The Grand Finale (6 page)

He sauntered out to the kitchen, and soon soothing sounds drifted in to Berry. Jake was telling Mrs. Fitz how nice she looked in the morning…full of energy. Mrs. Dugan and Miss Gaspich were similarly pacified.

Berry joined the group, and a tablecloth
was discovered and spread over the round oak table. A blue teapot appeared. Packing crates were drawn up to serve as chairs. Mrs. Fitz looked like she was beginning to come around, but Miss Gaspich looked like death. Her red-rimmed eyes sagged in her face, and her mouth crinkled into a small furrow in pasty cheeks.

“Miss Gaspich, do you feel all right?” Berry asked.

Miss Gaspich slumped against the table, staring glassy-eyed at her teacup. “Couldn’t sleep all night. Didn’t sleep a wink.”

Mrs. Fitz looked disgusted. “You snored all night, you old bat. And you hogged the pillow.”

Mrs. Dugan leaned across the table. “You! You were the one who hogged the pillow. Tossing and turning and complaining. Mildred was the perfect bed partner compared to you.”

Jake deposited a steaming mug of coffee in front of Berry. “Looks like we have a problem here.”

“Possible multiple homicides.”

“I think I’ll go out and get some beds today.”
He slouched over Berry, draping his bare arm across her collarbone, and whispered in her ear. “I only have four bedrooms. Guess that means two of us will have to double up.”

Mrs. Dugan glared at him. “I heard that. You men. You only have one thing on your mind. Sex. Sex. Sex.”

Mrs. Fitz winked at Jake. “Don’t pay no attention to her. She’s cranky because she’s always got sex on her mind, too, but she can’t remember what you’re supposed to do about it. Last man Mrs. Dugan knew was old Criswald, and he couldn’t remember what to do about it, either.”

Miss Gaspich giggled. Mrs. Dugan looked scandalized. And Mrs. Fitz looked like she was enjoying their reactions.

“I tell you what,” Mrs. Fitz said, smiling broadly. “How about when Jake goes out to get us some beds, he gets us some handsome men to go with them?”

Sarah Dugan pursed her lips. “That’s disgusting.”

“Yeah. But it made Mildred giggle. It’s bringing some color to her cheeks.”

Berry sipped at her coffee and thought she wouldn’t want to underestimate Mrs. Fitz. Her methods were a bit unorthodox for a little old lady, but she knew how to rally the troops.

Jake finished his coffee. “It’s Saturday. What time does the Pizza Place open on Saturday?”

“Ten.”

“I guess we can get ourselves together by ten.”

“First breakfast,” Mrs. Dugan said.

Mrs. Fitz drained her cup of tea. “Then the laundry. If we don’t do the laundry we’ll have to work in our nighties.”

Jake set his cup on the table and lazily stretched behind Berry. “I’ll take a quick shower, and then we can check out the apartment.”

Berry was having a difficult time not bursting into tears. The apartment was even worse than she’d remembered. The soot was everywhere. It had infiltrated every drawer, it clung to the walls, and it blackened the windows.

Jake put his arms around Berry and rested his chin on the top of her head. “It could be worse. No one was hurt.”

“Yes, but everything is ruined.”

“Not everything.”

Berry looked down at the rug. “The rug is ruined.”

“Mmmm.” His voice rumbled in her ear.

Berry was having a difficult time concentrating on the rug. She was being distracted by his hands inching their way down her spine.

“And the couch is ruined,” she said.

“Mmmm. The couch.”

The hands squeezed her ever so slightly, and his thumbs massaged little circles into her back just above the waistband of her jeans.

“And…um.” She couldn’t think what else was ruined. It was right on the tip of her tongue, but she was being rendered senseless by his thumbs.

“The curlers were faulty and the company will be responsible for damages, including cleanup,” Jake said. “I think we should gather up the clothes and linens and take them all back to my house to be washed. The rest of this you can leave to the professionals.”

Berry squeezed her eyes shut and a tear popped out. “It makes me sad to see it like this.”

“Me too,” Jake said.

“I think I’d feel better if I cleaned it a little.”

Jake held her a little tighter. “Me too.”

“Really?”

“No,” he said, “but I’ll do anything to prevent another tear from sliding down your cheek.” He turned and rummaged through the drawers by the sink. “Where are your big garbage bags?”

“One drawer down.”

