She didn’t invite him in. “Complications,” was her explanation.
Now Adrian was curious to know if the woman, whose name was Claire, would be in an equally libidinous mood over club sandwiches and glasses of alcohol-free lemonade.
She was. Which was not exactly what Adrian had been expecting, though he couldn’t say he was disappointed. He knew she wasn’t married — at least that is what she had told him. And he wasn’t married. And this was his day off. And after all, he hadn’t — he would be ashamed to admit — been with a woman in almost four months: a record dry spell that he was eager to break without having to resort to paid companionship.
“There’s a nice motel over by the Delsea Drive-in,” said Adrian, “if you don’t find that kind of thing, you know—”
Adrian fumbled for the word, but Claire found it: “Tawdry. But you see, I like tawdry. I like to be bad. And I like to be with men who want me to be bad.”
“But we hardly know a thing about each other,” he teased.
“Like that matters,” she said with a wink, and then pinched Adrian’s nose. “And that’s the way I like it. Two ships, you know, fucking in the night. Except in our case, it’s the afternoon. Buy me a drink, Adrian. After that — well, forget the motel. Let’s us drive right on over to my place.”
“How’s about we drive on over to your place right now?” asked Adrian, who suddenly could think of nothing he’d rather do than hop into the sack with this sultry woman of mystery.
Claire shook her head. Her whole torso seemed to wriggle, her faux pearl necklace whipping against her heaving, taunting chest. “No can do, Adrian. The kiddies come home from school at three-thirty and they’re not out of the house until close to four. From four to six you can have me all to yourself.”
Adrian sat forward in his seat. “Where do they go?”
“Who, sweetie?”
“The kids. Where do they go at four?”
“I really don’t know. Our neighborhood is lousy with kids for them to play with. Some days I think they walk over to the appliance store and watch Captain Kangaroo.”
Adrian didn’t respond. Not right away. Then he said in a voice modulated by the sudden deflation of his libido, “Captain Kangaroo comes on in the morning. More than likely they’d be watching Sally Starr.”
“Sally who?”
“Sally Starr. She wears six-shooters and is on a first-name basis with each of the Three Stooges.”
“What difference does it make?”
Adrian shrugged. He shook his head. He dreaded asking the question that logically came next, but he had to know the answer for sure. “Your kids — how old are they?”
Claire exhaled. Angrily. “What’s with the third degree? Hey, wait a minute—I get it; you don’t get yourself involved with women with kids, is that it? Look, buster, I’m not asking you to take me down the aisle. I’m only talking about a fucking four o’clock roll in the hay. Look. Forget it.” She stood.
“I didn’t ask about them because—”
Adrian was stopped short by Claire’s suddenly piercing glower. She gave her dress an upward yank, covering up a few inches of her munificent décolletage. The show was over — or, rather, the coming attraction for a show that just got cancelled. “My kids are my own business. And none of yours. And if you have a problem with that, which it looks like you do, then let’s just nip this thing in the bud. I’ve got somebody else I was hoping to see this afternoon anyway.”
There was nothing else to be said, but Claire said something all the same: “I got a girl, Angela — she’s nine and a half. I got a boy, Kirk — he just turned seven. They’re good kids, but I got no desire to play June Cleaver every fucking minute of every fucking day. I thought you were bright enough to see that.”
Adrian didn’t go home. He sat for a long time in the restaurant, reading the paper, drinking coffee, waiting for the end of American Bandstand. Benny would be surprised to see him on his day off. Angela and Kirk would too. They knew that he wasn’t supposed to be in the store on Thursday afternoons. They would be unprepared for what he intended to do there. Today he would sit down and watch Sally Starr with them. The whole two hours. And then he’d walk them home. He wanted to make sure they got home safe, this day and every other day they might happen to show up at the store.
The days were getting shorter. Someone needed to be there for them in the dark.
1964 NEARLY INTERRED IN ALASKA
It was my younger sister Debbie who looked out the window and said that Marina, our babysitter, had just fallen into a hole. I didn’t know what Debbie could possibly mean and didn’t have time to give it much thought. I was trying to hold up the china cabinet, which wanted to come crashing down to the floor, and I was also far too busy yelling at my younger brother Dirk to get away from the television, which seemed about to bounce off its stand.
Dirk had been sitting in front of the TV watching Fireball XL5 when the earthquake started. The booster rockets on Colonel Steve Zodiac’s World Space Patrol spaceship had just ignited when the picture went out and Dirk, being six, was having trouble disconnecting what had just happened on the screen of our family’s Zenith black-and-white television from the first few seconds of the most powerful earthquake to hit North America in recorded history.
“Debbie!” I cried, as loudly as my twelve-year-old vocal cords could manage. “Grab Dirk and get out of the house! Where’s Marina?”
“I told you! She fell into a hole!”
Debbie went for our brother. Walking was difficult. The floor was rolling like something in a funhouse. I was losing my battle with the china cabinet and had started to worry that in my defeat, Mama’s proudest possession — inherited from her grandmother, along with all the fine china inside — would fall right down on top of me and flatten me like a pancake.
I had been helping Marina make spaghetti. Dad, who was an SFC with the Alaska Army National Guard, was supposed to go straight from Fort Richardson to pick Mom up at the J.C. Penney’s store, where she was buying some new shoes for Easter, and then they were going to celebrate their anniversary, first by having dinner at the Red Ram and then going to see The Fall of the Roman Empire.
I told Mom and Dad that it was humiliating not being allowed to babysit my own brother and sister when my friends were already babysitting other families’ kids, but Mom said she didn’t like the idea of the three of us being left by ourselves so late into the night. The Fall of the Roman Empire was supposed to last more than three hours.
So who did she choose? Somebody only four years older than me, who was probably the worst babysitter in all of Anchorage. Mom chose somebody who, when the floor starting rolling and the TV went out, and all the telephone poles up and down Beech Street started whipping from side to side and power lines started snapping and throwing sparks all over the place — somebody who, when the world seemed to be coming to an end (and not in a fun way like with the Roman Empire), got out of the house quicker than you could say “boo” and left her three charges to fend totally for themselves. Nice work, Mom.
And now Debbie said that Marina had fallen into a hole.
I watched as my younger sister grabbed our brother just as the television came crashing down on the floor, right where he’d been sitting, and then, fearing for my own safety, I stepped away from the china cabinet and looked on in horror as it toppled over and smashed to bits all the things my mother held dear. In the kitchen, the pan of spaghetti sauce flew off the stove and splattered the walls and floors with blood-red splotches, while all the cans in the pantry knocked themselves off the shelves and started rolling all around like the way things do on ships in stormy seas.