Adventures with Max and Louise (9 page)

“Far as I know everyone left ten minutes ago,” he tells me. A wad of chew is lodged in his lower lip.

“Ask for a peek inside,” Max whispers.

“Do you think I might be able to look inside?” I ask in a syrupy-sweet voice. I can hardly believe the dulcet tones issuing from my mouth.

The guard glances up momentarily from his paper. “Nope.” He goes back to the sports page.

Max snorts. “Oh come on, pet, you can do better than this. Are you a woman or a piece o’ bleedin’ furniture? Stick out that chest. Bat those eyelashes. All’s fair in this game. Do you want to see this Chas bloke or not?”

Comparatively, given my pre-Max life, I did pretty well the first time, but now I give it everything. Taking his words to heart, I throw my whole body, implants and all, into my delivery. Leaning over the desk, I lower my voice an octave. “Look, I really won’t be long. Just a quick sec; I forgot my coat in there. It’s really very cold outside. Look, I’ve got goose bumps.” The words ooze like warm syrup.
Who in the hell is this chick?

The security guard glances up, responding as if I’d turned a switch. His eyes follow the goose bumps up my arm, meandering leisurely across my chest, landing on my 100-volt smile. Dropping the newspaper, he hikes up his pants, waddles toward the hearing room, and fumbles with his keys.

“Well, okay. I suppose . . . It’s pretty cold to be running around without a shirt. Oh no, I mean coat! I swear to God I meant without a coat. You know, I could get into big trouble for doing this.” He unlocks the heavy double doors.

Opening a door with a sheepish grin, he mumbles, “Good luck,” leaving me in the big, empty room. The door falls against the frame, filling the room with an echoing thud. The thrill of getting my own way evaporates in the face of all these empty chairs. Now I just feel ridiculous. What on earth am I doing here?

Tilting back on my heels, I look up at the ceiling with a mixture of resignation and exhaustion. Surely this is a spiritual test. Max is some kind of modern baby Jesus reincarnated in a 250-cc saline solution with polyurethane coating. He’ll direct me to China, where I’ll work in a rural orphanage, or maybe inner-city Detroit, where I’ll convince gang members to attend community college. Whizzing through this divine obstacle course, I’ll be given God’s special seal of approval: a free pass into heaven. Rocking back, I wait for a miracle.

Okay, God, here I am. Good one. Now, tell me the punch line ’cause this talking to my boob thing is freaking me out, just a little.

The silence is thundering.

“Great. Now what am I supposed to do?” I ask the empty room. I am now speaking to a roomful of folding chairs, waiting for God to call my bluff.

“Who are you talking to?” asks a male voice from the front of the room.

Jerking my head around causes a muscle spasm in my neck. Clutching the constricted muscle, I turn my head sideways. It is Chas. He’s entered from the front of the room with four other men. They pause in front of a double door and shake hands, and all of them, except for Chas, exit. He glides toward me with a grin on his face, a grin that, this time, I am sure is intended for me. Crabbing forward with my head at a bizarre angle, I get a better view as he approaches.

“No one.” My voice is three registers too high. Massaging my neck until it relaxes, I tentatively straighten my head.

Chas glances around the room. “Is your sister here?”

“No. I was talking to myself . . . I do that sometimes. Not very often, though . . . rarely.”

“Oh.” We stare awkwardly at one another. “I thought you’d left.” The huge room eats up our voices, which is creepy, like an empty church.

“You did?” I’m not sure if my brain is dead, or if I’m waiting for Max to pop up with more advice. I find myself desperately wishing for him to rescue me.

“After the hearing, I went outside, and you weren’t there. I just figured you were busy and couldn’t wait. You know, I’ve been meaning to call you since we ran into each other at Schubert’s last week.” He wears another perfectly tailored suit. This time a patch of red silk pokes out against the navy wool.

He was talking to me. Hallelujah. Choirs of angels should appear above my head. I am Dorothy switched into Technicolor. True, everything is definitely strange, but, hey, check out that gorgeous red flower!

Think, think, Molly. Yes, Chas Bowerman is talking to you, and this requires a response.
“Well, I did leave. But then I came back.” I am floundering in a sea of awkwardness. You can take girl out of high school, but you can’t take the high school out of the girl.

“To invite you to lunch,” Max whispers.

I parrot Max’s words. Chas’s face brightens; he looks at his watch. “Kind of early for lunch, isn’t it?”

