The Art of Crash Landing (27 page)

“Fritter, don't—”

“Don't you tell me what to do,” she hisses. “I leave you alone for five minutes—”

“You need to look—”

“I'm looking, all right. At an ungrateful—”

“Watch it! You're going to trip—” The words are no sooner out of my mouth, than she catches an orthopedic shoe on the edge of one wheel. She lets go of my elbow at the same moment I grab on to hers to steady her balance, so for both of us, the situation improves. She straightens, yanking her arm from my grasp, but thankfully doesn't try to reestablish her death grip.

We're in the doorway when from behind us Fritter's brother calls out, “Trip? Trip?”

Fritter and I reply in unison. However, I say, “We're fine,” while she responds, “He's not here.”

F
ired?” Luke pauses with a bite of salad halfway to his mouth. “After four days? How did you manage that?”

“It wasn't easy,” I admit.

“I've never heard of Fritter firing
anybody
.”

I shrug and bite into a slice of cucumber. Greek salads are my favorite, and, with the exception of Wednesday night's somewhat charred dinner with Father Barnes, it's been almost a week since I've eaten anything that wasn't stale, freezer-burned, fast-food, or rubbery soup-kitchen fare.

“With all those teenagers she takes in . . .” He's shaking his head, looking at me incredulously. “Every single one of them a tremendous pain in the ass. Hell, back in the day, I drove her crazy, and she never fired me. Never once have I heard of her firing someone.”

“I have my ways,” I reply, mysteriously.

Luke grins.

“I have ninja skills when it comes to screwing things up. It's like a superpower only lamer.”

He laughs and finally takes that bite of salad.

Luke has gone all out on this dinner, and I am glad to be sitting here eating it. Fritter fired me in the parking lot of the nursing home and then just got in her car and left me there. I had to hitchhike back to my grandmother's house. To add insult to injury my jeans were still damp—stupid antique dryer—so I was faced with a choice of a tweed skirt or velour sweatpants for my date. I almost called Luke to cancel, but then I remembered that all my groceries were still sitting in Father Barnes's refrigerator. In the end hunger trumped embarrassment.

Now, sitting here eating and laughing with this man, I'm ridiculously grateful for the food and the company. He's flirting shamelessly and it feels so good to be wanted that I'm finding it easy to focus on him rather than my itchy wool skirt and my ever-present vague nausea.

Luke's apartment is sleek and modern with everything from kitchen to bathroom set up to accommodate his wheelchair. There are enough pictures on the wall and books on the bookshelf to make it look homey, but the overall effect is a feeling of efficiency and ease. We're both laughing while I tell him the story of how I got sacked. I certainly don't tell him everything, but I do mention Fritter's reluctance to answer questions about my family, and I talk about my visit with her brother in the nursing home. I consider telling Luke about his aunt Fritter's orchestration of Tawny's break-in, but he seems so genuinely fond of the old lady that I hate to be the one to tell him she's a criminal mastermind. Besides, I have the feeling that would just get Tawny in trouble, not Fritter. Who are the cops going to believe—an elderly do-gooder librarian, or a pierced-up juvenile delinquent?

“Let me get this straight,” he says. “Fritter fired you for talking to a lonely old man in a nursing home?”

“Well . . .” I equivocate, “it's possible that she interpreted my
visit as more of an . . . um . . . questioning, and less of a social call.”

“I thought he had Alzheimer's.”

“He seemed pretty sharp to me.” I decide that mentioning that Jonah mistook me for someone else will not help my case.

“So, did you learn anything useful?”

“Maybe. I found out that
Trip
is Jonah's son.”

“That's someone's name?” Luke asks.

“Yup. Trip is one of Fritter's nephews. He was one of her summer projects—maybe the first. And, according to Karleen, he was my mom's boyfriend that summer she left town.”

“So Jonah told you about Trip?”

“Not exactly . . .” I sketch out Fritter's almost broken hip, making sure to play up my heroic measures. “And then after she told him that Trip wasn't there, I asked her what that was supposed to mean, and she explained.”

“I'm surprised she told you anything after catching you interrogating—”

“Visiting.”

“Questioning.”

