Perfect on Paper (30 page)

“Yeah, but—you know something? It does. I’ve missed you so much, Dana.”

“I’ve missed you, too.”

I hung up the phone, remembering the last time we’d seen each other, when I’d somehow managed to break it off with him. So much had changed since…

Since I’d been Lark and he’d been Sandro, I thought with a shudder. Thank god I occasionally did the right thing. Maybe I should try it more often.

My hip joints were stiff from the hour or so I’d sat on the stoop with Billy, alternately kissing and bantering. No wonder I’d slept so late. It was high time I started putting together the supplies I’d need for painting the balusters that day—what was left of it. At the rate I was going, I wouldn’t get to Hank’s until midafternoon.

My gaze alighted on the newspaper. The second Arts section, still open to the article about Hannah, rested on top of the pile.

What the hell,
I thought.
I guess there’s time for the puzzle.

I located the page with the crossword and glanced at the grid’s upper-right corner. “Puzzle by W. W. W. Moody,” the byline read. So that was what Billy had meant when he’d told me I had a surprise in store.

As usual, he was merciless. “So much for ‘You
get
me,’ ” I muttered as I scanned his evil clues, desperate for even a three-letter word to enter into the squares. I finally managed to crack the southwest quadrant, then slowly filled in the rest, counterclockwise, until I circled back to 1-Across: DIETER’S DIRECTIVE.
Hmmm.
Blank-blank-L-D-T-blank-blank-M…

Of course.

HOLD THE MAYO.

Very funny, Mr. Moody.

By the time I’d solved the puzzle, it was nearly one o’clock. I picked up the phone to let Hank know I was on my way.

“Boy, am I glad you finally called,” he said.

“What’s wrong? I told you I’d be coming over, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but after what I told you at that art show, I thought maybe I seen the last of you. Dana, I don’t want that to happen.”

“Neither do I,” I replied, and I meant it. Despite my recent behavior to the contrary, the boyfriend position was still his to lose. In the long run, Hank was Day In, Day Out. Billy Moody was a debauched Spring Break Week in Daytona. And if Hank could manage to explain the discrepancies in his autobiography to my satisfaction, then I felt sure I could manage to stay away from the undertow.

“I’ll be over in half an hour,” I said.

“That sounds good. We’ll talk then.”

Would we ever. I’d be the one asking all the questions.

“Tell me about Las Vegas.” I was sitting on the stairs, brushing pale lilac-colored acrylic into the recesses of a fluted support column. “Did you really grow up there?”

“All through high school,” Hank responded from the top step of a ladder, where he was stripping decades’ worth of paint from the crown moldings—or “fancy strips of plaster,” as he was given to calling them. “Like I told you, my daddy trained horses for casino acts. Least he did until my grandma took ill and called us back to Tennessee.”

“I’m surprised you retained such a strong—uh, rural way of speaking.”

He grinned. “I ain’t never gonna lose my accent. It’s good business, plain and simple. Like my daddy always said, ‘Folks is likely to remember a country bumpkin from Sin City.’ ”

“I imagine they would be. So, tell me—does the country bumpkin really work for a celebrated Spanish chef?”

“He sure does. This guy’s the best client I ever had. He don’t come around, he don’t run no tabs, and we’re living for free.” He looked down at me and smiled. “And he’s gonna love that staircase.”

“Thanks. Let’s hope so.”

“So… Hannah, huh?”

I should have known I wouldn’t be asking
all
the questions. I felt my face flush.

“You don’t need to explain,” Hank said. “That story’s a real moneymaker. Look, Dana, it’s like I told you last night—you can be anybody you say you are.”

“I guess we both can.”

“Now, is there anything else you been wanting to ask me?”

“No… Oh. Just one more question: Were you and Dinner really in Mullica Hill, New Jersey, on New Year’s Eve?”

He shifted his gaze from my eyes to his knees. “Well, not exactly. I was there.”

“But Dinner was here, pneumonia-free?”

He nodded.

“Would this have anything to do with the tuxedo you were carrying when you got home the next day?”

He nodded again, looking decidedly sheepish. “I was at a wedding.”

My pulse kicked into high gear. “Wearing a tuxedo? Were you the one who was getting married?”

“What? Hell no! I was the guy who was giving away the bride.”

