Miss Match

by Leslie Carroll

  “Are you okay?” Walker asked, noticing that Kathryn seemed to be wincing.

  “I’ll be all right. I just think I’m allergic to this place.” She was thinking that it was a good thing after all that Walker and she had such divergent tastes in interior design; otherwise, he’d be even easier to fall for. If they ever were to be a couple—which was never going to happen anyway—she could predict a lot of fights over aesthetics.

  “I’m not insulted.”

  “You’re not?”

  “Nope. This isn’t my taste either. My mother hired a Fifty-seventh Street decorator, and this was his high concept of Manhattan sophistication. Kind of soulless, huh?” He gestured to the piano and the empty cocktail glass perched upon it. “But I’m trying.” He smiled. “It’s the music—and the very dry martinis—that make it livable.”

  Kathryn nodded, willing to accept his explanation. Nothing about the Walker Hart she knew would have led her to believe that he preferred so much sinister-looking furniture in such boring colors.

  Walker seated himself at his piano and ripped into a passionate composition that immediately caused eddies of emotion to cascade right through Kathryn’s soul. She watched his long, tapered fingers expertly caressing the keys with varying degrees of intensity; now pianissimo, now mezzo forte, his body rhythmically swaying with the metre. Mesmerized, Kathryn found herself imagining what it might be like to feel those fingers playing her spine, her hairline, her . . .

  “Do you like this?” Walker asked as he continued to play.

  “Truth?”

  “Bring it on.”

  “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. And I’m not just saying that. It simply is. What is it? It sounds familiar.”

  “I doubt it, unless you’ve been listening inside my soul for the past dozen or so years. It’s mine,” Walker said modestly.

  “It’s yours?!”

  “Yup.” He continued to play the heart-wrenching ballad.

  Kathryn swallowed hard so that he wouldn’t catch the tear in the corner of her left eye that threatened to travel down her cheek.

  Walker began to softly sing the lyrics. Without missing a beat, he handed Kathryn a typed sheet. “Here are the words, if you want to follow along.”

  “Is it okay if I look at these later? I just want to feel the song right now.” Kathryn closed her eyes.

  “Sure.”

  The ballad told the story of the bittersweet ending of a passionate love affair; yet it ended on a note of hope that the lovers could perhaps one day arrive at a reconciliation.

  “It’s gorgeous,” an enraptured Kathryn murmured as the final chord died away. “It’s amazing that you wrote this. You should write a Broadway show. Remember, ‘a life without music is a sorry one.’ How could you deprive the theatergoing public of your gifts? I’m not kidding. If the rest of your compositions are anything like this, not only will the show run for years, but Olympic hopefuls will be ice-skating to this ballad, Barbra Streisand will resume her recording career just to sing it and beat Neil Diamond to the punch. There’s incredible passion in your work.”

  “You think it’s easy to sit down and just write a Broadway show?” Walker laughed. “I’ve been tinkering with the same idea for more than a decade.”

  “If it was easy, it wouldn’t be a challenge. Would it?” Their eyes locked.

  Kathryn turned to look at a picture on the north wall of his living room, noticing that all the walls were painted the same shade of industrial linen white. “Who’s this?” she asked looking at the canvas’ sixteen repeated images painted in day-glo colors.

  Walker looked at her, surprised. “Andy Warhol,” he replied.

  “I know it’s a Warhol. I meant who’s the subject of the painting?”

  He joined her and looked at it blankly.

  “At least it adds some color to the room,” Kathryn said helpfully.

  Walker continued to scrutinize the canvas. He moved closer to it, then backed away and squinted. “I have no idea who this is.” He started to laugh. “I don’t particularly like it either, but we’re on the same page; I thought it brightened up the place. You do too, by the way. Immensely.”

  “Do what, Walker?”

  “Brighten up the place.”

  Kathryn cocked her head sideways, slyly regarded him from the corner of her eye, and wagged her right index finger. “You’re doing it again,” she said.

