Page 4 of The Elevator Trilogy

Bubba And The Other Tomatoes

  The other tomatoes never felt comfortable around Bubba because of his size, and were often cruel to him with their comments – until he was drafted by the NFL and given a multi-million dollar contract, while the rest of them went on to be salad.

  25. The Penny

  “Danny!” Ed grabbed his friend's arm, yanking him back onto the curb just as a taxi, in a hurry, cut the corner way too close. “What don’t you understand about ‘Don’t Walk’?”

  “The blonde in front of me went for it. I was just following...”

  “I don’t think she’s your type.”

  “Yeah, what type is that?” He wasn’t really paying attention, his eyes still following the girl down the sidewalk across the street until she disappeared into a forest of pedestrians.

  “The kind that dates unemployed men.”

  “You worry too much. We haven’t been laid off yet.”

  “If Jack doesn’t replace the accounts he’s lost, none of us is safe. ...Let’s go,” the light changed and they both started walking to the opposite corner, just a block from the mid-sized ad agency and print shop where they worked. “He’ll start with the newest people, the ones it’ll be easiest for him to replace when the economy... Excuse me,” Ed interrupted himself to apologize to the faceless shoulder he’d just bumped, wedging his way between the people coming in the other direction.

  “I get it, but there’s nothing we can do about it.” Danny was a fatalist, intellectual-speak for “lazy.”

  Ed was just the reverse. Whatever happened, it was his fault. He was the one who passed on college – He couldn’t afford to go full-time anyway. – in favor of getting a job as close to being in advertising as he could find. Jack, the owner, was letting him help manage some of their accounts, production stuff, mostly print, some radio and the one TV commercial for which he selected the locations, arranged for the permits, that kind of stuff. More than a gopher, but nowhere near his potential. It was a beginning, and he got to use their supplies and computers to prepare storyboards for prospective clients, local businesses he’d been pitching more or less without Jack knowing.

  The bigger the street, the wider the sidewalks and the more people the two of them had to weave between and pass to up-the-pace and get back before someone realized they’d been gone longer than expected. It was too warm for the jackets they were wearing, the sun having surprised everyone after the cold morning rain had moved out earlier than any of the local weather reporters had predicted.

  Here and there, an inch or so of unsteady mist was hovering over the pavement where the sun was the strongest. “Wait up.” Ed was the first to see it, the sun’s reflection off the freshly minted face of Lincoln having caught his eye, and stopped to pick it up.

  “Are you kidding?” Danny came back a step or two. “..They don’t make enough hand gel for me to pick up anything from this sidewalk.” But Ed wasn’t listening, choosing instead to marvel at how perfect – except for a small, red, heart-shaped smudge on Lincoln’s face that he couldn’t rub off with his thumb – and dry it was despite the foot traffic and rain. Standing back up, he flipped the coin high – It was an Ed tradition whenever he found one. – and then, precisely at the right moment, reached out to snatch it out of the air, feeling it hit the palm of his hand.

  “Got it!” but when he opened his hand, it was gone. “What?” Turning his hand over didn’t make any sense, but he did it anyway.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” Ed really didn’t, and began looking around at the pavement, thinking it couldn’t have rolled far. “I don’t know. I must have missed it.”

  “Come on.” It wasn’t like Danny to be impatient, but he was hoping to be in the right place at the right time when this one particular girl who worked in accounting would be going out to lunch.

  Reluctantly, taking one last look around even while he began to walk away, they were off. Ed, too, wanted to get back. There was no one special in his life, not really, not in the year since he graduated from high school. The relationship he had senior year was never really going to amount to anything and then, when he moved to the city, they just stopped calling and emailing each other. The breakup happened quickly, no scars, no regrets, no memories worth keeping. A few dates here and there since then, most of them with girls who seemed more interested in him than he was in them.

  One girl he’d dated had become a friend, sort of, the two of them getting together now and then when one or the other needed company and someone he or she could trust. Not too bad, all things considered, when true love wasn’t an option. And no, they never promised they’d eventually marry each other if neither didn’t have a better offer first. It wasn’t like that. Just friends.

  Lately, it was all he could do to make up for the rookie mistakes he kept making at work. Hard to believe, but finding that coin had been the highlight of his week. Losing it immediately was more like it. He’d have to make his own luck.

  A few minutes later they were running up the two flights to their offices, above the hardware store on the ground floor, and the law office above that. Their agency had the top two floors, and the roof where Ed would go to escape and think about stuff when being alone was what he needed.

  “Hey, Ed.” Mary was the receptionist, a single mother in her mid-30s who would bring in her little kid, Bart, every once and a while when his grandmother couldn’t take care of him. Bart had become a sort of company mascot, doing chores he could handle and just hanging out with the staff. They all took care of him, and Bart felt like he was doing something important, carrying a stapler or roll of colored tape from one office to another. Ed would talk to him, put him in one of the conference room chairs and practice making campaign presentations. Bart was one of his biggest fans. “Jack,” she announced, looking up from whatever she was typing to make sure Ed was paying attention, “wants to see you right away.”

  “Sure,” he said tentatively, “I’ll just stop by my..”

  “Now, Ed. He said, ‘as soon as he..”

  “Mr. Mecklen.” (‘Mecklen’ is Ed’s last name.) It was Jack, coming around the divider that was behind Mary’s desk, the wall on which the agency logo was hanging above where she was sitting, “follow me, please.”

  Ed did, and they were down the hall and in Jack’s office only a few seconds later. Jack walked and did everything in a hurry.

  “Sit down,” Jack pointed quickly to the chair in front of his desk. “Where have you been this morning?”

  “Well, Danny and I delivered two mailers and some proof sheets.” No reaction from Jack who had sat down and was staring right at him, forearms on his desk, his hands interlocked, every other finger. “…and then we stopped at the ‘Bagel Bakery,’ you know, the warehouse on 4th where they make,” his voice slowed to a standstill, “…bagels …to make a presentation.”

  “I know. Mr. Gold called with a question. Quite the chat, so I’m told. According to Mary, Mr. Gold said your presentation was brilliant. Apparently you talked him out of fielding gourmet lunch trucks in favor of Saturday and Sunday morning residential deliveries of fresh, hot bagels – actually made on the trucks? Is that right?” Jack was going to do all the talking. “He says you actually went to the trouble to learn how they make them, and that you convinced him he’d sell substantially more bagels at lower costs than trying to make a limited number of sandwiches on a truck that was too small, with too little power to make fresh bagels.”

  “…Something like that,” Ed responded, hesitantly, not sure how much trouble he was in.

  “And that he’s engaging us make an initial investment of $25,000 and change for campaign fliers and art for the first truck, promotional t-shirts, bags and other supplies? Am I getting this right, Mr. Mecklen?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Okay, here’s the deal. You don’t ever, ever contact a prospective client without my prior approval, let alone talk price un
til I’m sure you know what you’re doing. Notwithstanding whatever advice you got or get from our staff,…” And then he stopped. “Judging from the expression on your face, I gather this advice I’m giving you comes a tad too late?”

  “ Well, there are a couple of oth…”

  “Stop. I want a detailed write-up on my desk by noon on Friday for me to read over the weekend. In the meantime, postpone any meetings or presentations. No client contact until we talk Monday morning. For now, you’re in campaign development and sales, working directly for me. No staff, no nothing, not a dollar of company resources until I approve it. You have any administrative or procedural questions, you come to me. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Fine. ..Good work, other than scaring the crap out of me, which is something you only get to do once. Understand?”

  Ed just sat there.

  “Why are you still here?”

  “Are you letting me run the campaign for the Gold’s, for the Bagel Bakery?”

  “As long as you don’t blow it. Now get out of here and go see Jenny,” the agency’s Office Manager.

  Ed got up and headed for the door, stopping with his hand on the doorknob. “Why would I do that? Why do I need to see Jenny?”

  “Because you’re being promoted, Mr. Mecklen, and she’ll give you the details.”

  “Right. Of course. Uh,” Ed was thinking of something smart to say, but decided to keep it simple. “Thank you,” and he left, forgetting to hold onto the door that tended to slam shut, “Bang!” rattling the old glass, unless you stopped it. The sound startled him, his shoulders and neck shuttering as he walked slowly back to the lobby, his mind blank.

  “Hey, Mary,” he announced himself, looking up at the staff board to see that Jenny was out to lunch, his words sounding slow, almost trancelike, “I’m running down to the diner. You want something?”

  “No thanks.”

  Ed nodded that he understood, and took the stairs more slowly than usual, wrapping the knuckles of his right hand on the round metal banister. The stairs were open to the column that rose from the basement to the top of their building. The sound of people, just a few, coming and going on the concrete and metal stairs snapped him back. “Crap,” he just remembered he was out of cash. Stopping mid-way down the flight between the second and first floor, Ed checked his wallet, rubbing the two ones that were in there between his thumb and forefinger as if there might be a third. “So much for lunch.”

  “Hey, Ed! ...Perfect timing.” It was April, one of their graphics design people who had done him more favors than he could remember. One of the most pleasant people you’ll ever meet. “Remember those sandwiches you picked up for us last week…” Actually, he’d forgotten all about it. “..and left on my desk when I was in the ladies room? For some reason, saying that made her giggle while she fumbled for her wallet without taking her bag off her shoulder. “Here you go, $12.63,” and then she looked up and smiled. “Thanks!”

  “Hey, you’re welcome.”

  April touched him on the arm and jogged up the stairs behind him.

  “Great,” Ed said to himself, stuffing the ten and two more ones in his wallet, and throwing the change in his pocket on top of his keys. Picking up his pace, he began to smile, mostly around his eyes, as his thoughts turned to which sandwich he would eat while he made notes on the folded sheet of paper he always kept in his left back pocket – the perfect accessory for the person eating alone which is mostly what he did lately. A folded piece of paper, plus the cheap ballpoint pen clipped inside his shirt pocket, or maybe a Time magazine or Popular Science, these were the essentials if you wanted to scope out other people in the restaurant without attracting too much attention. Today, he’d make a list of what to do next, over the next couple of days.

  Out the front doors of their building, to the right, down to the corner, right again, two blocks later to the diner on the corner. The bell over the door, still there after all these years, got the older woman’s attention from her station behind the cash register. “Hey, Mrs. Lupino, how’s everything.”

  “Fine. Take a seat,” she advised him and everybody who came through the door, including the mailman and her son who owned the place, barely looking up, and then she went back to work doing bad needlepoint between ringing up her customers. With glasses that thick, Ed was sure it was only a matter of time before she died stabbing herself when she put receipts on the spindle where she kept them.

  No stool at the counter. Today he deserved his own booth. Mr. Lupino, the old Mrs. Lupino’s son who worked the grill, was short on wait staff, and shouted over to ask, “What d’you want, Ed?”

  The menus were between the salt and pepper shakers, the ketchup and Tabasco sauce, but he didn’t need one. “Turkey club on rye, some fries and a lemonade.”

  No answer, but Mr. Lupino was already in action, laying two pieces of thick sliced bacon on the grill next to the rows of small, onion covered patties for the sliders his customers ordered by the bag. “Pie?” he shouted back. His wife, the other Mrs. Lupino, made them herself. The cherry and double crust apple were spectacular – and her Boston Cream Pie, which is really a cake was… was indescribably delicious. And she was beautiful, “the Jennifer Connelly of desserts” as Ed once observed to himself, when he stopped by for a piece to carryout on his way home one evening when he’d been working late. There was a bus stop near the diner and, if he was careful, and he was, it would still be perfect when he made it home, to his studio apartment.

  “Maybe,” Ed shouted back at him. “...I’ll let you know.” Hearing his orders over the din of customers talking and noise coming from the kitchen was a skill Mr. Lupino had acquired over the years since he converted the old car lot that had preceded him. Only occasionally would he even look at the slips the waitresses would attach to the wheel in the opening to the kitchen, just above where they’d pick up their orders. If he hired you, and you couldn’t live with the rush, you didn’t last long.

  Some Hispanic kid who worked the kitchen, a dirty towel rolled into his belt for an apron, brought the thick china plate with his sandwich, a small plastic basket of fries, a check, and some silverware rolled up in a napkin. The lemonade showed up a moment later. Ed got out and unfolded his piece of paper, and started making detailed notes about ideas for Gold's he wanted to make sure he didn’t forget.

  Twenty minutes later, Ed had pushed his plate out the way and was finishing up the list that had spilled over to the back of his paper, nibbling on the few fries he had left. Thinking he’d pass on the pie, mostly for financial reasons, and anxious to get back to the office, Ed slid left on the bench seat and began to stand up, reaching into his pocket, fumbling for the coins he’d leave for a tip. “Hm.” Three quarters, a dime and... and three pennies, one of them a shiny new coin with a familiar red, heart-shaped something stuck to the side of Lincoln’s face.

  “What the...”

  “Sorry, buddy.” The large man who’d bumped into him was apologetic enough, but all Ed cared about was watching, in adrenalin slow-motion, his change hit the tile floor.

  Sure the quarters were more important, but it was the rolling, shiny copper disk that caught his attention, weaving its way precariously among the feet of people walking between the stools and row of booths along the windows. Ed was after it – “Excuse me. …Sorry.” – until it took an abrupt left turn and rolled under the counter toward the kitchen.

  Whipping around the end of the counter, not bothering to look up, Ed came this close to colliding with a new girl, just coming out of the kitchen, a plate in each hand, and a third on the crook of an elbow. “Whoa!” she stopped short, barely holding on to the lunches she was rushing to deliver.

  Except for the nametags, “Lupino’s” waitresses didn’t wear uniforms. Too expensive. Most were locals, usually young and ordinary looking, working there to make money between stages of their lives, preludes to careers that never happen
ed. Whatever her story, there was something different about her face. “Maybe,” Ed thought, “she was just too new at this to be taking it in stride. Too fresh to find it tedious.”

  “Hey,” she greeted Ed, eyes unusually wide open. Mr. Lupino’s rule was that he had to have the longest hair of any of his employees, and he was practically bald – which explains why her already short, curly brown hair was pulled back into a pathetically inadequate ponytail with barely anything except a few wisps coming out the back of the rubber band trying its best to hold it all together.

  “Hey,” was all Ed could manage.

  “Here, gimme those.” One of the other waitresses, seeing the chemistry and wishing she could have some of that, volunteered to help out. “What table?”

  “In the corner,” the new girl answered without looking away except to handoff the plates

  “Sorry, I, uh, dropped some change and..”

  “Did you need something?”

  “Look at her eyes,” he told himself. “Those lips.. No, keep looking at her eyes,” Ed was trying not to be flustered. “…Any fresh pie left?”

  “Mrs. Lupino put out a cherry just a few minutes ago. …I could bring you a slice.”

  “Hey!” Mr. Lupino seldom required more than a word or two to make his point.

  “What booth?” she said quickly.

  “I don’t know. The one with me sitting there,” he smiled back at her.

  “Go. I’ll get it for you,” and Ed hustled off, catching a “give me a break” smirk and roll of the eyes from Mr. Lupino.

  “Great. I’ll, uh, …” and, gesturing with his head toward the booths, Ed left.

  Lifting up her right foot, Stephanie looked down to see the rolling coin she had stepped on before running into Ed. Bending over, she picked it up, marveling at how shiny it was, and rubbing the red, heart shaped mark on Lincoln’s face that didn’t come off. “Who knows,” she wondered softly, flipping the coin in the air, watching it flicker in the sunlight coming through the diner windows, “maybe he’s the one.” Reaching out, she snatched it on the way down, feeling its cool against the palm of her hand, but then… “What?” …It was gone. Staring at her open hand for a second, she turned quickly, bending her knees to look under the counter and at the floor around her.

  “Stephanie!” Mr. Lupino had his hands full, but gestured with his head toward the booths and the short line of customers looking for places to sit.

  “Yes, Sir,” she responded. I’m moving!”

  On the sidewalk at a busy corner a few blocks away, while Ed works late until he can meet Stephanie after her shift, there, amongst the grime and occasional piece of litter, an unusually shiny coin, a red heart-shaped mark on the face of a beloved President, lays waiting to be picked up by whoever has the daring and needs to have it.

  26. Say “Goodbye” to Jane.

  “Hey,” Josh looked up and over his computer, surprised to see the girl he’d been dating standing in front of his desk, his eyes distracted on their way up by the on-screen wallpaper picture of Avril Lavigne, the girl of his dreams.

  Josh’s desk was one of eighteen on the third floor where his team worked to keep their cable news service website up to date. It was Friday, just after 7 PM, less than an hour before another team would takeover. The day had started light, but political news and several international stories had started to break late and the floor was busier than usual going into the weekend.

  There was no leaving early. In fact, they all lived for the sound of people talking to each other and on the phone, the constant motion of staff coming and going, the odd mix of professional business and social interaction that made their days in the wide open office that was more their home than where they lived. It was a place where people came in early just to hang out, and went out after work with the other staff who had become their friends.

  “Hey,” she said back to him, her look serious, the tone of her voice flat.

  “What’s that?” he asked about the small gym bag she was holding by its straps in her right hand. “I can’t leave here until 8,” and then he paused, realizing something was different. “What have done to your hair? It’s…”

  Her expression was disappointed with more than a hint of disgust. Taking a breath, she plopped her bag on his desk, blowing several loose pages and a newspaper onto the floor which Josh started to pick up, but stopped to hear her explanation, sensing she really wanted him to be paying attention. “I washed out the blue stripe and pulled it back. I’m letting it grow out. No more blonde.”

  “But I like blonde.”

  “You like a lot of things. I’m just not one of them.”

  “Wha..”

  “Here.” Her eyes fixed on his, she reached under the white blouse and V-neck sweater she was wearing, moving her hands and arms like a magician escaping from a straight jacket. “This is the push-up bra,” she said, throwing it at him, “that I’ve been wearing for the past four months to get your attention. It’s uncomfortable as hell,” she wanted him to know, unabashedly using both hands to adjust her breasts through her sweater, rubbing them quickly on their underside crease.

  He sat there quietly, still holding the bra he’d caught with both hands. It was clear she wasn’t done.

  Pushing the set of metal bookends on the front of his desk, and the paper and hard back references between them, to her left, unable to care less that one end and several of the books had fallen off the edge onto the floor, she put one hand on the front edge of his desk for the balance she needed to take off her high heels. “These I’ll keep because… because,” slamming them on his desk one at a time, “they were expensive and, who knows, I may need to them for someone who really cares.”

  Unbuckling her belt, she unzipped the fake leather mini-skirt she was wearing and let it drop to the floor, leaving her standing there in nothing more than blue-gray, very low waist boylegs. Stepping out of the mini-skirt, she picked it up and threw that at him too. “Forty dollars. That was the sale price, and I haven’t been able to bend over or sit with my knees apart since I bought it.” From the bag, she pulled out a pair of well worn jeans and slipped into them. She didn’t mean to do it seductively. Being that way just came naturally to her. And then sox that she put on, hopping on one leg, and Reeboks from the gym bag. Her high heels went into the same bag that she grabbed by its handles without bothering to zip it up.

  “In case you haven’t gotten the point,” she said, loud and clear, with the perfect dramatic pause, “we’re done.”

  Josh leaned forward to quiet her. “Could you please keep…”

  “What? Some of your friends…” Looking around, she noticed, but couldn’t have cared less that everyone in his group, and from several desks across the open walkway, was hanging on her every word, watching the two of them without moving or saying anything.

  Two phones rang until they gave up. The chubby guy at the corner desk by the file cabinets snapped his cell phone closed, in the middle of a call, without saying a word or taking his eyes off the two of them. “God damn, she’s hot,” he and the other men in the group, Josh included – and one of the women – were thinking to themselves.

  Turning back to Josh, “…some of your coworkers don’t know yet what a jerk you are? ‘Breaking News!’ They do now. …No, actually, I stand corrected. I’m the jerk. For the past four months I’ve done everything possible to live up... to...” She stopped to catch her breath. “...Mm, what a jerk.” Taking a step forward, she grabbed the screen of his computer and turned it around. “What a surprise?! And there she is. Well, pay attention! I’m not her. Never will be. Don’t want to be. The fact is, if I didn’t remind you of her somehow, for some reason I still don't get, you never would have asked me out. Hell, you wouldn’t even know I worked here.”

  “Avril, ..”

  “Unbelievable! …Last night, in the middle of God knows what you thought you were doing, that’s what you called me th
at. …What’s my name? Come on. What’s my name?!”

  “Uh,” he hesitated, worried that it was trick question and wanting to make sure he got it right, “it’s …”

  “How puh-thetic. You actually think you’ve been sleeping with her, don’t you?”

  “How ‘bout if we talk about this over dinner?”

  She paused, wondering if anyone could really be that dumb.

  “Josh,” she said with remarkable calm and the flavor of pity evident in her voice, “we’re not going out tonight. Not tonight, not ever again. We’re not even going to be friends. …But strangely, strangely I almost feel like you did me a favor. To think that it took my wanting to be someone else to figure out who I really am.” One deep breath, and she smiled, not at Josh, but to herself, and then she turned and left, walking away toward the elevators.

  Not one to give up that easily, Josh rose to his feet, running around his desk and after her. “Jane. Wait up. …Jane!” She stopped and turned, waiting for him to catch up to her. “Look,” he started, a bit breathless and determined not to apologize, knowing it would only annoy her. “Okay, I’m guilty of being shallow. How’s that any different from what you did? I got stuck on the way she looks, and you were just as pathetic in how you responded.”

  Sad, but it was true, and the only reason she was still standing there.

  “You get to start over. Why can’t I? Why can’t we just start over, me crazy about you for who you are, you being who you are and helping me become…”

  “Josh,” she spoke up to stop him from talking. “The thing is, Josh, you’re right. I really am no better than you are. You’re smart,” she reached up, moving the fingers of her right hand through his hair, “good looking.. God, you’re good looking. Only average in bed, but we could work on that, and occasionally funny. Come to think of it, you’re my ‘Avril Lavigne.’” Placing her hand on his chest, “The thing is, Josh, I don’t think I ever really cared.” She smiled and shrugged. “..See yah,” and she turned, letting her hand linger on his chest for just a second as she walked away.

  He watched her go for a moment, and then turned, hands in his pants pockets, to walk back to his desk. Steve, the chubby guy from the corner desk, was waiting for him, leaning up against the front edge. Seeing Josh, he smiled, nodding his head up and down slightly, rubbing his thumb and first fingers quickly to make the universal sign of cash.

  Rolling his eyes, Josh reached for his wallet, took out and handed his friend a twenty.

  “What did I tell you? Call her ‘Avril’ in the heat of luuuuvvv, and that would pretty much do it. …and my mother thought I wasted my degree in Psychology. I mean, was that babe psycho or what?”

  Looking Steve in the face, and then looking down to his side, Josh blew him off with an, “I’ve got to get back to work.” Walking around his desk, Josh sat down and swiveled himself into position in front of his keyboard and screen. And there she was staring back at him, always perfect, always the come-on. There she was, Avril Lavigne, oozing sexuality, but nevertheless the now ex-girl of his dreams.

  27. Dream On

  “Pssst.” Nothing. “...Hey,” he said a little louder.

  “Whuh!” Carole shot up in her bed. “Ah,” she couldn’t seem to breathe, fumbling franticly in the almost darkness for her glasses on the crowded night table, pushing her alarm clock onto the floor, rattling her metal lampshade while she nervously clicked the switch again and again.

  “Looking for these?” The stranger standing a few feet to the side of her bed held up her glasses and cell phone. Given the circumstances, his voice and demeanor were remarkably casual. He seemed comfortable, at ease with himself as if this was something he’d done before. “I’ve turned off your power. The light won’t go on. There’s no point.”

  Carole could see him, but not clearly. Her vision wasn’t all that good, and the only light in the room was from a lamppost on the other side of the street coming through narrow blinds she’d closed just enough to give her privacy. Her breathing was labored.

  “If you don’t calm down, you’ll hyperventilate and pass out. …You really don’t want to pass out with me here, do you?”

  “Mm.” Carole shook her head as if shuttering from the cold, and then instinctively grabbed the quilt that had fallen to her waist and yanked it up over her chest and the t-shirt she was wearing.

  “You’re not naked, Carole. There’s no reason to cover up.”

  She took a quick breath, trying so hard not to be one of those people who couldn’t scream, let alone talk, when she’s scared. “What do you want?!” she blurted out, the pitch of her voice higher than usual and erratic. “What do you want? …How did you get in here?”

  “Through your back door. You really need to get an alarm,” he said laughing quietly to himself. “…You know, you seem tired, Carole. Having trouble sleeping lately?”

  “How do you know my name?” Without moving her head, hoping the stranger wouldn’t notice, she looked everywhere around the room, straining to see something that she could use as a weapon.

  “What, you’re going to leap out of bed and attack me with, let’s see, your blow dryer?” He rolled his eyes and then pursed his lips, as if seriously considering her options. “Nah.”

  No response. She squinted, but still couldn’t see him clearly.

  “You’re, what, maybe five four, 120 pounds tops? Athletic,” he thought out loud, cocking his head as he stared at her bare arms and the form of her legs pushing up the quilt. “I, on the other hand, am just over six feet and weigh 195 pounds. …Oh, and did I mention…” He tossed her glasses and cell phone into the metal trashcan in the far corner of the room, the sound of them hitting the can startling her even though she saw him throw them.

  How many times had she wondered to herself, watching TV or a movie, if something like this would ever happen to her, would she wait too long to do whatever she could, would she hesitate until it was too late?

  Reaching into his right pants pocket, he took out something out, there was a sharp “click” followed by a flash of light off what had to be a blade. “Did I mention that I have a knife.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You already asked me that.”

  “So I'm asking you again,” she responded defiantly. “Is it money?”

  The man just stood there. “Don’t you hate awkward moments? …No, I don’t need your money. …Now, you’re probably saying to yourself, if you weren’t too scared to think, ‘If not money, what does that leave?’ Money would be easy. Maybe he’s going to rape or kill me, or both. Maybe this is the beginning of the last few moments of my life. But you can’t think, can you?” The man took a step forward, the open knife down at this side. “…which is why I’m thinking for you.” And then another step, his arm with the knife bending down and forward, the point of its blade poking into the quilt, Carole’s leg flinching to get out of its way.