“He has a
daughter
?!!” Elinor Ann said, once I’d finally managed to return home on the pretense of feeding the cat and picking up additional art supplies. I needed a few hours on my own to assimilate Hank’s latest revelation.

“I should have realized it was a possibility. And I definitely should have known there’d be an ex-wife kicking around somewhere. He’s never once left the toilet seat up.”

“Where exactly is the former Mrs. Wheeler?” she wanted to know.

“Still in Tennessee. Apparently they were just a couple of crazy kids who never had no business gettin’ hitched. It all sounded pretty amicable—the divorce, the custody arrangement.… He claims he wants me to meet this girl.”

“Then why didn’t he invite you to the wedding?”

I’d been wondering the same thing—especially since Hank had been so insistent about spending New Year’s together. “He didn’t find out about it until the last minute. Apparently the happy couple was all set to elope before the groom’s parents got wind of it. They pulled the ceremony together in a matter of days.”

“I still don’t see why you couldn’t have gone with him.”

Nor did I. But we’d been on hiatus the preceding week as a result of his half-truths and sins of omission, and a daughter was the biggest omission of all.

“He said something about not wanting to spring too much on me at once,” I told Elinor Ann. “I can only assume he thought I’d find it odd when everyone at the ceremony addressed him as J.D. Calhoun.”

“That would have been odd, all right. How old is this daughter, anyway?”

I’d been afraid she was going to ask me that. “Twenty-five.”

“Really?!”

“Don’t say it.”

“Too bad she just got married.”

“
Don’t
, Elinor Ann.”

“She’s the perfect age for Billy Moody!”

“I thought I asked you not to say that.”

I was just about to reread the review of the art fair when the phone rang again.

“Hello?”

“Glory be! You’re finally home!”

“Hi, Mom.” I could hear ferocious banging noises in the background. “Is everything okay down there?”

“Everything’s just peachy!”

“Then why does it sound as if Noah is building his ark in your living room?”

“Oh, that. Just some… temporary unpleasantness. I’m having the wall-to-wall carpeting replaced. You’re father’s up in arms about it, but I told him I’d die of mortification if the sixty people coming to his birthday party saw the sorry conditions we’ve been living in.”

“Typical Dad, huh?”

“You know the Commodore.”

When I was a kid, my father would resole the same pair of shoes six times, but he never failed to trade in his car for the latest model every September. He hated to spend money on necessities—although one could hardly categorize new wall-to-wall as a necessity when ninety percent of it would be obscured by my mother’s extensive collection of Oriental area rugs. “How’s Dad feeling?”

“Fit as a fiddle! He’s downstairs at the chickee hut playing gin rummy with some of the neighbors.”

“Is he… still talking about God?”

“Mercifully, that seems to have passed. The other day he invoked his name to damn the Internal Revenue Service to hell, but that’s certainly nothing unusual.”

“Not at all.” I covered the receiver to mask a sigh of relief. “So everything’s back to normal?”

“It will be once this dreadful carpet is out of my living room. Now, I wanted to ask if you’ve booked your flights yet.”

“I’ve been meaning to get on that. This weekend, I promise.”

“And I’ve been thinking. You certainly seem to be spending a great deal of time with this young man of yours. Do you think it would be appropriate for us to extend a birthday invitation to him?”

Not if he neglected to extend one to me for his daughter’s wedding
. “I don’t know about that. That’s an awful lot of… pressure for a first meeting with the parents.”

“Then I’ll leave the decision up to you.”

“Great—another decision,” I muttered after I got off the phone and sat down to check my email. Lately I seemed to be incapable of making them. In fact, when my mother had referred to “this young man of yours,” my initial reaction had been to wonder how she knew about Billy Moody.

And now here he was, lying in wait in my in-box:

I was about to respond with a simple no when I realized I could respond in kind. He’d provided me with the perfect riposte in this morning’s crossword. I went into the kitchen to retrieve the puzzle, located the
phrase I had in mind, hit Reply, and typed “16-Down” into the body of the email.

I expected he’d know immediately what the fill read:

WHEN PIGS FLY.

Within minutes, my phone rang.

“Touché,” Billy said.

“You left yourself wide open.”

“I guess I did. And speaking of wide open, that’s an accurate description of my schedule. Let me take you to dinner.”

