He took the plant in and sat it on the workbench in his shop. He turned on the radio, but the plant seemed to quiver, so he turned down the sound and moved the plant away from the speakers. Debating the wisdom of giving the little bush to Molly, he went to work on the engine for which he’d bought the parts. The plant sat there and seemed to keep waving to him. He got worried about it dying in the heat, so he closed the shop up and turned on the air-conditioning.

He couldn’t see himself simply going up to Molly and giving her the plant. That certainly wasn’t much, after she’d received two dozen red roses, delivered. The memory of how he’d climbed up to paint the water tower all to impress Molly kept playing at the edges of his mind.

It occurred to him that he had not set out to impress Molly in a long time. Impressing her had gotten covered over by a lot of living, he guessed. And the truth be known, he didn’t see that a man should have to keep impressing the woman he married. Apparently, however, these things were important to a woman.

Maybe they were important to a man, too, he thought. Maybe it was all these crazy little things in life that kept the life in a person.

Finally he threw down his tools and wiped his hands and went into the house to shower and change. Then he got the little rose plant and set it on the floorboard of the Corvette. When he drove past her office and saw she wasn’t there, he was at first relieved because he didn’t want to try to give the plant to her in so public a place, in case she threw it at him or something. Molly never had been one to throw things, but then she never had been known to break dishes, either. He simply didn’t know where he stood with her.

As he drove on out to the cottage, he began to get worried that she wouldn’t be there. Maybe she was out with Sam. He might have to shoot Sam, he thought.

This worry about her being with Sam was relieved, however, when he reached the cottage and saw the El Camino sitting beside it. He stopped at the entry to the drive and debated what to do. It appeared to him that his options were limited, since he couldn’t drop out of the sky or anything, so he continued on down the driveway. On impulse he cut the engine and let the car coast, having the hope Molly wouldn’t hear him coming. He thought it would be best to simply appear at her door. It seemed to him that would be a little impressive.

Taking up the rose bush, he got out of the Corvette and stood gazing at the cottage. The windows were all up, and he heard music playing. He suddenly thought he could smell the scent of Molly. And just as suddenly he knew what he had come for.
What he had to have.

He went to the back door and peered through the screen. For an instant he had a strange feeling of having been in a similar predicament on the night he had caught his father and Odessa in the cottage, which should have been a lesson to him about sneaking and spying through open doors.

The kitchen was dim. Late afternoon sunlight made patterns on the refrigerator and cabinets. He didn’t see Molly or the two dozen roses, and he didn’t hear any voices. He did have the distinct impression the cottage was telling him to go away.

Ace the cat suddenly appeared at the door and meowed, and Tommy Lee about jumped out of his skin. Quickly he set the little rose plant on the bottom step, scratched on the screen to get Ace to meow again, and then strode quickly back to the shade of the big elm trees. He leaned against the trunk of one, propped himself, and gazed toward the cottage. His blood was running warm and he thought of touching Molly.

The next instant he was startled when he saw an image shimmering behind the black window screen, not Molly’s face, but the face of an old woman looking angrily at him. Then it was gone, as the evening sunlight shifted through the trees and made moving patterns across the cottage walls and windows.

Molly’s voice: “Oh, Ace . . . I’ll let you out.”

Her shadow appeared behind the screen, and it swung open. Molly stood there, looking downward at the little bush. The yellow sunlight turned her hair to gold and played warmly over her face, down her body, down her legs that were bare beneath a big denim shirt.

Tommy Lee stared at her legs.

His gaze drifted down her pale thighs and to her bare feet. He felt his blood run harder as she came slowly down the steps and bent over the little bush. The shirttail rode up high on her creamy thigh.

Then she was lifting the pot, reverently, as if it were a golden chalice. Her face came up and she looked straight at him.

He straightened and took hold of his courage. “Hello, Molly.”

“Hello.”

Molly held the pot hard against her fluttering heart, feeling as if she needed to hold on to something. She felt, too, that she held a treasure to be protected. She stood there and watched him saunter toward her, his muscles firm, his movement fluid, his eyes intent upon her.

He stopped when still ten feet from her, cocked his head slightly, and perused her with a gaze that made her tingle all over. His eyes were dark blue, blue as summer evening sky.

Molly had the sensation of glass walls cracking around her and fresh breezes beginning to blow. Suddenly, in a hot flush all over, she knew exactly what she wanted, and she knew as clearly as if he’d yelled it at her what Tommy Lee had come for.

She looked downward at the little flowers of the bush because right that instant it was much easier to look at the plant. Her heart was pounding and she grew warm in intimate places.

“You like the plant then?” Tommy Lee asked, a silly question like he could ask.

“I love it,” she said, raising her eyes to his.

“The old woman said it was a miniature rose bush. That it could be kept anywhere. I thought you might like that . . . that it was a living thing and would keep on blooming.”

