Stranger (23 page)

He made an indescribable noise that lifted the hairs on the back of my neck. “What are you wearing?”

“Pajamas.”

“Silk?”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but, no. Flannel.”

“I’m not disappointed,” Sam said. “I love flannel pajamas.”

I laughed. “Good night, Sam.”

Another slight groan and the creak of a mattress. “At least tell me I can call you again.”

My smile faded. I listened to the sound of his breathing, interrupted in a moment by another shuffle and a sharp intake of breath. The vision of him jerking off to this conversation no longer seemed so implausible.

“Sam, what the hell are you doing? Why do you keep groaning? What’s the matter with you?”

“My brother,” he said, “beat the ever-loving shit out of me. I’m having a hard time getting comfortable. I’d blame the cowboy sheets except I know it’s the black eye and the sore ribs.”

Shock dropped my jaw. “Your brother Dan?”

“I only have the one.”

“He…” I remembered the look on Dan’s face at the cemetery, and how his wife had pulled him away. “He really beat you up?”

“Yeah, but I gave as good as I got, so don’t you fret about me, Grace. Unless—” his voice dipped low “—you want to come on over and nurse me back to health.”

My mouth snapped shut. “I most certainly do not! Good night!”

“So I can call you again?”

“I don’t think so.” I switched off the light, half hoping he’d ask again. I couldn’t be blamed for giving in to such a pain in the ass, could I? If he simply wore me down?

“That’s not a no.”

There was a long silence. I looked up through darkness at the ceiling I knew was there, though I couldn’t see it. “No, I don’t suppose it is.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Do you like horror movies?”

“That depends,” Sam said.

“On?”

“If you’re asking me to go see one.”

I tucked my blankets beneath my chin. “More than one. Horrorfeast. I was going to go alone, but you can come with me. If you want.”

“For you? Yes.”

“Okay. Saturday, then?”

We exchanged details of when and where, and I told him good-night.

“Sleep tight,” Sam said, and to my surprise and some disappointment, he hung up, leaving me to stare at something I knew was there although I couldn’t see it.

Jared came back to work only slightly worse for the wear, joking as much as usual and only walking a little slower. He surveyed the basement rooms and looked impressed. “Nice washer.”

“It better be, for the price.” I’d replaced the washer and the drier with heavy-duty new ones that weren’t quite industrial-size, but close to it. “And what do you know, looky here, you can be the first to use it.”

Jared looked at the full laundry cart and rolled his eyes. “Gee, thanks.”

I clapped him on the shoulder. “No problem, big guy. How’s the ankle?”

He shrugged and reached for the fresh box of latex gloves I’d put on the brand-new shelves by the washer. He saw regulations, I saw dollar signs flying up into the sky. I put it out of my mind. That was part of the risk of owning your own business. Expenses.

“Hurts,” he told me. “But I’m okay.”

“Uh-huh.” I watched him without offering to help. I had an appointment in twenty minutes, and digging into the soiled laundry while wearing my crisp, clean suit didn’t appeal.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t whack your head.”

Jared loaded the washer and studied the dials without looking at me. “Yeah.”

A small sound from the doorway made us both turn toward Shelly, who’d caught our attention by demurely clearing her throat. She always dressed neatly, usually in knee-length skirts and buttoned blouses with cardigan sweaters if the weather called for it, but today she was even more buttoned up than usual. She’d skinned her hair back into an unflatteringly tight bun.

Even her lipstick was paler than normal.

“Phone for you, Grace,” she said.

“Thanks.” I looked at Jared, who was studiously emptying the laundry cart, then back at Shelly, who was studying the handset in her palm like it was ringing out in Morse code. I took the phone from her, and she backed away, going upstairs as I followed.

The call was from my dad, who wanted to know how the cleanup had gone. By the time I got upstairs to my office, he’d already run through the entire list of usual complaints and admonishments. I listened with half an ear while I checked through the stack of pink message slips on my desk. None from Sam.

“Grace, are you listening to me?”

“Sure, Dad. Of course.” I pushed aside the slips and reminded myself I didn’t care.

“I said I thought I should come over, take another look at the books. See where you can tighten your belt.”

