On the Edge of Dangerous Things (Dangerous Things Trilogy Book 1) (11 page)

Seventee
n

Two years after their wedding, Hester was outside her classroom on the first day of school waiting for the bell to ring when she saw Janine Apgar come out of her room backwards. She appeared to be talking to someone who was still inside.

Even though time had passed, Hester hadn’t been able to forget the crude comments Janine had made at Hester’s wedding reception, so Hester was still on the lookout for opportunities to make things unpleasant for Janine.

Janine had her hands on her ample hips, and in her tight straight skirt the cheeks of her rump looked like bowling balls. She’d recently started dying her brown hair orange. “Not orange, Hester, auburn,” she adamantly corrected Hester who’d called it orange. Janine had it parted in the middle today, and curls hung on either side of her face like links of sausage. At least with the orange hair, Hester concluded, Janine’s red-orange lipstick didn’t look as garish, and that was about the nicest thing Hester could think of concerning Janine’s current appearance.

Janine seemed to be flirting with whomever Hester couldn’t see. Her orange head bobbled on her thick neck. She shrugged her shoulders, her breasts jiggled.

Who is she talking to?
The suspense was killing Hester.

Hester was beginning to think the bell was never going to ring, the malfunction on purpose. It was freshmen orientation and freshmen teachers were never happy about orientation day. Everyone else on staff worked quietly in their rooms while they had to orient the freshmen. Hester begged Al, who was in charge of scheduling, not to assign her any, and he hadn’t; but he did assign five whole sections to Janine. Hester was triumphant. Al knew Janine wasn’t a favorite of hers.

But how had Al convinced Janine to take all those freshmen sections without Janine going ballistic? Janine personally told Hester how much she “hated the whiny little bastards” and how “all the books the freshmen read are nothing but drivel.”

The bell rang, Hester could go back into her room now and dig out her plans for Gides,
The Immoralist
. She couldn’t believe it was still in the world lit curriculum. An older man, who is ill, travels to Africa and hires young boys to wait on him while he tries to find some meaning in life. He’s too distracted by the intense Saharan heat, and the distracting beauty of the boys, to be able to draw any conclusions about anything. What a depressing story.

Work could wait, though. Hester wanted to see who came out of Janine’s classroom. According to good old Frances Middleton, who kept Hester up on the gossip, Janine hadn’t had a boyfriend in a long time. Maybe she’d found someone on staff to hook up with over the summer. 

Hester watched as Janine disappeared into her room. Nothing happened. Hester almost turned away to get started on the Gide unit, when who comes out of the room but Al. He had his clipboard in his left hand, but his right arm was stretched out, and his hand was still inside the room, holding on to something. Then Hester saw it, Janine’s hand in his, her bright yellow bangle catching Hester’s eye like a caution sign.

Janine reappeared in the doorway, and Hester watched as her husband pulled Janine toward him and whispered something in her ear. The sound of the woman’s laughter drifted down the hall to Hester, and pierced her through the heart.

Eighteen

The whirring of chain saws woke Hester, and her first thought was,
where am I?

She leaned up on one elbow. She was on the couch in the living room.

Al was on the La-Z-boy.

They’d had a calm, uneventful dinner together last evening. Even watched an episode of
The Sopranos.
But Hester drank too much wine, passed out on the couch, and now she was feeling pretty fuzzy. The noise outside wasn’t helping, though it wasn’t waking Al up. People were shouting and hammering things. Hester listened to the sounds of glass shattering, metal scraping against metal. The Pleasant Palmers were trying to fix what Mother Nature had destroyed.

Though she hadn’t been there long, it seemed she’d heard the history of Pleasant Palms a hundred times.

It began with the Great Depression and the misfortunes of a family named the Banfords. They were broke and freezing to death in Michigan, so they packed up and headed toward Florida. They ended up in Destination, which was not a true town, just a store and gas station next to a dairy farm on the only road leading south out of Palm Beach. The Banfords pulled off the road and asked the farmer if they could pitch their tent in the pasture in return for working on the farm. They ended up staying the whole winter. In the spring when they returned to Michigan, they were happy and full of hope.

Back up north times got better for the Bamfords, years passed, and their children grew-up and moved away. In the 1950’s, they decided to retire and bought a sleek new travel trailer and drove to Destination, Florida. They wanted to thank the man who’d helped them out when they needed it. The farmer, happy to see them, invited them to park their trailer in the pasture by the beach and stay on for the winter.

It wasn’t long before other tin-can tourists joined them. The farmer herded his cows across the road to another field and charged the Northerners a small fee. The pasture filled with Chateaus, Vagabonds, and Tropicaires. The strangers became friends, and the farmer made more money than he ever had.

The next year the travelers asked if they could leave their trailers in the pasture during the summer while they drove their cars back up north. Then maybe the farmer could build them a modest clubhouse or a small restaurant or a bathhouse? The farmer got worried. What did he know about clubhouses and restaurants? He still had another twenty acres to farm, and he was getting old and tired.

