Tango in Paradise (27 page)

A trickle of melted ice made its way under his shirt and trailed along his shoulder. Graham adjusted his shirt collar and pushed at the wetness, trying in vain to shift it off his body. The wet stickiness around his neck was suddenly unbearable, so he got up and went to the men’s room on the concourse below.

The room’s cleanliness surprised him, and nobody did more than glance at him as he stripped off his suit jacket and shirt, then rinsed off his hair and shoulders as best he could in one of the sinks. The air was cool inside the building, swirling around his bare arms and chest and raising goosebumps. He toweled off with paper towels, then pushed the electric hand dryer on and held his wet clothes under its already hot nozzle. He frowned as the dark stain grew more pronounced as the clothes dried. His maniac had nailed him good.…

“Excuse me.”

Men standing in front of the open urinals yelped at the female voice coming from the doorway and began frantically adjusting clothing. Graham started and whirled around. His maniac was standing in the open doorway as if he’d conjured her up. The two-by-four hit again, with even more force.

She was half turned away, averting her gaze, but that didn’t stop the consternation caused by a woman on the edge of invading the last of male refuges on the planet. Neither did it stop Graham from suddenly feeling too warm and too conscious of her presence. She looked even better standing up than she did sitting down. Way better …

“If you dry it without washing the stain out first, it may set,” she advised.

He found his voice—and his reason. “Are you crazy? This is
the men’s room
!”

Men bleated in horror behind him, like a Greek chorus, and that seemed to move her finally. She dipped out of sight behind the outer modesty wall. The men subsided, but they glared at him as if he were at fault for the near breach.

“I’m sorry,” she called out. It seemed her voice wasn’t disappearing. “But I got worried when you were picking at your collar and then left. I thought I better check and see if I could help. Do you want me to take it and wash it in the ladies’ room?”

“No thanks,” he said quickly, having a vision of himself standing outside the ladies’ room half naked.
He shoved his clothes under the still-running dryer, muttering, “Come on, come on …”

“I forgot that getting silk wet was bad. Are you drying it again? You shouldn’t.”

“I’ll take my chances,” he said, wondering what she’d thought when she’d looked in and caught him topless. Probably that he ought to be ten pounds thinner and work out regularly, he decided, then wondered what the hell he was doing wondering. His chest was acquiring a gray hair or two, as well, among the dark brown …

“I’m Elaine Sampson, by the way. You’re Graham, right?”

He blinked in confusion and answered automatically, “Yes. Graham Reed.”

“Nice name.”

There was a long silence. Graham could think of nothing to say, so he said, “Thanks.”

“I hope you’ll take me up on my offer, especially now if the stain’s set. You’ll really need a good dry cleaner. I’m a widow, and I have a young son. You saw him …”

Her voice trailed away and he realized he needed to answer. “Yes, I did.”

“With his father gone, it’s doubly important for me to set a good example for him. Are you a parent?”

Heads turned. Graham swallowed and said to no one in particular, “She spilled soda on my suit.”

“What did you say?”

“No, I’m not a parent, not even married,” he
called out. “Could we have this conversation later?”

“Yeah,” a guy in a stall yelled. “Could we have this conversation later?”

“Oh. Yes, of course, but if I don’t fix your suit, then he’ll think it’s okay not to fix things he’s damaged.”

“Lady, I do understand and admire that,” Graham began, shaking his jacket and shirt to quicken the drying process. The dryer turned off in a complete lack of cooperation. He slapped the start button, then realized he might have better luck if he put the shirt
outside
the jacket, rather than have it tucked inside because it was easier to hold. He switched it around, cursing himself for being seduced into accepting Ed Tarksas’s invitation to the ball game, just so he could listen to the man’s advertising campaign pitch for Graham’s chain of pizzerias. Cove Pizzerias couldn’t afford the slick TV, radio, and print ads Ed wanted to blanket over the Delaware Valley. Graham only owned twenty places in the state of Delaware, the most profitable in the coastal resort towns, so he wasn’t sure a huge campaign would be cost-effective, despite Ed’s intense sales pitch all during the game.

