The Things We Do for Love (7 page)

“What friend?” Paul asked Cameron.

Cameron said, “Never mind.” Graham had drunk the love potion, which probably wouldn’t do anything, but Graham already liked Mary Anne and Cameron didn’t
know why she herself felt so attracted to a man she barely knew.
Probably because I don’t know him and can therefore believe he has a blemish-free personality.
Like one of the heroes in Nanna’s books. But Cameron couldn’t help asking Clare, “Where did you see her?”

“Here.”

Beside Cameron, Paul lifted his eyebrows slightly. “Mary Anne?” he said in disbelief.

“Just forget it,” snapped Cameron. “We weren’t
serious
.”

“So who was it for?” Paul grinned, showing his pronounced canine teeth, which always reminded Cameron of Wolfie.

“I said,
forget it.
”

B
ECAUSE HE WAS ALREADY
downtown, Graham stopped at the WLGN studio to pick up a recording of his most recent show for his personal library. When Graham walked through the door, Jonathan Hale was at his desk, frowning at his computer monitor. He nodded at Graham. “Ready to go on with Mary Anne, Saturday?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good, I’ll have everyone start telling our listeners. What shall we say? Dr. Graham Corbett and Mary Anne Drew on Dating Dilemmas?”

“Sounds fine.”

“You want a specific focus for each week?”

“Yes, definitely. I’ll have to finalize them with Mary Anne, but let’s start with…” He thought suddenly of Mary Anne’s annoying infatuation with Hale himself.

“Unrequited Love.”

“Or, Can’t Get a Date?” Jonathan said.

“Different problem. Come on,” Graham said. “Surely, you’ve suffered from unrequited love.”

Jonathan seemed to think back, considering. “Not that I couldn’t get over. No, when I was rejected, I’ve just kind of crawled back under my rock. Actually, that’s not true. I usually got kind of pissed off. Decided I wasn’t in love.”

“You’re speaking in the past tense,” Graham observed.

“I’m engaged,” Jonathan said.

Graham scratched his head. Now he’d heard everything. “You mean—” He tried it out slowly. “Now that you’re engaged, you’re never going to fall in love with anyone else?”

“I’m in love with Angie,” Jonathan answered simply. “I’m a monogamous creature. End of story.”

And this man had dodged bullets in a war zone. Graham debated saying more. But he couldn’t
not
say it. “Jonathan, when you get married, it’s not that you’ll never fall in love with anyone else.”

The station manager cocked a bemused eyebrow. His expression was assessing, forming judgments about Graham.

Graham finished, “It’s just that you won’t act on it.”

Pleased by Hale’s slightly disconcerted look, Graham collected his recording—and on impulse, the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog—and left.

W
HEN
M
ARY
A
NNE
parked her car at the transfer station, the first people she saw were David Cureux and his son, Paul, and Cameron, who nodded at her, suddenly looking uncomfortable. They stood beside a recycling container labeled Mixed Paper—Magazines, Books, Phone Books, Etc. Mary Anne had some mixed paper. But all she could think about was that two of three people in that group knew she’d purchased a love potion, and she did
not
want the third, not known for his discretion, to find out.

Someone is going to tell.
Then, it would get back to Graham Corbett, which was mortifying, and to Jonathan, which was much, much worse. The single comfort was that only she and Cameron knew for whom the potion was intended—and who had drunk it. In retrospect, it was all so embarrassing that when she thought of it she wanted to shrivel up and never be seen again.

Mary Anne climbed out of her car, grabbing her bag of paper.

Paul was punching numbers into a handheld calculator. “For ten thousand paper cranes at one phone book page a piece…Mom will find that wasteful, by the way. Ought to be able to get two cranes out of a sheet—we need
either twelve Charleston phone books or—” he punched in more numbers “—fifty Logan County directories.”

“Now,” said his father, “once we have them, you take them to your house. I’ll tell her I think you took them to the school. And make sure she can’t get hold of you till tomorrow at noon.”

“Why?”

“If she knows we only recovered two boxes she’ll want us to come back and get the rest, so we can supply origami paper to the other forty-nine states. Then make sure you take them to one of the schools before she can get us cutting rectangles into squares.”

“Right.”

Mary Anne decided the men were so involved in their scheme, whatever it was, that she might be able to exchange a few words with Cameron and deposit her paper in the container without having to talk to the other two at all.

She had climbed the metal stairs that gave access to the Dumpster when Paul said, “Who did you buy a love potion for, Mary Anne?”

Her heart nearly stopped and her face grew hot. She stared accusingly at Cameron, who was glaring at Paul. “What makes you think your mom was talking about Mary Anne?”

“Well, Mary Anne’s face right now, for a start.”

What a maddening man. Why had she ever thought for one minute that Cameron should get together with him?

