Just This Once

by Judith Arnold

“As my blind date on the show. I’m telling you, Josh, you’d be a hell of a lot better than Marty the dentist.”

  Josh wasn’t sure how much of a compliment that was. “How do you know I’d be better?”

  She assessed him, her gaze narrowing, her confidence flagging visibly. “Maybe I’m wrong, but I got a sense of your attitude on the train last Sunday. You seemed like someone who takes things seriously but not too seriously.”

  He hadn’t expected such a frank answer, or such a perceptive one. He did take things seriously—but she was right. If he took things too seriously, he would have done something serious about his relationship with Melanie before she’d left for Florida. And he would have spent more time reading the files on the Branford Arms tenants than checking out Loretta on the train. And when he’d filled the second chair for Anita in the courtroom that morning, he would have done more than simply sit there looking stern and white and male.

  He was flattered, not so much by Loretta’s description of him as by her having reached such an accurate assessment of him, which implied that she’d paid awfully close attention to him when they’d met last week. An attractive single woman, not looking for love, had nailed down his personality on the basis of a single train ride into Manhattan. Melanie never even attempted to figure him out. She simply compared him to what her magazines claimed about men, and let him know how he measured up according to the magazines’ experts.

  “I can’t,” he said, surprised to hear the regret in his voice.

  “You can’t what?”

  “I can’t be your blind date.”

  She nodded, evidently having expected this response. She looked disappointed but not crushed. “You’re married, right?”

  “No, I’m not. But—”

  “Oh, God—are you a dentist?”

  “No.” He wondered why she was so negative about dentists. With teeth like hers, she ought to be crazy about them. They had obviously served her well.

  “So, what’s the problem? It wouldn’t cost you any money. The show is going to pay for the date. We’d appear on TV, pretend we’d never seen each other before, act good-natured and jolly about the whole thing, and then go on the date. Then we’d return to the show after the date and explain that the chemistry was all wrong or something.”

  But what if the chemistry wasn’t all wrong? Well, chemistry would never be an issue, he assured himself. He wasn’t even going to venture into the lab with Loretta. She wasn’t looking to fall in love, and neither was he.

  “I’m not married,” he explained, “but I have a girlfriend.”

  Loretta nodded. “Yeah, okay, well, I guess that’s not surprising. A good looking guy like you. Of course you have a girlfriend.”

  Loretta thought he was good looking. He tried not to smile.

  “I’m probably keeping you from her right now,” Loretta added apologetically, then took a long drink as if in a hurry to empty her glass and be on her way.

  “No. She’s not here. In New York, I mean. She’s in Florida.”

  Loretta’s eyes narrowed again. She was reappraising him. Taking him for a creep, no doubt, someone who’d met her for drinks because his girlfriend was out of town. Which, he supposed, wasn’t that far from the truth. Should he mention that his out-of-town girlfriend hosted rowdy parties? That she’d taken to blasting Gloria Estefan through speakers that used to resonate with the New York Philharmonic and the Juilliard String Quartet, and occasionally, when Melanie wanted to cut loose, with Tony Bennett?

  Wait a minute. He didn’t have to defend himself. For all Loretta knew, he’d agreed to meet her because he expected to discuss cell phones with her.

  “Well, okay,” she finally said, sighing dramatically. “It was just a thought. If I get dragged into this blind date scenario, I’ll just have to take my chances on whoever they dig out from under a rock.”

  She looked resigned. He felt bad for her. As frustrating as his work sometimes was, no one ever demanded that he make a fool of himself on TV. “Do you really have to agree to a blind date?” he asked. “Can’t they find someone else to appear on the show?”

  “I really have to.”

  “I wish I could help out.” He also wished she would smile again—even if he had a girlfriend and shouldn’t be wishing for things like that.

  “Look, it’s not your problem. Don’t worry about it.” She searched the bar for their waitress. “I’ll take care of this,” she said, gesturing toward the empty glasses on the table.

  “Don’t be silly.” He reached into his hip pocket for his wallet.

  “I’m not being silly. You came here because I wanted to talk to you about the show.”

