Sunset Express

'I know that you're having trouble with your ex-husband. I know that he has a problem with you and Ben staying here. I want you to know that I'll support you in anything you want to do.'

Lucy sighed, and glanced toward the living room. 'Ben.'

'Don't blame Ben. I am a detective, Lucille. I know all and see all.'

'Darlene.'

'Does it matter?'

She sighed again, then leaned forward to rest her forehead against my chest. 'Oh, Studly, there is so much going on right now. I'm sorry.'

I put my arms around her and held her. 'You don't have anything to be sorry for.'

She looked up and her eyes were rimmed red and wet. 'I feel like I've ruined our time together.'

'You haven't.'

'I've let him intrude, and that's not fair to you or to me. I didn't tell you, and that is not the quality of honesty that I want in our relationship.'

'You were trying to protect me.'

She stepped back and looked into my eyes as if she were searching for something faraway and hard to see, something that she feared might change even as she saw it.

'There's so much going on right now. You just don't know.' She took a breath, then let it out. 'I really need to talk about this.'

'Then let's talk.'

She took my hand and led me out onto the deck into the cooling night air, with the last breath of day fading in the west. She held my right hand in both of hers and said, 'There are things you need to know.'

'I don't need to know anything about you, Lucille.'

'I'm not going to tell you deep dark secrets about myself. I don't have any secrets.'

'Shucks.' Trying to lighten the moment with a little humor.

Lucy frowned and looked away. 'These are things I need to say as much to help me get them straight as for you to be aware of what's going on. Do you see that?'

'Okay.'

She looked back. 'There are things happening between me and my ex-husband that I should've told you about, but didn't.'

I nodded, letting her talk.

'Not because they're secret or because I wanted to keep anything from you, but because I resent the intrusion and did not want these things to impact upon our time together. I did not want him to share this time with us.' The other presence. 'But I let him get to me, and he has intruded and that is not fair to either me or to you and I apologize.'

I started to tell her that she didn't have to apologize, but she raised a hand, stopping me.

I sighed. 'Okay. I accept.'

'I'm not asking for advice. I'm an adult, I'm an attorney, and I will handle this. Okay?'

I nodded.

'I mean, God, I'm paid to advise other people, am I not?'

I nodded again. Getting a lot of nod practice tonight.

She said, 'Richard has moved back to Baton Rouge.' Richard was her ex-husband. He'd been living in Shreveport for the past three years, and, in the time that I'd known Lucy, she'd mentioned him exactly twice. He, too, was an attorney. 'I've encouraged Ben to develop a relationship with his father, but Richard has taken it beyond that. He phones me at my office,- he drops around my house unannounced; he invites himself to outings that I've planned with Ben,- he's resurrected his friendship with a lot of the people at my firm. He has systematically reinserted himself into my life, and I do not like it.'

'You feel invaded.'

She made a brief, flickering smile. 'Studly, I feel like Normandy Beach.'

I said, 'Joe likes you. Joe would probably fly down and have a talk with him.'

The smile flickered again and, for just a moment, Lucy laughed. The tension was easing. 'Perhaps it will come to that.' The laugh and the smile faded then, and she said, 'When he found out that Ben and I were going to stay here, with you, instead of a hotel, he became abusive. He criticized my judgment and told me that I was setting a bad example for Ben and demanded that I leave Ben with him.'

I said, 'Luce?'

She looked at me.

I opened my mouth but did not speak. My mouth felt dry and there was a kind of faraway ringing and my fingers and legs suddenly went cold. There are those times when intellect fails us. There are those moments when the modern man fades to a shadow and something from the brain stem reasserts itself, and in that moment the joking is gone and we frighten ourselves with our dark potential. I said, quite normally, quite conversationally, 'What do you mean, abusive? Did he touch you?'

She shook her head, and then she placed both palms on my chest. 'Oh, no. No, Elvis. And if he had I promise you fully that I would've had him arrested so fast he would've had whiplash.'

I nodded again, but now the nods weren't funny. My fingers and legs began to tingle with returning blood.

She said, 'I thought it was past, but it isn't. That's why Darlene called. He's been phoning the office and leaving messages on my machine at home, and then I got upset even more that I had let him get me upset in the first place. Do you see?'

My breathing had evened out and the ringing was gone. I nodded. 'He pushed your buttons.'

'Yes.'

'He exerted a kind of power over you that you thought was behind you.'

She said, 'I'm so sorry you thought it was you, or that you had something to do with this. Oh, sweetie, it wasn't you at all. It was me.'

'It's okay, Luce. It's really okay.'

She rubbed my chest again and stared up at me because there was more. 'Everything is complicated because I haven't been happy at the firm or with where I am in my life, and I don't know what I'm going to do about it.'

I looked at her, and my heart began to thud.

'It started before I met you. It started even before Richard moved back.'

I looked at her some more, and the night air was suddenly sparkling with a kind of expectant electricity.

'I don't know if I want to stay at the firm. I don't even know if I want to stay in Baton Rouge.' She shook her head, glancing past me at Ben, glancing out at the warm house lights in the canyon. She finally looked back at me. 'Do you know what I'm saying?'

'Would you consider coming out here?' My heart was thudding so loudly I wondered if the people across the canyon could hear it.

'I don't know.' She took a deep breath and rubbed my chest again. 'I guess I just needed to tell you that I don't know.' She tried to make a joke. 'Damn, and I thought I was too young for menopause.'

I nodded.

'I'm feeling kind of stupid right now. It just seemed important to tell you.'

I touched her lips. I kissed her, with the center of my heart. 'I love you, Lucille. Rotten ex-husband or no. Longdistance relationship or no. Do you know that?'

Her eyes grew wet again, and she ran her hand along the line of my shoulder. She touched my tie. 'You look so nice.'

I smiled.

'You went to so much trouble with the champagne and caviar.'

I said, 'Would you like to go eat? We still have time.' They would hold the reservation. I was sure I could talk them into holding the reservation.

She took a breath, then let it out and carefully looked up at me. 'What I would like to do is stay home with my two guys. What I would like is to order a pizza and drink your wonderful champagne and play Clue.'

I grinned. 'You want to play Clue?'

She was suddenly very serious. 'I just want to be with you, Elvis. I just want to relax and enjoy being here. Do you know?'

I kissed her fingers. 'I know.'

I took off my jacket and tie, and we ordered Domino's pizza. We made a large Italian salad with pepperocinis and garbanzo beans and fresh garlic while we waited for the pie. When the pizza came, we drank the Dom Perignon and ate the pizza between bites of Beluga caviar mixed with capers and minced onion, and played Clue until very late that night. There was a smile on Lucy's face that did not leave, and made the room feel light and warm and explosive with energy. Ben laughed so hard that he blew soda through his nose.