In Stereo Where Available (5 page)

I sat in a shaky black chair just behind the window at Starbucks, swinging my crossed-over leg with studied nonchalance and reading a celebrity magazine someone had left behind.
Rhett’s Real World
was the name of the article, the red letters splashed above a full-page photo of Rhett sitting in a living room that looked like part of a Pottery Barn showroom.
From the custom-built wine cellar to the African-inspired master suite, this is the villa that the rakish Charlestonian calls home
.

“Phoebe?”

I’d already seen him walk in, but I looked up from my magazine in feigned surprise. “Sam! Nice to meet you.”

He was short, with the kind of close-cropped haircut that men get when they realize they’re going bald, but he wasn’t too bad looking. I shook his short-fingered hand and let him get in line to order me a cappuccino.

“So,” he said, sitting down in the chair opposite mine and handing me my coffee, “I understand you’re from around here?”

“Originally? Yeah. I grew up in Takoma Park.”

“Really? That’s a nice area. I’ve hit the antique stores there a few times.”

I smiled. That was a good start. “So where are
you
from?”

“Ohio. I moved out here for work.” He crossed and uncrossed his legs nervously. “I work for a nonprofit downtown. The Children’s Action League.”

Even better. I pushed the magazine onto the windowsill and wrapped my hands around my coffee, leaning toward him. “Do you enjoy it?”

“Yeah, definitely. It’s rewarding, you know? Trying to make sure every kid gets a fair shot. Well,
you
know. You’re ateacher, right?”

“Yes.” I was already sorry I’d not only foregone the heels, but had worn jeans and an oversized L.L.Bean sweater. The idea had been to project an “I’ve got no investment in this date” vibe. Unfortunately, that was no longer the vibe I wanted to project.

“You’ve got to love your work,” he said, tapping the table with his fist. “It’s not enough just to collect the paycheck. Life’s too short.”

I nodded avidly. “I completely agree.”

“That’s the difference between here and Ohio, if you ask me. People rush around too much. I see it all the time when I’m working at the blood drives. People pass by, they don’t want to come in. They don’t want to slow down, or run the risk that they’ll have to take it easy for an afternoon. It’s sad, really.”

This was getting better and better. Mentally I started sifting through my calendar for the next three months, trying to remember how many weekends I had free. “Is that like a volunteering thing you do?”

He sipped his coffee and nodded. “Yeah, for the Red Cross. I do it once, sometimes twice a week. It’s important work.”

“Wow. That’s terrific. I mean, that you’re willing to take so much time out to do that.”

“I don’t mind.” He shrugged, then smiled at me. “I’m great with a needle. I can get a vein on anybody. You’re probably pretty easy. Your veins, I mean.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I never have any problem at the doctor’s office. How can you tell?”

“Just your look. Your build, I suppose. Some people bleed easier than others. Hey, is that an antique shop?”

I looked at the place he was pointing to across the street. “No, it’s a fake one. They sell country crafts. You know, cows and angels and stuff.”

“Oh. That’s too bad.”

I extended a finger timidly from my coffee cup and poked his hand. “I know a good store in Kensington, though, if you want me to show you sometime.”

He grinned. “That’d be great. I’m pretty specific in what I look for, though. I’m kind of a collector.”

“So what do you collect?”

“Oh…pictures. Old photos, mostly. Specific old photos.”

“Like a particular celebrity or something?”

“Not exactly. I collect mourning photos.”

I looked at him curiously. “What’s a mourning photo?”

“Oh, they were an old Victorian tradition from the early days of photography. When a loved one died, they took a picture. For posterity.”

I nodded. It seemed a delicate subject. “Of the mourners. That makes sense. Sometimes it seems like that’s the only time you can get the whole family together. I remember at my grandma’s—”

“No, not of the mourners. Of the deceased.”

I stared at Sam for a long moment. “I beg your pardon?”

He curved his furry eyebrows upward as if in sympathy. “It makes sense when you think about it. People didn’t have a lot of photos of their loved ones to remember them by. So sometimes they took the final picture in the coffin, sometimes on their bed. It was pretty common. It’s not, like…weird.”

I shook my head slowly. “No, not at all.”

He sipped his coffee. “They’re kind of hard to come by. I’ve only got about fifty. A lot of antique-store owners aren’t even aware of the custom.” He reached into his back pocketand pulled out his wallet. Flipping it open to the plastic photo pages, he said, “I always carry a few with me, so they’ll know what I’m talking about when I ask. Reproductions, of course.”

“Of course.” Through a half squint, I peered at the photo he’d laid on the table. It showed a woman who looked like the Whistler’s Mother, white bonnet and all, resting peacefully on a satin-ruffled coffin lining. Over her head, in elaborate white script, was the word
Mother
.

I managed to steer my gaze up to Sam’s face and waited for him to give me the punch line. Perhaps this was his idea of a great first-date gag, or else some kind of a test of how tolerant or compassionate a person I was. Unfortunately, it was a test I was about to fail.

“I have other ones,” he offered, his tone hopeful. With his index finger, he flipped through a few of his other samples. “A tree-cutting accident, an epidemic victim. Back at my place I even have one from Hawaii. That’s very unusual. Maybe I could show it to you sometime.”

