Sunsets (18 page)

Alissa couldn’t help herself. With both hands, she pushed Brad away from the door and against the wall where no one inside could see her give him a piece of her mind.

“Hey, you listen,” she said. “These guys are my friends, too. I don’t like it when you talk down to me. And I don’t like it when you’re rude.”

“How am I rude?” Brad said, his arms folded across his chest.

“You’re so blunt. I don’t like it. Like your little line, ‘What took you so long?’ That’s rude. Blunt and abrasive and rude.”

“Maybe you’re just sensitive because you’re used to people treating you like a little princess.”

Alissa felt the blood rush to her face. If they hadn’t been about to meet Chet and Rosie, Alissa would have slapped Brad for saying that and then marched away. She had never slapped a guy before, but she sure felt like it now.

“You know,” Brad said, shaking his head, “I thought we were doing so well. Last Thursday, the bongo-fest and our great conversation afterwards. What’s going on with you?”

Alissa had been so up and down emotionally the past few days she didn’t know where she was now. The last person she wanted to confide in regarding her spin-cycle feelings was Brad. Yet at the same time, she had this strange feeling that he—of all people—might actually understand what she was going through and have some worthwhile advice.

Drawing in a deep breath, Alissa said, “Okay, Brad, look.
Let’s not go ballistic over this. I’m fine. Really. You might want to consider my advice that occasionally you could practice using some manners. It wouldn’t hurt. And I’ll take your caution to heart and not be overly sensitive. Now, can we go have lunch with our mutual friends and not be at each other’s throats?”

Brad looked as if he had a pithy comeback ready to whip out, but he pressed his lips together and answered, “Sure. Okay. Let’s go.” As a gesture of his attempt to be more mannerly, he held out his bent arm, offering to usher her in like a queen.

“Don’t overdo it,” Alissa muttered, without taking his arm. They walked in tandem to the front door where Brad reached for the handle first and opened the door for her.

They both spotted Chet and Rosie at a corner table. Brad stepped back, inviting Alissa to go first. He shook hands with Chet and placed a kiss on Rosie’s cheek. Alissa slid onto the chair next to Rosie and glanced at Brad. He was looking at Alissa. It was as if each of them was wondering if the other would keep the peace.

“They’ve just added a barbecue buffet,” Rosie said. “Looks wonderful. That’s what I’m going to have. But everything on the menu is good.”

Chet gave Alissa a big smile. “So nice the way it worked out for the four of us to meet up like this. Rosie was real glad you called this morning.”

Alissa couldn’t help but flash an ever-so-subtle “so there” look at Brad. His steady green eyes were watching her, almost daring her to make one false move so he could have an excuse to stop being polite.

Alissa carefully did not make any false moves. She ordered the barbecue along with Rosie, and as they went over to the buffet, Alissa said, “I still would like to have lunch with you sometime when it’s just the two of us.”

“I’d like that, too,” Rosie said. “One can never have too many friends.”

“I didn’t tell you,” Alissa said, holding out her plate to the carver for some of the sliced beef, “but I met Meg at your wedding. I think she’s adorable. She told me more of your story, but she only got to the part about some woman named Hannah who took Chet away.”

“Oh, Hannah didn’t take Chet away. She was married to Elton, you know. They were missionaries in Brazil, back in the ’50s. They actually lived in a tree house. Can you imagine that?” Rosie reached for a scoop of potatoes. “Oh, look at that, will you? They have corn on the cob. I do enjoy fresh corn.”

Alissa put a piece of corn on her plate as well. It might as well have been a banana fresh from the Brazilian jungle because, whenever she started to listen to Chet and Rosie’s story, it was as if she had been transported there.

“What happened?”

“Hmm?” Rosie said, looking up from the zucchini bread basket at the end of the buffet. “Oh, yes, Hannah. She developed cerebral palsy. She and Elton returned to England after only three years on the field.”

“How sad.”

