The Do-Over (19 page)

She watched Lois concentrate on cutting her steak, and Dan focus on buttering his white roll. She’d forget everything about the evening, including her cotton t-shirt and knee-length floral skirt minus the happy butterfly sandals. Her thirteenth night of freedom and she’d wasted it on average clothing, uninspired food, and uncomfortable silence. “Lois.”

Lois took a bite of steak, nodded that Mara should continue.

“I’m staying here in Vancouver for seventeen more days. Then I’m going home. I’ll get your thank you card for the scarf I bought for Logan to give you, and I’ll be a good Mrs. and stock up on facial tissue and everything will go back to normal. Until then, I’m just having a little vacation. I’m not going to medicate myself so I can go back earlier, and nothing you say can change my mind.”

When Lois’ eyes narrowed, Mara held up her hand. “Okay, there are things you could say that would make me feel terrible and may cut my stay down a couple of days, but we’ll only both regret that later.”

Lois sniffed.

“Okay, I’ll regret it later. So, you just check into a nice hotel and fly out first thing tomorrow, and when I leave Vancouver, we’ll all just pretend nothing ever happened.”

Lois’ gray head shook with her intensity, and Mara could see where Dan had gotten his secret bully nature. The nut didn’t fall far from the tree. “Listen here, young lady.”

Young lady?
It was almost worth the butt kicking she was about to endure to hear someone call her
young lady
. That hadn’t happened since she was…

“You think you can just waltz back home and everything will be the same? Well it won’t. You have responsibilities, and you will meet those responsibilities with the grace and modesty becoming a Mulligan.” Lois lifted her chin, and Mara took that to be the end of the spanking. As far as young lady speeches went, it was pretty lame, but it was the worst she’d ever received. Of course, she’d never done anything wrong when she’d actually been a young lady. She’d helped her mother when she’d not been feeling well. She’d been polite to her father’s friends when her parent’s hosted a dinner party. She did once lose a library book, a particularly spicy Nancy Drew, but since she’d been bawling her head off at the time, the young lady talk the librarian had delivered was mostly designed to calm her down.

But she wasn’t crying this time. “Okay.” She set her fork down. “I think we’ve reached an impasse. How’s impasse, Dan? You like that word?” She rose from the table. “Lois, enjoy dinner with your son. I’ll see you next month.” She walked toward the door and every step felt lighter, happier, full of celebration. It was the end of the tyranny of Lois. She sighed as she reached for the door and stepped out into the warm night air. It was the end of the tyranny of Lois for seventeen days.

She stood on the sidewalk took in a happy breath and felt a shaky one leave her. She was a domesticated animal released into the wild. How many times on the animal shows Logan loved had she witnessed the exact thing that was happening to her? The tranquilizing dart wore off at last and the bear, lion, meerkat woke up. It shook itself and looked around the cage. The door was always opened at that stage in the relocation process, opened gingerly by some underpaid safari lackey. The poor guy then ran for the Range Rover in case the beast or in the case of the meerkat, the little bitey thing, awoke early and caused the poor assistant to regret that he hadn’t had his shots.

But the animal didn’t run right away. Even in the wake-up phase, when the critter could see, clear as the African sky, that the door was open, it didn’t run. They never ran. Sometimes it took whole long minutes of “what now”? before the born to be wild animal ambled out. Sometimes the lackey was called upon, yet again, to risk life and limb to scare it out. He’d start by yelling, as if the voice of a shaky twenty-year-old male would induce a man-eating lion to move. Then there would be elaborate hooting, or he’d beat a piece of metal against the fender of the already abused Range Rover or fire some odd pellets into the bear’s rump. In some episodes he was forced to play the god of fire and wave a flaming torch.

Standing on the sidewalk outside the mid-range steak house, Mara understood she was freed of the chicken fried steak, the husband, and the little bitey mother-in-law. She could see the cage door open. It remained mercifully open, but she felt stuck there like a big groggy bear.

She could go to the bar and listen to Renny, but she didn’t feel like dancing. Even the apple green martini had lost some of its edge. She could… bowl? Bowling was different, but the ugly shoes were all wrong. She could hear safari boy hooting, feel the sting of the get-along pellets. A bath. A bath had never failed her, never. She’d just head to the loft and try out a couple of fizzy balls and a glass of leftover wine in a box.