  “I’m paying for the drinks,” he insisted firmly.

  “Josh, look. I dragged you here under false pretenses, I tried a bait-and-switch on you—”

  “I’m paying for the drinks,” he repeated, then thrust his credit card into the waitress’s hand as she approached. “I’d like the check,” he muttered, then glowered at Loretta.

  To his surprise, she laughed. “You’re bossy.”

  “I am not.”

  “And argumentative.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I ought to count my blessings that you said no to the blind date. It could have been really bad, someone as bossy and argumentative as you are..”

  “It would have been terrific,” he snapped, annoyed that she could laugh at him for acting like a gentleman. “I’d make an outstanding blind date. Better than anyone else your show is going to find.” His eyes met hers, and he suddenly felt trapped. She was still laughing, and to his dismay he couldn’t keep a chuckle from escaping. “I didn’t say I’d do it,” he reminded her.

  “You just said you’d do it better than anyone else.”

  “Not in those words.” The waitress returned with the charge slip for him to sign. He stuffed his charge card and the receipt into his wallet and lifted his gaze to Loretta again. That smile of hers wouldn’t die. It broadened her face, opened it up, made her seem a bit too smart and challenging. The way he felt at that moment was not unlike the way he felt whenever Solly checkmated him: annoyed but mostly appreciative, full of respect and admiration for a worthy opponent.

  “A blind date on TV…” He shook his head. “It’s crazy.”

  “But you want to think about it,” she guessed.

  He didn’t want to think about it, but he couldn’t help himself. “I really shouldn’t be considering it.”

  “But you’d make a terrific blind date. You said so yourself.” Her smile was still smart and challenging, but there was an undertone of beseechment in it. She wanted him to do this, if only to protect her from Marty Calabrese, the dentist, or some creep the show would find under a rock.

  He was weakening. It’s crazy, he reminded himself. “Loretta…”

  “I’ve got to have an answer soon. If it isn’t you, we’re going to have to line up someone else. God knows who they’ll come up with. Someone who laughs like a horse. Someone with hair growing on his back. Someone who thinks smacking a woman’s butt is an appropriate way of showing affection.” She shuddered.

  She was playing him for sympathy, but in such a comical way he laughed again. Damn it, he was allowed to make friends with an amusing woman.

  Any alleged blind date he’d share with her wouldn’t be about falling in love. She’d been quite clear on that score. How could Melanie object to his helping a friend out and having a little fun? Just this once, why not do something silly and meaningless and not entirely decent?

  “Marty is probably your best bet,” he said. “But what the hell. I’ll be your blind date.”

  Chapter Eight

  “I’m going through schlock withdrawal,” Bob moaned.

  Loretta propped one leg across her other knee and noticed a couple of hairs near her ankle that she’d missed when she’d shaved that morning. She had on a pair of twill shorts with lots of pockets, which me
ant she didn’t have to carry a purse. She always felt freer without a purse; her hands remained empty and she didn’t constantly have to hitch her shoulder to keep the strap from sliding down her arm.

  Central Park was crowded, even though a layer of clouds filtered out the sunlight. It failed to filter out the heat, but that didn’t stop thousands of people from strolling through the park, roller-blading, bicycling, skateboarding, playing volleyball or bocce, lying on blankets and listening to music or dozing. People in Manhattan spent too much of their time indoors during the week, and on Saturdays they spilled into the park, preferring fresh hot air to stale conditioned air.

  Loretta and Bob had met on the east side of the park near the entrance to the zoo, purchased ice-creams pops, and settled on a bench that would be in the shade if there were enough sunlight for the trees to create shade. He had phoned her a couple of hours ago and asked if she was up for an afternoon in the park. His girlfriend of the moment was in Washington, D.C. visiting her father, who was an assistant undersecretary of something, and anyway, he’d told Loretta, she wasn’t a big fan of Central Park. “She says there are too many dogs and not enough pooper-scoopers,” he explained.

  Loretta considered that a legitimate complaint, but the problem didn’t faze her. She was used to stepping in shit.

