“And you do this how?” Min said. “Charming them?”
“What have you got against charming?” Cal said.
“It so rarely goes hand in hand with ‘honest,’ ” Min said.
Cal sighed. “People shut down because of fear. The first thing we do is analyze the students to find out who’s afraid and how they’re coping with it. Some of them freeze up, so we put them with Roger. Very gentle guy, Roger. He can reassure anybody into learning anything.”
“That’s a little creepy,” Min said, trying to picture Roger as one of those slick self-help gurus.
“You are a very suspicious woman,” Cal said. “Then some people hide their fear in wisecracks, disrupting class. Tony takes them. They joke around together until everybody’s relaxed.”
“And who do you get?” Min said.
“I get the angry ones,” Cal said. “The ones who are mad that they’re scared.”
“And you charm them out of it,” Min said.
“Well, I wouldn’t put it that way, but yes, I suppose that’s one interpretation.”
The angry ones. They walked on in silence, their footsteps echoing together.
Min looked up at him. “You must have felt right at home with me tonight.”
“Nope,” Cal said. “You’re not mad because you’re scared. I doubt that much scares you. You’re mad because somebody was lousy to you. And there’s not enough charm in the world to get you out of that until you’ve resolved the deeper issue.”
“And yet you kept on trying,” Min said.
“No, I didn’t,” Cal said. “Once you’d told me you’d been dumped, I backed off.”
Min thought about it. “I guess you did. Pretty much.”
“Now aren’t you sorry you were such a grump all night?” Cal said.
“No,” Min said. “Because you were pouring on the charm before that, which means you were trying to get something from me, God knows what—” Sex to win a bet, you beast. “—and you deserved to be called on that.”
A few steps later Cal said, “Fair enough.”
Min smiled to herself in the darkness and thought, Well, he does have an honest bone in his body. Too bad it’s just one. They walked on in silence until they reached the steps to her house. “This is it. Thank you very much—”
“Where?” Cal said, looking around. “I don’t see a house.”
“Up there,” Min said, pointing up the hill. “The steps are right there. So we can—”
Cal peered up the hill into the darkness. “Christ, woman, that looks like Everest. How many steps are there?”
“Thirty-two,” Min said, “and another twenty-six after that to get up to my apartment in the attic.” She held out her hand. “So we’ll say goodnight here. Thank you for the walk home. Best of luck in the future.”
He ignored her to look up the hill again. “Nope. I’m not leaving you to climb up there in the dark.”
“It’s okay,” Min said. “Seventy-eight percent of women who are attacked are attacked by men they know.”
“Is that another shot at me?” Cal said.
“No. I don’t know any men who would climb thirty-two steps to attack me, so I’m safe. You can go home with a clear conscience.”
“No,” he said patiently. “I can’t. Get moving. I’ll be right behind you.”
Behind her? Thirty-two steps with him looking at her butt? “No, you won’t.”
“Look, it’s late, I’m tired, can we just—”
“It’ll be a cold day in hell when you follow me up those steps. You want to go up, you go first.”
“Why?” he said, mystified.
“You’re not looking at my rear end all the way up that hill.”
He shook his head. “You know, Dobbs, you look like a sane person, and then you open your mouth—”
“Start climbing or go home,” Min said.
Cal sighed and took the first step. “Wait a minute. Now you’ll be looking at my butt all the way up the steps.”
“Yes, but you probably have a great butt,” Min said. “It’s an entirely different dynamic.”
“I can’t even see yours,” Cal said. “It’s dark and your jacket is too long.”
“Climb or leave,” Min said, and Cal started up the steps.
When they got to the top, he hesitated, and she saw the mid-century stone and stucco house through his eyes, dark and shabby and overgrown with climbing rosebushes that were so ancient they’d degenerated into thornbushes. “It’s nice,” she said, on the defensive.
“It’s probably great in the daytime,” he said, politely.
“Right.” Min pushed past him to climb the stone steps to the front porch. She unlocked the door. “There, see? You can go now.”
