by Heather Gean
I grabbed my bag. “Let’s go get some lunch. I can’t talk about this on an empty stomach.”
“Will you give me the inside scoop then?” Liz asked. She smiled devilishly at me.
“If by inside scoop you mean my scooping your tongue out from inside your head with a sharp object should you continue to talk about my engagement, then yes.” Liz joined me in a light-hearted laugh as I lifted myself from my chair to pick up the file folder she’d made me drop to the desk.
“Lunch it is!” With one hand in a forward “charge” motion, she disappeared around the edge of the cubicle. Before I followed her, I flipped open the front flap of the file folder. Across from the handwritten title of Van’s artwork were a date, a time, and a loopy signature. Instead of solving any of the Van puzzle, it only added an extra piece. The new piece had a name, and it was Elsie Sappho.
~*~
I was stretched out across my bed, finally engulfed in the wonderful smell of home. Ringo lay beside me, lapping his tongue towards my face every moment he thought I wasn’t paying attention. I scratched vigorously behind one of his ears. His face scrunched up in satisfaction as I did so. “This is the only guy I need in my life,” I said to Liz, who stood at the foot of my bed going through the new clothes in my suitcase. The few details I’d tossed her at lunch had only fueled her curiosity, and she’d shown up at my apartment when I got off work to ‘help me unpack.’ She’d been grilling me ever since.
“What about sex? You can’t have sex with Ringo,” Liz pointed out. I glared in her direction. “Speaking of sex… how’s Mr. Ashley Schroeder in bed?”
“I don’t know.”
“You mean… you don’t know how to explain it because it was so awesome? So horrible?”
“I mean I don’t know because there was no sex.” Liz dropped the shirt in her hand to her side to attempt to stare the truth out of me. “I’m serious.”
“I’m shocked,” Liz said, “and a bit sad. Why the hell didn’t you bang him? He’s Ashley fucking Schroeder! He’s beautiful. He’s rich. He’s all yours! Have I taught you nothing?”
I sat up to return her look of disgust. “There was not even a pseudo-sexy moment between us. I wouldn’t have slept with him had he promised me his entire fortune in exchange for it.” Liz narrowed her eyes at me. “I’m not lying. Kissing him was bad enough. I can only imagine how horrible the rest would be.”
“Rainy, that’s horrible.” She sat down on the end of the bed, suddenly overtaken with best friend concern. “He’s really not a good kisser?” The shake of my head seemed to crush Liz’s heart. “Is there at least a hot pool boy around or something?” I winced and offered a small laugh.
“There is, but I think one of Ashley’s sisters already has claim on him.” I collapsed back to the bed. Ringo groaned from the bounce of the mattress under him and rolled over. I put a hand on his belly.
“God, Rainy, that sucks!”
“It sucks for you too. Your bridesmaid dress is chartreuse.” The blatant horror on her face was hilarious. I may as well have pierced straight through her soul.
“Chartreuse? Oh no, no, no, no, no— What’s this?” Liz’s long string of protests was punctuated by a faded red shirt hanging from one of her accusing fingers. My heart caught in my throat. “Where did you get this?” Guilt overwhelmed me because it was easier to accept guilt than the girlishly happy feeling that accompanied that shirt.
“See, I went to this concert…” It wasn’t a lie. It obviously wasn’t the whole truth.
“Since I know they don’t sell these at concerts, I’m going to have to ask you to be a little more specific.” There was a long pause. All sorts of feelings ripped at my insides. Though Liz was one of my most trusted and best friends, it was difficult to explain the situation with Van. Was there anything I could say about him that wouldn’t hint of attraction? I was beating myself up on the inside. “Who’s the guy?”
“He isn’t the guy,” I defended.
“I didn’t say he was the guy.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Oh, my God! It’s that guy, that guy with the weird name that you mentioned on the phone.” The suspicion drained from her features and was quickly replaced by excitement. She sat down on the end of the bed again, still clutching the shirt. She brought it to her face and breathed in, nearly melting as she exhaled. “God, is that what he smells like? He smells hot. Is he hot?” I blushed and sat up to snatch the shirt away from her. I held it protectively in my lap.
