Craig Smith - Cold Rain

Was Buddy’s game coming unravelled? If so, Johnna might have the information I needed.

‘Please!’

‘One hour,’ I said.

I hung up, and went upstairs to see Molly. ‘Johnna Masterson,’ I said. ‘She wants to talk.’

‘Good for Johnna. Does she keep a diary too?’

‘This could be important. I’m going into town.’

‘Now?’

‘Why not now?’

The phone rang again, cutting off Molly’s response.

Molly snatched the receiver up and spoke softly, her voice mellow. ‘Hello? Yes. Just a minute.’ She set the phone between her cheek and shoulder. ‘Do you mind closing the door on your way out?’

Through the closed door of what was once our bedroom, I could hear Molly’s voice, though not all of the words. She laughed the way she had once laughed with me.

I spent most of the drive into town contemplating just what I had lost and wondering if by some miracle Johnna Masterson was about to offer me a way to get it back.

Over my third cup of coffee, watching the door and the sidewalk outside, I was still thinking about Johnna’s motives and what it could mean for my marriage when the waitress came up to my booth. ‘You Dr Albo?’ I said I was. ‘There’s a call for you. Lady said it’s an emergency.’

When I got to the telephone by the cash register, I heard Buddy Elder’s voice. ‘Hey, Dave. You looking for Johnna?’

‘Where is she?’

‘You’re not stalking that poor girl, are you?’

‘What do you want, Buddy?’

‘I heard a rumour today at the funeral home. They’re saying letter of censure. Good news, huh? Hope nothing happens to change their minds.’

‘Do yourself a favour,’ I said. ‘Get out of my life before I decide to kill you!’

At just that moment Buddy Elder decided to disconnect. I looked up and saw the cashier staring at me.

Why not? I had just threatened to take a life. I gave her a friendly smile, but I expect it looked like bad acting.

I went to the house where I knew Buddy was staying. His car was not there, nor did he answer the door when I knocked. I drove to his old apartment close to The Slipper after that. That too was dark, no sign of his Mercury. Finally, late, I checked Johnna Masterson’s address in a telephone directory.

There was only a rural route number, so I could not find her place. I tried her home number with my cell phone, but there was no answer. On a hunch, I went out to Walt’s and Barbara’s place. Roger and his girlfriend were out as well.

Tired and frustrated, I went back to the farm and crawled into bed around three-thirty. When I got up late the next morning the horses were already out in the pasture. I found Molly upstairs installing the base-boards. ‘How was Johnna?’ she asked cheerfully.

‘She didn’t show up.’

‘Did you sleep with her too, David?’

‘She told me last night on the phone she wanted to talk to me about Buddy.’

Molly’s electric drill punctuated my answer. She stood up, walked to the next mark and set the screw. ‘I keep trying to figure out why everyone but you is lying.’

She gave me a pretty smile, and I could have sworn something had changed. ‘How many were there over the years? Just so I know.’

‘I’ve never cheated on you, Molly.’

‘Now see?’ She settled the drill on the makeshift worktable. ‘You say that as if it’s true, and we both know it isn’t.’

It had been a short night for us, though on that occasion Molly and I had spent it together. In fact, I had just started drifting off when I heard her tramping around the front room. I rolled over and saw this beautiful blonde wearing work boots and tight jeans, looking down at me in the gloomy first light of a Monday morning. This was how our third date ended.

‘Make yourself at home, professor. There’s food in the kitchen. The coffee just needs to be turned on. You want to see me again I’ll be home when it’s dark. You want to think about it for a few days like last time, that’s okay too.’ She bent over the bed and kissed my eyelids, something no one had ever done to me. ‘Just don’t think about it too long. You might hurt my feelings.’

I rolled out of bed and sat up. I told her I was just getting up myself. Molly laughed like one of her carpenter friends. She knew better than that! People with things to do got up at dawn. Poets and professors-in-training and used car salesmen could let the morning get away from them. I tried to pretend I was only a couple of minutes from sitting down to compose a little iambic pentameter while I drank my first cup of coffee, but all she did was laugh at me.

As she went toward the door I called to her impulsively: ‘Will you marry me, Molly McBride?’ Her step caught. Her shoulders froze. Then she looked back at me with a smile. ‘Ask me like you mean it and I might.’

I was there that evening, and I asked her with a diamond ring.

I didn’t have that kind of money on hand of course.

I had called Tubs that morning and told him I’d found the woman I wanted to marry. I hated doing it like that, especially telling him I needed the money by that afternoon, but it was the only way to show Molly I meant it. Tubs didn’t ask how long I’d known her. He didn’t even ask her name. He told me to have the jewellery store give him a call when I found what I wanted. I could pay him back come summer.

Molly wasn’t expecting a man on bended knee that evening, but she handled it well. She said she needed a couple of days to think about it, if I didn’t mind.

Nothing at all to think about, I told her. ‘Just say yes and the three of us will live happily-ever-after.’ That was the thing, she said. There were three of us. She wanted to talk to Lucy about it. A few days after that Molly said Lucy had told her it was all right. We set the wedding for early January in DeKalb. For various reasons we spent the rest of that fall, about six weeks in total, living separately. We would meet in the morning and usually late in the evening. On the rainy days, we would steal an afternoon in Molly’s bed while the neighbour kept Lucy.

I finished the semester pretty much as I had started it. I would work most of the day, then drift over for beer and talk in the late afternoon at my favourite bar. A lot of times a whole group of us showed up.

Sometimes only two or three of us were there. Beth Ruby was a regular and wouldn’t let up with the carpenter jokes once she found out I was engaged. I didn’t really care. My attraction to the woman had faded. Molly McBride was the centre of my life, and I was foolish enough to tell her that. That was when Beth started talking about ‘a life sentence of monogamy.’

I told her it sounded good, but even as I said it, I felt a little nervous, the way a man will when he puts a tie on for his first job and thinks that for the next forty-five years he’s going to be doing the same thing.

Never can sure seem like a long time when you’re young.

A couple of weeks before the end of the semester, about three or four weeks before the wedding, I was sitting across from Beth Ruby at the Pub, just the two of us. Monogamy was the topic of the afternoon again, and it was a long afternoon. After we had had enough, I said I was going, had to meet Molly later. Beth asked for a ride home. Beth usually walked because she only lived a few blocks away, but I had given her rides before. She made a show of her bare thighs inside the truck. They were very nice thighs, too. She laughed at me for looking. I wasn’t ready to get married! I’d cheat on Molly with the first woman who came along. I said I was impervious. She opened her legs slowly and said,

‘You would do me right here, right now if I let you.’