“Two reasons,” Ayers says. “Both are secrets that I’m keeping from him. One is this…project that I’m working on. I can’t tell him about it, and I can’t tell you about it yet either. Maybe in the future, once I’m finished, but not right now.”
“Secret project,” Baker says. “I won’t ask.”
“Please don’t,” Ayers says. She seems to shrink under her Treasure Island T-shirt and when she gazes at him, her eyes appear robbed of their pigment. They are very, very pale blue. “The second reason is…that I have feelings for you.”
“For me?”
“For you,” Ayers says. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”
“You haven’t?” Baker says.
She shakes her head and presses her lips together like she’s embarrassed.
“So, wait,” Baker says. Is this really happening? Him and Ayers? Does she want him to kiss her? Does she want him to—finally—make proper love to her? Baker can’t find the words to ask, he’s too overwhelmed, but it turns out it doesn’t matter.
Ayers stands up, takes his hand, and leads him to her bed.
He wakes up in the middle of the night; 4:20 a.m., his phone says. Ayers is naked in bed next to him. He’s in love. He’s beyond in love.
But he has to get out of there. He can’t have Floyd waking up and finding his dad gone.
Baker eases out of bed and uses the bathroom. He sees a clothbound book balanced on the edge of the sink. Ayers’s journal? Baker is, of course, tempted to open it and read Ayers’s innermost thoughts, presumably about how she’s stuck with crappy cheater Mick but can’t get Baker Steele out of her mind. However, back when Baker was in college, he read his girlfriend Trinity’s diary and all hell broke loose. That was why they’d split. Trinity had called it a “devastating breach of personal trust.”
If you learn one thing from me, Baker Steele, she’d said, I hope it’s never to read a woman’s private thoughts without her express permission.
No matter how tempting, she’d added. And, oh yes, it will be tempting.
It is tempting—the journal with the red floral cover, demure and innocent with the look of a colonial-era recipe book.
But Baker leaves it be.
In the end, Trinity taught him a lot. He must remember to hit her up on Facebook and thank her.
Back in the bedroom, he runs a finger down the length of Ayers’s spine and she shivers awake and opens one eye. “You leaving?”
“I have to,” he whispers. “Floyd.”
“Okay,” she says.
Baker clears his throat. “And, uh, you remember that I’m leaving tomorrow for Houston? I have that thing on Saturday? But I’m coming right back. So you don’t have to worry.”
“What day?” Ayers asks. “What day are you coming back?”
Baker does a quick calculation. The benefit auction is Saturday night. Sunday he’s on cleanup duty. He needs at least two additional days to get the move organized, maybe three; honestly, he could use a week, but now that this has happened, all he can think about is how to get back here as quickly as possible. But then again, he has a life to dismantle—Floyd’s medical records need to be transferred (to where?); Baker needs to forward his mail (to where?) and figure out what to do about his income taxes. There’s stuff. “Wednesday,” he says. “Thursday.”
“Wednesday or Thursday?” she asks.
“Thursday,” he says. “Week from today.”
“I’m working at La Tapa Thursday night,” she says. “Come by after work. We can celebrate your move.”
He kisses her temple. “You got it,” he says. He puts his clothes on and runs both hands through his hair. “Oh, by the way, the chick who got drunk on your boat was a friend of Tilda’s.”
Ayers rolls over and squints at him. “Really?”
“Yeah, that’s what my mother told me Cash said. I guess Cash and Tilda went out last night.”
“They did?” Ayers says, sitting up.
“Yeah,” Baker says. “I think so.” He wonders if hearing this bothers Ayers for some reason.
She smiles. “They’re perfect for each other.” She falls back into her pillows. “When you get back, we can double-date.”
“Great,” Baker says sardonically—although, actually, it sounds like fun.
The theme for the Children’s Cottage benefit auction is Monopoly. This was Debbie’s idea. She was in charge of dreaming up something to top Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, which was last year’s theme. Although Baker was skeptical about the appeal of Monopoly—it evoked nothing so much as the rainy afternoons of childhood, trapped in a never-ending game of being sent to jail, paying other people rent, and eventually going bankrupt due to real estate failures—the execution is brilliantly done. Baker has dressed up as Rich Uncle Pennybags, in a vest with a pocket watch, and people are chattering with anticipation as they leave the school parking lot. (FREE PARKING signs abound, which is cute, even though parking is always free at the Children’s Cottage.)
The event is being held in the school gymnasium (built back in 2000 by one of the owners of the Houston Rockets), but the board of directors, naturally, have created a path that takes attendees through the school so that they can see where their donations will be going. Baker, with Ellen at his side, walks through the reading nook filled with picture books, the numbers room with boxes of manipulatives, the science room where kids study birds’ nests and leaves and different kinds of rocks, the social studies room, festooned with flags of the world, and last, and most popular, the water-table room. They then pass through the courtyard with the outdoor playground into the gym, which has been transformed into a Monopoly board for the evening.
At the front table, everyone picks up a plastic top hat and mustache on a stick (each stick has a number printed on the back; it doubles as an auction paddle) and proceeds to one of the tables, all of which are named for Monopoly properties and sheathed in tablecloths of the corresponding colors. Baker and his school wives are, naturally, at Boardwalk, with a tablecloth of Columbia blue. The centerpiece is a flour-sack money bag filled with pebbles and holding a bouquet of gold dahlias. The photo booth is decorated to look like the Jail square, so once Baker’s friends choose seats, he suggests they get their pictures taken, then go find glasses of the event’s signature cocktail, the Chance Card, which is a lurid orange. They’re being served by Vicki Styles, who likes to expose her cleavage whenever she can.