  “I see, and is that when you woke up, Jacob?” Dr. Winters assumed it was, but wanted to be sure.

  “Yes.”

  “How many dreams has it been?”

  “Six, including this one, since I started seeing you – and several before that.”

  “Each one taking you closer, further along to what you assume is going to be a violent outcome?”

  “Yes.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because… Because that’s what I want. It’s getting to the point where I’m going to bed early, hoping for the next dream to find out what happens next. …And,” Jacob sat forward to be able to get his hand in his pocket, “I went out and bought a knife.” He took it out, setting it on the table in front of him.

  “Like the one in your dreams?”

  “Exactly like the one in my dreams. That’s why I bought it.”

  Dr. Winters stared at his patient, rubbing the plastic shaft of the pen he’d been using to take notes. “Wait here.” Rising
out of his chair, he went to the door of the inner office where he and Jacob had been talking. His hand on the knob, he turned back to his patient. “I have someone I’d like you to meet.”

  The first person to come in was a woman, tall, gray hair, in her fifties. “This is Dr. Evelyn Bouchard…”

  “Hello, Jacob.”

  “Jacob nodded his head slightly, feeling anxious about what was happening.

  “… Dr. Bouchard and I have separate practices, but talk often about each other’s cases. It helps sometimes…”

  A fourth person had come in and was standing behind the two psychologists. It was a woman, Jacob could tell, judging from her size and what he could see of her almost shoulder length hair.

  “..to get another professional’s point of view.”

  Jacob pushed off the leather of his chair, rising to his feet as the second woman came around from behind the two doctors. Lifting up her face slightly, she reached with the forefinger of her right hand to push her glasses up to the bridge of her nose, but then decided that it would be better if Jacob could see her without them.

  “And I think,” Dr. Winters was only stating the obvious, “you recognize Carole. …Let’s everybody have a seat.”

  Dr. Brouchard sat on the two-cushion sofa next to Carole who was too nervous to lean back.

  “It turns out, so I discovered a few days ago, that Carole… She is the girl in your dreams, isn’t she, Jacob?”

  Jacob bobbed his head just enough, never taking his eyes off her.

  “Carole’s been seeing Dr. Brouchard about a recurring dream, about a man who breaks into her house, each dream more real than the one before it, each one coming closer to violence. …Sound familiar?”

  Rolling his eyes toward Dr. Winters, his silence was all they needed to hear.

  “By the way, Jacob, in the notes I’ve asked you to make after each dream, her name is “Carole” alright, but with an “e.”

  “You knew my name?” Carole hadn’t been told. “How did you know my name?” she asked him in that tone of voice between anger and fear.

  “I don’t…” Jacob held out his hands, unable to finish. “It was ‘Carole’ in the dreams I’ve had.”

  “Unlike you, Jacob,” Dr. Brouchard took over, “Carole has been afraid to sleep, afraid she’ll dream. She’s had an alarm system installed, but the dreams haven’t stopped.”

  “So what do we do now, Dr. Winters?” Jacob asked, his eyes moving from Carole’s folded hands in her lap, up her arms to her shoulders and neck. Carole pulled at the edge of her skirt, wishing she had worn jeans. “Why are we meeting? Will knowing we’re real make the dreams stop?”

  “I don’t know,” Dr. Winters wasn’t kidding.

  “This,” Dr. Brouchard interrupted, uncertainty apparent in her voice, “to be honest, is the first time we’ve handled anything like this. Many people have similar dreams. You two are apparently having the same dream, but from different perspectives.”

  “They don’t seem,” Carole was hesitant to speak, “like dreams.”

  “With your permission, Dr. Brouchard,” Dr. Winters wanted to answer, “most dreams are based on events the dreamer has experienced, a combination of situations and emotions creatively spun and extrapolated by the mind in the context of our hopes and fears. When dreams come true, it’s usually by chance or because… or because we make them happen. The problem here is that, so far as we can tell, the two of you have never met or run across each other, at least not consciously. Somehow, the two of you have started dreaming in synch. It’s rare, but there are well documented cases of it happening, of strangers sharing the same dreams – even more rare that those dreams would be progressive, that each of you would actually be adapting to your previous dream experience…” Carole and Jacob seemed lost.

  “You come home,” Dr. Winters continued, “you’re hungry, but there’s nothing good to eat. The next time you dream, you come home and there’s leftover Chinese in your refrigerator. The first time you found yourself in Carole’s room, there was no weapon. Two dreams later, you had that knife. Carole used to leave her cell phone in a recharging stand in her kitchen. Now she keeps it on her nightstand – first in your dreams and then in reality. Clearly, you’re adapting, letting your dreams influence your waking behavior, and your waking behavior influence subsequent dreams that are converging together toward what may be a common conclusion.” And he stopped.

  “…The problem,” Dr. Brouchard took over, “is that the dreams the two of you are sharing – every few days, by the way, on the same nights according to your notes – appear to have violent content and, at the very least, have been upsetting to both of you.”

  “That’s all very interesting,…” Of the two patients, Carole seemed to be under the most stress. “..but can you make them stop? Do none of you see that knife?” she pointed an unsteady finger at the coffee table in front of Jacob. “Why... Why shouldn’t I be afraid?”

  “Carole,” Dr. Winters answered, “it’s perfectly understandable that you are afraid. Dreams can be scary. These are nightmares at the very least, and you’re clearly sleep deprived which isn’t helping. …Look, if it’s okay with the two of you, we’re going to try having some of our sessions together. Our thinking is that letting the two of you get to know each other will make the violent component of your common dreams seem less real…”

  “…and because,” Dr. Brouchard finished the thought for her colleague, “there are things each of you needs to know about the other.”

  “Like what?” Jacob demanded.

  “For one thing,” Dr. Winters looked at Carole, “you need to know that Jacob owns the local franchise for the security company that installed your alarm system.”

  Carole’s head turned sharply to face Jacob, her posture becoming stiff as she pushed back, distancing herself from Jacob by a few inches.

  “And for another,” he said, looking back at Jacob, “you need to know that Carole has bought a gun and has been learning how to use it.”

  Carole tightened her jaw.

  Jacob, on the other hand, seemed almost excited by the challenge.

  28. Enchilada Books

  Inspired by my favorite corner bookstore,

  Three Lives, in the West Village of New York City.

  “Hey, Babe,” Toby Cooper looked up to see his wife, Amanda, and their three year old son, Nathan, on their way in. “Close the door, will you?”

  Toby was the third generation owner of “My Family’s Bookstore” that had been there on the corner for what seemed like forever. It was and had always been an ethnic neighborhood, a place where people from somewhere else came on their way to making something more of themselves. Amidst all this change, My Family’s Bookstore was one of the few constants.

  For these immigrants, whatever their origins or reasons, just having made it this far was proof of their motivation, of character and commitment which, by and large, would serve them well. Toby’s great-grandfather was no exception. He began waiting tables and eventually managed a prominent local restaurant until he retired. It was his son, Toby’s grandfather, the first of his family to go to college in a time when not everyone did, who started the bookstore. When he retired, his son, Toby’s father, took over, expanding the store into their building’s second floor, growing the business for Toby who came to work there full-time after he graduated. And now, with the untimely death of his father a few years ago, the store was Toby’s. He was young, but ready. It was a bookstore he had been born to run.

  “Hi, Daddy!” Nathan was so excited, his dark brown curly hair bouncing as he trotted around the big old desk in his father’s office to give Toby a hug. Climbing up on Toby’s lap, he would pay attention, shaking his head up and down, left and right sometimes, touching the papers on his father’s desk as if he understood what was happening. The three of them – Toby, Amanda and their son, Nathan – lived in the loft apartment on the fourth and top story of the bui
lding. The bookstore was on the first two floors, and kept its supplies and extra inventory in the basement. The third floor was divided into two apartments that were rented. It was a good, sturdy building, the kind about which people like to say, “They don’t make them like that anymore.”

  Amanda held on to the brass knob when she pushed the door shut so that its frosted glass panel didn’t rattle too much when it hit the frame. “What’s up?”

  “Hold on.” He picked the phone and pressed the 2. “Hey. ..Yeah. Would you mind taking care of Nathan for a while? ...Thanks.” A few seconds later, the sound of Carol jogging up the wooden steps that ran next to the office let them know she was coming.

  “Hey, Nathan!” Carol almost shouted, bursting through the door the way she did always made him laugh.

  “Hey!” Nathan was glad to see her. “What’s up?” It was a question he always asked, regardless of the circumstances.

  Lifting his son up, sitting him on the edge of his desk, Toby asked for a favor. “Would you mind hanging out with Carol for a while?”

  “Sure, Daddy.”

  “Stay close and do what you can to help her.”

  He nodded his agreement, squirmed out of Toby’s hands and hopped onto the floor, running over to grab Carol’s outstretched hand, and they were off to do stuff. The fact was, Nathan was remarkably helpful, holding books when she stocked the shelves, counting the inventory, two of these, three of those. He’d learned to say, “Welcome to My Family’s Bookstore,” and “Can I help you?” to customers, looking way up at them, playing with his fingers while he said it. It took a while for him to say, but always made them feel good about shopping there. He was only a little kid, but he knew what he was doing. If the customer needed help, one of the staff would step in, but take Nathan with them from shelf to shelf to the register, and then hold his finger on the knot of the ribbon if there was something to wrap. It would be his store one day, if he wanted it, and if it was still there to give him.

  Back in the relative quiet of Toby’s office, Amanda could read the stress on her husband’s face. “You talked to Jimmy.” It wasn’t a question. Jimmy had been the store’s accountant for more than decade now.

  “Yeah. He doesn’t think we’re going to make it.”

  “What does he know?”

  “He knows a marginal business when he sees it. There’s just…” and he stopped, interrupted by a rap on the door. “Come in.”

  “Excuse me.”

  “Hi, Mr. Morales,” the part-time handyman they’d hired a few weeks ago. He was a good looking man in his early 70s, with a strong face and determined eyes that seemed out of place and made you wonder what they had seen that made them that way. As far a Toby knew, Mr. Morales had lived in the community for most of his life – although his Mexican accent was still evident, as was often the case with older immigrants who came here as adults. A pleasant, very effective man, they’d hired him to keep the store in shape, to make the little repairs their landlord wouldn’t. “Good morning.”

  “Is it okay if I replace the plug on your floor lamp,” he asked, glancing toward to the corner of the room, away from the windows, that was darker than it should have been.

  “Uh, sure. Go ahead.”

  “I’ll just be a minute,” he responded, reaching into the pocket of his jeans to take out the new plug, a small tool bag in his other hand. “Mrs. Cooper,” he smiled politely.

  “Good morning,” she responded. “...Nice job on the shelves, by the way.”

  He didn’t answer, but turned and waved back to accept her compliment.

  Toby rolled his chair under the desk, putting both his forearms down, interlocking his fingers as he leaned closer to Amanda who was sitting in the small, worn corduroy wing chair that was her favorite. Kicking off her shoes, she curled her legs under and crossed her arms. (“Life’s too short, her mother used to tell her, “not to be comfortable.”)

  “It’s... It’s the same thing we’ve been talking about for months,” Toby said softly. “We just don’t have the space to do enough business, or the volume to get competitive pricing from our distributors. We do more for our customers, but...,” he tilted his head slightly and stopped to breathe, “these aren’t wealthy people. They’re not going to pay a premium for service, and nobody, nobody waits anymore for us to order something they can find on the shelf at one of the big chain-stores. If they can’t hold it and read the first couple of pages, they might as well buy it on-line. And why..,” he shrugged the one shoulder and raised his eyebrows, “why keep coming back if they can’t find something they want to buy.”

  “Hey,” she reassured him, “We’ll do the best we can, for as long as we can. …How ‘bout if I look for another location? I know you don’t want to move, but…”

  “I don’t. This is our neighborhood. If anything, we should have the advantage here because these are our people. What makes you think we’ll survive or do better someplace else?” And then he reconsidered, tired of denying the inevitable. “..But you’re right. We do need to start looking. I don’t think our new landlord’s going to give us any choice. See what we can afford. Just ...start close. Maybe we can at least keep our apartment.”

  “How about if we keep this place, but open a second and then eventually a third store to get our volume up? Maybe stores with different specialties? I could run one with nothing but arts and entertainment books, you know, lots of the big ones people like to leave out on their coffee tables.” She was playing with him a bit, but wasn’t kidding. “Seriously. Think about it. This store would be our headquar…”

  The door was still open from when Mr. Morales had come in, but Joyce knocked on the frame anyway just to be polite. “Sorry, but I need some help.”

  “Sure,” Toby looked over at his manager standing in the doorway, waiving her in. “What do you need?”

  In she came, but not alone. “Toby, this is Aleshia,” a little girl, seven or eight years old. “She would like to buy this book,” Joyce explained, holding it up.”

  “Hm. I didn’t know we carried that.”

  “We don’t, not recently anyway, …and she only has one dollar to spend.”

  The little girl held it out, the dollar, to show it to him.

  Toby looked at Amanda, and back at Joyce. “No kidding? …Hey, Aleshia. That’s a great book. Did you turn the pages? Do you think it’s something you can read?”

  “Yes, Sir,” she answered timidly, standing close to Joyce for protection. “My mother and father will help me if I have any trouble.”

  “Are they with you?”

  “No,” she shook her head, “They have to work. I stopped by on my way home from school.”

  “Well, okay. Uh, Joyce, I believe the price of that book is 75 cents, tax included. Would you put that in a bag and offer Aleshia a fresh brownie? And Aleshia, …”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you for coming to ‘My Family’s Bookstore.’” He smiled at her, and she back to him, a broad, warm smile with lots of teeth, the kind of smile that would make Toby’s day.

  “Close the door, will you Joyce. …And Joyce, make sure Aleshia gets home safely. Maybe Maura can walk with her on her way out to bring back supplies.”

  “Sure thing. …Come on,” Joyce took Aleshia's hand, grabbing the edge of the door behind her back on her way out.

  “Bye,” Amanda waved to the little girl who looked back over her shoulder at the two of them, and at Mr. Morales standing in the corner just finishing up his work.

  “Wait for me,” Mr. Morales picked up his pace to make it out before the door closed, as if he couldn’t have opened himself if he had to.

  “Gracias,” Toby said to Mr. Morales’ back, doubting if he heard him.

  “He speaks English, you know.”

  “Yeah.” Toby had always wished he could speak Spanish. His grandfather had learned it pretty well from his customers. Just the basics, if Toby rem
embered correctly, but enough to get by in the neighborhood which was much more Hispanic then than it is now.

  “And 75 cents?” Amanda wasn’t mad, but gave him “that look” anyway. “It’s no wonder we’re not making any money.”

  “What the hell. As far as I can tell, we didn’t pay for it.”

  “What’s that make,” Amanda was curious, “a dozen or so books you didn’t know you had that have turned up in just the past few weeks?”

  “Are you kidding? When Joyce and I did the inventory on Monday, we found 87 books we never ordered. Plus the ones we sold, that’s 121 – all them children’s classics, brand new hard cover editions of titles that have been around forever.”

  “Should we call… Who should we call?”

  “And what, Watson, report a case of serial shop-gifting? I’m pretty sure it’s not a crime give something to a retailer.”

  “Where do you think…”

  “Hey,” Toby waived her question off with both hands. “We’ve got more important things to worry about. This meeting in a couple a minutes,” he checked his watch, “I don’t know what they want, but it can’t be good. Our lease is up in six months. They’ve bought our building and the two next door.”

  “Even if they’re willing to let us stay, we can’t afford an increase.”

  “Hey, I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it. Start looking for someplace else, in the neighborhood if poss…” Toby’s phone buzzed. “Hello. …Yeah, send them up.”

  “Is that them?”

  “Yeah. Let’s do this.” I was time to get himself psyched for what would likely be a difficult conversation, getting up from his chair as he heard their them coming up the stairs. Amanda stood up, reaching down to pull on her shoes without unlacing them. Opening his office door, Toby stepped outside to greet them.

  “Mr. Cooper?”

  “Yes, but please call me Toby.”

  “Thank you, Toby. I’m Maria Santos, President of Santos Development.”

  “Our new landlord.”

  “Yes. This is my brother, Miguel, and our attorney, David Warner – and there’s one more person that will be joining us.”

  “And this is my wife, Amanda.”

  “Good to meet you, Mrs. Cooper.”

  “Please, have a seat,” Toby suggested, pointing to the chairs around a small work table they’d cleared off for the meeting.

  “Thank you, Toby, but we won’t be long.” Miguel was tall and good looking, his face instantly familiar, but neither Toby nor Amanda knew why. And he was polite, “We don’t mean to interrupt your business,” but in a sincere, and not at all patronizing way.

  Toby and Amanda flashed their eyes at each other. That they weren’t staying, and had brought their attorney, wasn’t a good sign. “Can I get anyone something to drink?” Amanda asked, hoping to break the ice. “...We have some homemade brownies, still hot out of the oven?”

  “Sounds tempting,” Miguel answered, “but…

  “Mr. Morales?” Their handyman was standing in the doorway. “Was there,” Toby asked him, “something else you…”

  Without waiting for Toby to finish, their handyman looked at Miguel and smiled. “Hello, Son.” Stepping forward, he put his hand on his son’s neck, slapping it gently instead of giving him a hug. “You look good. Thanks for flying out. We’ll catch up over lunch.” For Maria, who was standing next to Miguel, he had a kiss for her cheek. “Hi, Honey.”

  “Hey, Dad.” However often they saw each other, which was a lot lately, the way he was always glad to see her made her feel good when he was around. It was how he felt about both his children. Always had, when they were little kids, and always would.

  “David,” he shook hands with the attorney. “Thanks for joining us.”

  “My pleasure, Berto.”

  “Mr. Morales?” Toby didn’t understand.

  “Mr. Cooper… Toby. I’m Berto Santos. ‘Morales’ was my mother’s maiden name, and these two beautiful children are mine.

  “What happened to your accent?” Amanda wanted to know.

  “I never had one. I was born here, 72 years ago, a few blocks away in the apartment of a relative where my mother stayed when she came here, pregnant, from Mexico, after my father died.

  “And,” Toby was remembering the interview when he hired Mr. Morales, now Santos, “the recommendation you gave us from the law firm where you said you used to work?”

  “I did work there. As an associate, then partner and then Managing Partner until I retired a couple of years ago.”

  “And now you’re a handyman?”

  “My mother was a maid. It’s honorable work. Let me apologize for deceiving you. I wanted to learn, first hand, what it was like here. I just wanted to make sure you and your wife were still running the store the way your grandfather did.”

  “What does my husband’s grandfather have to do..” Amanda had a question, but realized this was really between Mr. Santos and Toby.

  “And the other night, when one of my staff ran into you going up the stairs into one of those really expensive townhouses on the other side of the square, the ones that have their own street that’s blocked by the gates. He said he asked if you worked there too, because it seemed like a lot, what with the work you’re doing for us, for a retired handyman to handle. And you told him not to worry, that you had help. ...That’s your house, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hm. So what’s this all about, Mr. Santos?” Toby walked around to his chair and sat down. Amanda took his lead and curled back into her wing chair. Please,” Toby asked them, pointing to the space in front of his desk, and they pulled over three of the wooden folding chairs that had been around the table.

  Mr. Santos sat close to the desk, putting his right arm on it, his left hand on the edge. “My mother, their grandmother,” he added, turning toward his children for a moment, his pride evident in his expression, “eventually learned to speak and read English well, but in the beginning, Spanish was her only language and that of our relatives and the friends we made. I learned my English on the streets and when I went to school. I didn’t know about using a library and we had no money, but I would come into this bookstore, whenever I could. At first, for the cookies your grandmother made. Little icebox cookies with walnuts, small enough that I could pop a whole one, still warm from the oven, in my mouth.”

  “I have the recipe,” Amanda's memory could smell them cooking, “if you’d like it.”

  “Not him,” Mrs. Cooper,” Maria reached out and touched her arm, “but for me, when you have time. I’ve been hearing about those cookies my whole life.”

  “He… Your grandfather would let me sit in a corner, on the first floor, under a table he made on crates and covered with books. He let me read books I couldn’t afford, helped me sound out words I couldn’t pronounce and told me what the ones I didn’t understand meant. He did this for years,” Mr. Santos looked around the office, remembering the man who had been so good to him. “Your Grandfather said I could ‘borrow’ the books and return them when I could.”

  “Let me guess,” Toby was thinking out loud. “121 children’s classics?”

  Mr. Santos laughed softly. “Yes. I’ve brought them back, the current editions of course. I still have the originals in my study at home. As you can see, I’m a man of my word. …When I was older, he would actually pay me a quarter if I gave him a detailed book report, 50 cents if it was written and at least 3 pages long. He made me write, in cursive, small,” he held up his hand, his thumb and first finger “this close” together, “on a yellow legal pad with narrow lines so there had to be a lot of words on the page. Sometimes, my mother would make a plate of enchiladas that he liked, and we’d eat them together in this office while we talked about the books he loaned me and others. And then I would go home and tell her, my mother, about the stories I read, about what she called my “Enchilada books.” We did this, your Gr
andfather and me, until I left for college. After that we would write to each other, and I’d stop by now and then, with a plate of enchiladas until my mother passed away.”

  “Maybe,” Amanda was wondering, “it’s a recipe I can have?”

  “Of course, Mrs. Cooper,” Miguel promised her. “I’ll get it for you.”

  “Well, Mr. Santos, uh, thank you for returning the books, but that can’t be all this is about? You’re my new landlord. We all know my lease is up in six months. What exactly is it that you want to talk about?”

  “I’m here to pay a debt, Mr. Cooper, to return a favor, long overdue. My son, Miguel, runs one of our companies. You may have heard of it.” Nodding to his son, Miguel gave Toby and Amanda his business cards that they read and then looked at each other.

  “You’re, what…” Toby asked, moving his eyes as he made a mental list, “one of the top 10 on-line booksellers in the country?”

  “Number eight,” Miguel volunteered. “..and growing. Number one for children’s books which is still our core business.”

  “Here’s the favor, Mr. and Mrs. Cooper. Listen, and then take the night to think about it. If you’re interested, call Miguel. He’ll have David prepare the papers we need and make it happen. It’s simple. One: As you probably know, I’ve bought the buildings next door and this one. Under your supervision, but at my expense, Maria’s company will remodel them and grow your store into all three buildings. That’ll give you space you need to be competitive. Your new lease will be a percentage of your gross that you can afford, that rises and falls with your sales. Two: You can buy whatever books you want through our distributor relationships. We’ll provide financing, if you need it. No one buys better than we do. Same for advertising.”

  “Will we have to change the name of the store?”

  “No. This isn’t about buying you out. I don’t want your business. I just want your grandfather, in case he’s listening, to know that I never forgot what he did for me, and for my family. If I hadn’t learned to read under your Grandfather’s table… Well, fortunately I did. And if your new store succeeds, if the model works and we open more of them in similar neighborhoods around the country, we’ll want to own those with you, the Coopers and the Santoses. ..Think about it, and call us tomorrow, even if it’s just to talk about it some more. I’m sure you’ll have questions. Call Miguel and I’ll be there too. …Come on,” Mr. Santos told the other three, “your mother will be waiting for us. Let’s let these people get back to work.”

  Toby and Amanda couldn’t think of what to say.

  Standing up, Mr. Santos reached across the desk to shake Toby’s hand. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Santos. This is a wonderful offer you’ve made. We’ll think about it, as if there was anything to think about, and give Miguel a call in the morning.”

  …and then he turned to Amanda, shaking her hand too. “Mrs. Cooper, I’ve enjoyed working for you and your husband, but I’ll be quitting now.” He smiled. “Joyce has a list of the repairs I haven’t gotten around to making yet.” Looking back at Toby on his way out the door, “You keep what you owe me. I’ll take a couple of brownies on my way out.”

  29. The Speed Date

  Late Saturday afternoon in the small ballroom of a downtown hotel. Twenty men and women, 25 to 29 years old, are having five-minute dates. Never married. No children. No ethnic or religious preference.

  Twelve mutually disappointing interviews into the afternoon, “He” pulls out the chair on his side of the circle of small square tables, trying to make eye contact and smiling politely as “She,” the young woman with the small yellow pad and pen sitting across from him, turns over a fresh page.

  “What are you drinking?” She thought she would begin with a meaningless question just to make sure her voice was still working.

  “Water. ..What about you?” he asked, looking at the pineapple shell on her side of the table. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a drink with that many umbrellas.”

  “It’s a virgin Pina Colada, extra umbrellas …for my niece. She collects them. …I think we should be completely honest,” she said abruptly without bothering to introduce herself.

  “Is this a trick question?”

  “Actually, it’s not even a question.”

  “Okay, yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, I agree to be completely honest. ...Are you talking really fast because we only have five minutes?”

  “Yes,” she blurted back at him.

  “Let’s start over..” She was very pretty, in a mildly quirky way, which was even more perfect than if she were technically beautiful, and he didn’t want to blow the four and half minutes they had left. “Hi. My name is Les.”

  “Is that ‘Les’ with one or two esses?”

  “You’re kidding ...aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I’m just a tad nervous. That’s why you couldn’t tell, whether or not I was kidding.”

  Awkward pause. “And you are?”

  “Sally, with a “y.” She extended her hand to shake his, trying to weave between the two large water glasses, two wine glasses, small carafes of white and red wine that no one was drinking, flowers and the candle that was floating in a blue-green glass bowl – not wanting to ruin the moment by knocking something over. On the first or second date, maybe, but not yet. He was cute, “92% handsome, with wonderful light brown eyes glowing back at her below eyebrows that were just heavy enough,” she scribbled, almost without looking down to see what she was writing, certain he’d never be able to read it upside down.

  “You’re kidding, again?” Standing slowly, careful not to bump into the table, he reached across to shake her hand. Firm and warm, it felt right to both of them. The usual shaking hands part had ended, but she wasn’t letting go, waiting for him to break it off. “My hand.”

  “What about it?”

  “The candle.”

  “Oh,” she let go and he snapped back, trying to be brave, figuring he’d could spray something on it later. “...No, not really.”

  “Not really what?”

  “No, I’m not really kidding about my name. I have cousin with the same name who spells hers with an “i.”

  “’S-i-lly’?”

  She started to laugh, but then caught herself.