She thought then that he knew, about the flowers Sam had sent her. She said, “Yes, I do. . . . I love it.”

His eyes were intent on her. Searching her.

“Would you like to come inside?”

His gaze shifted to the cottage for an instant. He shook his head. “Walk out back with me.”

Her heart caught. “Well, okay. I have to get pants and shoes on first.”

She raced back inside the cottage, pulse pounding. She feared he wouldn’t wait. She jerked on her jeans, slipped into her shoes.
Silly to be so flustered.
She stopped to dab Chanel down her breast. Another dab for good measure, and all the while she was thinking about Tommy Lee and how he felt against her.

Back through the kitchen she grabbed up the little rose bush from the table where she’d set it. She didn’t even realize she had taken it up, until she stood once more on the stoop, holding it close to her breast.

There was strain on his face. But it eased when she walked toward him. Without a word they walked together out to the wooden fence. They stood there, and Molly, heart pounding and every cell in her body screaming for his touch, began to wonder if Tommy Lee was going to say anything. Was he going to
do
anything?

She began to get impatient, and panicky, thinking maybe nothing would come of it, and that she was likely to die if she didn’t get to have him. The sun was a red ball far in the west, painting things golden. It really was pretty, and here they were standing in it, getting hotter and hotter. Longing so much for him that she thought she might cry.

She was to the point of just telling him what she wanted, when Tommy Lee moved and slipped through the fence. She could not imagine why he did that. He turned back to her, took the rose bush from her and set it on the ground, took her hand and tugged her through, then led her over to the barn.

“Tommy Lee . . . what . . ."

He stopped her there, in the bright red-gold light pouring over the barn front. “Just don’t say anything, okay, Molly?”

He took her face between his calloused palms. The wanting he saw jump into her eyes startled him. Gratified him.

He kissed her.

Instantly he was on fire, hauling her tight against him, pressing her against his groin. He went at her hard, and she came back at him just as hard. He was somewhat startled by her passion, but then he fell deeper into her moist eager lips and trembling hands. He fell deeper into her sweet perfume and sweet woman scent and hot muskiness of mating humans and ripe summer earth.
Good Lord Almighty,
and it was a prayer.

He shoved her against the wood planks of the barn gate and went at her, kissed her again and again and again, until they were both feverish and out of breath, and he was about to burst right through his jeans.

It was Molly who took his hand, opened the gate that kept the horse out of the hay, slipped through, and led Tommy Lee with her. He sat on stacked bales, spread his legs, and pulled her between them. The pressure of her gave him a brief ease. He lifted her shirt and kissed the warm, silky skin. She moaned and pushed her belly at him. He fumbled with the button of her jeans. She quivered. He paused to savor the quiver with his hands, and his lips. He went lower with his lips.

“Tommy Lee . . .
please . . ."

“Oh, Molly . . ."

He jerked his shirt off and spread it for her, spread his jeans and hers, but never got beyond getting her shirt unbuttoned.

She was beneath him, coming to him with a luxurious sigh that made him glad to be a man. Her scent surrounded him, and her skin slid sweaty beneath him. Her breath caressed his ear as she moaned urgently. She spread her legs for him and pushed at him. She was ready. He felt the golden beams of sun on his back, and his blood burned in his groin.

There was no going sweet, no going easy. It was hot and sweaty and earthy, the sun setting the barn and the hay and him and Molly on fire. They had both come a long way since the first time in this very barn. They both knew the notes of pleasure in each other’s body and how to play them. It came to him, as he shoved into her whimpering, quivering, eager body that this was what he had been needing for months.

“Molly . . . I can’t hold . . ."

She covered his mouth with her own and wrapped her legs around his hips. The last thing he heard was her calling his name in conjunction with God’s, before he heard only the roar of blood and heat and pounding need.

* * * *

Molly felt thoroughly, deliciously wrung out. She stretched languidly and cracked her eyes to see that the setting sun cast a rosy glow into the barn. It was as if the rosy glow came from her and Tommy Lee. She kept her nose turned against him, inhaling his virile scent, and kept her body pressed tight against his, savoring the heat and the sweat and the memory of what he’d just done to her.

Had it ever been like this? Oh, Lord, thank you! Oh, maybe now I can go on living a while longer.

But passion cannot, no matter how magical the moment, be sustained indefinitely. There always came valleys after mountain tops. Marker came peeking in at them, and as soon as he awoke from dozing, Tommy Lee began to twitch and rub his feet together. Shortly he began kissing her shoulder and a bit after that he was on his feet, slapping at his back. “Geez, the mosquitoes are comin’ out.”

Molly lay there and watched him in the light of the setting sun. He was naked, except for his socks. He grinned at her, blushing as he reached for his jeans. She sat up and pulled her shirt together, began buttoning it.