Tempted (7 page)

* * *

It’s a Monday night and has only been a few hours since Bret and I enjoyed a puppy love-infused lunch together.
 
Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself so lovelorn that I hardly think to eat.
 
Bret’s noticed the weight I’ve lost and says I look great, adding that he thought I looked terrific already, but now, yum!
 
Yeh, who’s chubby now, Madre?

I am just leaving for tonight’s ballet company board meeting when the recording secretary calls to alert me to the fact that two of the board members have whooping cough and that the meeting is cancelled.
 
She then goes into a ten-minute harangue about how the cough bug is going around and that ya know, I do work in radio, and how I should gargle with salt water, drink lots of warm green tea with lemon and honey, take a ginseng supplement, and basically barricade myself in the house for a week or two as a preventative measure until the danger blows over.
 
Throughout the one-sided conversation I picture her with victory rolls in her hair, a polka-dot dress and sensible shoes as she deftly plugs and unplugs wires from the 1940’s switchboard she operates.

A night off.
 
The concept is so foreign to me I frankly don’t know how to process it.
 
I stand frozen in my entryway, at a loss for what to do next.
 
Then a warm
,
dopey grin crosses my face as my yellow and orange chakra buddies skip up to me, holding hands and offering me a bouquet of daisies.
 
I nod knowingly and make the call.

Drat.
 
No answer.
 
The call goes to voicemail after the standard four rings.
 
I try again, just in case.
 

“Hello?” a perky voice answers.

“Oh uh,” I look at my cell to see if I’ve misdialed. “Yeah, hi, uh
...
is Bret there?”

“Sure, who’s calling?”

“This is Claire.”

“Hon, someone named Claire for you?”

“What?
 
I told you never to answer my business line.
 
I have important c
lients who call on that line,”
I hear him chastise from somewhere across the room.

“I didn’t mean to.
 
I was just trying to
...
Ohhhhhhhh,” she cuts off as the phone drops and somewhere in the same room a baby starts to cry.

He picks up the phone and muffles it
,
but I can still make out what he’s saying.
 
“Great! Now look what you’ve done!
 
Take Junior in the other room.
 
You may have just cost me a sale.”

“Bret Stevens here,”
he says, in a saccharine, phon
y, guy-I-would-never-do-business-with sort of way.

“I
...
uh
...
”  W
ords fail me.

“How ya doin’ tonight, Claire?
 
Hey, I’ve been running the numbers and I think there are a couple of good options for your portfolio.
 
A Roth combined with a two-year CD
a
mong some other more…”
h
is voice drops seductively
as he purrs, “creative options.

“I am pretty excited about what I’ve got for you and I think it will excite you too,” his words now dripping with innuendo.

“When’s a good time for you to get together to meet?
 
Would Wednesday or Thursday be better for you?”

My mind is not really
processing
what’s happening.
 
My chakras are at each other’s throats and a silent pandemonium has taken hold.
 
I am stunned, heartbroken, nearly grief-stricken, and feel like a prize fool.
 
But far worse than all of that, it means Mom was right.
 
Damn.

I don’t know the last time I saw my mom so happy.
 
She looks as though she’s found the fountain of youth.
 
She’s energetic, sunny and has taken to humming
...
actual humming!
 
Frankly, I wish she would just ‘I told you so’ me, but instead she’s being uncharacteristically chipper, supportive, and dare I say it, sweet!
 
Seems as though the best thing to happen to her in ages is having me go through a humiliating heartbreak with all of the attendant ramifications.

With April living so far away and unable to hold my hand every waking moment, I’ve turned to my close confidants, Ben and Jerry, for solace.
 
They are incredibly good listeners, saying nothing, but offering ice cream at every opportunity.
 
Mom has noticed the salubrious effects of my time spent with them
,
and in classic passive-aggressive form, tells me that she is thrilled to see I’ve packed the pounds back on.
 
Now I look like myself again and won’t have to worry about attracting unwanted attention from men.
 
Gee, thanks, Mom.

In nearly the same breath
, she tries
to fix me up with good ol’ Nimo, and I can’t help but wonder if they are somehow in cahoots, given that out of nowhere he has started calling and texting again, this time more insistently.
 
Actually, neither he nor my mother have ever talked and don’t have one another’s contact info.
 
So why did he choose to turn up now?
 
Did he somehow sense my availability and vulnerability?
 
Is it something akin to pheromones?
 
Can men smell female desperation?
 

In any event, Geronimo is on the warpath again, chatting me up, offering to wine and dine me, inviting me to stay over on the weekend
s to maximize our time together,
using the two-hour driving distance between us as an excuse.
 
We start going out every now and again
,
and pass the time pleasantly enough.
 
Movies, dinner
...
he even goes to tea with me as a show of consideration.
 
