In Stereo Where Available Page 12

  He wiggled his arm out from under my head and turned onto his side. “You want to stay here tonight?”

  I paused. “Again?”

  “Yeah. I mean, we’re comfortable, it’s late. Why bother getting out of bed?”

  “I don’t know. I already fed all the animals. I guess there’s no reason why not.”

  “I’ll make you chocolate-chip pancakes in the morning.”

  “Oh, that’s tempting…I don’t have a toothbrush here, though. Or any clean clothes.”

  “Big deal. Come on, I’ve got oranges in the vegetable bin. Valencias. I’ll make orange juice, too.”

  “You really want me to stay, don’t you?”

  “I really want you to stay.”

  I kissed him on the mouth and arranged the pillow more comfortably beneath my head. “Okay.”

  On Saturday morning I awoke to my cell phone cheerfully tinkling the notes of “Für Elise” from somewhere on the vast endless desert of the bedroom floor. I fumbled around at the foot of the bed until my fingernails tapped against it, buried under Jerry’s pants.

  “Who’s calling at nine in the morning on a Saturday?” he groaned.

  “Probably Lauren.” I picked up the phone and hit the right-side button with my eyes closed. “Hello?”

  “Phoebe, it’s me. We need to talk.”

  It was Bill. I sat bolt upright in the bed. Jerry lifted his head from the pillow, looking at me curiously.

  “Um,” I said, panicking.

  “Look, I’ve been thinking. Maybe I was wrong. We really ought to get together and talk this out. You want to meet up for coffee?”

  “Not today,” I said breathlessly. Jerry was still giving me a funny look, his fingers moving ticklishly across my back. I could hang up, but then it would be obvious. Besides, I’d never hung up on anyone in my whole life. That damned cell phone. Who was it that ever decided cell phones were such a brilliant idea? I was going to hunt them down and give them a piece of my mind. All mine did was produce men at the wrong moments, like genies popping out of a lamp I kept accidentally brushing up against.

  “What, you don’t even have an hour? Come on, Fee. An hour, that’s all I want. I’ll meet you at the Starbucks right around the corner from your place. Any time you want. What do you say?”

  “No. No, I’m really busy.”

  “Who is it?” Jerry finally asked.

  “Is that a guy?” asked Bill urgently. “Did I just hear a guy? At nine in the friggin’ morning on a Saturday?”

  “I really can’t talk right now,” I said.

  “Damn it, Phoebe! So, is that the deal? You won’t sleep with me, but you’ll sleep with him?”

  “No, that’s not it. I mean—no.”

  “No, what? Do I not hear some guy over there right now? I’m just hallucinating some guy in your bed at nine in the frig-gin’ morning? Some little angel you are.”

  “I’m not sleeping with him,” I hissed into the phone. That got Jerry’s attention. He sat up beside me and gave me a you’d-better-explain-yourself kind of look.

  “What is it, then? A nice late-November tennis date? Fine, forget it, if you’re so busy. Give him my congratulations for getting that friggin’ padlock off your underwear. Have a nice life.” There was a little staticky thud as he hung up his phone. I sighed and let myself flop backward onto the bed.

  Jerry was still looking at me with a gravely patient expression, the way my father did when he sat me and Madison down and waited for one of us to ‘fess up about who recorded Beverly Hills 90210 over his Goldeneye videotape.

  “May I ask?” he said.

  “That was a guy I used to go out with,” I explained.

  “Really.”

  I put my arm over my forehead, my phone still in my hand. “He just wanted to get together and talk. You heard me. I said no.”

  “Would you have said no if I wasn’t here?”

  “Yes. I’m not interested in him anymore.”

  Jerry nodded. “Why’d you tell him you’re not sleeping with me?”

  “He was accusing me of it and it slipped. Sorry.”

  “Yeah.” Jerry stood up and pulled on his boxer shorts.

  I took my arm off my forehead. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to take a shower.”

  “Are you mad?” I reached for a T-shirt from the floor and tugged it over my head.

  “I’m not very happy.”

  “Why not?”