Mary Anne considered saying that they’d bought it to give to a friend at Marshall University who was majoring in chemistry—so that the friend could have it analyzed. But she felt as if her tongue had glued itself to the roof of her mouth.

David Cureux said, “Don’t bother yourself about it. They don’t work.”

Paul gave a small choking cough, which seemed to indicate dissent.

Mary Anne did not want to do anything to verify Paul’s accusation. She said to Cameron, “What are you doing here?”

Cameron told her about the Salvation Army and the safe house. Its location was a secret, which Cameron obviously believed both men would honor, understanding its importance to the peace and well-being of the women and children who took refuge at the shelter.

As Mary Anne descended the stairs, she realized that Paul’s reaction had made her more uneasy about the love potion and about something she’d spent little time considering—its efficacy. She bundled her blazer close around her against a sudden brisk wind.

A Lexus turned into the recycling area. A man in a hard hat was approaching on foot and David waved to him, perhaps needing further help with his bizarre phone book situation. Mary Anne said, “Well…bye.”

Mary Anne peered at the Lexus driver and wanted to dive into the nearest Dumpster and hide. It was Graham Corbett.

T
HERE SHE WAS
. A good-looking woman, Graham thought, but that’s what he’d always thought. Very attractive—yet her silly devotion to Hale, who could be a bit of a jerk, really annoyed him.

Graham eyed the white rabbit sitting on his passenger seat. Who
had
left the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog for him? It had never occurred to him that Mary Anne might have done so. She hadn’t struck him as a Monty Python
fan. If she was a Monty Python fan and had left the rabbit, it didn’t exactly seem like a sign of affection. More a wish for his untimely death.

As he turned off the ignition, he watched her carry a huge stack of collapsed cardboard boxes to a Dumpster. Great bones.

She was hurrying back to her car in a way that gave him the distinct feeling she’d spotted him.

He opened his door. “Mary Anne.”

She spun, and he noticed, even across the blacktop, that her eyes were extremely green.

“Graham,” she said with almost explosive brightness. “What a surprise.”

A car maneuvered around his Lexus. Then a truck. The rush of people coming to drop off recyclables before the dump closed. As people parked and removed trash from their cars, Graham shouted a friendly greeting to David Cureux and his son, who were with Mary Anne’s cousin.

Graham made no effort to lower his voice. “We’re on for Saturday. The program will be, ‘Dr. Graham Corbett and Mary Anne Drew on Dating Dilemmas,’ and our first topic is Unrequited Love.” He couldn’t resist adding, “Do you have any insights on that?”

Around him, heads spun toward the person he’d addressed. A woman who was giving what-for to the guy in the hard hat nearly dropped an entire grocery bag of tin cans.

Mary Anne had flushed in a way he’d never have thought possible in someone with her particular California-girl coloring.

The only people who didn’t seem interested in his question were David Cureux, now climbing into one of
the recycling Dumpsters, and the man in the hard hat, trying to stop him from doing this.

Mary Anne recovered fast. A very small smile. “Men
always
love me back.”

Graham could have sworn that the old man who’d gotten out of that ’57 Chevy was turning up his hearing aid.

Graham couldn’t help it. Grinning, he strode toward Mary Anne. “Actually, it’s hard for me to see why anyone wouldn’t.” He plucked at her sleeve. “How about dinner tonight?”

Mary Anne glared down at his hand.

He removed it.

She lifted her eyes to his face.

Graham smiled…smiled with his eyes, too. His eyes were a sort of goldish brown that she supposed was called hazel. There
was
something appealing about this particular smile, Mary Anne decided, though she’d never shared Cameron’s opinion on this subject in the past.

Graham Corbett had asked her out. Had Cameron heard? How could she not have done—she was only twenty feet away. Mary Anne stole a look toward the steps by the mixed paper bin and saw that Cameron had deserted David and Paul and climbed into David Cureux’s truck.

Mary Anne said, “So sorry. None of the local restaurants have seats big enough for my butt.”

“Then, you’ll have to come to my house. I have a couch.”

Graham noticed that behind Mary Anne, near the Dumpsters, Paul Cureux and the man in the hard hat were both shaking their heads and giving him a thumbs-down.
The couch.
Ah, well.

“For your information, I am a size eight and considered extremely slim for someone my height.” She was,
in fact, much closer to a ten on those few days before her period began, but she felt no remorse in giving Graham the size of her skinny jeans. There were usually a couple of days a month when they fit.

Graham said, “Mary Anne, I apologize for ever casting aspersions on that fine chassis of yours.”

Two thumbs-down from Paul and the garbageman. David Cureux shoved two phone books at his son’s shoulder blades.

Mary Anne drew her eyebrows together. “Does this ever work?”

“What?”

“This particular method of…courtship?”

“It’s not
courtship,
” Graham told her. “I just thought you’d like to have dinner.”

