Dating Without Novocaine (16 page)

“H
ow's your mom doing?” Robert asked.

“Better, bit by bit,” I said. I was at Butler & Sons, in Pioneer Place Two, dropping off a load of pants. It had been two weeks since Dad and Mom had sent me back to Portland. I'd visited them several times, and was slowly growing less surprised to find Mom still breathing and the house free of filth, fires and giant mayonnaise jars.

“That's gotta be rough,” Robert said.

I shrugged. “I'm almost getting used to it. Isn't that peculiar?”

“I suppose you have to, after a time,” he said, sounding uncertain.

“I suppose.”

Day to day I
had
gotten used to it, but at unguarded moments fears for Mom would rise again to the surface and threaten to drown me. It was as if there was a huge subconscious reservoir of grief, waiting for its opportunity to burst forth in a messy emotional geyser.

And what was worse, anything sad or emotional to do with mothers or death could make me weepy-eyed
now, whereas before I'd been left dry and sneering. Songs, movies, greeting cards, you name it, I'd weep at it. At least I hadn't descended to the depths of weeping at television commercials. Yet.

“I'm off in fifteen minutes, for lunch,” Robert said. “You want to join me? Just, you know…as friends.”

I remembered the last time I had refused, and he'd caught me reading the paper in the atrium when I'd said I had to run. I couldn't be such a witch's tit and refuse him again, especially when he'd been so thoughtful about Mom each time I came in.

“Sure, why not? I'll go window-shop until you're ready.”

“Great!”

So I went and sniffed body lotions at Victoria's Secret, and pawed through the clearance rack seeking that one miraculous five-dollar nightie that wouldn't make me look droopy-breasted or lumpy-butted. The floor under the circular rack was littered with the crumpled bodies of fallen lingerie, as if the teddies and gowns had leaped from their hangers, committing suicide to end forever the indignity of being considered has-beens.

I wanted to save a lavender silk-satin set of boxer pajamas from whatever horror next awaited—an outlet store? a bargain bin, where its labels would be torn out, its identity erased?—but alas, my watch said Robert was waiting.

He was standing by the fountain in the center of the atrium when I emerged from the corridor. “Fishing for lunch money?” I asked.

“Or meter money. Don't think none of us hasn't done it, getting here before the place opens.”

“You park on the street?” I asked, making conversation as we headed for the subterranean food court.

“No, I usually take the bus. I live just south of town, on Barbur. It's cheaper to leave the car at home.”

At least he had a car, that was something.

He smelled of cologne, and I felt a little odd walking next to him, outside the store, as if we really knew each other. He had a shuffling, lazy gait, and was tall—taller than Scott. Tall enough to make me feel short and small, and not in a good way. If I ever hugged him, my cheek would rest against one of his spongey pecs.

“I'll meet you back here,” I said, when we reached the court. It was late enough that the worst of the lunch crowd had scurried back to their cubicles, and most of the tables were free.

“No, hey, I asked you to lunch, let me get it.”

I waved him off, and moved away. “Nah, don't worry about it,” I said. I wanted to avoid any sense of obligation.

“I get a discount—” he called after me.

I pretended to not hear, and hurried 'round the circle of vendors, not wanting to look back and see him forlorn, backlit by a pizza display case.

Although pizza would have been nice. I settled instead on a turkey and provolone sandwich from a deli, feeling healthy and pure for doing so. Chinese food would have been good, but then I'd be burping up that taste the rest of the afternoon, and worried that my clients would smell it on my breath.

We met again at a table at the raised section in the center of the eating area, beside a rail that looked down on a tiled pool of water.

I liked the atmosphere of this food court more than
that of most restaurants. The ceiling was covered with plastic panels that resembled clouds, and behind them was darkness studded with tiny glowing stars, leaving the room just dim enough to be soothing. Water poured from lion heads in several fountains, lit from beneath to a turquoise glow, the gurgling water disguising the noise of voices.

“Your salad looks good,” I said, sitting and arranging my tray of food.

