Perfect on Paper (13 page)

“Where are
you
?”

She sighed. “Home. Finally.”

“How’d you get there?”

She sighed louder. “I walked.”

“You
walked 
?! Why didn’t you ask Cal to come and get you?”

“I tried to call, but he was out in the garage doing—I don’t know. Man things. And you know how the boys are on weekends. They could sleep through the Rapture.”

“But—”

“I was fine at first,” she said. “I turned off Noble Street onto 737, and I was sure I was going to make it. But you know that stretch where the road opens up to two lanes, right before you get onto 222? Well, right then this huge FedEx truck passed me—I swear he almost took the door handle off—and it just—I don’t know. Spooked me. Eventually I got out and walked the four miles home, which was almost as bad as driving would have been.”

Route 737 was a narrow, twisty death trap with virtually no shoulder and a steady stream of traffic. “You could have been killed!”

“You don’t know the half of it. When I was almost to the house, the creepy gun dealer from Renningers pulled over and offered me a lift.”

“Oh god. You know, that would be hilarious if you weren’t, uh—”

“Crazy. I know.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Beats me.”

“What’d you tell Cal?”

“That I had a flat. Which I did, once I let the air out of the tire. He and Angus are down there changing it now.”

“Damn. You really are crazy.”

“I know. Oh, Dana,
why
didn’t you answer your phone?”

“I couldn’t. It’s still in your guest room.”

“Ohhhh.”

I tried to think of something positive to say, but no reassuring words were forthcoming. I was at a loss to suggest what her next move should be. Elinor Ann had always held psychiatry and its practitioners in low regard, and I couldn’t imagine her taking so much as a vitamin, let alone Prozac. And she’d just failed miserably at her attempt to tough it out. “So… what now?”

“Stay busy until Monday, then hope I can still drive to work, I guess. I’ll have the shipping department send your phone out then.” She paused. “Wait a minute. There’s something I don’t understand. If your phone is upstairs in the guest room, then how are you talking to me?”

I looked over at Billy Moody, who was doing a lousy job of pretending to read the Business section while he eavesdropped on my conversation. “Uh—are you planning to take the boys back to that… kennel?” I said to Elinor Ann.

“What kennel?”

“I really do think they’re ready for a dog. And that one we saw yesterday was so cute.… What was his name again?”

“Whose name?”

“
That’s
right,” I said. “Scruffy! How could I forget?”

“What Scruffy? What are you talking about? Are you—”

Finally my implication sank in, and she fell silent.

But only momentarily. “You have
got
to be kidding me. He’s on the
bus
?”

“I’ll say!”

“He lent you his phone, didn’t he? You have
got
to call me the instant you get home.”

“Fair enough. We’ll discuss it then.”

“Don’t even take off your coat. Dana?”

“Yes?”

“I guess I should thank you.”

“For what?”

“For helping me take my mind off my problem. And Dana?”

“Mmm?”

“If you give Scruffy your phone number, you are going straight to hell.”

“Okay, then! Talk to you soon!”

Billy Moody was regarding me with a bemused look that seemed to convey, “I know you were just referring to me as a dog named Scruffy” when I snapped the phone closed and handed it back to him. I had an awful suspicion that my face was turning the shade of a stop sign.

“Are you hot?” he said.

Of course not,
I silently responded.
I’m always this color. My blood pressure is three thousand over eight hundred and forty.

“A little,” I said instead. “So tell me—were you the kind of kid who peed in your baby sister’s cereal, or did you wait until adulthood to become the devil incarnate?”

“Hey—you finished the puzzle.”

“Barely. How do you come up with this stuff?”

“I usually start with words containing unusual letter patterns and build from there. Which is a little different from most constructors, who come up with a clue set first.”

“A clue set?” God, this kid was adorable, even if he did happen to be a sadist who spewed unintelligible jargon.

“You know—those long clues that appear in most puzzles and have some sort of common bond. Remember the one we both did in the bus station last Thursday?”

Ahh. The turkeys.
“I get it.”

“I stink at coming up with themes. I’m strictly a grid guy. In fact, that’s my email address. Gridmeister… at rocketmail, in case you were wondering.”

This was the moment I was supposed to turn a hose on our burgeoning flirtation with a pointed comment along the lines of,
My boyfriend uses rocketmail, too!
Instead, I said, “Is that some kind of a hint?”

He smiled. “Maybe you could send me a clue set sometime.”

Hmm. Maybe I could.

I counted the letters in an endless array of phrases—none of which could exceed the fifteen-letter width of a daily puzzle—all the way back to Ninth Street. I had just made the serendipitous discovery that both the opening lines “Call me Ishmael” and “Who is John Galt” contained thirteen letters (according to Billy Moody, symmetry was crucial) when the cab pulled up in front of my building.

Vivian yanked open the car door the instant it came to a stop. “What took you so long? Your cat’s fine, by the way. I fed him this morning.”

“Thanks.”
Then again, maybe
Atlas Shrugged
isn’t sufficiently well-known to merit inclusion.…

“Dana, are you listening to me?”

“Uh-huh.”
Dickens will never work—just think how long it takes Pip to introduce himself in
Great Expectations.…

“Then what did I just tell you?”

Wait a minute!
A Christmas Carol
! Marley was dead! One, two…

“Dana!”

Thirteen!!!

“Dana!!!”

“Oh. Sorry. What were you saying?”

“I said your damn cat is fine—and
you’re welcome
. Oh—and I dropped off a few pieces of costume jewelry when I went up there earlier—mostly Trifari, early sixties.”

Not for the first time, I questioned the prudence of giving a spare key to my employer, even if she was the most convenient choice for pet care.

“I was thinking you could work them into a few new Hannahs,” she said.

