Bethel's Meadow (27 page)

She knows too much about me
, I thought. Caitlin may have blown my checkered past a little out of proportion, but Glory was now aware of the basic facts: I had some dread mental disorder and I’d done a little time in a juvenile detention center. Even if I convinced her of the absolute truth, Glory would still have to mull over the prospect of dating a manic-depressive who’d had a criminal record as a teenager.

Shit, shit, shit.

Nervously I paced back and forth along the sidewalk, debating with myself the pros and cons of going inside.

What a hell of a way to begin a relationship, being totally exposed for what you are before you’ve had a chance to do your own job of making a fool of yourself. My standard practice was to not disclose my bipolar condition to a woman until after a few tosses in the sack. My policy was loosely based on the old saw: “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.” But, ultimately, my conscience had never allowed me to keep it secret for too long. While the condition is not contagious, I’ve always felt a woman had the right to know.

“Okay, Smith,” I said to myself as I came to a halt and faced the library’s entrance. “The worst thing that can happen is she says to get lost. But if you don’t go in, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

I thought again about what Jimmy Stewart had said about regret, and then I went inside.

Glory wasn’t at her usual position behind the counter. I walked up to it anyway.

“Excuse me,” I said to an elderly woman whose back was turned to me. The sweet-looking lady turned around and smiled.

“How may I help you?” she asked.

“I’m looking for Miss Nolan,” I said. “Is Glory working tonight?”

“Yes, she is,” said a familiar voice from behind.

I turned around, and damn if it didn’t happen again. I immediately got lost in Glory’s eyes. They were just the prettiest, most forgiving and loving blue eyes I had ever seen in my life.

I smiled and said, “Hello, Glory.”

Glory didn’t smile back. She still looked gorgeous even though she was frowning at me. I felt a little ashamed right then, because I noticed that the green blouse she wore was really tight around her breasts. Anybody who says Sarah Palin is the quintessential sexy librarian never met Glory Nolan. I restrained myself from looking down at her feet. I instead imagined how the bobby socks were ruffled about her ankles in the way that drove me completely mad.

“I’m a little disappointed in you,” she said. Then she walked away. “Follow me, please. You can help me return books to their proper place on the shelves.”

Glory was putting me to work; not a good sign, but not a totally bad one either. After all, she didn’t say to get lost. I followed her to the far front corner of the library, to a row of bins that sat beneath the outside drop-off slot. She reached down to one of the bins and lifted a stack of books and handed them to me.

“What have you been reading lately?” she asked as she scooped up several more books for herself.

“Not much, I’m afraid.” I followed her to a table where we placed the books. She began to sort them by their catalog number.

“Mr. Smith,” she said, looking up at me. Her demeanor immediately changed. She quickly dropped the cold-shoulder act. She gave me a look of concern that I hadn’t seen from a woman since . . .

My mother.

“My God,” she said. “Please forgive me if I sound mean, but you really look terrible. When’s the last time you slept? Have you been to a doctor?”

She didn’t sound mean at all.

“I’m fine,” I said, shrugging my shoulders yet still maintaining my smile. “Really, I am. I know I look like a ghost right now. But I’m going to see a doctor about getting some sleep. My friend Vernon told me about a meditation podcast that’s supposedly really good for inducing sleep. I’d rather try that before I start taking sleeping pills again.”

She nodded, but I could tell she was still worried. It made me feel so good that I had someone who worried about me like that, though I didn’t want to emotionally burden her. I definitely didn’t want her feeling sorry for me. I’d been doing a fine job of that all on my own.

Glory then proclaimed: “I just want you to know that I
will not
be calling you by your last name anymore.” She wasn’t screwing with me, either. Glory was dead serious. She looked back down and continued sorting the books. “You have a beautiful first name. I suppose you have your reasons for not using it. Maybe it was the name of someone else in your family whom you didn’t care for. I don’t know.” She looked back up at me. “But whatever the case . . .” Her voice trailed off, and it seemed her eyes were looking right through me. “No, it’s something stupid. You have a really stupid reason for not using your first name.”

“Glory, I’m here to explain a few things to you,” I said, perhaps a tad too plaintively. “And my first name is definitely one of them. But I’m mainly here to apologize about my ex-girlfriend coming in here and making a scene.”

Glory emphatically shook her head. “No, you don’t have to apologize for her. But I can tell you one thing: she never really loved you. At least not the way a woman should love a man.”

“How should a woman love a man?” I asked. I really wanted to know.

“No, you’re not going to turn this one around on me.” She tapped her finger on my chest. “You tell
me
how a true love should be. And don’t tell me what you think I want to hear. Just tell me what you think it should be.”

I didn’t like being put on the spot. “I just came here to tell you my side of the story. Caitlin didn’t give you the exact truth.”

“Stop,” Glory said, holding up her hands. “Whatever happens between us, that woman will
never
be a factor in it. Nothing she said to me has
anything
to do with us. Until you tell me yourself about who you really are, I will consider no one else’s input.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate that.”

“Now answer my question,” she said insistently. But before I could speak she put her fingers to my lips. “No, I have a better idea. Tell me your all-time favorite love song. Don’t even think about it. What is it?”

I took hold of her hand and smiled. “Oh, that’s easy enough. Do you like the band Soundgarden?”

“Oh. My. God,” she said. Her eyes came to life with wonder and joy. She continued to let me hold her hand. “You’re not going to say what I think you are, are you?”

“‘Blow Up The Outside World,’” I answered. “If you listen to the lyrics to that one song, then not only will you know a lot about me personally, but you’ll also know
exactly
how I feel about romantic love.”

Bingo!

Glory Nolan lit up like the glorious morning sun. But then she caught hold of herself. She wasn’t going to give in to me so easily.

