Can't Get Enough of Your Love (6 page)

I watched Juan Carlos's eyes for any signs of life when we got to the cottage, but there were none. When the road finally ended at the beginning of the tall grass, he turned and stared at me. “What is this all about?”

I raised my eyebrows and got out.

“Who lives here?” he asked as he got out.

I turned and stepped into his arms, resting my forehead on his chest. “I do.” He started to speak but stopped. “Come on,” I said.

“Wait,” he said. “Is this your house?”

I kissed his nose. “Yes. And it's a cottage, not a house.” Okay, it's a love shack, but I doubt Juan Carlos would understand. “And I'm staying here nearly rentfree as long as I do a few things around the house.”

“Like cutting all this grass.”

I kissed his lips. “That will be the first thing
you'll
do.” Though Roger really needs the sun worse. Juan Carlos's skin is like hot coffee laced with jalapeño peppers. He doesn't need any more sun. “Do you like it?”

“I have not seen it yet.”

“Well, do you like what you've seen so far?”

He looked around. “Where are your neighbors?”

“There aren't any. Maybe a deer or two will come sniffing around.”

“And it is nearly rent-free?”

I nodded.

“Well, show me this place.”

Since it was only five o' clock, we had plenty of light to see inside the house without having to crank up Sheila. Juan Carlos didn't say much as we moved from room to room. Mr. Wilson had cleaned out all the closets, so I had a better idea of what my office/studio/future glorified shoe rack would look like.

“Well?” I asked as he sat on the bed in the master bedroom.

“This place is like a museum,” he said.

“I like it just fine.”

He raised and lowered his eyes. “It is so far from Roanoke.”

I straddled him, wrapping my legs around his back. “It's only twenty miles.”

“Yes, but …”

“If you'd only get yourself a car. Doesn't Berglund give employee discounts?”

“Yes, but …”

But Mama needs the money. I didn't want to go down that road. “Aren't there loaner cars you can borrow?”

“Yes, but they do not like employees to do that.”

“Well, you know I don't mind picking you up.” It was kind of how we met in the first place, only the other way around. Sort of. More on that later.

“I do not like you picking me up.”

“Because it's not macho,” he was about to add, and I didn't want to have
that
conversation again. Juan Carlos has a
long
list of what a woman should and shouldn't do.

“I don't mind picking you up, you know that.” I kissed him on the neck. “As long as I can have you here all to myself more often, I don't mind at all.”

“But I must work,” he said.

I unbuttoned his shirt and unbuckled his belt. “Let me do all the work, baby….”

Forgive us, Jenny
, I prayed while we made love in a yellow room as the orange sun set over the green pond, rocking Jenny's bed as the waves gently kissed the shore. And afterwards, while we cuddled without speaking,
I realized something monumental.

I like this, but I don't really like Juan Carlos
.

I couldn't put my finger on it at the time, and I still can't. There's something … wrong with him. The loving is better than good, but the conversation is butt, and it's not because he doesn't speak English that well. He's just too … something.

I spent the rest of that spring break breaking my own back, since Roger was busy with his job (more on that and him later), Juan Carlos was working double shifts because of another damn GM recall (which makes me glad I own a VW), and Karl, well, I couldn't find Karl. I paged him to death, but he never answered my page, which most likely meant he was on the road somewhere.

Mr. Wilson came to my rescue. He just … showed up, real sneaky and freaky like, saying, “Jenny said you might need some help.”

I was beginning to like Jenny, though it's beyond freaky at night to know a ghost might be walking around
her
kitchen downstairs.

Mr. Wilson and I reduced the dock to a stack of wood on the left side of the barn, talking mostly about the wildlife around the pond. He told me about anemones, arbutus, Indian pipes, and blazing stars, and all their medicinal properties. He recounted stories of white-tailed deer, red foxes, mink, muskrat, ground squirrels, and even a few wild turkeys that visited the dollhouse. I know I have a ground squirrel living in the attic, which really makes no sense. He should be living on the ground, right? I hear him rooting around up there every night, but he (or she?) is usually quiet after eleven. Maybe Jenny quiets him down, too.

