This Matter of Marriage

  “I bought theater tickets through the Chamber of Commerce for this wonderful production I’d been looking forward to seeing.” Hallie sounded exasperated and angry. “Arnold had agreed to come and now…” She sighed. “The thing is, I’ve got two perfectly good tickets, which I refuse to waste.”

  “Maybe you can exchange the tickets for another night and go with Arnold then.”

  “I don’t ever plan to see Arnold again. I told him so, and what annoyed me even more than being stood up is his attitude. He expected me to break it off, and he even seemed relieved when I told him.” She paused long enough to catch her breath. “Anyway, I can’t exchange them and I don’t want to waste them.”

  He didn’t bother to suggest she go by herself. If she’d considered that an option, she wouldn’t have called. He was afraid she planned to ask him and groaned inwardly at the thought. Frankly, it’d been a long hard day and he wasn’t interested in sitting through a play, no matter how good it was reported to be. “What about Donnalee and Todd?” he tried.

  “Donnalee and Todd? You’re joking, right?”

  “I guess I am.” Well, Hallie was right. Those two were in their own little world. Every morning of the past week, Todd had arrived at the office wearing a silly grin. Silly, perhaps, but also… satisfied. Steve had never seen a man so much in love.

  “Can you go with me?” Hallie pleaded. “Oh, shoot. Monday’s your bowling night, isn’t it?”

  “No,” he was sorry to report. “The league takes a break during the summer.”

  “Then please, please come with me.”

  It was one of the rare times she’d requested anything of him. In that moment Steve realized he didn’t have the heart to refuse her.

  “How formal is it?”

  She hesitated, a sure sign he wasn’t going to like her response. “You’ll need to wear a suit,” she informed him. “Dark, if you have one.”

  He cursed silently. “I do.”

  He hated that suit. Hated it more every time he was forced to wear it. He kept the thing around primarily for weddings and funerals, so he hadn’t worn it in some time, since most of his friends were married and no one he knew had died recently. What he particularly loathed was wearing a tie, which felt like a noose around his neck.

  “Does that mean you’ll go?”

  Steve paused and reminded himself of all the times Hallie had come to his rescue. “I guess,” he muttered.

  “A little enthusiasm would go a long way, Marris,” she muttered back.

  Steve grinned. “I’m beginning to think Arnold might have had the right idea.”

  “I think not. These tickets were fifty bucks. Each.”

  A hundred bucks was nothing to sneeze at. “What time do you need me to be ready?”

  “Seven-thirty.” He could hear the relief in her voice and was pleased that he was the one responsible for it.

  “Are you throwing in dinner with this invitation?” If he was going to strangle himself with a suit and tie, he might as well get as much out of it as he could.

  “You expect me to buy you dinner, too?”

  She had a point there, but the kids had cleaned out his checking account. “I’ll bring a can of chili,” he said.

  “I’ve got…” He turned to the window and watched as she stretched the phone cord as far as her refrigerator door and bent over while she sorted through its contents. Actually, he appreciated the view of her cute little butt. “There’s a head of lettuce here and some Cheddar cheese. We could make a taco salad. Do you have any chips?”

  “If Kenny didn’t find them, I do.”

  “Okay, you’re on.”

  It was a pleasant surprise to discover what culinary magic Hallie could make with a can of chili and a few leaves of lettuce. And he had to admit dinner was a lot more enjoyable with her company.

  For fear of dribbling salad dressing on his one tie, knotted for him years ago by Todd, Steve changed into his suit after dinner. He suddenly recalled the last time he’d worn it—the day he stood before the judge when his divorce was finalized. He discovered his attorney’s business card in the jacket pocket and quickly tossed it in the garbage.

  As he looped the tie over his head and tightened it, he reflected on that devastating day. He’d been divorced more than a year and a half now, separated even longer. It didn’t seem possible. The familiar pain threatened to darken his mood, but he managed to ignore its pull. Mary Lynn had remarried and life had gone on. Not the way he’d wanted, but he’d survived. He was even experiencing some of his old pleasures again and finding new ones.

