Jennifer Greene: Kiss Your Prince Charming

Once she climbed out of the car, she stuck the mail between her teeth, hooked the key ring on a finger and then used both arms to scoop up the grocery sack, briefcase, and purse tote. The success of her hauling mission seemed assured until she tried slamming the car door closed with her fanny—which jostled everything, particularly threatening to topple the ice cream at the top of the overstuffed grocery bag.

Oh, man. She needed that ice cream. She deserved it. The whole day had been a nonstop test of sanity. The air-conditioning had malfunctioned at work. All six of her engineers had been testy and demanding. She’d skipped lunch and then had to work late. Her blue linen suit had more limp wrinkles than a shar-pei’s face, her right stocking had a run and her stomach was making pitiful growling sounds of starvation. The unrelenting heat was so unfair. This was Milwaukee, for Pete’s sake. Cool nights should have been a guarantee by the middle of September—particularly by seven o’clock—and yet the temperature still registered a mean, cruel ninety degrees with enough humidity to melt steel.

Carefully juggling her packages, sweat drooling down the back of her neck, Rachel mentally pictured her life ten minutes from now. Forget chores. Forget the sounds of lawn mowers and honking cars and kids shrieking as they skateboarded down the sidewalks of the old neighborhood. She could be inside her rented house in two minutes. Naked in six. A few seconds after that, she could be draped under the air-conditioning vent in her living room, dipping a spoon into an entire gallon of Fudge Ripple, with an old classic Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn flick plugged into the VCR.

The fantasy was almost as satisfying as sex. Maybe even better. Sex wasn’t a remote possibility in her life right now, where ice cream was definitely a can-do.

“Ms. Martin? Wait, Ms. Martin!”

She recognized Leo Rembrowsky’s voice coming up behind her, and any other time she wouldn’t have minded chatting a few minutes with her elderly neighbor. Leo was okay. Occasionally he’d tried to peek in her bathroom window and he was an incurable busybody, but mostly he was just lonely since his wife died. Swiftly she turned around, so Leo could see her arms were completely stuffed and she was in no position to stop and visit—yet he didn’t seem to notice.

“I been waiting for you.” He huffed and puffed up the driveway until he caught up with her, his Slavic accent even heavier than usual. “You’re late today. I wait outside in the heat. But I thought you should know. Mr. Stoner was in big car accident.”

Her heart clutched. She dropped her briefcase and yanked the mail out of her mouth. “You mean Greg? Our Mr. Stoner?”

“Yes, yes. I heard from Tilda. She heard on scanner. Then Josie, she call the hospital—”

Vaguely Rachel heard the details of the neighborhood gossip vine. Vaguely she was aware of the bloodred sun, dropping fast now, painting the maple leaves gold and brushing the sky with dusky sunset shadows. Life just seemed so everyday normal that it took a jolting few seconds for Rachel to believe something had really happened to Greg. “Mr. Rembrowsky, which hospital? And do you know how badly he was hurt?”

Leo crouched down to pick up the spray of envelopes. “St. John’s, I hear. It was three-car pileup. Early afternoon. Tilda called hospital, but no one would say how he is. You have to be family or nobody wants to talk to you. But I still thought you would want to know.”

“I do. I did. Thank you, Mr. Rembrowsky, and I’m so sorry you waited out in the heat....”

He straightened up and piled the mail on top of her grocery sack. “You just tell me when you find out news, okeydoke? And if there’s something we neighbors can do, you say.”

“Okeydoke. I promise.” She hustled up the sidewalk, shifted everything so she could unlock the back door, then swiftly jogged in and dropped all the debris on the counter in her yellow-and-white kitchen.

Inside, the air conditioner was wheezing and gasping like a four-pack-a-day smoker, but at least it was working—for now. Like most homes in the neighborhood, her two-story frame house dated somewhere around the turn of the century. On the plus side, the rooms had personality and character and unique little architectural features. On the minus side, every appliance in the place had a capricious personality. Greg’s theory was that she needed to get tougher and show the appliances who was boss.

Again her heart squeezed tight at the thought of Greg injured, and she quickly grabbed the phone book and searched for the hospital’s number. Once she dialed and was stuck waiting for someone to answer, her gaze peered outside.

Her kitchen window overlooked his kitchen window. The distance between houses was a mere fifty yards, but the economic chasm between them might as well have been miles. Her rental house mimicked most structures in the respectable-turned-shabby neighborhood. Greg’s elegant Victorian house, though, was the exception, and stood out like a treasured castle with its manicured lawn and wrought-iron balconies and gleaming casement windows. Why he lived alone in the big old white elephant, Rachel hadn’t yet figured out—but over the last couple years, she’d spent countless hours in that house. They’d had dinner in his kitchen two nights ago. Cripes, she’d shared a cup of coffee with him just that morning.

Finally someone at the hospital answered. “Hello, this is Rachel Martin. I’m inquiring about a patient—Greg Stoner—I believe he was brought in this afternoon after a car accident...” Swiftly she crossed her fingers. “Oh, yes, of course I’m a relative. That’s exactly why I’m asking—I just heard about the accident, and I’m his sister—”

The lie slipped out smoother than butter. Thankfully Leo had mentioned the hospital’s unwillingness to give out patient information to anyone who wasn’t kin. Greg had kin—retired parents in Arizona, a brother working for some company in Japan—but there was no one Rachel knew how to contact. If she wanted immediate answers on Greg’s condition, she had to find some way to get them on her own.

And the fib worked—at least claiming to be his sister successfully got her transferred to another hospital floor. But then she was put on hold. And then transferred to yet another floor. One could interpret all this monkeying around as great news, she told herself. If they were moving him around, he was obviously alive, right? And he couldn’t be in too bad a shape or he’d be immobilized in ICU. Yet her fingernails drummed a worried rhythm on the old yellow linoleum counter.

It seemed like she was stuck on hold for hours this time. A dozen memories of the lumbering, gentle giant flashed through her mind. She’d met Greg two years before, the day she’d moved into the neighborhood. He’d stopped by to welcome his new next-door neighbor. She’d nearly bitten his head off.

It hadn’t been exactly her best day. Mark had just announced that he’d discovered “true love” with the bimbo. Rachel knew nothing about divorces then, had no idea you weren’t supposed to leave the marital home—or the savings accounts—unarmed and undefended. She’d never lived anywhere but her hometown of Madison, but she’d impulsively taken off for Milwaukee because it seemed best. She didn’t want to live in the same town as the cheating creep, and had craved a distance from her overprotective family, as well. This house was the cheapest rent she could find, at a time when even cheap was too expensive for her. She had no job, no money, an ego in shreds and a life in shambles. She never planned to trust another man as long as she lived.

She’d never planned on trusting Greg, either. But tarnation. He’d given her absolutely no choice.