Beautiful Stranger (5 page)

But Marissa said, “That hell you spoke of?”

Spoke of. It made him smile. “Yeah?”

“Is that where Crystal's from, too?”

He turned his lips down, crossed his arms. A serious question. He shook his head. “Hers made mine look like heaven.”

“In what way?” The earnest teacher gazed out of bright blue eyes.

What could she possibly understand about Crystal's life? Or his, for that matter? But she was so damned earnest, he had to at least give it a shot. “It was poor when I was there. Lot of drugs and booze and gangs. But no one could get their hands on guns. They do now.”

“The guns are the biggest difference?”

He shook his head slowly, struggling to find some way to quantify the difference, put it in terms she could understand. All the images he came up with—war and revolution and bad morale seemed too male to fit her experience.

“It's never quiet,” he said finally. “Not ever. There's a siren or a party or a television or somebody's radio going twenty-four hours a day. It's never really clean. It's old and tired and forgotten.”

He narrowed his eyes against the memory, as if squinting would blur it enough to take the sting away. “If you want to walk down to the corner for a soda, you've gotta look out on the street to see who's out there, first.” He paused, still thinking, and raised his
finger to indicate there was more. “If you want to open the window, you better have bars. If you want to keep a pet, you'd better make damned sure it never goes outside. And at night, when things are bad, it's a good idea to put the mattress on the floor.”

A small, intense crease appeared between her eyebrows, but her eyes were steady and clear. “Thank you.”

He nodded. “Probably lucky for her that her mother kicked her out of the house.”

“She's pretty lucky to have you, that's for sure.”

That caught him in the solar plexus. “Thanks.”

“Do you know anything about the father of her baby?”

He sighed. Shook his head. “She's not talking, and I haven't pushed. I gather it was consensual—beyond that, I guess it doesn't really matter.”

“I guess that's true.” She seemed about to say something else, frowning into the distance. “It's just…”

“What?”

She shifted a little, brushed a wisp of dark hair from her cheek. “She stares out the window in class like she's waiting for someone to appear. Like she expects it.”

Robert suddenly thought of Crystal's favorite spot in the house: an overstuffed chair in front of the big picture window, where she would curl up as much as her growing belly would allow. She could sit there for literally hours, just looking outside. He'd thought she was simply looking at the mountains. “Very observant,” he said. “Maybe I'll see if she has more to say.”

A nod. “Well, I guess we ought to go back in. I'm starting to get cold.”

“Yeah, me too.” But before she moved, he touched her hand. It surprised him that he did it, and he wasn't
aware that he had until he felt the tiny bones beneath his palm. She looked up at him, a little alarmed, and he was alarmed himself, though he didn't pull away. There were a million reasons that starting anything with her would be a mistake, so he wouldn't, but he wanted her to know that the thought had crossed his mind. It was an offering, maybe.

He couldn't think of the right lightness of words to offer, so he only stood there, his hand covering hers, looking down into the wide dark blue eyes for a long, silent moment. “Don't let anybody ever tell you it's stupid to care,” he said quietly, more fiercely than he intended. “You don't have to understand it to reach out.”

She nodded, dipped her head and slipped her hand from beneath his. “Thanks,” she said. “We should go back in.”

 

Every Saturday morning, Robert and Crystal did their chores, and this day was no different. The routine varied little—they put loud music on the stereo, taking turns choosing CDs, and scoured the house top to bottom. She liked tackling the kitchen, something he hated with all his heart, so he let her. Robert dusted and vacuumed the living room, shook out the couch cushions, singing along with the classic rock Crystal rolled her eyes over. Her choices were even sillier—movie soundtracks, mostly, with a lot of very gentle, pop love songs that she knew every word to. None of the rap or blaring rock some of the younger laborers on his crew were so fond of.

Thank God.

This Saturday-morning ritual delighted the girl. She rose early, pulled back her hair, discarded her windbreaker and rolled up her sleeves. Singing, she scoured the sink and stove, wiped down cupboards and walls,
practically spit-shined the floors. Every other week, she even washed the windows, something it had never occurred to Robert to do. When she finished, she tackled the bathroom and gave it a similar polishing, then stripped off her rubber gloves and walked happily through the house, lighting strategic sticks of incense that smelled of grass and fresh air.