  “...Yes or no, how old are you?” he asked, sensing he may be on the verge of breakthrough.

  This time she did laugh, giving in to the chemistry for a moment, but then regained her composure. “What was your last year’s adjusted gross income?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I thought we were going to be completely honest with each other.”

  “I am. It’s honestly none of your business. …My turn. How many times have you had sex in the past 12 months?”

  Pause. “I get your point,” she admitted. “There are limits.”

  Another awkward silence, broken by the both of them starting to talk at the same time.

  “You go.” She was polite.

  “No, you.” So was he.

  “Do you date often?” she asked, poised to make another note on her pad.

  “Not really.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve been biding my time, waiting for..” He stopped.

  “For what?”

  “I’m not sure. …You maybe? ...Do you date a lot?”

  “Not really.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I have trouble taking chances.” And then she paused, gathering her nerve to ask her next question. It had sounded meaningful when she made her list, but now she wasn’t so sure. “Do you believe in sex on the first date?”

  “You make it sound like a religion.”

  “Do you or don’t you?”

  “Define ‘first date.’ Does this count? How about in the taxi on the way to dinner?”

  “You’re dodging the question.” br />
  “Okay. No, I don’t.”

  “Why not?” She looked up from the last note she had made. “I’m not sure I beli…”

  “You could be a psychopath.”

  “..believe you. ...Even psychopaths need to have sex.”

  This time he laughed. “Then we’d have to do it in public, where there were other people around, just in case.”

  Looking ahead to the last page in her pad, she was ready with another question. “What is it you like about me most, so far? Please think out loud.”

  “No one is this organized,” he thought to himself. “Did you make a list?” he asked, leaning forward to peer at her notes. “Okay. To be honest…”

  “It’s important to be honest.”

  “I know. We agreed. To be honest, I like the way your sweater fits around your, your,” he started to point, then stopped, “but that’s not what you want to hear.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That I like the way…””

  “That’s it’s not something I want to hear.”

  No comment. “...I’m wondering what your legs are like, but I can’t tell without looking under the table. …Can I look under the table?”

  “No, but they’re perfect,” she asserted without the least hesitation, impatiently wobbling her pen between her thumb and first two fingers.

  “Wait. I’ve got it. ...What I like about you most, so far, is your determination. I think you can give me a run for my money, so to speak. ...And what is it you like most about me, so far?

  Nothing, just a flinch of her mouth.

  “Shouldn’t you be thinking out loud?”

  “I don’t know?”

  “You don’t know what you like about me most? ...How about what you don’t like about me least?”

  “I don’t find your hair too objectionable?” She was lying. It had waves and curls that moved just a bit with his head, but not so much to entirely lose their place. Watching them made her squirm for some reason, but in a good way. “Focus,” she advised herself.

  “Thanks.”

  She began to really look at him. “And your eyes.”

  “What about my eyes?”

  “I don’t have any real problem with your eyes.”

  “Who’s she kidding,” he thought to himself. “My eyes are my best feature.” He was trying to reassure himself, but it wasn’t working.

  “…What is it you like about me the least?” she was bold enough to ask.

  “That you couldn’t think of anything you like about me the most,” he answered. “That’s what I like about you the least.”

  “And if I’d said I thought you were cute?”

  “You’re right. I don’t want to be cute. I want to be, ‘Oh, my God! Slam me against the wall, out of control, can’t catch my breath, no time to get our clothes off, try not to knock over the coffee table on the way to the couch, or squish the cat’ good looking.”

  She was blushing, but didn’t think he’d notice.

  “You know, I think I like this honesty thing.”

  “Ye... ” She cleared her throat. “Yes.”

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes, I think you’re more than cute.”

  “In that case,” he admitted, “I may have understated my feelings about you physically when I said you seem determined.”

  “One minute to go, ladies and gentlemen,” the moderator announced, leaving the two of them staring at each other, running out of time.

  He was the one to break the silence. “Would you go out with me?”

  “When?”

  “Tonight would be good.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

  “What’s your downside?”

  “You could be a jerk.”

  “Same risk for me.”

  “Bzzzzz!” It was entirely too loud, but they barely heard it. “Time’s up, everybody. Next date starts in 60 seconds.”

  Before they knew it, #14 was standing to the right of the table, his right, her left, looking at one of them, then the other, waiting for him to stop waiting for her to respond, but she didn’t. A slight sigh, his shoulders drooping in disappointment as he exhaled, he pushed back his chair and stood up, rubbing the tablecloth with the tips of his fingers before looking and walking away toward the next table, a few feet to his left, where a long-legged woman sat dangling one of her red high heel shoes. #14 started to sit down, not wanting to waste any of his time.

  She faced the new guy, but her eyes were on him, the one who was about to get away.

  Just as he was about to sit down in front of the red-shoed woman, he held up his forefinger to the new “she,” tapping the air, “One… One second.” Walking quickly back to her side of the previous table, “Excuse me,” he said to #14 with a perfunctory upturn of the corners of his mouth. Bending down, he gave the previous “her” a kiss. Once, then again for a little longer, pulling away slowly, very slowly. Rolling his lips, he swallowed, and said the one word she didn’t realize, until just then, that she had been waiting to hear, “Please?”

  Still nothing, and so he went back to the next table and sat down in front of the woman with the red shoes, who, having witnessed the kiss, began talking to him immediately.

  “Hi!” #14 seemed eager to get started.

  “Uhhh,” the first “she” said to #14, putting down her pen and raising her hand. “I’ll be right back.” Standing up, she reached down to even out the edge of her sweater, straightened her posture, took a breath and walked confidently toward “he” who had stopped talking to the woman with red shoes and was looking up at her. Grabbing the lapels of his sport coat, she pulled him to his feet, slid her hands up and around the back of his head, and kissed him, long and passionately, standing a bit on her toes to do it.

  When they were done, she slid the few inches down his chest, lowering herself to the carpet, and ironed the front of his jacket with the flat of her hands. Reaching up, she wiped away the tiniest bit of something she’d left on his mouth. “I think… I think I have a thing for polite men,” she said while he caught his breath. “...Meet me in the lobby when we’re done.” And then she went back to her table and sat down, pulling her chair back under her and the table to the perfect position, picking up her pen, very deliberately drawing five perfect little stars next to his name and turning the page over the top of the pad. Looking up at #14, but then over at him who hadn’t taken his eyes off of her or bothered to sit down, and then back to #14, she said, “Hello.”

  The women with the red shoes flashed her head back and forth between him, still standing, and her, now sitting at the table with #14.

  Pause.

  “There’s no real point in doing this, is there?” #14 asked her.

  “Not really.”

  30. Broken Rose

  It was two hours, forty-two minutes after they had met at the mid-life crisis pickup bar down the street. He was the married father of two children. She, so it appeared to him, was a single woman, in town for a few days on business, looking for someone at the end of a long day. Or maybe she was a call girl. He didn’t really care as long as he could afford to pay her without his wife finding out. He wasn’t bad looking. She used to be beautiful, and would have been now were it not for something about her eyes that would have caused a more careful man to think twice about taking her to bed.

  In the hotel room he’d paid for in cash – his wife at their home in the suburbs thinking, because he told her, that he was working late, hoping, but not really believing that he was telling the truth – Ed was sitting up in bed, propped up against two overly soft pillows, his hands curled too tightly over the sheet and blanket he’d pulled up to his waist, his eyes looking straight ahead at nothing. Rose, the name she had given him, was sitting naked on the edge of the bed, facing the open room, pressing with her hands on the top of her legs to extend her chest, stretching her back, her eyes closing for just a moment.
/>
  “You know, Ed,” she paused for a moment to turn to look at him. “You know, Ed,” you’re pathetic. ...Nod in the affirmative, Ed. Do it now.” And he did. “You’re a successful guy.” She rolled her shoulders back, turning her neck to the left, and then to the right to hear it crack ever so quietly. “Money in the bank, a beautiful family…” Turning to her side, she slipped one arm under the sheets, fumbling until she found her pants and bra. “...and you’ll risk it all, betray the woman and daughters who love you, all of it for a few minutes of bad sex with a stranger. …Good for you maybe,” she thought to herself out loud, “ bad for me, and I’m easy to please.”

  “Here’s the deal. …Are you paying attention? …Answer me, Ed. Are you paying attention?”

  “Yes,” he nodded as he said it, rolling his lips inward.

  “Good. Here’s the deal. A few minutes after I leave, the alarm next to the bed is going off. When it does, you’re going get up, …get up, turn off the alarm, but not wake up, get dressed and go to your office. You’re going to sit at your desk. Five minutes later, you’re going to wake up and call your wife. You’re going to tell her you love her, that you’re just finishing up and will be home as soon as you can, and you’re going to ask her to wait up for you so that the two of you can make love. …You’re actually going to say that to her, those words exactly. …Do you understand, Ed?”

  “Yes. Exactly those words.”

  “What words are those, Ed?”

  “I’m going to ask her to wait up for me so that the two of us can make love.”

  “ …From now on, your wife is going to be the only woman in your life. You adore her. Sexually, she drives you crazy, in a good way of course. You’re going to respect and take care of her. And Ed, this is very important, never again are you going to lie to her or be unfaithful to her. That last part is very, very important. No sex with anyone other than your wife. ...Tell me you understand, Ed, that you’ll always be faithful to your wife and, when you tell me, say her name.”

  “I will. I’ll never... I’ll always be faithful to Helen.”

  Standing up, Rose began to get dressed, taking her time, talking slowly, facing Ed as she did. “When you wake up, you’re going to forget this ever happened, that we ever met, about the bar and this hotel room. As far you can remember, you left the office for a quick bite to eat at your favorite diner, had your usual dinner, whatever that is, and went back to the office where you’ve been all evening. ...Okay so far, Ed.”

  He nodded again, this time more eagerly.

  “Good, Ed. …It’s sort of like a game, isn’t it?”

  He smiled in agreement.

  “Your such a douche,” she muttered under her breath.”

  “Yes,” he said, surprising her, “a douche.”

  Smirking, she closed her eyes and let the air out of her lungs, shaking her head slightly when she was done. “You’re not only going to forget meeting me, Ed, you’re going to forget ever having had sex with anyone, with anyone other than your wife since you married her.”

  He shook his head left to right this time.

  “No? What do you mean?”

  “No, I won’t remember anyone I’ve ever slept with, except Helen.”

  “No blow jobs, no other making out?”

  “Nothing. I won’t remember anything.”

  “Good. I just wanted to be clear. ...And, Ed.”

  “Yes?”

  “Just in case... Wait, do you believe in God, Ed?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do,” he responded somberly.

  “Well, Ed, if you are ever unfaithful to Helen again,” she paused to sit down on the ottoman to the easy chair in their room to slip on her high heel shoes, “God will appear to you in the form of a woman, utter the phrase ‘Broken Rose,’ at which time you will go with her and follow her, God’s every instruction, cooperating in every respect… even while she cuts off your dick and stuffs it down your throat moments, just moments before ending your miserable life.” Her voice was calm. Her tone, clear and deliberate. …Ed, do you understand what will happen to you if you’re ever unfaithful to your wife, if you disrespect her in any way?” Hearing nothing, she turned to look at him while slipping her arms into her coat. “Ed, do you understand what will happen to you?”

  Ed was red in the face, perspiring, his breathing labored. “Yes, I understand what will happen to me. God will cut off my…”

  “Good, Ed. Good,” she interrupted. Picking up the small alarm clock beside the bed, she set it to go off in 20 minutes, plenty of time for her to get out of the hotel and into her car. Bending over to pick up his pants, she took out his wallet and removed all his cash, $185, except two twenties, stuffing the bills into her coat pocket.

  Reaching into the vase of red roses she made him buy her in the lobby, she took one out and turned back to her victim. Raising it to her face, she savored its fragrance until some unspecified reality returned to her eyes. Snapping the stem in the fingers of her right hand, she stared at the breakpoint for a second, and then tossed the flower toward him, landing it perfectly on where his crotch could be found under the sheet and blanket. “A not so friendly reminder, Ed,” and then she whispered a simple toast, “For Helen, for my late mother, Rose, and hurtful men everywhere who don’t appreciate what they have.”

  Later that evening, she walked briskly into the studios of the talk radio station where her 10 PM to 2 AM show was a major draw, peeling off her coat on the fly and tossing it over one of the chairs in the engineer’s booth, minutes before show time. “Who are we starting with?”

  “We have Ann.” None of the callers used their real names, but she would sometimes hear from them later as casual, no charge patients, to learn the details of their lives. “She’s nervous and crying, but should play well.” Sitting down and putting on her headset just as the engineer pointed to her, the phone rings. It was an effect for the listeners, and the way her show always opened.

  “Hello? This is Dr. Allison.”

  “Hel… hello,” the female caller sobbed.

  “Hi. What name can I call you?”

  Sniffing, the caller told her, “Call me Ann. You can call me Ann.”

  “Okay, Ann. It’s good to hear from you. What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve just found out my husband has been sleeping around, with a woman at his office, and for Christ’s sake, one of my neighbors…” She’s devastated.

  “How do you know?“

  “Are you kidding,” the woman is almost shouting into the phone, choking on her tears. “He admits it, doesn’t even try to deny it. Says I’ve never satisfied him. Not even close!” She can hardly talk.”

  “Ann…”

  The woman answers with a barely audible, “Yes. It’s not my real name. …You’re a real psychologist, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, Ann.” Dr. Alison’s voice was calm and reassuring. “I have a Ph.D. and years of clinical experience with a specialty in the use of hypnosis for behavior modification. …But you know this isn’t a doctor-patient relationship. It can’t be, not while we’re on the air like this, but we can talk, if you like.”

  “Please. I need to talk to someone. …Please help me.”

  “I will, Ann. I’ll do what I can.”

  31. Silent Partners

  “Hand me another napkin, Honey,” Henry thought to himself, referring to Elaine, his wife of 52 years. He didn’t bother to take his eyes off the article he was reading in the technology section of the paper. The napkin holder had been shoved to her corner of the table, behind the packages of sugar, the ketchup and the salt and pepper shakers, when the waiter/busboy had dropped and slid their plates on the old Formica table at their favorite booth, the one where they had a late breakfast every Sunday morning. They liked that particular booth at the noisy corner deli because of the view it had of people coming and going through the park across the street and the way the sun managed to come through the g
lass walls even on a cloudy day.

  Elaine finished the last few lines of the article she was reading about agri-product futures and refolded the business section. Henry liked to hold the entire paper in front of him. She used to ride the subway to work and had become very skilled at folding and refolding the paper in quarters as she followed a front page article to an interior page. Reaching to the napkin holder, she pulled the first one out, which tore because they always do, and then two more. “Here,” she handed them to her husband, accompanied by a voice only he could hear. “Anything interesting?”

  “Well, that young couple at the counter keeps staring at us.”

  “I meant in the paper. What are you reading?”

  “They’re wondering if, when they get to be our age, they’ll have stopped talking to each other.”

  Elaine looked up at him, over the rim of her reading glasses, and smiled. “What do they know?”

  “It’s an article about what the scientist here calls ‘Brainwave Synchrony’ or ‘Entrainment.’”

  “Yeah, what’s that?” Elaine asked without looking up, or moving her lips.

  “They’ve discovered that people, some people who live together long enough, their brains become synchronized and they begin feeling and experiencing things together, in synch.”

  “Like the way women living together in a dorm start having their periods at the same time?”

  “Something like that, only more mental, more psychological.”

  “No kidding. And exactly how old is that scientist who's saying all this?”

  “I think he’s twelve,” Henry laughed, and so did Elaine.

  “He hasn’t a clue, the kid scientist, does he?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “He sure as hell hasn’t been married as long as we have, has he Henry?”

  “No.” This time he did look up and so did she back at him, relishing one of the great secrets of a long, long-time marriage. And then they went back to reading the paper. “Do you remember when all we could do was complete each other’s sentences?”

  “…and how you used to be wrong most of the time.”

  “Anything else I can get you?” the waiter/busboy interrupted, without the least hint of friendly customer service, impatient to get his tip and the table ready for another patron or two.

  “No thanks,” Elaine looked up at him.

  “Elaine.”

  “What, Henry?”

  “Out loud. …You’re just staring at him.”

  “Right,” she answered him, and then looked up at the waiter/busboy again, pausing this time to wonder how his apron could have gotten that dirty, and its implications for the breakfast he’d served them. Out loud this time, “No thanks. Just bring us a check.”

  And they started putting their paper back together and getting ready to leave. “You up for a walk in the park?” Henry thought to himself, reaching for his wallet.

  “Sure,” she reached across the table and touched his hand. “Buy me some flowers for the kitchen?”

  “How ‘bout something in a pot, something long-term that won’t shrivel up in a couple of days?”

  “Done, but something small. Our apartment is this close to being a jungle.”

  “Okay.” Henry glanced at the check and tossed a few bills on top of it. “Maybe something with coconuts?” He was joking, of course.

  Except for talking to the waiter/busboy, they hadn’t said a thing out loud since they got there.

  On their way out, Elaine paused for a second next to the young couple sitting at the counter, busy eating and talking to each other. “Ask her to marry you, Numbnuts,” she thought to herself.”

  “What?!” The young man turned quickly and looked up at her. “What did you say?”

  “Bobby,” the young girl he was with grabbed her boyfriend’s arm, “she didn’t say anything,” but he kept looking at Elaine, certain he hadn’t imagined it.

  Elaine stared back, smiling ever so slightly. “You heard me,” she thought to herself, and then turned to leave, Henry tugging on the arm of her coat.

  “Show off,” her husband thought to himself. He leaned over, kissing her on her cheek, while an incoming customer held the door for them.”

  “I love you, too,” she smiled back at him.

  32. Lot Boy

  “Okay, before we get out…”

  Mindy’s father released his seatbelt, slid forward and turned to talk to his daughter through the space between their bucket seats, while her mother just sat there, staring straight ahead impatiently, both hands on her pocketbook in her lap, waiting for her husband to make the obligatory parental… No, strike that. …his obligatory fatherly remarks. If it was up to her, the mother, she’d have been out of the car and bought one already. Mindy, one hand on the door handle, did her best to be attentive and to take her father seriously, pushing her glasses up on her nose with the forefinger of her left hand.

  “…You’ve done great in school, really great.” Mindy smiled at the pride she shared with her “Daddy,” which was what she still called him, most of the time, unless there were other people around. Otherwise, it was “Dad.” Your mother and I were going to wait until you graduated next year, …”

  “I know, Daddy,” she started to interrupt, but then, on second thought, decided to let him finish. In many respects, she realized, this was a bigger deal for him than it was for her.

  “...but, well, it’s occurred to us that, that you’ve already proven yourself to be exceptionally responsible for a young woman of your age, any age for that matter – and that we’d rather have you driving yourself around than being a passenger in one of your friends’ cars.”

  “Daddy, you’ve already been over…”

  “Yeah, so here’s the thing,” he told her, taking a quick look over his shoulder, thinking he’d better pick up the pace before some over-eager salesman noticed them and came up to their car. “First consideration?”

  “Safety.” Mindy knew the drill.

  “Second consideration?”

  “More safety.”

  He smiled, relishing how his daughter got everything he ever said, and then some. “Third consideration?”

  “Cool!”

  “Alright,” he was done. “Let’s do this.” Mindy and her mother pulled their door handles, popping their doors open. “But…” He waited for his daughter to turn back, to make sure she was paying attention. “But when you find one you like, keep your enthusiasm under control. Tell Mommy and me casually, privately if you can. Under no circumstances do we want the salesman to know how much you want it. Got it?”

  “Got it, Daddy,” and Mindy and her mother were out on the lot, their respective doors chunking shut simultaneously, her father’s door following a few seconds later.

  “Uncle Chuck’s Used Cars” was a small local lot, one of the dozen or so that were clustered along the boulevard in that part of town, some more substantial looking that others. Uncle Chuck’s had been there for a while, and the current owner – Chuck was long gone, to Florida some said, or to that used car lot in the sky. – had given one of Mindy’s mother’s customers, at the card store where she worked part-time, a pretty good deal. Seeing that the current Uncle Chuck, which was what people called him even though that wasn’t his name, was busy with another customer, they took advantage of the situation and started looking around without him.

  “How ‘bout the red one, honey?” Mom was working her husband, setting him up. It was an older convertible, just the kind of car he was worried about. Plenty of cool, not enough metal.

  “No. Big blind spot and no roof support.” The more times he said “No,” the more likely he was to agree to the one Mindy really liked, when she found it. It was a strategy that worked for contact lens, which he’d agreed she could have, out of state prospects for college, and boyfriends too – so Mindy and her mother thought, but Dad knew what they were up to. He knew what they were up to, but it still
worked because, in the end, he was crazy about the two of them and putty in their hands. Besides, agreeing with what they wanted assured him of getting stuff he wanted, occasionally, but not always, as long as they wanted it too. Whatever authority he seemed to have was pretty much an illusion.

  Ten minutes or so later, they had meandered around the 30 or so cars on the front lot, not having found anything special. Mom and Dad were walking over to talk to Chuck, whoever, while Mindy kept looking, now at the cars on the side lot, next to and behind the double-wide where Chuck would write up his sales. Coming around the corner, a good distance from where her parents were talking to Chuck, she saw a young man, her age, maybe a year older, polishing the hood of one of the cars, his arms solid and just a bit tan, his dark, not too short curly hair moving while his head bobbed to whatever was playing in his ears, his eyes riveted on one particular spot that seemed to be giving him a problem.

  “Hey,” she said to him. “...Are you are salesman?”

  He looked up, pulled the buds out of his ears, stuffing them in the pocket of his well-worn jeans, and looked straight into her eyes for a few seconds before responding. “No. No,” he said tugging on his t-shirt as if it were a sign. “The salesmen wear business shirts. I just clean and move the cars around.”

  “So you’re a lot boy?” Mindy seemed surprised. He seemed too, she couldn’t put her finger on it, not so much too clean cut, just plain too clean, too much like a college boy to settle for minimum wage – although part-time jobs were hard, really hard to find.

  “That’s what it says on my shirt.” Indeed it did, in small letters, on the right from where she was looking. Somehow she’d missed seeing it, probably distracted by the dimple on one side of his mouth.

  “Oh, yeah. So it does, right there,” she pointed and actually touched the letters, inadvertently holding her finger up for a second or two too long, before snapping it back, “in white on navy blue.” (“What,” she said to herself, “am I talking about?!”)

  “You say that like it’s a problem, like it’s not an honorable profession,” he was kidding with her, wiping the polish off his hands with another rag he’d kept in his back pocket. He smiled, to make sure she knew he wasn’t serious, the kind of broader than normal grin you put out there when you’re trying to make an impression. “I am to cars,” he said it slowly, “what the perfect lipstick is to your smile.”

  “What?” This one she said out loud. Laughing, because she couldn’t help herself, she covered her mouth with her fingers. “You’ve got to be kidding.” But then she blushed, something she never did, and actually stopped breathing for a moment. And that was forever between the two of them. He didn’t know it then, but then neither did Mindy, but that was the moment that sealed the deal. (Strange, isn’t it, she would realize later, that some of the dumbest lines are the ones that work.)

  “I don’t know,” he relaxed and shrugged his shoulders, rolling his eyes. “It sounded better in my head than when I said it out loud,” he giggled, pretty much losing whatever composure he’d been trying to fake.

  “Don’t feel so bad,” Mindy reassured him, reaching out to lay her hand lightly on the center of his chest. (Something about him was easy to touch.) “It was really more effective than I’m letting on,” and she giggled back at him.

  “You know,” he said, gesturing with his head toward where her parents and Uncle Chuck were still talking, “the cars here are pretty much crap. Well polished maybe, but too high mileage. Uncle Chuck buys them that way – high mileage, but with perfect bodies and upholstery – so they’re cheap, and then marks them up, way up, because they look good. ...And, more importantly, he’s got a bad cap job,” he told her. “Nobody’s teeth are that white, or big for that matter. …Unless you’re a beaver, maybe.”

  “And you’re telling me this why?”

  He thought for a moment. “Because I think I like you more than Uncle Chuck. …Yes,” he took a second to step back and get a good, obvious look at her, “definitely more than Uncle Chuck.”

  “Sooo, what do you recommend, Lot Boy?”

  “There’s a place, just down the street at the corner,” he pointed in the direction they’d have to go. “Collier Family Cars. You can’t miss it. It’s a family business…”

  “That explains the name.”

  “Yeah. Good people. A little more expensive, but their cars are better and they’ll back up what they sell you.”

  “Mindy!” It was her mother yelling, waving for her to join them.

  “I’ve got to go. ...Thanks for the advice. Will I see you later?” she asked, backing up before turning to leave.

  “If there’s a god in heaven!” he shouted after her, attempting his best to pretend to be serious.

  “Then it’s a sure thing,” she laughed back, knowing he was full of it, but loving how hard he was trying. And so she tossed him a kiss…

  “Mindy!”

  …and then turned to walk quickly between the cars toward her parents, looking over her shoulder just the one time to see him standing there, answering her with a quick wave of his hand.

  “Hey, Dad,” she was a bit out of breath, but didn’t waste time interrupting his conversation with Uncle Chuck, “can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Honey, Uncle Chuck here was just..”

  “Dad. Uncle Chuck, if I could just have a moment with my parents?” And then, not waiting for him to answer, “Thank you.” Tugging on the sleeve of her father’s jacket, Mindy pulled him a few feet away, her mother right behind them.

  “We’ll be right back, Uncle Chuck,” her mother was always courteous. “Just give us a few minutes.”

  “What is it, honey?” Her father asked when they were a soundproof distance away. “Did you find something you like?”

  “No, no. I talked to the lot boy.”

  “The what?” Her mother asked.

  “The guy who polishes the cars. That gu...” Mindy turned, but couldn’t see him. “Whatever. The point is, we don’t want to buy anything here. Let’s go. There’s another lot down the street. ...Come on. I’ll explain in the car.”

  Mom and Dad looked at each other, raised their eyebrows, and turned back to where Uncle Chuck was still standing. “Uh,” they both started to say in unison, “we’ll stop back” – but Chuck, judging from the experienced expression on his face, knew better. And they were off.

