Merry Jones - Elle Harrison 01 - The Trouble With Charlie (28 page)

If Jen hadn’t stopped by, I probably wouldn’t have made it to dinner. I might have stood in the bathroom for an eon. But she did stop by, and she chattered nonstop as she picked out sleek but comfy black pants, a dark-red sweater, low-heeled boots. She talked as she helped with my makeup, reminding me that I needed to highlight my eyes, emphasize my cheekbones, moisturize my skin. I drifted in and out, hearing part of her monologue, letting her take charge, becoming rag-doll passive. I did not mention Sherry McBride or Susan’s call or the possibility of my arrest. I let her think that my nerves, my trembling were about my impending date.

“You’ll be fine, DSI.” Don’t Sweat It. Her voice sounded faraway, like a memory. “Being with a man—it’s like riding a bike. You learn it once and you know it forever.”

She dabbed perfume under my earlobes. A complicated scent. Sophisticated. She’d brought it with her, knowing I wouldn’t have any.

I tried to thank her.

“Don’t thank me. We do for each other. Christ, do you want me to thank you for everything you’ve ever done?” She messed with my hair, restarted the blow dryer. “Okay, here goes. Starting with high school: Thanks for letting me cheat off you in geometry. Thanks for pretending the cigarettes were yours. Oh, and for double dating with me and that kid Alex—remember him? Junior Mister America—”

“Okay, Jen. I get it.” I didn’t have to thank her.

“So,” she fluffed some kind of goo onto my head, “this guy’s got SA?” Sex Appeal.

“Jen. It’s just dinner.”

“Right. Don’t be coy, Elle. I can tell you’re nervous. He’s got to have some serious SA.”

Well, she was right. He did. I pictured him. Eyes teasing. Lips hinting at a smile. Shoulders rippling under his blazer.

“You’ve got to think positive, Elle. Don’t get stuck on the past and the mess with Charlie. That’s over. Sooner or later, you have to take charge and envision what you want. Maybe it’ll be this guy, maybe not. But whatever, it’s up to you to create your future. Go for it.”

I nodded. Wondered if she’d visit me in jail, decided that she’d come by dutifully, once. Maximum twice. Prison didn’t fit into Jen’s safe, shiny world. The orchestra fit there. And charity benefit balls. And luncheons and pedicures and Lexuses and landscape architects and Super Bowl tickets, but not prison. I closed my eyes to let her apply shadow, opened them for the mascara brush. Let her manicured fingers play with my face, rearrange my hair. I wanted her to stay. Felt that if Jen were with me, prison couldn’t happen. I watched her, wondered what it was like to be Jen. To be able to eat anything, never gain weight. To spend anything, never run out of money. To take yoga, Pilates, gardening, golf lessons, never need an actual career.

But it didn’t matter what it was like to be Jen. I was stuck in my own skin. And it didn’t matter how that skin was made up
or what fabrics it was wrapped in. It didn’t matter where or if I had dinner, or with whom. In or out, with or without wine or the dinner date, the night would pass. The morning would come. And I would have to meet with Stiles.

At 7:57, Jen declared me ready to go, pecked me on the cheek as I thanked her, and darted out the door. I was still in the entranceway when the doorbell rang. I opened the door, thinking Jen must have forgotten something.

Joel stood there, eyes dancing, holding a single red rose.

It went by in an eye blink. No, it hung, suspended in time, separate from everything else. Unattached to before or after. Isolated. Protected, like a pearl in a shell.

And then it was over. I signaled Becky with a quick text to say that I’d returned safely, that we’d talk in the morning. Then I got undressed and lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling. Replaying my date long into the night.

When I opened the door, he told me I looked breathtaking. Breathtaking. I liked the sounds of the word. “Breath” sounded soft, gentle. Air passing around tongue and through teeth at the end. “Taking,” though, sounded sudden, sharp, cutting. Sexual. Dangerous. So, I looked soft and dangerous? I liked that idea. That he couldn’t breathe when he looked at me.

But it was only a word. And Joel, I already knew, was a flirt. A player with teasing eyes.

I accepted the rose, put it in a tall thin vase. And we walked to Rembrandt’s, were given a table in a dimly lit corner in the room behind the piano bar. Candlelight. Couples all around us; two tables of four. Some looked up as we walked by. The women eyeing Joel. I tried to see us, what we looked like, but couldn’t drift off. I was solidly planted in the moment.

He seated me. Pulled out the chair, waited for me to settle, then to lift myself up so he could slide the chair further under me. I was aware of him being aware of me, my movements, my
balance. Of the rhythm of sitting and rising and sitting again. I was aware of his hands on my chair, his eyes watching my nether parts lowering onto the chair. Thank God Jen had helped me pick out pants that fit snugly, flattering my butt. And when I was seated, his hands lingered for a moment on my shoulders, giving them the slightest, most tender squeeze.

I wanted to moan.

Lord. I needed a drink. My moods over the last several hours had risen and plummeted repeatedly. As Joel took his seat, I glanced around the restaurant, felt cushioned by the flicker of candles, the hushed voices, the oil paintings on dark walls. The slow, patient background of piano music.

He leaned forward, eager eyes on mine.

I needed to cool down. I didn’t know anything, really, about this man. Except that he’d somehow known Charlie well enough to come to the viewing. And that looking at him, being near him made my blood roar. But he was talking. I needed to listen. “—even at Jeremy’s, I found you hypnotic.”

Hypnotic? “Oh, please.” My neck felt hot.

“I’m serious. Afterward, I couldn’t stop thinking about how stupid I’d been not to get your number. When I was walking away from you, I was hoping you’d stop me—you know, ask for my phone? Punch in your number? But you didn’t.”

No, I didn’t.

“Why not?”

