LA Song

Jeulie led the two women upstairs, over the dark, rickety floor and to their rooms. Stacy's was on the right, Shannon's on the left; she proffered a key for each of them.

"Since you won't be in town too long, you might want to give the key back. Don't want it to be lost out in the desert."

Shannon shook her head, "I'd put it on my key loop. Jeez, Jeulie, I'm not that stupid."

Jeulie looked Stacy over once more. "I'm not inclined to agree with you," she snorted.

Stacy couldn't blame her for her initial hatred, considering what Shannon must have let slip about their former union, but this was heading for the "too much" category of verbal torture. "Lay off, Jeulie," said Shannon.

Jeulie seemed to give up the ghost with a shrug. "I have to get back to the flower harvest," she said.

"Ohhh," sighed Shannon, "You're in the middle of it now?"

"Yeah," she said. "It's just me and the girls now; Dwight's in town. All we have left are the forget-me-nots."

"I'll give you a hand in a second," offered Shannon. "I'm sure Stacy wouldn't mind helping you out, too."

Stacy opened her mouth to offer protest, but changed her mind. Her goal was to help Shannon after causing her firing why shouldn't she do what Shannon wanted for the day? Picking flowers didn't sound like too bad of a time. She nodded and disappeared into her room.

Jeulie made sure that Stacy was out of earshot before whispering, "Are you positive you're leaving later?"

"Yeah, and I can't say how long I'll be gone." Her eyes darted to Stacy's door. "But promise me one thing: you won't hurt Stacy."

"I won't," Jeulie sighed. "I'm only worried about you, Shan."

"I'm OK," she said. And she meant it.

At least for now.

***

Stacy had underestimated the weather, of course,(. It nearly knocked her to her knees when she stepped into the yard. The house was so much cooler inside that it was a shock to feel such heat. The painful Nevada sun, which beat down on their backs mercilessly, worse than LA.

"Hot one," Jeulie said, obsequiously
"Hotter than LA," Shannon said.
Jeulie smiled, not knowing what more she could offer Stacy, still unsure of their relationship. Shannon broke the tension by arriving in a baseball cap, cut-offs and tank top, matching Stacy's outfit. They suppressed laughter at their identical appearance; there was work to be done. And that, for the moment, was better than being idle.

They each wore gloves to protect their hands from the heat; they received them with wicker baskets to carry the blossoms in. Jeulie then told them to follow her, which they did, to the back of the house.

Stacy stopped absolutely still in her tracks. Most of Jeulie's backyard was irrigated field, dotted and overgrown with patches of manicured flowers.

"Jeulie grows flowers for a major perfumery," she explained. "It's how she can afford the horse and to wrestle for a living."

"There's no other way I could make a living," Jeulie added. They moved on, to the last patch that needed picking. Two girls knelt among the rows of blue and violet-colored forget me nots.

"Shannon, Stacy, these are my daughters Altovise and Janet."

Altovise was a redheaded teenager, about 5'6", with green eyes and a canny smile. Her way of acknowledging people with a tilt of her head and frank study disconcerted Stacy.

Little Janet was only six, with dark hair and an absorbed countenance. She smiled up at the two women and waved before kneeling back into the bed of beauty.

Jeulie instructed both women to kneel and picked a few blossoms to demonstrate how they should save the stems for seeding, plucking the blossoms free. The baskets were divided in the middle, blossoms going to the left and stems to the right. She then left to take on her own section of the garden and Shannon and Stacy were left to their own devices.

This heat and hard work made Stacy wonder why she had gone to such radical route, uprooting her whole life to chase Shannon. She knew that Shannon deserved much better treatment than what she had given her. Perhaps that was it; she was trying to make up for her past misdeeds.

Seeding was hard work; she only removed crushed a handful of blossoms before developing the skills needed to successfully pluck them.

The sun sloped down, following its everyday track from east to west. By sunset, the patch had been stripped bare and seeded. Jeulie checked each basket as they returned them to her. "Not bad," She rewarded Stacy.

Dwight waited for his wife and daughters at the back door. Janet was thrilled, running to meet her father, calling "Daddy!" and receiving a loving kiss "You made the harvest," he noticed. "Hey, Shannon. Thanks for helping." His eyes widened, "That's Stacy?"

"Stacy Keibler," she introduced herself. She shook his free hand.

"You girls can wait out here. I'll take these to the barn." He gathered their baskets and the five tired women sat on the porch.

"He's going to put them in the dehydrator, and the stems into seed bags," She explained.

Dwight returned with a pitcher of lemonade and a banjo under one arm. After dividing the lemonade between the tired women and himself, he sat on the porch swing and tuned his instrument. "Girls, how about we teach our guest how to play 'Stump Daddy'?"

"Yay!" Janet cried, then said to Stacy, "We tell daddy the first few words of a song and he has to play the music as we sing. If he can't remember the music, we win."

"Like Name that Tune in reverse," noted Stacy.
"Like this." Janet sang "'Twinkle, Twinkle, little.." By the first word her father began to strum his banjo to the right melody. "You try," she suggested, meaning Shannon.

Shannon smiled. "Is it too much to ask...I want a comfortable bed that won't hurt my back..." She frowned when he almost immediately played the melody to "Passionate Kisses".

"I was a child in the sixties," Sang Jeulie,
"dreams could be held through TV
With Disney, and Cronkite, and Martin Luther
Oh, I believed, I believed . . . I BELIEVED
Now, I am the back seat driver from America
I am not at the wheel of control
I am guilty, I am war, . . . I am the root of all evil
Lord, and I can't drive on the left side of the road

Dwight caught on at the end of the verse, "That's cheating," he joked, "Singing the end of the song and not the whole thing."

"I've seen the sun blaze the breast of the countryside," Added Altovise,
"I've seen her huddled in a winter freeze
And I've run cross paths of a thousand lives
Among the cactus and the white birch trees.."

Dwight chuckled, "Just like your mother," he added.

Then Stacy sang, her own voice lovely and soft.

"Pappa I'm a Long Way from Richmond
It's cold all day here up North
And I don't think I'll be coming back down south
I just don't think I fit in there anymore.

But I wish I knew where I was going
I wish my eyes could see the path my feet are on
I don't know where to go.

I've got a friend who says I'm still so young
And what's inside me is still undone
Someday the line between where I've been and where I'm going will start to show
And I'll know where to go

I wish I knew where I was going
I wish my eyes could see the path my feet are on
I don't know where to go.

I've got another friend she says life is like a carpet at your feet,
Flecks of color woven in piece by piece
Eventually you stand back she says, And the pattern starts to show
But Me, I don't know where to go.

I wish I knew where I was going
I wish my eyes could see the path my feet are on
I don't know where to go.

It's been awhile, Pa, since I was a young Child.
Had Arms around me most every day
Now I live my life so untouched somehow
I can only hope that it don't stay this way.

I wish I knew where I was going
I wish my eyes could see the path my feet are on
I don't know where to go."

Stacy fell silent, the song having ended. No banjo accompanied her.

"You won," Shannon noted, smiling.

They sat and sang into the night, before Shannon decided that she needed sleep. "I'm leaving tomorrow," she said. "Before the party, though."

Janet pouted, but she gave the girl a reassuring hug before leaving for the house. The family left for their own rooms, leaving Stacy to brood alone in the cool of the night.

She fell asleep there alone, and never saw Shannon leave.

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