A Winning Battle

by Carla Neggers

  “I just don’t know what he’ll try next,” Page lamented.

  Millie nodded thoughtfully. She was a tall, big-boned woman with pale blond hair and giant blue eyes. She had been a member of the Boston University crew team as an undergraduate and still liked to go sculling alone on the Charles River—when she found the time. Divorced for two years, she had a six-year-old daughter and a demanding job as a buyer for an upscale downtown department store. That she was not material for a Vogue cover had never bothered her. Her earliest memory, she claimed, was of bouncing two neighborhood boys off the front porch for calling her fatso. That had given her more satisfaction than any compliments on her eyes or whatever. She believed in revenge. She was a strong woman, hardworking and attractive in all the ways that counted.

  She was also honest to a fault. Leaning over to dab clotted cream onto a scone, she asked, “What do you want him to try?”

  “Nothing!”

  “That so?”

  “Yes, of course. The man’s an outrage.”

  “Good-looking outrage, though, isn’t he?”

  “In a crude sort of way, I suppose. But his looks are of no consequence to me.”

  “Don’t pull that prim-and-proper act with me, Page. It’s been a long time since your eyes have sparkled over a man.”

  “They’re not sparkling.”

  “No?”

  “No, they’re...” She thought for a moment. “They’re icing over.”

  “Get out of here. The guy sounds interesting.”

  “In all the wrong ways.”

  “Not your idea of Mr. Right?”

  “Absolutely not. Perish the thought. Millie, I can’t believe I’ve been sitting here for an entire hour explaining what Chris Battle has done to my life and it hasn’t sunk in that I want nothing to do with him. Haven’t I been making myself clear?”

  Millie ate the scone and refilled her cup with tea, made from loose-leaf tea and not, mercifully, tea bags. Because she planned to lift weights later while her daughter, Beth, was at pottery class, she’d gobbled up everything in sight. Millie Friedenbach didn’t believe in diets; she believed in exercise. “Yeah, yeah,” she said, “I hear you. I’m just not sure I believe you. I think, Page, you’ll be disappointed if this guy doesn’t try something new.”

  “I won’t, either. I’ve ignored him for three whole days.”

  “Wow.”

  “He’s relentless.”

  “Well, there you go. You two do have something in common.”

  “We have nothing in common. He’s not relentless in any way that’s positive. He— Oh, never mind. Why did I invite you over for tea, anyway?”

  Millie grinned. “Because you hate pity.”

  Page grinned back, laughing. “You’re right—and God knows I’ve never gotten any from you! What do you think I should do?”

  “Whatever you want to do.”

  “I need a plan.”

  “Some things you can’t organize, you know. You might think you have a system for dealing with everything and everyone, but—”

  “But not Chris Battle?”

  “Not from the sound of it.”

  Millie had to run. If she was going to be in shape for spring rowing, she couldn’t sit around with Page, “yapping like a couple of junior high girls.” She said she hoped being an ear helped, and she slipped off with a couple of extra sandwiches for Beth, who already took after her mother in size and appetite.

  Trust Millie for an honest opinion, Page thought after her friend had left. She slowly drank a final cup of tea, watching pedestrians pass by on the wide sidewalk outside. She’d concluded her business with her Cambridge clients and had spent the early part of the afternoon doing paperwork. Trying to, at least. For reasons she wasn’t sure she wanted to understand, she was totally preoccupied with Christopher O. Battle. Finally she’d called Millie to come over to tea, hear her tales of woe and have her say in no uncertain terms, “Forget the jerk.”

  But that wasn’t what had happened. Usually Page was the one who listened and Millie the one who talked, but today had been different. Somehow, despite Page’s schoolgirl protestations, Millie had sensed her friend’s attraction to Battle. Her unexpected, inexplicable attraction. It was more an obsession, and a dangerous one at that. All she had to do was let down her guard for even a moment and he’d pounce. He’d make her and what she did the butt of one of his columns. All across the nation people would be snickering at professional organizers. She owed it to herself and her colleagues not to let that happen.

