Red’s Hot Honky-Tonk Bar (18 page)

“Ma’am, I’m shocked. This is Alamo Heights! Surely you are not inviting me into your bed.”

“I believe it’s actually your bed,” she answered. “And I think we could call it an open invitation.”

To: [email protected]

November 19 11:09 p.m.

From: [email protected]

Subject: We went to a wedding

hi Mom we had a GREAT time today at the wedding of Cams friend. We don’t see Cam so much these days because he is busy a lot but today we went to the wedding and he took Daniel and me with him. Red too.

Red and I both had new dresses that we bought. She let me pick out my own. It is very cool. Long sleeved and kind of square neck with tiny pleats. It is blue and has pink and yellow dots. I did such a good job in finding it that Red asked me to help her. She told me to find her something that YOU would wear and I did. Too funny!

The wedding was in the park. There was lots of room and it was near the river and there were other kids to play with and ducks to feed and everything.

The rings and kissing part of it was in the grass. The bride is real pretty and had a long white dress but it was sorta plain. When I get married I want a really spectacolar dress. O.K.?

We ate enchiladas and Cam played with a new band. Well, not really a new band but a lot of people from different bands that he plays with. The old band are breaking up so he is kind of doing try outs with other ones. So there were lots of musicians there. Cam played his fiddle and
also the keyboard and the mandolin. I didn’t even know he could play mandolin.

The most coolest thing was Daniel. Cam had him play with the band! Well he didn’t play by himself. Cam did the fingering on the fiddle and held Daniels hand on the bow but it was like Daniel was playing himself and he was so proud. Every one clapped and Red and I just clapped and laughed and clapped and laughed.

Daniel is so happy here now. With the new school and Kelly and Cam and even Red. He is like a little kid I guess.

Guess who we saw at the wedding? The evil old lady that lives behind us. She is Cams aunt. Poor Cam she is so mean. She didn’t speak to us but I saw her looking at us. I am glad I don’t have mean relatives.

We are driving down to the Valley again tomorrow. Yuk, it is so far in the car. But we want to see Abuela. I will tell you how she is.

Love you forever and miss you. Don’t worry about us. Daniel and I are fine.

Livy

W
ith all the troubles in her world and worries she couldn’t even speak about, Red was surprised at how much fun she had at Brian’s wedding. She hadn’t really wanted to go. There would be a lot of their college friends attending and she’d feel out of place. But Cam had just assumed that she would. She refused to confess that she thought the company might be out of her league.

Getting Olivia to help her dress in a conservative and comfortable disguise helped a lot. As did the champagne.

Red didn’t normally drink. It was a conscious decision on her part. As a young woman without education or experience in the world, she had chosen the path for herself based on the lives of women she saw around her. And what was patently obvious was that women who drank or did drugs never seemed to get out of the life, they just got deeper and deeper in.

She had chosen to be clear-eyed and clear-headed. That had always worked for her. But this beautiful fall day at Brackenridge Park, the smudged edges of an alcohol buzz seemed perfect.

Both Olivia and Daniel were on their best behavior. Not due to anything she had said. Apparently the concept of good manners worn with good clothes was something Bridge had successfully instilled in them. And it probably helped that there were plenty of other kids to keep them busy. Brian’s new bride had a large extended family, with lots of brothers and sisters bringing along plenty of nieces and nephews.

The patriarch of the clan and Brian’s new father-in-law was a gangly, rough-talking man who refused to remove his ball cap, even for the prayer during the ceremony. He sat most of the afternoon on a chair beneath a shade tree, chewing tobacco and spitting into one of the white paper cups emblazoned with wedding bells.

Red attempted a friendly conversation with him. She’d already met his wife, who was genuinely cheerful and easygoing. The father of the bride, however, was not particularly friendly or even pleasant. Added to that, he seemed to be far from the sharpest knife in the drawer. After carrying the load for more inane conversation than she would have put up with from her bar’s most habitual drunks, Cam showed up for a rescue.

As they eased away, Cam shook his head and whispered to her, “Remind me, next time I’m complaining about anything, that at least I’m not related to that guy.”

Red laughed. “He’s what we call in the business all foam and no beer.”

Cam looked very handsome, she thought, in a Johnny Cash sort of way, black suit, black hat and boots. He was among the musician friends of Brian that took turns filling up the tiny stage area of the pavilion for a celebration jam session.

The music was great and when Cam brought Daniel up to help him fiddle, the entire reception was totally charmed.

For Red, the one fly in the afternoon ointment was the appearance of Aunt Phyl. Red was initially surprised to see her and then realized that she shouldn’t have been. Cam and Brian had been friends for years. Brian’s parents were from Terrell Hills rather than Alamo Heights, but the two had been in classes together since junior school.

