Signs and Wonders (14 page)

“Go talk to her, man,” Victor said. “She’s hot.”

“Smokin’,” said Wayne from Technology Services.

“Who says
smokin’
anymore?” Victor said.

“I’m just saying she’s hot.”

“Smokin’,” Victor said, wincing for real. “Give me a break.”

Doug was starting to feel drunk, and grateful for it, nodding vacantly through all of this. He hardly noticed when Victor and Wayne went to the bar to chat up the dark-haired woman, gales of laughter soon pealing from their little group. He ordered another martini from the blond waitress, who brought it and said, “This one is compliments of the girl at the bar.”

“Seriously?”

“I think she likes you,” the waitress said.

From the bar, Victor gave him a thumbs-up. Doug tried to grin, but it looked more like a grimace, he knew. His smiling muscles were stiff from lack of use. He drank down half the martini and ate his olives, and by the time he finished chewing the guys were trailing back to the table.

“You’re never going to believe this, man,” Victor said, “but she gave me this for you.” He opened his palm and showed Doug a keycard envelope on which the room number was written in blue pen.

“She thinks you’re hot,” Wayne said.

“Maybe even
smokin’,
” Victor said. He elbowed Wayne good-naturedly, and they both laughed.

Doug could feel the vodka now. “That’s crazy,” he said, not very distinctly, “we haven’t exchanged a single word.”

“So what?” Victor said. “She likes the look of you.”

He drained his martini. When he looked over at the bar again, the woman was gone. Victor and the other guys walked him to the elevator, pressed the button for him, and then left. He could see his face reflected drunkenly in the elevator’s mirror. Leering at himself, he couldn’t feel the muscles move, like after a shot at the dentist’s. The elevator stopped.

He found her room and inserted the key. Nothing happened. He tried again. Was she in there listening to him fumble? Not a very good advertisement for anything that might happen later. On the third try, the light flashed green and he turned the handle and stepped inside.

She was sitting on the bed, wearing a black negligee and watching CNN, a sound so profoundly reassuring to him that his knees felt weak. She was thin and olive skinned, with pointy shoulders. Her clothes were folded on the chair in a neat pink pile. Only when he saw her with her clothes already off did he understand that his friends had paid for her company.

“Hi, Doug,” she said, and turned off the TV.

“You can leave it on,” he said.

She pressed the remote again and a man said, “Next up, the story of a lost dog traveling hundreds of miles all by itself to find its way home.”

He sat down next to her, unsure of what to say or do. He’d never been in this situation before. “I had some trouble getting in.”

“Well, you’re here now,” she said, and patted his hand. “Are you okay?”

“I’m a little dizzy,” he admitted.

Patting his hand again, she stood up and fetched him some water from the bathroom, then turned down the volume on the TV.

“Who are you?” he said.

“My name’s Violet.”

“Where are you from?”

“New Hampshire.”

“I don’t know why I’m here,” he said. He felt close to tears. This wasn’t his thing, and it wasn’t going to help.

“Your friends thought you needed some company.”

“I do need company,” he confessed. “I do.”

“Okay, then,” Violet said.

He put his head in her lap. But she was bony and her negligee was slippery—Carol always wore cotton—and the whole setup wasn’t very comfortable, so he lay next to her in bed instead, his heavy head resting on the pillows.

“My wife died,” he said. “She was a teacher.”

“I wanted to be a teacher,” Violet said. They were holding hands. Her hair smelled good, not quite like candy, more like flowers. “I always liked reading.”

“You should do it,” he said. “You should be a teacher.”

“It’s kind of late,” Violet said.

“It’s not even midnight,” he said, and passed out to the sound of her laugh.

When he woke up, the room was dark and silent. It reminded him of waking in the hospital, and he was scared and sad, and his head hurt. “Violet?” he said, his voice sounding like a child’s.

“I’m here, honey,” she said, from the other side of the room. In the darkness, he could make out that she was dressed in her pink outfit again.

“Please don’t leave.”

“Okay,” she said.

In the morning she was still there, and they ordered breakfast from room service. Violet ate a waffle, licking syrup off her fingers. Without her makeup and in a sober light she looked less pretty than she had and even younger, actually, but somehow more tired.

