Troubled waters, p.17
Troubled Waters, page 17
She smiled and continued to watch him in silence. He was masterful the way he controlled the paint and the color with each stroke, working the textures as if the brush were an extension of himself. After a few minutes, he wiped his brush and said, “Can I offer you something to drink?”
Macey shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bother you. I just stopped by to . . .”
“To what?”
“Just stopped by.” She smiled bashfully. “Don’t people do that here—stop by for no reason?”
He laughed and put down his brush. “Come on. Let me get you some water. It’s a hot one today.”
She followed him inside the house, and as they passed his studio door, she stopped him. “Noah, may I see your studio?”
He turned around. “I was rude the other day . . . I mean, when I had to leave so suddenly. I really am interested in seeing your work.”
“Sure,” he said. “But first let me get you a glass of cold water.”
He poured her a tall glass and then led her back into the studio. Although cluttered, it did appear organized. Canvas and other paint supplies lined the walls and shelves, and there must have been seven or eight unfinished works at different stages. He explained that he had to have several paintings going at once or he got bored. Several large windows filtered light in from various angles. Other than supplies, shelves, and canvases, there wasn’t much in the way of decoration.
She walked around the room, her hands clasped behind her back, looking at each individual piece. They were all so beautiful. A horse standing at a pond. An old barn with cows all around it. One in particular caught her attention. It looked as if it had been painted from the top of a tree. There was something eerily familiar about the picture.
“What about this one?” she asked. “Where is this?”
“I actually climbed a tree and painted from that view. I almost fell out twice.”
“It looks familiar.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why.”
He stood next to her, their shoulders almost touching. “It’s from the big tree by your parents’ house. The one with the tree house.”
Of course. It was the view looking north, over the wheat fields, at sunset. Growing up, she’d sat in the tree house for hours, watching the sunrises and sunsets, sometimes even storms.
She continued moving around the studio. “You don’t strike me as a New Yorker,” she said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You don’t have the aura, or attitude, especially of an artist from there.” She glanced at him. “I’ve known a few.”
“I’m sorry,” he said with a laugh.
“You don’t even sound like you’re from New York.”
He trailed her around the room. “I’m not, originally. I’m from Minnesoooota.”
Macey chuckled as she circled back to the studio’s door. “Well, you don’t really sound like you’re from up north, either.”
“Maybe I’m starting to sound like a hick.”
“No, I’m not hearing that at all.”
His eyebrows rose and he said, “Are you sure? ’Cause I’m fixin’ to get ya some more water, little lady.”
She giggled and followed him out of the studio and into the kitchen, where he refilled her glass. The fluids felt good to her body, and she gulped down the second glass nearly as quickly as the first.
“Where are the girls?” she asked, noticing the house was considerably quiet for having two six-year-olds around.
“At a friend’s. They’re spending the night there.” He tapped his fingers on the small kitchen island. “Stay for dinner.”
She looked up and almost dropped her glass. “Stay . . . for dinner?”
His eyebrows formed a worried arch. “You don’t trust me to cook for you?”
“It’s not that. It’s just . . . I wasn’t expecting you to—” She stopped her rambling, took a deep breath, and met his eyes. “Sure. I’d love to.”
Noah picked up the phone in the kitchen, dialed four digits and said, “Hi, Evelyn. It’s Noah. Listen, I invited Macey over for dinner. . . . Yes . . . Would you like to come?” Macey held her breath. “Are you sure? . . . Okay . . . I promise I’ll have her home by dark. Bye.” He hung up the phone, and his lips curved into a confident smile. “You have permission.”
She shot him a look. “Right.” She rinsed her glass in the sink. “I forgot you only had to dial four digits here.”
“Yeah. Kind of a trip, isn’t it? I mean, in many places now, you have to dial an area code even if it’s not long distance, just because they’ve run out of numbers. Here it’s only four. I love it.”
“You love a lot of things about this place, don’t you?”
“Sure. It’s a nice place to live.”
An awkward silence caught Macey off guard, and she wondered what kind of conversation she could expect to have during an evening alone with Noah Kauffman.
“So what’s on the menu tonight?” she asked. Silence was something she was never going to be comfortable with.
A devilish glint in Noah’s eyes was followed by a suspicious grin. “I guess that all depends on what I’m able to find and kill in the next thirty minutes.”
———
He was only half joking. The grill spat flames into the air when Noah flipped the rabbit and then the rattlesnake. Macey covered her mouth as Noah laughed. “You’ll love it,” he assured her. “I promise.”
Macey stood several feet away from the grill yet close enough to hear Noah explain that he hadn’t actually killed the rattlesnake or the rabbit, but that Twenty, who was a fantastic hunter, had done the killing, and that he was paid well for his meat.
“I just don’t think I can . . . can eat. . .” She couldn’t even finish the sentence. Noah went on with basting the pieces of meat, thoroughly amused the whole time, like a boy who had just introduced a tarantula to a frightened little girl. Suddenly Macey found herself craving her mother’s fried chicken. What a transition she’d made in her life!
