Not in Time

by Shawna Seed

  “I’m glad you didn’t need stitches in your head,” Julien said. “I had to do that once, about 10 years ago. I was surfing, and...”

  Julien’s funny story about his surfing accident segued into a story about how he’d wrecked his knee playing pickup basketball, and soon they were pulling into his drive.

  Genevieve took the cat carrier while Julien brought in a cardboard box with Mona’s food and bowls.

  “Hang a right,” he said, closing the side door with his foot. “We’ll set her up in my office.”

  Edging past the washer and dryer, Genevieve turned into a short hallway. The tile of the laundry room gave way to wood floors.

  “Bathroom on your right,” Julien said. “Office is the next door.”

  Genevieve glanced into the bathroom as she walked by. The floor was marble and the fixtures looked new. A dark blue towel hung precisely on the rack.

  She followed the hallway’s slight bend to the left and turned into the office. A long built-in worktable covered two of the walls, forming an L. There was a high-end Mac desktop, a laptop, a couple different printers and some other equipment Genevieve didn’t recognize. Papers and sketchpads were stacked in an empty space between equipment. File cabinets were lined up under the worktable. On the wall opposite the door was a sofa upholstered in dark green fabric.

  Julien kneed an expensive-looking office chair up against the worktable and put down the box of food.

  Mona began to meow piteously. “I’ll go get the litter and stuff from the car,” Julien said.

  Genevieve sat on the floor to unzip the cat carrier. Mona stuck her head out, sniffing the unfamiliar air. Sensing no immediate danger, she slunk out and climbed into Genevieve’s lap. Genevieve buried her face in the cat’s fur and closed her eyes, trying very hard not to think about the man outside her apartment.

  “Genevieve?”

  Julien was standing in the doorway. “I was thinking – do you want to stay here tonight? The couch pulls out.”

  Genevieve looked up at him and nodded.

  “I’ll get your suitcase and call Melvin.”

  Once Julien returned, she unpacked Mona’s things and rolled her suitcase into the closet.

  It was small, but shelves and racks made maximum use of the space. Sports gear took up most of it: a basketball, a wetsuit, and several pairs of running shoes in various states of wear. Crutches leaned against the back wall.

  The stucco walls of Julien’s office were painted terra cotta and bare except for a framed photograph of an empty white lifeguard’s chair, which hung above the sofa. Genevieve squinted at the writing on the matte. “Cape Cod National Seashore, 2000.”

  She let herself out, shutting the door to keep Mona in, and went to look for Julien.

  The hall was painted the same terra cotta and held more framed photos – all landscapes, no people. Genevieve wondered whether Julien had taken them.

  A few steps down the hall was an open doorway to the living room. Ahead lay the door to what must be Julien’s bedroom. She turned toward the living room, which she’d glimpsed before with its brown leather sofa and long wall of books and the giant TV.

  The dining room was a small alcove off the living room. She’d seen Julien there one morning through the bay window, drinking his coffee. The table had elaborately carved feet, and against the wall was an old-fashioned sideboard of dark, heavy wood, a change from the clean lines in the rest of the house.

  She heard the side door open, and Julien walked down the hall toward the office. He called her name.

  “In here,” she said.

  Julien appeared from the hallway.

  “You have a really great house,” Genevieve said. “It’s really...” She tried, and failed, to come up with an appropriate adjective.

  “Thanks,” Julien said. “Let’s see about getting you something to eat.”

  “That would be great,” Genevieve said. “Anything that delivers this late is fine. Chinese, pizza, I’m not picky.”

  Julien picked up one of the dining room chairs and carried it into the next room.

  “Come in here,” he said.

  Genevieve followed him. They were in the kitchen, which was clearly the showpiece of the house.

  The refrigerator was high-end stainless steel. The countertops were marble. Tall cabinets, painted white, flanked the sink. Through the glass fronts, Genevieve could see dishes neatly stacked.

