"Pat! We're in a public place!" she hissed, and his hands minded their own business again, but his eyes continued to twinkle. He enjoyed getting her twittery.
It didn't take much, not from him. He was as close as she'd ever come to meeting a movie star. Tall, handsome and strong, though with a bit of a belly, Pat looked distinguished with his cravat and graying hair. He was a real Broadway actor, in Los Angeles for a tour of Paint Your Wagon, and he'd already been to thirty-three states in different productions. She'd only been to Mexico and Nevada.
They’d met by chance that spring morning in 1967, at the big VA Hospital in Westwood, the year her daughter Katie had turned sixteen. Raylene, there to deliver a package, had heard the unaccustomed sounds of "There ain't nothing like a dame" echoing far down the green hospital walls. Following the sound, she found a bunch of actors hamming it up for disabled Vets who lived there.
"That was such a nice thing you did for those men," she told the tallest actor, who introduced himself as Pat Flanagan.
"Hell, I survived Guam and Guadalcanal, lady. ‘There but for the grace of God . . .’ I do this every time I'm out this way. Reminds me how lucky I am," Pat replied. Raylene was amazed he could have seen so much action and still be so personable, but she didn't know how to say it. So she smiled a lot.
Pat smiled back. With her timid gray eyes and simple cotton frock, Raylene didn’t realize she stood out among the flashy actresses like a field daisy in a florist's shop, but Pat noticed, the way confident men do who are slightly bored. Instead of putting her on the spot by asking questions, he launched into his life story: how he was Irish from Milwaukee, he'd played in Mr. Roberts on Broadway, he loved to sing, and the only time he'd fouled up was when the dog in Oklahoma! had refused to enter on cue, “screwing my scene like some cussed donkey!"
"Oh you can't compare a dog to a donkey," Raylene surprised herself by actually interrupting him. "A donkey has no intelligence, but a dog, especially a Poodle or a German Shepherd, even a mutt, sometimes they're the best of all. Someone didn’t train that dog right or it must've got spooked by something, which is tough on an animal. I can't imagine it was the poor dog's fault."
She had not said so much to anyone all day. Raylene was accustomed, even then, to being ignored by her children; her husband's business myopia bothered her more, but she tried not to create a "fuss." Something about Pat's shining eyes had loosened her, and she was thrilled when he suggested she join the actors for lunch. Carl was away on business, the kids were with friends, and today was her own. Maybe, she thought, she could learn something from this man's warmth that she could pass back to Carl.