“Oh, it was,” Rosie said, returning to the table and sliding her chair forward as Chet rose to help seat her. “But Chet saw the need for someone to assist the missionaries who were going into the jungles. You know, in all the practical ways. Building things for them. Taking in supplies. He earned his pilot’s license in Brazil, and when he wasn’t working for the government, he was helping the missionaries.”

“The government position only lasted until ’78,” Chet added. “But I stayed on another fifteen years or so. Couldn’t leave my friends. There was always a missionary who needed something.”

“They must have viewed you as a blessing sent from heaven,” Alissa said.

“Or a critter from the earth,” Chet said. “I guess that’s why they all called me ‘Gopher.’ ”

Brad laughed softly.

The waitress stepped up to serve Brad his hamburger and Chet his club sandwich with a glass of milk. Chet offered to pray, and then they all dug in.

“What I want to know is how you and Rosie ended up together,” Alissa said. “I mean, you were in Brazil, and Rosie was in Redlands.”

“Actually, she moved to Altadena in ’86,” Chet said.

“It was ’87, but that doesn’t really matter. I’d still be on the ranch if it weren’t for Walter’s brother, Martin. He showed up only days after I’d gotten the last child through college and presented me with some legal documents proving the ranch was his. I hired a lawyer and tried to fight it, but Martin won. He was the blood relative listed in the will. Even above Walter’s own children. I still think it was terribly unfair.”

“You see,” Chet said, waving a french fry at them, “Walter had signed over the ranch to Martin the day he bought the land, before he was even married. And then the man never drew up another will.”

Rosie shook her head. “And, of course, since I never married Walter, I wasn’t even a legal guardian to those five children. But Martin conveniently waited until they were all grown and out of the house before presenting his documents, just to be sure the court didn’t saddle him with the kids, too.”

Putting down her fork, Rosie said, “Oh, let’s not talk about it. I always feel my blood pressure go up when I think of Martin.”

“Her kids moved her to the house we’re in now. It was Amelio’s, and he lived with her for a few years,” Chet
explained. “When I left Brazil, I stayed with an old army buddy who lived up in Santa Barbara. His wife had passed on, and he didn’t mind my company.”

Rosie chuckled. “I guess not. You turned into a five-year house guest.”

“It was a big house,” Chet said. “Needed lots of repair work, which had become my specialty. Then I lived in a trailer on the beach for awhile. Sort of a bum, you might say. It was awful hard for me to adjust to all the comforts and advancements of life in the States after having been gone so long.”

Alissa looked over at Brad. She was engrossed in the story. Brad had a vague look in his eye, as if he were wondering what the point was to all this.

“We should get to the point,” Rosie said gently, as if reading Brad’s mind. “These two have been such patient listeners.”

Chet drew himself up to full posture, and with his head held high, he announced, “Then the mailbag arrived. My buddy in Santa Barbara received a stack of mail for me that had been forwarded from the last government office where I’d served in Brazil. One of the letters was a notice about our high school class reunion.”

“Did you go?” Alissa said eagerly. “Is that where you two found each other?”

“Couldn’t,” Chet said flatly. “The announcement arrived two years after the reunion.” His eyes lit up, and he reached over for Rosie’s hand. “But my Rosie’s name was on the list. I nearly died and went to heaven right then and there. And the best part was, her address was listed right there by her name.”

A
lissa’s eyes moved from Chet to Rosie, over to Brad, and then back to Chet. “Wait a minute. Wasn’t Chet’s name on the reunion list, too? Why didn’t you write to him, Rosie?”

“She did,” Chet answered. “Her letter went to Brazil, too. It was in the stack of mail I received that day.”

“It was such a formal letter,” Rosie said with a chuckle. “I had mixed feelings, you see. He had never answered any of my past letters. I assumed he had forgotten about me and married someone else. All my years of hoping and dreaming seemed to have been for nothing.”

“Then what happened, Chet?” Alissa asked. “After you received the list and the letter from Rosie.”

“I’ll tell you what happened,” Rosie spoke up. “He went broke on flowers! They started to arrive at nine o’clock on a Tuesday morning. No card, just flowers. First daisies, then mums. By noon I had four bouquets all over my living room and no idea who they were from.”