  Opposite the refrigerator was an ancient gas range. A rack full of expensive-looking pans hung above it.

  “Wow,” Genevieve said. “I think my grandmother had that stove.”

  “It’s from the 1940s. It’s original to the house,” Julien said.

  He pointed to the chair. “Sit there. Talk to me while I cook.”

  “You don’t have to do that. Takeout’s fine,” Genevieve said.

  Julien opened the refrigerator and surveyed its contents. “I like to cook.”

  He pulled a large pot down from the rack above the stove, then hesitated. “I’m thinking pasta. Please tell me you’re not one of those weight-obsessed LA women who won’t let carbs past her lips.”

  “I love pasta,” Genevieve said. She glanced at the clock on the microwave. “But it’s so late. You don’t have to make all this work for yourself.”

  He ran water into the pot, put it on the stove and lit the flame. “Cooking for a beautiful woman is never too much work. I think that’s an Italian proverb or something.”

  “Maybe, but you’re cooking for a bedraggled woman,” Genevieve said.

  “Oh, it’s not so bad,” he said, making a show of looking her over. “You just have a little bump on the head. Venus de Milo is missing her arms, and men still think she’s beautiful.”

  “That’s because she’s topless,” Genevieve said. “They’re looking at her breasts.”

  Julien laughed, and Genevieve suddenly felt better.

  “Am I in the way here? I’d offer to help, but I’m useless in the kitchen.”

  Julien was at the counter, chopping something, his back to her. “You’re fine. Red sauce OK? Do you eat meat?”

  “I am a total carnivore.”

  He turned on another burner, pulled down a skillet and put chopped garlic and olive oil in the pan. A pungent odor soon filled the kitchen. “Why don’t you cook?”

  “My grandmother tried to teach me. She used to say she didn’t know how I expected to get a husband if I couldn’t fry chicken.”

  Julien smiled as he went to the refrigerator, then the pantry around the corner for more ingredients.

  “That smells great,” Genevieve said. “Where did you learn? Did your mom teach you?”

  “My mom hated to cook.”

  He added sausage to the pan, broke it up with the back of a spoon and let it cook a bit before adding a can of chopped tomatoes.

  “When I turned 21, I got a little bit of money my dad left me. After I finished college, I took it and went to Europe. I learned there.”

  “Oh, so you backpacked for a summer, stayed in hostels, that sort of thing?”

  Genevieve had never known anyone who had actually done this. It wasn’t really the sort of thing Texas Tech grads did, at least not in her era.

  “Sort of, except I stayed for a year and a half,” Julien said. “I spent a lot of time in Italy and discovered I really liked cooking. I kept it up when I came home because...”

  “It made you a hit with the ladies?”

  Julien laughed knowingly, and Genevieve wondered how many women had perched on this chair while he made dinner.

  While the sauce simmered and the pasta cooked, he told her a funny story about missing three consecutive trains to Milan because he was talking to a woman – but not the same woman. It kept Genevieve entertained and focused on something other than what had happened at her apartment earlier.

  “Almost done here,” he said, finally. “Does your head hurt? I’m wondering if it’s safe for you to have wine.” He tested the pasta.

 
“I’ll take my chances,” she said.

  He bobbed his head at her. “Glasses are in the sideboard. Get one for me, too. This smells too good not to eat.”

  “Time to make myself useful?” Genevieve said, taking her chair back to the table. “This is an amazing sideboard.”

  “It was my mom’s,” Julien said. “And the table. It’s the only furniture of hers I kept.”

  Genevieve poked her head around the corner. “These OK?” she asked, holding up two glasses.

  Julien was at the sink draining pasta. He glanced over his shoulder. “Perfect.”

  “What else can I do?”

  “Go sit,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”

  He came through the doorway a couple seconds later, two bowls of pasta balanced on one arm and a bottle of wine in the other hand. “Here, pour the wine,” he said.

  “You waited tables,” she said, observing how he carried the food.

