Perfect on Paper (24 page)

“I still think you should consider it a positive step. You know—going somewhere new, expanding your circles…”

“I guess. Plus I decided this was as good a time as any to test out my new coping strategy.”

“Which is…?”

“Act As If. I read about it on the Internet. If I Act As If I’m not suffering from panic disorder, then I can leave the house—which proves I don’t have panic disorder, which is what I’ll tell myself the next time I have to leave the house.”

“Ingenious.” Briefly I wondered if the strategy would work with Billy Moody. If I could just manage to Act As If I found him physically repulsive…

I would be headlining on Broadway, acclaimed as the greatest actress of my generation.

“Let’s just hope it’s the cure I’ve been searching for.” She paused. “So, Dana?”

“Mmm?”

“I hate to ask, but… what about Dinner? Think he’s really sick?”

“That’s an awfully elaborate excuse to get out of a date, wouldn’t you say?”

“Well, sure, but I was just thinking—well, what if Hank has to have an end-of-calendar-year session with his parole officer or something?”

“Will you
stop
? Hank’s
not
a criminal. I’m sure he’ll be home tomorrow—
with
his medicated pig.”

Besides, parole officers don’t work on national holidays, do they?
I thought to myself after we’d said goodbye.

I rummaged halfheartedly through Vivian’s assortment of hats, ultimately pulling out a plum-colored mini-porkpie with rhinestone trim. I’d been working at a blistering pace over the past week. One more canvas and my sixteen-painting grid would be complete.

But speaking of grids, maybe I should just fire off a quick email to Billy with those last-minute clues I’d thought of.

No, you shouldn’t,
I admonished myself, securing the canvas in place on my easel.

My brain became engaged in an excruciatingly boring debate for the next hour or so, with a back-and-forth consisting of two words:

Billy.

No.

Billy.

No.

Billy, Billy, Billy.

No, no, no.

Obviously the only way to get any work accomplished was to email him and be done with it. Besides, the puzzle would be even better with the addition of one more grid-spanning, twenty-one-letter clue, and “The Green-Nosed Reindeer” filled the bill perfectly. And if Billy happened to ask why I was still home at eleven o’clock on New Year’s Eve, well, I simply wouldn’t answer him. Let him assume I’d dashed it off mere seconds before leaving the house at one minute past the hour.

His response landed in my in-box so quickly, I could be excused for surmising he really was as devoted to me as he alleged.

Until I saw the words “Automated Response” in the subject line and read the email:

Huh?!

I sat at my desk, rereading the message several billion times before concluding that his sudden departure was attributable to one of two scenarios:

In the first, he had been summoned to Allentown—but not to ring in
the new year. His flurry of emails over Christmas proved he had virtually unlimited access to the Internet at his parents’ house. Therefore, a family member—perhaps the grandmother given to knitting hideous snowman sweaters—was on deathwatch.

But how would Billy—or anyone else, for that matter—know the exact date of her impending demise? And wasn’t January 6, Epiphany, the traditional end to the Christmas season across America?

That was when I had my own epiphany.

One of his clients—no doubt the trophy wife of a Wall Street megastar—had cajoled him into tutoring her nubile twin daughters at their Aspen chalet when her husband ceded his seat on the family Cessna in favor of remaining in town to pursue a hostile takeover of Exxon Mobil.

The nerve of some people. The unbridled nerve.

I picked up my paintbrush with renewed fervor and approached the canvas as if my life depended on it. Which, of course, it did. If I didn’t stay busy, images of Billy Moody schussing down slopes flanked by golden-haired sylphs—not to mention their well-preserved MILF—would eat away at my brain until there was nothing left but a smoldering nub of hostility.

I worked methodically, roughing out the porkpie hat and pig silhouette as noise from the street escalated in advance of midnight. It was strange Hank hadn’t yet called with a progress report. I’d tried his cell phone hours earlier, but it had gone straight to voice mail.