  When he arrived to pick up Hallie, he did a double take. The deep blue dress, slinky, silky and body-hugging, did incredible things for her figure. This was Hallie? Damn, he’d never noticed how well proportioned she was. Everything was right where it was supposed to be. And how.

  His first thought when he saw her—other than how good she looked—was to wonder if a dress like that required a bra. Not that it was any of his business, but he couldn’t help being curious. The sleeveless gown stretched tightly across her chest and hooked behind the neck. Yup, he was almost certain she was braless.

  He released a low whistle.

  “You like it?” Hallie held her hands stiffly out at her sides—a bit like a penguin, she thought—as she turned in a slow circle to give him the full effect.

  “Wow.” He’d have whistled a second time if he’d found the breath to do so, but she’d stolen it. Telling her she looked good was an understatement. A gross understatement. Arnold was more of a fool than Steve had realized.

  “You look…” All descriptive words and phrases deserted him.

  “Fat,” she supplied. She pouched out her stomach, what there was of it, which to his mind wasn’t much.

  “No!” He’d never been a flatterer, and he’d always struggled with compliments. It was a talent, Steve decided, and unfortunately one he lacked. Hallie waited expectantly. It was the same look Mary Lynn used to get when she needed him to say just the right thing to reassure her. The pressure was building and he was afraid he’d fail Hallie the same way he’d too often failed Mary Lynn.

  “You look wonderful.” It was the best he could do. He paused and waited for some sign of reaction.

  She closed her eyes and exhaled.

  “Really wonderful,” he added, hoping that would help.

  “Thank you.” She smiled softly. “I won’t tell you what this dress cost, but I fell in love with it the minute I tried it on. Let me just say that I’ll be packing my own lunch for the next ten years.”

  “Whatever the price, it was worth it.”

  “You can be a real charmer when you want to be, Marris.”

  Him? A charmer? Not likely, but if Hallie wanted to think so, he wasn’t going to correct her.

  The play was at the Fifth Avenue Theater in downtown Seattle. Their aisle seats were in the first row of the balcony. Steve stopped counting the number of times he had to stand in order to allow other ticket holders into their seats.

  Hallie acknowledged several people. A number of names were tossed his way, and he soon quit trying to remember them all. He was a member of the local Chamber of Commerce himself, but he did little more than pay his dues. He’d only attended two meetings in all the years he’d owned his business. From the looks of it, Hallie was an outgoing and popular member, which didn’t surprise him.

  The theater darkened and the play began. It didn’t take Steve long to realize it wasn’t a play at all. It was an opera. All the lines were sung. He opened his program and read it for the first time. He didn’t recognize the opera’s title, but it was clearly German.

  While he was no aficionado, Steve liked classical music as much as the next guy, but this was no Mozart. The composer wasn’t one he knew or cared to.

  Hallie’s rapt attention was focused on the stage. As far as Steve could figure, the opera was some tragedy that had people running back and forth across the stage.

  There were frequent
deaths, too—but not frequent enough.

  By the end of the first scene, Steve’s attention began wandering. He studied the lovely crystal light fixtures suspended from the ceiling, craning his head back as far as possible to get a better view. The theater had recently been renovated and he was impressed with the improvements.

  “Steve?” Hallie was frowning at him. “Is something wrong?”

  “Nah, just checking out the new fixtures,” he whispered loudly. “I wonder if they’re real crystal. You wouldn’t happen to know, would you?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “The seats are new, too.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He rotated his shoulders, testing out the cushions for comfort and gave a thumbs-up.

  Hallie rolled her eyes and reverted her attention to the stage.

  Quickly bored, Steve asked her for a pen.

  Hallie leaned forward for her handbag, and Steve was given a momentary peek at her front. He’d been right. No bra.