“I've got to lose some weight. I must have gained thirty pounds since I went back to school.”

“You're in school?” I asked, surprised. Preconceived notions were teetering, ready to plunk into the fountain.

“I'm getting my teaching degree. You think I want to be wearing golf shirts the rest of my life?” he asked, smiling, and plucking at the forest green piqué he wore.

“Huh. I didn't know.”

“I've just got one course to finish up over the summer. I've done my student teaching, and should find out in the next week or two if I've gotten one of the jobs I applied for.”

“Teaching what?”

“High school history, plus some coaching.”

I looked at him, my perspective changing. Teaching high school might not be the most lucrative goal, but it was a highly respectable one. Of course, he probably had piles of student loans it would take an eternity to pay off.

“Are you going to P.S.U.?” I asked, thinking of Cassie, and Jack the Musician and Student.

“Uh-huh.”

“My housemate is dating a guy who's in the teaching
program there. I'm not sure how far along he is. Jack Fogarty—do you know him?”

“Yeah, I've met him once or twice. Small world, huh? But I didn't know you lived with Cynthia!”

“Cynthia?”

“Isn't she your housemate? Jack's her boyfriend, isn't he? Or do I have the wrong guy in my head?”

“Long hair, works at a pub?” I asked.

He made a moue of his lips, as we stared at each other in silence. “Uh-oh,” he said.

“Yeah, uh-oh.”

I'd seen Jack late last night, at our house, heading from Cassie's room to the bathroom, dressed only in saggy white briefs. “You sure he didn't break up with Cynthia a couple months ago?”

“I don't think so.”

“Ah, crap,” I said. “Excuse the language. Who is Cynthia?”

“She's in the teaching program, she entered the same time I did. She came straight from undergrad, she can't be more than twenty-three. I don't know her well, but enough for chatting, and of course when she started dating Jack everyone knew, since he was in the program, too.”

“How does he even have
time?
” I asked plaintively, not expecting an answer. “God! What is wrong with men?”

Robert held up his hands. “Hey, I don't know what's up with him.”

“Oh, I didn't mean you. You seem like a nice guy. But my housemate is going to be crushed. Dammit! Why did he have to be such a jerk? She liked him!”

“You're going to tell her?”

“Well of course I'm going to tell her.”

“You know what they say about the messenger,” Robert warned.

“If it were me, I'd want to know.”

“Would you, really?”

“Of course. Oh, crap. This happened to her once before. Her ex cheated on her. She is
not
going to take this well.” I glared at Robert, but it wasn't him I was thinking about.

I was thinking of Jack. Jack with his face like Keanu Reeves, with his acoustic guitar, with his lanky build and long hair. Jack, smiling with those white, slightly crooked teeth, pretending to not be the dog that he was.

A thought that was an insult to the canine species, who showed far more fidelity than one Jack Fogarty.

“Maybe it's not what it seems…” Robert said, trailing off as he heard his own words.

“Yeah, right. What an asshole. How could he do that?”

Robert shrugged a shoulder. “It's not
such
a big deal. It happens, you know.”

I narrowed my eyes. “‘It happens'?”

“It's not like he was engaged to either of them.”

“That makes it okay?”

“No, not okay, but it's not like he broke a vow. It happens. He probably just couldn't decide between them.”

My second impression of Robert, as kindly future teacher, shattered and tinkled away. “You see nothing wrong with that?”

“Maybe he should have made it a little clearer that he wasn't being exclusive with your friend. He probably
didn't think it was that big a deal. It happens. He's just a guy, trying to figure things out.”

Was this the male version of nonjudgmental compassion? Did he think he was being fair and kind? Or
reasonable?

I'd suddenly lost my appetite for Robert's company. I unfolded a couple of my oversupply of napkins and wrapped up my turkey sandwich—it had cost six-fifty, after all—and stood.

“Where are you going?” Robert asked, voice high-pitched in surprise. “You're leaving?”

