Easily Amused (20 page)

“Great,” I said. This lying got easier all the time. Could I be the only one bothered by the sharp pebbles on the beach? How could he not feel the constant poke with every step?

As we continued on, he talked, oblivious to my pain. He pointed out seagulls and told me how their flight pattern followed the Great Lakes inward to the Midwest. After that, he compared the lake to every lake, river, and ocean he’d ever encountered in his travels: the blue-green of the Mediterranean, the unbelievably clear water of Costa Rica, and a place in Hawaii where the black sandy beaches were actually made up of lava granules. And as he talked, all I could think with every step was,
Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.
My fingers cramped from carrying the damn sandals, and the soles of my feet hurt.

“Let’s walk in the water,” I suggested after he finished telling me about every major body of water in the upper hemisphere. Thankfully, he agreed, and he even went along with my idea to leave the shoes on the sand, as long as they were within sight. I waded in ankle deep. “Ah, this feels good.” I wiggled my toes in the sand. The water was cold, and I was picking up a faint scent of rotting fish, but other than that—pure nirvana.

Ryan had rolled up his pants legs and now stood beside me. “This is refreshing. And you can really get a great view of the kites from here.”

I looked to where he pointed. Oh yes, they were kites all right. Same as before, only smaller. “Great view.”

We walked along the shoreline, me always within reach of the gently lapping waves, Ryan with a constant eye-check toward our shoes. I was relieved when he decided our romantic walk was over and we should head back.

Once I’d wiped the wet sand off my feet with a few tissues from my purse and we were back inside Ryan’s car, I felt much better. He started up the Jaguar, and I thrilled to the hum of the engine because it meant putting some distance between me and the kites.

A
s we drove along the lakefront, I felt better with each passing mile. I could have lived in Ryan’s car, with its smooth ride and climate-controlled temperatures. The music had a sort of surround-sound effect. And of course, Ryan looked superb, his chiseled features still perfectly chiseled, his wavy hair perfectly in place.

“I have to stop at a client’s house not too far from here to pick up a check. You don’t mind, do you?” His eyes left the road for a second to meet mine.

“No problem,” I assured him. Minutes later we pulled into the circular driveway of a mansion on the lake. The shrubs on either side of the massive front doors resembled grown-up bonsai, and the windows were all leaded glass. I was willing to bet it was gorgeous inside.

Leaving the car running, Ryan asked me to wait. He walked briskly up to the front door and slammed the knocker so hard I heard it from inside the car. The door opened a crack, and he exchanged a few words with someone I couldn’t see. Then he stepped off the porch, motioned to me with one finger skyward—
just one minute
—and then disappeared around the side of the house.

I’ve never been good at waiting. After a few minutes passed, I started playing with the radio, stopping when I got to a station playing George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone.” If Hubert had been anywhere within earshot, he’d have been singing along and playing air guitar.
Bad to the bone—ba-ba-ba-ba bad.

Now that I’d broken one taboo, I got braver. Glancing up to make sure Ryan was still out of sight, I opened the glove compartment and peeked inside. Hmmm, a bottle of Excedrin, a travel-size pack of tissues, and a road map of southeastern Wisconsin. I moved that stuff aside and found a folded-up chunk of papers at the bottom. I pulled them out and smoothed them across my lap. A lease agreement from a car dealership in Milwaukee. It had Ryan’s name on it and another name: Arthur Moriarty. It listed the Jaguar as the leased vehicle. I glanced at the specs to make sure it matched. Yep, two-door, color indigo, leather interior. It was the very car I was sitting in. But this contradicted Ryan’s story about buying the car, how it had taken months to get because he’d ordered everything custom, or something like that. I had a sudden memory of the psycho woman at the Italian restaurant who’d confronted Ryan and accused him of being a fraud. Hadn’t she said the Jaguar was leased?

I folded the papers and put everything back in the glove box, hoping I’d returned it in the same order. I clicked it shut and glanced up just in time to see Ryan returning, a check in hand. He was followed by an older woman who strode after him with a determined look on her face.