Midmorning, he took a list—one that Crystal insisted on preparing every week—to the grocery store. When he returned, she popped her head out of the kitchen, grinning happily. “Hey, Uncle, come look what I did for you.”

He followed, dropping his bags on the counter. The room was fairly large, with a big window looking out toward the mountains, and all the cupboards, stove and refrigerator on one wall. A small windowed alcove had previously held a small breakfast bar and two stools, where they usually ate. But she'd dragged the breakfast bar into the kitchen below the window and dragged the old Formica-and-chrome table into the alcove.

“You shouldn't have been moving this stuff, babe. I would have helped.”

“I used my butt,” she said with a grin. “Look at what I brought in, though.” She opened the drawers set into the alcove one by one. “All your stuff, so you can have a good place to work.”

“Ah, Crystal, this is so good,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. The drawers had held miscellaneous kitchen junk before, which she'd sorted out and moved. From his bedroom, she'd carried all his jewelry and glass supplies, and carefully organized them by type, even fitting the drawers with cardboard dividers to keep things neat. Touched, he kissed her head. “Thank you.”

“I know you gave up your workroom to give me a
place to sleep,” she said. “This will work pretty good, don't you think?”

“It'll be even better. Look how much great light there is in here.”

“Okay.” She slapped her hands together—
that's that.
“I'm going to get my sheets. Then will you show me again how to do those corners?” Now that the weather had warmed up, she loved washing the sheets and hanging them out on the line to dry.

“Sure.” He put the groceries away, then followed her to her room when she came in with an armload of sweet-smelling linens. On her narrow twin bed, he illustrated the army corner, tight and smooth, then pulled it loose. “You try.”

Adroitly she did it, but he saw her trouble was in the fact that she couldn't quite bend well enough to get it tight. “Let me help, babe.”

She straightened, laughing a little, her hand on her round belly. “It gets harder to do things, and I forget.”

It startled him, that happy, girlish laugh, especially in reference to her pregnancy. Trying not to make too much of it, he knelt and tucked the corners tight. “I don't want you to move anything heavy anymore, got it?”

“Yes, sir.” She saluted.

“You really love cleaning, don't you?”

“My mother thinks it's crazy, too. She never stuck to routines—but it makes things so cheerful when they're clean, don't you think?” She looked around with a little smile.

Robert straightened and looked at it through her eyes. Sunlight streamed in through the clean windows with their pressed, clean curtains. No litter of beer bottles or ashtrays sat on the coffee table, only a nice arrangement
of plastic fruit that appalled him, but Crystal had picked out. She washed it every week and patted it dry.

He'd rented the place because it was the right size for him, a little box with a kitchen and two small bedrooms and a living room that opened on to a small wooden porch. It sat at the outskirts of town, so he didn't have to deal with neighbors much or any lawn to speak of, just the omnipresent meadowlands with their offerings of columbines and long-stalked grasses. “Yeah,” he said. “It's a great house.”

“You should have a cat or something.” She plumped her pillows vigorously and slid one into a crisp pillow-case.

Aside from little requests like the feather duster she'd gone nuts for at Kmart, and the plastic fruit, it was the first time she'd even obliquely asked him for anything. “You want a cat?”

A shrug.

It struck him forcefully that he was no longer alone. After years and years and years of eating dinners by himself in front of the television, and getting up to everything exactly the way it had been the night before. He had somebody to talk to when he was blue. He had someone to say, “Hey, look at this,” when there was something on the news. Somebody to share chores with, eat meals with.

He'd only done what was necessary when Crystal showed up; he'd made room for her, done the best he could. But now he realized how much she'd done for him. “Maybe we oughta go see if they have any at the pound.”

Her face glowed. “Really?”

“Sure.” He tugged on the end of her braid. “I like
cats. Maybe we can get two, one for me and one for you.”

“They have to be inside cats, though. No going outside. I don't like that.”

“Okay.” He wandered to the door, pulling his T-shirt over his head. “I'll jump in the shower, then you can have it. Maybe we could have lunch first somewhere.”

“McDonald's?” she asked with hope.

“Ugh. No. Someplace better.”

