Romeo Fails Read online

  “Dorsey!”

  A smiling Maggie was bearing down on the table, her mother and Sarah behind her. Greetings were exchanged as they sat down. The two Bigelows were decked out in their Sunday best, Maggie in a flowered dress and her mother in a pale yellow suit. Matching purses and heels went without saying for both women. Mrs. Bigelow had always somehow reminded Dorsey of Mrs. Potato Head—not that the woman looked like a spud, it was more in the fierce accessorizing which dominated her every outfit. Even working in the garden, Vivian would be sure to sport matching gloves, hat and trowel.

  Sarah was elegantly low-key in a navy pinstripe pantsuit, which brought out the piercing blue of her eyes. No makeup, which was fine with Dorsey—she didn’t see how any cosmetic could enhance the gorgeous cheekbones, the gracefully feathered brows, the immaculate fair skin and those amazing eyes. She definitely preferred low maintenance to high in every way. In light of Sarah’s revelation about not being out to her family, Dorsey took another and more assessing look at her clothes. Her initial reaction had simply been one of appreciation. And attraction, she admitted to herself, although she was trying hard to be cool and objective. Despite that one magical night by the lake, she hadn’t sensed any interest from Sarah in rekindling anything. But back to Sarah’s appearance—if it hadn’t been for that night by the lake, would she have known Sarah was gay when she met her at the hardware store? She thought so, but maybe her prior knowledge and physical reaction were overriding all her other senses. Sarah was definitely more on the femme end of the scale, which no doubt made it easier for her to pass with her family. But those kinds of labels always led to confusion in Dorsey’s experience. Labels could be used just as easily to reveal or conceal. Even a woman who fit the butch stereotype as well as she did had her own quirks, her own likes and dislikes. People were just people, Dorsey thought. Each one an individual who had to be figured out on his or her own terms.

  Sarah sat down across from Dorsey as Maggie took the seat next to her best friend. Mrs. Bigelow faced her daughter. As Sarah took off her jacket to reveal a sleeveless, Mandarin-collared white shell and exceptionally well-toned arms, Dorsey felt a brief pang of disappointment that she wasn’t sitting next to her, where her bare arm might—just by chance—brush Sarah’s and no one would think anything of it. Wow, thought Dorsey, mentally making a face at herself—have I really sunk that low? Am I really that desperate?

  Yes, she sighed internally. But perhaps it was better to be seated across from Sarah, she decided. That way she got to look at her, at least. And maybe gain a little insight into what was going on inside that head. Sarah looked up from studying her menu and caught Dorsey’s glance. Her look was impassive, but Dorsey thought she caught a hint of warmth in the depths of those incredible blue eyes. Or did she? She was just torturing herself, she knew. And it was maddening.

  “We missed you at church, Dorsey Lee,” Mother Bigelow said chidingly.

  And you always will, thought Dorsey, but she merely smiled neutrally at her and said nothing.

  “But I guess you weren’t dressed for it anyhow,” Mrs. Bigelow added, casting a disparaging eye over Dorsey’s short-sleeved, brown-and-white Western-cut shirt with pearl snaps in place of buttons. Her favorite jeans and sneakers below wouldn’t have garnered any praise either. The smile now rigid on her face, Dorsey gazed blindly down at her menu to avoid a response she’d only regret later. She’d learned over the years that semi-courteous silence was the most effective defense against her best friend’s mother.

  She felt something nudge her sneakered foot and instinctively pulled it back slightly, only to feel the nudge again. It was Sarah’s foot, pressing gently against her own. She glanced at Sarah, who flicked her a look that included a small smile. She then turned her gaze back to her menu.

  Dorsey felt confused. Was she flirting with her? Did she even realize their feet were touching? Was she reading something into Sarah’s actions that wasn’t really there? Not much liking her muddle of feelings, she sat up straight and pulled both her feet back out of range, taking a sip of her ice water in the hope it would cool her down.

  The awkward moment was covered by Penny returning with the coffeepot and asking about their orders. The two Bigelow women opted for the buffet, while Sarah requested the Farmer’s Combo. Dorsey went with her favorite spinach omelet. Another awkward moment soon followed, though, when Sarah asked for a mimosa. Maggie and Dorsey froze for a second, knowing Mrs. Bigelow would disapprove. The older woman was clearly gathering her forces for her usual storm of criticism, but Dorsey recovered and jumped in first.