I moved my mouse to wake my computer monitor from sleep, but it stayed black. I turned the mouse over to make sure the red light on the bottom was lit, and it was. The batteries hadn’t run low. “Dammit.”

“Excuse me?” It wasn’t hard to hear the thunder in my dad’s voice.

“Not you. The computer. Well, a little bit you, Dad.”

He harrumphed. “I know you don’t want me noodling around in your business.”

“That’s right. I don’t.” The computer screen finally, slowly, came to life, but almost immediately showed an error message telling me I had to restart. I pressed the button on the back of the hard drive.

“Too bad,” my dad said.

“Haven’t we had this argument before?”

I sighed and waited for my computer to boot back up. It had been acting a little funny since the washer incident, and I was afraid the power surge had broken it. The desktop appeared, but none of my applications wanted to open. The icons bounced merrily in the dock, but that was all. Then the spinning wheel of death showed up, and I powered the machine down again.

“It’s not an argument, Gracie. I just want to help.”

I sighed again as my computer struggled vainly to boot up. “Dad, I have to go. I think my computer’s broken.”

I was sure I didn’t imagine the small note of triumph in his voice when he said, “I never needed a computer to run my business.”

“Yeah, okay, Mr. Quest for Fire, thanks.” I watched the screen go black, then the error screen came up again.

“I don’t know what Quest for Fire means, but I don’t like your tone.” He didn’t quite say

“young lady,” but it was implied.

“Dad!” I cried, then lowered my voice. “You’re driving me up a wall! If you want to come to check out my books, fine, do it. But I’m telling you, it’s all fine! I’m not going to starve, and I’m not going to lose the business, either!”

Once more Shelly’s discreet cough alerted me to her presence in the doorway. She did some sort of nifty sign language to tell me my appointment had arrived. “Dad, I have to go.”

“I’m just trying to help,” my dad said, tone affronted.

I caved. “I know. Come on over this afternoon. If I can get the computer up and running, you can do whatever you want with the books, okay?”

Placated but not appeased, my dad agreed and hung up as I stood to greet the couple who’d come to me to talk about arrangements for a maiden aunt. The rest of the day flew by in a haze of appointments, services and death calls. Feast or famine, my dad had always been fond of saying. The funeral business wasn’t predictable. By the time I pulled into the parking lot after our third service of the day, my feet hurt even though I’d worn sensible heels, and my stomach growled.

Shelly had waited for me to come back, though I was much later than usual. She’d tidied her desk in sharp contrast to the mess I knew awaited me on mine. Jared hadn’t gone to the final service with me, and I hadn’t seen his car in the lot when I pulled in, which meant he wasn’t giving her a ride.

“It’s late.” I hung the keys to the hearse back on their peg. “You should go on home.”

“I know.” She smiled at me, just a little. “I wanted to make sure you got back all right.”

Funny how Shelly’s mother-henning me didn’t annoy me as much as when it came from my family. “Go on. You don’t need to hang around here for me. Is Duane picking you up?”

“No. I drove myself.”

I watched her do an unneeded, last-minute tidy of her desk surface as she stood and grabbed her cardigan from the back of the chair. “I thought Jared usually drove you home.”

Her swift fingers buttoned her sweater up to her neck, though the weather was mild. She grabbed her purse and began rustling inside it. “Not anymore.”

“Shelly?”

She looked up at me.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

It was simultaneously the right and wrong thing to say. Shelly burst into braying sobs and sank back into her chair, then buried her face in her arms on top of the desk. It wasn’t exactly what I’d bargained for, though I should’ve known it was a possibility. I shrugged out of my suit jacket and hung it on the coatrack, then reached for the box of tissues and started handing her one after the other.

“Oh…Graaaaaace,” Shelly wailed from the hollow her arms had created to hide her face.

“Oh…I’m so…so…So!”

I settled my butt on the edge of her desk and patted her shoulder. “So what?”

“Confused!” More wailing.

Shelly had always been prone to crying under stress, but it was usually a little more restrained. She blotted her face with a handful of tissues, but they did little to stop the torrent of tears streaming down her cheeks.

“About Jared?”

“No!”

“About Duane?” I asked as gently as I could.

“No. Yes. Both.” She looked up at me. “What was I thinking?”

I handed her another tissue. “I don’t know, Shelly. That you like him? That he likes you?”