  Once she’d retrieved her pen, she placed it in his hand with just a hint of impatience. Steve doodled geometric designs across the front page of the program and then found himself drawing what resembled—he hated to admit it—a series of female breasts. Actually, he was surprised by how good he was.

  Years earlier he’d visited an art museum, where he’d seen a painting by one of the century’s more revered artists. The painting was on loan, part of a highly touted exhibit, and Steve had studied it for several minutes. All he’d seen was a clothes hanger with two misshapen boobs. The breasts weren’t even properly aligned, and yet the artist had made millions.

  Steve toyed with the idea of sending his doodles to the artist’s agent. Perhaps this was his life’s calling and he’d make a fortune drawing breasts. He kind of liked the idea. Hiring women to pose for him, that sort of thing.

  With that thought in mind he sketched a couple of ideas. He drew a torso and gave the woman four breasts with multiple nipples. He was just warming to his subject when Hallie glanced over at what he was doing, gasped and grabbed the program away from him. Giving him a pinched-lip look, she promptly crumpled it up.

  Okay, okay, he got the hint. Steve tried to pay attention to the actors, he really did, but he’d rarely seen anything this boring. Opera had never appealed to him. Large women who wore helmets with horns and stormed across a stage holding spears and pretending to be warriors were of questionable sexual persuasion as far as he was concerned.

  After a while, sure that Hallie was absorbed in the acting, he stole her program and folded it into a paper airplane. He had no intention of flying it, but apparently Hallie assumed otherwise. Her expression would have cracked concrete.

  “What?” he asked under his breath.

  “You have to ask?” she hissed.

  Hands lightly folded in his lap, he focused his attention on the stage again, determined to be a model member of the audience. His eyes drifted closed and he found himself falling asleep, only to jerk awake a second or two later. He yawned loudly, twice. Then swallowed a third yawn when Hallie glared at him. His cheeks puffed out with the effort.

  Next he checked the time and attempted to calculate just how much more of this he’d have to endure. Another hour he could take, but two hours was out of the question.

  The curtain fell and the lights went up. Intermission. Free at last, he all but leapt out of his seat. “I’ll get us something to drink,” he said, and was halfway into the aisle when Hallie thrust out an arm and stopped him.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she demanded.

  He knew he was in trouble because she spoke through clenched teeth. “Nothing,” he insisted brightly.

  “This work is masterful, brilliant…”

  “Boring,” he said.

  “For you, perhaps, but not everyone agrees. Kenny would do a better job of paying attention. You’re worse than a five-year-old. Furthermore, what was that you were drawing?”

  Steve was convinced she didn’t really want to know. He buried his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “I don’t know. I was doodling. I do that sometimes. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Have you ever shown your doodles to a psychiatrist?”

  “I’ll be better the second half. I promise.”

  “Never mind, let’s go.”

  “Go?” His heart raced at the thought of escape. Surely she wouldn’t tease about something like that. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Home.” She didn’t elaborate.

  His heart filled with gratitude. But once they’d walked down the large curved stairway and outside into the cool evening, he realized this reprieve might well have come at a price.

  “You aren’t angry, are you?” he asked. Hallie was a good friend, and if keeping the peace meant enduring the rest of this opera, then he’d do it.

  “I’m not angry,” she replied, but the way she said it suggested she wasn’t pleased with him, either.

  “We can stay,” he offered, all the while praying she wouldn’t change her mind.

  Not until they reached the parking garage did Steve recognize the truth. Hallie had been as bored as he was, only she was too polite to let it show.

  “You didn’t like that opera, either.” His step lightened and he cast her a smug look.

  “That’s not true. The music was—”

  “Don’t lie, Hallie, or your nose will start to grow.”

  He watched as a smile quivered at the corners of her mouth, struggling to break free.

  “Be honest.”

  She was suspiciously quiet for a moment, then took one glance at him and burst out laughing. The mirth virtually exploded from her. She wrapped her arms around her middle and bent nearly double. Still laughing, she positioned herself in front of him on the sidewalk, strolling backward as she spoke. “I wish you could’ve seen yourself!”