  Chapter 7

  Kathryn stirred a soggy french fry—the remainder of her “comfort food” meal—around in a pool of ketchup, and looked up at her date. The fact that Eddie Benson had said very little on his Six in the City videotape had lent him an air of mystery, propelling Kathryn to accept his offer of dinner and an Off-Broadway play.

  Unfortunately, laconic was turning out to be more boring than alluring. Eddie was nice enough, but a man of few words “offscreen” as well, which she hadn’t realized until she tried to strike up a conversation after the theater, at the Runyonesque diner Little Willy’s, on West Forty-seventh Street. It was kind of neat though, that Eddie had introduced her to Little Willy himself, who was anything but, by the way. The man had forearms like sides of Angus beef. Willy, not Eddie. Willy looked like he had some powerful friends he could call on if he couldn’t take care of business himself.

  Although . . . Eddie wasn’t at all bad looking. He had a Baldwin-ish two-day growth of stubble on his chin— which could be sexy in the right light and at the right time of day—and his light brown hair kept falling into his deep-set eyes. Kathryn tried to guess his vocation. At least he didn’t look like her stereotypical image of a dentist. Or an accountant.

  “You aren’t a dentist, are you?” she asked him suddenly.

  “No.”

  Okay. Kathryn had never much enjoyed spending time with people where she felt compelled to keep the ball in the air. And this was a first date. Weren’t people usually eager in these circumstances to find out as much about each other as possible, in order to make that big second date determination? Kathryn felt like she needed to ask a judge to issue Eddie a subpoena in order to get him to talk.

  “On your tape, you said you were seeking some stability in your life.” Since Eddie had been forthcoming about that topic, perhaps he might be tempted to expound upon it.

  “Yeah. My mother was Italian, so food and hugs and Christmas were all pretty important in our house. And . . . my line of work, it’s . . . well, it’s unstable. So I’m looking for . . . stability. A little woman to come home to. Do you make sauce?”

  Kathryn winced.

  “It was a joke,” he said, slapping the bottom of the Heinz bottle with the heel of his hand. “I already figured you’re something of a feminist.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Kathryn, amused. Well, at least he was talking about something.

  “You would have been married by now if you just wanted to settle down. Make a couple, three kids. But you’re not. So I would hazard a guess that your career is pretty important to you, too. Maybe it’s been more important up until recently. Which is why you registered with a video dating service.”

  “Very good, Sherlock. I’m impressed,” Kathryn replied. She took another sip of her vanilla coke, noticing that the juke box was playing Bob Dylan music. God gave names to all the animals. In the beginning, in the beginning. The lyric briefly made her think of Bear. She was trying unsuccessfully to think of a way to steer the conversation back to the subject of Eddie’s life, as opposed to her own. Not that a person was defined by his or her occupation, but it did seem to be a primary avenue via which many single men identified themselves, especially if they were looking to commit to marriage. It was like flashing one’s cash.

  “So what do you do, Eddie?” She tried to make it sound as casual as possible. His bank account didn’t interest her, but she was curious about his profession.

  “This and that.”

  Helpful. “What makes you happy?”

  “Knowing that I done my job. And
that I done it well. Sorry. Did, English teacher-lady.”

  “It’s okay. I’m only a drama teacher.”

  For the first time all evening, Eddie actually smiled. He had a crooked mouth, and Kathryn found his smile sexy. He should do it more often, she mused.

  “I thought you would have liked the play, but you didn’t seem to be into it. Sorry about that. My instincts are usually right about things.”

  “What makes you think I didn’t like it, Eddie?”

  “You kept sighing through it. And reading your program, even though it was so dark in there.”

  “Oh.” He was right, actually, and it made Kathryn feel guilty. “Score one for you. And what made you think I would have liked that particular play?”

  “Well, it’s a woman writer. And you’re a woman drama teacher. Y’know, I thought it would be that sister thing.”

  “One sister is more than enough for me,” Kathryn joked. “Can I be candid with you?”

  “If you weren’t, I wouldn’t like it.”