He located the bags and tossed them to her. “Here you go. Stuff the clothes and linens in these. I’m going to get the rug up before it ruins the floor.”

Berry filled the station wagon with the bagged laundry and looked up at her open windows. Jake was stuffing part of the waterlogged rug through one of them. “Bombs away,” he called, catapulting the rug onto the sidewalk below.

“Jake?”

He leaned out the window and grinned. His shirtsleeves were rolled to above the elbow, and a black smudge slanted across his cheek.

“Thanks,” Berry called up to him.

“Are you looking for a way to show gratitude?” he asked.

Berry smiled in spite of herself. She had to admire his tenacity.

An hour later Berry returned with Mrs. Fitz and Miss Gaspich. She unlocked the door to the Pizza Place and was relieved to see only a few water stains creeping down the walls.

“Just as good as new,” Mrs. Fitz commented.

Miss Gaspich set a bunch of wildflowers on the counter. “I picked these this morning in the woods behind Jake’s house. Don’t they look nice?”

Berry smelled the flowers. “They look great.”

Mrs. Fitz wrapped a snow-white apron around her middle. “We can handle this. You go on upstairs and help Jake with the apartment. Sounds like he’s having a party up there.”

Berry looked at the ceiling. It did sound like a party upstairs. There was music blaring from a radio and the sound of at least a dozen feet scuffing around. She took the stairs two at a time and found her apartment filled with people. Mrs. Giovanni stood at the sink, up to her elbows in soapsuds. Several adult Lings were scrubbing walls and scouring floors. Ling children ran from bedroom to living room in
a game of tag. A tall, rawboned man turned from a sparkling-clean front window. He held a bottle of glass cleaner and looked pleased. “They’re pretty clean, now. Now you can see Mama Giovanni’s geraniums when they bloom, and down the street my Caribe Restaurant.”

Berry caught Jake by the arm as he hauled a load of trash to the stairs. “What are all these people doing here?”

“They just showed up, one by one. You were right. This is a nice neighborhood.”

“They came to help me?”

“Mrs. Ling said you were the reason her daughter won her class spelling bee last month. Said you tutored her free for weeks before the contest. Mrs. Giovanni tells me you drove her to the hospital every day for almost a month this winter when her husband had a heart attack.”

“The tall man cleaning the windows,” she whispered. “I’ve never met him.”

“Apparently you’ve befriended his wife.”

Berry looked confused.

“Anne Marie.”

Berry’s eyes opened wide. “Anne Marie?” She burst out laughing. “Anne Marie is a six-foot-
tall platinum blond who only speaks French. She gets lonely when her husband is at work, so she visits me. I speak English and make pizzas, and she sits on the stool, knitting and speaking French. Neither of us can understand anything the other says.”

Jake shook his head. “How can you find time to do all these things, run a business, and go to school?”

“I’ve eliminated sleeping and only eat once a day.”

Jake was serious. “What about time for Berry?”

“I like my life.”

“I think you’re running on empty. When you say you haven’t got time for naked men—you’re right.”

“Naked men do not play an important role in my life.”

Jake grinned down at her. “I intend to change that.”

“Good thing for you Mrs. Dugan stayed home to do the laundry. I’d tell her you were talking dirty to me.”

“That isn’t talking dirty.” He leaned forward
and whispered some of his future intentions in her ear. He stepped back, grinning, enjoying the look of flustered embarrassment on her face. “Now
that’s
talking dirty.”

Mrs. Giovanni bustled past with a bottle of detergent in her hand. She shook her finger at Berry. “You got a nice young man there. You’re lucky to have a man like that to take care of you.”

Jake whispered in Berry’s ear. “See, even Mrs. Giovanni thinks I should take care of you.”

“I don’t need taking care of.”

“Of course you do.”

“Not the way you mean.”

“Especially the way I mean.”

Berry narrowed her eyes and put her fists on her hips. “I guess I know what I need and what I don’t need. And I don’t need what you think I need. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

“I suppose you are—but it would be much more fun if we did it together.”

“I didn’t mean…you know perfectly well…oh, jeez.”

Jake handed her the bag of trash. “Here, this
isn’t heavy. It’s scraps of wallpaper I scraped off the bedroom wall. You could take it downstairs for me. It’ll give you a chance to cool off.” He winked at Mrs. Giovanni. “Just being around me gets her all overheated.”

Berry took the bag and smacked Jake over the head with it.

