The Sexiest Man Alive (13 page)

What was this shit kicker doing here on Ben’s turf? With Ben’s girl? Why wasn’t he back in Zilchville chasing cows or rolling up the sidewalks? He’d met Hoolihan this past summer when he and Mazie had stayed on her family’s farm outside Quail Hollow. Hoolihan had picked Mazie up at a bar, gotten her drunk, and driven her back home. Okay, maybe that wasn’t quite how it had unfolded, but it was the narrative Ben told himself. Bottom line: he hated the guy.

Ben gestured toward the shot-up bar, and he could feel his veins swelling. “You dragged Mazie into this?” he grated out.

“Ben, butt out!” Mazie snapped. “You are not my bodyguard. And I made Johnny bring me here—it wasn’t his idea.”

Her defending the guy further annoyed Ben. He jabbed a stiff forefinger into Hoolihan’s chest. “You have no business putting Mazie in harm’s way.”

Hoolihan knocked Ben’s hand aside. “Back off, man.”

“You back off, asshole.” Ben had never instigated a fight and didn’t know why he was acting like the playground bully now, but something about this guy brought out all his combative instincts.

Hoolihan’s eyes glinted, and Ben saw that the cop’s temper was rising, too. He was the same height as Ben and looked like he was in shape. “I could have you in cuffs before you could even blink,” Hoolihan said contemptuously.

Ben laughed. “Lucky for you, you can hide behind that uniform.”

Hoolihan yanked the police vest off and tossed it on the ground. “Come on, then, try it.”

Ben set down the camera, trying to control his temper, because anger made you do stupid things. He’d just watch for an opening and then land a punch.

“Stop it!” Mazie yelled, getting between him and Hoolihan.

“Mazie, stay out of this,” Ben said.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do!” She sounded furious.

Both men ignored Mazie, shifting around her, circling each other, looking for an opening. Only room for one alpha male in Dodge City.

“Excuse me. Could somebody please explain what’s happening here?”

Ben groaned. Olivia. Hadn’t she promised to stay in the car? Everyone turned to stare as she hesitantly approached, looking a little scared and definitely out of place in her dress and heels. He and Olivia had gone out to eat after leaving the event at the hotel, then had strolled over to the Bling Bling Club for drinks.

“I’ve always gone out with safe, dull guys,” Olivia had confided, leaning across the table, looking up at Ben through long eyelashes. “Accountants and lawyers, real button-down types, you know? But you, Ben—what you do is exciting—dangerous even!”

“It’s not that dangerous,” Ben said, playing for modest. “It’s mostly filming stuff like a Popsicle stain in the sidewalk shaped like the Virgin Mary or the prizewinning squash at the county fair.”

That was when the call had come in from the WPAK dispatcher about the attack in Piggsville. Just his rotten luck to get a call at the moment when things with Olivia were heating up. When he told her he had to leave to cover the story, she’d pleaded with him to be allowed to come along.

“Sorry, you can’t,” Ben told her. “It’s against regulations.”

Olivia made a face. “You don’t seem like the kind of man who follows rules.”

Well, that was true. The lady was perceptive as well as gorgeous.

“I promise I’ll be good—no feminine hysterics or fainting.” Olivia worked the eyelashes again. “I’ll stay in the car. You won’t even know I’m there.”

He’d given in, of course, let her come along, maybe even showed off a little as he sped along at thirty miles over the limit, arriving in Piggsville only nine minutes after the call had come in. He double-parked and was out of the car instantly. Barry Carlson, the WPAK reporter who’d be doing the on-air, had driven over in the satellite truck. Ben grabbed the camera equipment out of the truck, his heart pounding and adrenaline pumping the way it always did when he was in on a big-action story. Yes! They’d beat out WISN and WTMJ—small victories,
but when you’re the seventh-rated news station in the metro area, small victories counted.

Barry stationed himself for the most dramatic shot while Ben ripped off the lens cap, set the camera on his shoulder, adjusted the focus, and—
rolling
. Live on air, Barry spieled out the story, Ben focusing on the damaged bar, then panning the crowd. Every resident within fifty blocks must be here, along with half the city’s police officers. Biker gang terrorism—this was big news for Milwaukee.

That was when he’d spotted Mazie.

Which had led to Ben’s picking a fight with Hoolihan. And now Olivia—whom he’d quite frankly forgotten about—was about to make a bad scene even worse.

“Who’s
she
?” Mazie asked, glaring at Olivia.

