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= Romantic Novel =

A New England Love Story

by Jean-Thomas Cullen

5.

One rainy day in November, Rick Moyer was driving through Emery and could not resist the urge to stop for a slice of pizza. He always saved his gas stop or his pizza stop for this little town. It was getting to be a habit. Besides, it was conveniently halfway between the New York State border and Hartford.

This had been a good day, business-wise. He had earned something like a million dollars in stock options in the past few hours, not to mention a retainer check for $50,000 from another firm’s grateful board of directors. He was getting better and better at the negotiations that rescued other businessmen from their follies and mistakes. He could always cook up a good business plan from the scraps of other people’s shattered ambitions. Dad had taught him well to look before he leaped, to gauge a situation from all angles, above all to avoid wishful thinking, and to know a business for its fundamentals using his own research or researchers he could trust. He was beginning to get a handle on showing up at an executive board meeting, knowing more about their business than they themselves knew. It was almost too good to pass along to Geoff, who would have to do his own business in parallel. Or Geoff would decide to take his own show on the road. That was how it was in this business. Water flowing downhill, seeking its own level. It worked. It was good.

Then, there was his personal life. As always, not so good.

He had been in New York City, where a thin first snow lay melting on the bushes and trees in Central Park. Slush briefly made the streets run brown before drizzle washed it away. New York was a city of umbrellas.

Rick had just dated an assistant fashion buyer at Mondorf’s on Sixth Avenue. She was a beautiful, warmly pleasant Londoner of Iranian extraction named Pari Shahnas. Everything was right about her, yet nothing quite clicked, and they both knew it. She was graceful and endured a lunch at an expensive restaurant. After a large glass of wine, she admitted that she was in love with a man from Belgium who kept breaking her heart and then coming back to her. Rick relaxed inwardly, knowing that nothing more could come of this. He appreciated her honesty and her languid search in life, and was not frustrated with her. He could endure a lot of things, including perhaps even an instance of infidelity (he had no idea; he imagined he could get over it with a lot of work) but not a woman who was like a boat that kept bashing itself to pieces on the same rocks with every incoming tide. Pari, for all of her glamor, her café-au-lait skin and flashing black eyes and white teeth and rakish grin and long black hair, was a train wreck in motion. He sensed danger about her, and she understood she was no good for any man as long as this Brussels sprout kept working her over on every business trip from Brussels to New York City.

Rick and Pari had found an end to their lunch rather gracefully. "I don’t like Brussels sprouts," he told her.

"Me too, Rick. I think I am beginning to acquire more of a taste for good old American hamburger," she said while finishing her after dinner coffee and glancing at her watch. "You know," she said with a wink, "red blooded meat, made in U.S.A. Maybe a nice cowboy type, all sizzle and all steak."

"I am afraid that I’m just a meatball," he told her. "I hope you find that right guy who will take care of you better than Mr. Endive."

They parted company with a handshake on a street corner in Midtown, and knew they probably would never see each other again. It went like that a lot, when Rick tried his hand at dating in the City.

It was finally with a sense of relief that Rick once again arrived in steady-state, slow-paced, reliable Emery Township. He had no friends or roots here, but the little place was beginning to feel more and more homey.

Crossing the border from New York State into Connecticut was, first of all, always a relief for him, going from concrete to greenery. Upstate New York, New England, Pennsylvania, backwoods New Jersey, they were all green regions with pastures and trees. New York City was for him a nice place to visit, and a nicer place to have in his rear view mirror. Maybe he would let Geoff take on a bigger role after all, which Dad in his wisdom apparently had recognized. He said to the dashboard: "You were right, Dad, I was too full of wild oats to get a good running start. I’m racing in top form right now, but I am just not me. What I mean by that is that I am a man without a woman, I mean without a good woman, which is like pencil without lead in it, or a pen without ink, or a wallet without money, or a pizza pie without pepperoni, or a library without cards."

It was raining hard when he pulled into Tony’s gas station. Old Tony. There he was, wearing a plastic poncho that didn’t fit quite right, working his batootee off as always. The poncho was see through, and he wore those same oily, gray and white striped overalls under it. He counted money, negotiated with customers, pumped gas, answered the phone, yelled instructions to his mechanic, and waved hello to Rick Moyer, seemingly all in one blur of motion. Things were hoppin’ and poppin’ here in Emery, land of black sand and mysterious librarians.

Tony was doing high jumps in the rain. "I caught the triple payoff at the track! I won a thousand dollars at Belmont!"

Rick pulled him under the aluminum overhang, where the air was a fine mist of whirling droplets but the ground was only damp. "That’s wonderful, Tony. So you can close up the station and retire now?"