Eventually, the friends got together and asked to buy the pasture. “Name your price,” they told the farmer, and he did. And that’s how Pleasant Palms Trailer Park came to be.

In 1990, Al and Hester Murphy flew down to Palm Beach on spring break for a conference on technology in the classroom. Al was eager to jump on the computer bandwagon, and he was good at scheduling school business in vacation spots so they could travel “on the district’s dime,” as he liked to put it.

As soon as they checked into the Breakers, barely ruffled by their business class flight, Hester reflected, and not for the first time, on the advantages of being married to Al, even though she’d insisted on paying for her own airline ticket. She didn’t really like Al fudging the travel voucher.

When the meetings were over and Hester’s skin was just getting that caramel glow, Al decided they should stay on. He wanted to rent a convertible, explore a bit, and get a tan too. Hester had no objections, not that it would’ve changed his mind if she did. She called for a substitute and faxed some plans to her supervisor before they checked out of the Breakers and headed south on A1A.

“Al, it is so sexy to play hooky at our age.”

Al was driving down A1A, and Hester had her hand on his thigh. She looked over at his profile, and even though his eyes were hidden behind his tinted aviators, Hester could tell by the set of his mouth he was pleased with himself. He looked at her and smiled. She knew she looked good in her tight, white capris and low cut silk top. Her hair, mousy from the long winter in New Jersey, was sun streaked now. Her skin tanned. Al reached over and tweaked her closest nipple through her top. It made her jump, but she liked it when Al touched her like this. It made her feel connected to him. It made her feel young and sexy and in love, and not like they’d been married forever and he’d done a ton of philandering and they’d never been able to reproduce. At a moment like this, all of Hester’s fears and hurts and regrets evaporated. At a moment like this, even a longed for child might’ve been in the way.

They drove past mansions and stretches of beach. On the radio Jimmy Buffet sang about Margaritaville. They eased around a curve. Emerald lawns led to meticulously trimmed hedges and Belgium block driveways to gilded gates. Yachts as big as houses, with names like
High Note
and
Octopussy,
drifted majestically down the Intracoastal.

Then suddenly, they were driving through the middle of a trailer park. Five narrow lanes of pale-blue travel trailers stretched east and west from A1A.

“Did you see that?” Al hollered over the music.

“It was a trailer park!” Hester shouted back.

“No kidding.”

“Turn around, Al. Please! Let’s take a look.”

“Cut me a break, will you, Hester? I was thinking the same thing.” He made a sharp U-turn, parked in front the Pleasant Palms Trailer Park Office, and hopped out. Al had an athletic body, a perfect body, except for that one bad ankle of his.

“Your Royal Highness, welcome to your new kingdom,” he said as he opened Hester’s door. The way he looked her in the eyes made her blush.

It took Al only a few minutes to set his mind on buying the 1978 Chateau trailer on Fish Tail Lane. But the way Al told it later, it was Hester’s decision. Al said it was up to her. He stood by the sliding door repeating what a great place it was, but it didn’t matter unless his beautiful wife was happy too. He did make her feel like a queen sometimes.

So, although it was more expensive than she thought an old trailer should be, and monthly fees were high, and taxes would be more because they weren’t homesteaded in Florida, and insurance had to be figured in, and Al would probably want to fly down as much as possible, even if Hester couldn’t go. Despite all of this, Hester nodded eagerly and said, “If you think we can afford it, Al.” After all, he did handle all their money

Al gave her a big kiss right on the lips right in front of the manager, while simultaneously and secretly grabbing her ass. “How’s it feel to officially be trailer trash?” he teased.

“Great! Just great!” Hester was bursting with excitement. It was so great to be with Al when he got his way.

Nineteen

Another year at Sourland High and Hester had finally gotten the first edition of the literary magazine printed. She’d been alone in the copier room until one of the new teachers, Theo Ottinger, walked in.

“Theo, if you’re not busy, would you take this box into Mr. Murphy’s office? I finally got the lit mag done.” Hester had dressed carefully this morning and looked stylish in her black tailored pantsuit with her favorite leopard print scarf loosely wrapped around her neck. As she’d been contemplating what to wear, she’d been daydreaming about this new staff member, this really young and really hip staff member.

“Sure, no problem, Mrs. Murphy.” Theo turned toward Hester. The space was small and cramped, and they stood only a couple feet from each other. Hester could see the soft brown freckles on the bridge of his nose.

“Please, Theo, call me Hester. We’re colleagues, and it makes me feel older than I am when you say ‘Mrs. Murphy.’”

“Hester? Okay, Hester, sure, no problem.” He put down the stack of papers he was holding and picked up the large box.

“I hope I’m not keeping you from something.”

