Impersonal Attractions (25 page)

These guys never looked the way they did in movies or in nightmares. They didn’t breathe fire or sprout bristles out of their noses and ears. They didn’t shout in hideous voices or wave machetes. Most of them were quiet, sad, little men. Wimps. Nerds.

Annie threw down the paper in disgust. She hated to think she was becoming an over-thirty law-and-order fanatic. But when it came to violence maybe she was. How many women does a nerd have to rape, ravage, kill, before they throw away the key?

How many women like Lola? She stopped for a minute, picked up the paper again. Was there any connection? She scanned the pages. There was a sidebar quoting Sean, spokesman for the department. The official word was no. No connection. One down, one to go. He was still out there.

*

Samantha ordered coffee for them both.

“I wonder how many cups I’m going to drink before this story’s finished?” she asked Annie, who had pumped her all through lunch for every detail. “But I’m up to here”—she gestured at her brow—“with murder. Your turn. Give me the good news. Tell me a love story.”

“I’m not sure that it is good news,” Annie said.

“Are you kidding? You sit there looking like Hudson with cream on his whiskers and say this isn’t good news?”

“Yeah, but…”

“Yeah, but you’re scared. We’re all scared. So what?”

“God, Sam. You sound more and more like my Aunt Essie every day.”

But she told it, from the top. When she finished she added, “He called me this morning from the office. Between meetings, crazy, rushed like he always is. Out of breath.”

“What did he say?” Sam raised her voice with the frustration of waiting for Annie to get to the punch line. Heads turned. She blushed.

Annie almost whispered. “He said, ‘I know that it seems like a dream today. But it’s not. It was real and it is real and I love you.’ And then he had to run.”

Samantha sighed. “Just like in the movies.”

“There’s more. An hour later the buzzer rang and it was a delivery boy with…Sam! What is it?” Annie started at Sam’s sudden gasp.

And then it dawned on her. “Oh, God, I didn’t even think about that. Jesus! And they were in a long white box. But it’s okay.” Annie smiled across the table at Samantha. “They were from Tom, bushels of Peruvian lilies.”

They both took a deep breath.

“So why isn’t this good news?” Sam asked.

Annie wrinkled her nose. “Why should this time be different from any other, this man different from any other man?”

“He is different. He’s Tom. He’s not some bozo you flirted with at the post office. He’s your friend.”

“Yeah. But I never knew him this way before. And it’s this way that I always screw up. If I don’t get bored in two weeks, he gets bored. Or I get scared or he gets scared. Or I don’t like the way he chews. Aaaaargh. Anyway, I always end up alone eating heart sandwiches.”

“Your pessimism at the outcome of your romances is only exceeded by your optimism that there will be another one around the next corner.”

“Like my mammy always said, ‘Men are like streetcars. If you wait long enough, there’ll always be another one coming along.’”

“But what about the one who’s at your door right this very minute? He’s perfectly fine, Annie. Tom is a wonderful man. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with him. At least nothing I’ve ever seen. So why not just enjoy?”

“Because I’m scared.”

“Scared that it won’t work out or scared that it will?”

“Both.”

“It’s okay. You’re just a little crazy—it’s called being happy. You’ll get used to it. I’ve got to run. Now remember that you’re going to call Sean to see if there’s anything new on the Strangler. He seems to be telling you more than me these days.”

They hugged good-bye at the restaurant door. “By the way,” Annie added, “I’m going to the flower market in the morning. Going to fill my whole apartment with tulips. Can I get you anything?”

“Sure. Grab me two dozen of anything pretty. And wholesale.”

*

Annie called Sean.

“No, thanks but no thanks, we’re doing just fine without you two.”

“There’s nothing we can do?”

“Well,” he hesitated.

“What? Tell me.”

“You could take Samantha to the movies for me.”

She slammed down the receiver. One of these days she was going to slap that man.

And then she thought about it. She hated to admit that he was right, even a little right. Maybe she and Sam were on to something, and maybe with a lot of luck they’d have found it. But maybe they wouldn’t have wanted to when they did.

Was this what having a new/old lover was doing for her? Turning her into a chicken?

She jumped at the ring of the phone. Was it Tom?

No. It was Slim. She’d almost forgotten him.

“Hey, Miss Annie. What’s happening, baby?”

How could she forget that snaky dark voice trying to slither into her ear?

“Everything’s happening, Slim. Everything’s cool.”

“Why that’s great, baby. Just great.” She could hear the drugs on his tongue.

“That’s right, I’ve found a man.”

“You getting married?”

“Just might. If I do, I’ll send you an invitation to the wedding.”

“Right on. You do that, y’hear. You be happy. Just keep on being happy. I’ll catch you later.”

And then he was gone. How easy that was. She’d done it before.… “Sorry, I’d love to, but I’ve become engaged since the last time I spoke to you. Yes”—meaningful pause—“he
is
a lucky man.”

So why hadn’t she thought of it before now? Maybe she’d gotten religion. Maybe the lie had to have a kernel of truth in it for her to pull it off. Did this one?

Did it, old jump-the-gun Annie? Out of the gate before the shot has sounded? Why will your heart not be still? Because the man made you feel loved in bed? That’s an easy trick. Because he said he loved you? You’ve heard that before. Because you love him? Yes, you love him. You’ve always loved him. But
love
him?

She carried Tom’s lilies and the phone into her bedroom. He had said something about a meeting with his partner. This late?

Annie, Annie, she caught herself. What are you doing? Already you’re making yourself crazy. You are crazy. First you go to bed with an old friend. He calls you the next morning and tells you he loves you. He sends you flowers. And now you’re anxious because he hasn’t called in eight hours. Nuts, absolutely nuts.”

