Kitabı oku: «Pencil Him In», sayfa 3
3
AT 6:30 A.M. ON THE FIRST DAY of her unemployment, Anna was eating one of the oranges from her office while she stood in front of her shut closet door, contemplating what was going to be behind that door. Two months ago her washing machine had broken down and she had stopped doing laundry except for the things that could be dropped off at the dry cleaners. Which was why she was now wearing a dark blue silk suit.
When the machine broke, she had called for someone to repair it, but that required her being home to let the guy in. Which, of course, had been impossible in the middle of the week. And considering her sometimes twenty-hour days, she could forget about hauling herself to the laundry room. So, for two months, instead of washing her underwear, she’d bought more on the internet.
Behind that closet door Anna guessed there might be close to a hundred pairs of dirty underwear. And blue jeans, Anna thought suddenly remembering that she actually owned some of those.
Anna popped another segment of orange in her mouth and considered getting a cleaning woman. After all, Camilla had one. And, Anna realized this morning as she looked around her place for the first time in what was probably months, there were things in her apartment covered in a thick fur of something that might be dust. She remembered that she had contemplated a cleaning woman a few months ago, but she just never had the time to straighten up before someone could come over to clean. Besides, Anna was not a big fan of a stranger being in her house, touching her things. So she had put it off and put it off, until like most things in her private life, she had forgotten all about it.
Perhaps she should invite Camilla over to watch her sweep the dust out from under her bed. Surely, that was life-getting at its best.
Putting the last segment of orange in her mouth she threw open the closet door and stood still in the small avalanche of dirty clothes that rolled out onto her feet.
“I wondered where those went,” Anna said, looking down at a pair of khaki pants that she hadn’t seen in months. “I thought I threw that out.” She picked up an old U.S.C. sweatshirt that was stiff with whatever was growing on it. “Gross,” she muttered and quickly dropped it.
Standing ankle-deep in clothes that had been stagnating in her closet Anna guessed that her first real effort in getting a life would be laundry.
She had a small plastic hamper, which was ridiculous in the face of all of her dirty clothes. Even her gym bag was too small. With a resigned sigh, she pulled her giant roller suitcase off the top shelf, put it on the floor and began shoving clothes into it. Halfway through, Anna started breathing through her mouth.
When all of her clothes were in the suitcase, she felt pretty good and decided there was nothing wrong with a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup for breakfast. After all she was unemployed. She didn’t need to worry about getting a healthy breakfast.
After laundry, she would have to tackle the grocery store.
In the back of the closet, Anna found some laundry detergent. So, with her suitcase, a mouthful of chocolate and laundry soap that hadn’t seen daylight in two months, Anna set out to find the building’s communal laundry facility. She had been given a tour when she moved in. That was the last time she had seen it.
Before walking out the door she remembered quarters and grabbed the jar she kept on her dresser that was filled to overflowing with change.
Anna’s apartment complex was huge, much bigger than she’d ever realized. There were pathways that seemed to go on for miles. Buildings she never knew existed were nestled in small hills and valleys that were actually quite pleasant, or would be if Anna wasn’t wandering around in high heels dragging a heavy suitcase filled with dirty laundry. Her hand was beginning to cramp around the change jar, so she switched hands with the laundry soap and tried to drag the suitcase in her soap hand. For a few minutes it was okay, then that hand started to cramp. So she rearranged everything again.
Anna walked around lost for fifteen minutes, but finally she found the laundry room. After the bright sunlight, stepping down the small cement steps into the basement facilities was like stepping into a cave. It was cool and smelled like every laundromat she had been in with her mother and Marie over the years. That strange combination of detergent, fabric softener and cigarettes.
Anna looked around and noticed that all of the washing machines were open.
“Excellent,” she mumbled. She unzipped her suitcase and began filling the washing machines with armloads of laundry.
Whoever lived in the apartment directly above or perhaps to the right of the laundry room apparently loved Celine Dion and seemed to have a hearing problem. Anna could hear the singer clearly through the wall and as she dumped soap and clothes into every washing machine she started bobbing her head in time. She wasn’t a huge fan of the woman, but she played on the radio every ten seconds.
