Unfinished Business (3 page)

Josie makes a noise in the back of her throat. “You know I hate that guy below you. What is his deal, really?”

Riana grabs the wine off the floor and sets it on the table. She waves her hands in circles. “Please, let’s not talk about him.”

The portly bottle squats on the table, waiting. “I’ll get the glasses,” I say.

Riana picks up the popcorn, sets it next to the wine then stacks the discs on top of the TV. Josie settles herself on the couch with the remote firmly in her grasp.

After I pour the wine, we all lean back and stare at the TV, which is still turned off.

For some reason, even though I really am curious, I put off asking about the discs. Like, why are there three? And, do these guys know you’re showing them to your friends?

Riana gazes thoughtfully into her wine. “Carlo is a fine fellow indeed.”

When I first met Riana over seven months ago, we were both working at a bakery on Cass. Now she goes to Wayne State University full-time and works with a bunch of stiff attorneys at Beck, Patterson and Willis. In other settings, very unlike my not-totally-ratty apartment, she is completely professional and efficient. I’ve been to the office where she works. There’s enough wood paneling there to make a beaver jealous. And they all love her because she does an amazing job filing crap and figuring stuff out. Her only flaw is Peter. The Stupid Boyfriend.
‘You don’t know him like I do.’
Whatever.

Anyway, now, as she happily downs her wine and tosses cheese popcorn into her mouth, she’s hiding the fact that she actually is a very together person. But that’s okay. We all hide stuff about ourselves. Right?

“Guys one and two are the warm-ups,” Josie says to me. “We’ll save number three for last.”

“So, Josie,” I try to sound casual, like I haven’t been wondering this very question since it had occurred to me at three-forty-three that afternoon. “Why is it you don’t want guy three for yourself?”

“You’ll know when you see him.” She grabs a handful of popcorn then sets it on the table in front of her. The orange pieces tumble around, making a mess on the cover of my new
Glamour
. “Besides, I’m doing this as a business. There has to be some ethical problem with taking money from a guy then going out with him.”

Riana laughs.

The bottom of my glass greets me so I fill it back up. “Okay, Josie, let’s have at it.”

Riana, who is still chuckling, hops up and shoves guy number one into the player. He’s on the steps of Josie’s apartment.

“I guess I’m your average guy,”
he says.
“Right now I’m a senior at Wayne so I guess I’ll be graduating this May—if I make it through finals and all that.”

I make a point of studying his face. Brown hair, brown eyes, cute smile. “He’s right,” I said. “He’s the basic model. Okay enough to look at but not much to say. No add-ons.”

Riana scoots forward and stares at the screen. “Maybe he was nervous.”

“No, I bet he’s always like that.”

Josie’s voice comes from inside the TV,
“Where do you work?”

“Oh, yeah. I work at Riverfront Coffee. I’m the manager.”

He goes on about keeping the coffee beans stocked and some other stuff like firing losers who come in late. Riana talks over him to ask Josie, “Do you have these guys sign contracts?”

After Josie shakes her head, Riana comes back with, “I don’t get how you’ve got this worked out.” Her eyebrows pull together as she points at Josie. “You ask the guy if he wants to be recorded. He says okay. You make the disc and for a fee you promise to show him to different girls.”

“Yep.”

“What’s up with the discs? Kind of retro, aren’t they?”

“I have them on thumb drives too. Either way, I control the merchandise.”

“The guys take your word on everything?”

“Yep.”

“No contract?”

“Nope.”

“How do they get hooked up?”

“If a girl sees a guy she’s interested in, she tells me and I tell him.”

“The guys are okay with that? They don’t get to see?”

Josie sets her wine down. “First thing, girls are too busy to sit around talking about themselves. And second thing, guys will go out with any girl who’s interested in them. If I say she looks okay, they’ll believe me.”

I cut in to support that theory, “That’s true. Guys will go out with anybody who wants to go out with them.”

Riana isn’t sold yet. “What does she pay? The girl?”

Josie smiles at the basic guy chattering on about his plans to see the Grand Canyon this summer then turns to Riana and me. “Would you pay? Would any of us pay?” She twists her face up. “I don’t think so.” She takes a long sip to empty her glass. “Girls don’t pay.”

