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“Do tell?” Ronnie’s eyebrows did a Groucho Marx dance.
“It would’ve been easier to ride one of them.”
“Bareback?”
“The ‘puppies’ caught sight of a stray Siamese nosing around the garbage cans out back of Phil’s Fine Fish Fry, and…” Anna looked down at her oversize fuchsia T-shirt and favorite striped bike shorts. They were flecked with moist green bits she prayed were relish. A glob of white creamy stuff clung to the hem of her shirt. Please let that be mayonnaise, she prayed, staring at the shivering form.
“Go no further. We get the picture….” Ronnie eyed her. “In glorious detail. Now go upstairs and take a shower in tomato juice or something. We’re the Clean Queens, not the Grunge Girls. Any minute now, someone is going to walk through that door, and what’s the first thing he sees? You prancing around the place, smelling like last Friday’s flounder special.”
The phone rang. Ronnie whooped. “Business is booming!” She waved her hand once more, dismissing Anna, then picked up the phone. “Clean Queens. We’ll give your castle the royal treatment, and you won’t have to ransom the family jewels to pay for it.”
“She loves saying that, doesn’t she?” Anna said to her mother as she crossed the reception area. To the left was another room with a folding table, metal chairs and easel. Anna would be training several new girls in there this morning while her mother interviewed other applicants in the opposite office. It looked as if Clean Queens would survive its first month of operation.
“Are you sure you’re all right, sweetheart?” her mother asked.
Anna nodded. “As soon as I shower and change.”
“Go on upstairs. Take a bubble bath,” her mother told her. “You’ve been working too hard. If you’re not here in the office, you’re cleaning with the afternoon and night crews.”
“How else am I going to make you a rich old woman?”
Her mother smiled. “Make sure you have some breakfast. You’re getting too skinny. The scones are still warm on top of the oven. We’ll be fine down here. The schedule’s all set, and so far, none of the girls have called in.” She crossed her fingers.
Anna stopped at the doorway that connected the offices to the apartment upstairs. “So, is business booming?”
Her mother looked up from the schedule book. “Ronnie and her theatrics aside, let’s just say we’re building…one dust bunny at a time. But you know those TV commercials you did?”
“Yeah?”
“They’ve brought in three calls.”
“They only started airing two nights ago.” Anna gave the thumbs-up sign.
Her mother blew her a kiss. “I’ll hug you later, sweetheart, when you don’t smell like Charlie the Tuna.”
Anna started toward the stairs, smiling. Her mother had invested everything she could in opening her own commercial and residential cleaning business. It was a huge risk, but it had always been her mother’s dream. Anna wanted to see it come true, and would do anything to see that it did—from insisting her mother borrow the money Anna had been saving toward a down payment on a house to dressing up like a cross between a bag lady and a Las Vegas chorus girl, donning a rhinestone crown, grabbing a feather-duster scepter and pirouetting across a dusty sound-stage, singing the praises of the Clean Queens.
She was at the stairs when she heard the front door chimes, announcing a newcomer. Another customer, she hoped.
“Well, hello, sailor,” she heard Ronnie say. “Can I help you?”
She was at the first step when she heard a voice say, “Is Anna here?”
She stopped, a wash of heat drowning her. Everything stopped. Time reversed. Dimensions narrowed. There was nothing but that voice. A voice from her dreams.
“Who-o-o-m-m-m shall I say is calling?” Ronnie would be eyeing the man, giving him a good onceover.
“Kent? Kent Landover? Is that you?”
“Ma’am?”
“It is you—little Kent Landover. You don’t remember me? Of course you don’t remember me. The last time you saw me you were no more than knee-high. I’m Anna’s mother, Maureen…Maureen Delaney.”
“Anna’s mother?” First it was a question. “Anna’s mother!” Now it was glee.
“Little Kent Landover.” Her mother would be shaking her head in amazement. “Look at you now, all tall and handsome and grown-up.”
“Ma’am, it’s an honor.”
“Oh, honey, no need to stand on formality. You always were such a serious little thing. Come on over here and give an old lady a hug.”
Anna heard Ronnie laugh. “Yeah, sure, little Kent Landover. One of the most eligible men in America—until recently. I keep my list up-to-date, honey. Little Kent Landover waltzes into the Clean Queens, simple as you please and—”
“Oh, I’m not that Kent Landover,” the man said.
Anna gripped the stair rail, her knuckles arranged in a white row.
“No? Which Kent Landover would you be?” Anna heard the upward sail of Ronnie’s voice and knew the large woman was standing up now, erecting a barrier. “The poor-as-a-church-mouse illegitimate twin?”
“I’m K.C.”
Anna sank down to the bottom step. Her hand, a bony relief, clung to the rail.
“My name is Kent Landover—”
“Uh-huh.” Anna heard the guard in Ronnie’s voice. She’d be circling the corner of the desk, bringing her substantial bulk closer to the stranger.
“But I’m not that fella who owns some company out here in California.”
“No?” Ronnie had her weapons drawn and cocked.
“No, ma’am. There seems to be some confusion about that other fella and me. I’m nothing so grand. I do a little cowboyin’—”
“Cowboyin’?” The word, uttered in Ronnie’s south Bronx accent, seemed to bounce off the ceiling and around the room.
