Fringe Benefits

by Christine Pope

  I should have known better.

  My cell phone rang. Biting my lip, I looked down at the readout. Leslie’s number.

  I tried to tell myself she could be calling for an entirely different reason. It wouldn’t be the first time she got potted and indulged in a little drunk dialing. If that were the case, ignoring the phone wouldn’t do me any good. She’d just keep calling until I answered. I knew I should turn the damn thing off, get back to my moisturizing, and call it a night.

  Of course I didn’t. “Hello?”

  “Oh, my GOD!!”

  I held the phone a little ways away from my ear. “Hi, Leslie.”

  From behind her I could hear hallooing and whistles. “Everyone says hi,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what?” Playing dumb would only prolong the inevitable, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to fend her off for a bit.

  “That you were going to be on the Mike and Bruce show! I wouldn’t have even known, except Courtney heard you as she was driving back from an ice run.”

  Courtney, I remembered dimly, was Leslie’s oldest brother’s off-and-on girlfriend. Who knew she had a taste for classic rock? Biting back a sigh, I said, “Well, that was because I didn’t know, either.”

  A long pause. “You didn’t know?”

  “Yes, that’s what I said.”

  An even longer pause. I could envision Leslie in my mind’s eye, practically see her brow furrowing as her lively brain fought off the alcoholic fog. “Jonah?” she asked at last.

  “Probably. I don’t see who else it could be. I don’t think his friend who did the actual recording would have any reason to hand that CD off to a radio station.”

  “So you didn’t know.”

  “No, I didn’t know.” Oddly enough, repeating the words helped to tame my anger a bit. At the very least this latest incident should prove to Leslie what a jerk Jonah could be.

  She had a better word for it. “What an asshole.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  Good question. “I don’t know,” I replied. “Probably blow it off. I mean, he had to have done it to get a rise out of me. So I figure if I ignore him that should do the most to piss him off.”

  “I like it.” She hesitated, then said, “You going to be okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “All right. Gotta go.” And she hung up.

  Actually, I was very far from fine. Although I managed to turn off the phone, return to the bathroom, and finish my nightly rituals, my heart wouldn’t stop pounding, and my hands shook as I put the moisturizer away in the medicine cabinet. If Jonah had been there, I probably would have landed a round-house punch right on his jaw. I knew how, too—my brother Alex was pretty useless when it came to that sort of thing, but Cary, my ranch-hand ex-boyfriend, had shown me how to throw a punch. My time on the ranch had also taught me how to cook on a wood stove, ride bareback, and milk a cow, all talents I’d thought were pretty cool to have at the time, although I doubted any of them would do much to impress a sophisticate like Pieter Van Rijn.

  I’d never had any reason to use the pugilistic knowledge Cary had imparted, but my fist would’ve loved an inaugural voyage to Jonah’s chin.

  Barring that, I figured the best thing for me to do was just climb into bed and try to forget the whole incident. No doubt I’d have a calmer perspective on the whole thing in the clear light of day.

  Now if only I could keep myself from wondering what it would feel like to have Pieter pull me close in the darkness, to have his arms go around me and offer the comfort of his presence. But of course I didn’t know what that would feel like…and somehow I doubted I ever would.

  Unfortunately, once I’d finally gathered the courage to turn my phone back on, the clear light of day only showed how many calls I’d missed overnight. Fourteen. I didn’t even know fourteen people in L.A., unless you counted casual party-going acquaintances whose faces were more familiar to me than their actual names.

  Four of the calls were from Leslie, who appeared to have slid further and further into drunk-dial territory. I deleted them all. I’d call her later.

  Two calls came from Ken, the sales guy I’d dated back in March. Wow, and here I’d thought he’d just lost my phone number. Mr. “I think it’s better if we see other people” Richards sure was in a hurry to re-evaluate the situation now that I’d suddenly achieved even a tiny amount of local celebrity.

  “Asshole,” I muttered, and hit the “delete” button.

  An assortment of other calls must have come from Leslie’s fellow party-goers—at least, I could hear a familiar din in the background that echoed what I’d heard behind her messages even if I didn’t recognize the names or phone numbers of the callers. Just drunken well-wishing. I allowed myself a smile, but trashed those ones as well.

  Then Jonah’s voice, in a call with a time stamp of nine-thirty this morning. I bristled even as I forced myself to listen to the message. “Look, Katherine, I don’t know if you heard or not, but I did send in your CD to KFAB, and I can explain. Just really, call me. I’ll try again later.”

  Call you? I thought. If I’d known where he lived, I would have driven over there and delivered that much-needed punch in person. As it was, I deleted his message with such fury that I chipped my nail polish when I stabbed the little button with an angry forefinger. Great. Talk about adding insult to injury.

  Still fuming, I showered and got dressed, even though I supposed I could have just stayed in the tank top and boxers I used for sleeping attire in the summer. Real sexy, I know, but at least it was comfortable. It wasn’t as if there was anyone around I had to impress. I could have stayed in my makeshift jammies, remained inside, and gone through a whole box of Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches while I hid from the world. But that was just stupid. Hardly anyone in the apartment complex knew my name; I was just “K. Wheeler,” a piece of tape stuck on the narrow mailbox on the ground floor. Even if my neighbors had been listening to KFAB (which to my mind was anything but fab at that point), I doubted they’d make the connection between the Katherine Wheeler they’d heard on the radio the night before and the quiet dark-haired girl in apartment 223.