  This time when they pulled up it was in front of a small showroom, a used-to-be new car lot where a man, in his late 40s, came out to greet them. “Hi, and welcome to Collier’s.” He reached out and shook their hands, all three of them, including Mindy’s. “This is my family’s car store. I’m the owner. What can I do to help you?”

  “We’re, uh, looking for a car for my dau…”

  “Excuse me, Dad,” a young man in navy blue t-shirt and well-worn jeans interrupted. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to take care of these people myself.”

  “Well, sure son.” He was a bit surprised, but not put off by the idea. “Sure,” and then turning to his customers, “Don’t worry. He knows his stuff, more than I do, to be honest. ...I’ll be around if you need anything,” and he walked away to give us son all the space he needed.

  “Mom. Dad,” Mindy was the first to speak, clearly perturbed. “This is the lot boy I was telling you about.”

  “You work here?” her mother asked the young man.

  “I’m Jacob Collier. My grandfather opened this place a while back, and now I work for my father whenever I have time.”

  “Doing what, exactly?” Mindy stepped between him and her parents. “Polishing cars? ‘Like the perfect lipstick is to my smile?’”

  “What’s she talking about?” her father asked her mother in a low, almost whispered voice.

  “Do you always steal customers from your competition by lying about who you are?” Mindy demanded to know.

  “Hey. ..I was on my bike, on the way here w
hen I saw you getting out of your car at Uncle Chuck’s. I never said I worked there, and no. No. I don’t always steal customers from our competition by lying about who I am. ...Only when they look like you. …Besides, I was right about his teeth, wasn’t I?”

  There was a pause, but not an awkward one.

  “You’re doing it again, aren’t you?” she asked him in an almost serious tone, pushing her glasses against her face. Turning suddenly toward her mother, Mindy pointed to her glasses, a not so subtle reminder about the contacts they’d promised she could have – and then whipped back to face her lot boy without missing a beat.

  “What? Over-hitting on you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah. …So how’m I doin’?”

  “Come on,” Mindy reached for Jacob’s arm, grabbing it with her hands, “Show us some cars. We can talk about how you’re doing later, when you buy me dinner.”

  “I’m buying you dinner?” he asked as they started to walk into the lot.

  “You mean you don’t want to buy me dinner?”

  “No. Yes. Uhhh, no. I’d …I’d love to buy you dinner.”

  And that, for Mom and Dad who were walking within earshot a few feet behind, was the moment they approved of this one.

  33. The Commute

  “Hey! Get a lane of you own, buddy. …Unbelievable. They’ll let just about anybody drive.”

  “Hmm.” Dead stop. “...Beep, beeeeeeppp!!” John was never reluctant to sit on his horn, however obnoxious. He didn’t care. He was going from A to B, and everyone else was just getting in his way. Behind the wheel of his faded, once electric red two-seater, he had the selfish independence of a… of a three year old. It was all about him.

  “Geez, now what? Come on, lady. Move it, or lose it.” John tapped impatiently on the rim of his steering wheel, two of his pudgy fingers showing the now melted remains of the Hershey’s bar with almonds he had been eating, its spent wrapper laying crumbled on the floor in front of the passenger seat. “Hey,” he mumbled. Pleased with what he had found, he stuck both of the first two fingers of his right hand into his mouth at the same time to savor the chocolate he could suck from them.

  “…What are we going? Zero miles an hour. Let’s see, at zero miles an hour, how long will it take me to go the 4.8 miles to my garage? …Freakin’ forever, that’s how long.

  ‘Ohhhh-kay, now we’re movin’. ...Oh, yutz. And we’re stopped again. Stop and go, stop and go.. …Whoa, baby. Take a look at the blonde in that… Hey,” he nodded like a bobble-head at her. “Yeah, hey, how are you? Ah, she can’t hear me. Nice smile though. Nuthin’ like a girl with short blonde, wispy hair ‘slowin’ down to take a look a me. Com’on baaa-aaaabee…’ Love that song.” John stops his incessant babbling to reach for the dial on his radio that he turns to no avail. “Hm. Nuthin’. I really got to get this thing fixed.”

  “Careening around the corner, ‘The Kid,’” he rolled his hands around the steering wheel as if the turn were extremely sharp and high speed, “eeeeeeee,” making a bad sound effect of tires screeching, “holds on, unfazed,” he lowered his voice to be the moderator of his own adventure, “by the hail of automatic weapons fire from cars in hhhatt, ...hhhatt pursuit.”

  “Who am I kiddin’? I need to get something better. Something with an office, maybe my own assistant… in a building with an eleva... Hey, this is my lane! WAIT YOUR FREAKIN’ TURN!! I’ll go, you’ll go, the next guy’ll go. ...Get the pattern?! Geez.”

  “Johnny.”

  “Oooo. Gimme that!” John reached out of his open window, in tight, standstill traffic to grab an open package of M&Ms from the passenger to his left. “Like takin’ candy from a baby.”

  “Johnny! …Give me that! …Here,” John’s mother returned the M&Ms to her neighbor and the mother of the child in the checkout line next to theirs, in the crowded grocery store. “Sorry. I don’t know what’s got into him. He’s been acting up ever since Todd took him to work a couple weeks ago, you know, when I was out of town taking care of Mom after her operation. And you know how he repeats everything his father says and does.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it,” her friend consoled her. “Can you imagine if they didn’t have these carts with the cars in the front, trying to shop with our kids running all over the place?

  “Beeeeeeeep!”

  “Johnny! Enough already. Get out, and step away from the cart,” his mother ordered him into submission. “Time to help Mommy checkout,” she smiled at him, but then turned serious again. “You know the drill. Slooowleeee. ...License and registration, and keep your hands where I can see them.”

  “Whut?” The sudden change in her tone surprised and scared him. Johnny looked, wide-eyed, at his mother towering over him. Searching the curled-up corners of her lips for relief, he struggled to maintain his composure.

  34. The Ripple Effect

  “Hey. My name is Daryl. Ever since I was a little kid, my parents have known I was special. Somehow, I was born with a natural sense of how people and events relate to each other, with an overview and a sense of anticipation that are uncanny for their accuracy, and flat out spooky in the way they’ve enabled me to manipulate other kids and adults too, my you-know-who included. (Sorry Mom and Dad. I love you, but I am what I am.)”

  “As it turns out, I’m even better working with perfect strangers. It’s not so much deception that I practice – Anyone can lie. – as it is the patience and skill with which I come at a problem, from a distance. In fact, so remarkable are my abilities, the things I do and the way I do them have become known as ‘Ripple Effect’.” “Discreet Resolution of Relationship Issues,” so it said on Daryl's business card. (Yes, he has business cards.) “Guaranteed Results.”

  Ripple, in case you haven’t guessed, is my family name. Need help? Ask around. No one does word-of-mouth better than me.”

  “So,” the man asked, standing there in his expensive suit, behind his glass desk in the corner office where he spent way too much time, looking at the business card he was holding, “what exactly is ‘The Ripple Effect’? He was skeptical, to put it mildly.

  “Uh, actually it’s more like a domino effect, but my last name is Ripple. That’s why I call it the ‘Ripple Effect.’ …because my name is Ripple.”

  “I get it.” From his expression, the man was wondering if he was wasting his time, but then Daryl, who tended to over-talk, wasn’t done yet.

  “I throw a stone or two into the pond of gossip, with strangely predictable results. I’m a personality savant. An empath who instinctively gets the underlying reasons people do what they do, even when they don’t. I play pool with people’s emotions, thinking three, four, five shots ahead. I…”

  “Daryl? ...Mr. Ripple?” The man interrupted.

  “What?”

  “You’re what, 16 years old?”

  “Seventeen actually, but I have a certain maturity, a poise beyond my nominal age. …Actually,” Daryl continued, worried he wasn’t going to make the sale, “my youthful appearance is one of the reasons I’m so good at what I do. No one notices me. No one sees me coming. No one,” Daryl paused, starting to rethink his next few words before he said them, “takes me seriously,” which, unfortunately, came out sounding more like a question than a matter of fact.

  “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  Detecting a note of sarcasm in his client’s voice, Daryl decided to focus on the business at hand. “So,” he picked up a framed picture from the man’s desk, “as I understand it, your daughter is flirting with the trainer at the gym where she works out, and you’re concerned that…”

  “My wife. …That’s my wife we’re talking about.”

  “Of course.”

  “To tell you the truth,” the man confessed in a slightly threatening tone, “I’ll be surprised if you can pull this off. …Frankly, I’d be surprised if you could pull off your shorts in an
emergency, but then you come highly recommended. It’s a small job I need done discreetly, and invisibly. She can’t know I had anything to do with it.”

  “I’m your man,” Daryl responded, his voice breaking just a bit as it was prone to do whenever he was trying to make a statement. “I’m,” Daryl coughed slightly to clear his throat, “I’m… fine. ...Is that the information I requested?” Daryl asked him, pointing to a large envelope on the man’s desk on which someone had written Daryl’s name.”

  Closing his eyes for a moment, the man took a breath. “Yes, including the half, the $500 up front. ...You’re expensive.”

  Daryl answered slowly, deliberately, without even a whiff of uncertainty. “That’s because I’m very good at what I do.” Reaching for the envelope, he slid it off the surface of the desk, being careful not to leave any fingerprints on the glass. Daryl was a stickler for details like that, not because he was worried about his prints being here and there, but because his mother was always cleaning the house and he couldn’t help himself.

  “And if I don’t pay you the other half,” the man was curious, “if I don’t like the job you’ve done for me?”

  “You’ll pay me.”

  Troubled by the confident sound of Daryl’s response, and not accustomed to people talking to him that way, the man had to ask, “Sure, of course I will, but what exactly will happen to me if I don’t?”

  “Happen to you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well,” Daryl stopped short of threatening to use his considerable talents to collect his money, “you’ll probably feel bad, and with all the crap going on in your life, who wants one more thing to feel bad about?” It was a gutsy response, delivered with a seriousness the man respected, and that was that. No shaking of hands. No final words.

  “Hey,” the man called to Daryl on his way out the door to his office. “How long will this take? When will I hear from you again?”

  “Just a few days. I’ll call or email you.” And Daryl left. It was time to get to work.

  The following morning, the man got a call: “Your wife will be at the gym this afternoon, between 1 and 2 PM. By the way, her trainer breaks for lunch at 2, too. ...at 2, also. Whatever. Meet me at 1:45 across the street from the side of the building where her gym is on the second floor, where we can see her working out.”

  Later that afternoon at 1:45 PM exactly, across the street from the wife’s gym…

  “What if she sees us?”

  “Trust me. She’s not paying attention. …Is that her?” Daryl pointed up and at the man and woman talking to each other, standing way too close together.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The guy who just took the towel off her shoulder to wipe his face, the one with all the teeth and no body fat…” (The glass was clear, and the side street narrow.) “Here,” Daryl handed the man the compact, but powerful binoculars he always carried with him, “try these.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s her trainer.”

  “The trainers there don’t wear t-shirts?”

  “If you had his chest, would you?”

  “Okay,” the man turned to look at Daryl, “I get your point. …Actually, no I don’t. What am I doing here?”

  “You’re here for me to give you a chance. I’m going to hang around and see where they go, just to be sure. From what I can tell, this is still just some innocent flirting, but I need to make sure. The question is, are you sure you want me to do this, or should I walk away and let nature, and your marriage, take its course?”

  The man thought for a moment, reflecting on the life he and his wife had built over the years, thinking about the beautiful teenage daughter and her younger brother they had raised together. “Do what I hired you to do. Whatever’s going on here, it’s more my fault, than hers. I want to know.”

  Seeing the despair in his client’s eyes, Daryl reassured him. “This isn’t over yet. Not even close. …You get back to work, and I’ll call you later.”

  The man looked up to the window where he could see the two of them laughing about something, his wife in her tank top, the trainer combing his longish blonde hair with his fingers, and then back at Daryl, said nothing and left.

  3 PM that afternoon, at an upscale, downtown salon where the wife has a regular appointment. Five feet to her side, a very attractive, maybe 30 year-old woman engages her hairdresser in an excited conversation while getting prepped for a haircut…

  “I need this to be perfect!”

  “Oh yeah,” Nora, the stylist, had seen that look on her customers’ faces before. “Let me guess… You’ve got a shot at a guy you pretty much thought wasn’t an option?”

  “Hey, you’re good. A couple of weeks ago, I got reassigned to work on the team that’s going to be marketing that new condo complex on the river, the one with the live music bar.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been there.” Nora didn’t know it, of course, but it was Daryl’s client, the one in the corner office, whose team had landed that account – the same client whose wife, just a few feet away, was listening intently, pretending to read the magazine she was holding, waiting for her own stylist to arrive.

  “Well, the senior guy in charge…”

  “He’s single?”

  “No,” she stammered just a bit. “…No, but the really good ones seldom are. …Hey, don’t give me that look. Help me out here. If his marriage is solid, his wife’s got nothing to…”

  “Hey.” Jessica was the co-owner of the shop, the real artist of the two whose partner was the one with the head for business. Jessica was the only one Daryl’s client’s wife would let touch her hair. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “No problem. I’ll let you make it up to me.”

  “Yeah, how’s that?”

  “I need a makeover,” the wife mused, holding out and squeezing her fashionably long auburn curls while catching a glance at the young woman next to her. “How long have I had all this?”

  “So what d’you wanna do about it?”

  “Make it short. Surprise me. ...If it doesn’t work out, I can always grow it back.”

  “Here,” Jessica spun the wife around and away from the mirror over the sink where the assistant had washed her hair. “Like they do on TV, keep your eyes on me until we’re done.”

  And the wife laughed, nervous with anticipation.

  Two days later, 10 AM in the food court of the downtown mall near Daryl’s client’s office, at a small table in front of the Auntie Anne’s, just open for business…

  “Want one?” Daryl offered his client a cinnamon pretzel stick, looking over at the girl behind the counter who waved back at him with a friendly smile.

  “No thanks. ...Here. It’s the other half of your money, plus expenses.”

  “What’s happened?” Daryl asked as if he didn’t know.

  “My wife stopped by my office yesterday. It was a surprise to take me out to a late lunch, something she hasn’t done for, I don’t know, a couple of years. We talked about all sorts of stuff, for a good couple of hours. ...She'd just had her hair cut. She looked great.”

  “You didn’t take a few calls, rush back to the office?”

  “No. …Turns out she’s changing gyms. Her new trainer’s a woman. ...I don’t suppose you had anything to do with that?”

  “Well, it may have been the flowers I sent with the ‘Thanks for a wonderful evening. See you tonight. Love, Charles’ note the delivery boy read out loud to her trainer – in front of her, while he was still, you know, at the gym training your wife. ...That, and I splurged to have my cousin, she’s taking acting classes, get her hair done at the beauty shop your wife uses.”

  The point about the flowers, the man understood. The cousin getting her hair done didn’t make any sense. “Whatever, it seems to have worked.”

  “…Now call your wife and invite her for a nooner.”

  “What?”

  “Geez. …Come on, get
out your phone. Call her. Then call your office, make up something and tell 'em you're done for the day. That condo complex you represent has a hotel, doesn’t it? …A small bottle of champagne, maybe some roses would be nice.”

  The man got Daryl’s point and slid the envelope with the cash across the table toward him. “Thanks.”

  “Mmm.” Daryl nodded his head, his mouth too full of cinnamon sticks to be more eloquent.

  About an hour later, at a Panda Express a few blocks away.

  “Hi.” Daryl slid over and stood up from the corner booth, still chewing a bite of his second egg roll. “Can I get you a lemonade or something?”

  “No thanks,” his client’s wife smiled and pulled herself into the other side. “I don’t have much time. I just wanted to thank you for your help. …Here,” she said, reaching into the purse in her lap, taking out $500 in cash, still in the bank’s ATM envelope. “Here’s the other half of what I owe you.”

  “Things are working out okay for you?” He asked, even though he knew the answer.

  “Yeah. Starting the rumor and staging that scene with your cousin’s boyfriend… He’s gorgeous, by the way,” she giggled like the young woman still inside her, blushing just a bit.

  “Oh, he’s good looking, alright. Works as a model, forever hoping for the big underwear billboard.”

  “It was a great idea, like hiring you.”

  “Hey. It’s what I do.”

  “I’ve got to be somewhere.” Smiling at him, she moved over and got up to leave, but then stopped for a moment. “You know, Daryl, I’ve got a daughter about your age if you’re ever interested.”

  “Thanks. I… I appreciate the offer, but I think it’d be a little awkward.”

  “Sure. See you around.”

  Later that evening, at Daryl’s clients’ house, the wife in the kitchen making something special she’d seen on Food TV, the husband working on a his signature Cobb salad…

  “Hey guys,” their daughter bounced down the back stairs, her little brother right behind her. “Cheryl’s picking me up. We’re dropping Mike off at Bobby’s for a sleepover, and then we’re catching a movie and having our own little party back at her place.”

  “You’re not staying for dinner?” the wife asked, pretending to be disappointed, while her husband smiled to himself, not bothering to look up from the perfect avocado he was slicing.

  “Nah,” the daughter responded, intent on letter her parents have the night off together. To tell you the truth, I’m Food TV-d up to here. Tonight, it’s…”

  “Beep.” The horn was Cheryl’s.

  “…cheeseburger sliders and steak fries,” and she blew them an air kiss and ran down the hallway to the front door.

  They dropped Mike off at his friend’s house and then drove to the parking lot at the PG-13 rated roadhouse where the burgers were great and the rock ‘n roll even better. “We’ll see you inside,” Cheryl told the daughter, letting her out, and then driving away to park in the open space near where Cheryl’s boyfriend was waiting for her. There, standing alone in the parking lot, the daughter turned to look around when the lights of one of the cars, parked in the open under one of the lampposts, flashed at her. Almost running over to it, she opened the passenger door and got in.

  “Hey, Daryl,” she said to the driver.

  “Hey,” he said back, and the two of them moved toward each other, kissing again and again, the way they do in the movies, sort of, but with more noise and saliva.

  Almost breathless, the daughter pushed back. “You know, my hiring you turns out to have been a pretty good idea,” she smiled, her eyes locked on Daryl’s. “My parents are back in love with each other, for now at least,” she admitted, raising her eyebrows. “…Let’s go inside and get something to eat, and then,” she reached up and touched the side of Daryl’s face, her voice lower with anticipation “…and then maybe we can go somewhere I can pay you the other half of your fee.”

  “Hey. It’s me again.”

  “Like I said at the beginning of this story, my name is Daryl. Daryl Ripple. For as long as I can remember, I’ve known I was special. Thing is, there are situations when being special can be a drag, but then sometimes… sometimes there are real advantages to being me.”

  35. Exhausted

  Or “Dead Tired,” Depending Upon The Ending

  Emma Warner got off late from work that evening and went directly to the mall, to shop, to pick up a watch she’d left off for repair a week ago, the expensive one she wears to weddings, and because it was worth it to put off going home to an empty house. Pushing hard on the outer door, Emma looked around. It was dark out. She’d parked as close as she could to the front of that one department store that was particularly well lit, but she still had a way to go and the lot wasn’t as full, wasn’t as busy as it had been when she arrived.

  Her cell phone rang just as she was stepping off the curb, a distraction she didn’t need. “Hello? ...Oh, hi. …Yeah, I’m fine, really. ...I’m just leaving the mall. ……………Are you sure it’s him? …...I see. ...So you think tonight’s the night? ...Me, too. …..Yeah, those cookies are good. …Alright. …..Yeah, okay. ...Bye.” Sliding her phone back into her coat pocket, she reached below it to grab her keys, pressing the open button to flash the taillights of her car and to make sure the door was already unlocked when she got there. Opening the door, she shoved her shopping bags across her seat, over the gearshift, sat down quickly and locked her doors.

  Eighteen minutes later, she was in her garage, staying in the car until the garage door was all the way down behind her. Out of her car and into her house, she shook the knob to the inside garage door to make sure it was secure, and then turned to walk into the family room when something stopped her short.

  “Hey.” Emma wasn’t all that tall, five-eight in the low heels she wore to work, but from where she was standing, the kitten that sat there, waiting for her just inside the door, seemed really small. Throwing her coat over one of the hooks by the door, she bent over and picked him up with both hands. Even face-to-face, nose-to-nose, he didn’t seem all that much bigger. “Hey,” she said again, honestly glad to see him. “Miss me?”

  “Mrr.”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘Yes.’ Let’s get out of these clothes – You can continue to wear your fur. – make something to eat and watch, I don’t know, whatever.”

  “This house,” she typed into her journal later that evening, “used to be smaller. There were the kids and their friends, and Jack and our friends. …Gosh, I miss Jack. It’s been so quiet lately.” In the family room off the kitchen, there was something on the TV, but she wasn’t paying attention, just voices to keep her company while she talked to herself through the words on her screen.

  “The kids bought me a cat, a kitten just eight weeks old, to keep me company. He’s off somewhere, exploring. I can tell because he knocks stuff over now and then. I’ve been making a list of names. If I keep calling him, “Hey!” he’s going to get confused when I finally pick one. He sleeps a lot, probably all day while I’m at work, and then runs around at night, at least until I fall asleep which is getting to be later and later. I’m tired, but if I go to bed too soon, I just lie there, so I might as well stay up and do stuff. I’m tired, physically, but I’m also tired of being afraid. To be alone is one thing, but I’ll… I’ll adjust, I’ll come back, not to where I was with Jack, but someplace different, but still good. Who knows? Maybe getting there will be its own adventure. Maybe that’s how it works.”

  “I’m tired and alone, but tonight, tonight I’m more tired of being afraid. Of leaving the lights on all night, in rooms I don’t even use. Of leaving all the TVs on. Of thinking there’s someone watching me, someone out there I have to worry about. I’m tired of going over and over in my head what I would do.”

  “I’ve got the lights on in the basement, but I’m afraid to go down there at night. If he com
es into the house, it’ll be through the sliding glass doors, or the French doors,” she stopped to look over her shoulder, “to the deck. I wonder what he will be like, as if it makes any difference. Interesting, isn’t it, how I keep saying ‘he.’ Why couldn’t it be a woman? Women can be criminals. We could talk about stuff we have in common while she duct-tapes me to one of my kitchen…” She stopped, interrupted by the sound of something maybe hitting the floor in the office she set up in the extra room upstairs. “Hey!!” she shouted, then took a breath to calm herself down. “What’s the point,” she said to herself, and then “…chairs,” and continued typing.

  “At least, if the burglar is a woman, she won’t rape me. Wow, I can’t believe I said that. These break-ins I keep hearing about on the news… There’s been some violence, but no sexual assaults. Not yet. Well, she could be gay, but I don’t think there are any gay burglars. Breaking and entering doesn’t seem like something gay people would do. …Like I really know what I’m talking about. I’m just babbling. …If I name him, “Hey,” he’ll grow up thinking everybody knows his name, which could be a good thing, as if he had a huge family.”

  “Tonight, I’m going to turn off the lights when I go to bed, like a normal person, like a normal person whose electric bill is beginning to look more like a mortgage payment – unless I pass out here on the couch. That’s what happened last night. When I woke up, the cat was sitting on my shoulder, leaning up against the cushion, watching some poker tournament. It took me 20 minutes to get my contacts out. They were just about stuck to my eyeballs. Once is enough. I’m not doing that again.”

  “And tonight,” she turned to look through the almost floor to ceiling windows that lined the wall to the deck and woods behind her house, “...tonight I’m not going to worry if someone can see me sitting here, getting up, fixing myself something to eat. If anybody out there wants to hurt me, they’re going to have to work for it. They’re going to have to be real and in my face. Just the thought of you isn’t going to be enough.”

  “So much open glass. Every time we thought about getting curtains, the sun would come through the windows to light and warm up the room. Jack would work at the kitchen table, looking out at the trees and watching our birds feed on the deck. He said they were ours, not as if we owned them, but because he considered them family.”

  “I called ADT today. They’re installing an alarm system Friday. One of my friends who I see at the gym recommended a Slomin’s Shield, but it sounds too much like a birth control device which, I’m guessing, isn’t something I’ll be needing anytime soon, or ever again for that matter. If I don’t get out of the house, the next time I have sex will probably be with the burglar. (Whoa, that’s not funny.) The mailman’s married, and doesn’t look good in mailman shorts. The kid who works for the lawn service is cute, but I think he’s 15. No. He drives a truck, so he’s got to be at least 16. I can live with that.”

  “Hey! …Yeah, you.” Her kitten had just jumped up on the coffee table, remarkable given his height. “Get off my keyboard. …Oh, come on. Let’s go upstairs.”

  Standing up from the couch, she reached under her little friend, picked him up and pushed his furry body against her chest. “Meeeekk!” Maybe just a bit too hard.

  “What’s that mean? Can’t you at least talk like a regular cat?” The other hand grabbed the remote and pressed the power button. Walking past the bank of switches and dials that controlled the lights, she paused and then turned them off, one at a time, all except the floods over the fireplace, and the light over the sink. “Oh,” and she walked over the doors that led out to the deck and turned that outside light on, too. “There. I’m pretty sure that’s what normal people would do.”

  “Murrr.”

  “Who cares what you think. Mommy says we’re going upstairs. …Wait.” Walking back to the coffee table, she unplugged and picked up her laptop, holding it under her other arm, the one without the cat. “I’ll write some more. Maybe it’ll help me get to sleep.” And up they went, into the master bedroom suite that she and Jack used to share, their escape from the noise, now desperately missed voices of teenagers on the phone and music playing way too loud. There was the bedroom, a dressing room with its walk-in closets and their bathroom beyond that.

  A few minutes later, the flat screen on her dresser was tuned to a Lifetime movie she somehow missed – or had completely forgotten, which was pretty much the same thing. Her back against the one of her pillows she’d turned upright, her contacts having been replaced with glasses, she opened her computer to pick up where she’d left off. Her small, furry friend curled up on top of the light blanket next to her. “Wait,” noticing that it was just 11 o’clock, “let’s watch the news,” and she changed the channel.

  “Why is it that the local news always begins with crimes? I know, I know. There’s been a series of late night break-ins in the ‘burbs.’ The police downtown have installed cameras and increased their presence, and the criminals, who need to make a living like everyone else, are looking to the suburbs for new business. Besides, the houses are farther apart, with woods, and… and breaking into one doesn’t risk attracting the attention of a neighbor or street people, of which there aren’t any. At first, they were targeting empty homes, but lately… lately they’ve been breaking in late at night, in the early morning hours, robbing houses while the owners are asleep inside. Some people have woken up... No, that’s not right. ...have been awakened. That’s better. ...and beaten.”