  “Right. Okay. Well, the problem I always have with Kara Kimbrough’s work is that she has no sense of humor. And she keeps thinking she’s writing comedies.”

  He smiled again. “Good,” he nodded, “I thought it was only me who thought it wasn’t very funny.”

  “You didn’t hear much laughing there tonight, did you?”

  He finished chewing a huge mouthful of cheddar burger. “No. I didn’t. Except for the four women in Birkenstocks down in the front row. I guess they were her friends.”

  “Or her sisters,” Kathryn added wryly. “I’m glad we went to see it, though. Thank you.”

  “Why?”

  “Critics have been talking Pulitzer Prize about it, so I was curious to see what the fuss was all about.”

  “Then I did do my job well.” Eddie seemed pleased with himself. “See, it didn’t have to be good, but somehow I knew that you would want to see it.” He tapped his temple with his right forefinger. “Instincts.”

  There’s a sort of raw charm to him, Kathryn thought. If only he were more verbal . . . but maybe I’m not giving him enough of a chance. She reached for the ketchup bottle and turned it upside down. Nothing came out.

  “You gotta do what I did,” Eddie said, stretching across the table to smack the bottom of the bottle. “Pardon the boarding house reach, as we used to say at home.” He was very successful. His blow was so forceful that Kathryn’s hand flinched and could no longer aim the bottle at the french fries. The condiment shot out in the opposite direction, landing in a huge crimson blotch on her black slipdress.

  “Goddamn son of a bitch!” Kathryn hadn’t meant to have such an uncensored reaction.

  Eddie looked pathetically apologetic and handed Kathryn a fistful of napkins, which she used to scoop up the tomato puddle in her lap. She felt terrible for having blurted an expletive—only because in retrospect, it sounded like more of a reproach of Eddie’s obvious good intentions than a spontaneous response to a fashion disaster. She dipped a wad of napkins into her glass of ice water and tried to remove the stain, but succeeded only in making the large, dark, damp spot even bigger.

  “Ugh. It looks like blood,” she said disgustedly.

  “Send me the dry-cleaning bill. It was my fault.”

  “Thanks, Eddie.” He was really nice. Too laconic for words, but a nice man.

  “Well,” he offered helpfully. “If people are looking at the stain on your dress, they’re looking at the wrong thing. If you don’t mind my saying so, you’ve got a very pretty face.”

  That was very sweet of him, actually.

  Eddie leaned in for a kiss. Kathryn met him halfway across the Formica tabletop. She felt the slight stubble above his upper lip graze her own. He wasn’t tentative, but he was a bit rough. Eddie practically bit her lip when he took her mouth, and Kathryn found herself not entirely disliking the sensation. It wasn’t a bad kiss on the whole. Not stellar. Not earth-shattering. But not bad. Frankly, it was the best kiss she’d had all night.

  “You smoke?”

  Eddie grew a bit edgy. “Why?”

  “You taste like you’re a smoker, but you’re trying to give it up.” Kathryn watched his eyes, because his mouth wasn’t moving. She was sure she was right. “And you’ve also got a lot going on in there . . .” she tapped her temple for emphasis. “But you’re afraid to let people in. Maybe you’re afraid you might get hurt. But if you hold yourself so tight, you won’t be open to life’s wonderful discoveries.”

  Instantly, Kathryn realized she might have gone too far, so she tried to lighten things up. “See, I can be a detective, too,” she added gaily. As she kept her gaze fixed on his eyes, she caught the angry black cloud that crossed them. The cloud moved down his face and manifested itself in a twitch of his upper lip, which turned into a fullfledged scowl.

  “Sorry. I hear it’s a tough habit to quit. Smoking.” The detective crack seemed to have made him touchy.

  He waved his hand for the check. I guess this date is over, Kathryn thought. Their lethargic waitress ambled over to the table, did the addition while her lips moved and her charm bracelet jangled, then ripped the green-and-white page from her pad, slapping it face down on the table. “Pay the cashier when you’re ready,” she said apathetically, as though for the hundredth time that evening. Maybe it was.