Now Graham wasn’t thinking about anything other than this woman who wouldn’t leave him to set his soda stain in peace. If she wanted to talk, he could think of better, more intimate places …

“Then you’ll go to have your suit cleaned?”

“If I don’t hang myself first,” he muttered.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing!” he shouted, wondering if she could read thoughts. Now, that was scary.

He heard a commotion outside, a boy shrieking and a woman’s voice raised in annoyance. Now what was she doing? Mugging kids?

“What are you doing?” he called out, feeling his shirt. It was definitely drying.

“Just a minute. We have a rebellion going on out here …” To someone else, she said, “I don’t know this man who’s in there at all, really, but I spilled soda on him and he was nice about it. Maybe he can watch your son. Mr. Reed?” Her voice rose again. “There’s a little boy coming in to use the rest room. Could you keep an eye on him for his mother?”

Graham looked down at his bare chest, looked at the men milling around and who were looking at him as if he’d been swallowing flaming swords. He felt as if he were in a nightmare that would never end. Face it, Reed, he thought, it couldn’t get any more bizarre.

“Uhh … send him in.”

A boy of about five or six walked into the bathroom, too young for the men’s room alone but too old for the ladies’ room with Mom. The kid looked sullen and Graham couldn’t blame him. He smiled at the boy encouragingly, saying, “Moms are right to be concerned, but they don’t understand, do they?”

The boy didn’t answer, just went about his
business with quick efficiency while the other men grinned at him. Graham sighed, seeing the usual result of whenever he tried to be friendly with a child. Kids didn’t like him. He was uncomfortable around them, he always had been. On the rare occasions he had familial and paternal stirrings, he put them aside, knowing his business took all his time and knowing he wouldn’t be a very good parent.

The boy headed for the exit door on the opposite side of the rest room, and Graham called out dutifully, “Okay, he’s coming out now.”

The boy turned and stuck his tongue out at Graham. Several of the men chuckled. Compounded evidence on his incompetency with kids, Graham thought.

He put on his shirt, not caring that it still had a damp spot or two. After buttoning it, he finally left the men’s room. The jacket he’d live with. It was only damp now, at least, rather than soaked.

Elaine was still waiting for him out on the busy concourse. She smiled at him, and although the mother and the boy were gone, she said, “Thanks. That was nice of you. The boy refused to go into the ladies’ room with his mother and threw a tantrum about it.”

“I don’t think he was too happy with the compromise,” Graham said, smiling ruefully. “He stuck his tongue out at me.”

She shook her head. “Kids. Still, public rest rooms are a problem when you’re a mom out alone
with your son. Anthony was about the same age when he insisted he was old enough to use the men’s room. How’s the shirt and jacket?”

“Dry enough.”

“I feel really bad about spilling soda on you.”

“Don’t.” He grinned. “Actually, it was an adventure.”

As she smiled back, he had an odd urge to reach for her and kiss her. Her smile faded, as if she sensed the attraction he felt for her.

“This is trouble,” she said in a low voice.

“I’m not trouble,” he assured her, feeling suddenly dangerous and impulsive, two sensations he never had.

“Yes, you are,” she said. “You have eyes like a little deer I raised when I was a kid and lived in upstate Pennsylvania. But yours are …”

“Are what?” He had to know. He was thirty-seven years old, and he had to know.

“Are more intense,” she finished.

She didn’t know what intense was, he thought. The way she was looking at him shook him down to his feet. That was intense.

Someone bumped into him, and he realized they were standing in the concourse, traffic traveling around them. The physical attraction snapped off as if by a switch, and he immediately felt awkward, like a schoolboy talking with a girl for the first time.

“Ah, I better get back up there,” Elaine said.

He nodded. “Me too.”

“I’ll get fries to cover my tracks.” She smiled slightly as she began walking over to the nearest concession stand.

He followed her. “Why do you have to cover your tracks?”

“Because my friends are nosy and my son usually is mortified by me. He’s thirteen. Kids embarrass easily at that age.”

“Oh.”

She got her fries in a large cup. She offered them to him, and because they smelled good and salty, he took one. It was fat and long—and hot.