  “You know what, that sounds good,” she said. “I’ll have a mimosa too, please, Penny.”

  The quick flash of a wicked grin she got from Sarah made her heart jump in her chest. Steady, she told herself. Steady.

  “Me too,” piped in Maggie, surprisingly. Her mother looked like she was about to erupt, but Maggie managed to cut off the rumbling before it could begin.

  “Oh, come on, Mother, it’s just a little champagne—and we’re celebrating Sarah being here, right?”

  Vivian could hardly disagree with that, so she settled for pushing her chair back and stalking off to the buffet line, clearly disgusted with the three of them. They waited until she was out of earshot, then dissolved into giggles like ten-year-olds. Maggie’s eyes were wet behind the cloth napkin she used to dab at her eyes.

  “Y’all are going to get me in trouble this summer, I can tell,” she said between gasps for breath. She put the napkin down and started fanning herself with her hands instead. “Whew.” Having finally collected herself, she pushed her chair back and went off to the buffet line to placate her miffed parent.

  Penny was back with the three mimosas on a tray, leaning down and forward to distribute them, which was a pleasant sight in her scoop-necked T-shirt. Dorsey couldn’t help but notice Sarah checking out Penny with a cool and comprehensive head-to-toe glance. She discreetly savored the rear view too as Penny departed.

  “She’s married,” Dorsey couldn’t keep herself from saying.

  Sarah seemed to color slightly, but merely raised her glass to Dorsey, saying “Oh?” and meeting her level gaze with the subtlest of smiles.

  “Yeah. To the chief of police.”

  “Oh. Well…cheers, eh?”

  “Cheers,” Dorsey replied.

  They both took a reviving sip of mimosa. A moment of silence passed. Although they were alone at the table, Dorsey knew this was not the time for any kind of tête-à-tête as the small café was packed with her fellow townspeople. It looked like just about everybody was there that morning, from Officer Argyle in her uniform at the counter to Melba Porter, the new doctor. The physician looked uncomfortable, poor thing, as the guest of the Blankenships, he being the bank manager and she being the unofficial town welcome wagon/busybody, take your pick. The three of them were wedged in a small corner booth nearby.

  Dorsey wondered when she would ever have a chance to talk with Sarah privately. Maybe it was better if she didn’t, especially with the complication of Sarah not being out to Maggie. It wasn’t like Sarah had made it clear she wanted to pick up where’d they’d left off that night by the lake. A couple of glances, a foot pressed against hers under the table—it was probably nothing. Probably.

  “So…” Sarah said, breaking the silence. “You’re the best friend I’ve heard about all my life.”

  “And you’re the beloved cousin.”

  “I guess it’s a small world,” Sarah said ironically. Her gaze was more bleak than amused, though.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Dorsey found herself hunting for something else to say, which was odd, considering she had about a hundred questions clamoring in her head. Like—do you ever think about that night? About me? Are you seeing anybody? In a relationship? Can we go somewhere and get naked right now?

  She settled for something more appropriate to Sunday brunch.

  “So…um, not to be rude, but what you are doing here exact
ly?” she asked.

  Sarah smiled at her forthrightness. “Good question,” she said. “And a long story. The short version is I’m taking some time off from work to write and I wanted to get out of the city for a while, so I decided to come visit my favorite cousin, Maggie.”

  That actually raised more questions than it answered, Dorsey thought.

  “Taking time off to write? But don’t you write for a living?” Dorsey said, a little confused. “You’re some kind of reporter for a big magazine in Chicago, right?” Maggie had told her all about it, many times.

  Sarah grimaced, whether at the tartness of her orange juice or at Dorsey’s words, it wasn’t clear.

  ‘“Some kind of reporter’—yeah, that sounds about right,” she said with a wry grin. “Or, at least it used to… I guess you could say I’m between jobs right now.”

  Sounds like you got fired, Dorsey thought, but was too polite to say.

  “So you’re spending the summer in Romeo Falls?” she ventured.

  Sarah said, “Well, I don’t know about the whole summer. I’m kind of playing it by ear for the moment.”

  “Oh.” They both sipped their drinks, Dorsey wondering if Sarah was thinking about three months of Vivian Bigelow’s company like she was.

  “Let me ask you a question,” Sarah said with a smile and neatly changing the subject, Dorsey noticed. “I’ve never heard of a ‘swingtime’ hardware store before. What’s up with that?”

