“Must be the heat,” he said aloud to the empty room.
A naughty thought crossed his mind that it might be interesting to look around Beth’s room upstairs, but he hesitated, deciding that would definitely be an invasion of Beth’s privacy. Knowing Beth, she would know he had been there by a trace of his cologne.
It was six-thirty and his stomach began to rumble.
“Time for a feed,” he said, trying to remember what was on the menu at Beth’s restaurant, recalling the flash-fried tuna rolls had looked delicious.
His mouth began to water and he was thinking a cold beer would taste awfully good just then too. But rather than drink alone, he decided to dress for dinner. He hurried toward his room, turned on the shower to get the hot water going, and stripped down to his birthday suit. He foraged his duffel bag like a trained pig hunting truffles, digging for his dop kit and shaving cream. Dop kit? Check. Shaving cream? MIA. Although he was in his altogether, he dashed to the second bathroom to see, perchance, had some kind absentminded soul left a can of it behind? There was none. By that time his bathroom was steaming up and there was no other option but to race upstairs to see what could be found. Surely Beth had something he could use.
“I might wind up smelling like fruit cocktail, but so what?”
He took the steps two at a time with his natural attributes swinging in the breeze as he hurried along. Where was the bathroom? He opened several doors to no avail. Finally he opened the only door he had not tried and sighed in relief.
“Ah! Here it is!” he said, and flipped the light switch.
There was a small cabinet recessed in the wall loaded with personal hygiene products. After he moved around what seemed like more bottles and boxes than you could find on a whole shelf at a drugstore, his hand finally touched down on the cool aluminum of a pink canister of shaving cream. Why did women buy so many products? Did they use them? He decided it was best to lather up, replace the can, and hurry back to his shower. He shook the can vigorously and squirted a generous pale pink mound into the palm of his hand, applied it carefully in a Santa beard all over his face and neck. It smelled pretty good, he thought, not too bad after all. He put his glasses back on, rinsed his hands, dried them on the towel, and turned off the bathroom light. Just as he was making his way down the steps he heard a scream and looked up into the horrified face of Beth on the bottom step. On a curious note, Beth was wearing only her panties, bra, and a pair of red canvas embroidered espadrilles that tied around her ankles.
“AAAAAA! AAAAAA! AAAAA!” she shrieked, staring with eye-popping intensity exactly where decorum would dictate a lady should not.
Avert your eyes! her conscience screamed inside her head, and she fought back, thinking, Shut the hell up! Holy crap! Who? Freaking? Knew?
“Oh my God!” he screamed back.
“Woody! I thought you were in the shower!”
“I thought you were at work!”
“Some idiot spilled a glass of red wine all over…Oh my word. For God’s sake, Woody!” Finally, she looked away and shielded her eyes. “Go get a towel!”
“Right! A towel!”
They both appeared to have had their feet nailed to the floor as neither of them made a move for the sake of modesty.
“Get a towel! Woody! Jesus H. Christ on a crutch from Lourdes! A towel!”
“I’m going!”
Her voice sounded annoyed but they knew better. They were thoroughly amused.
By the time he retrieved a towel and returned to the stairs, Beth had disappeared behind her bedroom door. He thought, if he was Beth he would be rolling on the floor, holding his sides and howling with laughter. That was exactly what he felt like doing. What were the odds that something like this could have happened? About a million to one, he decided. Woody flew to the downstairs bathroom without a single comment to her. For the duration of his toilette, Woody could not stop laughing to himself. How could he face her? What would he say? That he was a full-service banker? Oh no! Wait! He thought, What if this gets back to Henry? That humorless bastard? He’ll cut my ass! But he had to admit, Beth’s body was even more beautiful than he thought it might be.
As quickly as her mother’s old Volvo could take her, Beth returned to the restaurant. She was wearing a navy T-shirt dress that was more or less too patriotic a combination with her espadrilles for her normal taste, but customer-proof from flying glasses of red wine. Understandably, she didn’t want to run into Woody again at the house just then, so she grabbed the first clean thing in her closet that was presentable. All the way back to work, she was shaking from fits of nonstop giggles. It was the shock of it. Nothing like that had ever happened to her before and she thought it was absolutely hilarious. Woody had been completely embarrassed. Wait. Was he embarrassed? No. In retrospect, it didn’t seem that he was embarrassed one little bit. Caught off guard, maybe. Wishing he hadn’t looked so ridiculous with a gallon of shaving cream smeared all over his face, perhaps. But he had stood there like any other normal man, giving her the opportunity to behold and appraise the goods, and she had been caught as slack-jawed as an old bloodhound. Men were brazen things.
“Good thing you’re back,” Drew said, “We’re going crazy tonight. Where did all these people come from?”
“They’re evacuating Ohio again. I’ll take the phones,” Beth said.
“Must be. Deal. Thanks. No recession tonight!” Drew said, and went to welcome and placate the growing number of patrons gathered at the door and on the porch.
