Chapter 4 #2
he leaned back in his chair. Publicity tended to follow Dancy wherever she went, and he needed to make damn sure she was far
away before it could follow her here.
Dancy’s mouth tasted like a sewer when she awakened late that afternoon, and her stomach was a mess. As she sat up, The Boxcar Children fell to the bare wood floor. She needed to pee, and she needed a drink. Drinking had become her favorite hobby since she’d
lost her baby two months ago, the only thing that gave her respite.
The tiny bathroom held a miniature sink with running water and a mirror that showed, among other disasters, her hair protruding
in odd lumps and spikes from all the products that had held it in place. In the old days, shampoo commercials had paid her
rent, but those days were long gone. She pulled out her clip-in extensions and dropped them in the trash can, letting her
dull, tangled hair fall down her back. She felt a grim satisfaction in knowing she’d never looked worse. It was what she deserved.
Instead of wallowing in self-pity, she should have been finding a better way to get her career back on track than showing
up at the Peacock Gala.
Emerging from the bathroom, Dancy spotted a white terry-cloth bathrobe on the couch, along with a navy sweatshirt and a pair of men’s shower thongs.
Either Clint or one of his minions had been here.
Whoever it was had left whole wheat bread, coffee, and oatmeal on the reclaimed butcher block kitchen counter, which also held a hot plate, microwave, and coffeemaker.
An old-fashioned white enamel basin had been repurposed as a sink, complete with a center drain.
She opened the small undercounter refrigerator and found a carton of milk and a dinner plate covered in plastic wrap that revealed what looked like beef stew.
Instead of alcohol, a few cans of sparkling water stared back at her.
Asshole. She needed a drink.
Thirty minutes later, she was pedaling into the town of Lake Isabella on one of two road bikes she’d found propped on the
platform at the bedroom end of the caboose. She was never photographed without being perfectly styled, so riding into town
wearing the big T-shirt, baggy shorts, and too-long men’s shower thongs didn’t seem like much of a risk. She’d pulled her
long, ratty ponytail through the back of a cocoa brown ball cap she’d found under the bed. Its pink lettering read “Simply
the Best,” the name of Clint’s sister’s chocolate company. More important, she’d tucked one of the surgical masks from the
first aid kit in her pocket. Being able to wear a face mask was one lasting benefit of the pandemic.
She wondered if Sebastian had packed up the things she’d left in her room at Chicago’s Four Seasons and sent them back to
LA. For now, the cartoon shark backpack she’d borrowed would have to do as a shopping bag for the essentials she needed.
She hadn’t worked out in the eight weeks since her miscarriage, so she was breathing hard as she came over the last hill.
Two main streets laid out in an L formed the heart of Lake Isabella’s downtown area.
With the Fourth of July still a little more than a week away, the town hadn’t yet been invaded by hordes of summer visitors, but the local businesses were ready for them, and hanging baskets of impatiens adorned the town’s shepherd’s crook lampposts.
Dancy parked the bike in a rack by an olive oil and vinegar shop. Mask in place, she curled her toes in the men’s shower thongs
to keep them from falling off and flip-flopped her way to an ATM machine. There she withdrew enough cash so she wouldn’t have
to use any of her credit cards, all of which had her name stamped on them.
No one paid her any attention. She tightened her tangled ponytail, climbed on the bike again, and pedaled to the drugstore
she’d passed earlier. The clerk barely glanced at her as he rang up her purchases: toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant and lotion,
a comb, and a tube of lip balm.
For clothes, Dancy had to settle on a souvenir shop with a window full of Green Bay Packers football gear. There she bought
two team T-shirts with matching drawstring shorts, a few pairs of bikini underpants, and a couple of sports bras emblazoned
with a capital G in a green-and-gold oval. At the last minute, she threw in a gray T-shirt bearing the message “Football,
Bud, and Cheese Curds.” Shoes proved to be trickier. She ended up with gold-and-green Packers slide sandals printed with a
giant green-and-white G.
A bright purple banner flew above the door of the liquor store. She couldn’t go in. She couldn’t keep doing this to herself.