“These are best if cooked over a low heat for a while,” he said as he closed the grill’s lid, and Macey gladly followed him back inside. “I’ll let you help me make a salad.”
Macey washed, dried, and tore the lettuce, while Noah chopped carrots, tomatoes, and cucumbers, telling her at the same time about how Twenty goes to South Texas five or six times a year to hunt rattlesnake and that he’d even been bitten once and lived to tell the story. He told her if it had been a few months later, he would’ve fixed her venison stew. Macey just shook her head and continued to concentrate on the lettuce.
She’d just switched to washing the potatoes when Noah disappeared into the living room, and with his return a few minutes later, Simon and Garfunkel were bellowing out “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Macey listened silently as she scrubbed. It had been her father’s favorite song, one that would make him pick her up and dance with her as if she were a world-class ballerina. As a child, she’d never paid much attention to the words. Now, as far as she was concerned, they were still meaningless.
Noah dried the potatoes, wrapped them in tinfoil, and stuck them in the preheated oven. He slapped his hands together, met her eyes with a crooked little smile, and said, “Well, I suppose I should start the appetizer.”
Macey swallowed. “Appetizer?”
“Calf fries.”
———
Macey managed to talk Noah out of the calf fries, thankfully. She’d eaten them as a young girl, before she knew any better. Admittedly, they did taste like very tender chicken. But there wasn’t a chance she was going to eat them now. Not even for the handsomely tall artist she was beginning to adore.
The sweltering heat of the day had turned into a muggy but only warm evening. Macey sat on the porch swing and watched Noah baste the rabbit, which lay directly on the grill, and the rattlesnake, wrapped in tinfoil close by. He used his own recipe for the barbecue sauce. It would all make for an amusing story to tell someday, she thought.
He joined her on the swing. “I’m sorry. But if I don’t keep basting the meat, it’ll dry out. You were talking about your life in broadcasting.” He turned and looked at her, his eyes focused and seemingly interested in her life. This startled her. Most of the guys she knew talked only of themselves, then somehow later became threatened by her career.
She shrugged. “It’s busy. Chaotic. Exhilarating.”
“Why did you go into broadcasting?”
She thought about it for a moment. “I suppose because I thought I could make a difference.”
“Really? What kind of difference?”
“Well, if nothing else, to keep people honest. To expose the bad guys and highlight the good guys. Maybe it’s not that innocent, I don’t know. There’s a lot of exploitation in the business. The competition is fierce, to get the best story first. But in a small way I think I make a difference. I inform the public. That’s important. That’s what our whole system revolves around in America. Information. Accurate information.”
He nodded. “If your life is busy and chaotic now, just think what it will be like with the network.”
“Yeah. It sometimes scares me to think about it. I’m a hard worker, though, so that part doesn’t bother me. I suppose I’m just a little afraid of all the politics involved, that I’ll be able to survive it.”
“How so?” His blue eyes touched her as engaging, dreamy. Macey had to look away to concentrate.
“Well, let’s see. Back home in Dallas there’s this weirdly mixed dynamic made up of producers, reporters, and anchors. Anchors get paid more, but probably, in most cases, don’t know as much and aren’t as smart as some reporters and most all producers. The anchors are paid to be the pretty face. And they’re paid well. The producers and reporters do all the behind-the-scenes work, the dirty work, and get paid less. It causes a lot of backbiting and strife.”
“I can imagine.”
“The downside to being the anchor is when something goes wrong, no matter whose mistake it is, the anchor’s the one who takes the blame. If I, say, report bad information my producer feeds me, mispronounce a word, call someone by the wrong name, or stumble because the teleprompter is behind, any of that—it all falls on me. I look bad in front of a million people, you know?”
“Wow. Sounds like a tough job.”
“It is. And then there are days that you think you’ll go crazy because you get a phone call from a woman who tells you if you wear your hair a certain way one more time, she’s never going to watch your channel again. Or the guy who makes death threats.”
“Death threats?”
“Sure. People take their anger out on the media. We get threats all the time. It’s not unusual. We have trapdoors all over the station. So in case there’s ever a gunman, everyone knows what to do, where to go. Even the receptionist has a trapdoor. Pretty high tech, eh?”
Noah nodded, completely fascinated. “I had no idea. I just thought you guys, ladies, reported the news and that’s all there was to it. I never thought about all the behind-the-scenes things.”
“Well, we’re supposed to make it look easy. If you’re thinking about anything other than the news, we’re not doing our job.” She shrugged and laughed a little. “Even if you’re thinking about the color of my suit, we’re not doing our job. I should never wear that suit again.”
“So, in New York, all that is going to be multiplied by a billion.”
Macey pressed her lips together. “Yes.”
“And you’re up for that?”
She nodded, though a little more apprehensively than she wanted to. “I put myself through college by working any job I could find. I even drove a garbage truck.”
“You were a trash man?”
“For a little while, yeah. I was willing to do whatever it took to get through school, earn my degree. Collecting garbage pays fairly well, actually.”