“Liz, stop it.”
“Stop what? Rainy, we’re best friends. C’mon… tell me. I need to know,” she said pleadingly. I growled and groaned at her.
“His name is Van.”
“Van! I knew it was Van!” A short silence filled the room. Liz looked expectantly at me, but I didn’t indulge. “Tell me about Van.”
“What do you want to know?”
Her frustration grew. “Tell me anything! Do you like him?”
“He’s okay.”
Liz rolled her eyes. “Rainy, you know that wasn’t what I meant. Is he hot? Did you have a secret, passionate rendezvous with him?” She smiled at my unwillingness to respond. “You did!”
“I did not!” I sighed in anger and embarrassment and gave up trying to avoid her persistent speculating. “Yes, I think he’s hot. He’s a friend of Ashley’s. He’s an artist, or something. I… don’t really know a lot about him, but it doesn’t matter, does it? I’m engaged.”
The cranks in Liz’s mind were turning. “What draws you to him so much more than to Ashley? They’re friends, right?”
“Sort of… I guess. There’s a lot of trust there, but not a whole lot of that typical guy friendship stuff. They don’t hang out. They don’t talk.”
“Maybe they’re dating secretly and you are just the cover up.” I shot down her theory.
“They aren’t gay, and they aren’t together.” I crossed my arms over my chest. The soft fabric of the shirt caressed one of my arms.
“What’s so great about Van?”
“He’s different.” A small smile crept across my face after I said it. Liz noticed it with an analytical eye.
“I think that you only want him because he’s a bad boy.” Before I could argue that Van wasn’t a bad boy, Liz was speeding away on her theory. “It’s built in from childhood. Girls are taught to fear bad boys. Boys are told not to be bad boys. But, your liking a good guy is difficult because it seems conformist. I think, truthfully, you only like Van because you aren’t ready to settle down.” I blinked off the insanity produced by Liz’s psycho-evaluation of me.
“Van isn’t a bad boy. And getting married doesn’t necessarily mean settling down. Settling down is like having kids. Being married could be nice, ya know? Not coming home to an empty apartment. Not needing so much Tupperware because nothing can be cooked in portions for one person.”
Liz’s eyes softened. I saw the hint of a knowing smile on her face. “It could be okay. Trophy wives always have affairs just like their businessmen husbands do. Ashley will never be home. Van could be your pool boy, figuratively speaking.”
“I can’t do that.” I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t live a lie. I couldn’t degrade marriage like that. I didn’t want my marriage to be fractured like half of the other ones. But I couldn’t have Van, and that killed me. “I’ve got to stop thinking about it. I’ll get over it.”
Liz smiled at me, accepting that the conversation needed to end. She stood back up and rifled through my suitcase again. She was holding up a sundress as I was folding up Van’s shirt. “Do you think he’d be good in bed?” Her question coaxed a smile out of me instantly. I laughed as a darker shade of crimson swept across my face. I could only offer a nod, sending Liz into devious laughter. I threw Van’s shirt at her head. Ringo stretched with a doglike yawn, and I ran a hand across his velvety fur. I sunk back into the comfort of my bed.
It was good to be home.
~*~
My mom called me as I was getting ready to go out w
ith the girls for my welcome home celebration. I propped the phone between my ear and shoulder, which muffled her voice, but I still heard exactly what she said. I nearly dropped the phone. My hand caught it just before it slipped from my head. I pressed it more firmly to my ear. “You want me to what?”
“I want you to invite Ashley down for the weekend. We need to meet him. I’ll make dinner. It will be a great opportunity for us to get to know him! After all, the wedding is so soon and everything.” The last sentence hinted of resentment. When I had told my mother that the wedding was scheduled for December, she got upset. I was putting off telling her that it was going to be at the Plaza instead of in a church because that would also create an argument. All things considered, I couldn’t say no to my mother.