“Who are
you
?” Olivia asked coolly, moving closer to Ben.

The two women eyeballed each other, neither one moving to shake hands or introduce herself. They were an interesting contrast, Ben thought—Olivia tall, blond, and elegant, looking perfectly composed, while Mazie was her usual cute-but-messy self—and why was a tomato vine clinging to her ankle?

“This is Olivia,” Ben said finally, scrabbling frantically through his memory to retrieve her last name. “Olivia Peele-Harkness, Mazie Maguire.”

Mazie gave Olivia a stiff smile. “I saw you at the Phero-mate thing. Does this mean that you and Ben are Phero-mated?”

“What’s a Phero-mate?” Hoolihan asked, looking puzzled.

“Or did you meet him because he’s the Sexiest Man Alive?” Mazie continued, merciless.

“What Sexiest Man?” Hoolihan asked, looking still more confused.

Mazie must really hate him to do this, Ben thought, knowing what was coming.

“Oh, I thought everyone knew by now,” Mazie said, all innocence. “
Milwaukee Tonite!
chose Ben as their Sexiest Man Alive.”

Ben’s fists doubled up. The instant a smirk appeared on Hoolihan’s mug, he was going to smack it off. The next thing the guy would see was the ground coming up to meet his face.

But the cop didn’t smirk. He just bent over, picked up Ben’s camera, and handed it back to him. “Damn,” he said. “I always thought
I
was the Sexiest Man Alive.”

“Ben,” Olivia said. “Isn’t that your reporter waving at you? I think he wants you.”

“Yeah.” Barry wanted to do live on-airs with people who’d witnessed the attack. Without
another word, Ben turned, offering his arm to Olivia because she was wearing high heels and the ground was uneven here. Now that he was cooling down, he was relieved that he hadn’t thrown a punch. Satisfying as it would have been to thump the jerk, Hoolihan looked like the kind of guy who punched back, hard.

“Could you thread this needle for me, Mazie?” asked Mrs. Pfister. “I think they’re deliberately making needle eyes smaller these days to drive old people crazy.”

A lot of things drove Mrs. Pfister crazy. Telephone solicitors; products that came in heat-sealed wrappers that needed a blowtorch to open; the tiny, unreadable buttons on the TV remote; the circulars that piled up on her front porch—modern-day life seemed purposely designed to annoy, but she complained about them in such an entertaining way that Mazie didn’t mind.

Minerva Pfister was eighty-nine years old, with frizzy hair tinted to the shade of marmalade, bright brown nearsighted eyes, and teeth that were uneven but all her own. She lived alone in an ancient three-story Victorian-era house that was always sauna-hot because she refused to turn on the air-conditioning until the outside temperature hit a hundred.

Mrs. Pfister held out a tiny needle and a spool of thick black thread. Mazie managed to stab the thread through the eye after four tries and stuck the threaded needle into a bar of soap, a trick she’d picked up from her grandmother. Mrs. Pfister, who owned half a million dollars’ worth of blue-chip stocks, would spend the afternoon jabbing her fingers as she attempted to darn a pair of socks that could have been replaced for a buck at the Dollar Store. Mazie made a mental note to pick up a package of pre-threaded needles for her the next time she was at a fabric shop.

“One more thing, dear,” said Mrs. Pfister. “Now that I’m all settled down, I hate to get up again—would you bring me a cup of tea? The teakettle is boiling in the kitchen.”

“Sure, no problem,” Mazie said, even though it
was
a problem because she was already running late. Mondays were always hectic. The seniors didn’t get meal delivery on Sunday, and a lot of them only made toast for themselves, so they were always hungry and cranky by the time the Vittles Van rolled around on Monday.

The Vittles Van was Milwaukee’s version of Meals on Wheels. It was a charity-funded operation dedicated to ensuring one healthy meal a day to the city’s elderly and handicapped. Mazie drove a forty-square-block route on the city’s east side and delivered seventy-two meals each day.

Mazie hurried out to Mrs. Pfister’s kitchen. The teakettle was sitting on the back burner of her gas stove while the front burner was on full blast, throwing off heat fumes she could feel halfway across the room. Mazie snapped off the burner. Someone ought to invent a stove for forgetful old people with burners that shrieked:
Not that one—this one!
She found the teacup and tea bag and decided to use hot tap water. The water that gushed out of the creaky old faucet was scalding hot, as dangerous as an open flame. Mazie had heard of elderly people who’d fallen into scalding bathwater and had been so badly burned that they’d spent weeks recuperating in the hospital.