“I love that band,” she said. “And that is a great love song. It’s always been one of my favorites. But you know what? That doesn’t mean anything by itself. Why didn’t you trust me? Why’d you leave and never call me again?”

“Let me buy you dinner,” I said. “Then I’ll explain everything that you think needs explaining.”

“You’ll tell me why you don’t go by your first name?”

“I’ll even up the ante a bit.”

“How?” she asked. I almost had her hooked. I could just tell.

“You once told me you like fondue,” I said. “So tomorrow night I’ll take you to the town’s best fondue joint.”

“Really?” she said. From the way her eyes sparkled I knew I had her now.

Then I said, “Glory, before I leave here and let you get back to work, there’s something I have to tell you.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve never said this to any woman before.”

She playfully pushed my chest and smiled. “Go on, tell me. I can’t wait to hear it.”

“You sure?”

“Come on, you!”

“I’m terribly smitten with you,” I said to her. “I’ve never been smitten before in my whole life. I only now know what that’s like.”

Glory then hugged me and said, “You are so sweet.”

The scent of her perfume damn near made me melt in her arms. And I was close to getting a boner, too.

I walked out of that library with the broadest smile you ever saw on any son of a bitch in your entire life.

We were on for fondue tomorrow night.

32

“
T
HE HUNK SQUAD?” I asked incredulously, still not believing what I’d just heard from Glory.

She smiled and nodded. “Yep. The Hunk Squad. That’s what all the girls whose computers you’ve worked on in Dr. Phillips and Windermere are calling you now. You should get your boss to change the name of the company. I really like it: The Hunk Squad.”

I shook my head as I laughed. “I hope Vernon doesn’t hear about this, or he
will
change the name of the company. Aside from being a programming wizard, he’s also a marketing genius. Hell, he’ll start making me go to the gym twice a day, seven days a week, just so I can remotely fit the definition of a hunk.”

A fondue dinner was a great idea for this particular date. Though we’d had to drive to the other side of town to get here, Glory’s contented smile indicated it had been well worth the trip. The entire restaurant looked like the inside of a log cabin—it felt completely authentic, as if it were actually in the middle of the woods, either in Colorado or somewhere in Canada. There was a huge fireplace on the back wall, and moose antlers were mounted above the bar in the front lounge area.

In keeping with the restaurant’s theme, Glory and I were each indulging in a zesty pint of Canadian brewed Moosehead Lager. We’d enjoyed a delicious—and very rich—appetizer of cheese fondue, into which we had dipped pieces of fruit and bread. To precede the main course they had served a salad of crisp lettuce, garnished with nuts and cheese and topped by a tasty Dijon ranch dressing.

We were now enjoying the main course. They’d placed a lava rock on the table, and damn was it ever hot. The waiter warned us to not sprinkle pepper on the rock, as doing so would create some sort of an unpleasant gas. With the rock came servings of filet mignon, shrimp, and chicken. With a skewer we stabbed the diced meats and shrimp and placed them on the rock, where they cooked with a satisfying sizzle and a tantalizing aroma.

And speaking of
sizzling hot
, that’s about all I’ll say about the way Glory Nolan looked tonight.

After cleaning our plates of the sublimely delicious main course, the waiter arrived to remove the hot rock and to take our dessert order. After the waiter departed our table, Glory got right to the point.

“Why are you just called Smith? Tell me what happened to make you want to conceal your first name?”

And so I told her.

…

It was a month following my tenth birthday that my father died in a paratroop jump while doing his weekend warrior bit with the Oklahoma National Guard in Tulsa. My fate to become an orphan was sealed when my mother committed suicide just two weeks later. Mom wasn’t thinking too clearly, I think, because she hadn’t taken into account that she was my last living relative (both Mom and Dad had been orphans, too). So being the lost and lonely poor soul she surely must have been, she’d taken her own life by severing her femoral artery with a steak knife—I was in bed reading a Hardy Boys book at the time. I was the lucky bastard who found her body. I had gone into her room to ask for some ice cream. I never really thought about it until years later, but I never ate ice cream again. Anyway, the powers-that-be decided I needed a change of scenery, so I was relocated southwest from Tulsa to Norman, a suburb of Oklahoma City.

Fast forward four years. I was fourteen and doing time with my third set of foster parents. But they weren’t the ones who’d named me Bethel, though. I’ll never know why I was given that name, unless my folks had just taken it from the Bible. Whatever the reason, the kids at school had a hell of a grand time with the name Bethel. It took until my freshman year in high school before I’d finally decided I was tired of being called “Elizabeth,” “Lizzy-Beth,” “Lezzy-Beth,” and other variations and bastardizations of my name. Hell, I wasn’t particularly fond of the name either, but according to one of my teachers it had once been a common name in some parts of the country. But no one else was named Bethel back then—not in Norman, Oklahoma, at least.

I was just a puny little kid for fourteen. My limbs were as thin as twigs, and my head was extremely large in proportion to the rest of my body. I’ll bet you that my head alone weighed more than the rest of my body parts combined (a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea). I didn’t grow out of my puniness for another two years. I was a late bloomer, thus making me an easy target for predatory teenagers.

I fondly remember the girl who warned me of the trouble I was soon to encounter. She was a very pretty cheerleader, a darling young blonde with tawny skin. I can still recall that she smelled like daffodils and daisies, and she had nice perky breasts that made my day every time I saw them. Her name was Nancy, and I’ve loved her every day of my life for what she did for me that day. Between classes, Nancy approached me in the hallway and strode by my side and said, “Bethel, they’re going to pole you after school today. Do everything you have to to stay away from the football players, especially Bobby Clark. They’re going to gang up on you, sweetie. So please, sneak off somewhere before school lets out.”