Getting Warmer

by Carol Snow

  “The general manager.”

  “Are you close?”

  “We, um, dated. A couple of years ago.”

  “And you’re still friends?” Jill asked.

  He scrunched up his nose for a moment, trying to find the right words. “Not exactly. We were never serious, but when I, you know, called things off, she snuck into my house and slashed my couch with a commercial grade knife. I call her The Slasher.”

  “What if she’d been here?” I asked.

  “I’d have run like hell.”

  “Where’d she get the knife?” Jill asked.

  “I’d sold it to her. Top of the line.”

  Travis, all effusion, returned with two really, really, really big frozen margaritas adorned with skewered pineapples. “Like I said, these are on the house. Sorry about the mix-up.”

  Jill squinted at her margarita. “Mine was supposed to be on the rocks.”

  Travis froze for a moment before whisking the offending drink away. “Back in a jiff,” he said. “And again, please accept my apologies.”

  Nicolette came over, her smile wide, her face flushed. “Me and Rodney are gonna go check out the gondolas.” Rodney stood behind her, a proprietary hand resting on the strip of exposed back that lay between her too-small shirt and too-short skirt.

  “How long will that take?” I asked. The plan had been to spend just enough time with Jonathan to humiliate him and then leave abruptly.

  “As long as an aria,” Rodney cooed.

  “Come right back when you’re done,” I instructed, as teacherly as possible. But they were already halfway to the door.

  “How long was she in for?” Jonathan asked, watching Nicolette and Rodney leave.

  “Who? Um, Chartreuse?” I licked my lips. “Two years.”

  “Wow,” he said. “That seems kind of long for forgery.”

  “What she means is, it’ll be two years when Chartreuse has finished her probation,” Jill said. “She was only incarcerated for nine months. But let’s talk about you. Natalie tells me you’re in the restaurant business.”

  “Restaurant supplies,” he said. “Pots, mats, cooking utensils, dinnerware, cutting boards.”

  “Knives,” Jill added.

  “Yes, knives. All very glamorous.” He smiled.

  I looked anxiously at the door, though it was far too early for Nicolette to return.

  We settled in for the wait, moving to a table and ordering chicken quesadillas and another round of margaritas. A half hour passed. An hour. Jill grilled Jonathan, who said, as before, that he was thirty-three years old, never married, born and raised in Phoenix, a graduate of the University of Arizona. He had his story, and he was sticking to it.

  We told Jonathan more about the prison: the battered wives who’d shot their husbands, the cafeteria brawls, the lesbian gangs. We dredged up every prison cliché and convict stereotype we could think of, and still, Nicolette did not appear. We ordered the nacho grande platter and Diet Cokes. Jonathan tried to hold my hand under the table. I didn’t let him, even though he continued to be easy-going and funny and not like a philanderer at all.

  Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. “I’m getting worried about Chartreuse,” I said, thinking: I could kill that little tramp.

  We left the bar and trudged out to the self-park lot; we were too poor to spring for a valet. Nicolette’s car was gone. We hiked back to the hotel, where Jonathan handed a ticket to the valet, who magically produced a monstrous blue pickup truck.

  “Wow. This is a big car for a single guy,” Jill said as the valet opened her door.

  “I need to haul a lot of stuff for work,” Jonathan said casually, stepping up to the driver seat.

  Jonathan drove us to the Hyatt. What a difference five minutes made. The place was all glass, slate, wood, soaring ceilings and warm lighting. I immediately felt like an imposter. The back wall was open, with misters cooling well-dressed guests like a field of tropical flowers. We stepped down into a bar full of comfy chairs clustered around candlelit tables, then walked across manicured lawns and past lit swimming pools until we reached the landing, where a gondolier from Fresno informed us that the girl with the blond hair and the guy with the big muscles had left at least a half an hour ago. “They seemed really in love,” he added helpfully.

  We tried Nicolette’s cell phone, which, predictably, was turned off. We returned to the bar on the off chance that she had simply dropped Rodney at his hotel and returned to pick us up. She hadn’t.