“Yes,” I said, gathering up my purse.

“Why?”

I looked at him, with his puffy-faced doofus expression. “It happens,” I said.

 

I ate the rest of my sandwich in my car, spilling bits of lettuce and turkey down my shirt and into the spaces around the driver's seat, worrying about how upset Cassie was going to be, and fussing mentally over all those Dear Abby columns I'd read over the years, where no firm conclusion was ever drawn as to whether or not a friend should tell that a mate is cheating.

My instinct was to tell her. Warring with it was the wish to not hurt her.

Maybe I could tell Jack I knew, and let him do the right thing. It was a possibility, but at some point I know I'd blow it. Cassie would tell me it was over with Jack, and then two or three weeks or months down the road a comment would accidentally slip out that proved I'd known about the cheating before she had, and then what would she feel? Betrayed by me. Friendless.

And friends were those who stayed by you, when the men were jerks.

I could lie well enough in the present. It was the future that I couldn't handle.

I needed to talk it over with someone before I made a move based on emotion alone. I was furious with Jack, more furious than I would have been with a guy who had done the same to me.

When you're involved with someone, you put up with all sorts of garbage in hopes of continuing the relationship.

When it's your friend who's been wronged, there's nothing to mitigate the hate for the guy you never thought was good enough for her to begin with. You want to exterminate him.

At three o'clock I drove to Joanne's, for our appointment. She'd had three husbands and therefore seemed a good person to ask what to do. When I got there, though, she was on the phone, and the phone rang every time she hung up. She barely managed to tell me what I needed to do with the armload of garments she gave me. No help there.

My next appointment was with a retired judge who greeted me at the door in his bathrobe and slippers, white curls of chest hair showing between his ratty terry-cloth lapels. His wife had hired me to alter his pants, which kept sliding off his nonexistent butt. He was a short and wiry guy, bald and liver-spotted, hunched forward, and with that gleam in the eye that told you he was more goat than man.

Or were goats and men one and the same?

“You're a hot little number, aren't you?” he said by way of hello.

Somehow I restrained myself from kneeing him in the groin and dropping an elbow on the back of his neck. “A real firecracker,” I said, without smiling.

He cackled, and the gleam in his eye started looking more like a twinkle. “So you're a toughie. I've seen the likes of you,” he said, and made a couple boxing feints.

I tried to keep from laughing. “I carry sharp scissors, and am going to be fitting your pants,” I said, with a meaningful look meant to imply all that could befall his privates if he were not careful. “Behave yourself.”

He cackled again and let me in.

“You're not single, are you?” he asked ten minutes later while I was pinning the waistband of his slacks. “Don't tell me a beautiful girl like you is single.”

“Afraid so.”

“What, you chase them off with those scissors?”

I snorted.

“You like men, don't you?” he asked.

“When they behave.”

“Ha! Might as well be a lesbian, then.”

I squinted up at him. He was not what I would ever have imagined a retired judge to be.

“There's a lesbian going to come visit in half an hour. She's a friend of my wife's. I keep suggesting a three-some, but she just laughs.”

“Can't imagine why,” I said, checking the hang of the pants, dismally aware that he wasn't wearing underpants. He didn't have a hard-on, but I could see he preferred to hang on the right.

“I'll tell you something, that you might find useful.”

“Hmm?” I said, down on my knees pinning the cuffs.

“You know, if you're on a date and a guy starts getting fresh. If he starts wanting more from you that you
want to give out. Hell, use it even if he starts something, and his moves are bad and you change your mind.”

“Use what?” I asked, getting curious.

“Tell him he has bad breath. Guaranteed, he'll go flatter than a blown tire.”

I laughed. “I'll have to remember that one.”

“Girl used that on me once, in the back seat of a Chevy. Never could get it up again with her.”

“Can I ask you for a bit of advice?” I asked, sitting back on my heels. The man used to be a judge, he should have a good answer. He had to have seen this type of situation a thousand times, if he hadn't been involved in it himself.