I was just standing there, wanting to run and jump into the limo but unwilling to give Jerry a chance to ride in it, when Joella opened her door, did a double take, and dashed across the lawn. Well, maybe not dashed, considering her condition, but hurried.
“Andi, what’s going on? What is a limousine doing here?”
“It’s Andi’s,” Jerry said. “She inherited it from some rich uncle.”
“You inherited it?” Joella gasped. “I lie down for a nap, and when I get up, you’re an heiress with a limousine?”
“It’s only temporary. A cousin drove it up from Texas. I’ll have to sell it.”
“Oh, can we take a ride in it first?” Joella clapped her hands, starry-eyed as a little girl looking at her first Christmas tree. “Does it have an intercom system and a TV?” She rushed over and pulled open the rear door.
I followed her and peered over her shoulder. A black leather sofa-type seat curved across the front and down one side. Another seat ran across the back, the long stretch from front to back carpeted in burgundy. The far side held a wine rack, a small fridge, and a TV and DVD player. And on the ceiling—
Joella and I looked up at it, dumbfounded. It was a painted scene of an oil field crowded with big derricks and heavy equipment and little stick men in yellow hard hats, all done on what looked like a piece of old tarp fastened to the ceiling. You could almost smell the oil fumes from the derricks. Or maybe that was the tarp. It was totally out of character with the luxuriousness of the limo.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever ridden in one with a mural on the ceiling,” Joella said tactfully.
Jerry was right there peering into the limo too. “You’ve ridden in a limo without a ceiling mural?” he asked skeptically.
Jerry didn’t know anything about Joella’s past, of course. To him, she was just the unmarried pregnant girl to whom I was renting the other half of the duplex at below the going rate, which he disapproved. I’d never thought about Joella and limousines, but now that I did, I realized they probably weren’t all that unfamiliar to her.
She closed the door and stepped back, her hands now clasped behind her as if she were ashamed of her enthusiastic outburst. “I haven’t ridden in one for a long time. They’re, well, you know, different. But . . . no big deal.”
“Would you like to go for a ride now?” I asked impulsively.
“It might be fun.”
For Jerry I wouldn’t do this, but for Joella I would. There wasn’t a whole lot of fun in her life. “Okay, let’s go!”
I had the keys where I’d stuffed them in the pocket of my shorts. I opened the driver’s door, then paused. More black leather seats that were oh-so-buttery soft, so rich smelling, a world apart from the discount-store seat covers that scratched my legs in my Corolla.
There were a few buttons and switches I didn’t recognize, but the basic controls looked identifiable enough. I slid in and tried them. Lights, turn signals, windshield wipers, tachometer, gauges for gas and temperature and oil pressure. I was happy to see that the transmission was automatic. But the heating/ air-conditioning system looked as if it might take a rocket scientist to operate. As did the radio and sound system.
Joella opened the rear door again. I hadn’t invited him, but Jerry scooted in with her. I turned the key in the ignition. I was so accustomed to my noisy old vehicle that it took me a moment to realize that the limo’s engine was running. A kit-ten’s purr, sweet and low. Though when I cautiously revved the engine, it turned to a roar of tiger power.
I drove slowly up to the circle where Secret View Lane dead-ended, then carefully stopped and backed up to turn around, uncertain if the limo could make the circular turn in one sweep. All around the circle, doors opened and people stepped out to stare. It was like synchronized cuckoo clocks. Tom Bolton was at his gate, staring again as I drove by. At the corner, a teenager in a jacked-up pickup lost his cool long enough to brake and stare.
Hey, this was fun!
We cruised up through town. Limousines aren’t unknown in Vigland, of course. Every once in a while you see one parked at the nearby casino or headed for one of the waterfront resorts, and a newspaper article about last year’s senior prom had photos of several couples who’d hired limousines from a service over in Olympia. But neither were they commonplace, and we were definitely drawing second looks.
In the back, Joella and Jerry were playing with their own controls, turning on the TV, opening and shutting the privacy divider, pushing something that closed the curtains. Something buzzed beside me, and I didn’t know what it was until Joella yelled at me to pick up the intercom.
When I did, her voice said, “Madam Chauffeur, this is fantastic!”
I wanted to open the window beside me, then remembered what Cousin Larry had said. By the time we got up near Wal-Mart, where traffic was heaviest, I knew how the long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs feels. The end of the limo as seen in the rearview mirror seemed miles back.
At the red light, a teenage girl in a denim miniskirt waved frantically. I couldn’t make out her words, but it seemed clear she wanted to hire me.