“Okay, questioning,” I concede. “Although I never got a chance to ask any questions. Honestly, I think she only told me about Trip because she was a little shaken from her near fall. Did I mention that I saved her from a broken hip?”

I polish off the last new potato on my plate and eye the few remaining on the platter. Luke notices my empty plate and my glance, and pushes both the salad bowl and the platter in my direction.

“Eat.”

I serve myself just a tiny bit more, and then say, “So, you were one of Fritter's projects?”

He nods.

“How did that happen? I can't picture you as a juvenile delinquent.”

“Why is that?”

“Well . . .” Too late, I realize that I'm thinking of Luke as he is now, neatly trimmed hair, clean nails, wheelchair, wheelchair, wheelchair. What the hell do I know about him or his past? I finally limp in with “You have too many freckles for a trouble-maker,” but I'm pretty sure we both know what I'd been thinking.

“Actually, I was a pretty good kid in high school. I partied, but it never got out of hand.” He notices that I've finally stopped eating, so he starts to stack the dishes. “After my accident, though, I was a mess.” He sets the plates in his lap and pushes back from the table. “Coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

“I have decaf.”

I shake my head.

“Or would you like a drink? I don't drink, but I've got some brandy here somewhere I bought for a recipe.”

“I'm actually not drinking right now either,” I tell him.

He glances at me over his shoulder. “AA?”

I shake my head, tempted to answer “PG” but instead I say, “I'm just taking a break.”

He grins. “One day at a time.”

“Don't you get all twelve steppy on me.”

He laughs and wheels into the kitchen. I follow.

“So, Wednesday night I had dinner with Father Barnes.”

He glances over his shoulder with one brow raised. “Uh huh . . .”

“No, no, it was nothing like that.”

While Luke rinses the dishes in the sink, I describe my evening with Father Barnes, not mentioning my flirting with the priest, but instead discussing his prodigious alcohol consumption.

When I finish, Luke turns his chair to face me. “It's not like he doesn't know where to turn for help. There's an AA meeting twice a week at his church.”

“He needs to quit drinking.”

“Does he
want
to quit?”

I shrug.

“I'm happy to talk to him, Mattie, but keep in mind, needing to change your life isn't enough. You have to want to change it.” Luke's got a funny look on his face. I wonder if we're still talking about Father Barnes.

“I understand,” I tell him, and it's true.

“Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life. Well, AA and Aunt Fritter.”

“Sounds like a hell of a story,” I say.

“It's an awful story,” he replies. “But I don't mind sharing it if you want to hear it.”

I'm not sure I do, but I can't think of a way to gracefully decline, so I nod.

“I was riding pretty high at nineteen. I'd gotten a baseball scholarship to a junior college that had a good record of getting players into the minors. A month before I left for school a group of us were out driving around.” He sighs. “You've heard this story a million times. We were all drunk. The car missed a turn . . .”

“Shit,” I whisper. He's right—everyone has heard this story.

“Once I got out of the hospital, about all I did was drink.”

“I can imagine.”

He gives me a sad smile. “I hope not. I wouldn't want anyone trying to imagine me the way I was back then. So full of self-pity and rage.” He rolls to the Keurig coffeemaker and puts a pod in the basket. “The two in the backseat were just a little banged up, I was thrown from the car. The other kid died.” He pauses for several seconds before he adds, “I spent a couple years wishing I had, too.”

I take a step closer and put my hand on his shoulder. He covers my hand with his own.

“Well,” Luke says. “We've talked about me and about Father Barnes.” He looks up at me and smiles. “It's time to talk about you.”

I laugh. “No way.”

“Oh come on.”

“I'm not interesting.”

“Okay, then just one thing,” he says. “Tell me one thing about Mattie Wallace that not everybody knows.”

Luke is smiling, his hand still resting on mine, and I know he's showing an interest in me because he's a nice guy and nice guys are interested in more than themselves. Maybe that's why I don't date nice guys. What he doesn't understand is that my past is a lot like the couch in Nick's apartment. On the surface it's fine, reasonably comfortable, the Naugahyde a little scuffed, but presentable enough. But the last thing you ever want to do, and I mean
the very last thing
, is stick your hand down between the cushions and start feeling around.