Noah shook his head. “I had you pegged wrong.”
“Oh? And how did you have me pegged?”
He paused, then looked at her. “It doesn’t matter. I have a lot of respect for someone who can endure a business like yours and someone who worked so hard to get there.” He got up to check the meat and soon joined her on the swing again. “What drove you to work so hard?”
Macey swatted a fly away. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, there’s usually some underlying factor that causes a person to do things like drive a garbage truck to get through college.”
A confused look on her face, Macey shook her head and said, “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“You’re a smart woman. Of course you know what I mean. Did any of this, your pushing so hard, have to do with your leaving home so many years ago?”
Macey studied his eyes. What was he inferring? How much did he know? She hated that he always seemed to be one step ahead of her. It was like he could read her mind.
But before she could answer him, he said the words she was dreading the most: “It’s time to eat.”
———
Why would she even consider doing this? For a guy? She’d made her share of sacrifices for a lot of men, and even a few shameful compromises, but eating rattlesnake? Had she hit a whole new low or maybe entered the Twilight Zone? She decided to take a bite of potato first.
“I’ve got sour cream and butter,” he said, pointing across the table at each one.
“No thanks.” She smiled, as calmly as possible. “I just take a little salt and pepper on mine.”
“Ah. Health nut.” He plopped both sour cream and butter on his potato.
“The camera adds ten pounds,” she said, which seemed to appease him.
“Good,” he said, using his fork to indicate her plate. “Rabbit and snake are both low in fat and high in protein. You should love that.”
Macey took a bite of salad so she wouldn’t have to respond immediately. She wiped her mouth, chewed until the salad was practically liquid, and then said, “You know, I’m not so sure—”
She stopped as his bright blue eyes dulled with disappointment. Was this a big thing for him? Was he really going to be hurt if she didn’t eat the meat he’d prepared? Her pulse throbbed in her neck as she stared down at the small portions of rabbit and snake, each dripping with sweet smelling barbecue sauce. She could at least take a bite, couldn’t she? After all, she’d tried squid once, and she ate sushi on a somewhat regular basis. What was one bite of snake?
Her stomach churned at the very thought. She quickly stuffed her mouth with another bite of potato. Suddenly the tune of “Little Bunny Foo Foo” played in her mind, but then she realized it wasn’t her but Noah! He was humming it from across the table. She stared at him in disbelief. He just sat there, humming while slicing away at a hunk of cooked rabbit.
She had to laugh, and the laugh turned into an uncontrollable giggle, which ended in a full-blown roar with Noah joining in. It took a good five minutes for them both to settle down. Macey leaned across the table and studied him. “This has all been a joke, hasn’t it? You just wanted to see what I would do?”
A tight smile of satisfaction spread across his lips. “Well, it wasn’t a total joke. We do eat these things from time to time. But from the foods you selected at the picnic, many of which you seemed to think might jump up and strangle you, I just had to see if you would really eat either of these.” His face turned soft and pleasant. “They’re good. You really should try them.”
Macey shook her head. “I hate snakes.”
“Yes, well, all the better to show them who’s boss.” His fork pointed down at her plate. “Tell you what. You take a bite of both the snake and rabbit, and I promise I’ll stop asking you so many questions about your past.”
Macey looked up at him with a surprised expression. “What?”
“I have to admit I’m curious. Why did you leave here all those years ago? Why didn’t you come back until now, with the death of your father?” He set down his fork and wiped his mouth. “But I also have to admit, it would be something else to see you eat rattlesnake and Foo Foo over there.”
Macey broke out into a cold sweat. Was he serious? She saw that there was something real in his eyes. Something pure. She scratched her forehead and tried to lighten up. “Quite a choice,” she said.
He salted his snake. “Right.” After taking a large bite of snake, he chewed and smiled at her all at once. Macey could almost hear the thing rattling inside his mouth. She bit down on what was left of her fingernails. Could she trust him enough to tell him about what happened so long ago? He might never talk to her again. But was that so bad? Was there any chance of more than a few days of fun with this man? Perhaps it was best to spill all her secrets to the stranger across the river.
She hadn’t spoken a word of it to another person for seventeen years. She knew better than to think she could speak sanely about it all, as if merely talking about her drinking days in college.
She stared down at her plate and thought she might be able to psyche herself into believing she was eating chicken.
Noah’s fork held a bite of potato in front of his face as he said, “Well, Foo Foo’s getting cold. What’s it going to be?”
Sixteen
And then there was Keith. Wow. Keith. He was something else. A doctor, really rich, drove a Porsche and a Mercedes and had two homes. But there was no chemistry between us, nothing. After Keith came Bobby. I thought it was true love with him, but then he dumped me out of the blue to date some up-and-coming actress. It took me some time to recover from that one, and I’m not sure I ever did completely. After that, I was a lot more cautious about who I dated. I never let myself take risks. So there was Alex, and then James, a construction worker if you can believe that, then Danny, and lastly Rob, who dumped me by way of my answering machine the same day I found out my dad had died.”