He opened the door and with one swift movement threw himself into the seat and pulled it shut. The woman kept coming toward us even as he started up the car and put it into drive. I guessed her to be in her sixties, with the chic look of a woman with a lot of money and time. As we pulled away, I heard her yell, “This is the last time, Ryan. I mean it. Never again.”

I strained my neck to look at her through the rear window. She had her fist raised like Scarlett O’Hara vowing never to go hungry again. “What was that all about?” I asked.

“Just forget about her,” he said, folding the check in two and sliding it into his shirt pocket. “She’s completely unreasonable. I’d love to drop her account, but I’ve been managing it for years.”

Her account? What kind of account would that be? I thought he did some kind of troubleshooting, quality management type thing. Something wasn’t adding up, but before I could question it, he said, “Hey, you changed the radio station.”

“Is that OK?”

“Sure. It’s fine,” Ryan said, but he didn’t look too pleased. After the song was over, I noticed he changed it back.

We drove in silence for a few miles. He tapped on the wheel impatiently as he maneuvered through traffic. Once we were on the expressway, it seemed safe to ask, “Do you want to just cut this short and go home? I’m fine with that, really.”

“Forgive me.” He gave me a sideways look and reached over and gave my hand a squeeze. “I know I seem grouchy. I just hate having to deal with those people. It always puts me in a bad mood. But I won’t let it this time because I’m with you, and I don’t want anything to spoil this day. Besides, we can’t stop now. I have a really special evening planned for us.”

“You do?”

“Yes, Miss Lola Watson, I most certainly do. I have a very elegant dinner planned. A celebration.”

“And exactly what are we celebrating?”

“We’re celebrating that in this big, cold world we somehow managed to find each other. I made reservations at the Palmer House. I hope you approve.”

The Palmer House? I couldn’t walk past that place, the way I was dressed. “I approve,” I said. “But I hope your plan allows me to go home and change clothes first.”

“Whatever the lady wants.”

H
ubert was sitting on the couch reading when I walked in the door. I wouldn’t want to teach grade school, but I wouldn’t mind the schedule. “You’re early,” he said without looking up. “You got two phone messages. Brother Jasper called to say he wanted to talk to you at your earliest convenience. And then Mindy left one—she won’t be at the dress place tomorrow, but you should meet Jessica there.”

Oops, I’d completely forgotten to get back to Brother Jasper regarding his cautionary tales. “Did Brother Jasper say what he wanted, exactly?”

“I didn’t talk to him. It was on the machine.” He turned a page. From the look on his face, he was totally engrossed.

“That must be a really good book.”

Hubert looked up. “It’s one of your aunt’s diaries. You left them on the dining room table—I couldn’t resist. You know I have a thing for local history. I hope it’s OK.”

“Of course it’s OK. I’ve been meaning to get to them, but—” I stopped because I really didn’t know why I hadn’t looked at them yet. I guess reading about an old lady who’d never been married had no appeal to me.

“She had such an incredible life. And her writing is so vivid, I feel like I’m there. Did you know she was engaged to be married? Her fiancé was killed in the war. Even reading about it is heartbreaking. She writes about how his sister came to her door with the telegram in her hand. May could tell by the look on her face that he was dead, but she didn’t want to believe it.”

I sat down in the wing chair to listen.

Hubert looked pensive. “There was one passage she wrote…wait, I’ll find it.” He flipped through the yellowed pages. “Here it is.” He held the book up as if to give the passage significance. “‘In one instant I’d lost my best friend, my love, my husband-to-be. And now the future we’d planned was taken away from me. The children not yet born would never be.’ And then she goes on to talk about their relationship, how they both loved practical jokes and word play, how no one could make her laugh like him. It’s just so sad.” He looked up, his eyes brimming with tears.

“Are you crying?” I was shocked. This wasn’t like him.

“I guess so,” he said, a little embarrassed. He wiped at his eyes. “I have no idea why this is getting to me so much.”

“Well, it is pretty awful.”

“Yeah, and I guess knowing that she lived in this house her whole life really drives it home. Did I tell you that I found her last diary when I was cleaning out one of the bedrooms upstairs?”

I shook my head.

“She kept these diaries kind of on and off, from what I can tell. Sometimes she let it go for years and then picked it up again. The one upstairs was the most recent, from right up until she died. She kept it in the nightstand drawer. I’d like to read them in order, if that’s OK with you.”