“In two hours. I’ll meet you at noon at—you name the place,” I say, repeating Max word for word.

“Well, uhhh . . .” Chas utters.

“Not ‘You name the place!’” Max screeches in my ear. “Think of a place. You’re the bleedin’ food critic!”

Lodging a finger deep in my right ear, I try to tone Max down. “How about Sardi’s at one?”

“You look brilliant with a fingah stuck in your bleedin’ ’ead!”

The finger comes out.

Chas smiles brightly. “Sounds great.”

“We’re going shopping,” Max says.

“We’re going shopping,” I mimic.

“Don’t repeat every bloomin’ thing I say!” Max howls. “I was talking to you.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” I hiss, forgetting, in my fury with Max that Chas isn’t privy to this inner dialogue, that I probably sound like a complete idiot.

“Excuse me? Why didn’t I say what?” Chas asks, a frown creasing his broad brow, still tan from summer.

Max remains pointedly silent as I wrack my brain for a viable retort. “My cell phone.” I pat my obviously flat pocket. “My editor always texts me when he knows I’d rather just be called. I know what’s he’s texting me about. It’s nothing. So annoying to be on call like that when it’s nothing.”

Chas nods with a vague look on his face. “Yes, I suppose it would be.” Lucky for me, his good breeding overrides any sinking sense of doom about my behavior.

Every cell in my body screams, “Run, run, run!” before I utter one more nonsensical syllable.

“So, we’ll see you at Sardi’s at one!” I wave, turning on my heels and sprinting for the door until Max reminds me that this isn’t a track meet.

As I turn, Chas smiles with what I take for genuine enthusiasm. “At one then,” he says, checking his watch.

Pushing open the hearing room’s heavy double doors, I have so much adrenaline, they feel like feathers. The security guard glances up from his newspaper.

“Find your coat?” he asks.

“No, but I did find what was I looking for!” I grin from ear to ear. “Thanks!”

I
DON’T FLINCH
as the cold air hits me. I could be in a subzero climate surrounded by Eskimos, and I wouldn’t notice. I’m having lunch with Chas Bowerman. I stop in my tracks, locate my cell phone, and call Martin.

When he answers, I scream, “I have a date with Chas Bowerman!”

“ ’e might be listenin’,” Max points out. “You’re only twenty seconds ahead of the bloke.”

“Would you stop screaming?” Martin begs. “You’ve got a date with who?”

I lower my voice and begin walking.
Act casual; it’s a date, not such a big thing.
“Martin, Martin, you have to help me. Oh my God! I can’t believe it. I’m having lunch with Chas Bowerman!”

“Not tennis team Chas Bowerman. The one we panted over at cross-country meets?”

“The very one, and he looks even hotter than he did in high school,” I squeal.

“Not possible.”

“Way possible. I’m meeting him at Sardi’s at one, and I have nothing to wear. You have to skip lunch or cancel meetings and meet me at Nordstrom in a half hour!”

“Honey,” Martin says smoothly, “you’ve been rotating the same four Gap jeans since high school. When you opted for flat-front chinos, I began to wonder if you were turning lesbian on us. I have been waiting for you to let me shop with you since tenth grade. This is a big moment.”

I head south toward the retail center of Seattle. “That’s very gay of you to admit that.”

“I know. Show me a gay man who doesn’t like to dress his female friends, and I’ll show you a closeted straight.”

“We only have time for one outfit, Martin. I’ll meet you at the Nordstrom eBar on Pine.”

“Half an hour. Ciao.”

Chapter Ten

M
ARTIN IS TWENTY
minutes late. Sitting in the Nordstrom eBar, I bite my cuticles anxiously, scanning the steady stream of shoppers. It isn’t like him t not be on time. I finally catch a glimpse of him on the busy sidewalk talking to a thin balding man in a dark suit. Although to a stranger he would appear composed, I can tell from his rigid stance that Martin is upset. The man he’s talking to has to be Mario, his boyfriend, I figure. Martin checks his watch, says something angrily to his companion, and strides into the cafe. I jump up and offer him a kiss on the cheek. I rarely visit the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
office, but when I do, we both pretend he’s only my boss and not one of my best friends. Today he doesn’t return the kiss.

Grabbing my elbow, he steers me toward the foyer leading into the store. “Leave the latte; we’ll talk as we go.”

Arm in arm we enter the store, walking swiftly. A waft of warm, fragranced air hits us.