On the step, Anna sat, listening. She felt the smile soft on her face, the tears soft on her skin.
“Okay, K. C. Cowboy, what brings you to the Clean Queens?” Ronnie’s accent was more pronounced, her voice wary.
It was quiet, the moment before a storm. The breath holds. Wind stills. Birds go mute. Animals raise their heads, look with wonder. Anna’s head rose now, too, turned toward the doorway and the man beyond.
“I’ve come…” The voice paused, then came back stronger, clearer. “I’ve come to ask Anna to be my bride.”
Chapter Two
“What?” Ronnie exploded. The gale of voice filled the room and reached to where Anna sat. She didn’t react. Shock had already stilled her.
“Ronnie.” It was her mother’s steady voice. “Perhaps our guest would like a cup of coffee or tea?”
“Sure. With one or two lumps of reality?”
“Ronnie.” The calm was still there, but warning had been added.
Anna heard the man’s voice again. “I understand you being upset and all, Miss Ronnie—”
It was different, deeper than the voice of Anna’s childhood. It was the song of one girl’s every fantasy.
She heard Ronnie’s heavy tread. “Don’t you ‘Miss Ronnie’ me, buster.” She’d be shaking her finger in his face now. “Don’t let my delicate demeanor fool you. Do you remember ‘The Bam Bam Bomber’ who led the Rocking Rollers all the way to the nationals in ’79?”
Oh no, Anna thought. That remark always prefaced trouble. Mama, she prayed, break it up before Ronnie goes for a choke slam.
“No, ma’am, I can’t say that I do, but I do understand your reservations regarding Anna and me.”
“You better, buddy.” There was the even, full thud of steps. Ronnie was stalking now.
“I could never be good enough for her.”
“Damn straight.”
“Her being a countess and all…”
Anna’s hand rose to her open mouth.
“But I love her.”
Anna closed her eyes.
“Are you trying to make fools of us, boy?”
“Ronnie, let go of his neck. Sit down,” Anna’s mother ordered. “Kent, you too, child, please have a seat. Let me fix you a nice cup of tea.”
“Lace it with lithium,” Ronnie suggested.
“Ronnie.” Her mother’s voice sharpened. Then it was soft again. “Kent, I’m going to make us some tea, and there’s some scones baked fresh this morning. Do you remember my scones, Kent?”
“No, ma’am, I’m sorry to say I don’t, but I’ve had a little trouble remembering some things lately.”
“Don’t give it no nevermind. It was a long time ago you last tasted my scones. Ronnie?” Her tone was firm again. “I’ll only be a minute. I’ll expect everything to run smoothly in my absence.”
“Yeah, sure,” Ronnie said. “Leave me to entertain lunatic.”
There was a pause, then Ronnie said, “Cowboy, I’m not sure this town is big enough for the both of us.”
Anna’s mother came to the doorway, saw her daughter sitting on the staircase step. She closed the door and sat down beside her.
“You heard?” Her voice was a balm.
Anna nodded. She didn’t know what to say, what to think.
Her mother nudged her with her elbow. “Countess.” One corner of her mouth tipped up into a grin.
Anna smiled even as the tears began to slip down her face again.
“Oh, darling girl.” Her mother slid her arms around her. “You love him, don’t you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Anna whispered into the soft cotton of her mother’s shirt.
“And he loves you.”
Anna lifted her head. She saw the far-off look fill her mother’s eyes and knew she’d already lost the fight. Still she had to say, “That’s equally ridiculous.”
“You fell in love with him when you were young, and you’ve loved him all this time.”
“No,” she protested. She laid her head on the wide square of her mother’s shoulder. “We were children.”
“As were your father and I,” her mother remembered.
“That was different.”
“I was seven. He was nine. I fell in love with him the first time I saw him. I love him still. It can happen.”
She stroked her daughter’s hair. “What does age matter? Not at all. Not when something’s supposed to be.”
Anna raised her head. “Supposed to be? Kent’s not a cowboy, Mama. I’m not a countess.”
Her mother’s bright green eyes met her own. “That’s not what he says.”
Anna clicked her tongue against her teeth. “You sound as foolish as he does.”
The sea-green irises twinkled. “‘Children and fools cannot lie.”’
“Another Old Irish proverb?” Anna asked.
“English, I believe.”
Anna looked away. “He’s crazy.” She could still feel her mother’s eyes on her.
“I don’t know why I didn’t see it sooner. All those years…” Her mother’s voice dropped. “Sure, I had my own sorrowful heart, but I thought your sadness was from the poverty, the shame….”
Anna looked at her mother. “I had no reason to be ashamed, Mama. Neither of us did.”
She stroked Anna’s cheek. “No, you were only brokenhearted. You belonged somewhere else, with someone else. You dated others, even almost married, but you couldn’t, could you? You’ve always known it. Now I know it. And so does he. You belong to K.C.”
Anna turned away from her mother’s touch. She knew her mother thought of her own husband killed twenty-seven years ago. “There is no K.C.”
“Yes, there is. He’s standing in the other room, waiting for his countess.”
She met her mother’s gaze. “There’s no countess.”