  As they headed out to the street, after giving Little Willy a personal good-bye in the form of a male fist-tofist gesture, Eddie caught Kathryn looking down at the dark stain on the front of her slipdress. “I’d offer you my jacket, but . . .” he started to say, solicitously. “It’s not that I’m not a gentleman, because I am.” He seemed to be having trouble saying whatever it was he wanted to get out.

  “I was just checking to see if you could see the stain in the dark—no, it’s okay,” Kathryn replied. “I’ll throw it in a basin with some Woolite when I get home. And I do believe that for you, Eddie, chivalry is not dead.”

  “Actually, I became a . . . I always had a weakness for damsels in distress . . . and you do kind of have that Camelot look going with your hair and all.” He smiled uneasily. “My mom used to say to me ‘Who do you think you are, big guy? My knight in shining armor?’ I was only seven years old the first time I ‘rescued’ her.”

  Kathryn laid her hand gently across Eddie’s arm. “Let me guess,” she said softly. “From abusive Italian father to abusive Irish husband—and he was a cop, to boot.”

  One corner of Eddie’s mouth twitched slightly, and he looked down at Kathryn as if to say something, but thought better of it. But Kathryn hadn’t missed that flicker of sadness and hurt—of childhood pain and memories long-buried in the momentary dilation of her date’s dark eyes.

  They started to walk east toward Eighth Avenue. It was a warm night, and the streets of Hell’s Kitchen were populated with the usual denizens: pushers, prostitutes, and the occasional runaway, interspersed with pastel-clad, shiny-faced tourists with digital cameras, college students of both sexes in their requisite clunky black platform shoes, and unemployed actors trying to look, well, employed. The last two groups tended to distinguish themselves from the tourists by dressing like ’70s refugees or in top-to-toe black, like Morticia Addams. Eddie volunteered to escort Kathryn home in the same manner via which he had come to fetch her: two buses.

  “Sorry, these are new shoes,” she apologized, since she was teetering a bit on her strappy sandals. “Imagine if I’d had a drink drink tonight—I mean alcoholic, as opposed to vanilla coke—I’d break my ankle in these.”

  Her words were nearly a self-fulfilling prophecy. They passed a phalanx of dented metal trash cans lined up in front of one of the faded red brick tenements on the block. With her right arm linked in the crook of Eddie’s left one, and looking straight ahead toward the avenue, Kathryn didn’t see the rut in the sidewalk. She stumbled and lost her footing, falling toward the row of garbage cans, unable to catch her balance before she landed on one hip on the ground between them.
/>   As she tried to break her fall, a shot rang out, followed by another, and another.

  “Stay down!” Eddie yelled, then threw his body on top of hers.

  Another gunshot pinged off the metal trash can, inches from Eddie’s ear. He grabbed Kathryn and rolled in the opposite direction, then pulled her by the wrist behind two more cans. A fifth bullet whizzed over their heads and lodged somewhere behind them.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Eddie, they’re shooting at you!” Kathryn gasped.

  That was about the time she realized why her date had been unable to offer her the use of his jacket to cover up the stain on her dress. He was wearing a holster. Eddie freed his arm and reached for his gun, returning fire at a shadowy figure in the window of a third-floor front apartment in a walk-up across the street.

  In what seemed like a matter of a minute, the entire street was shut down from one avenue to the other by police cars, their sirens blaring. A threatening voice commanded everyone on the block to stay put and not move, under threat of being shot. Uniforms disembarked from the squad cars and spread out over the block like a SWAT team Kathryn had seen in an NBC movie of the week. It seemed as though each officer had been assigned a separate subculture to round up. Two blue uniforms were chasing down stereotypical-looking drug dealers who were trying to scuttle down the tenement steps into sub-basements, clearly interpreting the warning over the bullhorn as a mere suggestion. All parties were holding their fire, as the street had become so crowded—between the NYPD, the alleged perpetrators, and the curious bystanders who, applauding, probably thought the whole hullabaloo was choreographed for an episode of Law & Order.