Eleven
She waited until after three, then walked alone. She did not mind at first. She liked to stick her nose in pine trees and had been too self-conscious to sniff them around Quinn. She lingered in the first meadow for a long time watching a rufous-sided woodpecker. How did it feel to bang your head so resoundingly against wood? To get in such a long, staccato, reverberative run?
A small sick feeling came over her at the Bauer cabin when he still had not materialized. Yesterday was a lot. Ten hours in each other’s company. He probably needed a breather. Or he regretted putting his family’s house on display. Or Rick Garsh had fired him, too. Or maybe—this cheered her up—he was working straight through to dinner, knowing he’d see her later, at poker.
* * *
Cress scalloped potatoes with chunks of ham and drove the hot casserole in her mother’s silver-plated pan holder to DeeDee’s, where Kevin was splitting logs on the porch with enviable ease. Inside, extra leaves were in the dining table, the poker chips and cards set out.
“You made so much,” DeeDee said. “There’s only seven tonight.”
“Who bailed?”
“The brothers.”
“What happened?”
“Who cares? I won’t have to split the pot with Caleb for once.”
“He leaves you half his winnings. More than half.”
“I want all of them.”
That sick sense came again, that Quinn probably regretted yesterday and now was pulling back. Because if anything else was wrong, he could’ve caught up with her on the trail or stopped by the A-frame to let her know. She’d been findable. Needing consolation, she turned to DeeDee. “Guess what, DeeDee? I’m seeing someone new. But it’s a secret.”
“Hardly,” DeeDee said.
But she thought Cress meant Don Dare.
“Guess again,” said Cress.
River Bob? Freddy? Boots Stahl?
“A hint,” said Cress. “They couldn’t come tonight.”
“Not Caleb?”
“No, no. Not Caleb.”
Cress expected a big DeeDee guffaw, incredulity, a hundred questions. Instead, DeeDee bent to take a chicken from the oven and clunked the roasting pan onto the stovetop. Keeping her back to Cress, she moved to the refrigerator, withdrew a head of iceberg. She set it on the cutting board, peeled off the outer leaves, and, picking up a large knife, split it with a juicy whack.
“What do you care?” said Cress.
“Must be a big-city thing.”
“What’s a big-city thing?”
“Sleeping with another woman’s husband.”
“DeeDee!” Cress cried out—and only then remembered that DeeDee’s husband had left her for another woman.
“If you want approval for wrecking someone’s marriage,” DeeDee said, “you’re barking up the wrong ponderosa pine.”
“I’m not wrecking anyone’s marriage,” said Cress. “That’s the last thing either of us wants. We’re just friends. With a little sex thrown in. It’s an interlude, like you and Kevin. Quinn’s lonely here. And it’s good for me, too, after Jakey.”
As DeeDee carried the salad and Wishbone bottle out to the table, Cress trailed her. “And I’m working like crazy, for the first time since school. This has helped in a weird way. Energized me. I’ve never had such a fertile burst.”
“I’m sure Sylvia Morrow would be thrilled to know that.”
“Since when are you all Moral Majority?”
“Since all along.”
“It’s not as if you don’t have sex secrets.”
“I keep Kevin secret,” DeeDee said evenly, “so I don’t get ribbed by my loudmouth boss for sleeping with his son. Who’s single, like me.”
Without really thinking about it, Cress realized, she had equated DeeDee’s secret romance with her own; both seemed equally illicit and compromising. She saw now that they were not. Even so, DeeDee shouldn’t come down so hard on her. She wasn’t the adulterer. She’d broken no vows.
“You are older than Kevin,” Cress said. “You have to admit, that’s unconventional.”
“Unconventional, maybe. But we’re not hurting anyone.”
“He is only nineteen.”
“Eighteen’s the age of consent.”
“If you two are so guilt-free, why do you say you’ll go to hell for it?”
“Because the only sanctified place for sex is within marriage.”
“Then we’re all evil!” Cress said. “Everyone on this mountain. Except the old folks. And the Garshes, God love ’em.”
“Kevin and I may be fornicators, but we’re not adulterers.” DeeDee kept her broad back to Cress. “You’re breaking a commandment.”
“Is that what you say to Jakey about all his married bims?”
“Constantly.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” DeeDee’s heathered blue cardigan presented an implacable expanse. “You know what? I’m not going to stay for poker,” Cress said. “I’ll get my pan tomorrow.” The heathered shoulders shrugged.
She drove home past the Rodinger place. The windows of the small camp trailer glowed with their poignant yellow light. A blue Imperial with a white soft top sat in the driveway. Cress braked, rolled down her steamed-up window. A clank of dishes floated out to her on the frigid night air. A murmur of voices. Candy’s trumpet bleat of a laugh.
* * *
Quinn intercepted her in the first meadow. She dodged his kiss.
The wives had surprised them with steaks and bakers. A boysenberry pie from Harvey’s. On a whim, they’d parked the kids with Grandma, driven up.
No doubt they’d pulled on lacy underwear, too, Cress thought, and were extremely pleased with themselves. Yoo-hoo! Guess who’s here?
“You’re not mad at me,” said Quinn. “Are you?”
She had no right to be angry—husbands and wives could see each other at will. “You might spare me the details.”
“Hey—you think I liked them showing up unannounced?”
“What’s not to like?”
“You think I liked spending a whole night within spitting distance of Candy? I didn’t ask them to come. Why are you being like this?”