  “Glad I’m such a source of amusement.” A smile threatened to overtake him, too. He took her hand, gripping it firmly in his own. It felt right to be walking hand in hand with Hallie.

  Both of them thought it seemed a shame to head back home immediately, so Steve suggested coffee. They were a bit overdressed for an all-night diner, but that was where they ended up. Although they attracted plenty of curious stares, neither paid much attention.

  When their coffee was served, Hallie doctored hers with cream and sugar, then stared at him as if she was shocked by what she’d done. “I only add cream when I’m depressed,” she told him, her shoulders sagging. “I bet this has something to do with Donnalee.”

  Steve had trouble following her thought process—cream in her coffee, depression and Donnalee. Apparently there was a connection. Whatever it was would take him a while to work out.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if those two got married,” Hallie said next.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me to learn they’re already living together,” Steve muttered. He’d never seen Todd like this. Todd, his closest friend. The guy he worked with every day. The guy who’d shared the secret password to reach level ten of the video game King Kong. He’d fished with Todd, camped with him, even taken a weekend trip to Vegas with Todd.

  Yet in all the years they’d been friends, he’d never seen Todd in love. It was almost frightening what love could do to a levelheaded man. He told Hallie exactly that.

  “I agree with you completely!” she declared, leaning closer to him. Her hands cupped the coffee mug. “If you think Todd’s acting strange, you should see Donnalee. It’s… nauseating.” Barely pausing, she added, “I’m so jealous I could scream. Can you tell?”

  Jealous, Steve repeated mentally, and wondered if that was his problem with Todd. His friend arrived promptly for work, accomplished each task satisfactorily and left at the end of the day. Steve had no right to ask more of him, yet he found himself tallying a list of complaints at the end of the day. Trivial stuff. He was jealous. Damn it all, he really was.

  “Donnalee has had more sex in the past week than I’ve had
in my entire life,” Hallie said, glancing down at her coffee. “That explains it.”

  “Explains what?”

  “Why I’m putting cream in my coffee.”

  “Oh.” Well, okay, he supposed that made some sense, now that he understood the connection. “Same with Todd,” he grumbled. “It’s like he’s walking around in this bubble, breathing in happy gas.”

  “Exactly,” Hallie moaned. “Nothing can burst their bubble. It’s… it’s disgusting.” She raised the mug to her lips, paused halfway there and set it down on the table with a loud clatter. “Are we being petty?”

  “No way.” He dismissed the question without thought, then reconsidered. “On the other hand, I don’t know if I’d be complaining nearly as loud if it was me.

  “That’s my point,” Hallie said, gesturing with both hands.

  “What gets me is that I practically had to bribe Todd into going out on this blind date in the first place. He wasn’t interested in meeting you. Not even when I mentioned how attractive you are and how much the kids like you.”

  Hallie glared at him. “If you’re telling me all this to make me feel better, I suggest you stop.”

  Steve grinned. “From what you said, Donnalee wasn’t any more interested in meeting me.”

  She sighed expressively. “True.”

  “So Todd and Donnalee found great sex together. You had your chance, McCarthy. You turned down the best offer you’re likely to get,” Steve reminded her. “I was willing to take you to bed, remember?”

  “Right!” She rolled her eyes. “How could I refuse a romantic invitation like ‘Wanna do it?’ ”

  Steve chuckled, amused as he often was by Hallie. He’d lacked finesse on that particular occasion, he’d admit it. He’d been feeling low at the time. What he’d really needed was someone to listen, and Hallie had provided a sympathetic ear, for which he’d been grateful.

  “They’re going to wear themselves out,” Hallie said. “They’ll end up dying of exhaustion.”

  Steve could only assume she’d returned to the subject of Donnalee and Todd. “Yeah, but what a way to go.”

  The gleam of pure unadulterated envy was back in her eyes. “If it’s like this before the wedding, can you imagine what it’ll be like afterward?”