She did not greet Red in any way and Red made a point not to look directly at her. She knew better than to bring her own disagreements to somebody else’s party.

The children also recognized her. Daniel hurried to Red’s side.

“What’s up?” she asked him.

“That woman is there,” he whispered. “She’s right over there.”

“What woman?” Red feigned ignorance. “Oh, the one that Cam calls Aunt Phyl? Or did he say it was Ant Hill? Or Can’t Swill? Pant Pill? No, I think it was Plant Kill?”

Daniel began giggling. Red put her arm around his neck and gave him a half noogie.

“You and me, bud, we is not a-scared a no one,” she declared in a whisper.

He nodded agreement. Not another word about it was spoken, but Daniel continued to hang close for about fifteen minutes. Then apparently he became convinced that the threat from Cam’s aunt was less dangerous than the appeal of feeding the ducks with the other kids.

The woman was perfectly groomed and fashionably dressed. But from what Red observed, she wasn’t stuck up or overly fastidious about her acquaintances. She spoke to everyone, including all of the bride’s very sweet family. And when Red spied her seated under the shade tree with the cranky tobacco spitter, Red allowed herself a very self-satisfied giggle.

The menu was Tex-Mex and all the kids, including Olivia and Daniel, were trying to eat their weight in enchiladas. Red found herself busy getting drinks, rescuing napkins and wiping up spills. She fell into these tasks rather naturally and quickly noticed that, for the most part, grandmas were in on this. The actual parents, giddy with the unaccustomed freedom of a grown-up party, were mostly oblivious to the near disasters occurring minute by minute.

Strangely, Red did not find this at all laborious. The kids were having fun. The food was plentiful and as long as they ate it instead of using it as artillery, it all seemed fine.

After, the kids were finished and off on more adventures, the grandmas cleaned the table and sat down together, huffing and chuckling with exhaustion. Most of the group was easily ten to fifteen years older than Red, but she felt a strange kinship that was wholly new.

A very old granny brought a basket of fresh, hot tortillas and set them in the middle of the table. It seemed like such a welcome idea that another retrieved a huge bowl of guaca-mole and a plate of jalapeños.

Red enjoyed her share, washing it down with more champagne.

“You’re raising your grandchildren?” one of the women asked.

Red nodded, her mouth full.

“I’m raising one of mine, too,” the woman said. “I love him, but it wears me out. It’s hard to chase a toddler when you’re sixty-two.”

A heavyset woman with thinning blond hair and a mass of freckles agreed.

“I keep three of my six grandkids all day,” she said. “And I have two more coming before and after school. I’m exhausted.”

The other women were nodding. “You think when you finally get your own kids grown, you’re done,” a woman with a bright-red birthmark on the side of her face said. “Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.”

There was agreement on that statement, as well.

“Is your child unable to care for her kids?” the sixty-two-year-old asked Red.

“It’s just temporary,” Red answered. “My daughter is deployed to Afghanistan.”

One of the bride’s aunts laid her hand atop Red’s. “Oh, you poor dear! You must be frightened to death.”

“No, my daughter is a professional soldier,” Red answered.

The woman nodded sagely. “That she may be, but she’s your baby and she always will be.”

Red might have disagreed with her, but a memory of toddler Bridge, looking so small and frightened as she waved a tearful goodbye from the doorway of the night-shift day care flashed in her mind. A lifetime of similar goodbyes and a blind trust in Providence to keep her safe had been the only way they could get by.

“Of course she’s my baby,” Red answered. “We grew up together.”

The group of grandmas knew exactly what she meant.

As the evening ran on, the grown-ups got louder and the kids got more quiet. The colorful strings of lights around the pavilion made the area seem more intimate. Daniel found his way to the chair beside her, where he sat, willing his eyes to stay open as he began to yawn.

Cam came to the table and asked her to dance.

“We’d better be getting these kids home,” Red told him. “And you’ll have to drive. I’ve had too much of this.” She held up her empty champagne glass for evidence.

“Okay, but not until I’ve had a dance,” he said. “The musicians never get to dance. It’s a slow one and I’m so good at that. I hate to miss the opportunity.”

He held out his hand and she took it. He led her out to the ten-foot square of wood flooring already crowded with couples. Cam pulled her close in his arms, but she resisted, putting a respectable distance between them.

“What?”

“Daniel and Olivia might be watching,” she said. “And for sure your aunt Phyl is.”

He chuckled. “Red, you are such a puritan at heart,” he told her.

“Nobody would accuse me of that,” she said.

“Because nobody knows you like I do.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that, cowboy,” she teased.

“I am sure about it,” he answered with complete seriousness.

She looked away, uneasy with the honesty in his eyes.

“Okay,” he said. “If you’re going to ruin my fantasy of feeling you up on the dance floor, then let’s play a game.”