  Yet something about his smile, his irreverent charm, stirred her physically and emotionally, and she wondered if what was going on wasn’t simply the primitive, unpredictable longing for a solid male presence in her life. Not, of course, that Chris Battle was it. He was all wrong for her particular life. He just wouldn’t fit. He didn’t fit her life-style; he didn’t fit her temperament; he didn’t fit her preconceived notions of what kind of man would fit. He just stirred things up, that was all. And she wasn’t sure what to do about it.

  She supposed she did have a system for everything, including falling in love. It would be a civilized process. As yet, little that had gone on between her and Battle could be called civilized. He would be—and so would she—open, sincere, understanding. They would be adults. Normal adults. Chris Battle wasn’t normal. He wasn’t open; he was sneaky. He wasn’t sincere; he was deceitful. He wasn’t understanding; he was opinionated.

  And Page B. Harrington, she reminded herself, was too smart to fall for a sneaky, deceitful, opinionated man.

  Even if he was sexy as hell.

  Even if she did wonder if she was being too hard on him.

  Even if something about him—she couldn’t pinpoint what—touched a corner of her soul that didn’t respond to slate eyes and tanned shoulders, that said there was something about him that just might be right.

  If she continued to ignore him, would he just give up? What if he did? Then what?

  She finished her tea, paid the bill and went back up to her office. Unanswered questions, the inability to follow through on an idea and carry it to its logical conclusion, were danger signs, in her opinion signals of disorganization—of chaos. But she left her questions about Chris Battle unanswered, anyway. And that, she thought, was the central problem with having him messing around in her life, stirring things up: he was turning it into chaos.

  * * *

  By 6:30 Chris had begun to wonder if William had chickened out and let his natural considerateness prevail over his yearning for a little fun, but then his buzzer sounded, and in two minutes a sheepish-looking William Norton was standing in the entry.

  “You can’t let her know this was my doing,” he said, shaking his head in self-reproach. “I can’t believe I’m selling her out for Celtics tickets.”

  Chris resisted a grin of victory and tried instead to look the sympathetic friend. “Hey, you’re human.”

  “Yeah. Well, at least now we’re even.”

  “I told you, this is bribery. You don’t and didn’t owe me a damn thing.”

  “You’re not making me feel any better, Chris.”

  Before William could change his mind, Chris fished the tickets out of his wallet and handed them over. Sighing guiltily, William retrieved an envelope from his pocket. Chris plucked it from his fingertips and promptly inspected the contents: inside, as promised, was the faked memo from Page B. Harrington, on her very “own” stationery. In the kind of perfunctory style she no doubt used—Chris had given William the exact wording—the memo gave permission for Christopher O. Battle to go up to her condominium to deliver a package of “critical importance.”

  “William, my friend, this is great. You’d have made one tough forger to nail down. Glad your mind doesn’t run toward the less than honorable.”

  “It obviously does. Lord, Chris, I feel like such a traitor.”

  “She’ll never know, and I’ll behave, I promise.”

  “Right.”

 
“Don’t sound so dejected. Just name me one person who could resist Celtics tickets.”

  “I should be able to.”

  “Get going. You want to get there early enough to see the warm-ups. Have a hot dog for me, okay?”

  “Chris-”

  “Out, William. The deed is done.”

  He muscled William out the door and locked it behind him, wondering just how much his buddy was going to enjoy the game. All to a good cause, my friend, all to a good cause. Chris tore open a supply closet and dug around for an empty box. Couldn’t find one. Not to let such a trivial annoyance dampen his good spirits, he dumped out a box of narrow-ruled canary pads and used it. He cut up a paper bag and wrapped the empty box very neatly and professionally. Appearances counted. Then with a black marker he printed Page B. Harrington’s name and address on the front and stuck on a few red urgent stickers some joker had sent him for Christmas one year. He’d never had call to use them.