“I wanted to spice things up a little,” Chet said. “Women like that kind of romantic mystery. Keep that in mind, Brad.”

Alissa chanced another glance at Brad. He didn’t act as if he thought this were the kind of advice he would ever need.

“At four o’clock the largest bouquet arrived,” Rosie said. “Five dozen red roses. Absolutely breathtaking. And this time there was a note. ‘Roses for my Rosie,’ it said. He signed it, ‘The man of your dreams.’ That was my secret name for him in high school.”

“You must have been pretty overwhelmed,” Brad said.

“I couldn’t figure it out,” Rosie admitted. “At first I thought it was a mistake, and all these flowers were for a neighbor or something. But the card said Rosie, and I knew Chet was the man of my dreams.… It was all so much to process. I thought I was the one dreaming.”

“Then I rang her doorbell,” Chet said proudly. “She opened that door, and neither of us said a word. We must have stared at each other for a full two minutes.”

Alissa could just see them, frozen there, the two ageless lovers, suspended in time and space. “So what happened?” she asked cautiously.

“I kissed her.”

Rosie blushed. “He certainly did.”

Brad was the only one who had been eating during the unfolding of the story, and his hamburger was gone. “I hate to jam without hearing the rest,” Brad said, checking his watch, “but I have an appointment with a frantic client. He’s a scriptwriter, and his hard drive crashed when he was on the last scene of some film script. He didn’t back up on a disk, so if I can’t reconstruct the file for him, he’s going to be hurting.”

Rosie turned to Alissa and said, “I think that was all in English, but I have no idea what he just said.”

“He has to leave,” Alissa summarized.

“Oh, dear,” Rosie said, turning her apology toward Brad. “I’m afraid I monopolized the entire conversation. Let’s do get together again soon, and I’ll keep my lips sealed.”

Alissa watched Rosie’s firecracker red lips as she spoke, picturing what they would look like when “sealed.” Alissa was thankful Rosie had finished her story before she realized she had been doing most of the talking.

“I’ll look forward to it,” Brad said, pulling a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket and slapping it down on the table. “This is for mine and Alissa’s. Leave the rest for a tip. That way we’ll be even next time we meet for lunch. None of this, my-turn-your-turn stuff.”

“Brad,” Alissa began. His paying for her lunch caught her off guard. That made the lunch almost like a date. His intense look silenced her. This was an argument they could have later, away from Chet and Rosie, he seemed to be saying.

With all the strength she could muster, Alissa said, “Thanks, Brad. It’ll be my turn to treat you next time.”

Brad looked at her another lingering moment, as if he were trying to make sure she didn’t have any other little stingers to add. Alissa knew that look. She had seen it enough during the past few weeks. It was a look that said, “You intrigue me and infuriate me at the same time. If I could get you out of my head, I would. But I can’t.”

“You’re welcome,” Brad said with a smile. He nodded to Chet and Rosie and strode out of the restaurant.

“We certainly like Brad,” Rosie said as she picked up her fork and broke off a dainty corner of zucchini bread. “Are you two getting serious about each other?”

“Brad and me?” Alissa quickly swallowed the bite of corn in her mouth. “No! Not now, not ever. Never!”

Chet laughed at her strong reaction. “I suggest you carry around a packet of salt, my dear girl. You may end up eating those words one day, and I’m sure they’ll go down easier with a little seasoning.”

Alissa carried around Chet’s words all day. How could anyone think a relationship was brewing between Brad and her? Especially someone like Chet, who had seen it all. Nothing hinted that Brad and she were in love. Nothing.

To prove it to herself, Alissa stayed away from Brad for days. She heard him in the living room one evening talking with Shelly and Jake. Alissa pretended to be asleep and didn’t venture from her room to join them. She heard Jake asking when the four of them could get together as a good-bye for Shelly. As it turned out, between their busy schedules they couldn’t find a free evening, so that was the end of their planning.