by Reid, Penny
Elizabeth greeted us at the door and helped Vincent with the suitcases. She was all smiles and profanity.
When we unloaded the last box, Vincent surprised me by taking my hand and placing a kiss on my knuckles. His deep chocolate eyes gazed into mine, and he spoke with an air of knowing wisdom. “If I ever cheated on my wife, she’d have my balls cut off. If you don’t want to castrate this guy after what he’s done, then he’s not the one for you.” He nodded as though affirming the truth of his words and turned precipitously to the driver’s side door.
Then, like the end of a B-movie, he left us standing on the street watching the limo depart into the sunset.
Elizabeth told the story several times that night to our knitting group; it was her turn to host, so I helped her procure snacks and red wine. With each retelling, Vincent became younger, taller, more muscular, and had thicker hair; his Queens accent was replaced by a sultry Sicilian brogue; his black coat was removed leaving only a gauzy white shirt open to mid-chest.
The very last time she told it, he gazed longingly into my eyes and asked me to run away with him. I, of course, replied that he would be of no use to me castrated.
I didn’t mind that Elizabeth was so open with the ladies about my day. I thought of them as our knitting group even though I knew not one stitch about knitting. I felt a great deal closer to each of them than I did to my own sisters for two simple reasons: none of the ladies was a felon (to my knowledge), and I thoroughly enjoyed their company.
I loved how open and supportive and nonjudgmental they were. There is just something about women who spend hours and hours knitting a sweater with mind-blowingly expensive yarn, when they could just buy a sweater for a fraction of the price—not to mention the time saved doing so—that lends itself to acceptance and patience for the human condition.
“Who puts the condom wrapper back in their pocket? I mean, hola, Señor Dumb Ass!” Sandra, a feisty redhead with a mostly concealed Texan drawl, pursed her lips, her brows rising expectantly as she glanced around the room. She was a psychiatry resident at Chicago General and liked to refer to herself as Dr. Shrink.
“Exactly.” I felt slightly vindicated so I nodded, as did everyone else in the room.
“I think you’re better off without him.” Ashley didn’t lift her blue eyes from her scarf as she offered her thoughts; her long, straight brown hair was pulled into a clever twist. She was a nurse practitioner originally from Tennessee, and I loved listening to her accent. “I never trust a Jon without an h in his name. John should be spelled J-o-h-n, not J-o-n.”
Sandra pointed at Ashley and added, “And his last name: Holesome. It should be Assholesome or Un-holesome. He’s a turd.”
“I think we should ask Janie how she feels about the breakup.” Fiona’s pragmatic assessment was met with agreement. A mechanical engineer by training, a stay-at-home mom by choice, Fiona was really the leader of the group; she made everyone feel valued and protected. She owned a commanding presence even at a mere five feet tall. She looked like a fairy with her large, heavily lashed eyes set perfectly in her small, impish face topped by the practical pixie haircut she always wore. Both Elizabeth and I knew her from college; she was the Resident Advisor in our freshman year dorm, ever the mother hen.
I shrugged as all eyes turned to me. “I don’t know. I don’t really feel all that mad about it, just…annoyed.”
Marie peered at me over her half-knit sweater. “You seemed pretty shaken when I arrived.” I met her large blue eyes before she continued, “Between Jon and losing your job, I think you’re more upset than you want to admit.” Marie was a freelance writer and artist; I envied how her blonde curls always seemed to behave. Every time I saw her, she looked as if she’d just finished shooting a shampoo commercial.
I sighed. “It’s not that. I mean, yeah—I wish I hadn’t lost my job because now I have to find another one. But it’s not like I was really able to do what I wanted there. I went to school to become an architect, not to become a staff accountant at an architecture firm.”
“At least it was at a firm; jobs are scarce.” Kat, the most soft-spoken of the group, shook her head full of brown waves. I introduced Kat to Elizabeth when I discovered her passion for knitting. Kat also worked at my company—scratch that, ex-company—as an executive administrative assistant to two of the partners. “But they are going to miss you, Janie. You were, by far, the most competent of the business group.”
“Do they always give their terminated employees limos for the afternoon?” Ashley asked Kat with plain interest.
“Not that I’ve ever heard of. But then layoffs have always happened in groups of five or more.” Kat wrinkled her nose. “It does seem extremely strange. I’ll look into it.”
I wondered at the limo as well. The whole day bordered on ridiculous, so, in comparison, the limo and Vincent seemed like a minor bump on my roller coaster of anomalies.
“Do you have any idea why they did it—why they let her go?” Sandra reached for her red wine, directing her question to both Kat and me.
“No, but I’ll try to find out what I can.” Kat lifted her brows as she slid a gaze laced with suspicion in my direction. “Although, I heard that you were escorted out by one of the security guards from downstairs. Is that true?”
I nodded, feeling uncomfortable and studied my wineglass with pointed interest.
“Wait, what? Security?” Elizabeth sat forward and placed a hand on my arm. “Who was it?”
I took a swallow of the wine and lifted my shoulders in a noncommittal shrug. “Uh, just one of the guards.”
The room was quiet as I tried to sink farther into the couch. Elizabeth tossed her knitting to the side and started bouncing up and down with excitement. “Oh…my…God; it was him, wasn’t it? It was HIM!” Her blonde ponytail wagged back and forth.
“Who is him?” Sandra stopped knitting and crossed her arms over her chest as she looked from Elizabeth to me to Kat, her large green eyes darting around the room like a Ping-Pong ball.
Elizabeth stood up abruptly and ran to her kitchen. “Wait! I have a picture!”
My eyes widened as I watched her go. I called after her, “What do you mean you have a picture?”