Mrs. Fitz stood in the doorway of the Pizza Place and clicked her tongue at Berry. “You look like someone just stepped on your corns.”

“It’s that Jake Sawyer.”

“Isn’t he something? Um-hmmm.”

“The man has one thing on his mind.”

“You?”

“S-e-x.”

Mrs. Fitz looked at Berry. “Don’t underestimate him.”

Berry raised her eyebrows in question.

“He’s in love with you,” Mrs. Fitz said.

“We hardly know each other.”

“Sometimes your heart knows stuff your head hasn’t figured out yet.”

“He’s never told me.”

“Maybe he don’t know. Maybe he knows, but he’s afraid, like you.”

Berry squared her shoulders. “I’m not afraid.”

“Don’t tell fibs.”

“It’s just that I have this plan.”

“Bullshoot.”

“Mrs. Fitz! Such language.”

Mrs. Fitz laughed and slapped her thigh. “I know it. Aren’t I the ornery old lady, cussing like that?” She shook her head and returned to the caldron of pizza sauce bubbling on the stove. “You gotta be flexible, Lingonberry. Sometimes plans gotta change or you lose good opportunities. Isn’t every day a man like Jake Sawyer comes along. That man is
fine
.”

Miss Gaspich kneaded a huge wad of dough on the butcher-block table. A small smile hovered at her mouth. Her eyes twinkled. “And he’s got a great butt,” she added quietly.

It was close to eleven o’clock and Berry’s street was dark. With the exception of the bar on the next block, this was an early-to-bed, early-to-rise neighborhood. Berry summoned her last ounce of strength and dragged herself out of the car. She glanced into the window of the Pizza Place, noticing that it was empty, except for Jake. Thank goodness. She didn’t have the energy to be nice to any more customers. She pushed through the heavy glass door, tossed the money bag onto the counter, and slumped into a chair. “Another day, another dollar.”

Jake gaped at her. “You look awful!”

Berry pointed to her wet ringlets and water-splattered shirt. “Water balloon.” She raised her leg to display torn jeans. “Dog.”

“Does this happen every night?”

“Some nights are worse than others. Where are the ladies?”

“I sent them home in a cab. They looked all done in.” He took her hands and pulled her to her feet. “You look even doner. Let’s go home.”

“I have to clean the ovens, the floor—”

Jake pointed vehemently. “To the car, woman!”

Berry was too tired to argue. She followed Jake to the car and sat beside him, remembering the way he’d said, Let’s go home, as if it really was her home, too. Wouldn’t that be nice, she thought, succumbing to the hypnotic drone of the engine. Imagine if that lovely Victorian house could actually be my home. It’s nice to see Mrs. Giovanni’s geraniums, but Jake’s house has trees and a real lawn. She closed her eyes and imagined what it would be like to be barefoot on that lawn. No responsibilities, no plan to follow…just bare toes and soft grass.

When Berry opened her eyes she was in the garage.

“Come on, sleepyhead,” Jake said. “We’re home.”

Berry looked at him drowsily. There was that word again. When Jake Sawyer said
home
,
it took on spiritual proportions. Home was an ark: a refuge against flood, pestilence, and rude drivers; a haven for the harried; a cure for the sexually deprived.

Berry followed Jake into the kitchen and wondered what it was that made this house so homey. It was empty of furniture. Voices echoed in rooms not yet softened by curtains or carpets. By all standards the old building should have felt inhospitable. But it didn’t—it felt like a home. Berry could practically smell butterscotch pudding cooling on the counter.

Suddenly the ghosts of crushed dreams tugged at her heart. Dreams of towheaded children getting tucked into bed at night, dreams of a husband who nuzzled her neck in the kitchen and told her important things, like I took the car to get a new muffler today. She’d entered into marriage anticipating a family, fantasizing about a big old house that would be filled with noisy love and security taken for granted. What a dope she’d been to look for domestic bliss in a marriage to Allen. It had never really been a marriage at all. It had been a living arrangement. She’d expected so much, and she’d left with so little.

She chewed on her lower lip. No, that wasn’t entirely honest. The dissolution of her marriage wasn’t a totally barren experience. She’d walked out on her emotionally shallow husband with renewed self-esteem and a hard-won sense of purpose. Somehow, an individual had emerged from the muddle of matrimony. She was proud of that.

“Looks like some heavy thinking going on behind those pretty blue eyes,” Jake said.