“You had a nightmare,” she said. “You were talking but I couldn’t understand what you said.”

“I dreamed I was back in fifth grade and the other kids tried to kill me,” he said, and they both laughed. “Pretty weird, huh.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t be a teacher, if kids are that violent,” she said. “Maybe what I’m doing now is safer.” She smiled at him, then bit her lip. “You seem like a nice guy,” she said. “I’m sorry about your wife.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“My real name is Jane.”

“My real name’s Martin. Martin Douglas Robinson. I thought Martin was a sissy name when I was a kid, so I use my middle name instead.”

They shook hands formally, politely. He thought about kissing her, but he wasn’t really attracted to her. That part of him was dead or at least dormant; he took care of its occasional needs by himself in the shower, a quick and efficient system that worked fine in his opinion.

“I guess I better go,” he said.

She shrugged, sweetly. In that moment he liked her about as well as he could like anyone, and he leaned over and kissed her cheek. She touched his shoulder, a faint, barely-there caress, like the first drop before you’re sure it’s raining. She put a card into his palm and folded his fingers over it.

“Call me,” she said.

At work that day, Victor and Wayne grinned with accomplishment. They kept walking around slapping him on the back and announcing loudly that they knew something other people didn’t. Hungover, Doug didn’t say much, a silence taken for gentlemanly discretion. A lot of women came around to check on him, stopping by his office with lame excuses about confirming meeting times or having run out of toner and needing to use his printer. Suddenly there was an aura around him; he was back on the market. He wasn’t sure how to feel about this, and he left the office early, looking forward to a night at home in front of the TV.

When he pulled up, he saw a girl sitting on his front steps. It was Violet, or rather Jane. This time she was wearing jeans and a pink cardigan sweater and white running shoes. He stood in the driveway for a second, not knowing what to say.

“You’re in the phone book,” she said, before he could say anything. “I hope you don’t mind I just dropped by. Can I come in?”

“What are you doing here?”

“You’re in the book,” she said again. She was standing up now, with her hands plunged in the pockets of her jeans, and she looked innocent and vulnerable, or like a person who was trying to look innocent and vulnerable. The year he and Carol started going
out, he remembered, she’d been obsessed with a hooker who was blackmailing an alderman in Ohio and had amassed thousands of dollars that his wife thought was safely gathering interest in their kid’s college fund. “What a scumbag,” Carol had said of the alderman. “He should have kept it in his pants.”

“I was just on my way out,” he told Jane. “Now’s not a good time.” Quickly he got back in the car, then drove to a theater and saw two movies back-to-back. When he got home again it was midnight and she was gone. She probably had to go to work, in the hotel bar. He breathed out a deep sigh. Inside, he checked his messages.

“This is Jane Eckman calling,” her voice said. “That’s my name. Jane Audrey Eckman. I really am from New Hampshire. I’m not a creep or a crazy person. I just wanted to call and tell you that. I’m sorry I freaked you out today. I just didn’t know if you’d remember my name. I mean, if I called you, I thought you might not know who I was, so I thought I’d just stop by. I thought you seemed like a nice person, and so I thought I would just stop by. I’m in the phone book too if you want to call me back. Or also you have my card. That’s all. Okay. Bye.”

Alone in his house, he exhaled. He hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his breath. In the pocket of his pants, hanging in his closet, he found her card (
Friends for all Occasions,
it said, with a phone number, next to which she’d written, in blue ballpoint and bubbled letters,
Violet/Jane
) and tore it into small pieces, which he then flushed down the toilet.

The next night, she called again. He wasn’t picking up the phone, just in case, and she left another message. This time her voice trembled a little.

“Martin, this is Jane,” she said. “I know this is making me
sound crazy, but I’m actually not crazy, I swear. I just—Listen. I don’t know a lot of people here. And I don’t meet a lot of people either, because where would I meet them? And if I did meet them and they asked me what I do, what would I say? So I guess I just thought, I mean, in your case, you already know from the start. I guess I just thought, I’m kind of lonely, and you seem kind of lonely too, so maybe it would be okay. Anyway, I just wanted to explain that. You have my card. That’s all. Okay. Bye.”