It wasn’t long until Beth spotted Woody at the outside bar. He gave her a little wave and she waved back, shaking her head at him and smiling. He wasn’t alone for long, though, because, just as Beth had predicted, three attractive women, slightly older than Woody, obviously out on the town for fun, surrounded him and began pummeling him with small talk and big flirtation. From her distance, it was hard for Beth to follow exactly what was happening, but whatever it was, she didn’t like it, especially whatever it was that was going on between him and the little blonde with spiky layered hair. Perky, spiky-haired blondes irritated the daylights out of her.
They were having a very busy night, more so than usual, probably because they had lowered their prices to meet the challenges of the economic times. Beth seated some tables three times over the course of the evening. When the hullabaloo began to slow down, she went outside to check on Woody. The three women/sirens had moved on to another victim but the little blonde still had her eye on Woody. Beth glared at her, thinking she’d like to slap her right across her face, and then just as quickly she told herself that she was being ridiculous. She walked up to him and gave him a hug, one that was close and long enough that the blond twit might think there was possibly something between them.
“So, here we are. Let’s start over,” she said. “Did you eat?”
“Yeah, I had the tuna roll and a bowl of gazpacho. It was really good. Listen, about what happened earlier.”
“Nothing happened,” she said, lying, sincerely hoping he couldn’t detect all the confusion she was feeling. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Okay. But anyway, I apologize.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for,” she said. “So, how was your trip?”
Woody had turned away then, looking at the blonde, who was watching their every move. He gave the offending one a polite nod and Beth’s thermostat took a ride on a rocket to the Pleiades. He looked back to Beth, whose jaw had gone into Sudden Onset Rigor Mortis.
“Are you all right?” He was genuinely mystified by the abrupt change in her mood. But, he told himself, women are renowned for mood swings.
“Who me? Of course! I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?” What is the matter with me, she thought. “Uh, so listen, things are winding down so I think I’ll be out of here in like, soon? Meet you on the porch back at the house?”
“Sounds great. Or, I can wait for you if you’d like. Follow you home so, you know, you don’t get kidnapped by terror
ists or something.”
“Whatever,” she said, and gave him a smile so small it could have been confused with something churlish. “Let me go see what’s happening in there.”
After going over her schedule for the remainder of the weekend, Drew told her it was fine to leave for the evening. Beth got her handbag and went back to the porch where Woody waited.
“I’m liberated. Want to go now or do you want to stay and have another drink?”
Woody smiled at her as though he was taking her in all at once—her size, her manner, her eyes, and he remembered every detail about her that he shouldn’t have known.
“Woody? Did you hear me?”
“What? No! Of course I heard you! I was just thinking about the porch and wondering if the moon is up over the water. That’s all.”
Beth was somehow disappointed by those words because she had thought he was looking at her differently, sizing her up like men do when they are thinking about spreading their feathers, not that his feathers held the slightest interest for her. She told herself that she was just experiencing a flash of personal vanity that was without any meaning at all.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, let’s go see.”
The house was waiting for them. As they opened the French doors in the living room across the ocean side of the house, the rush of air billowed the sheer curtains and instantly cooled the rooms. The tide was high enough to hear it as far back as the kitchen, and unlike any night that Beth could remember, this one seemed awash with every Lowcountry spell of seduction she had ever known.
What a waste, she thought, wishing Max were there.
“Can I get you a glass of wine?” Woody called out. “I picked up a bottle on my way here.”
“Yeah, thanks! I’m gonna take Lola out and just change my clothes real fast. Okay?”
“Sure!”
“Hey! I meant to ask you. You didn’t tell Mike anything about the deal with Max, did you?”
“No. I didn’t even tell him I was coming here.”
“Good. With his mouth it would be all over the news by now.”
“Ah, come on, he’s a good guy.”
“Yeah, a good guy with a big mouth. He’d love to start something with my Aunt Maggie, who would freak out. Dahlin’! You’re ruining the sacred family reputation by shacking up!” Beth gave her imitation of Maggie her best Scarlett O’Hara accent.
“Is that how your aunt talks?”
“Very funny.”
“But you did that last weekend! We were all here!”
“You don’t understand. It’s different when he sleeps around.”
“Ah, the old double standard.”
“Exactly.”
Beth scooped up her little dog from her crate and rushed her down the front steps to the yard, putting her gently on the grass. While Lola went in search of the perfect spot, Beth thought about her clothes. The dress she was wearing was so stupid but it was one of only five she owned. Although she never would have said so, she felt a little funny that Woody might think she was changing her clothes to save them for work, which she was. Admittedly, just weeks ago she had been a student, living in jeans and sweaters, flip-flops and T-shirts. She hated the fact that she had so few things to wear to work that made her look like a professional hostess. And prideful as she was, she would never ask Simon or her mother to help her buy a wardrobe that was work-appropriate because surely she would spend more than she was earning and that just didn’t make any sense to her. And anyway, who knew how long her job would last?
When Lola reappeared from her search and destroy mission under the lantana bush, Beth raced with her up the steps, into the house, and up to her room, passing Woody on the porch.
“Be right back!” she said.
“I’m not moving! Take your time!”