Berry struggled for something to say. “This house feels like it should be filled with children.”

“I agree. It’s going to be perfect for a pack of kids and a couple floppy-eared dogs.”

Berry stared at him in confusion. He didn’t have kids, and he didn’t have a dog. What was he telling her? Had he bought the house for someone else? An investment? Was he only living here temporarily? Lord, did he have a pregnant girlfriend in Spokane?

Jake leaned against the counter. “I have a plan.”

“What sort of plan?”

“When was the last time you ate?”

Berry blinked at the change in the conversation. “I don’t remember when I ate last.”

“Did you have supper?”

Berry’d had a candy bar for supper. She’d intended to have a sandwich, but somehow she’d never gotten to it. “What’s this got to do with your plan?”

“Nothing. Everything.” Jake opened the refrigerator door. “There’s not much food in here.”

“So, I’m not the only one who forgets to eat.”

“I’ve been eating out. Mostly at my sister’s house. She’s only a few miles from here.” He put a half gallon of milk on the counter and found a box of raisin bran in the overhead cupboard. “I’ve only got breakfast food.” He located a spoon and poured her a bowl of cereal.

Berry aimlessly pushed the raisins around with her spoon. “I’m not sure I have the energy to eat this.”

Without saying a word, Jake poured some milk into the blender. He added an egg and searched through a small box sitting on the counter, finally extracting two bottles. “A little vanilla, a dash of nutmeg,” he told Berry. He
whipped the mixture and poured it into a large glass. “Here. You don’t have to chew this.”

“It has a raw egg in it.”

“Eggnog usually does.”

“Hmmm.” Berry cautiously sipped at it and licked a milk mustache off with the tip of her tongue. He had a plan. Swell. Another plan. The world needed one more plan.

Jake took the empty glass and put it in the dishwasher. He slung an arm around Berry and eased her toward the stairs. “Let’s go to bed.”

“Don’t I sleep on the couch?”

“I had beds delivered today. The ladies all have their own rooms.”

“And?”

“And you sleep in my room.” He opened the door to his bedroom and motioned her in with a Sir Walter Raleigh flourish.

“Oh, no,” she groaned, “not tonight, Jake. I’m too tired.”

Jake grinned at her as he turned down the bed linens. “No. Not tonight. When I share a bed with you for the first time I want you wide awake and panting.”

Berry stood blank-faced in front of him, too
tired to formulate a retort, her mind focusing on the fact that he’d said
when
I share a bed with you, not
if
. Was it that inevitable?

He draped the royal-blue silk pajama top across her shoulders, kissed her on her forehead, and left, closing the door behind him.

Berry surfaced through the drowse of sleep, stretching her legs, then her arms. She was in the biggest, most comfortable bed she’d ever slept in. “Yum,” she sighed, rolling onto her back, feeling the delicious silk pajama top slide over her breasts. This was a lovely way to awaken, she decided. Slowly and luxuriously. If only she didn’t have this peculiar feeling of being watched. The feeling crept along her neck and tingled in her scalp. She cautiously opened one eye.

“Morning.” Jake grinned down at her.

Berry pulled the covers up to her neck. “What are you doing in here?”

“I need some clothes. Want to take a shower?”

Berry looked at him suspiciously. He had a towel slung over his shoulder. “Aren’t you going to take a shower now?”

“Yup. But I’m a good guy. I’d be willing to share it with you.”

“What a pal.”

“I can do wonderful things with soapsuds.”

“I don’t think I want to hear this.”

Jake sat on the edge of the bed and ran his finger along the blue silk collar. “I like the way you feel under this material. Now I know why they make pajamas out of it. It never felt like this when it was on me.”

Berry liked it, too. It was fun to wake up feeling pampered and feminine for a change.

He ran the material between his fingers. “You would feel like this in the shower, when you got all lathered with soap.”

Holy cow. No one had ever said anything like that to her before. Not even her ex-husband.
Especially
not her ex-husband!

Jake’s desire was obvious in his dark eyes as his finger traced a trail over the small swell of her breast. There was something incredibly carnal about his lazy exploration of her pajama-clad body. She licked her lips in anticipation of his good-morning kiss. When it happened, it said, Good morning, good golly! His hands
headed south, and Berry didn’t want him to stop. He went from Montana to Salt Lake City and paused at Phoenix. Berry
really
needed him to continue on to Mexico.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered.

