It had taken him less than three minutes to give the remainder of the day to her.
Outside he said, 'Well, this is a surprise.'
'For me, too.'
'You and old Hildegard have a fight or something?'
'No, not a fight.' She glanced at him askance. 'But something.'
He glanced at her car, parked at the curb. 'I walk to work, since it's only a few blocks. Do you mind driving so we can stop by the house and I can wash up and get my sweats and racket?'
'Get in.'
He craned around to check his backside, then grinned at her across the hood of the car. 'My front side usually gets dirtier than my back, so I shouldn't get your car seat dirty.'
They had just climbed in and slammed their doors when a rotund man came walking down the sidewalk, raised a hand and called, 'Hey, Joey!'
Joseph turned, then smiled and hooked an armpit over the window ledge. 'Hiya, pa, what's up?'
From her side of the car Winn saw the man bend down, then in the window appeared a smiling face beneath a cap advertising 'John Deere.' Into Joseph's lap he tossed a knotted plastic bag.
'Your mother says the rhubarb is ripe and sent me over to bring you some. And who's this pretty little thing?' His face was merry as he smiled at Winn, and she understood from whom Joseph inherited his charm.
Joseph awarded her a proud smile, informing his father, 'This is Winn Gardner, the lady I met at Mick's wedding. Remember I told you about her?'
'Oh,
'Nice to meet you, too, Mr. Duggan.'
'You takin' off for the day?' he asked Joseph.
'Yeah, but the boys are inside.'
'Guess I'll go in and say hello and tell 'em ma sent the rhubarb.'
When he was gone, Winn's eyes dropped to the bag of pink and green fruit, then lifted to Joseph's face. He smiled and hefted the bag. 'Ma thinks we don't eat right since we moved out, and she keeps sending over our favorites.'
'They live close to you?'
'Yeah, right here in town. Pa works at the hardware store, ma raises gardens and thinks she's still got to baby her boys.' But he chuckled good-naturedly and for a moment Winn envied him his very ordinary, but obviously caring family. There were more questions she wanted to ask about them, but while she drove, Jo-Jo changed the subject. She felt his eyes on her as he commented, 'I never thought I'd see you again. At least, not one on one.'
'I've had one of those days we'd all like to forget, and I needed something to take my mind off it. I tried calling Sandy, but she's still at work, and Paul was too, and my mother.' She clutched the steering wheel and refrained from turning to look at him. 'I'm probably out of line, turning to you, but I was just driving and there was Osseo in front of me, and I thought of you and wanted… to… well…' Words finally failed and, anyway, explanations seemed suddenly phony.
'I'm glad,' he said quietly, and pointed to a white house with red shingles and trim. 'That's it.' She'd never seen it in daylight before. It was quaint and farmlike, and very much a grandma's house.
Inside, it was just as she remembered, except the kitchen stove had been cursorily cleaned, and the Dutch oven was nowhere in sight. The ivy hung in the west window above the kitchen sink, and the little red plastic clock read three-fifty-five. There was a bag of Taystee bread on the kitchen counter and a duster of green grapes in the middle of the porcelain-topped table, not even in a bowl, just lying there with half their stems denuded.
The room was ugly. Homey. She loved it. From the red dotted Swiss curtains that had probably been hanging limply since years before his grandmother died, to the worn-off spots in the linoleum where she had undoubtedly stood while preparing hundreds of meals, Winn loved it all.
Jo-Jo uncapped a jar and took up a handful of something that looked like cold cream and began rubbing it into his hands. He turned on the kitchen faucet and scrubbed first his knuckles, then his nails with a small orange brush. She stood behind him, watching his blue shirt stretch tightly over his shoulders as he worked over the old-style double-width sink that had no divider, but a drain board off to one side.
He leaned down, opened a cabinet door and retrieved a square yellow plastic dishpan, then began filling it with water.
Glancing over his shoulder, he invited, 'Listen, if you'd rather wait in the living room, make yourself at home. I'm gonna wash up here quick and get rid of most of the grease smell, anyway.'
He turned to face the window while one-handedly unbuttoning the dirty blue shirt. He stripped it off and flung it across the cabinet top. Picking up a bar of soap, he bent forward and began scrubbing his face, neck, arms, armpits and stomach. He went at it as if in a great hurry and wasted no time being gentle with his own hide.
She stood in the archway leading to the living room, watching. When he leaned over the dishpan, the white elastic of his shorts peeped from beneath the waistband of his blue jeans. She caught a glimpse of hair under his arms and watched in fascination as the curls at the back of his neck grew wet and changed to a darker color. He turned on the water, cupped his hands and clapped them to his face about five times, snorting into the water to keep it from getting up his nostrils. It was like watching a dog charge out of a river and shake himself. Water flew everywhere, up onto the red curtains, across the faded gray linoleum lining the top of the cabinets and onto his dirty shirt there.
He straightened, groped beside his right hip for a towel that was strung through one of the drawer pulls and stood erect while beginning to dry his face.
When he turned, the towel was still covering his chin and jaws. He stopped dead, staring at her from above the towel. The pause was electric. Two droplets slid off his elbows, then he went on briskly toweling his arms and stomach. 'Oh, I didn't know you were still standing there.' His eyes followed his hands, and so did hers. She noted the thick brown hair that covered his chest, the hard tough muscles, upper arms that had hourglass dips halfway to the elbow. 'I said you could go wait in the living room. I got a new print of a 1920 Essex, but I ran out of room to hang it on the wall. It's leaning beside the davenport. Tell me what you think.'
What she thought was that any woman who'd prefer looking at a 1920 Essex to Jo-Jo Duggan washing up would be an utter fool! The scent of Ivory soap was everywhere in the kitchen, and that other curiously lye-like aroma she'd detected about him the first night-she took it to be the solvent with which he washed his mechanic's hands.
It suddenly struck her that she'd run to Jo-Jo Duggan for more than one reason. He had been on her mind ever since she'd met him, and to deny it would be worse folly than marrying a man to whom she was not well suited.
She was studying the Essex when he clattered up the wooden steps that led off the end of the room just beside the kitchen archway. As he took the stairs two at a time, he called back, 'Where'd you have in mind to play racket ball?'
'Either my club or yours,' she called back, casting her eyes about his living room, noting a tablet with some numbers scrawled on it, two old limp sofa pillows, two empty cans of Schlitz beer, a discarded white T-shirt-bits and pieces of Jo-Jo Duggan's life, the life of a simple workingman.
'Then let's go out to Daytona. I feel in the mood for the ride.'
He clattered back down the steps and appeared in the doorway with a navy blue duffel, his racket slipped into a sleeve upon its side. He wore a red jogging suit with a white stripe down each leg and each sleeve, white socks, and had his Adidas in his hand.
Her heart went off like a rocket.
'Let's go.' He dazzled her with that high-voltage smile. 'I'm all yours.'
She had the crazy exhilarating feeling that he was. Or that he could be whenever she said the word.
Chapter 7
