c4

Cassie wasn't sure where she'd made her mistakes with men, always betting on the wrong ones. One look at her closest friends—Billy, for example—didn't reveal her to have rotten taste or not recognize a good man when she saw one. Whatever it was, she was determined to change the pattern, maybe think more like Beth, a woman who didn't have expectations at all. Cassie was twenty-nine. She had time to pick up her threads at thirty, thirty-one. Reevaluate. Maybe there were only so many Billys in the world and she'd have to go the route Beth was considering—reconcile to living as a single woman, possibly have her family that way.
But she was lonesome. Beth was busy, Marty was annoyed with her husband, Julie was completely stressed out and distracted by a couple of sick kids. There was one person, however, who had been very nice to her, and proved easy to both talk to and listen to. And as far as she could tell, he had no secret agenda—he was just pleasant and helpful. After all, she didn't look like his type any more than he was hers. For him, she envisioned a bleached blonde with tattoos, wearing leather pants.
She surprised herself by staring for a long time at that business card with just the cell phone number on it. A person would have to be desperate to actually call a guy like this to suggest meeting for anything more than coffee. The truth was, Cassie was a little desperate. Not for Mr. Right but for someone to fill up an hour or two. This might be exactly the person to call during her moratorium on dating, since she'd never go out with a man like Walt.
But he'd been so congenial to have coffee with, his brother was a police officer and, not least of all, he'd rescued her from a bad guy and offered to help back her up if she had further problems or needed a witness. Despite his hard, scary looks, he'd turned out to be one of the most docile and polite men she'd been around in a long time. She couldn't deny she enjoyed his company. There was something about Walt that was more than just sincere; he had an almost nurturing quality. The word guileless came to mind. And genuine.
Still, she would pick a crowded place with a well-lit parking lot.
She called the cell phone number and left a message. "Hi. This is Cassie. I got off work at three and I have to be back on duty at seven in the morning, so it's going to be an early night for me, but I would sort of like to have a glass of wine and a salad or something. If you're interested, give me a call. Here's my cell phone number."
She immediately felt ridiculous. Why was she calling this biker in grave need of a decent haircut and a shave? She had nothing in common with him. Men who had that crisp and polished look appealed to her—khakis with starched creases, even their casual shirts professionally laundered. Walt wasn't very well put together—a tightly fitted T-shirt, denim or leather vest, jeans and that ponytail. So retro. He looked road worn. Then she thought, Well, that's perfect. There was no way she'd find herself falling for someone like him, hoping he could turn into more than a friend. She was perfectly safe from another disappointment.
A half hour later her cell phone rang and she actually felt a lift, a grin spread across her face. She wasn't sure if it was because she'd left way too many messages in her day and far too few of them had been returned or if it was because she actually liked Walt.
But there it was, on the window of her cell—Walt Arneson. Oops, that would mean Cassie Rasmussen would be showing up on his; he now knew more than she intended him to know. She hadn't given him her last name before.
"Hey," she answered.
"Cassie?"
"Yeah, hi, Walt. How are you?"
"Good, thanks. So, you feel like an early dinner?"
"I do. How about you? But I don't know your hours—are you off work yet?"
"Don't worry about that, it's no problem," he said. "You have a place in mind? Something convenient to you? I'm all over the valley, so it makes no difference."
"I'm thinking…something casual. There's a Claim Jumper's on Harding, not far off I-80. They have big meals and good salads, so we could both get what we want."
He laughed into the phone. "Yeah, I guess it's pretty obvious—I don't mind a big meal. I know the place. What time?"
"Six?"
"Great. I'll meet you there."
And he hung up. No goodbye, no I'm glad you called—just hung up. Well, she thought, this wasn't a date. Just someone to talk to, keep her from being completely alone for an hour.
She got there at ten to six. When she asked for a booth in the bar and told the hostess she was expecting a big guy with a ponytail who looked like a biker, the young girl asked, "Is that him?" pointing to a table.
"Well, I'll be…" she muttered, amazed.
When he saw her coming, he stood. "Hey," he said, smiling.
"Are you starving, Walt?" she asked with a laugh. "You're here early."
"I'm always hungry, but that's not why I got here early. I didn't want to be late and the traffic overcooperated."
She slid in across from him. She noticed, not for the first time, right in that hairy face which longed for a shave, that too-long hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, he had the bluest eyes. They somehow seemed even bluer tonight.
"Tell me about your day," he said.
"Two motorcycle accidents," she reported.
"Oh, jeez. Not bad ones, I hope," he said.
"Actually, not too bad," she said, a little embarrassed at baiting him like that. "One was a teenager, some scrapes. And a highway patrolman versus car—messed up his knee and cracked his pelvis, but he'll be fine."
"Phew, that's a relief. Always hate to hear about those. Otherwise, your day was pretty good?"
"Always busy, which is one thing I like about E.R.—the time flies. Hard work, but interesting and fast. You?"
He grinned. "Absolutely nothing new about what I do. I did get out for a great ride through the foothills last weekend. What else? Besides work, what have you been doing with yourself?"
"Not so much. If I'm off work, I walk with Steve in the morning, and if I work, I take him out in the afternoon. I keep my little garden going. And I already told you a few days ago, I got together with my girlfriends from high school for lunch. The four of us have stayed close."
"Yeah, but you didn't really tell me about them." He grinned.
"We were cheerleaders together. I was lots thinner then…."
"Cassie," he said, laughing and shaking his head. "You look perfect."
"That's nice," she said. "Well, one's a hairdresser, one's a stay-at-home mom with three kids—both of them are married to firemen. And get this—one's a doctor. It's because of the doctor we can't all get together that often. Her schedule is tight. But I see my best friend Julie all the time."