  “Well,” she shivered to get her confidence back, “the best way to overcome your fears is to confront them. Easier said than done. To anticipate and prepare for things that go bump, or make footsteps on the stairs in the night. The more you think about it, the more carefully you plan and visualize your options, the more likely you are to execute that solution whenever push comes to shove. At least that’s the theory. It’s the long form of the old adage, ‘Better safe than sorry.’”

  “Okay. I’m in bed. I hear someone breaking into the house. Glass breaking. Footsteps. Someone talking as if there’s two of them. I’ve got my cell phone on the night table, but I’ll be slow to use it, thinking I may be calling 911 for nothing. I have to be sure. If the sounds wake me up, I could have been imagining them. Could have been something on the television. So what do I do? I can’t risk confronting him. Of course not.” She stopped to look around the room.

  “I get up quietly, because I don’t want to attract his or their attention, not before I’m ready. I get off the bed and close the door slowly so as not to make any unnecessary noise. Close the door and lock it. …That’s not enough. The dresser.” The door is to her right. Directly across the room, against the wall is her dresser, large and heavy enough to block the door, maybe, but not so heavy she couldn’t push it across the hardwood floors. “The thing is, if I can move it against the door,” she wrote in her journal, “someone could move it out of the way by pushing on the door. Hmm.”

  “I could go out one of the windows. Lower myself down onto the yard. What then, and deal with him outside, in the dark? The nearest neighbors are maybe 100 feet from here, asleep in their house maybe with their TV on. Nuts.” Stopping to think for a moment, she rubbed the tiny animal that was sound asleep next to her. “You’ll protect me, won’t you?” And then an idea.

  “I’m always tripping when I wear my Nike’s around the house. Something about the treads on my hardwood floors, and the way I tend to shuffle when I’m tired. My feet stick, the one foot even while the other one is going forward. …I’ll close the door and lock it, push the dresser up against the door. Put on my shoes and lean up against the drawers. Maybe leave the TV on. No off, so I can hear better. I'll have my phone with me and, when I’ve barricaded the door, and use it to call 911. If the police can get here in, let’s say, 10 minutes… I’ll only have to hold them off for that long, maybe 15 minutes. I can do that,” she s
aid, feigning confidence.

  “Yeah, I’m tired,” she turned to the kitten, fast asleep beside her, “but I’m not out of gas yet. You know, I could name you ‘Jack,’ but that would be way too weird. Let’s rehearse.” Saving her journal, she shut down her computer, got up and set it on the ironing board she’d left open next to a half-full basket of wrinkled laundry, and then got back into bed, getting under the covers, leaning on her side facing her night table the way she tended to sleep, and turned out the light.

  “Okay,” she whispered, “I’m asleep. I hear something. …Wait a minute, what was that? …Nothing. It’s nothing. I get up, quietly, in the dark, close the door first, slowly so as not to make too much noise – and then push the door closed and lock it. Go back, turn on the light. Done. Cross the room. Pull this side of the dresser away from… Ehhhh. Wow, it’s heavy, but then that’s the point, isn’t it. ...Rats!” Two lipstick-sized perfume atomizers and a picture frame fell over. “Reset.” Pushing the dresser back, she put the perfume and frame back where they were. “This time, I’ll put everything loose into the basket, and the frames face down on the runner where they’ll stay put. …There.” Her red, leather-covered jewelry box had small rubber feet and wasn’t going anywhere. “Now, pull the dresser, right side first. Mmm. Now push the left edge. Ehhh.” She stopped to catch her breath. “It’s too heavy. ...I need glides, but if it slides too easily, it won’t really stop anyone, particularly if he’s large, pushing on the door.” She stopped talking. Got it!”

  Pushing the dresser back against the wall, she opened the door, turned on the hall light and crossed into the extra bedroom she’d remodeled into an upstairs office. Some shirt cardboard she’d been saving for who knows what, and the sound of the paper cutter’s arm slicing it into quarters, she was back in her bedroom, lifting up the corners of the dresser, to put a cardboard coaster under each leg. “Geez, I’m actually sweating.”

  “Okay, back in bed. Let’s try this again.” And she did, twice, moving the dresser in front of the door, pulling the cardboard out from under the legs after she did. Putting on her Nike’s, first after and then, “Much better,” before she moved the dresser to give her the traction she needed, and then sitting on the floor with her back up against the drawers and with her cell phone ready to dial 9-1-1.

  It wasn’t until she got it right that she realized how really exhausted she was, and almost considered leaving the dresser in place, in front of the door until the morning, she was that wiped, but then took the time to put it back. “What the heck, I needed the exercise.”

  “Better go to the bathroom again,” she said to the kitten whose eyes tried to open, but then gave up. “Could be a long night. You get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  Almost two hours later, the kitten perked up, the soft light coming through half-closed blinds being more than he needed to see, but there was no one there. Not yet. Then the bedroom door, open only a few inches, began to move, its hinges making a low rubbing sound. And there, standing in the doorway, a tall, slender, dark form looked back at him. The man was a cliché as burglars go. Absent only the classic ski mask, he seemed unafraid to expose his face, although the facial hair and thin-rimmed glasses could have been fake.

  For a full minute he stood there, he and the cat staring at each other, before he moved toward the bed for any sign he might be interrupted, but there wasn’t any. Whatever he had on his feet, the soles were silent as he went directly to the dresser, opened the jewelry box and looked inside with a small flashlight, taking individual pieces, including diamond earrings and a solitaire pendant, and everything that was gold. Their wedding bands, and Emma’s engagement ring were there, too. (She’d decided, a few months after Jack died, not to wear them anymore.) He picked them up, glanced at the family picture on the dresser, turned back to look at the bed, and then put them carefully into the soft cloth bag he had brought with him, carefully so as not to clink into the other jewelry he was stealing. As for their sentimental value, he couldn’t have cared less.

  But then the top two drawers of the dresser wouldn’t pull easily, so he paused, looking over his shoulder briefly, wondering if it was worth the risk of waking her up. It was common for people to keep extra cash and more expensive jewelry in their dresser drawers. From the jewelry he had so far, he figured he’d net $4,000 maybe even $5,000 if the diamonds were high quality, and might still have another stop or two he could make that night. He’d already been through her pocketbook that she left lying on the kitchen counter, taking the cash and credit cards.

  Nodding his head slightly, still facing the dresser and the large mirror hanging above it, he thought he’d risk it, and reached again for the brass pulls to give one of the side-by-side drawers in front of him another shot. That one drawer wasn’t so bad, but the other one… The other one made a loud scraping noise he was sure would wake up his victim. But it didn’t.

  Turning his head to look at Emma, only the cat stared back. And then, it occurred to him, how sound could she be sleeping? Leaving the drawers half open, he walked over to the bed, reaching into his pocket as he moved. What came out of his pocket was a Gerber AR 3.0 standard blade folding pocket knife, LL Bean item TA219574, $34.95.

  Tough, ultra-light and contoured to fit comfortably in the palm of your hand. Three-inch stainless-steel blade holds a razor-sharp cutting edge. SoftGrip rubber inserts provide exceptional control for fine work to big jobs. High-strength, die-cast aluminum handles. Blade rides on two Teflon® washers to ensure a lifetime of smooth, one-handed opening. Pocket clip. 4.1" closed. 2.8 oz. Imported.

  As knives go, it was a class act that had convinced more than one woman to do whatever he wanted.

  Emma was lying mostly on her back, curled slightly to the outside, the covers lying oddly across her chest, just above where the impression of her breasts started to show through the soft cotton top she was wearing. Her lips slightly parted, she…

  “Mrrr.”

  The thief turned quickly toward the cat, instinctively pointing at him with his knife, the blade open and managing to catch the reflection of faint lamppost light coming through the blinds. …He turned back to Emma. She was in her early 50s, but in many ways more attractive than when Jack and she had met at college. Her lips slightly parted, he reached out to feel her breath on the back of his hand. Almost nothing. (“Pass-out sleep” she liked to call it.) For the moment at least, she was his to play with.

  With the tip of his blade, he reached under the light blanket and peeled it back, almost covering up the kitten who barely escaped in time. Then the sheet, and still Emma didn’t move. It was a game for him now. How close could he come, running the point of his knife ev-er so slowly, just above her skin, from between her breasts, across her exposed stomach and low hanging boxers that lay quietly, clinging perfectly to the soft dunes of the rest of her legs.

  …Nah, I like Emma. She’s way too smart, too well prepared for a moment like this, only to sleep through it and then succumb to some creep with an LL Bean knife and BMW who can’t hold a regular job. Did I mention he has a BMW? It’s a silver 328. How trite is that? Bought it used just to make an impression. If it was a Subaru, well then, maybe… No. Let’s try a different ending.

  Nodding his head slightly, still facing the dresser and the large mirror hanging above it, he thought he’d risk it, and reached again for the brass pulls to give one of the side-by-side drawers in front of him another shot. …and then the lamp went on behind him.

  “Hey.” It was a woman’s voice, not Emma’s, but then he didn’t know that. “Raise your arms slowly, hands on your head, and turn around. No sudden moves, please.”

  “And if I do make a sudden move…,” he started to say as he turned to face the bed, his own body blocking the reflection of the woman behind him, the arrogant tone and smile on his face fading at the sight of a younger woman than he had expected coming out from under the covers – a gu
n in one hand, her police detective’s badge in the other.

  “We’ll, you know how it goes. You make a sudden move,” she advised him, “and then my partner and I make a few sudden moves of our own which will probably involve bullets, and then you’re pretty much all done moving. …What?” she asked him, noticing the change of expression on his face.

  “Hi.” A second detective was standing in the doorway, his gun drawn, his badge clearly visible on his belt. “I’m Detective Sean Glitz and, yes, it’s my real name. My father was a Vegas showgirl. ...Actually, he works for Black & Decker, but I like the Vegas story better.”

  “Hysterical, isn’t he?” the female detective, her short blonde hair moving this way and that, kept the conversation going, waiting for the sound of backup she was pretty sure was on the way. “See what I have to put up with?”

  “My partner over there on the bed, is Detective Peggy Risen.”

  Detective Risen made an obviously fake smile, all her teeth showing on the top and bottom.

  “She’s in charge. Her brains, my muscle and boyish good looks. You know those really quiet shoes you wear? …Me, too.”

  “What are you two, television actors pretending to be police?” It was all the thief had to say, other than, “…Can I let my hands down now?”

  “No,” Detective Risen was serious, the sound of her voice commanding. “Turn to your right, and get down on your knees. ...Now!” And the man complied. “Face down, flat out on the floor. ...Do it. Hands crossed behind your back.”

  Detective Glitz holstered and secured his gun, and had handcuffs on the man in seconds, wasting no time patting him down as soon as the cuffs were tight.

  “Did you call?” Detective Peggy Risen asked her junior partner.

  “I pressed the magic button, and…” the sound of two police cars arriving in the cul de sac was right on time, “I believe,” Detective Glitz said to the thief, “your ride is here. How ‘bout that for service? ...No wallet. Oooo. And what do we have here?” he asked, knowing full well what it was. “Wow. Big knife,” he observed, flipping upon the blade, “which you were carrying to do what?”

  “I use it to pick my teeth,” the thief remarked, the sound of his voice distorted given the way his face was pressed into the floor by Detective Glitz’ hand on his back. “I practice good dental hygiene.”

  “No one has teeth that big,” Detective Risen remarked to the racket of uniformed police officers coming up the stairs. “Next time, just floss. …Officers,” she acknowledged the two men now standing in the doorway. Thanks for coming. I’m Risen. He’s Glitz,” she said, nodding toward her partner. “Please read the guy on the floor his rights and get him out of here. Gimme a card. Thanks. Don’t book him until we get there. We’ll be right behind you. …Hey, Carol.” The plain-clothes Detective, Carol Josephs, who had been working the mall just joined them. “Where you been?”

  “Hanging out in the woods, just in case. ...You were right, by the way. He had a small shotgun mike with a dish to make sure there was no one awake, no one in the house he had to worry about before he broke in. It’s out back. I’ll get it on my way out. If you two had been talking or moving around, we’d have been wasting our time.”

  “Yeah, well good work. Go get your car and meet us at the station.”

  Twenty minutes later, the burglar having been taken way in one of the police cars, Detective Risen and her partner stopped to thank Emma for helping out.

  “Thanks again for your help, Mrs. Warner. Like I started to tell you when I called, Detective Josephs caught sight of him up at the mall while he was following you. She recognized him from the mall security video we studied after you first got in touch with us, thinking someone might be following you. Most people would have ignored that feeling. It’s a good thing you didn’t. He knew where you lived, parked a couple of streets away and then, as we suspected he would, came up on your house through the woods, using the jogging paths. …He’s been on quite a spree, Mrs. Warner. Thanks to you, it’s over.”

  “Hey, nooo sweat,” Emma laughed, putting her hand on Detective Glitz’s arm. “And, by the way, I want your partner here to know that I consider hiding in my guest room closet with him to be our first date. ”

  “I’m just sorry we couldn’t have given you more notice and gotten you out of here.”

  “No reason to apologize.” Emma was beyond relieved.

  “Two more closet dates like that and I’m pretty sure we’d be engaged, Mrs. Warner.” Detective Glitz flashed the smile that made the potential danger earlier that night seem less than it really was.

  “Yeah,” Emma responded, “in my dreams. …As Plan Bs go, you two were great!”

  “We were only her Plan B?” Detective Glitz turned to his partner, pretending to be hurt.

  “Plan A was to put the dresser in front of the bedroom door.” Detective Risen tried to be serious on their way down the stairs.

  “What?”

  “Forget the dresser, what was all that commotion while you were eating cookies in the closet? She’s going to have rats if she doesn’t clean that up.”

  “Mice. This is the suburbs. She’ll have mice. And it was dark in the closet. We kept bumping into each other.”

  “Be sure to put that in your report.”

  “Are you mocking me?” Emma shouted after them, watching the two them walk down her path while she closed and locked the front door.”

  They waved back, not bothering to turn around. They’d be talking again that afternoon, after she got some sleep, to give a formal statement.

  As the door shut behind her, a “Meeerrk” came from half way up the stairs.

  “What? You’re up. …Yeah, well I’m hitting the sack. Come on,” she bent down to pick him up, carrying him the rest of the way back to her bedroom, tossing him onto the bed. “Maybe ‘Hey’ isn’t such a bad name. Or maybe ‘Glitz.’ I’ll think about it. You watch the place. I’m getting some sleep. Anything happens, move the dresser.” Strangely, the cat seemed to be paying attention. “You know the drill.” And Emma was down, on her pillow, and out.

  36. Next Contestant

  The booths were small at Kellagher’s, the downtown 1940s diner that had survived by changing with the times to serve whoever was around. In the beginning, it was mostly blue-collar people who worked and lived nearby when the neighborhood was a factory district. Seventy years later, the factories had all become lofts, the customers were now mostly young professionals who worked in the offices of technology and design firms nearby. Somehow, unforgivably, arugula and goat cheese had become staples on a menu Mr. Kellagher, God rest his soul, would never recognize.

  It was a busy place, even on an early Saturday afternoon. Cramped and cozy, the low-back bench seats made it easy for customers to hear the conversations behind them, but no one really minded, not so much. Patrons of such places have a certain understanding, in the fine print definitions of “diner” and “deli,” that you don’t really pay attention and that, even if you do, it’s none of your business, that everyone’s anonymous, even if they’re not.

  “Wow,” the girl with the short blonde hair that had a mind of its own said in a loud whisper, leaning forward to meet her girlfriend in the middle of the table. “He’s cute.” Her eyes rolled discreetly to follow the young man who was about to walk by on his way to the next booth behind her that the busboy had just cleared. Her friend, on the other hand, straightened up, turned her shoulders and stared right at him to get a really good look for herself.

  “Hey,” he responded instinctively to her making eye contact.

  The first girl, stunned by her friend’s boldness, pushed back against her seat, and looked up, as if to apologize, at the unpretentious smile that came so easily to his face. “Hey,” she answered, and he was past her, sliding into and across the seat-back they shared. Her hands, still pushing against the wide metal edge of her table, the girl with the short b
londe hair didn’t want to let go, but she did.

  “Poop,” she said to her friend, the two of them sighing in unison as a young woman rushed past them, peeling off her jacket on her way to sit across from the guy with the smile.

  “Sorry, I’m late, Tommy.” She was nervous and a bit out of breath.

  “Tommy,” the other girl sitting from the blonde mouthed the name to her friend. “His name is ‘Tommy.’ How sweet is that?!” And they giggled, as quietly as they could.

  “Hey, Myrna?” Tommy was surprised to see her. “No problem. I’m a couple of minutes early.” He wasn’t, but it was the nice thing to say. “Is Evelyn coming?”

  “Oh, I’m ‘Evelyn.’ Evelyn’s my middle name,” the blonde's friend giggled.

  “Shhhhh,” the blonde girl raised her finger to her lips.

  “What can I get you?” Their waitress, who seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, wasn’t wasting any time.

  “Uh, what would you like?” Tommy asked his apparently unexpected guest.

  “You go first,” Myrna pretended to be looking at the menu card.

  “Amateur,” the girl with the short blonde hair mouthed to her friend, mocking the lack of confidence Myrna was struggling to overcome, but then letting the silent expression on her face show the empathy she felt for her. “Come on, Myrna,” the friend whispered supportively to the blonde.

  “Okay, uh, I’ll have the grilled cheese and tomato on rye, some potato salad and a lemonade.”

  “We only have pink.”

  “Pink what?” Tommy was more than a bit distracted, wondering what Myrna was doing there.

  “Lemonade.”

  “Sure.”

  “And you, Miss?”

  Pleased to see that Tommy had ordered lunch, and not just coffee, she decided to do the same. “I’ll have the shrimp salad on a soft roll and some coleslaw.”

  “Something to drink?”

  “No. Water’s fine.”

  “Watching her weight.” The short blonde haired girl nodded to her friend, the two of them thinking they were superior because they were having milkshakes – instead of breakfast and lunch, something they failed to mention to themselves.

  “So,” Tommy didn’t have clue, “what’s this all about? Something going on at the office you didn’t feel comfortable talking ab…”

  “No. No. Nothing…” Surprising even herself, Myrna started to become emotional. “...like that.”

  “Hey, hey.” Tommy reached across the table to hold Myrna’s hands. “What’s wrong?”

  “Geez. How unattractive.” Myrna wiped away a wannabe tear that hadn’t quite fallen yet. “Perfect for a first date.”

  “First date??!” The blonde’s friend mouthed the words, her eyebrows up as high as they would go.

  “Shhhh!” the blonde urged her friend, again, to be quiet, even though they weren’t talking out loud, so she could concentrate on what they were saying behind her.

  “Pathetic? ...Maybe,” Tommy smiled, “but not unattractive. No. Definitely not unattractive.”

  Myrna started a nervous laugh, but only managed to choke a bit in the process.

  “Now that was unattractive,” Tommy said to make her laugh again. “…So, uh, this is a first date?” He reached over. Taking her hands, he rubbed his thumbs across the back of them to calm her down just a bit. As it turns out, the gesture made her all that more nervous.

  “Well, no, not exactly. But I’ve been thinking about it, hoping you would ask me out… or maybe I would ask you, and you would.. say ‘Yes.’”

  “Well, that’s nice, Myrna. That’s very nice, and maybe we could go out, but…”

  “Really, you would have gone out with me, if I’d asked you, …and if you knew it was going to be a date?”

  “Well, uh...” Tommy was hedging, not wanting to hurt her, but not wanting to commit either.

  “We’ve had lunch together a few times in the office cafeteria.”

  “At the big table where we all sit?”

  “Uh-huh. …You know, I would say something, you would laugh at it. Then you would say something, and I… And sometimes you’d walk with me to throw out our trays. …Not the trays themselves, but the stuff on them.”

  “Sure. ...Sooo, when you emailed me to meet you here, why didn’t you use your real name?”

  “Well that’s the thing, and the reason we can’t see each other.”

  “Mer-nuh. Are you breaking up with me on our first date?” He let go of her hands, for effect, and to make room for their lunch plates which the waitress had just unceremoniously dropped down in front of them.

  “You know Ralph?” Myra was starved and stuffed a huge bite of her sandwich into her mouth – one piece of shrimp needing help from a finger – having forgotten to eat since Friday afternoon when she’d asked Tommy to meet her. “His carrel is one row over from yours?”

  “Sure. Of course I know Ralph. We work on…”

  “Well, he thinks we’ve been seeing each other.”

  “You and me?”

  “No, him, Ralph and me.”

  “And why exactly does he think you've been seeing each other?”

  “Because we've gone out a few times, but we haven't had sex yet or anything. Strictly office-buddy type stuff. ...In any case, I was worried he might be looking over your shoulder and see the email, so I sent it from a personal account that doesn’t have my name in it.”

  “You have extra email accounts so you can send people stuff without being...” Tommy stopped, shaking his head just a bit to help him regain his focus. “And, you and Ralph is a bad thing, because…”

  “Because,” Myrna put her sandwich down, she was that serious. “Ralph's not my type and …and because I want to go out with you, but I don’t think you...” She regained her composure. “I’m pretty sure you don’t want to go out with me. Guys like you never do.”

  The shoulders of both the girls in the booth behind them dropped, a sad salute to their ordinary friend serving up her heart for all it was worth.

  “Guys like me?”

  “The smart, funny, clueless ones – the guys every girl wants, but who never realize it, even when you tell them.”

  “Myrna, I would go out with you. ...I mean, I might not have ever asked you out, but it’s not because you’re not great or even perfect.” Searching for words, Tommy looked down at his plate. “It’s like my grilled cheese. I like it on rye, perfectly toasted rye so it’s just a little bit crunchy. Most people prefer white or whole wheat because it’s good for you and you seem smarter for ordering it. Personally, I can’t eat wheat bread unless it has nutty things in it, and even then I’m pretty much faking it, but lots of people love it, really love it. I’m just not one of them.”

  Myrna thought for a moment. “I don’t like spicy food. Well, a little spicy, maybe, but not so much as to make my head sweat.”

  “Myrna,” Tommy was worried she wasn’t getting the point, “the thing is, it’s all about chemistry. Everybody likes ketchup on a cheeseburger, but not on a bagel with cream cheese and lox.”

  “Lox?”

  “It’s smoked salmon. Jewish people call it...”

  “All this talk about chemistry, it’s just a nice way of blowing me off, isn’t it.”

  “So the food analogies aren’t working?” He smiled at her.

  “No,” she smiled back, “they're working alright. It’s not what I wanted to hear, but I get the point.” And they both took another bite of their sandwiches. Still chewing, Tommy picked up his fork, reached across the table and stabbed some of her coleslaw, not because he wanted some, but because he somehow knew it would make her feel better.

  “You know,” Myra confessed, “it took everything I had to ask you to meet me here, and that was just an email.”

  “Hey, we’re all afraid of rejection, but what’s your downside? I blow you off. I think you’re a jerk?” He waited a moment for the l
ook of disappointment in her eyes to fade. “First of all, I don’t think you're a jerk. Second, even if did, what I think doesn’t make you anything. In fact, even if I did think you were… I don’t know, whatever, that would probably say more about me than you.”

  Myrna was listening, glued to Tommy’s every word, and would have said something, but had way too much food in her mouth. Experience in these situations, and his mother, had taught Tommy to take smaller bites.

  “…The fact is,” Tommy continued, “unless it’s unanimous, unless there’s pretty much universal agreement that you’re annoying, in which case you probably are…” Seeing moisture returning to her eyes, Tommy decided to take another tack. “Hey, …”

  “What?” Myrna said quietly after a swallow.

  “...Let’s try an experiment. I’m going to ask you a question. Are you ready? Pretend I’m just some weird, disgusting guy who tries hitting on you.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Hey,” he took a moment to gather his thoughts, “how ‘bout if we forget lunch and go out back for some fully-clothed, upright sex against one of the dumpsters?”

  “Are you kidding?!” For a moment there, she seemed to be seriously considering it, to the soundtrack of muffled screams from the blonde and her friend in the next booth.

  “...No, no. It’s… We’re just pretending, role-playing without having to dress up for the parts. …You’re supposed to say something like, ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ and then, uh, I don’t know, something insulting, like, ‘Look Buddy, there’s only room for one asshole in these pants.’”

  In the booth behind them, the other girl covered her mouth to stop from laughing out loud, while the blonde pointed at her, mouthing, “You’ve used that line!”

  “Wow, you’re really good at making this stuff up, although that was a bit gross, wasn’t it?”

  “Sorry. I heard that line in a movie once. It’s seemed cool at the time. In retrospect, now that I said it out loud, not so much.”

  “I’d probably just go with, ‘No thank you,’ and then, ‘Maybe some other time,’ you know, to be nice.” Myrna was nothing if not polite, but then reconsidered. “Okay, maybe I need to be more creative.”

  “No, you’re fine. The words aren’t really the point. …I’ve had some practice, on the receiving end, that is, although,” he had to be clear, “I usually show a lot more class than the guy in that example. …Anyway, so you blow me off, and I’ve left a lingering impression of being an jerk – when, in fact, it was probably just that I was nervous, you being so attractive…”

  Myrna smiled, “Thanks.” It felt good to hear, even if she wasn’t sure he meant it.

  And he smiled back, feeling surprisingly good about the comment. “So I’ve made a bad impression that I’ll probably never overcome and will regret like crazy someday when you’re receiving the Academy Award for your breakout, R-rated performance as a hooker with a heart – but it doesn’t mean there’s really anything wrong with me, not necessarily.”

  “You think I dress like a hooker? …Just kidding. I mean I do, sometimes, but I don't think you dress that way on purpose.”

  “…Look, the point is, you asked me to have lunch with you – Saturday lunch at a great diner. I’d be a fool to say no, but even if I did, even if I blew you off, maybe didn’t even respond, it doesn’t reflect on you. You’re great. If we don’t go out, if we don’t date, it’s probably nothing more than chemistry.”

  “That we don’t like the same cheese,” Myrna smiled at him, realizing he was everything she thought he was, maybe even more.

