Bet Me (26 page)

"But the thing is," Shanna was saying, "Elvis is not saying she's perfect. So I'm thinking maybe I just need a few key things. Like she should be kind."

"Yes," Cal said, remembering Min with Harry.

"And smart," Shanna said. "Somebody I don't have to explain everything to."

"Maybe," Cal said, thinking about explaining chicken marsala to Min. "It's no crime not to know everything. I'd make that somebody who was open to new ideas, willing to learn. And who had things to teach you."

"See, this is good," Shanna said, sitting down on her coffee table trunk. "And I thought a sense of humor would be important."

"Right," Cal said. "If you can't laugh at the screwups, what's the point?" He thought of Min saying, "Good thing this isn't a date," when they'd confused their Elvises, and—

"And because I'm superficial, I put down physically attractive," Shanna said.

"Me, too," Cal said, trying not to think of Min in all her hot glory. "And great shoes."

"What?" Shanna said.

"Nothing. What else?"

"That was it," Shanna said. "I didn't want to make too long a list. Kind, smart, funny, attractive. How's that?"

"Damn good if you can find it," Cal said.

"Didn't you?" Shanna said. "Min? She seemed—"

"Not dating her," Cal said. "Barely know her."

"Uh huh," Shanna said. "And why is that? She's pretty, she's kind, she's smart, she makes you smile, and you get all dazed when you kiss her. What is it that she doesn't have?"

"Well," Cal began and stopped. "She bitches at me a lot."

"Chicken," Shanna said. "You could walk away from all the other ones because they weren't right. This is the real thing, so you're running."

"This from a woman who just made a shopping list for love." Cal stood up and handed the Scotch back to her. "I'm going now. Best of luck with that list."

Shanna clucked at him as he went out the door, and he went home to ignore her. Once there, he realized that he hadn't had dinner, and he wasn't going out because if he did, he'd fall over Min.

"Not a problem," he told himself and went out to the kitchen. He had bread and peanut butter and not much else, so he plugged in the toaster and put the bread in and then he leaned against the refrigerator and waited for the toast to pop.

His kitchen was ugly, he realized as he looked around. And through the archway, his living room was worse. Maybe if he fixed the place up a little, he'd want to stay home more. He was getting too damn old to be hanging out in bars anyway. The phone rang and he grabbed it, grateful to have a distraction.

"Calvin?" he heard his mother say, but even she was better than the silence.

"Mother," he said. "How are you?" His toast popped, and he cradled the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he opened the peanut butter.

"I'm calling about dinner on Sunday," she said.

"I will be there, Mother," Cal said, thinking,
I'm there the third Sunday of every month, Mother
. Definitely in a rut.

"I'd like you to pick up our guest."

"Guest?" Cal said, as he got out a table knife to spread the peanut butter.

"Minerva Dobbs," his mother said.

"What?" Cal said and dropped the knife.

"I called her because Harriso n has been speaking of her often, and it occurred to me that it would be nice for him to have her there."

Cal sighed. "What did she say when you called?"

"She seemed surprised," his mother said. "But when I explained that Harrison would be so pleased if she came—"

"She said yes," Cal said, reaching for his toast. "However, I cannot bring her because I will not be seeing her ever aga—" His fingers brushed the metal top of the toaster and he burned himself and dropped the phone. "
Damn it
," he said and put his scorched fingertips in his mouth.

"Calvin?" his mother said from the phone.

He picked up the receiver. "I burned myself on the toaster. Sorry." Cal turned on the cold water and stuck his fingers underneath the stream. "Anyway, I will not be seeing Minerva Dobbs again." He stepped away from the sink onto something hard and his foot slipped out from under him and smacked into the cabinets. "Ouch."

"Calvin?" his mother said.

"I stepped on a knife." Cal bent to pick up the peanut butter knife and smacked his head into the counter. "
Hell
."

"Did you cut yourself?" his mother asked.

"No. I..." He put the knife in the sink. "I'll call you tomorrow, Mother."

"Calvin?" his mother said, and he hung up on her and considered the situation.

He was sabotaging himself, that had to be it. He was distracted, he was tired, he was hungry, he was careless. He picked up the phone again and called Tony's cell.

"Hello?" Tony yelled over the noise of the bar.

"Is Min there with you?" Cal said.

"Wait a minute," Tony said, and came back on a minute later without the background noise. "Sorry. What?"

"Is Min with you? I'm trying to make sure that wherever I go next, she won't be." He frowned. "She's driving me to incoherence."

