Ike plunked down in the only comfortable chair in his rented apartment. The two of them had driven to the quarry as planned and, like the teenagers they weren’t, had attempted some heavy petting in the front seat, not the back. It didn’t work. It didn’t work because, in fact, neither of them were teenagers anymore and hadn’t been for much too long. It didn’t work because the press of real work and duty distracted them from the moment, and because…hell, all those adult concerns push in and stifle whatever spontaneity they might have enjoyed. Ruth took care of him in a less athletic manner and he had driven her home. He had the sense that Ruth had more on her mind than just work, but Ruth was Ruth and she would work through it.
He let his gaze wander around his apartment. Ruth had said “poor excuse of an apartment.” She was right, of course. He’d rented it when he had been elected sheriff. The drive into town from the mountains where he had his A-frame took too long to be convenient and was too tricky when the snow fell and iced the roads. The apartment’s two rooms, kitchenette, and bath had come furnished. In the intervening years he’d added little to the décor. He had a bookcase of his favorites. Ike did not collect books. He figured if he had no plans to ever read the thing a second time, he’d pass it on to someone who might. His bookcase contained, then, a couple of dozen volumes, mostly nonfiction and two-thirds of them biographies of leaders, famous and infamous. He’d purchased a flat-screen TV which had not yet been connected to cable. He used it to watch old movies he streamed from Netflix and rented DVDs. Also he had some plates, pots and pans, and a second small freezer he kept stocked with frozen dinners, and that was pretty much it. So, aside from the books, there was precious little to move over to the president’s cottage. Actually, “cottage” diminished the building. “Mansion” more nearly covered it. Downstairs was largely given over to receptions and meetings. Ruth occupied an apartment carved out of the upstairs. It was barely larger than his, although there were guest rooms for visiting dignitaries. Fitting in the bookcase might be a challenge.
The larger question resonated around the minutia of marriage and cohabitation. Did he really want to share a bathroom? Was he ready for things like loofahs and body wash on the tub’s sill? He was a bar soap man and things that came out of squeeze bottles made him nervous. Was she the sort who would use his razor in places and for purposes it was not designed? The truth about marriage and its many failures, he thought had more to do with the everyday frictions over trivia, than any lack of passion, love, or communication.
He sat back and ran the thought through his head once again and laughed. Bullshit. You adjusted or you installed a second bath—problem solved. Marriage was a state he’d only tasted, never completely devoured. He’d leave heavy analysis to Abigail Van Buren.
Charlie Garland called Ike around midnight.
“So, you have done the deed.”
“Which deed would that be, Charlie?”
“Las Vegas, the Budding Rose Wedding Chapel. That deed.”
“Is there anything about me you do not know? Charlie, if I didn’t know you better, I’d swear you’re having a bromance with me and that thought is really scary. Why in hell were you snooping into my time in the west?”
“I am your guardian angel, your Clarence. I wanted to get my wings. Your wedding bells secured them for me.”
“What?”
“It’s a Wonderful Life, don’t you remember? Jimmy Stewart, or rather George Bailey thinks all is lost, his career as the town do-gooder finished and—”
“I got it. You as Clarence Odbody, the postulant angel, is way too much of a stretch, Charlie. You are the villainous Henry Potter, if you are anybody.”
“I am wounded. I have to ask, are you ready for this move?”
“Ready? How do you mean?”
“You were a single guy for a long time. Then, you married Eloise after what…a twenty-minute romance?”
“It wasn’t twenty minutes.”
“Close. Eloise died and Ruth helped you heal. Are you sure that isn’t all there is to this latest move?”
“Charlie, you are not my mother, you are not even a good psychologist. Stop prying.”
“Very well, if you insist. Moving along, the director wants to know if your nuptials will temper Ruth’s chronic enmity toward the nation’s select service. If so, does this raise the possibility that you could be tempted to help us out on, say, a consultant basis from time to time?”
“The contrary, my friend. At her request and my concurrence, you have been removed from my speed dial. Your name may not be spoken in her presence. You are permanently banned from the premises. Before you ask, that is because she dislikes being caught in a cross fire especially when the bullets are real. She wishes never to be so again. And so say I. Done and done, Charlie.”