I raised my eyebrows as high as possible and answered with an excited nod. When I’d walked into this Starbucks, my goal had been marriage and children. Now, it was to leave without seeing any more dead people.

“Well, I’d better head out,” I said, glancing at the wrist I’d forgotten to put a watch on. “Lots of papers to grade.”

“Sure.” Sam flipped his wallet closed and moved to tuck it back into his pocket, then hesitated. “Hey, you forgot to give me your phone number. I’m free next weekend, if you like. We can go antiquing, maybe. Or you could come over to my place and I can show you my collection.”

“Sure. Sure.” I peeked into my purse. “Oh, I don’t have a pen or paper.”

“I do.” He tore a corner from the celebrity magazine and handed me a pen from his pocket, then winked at me. “I won’t lose it. Promise.”

I breezily wrote down a string of ten random numbers, properly punctuated, and handed it to him with a smile.

“Give me a call,” I said, with as much cheerful warmth as I could muster. “If I’m not there, just leave a voice mail. And it’s been great meeting you.”

Jerry, my lovelorn mystery poet, called me later that afternoon, just as I was returning from the trip to the mall I’d taken to calm my nerves after my date with Dr. Death. I squinted at the unrecognizable phone number that popped up on my cellphone screen and, idiotically, answered it.

“Hey, Karen. It’s Jerry.”

My stomach seized up. “Oh, hi.”

“I got your e-mail. Thanks for the compliment. You never know what somebody’s going to think, you know, when you put yourself out there like that.”

“Uh, well, no problem.”

“So, are you doing anything tonight? I mean, I know you said you’re busy these days, but it’s Saturday and I figured it can’t hurt to ask. I only live up in Kensington, so if you want to get together, it’s not much of a drive. I can pick you up.”

“Oh, well…” My mind raced frantically, trying to come up with some excuse. I glanced at my calendar and named the first thing I saw. “I’ve, uh—got a dentist appointment.”

“On Saturday night?”

“Yeah, well, it’s one of those emergency ones. I’ve had problems with a—with a wisdom tooth. You know how that is.” I cringed as if he could whack me for an excuse that lame right across the phone connection.

“Yeah, I do. Well, that’s too bad. I was thinking about that fondue place. Have you ever done fondue?”

“Once, when I was in Girl Scouts.”

He laughed. “This is probably better. How about next weekend? Saturday, say.”

“Um…I’m not sure what I have going on. Why don’t we get in touch later this week and decide then?”

“Sure, sounds good. I’ll keep that night open. I’ll give you a call Wednesday, okay?”

“Okay. Yeah.”

That evening I cornered Lauren in her bedroom as she was changing from her gym clothes into PJ pants and her favorite T-shirt, pale blue and a size too small, that said
Viagra
across the front in bold white letters.

“Help me,” I said.

She turned around, pulling her hair out of the collar with both hands. “What’s the matter?”

“Jerry called me a couple of hours ago. He’s trying to get me to go out with him.”

“He’s trying to get
you
to go out with him, or he’s trying to get
Karen
to go out with him?” She picked a few cat hairs off of her comforter.

“Karen. But he still thinks
I’m
Karen. Get me out of this, Lauren. I can’t do this much longer. I’m a horrible actress.”

“I’d say you’re a
wonderful
actress. You’ve got some poor desperate guy believing you’re the woman of his dreams.”

“Stop it. I feel bad enough already.”

“You know, I’ve heard they do this in Japan all the time. Teenagers, I mean. They just dial random phone numbers and try to hook up with whoever answers. Of course, I don’t think they pretend they’re other people, let alone send each other mediocre love poems before the first date. That just
screams
‘stalker.’“

I twisted my fingers into my bangs.
“Lauren
. Do you have an idea or don’t you? He’s going to call me back in a couple of days. I need to know what to tell him.”

“You know what you need to do?” She looked at me over her glasses, flicking her fingers over the trash can to make the cat hairs fall. “You need to send him a nice honest e-mail explaining exactly what happened. That way he’ll stop nagging you, you won’t have to talk to him, and he’ll know that you meant well. Then you can get on with your life.”

“You think I should?”

“Yes. This is just silly, Phoebe, really. I’m not trying to be critical, but you’re really painting yourself into a corner here. You think you’re being nice, but you’re just leading him on. He’s a grown man. He can take the news.”

I sighed. “Maybe you’re right.”

“I
am
right. Go in there right now and write the e-mail. You’ll feel so much better once you’re done.”

“I can’t do it right now. I can’t deal with men anymore. You know who I went out with today? A guy who collects photos of dead people. Dead people, Lauren. My nerves are
shattered
.”

“Don’t be melodramatic. You’re going to meet some weirdos, all right? Everybody does. You can’t let it get to you. It’s just like in sports, okay? The best therapy for an injury is to get right back in the game. So go in there and set up your next date. Then, once you’ve done that, deal with Jerry. You’ll feel a hundred percent better.”

“You think so?”

“I’m sure of it.”

I went to my own room and double-clicked on my mail software.
You’ve got mail
. There it was again, Jerry Sullivan. I clicked on the message.

My mouse cursor hovered over the “reply” button for a moment, then dropped down to the bottom of my screen and disconnected. I just couldn’t do it. By now I didn’t even mind his calls and his e-mails. I just wanted him to stop calling me “Karen.”