The solution in this case was simple, Mazie thought; she’d just reset Mrs. Pfister’s water heater. She splashed a bit of cold water into the tea so that Mrs. Pfister wouldn’t burn her lips and brought the cup, along with sugar and creamer packets, into the living room, where Mrs. Pfister was comfortably ensconced in an easy chair, a TV tray holding her lunch.

Mazie’s stomach rumbled. She hadn’t had breakfast today and the lunch looked delicious: pork loin and gravy with roasted potatoes, applesauce, red cabbage slaw, wheat roll, butter, and a container of sherbet. Each lunch came with a carton of one percent or skim milk—and God help you if you delivered skim to someone who wanted one percent.

Mazie found her way down to Mrs. Pfister’s dimly lit, cobwebby basement and located the water heater. It was set to one fifty—hazardously high. Mazie turned it down to one twenty.

“How is that young man of yours—Ben, isn’t it?” Mrs. Pfister asked when Mazie returned to the living room.

“Well …” Mazie cleared her throat, trying to decide how much to reveal. Everyone on her route knew Labeck because he’d helped out several times. He’d been an enormous hit—the men liked him because he talked sports, and the women—well, their other faculties might have faded, but the ability to appreciate a handsome face never dwindled.

“You didn’t break up with him, did you?” asked Mrs. Pfister.

Might as well get it over with. “We’re—taking a breather from each other.”

“What happened?” Mrs. Pfister seemed genuinely upset. “Was it another woman?”

“Make that
women
.”

“Why, the cad! Two-timing you with a bunch of floozies?”

Mazie laughed. “It wasn’t like that.”

Mrs. Pfister reached out and patted Mazie’s hand. “These things happen, dear. And you
know what they say: every cloud has a silver lining.” Mrs. Pfister got to her feet, slopping tea out of her cup, and hobbled after Mazie as she made her way toward the door. “Now that you don’t have a Steady Eddie anymore, I’ll set you up with my grandnephew.”

“Thanks, but no,” Mazie said, speeding up her pace. “I really don’t—”

“His name is Lester. He’s a lovely boy. Well, not a boy—he’s thirty-four years old, exactly the right age to settle down and start a family.”

Mazie shook her head. “I don’t want to get married.”

Mrs. Pfister winked. “That’s right, sweetie—play hard to get. Make ’em chase you until you catch ’em. That’s what I did when Arthur was courting me. Of course I got pregnant, too, but that’s another story. Lester, now—bright as a button, owns his own business—one of these days he’ll be a very wealthy young man. He’s a great catch—you should snap him up before some gold-digging Jezebel gets her hooks into him.”

“I’m sure he prefers to find his own girlfriends.” Mazie caught hold of the door handle, but Mrs. Pfister laid a bony hand on her sleeve and was not about to let her go.

“Not at all. Why, Lester loves it when I fix him up with girls. He’s too bashful to do it himself. It all dates back to when he had that awful acne, but that’s almost all cleared up now, thanks to that hemorrhoid medication the doctor prescribed. Wonderful stuff. It cleared up his top
and
his bottom.”

Mazie managed to get the door open and wedge her body through, hoping she didn’t have to physically pry the old woman’s hands off.

“I’m going to go call Lester right now. Are you free Saturday night? Oh, and tell me your favorite color so he knows what kind of flowers to bring.”

“No!” Mazie said. “No flowers! No date! I have to shampoo my dog Saturday night.”

“Lester could help you. He’s good with animals. And he loves children, too!”

Pretending she hadn’t heard, Mazie scurried out to the van parked at the curb. She never bothered to lock the van because not even the most desperate thief would steal it. Its background color was the bright green of the Emerald City in Oz. It was custom painted to illustrate the Vittles Van theme: grapes gamboled across the hood, bananas boogied around the doors, and potatoes bearing a bizarre resemblance to Mr. Potato Heads baked on the roof. Muffins, cookies, and bagels with big-eyed, smiling faces lived next to foaming glasses of milk. The glamour veggies—corn on the cob, tomatoes, and sugar snap peas—starred at center stage, while the
gaseous vegetables—beans, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower—clustered at the van’s rear, just above the exhaust pipe.
THE VITTLES VAN
was written in bold, psychedelic letters on the doors, apparently by a sign painter who’d mixed cough medicine with vodka. The lunches themselves, packed in insulated cardboard boxes, were stored on shelves in the back of the van.