She reached up as if she could touch the silver-blue of the Abundance sign. She lifted her face to the now dark night sky, felt her hair hang down her back, and imagined the bath ahead. But instead of the store front being dark, she realized the lights were still on. Deep inside Abundance, even past dinner, when work had stopped, the place glowed. 

She put her hands up to the window and peered in, maybe she should check to make sure everything was okay. She reached for the door and was surprised when the handle turned. As she stepped in, the desk oddly lonely without Celia smiling behind it, she called out. “Hello.” She hesitated, wondered if an unknown janitor would answer.

“Back here, Mara.”

She put her hands to the rollercoaster drop in her stomach at John’s voice. And John’s voice had instantly recognized hers. She should definitely go hide out in her bathtub and yet… She stepped around the corner and met John’s eyes as he stared right where he knew she’d appear. Without breaking eye contact, he pushed several piles of paperwork to the side, and she did not imagine him clearing the workbench to throw her down on it.

She grabbed a stool and sat down to steady herself. Chicken fried steak had never made her shaky before. She motioned toward the front of the store. “Saw the lights.”

He turned the top file over. “Working late running some numbers.”

“I used to run some numbers. But they got real tired.” She was an idiot. She slid off the stool to leave before she said anything possibly stupider than a nine-year-old boy would.

He smiled. “I’ve got something to show you.”

She shouldn’t smile back, she knew, but she’d just walked away from Lois, and the fizzy balls were, well, not going anywhere.

He led her past Dylan’s work table and into a dark hallway, opening a door that appeared to go into a store room and flicking on a lone light high up in the ceiling. The small square of a room had a silver drain in the center of its floor, a waist-high stainless table, a large sink with a ceiling mounted sprayer, and all four walls lined with metal shelving packed with boxes and bottles.

She wondered if the cement room had once been a meat locker and if she should be alarmed by that. It was night, and she was alone with a bubble bath maker. Okay, the bubble bath part really took the sting out of any exciting danger she might be able to manufacture about him. “Jeffrey Dahmer worked in a candy factory.”

John, reaching for a stack of large bowls on a shelf, stopped. “Who?”

“Oh, just an American… cannibal.” She’d never said stupid things before. Running numbers get tired. Jeffrey Dahmer made candy. She couldn’t seem to stop.

He grinned at her, amused maybe, but definitely not looking like he thought she said stupid things. “Good to know. If Mr. Dahmer tries to lure me into his car with a peanut butter cup, I’ll just say no.”

She felt her breath catching again, more excited than panicked. “I think he’s dead. Something bad happened to him in prison.” She was all over the place. She needed to focus and figure out, quickly, where the line needed to be drawn.

He set the bowls on the table and reached for a box. He opened it and emptied out dozens of small pots and jars. Then he turned all his attention on her. “Being imprisoned, even at your own hand, would kill anyone’s spirit.”

She swallowed, nodded. He seemed to know exactly what had driven her to Vancouver. Maybe he could explain it to her.

He spread his hands out, taking in the contents on the table. “These are new products that I’m trying to decide whether to include or toss. I’m finishing an inventory of the business.”

“Inventory for the catalog?”

He shrugged, “just trying to determine the net worth of the company and it depends on the products listed. You tell me which ones go and what ones stay.”

“Me?” Her eyes widened. “That should be up to—”

He reached across the table and she held her breath as he tucked a strand of hair over her shoulder. “It should be up to a woman who knows how to enjoy her senses.”

She breathed out as his hand left, closed her eyes, and imagined a chicken fried steak undergoing a metamorphosis and flying off like a flip flop butterfly. She opened her eyes and rolled up her sleeves. “I was looking for something to drive me out of the cage.”

He didn’t even blink, and she really liked that about him. Instead he walked over to a large sink, pulled down the industrial sprayer, and filled a basin with water. He set it on the table and pointed to a drain in the center of the room. “Everything can be washed away.”

“This is like a messy wine tasting?”

“Something like that.” He rolled up his sleeves. “Ready?”

She stood, legs slightly apart, arms flexed like a superhero. “Ready.”