“This is not your door,” he said. “You said you live twenty-six steps up.”
“Fine, climb all the way to the attic.” She waved him in front of her into the square hall of the house. With him there, the faded blue wallpaper and dull oak woodwork looked shabby instead of comfortable, and that irritated her. “Up,” she said, pointing to the narrow stairway along one wall, looking even narrower now that he was at the bottom with what looked like several yards of shoulder blocking her way, and he climbed two more flights of stairs to the narrow landing with her following.
He had a great butt.
And that’s all that’s nice about him, Min told herself. Be sensible, keep your head here. You’re never going to see him again.
“Well, at least you know anybody who walks you home twice is serious about you,” he said, as he reached the top.
He turned as he said it, and Min, still two steps down scoping out his rear end, walked into his elbow and clipped herself hard over the eye, knocking herself enough off balance that she tripped back, grabbed the railing, and sat down on the step.
“Oh, Christ,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He bent over her and she warded him off.
“No, no,” she said. “My fault. Following too close.” Ouch, she thought, gingerly feeling the place he’d smacked her. That’s what you get for being shallow and objectifying the beast.
“Just let me see it,” he said, trying to look into her eyes. He put his hand gently on the side of her face to tip her chin up.
“No.” She brushed his hand away as her skin started to tingle. “I’m fine. Aside from being part of the seventy-eight percent of women who are attacked by—”
“Oh, cut me a break,” he said, straightening. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” She stood up again and detoured around him to unlock her door. “You can go now.”
“Right.” He picked up her hand and shook it once. “Great to meet you, Dobbs. Sorry about the elbow to the head. Have a nice life.”
“Oh, I’m going to,” Min said. “I’m giving up men and getting a cat.” She slipped inside and shut the door in his face before he could say anything else. Have a nice life. Who is he kidding?
She turned on her grandmother’s china lamp by the door, and her living room sprang into shabby but comforting view. The light on her machine was blinking, and she went over and pressed the button, and then rubbed her temple while she listened.
“Min,” her sister’s voice said. “Just wanted to make sure you didn’t forget the fitting tomorrow. It’ll be nice to see you.” Diana sounded a little woebegone, which was not like her, and Min replayed the message to hear her again. Something was wrong.
“The Dobbs girls cannot win,” she said, and thought about Calvin Morrisey. She went over to her battered mantel and looked over the snow globes lined up there into the tarnished mirror that had once hung in her grandmother’s hall. A plain round face, plain brown hair, that’s what Cal Morrisey had looked at all night. And now it had a nice bruise. She sighed and picked up the snow globe Bonnie had given her for Christmas, Cinderella and her prince on the steps of their blue castle, doves flying overhead. Cal Morrisey would look right at home on those steps. She, on the other hand, would be asked to try the servants’
entrance. “Just not the fairy tale type,” she said and put the globe down to go turn on her stereo, hitting the up button until Elvis started to sing “The Devil in Disguise.”
“And let’s not forget that’s what Calvin Morrisey is, Dobbs,” she told herself, and went to put arnica on her bruise and take a hot bath to wash the memory of the evening away. At least the part with David in it. There were some moments after David that weren’t entirely horrible.
But she definitely wasn’t going to see Calvin Morrisey again.
When Cal got to work the next morning, the sun was shining through the tall windows in the loft office, the smell of coffee permeated the room, Roger waved to him from his desk by the window, and Elvis Costello was singing “The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes” on the CD player. All right, Cal thought. He dropped a folder on the frosted glass desktop, poured himself a cup of coffee, and pulled out his Aeron chair, ready to make the world a better place for people trapped in business training seminars.
Tony came through the door and slapped him on the back. “Nice going last night. Tell me you won.”
“What are you talking about?” Cal said.
“The bet with David,” Tony said. “The one about the gray-checked suit. Tell me you won it.”
“Sure.” Cal dropped into his desk chair. “You saw me leave with her.”