  My cell phone was beeping as I emerged from the bathroom. I’d taken a good long time getting ready—full makeup, hair done, good jeans and a pretty sleeveless floral blouse instead of my usual Saturday attire of capris and a tank top. Don’t ask me why I’d gone to all that trouble, except that it felt oddly comforting to lose myself in the rituals of eye shadow and curling irons, jewelry and shoes.

  But even a prolonged primping session couldn’t put off the day forever. I hesitated next to the dining room table for a moment, hand hovering over my phone. As if sensing my presence, it beeped again. Damn it.

  I sighed and picked it up, then flipped it open. Only three missed calls. Well, I supposed it could have been worse.

  One from Leslie (frankly, I was surprised to hear from her before noon, considering the shape she’d been in the night before), one from Jonah-the-asshole, and a final one from someone I’d never heard of named Gary Nolan who claimed to be an agent. Gee, I wonder who gave him my phone number? I also started to wonder how much trouble it would be to change the damn number. That seemed the simplest course. Fun little triple ascending tone, and then “we’re sorry, the phone number you’ve called is no longer in service,” say good night, Gracie. It wasn’t as if I’d have to give a new number to that many people—Leslie, my family, Pieter.

  Funny how the one person I really wanted to call me of course wouldn’t. What reason would he have? I was just his secretary, off for a long weekend of cell-phone harassment. Very likely he had plans with someone glamorous and blonde, who’d never milked a cow or shoveled a hen house in her life.

  Okay, to be fair, I’d only done the hen house thing once. And it wasn’t as if that was normal routine for me—
our tidy ranch-style house in Billings with its manicured backyard of course bore no resemblance to the real ranch, complete with rambling farm house, that my uncle owned. I think he’d pulled the hen house stunt as a joke; after all, mucking out a hen house was a pretty big job for a ten-year-old girl to tackle alone. Stubbornly, I’d managed to do it all by myself. Afterward, however, I planted my hands on my hips, glared up at Uncle Bret, and announced, “If you ask me to do that again, I’m going home! Even if I have to walk!”

  He’d just laughed. Somehow I managed to make Uncle Bret laugh a good bit of the time. I’d always had a sneaking suspicion I was his favorite—Alex always had his nose in a book, and Ellen was a bit too much of a goody two-shoes—but of course he’d been far too diplomatic to say such a thing out loud.

  At any rate, since Pieter was safely back in town and probably didn’t require any further chauffeuring to the airport, I really didn’t expect to hear from him before my return to work on Tuesday. If the harassment got to be too much and I really did decide to change my phone number, I could always call him to let him know. Awkward as that might be.

  Uncertain, I stood there in the dining area, trying to decide what to do and thinking that maybe I should just ditch the apartment, cell phone and all, and head to the mall for some retail therapy. The phone rang. I lifted it and looked at the incoming number. Jonah again. That guy really needed to get a hobby.

  I almost didn’t answer. But then I thought I might as well pick up and get this over with.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “Okay, so you’re mad.” He didn’t even have the grace to sound sheepish.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” I replied. “What part of ‘I only want to record these songs to send to my parents, destroy all other copies’ did you not get?”

  “Well, yeah, okay, you did say that, but I really thought if you just saw what a positive response you’d get—”

  If only I could have reached through the phone and strangled him. I had to settle for retorting, “Look, Jonah, I don’t care if Bono and Bruce Springsteen called you up and said they wanted to sing duets with me. I don’t want to perform. I don’t want a career in the music industry. I enjoy a little karaoke if I’m drunk enough. That’s it. Comprénde?”

  A sulky silence. Then, “Look, you really shouldn’t blow Gary Nolan off. The guy has repped some pretty big acts, and—”

  Some part of me really enjoyed interrupting him. I didn’t care what Jonah Freeman thought of me. I certainly didn’t want to encourage him. So it felt really good to say what I thought instead of watching every word. “Okay, I won’t blow him off. I’ll return his call and tell him you had no business giving him my phone number, that I have no intention of singing professionally, and that I’m really, really sorry you wasted his time. How about that?”

  Another silence. Then Jonah said, sounding pretty ticked off himself, “That was uncalled for.”

  “‘Uncalled for’?” I repeated in astonishment. Did Jonah just try to turn this around and make it my fault? I ground my teeth, then released my jaw just enough to continue. “Let me be perfectly clear here, Jonah, since you seem to be having some basic comprehension problems. Do not give my phone number to any more agents. Destroy any copies of those music files you might have in your possession. In fact, tear up my phone number and swallow it, because if you try calling me one more time, I’m changing the damn number. Got it?”

  The silence that followed this little speech was so long I began to wonder if the call had been dropped. But no—I pulled my phone away from my ear long enough to check the display, and it showed we were still connected.

  Then, finally, a ground-out, “Got it.” And that time the connection was broken.

