After Hours: Midnight Oil / Midnight Madness / Midnight Touch

“Yup. If it’s a nice male one in spandex, I sure do!”

“Have you been sniffing too many aromatherapy candles, honey?”

“Probably. Hey, when you’re done let’s have a glass of wine and give each other pedicures. I think your laundry’s just about done.” Peg went to check on it, transferred the wet load to the dryer and got her cheap little foot spa out of the cabinet over the washer.

She brought it into the main room and set it down on a clean towel. Then she filled a pitcher with warm water from the kitchen sink and poured it into the basin. She added bath salts and brought out other supplies.

Marly was deep in concentration now, sketching the seat of the player’s pants, his socks, cleats and hands on the football. Peggy was impressed that she didn’t have to work from a photograph to get the details, proportions and angles right.

“Why didn’t you go to art school, Marly?” she asked.

“I did.”

“But you do hair.”

“You know the story about why I didn’t graduate. My dad got sick. Besides, I love what I do for women every day. I get to be creative, I make them feel better, it pays well and I’m never between jobs for longer than a couple of hours. What more could I ask for?”

Peggy nodded.

“And I’m able to do my art on the side.” Marly painted in the football, somehow giving it texture and dimension, too. The stitching appeared almost real.

As Peg looked at it, the familiar wash of conflicting emotions about football rolled through her. It represented both success and failure for her, strength and weakness, power and victimization.

A guy like Troy Barrington—great, there she went, thinking about him again—had been a natural to play on a high school team, then a college one and finally go pro. He’d been encouraged all the way.

But her experience had been different. Suddenly, when she’d gone out for the high school team, she was resented. She’d made it because she was so good, but all the guys had looked at her funny. She’d cost one of their friends a place on the team. She had long hair and breasts and odd plumbing. She was just different with a capital D.

Instead of the camaraderie that someone like Troy had with the team, she’d battled sexually aggressive glances and felt bad because she couldn’t share the same locker room, causing no end of logistical problems.

But she’d stuck it out. She’d won everyone’s respect, however grudging. She could kick a decent field goal, run like the wind and would tackle anything that moved. The problem was, admittedly, that her body weight didn’t stack up to a six-foot, two-hundred-pound male’s.

Still, by the end of her senior year, she’d been practically the team mascot, carried on their shoulders when they won the district championship with her field goal.

Peggy would always proudly carry that moment in her heart, no matter what had happened later when she’d fought her way onto her college team. Nobody could take the district win away from her, not even her father’s absence from the stands at the crucial moment.

Impulse struck again. “Marly, you’re going to kill me, but I promise you a deep-tissue massage if you’ll change the image on the screen.”

“You’re right, I am going to kill you.” Marly straightened and glared at Peg.

“Please can you paint over the man butt and put a kick-ass woman there, instead? She’s triumphant. She just kicked a field goal that won a big game.”

“Why do I have a feeling that this kick-ass woman should have long red hair?” Resigned, Marly was already whiting out the other picture. “Get me a hair dryer, will you? It’ll speed us up. I’m not staying here all night.”

“Even if I make whiskey sours?”

“Okay, I’m staying all night. But you have to give me dinner, too.”

“Deal. You know I wouldn’t ask you to do this if you weren’t so fast and so good.”

“Yes, you would.” Marly aimed the hairdryer at the wet paint, since trying to white out the wet image had just made a nasty smear on the wall. “So, um, Peg? How’s that impulse-control thing going? I can see you’re making huge strides.”

5

TROY WIPED THE SWEAT from his temple with the sleeve of his T-shirt and reflected that there were more fun ways to get this hot and dirty. Redheaded ways.

He cast the thought out of his mind and bit back a smile as Derek mirrored his movements. They’d pulled every rotten plank off the back porch of his house; Derek had helped him measure all the new planks; and Troy was in the process of repairing the structural beams underneath.

He’d had professionals come in and replace the sagging porch roof, making sure it was done to city code. He’d have done it himself, but he didn’t want the damn thing flying off or peeling back during the next hurricane to torment South Florida.

He and Derek were filthy, mosquito-bitten and tired, but the kid radiated happiness and a somewhat disturbing hero-worship that Troy felt he didn’t really deserve. But he loved the boy’s companionship and the fact that he inspired him to be a better person with a better attitude toward life. Derek somehow relieved his cynicism about the world and brought a smile to his face.

“Want a beer?” He ruffled the kid’s hair.

Derek’s eyes widened. “For real?”

Troy quirked an eyebrow and climbed through the back door, a little more difficult without the benefit of a porch floor. He returned with two cans and tossed the one marked A&W to his nephew.

The look on Derek’s face was priceless: half relieved and half disappointed. “I thought you meant—”

“Last time I checked, you were eleven, not twenty-one.” Troy grinned. “You’ve got ten years before I throw a Budweiser or a Spaten your way.”

“What’s a Spaten?”

“A good German beer.”

“Oh.” Derek popped the top on his root beer and said, “I don’t really know why anybody thinks real beer tastes good. I’ve tried it before when nobody was looking. It’s nasty.”

“I’m so glad you feel that way.” Troy popped the top on his own can and drank deeply. Water would be better in this heat, but he couldn’t resist the cold, bitter foaminess pouring down his parched throat.

“Hey, Uncle Troy?”

“Hey, what?”

“I was wondering if—” Derek broke off and twisted the aluminum can in his hands 360 degrees. He looked at it fixedly. “Um.”

“Come on, just say it.”

“Well, I’m s’posed to wait till Mom asks you, but it’s really hard. Would-you-consider-coaching-our-Pop-Warner-team-’cuz-Mister-Vargas-quit.” He said the last few words so quickly that Troy could barely understand them. “Mrs. Vargas has to have an operation and he’s gotta take care of her, so he had to.”

Troy blinked. Oh, gee. What a promotion. I’m gonna go from coaching college ball to peewee….

He hesitated. I’m not qualified. I know nothing about kids except how to practice making them.

Then curvy little Peggy’s face flashed into his mind. But if that redheaded gal can coach the girls, then I can coach the boys.

He gazed down at the freckled, upturned face of his nephew, so eager and so hopeful, and knew there wasn’t any question of what his answer would be.

“I’m sorry to hear about Mr. Vargas’s wife,” he said. “We’ll have to send her a get-well card.”