Earnest (10 page)

C
HAPTER
16

O
n the first Saturday afternoon in his new apartment, Jeff 's objective was to settle in quickly and ignore his hot-pink walls. He'd think of this apartment as a bad hotel he had to stay in for a short time. Though Jeff's confidence in his and Anna's relationship had faltered since she'd taken his key, he held on to the prospect that soon she'd stop freezing him out. For now, however, he understood how the man inside the shaken glass ball felt about the blizzard.

Jeff leaned his paintings against the living-room wall because he had no hammer for his nails.
Something to pick up at the condo.
He set up his drafting table across the room and started to unpack his books. He looked around. No shelves. Okay, he'd leave the books in the box—they'd be easier to move back to the condo.
Shelves or no shelves aren't the end of the world.

In the bedroom Jeff unpacked his clothes. Since shopping was torture for him, his wardrobe was sketchy—two suits, about a dozen shirts, and a few sweaters, sports coats, and pairs of slacks and jeans. He had a parka, overcoat, down vest, rain slicker, and handful of ties, mostly from Anna. For the last few days, he'd worn the same pair of slacks and one of those ties with whatever wrinkled shirt he pulled out of a cardboard box. But his rumpled look couldn't go on forever. He needed his and Anna's iron.
Another thing to pick up
.

In a neat row Jeff lined up his four pairs of shoes on the closet floor. He opened the top drawer of Mr. Ripley's dresser to put in shorts and tee shirts. Jeff stopped. He stared.

Long hairs lay, like irksome threads, on the bottom of the drawer. He pursed his lips with distaste.
So the former tenant had been a brunette. Irish? Japanese? Salvadoran?
Whoever she was, Jeff wished she'd vacuumed the damned drawers before moving out.

Having no vacuum cleaner here, he dampened a paper towel and wiped up the hair. To clean this place, he should have the vacuum cleaner, which, like the iron, he and Anna had bought together. What were they going to do? Borrow these essentials back and forth? Buying new ones for a short time would be a waste of money. In this situation, how was anybody supposed to win?

Besides the hammer, iron, and vacuum cleaner—and Anna—the other crucial missing thing was Earnest. Jeff had not seen him for three days, which felt like three months. Tomorrow Jeff would go to the condo, borrow him for the afternoon, and take him for a romp in the woods. Afterward, they'd stop here, and Jeff would show him the balcony and give him a Granny Smith apple—Earnest went wild over the crunch.

Except Jeff had no paring knife to cut the apple here. Where would the list of missing essentials end?
Another thing to pick up at the condo.

Jeff thought,
What a pain in the ass this situation is getting to be
. But then he told himself,
Patience, patience. The Romans took a while to build their city
.

 

Jeff knocked on the condo door. When his neighbor bounded along the sidewalk in his running shoes and baseball cap and found him there, pathetically trying to get inside his own place, Jeff felt like a fool.

“Lost your key?” the neighbor asked.

“Yes.”
But not in the way you think.

“The manager can let you in.”

As the neighbor jogged on, Jeff thought,
Damn. This is my home as much as Anna's.
From the beginning, they'd rented it together, and this very month he'd paid his usual half of the rent. Legally, he had a right to live here till the end of September. He wished he'd not so amiably handed her the key.

Jeff knocked and called again. “Anna?” Besides picking up Earnest, he'd intended to tell her that he'd asked Brian to take him off the project. He'd wanted her to see she meant so much to him that he'd been willing to tarnish his professional future for her.
But damn her! He couldn't talk with her if she wouldn't answer the door.

This morning Anna hadn't answered the phone, either. He'd called. Three times. In the garage he'd just parked next to Vincent, so he knew she was inside. He'd have to be brain dead not to understand she was avoiding him.

Impatient, Jeff pounded the door with his fist. Still, she didn't come. “Anna? I know you're in there. Open the damned door.”

When Jeff pressed his ear against the wood for signs of life, he heard Earnest whimpering on the other side—so near and yet so far. Each whimper felt like a stab from the paring knife Jeff had intended to collect here today.

Anyone could recognize the anguish Earnest was expressing:
I know Jeff is there. Why isn't he coming in? I'm confused, and I don't like it. I'm not sure what to do.

Jeff closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips against his temples. His cheeks felt hot. His mouth was dry. He had a right to be annoyed when Anna was acting like he didn't exist, and, far worse, when she was upsetting his dog. But for today, as hard as it was, he resolved to continue as Mr. Go-Along-to-Get-Along. He would keep his annoyance in check.