  He was already in the bathroom. I jumped out of bed and followed him. Outside the bedroom door I could hear Betsy and Marco playing in the living room, Jerry’s sister talking on the phone. Jerry started to close the door behind him, and I put my hand on it to stop him. He looked over his shoulder at me, annoyed.

  “Do you mind?” he asked.

  “Can we talk about this?”

  “I’d sort of like to take a leak right now.”

  “Will you come back out afterward?”

  “Can I take a shower first?”

  “Do you have to?”

  His eyes narrowed angrily, and I stepped back to let him close the door. A minute later he opened it back up and stood in the bathroom doorway, one arm up against the door frame. I hadn’t really seen his body in the light before. He was nice-looking, a little squishy around the middle, but not too much. He had about as much muscle tone as you’d expect an English teacher to have, but his was an average build, not too skinny, not too thick. The hair on his head was a pale light brown, but on his chest and stomach it was a regular, darker brown, thicker than I had expected. I still wasn’t very familiar with the way men looked under their clothes, their furry solid bodies, their heaviness, how intimidating they were when they got out of their shorts. All that inviting radiant warmth and surprisingly soft skin and matter-of-fact arousal. Nothing hidden, nothing subtle. I didn’t think I would ever get used to it. And the way he was looking at me, maybe I wouldn’t have to.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “I just don’t see why you have to be spreading it around among your ex-boyfriends that we aren’t sleeping together. It’s none of their business. It’s nobody’s business but ours.”

  “I’m sorry. I mean, you’re right. He just got all mad, and I didn’t want him thinking I was cheap.”

  “What do you care what he thinks? Anyway, even if we were, you think that would automatically make you cheap? Is that what you’re thinking?”

  “No. Just—what he was assuming was wrong. That bothered me, and so I—”

  “It bothers you that people might think you’re sleeping with me?”

  “Jerry. No.” I folded my arms more tightly across my chest. “Are you jealous? Is that it?”

  “No, I’m not jealous. I’m annoyed to have my personal life turned into a game of Telephone. If you don’t want to make love, that’s fine. But I wish you wouldn’t make a general announcement about it.” He turned his back to me and pushed the shower door open to reach the tap. There was a squeal of the pipes and then the hiss of the water coming on, trickling down against the tile.

  “Jeez, I said I was sorry, didn’t I? It’s not like it reflects badly on you or anything. I mean, Bill and I never even—”

  Jerry turned around quickly and held one finger up between us, right in front of my nose. “Stop. I don’t want to know.”

  “Fine.”

  He gave me a long cold glare and closed the bathroom door. When I heard the shower door slide closed, I put my clothes on quickly, the bare branches in the Ansel Adams print above the bed a grayish blur, my fingers clumsy as I buttoned my shirt. I slipped past his sister with barely a wave and stepped out into the cold ash-scented November air, glancing for a moment at the foggy upstairs window as I backed out of the driveway, heading home.

  CHAPTER TEN

  By the time Lauren got out of bed, it was one in the afternoon and I was curled up on my side on the cat-hair-covered living-room sofa, watching an old episode of Saved by the Bell.

>   “You look like crap,” said Lauren.

  I glanced over at her. She was standing next to the breakfast bar in her satin shortie pajamas, squinting, her hair sticking out as though she’d been rubbing it with a balloon.

  “You’re one to talk,” I told her.

  “What happened?” She plopped down in the armchair beside me. “Mr. Wonderful turn out to be Mr. Sub-standard?”

  “We had an argument.”

  “Over what? Who loves who more?”

  “No. Stop it.” I pushed the side of my thumb along my nose. “Bill called me while I was over there. It sort of went downhill from there.”

  “I bet. You know, I told you you’ve been spending way too much time with that guy. Of course he’s going to start thinking he owns you. You ought to take a break.”

  “I don’t want to take a break. I like Jerry. I like him a lot.”

  She rolled her eyes and got up out of the chair, heading for the kitchen. “I didn’t say you’re not allowed to like him. I’m just saying that there’s a difference between having a connection with somebody and actually acting like you’re Siamese twins. See, this is what happens when an INFP hooks up with an INFJ. I told you it was a bad idea.”