“You’re right, you’re right, I should have had faith. You want to tell David or should I?”
“Tell him what?” Cal turned on his Mac and hit the GET MESSAGE button for his e-mail.
“That you had sex with the suit,” Tony said.
“What?” Cal said, squinting at the screen while Elvis sang backup to his morning. “Of course I didn’t.”
“Oh.” Tony nodded. “Well, you’ve still got a month.”
“Tony,” Cal said as the list of messages showed up in the window. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m positive it’s wasting my time.”
“David bet you that you could get the suit into bed in a month,” Tony was saying with obvious patience. “I could use the money, too, so if you’d—”
“No,” Cal said. “I did not make that bet.”
“David thinks you made the bet,” Tony said.
“No, he doesn’t,” Cal said. “Now that he’s sober he does not think that he bet me ten thousand dollars I could get a strange woman into bed. Now could we get some work done? There’s money in it for you. They pay us to do this stuff.”
He slid the folder on his desk across to Tony, who picked it up and leafed through it. “Piece of cake,” he said, and began to move away. “Oh, just so you know, Cynthie left with David last night.”
“Good for them.” Cal turned back to his e-mail.
“This doesn’t bother you?” Tony said.
“Why are you harassing me this morning?” Cal said, putting an edge on his voice.
“I just want to make sure you’re not going back to her,” Tony said. “My future is on the line here.”
“How?” Cal said.
“Well, you’ll get married first,” Tony said, coming back to sit on the corner of Cal’s desk. “You always do everything first. And then Roger will get married and you’ll both move to the suburbs. And Roger is going to marry somebody as uptight as he is, which means I’ll have to live with you, and since Cynthie never did like me, she’d be a problem to convince on that.”
“So would I,” Cal said. “Get off my desk.”
“It wouldn’t be with you, not in the house,” Tony said. “I figure a nice apartment over the garage. It’d be convenient for you. You could come over and watch the game and get drunk and not have to drive home. And I could baby-sit the kids when you and the wife wanted to go out.”
“First,” Cal said, “I’m not getting married, so forget the wife. Second, if I was insane enough to get married, I wouldn’t have kids. Third, if I was insane enough to get married and have kids, it would be a cold day in hell I’d let you baby-sit.”
“Well, we’ll both have matured by then,” Tony said. “I wouldn’t let me baby-sit now, either.”
“I’m getting married first,” Roger said.
They both turned to him, and he smiled back, big, blond, and placid in the sunlight from the big loft windows.
“I’m going to marry Bonnie,” Roger said.
Cal frowned at him. “Who’s Bonnie?”
“The mini-blonde he met last night,” Tony said, disgust in his voice.
“Her name is Bonnie,” Roger said, his voice like ice, and both Cal and Tony straightened.
“He’s serious,” Cal said to Tony. “What happened?”
“The redhead wanted me,” Tony said. “So I went over. And Roger followed and hooked up with the mini . . . with Bonnie. And sometime between then and now he lost his mind.” He shook his head at Roger. “This is a woman you’ve known less than twelve hours. It took you a year to pick out a couch, but you’re seriously—”
“Yes,” Roger said. “She’s the one.”
“Maybe,” Cal said, thinking, The hell she is. “You didn’t tell her that, though. Right?”
“No,” Roger said. “I thought it was too soon.”
“You think?” Tony said. “Jesus.”
“I’m going to marry her,” Roger said, “so stop yelling and get used to it. She’s perfect.”
“No woman is perfect,” Tony said. “Which is why we must keep looking. You going to see her tonight?”
“No,” Roger said. “They have some Thursday night thing they do every other week. Bonnie called it their ‘If Dinner.’ ”
“They?” Tony said.
Roger nodded. “Bonnie, Liza, and Min.”
“Who’s Min?” Tony said, lost again.
“The one I’m not going to sleep with,” Cal said. If Bonnie was anything like Min, Roger was in big trouble.
