He Gave Me a Green Dress, So I Gave the Arena the Truth novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Terms for the First Wife

Lars offers Jocelyn the guest house in front of Roz's regulars and freezes her cards, then the clinic says a team doctor's letter cleared him.

Roz Saari opened the back door of her bar in a hockey jersey and one sock.

"It's midnight," she said. "Why are you crying in my alley?"

"I'm not crying. I'm just standing here."

"Joss, you're holding a coat and no purse."

I had left my purse on the chair at Harlan's. My phone was in my coat pocket, and it hadn't stopped buzzing.

Roz took one look at my face and pulled me inside.

She owned the Saari Tap, and she'd been my best friend since we shared a dorm room at nineteen.

The back room held a cot, a mini fridge and forty cases of seltzer.

"Stay as long as you want," she said. "Tell me what he did."

I told her in four sentences. Then I told her the fifth, what the trainer had said at the coat check.

"Ask the clinic who signed Lars's results," Roz repeated. "Then ask them tomorrow."

"They're closed until Monday."

"Then you'll call the desk nurse Sunday."

She went out front and I heard her lock the till.

She came back with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses and a bat.

"What's the bat for?" I asked.

"Nothing yet."

I didn't sleep. I lay on the cot and listened to the bar's refrigerator hum.

At noon the next day, when the Saari opened for the lunch crowd, the front door banged open and a hush fell across the room.

I was behind the bar rinsing glasses, because Roz had put an apron on me and said sitting still would make it worse.

Lars stood in the doorway.

He was in jeans and a team jacket. He was freshly shaved and rested.

Eleven regulars stared at him. One of them had a phone raised.

"Joss," he said. "Can we talk in the back?"

"We can talk here."

His jaw moved. He crossed the room and set both hands on the bar.

"Fine. I've thought about it."

He used the calm voice. The reasonable one.

"You keep the guest house. I'll cover the property tax and your phone. Belinda moves into the main house, because she's carrying and she needs the quiet. The baby is family. You'd be an aunt, Joss. Think how that sounds."

Nobody in the bar made a sound.

"You want me," I said slowly, "to live in the guest house. While my sister lives in my kitchen."

"It's temporary."

"For how long?"

"Until things settle. Your mother managed."

Roz's bat hit the floor behind me, on purpose.

Lars glanced at it, then back at me.

"Don't do this in front of people. You'll regret it."

"You told twenty people last night."

"That was different. That was the truth."

I picked up a glass and put it down again, hard enough that the bar rang.

"The answer is no."

"Joss."

"I don't want the guest house. I don't want to be an aunt. I want you out of my sight."

Something flickered in his face.

Then he took out his wallet and set my credit card on the bar, the one he'd given me on our wedding day.

"I'm freezing those accounts as of this morning," he said. "The house is in my name. The car is in my name. If you want any of it, you'll call me and be reasonable."

He turned and walked out through eleven staring regulars.

The man with the phone lowered it slowly.

"Did you get that?" Roz asked him.

"Every word."

"Send it to me."

I stood behind the bar with my hands shaking on the wet glass.

Roz put a hand on my shoulder.

"I've got eight hundred in the safe," she said. "It's yours. And you're on the payroll starting now. Wednesdays you pour."

"Roz."

"Shut up and take the apron."

My phone buzzed on the shelf. I'd stopped looking at it hours ago, but this time it was the clinic.

I answered.

A nurse I knew, the one who had said Lars had such good taste, spoke in a hurry.

"Mrs. Rudd? I'm sorry to call on a Sunday. I'm on the desk list. Your Monday appointment was cancelled this morning."

"By me?"

"By Mr. Rudd. He called at nine."

I gripped the edge of the bar.

"I need to ask you something," I said. "Who signed my husband's results?"

Her voice dropped.

"I'm not supposed to open your folder over the phone."

"Please."

I heard keys. I heard paper.

"There's a letter in his half," she said. "I never looked. It's from a team doctor, and it says he's cleared and normal."

"Who signed it?"

"The team doctor. It's dated the week after Mr. Rudd's playoff surgery."

"Three years ago he got stitches," I said. "He missed one game."

The line was quiet.

Then she said, in a small voice, "Mrs. Rudd, the letter says surgery."

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