by Lisa Cach
“Your own personal Triple-A.”
“I have Triple-A, too. You’d think if I pay for it, why not use it? But anyway, that dream was all right to talk about. After all, we’re counselors, we like to analyze dreams. He thought it meant I felt I could rely on him, and seemed flattered.”
“Dream number two?”
“Dream number two, and three. This is where the trouble begins. In Dream Two we’re standing in line somewhere, and I wrap my arms around his waist and lay my head on his chest.”
“Oh, dear. How did he react?”
“He got a strange little half smile on his lips. I took it as encouragement.”
I grimaced, dreading what was coming.
“Yeah. Dream Three, we were in the shower together, having sex.”
“You told him that?” I asked, aghast.
“Yes. And idiot that I am, then I asked him, ‘How do you feel about that?’”
I forgot about my panna cotta. “Oh, Louise, no.”
“Yes.” She mashed frosting with her fork. “Everything got real quiet, like we were in this little pocket of silence in the middle of the restaurant, and I could feel my face getting hot, my neck, my chest. I wanted to just slide under the table, find a nice dark place and hide.”
“What’d he say?”
She met my eyes, leaving off the cake killing. “He said—are you ready?—‘Did I miss something? Some sort of cue?’”
“Oh, Louise…”
“Then he says, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve really got to go to the bathroom.’ And he gets up and leaves me at the table.”
“Ah…Christ. How embarrassing.”
“Try humiliating. So there I sat, twiddling my toes, and the food comes and he’s still not back, and there’s no way I feel like eating now.”
“But he did come back?”
“Yes. I don’t know what he was doing in there all that time. Throwing up, maybe. Laughing his ass off. Thinking about bolting. I don’t know. But he dealt with it as best as I think any guy could be expected to. He sat back down and took my hand, and said, ‘We’re going to talk this out.’”
“I think I’d have preferred to drop it and go home,” I said. “Pretend like it never happened.”
She shrugged. “I give him credit for sticking around.”
“So what did you two decide in the end?”
“There’s been no real decision. At least, not on his part.”
“What?”
“He started asking me questions about what I wanted in life, if I wanted children—which of course I don’t—asked if I wanted to get married someday, asked what I was looking for in a man.”
“Almost like he was seeing if he could fit the job,” I said.
“At the end of it all, he said he was ‘confused,’ and he had to think about all this.”
“‘Confused,’ huh?”
“Confused. Anytime a guy says he’s confused, I take it to mean he doesn’t want to be with you. Maybe he likes you as a casual friend, maybe he likes pouring his heart out to you because you’re stupid enough to sit there and listen and sympathize, but he doesn’t want you.”
“Why can’t they just come out and say that?” I asked.
“If they did, they’d lose their backup girl, the one they know they could have if they asked. I’m not going to sit around for that. I’ve got some self-respect, after all.”
“You think that’s really what it is, he just wants to keep you in his back pocket?” I asked.
“Guys do it all the time. Hell, I’ve done it to guys myself.”
“Why’d he ask you all that stuff about what you wanted?”
“He’s jerking me around. He doesn’t mean to, but it’s what he’s doing. He’s never going to really want me,” she said, and her voice caught.
“You sound so sure,” I said quietly. It was never good to see a friend hurt.
“I am sure. If I wait around for him to become unconfused, all I’ll be doing is torturing myself. The only way I can regain some control, some power, dammit, is to make the decision myself. My head knows it’s the right thing to do. I just wish my heart followed.” She mashed cake with her fork, and her lower lip trembled. “I wish I could stop hoping for a better ending.”
The lingerie boutique was in an old house on NW 23rd, one of the trendy streets lined with shops for over-priced housewares, nightclub clothing, handmade dog biscuits, scented candles, and the odd shop of imports from Indonesia, India, China, or Africa. Mid-size deciduous trees lined the street, strung year-round with white Christmas lights, and between the browsing possibilities and the coffee shops on every block, it was a popular place to meet, people-watch, or just waste time.
We weren’t far from where Scott lived, and I was planning to stop by his place later to pick up some pants he needed altered. There were new streetcars running from downtown to this neighborhood, up and running for only half a year, and if Scott had wished, he could have taken one of them to work instead of his bicycle. But I’d seen his legs, and could see why the bike held his favor.
We climbed the wooden stairs to Belinda’s Fine European Lingerie, and opened the door to silken, perfumed luxury.
“Can you believe I paid twenty-eight dollars for a pair of underpants?” Louise asked as we went to the counter. “What was I thinking?”
“Can I see them?”
She pulled them out of the bag, the price tag dangling from the hip. They were pale pink silk, with cream lace insets, and they were beautiful.
“And the bra—we don’t need to say how much the bra was.”
I knew there was also a teddy and a nightgown in the bag, still wrapped in tissue. I hadn’t asked to see them only because I thought it would be too upsetting for Louise. The high-priced underwear—at least we could talk about the cost of such a tiny scrap of silk, without dwelling on the shattered hopes.
She handed the bag to the clerk behind the counter, along with the receipt. “I can’t believe I was so stupid. God.” Then she started talking to the clerk, explaining about the return. I drifted away to browse through the merchandise.
