by C. E. Murphy
“Up here!” I pulled the towel up to show her, trying desperately to pull the jeans up. The waistband wouldn’t go past my hipbones. My bellybutton was yards above the waistband.
“That’s where they’re supposed to hit, Joanne.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I yanked again, which was certainly uncomfortable, if not in the least productive. I was giving myself an all-around wedgie. Phoebe slapped my hands away from the waistband, zipped the zipper and buttoned the button, then stood back and nodded approvingly.
“Okay, that’s good. Shirt now.” She handed over the gold glimmery thing. I held it up in dismay.
“This isn’t a shirt. It’s a piece of gold lamé. With strings.”
“Wow. I wouldn’t have put money on you knowing what lamé was. It’s a shirt.” She took it away from me and tied two of the strings around my neck. “See?”
“I am not wearing this in public.”
“Yes, you are. C’mon, lose the towel.” She tugged it. I squawked and clutched it against my chest.
“Phoebe!”
“Trust me, Joanne. Would I lead you astray?”
“Yes.” I sighed and unwrapped the towel, feeling put-upon. Phoebe tied another series of strings behind my back, then clucked her tongue.
“Okay. Got any hair gel?”
“Will you have a heart attack if I say yes?”
“No.” She sounded far too cheerful, and went into my bathroom to root around. “You don’t own any makeup?”
“What would I do with it?” I sat on the bed, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. Phoebe clucked again and came back out with a palmful of mousse that she rifled through my hair.
“Close your eyes. And tell me about this guy while I do your makeup.” She unzipped the compact bag and dumped its content onto my bed, too: foundation, blush, lipstick, little jars of loose makeup and about fourteen makeup brushes of various sizes. The rest of it I didn’t recognize, which made me nervous. “Close your eyes,” she ordered again. I did. “Does he have a brother?”
“No,” I muttered, “he’s got a sister.” Wretched petite curvy redheaded Barbara. I could remember her name easily enough. It didn’t make sense that it’d taken numerous repetitions for me to remember Mark’s.
“That’ll do,” Phoebe said saucily enough as I opened my eyes. She nearly poked me with a brush and scowled. I closed my eyes again. “Where’d you meet him? How long’ve you been dating?”
“I just met him last night, Phoebe.”
“Ooh, first date. Good thing I’m here. What about Gary?”
My eyes popped open again. “What about him?”
“Does he know you’re seeing a younger man, too?”
“I’m not dating Gary! He’s seventy-three years old, Phoebe!”
“Uh-huh,” she said, full of polite disbelief. “Sure. So’s Sean Connery.”
I screwed up my face, feeling like words wanted to explode out and not knowing what I was going to say. “Anyway, he thinks I should go out with Mark. That’s practically the only reason I am.” Somehow that didn’t sound like it helped matters any. “Anyway,” I repeated, strenuously enough to burst something, “I’m sorry about double-booking. I don’t know how that happened. It’s—”
“Okay,” she said. “It’s okay, because I’m going to get all the prurient details afterward. You’ll feel too guilty to hold out on me. Open your mouth.”
“I hate lipstick.”
“I didn’t ask. Open your mouth.”
I opened my mouth. A moment later Phoebe gave me a tissue to smack on, then pointed me toward the bathroom mirror. “Go on. Go look at yourself.”
I eyed her, then got up and went to look.
Even if the mirror hadn’t told me so, Mark’s expression when we came back out of the bedroom said everything that needed saying. The ridiculous little gold shirt had strings that criss-crossed through half a dozen loops from my shoulder blades to the small of my back, where the shirt stopped entirely. Phoebe’s makeup job gave my skin a startling warm golden glow. I’d dug a pair of three-inch strappy gold heels out of the closet, finally glad for the rare bout of shoe lust that had prompted me to buy them years ago. I’d never worn them. Mark did a double-take at my feet when he realized I stood as tall as he did, then developed a slow, astonished smile that made me self-conscious and pleased all at once. Phoebe looked insufferably smug.
“My plan,” she told Mark airily, “had been to get Joanne a social life, but she seems to be managing it on her own. I’ve got a new plan. Now Joanne helps me get a social life. She said you had a sister.” Her grin was bright, and Mark laughed.