Tony’s face streamed with rain and joy, but his eyes were hard and practical. "With a thousand bucks, I can retire maybe for one day. Are you crazy, Rick?"

"You have to go back every day and win again." They were shouting because of the noise of wind, rain, traffic, and a backhoe raising hell nearby.

"I can’t do this again, maybe ever in a lifetime, Rick."

"You have to know your horses, Tony. You have to study them."

"They all look alike to me, Rick. And their rear ends too."

"Then why do you risk your money on them?"

"Because want to feel like a million bucks sometime."

"You don’t make any sense."

"It happened to me one time and I will tell everyone for the rest of my life about the day I won a thousand dollars at the track."

"Let me be the first to congratulate you."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you my friend. We should be this lucky with women."

Rick looked at him while the pump hose at his side gurgled and throbbed with gasoline. "Is it luck with women, or do you have to study them like you do race horses?"

"I’ve been married five times, Rick." He patted Rick on the cheek. "I am the wrong man to ask."

Rick followed him around in the rain. "You mean you just keep gambling. You meet a woman and you marry her a few days later."

"Weeks, months, Rick. A decent span of time to make it look good." He pumped gas, yelled at a passing taxi, waved to a police car who emitted a siren fweep and briefly flashed his lights, and ran to answer the phone in his office.

Rick ran after him, hoping for something more.

Tony turned and patted him once more on the cheek, in the entrance to the gas station with its smells of oil and rubber and glue. "The truth is, my boy, I marry them the first time I lay eyes on them. The ceremony and the alimony come later. That is passion. The hell with the consequences. The first one cleaned me out so I have nothing for the next ones to go after. You see how much energy, how hard I work, not even stop to take a sang-gwich." He pronounced it the Long Island way, home of the Belmont track where he had made his win. "What good is life without passion?"

"If I find the answer, I’ll text you," Rick said.

Minutes later, Rick drove across the street and pulled into the library parking lot. There was a book in there, and he was going to check it out. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he was going to find it today. It was a book he had been looking for all his life. It was pouring sheets and buckets as he pulled his raincoat over his head and made a run for the main entrance.

Inside, he found himself amid the same welcome smells of perfume, books, and wet umbrellas. As he shook his coat out, careful not to splash, there was that woman at the counter who resembled a prehistoric hen, missing only talons (unless you counted her long acrylic pink fingernails). "Mr. Moyer," she said in a reedy but commanding tone. "What can we do for you."

"I need to check out a book."

"Do you have a membership here?"

He stepped up to the counter. "No, but I would like one."

"You have to be a resident of Emery, Mr. Moyer." She reached under the counter and, with trembling hands perhaps symptomatic of early onset palsy, she took out a book with a rubber band around it, and a yellow form slip. "This is that book on dinosaurs that you wanted. I’m afraid I cannot lend it to you because you need a library card."

He put both hands on the counter, palms down. "What is your name?"

"Mrs. Rose Otto."

"Mrs. Otter—"

"Otto," she said with flaring little eyes and a horrified red mouth.

"Mrs. Otter, what if I bought a house here in town today? What if I paid cash. What if I bought a whole row of houses here, just so I can check out that book."

She trembled with horror. "I don’t know."

He slapped his hand down on the counter, gently but firmly. "What do you mean you don’t know?"

She raised one trembling, talon-like hand and pointed at him as if her arthritic fingers were a chicken beak. "Mr. Moyer, you can buy all the houses here that you want, but that doesn’t make you a resident. It doesn’t mean you really live here."

It was Rick’s turn to look horrified. "Am I having a nightmare? Is this a rainy day dream?"

She continued holding that trembling, bluish chicken head-hand in the air, with one large, flat, yellowed fingernail pointing at Rick like a staring eye. "Mr. Moyer, your soul is not here. You drive through here in your car, stop for gas or pizza, and order a book about dinosaurs. You do business deals in New York and you reside in Boston or wherever you reside, but you are not living here in Emery. You see, buying an address makes you a resident, but it doesn’t mean you live here."

Rick sputtered: "This cannot be for real. We are not having this conversation. I must be asleep in my car. That’s it. I am going to wake up any moment and realize that I am home in bed. This cannot be happening to me."

At that second, a woman’s voice intruded. "Rose, dear, it’s time for lunch."

Rose kept her hand in the air, but turned halfway to face a pleasant lady who had emerged from an office. The sign on the office door read Mrs. Linda Damien, Chief Librarian. "But I am not done with Mr. Moyer here."

"That is okay," said Mrs. Damien. "I am going to send you off to lunch, and I will take over here."

"But."

"Go."

Rose meekly turned and sort of hopped away in little odd steps.