“I was looking forward to one kind of evening,” Cress said quietly, “and I had a very different kind of evening. I was disappointed.”
“I was, too.” He put his arms around her waist.
She twisted away. “But you had company.”
* * *
Franny told her to try the golf course, Beech Creek Country Club, which had a busy holiday banquet season. “The banquet manager’s Dalia Oliveras.”
Dalia told her to come in that very night. A waitress had quit. “If we like each other,” Dalia said, “I’ll keep you busy through New Year’s.”
Cress drove down the mountain to serve dinner to a private party of golfers from San Diego. The six older retired couples drank ten bottles of wine and left for their rooms by nine-thirty. Cress was home by eleven. The next day, Saturday, she worked a wedding with a hundred guests; the dancing lasted until ten, the cleanup till midnight. On her way home, she stopped by the Sawyer Inn for Donna’s last set.
“We just had a big fight,” Don Dare whispered. “She says I can’t go to Family Night without her, or poker.”
“Her ex drove her crazy,” said Cress.
“I am not him! I have never been like that,” he said. “I don’t have the time or the energy or the interest to have more than one woman at a time. Speaking of which—how long have you and Quinn Morrow been up the tubes?”
“What do you mean ‘up the tubes’? Says who?”
“My supersuspicious, eagle-eyed girlfriend. And I see you two out walking from the Crags.”
“It’s probably over, anyway. But Donna must really hate me now.”
“So long as you’re not with me, she doesn’t care.”
* * *
Working at Beech Creek wasn’t half as demoralizing as the Dinner Plate had been; her hours were varied, with banquets clustered around weekends and a few easy luncheons during the week. Dalia Oliveras was a competent and calm manager, and the head waitress, Lisette, the pretty blond wife of an apricot farmer, called Cress a godsend. The owner of Beech Creek was a golf-mad oilman who had made his fortune selling drilling equipment; Beech Creek Country Club was a tax write-off, a hobby, and a folly. Nobody expected profits, and a relaxed, carefree mood trickled down to the employees, who ate the same prime rib and chicken Kiev as the members. Shift drinks came in twenty-ounce to-go cups.
Cress worked the Kiwanis Club Christmas party, then the Junior League’s, Snap-on Tools’, the Sparkville Boosters’. She didn’t see Quinn all week, he didn’t even know about her new job. This time apart, she thought, was practice for their ending, or possibly was the ending. Although nothing seemed over. Quinn’s heavy-browed scowl floated before her as she wound in and out of the curves in the dappled sunlight of morning, and later, again, when she drove up the mountain in the star-strung freezing dark. Serving a martini or carrying out salads—she could carry five at once—a sudden shift of light, a twinge in her thoughts, and she knew: He’s thinking of me.
* * *
“You are still here.”
“Where else would I be?”
His gloominess made her playful. She danced away from him, or started to. It was eight o’clock, and for the first time in six nights, she wasn’t working. He caught her wrist. “Ah, Cressida.” He kissed her, pressed teeth on her lower lip.
“Let go,” she said.
He freed her wrist and sat heavily on the wicker love seat. “I don’t blame you,” he said. “I’ve cost you a job, and for what?”
She stood away from him. “I’ve been working a new job. That’s all.”
“When I married,” Quinn said, “I was only eighteen. I made decisions then that have to last my whole life—at Annette’s age, basically. I’ve had to give myself some leeway. Or I’d be out of my mind.”
“I’m not your first”—Cress considered how to say it—“outside interest?”
“I was married twelve years before the first time. When I started working away from home … But nothing ever counted before.”
“You never fell in love.”
“The last one, down south, we enjoyed each other, and she started wanting more. But I told her from the start, nothing could come of it.”
“How long ago was this?” said Cress.
“Two, three years now.”
“Do you ever talk to her or write?”
He looked away, shrugged: he’d reached his limit of disclosure.
“And now there’s me.” Cress spoke lightly.
“It’s not the same. You must know that.”
“I don’t know anything,” she said.
“I never talked to anybody like I talk to you.”
Ah yes. Her talent. Men talked to her. Even men who didn’t talk, talked to her. It usually meant more to them than it did to her.
She smiled, and grasping his head, she kissed the crinkles by his eye. He caught her hand. She allowed this for a moment, then sprang away.
“Look.” She swung a plastic bag of fresh chestnuts from the Italian grocery. He’d never eaten one and didn’t know what they were.
“Come,” she said, and showed him how to prick the hard shiny skins, nestle the nuts in the coals, turn them with tongs. They burned their fingers peeling them and their tongues eating them. “Like apple-flavored potatoes,” said Quinn.
A loud crack and an ashy burst made them jump. Quinn shoved her behind him, and still partly crouching to hold her down, he faced the door.
“Quinn!” Cress tugged at his pant leg and started to laugh. “A chestnut exploded! Just a chestnut. Insufficiently pricked!”
He sat heavily on the love seat. She was still on the floor by his knees. “I thought maybe we had a crime-of-passion deal going on,” he said.
“But Sylvia’d never shoot—”
“She’s a damn fine shot. Taught her myself.”
Quinn refused any more chestnuts, as if they’d offended him. Snow swept against the window. He slid a hand under Cress’s hair, squeezed the back of her neck. “Please,” he said. “I’m begging, here.”
* * *
Quinn and Caleb left the mountain three days before Christmas and wouldn’t be back until after the first of the year. Cress’s parents came up for two days, then went to Mazatlán. Cress barely saw them; she worked every night until Christmas, including Christmas Eve.