“I do. Look, I didn’t mean to bust in on you two having a night out. Can I make it up somehow? You could come to dinner with us, Phoebe.”
“Absolutely not.” Phoebe waggled a finger at him. “But if you can get Joanne out to Contour in Pioneer Square for a few hours after dinner, I’ll call it even.”
“I can’t dance, Phoebe,” I protested. “I really can’t. And this is a fluke. If I need to help you get a social life, you’re a disaster.”
Phoebe turned the waggling finger on me. “I, personally, am coming off a very bad breakup, which you don’t know because we’ve never really hung out before. So, see, you’ll be good for me. It’s a whatchacallit, parasitic relationship.”
Mark and I said, “Symbiotic,” at the same time, and I lifted an eyebrow at him before turning back to Phoebe, curiosity getting the better of me. “When was the breakup?”
“I thought cops didn’t know words like symbiotic,” she said, grinning. Then she assumed a guilty expression. “Um. A year and a half ago. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if you can’t dance. Make her come out, anyway, Mark. A very wise man once said, ’Get up and dance, anyway, because nobody else cares if you can’t dance.’”
“I’ll try,” he promised. “Who said that?”
“Dave Barry. It was one of his life lessons. Right after ’Do not take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.’ Now go.” Phoebe beamed at both of us. “See you guys later.”
I left the apartment with Mark, feeling somehow like I was walking half an inch in the air.
I’d hit the earth again by the time we went down five flights of stairs to get to my car. I hadn’t been on a date in so long I had absolutely no idea how to conduct myself on one, which didn’t go a long way toward creating the casual bantering atmosphere one tends to hope for on a first date. If that’s what this qualified as, anyway. I wasn’t sure, under the circumstances. Mark, however, was apparently much better at this sort of thing than I was, and put an appreciative hand on Petite’s roof as I unlocked her doors. “You did all the work on this yourself, huh? What year is she?”
The way to my heart was through my car. A blind man could see that. Morrison couldn’t, but a blind man could.
Morrison was really not the point here. I smiled at Mark and nodded. “Yeah. She’s a 1969 Boss 302. There were only about seventeen hundred built, and about half of them are automatics. Someday when I’ve got a lot more time and money I’m going to convert her to a manual. That’s my big dream for her.” Mark didn’t look glazed over yet, so I went on happily. “She was just a junker in somebody’s barn when I found her. They let me take her for the price of hauling her out of there. It’s been her and me ever since.”
“She’s beautiful.”
Mark was obviously a genius. I beamed and nattered on about my car all the way down to the restaurant. Unlike Morrison, Mark knew enough about cars to not embarrass himself, and unlike most men, he didn’t seem to feel it necessary to try to out-guy me on the topic. I noticed I’d been talking nonstop as we walked into the restaurant, and reined myself in with an effort and a surprisingly easy laugh. “You kind of found my Achilles’ heel. Get me started on cars and I can’t shut up.”
“Nah.” Mark waved his hand. “I like hearing what people are passionate about. You learn all kinds of things that way. Everybody’s got something they’re geeke
d about.”
“Geeked?” I laughed again. “I didn’t know geek was a verb.”
“Sure.” Mark actually held my chair for me as I sat down. What fascinating and bizarre behavior the courting male displayed. I wondered if he’d try ordering my dinner for me, too. “I’ve got this theory,” he said as he sat down. “Used to be that being a geek was a bad thing, like being a dork or a nerd, right?”
I put my elbows on the table and folded my fingers under my chin. “Sure.”
“Right.” He nodded. “But then computers got to be everyday appliances, people needed geeks, and now it’s pretty cool to be a geek. And I think the word has adapted. Now you can be a computer geek, a car geek, a cooking geek—”
“Those are called foodies,” I interrupted, smiling. Mark made a face at me and I laughed out loud again. “Sorry. I think I got that word from the Food Network.”
“You’re not sorry.” He didn’t look in the slightest bit upset, though, turning his face-making into a laugh of his own. “My point is if you’ve got a hobby or a job or a passion that you know a lot about, that other people don’t, you’re that kind of geek, and you get geeked about your topic.”
“So geeked is a new word for excited,” I said. “Were you an English major, Mark?”
His eyebrows quirked. “It shows?”