Why not? It hadn’t occurred to me. I’d never given my number to a stranger. But I couldn’t say that. It sounded prissy, even to me.

“I mean, did you feel anything like what I did? Any attraction? Tell me the truth.”

The truth? What had I felt? I remembered him offering me a coin, producing from nowhere a scarf, a rose. His eyes had singled me out, focused on me as if I were the only woman in the room. But why? He was so handsome. So practiced at flirting,
and paying so much attention to a self-conscious, inexperienced, not-as-glitzy-as-he-was woman. So, what had I felt? Panic. The desire to run for the door. But another feeling stopped me.

Kind of a déjà vu, a familiarity. A sense that—almost that I’d met him before. That something other than chance had brought us together. Maybe fate.

But I wasn’t going to admit any of that. Would never have said any part of it out loud. Certainly not to him.

He chuckled at my silence. “Okay. I guess not. I was hoping it was mutual—”

“No, that’s not fair. Remember, I had a headache. And, truthfully, it was my first time out since—” I stopped. Heard both Jen and Becky yelling at me:
Do not talk about your marriage!

“Actually,” the words popped out, “I felt familiar. Kind of like I already knew you.”

Joel smiled, tilted his head. Reached out. Touched my hand. A bottle of Rosenblum Petite Sirah arrived. Warm fresh bread. We ate red meat. Joel’s lips were neither too full nor too narrow; they looked firm, smooth as they parted to admit his fork. And his jaw rippled, made shadows on his cheeks when he chewed. He didn’t look at all like Charlie. Longer, slimmer, he moved more gracefully, like a river. And his voice flowed more smoothly. I told myself not to think of Charlie. He had no business here. This was my night. My first date with another man. I knew I needed to ask Joel for information. Find out about his relationship with Charlie. But there was no rush. My questions could wait. It was all right to take it slow, to savor the attention. The subtle seduction of conversation, the maddening, almost accidental touches, the slow embrace of wine.

We talked, laughed. Never ran out of topics.

“How did you get into magic?”

“Magic?” He grinned, reached over, touched my wine glass, and suddenly there were two of them. Two glasses of wine.

What? “How did you—”

“You mean how did I do this?” He smiled. And now there was a third. Three in a row. Full of wine.

I was baffled. Alarmed.

Joel shrugged. “I took up magic to cover my shyness.”

“Your shyness?” Was he joking? “You don’t seem shy.”

“See? It worked. Magic gives me a way to approach beautiful women without using the same old tired lines—instead of asking, ‘Do you come here often?’ I can reach into her ear and say, ‘Is this yours?’” He reached behind my ear and, this time, presented a bracelet. A gold bangle just like the one I’d been wearing. I checked my wrist, saw it was bare. Took the bracelet, replaced it, puzzled and impressed.

“You’re good.” I laughed. Lifted my napkin, realized it wasn’t a napkin anymore, but a lavender chiffon scarf. Wrapped around my house keys. Wow. My napkin, it seemed, had moved into my purse. I found it when putting my keys back. When—how had he done all this switching right in front of me? His tricks made me uneasy. As if I didn’t know what he was up to. How to keep my privacy and protect my stuff.

“Don’t worry. I’ll stop—I was just showing off. I make it a personal rule never to abuse my skills.”

Apparently, he wasn’t just a magician, but a mind reader, too. “Good. Because you’d be a great pickpocket.” I had the urge to check my wallet, restrained myself.

He lost his smile. “Making money wasn’t my goal. Girls were. I was a skinny, bashful teenager, afraid to talk to girls, much less ask them out. Magic was my ticket.”

His ticket? “Magic” and “ticket” in the same sentence made me think of the travel agency. Magic Travel. Maybe he’d heard of it. But why would he? Just because of the word, “magic”? “So you’ve gotten a lot of women to pay attention to you?”

He smiled. “Well, yes. But so far, no one’s been right. I’m still looking.” And he looked into my eyes. Deeply.

My face got hot. I reached for one of the wine glasses. Sipped. It tasted real.

“Elle, honestly, I’m at an age where I’ve done enough singles bars and traveling alone. My friends tell me I’m a born bachelor, but the fact is, I’d like to settle down.”

I felt his gaze. The heat of it ran down my neck, my chest. I didn’t dare look back. Busied myself with the stem of the wine glass.

He paused. “But magic—it’s more than a gimmick to help me meet ladies. It’s a way of life. Kind of a philosophy.”

“Oh?” I swallowed more wine, dared to look at him.

“Really, there is no such thing as magic. It doesn’t exist. It’s all illusion, just like everything else in life. People see what they want to see, or what they expect to see, and they miss everything else. They want to believe there’s a trick. But the only trick is in their perceptions.”

I was confused. Must have looked it.

“An event only seems magical because the audience doesn’t see—or doesn’t pay attention to all the pieces of the puzzle.” His voice lowered, became private, almost a whisper. “You don’t see where the coin is hidden. I distract you, or move in a way that you don’t see the sleight of hand that takes your keys. You don’t know the scarf is there all along. You don’t expect it, so it seems like magic. That’s how life is, isn’t it? We see what we expect, what makes sense. What we want to see. What we can bear to see. And we reject the rest.”

I stopped breathing, replaying his last few sentences. Lord. Could Joel possibly know about the holes in my memory? The things I couldn’t bear to recall? Had he created his little speech about rejecting pieces of reality just for me?

I swallowed more wine. Smiled. Nodded. Tried again to do an Elle and mentally float up to the ceiling and watch our table from a safe distance. But I couldn’t. Why not? Maybe it was Dr. Schroeder’s pills—I’d taken a double dose. Maybe they’d begun
to work. Or maybe it wasn’t the pills. Maybe it was Joel. The square line of his jaw. The hint of a smile on his mouth, flickering in his eyes.