“You have to get better,” I said, addressing the beady eyes staring back at me from the center of the canvas. Maybe for this portrait I’d put a thermometer in Dinner’s mouth to memorialize the emergency. The old-fashioned kind, with mercury inside…

The phone rang—
finally
—and I lunged for the receiver.

“How is he?”

Click.

I looked at the clock: twenty to midnight. My mystery caller was early this year. He usually waited until a quarter of.

I had barely hung up when it rang again.

“Who the
fuck
is this?”

“It’s me,” Hank shouted over the roar of what sounded like the Indy 500. “Sorry I’m calling so late. I only just now found a 7-Eleven with a pay phone and a clerk who was willing to give me a mess of quarters.”

What year was this—1962? And since when did the state of New Jersey suffer from a dearth of convenience stores?

“I cut out so fast this morning, I didn’t have time to juice my cell,” he explained. “Forgot the charger, too.”

“I see,” I said, instead of, “How does a veterinarian manage to run a business without a functioning telephone?” which had been the first response that had sprung to mind. “Uh, did you call earlier? Like, two minutes ago?”

“Sure didn’t. Is… everything okay up there?”

“Of course. What about down there?”

“It’s pneumonia, all right. The doc wants to keep him overnight, but said he ought to be good to go by tomorrow. So I checked into a Motel 6, grabbed a nap, got me something to eat, and I been trying to find me a phone ever since.”

“I’m glad you did,” I said, instead of, “How does a motel chain manage to retain their clientele without in-room telephones?” Why was I finding it so hard to believe he was telling the truth? If I broke with tradition and made a resolution for the coming year, perhaps it should address my overly suspicious nature. “And thank god about Dinner.”

“I’ll say. He’s—”

A recording came on requesting a deposit of sixty-five cents to continue the call.

“Shoot. I’m a nickel short.”

“What’s the number?”

“Ain’t one. It’s scratched out. Listen, Dana—happy New Year, okay? I’m freezing out here in this here parking lot. I’ll call you tomorrow when I get back to town. And I l—”

The phone went dead.

“I l—?” What was that supposed to mean? “I listened to the radio on the drive down”? “I lunched with the president”? “I left my heart in San Francisco”?

“I love you”?

Whatever the sentence, it would be at least twelve hours before I’d hear the end of it.

By now only minutes remained of December 31. It was time to compose my annual New Year’s statement of purpose.

It was a ritual I’d picked up from my father, who, in a rare reference to spirituality, described it as an offering. “It’s not a resolution. It’s a kick you give yourself in the ass,” he’d explained. “And don’t worry, kid. God ain’t listening. You don’t go to hell if you blow it.”

This year I knew exactly what declaration I wanted to make. I’d been thinking about the wording all evening while I worked on Dinner’s portrait. Now I addressed the canvas in front of me, uttering the sentence aloud:

“Allow me to develop my talent without obstacles.”

It was a fine wish for the coming year; one I’d be wise to heed. In the half a lifetime between college and the present, I’d squandered an awful lot of time dating the wrong men and entering letters into the little white squares of crossword grids.

Then again, Billy genuinely seemed to believe I had a flair for puzzle themes. I had no reason to doubt his judgment. Besides, he was so incredibly…

“Without obstacles,”
I reiterated, bonking myself on the head with the end of my paintbrush for emphasis.

Just then, a frenzy of noisemakers and shrieks erupted on the street.
Puny, who had been lolling on the counter keeping me company, leapt from his perch in terror, scattering my can of brushes and upending my palette facedown on the floor in his haste to find safety under the bed.

I turned over the palette to discover a riotous Rorschach of color. At first glance, the image looked like a vengeful old crone—Hannah, perhaps.

Of all the nights my best friend decides to battle panic disorder, it had to be this one,
I thought, grabbing a sponge and a roll of paper towels. I immediately felt guilty when the phone rang a few minutes later. If that was Elinor Ann on the line, she hadn’t lasted very long at the open house in Macungie.