“I’ll have to call and ask him. He works all the time,” I explained.
“That is no excuse! He had better be the kind of man that makes time for family.” I agreed with her, but I knew that Ashley wasn’t. I promised her that I would call to invite him. I put the phone down on the edge of the bathroom sink.
I had no sooner than put the finishing touches on my appearance when my phone rang again. “Hey, how was your flight?” It was Ashley. How had I answered it without checking the name? I stammered before collecting myself enough to say anything.
“Hey! Good. You called with perfect timing actually. My mother has invited you down for the weekend. My family really wants to meet you. She’s going to make dinner. It should be fun. Are you free?”
“Actually, I’m not. I’ve got some guys coming in from Amsterdam that I need to meet with on Saturday. Would it be okay to reschedule?” This wasn’t a surprise.
“Are you sure? She’ll be heartbroken.” I was asking on behalf of my mother’s feelings. Ashley did not want to be on my mother’s bad list.
“Tell her I’m really sorry, but that I promise to come down another weekend really soon. Anyway, I was just calling to make sure you made it home okay. I’m on my way out to do a late night meeting with my dad and some clients who are only in for a few hours. I’ll talk to you soon?”
“Sure.”
“Take care, babe!”
I rolled my eyes as I hung up. Being rude to me was one thing, but being rude to my parents was something else. He had some nerve creating a double standard like that. I was expected to drop all of my obligations for him, but he couldn’t rearrange a single thing for me. I could already see the hierarchy of our relationship, and I despised it. My anger shifted to remorse. My mother was expecting to prepare a special dinner for me and my fiancée this weekend. I hated to disappoint her by showing up to dinner alone.
The bulk of my worries remained elsewhere. Next weekend was opening weekend for my exhibit so my free time would be limited. Maybe inviting my parents to the exhibit would cover up the fact that my marriage was failing before it had even begun. Then again, it would take a government-sized band aid to cover this kind of hemorrhage. I could probably get one on loan from DML, after all, who was better at making mistakes look good?
~*~
It was obvious around the museum that it was only two days before opening weekend. A mountain of papers continually grew on my desk. I was a walking memo pad. Our no-show, former-main-piece guy was bombarding us with calls, claiming he had been given the wrong delivery date. Since I had a copy of the letter I had mailed him, I knew he was lying, but I had been trying to figure out if we could stick the piece anywhere. It was, after all, a great piece. I stood in one of the hallways of the exhibit with a layout diagram pressed against a wall, making notes on the edges.
“Guess what I have!” Wes said as he came through the doorway.
My heart skipped beats. “James Wellington’s review?”
Wes shook his head and held up a magazine. “Not quite. Someone else is giving this exhibit more publicity than he will.” I focused in on the glossy, flawless picture on the cover of the magazine and nearly dropped my layout diagram. I had to blink a few times to make sure I was seeing it correctly. I snatched the magazine from Wes’ hand. It was the cover of me and Ashley.
“Oh my god,” slipped from my mouth. I had never looked that good in my life.
“Oh my god is right! Not only do you look stunning, but you mentioned the exhibit in the interview! That was genius on your part,” Wes said. “We’re expected to draw huge numbers of people, even some sizable donations.”
I thumbed through the magazine to the huge spread. The pictures, colors, and texts were beautifully mixed to create a breathtaking couple of pages. I had to hand it to them; Ashley and I actually looked in love. Under an extremely soft, innocent picture of me by myself was the caption Rainy Clarke, the future Mrs. Ashley Schroeder. It made our relationship look like a fairy tale. My head dizzied from the concept of my face being in a nationwide publication.
Wes took the magazine from me. “In the middle of all this lovey-dovey crap, there is a fabulous bit of information about the exhibit.” Wes skipped a few lines involving the petty details, but finished aloud with, “This exhibit has been organized in part by Rainy and is rumored to be one of the must-see art exhibits in the country.” It didn’t matter if the statement was true because its readers would believe most anything in print, especially if they believed that crap about miraculous cellulite loss.