And she recognized the song currently playing and sang along—Celine Dion style, adding some chest pounds for the hell of it. And for the moment, Anna didn’t mind at all being unemployed. She was busy, she had some tasks, there was an agenda and it was early. After the day she had had yesterday she would take what she could get.
Walking back to her suitcase and the jar of coins, she saw a sock she had dropped on the floor and she bent to pick it up. She twirled with a little flourish in time with the music and pitched the sock toward the last open washing machine. It went in and because she was in a good mood and the air smelled clean and no one was in the room, she lifted her arms turning her silly dance into a victory dance.
“Excuse me?”
Anna screamed, startled and whirled toward the deep voice behind her. “Holy…” she breathed, her hand at her chest. “You scared me.”
A man was standing on the step leading into the small laundry room. He was backlit by the bright sunshine and in the relative darkness of the room she couldn’t see him clearly. But she saw he was big. Tall and wide. Not fat.
“Sorry,” the man said and though Anna couldn’t see his face, she guessed he was smiling. He sounded like he was smiling. He was a big, wide, smiling man. Anna felt her day improve a little more.
“No problem,” she said as her heart rate went back to normal. “I…well, I thought I was alone.”
“Obviously,” the guy said.
Obviously? Anna thought, her brows snapping together before she reminded herself that he could see her. What the hell does that mean?
“The dancing gave it away,” he said and Anna ridiculously felt herself blush. He should have ignored that. Pretended he didn’t see her dancing around to some teenager’s music. Polite people pretended they didn’t see people do embarrassing things. “The singing, too,” he added with a chuckle.
Wow. He’s laughing at me. A few choice words about spying and the difference between polite and rude rose to her tongue. Then, tall wide man stepped out of the doorway into the laundry room and Anna’s brain shut down.
Oh. My. God. Anna thought. He was easily the most handsome man Anna had ever seen in real life—short blond hair, green eyes that even in the darkness of the laundry room seemed to glow. He looked down at his laundry then up at her and his eyes seemed to touch her and she felt the strange chill of awareness creep up her back and across her chest. He was still smiling and she could see it all there in his green, green eyes.
Her heart, usually so strong and steady, went ka-thunk.
All the rest of him—the bones, the skin, the stubble across his chin and cheeks, even the veins on his arms that every woman on the planet absolutely adored—combined to create some kind of Prince Charming. This man was what her mind would conjure up when she was a little girl and her mother read fairy tales to her and her sister. When the hero came cruising up on a white horse he looked like this guy.
She had forgotten all about that, but as she looked at him it all came back to her and she smiled.
His eyebrows lifted and the look in his eyes changed from merry to uncomfortable. “Hi.”
Oh, God, stop staring, Anna told herself. “Hi.” She smiled stiffly and turned away, feeling dumb.
Great, she thought as she grabbed her jar of change. Prince Charming. Wonderful. Fairy tales, what is wrong with me? The man laughed at me.
“Are you using all of the machines?” he asked as Anna shoved quarters in the washers. Anna shut the lid on the last one, put in a small fortune in coins and glanced around the room at all the washing machines quietly chugging away.
“Looks like it.” She walked over to her suitcase and threw the detergent and the jar of coins into it.
“You didn’t leave one open?” he asked and Anna looked up sharply at his tone. That tone was not a Prince Charming kind of tone and the look in his eyes was not nearly as merry as it had been a moment ago.
“I’ve already started all of them,” she told him. “You could come back in—” she looked at the digital read out on the first machine she had started “—fifteen minutes.”
“Since I’ve never seen you here before I am going to guess that you didn’t see the sign.”
He gestured with his thumb to a sign on the wall that she hadn’t seen.
“Of course I’ve seen the sign,” she huffed.
“Well, then you know.” He obviously didn’t believe her. Smart-ass, Anna thought. “You should leave one machine open.”
“Who the hell are you?” Anna asked. “The laundry room police?”
“No, I’m a guy with no clean clothes,” he snapped back.
“Look, I didn’t think anybody else would be doing their laundry at—” she looked at the clock which was right by the sign she hadn’t read “—8:00 a.m.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize I needed to run my laundry schedule past you.”
Anna and Prince Charming had a little silent showdown. She guessed he expected her to apologize and haul a bunch of wet clothes out of a machine so he could wash some of his big, tall clothes. And perhaps she might have done that, if the man—a complete stranger—hadn’t laughed at her. Really, you don’t laugh at strangers. It doesn’t make you any friends.
