Read Online South of Elfrida by Holley Rubinsky - Free Book Online Page A

Queen would be a turn-on.”
    Stefan knows about The Copper Queen; he once spent three delirious days with a stranger in a corner room.
    He snips a brown bit of lettuce from his burger with his fingernails. “Having expectations leads to disappointment, wouldn’t you say?” He personally doesn’t have expectations, doesn’t think about what should or should not be; as a poet, he’s long ago decided that his obligation is to observe what is. “You’re unrealistic,” he adds. She’s divorced and forty-five and her looks are on the plain side. Her romantic entanglements usually have shitty endings. She’s optimistic and then her hopes are dashed—he used that expression on the drive down from Tucson and she perked up. Told him the archaic expression—“hopes are dashed”—reminded her that the path of love was, indeed, tortuous and fraught. “Tortuous” and “fraught” in the same sentence made the poet in him cringe.
    Her countenance is a portrait of disappointment; the lines beside her mouth seem deeper, the circles under her eyes darker. Stefan says, “I didn’t mean unrealistic in a negative way.”
    â€œDanny was pleased about the idea of meeting in Bisbee. He went to the hotel website and thought it looked super. Then, bango, a message on my cell saying he wasn’t coming. One minute he’s coming, the next he’s not. There’s something wrong with me.”
    He nods sympathetically. What else to do? Karen sets herself up. Any woman who would sign on for ballroom dancing without a partner is asking for rejection. It hadn’t turned out badly for either of them. He was the gay man in the class, the sought-after partner—no clammy hands, no clumsy steps—and she, in turn, protected him from overeager widows. They made a good pair; they were light on their feet, anticipated each other’s moves, and caught on to new steps quickly. He lives in Phoenix now, two hours north of Tucson. After Danny cancelled, left her high and dry, she phoned him in tears and begged him to come down. She would reimburse him for the twenty-five-minute flight, and because she knows he can’t bear sharing a bathroom, she booked him a room for two nights in a nicer motel near her condo. When she picked him up in her white Honda Fit at the airport, they drove east on the I-10 toward Benson. They passed miles and miles of identical housing developments. She said, “Not a solar panel in sight.” As soon as she said it, Stefan became conscious of the missing solar panels. Their absence was obvious. Talk about green energy; Tucson has sunshine for more than eighty percent of the year. That’s the sort of fact she grabs and runs with.
    In Tombstone they went first to the bookstore. Stefan has found his slender volume of poetry in unlikely places, but not here. Not that he actually expected it. The store specializes in the history of the west, with an eye to tourists. They have a few little books of cowboy poems, that’s it. He said he was starving, so they went to the café and ordered emu burgers because they sounded exotic.
    â€œWhat karmic sin did I commit that so many relationships are toast before they begin?” Karen presses her fingers to her eyelids.
    The words are so familiar that Stefan says, without thinking, “He has always disappointed you, whatever his name is, he has never given enough.” The lines are from a long poem he’s written about her but not let her read. He writes about a bitter, older woman too, a character based on her, and though she’s read some of the poems, she doesn’t realize she’s his subject. “Expectations,” he says, getting the conversation back on track.
    Karen pushes her plate toward him, crosses her arms on the table, and gives him a steady look. “I suppose I could join Second Life .”
    Stefan flinches. Oh, crap. “Point