She hoped Woody would think she was changing into shorts because it was more comfortable to throw your feet up on the banisters and, um, modest. Yes, suddenly modesty was going to play a front and center role in her friendship with Woody. The last thing she wanted to do was give her banker friend the wrong idea. She was not at all like Phoebe. In fact, Woody knew that she was not available, so what was she really thinking?
She searched her closet for a clean shirt and a pair of shorts and settled on the same thing she had worn that day before she went to work.
On paper she was a wealthy young woman, but she surely couldn’t afford to dress like one. That truth annoyed her and strengthened her determination to take control of her life, and that control included her assets. The terms of her diminishing trust account were so wrong, just so wrong. She wondered if her mother was paying attention to all the money she was losing. Did she even know? Thirty-five percent? In Beth’s mind, that was a huge amount to lose. An enormous amount!
“Ah! There you are!” He stood when she came on the porch. “So, tell me, how was your day?”
She loved it that he stood up from his chair when she appeared.
“My day? Let’s see. Around noon, I cured cancer—”
“Oh! My! All forms of it?”
“Yes, all forms.”
He handed her a glass of red wine and looked at her with a lopsided grin. “Wow, congratulations. You are talented!”
“Thank you. And by six, I was wearing a glass of red wine instead of drinking one…”
“Ah yes, that unfortunate bit that we shall never speak of…”
“Thank you. Yes, that.” Beth was smiling. She was so happy to be in Woody’s company. He made everything seem so easy to deal with, even the most embarrassing situations.
He raised his glass in a toast. “Well, here’s to the gym. Glad I kept my membership going.”
“Oh. Shut. Up. I’m just glad you’re here.”
“Me too. Let’s sit.”
They pulled their rockers up to the banisters but found themselves still standing as they stared, watching to the east as the moon was full and on the rise over the ocean. The whole world was cast in its dusty blue glow as it quickly changed from orange to gold to a radiant white. It was gorgeous.
“Why does it seem so close tonight?” he asked.
“I don’t know but it does. Doesn’t it? Like you could pick it right out of the sky.”
Woody was so caught up in the magic of the evening that he turned Beth around, put his hand behind her neck, and went in for the kiss that he hoped would steal her heart. Beth, to her complete astonishment, did not resist. In fact, she responded in a way that surprised her. She felt a crazy weakness in the pit of her stomach, like a fluttering. Even her wrists and shoulders felt funny. Old Woody had it going on like she never would have dreamed in a thousand years, and Beth could not think of another thing in that moment except that he tasted so good and that his mouth was the absolute perfect fit. He took her goblet and put his with hers on a small table just between the rockers and they picked up where they had left off. Now she was leaning against one of the columns and he was very close, close enough that neither of them could ever have said that there was any innocence about what they were doing and where they were headed. To be honest, she could count the change in his pockets with her thigh so one can only imagine what else she was learning. And he could feel where she was powerful and still sense her soft places too, which was taking him to another level of consciousness and at a rather sprightly clip, despite his feeble attempts of restraint.
Now, it is the height of poor taste to detail someone’s intimate life, but let us just say that what transpired between Woody and Beth was just short of the shorts. It would be impossible to see clearly through all of the steam generated that night to say exactly who it was, but one of them finally came to their senses and called for a five-minute recess. There was a lot of stammering and lip biting on the part of Beth and a fairly gargantuan internal dose of Shit! What am I doing with my client? stemming from Woody’s poorly represented conscience.
But neither of them had any regret. Neither of them. Not one speck. They said good night wondering i
n their minds what it would be like to really be with each other, sleep together, wake up together, and further, they laughed because they were so overcome by the sheer power of their attraction to each other that they didn’t know what else to do but to laugh.
“Well, I hope you sleep okay,” she said. “I know I won’t.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to elope with me right here and now? I’ll make an honest woman of you.”
They both giggled and finally she said, “Oh, Woody. What are we doing here? This is crazy.”
“No, Beth. It’s not crazy at all. It’s wonderful.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.”
She looked at him then, in the pale moonlight, in his tortoise-shell glasses, in his patrician profile, in his boyish lankiness, in his brilliant mind and perfect manners and his enormous heart, and something happened to slightly tarnish her feelings about Max.
“Is this a bad thing?”
“No, Woody, it’s a complicated thing. You know that.”
“Well, you go get some sleep and let’s see how it looks in the morning.”
“Good idea. Night.”
He took a handful of her hair into his hand and smelled it.
“You have the most beautiful hair and I love the way it smells.”
“Tomorrow, Woody,” she said, easing away from him. “Let’s see what we see.”
Together they locked the doors, checked the stove twice, and turned off all the lights. She began to climb the steps to her room, and she could feel a pall in her heart. She knew that Max would never show her the same sensitivity or tenderness or consideration. He didn’t have it in him. And so she had to decide what she really wanted. Were those things really so important to her? But to be fair, she thought, Max is who he is, and if she thought that who he was wasn’t enough to carry her through marriage, raising a family, maybe moving to some other part of the planet, she knew she had better rethink her love for him. No, she decided, before she drifted off to sleep, she was deeply in love with Max, and in an all-encompassing way she knew she would never feel for anyone else. Even Woody Morrison, wonderful as he was.