  “Summers in college,” he said, returning to the kitchen.

  “You must have totally cleaned up on tips,” Genevieve said.

  Julien came back with cutlery, a wedge of Parmesan and a grater. “Why do you say that?”

  “You have a lot of personality,” she said. Then she surprised herself by adding, “And that smile.”

  On cue, he smiled, although more to himself than her. “Any waitressing on your résumé?”

  “In grad school,” she said. “I was too shy to really hustle tips. I’d get the orders right, be quick, and then I’d still get bad tips. My feelings would be so hurt.”

  He leaned back, opened a drawer of the sideboard and retrieved two napkins, handing her one. “You remind me of my high school girlfriend,” Julien said. “She had that same shy thing, but totally smart and funny once you got to know her.”

  Genevieve took a bite of the pasta. “Oh God,” she moaned. “This is really good.”

  “Better than takeout?”

  She nodded, too busy eating to talk.

  When she’d finished the first glass of wine, Julien poured her a second. About halfway through it, she put it down, suddenly feeling uncomfortable.

  “What are we doing? Twelve hours ago you thought I was a con artist.”

  Julien frowned. “Genevieve, I said...”

  She ignored his protest. “And you spent all afternoon, how did you put it? Pulling threads on my story, trying to find the one that would make it all unravel? And now I’m at your house eating dinner and... what? Pretending that didn’t happen?”

  Julien picked up her bowl and carried it to the kitchen. “I’m sorry. Earlier, it seemed like you wanted to be distracted. I’m trying to help.”

  “I appreciate that,” Genevieve said. “But are you still trying to make the whole thing unravel?”

  Returning to the dining room, Julien pulled out a chair and sat across from her.

  “Do you believe me? Do you think I’m telling the truth?”

  Julien looked her in the eye and took a long time answering.

  “I think you believe you’re telling the truth.”

  “That’s not the same thing.”

  “No.”

  “So what does that mean? You think I’m delusional or something?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s like in The Matrix, the part where...” He stopped. “You saw The Matrix, right?”

  “I don’t really like science fiction.”

  Julien began to laugh.

  “What?”

  “You don’t see the irony?”

  It was late, and she’d had a very bad day. “You don’t like science fiction! Today at my apartment you called it crap!”

  Julien checked his watch. “Yesterday, actually. I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I said I didn’t believe it. But forget The Matrix, that’s not the point. Here’s the point: It’s possible to suspend disbelief and hang with something because you want to see where the story goes. And that’s how I feel. I want to see where the story goes.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Genevieve woke up slightly after 9 a.m., sore all over, with a hungry cat staring at her from Julien’s worktable.

  She fed Mona, then listened carefully. The house seemed quiet. Was Julien still asleep? As she started to open the door, she noticed the note slipped underneath.

  Went to the gym. Help yourself in the kitchen. Fresh juice in fridge.

  She showered and dressed quickly. In the mirror, she noticed the beginning of a bruise on the side of her neck. Another was developing on her wrist. Her head was tender where she’d hit it, but washing her hair didn’t reopen the cut. Her injuries could have been worse. In many ways, she’d been very lucky.

  She was grateful when she got to the kitchen and saw that Julien had made coffee before he left. She poured herself a cup.

  At first she didn’t see any orange juice in the fridge, but then she spotted it: a small glass pitcher on the top shelf. By fresh, he meant fresh-squeezed. She poured a glass and took a sip. It was delicious.

  She found skim milk and doctored her coffee. He also had two kinds of beer and an open bottle of white wine. On the top shelf were eggs and butter – French, by the look of the package. In the crisper, she found leaf lettuce, two other greens she didn’t recognize, broccoli, apples, pears, oranges and carrots. The door rack held three kinds of mustard, club soda, tonic water, wasabi paste and capers. Wasabi paste? Capers?

  She grabbed an apple and headed around the corner to scrutinize the pantry.