  “You let her drive?” Jonathan asked. “I’m surprised she still has a car.”

  “It’s her mother’s,” Jill said. “By letting her drive, we were trying to send the message that we trusted her.”

  “I’d be happy to drive you home,” Jonathan said.

  “We’ll take cabs,” I said, just as Jill chirped, “That’d be great!” She and I locked eyes. I blinked first. Jill and I lived in opposite directions, and neither of us lived near here. A cab would cost a fortune.

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” I said.

  As we left the resort and turned onto Scottsdale Road, the thoroughfare that divides Scottsdale and Phoenix, Jill casually asked, “So, Jonathan, do you live far from here?” I sat sandwiched between them on the bench seat.

  When he said not really—ten or fifteen minutes—she said, “Why don’t we go to your place for a cup of coffee, then?”

  My face burned in the dark. I felt suddenly, hotly angry. I stared straight ahead at the taillights in front of us.

  “Sure. I can make you cappuccinos.” Jonathan sent me a brief smile before blinking in surprise when he saw my expression.

  “We wouldn’t be disturbing anyone?” Jill asked.

  “Nope. I live alone. Don’t even have any pets.”

  With a few exceptions, the Valley of the Sun has two basic house styles: Spanish and territorial. Spanish houses are white or beige stucco with peaked red roofs. Inside they have high ceilings, open floor plans, fancy kitchens and tiny bedrooms. Territorial houses look completely different from the outside, with flat roofs, wood beams and front courtyards. But inside? High ceilings, open floor plans, fancy kitchens and tiny bedrooms.

  Jonathan’s house was Spanish style. It looked like a Taco Bell. Well, a Taco Bell with a garage. So did the one on its right. And on its left. And across the street.

  “How do you know which one is yours?” I asked.

  He laughed. “It’s the one with the cactus out front.” Jonathan’s cactus was a nicely formed saguaro, far superior to the saguaro across the street or the chollas and prickly pears on either side. A concrete driveway took up most of the front yard; the remainder was landscaped with gravel. Grass does not do well in the desert.

  He clicked the garage door opener on the truck visor, and the beige door magically slid upward, revealing a tidy two-car garage lined with cabinets and a pegboard covered with hanging tools. He slid his truck into the center of the space and left the garage door open.

  “I have to get either a smaller car or a bigger garage,” he said. He was right: his truck stuck out a good foot beyond the door. “I just got a letter from the homeowner’s association. I’m not allowed to leave my garage door open. But parking in the street is an even greater sin. Maybe if I parked diagonally . . .” He squinted at the wall.

  My mind was whirring. On the way over, I’d decided the house probably belonged to a friend who was out of town. But if that were the case, would Jonathan really make up the stuff about the homeowner’s association? How good a liar was he? Maybe this really was his house. He could be separated. Why would he tell me he’d never been married then? Of course, I had no right to object to a blurring of the facts. So he neglected to mention an ex-wife. So I told a colorful tale about life among the inmates. Perhaps some day we’d have a good laugh and live happily (and truthfully) ever after.

  I was all set to be reassured by a standard-issue bachelor pad, complete with white walls, an enormous TV and recliners with drin
k holders when Jonathan let us into the kitchen. There were Indian pots and hanging ivy on the towering plant shelves. Custom-made cushions sat atop Mexican bar stools. Tailored valances hung from wrought iron curtain rods. A woman had been here.

  “You’ve got quite an eye for decorating,” Jill said. “What would you call that paint color? Mustard? Ochre?”

  “I call it yellow,” Jonathan said. “If I call it anything at all. My latest stepmother wants to switch careers from real estate to decorating. Once she finished my father’s house, she moved on to mine. She keeps showing up to take more pictures for her portfolio.” He rolled his eyes. “Whatever. It’s better than anything I could have done.”

  I had a sudden image of his stepmother: the perfect silver hair, the trim figure, the tailored, sherbert-colored clothes and matching shoes. She would get her hair styled weekly, her manicure done twice a month. Her makeup would be flawless. I had seen his stepmother—well, others just like her—a thousand times since moving to Scottsdale.