“That was a good choice,” Becky says. “The Chance Cards are being served by the Community Chest.”
Baker loves his school wives. How will he ever leave them?
The event swims along. People drink, eat hors d’oeuvres, bid on silent-auction items. Baker really wants to get Floyd tickets to the first Texans game, but then he remembers that he’s not going to be around for it. Wendy wants them all to chip in on a house in Galveston in May—but Baker won’t be here for that either. He needs to tell his friends about his plans, and soon; the only person who knows is Ellen.
Standing in the strobe-lit school gym surrounded by people he has known for years—and even psycho Mandy in her little black dress with her satin Justin Verlander team jacket on top seems endearing tonight—Baker has a hard time believing that he was in Ayers’s apartment only two days earlier. He has switched worlds. Which one of them is real?
He could easily make the argument that this world is real. This is Houston, a real place; the Children’s Cottage is a real school. Baker is a part of this community. He is known. He’s Floyd’s dad. No one misses Anna, though they all know that she’s a big deal, if not a particularly hands-on mother. Baker’s friends are real friends, there when he needs them. He’s giving up a lot by leaving—his house, his autonomy. There’s a way in which moving to St. John feels like regressing. He’ll be back living with his mom and brother.
All of this is on one side of the scale—and Ayers is on the other.
Dinner is served. It’s boardwalk food, which sounds iffy but ends up being delicious: jumbo hot dogs with a variety of toppings, skinny truffle fries, and Mexican street corn. Then the live auction starts and Baker zones out, thinking he’ll tell Debbie, Becky, and Wendy his plans after the auction but before the dancing. They’ll be upset initially but then one of them will request “We Are Family” from the DJ and they’ll all cluster together to dance and all the married parents will be jealous. Nothing new there.
Baker perks up only when the auctioneer announces a superspecial item, added at the last minute by an anonymous donor. It’s one week in a villa on St. John with 180-degree views over the Caribbean Sea. Nine bedrooms, dual-level pool, private beach and shuffleboard court, outdoor kitchen, and the use of two 2018 Jeeps. July or August dates only.
Ellen nudges Baker’s leg under the table. “This is you?”
He gives the slightest of nods.
The bidding is robust. It starts at five thousand and skyrockets from there—ten, fifteen, twenty thousand dollars. July or August is the perfect time of year to escape the beastly heat of Houston, and when Baker ran the idea past Irene and Cash, they’d agreed that July or August would be an ideal time to take a break from St. John and fly to Door County (Irene) and Breckenridge (Cash).
Twenty-five thousand dollars. Thirty thousand.
“Jeez, Baker,” Ellen murmurs.
“It’s Nanette’s husband bidding,” Wendy says. “Oil.”
“Against Beanie O’Connor’s grandmother,” Becky says. “Oil.”
Thirty-five thousand. Forty thousand.
“That’s going to buy a lot of manipulatives,” Debbie whispers.
Forty-five thousand.
Fifty thousand. Going once, going twice…sold, for fifty thousand dollars.
“Are you going back?” Ellen asks. “For good?”
Baker sighs. He hasn’t even told Ellen about his night with Ayers. He hasn’t told anyone. “I am,” he says.
“Good for you,” Ellen says.
The auction is over, the DJ gets warmed up with “Celebrate,” and all of Baker’s friends go to the ladies’ room, leaving him sitting at the table alone.
First order of business on getting back to St. John: Find some male friends. Other than Cash.
When the ladies reappear, they envelop Baker in a group hug. Wendy is crying. Baker gives Ellen a quizzical look and she shrugs as if to say, Sorry, not sorry. The thing that Baker has long suspected happens in ladies’ rooms has happened. The truth has come out.
“I’m going to miss you guys,” Baker says.
Turns out that when Nanette’s husband, Tony, lost out to Beanie O’Connor’s grandmother in the auction, it lit a fuse. Nanette and Tony have a raging, alcohol-fueled fight in Free Parking (though, thankfully, no one ends up dead like in that book all Baker’s friends read three or four years ago), and Nanette announces that she wants a divorce.
“The auction was just an excuse,” Debbie says when she comes over the next day to help Baker get organized. “She’s been sleeping with Ian for years.” Ian is Wendy’s ex-husband.
Yes, true, everyone knows this.
Nanette sends Baker a text less than an hour later: I hear you have a place for rent?
He texts back, Just so happens, I do.
On Sunday, Debbie helps Baker clean out his fridge and cabinets. Becky helps him figure out his tax returns. Wendy comes over with her daughters, Evelyn and Ondine, and they play with Floyd while Baker packs Floyd’s suitcase.
Ellen stops by with a goodbye present, a Rawlings alloy baseball bat for his new coaching duties.
“You won’t hit the ball if you don’t swing,” she says.
Baker books tickets for Wednesday. Debbie drives a minivan; she’s going to take Baker and Floyd to the airport after she drops Eleanor and Gale at school.
Monday after school, Baker and Floyd sit in the kitchen eating pizza because Baker doesn’t want to dirty any dishes. It’s ironic that they’re eating pizza, Anna’s favorite meal, when Anna is so far away.
Baker decides to reach out to Anna. He snaps a selfie of himself and Floyd and the sausage and pepperoni pie from Brother’s and texts it to her with the words Miss you, Mom!
She’ll probably respond to the text sometime next week, Baker thinks.
A few minutes later, Baker’s phone beeps and he checks it, expecting Anna’s response to be Okay or Sounds good or maybe even Miss you 2.
The text isn’t from Anna, however. It’s from Cash. Baker reads it, then drops his phone.