“Sure.”

“By Tuesday.”

“That’s only three days from now!”

“Fine, fine—a week from Tuesday.” She cocked her head to get a better look at the dog portrait poking out from the top of my open duffel bag. “That’s not one of yours, is it?”

“No.”

“Thank god.”

I went upstairs and let myself into the apartment, where I was nearly blinded by a glittering mountain of garishness heaped nearly half a foot high on my kitchen table. Puny, intently batting around a faux-pearl earring only slightly smaller than a manhole cover, barely acknowledged my return. After concluding he couldn’t possibly fit the thing inside his mouth, let alone swallow it, I dropped my luggage and went to have a closer look at Vivian’s haul.

I held up a lucite brooch in the shape of a cicada. Imbedded inside it were actual cicadas. I shuddered and backed away from the table. The jewelry could wait until I unpacked, found space on my bedroom wall for the dog portrait, and googled the phrase “agoraphobia cure.”

No sooner had I hung the picture—underneath a painting of a cocker spaniel that appeared to have three legs and next to a mastiff that bore an uncanny resemblance to Ernest Borgnine—when inspiration struck. I removed the German shepherd from the wall, returned to the kitchen,
and found the mate to Puny’s earring, as well as a gold-and-pearl contraption that could have served as full-frontal body armor but was more likely a necklace. Propping the portrait against the mound of jewelry on the kitchen table, I positioned both pieces on the appropriate areas of the dog.

Perfect.

And I had just the model to pull off the look, right down on Seventh Street.

“I’ll call it ‘Pearls Before Swine,’ ” I murmured, reaching for the telephone.

But it rang before I could pick up the receiver.

“Hello?”

Click.

Swell,
I thought.
It’s not bad enough I’ve just flirted the entire width of New Jersey, but now Ray Devine checks in the instant I decide to call my boyfriend.
What did he get out of these calls? And did I really want to spend another second of my life wondering?

Maybe it was time to put an end to them and move on.

By the time I’d returned the German shepherd to its position on my bedroom wall, righteous indignation had kicked in. Of course it was time to move on. I’d scrupulously avoided all contact with Ray for two decades, but clearly a more decisive approach was called for. I had a relationship to nurture. Portraits of pigs to paint. A best friend to counsel. Crosswords to construct.

I sat on the bed and punched in Ray’s number. I was about to give up after the sixth ring, when his voice came on the line.

“Hello?”

“Why do you keep calling me?” I said. “Don’t you think this has gone on long enough?”

“Who is this?”

CHAPTER TEN
A WAKE-UP CALL

“J
ust kidding,” Ray said, effectively saving my life, not to mention my pride and self-esteem. Who would have thought “just kidding” could do all that? “How the hell are you, Dana?”

“I’m all right. And you don’t have to tell me how you’re doing—I already know you’re healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

He chuckled. God, it was good to hear his voice. “I’m still breathing—guess one out of three ain’t bad. A photographer buddy of mine hooked me up with that ad. God, it’s good to hear your voice.”

Without even realizing it, I found myself splayed on the bed, eyes half-closed like a nodding junkie, twenty-one and stupid again, squandering my time on someone else’s husband.

Only he wasn’t Rhea’s husband anymore. Renée Devine had told me so at the open house in Bay Ridge.

Then again, she’d also told me Ray was dead. “So, how’s your… wife?” I’d never quite gotten the hang of saying her name out loud to him.

“Happily married. Not to me, though.”

“I’m sorry. When did you split up?”

“Oh, about an hour after the last time I saw you.”

I snapped out of my stupor and sat rigid on the bed while he explained
what had happened: how Rhea had been convinced of our affair; how she’d followed him to the bar the afternoon I’d broken up with him; how she’d refused to believe it was over, opting instead to decamp to her parents’ house in Canarsie, Renée in tow, never to return.

“But—why didn’t you
tell
me?”

“You told me not to call you, remember?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Look, Dana. Of course I wanted to tell you. I can’t count the number of times I almost picked up the phone over the past twenty years.”

“What are you talking about? By my calculation, you’ve picked up the phone somewhere between four and five hundred times over the past twenty years.”

“Now I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“All those hang-up calls!”

“What hang-up calls?”

I felt a whooshing noise inside my head, which I attributed to the collapse of the castles in the air I’d started building half a lifetime ago. “Are you serious? You really never called me?”

“I really never have.”

I stared dumbfounded at my wall of dog portraits while I digested his statement. “Woof! Woof!” they seemed to be saying. “You’ve scaled new pinnacles of delusion. Woof!”

Ray finally broke the silence. “Here’s the thing, Dana. By the time I got home that night, I had to admit you were right. You didn’t need to be wasting your time sneaking around with a guy like me. And just because Rhea took off—well, that didn’t necessarily turn me into the right guy for you.”

I didn’t need to hear him explain why. Even back then, I’d never been able to wholeheartedly embrace the fantasy of a father-aged husband and a sister-aged stepdaughter. “But… you came out of it okay?”

“I always get by somehow. Listen—whatever you do, don’t blame
yourself. If my marriage had been any good in the first place, you and I never would have happened.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“I know I am.”

I was glad one of us did. Suddenly I realized I’d reverted to my reclining position on the bed. His voice had a sandpapery quality to it, no doubt caused by years of tobacco and alcohol abuse, that had always mesmerized me. That hadn’t changed.

But it should have by now. Ray was ancient history. And, as he’d just confirmed, we’d had no contact with each other for more than twenty years. I sat up straight, determined to end the conversation on a friendly—but not
too
friendly—note.

“So, how are you doing?” he said. “Still painting?”

“I am.”

“Got a guy?”

“I do.”