I made a loose fist and put it out, palm down. Mark, who knew a cue when he saw one, did the same and bonked his knuckles against mine. “Fellow English majors of the world, unite.”
“Bad spellers of the world,” Mark said, half under his breath, and together we said, “Untie!” Mark’s grin went so wide it looked fit to split his face. He put his menu aside—I hadn’t even noticed the waiter handing them to us—and said, “Know what really drives me insane? Misused quote marks on signs. ’Big “sale”’,” he said, complete with air quotes around “sale.” “’Price “reduction”’. ’Lasagna “special”’.”
“Oh, my God. Me, too.” I actually leaned forward and grabbed his hand in sympathy. He was too good to be true. Not only was he cute and willing to listen to me babble about Petite, but he had the same language issues I did. I wanted one of my very own.
The thought that I could possibly have one of my very own heated my cheeks. Taking him home for a not-repeat of last night’s performance suddenly sounded pretty entertaining. For the first time I could remember, the idea made me smile, and I wasn’t embarrassed at all to let my English geek get out of hand. “Doesn’t it make you just want to stop and fix the signs, or go in and yell at people until they understand that using quotes like that implies sarcasm? That they’re saying exactly the opposite of what they mean? ’“Rock-bottom prices”’!” Now I did air quotes, too, which was probably good, as it released Mark’s hand from my enthusiastic prison. “Or apostrophes. Don’t get me started on apostrophes. How hard is it to remember that i-t-apostrophe-s means ’it is,’ or ’it has’?”
“True confession time.” Mark leaned forward, too, dropping his voice to admit, “I can never remember that one. I always have to think about it.”
“But I bet you get it right when you think about it!”
“Well.” He sat back with a disparaging wave of his hand that made us both laugh. “Yes.” He lifted his menu with a challenging arch of an eyebrow. “First one who finds a typo in the menu wins dessert.”
“Oh, you’re on.” I picked up my menu and started flipping through it, grinning broadly. The waiter appeared at my elbow to ask politely if we wanted wine or appetizers, and Mark and I caught each other giving the other guarded looks. I pursed my lips and glanced sideways at the waiter. “No, thanks,” I said.
Mark nodded. “A few more minutes, please.”
The waiter slipped discreetly out of view again. “I’m not much of a wine drinker, anyway,” I mumbled. Mark gave me a disarming smile.
“More of the sort to go right for the hard stuff, huh?”
I made a laugh that was mostly in my nose and the top of my mouth, and therefore came out an unattractive wet snort. How delightful. Mark’s smile broadened, though, so maybe it wasn’t as gross as I thought it’d been. “I’m good with beer. I don’t usually drink liquor.”
“Does it mess up your—” Mark broke off, caught between winsome curiosity and apology. “Tell me to screw off if it’s none of my business, but I’m really curious about what Gary mentioned this morning. Shamanism? You’re really into that? Does drinking mess it up?”
For one brief moment I seriously considered killing Gary for opening his big mouth. My inexplicable powers did not strike me as good first-date discussion material. Bitching about the slaughtering of the language, yes; magic powers, no. I sat there looking at Mark for what felt like a very long time indeed, considering whether or not I wanted to answer his questions, and how far I wanted to get into the answers if I did. “No,” I said finally. “Drinking just impairs my judgment like it does anybody else’s. Um.”
“You don’t want to talk about it.” Mark’s smile went all apologetic. “Sorry. It’s just…talk about things to get geeked about. Magic. Shamanism. It sounds interesting.”
“Does it?” I scratched the back of my neck, looking at my menu. “There’s just no real way to talk about it without sounding insane.” I glanced up with a shrug. “I mean, honestly, if I went into it, explained what it was all about and said I had magic powers and could affect the weather,” which I managed to say without wincing, although it was a trial, “or could heal people, and you said, yeah, cool, I’m down with that, frankly, I’d think you were nuts.” I did think he was nuts. He’d been far too easy about the whole thing this morning. On the other hand, he asked smart questions about Petite. Maybe a willingness to consider the esoteric was a flaw I could learn to live with. I’d sort of have to, if I ever wanted to have a boyfriend again. Either that or I was going to have to develop a secret identity, and I didn’t think I had the body for running around in leather catsuits.