  Four kinds of pasta. Three types of rice. Olive oil. Canola oil. Sesame oil. Five vinegars. More spices than she’d ever seen, including a few she’d never heard of. She found cereal and shut the pantry door, chastising herself for snooping.

  She was pouring a bowl of cereal when she heard her cell phone in the other room. She dashed down the hall and picked it up on the third ring. It was Thomas.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back yesterday,” she said, carrying the phone to the kitchen. “What’s happening with Philip? How did his meeting go?” Genevieve began hunting through the drawers for a spoon.

  “He’s suspended with pay for now.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “The lawyer says yes,” Thomas said.

  “How’s he doing?”

  “He’s not really saying. What’s all that racket?”

  “Oh, sorry,” Genevieve said. “Looking for a spoon. I can’t figure out where Ju...”

  Genevieve stopped herself. “So, how are you holding up?”

  “As well as can be expected,” Thomas said. “Let’s back up to the part where you can’t figure out... what was the rest of that sentence?”

  Genevieve filled him in on the previous day’s happenings, or part of them, anyway, leaving out the confession that had prompted Julien to label her a con artist.

  When she finished, Thomas was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “Do you want to come stay here? We can’t have Mona, because she makes Philip sneeze, but you can stay on the sofa. It sounds like Mona’s going to have to go to a kennel anyway.”

  Genevieve had been avoiding that thought. She’d boarded Mona once, when her apartment had to be tented for termites. Mona had come back with an upper respiratory infection that took two vet trips to clear up, and she’d been skittish for months afterward, hiding under the bed at any loud noise.

  “Thomas, things are so tough for you right now, I don’t want to impose.”

  When Julien returned from the gym, Genevieve was standing at the kitchen counter, finishing her cereal and staring out the window.

  He was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, his hair still wet. He’d showered at the gym.

  “Hey,” he said. “Something wrong with the dining room?”

  “What?”

  “Eating standing up in the kitchen?”

  “Oh. Sorry. I do that at home.”

  Genevieve turned from the window, empty bowl in hand.

  Julien took it from her with one hand and gently
brushed her hair away from her shoulder with the other. “You feeling OK? Your neck is bruised.”

  “I just talked to Thomas,” she said, watching as Julien washed her bowl and spoon. “I could have done that.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “How’s your friend?”

  “It looks like his partner is losing his job. He offered to let me stay there, but things are clearly tense right now, and I do not want to be in the middle of that. They have really different styles of handling problems,” she said.

  “That’ll get you every time,” Julien said.

  Genevieve wondered if he was speaking from personal experience.

  Julien lifted the coffee pot, sniffed what was left, made a face and dumped the dregs down the sink. “You know, I was thinking, you could just skip the hotel and stay here.”

  “I don’t want to inconvenience you,” Genevieve said.

  Julien put the coffee pot in the dish drainer and turned to face her, his arms crossed over his chest. “Actually, I feel better having you here where I can keep an eye on you. Seems safer.”

  “I feel safer here with you, too.”

  Genevieve knew she probably shouldn’t admit it, but it was true. Despite everything that had happened the day before, she’d slept just fine knowing that Julien was only 20 feet away.

  “I guess I’d better get to work finding a kennel for Mona, then,” she said. “The last place I took her totally stressed her out and sent her home sick.”

  “Henry will pay for the best,” Julien said gently. “The client I was seeing in Vegas has a dog-walking business, and he used to live here. I can see if he knows someplace good.”

  “OK,” Genevieve said, acknowledging that he was trying to be helpful.

  “I need to get some work done. Is the coast clear in my office?”

  “I’ll get my laptop,” Genevieve said, starting down the hall. “Do you want me to take Mona to the living room with me?”

  Julien followed her to the office and stopped in the doorway. Mona was asleep on the sofa. “Leave her,” he said.

  Genevieve set up shop at Julien’s dining room table. She knew she should focus on finding a place to board Mona, but the task so depressed her that she just couldn’t face it. She decided instead to send D a long update email.