She stood on one foot, her other propped on the table, and made sure her skirt moved no higher up than her knee. The knee, that was where she’d drawn the line. “This one’s too gritty.” She rubbed the tan sandy scrub between her toes. “See how it doesn’t hold together and kind of balls off? It needs some of the creaminess the bath wash has.” She shifted to re-balance herself as she skimmed a finger up her leg to show how the thick pink soap smoothed along her calf.

He leaned over the table, took a handful of pink from the jar, mixed it with the sand, and slicked it along her instep.

She sighed. “Yeah. That’s it.” She felt her eyes practically roll up in her head when he smoothed the textured cream over the top of her foot. Then a dollop slipped between her toes, and his finger slid between them, sending a hypersensitive nerve firing right up her body. She squealed and nearly tipped backwards trying to hop away. She got her balance after her slathered foot landed on the cement, and she faced him, breathless, across the table.

But he just smiled at her, rubbed his finger and thumb together until the pink scrub gave off the scent of sweet peas. “What does it need to be less ticklish?”

She tried not to smile. Grown women were, “not ticklish.” He argued his point by bobbing his head up and down in an imitation of the hopping she knew she’d just been guilty of.

Well, it didn’t mean she was ticklish. She’d never been ticklish, even as a child. She’d just swung her leg off the table with record speed from a little toe touch. Was it possible she had the capacity but no one had ever touched her like that before? She kicked her other leg onto the table. “Hey, do that one.”

He put his hands near his chest. “Miss Mara, I am not that easy.”

She felt herself blush when she saw the corners of his mouth quirk up in amusement. “I’m just seeing if I’m ticklish, and I certainly—” She started to lower her leg, but he reached for her ankle.

“In the name of science, I am at your service. Not that long ago I picnicked as a prince, so I’m pretty sure I’ve still got it. Aristocrats are always helping out a lady in need. Sometimes I throw a perfectly good coat over a mud puddle just to practice.” He scooped up another mix of scrub and cream. “There’s the dragon battles, and I shower them in bath products. The ladies, not the dragons.” He ran a finger up the length of her sole, and she giggled in spasms, teetering on one leg. She held on to the table in her struggle to keep her balance and free her foot.

He waited until she’d calmed down then poised with his finger at the base of her heel again. She stretched for the jar of pink cream, grabbed a handful, and pulled her hand back, ready like a catapult.

He sighed, and she relaxed. He wouldn’t risk a face full of bath cream wearing a dress shirt. But he didn’t release her and didn’t move his finger from the invisible line he’d drawn before. “Mara.” He said her name with another slow sigh. “I’ve watched my share of wildlife programs.”

He waited, and her mind raced back to when she’d entered the store room and mentioned being driven out of captivity.

He grinned, and she felt him press his finger with intention into her heel, “get out of the cage,” and draw the line.

She was blinded by laughter and the struggle to free her foot. She threw her handful of bath cream and felt John lose his grip as she regained her balance. And then there was nothing but silence and a pink blob hanging in John’s dark hair, right in the center of his forehead. It obliterated his eyebrows, but she could tell when his eyes narrowed. He did know his wildlife programs.

In defense, she reached for a bowl with care. Don’t startle the hunter. Move slowly. Keep your eye on him. What other hunting advice did she possess? She patted the orange cream, cool and with the perfect combination of thick consistency and a color that stained. Yes, she was properly armed.

John, eyebrows hidden, eyes unwavering, reached for the mint-lavender foot cream. Damn him. She’d be green.

Then it flew, thick handfuls, sweet smelling and wet. She screamed and turned her head but heard the splat even as she felt it liquefy from the back of her head down her neck to slide between her shoulder blades. She turned, eyes closed, and threw two handfuls before putting a shoulder up against the onslaught of mint.

She tried to run for the door in the flashes of vision between blinks but it was hard to find it in the blizzard of cream. She felt his grip on her arm when he caught her at the end of the table and rubbed what had to be cupfuls into the nape of her neck. She shivered from the cool damp of it and faked surrender until she felt his body relax, then she aimed for the heart with as much orange cream as she could hold. The cotton of his shirt stuck to his chest as the orange oozed out between her fingers. Her eyes followed the trail of damage from his shirt placket up to his chest exposed at the V. His pulse beat rapidly in his now shiny neck, and she noticed just above his upper lip, a lone bit of cream. She reached up to wipe it off, and realized too late, that her hand, covered in orange, only added to the mess.