How to Score (29 page)

Arlene placed the signed letter in the outbox on her desk on Thursday morning, then fished it out to review it a second time. It was unlike her to deliberately dawdle, but it was Thursday morning, and she hated the thought of going to the basement and sorting through Justine’s trunks.

Well, there was no help for it. The hated task wouldn’t do itself. With a heavy sigh, she placed the letter back in the wire box and started to rise from her chair.

The intercom buzzed. “Mr. Landry is on line one,” the receptionist said.

A burst of pleasure flushed through Arlene. Settling back in her chair, she punched the blinking phone button and lifted the receiver to her ear. “Hello, Walter. How are you?”

“Terrible.” He sounded it. His tone was terse, his voice as rough and hard as gravel. “Sammi’s ruining my life.”

Arlene frowned. “What has she done now?”

“My lawyer and I had a meeting with the Preservation Commission this morning to try to get the ban on the demolition permit lifted. Guess who was staging a protest rally outside the building?”

“Oh, dear!”

“You can say that again. She was marching around with a bunch of old ladies and biker types, and they were all carrying signs.”

“Good heavens.”

“You don’t know anything about it?”

“Mercy, no! All I know is she’s taking a personal-leave day.”

“Well, she’s spending it running a media circus. All the stations were there.” His words were clipped and short. “Do you have a TV there?”

“No.”

Arlene could hear a tapping sound, as if he were irritably drumming his fingers or rapping a pencil. “It’s going to be on the noon news. What do you say we could go someplace that has a TV and watch it together over lunch?”

Arlene’s heart unexpectedly lurched. “All—all right.”

“Are there any restaurants with TVs near the museum?”

“The only one I can think of always has the TV turned to the sports channel.”

“Yeah. That’s the case with most of them.” He blew out a sigh.

“I live nearby,” Arlene ventured.

“Great! I’ll pick up something for lunch and meet you there at, say, eleven-forty-five?”

She hadn’t really meant to invite him; she’d simply been thinking out loud. But it
did
make sense; she wanted to see the news story—and she wanted to see Walter again. “All right. That sounds fine.”

“What’s your address?”

She gave it to him, then hung up the phone. Her hand fluttered to her pearls, then dropped to her plain white cotton blouse. It wasn’t her most attractive shirt; why was she always wearing something dowdy when Walter called? Maybe she could go home and change before he arrived.

The thought jarred her. Why was she worried about what she was going to wear? Walter wasn’t a romantic interest. He was a…

What? A friend? She didn’t know him well enough to even call him that, although they certainly were on friendly terms. He was more like an acquaintance. Yes, that’s what he was. An acquaintance. That was all.

Wasn’t it?

She pushed out of her chair, irritated at her thoughts. Of course that was all. Why was she in such a dither about what to call him, anyway? She didn’t need to label their relationship.

Not that it was a relationship.

Arlene resolutely marched to the basement, opened a trunk, and set to the task of sorting through Justine’s belongings. When she reached bottom, she realized she didn’t have that cloying, breathing-through-a-straw tightness in her chest that the sorting work usually gave her. Knowing that she’d see Walter at noon had lightened the task considerably.

At 11:15, she went upstairs and grabbed her purse from her office. “I’ve got a doctor’s appointment,” she told the receptionist and then wondered why she’d felt the need to lie. Force of habit, most likely. That was what she’d always done when she’d sneaked out of the office to meet Chandler for a nooner.

Not that this was anything like that. It was lunch, that was all.

Her shoes squished on the hot asphalt as she headed to her car. Maybe she should change into her pumps before Walter arrived. They made her look taller, which made her look thinner. And she’d change into her burgundy blouse, then change back into the white one before she returned to work so she wouldn’t stir up any gossip.

There was nothing wrong with wanting to look her best for lunch with an acquaintance, she told herself as she settled behind the steering wheel. Nothing wrong with it at all.

Anger had boiled in Walter’s chest all morning, but the sight of Arlene opening her front door immediately iced it down. She was wearing a wine-colored blouse that made her skin glow, and her lips gleamed with a lighter shade of the same hue. Funny; he didn’t recall her wearing lipstick before. Her cheeks were rosy, too. She looked lovely.

All of a sudden, he didn’t know what to do with his hands. He awkwardly clutched the bag holding their lunch with one and shoved the other in his pocket, then pulled it out. “Hi, there, Arlene.” To his own ears, his voice sounded funny. He cleared his throat. “You look real nice today.”

Her hand moved to her neck. He’d noticed that she touched her pearls a lot. He suspected that her gentleman friend had given them to her. “Thank you.” The color heightened in her cheeks.

He held up a large white bag. “I wasn’t sure what kind of food you liked, so I went by Chiquita’s Cantina and got you the same thing you ordered the other day.”

Little smile lines fanned out from her eyes. “How thoughtful.” She pulled the door wider. “Come on in.”

He stepped into a small living room. It was neat and tidy and almost entirely beige—the walls, the carpet, the sofa, and the chairs. A large tapestry on the wall over the sofa provided the only color. It looked out-of-place and expensive. It was the kind of thing one might expect to find hanging in a mansion rather than in a modest home like this one. Unless he missed his guess, it, too, was a gift from her gentleman friend. An odd bite of displeasure nibbled at his gut.

“Do you mind eating in the kitchen?” Arlene asked. “I have a TV in there.”

“No, no, I don’t mind at all. Helen and I always ate in the kitchen.”

