Therese Fowler - Reunion

“I don’t even have a dog.”

Peter looked at her like she was simple. “Work with me here, Blue.”

After cruising over what from Blue’s east-facing view looked like an infinite expanse of ocean, the Gulfstream bumped through clear but turbulent air and landed at the Key West airport, three hours ahead of when the crew would arrive via commercial airline. That airline provided TBRS with free freight and free airfare for the equipment and its users, for which Blue would thank them at the beginning and end of each broadcast in the week to come. That was how it was done. Endless back-scratching—so much that sometimes her back was raw from it.

“Jesus, there’s nothing to this place,” Stephen said, looking out his window as the jet taxied toward the terminal.

Blue leaned to look and saw a long stretch of shell-pink building that could pass for a warehouse except for the presence of two small jets and a gaggle of single-engine aircraft tethered close by. She said, “What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know, something like Honolulu I guess. Something that doesn’t look like we’re going to have to unload our own gear.”

“God forbid,” Peter said from his seat behind Blue. “We wouldn’t want to overwork our guests .”

Blue told Stephen, “I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Yes, the airport was small, nondescript, but what was not to like? A thousand feet past the terminal was the Atlantic Ocean, sea green and gleaming, brilliant in the midday sun. Plus, there were palm trees; she’d always thought palm trees worth any amount of trouble, even unloading one’s own bags from the belly of a multimillion-dollar chartered jet.

A contingent of Key West folk was waiting to greet Blue as she descended the plane’s steps into the midday heat. A stout man of about forty came forward, his flowered shirt’s buttons straining such that it was obvious he’d bought the shirt fifteen or more pounds ago. Several photographers circled them, jockeying for position.

The mayor extended his hand. “Welcome to the Conch Republic!”

“Thank you, Mr Mayor,” Blue said, remembering his face from her prep file, but forgetting his name. It wouldn’t matter, Mr Mayor always worked—or Ms Mayor, as the case sometimes was. “It’s so thoughtful of you to take time out from your full schedule to meet our plane.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble. I speak for everyone here when I say we are delighted to have The Blue Reynolds Show in town. Whatever I can do to make your stay more enjoyable, you just let me know. Anything. I mean it. That’s a promise.”

Blue smiled her public smile, clearly delighting the man, who beamed in return. She said, “Yes, I will, I’ll let you know.”

Outside the terminal a few minutes later, Peter stood at the curb, where a battered, empty Toyota was idling in spite of the No Parking signs. He said, “Do you think the mayor could find out where our limo might be?”

Marcy took out her phone. “I’m sure I stored the number in here … they must just be running late …”

Blue stepped away from the group and leaned against a pole to wait, letting the heat and the salt smell of the air be her real welcome. She closed her eyes, just for a moment, and savored the illusion of invisibility she’d once believed in when she was small.

There’d been a lot of waiting during her childhood, mostly waiting for her mother’s return—from a date, from a new-town-scouting trip, from a dead-end job. Melody, passive and untroubled, watched a lot of TV, entertained by Mork and Mindy or Remington Steel or Moonlighting . Blue, anxious, distractible, had better luck with books.

Without the interruption of commercials or the finite images of someone else’s interpretation of a story, she could more easily fit herself into the romance or drama unfolding inside a book’s cover. She filled empty hours, when her homework was done and the paper plates from dinner were cleared from the coffee table, with stories of clever women who won over reluctant bachelors. Women who defied parents or society in order to follow their hearts—inevitably to romance, and often to fame and wealth. Or women who traveled to exotic places in astonishing jets and were greeted by mayors who were glad to do their bidding. What a glamorous life, and so far removed from reality that she never thought to jump the chasm between her vicarious thrills and the methodical plotting that living such a life would require.

No, what she’d planned for was far more predictable and achievable: when she and Melody were both out of school, she would use what she earned working for Lynn Forrester to put herself through college and become a high-school English teacher. She’d assign her students the books she was growing to love under Mr Forrester’s guidance: books about Mark Twain’s river life, Willa Cather’s prairies, and of course the battlefields and savannahs and islands that featured in Hemingway’s troubled imagination. At eighteen she hardly understood the causes of Hemingway’s torments, but she had an instinctive feel for the tragedies in his stories. What is tragedy, though, at eighteen? It’s romance, and it was romance that had been fixed in her mind that fall after she met Mitch. Romance, and a steadfast determination that, whatever she did, she would not allow her life to turn out like her mother’s.

That, at least, had gone as planned.

Chapter Five

Mitch sat on a bar stool in his parents’ kitchen, looking at the shopping list his mother, Lynn, had just handed him.

5lb potatoes

5lb shrimp

8 lobster tails

Lemons

Romaine

Tomatoes, onion

Cornmeal

Butter (unsalted)

2 Key Lime pies—Blond Giraffe

“A person could gain ten pounds just reading this list,” he said. “There are only four of us, you know.”

His mother, who’d begun rearranging things in her overstocked freezer, leaned around the door to squint at him critically. “I think you’d better stop at two or three pounds. You’re officially over fifty now, and you know, the older you are, the stickier those pounds get.”

“Tough to stop when I’m around enablers like you,” he said. “You want me to buy two pies and also show restraint?”

“We need two,” she said, going back to her task. “While you all were in the pool, I invited the girls from next door.”

“The girls” would be the new neighbors, Kira and Lori, whom he’d met soon after arriving this morning and who had wasted no time in telling him how they’d met each other (at Fantasy Fest) and, thanks to some very savvy stock sales on Lori’s part, could now afford to call the place home. They’d also wanted to know everything about him . The things his mother hadn’t already told them, that is. Things she said she didn’t know. For example, how serious were he and his traveling companion, Brenda? She looked like such a nice woman, they said, from the glimpse they’d gotten through the flowering hedgerow. Was she really a professor of Victorian literature? “Indeed,” he’d answered. “And she just published a wonderful book on Lewis Carroll—Duke University Press, you should pick it up.” They’d looked at one another with suppressed laughter in their eyes. “No, seriously,” he’d said, “it’s really good.”

“I was wondering,” he asked his mother, “why did you tell them about Brenda?”

“Oh, you know how it goes. We hang out in the kitchen, we make a pot of tea, we chat, things come up. They were curious. We’re all curious.”

“Hmm.” In fact Mitch, too, was curious. He’d known Brenda for sixteen years, but there was no telling what would happen now that they’d gone ahead and dipped their toes into more intimate waters. Well, a little more than their toes, which was going to take some getting used to. The only reason he’d told his parents was as forewarning that Brenda, who they’d known was joining him for this visit, would now also be sharing his room.