Chapter 16 - Bonnie

Chapter 16

Bonnie

Phoenix, Arizona

A while ago

John Jenkins, Jr. went by the name Junior, and if that didn't tell you everything you needed to know about the guy, nothing did. He was the kind of comfortable rich boy who'd aged into a cheeky and cheerful captain of the universe. Bonnie was fascinated by him and had been since she'd met him at a town planning and real estate development "luncheon." They called it a luncheon, but it was a stand-up networking event, and there wasn't enough food to qualify as lunch. When Bonnie met Junior, she realized she'd never known anyone so at ease in the world. It came from never having to fight for scraps, not money-wise or lovewise.

Junior was on the board of a multinational building company and glided through the room like a swan gliding through water. Bonnie could see that he was a man to know. She was also a man to know, but no one ever knew it, because she was a woman.

"I'm retired," he laughed when Bonnie finally met him and they got to talking, "but it's not sticking. The board's supposed to be a hobby."

Junior was big. Not beefy and linebackery like Dale, just tall and broad shouldered—the kind of guy who took up space. He had a thick head of silver hair and sparkling brown eyes in a deep net of smile lines. She eyed his clothes: expensive. And his watch: very expensive. And his ring finger: wedding ring.

He caught her looking. "My wife's been gone for fifteen years, but I still wear it," he said, holding his hand out and looking at it. He had a nice tenor voice, clear and lively.

"Does that line ever work?" she asked lightly, refraining from rolling her eyes.

He smiled, cocking his head and regarding her with open curiosity. That was the thing about Junior: he was wide open, all the time. That's what growing up rich and happy would do to you—Junior had no need for defenses, even though he'd known his share of loss. "It's the truth," he told her gently. "Breast cancer, stage four by the time she was diagnosed."

"I'm sorry." And Bonnie was. She held up her own hand. "My husband: aneurysm. A few years ago. I don't wear the ring anymore."

"I'm sorry."

"Thanks. It was a nice ring, and he was a nice guy." Bonnie could talk about Dale now without any wobbles. It had taken a while, but she was finally there.

"The first few years are the hardest," Junior said kindly.

"I know." She smiled. "But you're not here to talk bereavement, you're here to meet people." She stepped aside, so he could move on and keep networking.

"You're not people?" He refused to move.

"I am, but you might be the first to think so," she said in disgust. She was about done with these events. She was retiring too, and not sad to see the back of a bunch of people who didn't think she was worth talking to.

"You're here because . . . you work in real estate?" His gaze swept her cobalt-blue suit.

"Not quite."

"You're in town planning?"

"No, but I used to work in the clerical department once."

"Development?"

"Kind of."

He was immensely curious now.

"I'm in mobile homes." Bonnie put him out of his misery. "I develop trailer parks." She waited for the usual polite-but-distant expression to form, and for his gaze to drift away to someone else, but Junior's lively brown eyes stayed fixed on her.

"Well, well," he said. "That's very interesting. I was just reading an article in the New York Times about mobile homes being the solution to the growing housing crisis. I think it even mentioned Phoenix."

Well, well, Bonnie thought, this was very interesting. A man taking her seriously at one of these events. Usually she was the invisible old woman in the room. They tended to think she was someone's PA, or an organizer of the event. If she was lucky, someone might assume she'd inherited some real estate and patronize the hell out of her by giving her development advice. But Bonnie hadn't inherited a thing. Her husband had been a public servant. It was Bonnie who made them wealthy.

"I was quoted in that article," Bonnie said coolly.

And then Junior shocked the hell out of her by quoting her to herself. He really had read the article. And he really was interested in knowing more about trailer parks. And there was nothing Bonnie liked better than to talk business, especially with a good-looking man.

"A mobile home is a good starter for a lot of folks," Bonnie told him. "Particularly for the kinds of people who are usually priced out of the market: single parents, low-income earners, older people. They're not making more real estate, and building is expensive, but a mobile home is a bargain. I've got land for people to put their homes on, and the land rental is reasonable. It's better business to have long-term renters than to price people out, so I think of it as a happily symbiotic relationship."