I then asked Mr. Wilson about snakes.

I wish I hadn't.

“There are some gopher snakes around here, but they're harmless,” he said. “They'll keep the field mice down, though. I remember when we had to use an outhouse behind the barn before we had the septic put in. One day, I was sitting there taking care of my business when I felt something poking me from below. I stood up, and sure enough, a gopher snake six feet long came up out of the cesspit. I don't rightly know why it was down there….”

I
always
check the toilet bowl now, even though the bathroom is on the second floor. Shit, I even check it at work. Roanoke isn't that far from the country.

“That pond out there,” he said as we took an iced tea break a little later in the day, “is full of largemouth bass, but if anyone asks you, you tell ‘em that there's nothing but bluegill and sunfish in it. We don't want our secret getting out.”

He pointed to a long aluminum canoe balanced between two rafters in the barn. “That there's the best way to fish the pond, if you ask me. Shove off, drift a bit, and move with the water like the fish do. Some of the best spots to cast are within twenty feet of this dock.”

I've never done it in a canoe. That might be interesting. Roger would try it. He's the most adventurous. We'd probably tip over that canoe fifty times … and we'd have a million mosquito bites for our troubles. Hmm. Maybe there
are
some places where a lady cannot entertain her man properly.

Mr. Wilson then took me around the front of the house. “There's a sidewalk under all this grass. It's just a bunch of concrete squares that run from the house to the driveway.” He took a few steps from the door, kneeling and pulling up a clump of sod. “Here's one.
There are even a bunch leading down to the dock, spaced about a foot apart.”

Jenny's dollhouse is like a good mystery novel. The more I dig through the layers and the dirt, the more mysteries I solve. I feel more like a detective than a tenant, gradually revealing the secrets of the house.

I spent the better part of spring break hacking, carving, and digging until a parking area appeared. Then I trimmed and cleared bushes, saplings, and tree branches from the worst section of the long driveway. I was sweaty and sticky, bugs dive-bombing me as the sun started to set, but I felt wonderful.

But Juan Carlos wasn't havin' it.

“Why did you not wait for me to help you?”

“I had nothing better to do,” I said as we ate some grilled cheese sandwiches, our first meal together in my new house. Besides, I had thought, if I waited on his ass (or Roger's or Karl's), nothing would get done.

He didn't ask to move in with me, but I didn't think he would. What would his mama say about that? However, I have to entertain the possibility that Karl or Roger may ask me that very question. I already know my answer:
No
.

How would they react? Hmm. Karl would probably shrug it off. Yeah, Karl's a roughneck. He wouldn't care. He would just ask to ask, you know? To be polite. Roger … Hmm. Roger is more of an enigma. He would probably go away hurt, hardly saying a word, and that would hurt me the most, since we have the best conversations. But then … then he'd be back as if nothing had happened.

At least I hope he'd come back.

I was so happy and unparanoid that first day—I finally had one of my men visit me at
my
new house, far
from Roanoke—that I did something stupid. I promised Juan Carlos that I'd cook for him whenever he visited, and I regretted it once school began again. I was too tired to cook anything special, since I was also going to football practice for the Revenge after school. I made hot ham-and-cheese sandwiches and home fries one night and baked spaghetti another night. But no matter what I cooked, Juan Carlos rarely said anything positive about the meal.

“Is there something burning?” he'd say as he walked into the kitchen.

“No.”

I found myself talking to the pots and pans on the stove. I hoped they wouldn't take it personally.

He did the same thing each day he visited. First, he commented on what he wanted for dinner, always something he knew I didn't have, like steak or rice. Then his nose detected some stench that only he could smell. After that, he'd lounge in front of the TV, flipping back and forth between the only two channels that came in clearly because I didn't have an antenna. After watching or finding nothing on the “stupid TV,” he'd share that information with me and bellow, “I am hungry!” from the top of the stairs.