She grinned, looking impossibly young and pretty and sweet, the way she should. “Grown-ups are so boring.”

He tugged the rubber band out of the bottom of his braid and shook out his hair. “Look who's talking.” He threw his T-shirt at her. “McDonald's is not high cuisine.”

“Yuck!” She threw the T-shirt back at him. “And don't use such fancy language.”

“It's good for you.”

The doorbell rang, and Robert picked up his shirt from the floor. “Get ready and we'll go.” Probably the paperboy, who showed up at the dot of eleven every second Saturday. He stuck his hand in his pocket and found he only had a five. “Hang on!” he called, and went to the bedroom for a ten.

M
arissa had a routine on Saturday mornings. She liked to get up early and walk downtown, pick up a latte from a café she liked, then walk through the pleasant side streets that branched off Main, to look at garage sales. It was a homey tradition in Red Creek, a homey tradition she enjoyed right along with everyone else. She also hit the big, three-county flea market that was held at the fairgrounds once a month, and although she enjoyed the social angle as much as everyone else did, her true purpose was related to her avocation: art glass.

She was a minor expert, specializing in Art Nouveau. She collected several items herself, and stayed in touch with an honest dealer who could sell the pieces in which she had no interest. It had amazed her at first, how often she found rare and not-so-rare pieces in Colorado, but there had been a huge amount of mining money here in Red Creek, and more in Denver. More than once she had spared a vendor from making a big mistake in sell
ing the 1908 Van Briggle vase they'd grown tired of for two dollars and fifty cents instead of the thousands it would command in the open market, or letting the Louis Comfort Tiffany inlaid bronze dish go as an ashtray.

This morning, she'd come out especially early, scenting possibility in an “Attic” sale on one of the oldest blocks in town. Three families had come together for the sale of an old woman's Victorian mansion. Tables had been set out on the lawns between two houses, and Marissa browsed happily among the old records and books, tickled when she found an old, hardbound Donna Parker she remembered, the one in which Rickie's mother died. So sad. She tucked it happily under her arm, and around the crotch of an old tree, spied the kitchen and glass-wares and costumed jewelry, all spread on a huge Arts and Crafts buffet in exquisite condition. Aha!

Furniture wasn't her usual area, but she examined the piece intently, trusting her instincts. It was in perfect condition, save a very small chip on one corner, and she knew it was worth far more than the fifty-dollar price tag stuck on it. She took out a notebook she carried for this purpose and scribbled notes about it for future reference. The drawers were open, holding ropes of old costume necklaces and rhinestone earrings. The top was cluttered with extraneous kitchen supplies, among them an enormous collection of vases in every shape and form available, along with plates of carnival glass—that carried price tags commensurate with its value. Marissa didn't collect it, but was pleased to see that the sellers did know the worth.

Most of the rest of the glass was flawed or worthless—a fairly good example of milk glass was badly cracked, and a promising cameo glass proved to be an imitation. She was about to go find one of the sellers to
let them know they needed to have the buffet appraised before letting it go when her eye caught on a soft glow in one of the drawers. Hesitantly she moved a tangle of Mardi Gras beads out of the way to reveal a small, opalescent statue of a woman in a circle of glass. Marissa's heart pinched as she reached for it, drawing it into the light—it was! She held it up to the sun, laughing at the glow it cast. It was a miraculously unchipped, uncracked and perfectly whole perfume bottle stopper by Lalique, with the design of a naked woman in a twist of branches.

“Oh!” she said, turning to the woman in a jumper who approached pleasantly. “Let me ask you a question.”

“Of course.” A bright, tanned smile. “Are you interested in the buffet?”

“No, but is it yours?”

“Yes, all of these came from my aunt's house. She died recently and we're remodeling.”

“Well, the vases are all junk and the jewelry, but the buffet needs to be appraised. It's worth at least a couple of thousand.”

Her lips turned down in surprise. “Really? I have always hated this thing. So clunky. I don't much like anything from that era, so I won't keep it anyway, but I appreciate you letting me know.”

Marissa opened her hand, letting her treasure glow in her palm like a beacon. “And how much for this?” She held her breath.

A shrug. “Pretty. How about fifty cents?”

Marissa smiled, and pulled out her purse and carefully set the piece down. “I'm going to write you a check for this, but there's a rule. You may not look at it until I leave.”