"Can I see one of your parks?" he asked, and it wasn't a pickup line. Bonnie knew pickup lines—she'd been dating a lot the last couple of years, including online, and she'd heard more than her share of bad pickup lines.

"Sure," she said, trying not to give away how excited she was that he'd asked. "Just name a day."

"Today?" He leaned in conspiratorially. "I'd be forever grateful if you could rescue me from this event."

Bonnie laughed. "You looked like you were enjoying yourself."

"I am now."

"Well, okay, then. If you want to see a trailer park, you're talking to the right girl."

She took him to Sandy Gardens first. It was the biggest one, modeled on Jimmy's grandparents' place, only fancier. It had an artificial lake smack bang in the center of it (a nod to Jimmy's pool), and paved roads, with streetlights and everything. There were three pools—two for the adults and a kids' paddling pool—and a gym. And the trailers were neat double-wides, on their own patches of lawn, with strips of garden for people to plant as they wanted. Palm trees lined the streets, and everything was kept clean and classy.

"Just because people aren't rich, doesn't mean they don't deserve somewhere nice to live," Bonnie said, as she drove Junior around.

"What was here before you developed it?" Junior asked. He was impressed by the suburban dreaminess of her park, she could tell.

"It was already a trailer park. I just made it nicer." She shot him a sideways glance. "It used to be known as Shitsville."

He laughed. "Well, good thing you changed the name. I can't say I'd want to live somewhere called Shitsville."

"The streets are named after the people who used to live there," Bonnie told him. "Some of them still do live here." She gestured to her left. "Down that way on Chisum Street is a woman by the name of Tina who used to babysit my girl Sandra when she was little. She lived right over the road from us."

She watched as he digested that, waiting for him to get that distant polite look. But he didn't.

"How did you do all this?" he marveled. "This is a big undertaking."

"Well, like I told you, I worked in clerical in town planning and learned a thing or two. And my husband Dale was a city planner, so I learned a thing or two more from him. And, when the kids were in school, I went and got myself an education, including an MBA from the University of Arizona, and this just seemed to me like an idea that had legs." She gave him another sideways glance. "You got no idea how despairing you feel living in a place like Shitsville. But somewhere like this assures you that you're a human like all the others, with all the same potential."

"How many of these places have you developed?" he asked.

"Three so far. Sandy Gardens, Mountain View, and Waller Palms Estates. Waller Palms Estates was the first one."

Bonnie parked her Caddy down Chisum Street, within view of the lake. "No more now, though. My daughter Jacqui is taking over the day-to-day running of things. I'm ready to slow down." She drummed her fingers on the wheel. "I've never had a lazy day in my life, and I wouldn't mind trying it out. It looks like fun, lazing about."

"I'm supposed to be slowing down too," Junior admitted, "but my buddy asked me to be on this board and I couldn't say no. He's my old college roommate, you know how it is."

"Not really. I didn't go to college until I was thirty."

"Hey, you don't play golf by any chance, do you?" he said abruptly.

Bonnie laughed. "God, no. You think they had golf in Shitsville?"

"If you're interested in trying it, I was going to ask you out on a date."

"To play golf? How long were you married? I think you've forgotten how dating works. You want the girl to enjoy herself."

"Quite the contrary—you don't want to set the bar too high, or you've got nowhere else to go," he joked.

"Honey, your bar is on the floor."

"So, no golf?" He sounded thoughtful. "How about dinner?"

"Let me guess: at a golf club?"

"Potentially."

Bonnie laughed. She'd been feeling glum about handing the parks over to Jacqui. Even though she'd still be the primary shareholder, she'd be stepping back, and she didn't know what she had left in life, now Dale was gone, and the kids and grandkids had their own lives. She certainly didn't want to take up golf, but taking up a golfer was something else entirely.

* * *

If Jimmy Keays was lightning, and Dale Waller was a slow dawning, Junior was a new day, even though he came in her sunset years. Junior faced everything like it was a fresh morning, full of expectation. Not even grief had dulled that in him; in fact, he claimed it had sharpened it.

"Every day could be your last," he was given to saying, often after a bourbon. "You've got to love it while you've got it."

"Don't you talk about last days," she threatened. "You promised you wouldn't up and die on me."

"I promised I'd stick around as long as I could—that's not the same thing."

