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Ruby
“Tell me more about that time in your life.”
Ruby is sitting cross-legged on her bed with just the lamps on in her room. She’s got her hair pulled up into a bun, and her thick-framed glasses on instead of contacts. It’s nearly eleven o’clock at night, and she and Dexter are having a Zoom call while she sips a cup of tea.
“You want to know more about my life in Santa Barbara when it was just me and my mom?” Ruby leans over and sets her mug on the bedside table, disappearing from the screen for a moment before sitting back against the pillows and showing up on her laptop again. On his end, Dexter is sitting at his kitchen table in Manhattan with the darkened window behind him. It’s a long galley kitchen, and there are copper pots hanging from hooks on the wall above the stove. He’s got about four days of stubble and is wearing his reading glasses as he glances back and forth between the screen and his notes on the table.
“Yeah, I do. I think hearing about how your early life shaped you will give me more insight into how you functioned as First Lady.”
Ruby tries to smother a smile, because she’s starting to wonder whether Dexter North is interested in her life on some personal level, or if it’s truly “just for the book.” There have been moments when they’ve talked in their nightly Zoom calls when she catches him gazing at her with a rapt look as she speaks, and it reminds her a lot of the way a smitten man might watch a woman from across the table on a date.
But no!Ruby thinks.He’s just an extraordinarily thorough researcher. There’s no way a man in his mid-thirties could be romantically interested in a woman whose fiftieth birthday is right around the corner.She tells herself that every night after they end their call, which sometimes goes on until after one a.m., and then she reminds herself of it each morning as she’s putting on her makeup in the mirror and turning her head from side to side, examining her crow’s feet, looking at the pull of the skin on her neck, and cataloging the way her frown lines linger between her brows even when she relaxes her forehead.Dexter North could do better, she tells herself over and over, but then mentally berates herself for even thinking that a man might be interested in her, because that’s not how a woman in her shoes should be thinking or behaving.
“Okay,” Ruby says now, uncrossing and recrossing her legs so that the opposite leg is tucked under the other. She gets comfortable by fluffing her feather pillows behind her back and then sinks into them. “Let’s see. So my mother, Patty, was and is the most elegant woman on the face of the earth. I’m not kidding. When my father died, she pulled herself together and planned the funeral herself. I remember silver candlesticks, hot dishes that she prepared the night before the service, and the way she washed all the windows so that when people came to our house after being at the church, the sunlight flooded through the house and made it feel warm and quiet.” Ruby closes her eyes for a moment, remembering. “Six months after my dad died, my mother decided that she was going to use her law degree and go back to work, so she did. My grandmother watched me after school and in the evenings, and my mother became an incredibly successful lawyer at one of the biggest firms in Southern California. She dated judges, young and hungry lawyers, actors, and musicians.”
“Your mom did?” Dexter asks, laughing. “Wow. What a minx.”
“She’s a force, Dexter, you have no idea. She still loves younger men, and she’s in her seventies now.”
“Could I get an introduction?”
Ruby can’t help but laugh at this. “Sure. I’d love for you to meet her. She was here when the bookstore opened, and she’ll be here again for the event.”
“Let’s do a sidebar from our discussion and talk about the event.”
“Let’s not,” Ruby counters. “You’re invited, and you’ll stay here at my house for one night so that you can attend with the other ten news outlets.”
“But I’m not a news outlet,” Dexter argues good-naturedly. “And I don’t want to cramp your style or make you feel like you have to say ‘off the record’ every time you burp in your own home.”
Ruby collapses in a fit of giggles, actually falling sideways onto her pillows as her glasses get knocked off-kilter. “You think I’m going toburpin front of you, Mr. North? First Ladies don’t belch.”
“I bet they do lots of things that regular people do,” he says seriously, watching her face.
Ruby sobers instantly and sits upright. “You’re right,” she says, clearing her throat. “We’re real people. And I would tell you to get a room at the inn, but I’ve booked it up entirely for the event, so your only other choice is to stay at Sunday’s house. And while that girl has my heart, I can tell you honestly that she could talk a gate off its hinges. You will never be prepared to keep up with Sunday Bond.”
“So then you would actually be saving me by putting me up in your guest room?” Dexter asks, amused.
“I mean…in a sense.” Ruby shrugs. “But if you want to find out for yourself, Sunday is the nicest person you’ll ever meet, and I’m sure she would put you up.”
“Tempting. So tempting,” he says, smiling at her. “But if you’ll really have me for one night, then I accept the offer.”
“Done.” Ruby pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose and then shoves her bun back to the center of her head, as she can feel it listing to one side. “Now, let’s talk more about my mom, who is truly a wonder.” Ruby pulls her knees to her chest and hugs them with both arms. “So, Patty Dallarosa was dating her way through the Golden State during my teen years, and at one point she brought home Harrison Ford, who was filmingIndiana Jonesat the time.”
“You are absolutely kidding me.”
“I would never,” Ruby says, holding up one hand in Scout’s Honor style. “My mother has always had a way with men, and she’s extremely classy. Outspoken, but classy. I think I learned the right ways to behave in every situation from watching her, to be perfectly honest. And yet, as a kid, she let me have a pretty normal California upbringing.”
“So surfing, skateboarding, cut-off jeans, and joints in the back of some long-haired guy’s van while the sun sets at the beach?”
Ruby intentionally makes a stunned face. “Wait, were you there?” They both laugh. “No, but honestly, it was a lot like that. I hung out at the mall, went to beach parties, Disneyland, and concerts at the Hollywood Bowl.”
“Best concert you ever saw there?”
“I’m an 80s girl—I saw them all: Prince, Madonna, U2, Michael Jackson. And they were all amazing.”
“I can’t lie,” Dexter says, “it does sound idyllic. The California part, I mean,” he adds quickly, “not the part where your dad died and your mom had to work her butt off at a law firm while you were a teenager and probably needed her around.”
He’s prodding for more emotion, but Ruby respects this because it feels more like a conversation than like a reporter giving her the third degree.
