“Never mind how long ago. Besides, they come untied because I step on my own laces.”
“I can see how it would make you feel better to believe that,” he laughed.
“You better quit it, Frank, you’ll make your ribs sore again.”
“Tell you what — let’s take our shoes off — then we won’t be interrupted all the time while we walk.” He eased himself down onto the sand, and we took off our shoes. It felt good, sitting there in the warm sand, a few feet out of the reach of the waves.
“Seems like I spent whole summers running around barefoot,” I said.
“I can see why.”
“Enough about the shoelaces, already.”
“Okay, okay. I spent whole summers barefoot, too. Drove my mother nuts. ‘You’ll step on a piece of glass!’ she’d say, or ‘People will think I don’t buy you shoes.’ But after the first week or so, my feet were so tough I could have walked on razor blades.”
“My mother used to say the same things to me. Barbara would be inside, trying on my mother’s high heels, and I’d be barefoot, climbing the tree in the front yard.”
“You had lunch with Barbara, didn’t you? How’s she doing?”
“Other than the fact that she spends too much time sitting there staring at four walls and trying to cheer Kenny up, she seems all right. We actually got along with one another today. I don’t know. We’ve never been real close, but we were okay until my father’s illness; then Dad died and she got married to Kenny, and except for a brief spell after Kenny dumped her, we haven’t had much to do with each other. We always seem to get on each other’s nerves.”
“I didn’t know your dad had died,” he said.
“It was before you moved down here, about seven years ago. He had a long fight with cancer.”
“I’m sorry.” He was quiet for a minute, watching the waves. “My dad died three years ago.”
I looked over at him.
“I guess I should be grateful,” he said. “It was quick. He had a heart attack.”
“Not any easier on you.”
He was quiet for a long time, but then said, “Maybe not.”
“How’s your sister?”
“Cassie? She’s doing great. She and my mom still live in Bakersfield. She’s married and has two kids.”
“Two kids? Your little sister has two kids?”
“Two boys, four and six — Brian and Michael Junior — hellions, both of them. But I’m crazy about them. Her husband is with the Highway Patrol. Cassie did okay by marrying Mike — he’s good to her. We’ve turned out to be one of those real cop families: my dad, Mike, and me.”
For a long while, we didn’t say anything.
“You know what’s crazy?” I asked.
“Yeah — the fact that we didn’t get in touch with each other more often.”
“Right.”
We watched a big black dog dive into the waves, swimming after a Frisbee. He returned soaked and sandy, but carrying his trophy proudly, prancing back to his owner, whom he showered with ocean water as he shook his dripping coat.
“I guess we could have tried harder,” Frank said.
“I don’t know. Timing was bad, I guess. We get to know each other, I move down here. You move down here, but you’re with somebody. You get in touch with me, but by then I’m with somebody.”
“What happened to that guy?”
“Greg?” I asked, grimacing. Greg, the man I was seeing around the time Frank returned to Las Piernas, was part of my Dating Hall of Shame. “In a word, nothing. I got tired of nothing and we broke it off. He just never got his act together. I think I was going through one of my desperate periods when I hooked up with him.”
“I can’t imagine you being desperate.”
I laughed. “Believe me, Frank, I have. And I ended up with some real doozies. True disaster cases. I pride myself on the fact that it has been a while since it happened. Maybe I matured enough to figure out that it was better to just ride out any panic I was feeling about being alone.”
“I know what you mean.”
“You do?”
“You think that only happens to women or something? I think it’s almost a universal experience for anyone who’s single long enough.”
“I guess you’re right. You were pretty serious about somebody for a while, weren’t you?” Of course, I was pretending Pete hadn’t already given me the salient details about the woman who lured Frank to Las Piernas.
“Yeah. Her name was Cecilia. She was with the Highway Patrol. I transferred down here to be with her, then she decided to go back to Bakersfield. It was just as well.”
“I suppose I should be grateful to her.”