“Was that Mario?” I try to sound casual; this is a very sore subject. For three years Mario has bounced between his wife and his boyfriend, Martin, casually breaking hearts along the way as he ping-pongs from his home to Martin’s apartment. Angeli and I despise him with all the venom best friends reserve for toxic lovers.

Martin stops, drops his gaze, and sighs. “We run into one another on the street, and he has the nerve to ask me how I’m doing. How does he think I’m doing? He’s back with his wife.”

I squeeze his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

He rubs his hand over his forehead. “Oh, honey, don’t be. The man’s so confused, he doesn’t know who he loves. He went over to the house to breaks things off completely, and he ended up spending the night.”

“How are you doing?”

He gives me a sad smile. “I’m okay. I know who I love.”

“Mario?”

“Yes, no, maybe. Pick one. I don’t know.” He gently strokes my cheek. “My life is too much of a mess. Let’s focus on you.” Breathing in deeply, he composes himself. “Okay, Cinderella, let’s go find you a gown.”

We walk down the polished floor between the display cases, breathing in the mixture of perfume, new shoe leather, and floor wax. If it were a perfume, I’d buy it. I feel completely selfish asking Martin to help me prepare for my date when his own love life is in shambles, but he seems happy to be distracted.

I take his arm. “Does that mean you’re my fairy godmother?”

Martin pats my hand. “With a maxed out MasterCard and Visa. Most fairy godmothers have a better line of credit, but I just had to have a Dolce and Gabbana coat I’ve been eyeing for six months. I had to treat myself to something nice because I’m dating a married man. Isn’t that sad?”

We round the corner toward the gleaming cosmetics counters. “Don’t worry, I’m buying my own gown,” I reassure him.

“Great. I feel more like Gus anyway.”

“That porky little mouse?”

“Gus is not fat. He’s just big boned.”

Angeli is at the cosmetics counter in her white Clinique jacket, administering to a middle-aged woman perched on a stool. As we approach, I overhear Angeli murmur, “You have lovely wide-set eyes. I’m going to play them up with a neutral khaki liner.”

Martin leans toward her with the barest pause, forming a megaphone with his hands. “Book Molly for makeup in one half hour.”

We step onto the escalator near the polished black grand piano being played by an elderly gent in a tux.

“Wait a minute!” Angeli hollers over the Gershwin standards. She holds an eyeliner pencil at the edge of her client’s eye. “Why does she need her makeup done?”

“She has a date with Chas!” Martin shouts as we ascend to the second floor.

Angeli’s face is a blank. Her client turns toward us, moving her skin against the stationary eyeliner.

“Chas Bowerman!” I gush, unable to resist. Angeli knows that Chas is pretty much the holy grail of my arid love life.

Angeli’s mouth hangs open in surprise. “Wow,” she says softly.

The last thing I see before a wall cuts off my view is Angeli’s client, a streak of khaki eyeliner slashing across her face from eye to ear.

“W
HAT SIZE ARE
you, ten?” Martin asks, rifling through racks of clothes like a stylist.

We are in Savvy, a department on the third floor. The other shoppers, dressed in jeans and floaty little Kleenex-size tops, have hips the size of seven-year-olds. I glance at them, already defeated. What on earth makes me think that I can get a guy like Chas Bowerman interested? I’m sure he’s never dated a woman whose dress size is in the double digits.

“Twelve,” I admit ruefully.

“Don’t worry. Nobody trusts a skinny cook. What about this?” He holds up a white blouse with ruffles cut to the navel.

I roll my eyes. “Oh sure, if they can finish sewing it together in time.”

“And this?” He holds up a loosely knit sweater so low cut, it’s more like a vest.

“We need to get one thing straight: I’m going for pretty, not sleazy.” I check my watch. Forty-five minutes. “I don’t want him to think I’m one of those food columnists slash hookers.”

Martin stops in his tracks. “Okay, look, pretty is grade school. Second-grade boys dig that. By sixth grade there is not a straight boy in the school who can’t name the hottest teacher. I myself liked the gym teacher, Mr. Sanborn, but that’s another story. We’re grown-ups, Molls. It’s okay for you to be sexy.” He shows me another dress. The fabric is so thin I could wad it up and hide it in my fist.

“I want slacks,” I insist. There’s no way I’m going to let Martin dress me in uncomfortable clothes.

“Slacks? Slacks went out in the seventies, honey. They’re called trousers now, and you’re not wearing them. You have great legs.”