His eyes were boring into hers and, tired of him, she raised her eyebrows, well aware that there were few better standoff enders than a properly raised eyebrow.
“Fine,” he said, moving to the door. “But you could be a little more considerate.”
“Jerk,” she muttered under her breath.
“Bitch,” he muttered back and she had heard it enough times that it barely even hurt.
IT TOOK ANNA four hours to do all of her laundry. Well, an hour of laundry and then three hours of folding and trying to figure out where to put all her clothes. She was able to avoid seeing Prince Charming again, which she was pretty happy about. Having cooled down, she realized she had acted childishly and didn’t look forward to having to see him.
Anna was comfortably wearing clean underwear, freshly laundered jeans and a U.S.C. sweatshirt she thought she had thrown out. At the grocery store—the second item on her agenda today—she toyed with the idea of actually buying food to cook. Then she remembered who she was and bought some staples and a lot of microwave dinners.
She was unloading groceries back at her place when the phone rang.
She cradled the phone between her shoulder and ear while she opened the refrigerator door.
“Hello,” she said, picking up the three bags of oranges she bought and dumping them onto one of the shelves.
“Anna?”
Anna stilled, the hair on the back of her neck pricked. She shut the refrigerator door and leaned against it.
“Hello, Camilla,” she said smoothly.
“How is your first day of unemployment?” her boss asked brightly.
“Fabulous,” Anna answered snidely. “I should have quit years ago.”
Camilla only laughed at Anna’s little dig.
“What do you want, Camilla?” Anna grabbed up the bags of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups she had bought and fired them into a cupboard.
“I’m just making sure that you are going to be at the barbecue on Monday.”
“I can’t,” Anna said quickly. “I’m busy.”
“No, you’re not.”
“You don’t know that,” Anna snapped.
“Of course I do. Your sabbatical just started yesterday.”
Anna put a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread in the fridge.
“I already told Meg you were going to be there. Marie will be there.”
“That’s a seriously low blow, Camilla.” Anna blindly shoved a quart of milk into the cupboard.
“Well, sometimes low blows are the only ones that get things done,” Camilla chuckled. “It’s a barbecue with people who love you. It’s not the Spanish Inquisition.”
“Fine,” Anna breathed. “I’ll be there.”
“Oh, Anna, I am giving you fair warning so that you don’t freak out at the picnic…”
Just those words sent a chill to Anna’s heart, those were words with trouble all over them.
“I’ve invited someone I would like you—”
“No, you didn’t,” Anna interrupted, knowing that this someone was a single man who Camilla was dying to fix her up with. “You did not do that, Camilla.”
“Well, yes, I did. He’s very nice. A doctor.”
“I don’t care. I don’t care who he is. You have meddled enough with my life.”
“It’s not like I’ve set you up on a blind date. I just invited a nice single doctor—” Camilla put a little emphasis on the doctor part “—to my granddaughter’s birthday party. There is nothing more to it than that.”
But Anna knew better. With Camilla there was always something more. She was a Pandora’s Box of more.
AFTER PUTTING all her food back in the right spots Anna was at a loss. What did unemployed people do all day? She collapsed onto her couch. She was wide-awake so taking a nap would be fruitless. She checked her watch and thought longingly of the meeting she would be attending if she were at Arsenal.
But she wasn’t at Arsenal and thinking about it would just depress her. She dug the remote control out from under her butt and decided she would discover the joys of daytime television.
A half hour later she threw the remote back on the couch and decided there was no joy to daytime television.
People, she thought, shouldn’t sleep with amnesia victims who might be relatives. It’s gross.
Anna stood up and decided to clean her apartment. She had cleaned plenty of apartments. She had picked up after her messy sister and mother, so she was no stranger to the mop and broom.
But this. This was very much beyond her. She quickly realized that what had become of her home was something best left to a professional. The basics, sweeping and mopping she could handle. It was the advanced cleaning, the things involving mildew and harsh chemicals, that were destroying her apartment. She’d already accidentally bleached part of her carpet and the paint was bubbling up from the wall in her kitchen where she had sprayed the wrong kind of cleaner.