Although, surely one drink . . . No. Even one drink was too many. She had to stop.
She might have done it if a woman hadn’t passed by just then with a beautiful, dark-haired infant in a front carrier.
The baby batted at her sunglasses. The woman laughed, caught the little hand, and kissed it.
A fist clamped around Dancy’s heart. She stumbled inside and grabbed the first bottle of vodka she saw.
With no more room in her stuffed backpack, she hung the liquor bag over the bike’s handlebars and pedaled out of town. When
she got to the caboose, she leaned the bike against the side of the train car and took the liquor bag from the handlebars.
The Alden kids stored their milk bottle in a creek to keep it cold, but she didn’t need a creek. She had a tiny refrigerator
inside.
As Dancy gazed at the caboose, a weight settled over her. Taking the bottle inside a place where the boxcar children could
have dwelled felt like a desecration. Instead, she carried it to the edge of the clearing and a moss-topped log that made
an almost comfortable seat. She twisted off the cap and considered whether she was an alcoholic. She’d never drunk much before
her miscarriage, but for these past eight weeks, that was nearly all she had done.
The sun was settling lower behind the trees, casting long shadows over the carpet of leaves and pine needles. She’d visited
a fertility clinic the day after she’d left Roth. Her desire to have a child—a family of her own—had grown from primal longing
into a soul-wrenching hunger. Wanting a child who was hers alone, not entangled with any man she knew, she pored over sperm
donor profiles until she found a nerdy graduate student with a shiny health history and a love of classical music.
In February, when she got pregnant, she’d never been happier.
And then, eight weeks ago, just as she had regained her energy and appetite, she’d awakened in a pool of blood.
The doctor had explained that it wasn’t Dancy’s fault, that she could get pregnant again, but she knew the truth.
She’d spent so much time being a sex object that her body had forgotten how to do what it had been designed for.
After the miscarriage, she’d shut out the world, not showering, barely eating, choosing instead to drink and watch mindless
reality shows. Only starting a small kitchen fire after leaving a pan of canned soup unattended on the stove had frightened
her into pulling herself together. Instead of obsessing over the child she lost, she had to reestablish the career she’d abandoned.
Creating a splash at the Peacock Gala seemed like a good first step.
Evening was settling in. Dancy poked at a toadstool with the toe of her ugly slide and gazed across the clearing at the weathered
red railroad car. It was a home for wanderers, a home for the lost. Lost people. Lost innocence. Lost children.
Dancy rubbed her finger along the bottle’s label. Finally, she recapped it without taking a sip and leaned it against the
side of the log where she could find it later when the sadness grew unbearable.
After cleaning up from his early morning swim, Clint carried his first coffee of the day up the single set of steps to the
boathouse’s rooftop deck. His new Regal Bowrider powerboat was moored in the single berth directly beneath him, his sailboat
was docked on the right, and kayaks were stacked on the dock, along with a couple of jet skis. The outdoor lounge chairs,
ottomans, and forest green umbrellas made the deck a great place to hang out, and the cable railing didn’t block his view
of the bluffs rising from the other side of the lake. Fishermen were out this morning, and a sailboat floated in the distance,
its sails luffing from lack of wind.
The boathouse roof was a favorite gathering spot for the few people he’d invited here early on after the house was built: his mother and stepfather, his sister, Rory, her husband, Brett, and their two-and-a-half-year-old, Clint’s niece, Jemma.
His friends Thad and Olivia had shown up with their two kids.
Not many football players had a superstar opera diva as one of their best friends, but Clint did, and Olivia was one of his favorite people.
All of them had been easy company, visiting only for a few days. He never had to solve any problem bigger than the kids squabbling
over who got to sit next to him when he took them out in the Bowrider. No one grilled him about next season or misquoted something
he’d said about a teammate’s play. No one hit him up for game tickets or asked stupid questions, like what kind of animal
he most identified with or whether he thought his mother was hot. Actual fucking questions he’d been expected to answer. Here,
alone on his rooftop deck, he could find himself again.