“Sure. Whatever you want.”

He beamed. Such an easily pleased man. “So what are your plans for tonight?” he asked. “I’m playing racquetball with Ben Cho at six, but maybe later—”

“Sorry, but I have plans to go to dinner with Ryan. Didn’t you see my note on the table?” I could tell by the look on his face that he hadn’t.

“That Ryan guy again?” He set the diary down on the couch next to him and leaned forward with clasped hands. “What are you doing with him, Lola?”

“What? I like him.” OK, I sounded a little defensive, but what was with people thinking that a hot guy like Ryan would never be interested in a plain girl like me? In Hubert’s case, it was possible he thought he was protecting me from some unsavory character, but really—give me a break. Did any of them stop to think that maybe Ryan was genuinely attracted to me? It wasn’t so far-fetched.

Hubert sighed. “He’s just so slick. The whole time I was talking to him all I could wonder was, what’s his game? You hardly know him. Take it from me—you can think you know a person, and it can turn out that they have a whole other side you know nothing about. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

He was comparing Ryan to Kelly? Please. “You only talked to him for a few minutes,” I pointed out, “so I hardly think you can cast judgments. Trust me, he has no ‘game’—we’re just two people dating.”

“It’s not just me saying it.” He rested his chin on his fist. “The whole neighborhood talks about him.”

“I know, I’ve heard. He never puts out garbage, and he’s gone a lot, and he has a lot of packages delivered. None of which is a crime, by the way.” I looked at my watch. I only had an hour before Ryan and I were leaving for the restaurant.

“Belinda said she looked up his property tax records and they were paid late three years in a row. Not only that, but—”

“I think Belinda should mind her own business,” I said, standing up abruptly. “If you’ll excuse me, Hubert, I have to get dressed for dinner at the Palmer House.”

I went upstairs and got ready for my date, starting from bare skin and working outward. I lathered up and rinsed off in the shower, washing away the sand still encrusted between my toes. I loofahed my elbows and knees, something I knew to be part of Piper’s routine but which I never saw the need for prior to this. I reapplied makeup and dried my hair using my round brush, and then I slipped on a deep red halter dress I’d only worn once before, for a wedding. My uncle compared it to the one Marilyn Monroe wore standing over the air vent, and he was close even if the color was different and I was no Marilyn Monroe. Still, it was a great dress—silk, or at least silk-like. It required dry-cleaning, so each use was a seven-dollar investment. The neckline plunged pretty low for me. Luckily, the dress had built-in cups. I wore a gold necklace to take the focus off my breasts and put on the matching bolero jacket, which toned down the look from slutty to sexy.

The ensemble came with a clutch purse, a concept I despised. A regular purse with a strap could be slung over a shoulder or held loosely, but a clutch purse had to be
clutched
, an abnormal position that turned a woman’s hand into a claw. Still, the purse matched, so what could I do? I loaded it with my wallet, phone, sunglasses, and lip gloss and then snapped it shut. Men were lucky—they could get by with pockets.

When the time came to leave, I slipped out the back door and yelled, “Bye, Hubert,” as I left. I loved Hubert, really I did, but I wasn’t up to hearing more penny-ante bad news about Ryan before my date. I was a big girl and a pretty good judge of character. I appreciated his concern, but he’d have to trust me on this.

T
he Palmer House gave Ryan the stamp of approval. Everyone recognized him, from the two young men who did valet parking, to the bartender, to the maître d’. A group of businessmen stopped their conversation to greet Ryan as we were led to our table. (“The corner, just as you requested, Mr. Moriarty.”) I felt like I was out with George Clooney. After we sat down, I asked, “How do they all know you?”

“I bring clients here quite often,” he said. “And my parents know the owners. We’ve been coming here for years. You know how that is.”

I looked around the elegant dining room with its beautiful chandelier made up of millions of prisms, the thick drapes held back with gold cord, the oil paintings each highlighted with their own little stage light. My family also had a restaurant we’d frequented for years. It was a pizza joint called Barnaby’s that featured a little jukebox at each booth. As kids, Mindy and I couldn’t wait to finish our meal because then we could pick a prize out of the treasure chest. I always looked for the plastic decayed teeth, while Mindy generally picked toy tiaras or rings.

