by Claire Adams
“Canada,” I answer, batting my eyes. It’s not a conscious act. “So, are you on call?”
“Am I on call?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Like, what are the chances of you having to rush out of here to go save an orphanage?”
He laughs, perhaps a bit uncomfortably.
“Probably not too high,” he says. “I don’t think there are any orphanages around here. I think the only way I’d get a call is if we had something catastrophic.”
“Wow.”
Who am I right now?
Of course, that thought leads me back to standing in Dane’s doorway, and for a moment, I completely forget about the sexy fireman sitting across the table from me, trying to decide whether I’m attractive enough to forgive a little bit of crazy.
“So, what brings you here?” he asks.
“Oh,” I say, straightening up and trying to at least pretend that I’m not a complete flake. “My friend Annabeth,” I tell him. “She dragged me out of the house, put me in a car and told me we were coming here. She’s the one standing in line to have her picture taken with four bags right now.”
He looks over my shoulder, and the way he’s closing his eyes while his upper body shakes tells me that he’s spotted her.
“She looks…determined,” he says.
“Yeah, she’s a bit of a freak,” I tell him. “So, what brings you here?”
If I can’t think of anything intelligent to say, I can at least bat back the same questions he’s asking me, right?
“My brother-in-law,” he says. “He and my sister come to these things all the time and try to ‘meet’ each other by smell.”
And that’s fantasy number two. Okay, so it’s not why he’s here, but at least he’s familiar enough with the concept of the open-eyed-blind-date that it shouldn’t be too weird if I suggest it sometime in the future.
And now I’m thinking about Dane again.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
“What’s wrong?” he asks. “They’re really not weird people, I actually think it’s kind of romantic.”
“It is romantic,” I tell him. “It’s just—I’m still in the process of getting over someone right now, and everything is making me think of him.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “If it helps at all, I know what that’s like. I got divorced a few months back. This is actually the first time I’ve really gone out since it happened.”
“It sucks, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he says. “It does.”
We sit through an uncomfortable silence for a little while.
“Would you like another drink?” he asks. “It looks like you’ve got quite the tolerance.”
“Not so much,” I tell him, “but I would love another drink.”
If I’m going to get Dane off of my mind for good, this is probably how I’m going to have to do it: one good-looking fireman at a time.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Tracers
Dane
I don’t know how long we’ve been swimming, but I’m pretty sure I’m starting to play chicken with the “don’t get too drunk” rule. I’m not getting mean or even slurring my words that much, but I have to admit, I’m pretty sloshed.
Wrigley’s off at the other end of the swimming pool, cackling with one of her old friends.
Me, on the other hand? I’m making another trip to the drink table and trying to figure out what I can have that’s going to keep the buzz going, but not put me over the edge.
Before I can decide, though, Wrigley’s hand is on my shoulder and she’s telling me that we’ve got to get out of here right now.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Someone’s coming,” she says. “Someone our guys in the hall can’t detain or turn around. Grab your shit and come with me.”
I should have known tonight was going to end this way.
I grab my clothes and Wrigley grabs my hand. She leads me to the women’s showers and whispers for me to get dressed.
It’s completely dark in here right now, I can only assume to throw whoever might go to the pool that there aren’t a bunch of recently-naked drunk people hiding in the women’s locker room.
“Did someone grab all the liquor?” I ask in a whisper.
“It’s taken care of,” a man’s voice answers from my left.
I guess we’re all in here.
If it’s a woman coming for a swim, it does occur to me that we’re probably going to give the poor lady a heart attack, all of us crammed in here. I can’t vouch for whether everyone’s clothed or not, the way Wrigley basically threw me into the room.
“If the guards think everyone works here, I don’t know why we’re worried about someone finding us. Everyone’s dressed, right?”
Wrigley answers, “The guards think we work here, but that’s not going to hold up for very long when someone who actually belongs here blows the whistle.”
“Is there a back way out of here?” I ask as quietly as possible.
“Yeah,” someone says, “but it’s in view of the door. If they’re coming down this hallway or they get in the pool—”
The sound of a nearby door opening silences the room. I lean toward the only minor source of light—the crack beneath the door—and listen for high heels.
There are footsteps and they’re coming closer. I have no idea if it’s a woman or a man and even if I did, it’s so dark in here that I couldn’t mount any kind of escape anyway.
What’s worse? I really have to piss right now.
Wrigley’s still holding my hand, so I use that, coupled with the memory of her height relative to mine to lean down and whisper right in her ear. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
There’s no response other than a squeeze of the hand.
The footsteps have ceased, but that doesn’t mean the coast is clear. No doors have opened since the sound of the footprints, so whoever’s out there is still out there.
I’m crossing my legs as best I can and trying to think of anything but water, streams, rivers, lakes, reservoirs, waterfalls, rivers, sprinklers, hoses, bathtubs, sinks, rain, the Pacific Northwest, oceans, swimming pools, showers, warmth, green tea, or the movie Labyrinth, but I wouldn’t have that list if those weren’t the first things that cross my mind.