"I am sorry," Mrs. Damien exclaimed genially. She was a heavy set, imposing woman with very dark reddish-copper hair. She was an Earth-mother figure swathed in Earth colors including a kind of light tomato sweater, a sort of cocoa wool skirt, some very English looking cereal-colored wool hiking socks, and sensible brown shoes with thick caramel rubber soles. She wore a pretty white blouse with vivid tiny green asparagus (or something) motifs all over it in a tasteful distribution. "I am sorry. Rose has worked here since the English settlers arrived, or maybe earlier. She tends to get very fussy and philosophical. Now what is your problem, young man?"

Rick pointed to the book.

"And?"

"Residence."

"You live here?"

"No, and I do not reside here."

"I’m sorry."

"Me too."

She blinked, long and deeply. "Huh? What did you just say?"

Rick cleared his throat. "The lady said…"

"Oh, that’s just Rose. Not to worry. Do you have a library card, Mr. -?"

"Moyer. Richard Moyer. Rick."

"Mister Richard Rick Moyer, how do you do. Let’s solve your problem."

He showed her his library card, which was from an hour out of town, and actually nearly out of state, though not out of date thank God. Harford was nearly in Massachusetts. Connecticut being so small, it was a lot like Luxembourg or Andorra, if a bit larger. Drive two hours in any direction, and you were no longer there.

"We have a form you sign, and you pay a dollar, and you get an inter-library loan good for three weeks. We run it against your home library. If you don’t deposit the book with them for return to us within three weeks, we send teams of armed assassins to water board you. Can you work with that?"

"I will try to read the book on my lunch hour tomorrow and have it back here within two days—no more."

She clapped him soundly on the back. "Just kidding, my friend. We do the inter-library loan, it is a dollar, and I am sure you will return our book to us one way or another."

"I promise."

"Good." She raised her face and said loudly: "Marian!"

A voice wafted from somewhere. "Yes."

Or: Ye-e-e-s-s.

"Marian, kindly take care of this gentleman’s needs."

Rick turned, and nearly had a heart attack.

There, rounding a corner, was the most beautiful and perfect woman he had ever seen. It was She, the woman who had nearly caused his heart to stop before, She for whom he scanned in the windows every time he drove (slowly) through Emery, She in fact who was the only reason he even knew Emery existed, and the little Town of Black Sand had become a mythological paradise in his feverish imagination.

She had that dark, rich hair—a mystery in itself, the way it tangled and hung somehow in generous, shiny swirls over her neck. She was almost tall, and willowy, and maybe a bit thin. Yet, she was no emaciated and bony fashion model, but a woman, filled out just right, and curvy where she needed to be so. She wore a rainy day outfit, consisting of expensive, soft leather hiking-type boots, crew socks, jeans pants that looked comfortable yet fit snugly on her curves and points; she wore a white blouse with rounded collar wings, a blouse decorated with fine periwinkles; and over that a richly corded, expensive looking sweater braided in some sort of fisherman’s weave; and a pair of gold earrings like an odd little lump or rock on each ear lobe.

Her facial features suggested a typical rich American mix of Mediterranean and Irish or German, perhaps. Her eyes seemed crisp and vaguely almond-shaped, almost epicanthic, her cheekbones faintly high and sharp in a remarkable, pleasing way. Her facial shape was slightly exotic—fine boned, finely honed, hard to describe: stately, magnificent, handsome, sculpted, all without being exaggerated or overly sculptural. She had a girl next door quality that fit perfectly with the jeans and the sweater, the periwinkles and dusky glances, the pearly teeth and the pink tip of a tongue captured between them in a moment of shock. She was so perfect that he wanted to cry. He could look at her forever.

Her skin was pale, but with a rich creamy understatement as if her maker had thrown in a little extra melanin for pigment. For a moment, he thought it was her eyes that caused him such paralyzing joy and admiration, being a vivid caramel-green, but today tinged with a blue almost violet, and shiny as a dark blue sky on a stormy rainy day (like the one outside right now). Or was it the way she bit her lower lip, sucking it under her upper lip and teeth? No, it was the shocked, almost shamed look of recognition that said everything. Her look said that she longed for him. Her look, without a word said, was filled with an admission: she had coveted him, thought about him, and wanted him from the first moment they had laid eyes on each other several months ago. He knew that much about women. He had coveted, and been coveted, many times, but never anything like this. She came around that corner, never suspecting a thing, and came to a petrified stop before the man whose knees she would kiss if he let her, and here was Mrs. Damien commanding her to take care of this man’s needs. He read all this in her expression, and his heart melted within him. He was a kick or a shove away from being putty in her hands, if only she knew enough to seize the moment.