Asking for Trouble (10 page)

“Tough,” she said, “definitely. But maybe . . . You really
want to know what I think?”

“I definitely want to know what you think.”

“Then, yes. Some hair. I remember military-short, and I
thought it looked good. If you want my opinion.”

The server stopped by their table again. “You guys good?”
she asked. “Anything else?”

Joe looked at Alyssa. “Another beer?”

“No, thanks. I’d better stop.”

“We’re good,” Joe told the woman, and she nodded and put the
check down, exactly in the center of the table, and Alyssa put a hand on it.

“Let me get this,” she protested when Joe’s hand came down
on top of hers. “Let me say thank you for taking me car shopping.”

“Nope.” He was pulling it out from under her palm. “No way.”

“Joe . . .” She sighed. “You bought me breakfast. You’ve
spent the whole day helping me. You’ve done so much for me.”

“You’re welcome, but that doesn’t matter. Don’t you remember
what your brothers said at Christmas?”

“What?”

“The guy pays the first time.” And every time.
He’d been called a throwback, and he
didn’t care. He could afford it, and he couldn’t sit back and watch a woman
pull out her wallet. He just couldn’t.

“That was for a
date,”
she argued. “This isn’t a date.”

It had felt like a date to him. Too bad he’d been wrong. What
was it she’d said?
I’m not even your
sister.
But close enough, still. Too close. “Maybe it isn’t,” he said, “but
it’s the first time the two of us have been out together, so it counts.”

“It does? Are those the rules?” she asked, all sweet and
sassy again. “Another part of the Man Code that I’m unaware of?”

“That’s it,” he said, barely knowing what they were talking
about, but sure of this. “Those are the rules. This is my job. I pay.”

She was smiling. “You seem pretty sure of that. So what’s my
job, then?”

He smiled back at her. “To be here.”

When the doorbell buzzed the next evening, Alyssa groaned,
kept her eyes firmly shut, and decided not to get up.

Sherry came in from the kitchen. “Was that the door?”

“Yeah. Probably selling something,” Alyssa said, opening her
eyes with reluctance. “Don’t answer.”

A second insistent buzz, and Sherry went over to the
intercom, pushed the button. “Hello?”

“It’s Joe.” Not even the tinny distortion of the cheap
intercom system could disguise those low tones. Alyssa swung her feet off the
coffee table and sat up.

“Hi, Joe.” Sherry said, her own voice perking right up.
“Want to come up?”

“Please.”

Sherry pushed the button even as Alyssa hissed, “Wait!”

“Makeup time,” Sherry said, and headed for the bathroom.

Alyssa swore, shoved the heavy quilt off her, stood up,
tripped herself, and finally got loose. She folded the quilt hastily, finished hanging
it over the arm of the couch just as she heard the knock. She swore again. Why
wasn’t Sherry answering it? What kind of a friend
was
she?

A second knock, and she gave it up, went and twisted the
locks, pulled the lightweight hollow-core door open.

Joe stood there holding a box. A bulky, shiny white
rectangular carton printed with a picture of something she didn’t instantly
recognize, two and a half feet high and a couple wide.

“Hi,” he said. “I won’t stay long, just wanted to drop this
off.”

“Uh . . . what?”

She stepped aside to let him in, and he turned with the
thing in his arms, indicated her bedroom with a jerk of his head. “Heater,” he
said economically. “For your room.”

“You brought me a
heater?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking surprised. “You said it was cold,
because you didn’t have heat. So I stopped by the hardware store after work and
picked one up.”

“Uh . . . OK. Thank you,” she added hastily. She was
painfully aware that her eyeliner was probably smudged into raccoon eyes, and
that she didn’t have any lipstick on at all. And worst of all, she could tell
she was breaking out on her chin. She wanted desperately to touch the spot, convinced
that it had somehow grown into something huge, red, and disgusting since she’d
got home. She kept her hand off it with a serious effort, did her best to turn
the unblemished side of her face towards him.

“Maybe we should set it up,” Joe said patiently, and she
realized that he was still standing there holding the box, and that it looked
heavy. She darted to her bedroom door, opened it for him, shivered because,
yeah, it was freezing in there, the reason she’d been in the living room. The
reason she hadn’t even changed out of her work clothes yet, because she’d been
too tired and it had been too
cold.