Wrigley notices my squirming and squeezes my hand again.
In return, I squeeze her hand nine times: three short squeezes, three long squeezes and three more short squeezes. All I can do is hope she’s got at least some familiarity with Morse code.
I feel her other hand on my shoulder, pushing down. I bend my knees, and a moment later, feel her breath against my skin.
“You’re just going to have to hang in there,” she says. “We can’t risk someone hearing you.”
Well, she knows what my ordeal is. That’s got to be in my favor somehow.
But, as I start thinking about tributaries and rivulets, sandboxes and childhood embarrassment, I’m about to my breaking point.
I squeeze Wrigley’s hand again, more frantically this time, and she’s immediately pulling me. There is no way for me to know if I’m going to run into something, so all I can do is trust Wrigley to know where she’s going and know how to lead me there without having me end up stubbing my toe on something, and with the resulting profane yell, betraying our presence.
After a few dizzying turns, Wrigley stops and puts her hand on my shoulder again, bidding me bend down a bit.
“Aim for the side of the bowl,” she says. “Sound really carries in here.”
“Thank you,” I tell her. “How am I supposed to—”
She puts something cold and flat in my hand. Before she lets it go, I feel her move it and the screen of her cell phone nearly blinds me.
“Make it fast,” she says, “and don’t use the cell phone to find your way back. Whoever’s out there might be able to see the glow under the door.”
With that, she points at a stall, and as quickly as I can, as qui
etly as I can, I make it inside.
My zipper’s down and ah, sweet relief.
I’m careful to keep a good hold on the cell phone and everything’s going great. That is, right up to the moment when, out of pure habit, I lift one foot and flush the toilet.
Fuck.
Twenty-some-odd people shift nervously in the adjoining room, and I’m just hoping whoever was in the pool room has already left. That pipe dream is shot to shit when I turn around to find Wrigley pushing her way into the stall, telling me to get on the seat and keep my head down.
“She heard you,” Wrigley whispers as she somehow manages to work her way onto the seat with me.
“How does she know the toilet was flushed by someone who isn’t supposed to be here?” I ask.
“Nobody’s supposed to be here,” she answers. “Nobody comes in this late, not to the pool, anyway. Why do you think we wait until after midnight to go swimming?”
She has a point.
“How do you know she heard me?”
“She asked ‘who’s there’ right after you flushed,” Wrigley answers. “How else did you think I knew it’s a woman?”
“Maybe she won’t come in here, though,” I say.
I should really learn how not to jinx things.
There’s a rush of bare feet over the hard floor, everyone’s rushing for the entrance to the hall.
“Be quiet,” Wrigley says, and then the door to the showers opens.
Just a fraction of a second later, another door opens from the other side, and I’m wondering how inconspicuous a locked stall door is really going to be if someone walks through here looking for trespassers.
“Who’s there?” the woman’s voice comes, her voice reverberating against the tiled walls.
Wrigley and I hold our breath. The light turns on just as the door to the hallway closes. It sounds like everyone else got out, but Wrigley and I are stuck in here.
Right now, I’m not so worried about anyone else getting caught; I just want to get the hell out of here with Wrigley and not in handcuffs.
“Hello?” the woman calls.
I was really hoping she’d hear the other door close and figure whoever was in here had left, but she’s not giving up so easily. Her shadow is just on the other side of the stall door.
“Thank God,” Wrigley says.
“Who’s in there?”
“I had to use the bathroom and then the lights went off. I couldn’t see anything.”
“Who do you work for? Why are you in here so late?”
“I could ask you the same question,” Wrigley says.
“I’m Paula Owen, I run the company that owns this floor,” the woman answers. “Who are you and why are you in this bathroom so late?”
Wrigley turns and puts her feet on the floor. “I’m sorry, Miss Owen,” she says. “I didn’t know that was you. I’m Janet, one of the new assistants. This is kind of embarrassing, but I kind of have a thing about using public restrooms. It’s a privacy thing. I don’t like going where I think other people are going to, you know, hear anything.”
I really hope that works.
“Janet,” the woman repeats. “Whose assistant are you?”
I whisper, “Intern.”
“I’m sorry,” Wrigley says. “I meant intern.”
There’s a long pause.
“You know you’re not supposed to be in here after 10,” the woman chastises.
“I know,” Wrigley says, “I’m very sorry about that. I just get really uncomfortable if I think anyone’s going to hear me.”
There’s another long pause.
“Well, all right,” the woman says. “Just don’t let it happen again.”
“I won’t, Miss Owen,” Wrigley answers. “I promise.”
With that, the woman turns and walks away. Neither Wrigley nor I move until we hear the door to the pool area open and close again.
“You’re going to have to move like nobody’s business,” she says. “Go and wait at the other door. I’ll see if I can distract her until you get on the elevator. Just wait for me outside and have a cab waiting for us, all right?”
“All right,” I answer, and with that, we move.