I didn’t often find my way to the small boutiques outside of the heart of downtown, and I saw what I’d been missing. The prices were, as always, beyond my pocketbook, but a girl could dream, even if she couldn’t see herself trying to sew her own bra or merry widow. Not that I couldn’t do it; I just couldn’t bother.
The negligees were achingly lovely, and unlike the foundation garments they were possible to reproduce, if one could find the same quality of lace. I went through a rack of gowns with an assessing eye, examining seams and cut.
My dream wedding dress was still in the paper pattern stages. It occurred to me that with a wedding dress one also needed something for the wedding night, a bit of sensuous luxury in flowing pastel.
If you sew it, he will come.
The words whispering in my head seemed more appropriate than ever.
Louise found me. “They made me take store credit,” she said, her mouth in an unhappy twist. “I don’t even want to think about wearing underwear, not from here. Why bother wearing any at all, for that matter? Who’s ever going to see it?”
“You have a problem with underwear?” I asked.
“Half the time you don’t really need it. It’s all a scam.”
“I’m not wearing any,” I said. “A bra, but no panties.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Am I?” I hadn’t had any that were clean this morning, so I’d worn a long tailored skirt. Who was going to know the difference? “You know, there’s a place for people like you, Louise. Underwear Anonymous. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.”
She started to smile. “First I’d have to admit I had a problem.”
“Do you need to wear underwear to relax in a social situation? Do you put it on before going out? Do you wear it every day?”
“Yes!” Louise said.
“Has underwear caused you emotional trauma?”
; “It’s doing so at this very moment,” she said.
“Then you need Underwear Anonymous.”
She giggled, looking a little more like the Louise I knew. There wasn’t much that could keep her down for long. She was so much her own person, so content in her own private space, I sometimes wondered if she would ever marry. It was hard to imagine her sharing her space with anyone. I almost wondered if she’d chosen Derek because she knew, deep down, that nothing was going to come of it.
Louise looked around the store, then back at me. “You know, it’s too bad they don’t make this type of stuff for men. The fanciest they get is silk boxers, and how does that compare in price? Just another bit of male/female inequality showing itself.”
“What do you want? Guys in codpieces?”
“Wouldn’t that be something?” she asked as we left the shop and started down the sidewalk. “Wouldn’t you love to see guys walking around with those stuck to the front of their pants? I’ll bet they’d wear them, too.”
“Nah, what we need is a modern version,” I said. “Something that doesn’t look like it came off a portrait of Henry VIII. We need some sort of…weenie wrap.”
“What, like a scarf?”
“More like a sock,” I said, envisioning it. “In bright colors, made of spandex. Or polar fleece, for winter. They could wear them attached to those tight pants runners wear.”
“I don’t think they’d like that. Too much flopping around.”
“Well, okay, then it could just be underwear like a teddy, worn only to impress one’s date. It could have a little pouch for the balls, and all tie on with a ribbon. Not many women think a penis is pretty, anyway. Why not spruce it up a bit?”
“I think I’d prefer the bare thing,” Louise said.
“No, this could be great. I could get a stall at Saturday Market and sell them.”
“They’d throw you out.”
“I could advertise in the back of Cosmo.”
“That might work,” she admitted. “Be sure to offer them in different sizes, and put a big XXXL tag on the big ones everyone will buy.”
“And an XXS on the ones sold as revenge gifts to ex-lovers,” I said. And in my mind I was thinking that Louise needed a Voodoo Derek doll.
“Hannah, you are a warped individual, you do know that, don’t you?”
“You wouldn’t have me any other way.”
Eighteen
Tapestry with Fringe
“Aren’t you going to measure my inseam?” Scott asked as I knelt at his feet and pinned the cuffs of his pants.
“No, I don’t need to.”
“Damn. I was looking forward to that all day.”
I raised a brow at him. “Shouldn’t your lawyer lady be taking care of all those sorts of needs?”
“There’s no fun in thinking about that. But a seamstress, with a tape measure, reaching up your leg, now that’s something to fantasize about.”
“I’d think that would frighten the average man, having a ruler so close.”
“Not me.”
I snorted. “No one would ever suspect that dentists were such horn dogs.”
“We’re good with our hands,” he said, leering.
“Next,” I said, and he stepped behind his kitchen counter to take off the pants and put on a new pair. “I’ve got a joke for you.”
He groaned.
“This dentist is looking at the films from his female patient’s mouth, and he says, ‘Uh-oh, cavities. We’re going to have to do a lot of drilling.’ The woman sort of moans, and says, ‘Oh, God, I’d rather give birth to a child.’ So the dentist says, ‘In that case, let me adjust the chair.’” I grinned at him.
“Where do you get these lame jokes?”
“Off the Internet. Where else?”
He came back over to me in the new pants.
“You know, Scott, you could have had the store hem these for you. I’m sure it was included in the price.”
“I trust you to do it. I wanted to talk to you about making some pillows for my couch, too. My living room looks too…I don’t know. Cold.”