He followed her inside, set the box down in the middle of
the floor space, and pulled a metal gadget out of his pocket, squatted beside
the box and opened a blade, because of course Joe carried around some sort of
multipurpose survival tool. Naturally. She watched as he cut the box neatly
along the front edge, down the two front sides, rolled the radiator-style
electric heater out and removed the Styrofoam, then took a moment to cut the
box all the way flat and fold it up, stacking the Styrofoam packing pieces on
top.

Sherry came in halfway through the process, leaned against
the doorway—made up, Alyssa noticed sourly, her curly hair perfectly,
messily casual, her sweatshirt replaced by a snug green sweater that matched
her eyes.

“Hi, Joe,” she said. “You being all capable and manly
again?”

Joe gave her his crooked smile and stood up. “Hey, Sherry.
Nah, just brought this over. How’s that bathtub faucet working for you?”

“Great,” she said. “I took a bubble bath last night, Sunday
night luxury, you know, and it was so nice to lie there and relax without the
drip. Thank you for fixing it for me. I really appreciate it.” Laying it on thick,
Alyssa thought with another stab of irritation.

“No problem,” Joe said, then turned back to Alyssa. “I think
it’ll work best to put it over here,” he said, rolling the big cream-colored appliance
over next to the dresser and plugging in the cord. “You don’t want it right in
front of the bookcase. Keep a good foot of clearance from the wall when it’s
on, OK? And not right next to the bed, either.”

Alyssa glanced at the bed, wished she’d made it a little
more neatly this morning, that it wasn’t covered with hastily discarded
clothes, and that her closet door wasn’t open. And that her birth control pill
case wasn’t sitting on the bedside table, she realized with horror. She edged
her way around Joe and half-backed her way to the head of the bed, opened the
drawer of the nightstand behind her, and shoved the case inside.

“OK,” she said, then remembered her chin again and tried to
angle herself, which was impossible in the narrow space between the wall and
her bed. “Thanks.”
 

“It’s filled with oil,” he said, positioning the heater to
his satisfaction. “Pretty energy-efficient, so you shouldn’t see a big change
in your electric bill. It’s got some different settings. Two switches, see,
besides the dial? So if you just want a little heat, you turn this one, the
left one. And if you want medium heat, just the right one. Put both on, and
it’ll be full heat. And this up here,” he continued, “that’s more of a
thermostat. Here.” He squatted down again. “I’ll show you.”

She glanced at it. “Two switches. OK. Turn one on, turn both
on, turn the dial up. I’ve got it.”

“It’s not quite that simple,” he said. “It actually works
better in the midrange.”

She edged her way out from beside the bed, picked up the owner’s
manual he’d set on her desk, set it down again. “I’m sure they tell you in
here. I’ll look later.”

“I can just show you now.”

“I don’t want
to
look
now. It was really nice of you. I
know it was. Thank you.
But I don’t
want to look. I’m too cold right now
.”
She looked at the pile of debris instead, and her blotchy chin was quivering,
because now she either had to go down and put it in the trash or look at it
lying there, and her room was already messy.

He glanced up at her, startled, made an adjustment to the
heater, then stood. “Bad first day?” he asked, his voice gentler. “Hard?”

“It’s just . . .” Despite her best efforts, her arm began to
go up and down like an oil derrick, and the words were tumbling out. “My room’s
a mess, and I’m cold, and it’s too
hard.
Moving,
and the job, and . . . now it’s all
messy,”
she repeated, and turned away from him, wiping her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m
just . . . I’m sorry. Thank you for bringing the heater.” And
go away,
she thought miserably. She
shouldn’t have opened the door. She hadn’t wanted to see anybody tonight.

“Do you have a bathrobe?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“A bathrobe. Or a sweater.”

She gestured at the closet, her arm flapping again, and he
took a quick look inside, pulled her fuzzy sweater off the hook, and helped her
on with it. “How about going and getting something to eat?” he asked. “Did you
have dinner?”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t want to go anywhere. I
mean,” she gulped, “thanks. No.”

He stood a moment, obviously thinking. “Tell you what. You
go take a shower, get warmed up, put on some . . . “ He gestured at her blouse,
skirt, and tights, her first-day clothes. “Some sweats or something. I’ll go
get some Chinese food. What do you want?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and she could hear that it was
more like a wail. She was acting like a baby, she knew, but she was at the end
of her rope, and the rope was fraying fast.