"She's stalking you?" Tony said, sounding skeptical.

"No, she doesn't want it, either," Cal said. "It's like we're stuck inside a box. We try to go our separate ways and then we end up with each other anyway. You're not going to Emilio's, are you?"

"Chaos theory," Tony said. "Min's a strange attractor."

"This is true," Cal said. "Are you going to Emilio's tonight, or can I go eat in the kitchen there?"

"You can go," Tony said. "Seriously, the box you're talking about is the field of your attraction. You and Min try to get away and you hit the sides of the box at random because you're unstable, never repeating, but making a pattern."

"Good for us," Cal said. "Just keep Min away from Emilio's, will you? I'm starving."

"I think she and Liza are going someplace," Tony said. "They've been talking all night about some job Min wants Liza to take, and I think Min's going to drag her there to show it to her. Unless Emilio's been advertising for help, it's not there."

"He hasn't," Cal said. "He's full up on nephews. T
hank
s, Tony. I'll see you tomorrow."

He hung up, changed out of his work clothes, and started for Emilio's, trying not to think about Min. That didn't work, so he switched over to chaos theory, of which he had only vague memories. The Butterfly Effect, he remembered that, the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in Hong Kong could cause a hurricane ten years later in Florida or prevent a tornado ten years later in Texas, take your pick because it was unpredictable. That was Min; she'd looked harmless that first night, and then she flapped her wings two weeks ago and now he was a mess. She was a goddamn stealth butterfly.

He looked down the block at the front of the Gryphon Theater, half expecting to see Min standing there since it was the first night of the Elvis revival week. Nope. Which made sense, since events did not repeat in chaos theory. Somehow, the idea that it was science made the whole thing a lot less worrisome. He wasn't insane, fate wasn't stalking him, he was just standing on the edge of chaos. Much better.

He turned down the street to Emilio's, trying to remember what "the edge of chaos" meant. It was something about flipping a coin, something about the edge being the moment when the coin was in the air. The point at which the system was pure potential, about to choose a path. Or something about a pile of sand, adding sand a grain at a time, and the edge of chaos being the point at which the critical grain landed and the pile either shifted or turned into an avalanche ... Cal slowed as he remembered a grad assistant in a baggy blue sweater, his hair standing on end from his complete earnestness about the subject, saying that the edge of chaos was a time of turbulence, mental chaos if the system was a human being, but also the time of greatest potential, possibly the place where life starts. "The place," the grad student had said, "where the system cascades into a new order and moves from being to becoming."

Cal shook the grad student out of his head, and pulled open the door to Emilio's. When he got inside, he heard Roger say, "Cal!" and he stopped, frozen, knowing before he turned that Min would be there, strange attractor, effective butterfly, locus of fate. He turned and saw her, sitting at a table with everybody else, looking like a startled cherub, her beautiful lips open in surprise, her dark eyes wide, and he felt his breath go again, felt his blood heat, his entire system rushing about insanely, bouncing off the inside of his skin, his future impossible to predict, everything riding on his next lurch through chaos.

Min bit her lip and smiled at him ruefully, and without another thought, he walked across the room to her, feeling almost relieved as the avalanche began.

Cal pulled a chair from another table, and Min scooted over to let him in. She was wearing another soft shirt, this one in panels of different colored sheer prints, and she looked pretty and warm and more desirable than he could have imagined.

Beyond her, Tony shrugged and looked apologetic.

"Tony said you'd told him you were going to work late tonight," Min said as he sat down.

"I lied."

Min shifted a little more to give him room, and he caught the faint scent of lavender and felt dizzy again. "Well, at least you're honest about your dishonesty."

" 'I was raised to be charming, not sincere,'" Cal said, and relaxed as she smiled at him.

"You know
Into the Woods
?" Min said, "That's my favorite Sondheim."

"Mine, too," Cal said, watching her face. "Tony likes
Sweeney Todd
, and Roger's is
Sunday in the Park with George
, but—"

"You're kidding me," Min said, blinking those dark eyes at him. "You're all Sondheim fans?"

"We roomed with a drama minor in college."
God, you look good
.

"There was a fourth roommate?" Min said, and then she closed her eyes. "Of course there was. Emilio. It was his restaurant you worked in when you were in college."

"No," Cal said. "It was his grandpa's restaurant. He went out on his own about two years ago."

"And he's not setting the world on fire." Min nodded. "That's why I brought Liza here. It took me all night to talk her into it, but I think she likes the place."