  “So what are you suggesting?”

  “Just breathe for a few minutes. Take some time to do something fun without the guy. Come on, I’ll take you out tonight. We’ll drive up to Baltimore.”

  “Baltimore?”

  “Yeah.” She poured herself a cup of coffee into her Prozac mug. “Girls’ night out. I know a really fun place.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Oh, come on, Fee. I know you’re not one of those girls who just sits around waiting for her man to call and give her a reason to live. I like Jerry, okay? But you two NF’s are sucking each other dry. You need some balance in your life. That’s where an SJ like me comes in.”

  I sighed. “You and your little personality equations annoy the heck out of me sometimes.”

  She picked up her mug and came toward me, grinning, sitting down on the coffee table right between me and the TV. “That’s so Piscean of you.”

  In the car Lauren rolled down the windows, opened the sunroof, and cranked up the music until it competed with the throbbing bass of the Ford Impalas and tricked-out Grand Ams that pulled up alongside us as we crept through Baltimore. A nineteen-ish guy with spiky blond highlights and round purple-lensed sunglasses leaned out his passenger-side window and shouted at Lauren, “Your music sucks!”

  “Kiss my ass, baby,” Lauren shouted back, grinning. She reached up through the sunroof and tapped the ash off her cigarette.

  “I am never going out with you again,” I informed her.

  “Oh, relax. You’ve been out with me before.”

  “I’ve been out to Starbucks with you before. That’s not exactly the same thing.”

  She leaned over and adjusted the vents. The top edges of her bra were sticking out of her shirt, her boobs jiggling. “You’ll like this place. It’s got a good vibe. Really laid back.”

  “You know, ‘laid back’ is not really an expression I’ve ever associated with you.”

  “I’m a goal-oriented person, that’s all. It doesn’t mean I don’t know how to have fun. Ask Prabath. He’s supposed to be there tonight.”

  “I thought you said this was a girls’ night out.”

  “It is. What’s more fun for girls than a couple of boys?” She looked at me with delicately raised eyebrows. “Boys being the operative term. I’m not talking about your medium-starch, NPR-listening squeeze here. I’m talking about guys like Prabath. He’d be a great catch if he were about ten years older mentally.”

  “Is that why you don’t go out with him?”

  “More or less. He’s hot, he makes decent money, he remembers your birthday, he’s respectful. The only problem with him is he still watches Animaniacs and decorates his living room with Star Wars figures in the packages.” She pulled up behind a short line of cars waiting to enter a parking lot. The guy behind us honked angrily.

  “So, who’s the other guy who’s going to be there? You said a couple of boys, right?”

  Lauren smiled. “Nobody you know yet.”

  “Oh, jeez. You’re trying to set me up, aren’t you? Is this the guy you said looks like Nicolas Cage?”

  “Look, I’m doing you a favor, that’s all. There’s no law that says you can’t meet people.”

  “Lauren, I’m going out with Jerry. Just because he’s mad at me doesn’t mean I can run off and start dating other people.” I looked at her uncertainly. “Does it?”

  “Nobody said anything about dating. All I said was meet.” She stuck her arm out the window and hit the parking-card button. “Here we are. You ready to walk a couple blocks in those heels?”

  The place was called Club Cabo, and just as I walked in past the bar, a woman in a skintight nurse’s outfit and pigtails walked by me with a caddy full of pink-filled feeding syringes.

  “Explain that to me?” I asked.

  “Oh, that’s just one of those novelty drink things. You know, you give her five bucks, she gives you a ‘shot.’ Get it?” Lauren stood on her tiptoes and peeked around. “You see Prabath anywhere?”

  “Yeah, he’s behind the girl in the green bikini.”

  “Oh, okay. Yeah, there he is.” She took my hand and I followed her through the crowd to where Prabath was grinning and waving. He was pretty cute. He had curly black hair and the deepest dimples I’d ever seen on a guy. I hung back behind Lauren and waved timidly.

  “I was wondering where you girls were,” he said. He pulled a chair out from the table beside him and sat down next to some guy in a button-down short-sleeved shirt with a computer-programmer haircut.