It was building up, though, and sidling precariously close to resentment. Anna couldn't just cut him off with a quick and heartless scissor snip.Whether she liked it or not, their damned iron and vacuum cleaner kept them entangled, to say nothing of nearly three years' memories and feelings. And Earnest. He mattered most. Anna couldn't let her pettiness reduce him to whimpers.

Biting his lip in frustration, Jeff rested his forehead on the door. For Earnest's sake, he stopped knocking. “It's okay, Buddy,” he said.

On his cell, Jeff called what used to be his and Anna's landline. He could hear rings in the living room, but no footsteps moving toward them. After six rings, the voice mail clicked on. Another shock. That morning his voice had been on the recorded message, but now Anna said, “I can't come to the phone right now, but if you'll leave a message, I'll call you back.”

She's not wasted any time,
Jeff thought bitterly. He'd stood by and let her elbow him out of the way and take over their condo and his dog
—
and now she was usurping their life. He called her cell.
No answer, of course
. After another recorded message, he said, “It's me. As you know, I'm standing at the door. I want to see Earnest.” Jeff paused, not sure how hard to push. If he alienated her more than she already was, they'd never work out this mess.

“We need to talk,” Jeff continued. “I realize you're trying to claim Earnest, but he's mine. You can't hold him hostage just because you're mad at me. I paid for his adoption. I've footed most of his food and vet bills. I'm responsible for him.”

Jeff wanted to say he was
legally
responsible, but the word might sound too much like he was gearing up for a court fight, and that would sound the death knell for their relationship. He held out hope that he and Anna would somehow get back together.

Nevertheless, he was vexed. A few days ago his patience had been as thick as the Sweet Time Bakery's mile-high chocolate cake. Now it had thinned to a razor's edge.

C
HAPTER
17

A
nna was weaving lavender wands when the first customer of her newly opened shop walked in. Perhaps the sandwich board that she and Lauren had set out next to the poetry post that morning had drawn him. They'd attached blue and white balloons and printed in triumphant red letters HURRAH! WE'RE READY FOR BUSINESS AGAIN!

“Welcome. May I help you?” Anna asked as Earnest rose from his new emerald-green lily pad and sized up the man.

He could only be called a hunk, though a rose by any other name would smell as sweet: heartthrob, babe magnet, eye candy, stud. His muscled chest bulged under his cotton turtleneck, the same turquoise as his eyes. His chiseled features might have graced a
GQ
cover.
Too bad Joy's not here to see him.

“I want to surprise my girlfriend. Do you have flowers I can leave on her car seat?” he asked.

“Sure. Any idea what she'd like?”

He paused as he considered the question. His lips were seductive. Sexy stubble darkened his cheeks. “I've never given flowers to a woman before. What do other men get?”

“Depends on what they want the flowers to say.”

His turquoise eyes lit up. His smile was pure bad boy. Anna would have bet the statement that this hunk wanted the flowers to make was
You're hot, babe. Let me ravage you again tonight.

“Are you looking for something romantic?”
Of course, he was
. She'd asked just to help him out.

“Romantic. Yes! Sure! That'd be great.”

“Red roses maybe? I have some that are actually called Romeo. They're fragrant and sensuous. Women love them.”

“Good.” The bad boy smile again.

Anna took her bucket of Romeos from the refrigerator, which was now running by an extension cord from the garage. She set them on the counter. She'd make him the Humdinger, her standard amorous bouquet. It was luscious, the opposite of her chaste Virtue Special.

“Here, smell,” she said.

He sniffed—heartthrob nose to voluptuous rose. “Perfect.”

“A dozen?”

“Sure.”

“I'll have them ready in a few minutes.”

Anna counted out the roses, placed them on cellophane, with a tissue paper lining, and folded the corners over the stems. The man wandered around the room and examined her new plants and freshly washed Buddhas and angels. He squatted down and petted Earnest, who'd gone back to his new lily pad as if he were a Mongolian prince claiming his yurt. With entitlement, Earnest sprawled languidly on the corduroy, like he thought the customer had come to pay him homage and any minute yaks would arrive bearing Granny Smith apples and cheese.

As Anna stapled the cellophane in place, she thought of the hunk's girlfriend showing up at her car and finding his roses. Surely she'd be pleased. Women liked surprises. Anna did.

Last year after breakfast one morning, she'd dropped her favorite teacup on the kitchen's tile floor. The cup, almost large enough to house a goldfish, shattered into more pieces than Humpty Dumpty had. As she picked them up, she complained to Jeff, “I don't know how I'll ever find another cup like this. I never see this size anywhere.”