  He paused and admired his handiwork. Perfect. But what if security demanded to know the contents of the box? He couldn’t imagine they would, but given his record with them, he figured he’d best be prepared. What would a professional organizer need special-delivered? Paper clips, file folders, space organizers, calendars, rubber bands—none of that seemed urgent enough.

  Then he had it. By God, did he ever!

  Chuckling to himself, he tucked the bogus package under his arm and William’s envelope in his jacket pocket and headed out.

  * * *

  Page frowned at the telephone. ‘‘What special delivery package is on its way up?”

  “It’s from ...let me see.” There was a pause as the desk clerk checked her information. “From Desperately Disorganized Inc. of Des Moines, Iowa. Your delivery man had personal authorization from you to bring the package up. I went ahead and sent him. Will there be a problem?”

  There would definitely be a problem. Page had never heard of anything remotely called Desperately Disorganized Inc. of Des Moines, Iowa. If she’d authorized a delivery from such a company, she’d have remembered.

  Her frown deepening, she wondered what Chris Battle was up to this time. “No, there won’t be a problem. He’s on his way up?”

  “Yes, I-”

  “A not too tall, not too handsome man?”

  The desk clerk laughed. “Aren’t they all?”

  “But this one...”

  “This one’s different. Yeah, that’s him. Security says he’s the guy who’s been bothering you the past couple of days. But according to the memo... I mean, it looked authentic.”

  “I’m sure it was.” Battle was nothing if not thorough. “Please don’t worry. I’ll handle this.”

  Even as she hung up, her doorbell rang. After tea with Millie and exercise, Page had changed into a bright yellow jumpsuit and turquoise sneakers—a failed attempt to revive that vague, indescribable feeling of the first taste of spring. She had finished the last of the sinful almond torte Battle had chosen for dessert to the dinner he’d sent up the other night; she’d divided it so that she could spread it over three meals. One pot of daffodils was gone. The other was going.

  She considered leaving her “delivery man” outside in the corridor. He could make excuses to security. But her reputation had suffered enough during the past week and...well, she admitted, she couldn’t resist.

  What wouldn’t the man stoop to?

  She tore open her front door.

  He stood holding a package that appeared to be wrapped with a cut-up paper bag. But she took it in with little more than a glance as her gaze fell on the solid figure studying her. Chris Battle wore a rumpled corduroy jacket with a dark pullover underneath and battered twill pants that looked as if they’d seen safari duty. His hair was a tousled mess. A treacherous twist of her imagination flashed an image of him rising from bed in the morning with his hair in just that kind of mess. But no matter what her imagination threw at her, it couldn’t rival Chris Battle in person. And given the vividness of her imagination the past few days, that was saying something.

  But she was nothing if not self-disciplined. “You have a delivery for me?” she asked briskly.

  “Well—”

  “From Desperately Disorganized Inc.?”

  “Look, I know what you think and I don’t blame you—”

  “Tax returns, correct? I promised I’d have a look. They said they’d rush them right out. Aren’t they an unusual outfit? They’ve made a specialty of anti-planning humor. They write jokes for a number of late-night television shows—even their Des Moines address is part of their act, a gimmick of sorts. I find their humor in poor taste, of course, but who am I to judge? They like to hire me on occasion and then poke fun at how good I am at my work. Ingrates, don’t you think?”

  A deep frown of pure incredulity—shock, even— creased Battle’s forehead. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Yes, well, that’s of no consequence to me, I’m sure. You don’t make enough money writing your nasty columns that you have to moonlight as a delivery boy? A pity. Here, I’ll take that.”

  She snatched the package from his hand, and before he could recover from his complete bafflement, she shut the door. Not exactly in his face. But close enough.

  The doorbell rang once, twice, thrice.

  She chuckled to herself. “Stand out there and rot, Mr. Battle.”

  She tossed the box onto her kitchen counter, proud of herself for having come up with a credible reason for a corporation called Desperately Disorganized Inc. to exist. But perhaps she’d only encouraged Battle.

  The doorbell rang a fourth time.

