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  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.

  Dear Karen,

  It was great to talk to you earlier. I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing you next weekend. I thought I ought to tell you a little more about me, since I know the conference was pretty crazy and I don’t remember what I already told you.

  I’m 33, and I teach English at Kensington High. I got my B.S. from Towson and my M.S. from Georgetown. In my free time (ha) I do a lot of reading, mostly new fiction—I’m a big fan of Don DeLillo—and I really like to cook. Last summer I took a class in Vietnamese cooking over at the Culinary Institute, and I’m great with knives now—don’t let that scare you. Right now I’ve got my sister and her kids living with me, and they’ve kind of taken over, so I don’t get a chance to do much else. Usually on the weekends I’m taking the kids places so she gets a break. Well, that’s my life, I guess. Not all that exciting, but some would say that’s a good thing. Talk to you soon.

  Jerry

  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.”

  “How did Jerry take the news?”

  It was Wednesday evening, and Lauren was standing beside the oven with her arms folded, waiting for her steak to finish broiling. For a woman, Lauren was a seriously dedicated carnivore. Rarely did she eat a meal that didn’t involve red meat, whether it was a sandwich or Chinese take-out or an ordinary middle-of-the-week dinner. It didn’t have anything to do with the Atkins diet or anemia or anything like that. That’s just what she liked to eat.

  “I didn’t tell him,” I admitted.

  “You didn’t?” Her eyebrows shot up. “Didn’t you say he was going to call you today?”

  “He did, actually. We’ve got a date on Saturday.”

  “Oh, no. Tell me you’re joking.”

  “No joke. I’m kind of curious to meet him. He sounds like a nice guy.”

  She gave me a look of complete dismay. “He thinks you’re another woman,” she reminded me slowly.

  “I know. I’ll straighten it out when I see him. He seems to like me, after all. I’m just thinking of it as kind of a weird blind date.”

  “Phoebe! Are you out of your mind?” She stared at me, then suddenly remembered her steak and opened up the oven, smoke pouring out the top of it. She put on an oven mitt and carefully lifted the cookie sheet, trying not to spill meat juice all over herself. “It’s not you he likes, remember? It’s the woman he met at the teachers’ conference. You can’t just jump in as her substitute. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Well, I’m a teacher, too. We’re even both from Takoma Park, Karen and I. What are the odds, huh? Maybe it’s fate.”

  “It’s not fate. It’s a wrong number. Sheesh, Phoebe. Why don’t you start taking those collect calls we get from the state prison? Or hitting on the fund-raising guys who call us at dinnertime?” She stabbed her steak with a fork and shook it onto a plate, a bit of the juice splattering against her thumb. “Ouch.”

  “Maybe I will. Maybe it’s like sending someone else to the salad bar for you. They’ll come back with something you wouldn’t have picked on your own, but it turns out to be pretty good after all.”

  “You’re nuts. You just need to keep doing the K
ismet thing a little longer.”

  “I am. I’ve also got a date with another guy from the Web site. This is the last one, though. I mean it. I’ve been out with Saint Nick and the Grim Reaper. I think I’ve given it a fair shot already.”

  She sighed. “You just have to be selective, okay? I Google every one of my matches before I set up a date, did you know that?”

  “That sounds kind of kinky.”

  She smirked at me. “I type their name into a search engine. You’d be amazed what you can find out. I found one guy’s update on his high-school class Web site talking about his kids.” She gave me a knowing look and pointed her fork at me. “Think about that.”

  I shrugged. “You’re just as single as I am.”

  Lauren did a little loosening-up-for-a-fight dance, her hips wiggling, searching through the spice cabinet for the steak sauce. “Fine, see if I care,” she retorted. “He’s your stalker.”

  I pulled into the parking lot slowly, mentally sorting through the people standing around the entrance to the restaurant. Two heavyset, permed women laughing with a sheepishly smiling teenage boy in dress clothes; a twenty-something guy in low-slung trousers and an overly long belt impatiently smoking a cigarette; and then, standing with his arms behind him and leaning against the wall, a short-haired middle-aged man in pleated khakis and a navy blue sweater. That had to be him. I parked my car and made my way cautiously toward where he was standing.

  He wasn’t bad looking: fairly tall, clean-shaven, the features of his shy-looking face ordinary but balanced. Slightly paunchy at the front of his sweater. His hair was fine and fawn-colored, a bit of a red tinge to it, receding somewhat into a widow’s peak. He was average, a solid five out of ten. That was okay; so was I. He glanced at me and then away, still looking for Karen. I decided I liked his build, nice and solid across the chest, with good strong shoulders.

  “Jerry?”

  He looked at me perplexedly. “Ah, yes?”

  I put my hand out. “My name’s Phoebe.”

  He shook my hand politely, looking utterly lost. His handshake was okay, a little light, but passable. “Look, there’s something I need to tell you, and I’m not quite sure how.”

  Jerry stood up a little taller; I could tell he was bracing himself for rejection. In a somber voice he said, “All right.”

  “This is going to sound crazy,” I warned him, “but apparently, um, the Karen you met gave you my phone number instead of hers, and I’m the one you’ve been talking to all this time. I’m really sorry. I tried to tell you, but I just felt really bad, and I didn’t know how to break it to you.”

  He gave me a long pausing look, as if he was either waiting for the punch line or hoping reality would come back into focus. “Say that again?”

  “The number you’ve been calling. The e-mail, too. They’re mine. I’m sorry, I really am, but I don’t have any idea who Karen is or how you can get in touch with her. I wanted to email you, but after you sent the poem I just couldn’t—”

  “You’re the one I sent the poem to?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not Karen. I mean, obviously. But I did like it. It was awfully sweet.”