His audience at the Dumpster—except for David Cureux, who seemed entirely disinterested—winced.

Mary Anne smiled. Great teeth. “It happens you’re right. Lucille probably has it on the table by now. See you later, Graham.” She spun away, whipping her hair with skill, and opened the driver door of her car.

This wouldn’t do.

He followed her, though Paul Cureux and the garbageman waved their arms and shook their heads in a way that spelled,
No! No! Cut your losses, dude!

She was in the car, but before she could close the door he caught it with one hand.

He asked softly, “Do
you
have the Holy Hand Grenade?” It was a Monty Python reference.

Her baffled expression answered the question he
hadn’t
asked. She was clueless about the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.

She said, “Maybe you should talk to someone, Graham. Really,” and shut her car door.

H
E KNOWS
!
M
ARY
A
NNE
thought in horror. Graham had somehow guessed that
she’d
given him Flossy. Or why that reference, which must have come from Monty Python? Her boyfriend had been as excited about the Holy Hand Grenade as about the little bunny with fangs.

Graham had asked her out.

Graham
didn’t
think she had a big butt? Deciphering the car-related remark, she decided it had been a vulgar compliment. Though he had made that crack about the couch. Which could be read a few ways. She needed to call Cameron, to make sure Cameron was all right.

These things
did
happen in life.

And it wasn’t as if the guys usually went for Mary Anne. Nine men out of ten flirted first with Cameron.

Would it be better to wait until Cameron called her?
We don’t even have to discuss it, because I’m not going out with Graham Corbett.

But it was looking plain to Mary Anne that Graham was not going to fall for her cousin.

As Mary Anne walked into her grandmother’s living room ten minutes later and joined Nanna near her grandmother’s chair, Lucille said, “You got a phone call, Miss Mary Anne.”

Mary Anne blinked. Her friends used her cell phone. Where was it, anyhow? In her purse. She looked at it and saw that she’d missed two calls. She’d turned off the ringer and put it on vibrate, then left it in her purse.

Mary Anne asked, “Who from?”

“Man named Jonathan.”

Mary Anne’s heart gave a hard pound, but she quieted her hopes. He was probably calling to set up a double date so that she could become bosom buddies with his betrothed. Mary Anne did not ask any more about the call from Jonathan. This wasn’t because she wasn’t curious. It was because she was in her grandmother’s house, and her grandmother would find such curiosity unseemly. In fact, Nanna looked entirely uncurious about the fact that a man had called her granddaughter.

Mary Anne absently answered her grandmother’s questions about how her essay had gone. Why was Jonathan calling?
The double date,
she told herself again.

But what if that wasn’t it? What if he was starting to be attracted to her, Mary Anne?

Don’t get your hopes up, Mary Anne.

“What did you say?” She came out of a trance as she aimed this question in her grandmother’s direction. It had been something about bridge.

“They had to cancel tomorrow,” Nanna told her. “So I told them Saturday.”

Saturday…“I can’t, Nanna. I’m going to be on the radio. An hour-long program.”

“Why, how nice!” said the woman, apparently sharing none of her granddaughter’s fears that Jon Clive Drew’s notoriety might find a new way to express itself in the next generation.

And Mary Anne didn’t fear that—not exactly. It was just that Graham Corbett’s being featured in the press as an eligible bachelor or heartthrob or anything of the kind made her skin crawl. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to be famous. Rich, yes. Famous, no.

Jonathan…Jonathan wouldn’t want to be rich or
famous. What if he broke his engagement with Angie? What if he discovered he liked Mary Anne after all?

Not going to happen.

As she went to her room to freshen up before dinner, she considered Jonathan again. Cameron had once told her that the reason a person fell head over heels in love—particularly the kind of love that felt more like obsession—was because of a need to incorporate some aspect of the loved one’s being into oneself. This had always made sense to Mary Anne with regard to her feelings for Jonathan, because she
did
so admire his past as a foreign correspondent. She liked to imagine herself traveling in dangerous places, enduring hardships in order to interview those wounded by war. Not part of the conflict but damaged by it.

In the past few years, she’d managed to find something which seemed just as important in Appalachia. It was her work with the radio station that allowed her to do this, to interview the struggling single mother working at Wal-Mart, the people with water problems out in Mud Fork. Her essays let her write about those worlds, exploring the beautiful in the imperfect, the unique in the mundane.

Maybe she
had
incorporated that aspect of Jonathan into herself. So why wasn’t she over him?

She listened to her phone messages.

“Hi, Mary Anne. This is Jonathan. I have a proposition for you. Give me a call.”

A proposition?
It sounded like something to do with the station.

“Mary Anne, it’s Cameron. You remember we have the hike this weekend, right?”

Women of Strength.
And Mary Anne
had
forgotten. She could only take part if she’d be back in time for Graham’s show.