I was just beginning to feel more confident with the driving when a beat-up Chevy zoomed through a yellow light and turned left in front of me, barely missing the front fender. I jammed on the brakes, and in back I heard a big thump.
“Jo, did I hurt you?” I yelled in a panic. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Jerry’s on the floor, but he’s okay.”
She sounded disappointed, and less clearly I could hear Jerry grumbling about my driving. Tough. Nobody invited him to come along.
“He’s getting up now.”
We cruised on down the hill beyond Wal-Mart, then back along the bay to the center of town, and finally on around the hill to Secret View Lane. I parked at the end of the walkway to the house. I’d move the limo into the safer area of the driveway as soon as Jerry got his car out of there. Maybe I’d be all heartbroken about him in a few hours, but right now I just wanted him gone. Out of sight, out of my life.
Jerry stepped out of the rear door of the limo first, rubbing his neck and glaring at me as if he figured I’d knocked him down on purpose.
Joella rushed up and gave me a big hug. “Thanks, Andi. I don’t miss stuff like that, but it really was fun.” She grabbed my wrist and looked at my watch. Hers had stopped working, but she couldn’t spare the money to buy another one. “Oh, hey, I’m late for Bible study.”
A minute later she was backing her old Subaru down her half of the driveway. She’d had a Mustang convertible when she first moved in, but she’d sold it to help with expenses.
I turned to ask Jerry to move his Trans Am, but JoAnne Metzger, a neighbor from the end of the street, was running down the sidewalk and waving at me.
“Andi, got a minute for a nosy question?” she called.
“Sure.”
JoAnne is the social organizer of Secret View Lane. She puts together neighborhood barbecues and recycling drives and organizes the annual garage sale for the whole street. I went down the sidewalk to meet her.
She patted her chest and puffed with the exertion. “My niece is getting married in a couple of weeks, and when I looked out and saw this limousine, I thought, oh, wouldn’t it be great to give Tanya a ride in that as a wedding present? She’d love it. But I have no idea how much it costs to hire one, so if you don’t mind my asking . . .”
She glanced around as if wondering why the limousine was here, since there didn’t appear to be any special event going on. I had the feeling she was pointedly ignoring Jerry. The “fat slob” he’d disparaged at that barbecue had been her sister.
“I didn’t realize you could rent one and then just drive it yourself,” she added.
“Actually, I’m not renting it. I’m as surprised as anyone, but I seem to have inherited it from an uncle in Texas.”
“It’s yours?” Her interested look went wide-eyed. “Andi, that’s fabulous! How fun! So maybe we can hire you and the limo for Tanya’s wedding?”
“Well, uh, I don’t think so. I don’t see how I can keep it. I’ll probably sell it as soon as possible.”
“Couldn’t you hang on to it just until the wedding? Tanya would be so thrilled. Dan could drive it, if you don’t want to get in heavy traffic with it.”
Cousin Larry had suggested that I start a limousine business. He was probably being facetious, same as with his hot-dog stand suggestion, but was a limousine service perhaps a real possibility? Even if it wasn’t, if I could just make a few bucks with the limousine before I sold it . . . why not?
“Give me a day or two to see what I’m going to do with it, okay?”
Although I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to let her husband drive. I didn’t have acrimonious feelings toward him as I did toward Jerry, but I was feeling very proprietary about this long, black, magic chariot that had unexpectedly dropped into my possession.
“Sure, just let me know.” She gave me a little wave as she started back toward her house at the end of the street.
Jerry had gone back to the limousine, though I doubted it was because he sensed vibrations of hostility from JoAnne. As I’d already concluded, he wasn’t that aware. He was leaning over and running his hand around a hubcap now.
I suppressed an urge to stomp on his fingers as I walked over and said, “Could you move your car out of the driveway, please? I’d like to park the limo there so it can’t get scraped or bumped out on the street.”
I noted a little dust on a front fender and headed for the garage to get a rag to polish it off. Instead of going to move his car, Jerry followed me.
“Hey, babe, I’m thinking, why don’t I run down to the store and pick up a couple steaks? It’s a great evening for a barbecue.”
I turned at the door to the garage and looked at him. He hadn’t been interested in my suggestion about barbecuing burgers earlier. “It’s getting late. I thought you had things to do.”
“They can wait.” Without looking at the Rolex he always wore to check the time, he stepped closer and draped his arms around me. “How about it? Maybe a bottle of champagne?”
“You want to celebrate our breakup?”