“A check for fifty cents?”

“No.” Marissa completed the check, tore it out and folded it in half. “Considerably more than that. This is,” she said, picking it up with reverence, “a wonderful and rare antique. If your aunt has more of this kind of thing, I really want to see it, and if you have more glass in the house, you should have it examined.”

The woman looked concerned, and waved toward some clothing on a rack to one side. “Do you want to wrap that in something?”

“Great idea.” She took an old silk hair scarf from a hanger. A collection of soft, airy dresses in bright India cottons had caught her eye, one in a cranberry shade, one in a beautiful green. They were maternity dresses, with the tags still hanging from the sleeves, and very tiny. She pulled one out and thought of Crystal's dark hair against the fabrics. “How much?” she asked the woman.

“A dollar each.”

Marissa bought them, and feeling buoyed by the little yelp of the woman when she opened the check, she drove to Robert's house. The happy mood carried her all the way up the steps and she gave a quick, strong knock to the screen door—then courage deserted her.

Suddenly she felt like an idiot. Women must think up excuses to see him all the time. How would this look? She frowned, looking at the dresses again, and worried that Crystal would never wear such things. Robert would probably be offended that she thought he wasn't taking care of the girl's clothes well enough.

Oh, bad idea. She nearly bolted, but a voice called from within, “Hang on a second!” and she couldn't move. Anxiously she looked down again at the dresses, simple summery things that would be so much more comfortable for Crystal over the last month or so of her
pregnancy. The colors were still as beautiful as she thought, and she sighed.

“Marissa!” The word held surprise.

She looked up and saw Robert, dimly, through the screen.

Shirtless.

And his hair was down. “Hi,” she said weakly.

He stayed where he was, pulling a long-sleeved T-shirt over his head and tugging it down over his flat, brown belly before he crossed the room and opened the screen door to her. A wicked twinkle lit his eyes. “You look like you've come to the wolf's door,” said that slightly hoarse voice.

Marissa could not summon a single word to her lips, mainly because every thought in her brain evaporated, splatting like water on the heat he generated just standing there in a pair of very old jeans and a threadbare white T-shirt that clung to his torso like a layer of oil, showing every muscle, every sleek line, every indentation of his body. It was inside out, and she wondered vaguely why he'd been in such a rush to cover his chest.

But it was his hair that made him dangerous. She'd never seen it down like this. It streamed over his shoulders, each strand as glossy and healthy as every other, the mass of it not nearly as black as she'd thought, but laced with warmer browns and even a few glitters of lighter brown.

She didn't like long hair. She liked razor cuts and army styles, even crew cuts. Long hair said a man hadn't grown up. It said he didn't give a damn about what the world thought. In Colorado, it often said he was a redneck with a shotgun in his truck and a ready six-pack of beer.

On Robert, long hair was right. It was a rejection of
the mainstream culture, but he had that right, didn't he? She thought, suddenly, of the upside-down American flag on the jean jacket he wore sometimes.

“Cat got your tongue?” he said, and a slow, sly grin turned up the edges of that wide mouth. His eyes crinkled the slightest bit at the corners.

“Um.” She looked at the dresses in her hands, and wished for a long, painful minute that she had never had a single impulsive impulse, and especially that she'd never had this one.

She felt her cheeks redden with total social humiliation, and flailed around for some explanation as to why she was here. Helplessly she lifted the dresses, as if they might tell him, and suddenly her tongue came unstuck. “You know, I had an idea, and maybe it was a bad one, and I'll just…um…” She backed away, her free hand fluttering up as if to grab some intelligent word from the air. “I'll let you go on with whatever you were doing.”

He grinned, showing those straight white teeth, and kicked the screen door wider, propping it with one foot. A bare foot. His naked toes gave her a jolt. “Wow,” he said conversationally, folding his arms casually over his chest. “Think the teacher's a little flustered.” His eyelids fell just the slightest bit, lending him a suggestive, seductive aspect, and he wet his bottom lip with his tongue. “Scared of me, white girl?”

The answer was yes. He looked like a hot summer night. Like a motorcycle ride. Like two o'clock in the morning. She took a breath, blew it out, regained a little dignity. “I didn't think I liked long hair,” she said.