  “Yeah,” thinking he’d pretty much wrapped that up, “something like that.”

  “But I like you.”

  “Sure you do.” (“So much for the wrapping it up part,” he thought to himself.) “I like you too, but it’s not the same as being in love.”

  “I think maybe it is. ...I’m excited to see you in the hallway. Everyday, when I get up in the morning, the first thing I think about is you. You’re the reason I look forward to going to work.”

  “Well, uhh...” Tommy didn’t know what to say, and then thought he did. “Myrna, it’s not me, not me exactly. We don’t even really know each other. It’s the idea of me, I mean, someone like me, not exactly of course, just someone that you love and who does or will some day love you back.”

  “Tommy,” Myrna was almost pleading with him, “how do we know if we haven’t spent any time together? Maybe we do have chemistry?”

  Tommy was quiet, because it was a good question, and because he saw the hope in her eyes.

  The girls in the booth behind them were staring at each other in anxious anticipation, the blonde sucking mostly chocolate bubbles from the bottom of the tall glass in front of her.

  “Okay,” he said boldly, “fair enough. Let’s try something.”

  “What?”

  Tommy reached across the table, taking Myrna’s hand. Sliding with her across their bench seats, they stood up, face-to-face on the vinyl tile floor at the end of the table. Slowly, carefully, but not the least awkwardly, he pulled her toward him and kissed her, not just once, but twice and a then a third time for a little longer, touching her lips and cheek ever so lightly as they pulled away, right there at the diner. “…Well?”

  Myrna was slow to open her eyes, but looked into his when she did. “…Yeah. Yeah, I see what you mean. …I like you, but the chemistry just isn’t there.” It was something she needed to say before he did.

  “And I do like you.” And the thing is, he wasn’t kidding.

  “Wow,” the blonde’s friend looked a bit sad when she said it, “He really is perfect, isn’t he?”

  Tommy and Myrna were quiet, but only for a moment. “I’m, uh… I’m going to leave. I’ve… I’ve got someplace to be.” Myrna reached across her seat for her jacket.

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks for lunch.” And she started to walk away.

  “I’ll see you Monday, won’t I?”

  Turning back, she smiled at him. “Are you kidding? You’re the reason I go to work, remember?” She paused, but only for a second, smiled, turned and headed for the door, stopping when she got there to touch her lips, but refusing to take a last look at the end of her first and probably only date with Tommy. Taking a breath, Myrna pushed to head out to the sidewalk.

  “Oh, hey, Myrna.” It was one of the guys from accounting she almost bumped into on her way to the corner.

  “Sorry, Jack. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “Nah. Missed me!” And he kept walking, but then stopped and turned around. “Hey, Myrna,” he shouted back. “I’m on the way to meet up with some friends for a beer. It’s one of those sports bars with screens all over the place. You could almost get jock itch just from reading the menu, but it could be fun. Want to come?”

  In the diner, Tommy had sat back down to finish his sandwich, the formerly melted cheese having turned into a slab of… of something he decided he’d rather not eat. Fortunately, there was still some potato salad left. Sitting there for a second, looking across the table at nothing in particular, his hand came to his face and touched his lips.

  In every life, there are moments when you either act or risk letting something really special pass you by. For the blonde in the booth behind him, this was one of those moments. Her friend could tell what she was thinking, and encouraged her. “Go for it.”

  Springing onto the floor, the blonde moved quickly, fearing Tommy might be getting ready to leave, sliding onto the bench seat across from him. “Hi.”

  Thinking that she was from the booth behind him, Tommy looked around at the blonde’s friend smiling back at him. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” the other girl answered, nodding her head up and down for some reason.

  Turning his head first, and then his shoulders, Tommy stared at the girl with short, confused blonde hair, unable to look away from her aquamarine eyes. “Do I
know you?”

  “Not yet.” And she paused. “Judy. …My name is Judy, and before this conversation goes any further, I want you to touch me. There’s something I need to know.” Sliding her hand halfway across the vintage Formica table, she extended her forefinger, hanging it out there in the air, pointing toward him.

  Thinking for more than a second, Tommy answered cautiously, his right hand flat, his finger rising off the table as he moved it forward, first inches, then a hair’s breadth away from hers, both of them focused on the point of… contact.

  37. HonoLulu’s

  Hawaiian-Style Fresh Fruit Custard

  “Anna?”

  “Yes, Jack. What do you need?”

  “I’m trying to find Veronica. Do you know where she is?”

  “Out. She got a call a few minutes ago. Ran up, asked me how she looked and blew out of here. Said she’d be back in two hours.”

  “Hey, Babe. ..What? Lulu’s off again today?” It was spring, and once again Joe’s favorite soft-serve truck was open for business at the edge of the little park across the street from where he worked. As busy as he was, it was worth waiting in line while he wondered what secret ingredient they used to make it taste so good. Maybe it was just the fresh fruit, and that every flavor had some chopped pineapple in it. “Am I never, ever going to meet Lulu?”

  “Lulu,” the shapely clerk behind the counter explained in a voice as smooth and enticing as the custard she sold, “is just a figment of my imagination. …You want your usual, Joe?”

  “Why does anyone with your smile work in a truck?”

  “You could ask me out,” she put her elbows on the counter and leaned forward to tease him, “and we could talk about it.”

  “Excuse me.” A little girl had walked up, too short to be seen over the counter, and the other woman who worked the truck was busy refilling one of their machines. “Can I have one,” she asked, holding up her hand to show the few coins she had to spend.

  “Are you with anyone, honey?” the counter girl was concerned she might have wandered away from her mother.

  Shaking her head up and down, she turned slightly and pointed with her other hand to the young woman with the baby watching them from the bench a few yards away.

  “Well, honey,” she did a quick count of the change the little girl was holding, “I don’t think..”

  “Hmm,” Joe interrupted, palming a $10 bill over the edge of the counter. “You know, I think she’s asking for one of your 50 cent, two-for-one specials – maybe one vanilla for her mother, and a chocolate for herself. …Did I get that right,” he asked the little girl.

  She thought for a second, and then answered, “Yes,” smiling back at him. “That would be perfect.”

  “Here.” Joe bent down and took two quarters out of her hand. “Better put the rest of that change in your coat pocket so you can hold the cups.” And she did, very carefully, before trotting over to her mother who mouthed a “Thank you” back at them.

  “They’re not really having a two-for-one sale, are they?” The voice was from the twenty-something woman waiting in line behind him.

  Turning to see who it was, the witty response he was preparing somehow got lost in her eyes.

  Not hearing any reaction to her comment, she started to apologize. “Sorry, I, uh..”

  “No, no. I was expecting some…”

  “He was expecting,” the woman behind the counter saw her customers getting impatient, “some bitchy city girl who cared more about moving along the line than chit-chat foreplay.”

  “Yeah, Babe. I’ll have the pistachio in a sugar cone with chocolate drizzled on top,” Joe told her, not bothering to turn around, “and whatever…”

  “Veronica.”

  “…is having, if she’ll join me.”

  “Tell me,” Veronica looked up at the counter, is he..”

  “Cute? Yeah, he’s gorgeous, and doesn’t hit on me more than once a day, no matter how hard I try.”

  “Maybe you should let me wait on him.” The other clerk was back, motioning to the next person in line.

  “Well then,” Veronica took a breath, “why not. Do you have banana?”

  “We sure do, made with fresh bananas, not just flavored.”

  “I’ll have that, with the chocolate on top, like Joe.”

  “Hi.” Joe decided to make it formal. “I’m Joe.”

  “Veronica,” she reciprocated extending her hand, which he shook and held for a second.

  “Guys?” The counter girl was holding out their orders, including a few extra napkins.

  Joe reached into his pocket and peeled off another ten that he slid across the counter. “Keep it,” he told her, not wanting to waste any time.

  “Wow. …Watch him. He doesn’t usually tip like this.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”

  “Thanks, Babe.” Taking Veronica’s cone first, he used his other hand to lift her wrist so she knew it was hers for the taking. “Here” And then he reached back for his own. “Come on.” Joe took Veronica’s arm. “I reserved a table for us near the fountain.”

  “She doesn’t mind you calling her ‘Babe’?” Veronica asked as they walked, surprised when he had called her that and wondering what it said about Joe’s attitude toward women.

  “No. ‘Babe’ is what it says on her nametag. ...I don’t know her real name. Everyone just calls her ‘Babe.’ I figure it happened so often, she just decided to make it official.”

  “What do you suppose she does the other six months of the year?”

  “Actually, she’s a graduate student in business. That part I do know. …Careful, the bricks are uneven here. …Says she’s developing some new concept she’s test marketing, ‘even as we speak,’ and I don’t think she was talking about the custard. Babe seems way too bright to play in a market with so little potential for late entrants.”

  “Wow. That sounded professional. Do you always talk like that?”

  “Sorry. Force of habit.”

  The table was small. Even so, Joe helped Veronica into her seat and then pulled around his chair to sit closer than if he’d been on the other side.

  “Gee, this really is delicious.” Veronica wasn’t the least bit hesitant to throw herself into the cone. “I gather,” she said between bites, “you come here often.”

  “Almost daily. I can’t make it all afternoon without getting out of the office for a snack. Besides, Babe and her girls, in keeping with the theme of their little enterprise, are wearing coconut bras and grass mini-skirts. It’s either them or Jake, The Gross Hotdog Man.”

  “Fresh flowers in their hair?” Veronica asked, with a tad of longing.

  “Yeah. Good guess. ...In fact, hold on for a second.” Joe pushed back and got up, trotting back to the truck. “Excuse me,” he apologized to the woman Babe was helping. “Babe, you believe in love don’t you?” he asked her, pointing to the flower behind her ear.

  “What? Oh, what the heck.” She pulled the flower and handed it to him. “Go for it.”

  “Thanks, Babe,” he told her, already on his way back to the table.

  “…Hi. I’m back.” Holding out the flower that, like the fruit they served, really was fresh, not some cheap plastic imitation, Joe gave Veronica a chance to smell it. “Would you mind?”

  “Would you do it for me?”

  “Uh, sure. …Which ear?”

  “You pick.” Reaching over, he carefully slid the stem under her hair, over her left ear, and sat back down.

  “It’s perfect.”

  “The flower?”

  Joe’s phone rang. “Wait. Hold that thought.” And then, without waiting to hear the caller say anything, “I’m working this really hot girl. I don’t care what you want, it can wait,” and he hung up.

  “You know I heard that, the part about working the really hot girl.”

  “You… You have some custard on your face.” br />
  “I’m saving it for later,” she giggled, planting a napkin over her whole mouth to be funny, and pretty sure she wouldn’t miss any.

  “Got it.”

  “Now you know why I don’t wear lipstick.”

  “Me neither.”

  She liked Joe, and wondered to herself if he knew it. “…So, what is it about me you think is hot? …What,” she fumbled at the center of her blouse, “am I unbuttoned?”

  “Yes, but I think my fly’s down, so we’re even.” Holding his cone up, Joe sucked at the custard falling out of the little hole in the bottom, while Veronica crunched down on hers. “So what to do you do, for a living?”

  “I’m a surgeon.”

  “Do you use a dog,” Joe played along, pretending to take her seriously, “or do you have a tiny stick to help you find your way around the organs?”

  “Actually, I’m a programmer. I write code for artificial intelligence response systems.”

  “Like the automated voices that answer the phone?”

  “Well, the next generation,” she paused to push a piece of cone the rest of its way into her mouth, “and much more sophisticated tasks. ...What about you?”

  “Right now? Right now I’m helping my parents while I live in their basement. They have a live-body answering service that’s being forced out of business by…”

  “Oh no, let me guess. By artificial intelligence response systems?”

  “Yeah,” Joe made an audible sigh, pretending to be upset, “but there’s no reason we can’t still be friends.”

  “Careful you don’t hyperventilate. …And when their business fails?”

  “Well then, I’ll probably go into marketing.”

  “Good choice. I understand it’s a profession that doesn’t require any special training or expertise.”

  “Ow!”

  Veronica laughed, and then polished off the last bite of her cone. “So, you never told me, what it is exactly that makes you think a girl is hot?”

  “Hey, Joe!” It was Mike from the office, walking quickly over to where they were sitting.

  “Nuts.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “It’s a guy I work with. I’m in marketing...”

  “No kidding?”

  “...and we have a presentation this…”

  “Hey. My name is Mike, and you must be the hot chick Joe is working?”

  “Hi. I’m Veronica.”

  “So how’s that going?”

  “I got him to buy me a banana custard.”

  “Geez, we’ve been dating for years,” Mike was kidding, of course, “and I think he offered me some M&Ms once.”

  “Veronica, I… I’ve got to go, or I could get fired and might be too depressed to take you out to dinner.”

  “Are you asking me out?”

  “Actually, I’m thinking we should get married, but, you’re right,” Joe pretended to be serious while he pushed back his chair and got up to leave. “We should probably date first. …Do you have a card?”

  Taking a moment to reach inside her purse, she found the compartment where she kept them. “Here. What about you?”

  “Uh. I don’t have one with me?”

  “He’s not allowed to have business cards or other pointy objects.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Of course.”

  “No, no. Wait, I’ll prove it. …Give me your pen, bozo.”

  “Here.” He clicked and reached out to take Veronica’s hand.

  “You’re going to write your number on my hand?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “I’d rather you kissed me. The ink could wash away, but a kiss, if it’s good, lasts for…” And he leaned over and kissed her, once quickly, and then a second time for much longer.

  “You taste,” she said so close their lips were almost touching, “like a giant pistachio.”

  Backing up just a bit, Joe whispered, “I don’t want to go, but I have to.” She touched his face for a moment, he gave her one more kiss and then pulled away to leave with Mike.

  “Hey,” Joe turned, walking backwards to keep up, “will you get where you’re going okay?”

  “Yeah,” she shouted to him. “I dropped bread crumbs on my way over, and I’m meeting my sister in a few minutes. We’re going… shopping.” She stopped talking, figuring he was out of range by now.

  “Wait a minute,” Joe stopped. “Stay right here.” And he jogged back to their table. “Hey.”

  “You’re back.”

  “Courage.”

  “What?”

  “You wanted to know what I find hot about women. It’s courage.”

  “Thank you. Good to know.”

  “Courage and, to be honest, breasts. Breasts, but mostly courage.”

  “JOE!!” Mike shouted as loud as he could.

  “Go ahead. I’ll… We’ll talk later.”

  Out of earshot across the park, Mike couldn’t help himself. “I’m in the park all the time, and the closest I’ve been to getting lucky is with a bag lady who thought I smiled at her.”

  “She’s blind, you know.”

  “Sure. That would explain the cool fold up cane, but does she know you’re an idiot?”

  Back at the table in the park...

  “Hey, Veronica.”

  “Hi, Lisa. Who was that? The guy who kissed you?”

  “Tell me the truth. Is he really cute?”

  “Are you kidding? I’ll take him, if you don’t. How did you meet?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Come on,” Veronica got up. “One hour and I’ve got to get back to the office. …You know, he knows I’m blind.”

  “Sure.”

  “He’s not some guy I met on-line or on a blind date, not exactly.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Sure, he knows you’re blind, but does he know you’re an idiot?”

  An hour and twenty minutes and two shopping bags later, Veronica was back at her office. “Hey,” she rushed past Anna, the receptionist.

  “Wait. …Your messages. Oh, and careful. There are flowers on your desk. Really, really nice flowers.”

  “From who?”

  “Did you …have that in your hair when you...”

  “Anna. Who sent me the flowers?!”

  “Don’t know. The card’s like eight and half by eleven and written in Braille. Here. I was hoping you’d read it to me.”

  Rolling her finger across the bumps, Veronica gave her friend the highlights. “It’s from a guy I met a couple hours ago. He saw the Braille on my business card and figured I could read this for myself. He wants to know if I’ll have dinner with him. …Hold on.”

  Excited, Veronica walked quickly to her office to type a note: “Nice spot. Worth every penny at twice the price. I’ll be sure to refer my friends,” and then signed it “Veronica” with her cell phone number. Folding it in thirds, she put it and $20 cash in an envelope that she was careful to seal. On the outside she wrote a single word, large across the center.

  “Anna?”

  “What?”

  “I need a favor.” Veronica was talking even faster than usual. “You know the custard truck at the end of the park.”

  “Sure.”

  “I want you to take this over there now and give it to the girl behind the counter, her and only her, the one who calls herself ‘Babe.’”

  38. Road Trip

  “You know, this is really nice. We should go places together more often.”

  “Yes dear, it’s wonderful. Are you sure you don’t mind driving?”

  “No, of course not. In fact, I need to get out more. I love writing, but it’s a solitary job. Just me and my computer, hardly ever getting up.”

  “What about the trips you make to the refrigerator?”

  “I know I’ve put on a few pounds but, some days, they’re virtually the only exercise I get.
”

  “How ironic is that?”

  “By the way, I need some new underwear. Just the pants. My shirts are fine.”

  “I’ll get you some.”

  “Have you noticed the holes in the ones I’ve thrown in the hamper recently?”

  “Moths?”

  “ Yeah. Moths. Giant underwear moths. That’s all they eat. …The cloth is so old I can’t pull my pants down without my thumbs going through them.”

  “Why not just throw them out?”

  “Emotional attachment. I’m beginning to have a sense of what it’s like to be Swiss. Cheese, that is. ...Would you set the GPS?”

  “Are you kidding? We both know how to get there.”

  “Just in case we run into traffic and have to detour.”

  “Honey, I really need to get there on time.”

  “Some things you can’t rush. …Can I have the Baby Ruth I asked you to pack?”

  “I thought you were kidding. It’s only a 40 minute drive. …Oh, don’t look so dejected. Here, have some water.”

  “You think water is a substitute for a Baby Ruth?”

  “I think it will fill up your stomach and besides, …”

  “Besides what?”

  “You can’t talk when you’re drinking.”

  “Turn off your cell phone.”

  “I’m not driving.”

  “Suppose one of the kids calls you and wants to talk to me?”

  “I’ll tell them you’re driving.”

  “I suppose I could pull over.”

  “I’ll turn off my cell phone.”

  “How do I turn on the rear wiper?”

  “It’s not raining.”

  “There’s bird stuff back there that’s bothering me.”

  “What, that tiny white speck in the corner?”

  “Maybe we should have taken my car.”

  “Your car doesn’t even have a rear wiper.”

  “It doesn’t have any bird poop on it either.”

  “Just push this lever.”

  “How many times?”

  “…Once! Just once will probably do it.”

  “There. That’s better.”

  “Honey, maybe I should drive. …Would you puh-lease stop adjusting your seat?”

  “You know, my car has manual seats. I’m not used to all these comfort features. It’s hard to get it just right. ...Nuts. We need gas.”

  “Are you kidding? Half a tank is more than enough to get there.”

  “Not if we get stuck in traffic.”

  “It’s Sunday. There isn’t any traffic. We’ll stop for gas on the way back.”

  “…What?”

  “Honey, you know I love talking to you, but…”

  “Oh, God!”

  “What’s wrong?!”

  “Where is my Pitch Perfect CD? …Thank you. You know it’s only a matter of time before we get stopped by some first-year State Trooper asking for our papers, only to get arrested for making an illegal copy of the Pitch Perfect CD you checked out of the library.”

  “First of all, we don’t live in Arizona. It’s 2,000 miles away. No one is going to ask us for any papers. Second, we’re not Hispanic. Not even close.”

  “What about the Cinco de Mayo sticker we have on the bumper?”

  “WHAT?”

  “Just suppose we did. Or maybe a grocery bag in the back with chips and salsa. Now I know why people get those tinted windows. …No. Wait. That’s ridiculous. Just because we eat bagels doesn’t mean we’re Jewish.”

  “Of course not. It’s just a coincidence.”

  “What’s a coincidence?”

  “That we’re Jewish.”

  “You mean we’d like bagels even if we weren’t?”

  “Probably. Lots of regular people do. …Now tell me what’s making you so nervous.”

  “I think I should have gone to the bathroom before we left.”

  “Honestly, are you four years old? When did you stop going to the bathroom before we leave?”

  “You were in the bathroom.”

  “We have two other bathrooms in the house.”

  “Sure, but they’re all on different floors. …Why are you hitting your forehead like that?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Did you remember to set the alarm?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “…Give me two of those antacids, the cherry-flavored ones you keep in your purse.”

  “You’ve got heartburn?”

  “Not yet, but I feel it coming on.”

  “Here. They’re grape. They were all out of the cherry. Apparently you have singlehandedly exhausted the manufacturer’s national reserves.”

  “No thank you. Grape stuff turns my tongue purple.”

  “These tablets are white. ...I’ll eat them and smile at you to prove my point.”

  “If you’re not feeling well, we could…”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I noticed the Colbys have a ‘For Sale’ sign out.”

  “Yeah, Maggie says Jack’s been asked to takeover one of his company’s regional offices. I’ll miss her.”

  “Yeah. It’s cool they way they forgave me for almost running over their cat with the lawn mower.”

  “Almost? …Besides, they didn’t forgive you. They just didn’t blame me. They figured we married young and I didn’t find out you were a jerk until it was too late.”

  “I loved that riding mower. If Porsche made a riding mower, that would have been it. ...Besides, Flubby looks better with a shorter tail.”

  “It’s ‘Fluffy.’ The cat’s name is Fluffy, for the way her fur used to poof-out, ...before the accident.”

  “Should have been Flubby. That cat weighed like a thousand pounds. How’s she doing?”

  “She died three years ago.”

  “Did I…”

  “No, honey, although I suspect the incident with the mower may have aged her prematurely.”

  “…You don’t think I’m a jerk, do you?”

  “Of course not. You have certain personality traits which, for people who are not used to them, can be misinterpreted...”

  “As signs of mental illness?”

  “I know better and, besides, I love you and can’t help myself. …Wait, did you just adjust the mirror so you could see your teeth in it?”

  “I thought I might have a nut stuck there and didn’t want to embarrass you.”

  “Believe me, honey, that ship has already sailed.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Honey? …Are you pretty much all set?”

  “Uh, yeah. I think so.”

  “That’s great dear. So what do you think? Can we back out of the garage now?”

  39. Unfaithful

  All total, he’d only been out of town for two days. Their presentation team decided to fly out Wednesday afternoon to rehearse, make last minute adjustments and get plenty of sleep the night before the 9 AM meeting that had to go perfectly. If it did, if it went well, they’d be invited back the next morning for what amounted to a second competition among the contract finalists. They did, and they were and now they’d know Monday if their agency had been selected. It would be the break they needed, and had worked so hard to win. It would also affirm Ben’s standing as the heir apparent to the two aging partners who founded the agency, but whose creativity was defined by a different, no longer relevant time. Ben was the next generation, yet to realize his full potential, a natural salesman with an effortless knack for making people believe that what he said was what they wanted to hear.

  Now, late Friday afternoon, his suit bag over one shoulder, the strap to his computer briefcase over the other, the walk from the elevator to the door of his corner apartment seemed longer than usual. He would drop everything, set his watch alarm for a couple of hours sleep, and meet Amy for dinner at the pub a few blocks away. Amy would bring him back to life, and then maybe spend the night at his place. T
he idea of her being there in the morning when he got up – still asleep, because she always slept later than he did – almost made it worth being that wiped. On Monday, if they didn’t get the contract, he’d call her and, for at least a few minutes, it wouldn’t seem as if it made any difference.

  Pushing his door open, Ben turned sideways, shuffling past the little table where he dropped his keys, on his way past the open kitchen to the couch that looked oh-so-inviting.

  “Hey,” she said, absent any particular expression. To his surprise, Amy was in the over-sized leather armchair, the one with the ottoman where their feet would play with each other’s while they watched TV or a movie. Not this afternoon. Amy was sitting on the edge of the chair, shoes on, feet flat on the floor, a mostly empty glass of white wine on the table to the side, next to a couple of magazines.

  “Hey. …Everything okay?” They didn’t live together, but he’d given her a key to take care of his plants when he was out of town, and for the times when she’d get there ahead of him after work.

  “I thought we had an understanding.”

  “About meeting for dinner?”

  “About not going out with anyone else.”

  Setting down his bags, Ben walked to the refrigerator, thinking a cold beer would help him make sense of whatever was bothering her. “That sound,” he reflected as his bottle opener did its job, “is fifty percent of the beer drinking experience.” And then he plopped himself down on the couch across from her, loosening his tie the rest of the way, pulling it off and dropping it on the empty cushion to his right. He liked that tie, feeling it made just the right impression without distracting his audience, but he was too tired to be neat. Staring at it for a moment, respectfully, he figured he’d drop it at the dry cleaners on his way for a Saturday morning run.

  Taking a long swig of the beer, followed by a little first swallow burp, he’d put off responding as long as he could. “Okay, tell me what’s bothering you.”

  Amy was beautiful, but in an intellectual way, very smart and naturally sexual to an extent it wasn’t clear she understood. “Janice went with you.”

  “Janice and I work together. You know that. Of course she went us. She does our storyboards. It was her roommate, Martha, who introduced you and me.”

  “Marla.”

  “Marla, whatever. What’s this all about?”

  “Janice spent last night in your room?”

  “Janice, Jack, Beth and I, all four of us were in my room last night making last minute changes to our presentation this morning. …So what?”

  “Janice called Marla from the airport on your way back to say how psyched you all were and that, after Jack and Beth left, she and you screwed each other’s brains out.”

  Ben started to smile, but Amy’s expression wouldn’t allow it. “Uh, let’s see. First of all, Janice doesn’t talk like that.”

  “I was paraphrasing.”

  “Second... Second of all, she’s dating some guy, some jock, Todd I think.”

  “You and I are dating. That didn’t stop you.”

  “Stop me from what? ...Okay, okay. This is easy.” Taking out his cell phone, he began scrolling to find Janice’s number. “I’ll call her. You can ask her for yourself.” Pressing the speaker button, he put his phone down on the trunk that doubled as a coffee table.

  “Hellooo.”

  “Hey, Janice. It’s Be..”

  “This is Janice. I’m busy or screening my calls. Whatever. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you, sooner or later. …Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Hey, Janice. It’s Ben. Please give me a call as soon as you get this.”

  “So what do we do now,” Amy didn’t really want to know. “Sit here and wait for her to call back?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. My word should be good enough.”