  “How many stepmothers have you had?” I asked.

  “My mother was my father’s second wife. There have been two since.”

  “So your father has made it down the aisle four times, and you haven’t managed even once?” Jill asked.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Think there could be a connection?”

  I stared at him. If he was lying, he was frighteningly good at it. But what about the blond woman in the paper? Was she merely a date who had been misidentified by some champagne-guzzling society reporter?

  Jonathan made cappuccinos from an enormous stainless steel model. “My post-adolescent rebellion against the stepmonster,” he said. “She says the espresso maker dominates the space and that a sleek home model would be much more appropriate. But I like it.”

  His answering machine sat on the counter, the light blinking. “You have a message,” I said.

  “It can wait.”

  We took our cups into the great room, a high-ceilinged space open to the kitchen. It had a built-in entertainment center, built-in bookshelves, a ceiling fan and a gas fireplace. The couches were soft brown leather and strewn with Indian blankets and southwestern print pillows. The walls were a paler shade of the kitchen’s ochre/mustard/yellow.

  Jill stroked the leather couch. “Is this the couch the Slasher attacked?”

  “No, that was beyond repair.”

  As I sipped my cappuccino (which was delicious, with just the perfect amount of froth), I noticed some framed snapshots over the television set (big screen, plasma). “Family photos?” I asked casually, wandering over.

  “Yup,” he said.

  I spotted her immediately. It was a group shot. She was wearing khaki shorts and a sleeveless pink polo shirt, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looked more relaxed than in the newspaper photo. She looked prettier.

  I rested my cup on the shelf and picked up the photo. I swallowed hard, more disappointed than angry. If only Nicolette hadn’t taken off. If only I were in my own room now, flipping through a magazine or watching TV or even reading The Odyssey.

  “Who’s this?” I asked, as levelly as I could.

  “Let me see.” He walked casually across the room and leaned over my shoulder. He smelled good, like leather mixed with citrus. I tapped my finger against the glass.

  “Oh, that,” he said. “That is Mrs. Jonathan Pomeroy, Sr. My stepmother.”

  five

  Jill couldn’t understand why I was so upset.

  “I like him,” I told her on the phone the next day.

  “He drives a pickup truck.”

  “It’s for work.”

  “Yeah, sure, nice excuse. He could get a minivan.”

  “He’s a single guy. Single guys don’t drive minivans. God. You make it sound like he drives a Hummer.”

  “You know what we always say about guys who drive big cars,” Jill said.

  “Jonathan’s different.”

  “C’mon. Say it with me.”

  “I’m not in the mood.”

  “C’mon. You know I’ll just keep bugging you until you say it.” She would, too. “On the count of three: one, two, three—”

  “Big car, small penis,” we chanted, though my heart wasn’t in it. “He needs it for work,” I said again.

  “Did you see the size of his television? And that espresso machine? That guy’s definitely compensating for something.”

  Jill was my best friend in Arizona; well, she was my only friend in Arizona. Still, there were times when I didn’t like her very much.

  I stared glumly out the window. The sky was a blinding blue. The pool shimmered. In the giant saguaro, a woodpecker tapped rhythmically. The thermometer read one hundred and eight degrees. “Do you think Jonathan would understand if I told him the truth? Do you think we could start over?”

  She paused to consider. “He’d think you were deranged.”

  To make matters worse, Nicolette was in love. I stopped by the front office first thing Monday morning to make sure she hadn’t been raped and mutilated, her body dumped way out in the desert to be devoured by coyotes and vultures. She was still alive, which was good because it meant I could hate her.

  “It’s like me and Rodney were made for each other,” she proclaimed. “We spent the whole weekend together, and I never got sick of him.”

  “Rodney and I,” I said reflexively. Teaching has turned me into a total dork. “Wait. Did you have sex with him?”

  “Well, yeah.” She pulled lazily at a lock of her long, blond hair. “I thought that was the whole point of going out and picking up guys.”