I wait at the door to the hallway until I hear the other door open and Wrigley thanking the woman again for being so understanding. I’m out the door and not looking back on my way down the hall.
I turn down the other hallway and make it to the elevators without incident. When I get to the bottom floor, though, the guards have a few of the people I hardly recognize with clothes stopped, questioning them.
I’d love to jump in and save them, but I have no idea what cover story they’re using and I’m pretty sure that I’d only make the situation worse for them, so I just try my luck walking past when I think they’re not looking.
“He was in the meeting, he’ll tell you,” some fucking idiot tells one of the security guards.
I stop walking. Sure, I might be able to get out those doors and outrun the guards, but that would put Wrigley in serious shit when she tried to come out.
“What’s going on?” I ask the guards.
“Why don’t you tell us?”
“We just finished up a meeting,” I say. “What’s the problem?”
“The problem is that Mrs. Owen came through here just a few minutes ago, saying that she heard there were some unauthorized people up on 36, and what do you know? A few minutes later, we’ve got a couple dozen people filing out of the elevator. Where’s Miss Bliley?”
“She had to make a pit stop,” I answer. “Look, I don’t know what you think is going on here, but we just finished up with our meeting, it’s late, I’m tired, and I’m sure we’d all just like to go home and get a good night’s sleep.”
“Yeah?” the shorter security guard asks. “What was the meeting about?”
The people the guards stopped obviously gave some specific answer to that question, putting me in an almost impossible position.
“I can’t tell you that,” I answer.
“What do you mean you can’t tell us that?” the taller security guard asks, resting his hand on his belt.
“Have either of you ever heard of proprietary information?” I ask. “Not only could I lose my job if I disclosed the nature of the meeting to anyone not authorized, I could also get sued. I’m really not willing to risk that just because Mrs. Owen is paranoid that she’s losing her grip on the company.”
Hell, if I’m going to make shit up, I may as well take it as far as I can.
The guards look at each other.
“She’s losing the company?” the shorter guard asks. “These people said the meeting was about profit margins.”
“I’m sure they did,” I say. Is a wink too much? Yeah, a wink is too much. “And I never said that she was losing her grip on the company. Anyway, I can’t discuss it. Can we go, or are you going to continue to waste everyone’s time?”
“Well, if it was just a meeting,” the taller security guard starts, “then why did most of the people who came down run when we asked them to stop?”
Fucking amateurs.
“Probably because they didn’t want you reporting who was here at the meeting. Look guys,” I say in my good-old-boy tone, “we don’t want to make this situation awkward for anyone, but I can’t have Mrs. Owen coming back on any of our people, either. That doesn’t seem fair, I mean these are just good, hardworking people trying to do their job—just like the two of you. So, what do you say we just keep names and faces out of it?”
The truth is that, unless everyone except for Wrigley is a complete dolt, names and faces aren’t going to mean jack shit to anyone in this building, but it’s a good line.
“You know,” I say, “after things get switched around upstairs, I’d really hate to see the boss have to bring on new staff.”
The guards look at each other and then at me.
“All right,” the tall one says.
“We’ve got your back, Mr. Dur—I me
an, sir.”
The elevator dings, and I’m praying that it’s anyone but Mrs. Owen who walks out. To my temporary relief, it’s Wrigley.
That relief is temporary because she’s not up to speed on the bullshit I’ve been feeding these guys.
“Hey there, boss,” I say. “We had a little misunderstanding down here, but not to worry. Our friends here don’t know anything about the meeting.”
“That’s right, ma’am,” the tall one says.
“None of our business anyway,” the short one chimes in.
“Good to hear,” Wrigley says, doing a decent job of hiding her confusion.
“You ready to get out of here?” I ask her.
“Yeah,” she says. “Have a good night, guys.”
We keep straight faces long enough to get into a cab, but as soon as that car door is closed, we’re in hysterics.
* * *
Back at my apartment, and Wrigley’s asking if she can sleep on the couch. I don’t really have a problem with it, especially after the fucking insane night we’ve both had.
That’s not what happens, though.
Before I know it, we’re both sitting on the couch and she’s running her fingers through my hair, telling me that she can’t remember having such a fun night and I’m having trouble disagreeing with her.
Yeah, I’m thinking about Leila, but the shine is off the apple. She left without so much as a smile and a wave, and I’m done feeling like shit for wanting to stop feeling like shit.
Wrigley’s kissing me a minute later and I’m not telling her to stop. My arms are around her, and I’m wondering what I was so afraid of. Wrigley wanted to stick with me even while I was trying to figure things out with Leila, and while that’s not perfect and her motivations were hardly pure, I’m sick of not being able to sleep at night because the woman I cared so much for just took off while I was sitting alone in a bar waiting for one last night together.
Wrigley pulls away for a second and asks, “Are you all right? We don’t have to do this if you’re still against it.”
“You know what? I’m fine,” I tell her.
I’m kissing her again and my hand makes its way behind her back, up to the clasp of her bra, and with one hand, I—hold on. Give me a second.