“Uh—no.”

“But you had a good time with me last night, didn’t you?”

“I’m changing the subject now. Your puzzle this morning was brutal.”

“Glad you enjoyed it. Of course, you were my inspiration.”

“I suppose having one’s name appear in a constructor’s crossword fill is the word-nerd equivalent of flowers and candy.”

“I’ll give you those, too, if you let me take you to dinner.”

“Stop.”

Our conversation had rendered me so discombobulated, I found myself wandering from room to room in a fugue state after it ended.

God, Billy was sexy.

But Hank was sexy, too, and so much more appropriate.

But Billy hadn’t concealed his true identity for the past three months.

But Hank wouldn’t be in his forties when I was eligible for Social Security.

But Billy didn’t have a kid.

But Hank wasn’t one.

But Billy didn’t use double modifiers.

But Hank—

“Enough!” I shouted, loudly enough to send Puny scurrying under the bed. I could equivocate indefinitely. What I really needed was a third
party to decide my future. Some kind of judge, whose decision would be final and binding.

Elinor Ann? No. She’d already made it clear how she felt about Billy. And about Hank, for that matter, and his never-ending cavalcade of new revelations.

I went into the kitchen and came face-to-face with the portrait of Dinner in his leopard skin pillbox hat.

Of course. Ray Devine could be my Solomon.

I’d lay out my dilemma when we got together for drinks. He’d loved me once; I was sure of it. He’d still want what was best for me, wouldn’t he?

All of a sudden, Friday couldn’t come soon enough.

Apparently Ray had lost his sense of urgency when the day finally arrived. I’d been sitting with a book of Saturday crosswords at the bar, nursing a scotch and water down to nothing but ice cubes and consulting my watch incessantly for the past forty-two minutes and fourteen seconds, when I reached for my cell.

I let his phone ring twelve times before giving up and calling Elinor Ann.

“Maybe there’s a problem with the subway,” she said. “Didn’t you tell me he’s way out in Brooklyn?”

“Nineteen stops on the R train.” A hirsute patron with homemade—or prisonmade—tattoos spelling out an expletive on the fingers of his left hand arose from his stool near the end of the bar and took a seat by my side. “Buy you another?” he slurred.

You just
had
to pick a dive bar for the big reunion,
I thought to myself.

“I’m set, thanks.”

The hirsute man ignored my response and signaled the bartender to bring another round. “Set for what?” Elinor Ann asked.

“Imminent peril.”

Another drink materialized before me. I managed a pallid smile and
clinked glasses with my benefactor, then returned to my phone call. “You know, Ray was never late when we used to get together. Maybe he changed his mind.”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

“So… what are you up to?”

“Cleaning up after supper. Oh! Guess what we had?”

Hirsute Man’s arm was sliding dangerously close to my strike zone. “Uh—why don’t you just tell me what you had?”

“Salmon.
With
fresh dill I picked up after work at the farmers’ market!”

“You went all by yourself? That’s fantastic!”

“Hooray!” Hirsute Man raised his beer in solidarity.

“How did you manage to do it?” I asked my friend.

“Well, I noticed something. Whenever I thought about having to go out alone, the anxiety gave me so much nervous energy that I’d just sit there and—well, vibrate, I guess you could say. So I thought if I could do something to get all that tension out of my system, maybe I’d be too tired to panic.”

“And it worked?”

“Just before I left the plant, I went into my office and did twenty squat thrusts. Then I did fifty jumping jacks. I was drenched with sweat when I walked out of there—our foreman told me I looked like I was coming down with the flu—but I stayed calm enough to make it all the way to the market.”

“Jumping jacks,” I said. There was no way I was going to use the words “squat” or “thrust” in the presence of my new admirer. “What a solution. Who would have thought?”

My comment inspired Hirsute Man to break into a rousing rendition of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.”

“Oh my god,” Elinor Ann said. “That wasn’t Ray, was it?”

“God, no. Listen—I am
so
proud of you.” Hirsute Man was wrapping
up the chorus. I had to shut him down before the inevitable air guitar solo. “Oh—and I have good news, too! The doctor gave me a new prescription today. This time she’s one hundred percent sure it will
finally
get rid of my yeast infection!”