I let Ryan choose the wine, and after he ordered coq au vin and a spinach salad, I told the waiter I’d have the same. Since he picked the wine to go with the chicken, it seemed a safe choice.

The meal went seamlessly, from wine to bread to salad to the main course. Ryan did most of the talking, telling me about some of his most recent trips and a few minor airport snafus—delayed flights, missed connections. I nodded and drank throughout. At one point, I realized my mind was drifting. Pleasantly drifting. I emptied my glass, and before I could even set it down, our waiter was there to refill it. We never got that kind of service at Barnaby’s.

The alcohol was really kicking in now. I felt a surge of affection for everyone in the room, from the dark-haired young man who cleared our salad plates, to the two old ladies at the next table, both of whom looked like the Queen Mother. “Tell me again what you do exactly for your work,” I said during a pause.

“Quality control, mostly. I also help companies implement management systems.”

“Management systems?”

“Six Sigma, Lean, that type of thing.”

“And you like your job?” In my slightly drunken state it seemed important to pin down exactly who this man was.

“I like it well enough,” he said, putting his hand over mine. “It pays the bills.”

The bills. I thought of his property tax. Late three years in a row. If it weren’t for that damn nosy Belinda poking her nose in Ryan’s business, I wouldn’t even know that little bit of trivia. Big deal, so his taxes were a little late. It happens. He paid them eventually. Maybe Ryan was just one of those people who has trouble keeping track of paperwork. An easy explanation. But there was one more thing on my mind. “Did you say you bought your car six months ago?”

“No, I said I
got
my car six months ago.” He took a sip of wine. “It’s leased. I find that leasing has tax advantages for me.”

Now I was confused. I thought for sure he said he bought it. I remembered him saying he had the Jag ordered. Something about it being customized. My thinking on the subject was fuzzy, and I was having trouble remembering why I’d doubted him in the first place. Or why it even mattered.

“Did I tell you how stunning you look in that dress?” Ryan ran a finger over the sleeve of the jacket. “That’s a great color on you. Beautiful.”

And suddenly I felt beautiful. I was in a la-di-da restaurant, being pampered and spoiled by the attentive staff. Money was no object this evening. I was with Ryan, a drop-dead gorgeous guy and Palmer House celebrity. We were eating delicious food that had been painstakingly prepared and served on beautiful china. The wine was delicious, light and medium dry. It went down as smoothly as spring rain in a valley.

By the time our dinner plates were cleared, I decided I could have this exact evening played over and over in one continuous loop into eternity, me in my gorgeous red dress across from this beautiful man.

Our wine glasses were full again, and Ryan proposed a toast. “To new beginnings,” he said. I held my glass up but didn’t try to clink. I had a feeling that was a beer hall move. “Lola,” he said, stretching my name beyond the boundaries of its two syllables. “Remember our plan to announce our faux engagement at your sister’s wedding?”

“Of course.” Man, this wine was good. Was this new bottle different than the previous one?

“If you don’t have any objections, I’d like to propose to you tonight. Everyone always asks about the proposal, and I think it would make a great story.”

I set down my glass, unsure, while he got up out of his chair and knelt on one knee in front of me. The tables around us hushed with the realization of what was happening. Looking down at him, I noticed for the first time that the carpet had a subtle fleur-de-lis pattern. “Lola,” he said, enunciating clearly, “I love you and want to spend my life with you. Will you marry me?” Like a magician, he pulled a box seemingly out of nowhere and flipped it open to reveal a breathtakingly beautiful diamond ring.

“Wow,” I said. I realized that was not the right answer when Ryan said, a little more loudly this time, “Will you marry me, Lola?”

“Yes, Ryan,” I said, “I will marry you.” The other diners applauded loudly, and I heard a few sentimental murmurs. I got an impression of confetti filling the air, flashbulbs going off, and a violinist playing in the distance, but that may have been the wine. I know for certain that a romantic kiss followed, and then Ryan slid the ring onto my finger. It was loose.

“Look,” he said, “it’s a perfect fit. I think that’s a good sign.”