  She grabbed her pocket knife—a recommendation for all her clients, women included—and sliced open the package. Narrow-ruled pads, the box said. Inside was nothing at all.

  The doorbell rang a fifth time. Then Battle pounded twice and yelled, “You’re not going to get away with this!”

  She couldn’t resist. She walked to the door and peered through the peephole. Even as distorted as he appeared, she could tell she had one highly aggravated man on her threshold. Good, she thought.

  “Mr. Battle,” she said, her voice normal and calm, “I already did.”

  * * *

  Back out on Tremont Street, Chris considered battering rams, parachute drops, napalm and simple breaking and entering to get into Page B. Harrington’s condominium. When he did, he’d lay waste to the place. Tear everything out of her closets, dump out her drawers, empty her files, rip April and May out of her calendar, stick the W’s in with the R’s and the A’s in with the Fs in her Rolodex, throw out all her labels and all her things that held other things. She’d have to start living like a normal person.

  For five minutes, maybe. She’d probably need at least that long to put everything right back where he’d found it. Organized people had systems. A place for everything, everything in its place. How many times growing up had he heard that neat dictum?

  Forcing himself to calm down, Chris proceeded toward Copley Square, aimless. Page B. was good. He had to admit it. He’d expected her just to give up and let him in, get the messy business over with, but instead she’d faked him out in her bright yellow jumpsuit. What was that all about? anyway? And the turquoise shoes? To be sure, she had a logical reason for each.

  And to be equally sure, he had zip. He’d been humiliated; he’d been threatened once more by security—the last time, they’d said—and he’d lost his Celtics tickets. All he had for his troubles was an appetite. Dammit, sparring with Ms. Organizer made him hungry—

  He grinned, a sudden, insane grin. “What the hell— you’re spontaneous, right?”

  He found a pay phone, dialed Page B’s number. . .and almost hung up when she answered. Her voice did strange things to him, like make him remember her sleek body and expressive eyes instead of her tripe about tax returns and anti-planning humor. What the hell was that? Late-night shows. He’d give her anti-planning humor.

  But he didn’t hang up. “Hi, it’s me.”
>
  “Who’s me?”

  “You know, dammit. Your cutesy-poo act is wearing real thin. Want to cut it and meet me over at Durgin Park for supper? Nothing fancy. I feel like digging my teeth into something that won’t bite back.”

  She laughed, a delicious sound that made his mouth water, and he realized there was something else he wouldn’t mind digging his teeth into. But he didn’t think Page B. would be lured from her condo if he told her. Of course, he didn’t think Page B. would be lured from her condo no matter what he told her.

  He bit his tongue and kept quiet.

  “You’re serious?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “I just ate the last of your almond torte.”

  “Don’t remind me. I’m still smarting over that fiasco.”

  “What fiasco?”

  “Page, you know damn well—”

  “Your peace offering, you mean? But it was delightful!”

  “Page!”

  “My, aren’t we familiar for a delivery boy?”

  “Forget dinner.”

  “No, no. Give me thirty minutes.”

  “For what? You don t need to change. You looked fine to me. It’s almost spring, right? Nobody’ll notice a bright yellow jumpsuit and—”

  “I’ll meet you there,” she interrupted once more. “If I don’t show, it means I’ve talked myself out of this display of total insanity. You’re dangerous, Christopher Battle.”

  “Me! Who just got tossed from one of Boston’s swankiest hotels courtesy of one turquoise-eyed barracuda? Lady, you’re the one who’s dangerous.”

  She had started laughing again. Definitely a mouthwatering laugh. Spine-tingling, even. A pity she was so compulsively organized.

  “Don’t talk yourself out of coming, okay?”

  He surprised himself by how serious he sounded. What was going on here? Alarms went off inside the part of his brain still functioning in its cynical columnist mode, warning him not to get too close. He ignored them and debated his next move as he headed toward Copley Place at a slow, thoughtful pace. But then he reminded himself that organized people were the ones who weighed pros and cons before doing anything. He wasn’t organized; he was spontaneous.