That evening when she came home from work, he was waiting for her on the love seat, unusual because she nearly always got home first. “Ready for a treasure hunt?” he asked.

She started hunting right there in the living room by poking through throw pillows.

“Cold,” he said.

She looked behind books in the shelf.

“Totally cold.”

She searched through Earnest's wicker toy chest.

“Icy.”

Jeff and Earnest followed her into the bedroom, where she reached into drawers, got on her hands and knees and checked under the bed, and searched coat pockets in the closet.

“Colder, colder, colder,” Jeff said until she walked into the den. “Warmer. Now you're getting somewhere.”

Hidden at the back of a file-cabinet drawer, Anna finally found a cup exactly like the one she'd broken. On his lunch hour, Jeff had tracked it down in Seattle—a supremely considerate surprise.

Unlike his supremely
inconsiderate
surprise three weeks ago when he'd given her the shock of a lifetime, wrapped in betrayal and tied with a bow of deception, Anna thought as she tied her own red bow around the roses. Now Jeff 's surprises were still coming in the form of demanding phone messages that she'd never expected from him. Every night he called and said that Earnest was his and he wanted him back, and she knew Jeff well enough to read his voice's growing impatience. Now that her shop was open for business again, he might show up at any time and take Earnest away—and she couldn't stop him. Lately, that prospect had provoked sweaty, bitter dread.

“Here you go.” Anna handed the bouquet to the hunk, whose credit card revealed the unhunkworthy name of Dudley Spitz. “I hope your friend likes the roses.”

“Oh, she will.”

As soon as he'd swaggered away, Anna found Mad Dog Horowitz's number in her wallet. She picked up the phone.

C
HAPTER
18

“J
effrey? What's going on? I called your condo, and Anna said you'd moved out. Is that true?”

Jeff closed his eyes. How to answer his mother, Madge? He'd intended to phone her, but he kept putting it off. He and Anna had been separated less than a month, and he wasn't ready to talk about her with anyone. Though she was being impossible, he wasn't ready to call it quits with her, either.

Perhaps his resistance to calling it quits—or to contacting Madge—stemmed from his parents' divorce. It had bruised Jeff. He didn't have a single memory of them happy together, and he'd sworn never to follow their footsteps into a bad relationship. Nevertheless, he wasn't ready to accept or admit that his and Anna's had failed. It was too soon for that.

“Yes, it's true. I'm living in an apartment.” Jeff slumped back into Mr. Ripley's plaid sofa.

“What happened?” Madge asked.

“A misunderstanding.”

“What kind of misunderstanding?”

“A dumb one.”

“Most are. Why was yours dumb?” Madge asked.

“Because it didn't need to happen.”

His mother had a streak of battering ram that used to infuriate his father. She could pinch up her thin face, fire off questions like grapeshot, and make people squirm. She should have been a lawyer instead of a grocery-store checker—and now co-manager, with her boyfriend, of a Sun City, Arizona, video arcade. Her specialties would have been stomping over boundaries and assaulting people's privacy.

“I don't mean to be nosy. I respect your right not to talk about it,” she said, in retreat.

“Thanks,” Jeff said. “Talk's a waste of words right now because I don't know how things are going to shake out.”

“Are you okay where you're living? Is it clean? Safe?”

“It's got hot-pink walls.”

“I like that color.
People
magazine said that Oscar de la Renta designed hot-pink clothes. Even swimming suits.”

“I'll bet he didn't paint his walls hot pink.”

“You never know.”

Jeff heard a thunk, and then his mother came back on. “Sorry. Dropped the phone. Hard to talk and wash dishes at the same time,” she said. “Jeffrey, are you all right?”

“I'm fine.”

“Sure?”

“You don't have to worry about me.”

“Anna was a nice girl.”

Was
. He didn't like the past tense.

 

Anna was a nice girl. Indeed. She was.
She is.

Jeff had met her one Saturday morning after stepping out of the shower. He heard a knock on his door and grabbed his robe. Another knock. And another as he hurried, dripping, across the living room. He thought the person was impatient, rude.

When Jeff opened the door, a blonde with gorgeous blue-gray eyes was peering at him over the top of a fan-shaped spray of gladioli that seemed bigger than she was. His first thought was of a nightclub singer, prancing across a stage with a huge feather fan, but the legs of this woman were a little thin for that job.

“Sorry to beat on your door. I was afraid I'd drop this.” The gladiolus fan tilted to the right.

“Need some help?” Jeff straightened it so the water wouldn't spill. “Let me hold it.” To give her arms a rest, he took it from her.