Luke, however, has gotten personal—his was certainly a between-the-cushions story—and this puts me a little off balance. Frantically, I rummage through my past, searching for an honest story I'm willing to tell, all the while trying to think of a way to sidestep his request without lying or coming off like a total jerk. And then suddenly, Luke provides me with the answer. He begins to trace a slow circle on my wrist with his thumb, and I shiver, feeling my nipples grow hard.

“Not everybody knows I'm good in bed,” I say.

He pulls me onto his lap. I have one hand resting on his chest, and I can feel his heart racing beneath my fingers. I'm a little surprised to find that mine is beating fast as well. He runs a hand up my back to my shoulder blades. I lean forward and kiss his mouth.

When I pull away to look at his face, he frowns slightly and averts his gaze. I'm not sure what he's thinking, but there's some worry brewing under that carrottop.

“What's wrong?” I ask.

“Charlie Franklin called today,” he says. “We need to talk about it.”

Something is up, and from the look on Luke's face it's not something that's going to make me happy. But right now Luke smells like soap and aftershave, and his hand is warm on my back. And he's looking at me as if he thinks I'm something special.

“Can it wait until later?” I ask.

He answers me with another kiss.

I
'm nervous. Although I'm certain that the awkward gropings of my first sexual experience will be nothing like what's about to happen on these high-thread-count sheets, I'm feeling a similar flutter of fear. I've never slept with a handicapped guy, and I'm not sure I've ever slept with such a genuinely nice guy either. There's no doubt in my mind that there are a million stupid things I could do to screw this up.

Luke emerges from the bathroom wearing only a pair of blue boxers, and wheels himself to the bed. I was right in my estimation of his build, he looks like a body builder from the waist up, and even his legs, covered in fine red hair, are not as thin as I'd imagined them to be. In one fluid motion he puts his fists on the mattress and lifts himself out of his chair and onto the bed, taking a few seconds to arrange his legs under the covers.

He opens his hand and reveals a condom package, which he tucks under his pillow.

“I knew you were a Boy Scout,” I tell him.

“Be prepared,” he replies, lifting the covers for a peek. When he sees that I'm naked, he grins and shimmies out of his underwear, tossing it on the seat of his wheelchair.

“I've been hoping this would happen.”

“Since when? It seems like all I do is annoy you.”

He grins. “Since you handed me a piece of paper that said
twat waffle.
”

I laugh.

“I'm still waiting to hear what that was actually about,” he says.

“Sorry. We women must maintain an air of mystery.”

Luke chuckles, reaching out to cup the side of my face. “You are the most exasperating and ridiculous woman I've ever met.”

“But in a really good way, right?”

“The best way,” he replies, pulling me to him.

At this most inopportune moment, his cell phone, lying on the bedside table, rings. Luke reaches out an arm and lifts it to his face for just long enough to turn it off, then he drops it back to the table and turns to me.

“Nobody important?”

“My mother.”

“Wow. Her calling right now is a little . . .”

“Oedipal?”

“I was just going to say freaky, but let's go with Oedipal. I should have said Oedipal.”

“You did work in a library.”

“Yeah, I should try to sound well read.”

“That's tough, huh?”

“Hey, I was no English major.”

“What was your major?”

“Jack Daniel's,” I tell him, and it's almost the truth. I didn't go to college, but that's certainly what I concentrated on between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one.

He runs a finger down my arm. He's grinning, and I return his smile, but my misgivings must show on my face, because he reaches over and pulls me into his arms, my head resting on his shoulder.

“What's wrong?” he asks.

I prop myself back up on an elbow and look down at his earnest expression. The light on the nightstand is behind me, my tangled, messy hair making a complicated shadow on the pillow beneath his head. “I'm a little nervous, I guess.”

“Why?”

“You're not exactly my type.”

A cloud passes over his expression, and even in the dim light I can see his green eyes darken. Anger? Hurt? I'm not sure. I don't know him well enough yet to read the difference.

“You're nice,” I hurry to explain. “Dependable. Gainfully employed.”

I'm relieved to see his expression clear and a small smile lift the corner of his lips.

“So you only sleep with cruel, flakey losers?”

“Yeah, I mostly date musicians.”