Everything I Left Unsaid(31)

“That guy…in your trailer the first time I met you.” What the hell was I doing? My mom would kill me for asking these questions. For prying. She used to yank on the end of my ponytail when I started asking too many questions. “Never mind, this isn’t my business.”

“Spit it out.”

“Are…I mean…do you?”

“Fuck men for money?”

I blushed so hard my eyes hurt.

“No. I f*ck them for pleasure. But some of the girls do at the club. There’s one of those old-school comfort rooms in the back.”

“Oh.” I had no clue what an old-school comfort room was. No clue. And I was suddenly on fire to know. But I wasn’t about to ask her. I didn’t have quite enough courage to reveal my total ignorance.

We sat in silence for a minute.

“How long have you lived here?”

“Too long,” Joan said.

“It seems nice.”

Joan’s silent laugh made her breasts shimmy. “Depends on context, I guess.”

“Oh,” I said, “you’re from someplace wonderful?”

“No.” Joan shook her head and then slid her sunglasses down over her eyes. “I’m not.” She stretched out on her back and didn’t say another word.

After a minute I got back on my mower and rode through the weeds, avoiding the sticks marking unseen hazards.





After locking up the mower and the rest of the tools, I followed the scent of something delicious being cooked over to Ben’s garden.

Part of me insisted that I heed both Dylan and Joan’s warnings. But a larger part of me was tired of taking other people’s warnings as rules. I was done having my mind made up for me by someone else.

Joan had an unforgiving view of the world if she could be angry at Tiffany for being a victim. I wasn’t about to take her word about Ben. And Dylan…I didn’t know enough about him to know his worldview, other than that he was both kind and controlling. I’d never known the two qualities to live in sync like that.

Perhaps Joan and Dylan weren’t looking past the tattoos. Perhaps they were caught up in some black-and-white idea that I wasn’t interested in. Maybe Ben had never given them tomatoes.

I found the old man sitting in front of a fire inside the half-built shell of his brick oven.

“You’ve made a lot of progress,” I said. Through the unfinished top of the oven I could see a cast-iron skillet over a crackling fire.

“Just about done, but I got impatient,” he said. “Thanks for what you finished the other day.”

“No problem. I didn’t want that cement to go to waste. What are you making?”

“Here,” he said, pulling out the pan. Inside, bubbling in oil, were little yellow plants. “Zucchini flowers.” He set the pan down in the grass and pulled off the mitts he’d used to protect his hands.

“My ex used to make ’em,” he said. “She was part Mexican. Fucking amazing cook.”

With a metal fork he grabbed one of the flowers and put it down on a piece of napkin he had with him, and the white paper immediately went clear with grease.

“Want to try it?”

I nodded and took the napkin, still so hot I shifted the little flower from hand to hand so my fingers didn’t burn.

He lifted the other flower out and put it down on his knee.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked.

“Nah.” He held out his palms and I could see the thick calluses on all his fingers. Three fingers on his left hand reminded me of Smith’s hand. They looked like they’d been broken and not set properly.

I blew on the flower and then finally bit into it. It was stuffed with a little bit of cheese, and as I pulled the flower away a long string of it came down and scorched my chin. My tongue was singed.

“Ouch. Ow. Wow.”

“Tenderfoot,” he muttered and tossed his flower into his mouth. He chewed contemplatively. “Not quite.”

I finished mine. It was cheesy and fried, which made it pretty damn great. “That was delicious.”

“My ex’s was better,” he muttered.

From a bowl beside his chair he pulled out jalape?o peppers he’d sliced in half, added them to the still-bubbling oil, and put the whole thing back in the fireplace.

“Are you going to just eat those?”

“Fried peppers? No, I’m going to make cornbread. My wife used to put peppers in hers.”

“You’re a really good cook,” I said. He was thinking about his wife and he seemed sad, staring into that half-finished oven. I wished I knew some way to comfort him. Leach away some of this loss he was so clearly feeling.

He shook his head. “Well, I can’t drink, I can’t smoke. Don’t ride no more. Friends are in jail or dead. This is what I got left.”

“You don’t have any family?”

He pursed his lips, staring into the fire as if trying to remember, and then he shook his head. “Nah. My old lady left years ago. Went west to her sister’s.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, responding more to the grief he couldn’t quite hide under those words.

He shrugged. “It’s done business, I suppose.”

“You don’t have any kids?” I asked. I rubbed at some dirt on my elbow, carefully not watching him. I wanted someone—Dylan or Ben—to tell me that they were related, that Ben was Dylan’s father. Otherwise, I didn’t know why Dylan wanted Ben watched.