He laughed. With exaggerated vanity, he tossed his head and sent the mass swirling over arms, chest, back. With an arched brow he said, “Want to brush it?”

She smiled. “Pass.”

“So,” he said, lifting his chin, “what d'you have there?”

“Oh.” Still a bad impulse, but what could she do about it now? “I found these, and thought they might work for Crystal. I bought them at a garage sale, but they still have their tags—I know a lot of people don't like used stuff—and they were so pretty and it's going to get warm enough that she's not going to be able to stand that coat, and they just looked like her somehow.”

He waited through the long spill of words. “That was a nice thing to do.” One long brown hand touched the fabric. “I don't know if she'll like them—you know teenagers—but it's worth a try.”

She relaxed. “Oh, well.” She waved a hand. “They were only a dollar apiece, so I took the chance.”

“Come on in.” He cocked his head, pushed the door wider, led the way into a bright, clean, sweet-smelling room. “Crystal,” he called. “You have a visitor.”

“I do?” She came around the corner, perplexed, and halted dead. She wore a pair of jeans and a simple, oversize white shirt. The hair that usually hid her face was swept back. Marissa was struck by the very painful thinness of her body, except for her breasts and belly, and by the sweetness of the makeup-less features.

To Marissa's relief, she didn't look upset. “Hi, Ms. Pierce. What are you doing here?”

She almost started stuttering and explaining too much, but a single glance at Robert's amused face put her straight. In the same spirit with which she picked up the dresses in the first place, she held them out. “These made me think of you.”

Instant wariness in the dark eyes. “Really?”

“If you don't like them, it won't hurt my feelings. I know I'm a boring adult and don't get the fashion thing,
but I was at a yard sale and they were cheap, and brand-new. Couldn't stand to leave them there.”

Crystal came forward slowly, put a hand on the skirt, just as Robert had. “I could try 'em.”

Marissa let her take them, pleased when Crystal said, “Can you wait, tell me if they look good?”

“Of course.”

She slid away, holding the dresses up to her body. She almost skipped. Marissa let go of her tension and smiled at Robert. “You never know, do you?”

He lifted his eyebrows, a funny expression in his eyes. “I guess maybe I haven't thought too much about the clothes angle. Got her a few little things when she first got here.” A rueful grin. “I forget about that girly stuff, you know?”

“You're allowed.”

“Can I get you something? Crystal makes really great limeade. She learned to make it in home ec.”

“I'd love some, thank you. I've been checking out garage sales this morning.”

He gestured for her to follow him into the kitchen. “Excuse me for saying so, princess, but that doesn't seem like your style.”

“You never know. I had an outrageously great morning.”

“Yeah?” Moving efficiently, he put ice in three glasses and poured a pale green liquid from a glass pitcher. He gave her a glass, and carried two others into the living room and put them down on the coffee table. “Oh, damn. Forgot the coasters. She'll kill me.” He turned, whipped three out and put them on the table, winking. “I haven't been that civilized before, you know.”

Marissa smiled around the tiny knot he put in her
chest. However she had imagined Red Dog living, this tidy hominess was about as far from the fantasy as it could get.

“So,” he said, settling in a chair across from her. “What did you find, besides the dresses?”

A little burst of light filled her chest and she smiled as she reached into her bag to pull out the silk-wrapped prize. “Are you familiar with antiques?”

“Not really.” But he whistled when she unwrapped the perfume stopper, his eyes going wide as he accepted it as gingerly as it deserved. “Very pretty. What is it?”

“A perfume stopper from the turn of the century.”

“It's great,” he said, and sounded sincere. He turned it slowly, admiring the shifting light, and Marissa found herself admiring his hands. They were beautiful, strong and lean and long fingered, but they were also scarred. Little white scars, most very old, tattoos, new marks from working. Letters marched across the middle joint of each finger, and she grinned. “What do your fingers say?”

“You don't want to know,” He gave her the stopper.

She raised amused eyes. Her last boyfriend had been a biker, after all. “Bet I already do.”

“I seriously doubt it.”

Marissa only smiled. She did know, but she'd let him keep his secret.

Crystal came out, shyly. “Well, what do you think?”