The apology left his expression, curiosity and interest replacing it in a lip-parted half smile. Mark had a very expressive mouth. I thought I could get used to watching it. “Can you?”
“Can I wh—oh.” I breathed a laugh and shifted my shoulders, discomfort creeping up and down my spine. “See, I can’t answer that. Anything I say, one of us has to be crazy to believe it.”
“So.” Mark picked up his water glass, swirling ice around, and put it down without sipping. “So you’re telling me you’re into this thing that you don’t expect other people to believe in, and you’d reject them based on their belief?”
I rolled my eyes up, considering that, then shrugged my eyebrows. “Yeah, pretty much. The only reason I believe it is I can’t get away from it. I don’t expect rational people to buy into the concept of magic going on around them. It’s the kind of topic you smile and humor people on, and later go ’Woo, she was a kook, huh?’ about.”
He tilted his head. “Is that what you do to yourself?”
Maybe I didn’t want to get used to watching him after all. I was not accustomed to feeling this much conflict over a guy. I told myself that, and very firmly did not let myself start thinking about my boss. Instead I stared at Mark, then exhaled heavily. “Yeah, basically.”
“Huh.” Mark quirked an eyebrow. “It must be a difficult dichotomy to be you.”
“Sometimes.” I shrugged one shoulder. “On the other hand, once in a great while it lands me dates with guys who use dichotomy in casual conversation, so it can’t be all bad.”
“Careful,” he said with a quick grin. “I’ve been known to throw even bigger words around without warning. They misspelled brulée, by the way. They’ve only got one “e” and no accent. You’re buying dessert.”
“How’d you—I haven’t even gotten to the dessert menu yet! No fair!” I went back to perusing the menu, fully aware that Mark had changed the subject deliberately and gracefully to let me off the hook, and grateful for the reprieve.
CHAPTER 9
A lot of
good food and several hours later, it proved that Phoebe was right. No one seemed to care that I was more of a twitchy, spasmodic marionette than a dancer. Impossibly loud music crashing into my bones made me stop caring, too, and consequently there were a couple of times when the woman in the mirror looked like she might know what she was doing out there on the dance floor.
Mark, on the other hand, really did know what he was doing, enough so that I accused him of being gay, which was wildly un-PC of me. He compounded the lack of political correctness by spending the next twenty minutes swishing around the dance floor, until Phoebe and I were leaning on each other and snorting with undignified laughter. I was actually having a fantastically good time when Barbara Bragg showed up.
For one horrible moment I was afraid she’d have Morrison in tow. There were things my constitution could stand, and things it couldn’t. My boss at a dance club was one of the latter. In fact, my own presence at a club was almost more than it could take, so compounding it with Morrison’s arrival would’ve just laid me out flat, shattered like so much windshield glass. Mark, blissfully unaware of my mental gymnastics, waved his sister down through a series of complicated hand gestures—which is to say, he pointed at us, then himself—suggested he was with Phoebe and me.
Barbara looked us both up and down, then turned to Mark with a grin. I could hear her over the music, which lent me respect for her lung power, if nothing else, as she bellowed, “You don’t get all the cute girls, Mark!”
I figured she had to be talking about someone else. I was too tall to be cute, and while Phoebe had great bone structure, I thought the near-unibrow might preclude cuteness. Regardless, Barbara slid an arm around Phoebe’s waist, fitting next to her like the proverbial peas in a pod, and grinned broadly at me as she pulled her farther away.
Phoebe looked about a thousand times more relaxed dancing with another woman than I could imagine being with anyone. My reflection was still having fun, but I felt a little thrill of envy spark through me. Barbara Bragg was physically adorable, with a pert, turned-up nose and pixiecut hair, her big blue eyes full of laughter. I was pretty sure her hair grew out of her head that particular shade of red, too, which I found totally unfair, and I’d never even wanted to be a redhead. It was the principle of the thing. And maybe the way she filled out the frilly sundress she wore, with curves in all the right places. She also had a butterfly tattoo on her left shoulder, matching Mark’s in size, color and newness. I didn’t know her, but it seemed to suit her: full of life and vibrancy, just like her brother. It wasn’t exactly hard to figure out what attracted Morrison to her.