“Wow…” was all I could say. It was phenomenal publicity. We couldn’t have paid for better. For once, something great had spawned from my match with Ashley.
Let me put things in perspective. Ashley himself wasn’t a big deal to the media. Sure, he was heir to a fortune, very handsome, and a favorite among New York-based tabloids, but he wasn’t Hollywood famous. Essentially, it was his being matched by the government system to me that put his face, and mine, on the cover of that magazine. He was the first high profile individual to seek a government match, since the trend among the rich and famous was not to make anything legal. They hardly stayed married long enough at a time for it to matter, but nonetheless, all of these facts combined to create this high-profile situation. Finally, it seemed that Ashley and I were working together on something, whether it was relationship-based or not.
“You know, I have a Schroeder refrigerator,” Wes said as he closed the magazine. I had no idea why he was telling me this but gave him an uncertain nod. “It keeps the beer nice and cold.” I nodded again in an awkward moment with Wes. He pressed his lips together and nodded back at me. “Yeah.”
“Wes, could you just… ignore the fact that I’m on the cover of that magazine? It doesn’t change anything.” He still gave me a sideways, awkward stare. My coworker of some odd months was looking at me as if I was his favorite star and he was stumbling over his words in shock. It weirded me out more than you could imagine. I knocked the magazine, and the file folder he carried under it, out of his hands, sending papers floating to the floor.
“What the hell? Rainy!”
I smiled, content with his normal reaction. Though he would be annoyed with me for the next thirty minutes or so, it was worth it in the long run. He folded the magazine angrily into one of his fists, gathered his papers, and stalked away.
I spent the next little while making room for the extra piece, which was sitting uselessly in the storage room. I had just gotten an adequate space cleared when Wes appeared in the doorway. Even through his glasses I could see the annoyance in his eyes. “You have a visitor.” The second shock of my day bypassed Wes and came towards me with open arms.
“Surprise!” Ashley said. My eyes widened. Surprise was an understatement. He had me wrapped up in a hug before I could shake the astonishment. My arms were pinned under his, and I could only awkwardly put my forearms around his waist. I couldn’t decide if my shortness of breath was due to the tightness of the hug or my shock.
“Wow! What are you doing here?” I pulled out of his arms.
“Well, I felt horrible that I couldn’t make it in this weekend, and I realized this morning that I had two days without any major commitments, so
I figured I would come down and surprise you!”
I weakly smiled without showing any teeth, tilted my head to the side, and shrugged one shoulder. “Well, I’m surprised!” Ashley chuckled along with me.
“What are you doing right now? Can you get away?” I looked at the space I had just cleared.
“Not for a while. I’ve got to slide one extra piece in, get the lighting fixed on this wall after that, and then call up the artist to let him know that he is back in the exhibit. It could take a few hours.”
Ashley nodded. “Don’t you have people for that?”
“This museum brings in very little money. We don’t charge much… So I really don’t have anyone else.” I watched that sink in as pseudo-disappointment. “You know how it is.”
“Yeah, I do.” He ignored that I was busy and began to look around. “So this is what you do? It’s impressive.”
I actually received that compliment in a true form. I smiled in spite of myself. “Thanks.” My heart softened to him as I watched him welcome the artwork with observant eyes. “You can hang around in here with me if you want. Just don’t touch anything.”
After some coaxing, I convinced Wes to help me move the piece into place. Ashley milled around the galleries as we repositioned the small spotlights, which was more work than it should have been. That particular strip of lights was stationary, so to space them further apart took a drill and a lot of patience and measuring. We almost had it mounted back into place when Ashley returned to our area.
“I didn’t know Van had something in your exhibit,” Ashley said. “Small world, yeah?” My back was to him, so he couldn’t see the deer in the headlights expression on my face. I relaxed when I realized it wasn’t an accusation.
“One of our main pieces never showed up, and Van had one in the area. It was last minute,” I explained. “But it’s cool, don’t you think?”