  She hadn’t stepped in any yet today. In fact, she was in a pretty good mood. She’d reached the fudgy core of her ice-cream pop without catching any drips on her T-shirt, and the pleasantly syncopated rhythm of African drumming drifted over the hill from the Band Shell, where musicians and performers always congregated. The park’s expanses of lawn were a vivid green, not the scorched yellow they’d be by August, and squirrels and pigeons swarmed the edges of the walkways, feasting on discarded popcorn, sunflower seeds, and bread crusts.

  Life could be worse, Loretta thought. It could be raining. Her ice-cream novelty could have been missing the fudgy core. She could have planted her foot in the wrong place and gotten dog shit all over her sandal. Josh Kaplan could have rejected her proposition last night, leaving her to the mercies of Becky Blake and the production team for her staged blind date.

  Bob was clearly not in as good a mood as she was, however. He glumly licked his strawberry shortcake ice cream and stared at the varied specimens of humanity wandering past the bench. Maybe he really, really missed his girlfriend—but Loretta didn’t think that was the cause of his mopiness.

  “What do you mean, schlock withdrawal?” she asked.

  “Becky’s wrong about the show,” he said. “Harold’s wrong. They’re going to push us into becoming a smiley-face program, and we’re going to lose even more audience share.”

  “Maybe they’re not wrong,” Loretta argued. “Maybe the world has finally grown sick of watching TV shows that feature buxom women getting into catfights over beer-swilling bozos.”

  “Trust me, Loretta—women having catfights is something the world will never grow sick of watching. Especially if they’re buxom women.” He scooped a blob of pink ice cream into his mouth with his tongue and swallowed. “Which of our shows had the highest ratings this year? The one about the Suburban Slut Society.”

  “That was a fluke,” Loretta argued. “We blipped on the ratings because all the other stations were broadcasting the president’s speech. You know people care more about suburban sluts than about the president’s latest initiative.”

  “People care more about suburban sluts than about a lot of things. I’ve been thinking about this, Loretta, and I believe Harold is steering us wrong. He just doesn’t understand what we’re all about. He doesn’t even watch the show.”

  “How do you know? He could be the show’s biggest fan.” Actually, Loretta and Bob knew little about Harold at all. They saw him at the annual Christmas party, where he always remained removed from the festivities, hovering in one corner of the private function room at the restaurant where the party took place and allowing his employees to pay homage, to wend their way to his corner, thank him for allowing them the privilege of working for him, and wish him a happy holiday. He was a large man in both height and girth, and he wore the same suspenders and bow-tie ensemble—bright red with white snowflakes embroidered on them—every year.

  In addition to Becky’s show, his syndication company produced two game shows, a cooking show and a home décor show. Loretta had watched Home Sweet Home once and found it about as exciting as watching paint dry—or, more accurately, watching wallpaper paste and grouting dry. The theme of that show had been renovating lavatories.

  Home Sweet Home was actually performing a lot worse than the Becky Blake Show, probably due to the fact that it was broadcast Sunday mornings at eight-thirty, when most people were either at church or asleep. Atheistic lavatory renovators apparently kept the numbers for Home Sweet Home from vanishing altogether.

  But the game shows and the Becky Blake Show were Harold’s cash cows. If the Becky Blake Show dropped in the ratings, the company felt the hit. Loretta supposed that Harold might panic under the circumstances. Heaven help his syndication company if it had to depend on Home Sweet Home and its cooking show, Someone’s In The Kitchen With Dinah, for the bulk of its income.

  “We should do a show on moron bosses who manipulate their employees by threatening layoffs,” Bob suggested.

  Loretta gave him a look. “Now, Bob, that would not be a kinder, gentler show.”

  “Who the hell wants kinder, gentler, anyway? Wouldn’t you rather put together shows with a high scuzz factor? Check it out,” he murmured, indicating with a nod two curvaceous teenage girls sauntering past their bench in scant tank tops and crotch-high shorts. Their exposed navels glinted with jewelry and their hair was highlighted with colorful dye—purple in one girl’s case and green in the other’s. “Suburban sluts,” Bob observed. “Prime Paramus pulchritude. Look at how everyone is staring at them. They’ve got the highest ratings in the park today, am I right?”