"That would be the one with the three kids…."
"You remembered."
He lifted his eyebrows. "I might remember that night almost as well as you do," he said. "You still okay on that score?"
"Yes, thanks. And the hand?" she asked." You still have the cast."
He lifted the hand with the cast. "They have to get an X-ray before taking off the cast. Every time I see the doc, another X-ray. It's just a little crack, really. Maybe next week."
The waitress came to their table. He ordered a Coke, she ordered a glass of pinot noir and they decided to take a few minutes to decide on dinner.
"Nothing to drink for you?" she asked. "No beer or anything?"
"I've had enough," he said.
"Really? You get an early start or something?"
"No," he said. "I mean, in earlier days. When I was much younger, I hit it pretty hard—got myself in some trouble, disappointed my family. My parents. I was just a kid, but it was time to hang up the mug. No fanfare, no big pronouncements, no meetings. I just decided enough was enough."
"Oh," she said.
"Alcohol and motorcycles are a bad combination. And my job depends on me being at my best when I'm on the bike."
"Then what were you doing at the bar that night? If you don't drink?" she asked.
"I usually look for the bikes. I run into customers, talk awhile, hand out cards, invite them to the store to look around, bring in their mechanical problems, that kind of stuff. Plus I like bikers. A lot of them are cops, by the way. I just want to be friendly," he said, shrugging. "Except that night you were having some trouble—I wasn't feeling friendly. I'd have gladly decked that guy, but my first concern was if you were all right."
"You did a very good job with that." She laughed. "You look like the kind of guy a person should duck away from. I mean, you have all the warning signs—the tattoo, the biker clothes, your size alone…."
"That's gotten me into trouble a time or two," he said. "I look like a fighter. I don't mind looking strong—it can come in handy. But I'll do anything I can not to fight, honest. Fighting just complicates things."
"But if you had to?" she asked just as their drinks arrived.
"I could probably hold my own," he said with a self-effacing shrug.
"Ya think?" she asked with a laugh. "Let's decide what we're eating, then you can tell me about this place where you work."
She already knew Walt grew up in Roseville, the second of four boys. But over dinner she learned he was thirty-two, had only completed high school and by the time he was twenty-two had been arrested three times and had two DUIs, not to mention a variety of trouble he caused or got caught up in for which there were no permanent records. A self-described idiot and badass. At that time he was mad at everyone, everyone was mad at him, so he took off on his bike. He wasn't going to put up with anyone's crap anymore. He took his hiatus on the road, that cross-country ride.
"I went through a transformation, don't ask me how. I'm probably too thickheaded to have been looking for something like that, but I'd lie on the ground, look up at a dark sky full of stars and it would come to me— I'm a speck. In the grand scheme of things, I make almost no difference in the world. On the road, in the mountains, valleys, beaches, I kept thinking, This is such a huge, amazing, beautiful place and I'm just a meaningless dot. Nothing. So should I be a speck, a dot, whose single contribution is making people like my mom and dad embarrassed and miserable? Or should I try to do something better than that? Nothing profound, heroic or amazing, but how about just not humiliating my family."
She reached across the table and put a couple of fingers lightly on the tattoo. "This come before, or after?"
"One of my little pretransformation sprees," he said, grinning. "Serves as a very good reminder. Besides, I've gotten kind of attached to her."
"You could dress her," Cassie suggested.
"It just wouldn't be the same."
When he got back to California after his sabbatical, looking for something productive, he got a job in a small bike shop, and it was a good fit. After his experience on the road, keeping his bike running and learning from other groups of bikers, he knew a lot about the machine, about the people who gravitated to those machines. It was a perfect match for him; he could converse about every model, fix them, sell them, give advice. Much to the shop owner's consternation, he did a lot of things for customers at no charge—referrals to other stores, a mechanical tweak, inexpensive part thrown in. He was just acting the way bikers out on the road acted toward one another, but the result was a growing clientele. Bikers trusted Walt.
"Since then that little shop has grown into a chain, a franchise, but the philosophy is the same—we cater to bikers' needs. They think of the store as a clubhouse—they like to hang out a lot, talking to other bikers, so we stock up on trade magazines, give 'em free coffee, set up plenty of comfortable chairs. We've started organizing group rides on weekends—no charge, of course—and people sign up. Works great," he said. "Since I've been doing this for more than eight years now, I know just about everything about the business. There are four stores in four corners of the valley. Great little business. Because I love bikes, it's kind of like getting paid for your hobby. The best day I have is when someone comes in with a bike I can fix, and I know it's fixed perfectly and at least what I did won't give 'em any more trouble. I know that doesn't sound like such a big deal, but it sure feels good."
He talked about his brothers—his eldest brother was an accountant, the one just younger was still in school, studying entomology. "Bugs. Guess he's gonna be an Orkin man," he laughed. "And you already know about Kevin, the cop."
Dishes were taken away, coffee arrived. Walt had a huge slice of chocolate cake that she automatically dipped her fork into and sampled, as though they'd been friends for years. Then she glanced at her watch and said, "God, it's eight-thirty! I have an early shift!" She lifted her hand toward the waitress for the check, but when she brought it, Walt snatched it.
"Come on," Cassie said. "I invited you!"
"Let me," he said. "Please. I haven't enjoyed myself this much in a long time."
"Aw, Walt…I didn't mean to let you grab the check! At least let's split it." She thought, He's a bike mechanic, a grease monkey who spends a lot of time visiting with his customers—he must be totally broke.
"Come on, you're going to have to let me do this. I want to."