  “Good question,” Dorsey said, returning her smile and intentionally mimicking Sarah’s turn of phrase. “And also a long story. I’m not sure how or why, but somewhere along the way, my father fell madly in love with swing music. You know, big band music from the forties—Benny Goodman, the Dorsey Brothers, Artie Shaw?”

  “I see. And your mom let him name you after his favorite swing musicians?” Sarah’s eyes lit up as she made the leap.

  She was quick, this one, Dorsey thought. Smart and hot, her favorite combination.

  “Yeah, you guessed it. My brothers and I all got the swing names: Goodman Armstrong, Shaw Beiderbecke and Dorsey Lee Larue.”

  “Lee?” Sarah queried.

  “For Peggy Lee, the singer.”

  “Ah.”

  Further conversation was interrupted by the return of the Bigelow women to the table, plates laden down with buffet bounty. Mrs. Bigelow was a few steps behind her daughter, having stopped to say hello to just about everyone on the way back. Her last stop was at the Blankenship table a few feet away, where the vandalized highway sign was still the hot topic.

  “So, Dorsey Lee,” Mrs. Bigelow said as she sat down, having apparently decided to magnanimously forgive them all, “have the police talked to Goodman about this terrible graffiti crime?”

  “To Good? I don’t think so. Why would they?” Dorsey responded, surprised. No one could ever think her brother Good—salt of the earth, solid citizen, respected merchant—had anything to do with such mischief.

  “Because your store is the only place in town that sells spray paint,” Mrs. Bigelow replied triumphantly. Dorsey privately thought Mrs. B. had been watching too many Murder She Wrote reruns, but said nothing. But then Maggie jumped on the bandwagon.

  “Ooh, we could be suspects, Sarah,” she said with a laugh to her cousin, who was more intent on draining the last of her mimosa. “We bought some red spray paint yesterday to redo those old chairs on the porch,” she told her mother, who immediately launched into a critique of Mary Margaret’s crafts skills and color choices.

  Sarah was looking about for their waitress, ready for another round. She located Penny behind the counter, presenting the bill to Officer Argyle. Sarah frowned as she watched that bastion of the law stand, hike up her heavy gun belt and lumber toward the cash register. Her frown was almost bordering on a glare, Dorsey observed with surprise.

  “You must have met Mrs. Gargoyle,” she said to Sarah. Sarah looked confused until Dorsey nodded toward the officer.

  “Mrs. Garg—oh, yeah, Officer Argyle, I get it. Yeah, she welcomed me to town with a speeding ticket the other night as I drove in. I think I was doing all of thirty-seven in a thirty-five mile an hour zone. I tried to sweet talk her into just giving me a warning, but she wouldn’t budge.”

  “She’s immune to sweet talk.”

  “Sweet talk? Who’s getting sweet talked?” Maggie chimed in with interest, picking up on Dorsey’s words.

  “I was just saying Mrs. Gargoyle is immune to it.”

  Mrs. Bigelow said with asperity, “I do wish you girls wouldn’t use that horrible nickname for Gretchen. It’s very rude. And un-Christian, Mary Margaret. Besides, she and Luke and the rest of them do a very good job of keeping our little town safe. Much safer than Chicago, for instance. You must be so glad to be out of that horrible city, Sarah.”

  “Well, I’m a big-city girl, Aunt Viv, so you know I love Chicago. Every place has its good points and bad points, I’m sure,” Sarah replied diplomatically. “Although it is great to be able to take a walk after dark and feel safe here,” she added.

  “Oh, is that where you went last night? I heard you go out after I went to bed and was wondering,” said Maggie.

  “Well, I never was so glad as when Mary Margaret came home from the city after college and settled back down in Romeo Falls,” Mrs. Bigelow said. “There are just so many pitfalls for a young woman alone in the city. Especially in today’s world.”

  She shuddered, no doubt imagining all those terrible pitfalls. Her daughter’s MBA was gathering dust while she taught math at the high school, but Dorsey knew this was outweighed in her mother’s mind by her “escape” from the evils of big-city life. She’d heard the speech before from Mrs. Bigelow on how cities were chock-full of drug dealers, vegetarians, homosexuals, Democrats, foreigners and other persons of low repute. Dorsey ignored the diatribe and put the time to better use by catching Penny’s eye, requesting another round of mimosas via hand signals. Penny soon brought the drinks along with the orders for Dorsey and Sarah.

  “Whoa!” Sarah exclaimed. “This is a lot of food.”

