I Thought You Were Dale

It was Delia in produce who told Carla about the guy who’d moved in down by the lake. Took over the condo when old Mrs. Beauharnois died, might’ve been a cousin or a nephew or something, Delia said. He’s a widow, she said.

— Er, said Carla. It’s widow-er.

That’s when Carla got to thinking—out of the blue—that she just might, some day, in her own way—in her own time—might make a move on this guy Dale Sweeney, though she’d never laid eyes on him.

Carla was on the rebound from Jeff. She still felt young, only thirty, not too worn if you didn’t look too close. Worked off the baby fat. She’d check herself out mornings in the ceiling mirror Jeff had installed—a little harder around the edges, she thought, from work and worry, of course. She liked the look—kind of a fuzzy Madonna look after she’d found Pilates. And Carla’d started reading her books a little, again. Ayn Rand. Terry McMillan. Danielle Steel.

So what if Jeff had split, good riddance to bad rubbish. He left the truck, at least there’s that, Carla reasoned. Let him drive the little goddamn broken-down old Datsun to his shit job at Wendy’s and his girlfriend’s dump on Rugar Street. That’s rich: had to go find himself and he finds himself all right—over in Wiggletown. And sinking.

On the other hand . . . Carla on the upswing! Nice promotion at Price Chopper, new responsibilities, the pinstripe shirt and blue skirt rather than the sweatshirt and hairnet deal in bakery. Plus a raise—up to ten-fifty now. And she just loved that clipboard she had to carry around; she even kept it with her in the truck, the thing sliding around on the dashboard importantly. And her kids weren’t fucked up like most kids in this situation; not yet. They had Grandma and school and they loved their room now that Jeff had finally put down the purple carpet.

Delia, tall and broad as a cigar store Indian, saw everyone come in the store from her spot in produce. Everybody had to walk through there—aisles of fruit on the left, veggies on the right—before they got to anything else they might really want. There were really good scientific reasons for this, Mr. Crevecoeur said so, and said someday she, Carla, could read up on it in the company literature that he kept in a binder in his office. There was a word for this but Carla couldn’t remember what it was, but whatever it was, basically it explained why you buried the things people were most likely to be coming in wanting—milk, beer, meat—at the back of the store, so they’d have to walk through the things they might not really want or’d rather forget they were supposed to get—like peas and carrots. Whatever. Carla was somewhat interested.

Delia had come up to the desk early last Saturday and said to Carla, Looky-who, and nodded over her shoulder. Which one, said Carla. With the cute butt, said Delia, and that little giddyup there, that limp. Delia pronounced with a flourish—I give you . . . Dale Sweeney.

Carla saw him. He did have a cute ass, in worn jeans. His limp—yes, he did have one—was more of a swivel, to the discerning eye. He had a big wallet in his rear-end right pocket, and a chain swung from that down and then up toward his front somewhere. She could see an old faded bandana spilling a little from his left rear-end pocket. He wore a jean jacket.

She and Delia both made to catch their breaths a little when Dale Sweeney leaned over to pick up a rutabaga from the basket. He brought it to his nose—Carla had to assume he had a nose, as she’d seen nothing but his backside thus far—and sniffed. He then held the rutabaga nearly at arm’s length in his...