Probably not the best idea, talking about Helen. He wasn’t sure why, exactly; he just had the feeling that maybe he shouldn’t rub his marriage in Arlene’s face. She’d gotten awfully prickly about her single status the last time they were together.

He trailed after her into the kitchen, noting the way her black skirt curved in at the waist and flared at the knee. She’d worn a boxy jacket both times he’d seen her, and he’d wondered what she looked like beneath it. Turned out she had a shapely figure—very shapely, indeed.

“What can I get you to drink?” Arlene asked. “Iced tea, coffee, water, cola?”

“Iced tea would be great.” He leaned against the white Formica countertop and looked around the spotless kitchen as she pulled two glasses down from the cupboard. The walls were covered with blue-and-white wallpaper, and the cabinets were painted a glossy white. Two blue-and-yellow-striped place mats sat side by side on the small table in the dining area, facing a small television on the counter. “This is a nice place. Lived here long?”

“Thirty years.” She opened her freezer. Ice plinked against the glass as she dropped it in.

“Lived by yourself all that time?”

She paused and looked at him, frost curling around her from the open freezer door.

Oh, dear. He hadn’t meant to imply anything. “I-I was wondering if a sister or friend or someone lived here with you.”

She shook her head and dropped another cube of ice into the glass. “No. I’ve always lived alone.”

He wondered if she found it lonely. He sure did. Maybe it was the contrast from having been married thirty-four years, but coming home to an empty house was the loneliest feeling in the world.

She closed the freezer and looked at him, her gaze a little wary. “I wasn’t a kept woman, if that’s what you’re asking. I bought this place all on my own.”

He swallowed hard. “I-I wasn’t asking anything, really. Just making conversation.”

She bustled over to the counter and set down the glasses beside a pitcher of tea and a little plate of sliced lemon, then glanced at him as she pulled an iced tea spoon out of a drawer. “So Sammi organized some kind of protest?” she asked, obviously wanting to change the subject.

Walter nodded. “When I walked up to the commission headquarters, there were protesters and TV cameras and reporters all over the place.”

“Were you interviewed?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Well, that’s good.” She splashed tea into the glasses. “They gave you a chance to tell your side of the story.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t do a very good job of it.”

Funny, he thought; he never use the word “afraid” conversationally—he’d always feared it would make him look soft-bellied—and he’d just used it twice in a row.

Arlene carried the iced tea glasses to the table and put them on the place mats. Walter picked up the little plate of lemon and carried it to the table, as well. She headed back to the counter, opened the white bag, and pulled out two Styrofoam cartons. “I think I’ll plate these and microwave them.”

“Good idea.” He watched her pull two blue-rimmed plates out of the cabinet, then arrange the black beans, rice, and chicken enchiladas on them. “Would you mind putting the chips in the bowl on the counter?” she asked as she placed one of the plates in the microwave.

“Not at all.” Truth be told, he missed the little niceties of meal preparation. Most of the time he ate fast food straight out of the bag because setting the table for one was just too darned lonely.

The microwave beeped. Arlene pulled out the plate and put in the second one. “Looks like we’re almost ready. Why don’t you turn on the TV and have a seat?”

Arlene carried the heated plates to the table as Walter picked up the remote control. She put a plate in front of him, then set her own plate on the next place mat and slid into the chair beside him.

“This looks lovely,” he said. “Nicer than in the restaurant. We’ve even got cloth napkins!”

Arlene unfolded hers in her lap, pleased that he’d noticed. The pompous swells of news music filled the room.

“We timed things just right,” she said.

The music crescendoed as the camera zoomed in on a blonde seated at the anchor desk. After a lead story about an overnight burglary, the anchor shifted the papers in her hand and looked at the camera. “The Historic Preservation Commission was the scene of a demonstration this morning. Marie Mareno has the story.”

The screen filled with the image of a brunette with a microphone. Behind her, a tattooed man wearing a black studded collar, a do-rag, and a leather vest held a sign that said “Save our heritage.”

“I’m standing in front of the Tulsa Preservation Commission,” the reporter said, “where a large group gathered to show their support for saving a tiny art deco home built in 1933.” The camera panned to show a dozen or so protesters. It was an unlikely bunch: little old ladies in vintage pastel dresses, men in biker gear, and women in tight leather pants. All of them held hand-painted signs in brilliant Day-Glo colors.

“The owner of the home, Walter Landry, has applied for a demolition permit.”

Walter’s face appeared on the screen. Beside her, he cringed. “Good heavens, when did I get so old and awful-looking?” he muttered.

Arlene didn’t think he looked awful. She thought he looked distinguished. She was about to tell him so, but he started talking onscreen.

“The house is small, outdated, and practically unlivable,” Walter told the reporter. “More than half of the other old homes in the neighborhood have already been torn down to make way for bigger, more modern homes, and I have the right to sell mine to someone who wants to do the same.”

The camera went back to the reporter. “And that is exactly the problem, according to Art Deco Museum curator Sammi Matthews.”

They should be calling her the junior curator, or a least a co-curator, Arlene thought indignantly. They made it sound as if Sammi had completely replaced her.

Sammi’s heart-shaped face popped on the screen, her hair rioting in the wind. “The house was designed by Raymond Deshuilles, the architect who built the Aston mansion and many other Tulsa landmarks. He believed that style transcended money. To prove it, he built five modest homes in the Green Lawn area, and this is the only one that remains.”