*

Hi, it’s me.” Tom sounded as if he had smoked two packs of cigarettes since noon. “Can I come over?”

“You’re forty minutes away. You have to go to work in the morning. But I’d love to see you.”

“I’m not forty minutes away. I jumped in the car as soon as I was finished and just drove. I’d parked when it dawned on me that this might not be cool.”

“Where
are
you?”

“A block away, on Fillmore. Outside the liquor store. Shall I bring some Jack Daniel’s? Or Southern Comfort?”

Southern Comfort. She’d forgotten how much she loved
it.

She ordered the Southern Comfort. “And step on it.”

“Consider me there.”

*

Five minutes later she did consider him. There as he untied the little bows of the straps of her thin, white, cotton nightgown, touched with tucks and lace. She’d quickly slipped it over her head after his call. He slipped it off again.

“What about my drink? My Southern Comfort?” she murmured, teasing.

“You’re it, dear. My long-legged southern belle.” He kissed the tender places behind her knees as he slowly turned her over.

“Do you think it’s just sex?”

“Well, it certainly is sex.” He laughed. “But if you think I’m simply after your body, I can stop.” His tongue was in the spaces where her fingers met.

“No,” she said, reaching up for him. “I’ll take your word for it.” She closed his mouth with hers and mumbled, “Now, hush.”

When she awoke he was sitting on the edge of her bed, smelling of shaving cream and soap. He was holding her blue mug.

“Ready for some coffee?”

She smiled, stretched, yawned, and reached for his hand. I am going to go blind or get hit by a truck, she thought. God is not going to let me be this happy.

“I’ve got to go play architect,” he said. “And you need to get up, lazybones. Your typewriter is waiting for you.”

She glanced at the clock: six-thirty. Why wasn’t she tired?

“I’ll get to it, when I get back from exercise.”

He smiled down at her body, and her eyes followed and then met his. She could read in them the memory of their communion a few hours before. There was that electric message that says: I know you naked. I know your secret places. I remember the things you whispered in my ear.

She had to look away.

“I’m going while I can,” he said. “Dinner tonight?”

She nodded.

“I’ll be here at seven. Work well.”

He was gone.

But he was coming back.

She found a note taped to her coffeepot.

“I’ve always loved you. I always will.”

Now
that’s
the way to start a day, she thought. Damned sight better than a garbage truck.

THIRTY-NINE

She bounded through exercise class. Her teacher Mimi raised an eyebrow.

“New vitamins or a new man?”

“Old man. New love.” Annie grinned. “Let’s have lunch this week and I’ll tell you all about him.”

Throwing her bright yellow sweatshirt and pants over her pink leotard, she ran across the street to the Marina Safeway. Shopping went a lot faster when she was concentrating on it, rather than on the other customers. Marina Safeway post-Tom, no cruising—would anything ever be the same?

She drove Agatha southward and made a left on Golden Gate, across Market, where bums were still asleep on the sidewalk.

Did bums ever get flowers? Don’t think about it. Anybody who can’t enjoy the circus because she feels sorry for the elephants shouldn’t think about bums on her way to buy tulips. She’d think about Tom, and remember to buy something for Sam and a surprise for Quynh and Hudson. Hudson loved tulips. After pig they were his favorite breakfast food.

The California Flower Market was wholesale, not open to the public. Unless, like Annie, the public had found a friendly dealer named Nick. Every time she went to his
shop, one of a number of single-story shops bursting with blooms, he asked her her resale number and wrote something down on her order when she looked at him blankly. He seemed to take as much delight as she did in the mountains of tulips, dahlias, lilacs, and sweet peas she carried away in her arms.

Today his tulips were seven dollars for ten dozen. Even sharing them with Sam, Quynh, and Hudson, they were enough to fill her entire apartment. Tom would think he’d walked into a bower tonight.

She smiled, remembering him a few years earlier as a grandly foolish Bottom in a little theater production of
Midsummer Night’s Dream.
He had talked her into it and she had a two-minute role: Snout and the Wall. They had all become celebrants of the moonlit magic of nosegays, cowslips, and love-in-idleness, that purple flower whose juice made its subject dote madly on the next live creature he or she saw.

Just as Titania wakened from her flowery bed smitten by Bottom, so was she, so was she.

Her reverie was interrupted by a wolf whistle that split the sunny, morning, market air.

*

Eddie Simms, loading the back of a delivery truck with pink azaleas, turned from his task to look.

Great ass, he thought. Look at that. Even in that jogging suit. He wondered why women wore those sloppy things. But this one clung tightly to the woman’s rear.

How old was she? Long blonde hair in a ponytail with a bow. She might be a school kid. But then why isn’t she in school? Kids don’t come down here anyway without their mothers.

Now, if she’d just turn around.

There you go, honey. Turn around and wave at Nick, the nice man who sells flowers wholesale to all the pretty girls. Turn just a little more.

Wait a minute!
he thought. With the sunglasses it was hard to tell, but that tall, skinny body…

It was! It was that Tannenbaum bitch from school—from that stupid English class he took to get his PO off his back. That bitch who asked him all those dumb questions, trying to cut him down, trying to embarrass him in front of everybody. Sucking up to that tall nigger kid and that old Jew lady. Like they were something special, with their stupid stories.

He could write her some stories. Stories that would
really
give her a thrill. A bigger thrill than the Halloween story she didn’t like.

Was that her? He couldn’t be sure; it had been a long time since he’d dropped out. Right after that night he’d spooked her in the parking lot. He’d been real busy since then.