  “But the person who e-mailed me back signed everything ‘Karen.’“

  “Yeah, that was me, though. Gosh, I’m really…I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t think it would get this far, I guess. I’m not very good at these things.”

  He looked at a point on the sidewalk for a minute, dumbfounded, trying to put this together. “So…then why did you say yes when I asked if you’d meet me here?”

  “Well, because I didn’t want to let you down, and anyway, I kind of wanted to meet you, to tell the truth.”

  “And you don’t even know Karen?”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea who she is. Apparently she and I come from the same town, but the only Karen I knew growing up lives in Wisconsin now. And I tried to think if there’s anyone I work with who would have been at that conference, but I can’t think of a single person.”

  “It was a local teachers’ conference.”

  “I know. I’m a teacher, too.”

  “You are?”

  “Yeah, I teach first grade at Meadowbrook Elementary.”

  He smiled. He had nice, even teeth. “Really? I’m a high-school teacher.”

  “Yeah, I know. You told me.”

  “Oh, yeah. I guess I did.”

  “So…anyway, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to think I stood you up. Or Karen did, or…well, whoever.” I put my hand out again. “It’s been nice meeting you.”

  He shook my hand again and then looked at his watch before he let go. “I’ve, uh…I’ve got a reservation for 6:30.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry…that you went to the trouble, I mean.”

  “No, I mean…are you hungry?”

  I laughed. “Actually, yeah.”

  “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Phoebe. Phoebe Kassner.”

  “Well, uh, Phoebe, if you’re not too busy, would you like to join me for dinner?”

  I grinned at him, my fingers curling nervously against the top of my leather purse. “Sure, that would be great.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Inside the restaurant it was dark and intimate, with highwalled booths and light fixtures obscured by clumps of colored glass bottles hanging low over the tables. Soft easy-listening music played as black-vested waiters walked back and forth with bottles of wine wrapped in white napkins. It was a lot nicer than I had expected.

  “So you teach English, right?” I asked him. He sat across the table from me, with the burner for the fondue pot warming up between us. Even if I hadn’t already known what he did for a living, I probably could have guessed. He radiated that quiet, intelligent, borderline socially inept high-school-English-teacher vibe. I could easily see a woman like the one he’d described in the poem giving a guy like him a fake phone number. It probably wasn’t the first time a girl had done that to him.

  “Yeah. I’ve been teaching for eleven years now. I started out teaching social studies. After a few years I begged them to move me to the English department.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Social studies is too stressful. All the students are liberal, and all their parents are conservative, or at least that’s what it feels like. If you cover a lot about culture, the kids love it, but their parents write you angry notes accusing you of dishing out liberal propaganda and complain their kids aren’t learning any geography. And if you cover geography or civics, the kids hate it and whine that you’re trying to brainwash them with patriotic propaganda and they don’t do their homework. It’s too much hassle.”

  “I could see that. Earlier this month my class did apple prints, you know—the seeds form a star when you cut it across the middle, and then you dip it in paint and print it—and one of the parents complained that I was trying to turn her daughter into a devil worshiper. Because of the pentagrams.”

  Jerry laughed, cute and young-sounding, a lilt of pleasant surprise to it. Right away I loved it, the sound of that laugh, and all of a sudden I knew that whatever else happened in the next hour or two, I liked Jerry Sullivan, and I wanted to hear everything he had to tell me. I liked him more in that split second of laughter than I’d ever liked Bill. Possibly more than I’d ever liked anyone.

  “I’ve gotten that, too,” he said. “One time I ended a unit on Asia by bringing in a whole bunch of Hindu festival stuff for a class party, and three of the parents went nuts. They called my principal and everything. It was annoying, because I’d felt like I’d finally gotten them to care about the culture, and I’d gone home that day feeling great. And then the next day I’m getting angry notes about pagan elephant gods, with Bible tracts stuffed into the envelopes. Teaching English is easier. It’s challenging, still, but at least no one accuses me of trying to start a Hindu cult in my classroom.”

  “You weren’t, were you?” I asked, grinning.

  He laughed again.
“No. I’m Presbyterian. If I started talking religion with the kids, they’d all fall asleep.”

  I nodded and reached for my water glass. “Speaking of boredom—you don’t get bored teaching the same books over and over?”

  “No. I like those books. Catcher in the Rye, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Native Son. They really make an impact on the kids, even if they don’t realize it right now. I get a lot out of teaching them.” The cheese in the fondue pot began simmering at the edges. Jerry speared a piece of bread with his fork and dipped it in. “You’ve got the hard job. First grade, right? That can’t be easy. I’ve got one four-year-old living with me, and she’s exhausting just by herself. I don’t think I could handle thirty of her.”

  “Well, they’re good kids. The hardest part is getting them to understand what I’m saying. Most of them speak Spanish at home.” I followed Jerry’s lead, poking through the bread basket with my fork in search of a crusty piece. “So why is there a four-year-old living with you, if I may ask?”

  “Oh, my sister and her husband are getting divorced, and he won’t give up the house, so she moved in with me. She’s also got a one-year-old, but I can deal with him. When he screams, there’s a reason for it. With the four-year-old, everything’s a drama. This morning she threw herself on the bed and cried because I wouldn’t let her wear her bathing suit and Hello Kitty shorts to the park. It’s fifty degrees out.”

  “You don’t have any of your own kids, do you?” I asked worriedly. Not that I would necessarily care. At twenty-nine, I was pretty resolved to the idea of being somebody’s stepmother.

  He shook his head. “No. No kids, never been married. I think I might have missed my window.”

  I cocked my head a little. “Why is that?”

  “I don’t know. Nagging suspicion. I was pretty immature for a long time. Then all of a sudden, I was mature, but I was thirty. At least, I think I’m mature. I guess I still have my moments.”

  “That’s true of everybody.”