  “That is not the point.”

  She scrunched up her little nose. “Then what is the point?”

  I blinked at her. “What’s Rodney going to think when you tell him your real name? And that you made up that alien story just to trick him?”

  “Oh, that.” She made a little wave. “I told him my real name when we were in the gondola. And he never believed I was an alien, anyway. We laughed about it the whole weekend. It’s, like, our first inside joke. Did you guys go on the gondola? It was totally awesome.”

  As I walked out of the office, I almost tripped over Cody Gold. Cody had a talent for showing up wherever I happened to be.

  “Good Morning, Miss Quackenbush,” he squeaked. Cody never called me Mrs. Quackenbush. Cody was the only student who cared whether or not I was married. “I finished The Odyssey over the weekend.”

  “You did? Well, good for you! Don’t give the ending away to the others, though!”

  Shoot. Cody had finished The Odyssey. I hadn’t finished The Odyssey. I hadn’t even finished the CliffsNotes. “Well, you’d better hurry to class. See you sixth period!”

  “Third period,” he said.

  “Really?” I hated the rotating schedule even more than I hate Homer. “I mean—right! Well, then, I’ll see you when I see you!”

  First period turned out to be my Adventures class (I’d thought it would be, but I wasn’t entirely sure). I had a big surprise for my students.

  “For homework tonight”—I pressed my hands together and paused for dramatic effect—“I’m going to ask you all to watch television!”

  Nothing. Not a, “Way to go, Ms. Q!” Not, “Hey! Are you serious?” Or, “How cool is that?”

  Nothing.

  A girl named Marisol sneezed. Someone mumbled, “God bless you.”

  “Now, don’t get too excited,” I said, hoping for a laugh but not getting one. When I was in high school, no teacher ever assigned television watching. No teacher was ever that cool. Maybe I should be assigning Nintendo playing or iPod downloading. Or shopping or drinking beer. Maybe that’s what they were waiting for.

  “Today we are starting a unit on marketing and advertising. And you all know what advertising is, right?” Nothing. “It’s time or space that a company pays to expose its product. For homework, I want you to focus on television advertising, also known as . . . ?” Nothing. This was supposed to b
e the easy part. “Commercials. Right? Television advertising is usually done in the form of commercials.” I wasn’t even going to bother with a discussion of product placement.

  For homework, I told them to each watch a half hour show. On a piece of paper, they were supposed to write down the name of the show. Then they had to write down every commercial that came on and who that commercial was aimed at. I moved on to the hard part.

  “Who knows what marketing is?”

  Nothing.

  “Marisol?” She shrugged, sniffled and looked at the floor.

  “Steven?” Steven straightened his gangly body in his chair. He was easily the slowest student in the class—no mean feat. But I didn’t care. Steven was pure goodness: sweet and eager. He made me remember why I had gone into teaching in the first place, even as I proved utterly incapable of teaching him a single thing.

  “Is marketing, like, when you go to the grocery store?” His eyes were wide, hopeful.

  “You know, that’s a good answer, Steven! Because a grocery store is often called . . . what?” Nothing. “A supermarket? Right?” I searched their faces for a hint of a nod or even a glimpse of understanding. “And what is the purpose of a supermarket? Robert?”

  “They, um”—he looked around—“it’s where your mother goes when she has to get stuff for dinner.”

  “Right. So what does a supermarket do? Mandy?”

  “They have, like, fruit and stuff. Bread and peanut butter and stuff.”

  “Yes. Good. So if customers are buying the food, what is the supermarket doing?”

  “They have birthday cakes,” Steven offered. “My mother always gets my birthday cake at Safeway.”

  “They have cakes. Yes. But do they just give the cakes away?”

  Marisol raised her hand. Victory! “Marisol?”

  “Last year, my mom got my birthday cake at Food 4 Less.”

  “I think Safeway’s cakes are better,” someone said.

  Another voice piped in. “Last year? For my dad’s birthday? I made a cake from scratch. I used one of those mixes.”

  And another voice. “Betty Crocker mixes are really good.”