“There goes the cholesterol, right through the roof,” she quipped, before taking a bite of one herself.

The fry tasted as good as it smelled, the salt melting in his mouth. He grinned at her. “They’re good.”

“The best.” She cleared her throat. “Maybe you want to go up ahead of me. Otherwise they’ll think I’ve been nagging you and will tease me.”

“And your son will be mortified.”

“Because he thinks I’m a nag too. I’m actually a worrier. Really, though, use my friend for your suit. She’ll do a good job, and I’ll feel better.”

“I suppose if I don’t, you’ll spill french fries down it.” The card she’d given him was burning a hole in his jacket pocket. That he wasn’t wearing the jacket at the moment didn’t matter. He knew the card was there, like a lure.

She laughed. He couldn’t remember the last
time he’d made a woman laugh. He liked the sound of hers. He liked the nagging. Or worrying. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had worried over him, either. It was nice.

He left her on the concourse, reluctantly, but with a small smile as he entered the stadium proper. He slipped on his slightly damp jacket and climbed the concrete steps to his seat. The small contingent above him, he saw, noticed him immediately. He realized he still had no idea who these three older women were and what their relationship was to Elaine Sampson. Nice name, he thought. Her son glanced at him, then looked back to the action taking place on the diamond. She was setting a fine example, he thought, because the boy seemed well mannered. He wondered what the father had been like.

He settled down next to Ed again. “Did I miss anything?”

“Just another homer, honey,” came a voice behind him.

He turned slightly to see the black woman better. She was grinning knowingly at him. “Thanks.”

He turned back around in time to see Elaine stroll out of the concourse entrance. She was munching on her french fries as innocently as any teenager. And she looked so damn good.

“She bought french fries!”

Howls of indignation went up behind him, along with vows to make Elaine share her goodies.
Graham found himself smiling smugly. He’d gotten one first, when it was still hot.

All of a sudden he heard a loud smack. The crowd was up and screaming. Graham stood more out of curiosity than interest. Another home run by one of the Phillies. He had to say the team was giving the fans their money’s worth tonight.

He glanced over some heads to the aisle, expecting to see Elaine still making her way up the stairs. Instead, to his astonishment, she was standing in the middle of the aisle, next to a stranger, doing some kind of dance.

As her hips rocked from side to side, she pointed her forefinger above her head, then brought it down diagonally across her body and up again, in counterpoint to her swaying hips. She did it with such abandonment that all kinds of images rocked through his brain, most of them requiring two bodies in a horizontal position. The people all around him started chanting, “Whoomp! There it is!” over and over as they did the same strange dance as Elaine.

She was like no other mother he had ever known. Somehow she had roused an entire group into whatever ritual they were doing, and she hadn’t spilled one french fry in the process.

He liked her for that too.

Elaine knew exactly the moment when Graham Reed and his companion “suit” had left at the start
of the eighth inning. It was as if a hard wall suddenly crumbled around her. She didn’t know why she was disappointed that he hadn’t stayed for the end of the game, nor did she understand why she had pushed so hard for him to take advantage of her offer. It was true that she needed to ensure Anthony learned to correct his mistakes and treat other people’s property with respect, but maybe she’d been too extreme this time.

More important, Graham Reed was dangerous. He was too sophisticated for her, too smooth, too corporate. Even in the rest room he’d been composed, never showing anything beyond initially being startled. And afterward, when they’d stood together on the concourse …

She wasn’t ready to think seriously about men again. Granted, there hadn’t been anyone about whom she could think seriously. Bill Voss, who taught eighth-grade math, was single and nice, yet he had never caused a ripple of attraction in her. But this Graham Reed, he could light fires without moving a muscle. That sort of man didn’t instill notions of stability in a woman. Elaine told herself she should be grateful he thought she was a klutzy nut.

“Strike three!” Cleo shouted. The fans roared to their feet as the last out of the top of the ninth inning was made. The Phillies had won. Elaine’s attention went back to where it belonged.

She rose, applauding with the rest of the members of the Widows’ Club.