Meanwhile in the kitchen, I slammed cabinet doors and cursed the walls. We didn't eat like a proper couple—in the kitchen—but instead used TV trays upstairs. After the meal, finished without my receiving so much as a “thank you,” I descended to the kitchen, washed and dried the dishes, straightened up, and tried to read some of Hurston's
Their Eyes Were Watching God
while he cursed the TV in Spanish.

I had become Juan Carlos's
other
mother in a matter
of days. My “love shack” was fast becoming Juan Carlos's “snack shack.”

If I wasn't interested in the “nothing” he found on TV, I'd sit in the easy chair reading about Janie Crawford, Hurston's magnificent heroine, and the three men in
her
life. Juan Carlos was beginning to sound and act more and more like Jody Starks, Janie's second husband, who treated her just a tiny bit better than a slave.
I feel you, Janie Crawford
, I thought as I read.
I know what you're going through because I have a man over here commanding my sofa, waiting, on purpose, until I'm in the middle of an interesting passage to announce things
.

“I will be working double shifts until June starting next Thursday.”

I ignored him.

“Lana?” He hit the mute.

“Huh?”

“I said that I will be working double shifts until June starting next Thursday.”

“Oh.”

“It will be difficult for me to see you.”

I shrugged. “We'll find a way.” I put down my book. “Why don't we do something special while we have the time?”

“Like what?”

“Like … let's go to the movies and then come back here to mess around.”

“We do that all the time. It is not special.” He nodded. “We will go dancing Friday night. I know a good place to go.”

“Where?”

“In Roanoke. It is a small club run by my friend.”

That wasn't going to happen. That
couldn't
happen. I mean, just going to a movie, where I insist that we sit in the last row, is hard enough. I have to first find out where the other two are so we can see a movie where they aren't. Even so, half the time I spend more time watching the folks around us than the movie.

“Yes,” he said with a smile, “we are going dancing.”

I like a decisive man, but I had to think quickly. I hadn't been dancing in so long. I really like dancing, and with tall, sexy Juan Carlos as my partner, I envisioned having his long, strong hands around me, grabbing my ass … looking up into his sexy unshaven face, his dark eyes … grinding on him all night long.

But not in Roanoke. Roanoke likes to talk. Roanoke has no life, so it sucks the life out of others' lives by running its mouth. Roanoke is a gossip, a perpetual Nosy Parker at the beauty salon of southwest Virginia.

“Why don't we go down to Greensboro? They have better clubs than Roanoke.” For black folks, that is, and Juan Carlos is just dark enough to pass for black. “And the Revenge doesn't play this weekend, so …”

“I do not understand why you must play football,” he said. “It is not for a lady to do.”

It is for
this
lady. Only Roger has ever seen me play football, and the massages he gives me after my games are heavenly. In fact, only Roger and I have ever sat down and watched football together, making all sorts of silly, um, sexual bets. If my team makes a first down, he has to go down on me. If my team scores, I score. I always pick the team with the best offense, and he always seems to choose the team with the worst defense for some reason.

I, um, I really like it when my team scores lots of
points, and Roger doesn't seem to mind if his team gets shut out.

I guess if I really think about it, I play a little football in bed, too. For me, either a man is going to pop me with a kiss or he's gone. Either we're going to be tackling each other or he's going to be stepping. If I don't sweat or end up dirty, bruised, or cut, we aren't trying hard enough. If afterwards I don't ache, the love didn't take and I might not be awake. If a man gets with me, he had better like to shake and bake all the way into my end zone.

Juan Carlos used to think he might break me in two during sex. “That's not going to happen, Juan Carlos,” I told him. “You can shake and bake me, but you're not going to break me.”

I can't say the same thing to Karl. He really knows how to party in my end zone.

Juan Carlos and I often argued about my “hobby,” as he called it, and that night was no different.