She quickly called a cleaning service and scheduled someone to come deal with the disaster. But in the mean time, the bathroom with its sturdy tile proved to be less destructible so she tried to tidy that up.
She was on her hands and knees in the tub working at the brown stuff around the drain when the solution to her problem—no, not the brown stuff problem. The other, bigger problem. The getting a life problem—hit her. Like a lightning bolt.
What better way to thwart Camilla and this doctor than to show up with a date of her own?
She sat straight up, the toothbrush in her hand dripped onto her jeans.
She needed a date, but not just any date. She needed a man who would expect no romantic entanglements. A man she wouldn’t have to exchange small talk with or any other uncomfortable platitudes.
“Gary,” she said with a smile.
She climbed out of the tub, threw the gloves and the toothbrush in the sink and headed out the door for Gary’s apartment.
Gary was perfect as a date-on-call for several reasons.
1. He lived just around the corner in her condo complex.
2. He was a mostly out of work actor and he had viewed the wedding she took him to as a chance to be on stage, which was why halfway through the night people were expressing their condolences for the brain tumor Gary was telling people he had.
3. He was gay. There were absolutely no uncomfortable entanglements.
In a word: perfect.
Anna crossed the small stretch of grass between her unit and his with a glad heart. She was going to beat Camilla at her own game. Anna laughed a little bit thinking about how perfect this was. How truly satisfying it would be to get back at Camilla in just this exact way.
Gary had been leaving messages on her machine for the past two weeks that she had not had the time to return and she felt a little bad. But he would understand. Gary was good like that.
The light was on behind his blinds, which Anna took as an omen that her plan was going to work out okay. She stepped up on his small cement landing and knocked. She felt bad that she hadn’t seen him in so long, a few weeks anyway. He had gotten some part in a play and she, of course, was always busy, so time flew by. She smiled and knocked again, happy that she had more time to spend with Gary who was always fun.
She heard footsteps and for the first time in a while, felt a smile that wasn’t forced spread across her face. She pushed back a lock of hair just as the door opened and she felt all the blood drain from her face.
“Well, well.” Prince Charming leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms over his bare chest.
4
“YOU?” ANNA WAS far more than surprised. She felt oddly as though the bottom of her stomach was missing. The man who had been so handsome fully clothed was now shirtless…
“In the flesh.”
“What are you doing here?” Anna asked. Where is Gary? Is this guy a friend of Gary’s? A…lover?
“I live here.”
Anna ignored his sarcasm. “Where’s Gary?”
“Well, if you’re talking about the guy who lived here before me, he moved out two weeks ago.” Prince Charming idly scratched his chest, which of course, was hairless and perfect and distracting to Anna in a dozen different ways.
“Two weeks?” she repeated partly because she didn’t believe it and partly because his abdomen had that six-pack effect that made women want to lick men’s stomachs.
“Yeah, he got some part in a soap opera or a play or something. Listen, not that this isn’t real fun standing here watching you watch me, talking about a guy you apparently didn’t know very well, but I’ve got paint I’d like to watch dry.”
“Wait a second, Gary moved?” The message on her machine. Of course, he was calling to tell her that he got the part and was moving. Anna, as per usual, was an awful friend. Anna’s ruined dreams of petty revenge were not nearly as disappointing as the fact that she had missed saying goodbye to Gary. She ducked her head for a second feeling truly awful.
“Do you have his address or number?” she asked.
He looked at her carefully for a second, then nodded. “Just a second,” he said. He pushed away from the doorframe and turned around. As the door shut behind him, she saw a long puckered scar that ran up the center of his back toward his hairline.
The scar was shocking. Brutal and ugly against the smooth, tan skin of his back.
“Oh, no…” she breathed as he walked away. She blinked and swallowed, not sure of what she had seen. Could this be any worse?
Nice one, Anna. Why don’t you go door to door offending and alienating people? You’re off to a great start. She felt horrible. Maybe she had spent too much time away from regular people. Dealing with the sharks in the advertising world had made her intolerant. Maybe, just maybe, she was a bitch. She’d threatened to kill Andrew with chopsticks. She’d lost touch with Gary and she was rude to a complete stranger just because he caught her making a fool of herself.