“You seeing Bonnie on Friday?” Tony said to Roger, sticking to the basics.
Roger nodded. “She said they’ll be at The Long Shot. It’s not their regular hangout, but she said she’d look for me there. And she’s coming to the game Saturday. And we might go to dinner Saturday night.”
“She’s coming to watch you coach a kid’s baseball game?” Cal said. “She must love you a lot.”
“Not yet,” Roger said. “But she will.”
“Friday,” Tony said, ignoring them. “That’s good. I can hit on Liza, and Cal can move on the suit.”
“No,” Cal said.
Roger looked sympathetic. “What happened?”
Cal went back to his computer. “She’s a conservative, anti-gambling actuary who spent dinner bitching at me. Then I took her home, climbed fifty-eight steps to her apartment to make sure she didn’t get mugged, and elbowed her in the eye. It was the worst date of my life, and I’m sure it was in her bottom five.”
“You hit her?” Tony said.
“By accident,” Cal said. “I’d send flowers to apologize, but she’s anti-charm, too. It’s over. Move on.”
“So you’re going to give up on another one,” Tony said, shaking his head.
Cal looked up at him, annoyed. “Now tell me about your deep and lasting relationships.”
“Yes, but that’s me,” Tony said. “I’m shallow.”
“Bonnie lives on the first floor of that house,” Roger said, as if they hadn’t spoken, “so I just had to make the first thirty-two steps. And then she felt bad for me, so she invited me in for coffee. I can get used to the steps.”
“Does that mean Liza lives on the second floor?” Tony said.
“No, Liza lives over on Pennington,” Roger said. “She moves every year to a new place, about the time she changes jobs. Bonnie says Liza likes change.”
Cal looked at Tony. “You didn’t walk her home?”
“She ditched me while I was in the john,” Tony said. “I think she’s playing hard to get.”
“Sounds like Min,” Cal said, going back to the computer. “Except I don’t think she’s playing.”<
br />
“Bonnie and I walked Liza home,” Roger said. “It was nice. It gave me more time with Bonnie.”
“Jesus, man, pull yourself together,” Tony said.
“You’re serious about this?” Cal said, turning back to Roger.
“Yes.”
Cal saw determination on his face. “Congratulations,” he said, deciding to check Bonnie out. “Wait a month to propose. You don’t want to scare her.”
“That’s what I thought,” Roger said.
“You’re both nuts,” Tony said.
“We’re all going to be unemployed if we don’t get to work,” Cal said. “Start with the Batchelder refresher.”
“Bonnie says Min is great,” Roger said. “She looked nice.”
“Min is not nice,” Cal said. “Min is mad at the world and taking it out on whatever guy is standing next to her. Now about the Batchelder refresher—”
“Are you sure David knows there’s no bet?” Tony said.
“Positive,” Cal said. “I’m never seeing that woman again. Now about the Batchelder refresher . . .”
At half past four that afternoon, Min walked into the ivory moiré–draped fitting room of the city’s best bridal emporium, well aware she was late and not caring much. Her mother was probably so absorbed in harassing Diana and the fitter that—
“You’re late,” Nanette Dobbs said. “The appointment was for four.”
“I work.” Min crossed the thick gold carpet and detoured around the dark-haired bundle of exasperation that had given birth to her, dropping her jacket on an ivory-upholstered chair. “That means the insurance company gets first dibs on my time. If you want me here on the dot, schedule this for after work.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Nanette said. “Your dress is in the second dressing room. The fitter is with Diana and the other girls. Give me your blouse, you’ll just drop it on the floor in there.” She held out one imperious, French-manicured hand, and Min sighed and took off her blouse.
“Oh, Min,” her mother said, her voice heavy with unsurprised contempt. “Wherever did you get that bra?”
Min looked down at her underwear. Plain cotton, but perfectly respectable. “I have no idea. Why?”
“White cotton,” Nanette said. “Honestly, Min, plain cotton is like plain vanilla—”