  “I wasn’t staring at them until you pointed them out.”

  “Are you Becky Blake’s typical demographic?”

  “Of course not. I’m employed. I’m at my job when the show is on.” She used her teeth to scrape the last of the ice cream from the stick, then tossed it into the trash pail next to the bench. “I suppose I’ll be able to watch her show every day once I get laid off.”

  “You’re not going to get laid off,” Bob said, lobbing his stick in a hook shot over her head and into the trash pail.

  “Of course I am. Last to arrive, first to depart. If anyone should be whining here, it should be me.” But she wasn’t in a whiny mood. She was actually feeling hopeful—not about her job, but about next week. Whenever her future appeared ominous, Loretta’s strategy was generally not to think more than a couple of days ahead. She’d meet up with those storm clouds lurking on the horizon soon enough. No need to keep focusing on them as they approached.

  Right now, they were far enough in the distance that she could ignore them. The next few days ought to be okay, if she could enlist Bob’s support. “Listen, Bob, I’ve found someone to be my blind date on the show.”

  “What?” Twisting on the bench to face her, he scowled. If the afternoon were brighter, the neon colors of his striped shirt would have hurt her eyes. Even in the gloomy light, it was a ghastly shirt.

  She kept her opinion of his apparel to herself. She required his help to make this blind date thing work, and insulting his sartorial taste wasn’t the way to get it. “I don’t want to get sandbagged on the show. I’ve been coerced into doing the whole blind date thing on the air, but there’s a limit to how much misery I can stand, especially since I’m going to wind up getting fired anyway.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Well, just assuming. This guy I lined up to be my blind date is no one I actually know or anything. It’s my cell phone guy. He’s agreed to come on the show as my blind date instead of as the cell phone vigilante. I’m going to need you on my side when Gilda
and Kate say it’s cheating for me to know my blind date in advance.”

  Bob studied her thoughtfully. “Why? What I mean is, why him? You’ve got the hots for him or something?”

  “No. That’s just the point.” She swiveled sideways on the bench and propped her feet on the green wooden slats. A gust of wind carried a musty scent their way from the vicinity of the zoo, a blend of old hay, soap, and pachyderm. Loretta found it curiously pleasant, a combination of domesticated and feral that seemed appropriate to New York. “I’m not looking for love,” she explained to Bob. “He’s got a girlfriend. So we’re both going into it with our eyes open. It’s really perfect. Neither of us has any desire to turn this date into the romance of the century. There won’t be any hurt feelings, because there’ll be no feelings at all.”

  “If that was what you were aiming for…” Bob pouted. “You could’ve chosen me.”

  “I didn’t see you leaping to your feet to volunteer.”

  “You didn’t leap, either.”

  “I got volunteered. Everyone at the show wants me to do it. You want me to do it, too. So fine, I’m doing it. I just don’t want anyone’s heart to get mixed up in it. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  Bob nodded slowly. “I guess.”

  “So you’ll back me up when I propose Josh Kaplan to be my blind date?”

  “It might work better if I propose him.”

  It would work much better. “Would you do that?” she asked hopefully.

  “Sure. This way you can pretend you don’t know him. Josh Kaplan?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s so special about him?”

  “Nothing,” Loretta said, although that wasn’t entirely accurate. She’d enjoyed looking at him while they’d enjoyed their drinks last night. His eyes were awfully expressive, a multitude of colors that signaled when he was going to smile and when he was going to frown. He had a nice build, the sort of body that looked equally comfortable in a business suit and in old jeans and a T-shirt. What made him most special, as far as she was concerned, was the fact that he’d agreed to appear on the show, to have a little fun and not take any of it to heart—and the fact that he wasn’t being foisted upon her by her brother Nicky. “Like I said, he’s got a girlfriend,” she told Bob. “So I’m not exploiting him. He’s not going to fall in love with me or anything.”