“OK,” he said. “I’ll get some stuff. How about you?” he
asked Sherry, still watching interestedly from the doorway. “What would you
like?”

“Kung Pao Chicken,” she said brightly. “I know a great place,
right around the corner. I’ll go with you to get it. We might as well sit there
and wait for it. They give you tea.”

Joe hesitated a second. “All right. We’ll be back in half an
hour or so,” he told Alyssa. “Take a shower. I’ll take this stuff down with me.”
He gathered up the packing debris. “By the time you get out of the shower, your
room will be warm, and you can change, and we’ll be back with dinner.”

Alyssa nodded, because she was too close to crying. And she
did cry a little in the shower, because she was
miserable, and she was making Joe feel like a big brother again,
which was exactly what she didn’t want to do.

She did feel better when she got out, though. Her chin
didn’t look nearly as bad as she’d feared, especially once she covered the spot
with concealer, and her bedroom
was
warm
now, and changing to yoga pants, a long sweater, and cozy socks helped, too.

Joe and Sherry came back with the food, set the white
cartons on the coffee table, and Sherry stuck spoons in, brought over plates
and napkins. Joe didn’t ask Alyssa what she wanted, just put a pile of rice on
her plate and added some meat and vegetables, and she ate, and didn’t talk, and
realized how hungry she’d been.

“Well,” Sherry said when they’d finished, “guess I’ll do the
dishes.”

“I’ll only stay a couple more minutes,” Joe said. “I really
just wanted to check in with Alyssa.”

Sherry looked at him. “All right, then.” She stood up, began
to gather containers, and Joe stacked plates and forks for her.

“So.” He shifted on the couch to face Alyssa when Sherry had
left the room. “Hard first day? Not as good as you thought? Not going to work
out?”

“I don’t know,” she said, wrapping her sweater around herself
a little more tightly. “I hope so. But it’s different from what I thought, because
Suzanne’s leaving.”

“Leaving?”

“Yeah.” She laughed, though it really wasn’t funny. “Ain’t
that a thing? She told me she knew when she interviewed me, but she couldn’t
say yet, because she hadn’t given notice. She was really
sorry,”
she added bitterly, “but that doesn’t help much.”

“So what does that mean?” he asked. “For you?”

She shrugged helplessly. “They’ve hired a replacement. Some
woman who’s been at the Carolyn G. Haskill Cancer Foundation, and Suzanne went
on about how good she is, how she’s sure it’ll still be a wonderful opportunity
for me. I just wish I’d
met
her.”

“When does she start?”

“Two weeks. Suzanne leaves in a week, then a week in between
with nobody, just me, and then this new person—Helene—comes.”

“That means you’ll have two weeks to get familiar, though, right?
So you won’t be brand-new, and you can be the one showing her around. Could
even be better.”

“Yeah. I know, I told myself that. It was just a shock,” she
tried to explain. “I was nervous already, and I’ve gone out on such a limb
here. Moved, and the car, and using so much of my savings, and . . .” She took
a breath, close to tears again, and admitted the truth. “What if it doesn’t
work? What if she wants to hire her own person? What if she fires me right
away, before I even have a chance?”

He didn’t tell her she was being silly, to her relief, or
not to “borrow trouble.” She hated that phrase. She didn’t need to borrow it.
Trouble
happened.
“Then you’ll find
something else,” he said. “Then you’ll try again.”

“But this was supposed to be my big chance. This was my
change.”

“It was
a
chance. Nothing’s
the last chance. There’s always another chance. And the change was in you. You
already made it.”

She looked at him, trying not to cry. She didn’t want him to
talk. She wanted him to give her a hug, tell her everything would work out. She
wanted him to
hold
her, but he
didn’t, and she didn’t want to ask him and have it be awkward, so she didn’t.

“I’m being a baby,” she said. “I know it. I’m sorry. Thanks
for coming over, but . . . I’m sorry.” Which made the tears come even closer.

“You’re not being a baby,” he said, getting up off the
couch. “You’re tired, and you’ve had a hard day. Go to bed, and it’ll be better
in the morning. Things are almost always better in the morning. But I’ll get
out of here so you can do it. Say goodbye to Sherry for me, OK?”

She nodded miserably, got up and tried to smile, to thank
him. And then she shut the door, went into her room, lay down on her messy bed,
and cried.

But at least it was warm.