Personally, I like that system. Girls have enough hassles, they shouldn’t have to pay to have some creepy guy stare at them and listen to their darkest secrets.

Mr. Grand Canyon finishes up by saying he’s looking for a regular girl.
“Not one who’s going to psychoanalyze me, us, you know, our relationship.”

All three of us burst out laughing.

Guy number two has jet black hair and blue eyes. For some reason, he also has a tan even though Josie made the tape a couple of days ago. I wonder if he has a condo in Miami but don’t ask because he also looks like he’s thirty.

We drink our wine and stuff our faces. Why can’t anyone invent cheese popcorn that doesn’t make people’s fingers turn that awful, yellow-orange color? They’d be a millionaire.

Guy number two finishes up with,
“She’d have to be somebody who likes to have fun and do fun stuff.”

Riana hits eject, pulls him out then sets him on top of guy number one. She slips in the long-awaited guy number three.

I expect Josie to offer an enticing intro about what a hottie guy number three is but she doesn’t. Instead she aims the remote and hits play from her post on the couch.

Right away I see what she meant.

The guy is a big square of muscle with a Greek god face. Beautiful but built like a Mack truck. His chest is wide, wide, wide. I take a good look at his hair. It’s a little bit red, kind of a strawberry blond, actually.

He lifts his hand to emphasize something he’s saying. I stare hard at the huge square thing with clean, blunt fingernails. My mouth goes dry then I actually salivate. I gurgle out, “Look at his hands.”

Josie nods.

Heat rushes to my head and mixes with the warmth Carlo’s touch already started. My stomach loops into a knot.

“His hands!” Riana laughs.

I realize I haven’t been listening to a word the guy’s been saying. I snatch the remote from Josie and hit replay. While the disc is whirling, my two best friends discuss my hand fetish. I don’t care. They’re my friends. I know stuff about them. Weird stuff. Stuff a hell of a lot weirder than having a thing for hands.

“What’s this guy’s name by the way?”

Josie makes an apologetic face. “Clifford.”

Clifford. Cliff. Cliffy?

No getting around it. Dude’s name is Clifford.

I turn back to the screen and hit pause. He is frozen in time with his big mitt above his lap. Maybe I want him to drop that thing in my lap.

Maybe?

Ha.

Hell, I don’t care if his name is Sandy.

“He’s big,” Riana announces for no apparent reason. “Big Clifford.”

I hit play and he starts talking.

“Some girls don’t want to go out with a guy like me.” There’s a long pause. A thoughtful one? “They don’t like guys so big”—he points to himself with his sexy hands—“I gotta be big, you know, or I’ll lose my scholarship.”

“Big Clifford,” says Riana.

He says something about football and pushes his strawberry hair away from his bottle green eyes.

Riana hiccups. “Clifford the Big Red Dog.”

Chapter Four

What Does He Really Want?: Confessions from Real Men

It’s never a good idea to start drinking while you are wearing an ICP T-shirt and gym shorts because after a while of laughing and flipping through channels, you decide you look as cute as any girl in any video dressed exactly the way you are. You don’t need all that makeup and sea-salt hair texturizer. I’m ashamed to admit that’s what’s going on with me about the time Nick calls.

“You guys done with your videos?” he wants to know.

I bristle a bit at his tone. What’s it to him if I’m sitting around watching random guys talk about themselves? “Yes.” I lift my nose in the air even though he can’t see me. “We’re done.”

“Bring Josie and Riana over. The guys are here.”

Even though I’m glad he called, I’m still feeling feisty about his attitude so I offer a deal. “We’ll come over if you have some wine because we’re on empty.”

“Sure. I think I have some.”

That’s a yes in my book, so I click off. “Less go, gurls. Over to Nick’s.”

We roll to our feet.

“Want me to leave The Dog with you?”

Guys number one and two have been stuffed back into the brown paper bag. I eye the remaining disc.
Enjoy another round with Clifford? Oh yes
.

Josie laughs. Riana grabs my arm and pulls me to the door but Josie insists we take the fire escape. So we do.

It isn’t that late. Occasionally cars creep past as we go the eight blocks to Nick’s. Headlight beams float across the rows of the broad, turn of the century houses that are divided into apartments. Josie whistles back at some guys sprawling in lawn chairs.