Red grinned up at him. “Guys who suggest games are usually up to no good,” she asserted.

“Guys are up to no good generally,” he agreed. “But it doesn’t mean you can’t play with them.”

“What’s your game?”

“You tell me something that I don’t know about you,” he said. “And I’ll tell you something that you don’t know about me.”

“Now, why would I do that?” Red asked. “I’m famously secretive as you remind me constantly.”

“You’ll tell me because you’ve had too much champagne and because I’ve already said that I know more than anybody about you and you’ve got to prove me wrong.”

She looked up at him, stern and determined.

“I am not talking about Bridge’s father or anything about my life before I came to San Antonio,” she stated firmly. “I’ve never even talked to Bridge about that, so you can’t expect that I will share that with you.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m not going to talk about any of the men that I’ve been with before you,” she said. “That’s just none of your business.”

“Agreed.”

“So what else could there be that you want to know?” The question was genuine and Red was surprised by his quick response.

“I want to know about how you got that armadillo tattoo.”

Cam momentarily allowed his hand to drift lower and caress the location.

Red deftly moved his hand back to her waist. He was grinning at her and she couldn’t resist him.

“I got it right after I first started dancing,” she said. “You are right about me, I am not totally a free spirit. Getting up in front of all those men wearing virtually nothing, that was hard for me. Embarrassing. Humiliating. It’s an ugly business. Putting cash in the G-string, that’s what most people think it’s about. But there are all these jerks who want you to take their twenty with your thighs or let them stick it between your butt cheeks. I had one guy who always wanted me to pick up his money by sitting on it so it would stick to my crotch.”

Cam’s grasp on her tightened, but she didn’t pull away.

“I just felt so naked, so exposed,” Red said. “One of the older gals told me to get a tattoo. The thing with the tattoo is that nobody can make you take it off. So there’s a part of you that remains all yours always.”

Cam thought about that explanation and then nodded understanding.

“So why the armadillo?” he asked.

Red gave a little laugh. “I didn’t know what to get,” she said. “The other girls had hearts or flowers, some cartoon characters. One really nice gal had the poison symbol, you know the skull and crossbones. Yikes!”

Red shook her head, recalling all those long-ago people and the world that had been her own.

“I went to a local tattoo parlor, but I still didn’t know what I wanted. I looked through his book and I didn’t see anything that really appealed to me. So I said I had to think about it and walked out. Next door to the tat shop was a gardening place. I saw a father and his daughter there and he was picking out a child-size garden rake for her. The scene just stopped me because when I was a kid my dad bought me one just like it.”

Red relaxed into the story and the memory. “My dad said I needed my own rake because I was worse than an armadillo for digging up the flower beds.”

She smiled up at Cam. He was smiling, too.

“The more I thought about it,” Red continued, “the more I thought it fit. The more I wanted it to fit. Armadillos are mostly night creatures. You might catch them out in the daylight, but they never seem happy about it. Whether you think they are cute or ugly is a matter of opinion. But like me, they certainly stand out as looking different.” She grabbed a handful of her long red hair and held it out as evidence. “And they go about their business, not trying to hurt anybody.”

“Not to mention that they have some pretty formidable armor to keep others from hurting them,” Cam said.

“Yes,” Red said. “They are pretty good at keeping others from hurting them.”

Cam pulled her close and ran his hand down her back to clutch her right buttock.

“Now that I know more about it, I love it even more.”

She laughed, more pleased with having told him the story than she was willing to admit.

“Now you,” she said. “You have to tell me something about you that I don’t know.”

The song ended and they stopped to join the other dancers and those sitting at the tables in applauding the musicians. Brian had deserted his new bride to join in on the jam. And when they struck up one of his favorite tunes, he tried to wave Cam over.

Cam shook his head. Wrapping his arm around Red’s waist he led her off the dance floor and out into the surrounding darkness of the park. It was cooler away from the crowd and the night air had a real November nip.

“Do you need my coat?” he asked.

“No, the cool breeze feels great,” Red said. “Now, are you thinking you can just walk me out here in the dark and kiss me and I’ll forget about you living up to your end of this bargain?”

He stopped abruptly and turned to her. He lifted her chin and planted the sweetest, gentlest kiss against her lips.

“Mmm, that was nice,” she whispered.

“It was your idea,” he pointed out.

“You still have to give up a secret,” she said.

“I know,” Cam answered. “And I want to. Actually, I have two that I want to tell you. My problem is, I can’t decide which one I have to tell first.”

“Tell me the best one,” Red said.

“Okay,” Cam answered. “This is the best one. Red, I don’t think you know this, but I want to marry you.”

She stood there, frozen in place. In the shadows of the trees, she couldn’t see his face, but she knew the expression on it. Suddenly, she was cold and ran her hands along her folded arms for warmth.