  They all eyed her oversized “Farmer’s Combo” platter with its generous portions of scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns and wheat toast, plus a short stack of blueberry pancakes.

  “Now you know why I’m the chubby cousin,” Maggie said. “If nothing else, they feed you in this town.”

  “Oh, Maggie, you’re fine,” Sarah said. “And this is fine too. I just wasn’t expecting so much. But it’s all good—I like a little bit of everything.”

  Again there was that quick flicker of a look toward Dorsey, who couldn’t help but flash back to their one night together, when Sarah had, indeed, liked a little bit of everything. Was she flirting? Dorsey felt her face warm and knew she was blushing, but hoped everyone else would attribute it to the mimosas or the rising temperature in the busy restaurant. She took another sip and told herself to get a grip. Just because she hadn’t gotten laid since that night with Sarah almost a year ago didn’t mean she had to obsess over and pick apart everything the woman said. Just because she remembers you doesn’t mean she wants anything more, she told herself.

  “How’s your mother?” Mrs. Bigelow asked her, bringing Dorsey back to the here and now with a jerk. “Still enjoying the Florida sunshine?”

  “Yes, she’s fine. She loves it down there.”

  Dorsey’s mother had remarried a couple of years after Hollis’s death, to Earl Ray the fertilizer salesman. They were down south now, in a trailer by the sea.

  Mrs. Bigelow never let an opportunity pass to voice her opinion.

  “What she saw in that Earl Ray I will never know. When a man spends all day with fertilizer…”

  “You know he’s retired now, Mother,” Maggie firmly redirected the conversation. “So, Dorse, how’s it going with your carpentry job? Dorsey’s very skilled with her hands,” she added as an aside to her cousin. Heat suffused Dorsey’s face again as Sarah smiled, her blue eyes focused on applying the perf
ect amount of syrup to her delectable-looking pancakes.

  “It’s no big deal,” Dorsey said, feeling embarrassed for some reason to be the center of attention. She was often more comfortable with listening than talking, especially in a group situation. “I’m just fixing up the Bartholomews’ deck,” she told them, naming an affluent family who farmed about ten miles west of town.

  “When do they get back from their cruise?” Mrs. Bigelow wanted to know.

  Between Mother Bigelow and her rival Mrs. Blankenship, they had their fingers on the pulse of just about everything going on in Romeo Falls. The Bartholomews were off on a month-long Mediterranean cruise to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

  “A couple more weeks,” Dorsey said. “I’ll be done before they get back, though. I’ll be out there every night this week, probably.”

  “Well, maybe we’ll come visit you,” said Maggie, meaning herself and Sarah. “We’ll bring a picnic supper and show Sarah a real live farm.”

  Dorsey wasn’t sure how much of a treat that would be, but she knew Maggie only meant well.

  “Yeah and if they have a pool, so much the better!” Sarah said, fanning herself with the little laminated card that showcased the desserts. “I heard the weatherman say this morning that it’s supposed to heat up tomorrow.”

  “No pool, but they do have a hot tub,” Maggie told her, eyes alight with fun. Clearly, she’d already begun planning the picnic in her head.

  “Now, girls,” Mrs. Bigelow began in a lecturing tone. “I don’t think you should be having a party at someone else’s house while they’re away.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Dorsey said. “Mr. Bartholomew gave me the keys and told me I could use the hot tub if I wanted. I’m watering their plants while they’re gone too.”

  “Well, how very enterprising of you,” Mrs. B. sniffed, clearly disappointed that she wouldn’t get to finish her sermon on Thou Shalt Not Par-tay.

  They got through the rest of brunch, despite Mrs. Bigelow’s propensity to dominate the conversation with her views on her five favorite topics: (1) Why Every Young Woman Needs A Man, (2) The Economy (See Previous Topic), (3) The Liberal Media Is Brainwashing Us All Straight To H-e- *-*, (4) Kids These Days! and (5) Mary Margaret’s Weight, Divorce, Job, etc. Dorsey tuned the old harpy out as best she could and divided her attention amongst the excellent food, replies whenever Maggie engaged her in the conversation and occasional glances at Sarah across the table. Her bare arms, pale, slender fingers and soft black hair were all entrancing. She had to be careful not to get lost in contemplation of the erstwhile Goddess, however—she didn’t want to cause problems for Sarah, herself or anyone else. A couple of times, she found Sarah’s eyes composedly regarding her from across the table. Dorsey wondered what she saw.