"You're just tempting fate now. Stop talking about it." She didn't like death talk. It brought restless dreams.

The thing you didn't know when you were young was that death didn't erase people. When you were green, you thought of death as a finality—but in Bonnie's experience, there was nothing final about it. When people died, it was like they were still around somewhere, but you hadn't seen them in a while. It was like they were just down the street, around the corner, just out of reach. But they weren't gone. And they visited in dreams, dreams so vivid that for a moment you were sure they were real.

Sometimes, she woke up from her dreams, sure Dale was in the bed with her. And it was a feeling of sharp and sap-green relief. Like something wrong with the universe had been put right. Junior understood, because he dreamed about his Sarah too. He said he dreamed he could smell her face cream, and the smell was the smell of perfect happiness.

It was okay to talk this way with Junior, because he was an open book. And there was no upset in him, no jealousy. He just opened his arms after she woke up crying and held her close. And she did the same with him.

The only time they ran into trouble was when she dreamed about Jimmy. Because Jimmy she refused to talk about. And Junior, who kept no secrets, couldn't understand.

She hit the roof when he told her he'd asked Sandra about Jimmy.

"You had no right," she raged. She may have thrown a cushion at him. And the cushion may have bounced off his chest and hit a vase, which may have shattered on the floor. It may have been his wife's vase, and Bonnie may have felt so guilty that she got even madder.

"You were talking in your sleep. I didn't know he was her father," Junior said regretfully. He didn't rage back or defend himself. He just knelt down and gathered up the shards of Sarah's porcelain vase. "I didn't mean to upset the apple cart."

"That's why you don't go talking behind my back, because you don't know." Bonnie had been flooded with feeling, unable to stop herself from shaking. It wasn't all rage. Some of it was the usual Jimmy feelings that never seemed to go away, not even after all these years.

"Sandra was very kind about it," Junior sighed. "She's a nice girl."

"She never knew Jimmy Keays," Bonnie said tightly. "She sees Dale as her father."

"She said." Junior took the vase shards into his study. Bonnie knew he wasn't going to throw them away. Not yet. He'd have to work up to it. She felt terrible about the vase.

When he came back, Bonnie had gone outside to the pool.

"I'm sorry," he said miserably. "I was wrong."

"Sandra doesn't know anything about Jimmy," Bonnie said, feeling sick about her daughter, and Jimmy, and Junior's dead wife's vase. She was worried she was having a heart attack. Her chest was tight, and her heart was racing.

"Honey." Junior did what came natural to him and hugged her. Hugging was his instinct when people were hurting. He was nothing but a big ball of love. "Honey, I don't understand."

No. No one did. It was a chasm through the middle of her, losing Jimmy. It always had been, and always would be.

Bonnie burrowed into Junior's chest, even though she was still angry with him. She loved the comfort of him. No one had ever comforted her the way Junior did. "I never told Dale about Jimmy either," she reassured him. "Jimmy is just my private thing. Can you understand that?"

"Sandra said you don't know where he is," Junior rumbled. "Is that true?"

Bonnie shook her head. No. It wasn't true.

Junior just stood there hugging her.

Eventually, Bonnie gave a shaky sigh. "I know where he is," she confessed. "But I can't tell you. Because I can't tell Sandra. And if she can't know, you can't know." She pulled away and looked up at him. "I really can't tell you, Junior."

"Just tell me one thing," Junior asked, his brown eyes serious. "Do I need to worry about this guy?"

Bonnie gave a bitter laugh. "No," she said honestly. "Jimmy is gone."

"Gone, but you know where he is?"

"Junior?" Bonnie took his face in her hands and kissed him. "Jimmy is gone."

Junior nodded. He didn't like that part of her was closed off from him, but he accepted that it was her right to open or close herself as she wanted to.

"Don't you ever leave me." Bonnie was fierce as she squeezed his face between her hands. "I swear to God, Junior, I won't stand for another man leaving me."

"I'm not planning on it," he managed to say, even though his face was all squished up.

She kissed his fish lips. "You're my new day, Junior. Don't dwell on old times. And please don't ever ask me about Jimmy again."

He promised. And he kept that promise.

But he didn't keep the one about not leaving her—he died the following year.