I looked over my shoulder at the area in question. “You’ve got a black leather couch and a glass coffee table. Of course it looks cold.”
“You’ll help me, won’t you? And maybe one of those cover things for my comforter.”
“A duvet, you mean?”
“I guess. Maybe you could help me choose paint, too? You’re good with color.”
I finished pinning and stood. “I’d be glad to help, but I don’t know that you’d like what I chose. I look at a room, and I’m more likely to think of how I would want to live, rather than how someone else would.”
“That’s okay.”
He went back to the kitchen to put on his old pants, and I sat on the couch, kicking my shoes off and putting my legs up, to enjoy the leather and the view from his windows, which looked out over the northern end of the city, with a glimpse of the Willamette River. I could get used to a view like that.
Louise and I had browsed the shops on 23rd for a while, then she’d gone home on the streetcar, and I’d driven to a specialty trim and fabric store that I’d heard about but never visited, and killed an hour there until it was time to come to Scott’s.
I looked around, checking for signs of the lawyer. There were none apparent, no stockings trailing out from under the couch cushions, no mushy card on the mantel above the gas fireplace, no forgotten pair of feminine sunglasses on the counter. The real place to check would be the master bath, but I didn’t have any reason to go in there.
Not that it mattered if she’d left signs behind. What did I care?
“So how is it going with Ms. Law?”
“All right,” Scott said, coming over to join me. I pulled my feet up, but he stopped me. “It’s okay,” he said, and sat and pulled my feet into his lap. He tickled the sole.
“Knock it off!” I said, punching his thigh with my free heel. He started massaging my toes, and it felt too good to protest. “So, things with her are moving along?” I asked, resuming the topic. I wasn’t going to let him escape it.
“She doesn’t have a lot of free time, so we go out maybe once a week. Her job’s pretty demanding. She has a lot of funny stories to tell, though. A lot funnier than I have, looking in mouths all day.”
“She’s outgoing?”
“She’s entertaining, and opinionated. You know she’s not going to take any garbage from anyone.”
I wondered if I took garbage, and if so, just how unattractive it was. My overused dentist jokes could hardly compare to courtroom dramas for entertainment value, either.
“Do you think there might be a future with her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Still?”
“Still,” he said.
“Is she pretty?”
“She looks like Lucy Lawless.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“Huh,” I said, and felt the need to compete. “I had a date with a cop.”
His hands on my toes stopped. “When?”
I told him the story, skimming over the part when Pete had his hands on my breasts and where I’d tried to feel if he had an erection hidden in his jeans somewhere, but letting Scott get the gist of what had occurred.
“No harm done,” I said in conclusion. “A little kissing and groping, he falls asleep, never calls. Oh, well. Move on.”
“You know, you can get herpes from kissing.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” I said, not meaning it.
“Did he have any sores around his mouth?”
“You think I would have kissed him, if he did? So at least I should be safe. It’s not contagious when the sores aren’t there, right?”
“They could have been inside his mouth. Or maybe he was at the beginning of an outbreak, and they weren’t visible yet.”
“Are you trying to freak me out?” I asked.
“Tuberculosis. Hand, foot and mou
th disease.”
“What the hell is that? Isn’t that something sheep get?”
“That’s foot and mouth, or hoof and mouth. Hand, foot and mouth gives you blisters on those parts. It’s a virus.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Mostly kids get it,” he said.
“I’m not going to be French kissing any kids.”
“Then there’s syphilis.”
“People still get that? Didn’t it go the way of smallpox?” I asked.
“Not hardly.”
“You’re going to put me off kissing entirely. I’m going to be reduced to hugs and holding hands.” I was beginning to get a slimy feeling, as though maybe I should have rinsed with a shot of whiskey when I’d gotten home. Not that we had whiskey in our house. Cranberry juice?
“Hugs are probably safer, but I don’t want you picking up scabies.”
“For God’s sake. The more you talk, the less I believe anything you say.” I lightly kicked him on the thigh, then sat up. “I should probably get going.”
“You don’t have to. I have stuff for dinner.” I looked at him, and he quickly went on, “I’ll feed you as thanks for coming over and doing my pants. It’s bribery, is all, since I want you to fit my pillows and duvet into your schedule, too.”
“Do you have any idea of a color scheme? Or a style?” I asked, although what I really wanted to know was what was going on here. We had known each other for so long, I could not tell if he was coming on to me or just being friendly. Maybe he didn’t want to spend the evening alone, and wanted company the same as I might enjoy having Louise over for dinner, or might like drinking tea and chatting with Cassie.
And maybe he was flirting a little bit, the same way I flirted a little bit with him, because we both knew nothing would ever come of it. It was safe. He was Louise’s ex, and would always, in some way, belong to her.
I couldn’t come right out and ask him if his interest went beyond the platonic, as whatever the answer was, the question itself would put a bruise on the friendship, creating a tender spot we would have to avoid. So, I might as well try to not think about it.
Easier said than done, of course.
“I don’t know, something warm,” Scott was saying. “I don’t like these ones I have, they’re ugly,” he said, slapping one of the light green linen-covered pillows on the couch. “I don’t know why I bought them.”