  “We’re fashionably late. You wouldn’t believe what it takes to get Phoebe ready for a night out.” She sat down and plunked her purse on the table.

  I sat beside her. “I was ready before you were,” I reminded her.

  She smiled at me and patted my arm. Her perfume circled around me like a tourniquet. “Phoebe, this is Brad.”

  “Hi, Phoebe,” said the guy sitting across from me. Saying that he looked like Nicolas Cage was kind of like saying I looked like Madison. In everything but height he reminded me very much of my minister stepbrother. Even his handshake was like Pete’s, a slow, reassuring squeeze that lasted a split second longer than it should have. I glanced over at Lauren, who played with one of her dangly earrings and threw me an innocent smile.

  While Lauren and Prabath picked up our drinks from the bar, Brad asked me questions. I could see why Lauren had picked him out for me; he was charming and funny, if not exactly attractive, and he listened attentively to everything I said to him. He did Meaningful Work. He went to church once in a while. He didn’t smoke. After about ten minutes back at the table, Lauren squeezed my fingers and excused us to the ladies’ room.

  “So what do you think?” she asked urgently. We were stuck in a corner beside a trash can overflowing with paper towels, while a pack of girls in black stockings and Lycra half shirts crowded around the mirror in a cloud of hairspray and Tommy Girl cologne.

  “He’s really nice. I’m pretty impressed with you, actually. There’s practically nothing I don’t like about him.”

  Her face bobbed back and forth searchingly. “Practically nothing?”

  “Yeah. I mean, technically, he’s got just about everything I’m looking for in a guy.”

  “Except what?”

  I shrugged and folded my arms against my chest. “Except he’s not Jerry.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. Phoebe, you’re not really dating Jerry. Jerry’s like a match, okay? It’s got a little tiny bit of chemicals on it, and when you strike it, it flares up like crazy, and then whoosh, it’s gone. Brad’s like a…like a campfire. He’s got the logs and the kindling and the little bit of newspaper crumpled up inside. He’s got everything you need, arranged, like, geometrically.”

  “No
offense, Laur, but I think Jerry would tell you that’s kind of a dumb analogy.”

  She pressed her lips together and shook her hands at me. “Phoebe. You can’t just take two random people from the dating pool and throw them in a room together and call it a relationship. Jerry’s a nice guy, okay? But you two have nothing in common except that you’re both kind of desperate. Give Brad a chance. He’s a sweet guy, and he’s funny, and he really cares about his job.”

  “Yeah, I noticed all that. He kind of reminds me of Jerry.”

  “You see? You’re set. If you want some time alone, just let me know, all right? Prabath and I can go off somewhere for a while. It’s not a problem.”

  “Thanks. I’ll let you know.”

  We pushed our way back down the hall, through a crowd of shrieking girls who reminded me of Madison’s high-school friends. Dance music throbbed at migraine-inducing levels, and the stage lights cast everyone on the dance floor in a fluorescent pink glow. I followed Lauren through the crowd toward Brad and Prabath.

  “Phoebe!”

  I spun my head around at the sound of my name. It seemed as though my brain was a moment behind the rest of me, and I swayed slightly on my feet. “Whoa,” I said out loud.

  “Phoebe. Hey, over here.”

  I blinked, trying to make a familiar face appear in the puzzle of hot-pink people. Finally one came into focus—a smiling guy with gel-spiked brown hair and a shirt with a Chinese dragon on the front.

  “Carter?” I asked incredulously. “What are you doing here?”

  He shrugged and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I’m here with a bunch of friends.”

  “Yeah, me, too. Wow.” He looked adorable. The spiky hair and absence of corduroy made all the difference in the world. “I thought you were out of town.”

  “I’ve been back and forth. The Danforths keep changing their minds about which shows they want her to be in. I never know where I’m going to be until a couple days before. Hey, you look great.”

  I grinned. “Thanks. So do you. I’m not used to seeing you in…uh…”

  “Cool clothes,” he finished, and I blushed. He jerked his thumb to the side, indicating a guy at a table a few feet away. “They’re his. I’m supposed to be making a good impression. They’re trying to set me up.”