She felt like she was ten years old again sitting on a playground at a new school all by herself. She remembered all the quiet, kind kids who had tried to reach out to the new girl and she had bitten off their hands because she didn’t know what to do.
He came back within moments carrying a slip of paper. Anna took it and smiled up at him ruefully. “I was really rude to you. I am sorry.” He remained silent and Anna tried again. “You caught me making an ass out of myself and it embarrassed me. I really am sorry.”
There was a tense moment between them and it seemed like his very green eyes were looking right through her. She let him do it and, when he finally smiled at her, she felt like a weight had been lifted off her chest.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said and from the tone in his voice, Anna guessed that he had forgiven her for most of her stupid behavior. “I was pretty awful myself. We can call it even. I’m Sam. Sam Drynan.”
“Hi, Sam, I’m Anna.” She held out her hand and he shook it and, though she really couldn’t believe it, certainly never heard of it occurring in real life, electricity zipped across her fingertips and up her arm from the contact.
What the…? She looked down at her hand nearly lost in the giant paw of his hand and wondered if maybe she had stepped into some sort of Meg Ryan movie. Electric touches did not happen in Anna’s life.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” He grinned. His thumb lightly stroked the flesh of her hand and Anna’s stomach did a pleasant little shimmy.
Oh…what? That? Is he? Flirting! Anna pulled her hand out of his and he smiled warmly at her. He is! He is flirting with me!
Anna giggled and then quickly wanted to kill herself.
“No, that will be all.” She cringed. “I mean that’s all I need. Thanks.”
“Are you a professional Celine Dion impersonator?” he asked.
“No, strictly amateur.”
“Well, you’ve certainly got her moves down.” She looked at him blankly before he lightly beat his chest with his fist.
“Right.” She clapped her hands together in front of her so they wouldn’t do anything stupid like try to touch him. “Well, you should see my Michael Jackson.”
He laughed and she appreciated his sense of humor. A funny guy, she thought. I like that in a total hunk.
She stood there smiling at him, her body doing ridiculous things in reaction to just him being there. Shirtless and very handsome. Her thoughts about getting naked from the morning came back. Sam Drynan was definitely the kind of man she could get completely naked with.
“Well, um…” Anna realized she had been standing there, staring silently for several seconds. “Yes, thanks for the number and um, again sorry about earlier and…” She nodded her head and started backing off the porch. “Yeah, that’s it.”
“Okay, you don’t need anything else?” he asked, crossing his arms over that nice chest and leaning against the door frame. Anna shook her head, the power of speech suddenly abandoning her.
He lifted his hand in goodbye and shut his door. Anna started to walk back to her apartment. She stopped.
Camilla. The doctor. She sucked air in through her teeth and weighed the satisfaction of thwarting Camilla against the embarrassment of asking Sam out on a date. He was infinitely more effective than Gary. He was gorgeous and straight. More than that, he had flirted. She might be out of practice, but she wasn’t a complete lost cause.
The fact was she had nothing to lose and just imagining the look on Camilla’s face was enough to make her head back to Sam’s door and knock.
“You need to borrow some quarters?” he asked, laughing as he opened the door.
“I need a date,” she blurted. His mouth fell open and Anna wished that the ground would open right up and swallow her. “I mean, not a real date. A fake date.” His eyebrows snapped together and Anna, in a panic of regret and embarrassment, just kept digging the hole. She was the kind of person who, once she made a mistake, could seem only to make it worse. It was why she tried to never make mistakes in the first place. But here she was trying to jam both feet in her mouth. “There’s a doctor and Camilla and a picnic, well, a picnic and a birthday party…”
“You need two dates?” he asked.
“No!” she said. “Just one. It’s a picnic and birthday party combined.”
“For a doctor?”
“No, I’m trying to stay away from the doctor.”
“Oh!” Understanding dawned on his face. “You need a decoy date.”
That sounded a bit cold, but when a spade was a spade… “Yes, I need a decoy. I came by here to get Gary to go with me but…”
“He’s moved.” He nodded his head and Anna reminded herself that he had been flirting with her. She wasn’t that out of practice. She wasn’t that blind. Sam had shown definite interest and she was just doing what hundreds of women did everyday. She was asking a handsome man on a date. Well, a decoy date, but he seemed to understand.
