"This afternoon I thought I had it all figured out," she told him. "Then the whole thing fell apart on me. By the time it was over, it turned out that what I thought I knew I didn't know at all."
"Do you want to talk about it?" Butch asked.
"Not really. I guess what I need to do now is just forget about it. Try to keep work at work and home at home."
Butch passed her a bowl of dressing. "It's Roquefort," he said. "My own recipe.”
"Homemade?"
"But of course. If it's any consolation, the same thing happened to me today. What I thought I had all figured out for Chapter One wasn't figured out at all."
"So you've started, then-writing, I mean."
"Everybody always says make an outline," Butch said. "So I tried that. I worked on the damned outline for a solid week and wasn't getting anywhere. Then I finally figured out what the problem is. I've always hated outlining. Always. So I threw out the outline and started over from scratch."
Dipping a sprig of asparagus into the dressing, Joanna took a tentative bite of her salad. "This is delicious," she said, savoring the tangy flavor on her tongue.
"See there?" Butch said with a grin. "I'll bet you thought I was just another pretty face." And then they laughed some more.
"Seriously, though. You said you were going to write mysteries," Joanna said. "What kind?"
"Well," Butch said, "that's what I thought I had figured out. I thought I'd write books about a kind of tough-guy cop. Now I'm not so sure."
"Why? What changed your mind?"
"You."
"Me?" Joanna said. "How come?"
"Because from what I've seen in the last few days around here, being a cop is a whole lot harder than I ever thought. And I'm not so sure I want to write about a tough guy, either. There are a lot of those in fiction, you know."
"Are there?"
"Sure. So maybe I'll write a book with a female protagonist instead."
"I see. A lady detective." Joanna thought about that for a time before she spoke again. "Have you always liked mysteries?" she asked. "Did you read all those old books when you were a kid, the ones about the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew?"
"I was a boy, I'll have you know," Butch replied indignantly. "I wouldn't have been caught dead reading a Nancy Drew."
"But you did read the Hardy Boys," Joanna persisted.
"Of course. Didn't everybody?"
Again silence filled the room and they ate without speaking. Joanna, wanting to keep things light, tried drawing him out. "Have you chosen a pen name yet?"
"Since I haven't written Chapter One yet, that seems a bit premature. So no, I haven’t"
"Well, you should," she said. "When it comes time to start, that's what's supposed to go on the title page-the book's title and the author's name."
"Butch Dixon," he said slowly, sounding it out. "That doesn't have much of a ring to it. Sounds like somebody who'd write auto-repair manuals. No. Butch Dixon isn't going to cut it. And Frederick Dixon isn't much better."
"Then what's your middle name?" Joanna asked.
"Why do you want to know?"
"I just want to, that's all."
Butch sighed. "I hate my middle name," he said. "I haven't had enough to drink to start telling people my middle name."
"You're not telling people," Joanna objected. "You're only telling me."
"Wilcox," he said with a glower. "Not two 1's like the town. One 1."
"Why don't you use your initials, then?" Joanna suggested. "If you're writing about a female protagonist, people might think you're a woman. Let's say Faye Wanda Dixon."
Butch choked on a sip of champagne. "Faye Wanda!" he repeated. "'That's awful."
"But you see what I mean."
"Okay, F. W. Dixon, then. That's all right, I suppose. But doesn't it sound familiar? I'm sure I know of a writer by that name."
When they finally managed to dredge the name Franklin W. Dixon out of their Hardy Boys memory banks, they gave up eating altogether and collapsed on the floor amid gales of helpless laughter. Joanna couldn't remember laughing like that in years. It felt good. What remained of her day's awful burden lightened and disappeared entirely.
"No wonder the name sounded familiar!" Butch gasped, wiping the tears from his eyes. "We were just talking about him. And I can still see it now, the name and the initials printed on the skinny little spines of those tan-and-brown books. What's funny is, I already owned both the F and the W and I didn't even realize it. And you're right, of course. Good old Franklin W.-F. W.-was a woman masquerading under a man's pen name, right?"
"Right," Joanna agreed. "Turnabout's fair play."
Eventually they got up, cleared the table, and loaded the dishes into the dishwasher. With the kitchen cleaned up and the dishwasher running, they took their last glasses of champagne out onto the front porch to sit in the swing and watch the stars. It was chilly enough outside to make Joanna wish she'd brought along a sweater.
Butch noticed her rubbing her arms. "It never gets this cool in Phoenix during the summer," he said. "Too much humidity. Too much pavement."
"Are you going to miss Phoenix?" she asked.
"I wondered about that, but don't think so." He paused. In the interim, a roving band of coyotes howled back and forth across the valley.
"See there?" Butch added. "You don’t hear very much of that in Peoria anymore. No, I don't think I'll miss the city at all."
"So that's why you were so busy the last few weeks? You were working on the deal to sell the Roundhouse?" He nodded.
"I was worried," she said. "Especially when I called and the phone was disconnected. I thought maybe…"
"Maybe what?"
"I thought maybe you'd taken up with some other woman."
"That was bothering me, too," he said glumly. "I wasn't hearing much from you, either. You kept saying you were helping out a lot with Ruth and Esther, but I was obsessed by the idea that some other guy had moved into the picture."
"So we were both… well… jealous."
"I guess so."
"Don't you think that's funny?" Joanna asked.
"No," Butch said, shaking his head. "It's not funny at all. I'd hate like hell to lose you, Joanna." His voice seemed to break when it came time to say her name, as though he could barely stand to say the word aloud. Surprised, Joanna turned to look at him, but he kept his gaze averted.
"You mean that, don't you?" she said.
There was real wonder in her voice. After months of bantering back and forth, after months of what she had regarded as just having fun, she had finally caught a glimmer, a hint, of the depth of feeling Butch Dixon kept hidden under layers of jokes and easy laughter.
"Please, Joanna," he groaned. "Let's just drop it. I promised last night that I wouldn't rush you, and I'm not going to. I just want to be here, that's all. I'm not asking for anything more than that. I'm not making any demands."
She moved closer to him on the swing, letting the bare skin of her leg meet tip with the soft, worn denim of his jeans. Then she reached out and took his hand. "I wouldn't want to lose you, either," she said. She raised his tightly clenched fist to her lips and kissed the back of it. Under that light caress she felt the tension recede from Butch's hand and body both.
"Wouldn't you like to come inside?" she whispered. "No," he said. "Really. I think I'd better go. Now, before things end up getting out of hand."
For months Joanna had determinedly refused to acknowledge the aching tensions and urgent sexual needs of her body. By denying their very existence she had managed to survive, had managed to keep the fires inside her banked, her longings under wraps. Now, though, to her utter amazement, Butch Dixon had broken through her resolve, and had let a demanding and insistent genie out of its carefully bottled imprisonment. After months of self-denial, Joanna Brady suddenly realized that she was still young and still alive. It was time.