The whole city scene is brown and muddy with spring. The buildings on both sides of the street are worn and faded. It’s not like the picturesque farm country where I grew up. The place I left months ago.
Left
may be too gentle a word.
Ran from
is probably more accurate. If I wanted to be accurate. Which I don’t.

As we ramble along the chipped sidewalk, I admire the fact that the city is all one place, one thing. That wasn’t the case where I grew up. That place was divided into the two clear halves. Us and them. The old and the new. It wasn’t always that way. My town started changing about the time I went to first grade. People began building homes with landscaped yards, subdivisions started covering corn fields and by the time I reached senior year it was clear to me who was running everything—them—and it was clear who was frozen in time—us. And did I find a way to break the mold so I could do something with my life? No. I did the exact opposite. I stepped right into the mold.

Then I broke it while everyone watched.

Too bad they weren’t happy for me. Too bad they kept trying to find ways to stuff me back in and turn me into the person they thought I should be.

A person exactly like one of them.

A fresh wave of shame washes over me. Even after all these months, it still hurts. I try to ignore it and be happy with my new, very separate life. Josie and Riana know where I’m from but I don’t offer anything more than I have to about my past. Nick grew up in a country town too, so he thinks he understands me being embarrassed about being a hick but he doesn’t know all there is to know.

Nick is standing on the sagging porch steps of his rental. “Well…I guess we don’t have any wine.”

I stop short, fold my arms across my chest and plant my feet wide like a bouncer. I don’t know why seeing him there, with his sturdy arms folded across his chest, is making me anxious all of a sudden, but I don’t have time to sort it out. I give in to my own attitude. “No wine, no girls.”

Josie mumbles. I open my mouth to say something grouchy, but Marc shows up. “I’ll go get the girls their wine.”

Marc crosses the battered yard, heading to the store.

Riana trots after him, singing in a peculiar, high voice, “I’ll come with you, sweetheart.”

She links her arm with his and they zigzag across the street.

“You guys know Wilson and Sam, right?” Nick is looking me over while leaning into the doorjamb.

Josie and I nod and say hi. The guys say hi back. I’m still feeling foolishly cute in my T-shirt and bike shorts. Maybe forgetting all about skinny jeans and yoga pants is the way to find my true self. Maybe if I forget about looking my best at all times, I’ll be free. I could cast my fashion cares away and wear practical things like, like… What do practical people wear?

My mother is practical. She has a sweatshirt with cats wearing cowboy hats on the front, which shows the cats’ butts on the back. The kitties wear cowboy boots on both sides.

A shudder of horror ripples through me.

“You coming in?”

This from Josie who I realize has already gone inside then come back out to find me staring at the door.

I shake off the image of me cozy and satisfied in a kitty-butt sweatshirt and follow Josie. Wilson and Nick are on the crushed velvet couch. Sam is stretched out on the shag rug. Josie drops into a La-Z-Boy chair.

Wilson shifts into a semi-upright position, making some space between him and Nick. The harvest gold couch looks strangely welcoming so I plop down between the dudes. I grin at Wilson then at Sam, as if to say,
Here I am, aren’t I great?

The move is not my usual I-don’t-give-a-shit style but I’m cute in my non-fashion conscious—practical?—outfit. Besides, maybe being bold is what I need to do in life. Let the cat out of the bag so to speak. Oh. I guess I already did, and it, along with all its cowboy booted friends, chased me out of town. A wave of queasiness swirls through me.

Lucky for me, Riana and Marc bust through the door in a fit of laughter right then. Soon enough, we’re all comfortably drinking and chatting.

After we get done complaining about the annoying walking tours of Midtown and how the groups of people are always getting in the way, Marc changes up the conversation. “I hate it when I ask a girl how many guys she’s been with and she can’t give me an exact number. I want to know what I’m getting myself into.”

Josie turns to Marc. “Do you know an exact number?”

“No,” he scoffs, “it’s different for guys.”

“Do halves count as wholes?” Riana asks as she stares at the ceiling. “For the total count I mean.”

“Half?” Josie and Marc say in stunned unison.