  “Why would Marla make this up?”

  “I don’t know, and pretty much don’t care. Maybe you misunderstood what she said, or what Janice was talking about.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Bullshit?” She’d caught him off guard. “We’ve been dating for what, four months…”

  “Five.”

  “..and that’s got be the first foul language I’ve heard you say. …Listen to me. Janice didn’t stay in my room after Jack and Beth left, and I didn’t see her again until we all checked out and met in the lobby this morning. …I know, let’s call Marla. What’s her number?”

  “Are we or are we not dating exclusively?”

  “We are.”

  “And doesn’t that,” Amy had lapsed into the perfectly logical mode that was the way she argued, “preclude your having even casual sex with anyone else?”

  “Abso-fuckin’-lutely. And I didn’t.”

  “So, what, do you expect me to forgive you?”

  “No. I expect you to believe me.”

  No response.

  “Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m beat and I don’t want to blow what’s obviously a really important conversation with you for lack of a couple of hours sleep. …Why don’t you just leave. I’ll pass out here on the couch and have Janice call you. …and you can call Marla. Hell, find her. Talk to her face-to-face. I’m sure whatever she told you will come out differently the next time you hear it.”

  “What if I would forgive you?”

  “Amy, I don’t want you to get over it. I didn’t do anything to forgive.”

  “Don’t you believe in forgiveness?”

  “Wh.. What?!” Seeing how upset she was, tears beginning to form in her eyes, was beginning to make him upset.

  “People make mistakes. We’ve only been dating five months. I’d understand. It’s not like we’d moved in together or gotten engaged. That’s what those milestones are for, signs that our relationship is more... more binding.”

  “‘Milestones’? You make them sound like things you need to pass by drinking lots of water.”

  “Those are kidney stones, and this isn’t funny.”

  “No, it’s not. …Look, I like that you’re an attorney. I like the way you look at things differently than I do, but this is ridiculous. If I give you my word that I’ll only be with you, just you, and I break that word, it isn’t okay and apologizing for it… Not that I did anything to apologize for. …or trying to explain it or make excuses, doesn’t make it go away. …A deal is a deal. We may get on with our relationship, but we’ll never get over it. It may still be good, it could even be better, but it won’t be the same. All this apologizing, accepting responsibility for this and that unforgiveable transgression you see on TV, that’s the bullshit part. Just because you own up to something doesn’t make it better, nor does forgiving it make it go away or make you somehow superior for pretending it didn’t matter all that much.”

  Amy was quiet. Her jaw clenched, her posture stiff, she let one hand leave her lap for just the moment it took to wipe away a single tear.

  “Amy, honey, you have nothing to worry about, Janice and I didn’t do anyth..”

  What interrupted him was the sound of his phone vibrating on the trunk between them, Janice’s face on the screen with that “give me a break” look she’d flashed him when he was taking everyone’s pictures at the office.

  “Finally,” Ben figured this was over, and pressed the green button. “Hey.”

  “Hey, gorgeous,” Janice answered, obviously kidding him. “What’s up?”

  “Hang up the phone.” It was the first thing Amy had said in a couple of minutes.

  “I’m here with Amy. I know this will sound…”

  “Please. Hang up the phone.”

  “Janice, I’ll call you back.”

  “Okay, babe,” she answered in the staccato way she talked. “Later,” and she hung up.

  “So, all of a sudden you believe me?”

  “I slept with Ted.”

  Somehow he managed not to say the usual, “What?” as if he hadn’t
heard what she said. “Whose Ted?” he asked, as if it made any difference.

  “Janice’s Ted. His name is Ted, not Todd. I met him a few weeks ago when I stopped by to pick up Marla, and then...”

  Holding up his left arm, Ben patted the air with the palm of his hand, signaling her to stop, preferring to take the last swallow of his beer in silence.

  40. First Date

  It was 5:22 AM Tuesday morning, according to the glowing numbers and letters when he pressed the button on his watch, 8 minutes later than the last time he’d checked.

  “Enough already. I’m getting up,” Kenny advised himself out loud, even though he was the only resident of his studio apartment, the largest unit he could afford in the slightly better than crummy neighborhood he’d settled for when he moved to the big city. His first real job out of college, he wasn’t about to put in the hours, the “sweat equity” his father called it, only to max out his potential in a small town company. He’d make it here, or nowhere. “Maybe I’ll have time to catch a nap before I leave.” He had the one air conditioner in the window, but it was too noisy to run when he was sleeping, and then there was the fan on a stick he kept in the corner, oscillating slowly left to right, right to left. Kenny got up, turned on the air conditioner, opened the blinds a bit, and waited a couple of seconds for the compressor to come up to speed. “Come on, baby. One more day.”

  The meeting at which he would present the idea no one but he believed in, not yet anyway, was at 9 AM sharp. He’d stopped riding his bike to work a few weeks ago, in the spring. Too hot, and he’d started wearing a jacket and a tie. Throwing on the light switch next to the refrigerator, his eyes went right to the Vespa brochure he’d been meaning to file somewhere for two weeks now. “Very cool. But parking? I need to solve the parking problem.”

  There was the subway, of course. Much better than the bus. Even so, it was a few blocks away, and then several more blocks at the other end of the ride to the building where he worked.

  “Hm. Breakfast?” he thought to himself. He needed to eat early to make sure he had plenty of time to go to the bathroom. “I eat too much, I’ll feel slow. Too little, and I could be lightheaded. It’s happened before. ...Split the difference, and I’ll eat now so I have time to go to the bathroom, as much time as I need. Couple of eggs,” he thought, reaching for his small frying pan, “and some wheat toast. Very healthy. ...Oh, and some cran-grape juice.” Opening one of the cabinets above the sink, he took out a Balance bar and set it on the counter, just in case he needed something extra after he got to the office.

  Turn on CNN. Get the paper that was curled up against his front door and read it while he eats. It was important that he be well informed, ready to participate in any conversation at the office. Marjorie, the girl who lived with her boyfriend across the hall, worked the night shift at a bakery. She’d pick up his paper from where they were stacked by the mail boxes and leave it for him so he didn’t have to go down there in his shorts, or put on pants. Today, there were two French rolls, still warm, in a clear plastic bag. “What a doll,” Kenny smiled, reminding himself to thank her. “Screw the wheat toast.”

  Clean up the kitchen. 30 minutes on his Bowflex. It was a studio, but as big as a one bedroom, that he rented because the open floor plan gave him more flexibility, more usable space. “Nap. I need a 20 minute nap, and before I take a shower. ...On the couch.” It wasn’t as comfortable, but that was the point. Tired or not, he couldn’t afford to oversleep, which is why he set his cell phone alarm and his watch, five minutes apart, just in case.

  Shave first, then shower. No cologne. Deodorant with antiperspirant, enough, but not too much so his undershirt would stick to his pits. This was business.

  “What to wear? What to wear? …Khaki dress pants. ...Ooo. I need to buff up my shoes. …And a white shirt, in case I’m perspiring. No. Too plain. The white one with the blue pin stripes. Much better. And, uh... this tie. Assertive, without being overbearing. Expensive, sort of, but not too pricy.”

  Lifting the lid of his laptop, he rubbed the pad to bring it back to life. “…Crap.” No personal email, except two from his parents. He went out of his way to stay in touch with some of the girls he’d met in college, and the more or less friends he’d made over the past year since he moved. “Maybe if I didn’t work such stupid hours, I’d have time to meet someone. …Maybe if I met someone, I wouldn’t want to work such stupid hours.”

  Shutting it down, he waited for the screen to go dark before closing it up. Rolling up the power cords, he dumped them and everything he’d be taking with him onto his breakfast/dinner/work table. Today he’d use the rolling briefcase his parents had bought him. A backpack, however functional, didn’t send the right message. Besides, he had way too much to carry. The backpack would be too heavy, pulling on his shirt and jacket, and it was hot out. (As you’ve probably noticed, Kenny had a real fear of perspiring, but then, who doesn’t?)

  Half an hour later, give or take, he was ready to leave, standing just inside his apartment door. “No, wait. I need to try to go to the bathroom again.” He tried, but no luck. It was all in his head. One last look around, for the third time, to see if he’d forgotten anything, Kenny took a breath, opened the door and closed and locked it behind him.

  He was leaving early to get there early, time to relax, cool down and, you guessed it, go to the bathroom if he had to. Time to set up the conference room so everything would be perfect. It was important they understood how much time he’d put into this idea, and give it and him the respect they deserved.

  Outside, in the subway and now on the last leg of his trip, it was hot, humid and crowded. On the subway, he’d taken off his jacket and folded it neatly over his arm. At the top of the stairs up from the subway, 10 blocks from his office, he set his briefcase down and pulled up its handle. Pulling it would be easier. The sidewalks were wide, but still swarming with people who didn’t understand the tradition of staying to the right. As long as he kept his briefcase behind him, so it didn’t clip anyone, it’d be okay.

  Three blocks later, Kenny waited to cross the street, to the other side where the buildings would provide some shade for the next several blocks.

  “Hey!” Kenny turned to see some jerk trying to zip open his briefcase, only to scare the kid away to steal something from someone else. Turning back when he thought it was safe, he looked across the street ...and there she was. His age, give or take. Short, almost, not quite shoulder length brown hair, neither wavy nor straight. From across the street, she stood out against a background of ordinary people. At a distance, he could see her as if they were much closer. Dark blue business suit. Heels, but not that high. Her arms wrapped precariously around some books and file folders, one hand holding a portfolio by its handles. Waiting there, the pressure of everyone behind her against her back, Kenny saw her exhale and felt her determination. And then the light changed.

  Seeing her step off the curb and coming in his direction, it was a no brainer. “What the hell?” He’d wait for her to cross for a closer look – but then she broke out of the pack and angled herself to his right, saving a few must-have-been-precious seconds on her way down the same street where Kenny was heading.

  “A little creepy maybe, but I’m going that way anyway,” Kenny said to himself, and he followed her, sort of. Catching up, he stayed close, two or three people between them. He was even in front of her once or twice, but to the side, a technique he’d seen on some detective show. He watched her walk, impressed with how deftly she varied her pace and direction to weave in and out of ongoing and slow moving pedestrian traffic. It was all he could do, dragging his briefcase behind him, to keep up with her. And then there was that one time, at a corner, rushing to beat the seconds counter. He’d switched hands to make sure his briefcase would roll on the handicap break instead of bumping off the curb and killing his laptop, when she moved to her right and they j
ostled each other.

  “Whoa, sorry,” He apologized.

  “It’s okay,” she said, working quickly to adjust her armful for fear she drop something. Planning only to look up for a moment, she looked away and then back up again. “Really,” there was something about his eyes, “I’m fine.” By that time they were halfway across the street.

  “Careful.” Switching his briefcase to his right, his left hand took the back of her arm, moving her out of the way of an especially aggressive taxi turning the corner.

  “Thanks,” she said smiling, but without stopping, in fact hustling to pick up her pace. “The last thing I need this morning is to be phoning in my presentation from the emergency room at some hospital.”

  “Me, too.”

  She looked at him as they rushed down the long block to the next corner.

  “I mean, I’ve got the presentation of my life this morning. ...How do I look?” And that made her laugh.

  “Great,” she said. “You look great. ...And?”

  “Uh, and what, you look great too?”

  “Gee.”

  “It’s just that looking great doesn’t seem like something you have to work at.”

  “Nice recovery.”

  “Personally,” Kenny kept the conversation going, “I’m at my best when I’m coming from behind.”

  Four blocks later, they knew what they did for a living, where they were from, where they worked and lived, had shared their anxiety about the morning’s meetings, and had laughed and smiled about this and that.

  “So exactly how long have you been following me?”

  “Since you crossed the street, although, technically, I was going this way anyway. It’s how I go to work.”

  “Is this how you meet women?” She was playing with him.

  “No, although it beats barhopping. …Besides, I didn’t plan on meeting you. I was just...”

  “Just what?”

  “I don’t know, just letting the fact that you exist get me psyched for my meeting.” And then she stopped and looked at him, people, all sorts of people streaming around them and then closing ranks on the other side.

  She looked up at him, although Kenny wasn’t that much taller. “That was a heck of a thing to say.”

  “I can’t help it if I’m naturally glib,” he smiled back at her.

  For a moment, they were both quiet, not really understanding what was happening.

  “Have dinner with me,” Kenny blurted out, sensing he was running out of time.

  “No. …I’ve got to go.”

  “Wait. It can’t be something I’ve said,” he shouted after her – even though she was only a few steps away. “I haven’t said that much. That would be a new record, even for me.”

  And the she stopped and turned. “I’ve got to go this way.”

  Kenny walked over to her, almost jogging. “What’s your downside?”

  “You could be a creep.”

  “I’d be taking the same chance. It’s just dinner.”

  “…No,” and she turned to walk down the side street from the corner where they’d been talking.

  “Oh, come on!” he shouted. And she slowed down, then started walking, but then stopped and turned.

  “That’s your line?!” she shouted back. “’Oh, come on!’ That’s your line?”

  This time they moved toward each other. “My name’s Kenny Holden.” Reaching into his shirt pocket where he put his business cards, he pulled one out and gave it to her. “…and this is when you tell me your name.”

  “’Marilyn,’ and here’s my card,” she said, pulling one, carefully so as not to drop anything, from the side pocket of her jacket.

  “It’s bent,” Kenny noticed, but then added, “but I’ll get over it.”

  “Pick a restaurant, well lit with lots of people…” she started to say, when someone bumped into her, pushing them together.

  “Would a police bar be okay?” Kenny said in a normal voice.

  “Precisely what I was thinking.”

  (What happened next, if it happens to you, was the kind of thing you tell your children and grandchildren about.)

  “What?” she asked him, wondering about the look of confusion on Kenny’s face.

  “I… I’m not sure,” he said, unable to stop his eyes from flashing between her golden brown eyes and red-lipsticked mouth that seemed incapable of being still. He didn’t know what to say, but she did.

  There was that breath and the forced exhaling he’d seen before. Her jaw tightening with determination, a hint of vulnerability in her eyes that she would never acknowledge. “What the hell,” and, at that moment, her voice was the only sound he heard. “Go for it.”

  Reaching around to the small of her back, he pulled her the last few inches toward him, her high heels rising off the pavement.

  41. I, Your Son

  “Shhh!” He held his finger up to his lips, cautioning the girl he was showing around their laboratories to be quiet. The large room, covering most of the fourth floor of the new graduate Physics building was usually off limits to visitors, but he had a special unlimited access pass that even their extraordinary security had to respect, and had managed to get one for her, too. It was a pick-up trick that had never failed him.

  That they were above ground, instead of in one of the several basement laboratories where robotic components were fabricated and assembled, was a huge concession their security-obsessed government benefactors had made to Professor Cummings, the AI genius around whose vision the entire project had been funded. Cummings insisted that windows – real windows, not the fake LED kind they had in the basement – were essential for him and his team. “Hey,” Cummings hated wasting time, “use silent, dark glass, whatever it takes. I don’t care. I want sunlight. I want my people and me to be able to look up now and then and see stuff. Blue and green things. Birds. Students groping each other on the way to class. Honk, honk, beep, beep. Get it?!” And he got it, he was that big a deal, creatively speaking. Like no one else before him, he understood how intelligence worked and had that rare knack that great engineers have for using ordinary science to make extraordinary things.

  It wasn’t just about chips and programming. Cummings and his team had rejected the usual mechanical solutions that they considered cumbersome in favor of hybrid plastics they engineered to contract and expand like human muscles when they were energized. Except for organs, which were unnecessary and replaced with other, special feature gizmos, Cumming’s androids were designed with a skeletal and muscular structure almost identical to their human counterparts – with live, temperature-regulated sensor-skin that would fool even the most astute dermatologist.

  It was early, Saturday morning. “Why can’t we talk?” she whispered back at him, “and why can’t we go in?” Huddled behind some file cabinets, they were – with the exception of Cummings and one other person – alone on the floor. “You know,” she giggled just a little, “I can pretty much stand on my own without your arm around me.” She was an undergraduate science major. He was the coolest guy, not all that good looking, not really, but a combination of eyes and smile with a style that were, she thought to herself when they first met, “…perfectly imperfect” – and with really great, almost intoxicating breath she wished she could stop sniffing.

  “Your security pass,” he pretended to be seriously disinterested, but couldn’t keep the corners of his mouth under control, “requires that we stay in close contact with each other at all times.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Shhh. Let’s get closer.”

  “Any closer and we’d need to get a room.”

  “Close enough to hear what Cummings and the kid he’s with are talking about.”

  Across the mostly open floor, Cummings was sitting inside his carrel, his back to the corner of his L-shaped desk. In the chair at the end of his desk, a little... person sat unusually erect, his feet not nearly long enough to reach
the floor.

  “I, your son,” the little boy spoke in a voice that broke slightly.

  “Do you understand that I don’t own you?”

  “You created me.”

  “Oh my God!” the girl whispered. Is that one of his...”

  “Impressive, isn’t it,” he answered.

  “Impressive, my ass! It’s fuckin’ amazing. I had no idea.” She was talking a mile a minute. “I thought all those rumors where just an urban...”

  “Hey!” he interrupted in a loud whisper. “He’ll hear us. …Wait a minute. What were you saying about your ass?”

  “Why would he make a kid? Why not an adult?”

  “Cummings is, uh... It’s his way of acknowledging that this particular unit's intelligence and capabilities are childlike. Later generations will be progressively larger and more mature, more grownup.”

  “You created me, didn’t you?” the child asked again.

  “Well, sure, in a manner of speaking, but you are the result of all that have come before you, of all that you experience and, most importantly,” Cummings slowed down to make this particular point, “of the creative elements of your intelligence that make you unique. ...You are, whatever your origins, free.”

  The child sat there, staring back at him, before responding in a fake, modulated voice that mimicked the robot in a then-popular commercial, “I whant chicken and Chi-Chi’s.”

  “What’s going on?” the girl asked.

  Cumming’s suddenly pretended to be annoyed. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Cummings almost shouted at the kid. “You don’t have any taste buds!”

  Sitting there, the child seemed hurt, dejected, and thought for a few seconds before responding, working hard to be serious. “I whant taste buuuds.”

  And then both Cummings and the kid broke out laughing.

  “Unbelievable,” she said, “It’s so real!”

  “Hey!” Professor Cummings looked up and over the low glass partition that defined his area. “You two in the back. Get over here!”

  “Uh, oh.” He stood up, cocking his neck a bit to the left.

  “What happens now?” she stood up next to him.

  “We do what he says. I mean,” his tone was less than confident as they started to walk, “what can he do to us?”

  “I thought you were tight with the Professor?” She grabbed his hand, but then it occurred to her, “Wait. Did you plan this?”

  “You know, in retrospect, to say ‘tight’ may have been somewhat of an exaggeration.”

  A few seconds later they were at Cummings’ carrel, standing in front of him. The little kid hopped off his chair and on to Cummings’ lap. The girl couldn’t keep her eyes off of him, so real in every way. Out of respect, the two of them waited for Cummings to talk.

  “Hi,” he said, looking at the girl. “I’m Evan Cummings, and you are?”

  “Michelle. Michelle Konig.”

  “Let me guess. Undergraduate science major?”

  “Yesss,” she answered, beginning to realize how he’d guessed.

  “Andrew,” Cummings sighed.

  “Andy. ...I prefer Andy.”

  “I know. Fine. So tell me, Andy, have you been less than forthcoming with your new friend?”

  “What’s he talking about?” Michelle, turning to look up at her date, right into his electric blue eyes, needed to know.

  “Andy?” Cummings wanted him to explain.

  “Uh,” Andy looked at Cummings and then back at Michelle, rubbing her hand that he was still holding. “It’s ‘Andy,’ short for… for, well, ‘Android.’ It’s sort of a lab joke. These people are funnier than they look.”

  Michelle pulled her hand out of his. “You’re not real?!”

  “Oh,” Andy almost seemed insulted. “I’m real alright. …I’m just not human.”

  “What about him?” Michelle pointed, respectfully, to the little kid on Cumming’s lap who was looking up at her.

  “Michelle, this is my son, Mike.”

  “Hey.” Mike said hello.

  “He’s as human as human gets. When you were hiding in the back, he was just playing, messing with your head. We’re hanging out today while his mother’s picking out the most expensive new kitchen appliances we can’t afford. ...Besides,” Cummings stopped to wriggle his fingers on Mike’s stomach which his son seemed to enjoy no end, “bringing him to the lab now and then has given me some of my best ideas.”

  “We’re a team,” Mike added for clarification, his little voice full of pride, touching the photo ID on the lanyard around is neck.

  “Unbelievable,” Michelle reached up and touched Andy’s face. “Wow.”

  “Nice to have met you, Michelle. Andy, will you please take your friend to security, directly to security?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Ms. Konig?”

  “Yes,” she answered just as she was turning to leave.

  “Needless to say, if you talk or write to anyone about any of this, or recognize Andy if you should happen to run into him – which isn’t going to happen, is it Andy?”

  “Oh, no,” Andy shook his head in the negative.

  “ – you’ll be attending community college in Nome.”

  “Can you do that?” she asked, but then noticed, by the expression on his face, that he wasn’t kidding. “Of course. I get it. Not a word.”

  “Good.” Cummings made a perfunctory good-bye grin and Andy and Michelle left, walking toward the elevators.

  Halfway there, Michelle stopped. “Andy,” she instinctively put her hand on his arm, then paused to rub it. “Hmm. ...Stay here, would you?”

  Not waiting for him to answer, she jogged back to Cummings’ desk where he was drawing something on a yellow pad for Mike. “Professor Cummings?”

  “Yes?”

  “Professor, I was just wondering, can Andy…”

  “Can Andy what?”

  “You know,” Michele was hedging and decided to answer by raising her eyebrows and widening her eyes.

  “Oh... No. He doesn’t have the parts. He thinks he can, but it’s only a mental thing. Very bright. Very lifelike externally, but he doesn’t have the parts.”

  “Hm.” Michelle nodded her head slightly. “Too bad.”

  42. The Hangover

  Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, eating the worm.

  “Hey.” The short line in front of him at the familiar shop down the street from his office had moved quickly. More than most days, today he needed the perfect cup of coffee. “I’ll have my usual.”

  Fifty-two minutes earlier…

  Naked, in someone else’s bed, in a bedroom and apartment he didn’t recognize, Anthony Null went from a dead sleep to wide awake the moment he heard his watch alarm go off. Pushing himself up onto his elbows, he paused for only a second before swiveling onto the edge of the bed, his bare feet pleased to feel the cool of the floor. He pressed the big button on his watch to shut off the sound. Disoriented, he looked around to see his suit and other clothes strewn about the old hardwood.

  “Shit.” Checking the time, he realized it was Alarm 2 that had gone off, his backup in case he didn’t wake up when the first alarm went off. “I’m going to be late.” Throwing off the sheet, Anthony had to go to the bathroom, but thought it best to put on his underpants, “Where are…,” first, and then his suit pants before venturing out into the hallway to the bathroom, wherever that was.

  There was cable news playing too loud on a TV somewhere, suggesting someone else was there, but he’d look into that in a moment. First things first.

  The door on his right was open slightly, enough to see a white tile floor. Pushing it the rest of the way, he was headed for the toilet before he paid attention to the sound of water running and realized there was someone in the shower. Not just someone, but a young, very fit woman he could see clearly through the shower curtain. In fact, the only thing blocking his view was a school of tiny
cartoon fish. Pushing her hair back with both her hands, the young woman stared back at him, smiling as she did.

  “Hey,” she said, sliding the shower curtain open without a hint of modesty. “It’s Bette. ..My name is Bette and, don’t worry,” she added, “I can’t remember your name either.”

  “Anthony. Were we...?” He was trying to remember, but she was spectacular looking, and he couldn’t concentrate.

  “No. I was with Jack. …I don’t know who you were with, except that she seemed nice, but left early to go to work.” Un-phased by the encounter, Bette continued to wash herself, more than a little water spraying out onto the floor. Somehow it made sense, that it would have been impolite to pull back the curtain between them.

  “Is, uh, there another bathroom?”

  “Getting the point, Bette smiled. “Got to go, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you wait a few minutes?”

  “Not really.”

  “No. This is it. As for privacy, I think we’re passed that. I’ll... How ‘bout if I turnaround and pretend not to listen?”

  “That’d be great.” It wasn’t, but then it was an emergency, and he figured he’d probably never see her again although, when he would think about it later, that would be a real shame.

  Now she did close the curtain, and turned around as promised.

  “Are you sure we don’t know each other?” It was nervous conversation, but he needed the distraction.

  “Positive,” Bette assured him.

  “Good,” he said awkwardly while he finished up. “I mean, I wouldn’t want it to turn out that we worked together, or something.”

  “Yeah,” Bette mocked him, as if she cared. “This could really change the whole workplace dynamic.”

  “Hey,” he was done and flushed the toilet. “Nice meeting me,” Anthony watched as she leaned over to turn off the water that was suddenly too cold.

  “‘You.’ Nice meeting ‘you.’”

  “Right.” Anthony smiled and laughed at himself, not moving an inch while Bette stepped out of the tub and reached for a towel. “You were that close to finishing?”

  “Hey,” Bette wiped the water off her face and began drying her shoulder-length blonde hair. “A girl can have some fun, can’t she?”

  “Well, thanks for the bed.”

  “It’s not my place.”

  “Jack?”

  “Tell you the truth, I haven’t a clue. In fact, I’m not entirely sure how Jack and I met? Hmm,” she stopped to think for a moment. “Well, anyway. Nothing I can do about that now. …Anthony?” She needed to walk past him to the hallway.

  “What? …I can’t seem to move,” he smiled back at her. It was one of those first moments, the instinctive flirt that stays in your head forever.

  She stopped, her hands together holding her towel just below her breasts.

  He shrugged and shuttered at the same time. “Oh, God. I’ve…” He paused to take a breath, his shoulders returning to their usual position. “...I’ve got to go. Maybe…”

  Bette made a small kiss with her lips, and he sighed and smiled back at her, realizing that asking for her number would only spoil the moment for both of them.

  A few minutes later, he was running down the stairs. There may have been an elevator, but he couldn’t find it. Out on the street, in the middle of a block he didn’t recognize, Anthony realized he had no idea how far he was from the office – or what happened to his briefcase. He was pretty sure he had his briefcase with him, but it wasn’t in the apartment, so far as he could tell in the few seconds he’d looked for it.