“Not celebrate it, Andi. Just give it the kind of conclusion it deserves. With a little celebration of your new limo thrown in.”
I was about 99 percent inclined to tell him no way, but there was that one percent of mental foot dragging. Maybe because he was almost begging, and that was certainly a change. Maybe because I figured he owed me a steak. Or maybe because, deep down in some hope-never-dies part of me, I thought maybe there was still a chance for us?
And then he said, “I’m just thinking, I’ve never . . . you know . . . in the back of a limousine.” He ran a fingertip across my eyebrow and down my temple. “We’ll pull all those little curtains and light a couple of candles . . .”
I drew back and stared at him in astonishment. “We’ve never ‘you know’ anywhere!” I pointed out. Jerry had made some moves and hints before, but I thought he understood where I stood on this.
“And that’s one of the problems with our relationship,” he pointed out.
“One of its ‘limitations’?”
“A definite limitation.”
“So you’re thinking that now, when our relationship is ending, that I’m going to . . . jump into something I wouldn’t before?”
“It would put a beautiful end to the relationship. Give it— what’s it called?—closure. Yes, that’s it. A beautiful closure. A beautiful memory for both of us.”
And suddenly I was totally and completely furious. He had just dumped me, tried to sell me his old sailboat, blithely told me he was taking up with another woman, and now he wanted closure in the back of the limousine? Toadstool was way too generous.
I put both hands on his chest and shoved. He stumbled backward, looking baffled, as if he couldn’t understand this uncooperative attitude.
“Andi, come on. What’s the matter?”
“Out!” I yelled. “Get away from me! Get out of here, now! ”
My old broom was still standing there from when I’d last swept the front steps. I grabbed for it blindly, intending . . . I don’t know what. Maybe shake it in his face to let him know how I was feeling.
But suddenly I was even madder than that, and I was yelling a lot more things. “Jerk! Idiot!” I think I got scumbag in there too, and maybe even slime bucket and sleazeball.
I swung the broom back and forth . . . whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
Jerry had a strange look on his face. He jumped like a kangaroo in reverse, then started running and stumbling backward. He crashed into a flower bed, scrambled to his feet, and crab-stepped sideways.
I had him on the run! It was an exhilarating thought. Whoosh! Sweep that man right out of my life! A little closer and I might even do a wham.
“C’mon, Andi, take it easy—”
Was that fear I heard in his voice? The man was afraid of a woman with a broom?
“Out! I never want to see you again!” Whoosh!
He jumped into the Trans Am, and my whoosh turned into a wham on the door as he closed it. A wham that boinged and vibrated up my arms and across my shoulders and ricocheted around in my brain. I shook my head, trying to clear the shooting stars.
Which was when I suddenly realized it wasn’t an old broom I was swinging. It was a shovel. The shovel with which I’d been flattening those dirt mounds in the lawn.
I stared at the dent in the car door, horrified at what I’d done. Bare metal showed through the glossy red paint. “Jerry, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to—”
He didn’t give me a chance to finish. He gunned the engine and shot out of the driveway like a race driver in reverse. Out on the street, a scent of burned rubber sprayed the air like some macabre barbecue.
I stared after him. How could I have done such an incredible, ridiculous thing? Chasing a man down a driveway with a shovel, whacking the side of his car, all the time yelling and screaming like a banshee.
I looked at the shovel still hanging like a metallic appendage from my hand. Appalling. Bizarre. Unbelievable. And then I realized I had an audience. Tom Bolton from across the street was staring at me from his gate. Farther down the street, two doors had opened, and more people were gawking as if they thought I’d gone berserk.
Maybe I had, I thought guiltily. Never in my life had I behaved in such a way. I cringed, wishing I could dig a quick hole with the shovel and pull the dirt in over me. How would I ever live this down?
But it doesn’t really matter, I told myself firmly as I straightened my shoulders and pretended to ignore the stares. It was humiliating, of course, to have witnesses to my ridiculous display. It was disturbing to realize I could do such an awful thing, with or without an audience. It was scary to know that in anger I couldn’t differentiate between a broom and a shovel. What if I’d actually whammed Jerry?
But I hadn’t, after all, done that. Except for some possible damage to his ego, I hadn’t hurt Jerry at all. I’d drop him a polite note and tell him to send me the repair bill on the car. Not something I could afford, but the only decent thing to do.
With careful dignity, I walked to the garage and set the shovel next to the broom that I’d meant to pick up. No harm done, I assured myself firmly.
Wrong again. Although it would be a couple of days before I knew that.