  Wow. I dropped the phone on the dining room table, feeling more than a little shaky. I didn’t know I had it in me. A song lyric from one of my mother’s old albums ran through my head: “I am woman—hear me roar.” And I laughed out loud, more to dispel some of the tension I could still feel in my neck and shoulders than anything else.

  Where the hell had that come from? Now, I would stick up for myself when necessary, but I’d never been that good at calling guys on their bullshit. Mostly I’d put up with it for a while, then decide I’d had enough and figure out some way to disengage myself from the situation without too much drama on either side. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d stood my ground and thrown someone’s crap right back in their face like that.

  It felt good, though. It felt really, really good. Phone threats to Jonah to the contrary, I didn’t intend to call this Gary Nolan person and say anything. I figured in that case silence should do the trick. If he was as important an agent as Jonah had hinted, then he wouldn’t bother chasing after a nobody like me. And persistent as Jonah might be, I doubted any guy with even half his synapses firing would try calling me again after getting his shorts handed to him the way he just had.

  Grinning, I picked up my phone to call Leslie back. I didn’t want to leave her hanging, and I knew she would get a laugh out of how I’d handled Jonah.

  And who knows—if I’d developed the guts to give Jonah what-for, maybe someday I’d find the strength to let Pieter know how I really felt. Stranger things had happened.

  Hadn’t they?

  Twelve

  Tuesday morning couldn’t arrive fast enough. Feeling grim, I’d turned off my cell phone for most of the weekend—after all, my parents and Leslie and Pieter all had my land-line number as well, so it wasn’t as if I’d dropped all forms of communication. But I also didn’t want to jump every time the damn cell rang, so off it went. In an odd way, it was great to not have to worry about it anymore, and I wondered why so many people felt the need to have the things glued to their heads all the time. I mean, the sky wasn’t exactly going to fall in just because someone missed a phone call.

  Sunday night I did go to the party at the Gruesome Twosome’s house, more to get Leslie off my back than anything else. I wouldn’t say it was exactly a night to remember. Michael hinted darkly about breaking out his karaoke equipment (I threatened to break his kneecaps if he did any such thing), and all evening I had to dodge one of the O.C. guys Leslie had told me about. My comments about our mutually undesirable geography didn’t dissuade him.

  “I live in Brea. It’s practically touching Los Angeles County,” was his reply to that tactic.

  Feeling desperate, I’d said, “Well, I’m not even sure I’m going to stay in L.A. I might be moving back to Montana.”

  That ill-considered remark proved to be a huge mistake, since word got back to Leslie and I had to spend a good fifteen minutes explaining to her that I’d only told O.C.-boy about a possible move in order to get him to leave me alone.

  As if I’d ever leave Los Angeles while Pieter Van Rijn still lived here. But I couldn’t exactly tell Leslie that.

  All in all, I was more relieved when my alarm went off on Tuesday morning than any sane person had a right to be. I mean, what sort of nutcase is happy to go back to work after a long weekend?

  Guess it was time to sign me up for a straitjacket. I sang in the shower, allowed myself an indulgent cup of chai latte on the way in, and generally felt more cheerful about the whole situation than I had any right to. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten the strange spat with Pieter on Friday afternoon. Rather, I’d allowed myself a little distance, a little time to think. Wasn’t it all for the best that he now knew what I’d done, and that I wasn’t entirely comfortable regarding his past history with all those secretaries? While he certainly hadn’t volunteered much information, he hadn’t shut me down completely, either. The mere fact that he’d brought me to his store and attempted to share his knowledge of antiques with me had to mean something.

  He’d said I was different. Just the memory of him uttering those words and giving me an approving look was enough to buoy my spirits. Obviously he’d seen something in me that he hadn’t seen in any of his other assistants. All I had to do was build on that idea somehow,
make him see that the possibility of a relationship between us wasn’t crazy. Well, not completely crazy, anyway.

  I pulled into the Pyramid Imports parking lot at about five minutes to nine. Pieter’s Maserati was already there in its customary spot. My heart gave one of those annoying little skips, and I told it to back off. After all, there was no reason to think he wouldn’t have been back at work after the long weekend.

  Since he’d allowed me to keep the spare key, I let myself into the building. I set my purse down on my desk, then went on back toward Pieter’s office. As I’d expected, he was seated at his desk, widescreen Macbook already up and running.

  He glanced up at once as I paused in the doorway. “Good morning, Katherine.”

  Until Pieter, I’d never been someone to really notice a man’s eyes. Light, dark, whatever. But his were so striking that I just wanted to keep staring, as if somehow I could fall into those icy depths like an Olympic diver plunging into a pool. I managed to jerk my gaze away and reply, “Morning, Pieter.”

  I couldn’t see any trace of awkwardness in his expression. “Did you enjoy your weekend?”

  “Sure.” That was a lie, but of course I couldn’t exactly tell him I’d spent most of the weekend hiding from my cell phone or dodging importunate bachelors from north Orange County. I blurted, “How was yours?”

  “Well enough.”

  He might have looked perfectly placid, but standing there I suddenly felt as if my feet were two sizes too big. I didn’t know what to do with my hands.