  “Taxi!” Waving frantically, he caught the attention of the one dropping off a fare at the corner. It turned, and came over to pick him up.

  Not waiting for it to stop, Anthony had the back door open and slid in. “How far are we from 33rd and Madison?”

  “Uh, this time of the morning, maybe 20 minutes.”

  “And from the 1800 block of Coulson?

  “Less than 10. It’s on the way, sort of.”

  “Okay.” Worse than being late would be coming in looking the way he did. “I’m a mess. Take me to Coulson.” And they were off, throwing Anthony back against his seat. “Hey!”

  “What? I thought you were in a hurry.”

  “When we get to my apartment, I need you to wait. Will you do that? You can keep the meter running, but I’ll need 15, maybe 20 minutes inside.”

  “Sure, but I’ll need something up front, just in case you don’t come back.”

  “Fine. I just need time to wash up and change my clothes.”

  A few minutes later, “There… The graystone on the right with the flower boxes. ..Here’s $20,” which was way more than the meter. “I’ll be right back. You’re going to wait, right?”

  “For 20 minutes, but that’s it.”

  Two steps at a time, Anthony was up the front stoop, past the large, heavy front door and into the hallway. Up one long flight, fumbling through his pockets along the way, he realized he didn’t have his keys. “Fuck!” Back down the stairs, one at a time as fast as he could, Anthony pounded on Mrs. Smerinsky’s door. She was the super and would let him in. “Mrs. Smerinsky?!” No answer. He pounded again. Still nothing.

  “Can I help you?” From behind him, it was the voice of an older man Anthony didn’t recognize. He’d just come into the lobby of their converted townhouse holding two plastic bags of groceries in one hand, his keys in the other.

  “I’m looking for Mrs. Smerinsky. I’ve locked myself out of my…”

  “So, what, you think she’s hiding in my apartment?”

  “Do... Do you live with...?” Having seen Mrs. Smerinsky first thing in the morning, the thought of her cohabitating with anyone was, well, hard to grasp.

  “Son, I don’t know who you’re talking about. Now are you going to get away from my front door, or do I need to call the police?” The man had reached into his pocket, exchanged his keys for his cell phone, flipped it open and was poised to hit the “9” with his thumb.

  “Are you the Super?” Anthony was confused.

  The man paused. “No. No, there is no Super in the building. Just a number we call if we need anything. ...Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” Taking out his wallet, Anthony checked his driver’s license and read it out loud. “1824 Coulson.”

  “Right address son. Do you live here? I don’t remember seeing you around, but then I’ve only just moved in a few days ago.”

  “I, uh…” Anthony was interrupted by the sound of his cab beeping outside. “I’ve got to go. Sorry to bother you.”

  Back out on the stoop, Anthony reassured the cabby, in a manner of speaking. “Hey. I said 20 minutes!” he shouted down to him and then turned back to ask the old man for a number he could call, but the man was gone. “What the hell,” he mumbled to himself on his way down the stairs, fearing the cabby would take off without him in it.

  In the back seat, Anthony turned to look at the front of building and the number in stone above the door, and then at the seat in front of him, rubbing his day old stubble under his neck. “Okay. Let’s go. 33rd and Madison.”

  On the way over, Anthony took out his driver’s license again, his credit card, his library card, coffee shop rewards card, employee ID, medical insurance card, a couple of receipts, everything he had in his wallet. It all looked familiar. It all looked right. Sitting there, he put everything back, and his wallet into his front right pocket where he kept it for safety. “My cell phone.” That was in his left pocket. Checking “Contacts,” there were numbers, thank goodness. People, pictures of them and numbers. Names and faces he recognized. “Hello,” he dialed his parents.

  “Yes,” said the woman with the heavy Hispanic accent.

  “Hi,” Anthony said carefully, not recognizing her voice. “This is Anthony. Can I speak to my parents please?”

  “Sor
ry. No one home. Take message?”

  “Sure. Tell them their son called, and that I’ll call them back.”

  “I will tell them,” she said, but then hung up before Anthony had time to ask a question.

  “I didn’t know my parents had a housekeeper,” Anthony said out loud, but to himself, and let his mind go blank. It was surprisingly easy, and the first moment of calm he had had that morning.

  “Wait. See the coffee shop on the right, the place with the yellow awning? Let me off there.”

  Moments later, Anthony managed to relax in the comfort of familiar faces behind the counter. There were three people in front of him. Still in denial about his apartment, he chose to pretend it was just a normal day. With luck, no one had even noticed he was late for work. “Hey.” More than most mornings, today he needed the perfect cup of coffee. “I’ll have my usual.”

  “Right.” She answered quickly enough, but was clearly puzzled.

  “It's me, Anthony. My name,” he said slowly, “is Anthony.”

  “What is it that you wanted, Anthony?”

  “I’ll have,” he said, disappointed with the lack of recognition, “the large vanilla latte made with the Brazilian blend? It’s… what I always order.”

  “Great!” the excessively perky clerk blurted out. “It’ll just be a minute,” and she started to leave to make his order, but then turned to say, “Sorry. I promise to remember next time,” smiling directly into his eyes.

  Jaywalking across the street to his office building, Anthony took a reassuring sip of his latte through the flap in the lid and began worrying again about his briefcase. Up in the elevator to the seventh floor, Anthony slipped into the small lobby through the open glass door someone who was leaving held for him. “Thanks.” With no one at the receptionist desk to say hello, he headed for his office.

  “Excuse me.” A short, stocky woman coming from around the corner where he was headed stopped in front of him. “Can I help you?”

  “Hi. You must be new. I’m Anthony Null. A bit late, but then it’s been one of those days, to put it mildly.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” she said in a very professional tone, “but I’m not new here. Where are you going?”

  “To my office. Down the hall to the right, third door on the left.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Where’s Marilyn, the receptionist?”

  “My name is Mrs. Johns. I’m the receptionist. There’s no one,” she stopped to think for a moment, “named Marilyn who works here. …and there aren’t any offices to the right, on the left.”

  “Excuse me,” Anthony brushed past her, “I don’t mean to be rude, but…” Standing there, around the corner to his right, Anthony could see all the way, over the open carrels that filled almost the entire floor, to the windows on the other side.

  “Mr. Null, are you sure you have the right floor?”

  “This is the seventh, isn’t it? I must have stepped off the elevator on the wrong floor. I’ve really got to pay more…”

  “Yes. This is the seventh floor.”

  His coffee in his left hand, Anthony stared into the vision of people working at their desks, talking on their phones and to each other, working at their screens, one guy blowing bubbles with his straw into what was left of his milk shake, two girls looking at him from where they were sitting on a coworker’s desk. With his thumb and the first two fingers of his right hand, Anthony pulled at his lower lip, oblivious to Mrs. John’s trying to get his attention.

  “Mr. Null,” she said forcefully.

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Null, can I call someone for you? Perhaps you’re in the wrong building altogether?”

  Anthony turned, and looked down at her. “You’re probably right. …You know, you’re probably right,” he said. “Thank you.” Walking through the double glass doors, he took the elevator down to the ground floor, walked out of the building and turned, for no particular reason, to his left, and began walking in that direction. Near the corner, an attractive young woman crossing in front of him from his right, almost walked past him.

  “Anthony?” She stopped, pleasantly surprised to see him. “Hey, I almost didn’t recognize you, in the suit,” she chuckled.

  He returned her smile, but didn’t respond. Her face, her long, wavy, auburn hair were unfamiliar to him.

  “Hey,” she reached out and laid her hand on his chest flirtatiously. “You should have called,” she toyed with him, feigning disappointment, “but I forgive you. Nice guys deserve a second chance.”

  Cocking his head slightly, Anthony started to talk, but she interrupted, actually putting her finger over his lips and tapping them twice.

  “I’ve got to run. Call me.” And she moved away, into the people walking down the avenue.

  “Whoa! Hey!!” Anthony started running after her, looking for her hair in the crowd, and then seeing her in the street, getting into a car that must have been there to meet her. Looking out the window, she saw him again and waved as they pulled into traffic. Staring at her, Anthony pushed his way between people into the street and started jogging after her, thinking maybe she’d be caught in traffic, but the avenue was clear and she was gone.

  “Now what?” Anthony whispered to himself, his voice lost in the noise of the street. “What do I do now?”

  “Anthony?” The voice from behind him was familiar.

  “Bette! I... You have no idea how glad I am to see you.”

  “Come on. We need to get out of the street.” Pulling on his arm, they pushed through the row of people at the corner, waiting to cross. “Let’s go this way. There’s someplace I want you to see.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Your briefcase. Here.” She handed it to him, and held his arm with both her hands as they walked away together. “It was under the couch in the living room. Your business cards had your office address. I was on my way there when I saw you running. ...So how’s your day been?”

  “To be honest, not so good. …Yours?”

  “I know this doesn’t make any sense, but nothing’s right. Nothing I remember is what it was, what I remember it being. Sounds ridiculous, but...”

  “No it doesn’t. I don’t work where I did, where it says I work on my business cards. I don’t think I know where I live. No one,” and then he stopped to think while they kept walking, “no one except this one girl, the one I was chasing after, so much as recognizes me.”

  “Anthony, that girl in the car. That was the girl you were with last night.”

  “At least I have good taste in women.” It was his vain attempt at humor, but it did get him a friendly squeeze.

  A few blocks down that street, and two blocks to the left, they were standing in front of Montezuma’s, the neighborhood grill with a bar and loud music, although it was way too early for any of that.

  “This is where we met, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bette, let’s go back to the apartment.”

  “I have gone back. I was on the sidewalk, and then thought I would go back and leave a note. I couldn’t lock the door without a key, so I knew I could get back in, but it’s locked and, when I jiggle the door, thinking it’s stuck, turns out there’s some Russian family living there. I looked over the shoulder of the woman who came to the door, and it’s not the same, not the same as it was just a few minutes after I left. ...I tell you, Nullman, I’m seriously worried I’m losing my mind. …I’m not even sure you’re real. I mean,” she was beginning to babble, “who has a last name like Null? That’s, what, mathspeak for not even zero, for nothing?

  “Hey.” Anthony interrupted to calm her down. “I am real,” he reassured her. “And if you’re going nuts, I’m going there with you. ...Besides, I've seen you naked.”

  “What does that have to do with anything,” she smiled at him.

  “Nothing in particular. It's just something I
haven't been able to get out of my head.” And he leaned over to give her a kiss on her cheek, just to the side of her mouth – which turned into a hug, reassuring at first, but slow to release, with a tinge of serious chemistry toward the end.

  The rest of that morning and that afternoon, the too of them did their best to make sense of their situation, but couldn't. They had some cash, almost $200 between the two of them. Thank goodness for that, because their credit and ATM cards were useless. At 8:15 PM, they were back at the grill, and at the booth where they thought they had been sitting the night before.

  “Hey, guys.” It was Angela, or so it said on her nametag. “Here’s some chips and salsa to keep you busy.” The basket and small pot with a handle came down hard on the colorfully tiled surface of their table. “Careful. They’re hot.”

  “The chips,” Bette stopped short of picking one of them up, “or the dip?”

  “Both, actually. So what can I get for you tonight?” Their waitress seemed to recognize them, but she was probably just being friendly. Just in case, Anthony thought he would give it a shot.

  “Did you,” he asked her tentatively, “work here last night?”

  “Sure. I waited on you guys, you two and another couple. Well, actually, I’m not sure who was with who. What, you don’t remember?”

  “No,” Bette answered. No we don’t.”

  “Sure. You were doing Mezcal Tobalá shooters from a couple of old, old bottles Pablo brought up from the basement and opened for you. Said they were 400 years old, but you can’t believe half of what that kid tells you.”

  “Who?”

  “Pablo.” Angela put her hands on the corners of their table and leaned over toward them. “He’s the owner’s nephew," she explained, her neck and shoulders tightening with an obvious cringe. “Something about that guy really creeps me out. You should see the way he files his nails into points.” ...Angela blew out some air, shuttering as she did. “So Pablo was filling in for our regular bartender… Hey babe!” she paused to wave at the guy with the dark curly hair, back at his usual station behind the bar. “Damn he’s cute. ...Anyway, ‘Hey-zoose’,” she pointed with her head in the direction of the bar… “Don’t you love the way that sounds, you know, differently than how it’s spelled? Anyway, Jesus had the night off, so Pablo was filling in for him. …Between you and me,” Angela whispered, “I don’t think Pablo’s all that crazy about white people. Thinks he’s the descendent of some Aztec king, to hear him talk, and God’s gift to waitresses. Not,” she added with disgust.

  Anthony and Bette looked at each other, and then back at Angela, their cluelessness readily apparent.

  “Thing is,” Angela continued, “I’m not all that sure what that old Mezcal had going for it, but it pretty much wiped the four of you out. …And you,” she pointed to Bette, “you were the one who dared him to drink the worm in his bottle – which he agreed, if you did too. Heck, half the people in the bar were cheering you guys on.”

  “You’re kidding?” Anthony didn’t believe it and neither did Bette.

  “No, it’s true. I’ve been here for a year and I’ve never seen anyone really do it, but you two stepped up. …Truth be told, maybe it was the light, but I’d say those worms weren’t entirely dead yet. Seeing you two chug those last couple of swallows without so much as gagging was… was very impressive. …You guys don’t drink much, do you?”

  “I thought,” Anthony was pretty sure he knew what he was talking about, “the worm was a gimmick some marketing guy in the 50s thought would get peoples’ attention?”

  “Yeah,” Angela agreed, “I’d heard that too, but those bottles Pablo dusted off were the real deal. No labels, just something painted on the glass in some old language that Pablo was mumbling while he held the torch up to each of them,” Angela pretended to be holding one of the bottles in her left hand, slowly swirling the other around its imaginary bottom, “you know, before he opened them up, which wasn’t easy. Something, he said, about bringing the worm back to life. …Hey, but the kid’s full of it. What does he know?”

  Anthony took a breath, so deep he actually coughed. Looking at Bette, he figured they had nothing to lose. “I tell you what,” he started, getting ready to suggest they play it again.

  “Wait,” Bette interrupted him. “What were we eating?”

  “Oh, gosh. …Yeah. You had two, I remember, two guacamole cheeseburgers. I remember, because you,” she pointed to Bette, “kept stealing bites. That’s why he ordered the second one. And there was a soft taco sampler for four on the table.

  “Okay, same deal tonight.”

  “You sure?” Angela was apprehensive.

  “Let’s do it,” Bette was determined. “What else can go wrong?”

  “Look, I’m the last one to blow a party, or risk a big tip for that matter. I don’t mind telling you, but you four were very generous. The food’s good, but let me have Jesus whip up something different in the drinking department. How ‘bout it?”

  There was a pause. “Done,” Bette agreed for both of them with resolute relief.

  A few minutes later, Angela was back with two martini glasses filled with an almost glowing amber liquid. “So what are these?” Anthony asked her.

  “Half apple brandy, half cherry liqueur. They’re called ‘Forget Me Nots.’ Very tasty, easy going down and no worms! Jesus thought you might like them.”

  Picking up their drinks, Anthony and Bette looked over at the bar where Jesus was looking back at them. Raising their glasses to thank him, he smiled back and, oddly, threw them a kiss. They turned, clinked glasses, and took their first swallow of many that evening.

  7:00 AM the following morning. Anthony’s watch alarm was the next sound he remembered hearing. “Shit.” Alone, naked in a bed he didn’t recognize, Anthony got up and headed out to find the bathroom, not bothering to put on more than his underwear. “This is gross,” he mumbled, wondering if three day old jockey shorts would be his personal best.

  This time there was no TV playing. It was quiet, except for the sound of a shower running, the door to the bathroom wide open.

  “Hey,” Anthony said cautiously to the unidentifiable form behind the frosted shower doors.

  Slowly, the door nearest the showerhead slid open. “Hey.” It was Bette, her smile evolving into giggling.

  “What’re you so happy about?”

  “I’ve already called my mother. You should check, but everything seems to be the way it should be. And I called your office number and got your voice mail. Apparently you took yesterday off.”

  Closing his eyes, Anthony took a deep breath, but then had second thoughts. “Wait. So whose place is this?”

  “It’s mine, Mr. Rumsen. This is my place.”

  “That’s my last name! I mean, that is my last name. How did you know that?”

  “Because it’s on the business card I took out of your briefcase yesterday – the same as on your voice mail when I called your office.”

  “Wow. …Wasn’t your hair a lot longer yesterday?” Anthony was wondering about her short, short blonde hair that would barely need drying.

  “Oh, yeah? And weren’t you a white guy?”

  Stunned, Anthony looked at his hands, only to find them still as pasty as ever. (“It would help,” his mother was always reminding him, “if you didn’t work so much and got some sun now and then.” Something about Vitamin D, but then he had more pressing stuff to think about right now.)

  “Gotcha!” She laughed. “And my hair was longer yesterday. I just cut it for an audition this morning. Decided it was time for a change. How ‘bout it?” She turned her head quickly from side to side.

  “Nice, but I think you’d look pretty good...”

  “You know what I think?” Bette, who was never one to waste time, stood there, one hand on the shower wall, the other on the edge of the door she’d pushed upon, the water from the shower running ont
o her back and over her shoulders.

  “What’s that?”

  “I think you should tinkle and then get your ass in here.”

  43. Trouble Sleeping

  12:35 AM, early Wednesday morning.

  “Are you awake?”

  “Hm,” was all his wife, lying next to him, her face down in her pillow, could manage to say. [Translation: “No.”]

  “Jimmy Fallon’s coming on.”

  “Hm.” [“Who gives a crap? I need to sleep.”]

  “You know that new girl I told you about, the one they hired in public relations?”

  Nothing.

  “Well, she comes in my office today. I’m busy like a beaver editing a screenplay. Doesn’t even bother to knock. She’s wearing one of those V-neck tops without the undershirt thing. Lot’s of cleavage showing, looking even more boobous than usual. I’m guessing she has a platinum card at Victoria Secrets. …You following this?”

  “Hm.” [“Unless she was naked, I couldn’t care less.”] “…Hm?” [“Is she attractive?”]

  “Everybody that young is attractive, and that rack she’s carrying certainly doesn’t hurt.”

  “Hmmm.” [“Forty years from now, they’ll be down to her waist.”]

  “So she puts both hands flat on my desk and leans over, daring me to stare at them, like somehow they were a reason for me to agree with her. …Most men would have forced themselves to look her in the face. I am, on the other hand, what I am. ...I look right at them. Didn’t look up at her once. I actually turned my head slightly from side to side like I was studying one, and then the other. ‘I don’t know what you and your boobs are doing on my desk,’ I tell her, ‘but, whatever it is, I have a deadline and it can wait. Now I want the three of you out of here. Now.’ Impressive, huh?”

  “Hm.” [“I don’t believe for a second you really said that.”]

  “Well, that’s what I would have said, if she’d given me a chance. …Geez, even boobs from public relations get to tell me what to do.”

  “Hm.” [I have boobs.”]

  “Sure, but you’re not always pushing them in my face. …Come to think of it, why is that?”

  “Hm?!”

  “You know, I’ve been writing my own stuff, short short stories, you know, for people with short spans of attention. Stuff to read over breakfast, maybe on the train.”

  “Hm.” [“..Or to read when they can’t sleep instead of keeping your wife up all night.”]

  “Yeah. Forty-nine of them so far. Most of them true, well, except for a few details. …Wait, I’m going to the bathroom.”

  Three minutes or so later.

  “I’m back. I need to stop eating or drinking anything after… after 9 o’clock. AM. That should do it. ..What were we talking about? ...Oh, yeah. The new hire from PR. You know what I think?”

  “Hm. [“Don’t know. Don’t care. Maybe you can tell me telepathically, like that character in one of your idiot stories. Some clerk makes a typo on your birth certificate, and you think you can read minds.”]

  “Hey. It wasn’t a typo. ...Man,” he lamented on his way, one at a time, through the 100 or so cable channels he’d marked as ‘favorites,’ “there’s nothing on. Wait, let’s take another look at what LMN is showing.”

  Suddenly, his wife pushed up, rolled onto one elbow, used her free hand to grab the remote out of his, held down the volume button for two, then three bars on the screen, fell onto her back and dropped the remote onto the hardwood floor off her side of the bed. When it hit, the battery cover popped open, and the two AA batteries rolled away, where he was sure to step on them in the dark, the next time he got up.

  “Hm,” she said, falling instantly back to sleep. [“Take a hint.”]

  He stared at her for a couple of minutes in silence, then poked her in the arm, deliberately, gently, almost affectionately. It was his way of standing up for himself – After all, he had a right to be up in the middle of the night. – and apologizing at the same time.

  “Well, not twenty minutes later, in comes Mr. Siegel asking me if I’d met his niece. Literally, the woman with the boobs is his wife’s sister’s daughter, two years out of college and looking for work so she can afford to get her own place and stop driving Siegel’s sister-in-law crazy.

  “‘I gather you’ve met my niece,’ he asks me with a look of mild distain, ‘The one with the cleavage.’”

  “Cleavage? I hadn’t noticed. She seemed pleasant. I was just too busy…”

  “Yeah, right. I need you to take her under your wing, professionally speaking of course. Let her help you with one of your projects.”

  “She’s in public relations.”

  “I know, but they… They really didn’t need the extra body. Do your best to make her useful.”

  “Of course, Mr. Siegel.”

  “And, uh, I know it’s a lot to ask, but maybe you could talk to her about the way she dresses, a little less perfume maybe.”

  “Uh, I don’t... Wouldn’t it be better if your sister-in-law, maybe your wife had that conversation with her? Maybe, Denise.”

  “Who?”

  “Denise, your assistant. Denise would be perfect. A mature, consummate, albeit elderly professional, there isn’t anything she wouldn’t...”

  “Denise is like a thousand years old.”

  “But mentally, as sharp as...”

  “You’re my last hope.”

  “You do know I’m a guy, Mr. Siegel?”

  “And then he tells me. ‘Jack, starting tomorrow, Angela’s your new assistant. Make it work,’ and he leaves. Never even bothered to sit down.”

  A moment of quiet.

  “Honey?”

  [Insert light snoring sounds.]

  “Honey, you’re snoring. You can’t sleep on your back.”

  Nothing but more snoring, which would be bad enough, but it was the irregular kind, punctuated by sporadic little gasps, like she might be on the verge of choking.

  “Honey,” he said, pushing on her shoulder, “roll over.” And, she did, to the outside, stopping just short of falling off the edge of the bed.

  “Whoa! …Whoa, that was close. I’m thinking when I get to 50, 50 stories, maybe I’ll put them together and see if I can find a publisher. Siegel knows people. I mean, I know people, but Siegel’s people are more impressive. Maybe blow one or two of them up into screenplays. No, better yet, pilots. Yeah, pilots, with residuals.” He wedges his flat hand part way under her side.

  “Hm.” [Instinctive auto-response having no particular meaning.]

  “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll take care of his niece, and he’ll owe me. Yeah.” And he closed his eyes and finally fell asleep.

  Early the following morning, he’s on the way out the door, she’s just coming down the stairs, having gone to the bathroom already, on her way into the kitchen to wash her hands, because there are no other sinks in the house. (Of course there are other sinks. She just doesn’t want to mess any of them up.)

  “Thanks for listening last night. Sorry if I kept you awake. Fortunately, a woman as good looking as you doesn’t need her beauty sleep.” And he gave her a kiss good morning as they passed each other. And it’s not easy making lip-to-lip contact when you’re both moving.

  “To be honest, I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. Was I carrying on a real conversation?”

  “No, but I’ve gotten pretty good interpreting your grunts.”

  “Hm.”

  He left for work early, to get some work done before Angela showed up.

  An hour and a half later, Angela comes in eating a donut, falling out of her dress, and starts babbling about something, blowing his concentration.

  But just then, the wife shows up. “Hi, honey.” And then turning to Angela, “Hey. I’m Evelyn, Richard’s wife. You must be Angela, Richard’s new associate.”

  Standing up, but still holding her donut in her left hand, Angela e
xtended her right one. “Hi, Evelyn. Good to meet you. ‘Associate?!’ Really,” she smiled while continuing to chew the half a donut she had in her mouth. “I like the way that sounds.”

  “By the way, it’s ‘Evy.’ Call me ‘Evy.’” Evelyn ignored the bit of powdered sugar on Angela’s hand and shook it firmly. “…You know what, honey?”

  “Hm.” Richard was back to work, staring at his screen, occasionally typing.

  “How ‘bout if I take Angela out for a nice breakfast, you know, welcoming her to your staff.”

  “I don’t have a staff.”

  “I’ll bring you something back.”

  “Do I have the time?” Angela asked her boss.

  “Yes.” Evelyn answered for him. Desperate to get back to his writing, he’d agree to anything to get the two of them out of his office. “Hard to believe, I know, but he’ll just have to get along without us.”

  Walking around his desk, Evelyn bent down to kiss him goodbye on his cheek as Angela headed for the door.

  “Thanks,” Richard looked up and whispered directly into her ear, “for having my back.”

  She kissed him a second time, because she wanted to and to give her an excuse to whisper back to him. “It’s more like her front that I’m worried about.” Standing up, Evelyn turned for one last word. “…Maybe you could take off early and we could go out to dinner?” she asked. Dinner was what she was charging Richard for the day she was taking off to fix Angela.

  Richard looked up at her, raising both his eyebrows as if to say, “You know, I could leave now. I’m really not all that busy.”

  “How ‘bout that?” she smiled back at him. Maybe you really can read minds.”

  “Babe,” Richard mumbled under his breath, “you have no idea.”

  “See you later.” On their way out the door, Evelyn grabbed the brass knob of Richard’s wood framed glass door and pulled it shut behind her. “Hey,” she called to Angela who was a few steps ahead of her. “Maybe we can do some shopping while we’re out. What do you think?”

  “Wow. No kidding. That’d be great! …You know,” she confided as Evelyn caught up to her, “I’m pretty sure I need an upgrade.”

  “Really?”

  Words To Live By

  “Better to be lost in space,

  than to never have explored it.”

  In honor of the inspirational character and words of

  Pixar's Buzz Lightyear, “To infinity and beyond!”