“You two are annoyed. I understand and I am sorry about that. I will take it, then, that you are temporarily out of the loop.”
“Not temporarily.”
“We’ll see.” Charlie hung up. Ike sighed and thought of Bruce Willis and Helen Mirren and RED and wondered if there was ever an ending to a career foolishly begun in the darker reaches of the CIA.
More importantly, now that Charlie had resurrected it, had Ike finally said goodbye to Eloise’s ghost?
***
Ruth believed she handled stress about as well as anyone she knew, except Ike. Her cure was to do more. That is, if work stressed her out, she’d just work harder. If something in her private life, her not work life, caused her to pause, she simply pushed on through. Truth be told, that part of her life had been anything but stressful. Her relationship with Ike, which had started out about as oddly as any, had over time found a comfortable place, a rhythm. It could have gone on forever just as it was. But it wasn’t going to—not now. Las Vegas and tequila had seen to that. So, a new game. Until now, the faculty, confronted with their coupling had, as a whole, managed with varying success to look the other way. Long before Ike appeared on their doorstep, they had bought into the de rigueur notion of “celebrating diversity.” Most of them had done so as a knee-jerk response to the then-fashionable idea. None had actually considered what it meant beyond recruiting the occasional minority student—Latino, African American, gay, and so on—whatever the social imperative suggested to be important at any moment in time. All agreed that it was a good thing they did and so they “celebrated.”
Having their PhD, DLitt president sleeping with the town sheriff, however, forced some of them to rethink their early subscription to the concept. Somehow, Ike and Ruth as a couple, a sexually active couple, didn’t fit the broader intent. Yet, objecting to Ruth’s choice exposed in them a level of hypocrisy which they found difficult to internalize. So, they looked the other way and hoped in time the whole affair would just go away. It hadn’t. Ruth had dealt with this as with everything else. She soldiered on, daring anyone to say something. No one had.
That was then and this is now. It was one thing to be perceived as having a fling with a “townie,” as one or two of her students did each year, and more than one faculty member did as well. But those flings were considered anomalies and not to be taken seriously. For Ruth to flaunt the norms of her “class” by actually marrying the man created a wholly different problem. She had not found an easy way to work through that. Her relationship with Ike could no longer be allowed to be viewed as a mere trifle, a whim, or a peccadillo, on her part, even when in fact it never really was. She’d permitted that camouflage to exist when she knew in her heart it was essentially disingenuous. Now it would no longer disguise anything. She had stepped over the line and the man many of her people viewed as “the hick” would soon be moving into the president’s cottage permanently.
And for this, she felt stress. Even an old divorce years before did not leave her in such a state. Sometimes while in the shower or lying in bed late at night when sleep eluded her, she thought about what it would be like when the two of them reached this place in their relationship. At those times she had difficulty catching her breath. She knew she wanted Ike more than anything—didn’t she? She did, but…
“What’s wrong with me?” she’d mutter to the shower head or the ceiling. “I told Ike I’ve wanted this since…” Then she would recall the night up in the mountains. He’d just finished telling her about Eloise, his bride of a hundred days, accidently killed by an assassin in Switzerland. She’d heard the pain in his voice and his plea for understanding and wondered at the man who in spite of her bitchy behavior had been supportive during an extremely difficult time in her life.
“I don’t know if I should cry or be angry” she’d said to him at the time, “and here’s something else for you to think about, I think you are the most irritating, engaging, infuriating, attractive man I have ever met.” And, that said, she’d stepped up and kissed him. “Smooched” him, she’d described it in their Las Vegas hotel room, wearing nothing but an overlarge bath towel. My God, how far they’d come. She smiled at the image. Not much had really changed since that early beginning. Nothing about Ike, that is. He could still be irritating and engaging, infuriating and attractive. And lately, she found him to be the coolest man in a tight spot she’d ever known or imagined.
Now, things had to change. They were no longer playmates. Their sandbox days were over. No more necking out at the quarry…well actually, that hadn’t worked out too well. The two superannuated teenagers would have to settle into adulthood. And when they went public, there could be no turning back. She took a deep breath. They’d manage it, somehow.
Second thoughts? No, none. They’d figure it out.