The next day she didn’t call. He’d expected her to, but of course he was glad she didn’t. He went out for a beer with Victor and Wayne, to a sports bar, not the hotel, and when he got home he was even a little disappointed not to find a message waiting, but not
really
disappointed, just a little let down. She was lonely, that was all, and he was glad she was leaving him alone now. He’d been through enough.

A few days passed. Life went back to its routine, such as it was. He cleaned his office, cleaned his house. No calls.

Then the verdict came down on the murderer of his wife and child. He was guilty. Absent the death penalty in Rhode Island, he’d probably get life in prison. Protesters outside the prison were demanding he should be killed. The parents of the dead woman were interviewed and declined to offer an opinion, saying only that no matter what happened, their daughter and grandson weren’t coming back, and given that, there could be no justice. Punishment, but not justice. Doug turned off the TV and sat by himself on the couch, his hands shaking.

·    ·    ·

A week later, when he pulled up to the house after work, Jane Eckman was waiting on his front steps again. This time the weather was warm and she was wearing a pink flowered sundress, like a girl going to church. It looked like an outfit her mother would have bought her. For the first time he wondered how old she was. He almost reversed out of the driveway, but didn’t. He got out of the car and faced her.

“Hi, Martin,” Jane said, then swallowed visibly. “I’m sorry about those phone calls.”

“It’s okay,” he said.

“I came here to ask you out,” she said.

“What?”

“On a date,” she said.

To this he said nothing, and just looked at her.

“People say sometimes men are dense so you have to be clear. So I’m here, being clear. I like you. You seem like a nice man. You told me I should go ahead and try to be a teacher. It made me feel good, do you know what I mean? I meet a lot of men and most of them don’t seem very nice. So I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner with me tonight?”

“Jane,” he said.

“If you say no, I’ll leave now and I won’t ever bother you again.”

“No.”

“Okay, then,” she said. She pulled a cell phone out of her purse. “I’ll just have to call a cab. It’s okay if I wait out here, isn’t it? Sorry. This isn’t a very good exit.”

In the living room, he watched her stand in the driveway until the cab took her away. He couldn’t see, from where he was, whether she was crying or not.

·    ·    ·

He thought that was the end of it, but she kept calling. She didn’t leave messages, though. She’d just call and hang up, every few days. It was ridiculous, like high school or something. After a couple weeks he made up his mind. He went to the bar in the hotel, but she wasn’t there. This went on for another few days, her calling and hanging up, his looking for her at the hotel bar at night after work. Finally he saw her, sitting there, nursing a cocktail. He had two thousand dollars in his pocket, in a small manila envelope. It was money he and Carol had saved for a down payment on a new car. Jane smiled when she saw him.

“Buy me a drink?” she said hopefully.

“I can’t stay,” he said. He looked around the bar, eyeing it as he thought she would, for prospective marks. Was that what she would call them, marks? He didn’t know. “I came to bring you something.”

Jane smiled again and he saw she was blushing. She thought he’d come around to ask her out. He put the envelope on the bar. “Be a teacher,” he said.

Her smile was gone, but the blush was still there. She didn’t touch the envelope. She curled both hands around her glass, holding it tightly.

“My wife and I were saving it,” he said, “but I don’t need it. Take it and go back to New Hampshire. Go back to school and be a teacher. Meet a nice man and have children.” His voice was cracking. The bartender was looking at him, but he didn’t care. “Start a new life.”

Jane pushed the envelope back at him and stood up. “Is that
what you think I want from you? Fuck you.” Her voice rose to a shout. “Seriously, Martin. Fuck you.” She got up and rushed out, her high heels clicking spastically.

The bartender shrugged. “Women,” he said.

Doug picked up the envelope and went home. While he was taking a shower, the phone rang.
Jane,
he thought,
I’ll never get away from her.
After he got dressed, he saw there was a message, so he poured himself a drink and steeled himself to listen to it.

But it wasn’t Jane. It was Debbie, Carol’s best friend, the one who’d been driving on the night of the accident. She’d called him every few months since the crash, but he’d never called her back. It wasn’t that he hated her; he just couldn’t stand the sound of her voice.