“Hello?”

“What the hell are you doing home? I was expecting to leave a message.”

All of a sudden, December 31 didn’t seem nearly as lonely as I’d made it out to be.

“Long story,” I said. “And I could ask you the same question.”

“You know I hate New Year’s.”

“Oh, right. ‘Amateur night,’ you always called it.”

“Good memory.”

I could hear the clink of ice cubes in the background. “Still drinking Jim Beam?”

“I stand corrected. Great memory. So… what are you up to?”

“I’m on my hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor.”

Ray chuckled. “Guess there are worse ways to see in the new year.”

Okay,
I thought.
He’s got to be the mystery caller. He obviously heard the anxiety in my voice when I picked up just before midnight and checked back to make sure I was all right.

“So, where’s this boyfriend of yours, anyway?” he wanted to know, further confirming my suspicions. “Aren’t the two of you supposed to be out on the town on a night like this?”

I sighed. “Something like that.”

“I’m sorry. You thought I was him on the line, didn’t you?”

“Not at all!”

Well, maybe a little. It would have been nice if Hank had asked for more quarters at the 7-Eleven so he could complete his tantalizing sentence.

“I’m glad it’s you,” I said, and I was. Genuinely. Truly. Honestly.

But I’d really hoped the caller would be Billy, even though of course I was supposed to have hoped for Hank. Hank Hank Hank Hank Hank.

“You two didn’t get into a fight, did you?”

“No. He had a medical emergency.”

“Nothing life-threatening, I hope.”

“Oh, he’s not the one who got sick. His pig came down with pneumonia.”

Ray immediately started laughing his head off. I guess I couldn’t blame him. No doubt he was expecting a woeful tale of a shattered femur, or angioplasty—at the very least, a concussion. Instead, he got indisposed swine.

“I’m sorry,” he finally gasped. “I know it’s not funny, but—”

But it was. Several minutes elapsed while I sat there, letting him get it out of his system and willing myself not to join in. I was not about to be complicit in turning my boyfriend into an object of ridicule—even if he didn’t know how to wire a switch plate. Or sand floors. Or build a Christmas tree stand that actually supported a Christmas tree.

Finally Ray calmed down. “You know, Dana—if you’d told me you were on your own tonight, I would’ve packed up my bottle and brought it into town. Too bad it’s so late.”

“Yeah.”

“And so many stops on the R train.”

“No kidding. Nineteen.”

“How the hell did you know that?”

Oh dear,
I thought.
The last thing Ray needs to discover is how the hell I know that
. It had been nearly two months since Renée’s open house, but I still cringed every time I spotted a pair of pale pink Uggs, which occurred regularly enough to make me wonder if karma had declared a vendetta against me. “I counted the stops on a subway map once. Back when we were… you know.”

“I’m flattered.”

“You should be.”

“And I’m sorry I laughed about your boyfriend’s pig.”

“You should be. He’s really very endearing.” I didn’t dare refer to Dinner by name for fear of setting Ray off again. “And he’s turned out to be a wonderful muse for me. I’m working on a portrait of him right now—part of a sixteen-canvas series. He’s modeling a collection of vintage hats.”

“That sounds promising. Send me some pictures?”

“I’d love to.” He gave me his email address, and I finger-painted it in porkpie-hat plum onto a blank area of my canvas.

“Do it tonight, okay? It’s been too long since I’ve seen your work.”

“I’ve already got thumbnails on my computer. I’ll send some right after we get off the phone.”

“Well, in that case…”

“See you next year?”

“Hell no. It’s half past midnight. See you this year.”

I went over to my computer, located the Hannah file, and selected a half dozen of my favorite portraits. But as soon as I launched my email program and discovered one new message in my in-box, it became clear that Ray was going to have to wait just a little while longer to see them. “So much for ‘sporadic access to the Internet,’ ” I muttered under my breath.

But the words in the subject line were profoundly confusing.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CUSH AND BOOTS