His hands were warm on her belly, his fingertips resting on the thin elastic band at the top of her bikini panties. “Once I cross the border, there’s no going back.”

Berry exhaled. Crossing the border wouldn’t be good. Pleasurable? Yes. Smart? No. There would be no going back in more ways than one. She groaned and pushed away and straightened her nightshirt.

“I need a moment,” she said. “It’s the first time I’ve ever felt anything like this.”

“You were married for four years. Didn’t you ever make love?”

“It turned out that I gave love, and he took love, but we never
made
love. We went through the motions on a regular basis, but nothing ever happened for me.” She rolled her eyes. “This is so awkward.”

“I hope I never meet this guy. I don’t think I could keep from flattening his nose.”

“It wasn’t entirely his fault. I was very young. Allen and I both thought marriage could be a panacea for our own problems. Allen was very smart. He had direction to his life. He wanted to be a doctor. There I was floundering through school, changing my major every semester, barely passing half my courses—and Allen walked into my life. He was like the calm in the center of a hurricane. Cool blue eyes, perfectly combed hair, always a crease in his trousers. I think, unconsciously, we each felt incomplete. I needed order and purpose, and he was lacking emotion. I suppose we thought if we joined the two of us together we’d get a complete human being.

“Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way. Marriage intensified our problems. The longer we were married, the less sure I became of myself, and he grew more withdrawn, less communicative. When it became clear that the marriage was a failure, Allen began looking to other women for comfort.” Berry shrugged. “Maybe cheating was a last-ditch effort for him. Maybe he was trying to convince himself that he wasn’t deficient.”

“Maybe he was a creep.”

Berry hugged her knees and laughed. “That was my original conclusion. Time and personal growth have softened the edges of my animosity.”

Someone obtrusively clumped down the hall, stopping short of Jake’s bedroom door. “Anyone wanting to use the bathroom should do it now,” Mrs. Fitz hissed in a loud whisper. “They should get into the bathroom before Mrs. Dugan gets up!”

Berry was the last to arrive at the breakfast table. She quietly slid onto a packing crate and poured a bowlful of cereal, being careful to avoid looking at Jake. She was practically senseless with embarrassment. She’d gone bonkers listening to him talk about soap. She couldn’t have felt more exposed if she’d come to the breakfast table naked. She’d told him her life story. Lord, she was such a boob. She kept her eyes trained on the cereal without really seeing it. She added milk and stirred.

Pow!
A kernel of cereal flew past her ear.
Pop, ping, pow.
Her cereal was exploding!

A kernel bounced off Mrs. Dugan’s forehead. “I’ve been shot!” Mrs. Dugan cried. “Someone shot me in the forehead.”

Mrs. Fitz dived under the table. “You haven’t been shot, you old dunce. It’s the cereal.”

Jake jumped to his feet and clamped a dinner plate over the almost empty bowl.

“What is this stuff?” Berry asked, her eyes wide.

Jake cautiously removed the plate. The cereal was bloated with milk, making soft snuffling noises. “I don’t understand this. It never did this before. Maybe it was the way you were stirring it.” He took the box of cereal and Berry’s bowl and descended into the basement with them.

Mrs. Dugan shook her head. “This never happened when we lived in the Southside Hotel for Ladies.”

Mrs. Fitz picked cereal out of her hair. “Yeah, that place was boring. Filled with old people.” She shivered at the thought.

Miss Gaspich folded her napkin. “I like it here. I wish he hadn’t taken that cereal away. I wanted to try some.”

Berry stared at the cellar door, wondering what was down there. Dr. Jekyll’s laboratory? Finally her curiosity grew stronger than her embarrassment. She excused herself from the table and cautiously opened the basement door. “Jake?”

“Mmmm.”

“Can I come down? Will anything else explode?”

“Take your chances.”

Berry looked around the cluttered, well-lit room. Kites, model airplanes, wind socks, and bicycle wheels hung from the ceiling. The walls were lined with bottle-laden shelves and crowded bulletin boards. Countertops held robot innards, computer equipment, and sacks of rice, whole wheat, and corn. There were toys everywhere: decapitated dolls, fuzzy bears, motorized skateboards, boxes of puzzles. Jake sat at a massive oak desk, intently staring at a soggy particle of cereal speared on a long skewer. Berry moved behind him. “I feel like I’m visiting Gyro Gearloose.”