Our teatime jaunt was a shambles and not to be repeated.
 

It reminds me of how, when I was going to school in Europe, I would sometimes run into loud-mouthed, over-the-top, bad s
tereotype Americans who wore hundred gallon
cowbo
y hats, wheat colored suits, broad
smiles and spoke way too loudly, all the while, under the guise of humor, complaining about anyone they met in Europe who did not speak English.
 
I used to cringe and try to hide in the corners lest one of these rude and bombastic countrymen try to strike up a conversation with ‘one of their own.’
 
Going out to tea with Nimo was like that.
 
He kept joking about how hilarious it was that he was a man and that he was at tea
...
a heterosexual man, at that!
 
The college-age server responded with good-natured mirth and understanding, while I inwar
dly apologized to all of my gay
male friends.
 

Once the tea was served, Nimo launched into a comedy routine about putting his pinky up while sipping.
 
He went a step further by do
nning one of the hats and boas that made up the
display.
 
He finally asked our long-suffering server to just call him Mrs. Doubtfire, and laughed uproariously at his own hilarity.

The final part of his act centered on the sizes of the finger sandwiches and petite desserts.
 
The jokes were rampant about bird-sized
serving
s, about how he’d have to order six of the high tea meals to fill up, how at $25 a pop it was clear the tea room was running quite a racket, and that he should quit his job, open a tea room and get rich too.
 
While walking out the door, he made a point to bid ‘cheerio’ to the cute server.
 
I surreptitiously slipped $20 into her palm in apology.
 
As a closing punch
-
line, he added that ‘size shouldn’t matter,’ but that after those portions we’d be headed straight to the nearest In ‘N’ Out burger for a double double, with a
ba-dum-cha
rimshot sound effect punctuating the joke.
 
If he’d used In ‘n’ Out’s underground menu and said ‘a double-double animal style with a Neopolitan shake’ perhaps I could have borne it.
But he didn’t.
 
That was our last and only tea outing together.

When not enduring Nimo, and in an effort to keep my mind off Bret, I’ve been beefing up my presence on Facebook.
 
I always enjoy my time there and find I smile a lot while tooling around the site.
 
It’s so refreshing to interact with people who are not bent on finding and exploiting your faults
ad infinitum
and inventing new ways to annoy you daily
...
yes, that means you, Mom.
 
Similarly, it’s relaxing and fun to interact with people who not only have brains, but who don’t begin every sentence declaring, ‘You will
laugh
,’ who
then proceed to tell you how the car in front of them on the freeway turned their windshield wiper cleaner on and how your car was hit by the spray, or what a laugh riot it was that you wore two black socks to work, but that they weren’t exactly mates
...
and oh, yes, that most definitely means you, Geronimo.
 
While I’m at it, who goes around yelling their own name as an exclamation, even
if their name is Geronimo…
which
is not your birth name anyway!

* * *

I have my new Bretless routine down pretty well.
 
And I am a hero with the ballet corp
s
for donating my Bulls hockey tickets to the recent charity ball
’s
silent auction.
 
Go, me
–
woot!

I have also become quite admirably dext
e
rous at carrying on multiple Facebook conversations while furthering my pursuit of taste-tasting the lot of Ben & Jerry’s offerings.
 
I still refer to them with their proper names
,
as opposed to shortening them to B&J
,
as I do with my favorite trader, Joe.
 
While I have grown quite fond of the dynamic dairy duo, we still have a way to go in our relationship, so I try to keep it professional.

It’s Saturday night and, as usual, I’m hosting an ice cream social
attended by
me and my two aforementioned dessert consorts.
 
Facebook is doing its part to entertain me, and I am making myself smile by playing classic Depeche Mode.
 
All in all, it just feels good to feel good!
 
A variety of posts drift down my newsfeed and tonight everything is whimsi
cal and delightful, even if it’
s colored by the Chocolate Therapy to which I’ve submitted, specifically, ‘Chocolate ice cream with chocolate cookies and swirl
s of chocolate pudding
.’
 
God, I love those two men!

An image of a Marie Antoinette style mermaid has been posted to my wall by a fan.
 
I squee and ‘like’ and ‘xoxox <3
.
’

A photo of a Steampunk corset sashays by.
 
I click ‘like,’ leave a fawning comment, and pull the photo off the page onto my own desktop for subsequent ogling.

An inspiring quote indicating that ‘humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less’ saunters by.
 
I share it on my own Timeline.

A friend private messages me letting me know the upcoming Hobbit movies will now be broken into three installments instead of one or even two.
 
I am grateful that prayer works.

April posts a cute little ditty about ‘vices and virtues’
that catches my attention…
 
especially as I am elbows deep into my current frozen sweets
vice
.
 
It’s a quote by Abraham Lincoln that reads:
 
“Folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”