“Yes, but…Oh, bugger.” She sat up and wiped her face. With her face cleaned of the minimal makeup she wore, she looked even younger. “I’m so confused.”

She’d said that already, but I couldn’t blame her for saying it again. “Let me ask you something.”

She looked up at me, her hopeful face pressuring me to make this all okay. “Sure.”

“Are you…happy?”

If someone had asked me that question, I wasn’t sure how I’d have answered, but Shelly just shook her head. “No!”

“Well, doesn’t that tell you something?”

“It tells me a lot,” she said, and burst into more tears.

I really needed a shower and a change of clothes. And also, a beer. Or two. “Shelly, come upstairs with me, okay? I need to eat something. Not cookies,” I said before she could offer.

“Come upstairs. We’ll talk about this.”

In my apartment, she sobbed on my couch while I heated a frozen pizza and cracked open two bottles of Tröegs Pale Ale. I handed her one and changed into jeans and a T-shirt in my bedroom. Once again, my shower would have to wait. By the time I came out, Shelly had chugged down half her beer and managed to stop crying long enough to set my table with paper plates and napkins.

The oven dinged just then, and I pulled out the pizza and cut it into slices. Shelly took one but didn’t eat it, while I wolfed down mine and grabbed another. With the emptiness in my stomach subsiding, I drank some beer and sat back in my chair with a sigh.

“He’s a good guy, Shelly.” I didn’t indicate which one. It didn’t really matter. They were both good guys; I liked Jared a lot more, but then I was biased.

“Yes.” Shelly nodded and pressed a hand to her tear-swollen eyes. “I know.”

“Look, without getting into the details—”

“I had sex with him!” Shelly cried. Her chin lifted, her mouth trembling, but her voice was strong. “I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I just…did it!”

I swigged beer quickly to cover up the fact I’d gone briefly trout-mouthed. It went down the wrong pipe, sending me into a coughing fit. Shelly blinked rapidly and swiped at her eyes, but staved off more tears by slugging back her own beer. “I’m—”

“Surprised?” she interrupted. “Why, that he’d do it with me?”

“No, of course not—”

Shelly thumped the table with the flat of her hand. “Guys will screw anything, Grace, and besides, I told him he’d be doing me a favor!”

“I didn’t think he wouldn’t want to…sleep with you, Shelly.” Somehow the f-bomb just didn’t seem like the right word to use with my pretty little office manager. “Wait…favor?”

Her chin went higher and her mouth thinned. “Yes. I told him it would be a favor. How am I supposed to know if I want to spend my life with Duane if I’ve never had sex with any other man? How am I supposed to tell if Duane’s any good in bed if I have nothing to compare him to?”

“So…the night he hurt his ankle, you…”

“I did.” Shelly looked hesitantly proud.

I finished my beer while she eyed me anxiously. “And how was it?”

A couple more tears squirted out of her eyes but she slapped them away. “Wonderful.”

I understood very well where she was coming from. Bad enough that she’d cheated on her almost-fiancé. Worse that the sex had been so great. “You can write off bad sex. Good sex is harder to forget. Great sex? Almost impossible.”

“I thought I’d just get it over with. Then I could stop thinking about him all the time,” she said. “That if we did it, I’d prove something to myself. And I did. But the wrong thing!”

I bit into my pizza, chewing while I thought of how to answer her. “So what are you going to do now?”

“What should I do?”

“When did I become an expert on relationships?” I got up to put my plate in the cranky dishwasher. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have one boyfriend, much less two.”

“Jared’s not my boyfriend,” Shelly answered, but it sounded automatic and not sincere.

“And I’m not stupid, you know.”

I turned to look at her. “I never thought you were.”

She looked at me. “You can’t tell me you don’t have a boyfriend or someone hidden away somewhere. Do you think I haven’t figured out where you go those days you leave the office?

What about Sam?”

“Shelly, you really don’t know.”

She sniffled. “You’re not going to play bingo. I know that much.”

“No,” I admitted. “But I’m not going to meet a boyfriend.”

“You’re going to meet someone,” she said with that same stubborn, anxiously hopeful look.

“Yes.” That was it, no further explanation, no matter how hopefully she looked at me.