“Thanks.” Her smile was lovely. “Good luck tonight. I hope lots of people bid on my arrangement and your auction's a big success.”

“I don't know anything about an auction.”

“Not for the wildlife shelter?”

“No, and I didn't order these flowers,” Jeff said.

“Aren't you Eddie Baker? This is 203-C Erickson Avenue, right?”

“Right, but I'm not Eddie Baker.”

At the unexpected news, she widened her gorgeous eyes and reeled him in, hook, line, and sinker. When she got flustered—and looked adorable—she scraped off his scales, filleted him, and rolled him in cornmeal.
Amazing for her to land on my doorstep. A gift out of the blue.

“There must be some mistake. I'm sorry,” she said.

“No problem. Why don't you come in? We can look up Eddie Baker in my phone book.” Maybe that sounded like “come in and see my etchings,” but what was he supposed to do?

As she followed Jeff into the kitchen, he thought how vulnerable she was. For all she knew, he could be Charles Manson, and a machete could be stashed behind the stove.

He set the gladioli on the kitchen table. “You know, you shouldn't be so trusting of men. There's a lot of evil in the world.”

“I could tell in a second that you're a good person.” Another smile. Those pretty teeth.

Suddenly, Jeff remembered he wasn't dressed. Water from his hair was trickling down his neck, and he had nothing on under his robe. He grabbed its front to insure he didn't flash this lovely woman. He, who prided himself on being calm, turned nervous.

He rummaged through a kitchen drawer. “I can't remember where I left the phone book. It has to be around here somewhere.”

Eventually, he found it in the den, and Anna found out where Eddie Baker lived. And soon Jeff and Anna found out that they liked each other. A lot. Slowly, over time, their “like” tiptoed close to “love.”

On Valentine's Day, near their seven-month anniversary, Jeff took Anna to the Seattle Aquarium. As little kids hung over the tide pool's edge and splashed their hands in the water, Anna petted the limpets, hermit crabs, and sea stars. At the harbor seal display, one biologist tossed herring down the gullet of Alice, and another brushed the teeth of Humphrey. A boy in a Nemo sweatshirt begged, “Mommy, can we have a harbor seal?” Everybody in the bleachers laughed.

Jeff pulled Anna through the crowd to the giant Pacific octopus tanks. In one swam Delilah, her arms flowing behind her, graceful as a ballerina. In the other, Inky clung to his glass wall by his suckers, his eight arms spread out like a red sun's rays. When Jeff and Anna moved close, he aimed his eyes straight at them as if he were making sure they hadn't concealed a harpoon under their coats.

“Big things are happening here today,” said a docent, who looked like a school marm in a long flowered skirt. “The diver in Inky's tank is about to remove the passageway's partition between him and Delilah. They've been yearning for each other for a long time, and now they can finally mate.”

“Imagine a hug with sixteen arms,” Anna whispered.

The diver slid away the partition, and the horny Inky picked up Delilah's pheromones and came to life. He charged through the tunnel, sprang on her, and covered her with eager arms so no one could tell where he ended and she began. All anyone could see was writhing and swishing.

Love was definitely blooming. Sperm would join eggs, and babies, in the form of plankton, would be in Inky and Delilah's future. At last, their longing satisfied, they could cohabit for a while.

Jeff led Anna past the otters, spinning and zooming through the water. In a quiet corner near the whale display, he put his arms around her as ardently as Inky's around Delilah, and Anna wrapped hers around Jeff's neck.

“I've been thinking we should move in together,” he said.

“I've been thinking you should be the one to bring it up.”

“I'm bringing it up. Want to get a condo?”

“I'm so glad you asked.”

As Jeff kissed Anna's smile of agreement, Roman candles showered silver stars inside his heart. “I love you, Anna.”

“I love you too.”

 

Their two years of living together had been the happiest of Jeff's life. No pleasure could compare with waking up each morning and finding Anna beside him. Jeff could not understand how a love so deep could have gone so wrong. Their breakup was ridiculous. Somehow he had to get that through to her. He had to try one more time.

He would call Anna again and leave her another message, and this time he would not mention that he wanted Earnest. Jeff would tell her that he was going to sit in front of their condo door till she opened it and let him in to talk—and, if necessary, he would go on a hunger strike. She had to let him explain his side, he'd say. Then if she still wanted to break up with him, he'd reluctantly agree. He was a man of his word, he would remind her. He would be honorable. When they first met, she'd said he was a good person.

Before hanging up, he'd tell her that he loved her.