A fish splashed next to the dock. A big one from the sound of it. He rose from the lounger to investigate. As he leaned over
the cable railing, he saw it wasn’t a fish making that splash but Dancy. She stood mostly submerged in the water, wet hair
dripping over her bare shoulders, the upper slopes of her breasts rising above the surface, her scapulae and clavicles as
sharp as switchblades.
She sank deeper in the water when she spotted him, so her shoulders were covered. “G-good morning.”
Even from the roof, he could see her teeth chattering.
Although it was nearly July, the lake hadn’t yet warmed up.
A bar of soap and the robe he’d left for her in the caboose lay at the end of the dock.
He hadn’t figured she’d be here long enough for the lack of a working shower in the caboose to be a problem.
He’d hoped one night in the caboose would send her running back to her real life, but here she was, bathing in the cold lake.
“The water won’t warm up for a couple more weeks,” he said.
“I’m p-pretending it’s summer camp.” She rubbed the bar of soap in her hands and ran the lather through her hair, an ineffective
shampoo. He stepped back from the railing, uninterested in prolonging the encounter.
As an osprey swooped over the water in search of a juicy bass or walleye, Clint deadheaded a couple of geraniums that his
mother had planted in the big, blue ceramic pots. She’d threatened him with his life if he didn’t keep them watered. He gazed
back at his house, studying the way it blended into the landscape. Closer to the boathouse and to the left was the glass cube
that held his gym and indoor sauna. He needed to have the gym separate from his house, a clear demarcation between his professional
and private lives.
He heard her kick in the water. Peering down, he saw her swimming for the ladder at the end of the dock. The water was clear
enough to see she was naked, although he couldn’t pick out any details, which was fine, because Dancy’s details no longer
interested him. No woman’s seemed to.
His head buzzed the way it always did when he thought about having lost his interest in sex.
Not that he’d ever been a player—that hadn’t sat right with him—but he’d had his fun.
This sexual drought had started sometime in December during the playoffs, and he’d had too much on his mind to give it much thought.
Then January had come around, followed by February, March, and April.
Next thing he knew, June was almost over and he still had no interest in taking any of the women who swarmed around him to bed.
Something was wrong. He loved sex. Loved women. The way they looked, felt, smelled.
He’d done some Googling and learned that a lack of interest in sex could be caused by depression, but he had nothing to be
depressed about. He had a great family, friends, and more money than he’d ever spend. He was doing what he loved, even if
he wasn’t doing it well. Hell, no, he wasn’t depressed . . . except that he no longer had much interest in one of life’s greatest
pleasures. Now he’d rather play video games.
So maybe he was depressed, which was only more depressing, because, with all life had given him, he shouldn’t feel that way.
Maybe it was being accused of Ashley’s murder that had finally caught up with him. The avalanche of publicity had magnified
his fame until it felt as if the whole world was watching everything he did.
Here he could mentally prepare to reenter the world and play at the top of his game next season. Escape it all—the demands,
the way any idiot could identify as a sportswriter and spout bullshit about a game they only thought they understood. He could
escape the uncomfortable, over-the-top adulation of his fans, the unrelenting expectations of his teammates, and the burden
of so many people looking up to him when he couldn’t look up to himself. Except he needed quiet and solitude to regain his
cool, and the woman splashing around in the water below was destroying that.
“Turn around,” Dancy said when she reached the ladder.
He did as she demanded and heard the swoosh of water as she pulled herself up the ladder. The creak of the planks followed as she walked along the dock. He couldn’t handle her disturbing his morning solitude again. “Use the shower in the gym,” he called out. “The building over there.”
“This is fine.”
It wasn’t fine with him.
He finally turned to see her disappearing along the stone pathway, wearing the robe he’d left for her, wet hair hanging halfway
down her back and strands of pondweed sticking to her wet calves. He headed back to the lounger to finish his coffee, but
he couldn’t get the image of those bony shoulders out of his mind. Maybe she was sick, although drug and alcohol addiction
were a more likely problem.
He needed his solitude. He’d let her stay one more night, and if she was still here in the morning he’d kick her out for sure,
bony shoulders or not. No second-guessing. No mercy.
He didn’t owe Dancy Flynn a thing.