“It’s on Monday. Noon,” she said into the very uncomfortable silence. “Memorial Day.”
“Good day for a picnic.” He was nodding again and the suspense was becoming almost too much. She was about to tell him to stick his six-pack and his lovely hairless chest right up his…
“I’ll think about it, Anna,” he said with a smile.
I’ll think about it? He might as well say I’d rather date Don Rickles.
“Okay,” she answered, feeling like an idiot.
She turned.
“Maybe you should leave me your number?” he said.
Right. Number. Duh. She turned around and told him her number before he could go back in and get a piece of paper or a pencil. Then she leaped down from the landing and walked across the grass, feeling the whole time the weight of his eyes on her back. What the hell was that? she wondered. I’ll think about it? The man had stroked her hand with his thumb. Men don’t just do that, do they? Maybe they do. Maybe I am a complete loser.
She almost went back and told him not to do her any favors, but in the end decided that there really was only so much embarrassment a girl could take in one day and she had hit her limit.
The last part of the day stretched ahead of her in one long yawn. A whole lot of absolutely nothing. How was she ever going to survive this sabbatical? Perhaps if she made an effort to make an ass of herself in front of a handsome guy every day, the time would just fly by.
Anna shook her head and shoved open the door to her apartment.
Maybe daytime TV improved the later it got in the day. She shrugged. It’s not like she had anything better to do.
SAM DRYNAN watched Anna leave and couldn’t quite decide what to do. He couldn’t actually figure out who she was and why he even wanted to watch her walk across the manicured lawn that separated her unit from his.
She was partly a nightmare, that was certain. A bossy nightmare. But at the same time there had been a few seconds while watching her dance around the laundry room that he had been charmed. And then she had looked at him with those impossible blue eyes and wide genuine smile and he had thought, Am I really this lucky? Do I get to walk into a laundry room and meet this girl?
Then, of course, she’d opened her mouth and ruined the image.
She was gorgeous. Tall and thin with black hair that had been tied back in a sort of serious-looking bun. Mostly it was her eyes, so big and so blue, blinking up at him that had him wondering what he was doing. A woman with eyes that big and that blue could only be trouble.
He had had the same kick-in-the-gut feeling tonight when he opened the door and saw her there with the same smile. Of course, immediately after she asked him out as a decoy. Did she think he was nuts? Well, he was a little, clearly, because he was thinking about going with her.
Sam laughed and shook his head. He closed his front door and went back into his apartment. He walked to his kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water and leaned against the counter to drink it. She was something.
One minute sharp and bitchy, the next sort of soft and sad and awkward. Watching her ask him out on a date was like watching a train derail. Gorgeous women like Anna usually weren’t so uncomfortable. Which was the real Anna? Sam wanted to put his money on the soft, sad and awkward girl with the genuine smile and big blue eyes.
“Anna,” he said out loud and then shut his mouth. He drained the bottle of water and went back into his spare bedroom where his weights were so he could finish his workout.
A year ago he used the weights to keep his body in shape so he could perform his job and stay on his toes. Now he used the weights as physical therapy so he could regain mobility and just a little bit of the strength he had lost.
It was the only thing he was ever going to get back.
AT 3:00 A.M., Sam was staring up at his ceiling.
Anna. What a piece of work she was. A real piece of work. Sam was fully aware of what he was doing. This obsessing was something he had been battling since the accident. In the deadening never-ending hours of free time, Sam would become fixated on something. Like woodworking. Like long-distance running. Like the stewardess on his flight to Los Angeles last month. Like how, if he had been just a little bit quicker in that hallway, if he had turned right instead of left when the wall came down on him, he wouldn’t be where he was now. Anna had joined the list of obsessions.
Let. It. Go. Get some sleep.
But the problem was there was no real reason for him to get to sleep. Nothing to really do in the morning, so he punched up the pillow behind his head and focused some more time and energy on Anna.
“Anna,” he said again, kind of liking the sound of her name in his empty room.
“Anna, I don’t mind if I do,” he said and decided he was going to go on that date with her. He just needed to find out if that woman with the warm smile and genuine eyes existed underneath all the attitude. If she did, if she was there, Sam smiled up at his ceiling…Well, he would find her.
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