“Not really. Just trying to run off the one-act plays my freshman performing arts students wrote last week.”

“I’m glad to hear you’re having them write something. It seems like the English teachers are the only ones who make students write, and as I’m sure Al told you, at Sourland High every teacher is supposed to be committed to teaching reading and writing across the curriculum. Al will be thrilled to hear about what you’re doing.”

Theo smiled, and the dimples Hester had admired the first time she’d met him, appeared. Handsome, vibrant Theo seemed pleased by what she said. He seemed like the kind of young man who wanted to get ahead in life, and would. Hester liked that about him.

Al wasn’t in his office when they got there, and Hester found herself stalling for time, asking poor Theo a million questions. Why not have Al walk in on them? See them together?

But the bell rang, and Theo quickly excused himself.

The next morning Hester fussed with her hair, blew it out, set it on electric rollers, and brushed the hell out of it to get it smooth.
Eyeliner, mascara, lots of lip gloss. The gray pantsuit or the navy skirt and vest? Definitely pumps. They give my calves good definition…so the skirt and vest.

As soon as the last bell of the day rang, Hester headed to Theo’s classroom. She could hear the music as she was coming down the hall, Roy Orbison, “You Got It.” She caught her reflection in the glass as she opened the door and thought she looked fairly young herself today.

Theo was standing on top of a student desk stapling posters on the bulletin board singing his heart out to the record. From the back his lanky body looked almost feminine, his long sandy-colored hair pulled back into a neat ponytail. Hester walked over and handed him the next poster in the pile.

He almost lost his balance. “Oh, thanks, I didn’t hear you come in,” he shouted over the music, flashed those dimples, and jumped down. “Want to dance?” He laughed and sang another line of the song before he turned the record off.

“I just came to offer my services. Al told me last night he put you in charge of the Shakespeare festival.” This was a lie. Al and Hester didn’t say two words to each other last night. She’d caught him walking Janine to her car and was so annoyed, she’d taken her dinner, her copy of
The Inferno,
and her pride, and spent the night in the guest room. She found out about Theo directing the festival that morning from Gladys.

Before Theo could answer, Hester added, “I know Janine Apgar always assists whoever is in charge and likes making the extra money, but Al thinks she deserves a break, so he suggested I see you about your plans.” Another lie.

“I haven’t thought about the festival yet. I mean, it’s only October, so that leaves two months before rehearsals.”

“Theo, believe me, December will be here before you know it, and you have to cast the performance before the break, or the kids will never know their lines. Look, why don’t we get together after school and plan it all out?”

“If you say so.”

“Come to my room after the last bell tomorrow, and don’t be late. We’ve got a lot to do.” And without thinking, Hester winked at Theo, and she was startled by the way he blushed.

That night while she was cooking dinner, Hester told Al, Theo Ottinger asked if she could give him a hand with the Shakespeare festival. The poor guy was in a panic, so she couldn’t say no, even though she knew Janine would be upset because Janine usually assisted whoever ran the festival.

“Please, Al, can you explain it to Janine. If I try to tell her, she’ll accuse me of taking money out of her pocket. You know how she can be with me. Coming from you it’ll be easier for her to take, especially since the two of you seem to get along so well.” Hester let the dig hang in the air between them before she went back to chopping her onions and imagining the look on Janine’s face when she learned Hester would be working on the festival.

Theo and Hester sat in Hester’s chilly classroom trying to decide between
Midsummer Night’s Dream
or
Much Ado About Nothing
when Al walked past. Hester caught him craning his neck to see what they were doing. He was checking up on her, and it was about time, she was enjoying Theo’s company more than she expected.

Soon it was December, and Hester was still mentoring Theo. Together they held auditions for
Midsummer
. The day before
the holiday break, the last part given out, Theo asked if Hester would meet him for dinner one evening during Christmas vacation. “You can help me flesh out some ideas for costumes and sets.”

The word “flesh” sensuously tumbled out of Theo’s mouth.

“Al and I are leaving for Florida on Christmas Day,” Hester said, “but I could squeeze in lunch on Christmas Eve.”

“Lunch. Christmas Eve. It’s a date, Mrs. Murphy, I mean, Hester.” They walked into the hall together and in the distance heading in their direction was Al. Hester grabbed Theo’s hand forcing him to turn toward her and away from Al.

“Wait, Theo.” She went up on tiptoes and kissed him, hoping he’d kiss her back. Theo didn’t hesitate. He took Hester’s chin in his hand, looked into her eyes, and kissed her, an opened mouth, hot tongued kiss. Hester sensed Al getting closer and closer. By the time she wriggled free from Theo, Al was standing six feet away, the look on his face not a happy one. His deep set eyes shifted from her to Theo and hardened.

What had she done?

She didn’t give a damn how mad Al was with her. She wanted him to be furious with her, but she hadn’t thought about the possibility that Theo would get caught in the crossfire.