All knitting ceased abruptly. The last time they all stopped knitting mid-row was when a good-looking pizza guy arrived, and they all wanted to give him the tip. This time, everyone started talking at once, but their chatter trailed off when Elizabeth reentered the room with her phone and flopped down on the sofa next to me.
“I Kinneared him a couple times,” Elizabeth said as she thumbed through photos on her phone. She looked up at our silent, blank faces and lifted a single brow. “You know, to Kinnear: to stealthily take a clandestine picture of someone without them knowing. Hello? Don’t any of you read the Yarn Harlot’s blog?”
“Oh yeah, I heard about that. Didn’t the Yarn Harlot do that to Greg Kinnear at the airport or something?” Ashley placed her knitting on her lap, pointing at Elizabeth.
“Yes, yes. She wrote about it on her blog then it was put in Urban Dictionary and the New York Times yearly review thing or something or other.” Elizabeth turned to me and looked from my open mouth to my eyes. “Oh, don’t look so shocked about it.”
“I still want to know who him is.” Sandra stood up and leaned over Elizabeth’s shoulder as she paused on the first in a series of pictures of Sir Handsome McHotpants. I drank another swallow of my wine. All the ladies clustered around the couch as Elizabeth drew her thumb over the touch screen of the phone; only Fiona stayed seated, waiting for the drama to pass.
The group let out an audible gasp.
“Holy hotness, Batman. Who is that?” Ashley’s blue eyes were as round as saucers.
“That’s Sir Handsome McHotpants.” Elizabeth sounded almost proud. “He’s a security guard at Kat and Janie’s building. Janie’s been lusting after him since he started a few weeks ago. I don’t know his real name, but Janie might.”
Kat nodded
, a small smile curving over her lips. “I recognize him. Janie isn’t the only one who has noticed.”
Marie laughed as she straightened and moved back to her discarded yarn. “No wonder you’re like: Jon who?”
“Damn, Janie, did he cuff you?” Sandra punched me on my shoulder. “Did you have hot elevator eye sex? Is that why you’re the shade of my red sweater right now?”
I didn’t realize that I was blushing until that moment. I put my wineglass aside and pressed my hands to my cheeks. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed by their comments; quite the opposite. I enjoyed their good-natured teasing.
I knew I was blushing due to the memory of his gaze and the intensity of his blue eyes as they moved over my body and the warm, charged strength of his hand on my back and arm. I felt more affected by him than all the other events that preceded his presence, even all these hours later, after my day from hell. I moved my hands to cover my face and shook my head.
“Janie, did something happen?” I felt Elizabeth shift her weight on the couch as she addressed me, her voice contrarily laced with excitement and concern.
“No, nothing happened. I just talked to him, and you all know how well that always goes.” I left my hands on my face and sighed.
“What did you talk about?” Fiona’s soft voice made me feel a little calmer.
“I…I talked about the days of the week and the international standard for assigning numbers to days of the week.” My hands dropped from my face and I met their stares.
“Oh, geez, Janie! What brought that up?” Ashley snorted as she laughed, moving her attention back to the soft mass of stitched yarn on her lap.
“No, wait, tell me everything,” Elizabeth said as she passed the phone to Fiona so she could see the pictures. Elizabeth grabbed my hands in hers and forced me to meet her pale blue eyes. “Leave nothing out. Start at the beginning and repeat what happened word for word—especially everything he said.”
So I did. I tried to stay focused as I repeated the story without allowing my mind to wander and expand on some meaningless tangent. When I repeated the part about ISO 8601 and how he’d asked me to expand on the seamless intercourse between government bodies, they all gasped.
“Ah! What did you say?” Sandra was leaning forward in her seat. “I can’t believe he flirted with you! Did you flirt with him back?”
“What? No, no, he wasn’t flirting with me!” I shook my head emphatically.
“Oh, Janie, au contraire mon frère, he was most certainly flirting with you.” Ashley wagged her eyebrows at me, her teeth sliding to the side in an impish grin. Everyone giggled at her thick Tennessee accent applied to the French colloquialism. “He sounds like the strong and silent type. You must have made an impression. Kinda weird, though—flirting with you right after you’ve been fired.”
Kat nodded. “I agree his timing could have been better, but you must have made an impression.”
“Of course you did; look at you—you’re stunning.” Fiona’s tone and expression was matter-of-fact as she gestured to me with one hand.
I stared at her wide-eyed. “You call this big bottom of mine stunning?”
Marie giggled. “One man’s big bottom is another man’s idea of stunning; don’t hold it against this guy if he likes curves on his girl. On second thought, do hold it against him.”
The room roared with laughter, and I couldn’t help the small, breathless chuckle that abdicated my lungs. I couldn’t fathom that he was attracted to me, let alone flirted with me; it all seemed too strange. I interrupted their merriment to finish the story, and everyone frowned when I explained that I left with the female guard and hadn’t talked to him or said goodbye.
“But he told you to wait,” Kat said. “Why didn’t you wait for him?”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way; he meant ‘wait here’ or ‘wait for the papers,’” I explained.
Ashley shook her head. “No, didn’t he say,” she lowered her voice to a manly tone which actually sounded a lot like Batman, “‘Don’t move. Wait for me.’?”
“I think you’re reading too much into that.” I stood and began collecting empty wineglasses, stretching as I did so. The weight of the day made my shoulders feel heavy; I was tired.
“I wonder.” Fiona gave me a sideways glance. “You’ve always been clueless with guys.”
“Oh really?” I countered.
“Yes, really,” Elizabeth said, chiming in. “You are beautiful, even if you don’t believe it. A lot of guys, and, I mean, a lot of guys, like the big boobs, small waist, big butt, long legs, amazon woman thing you have going on. Pair that package with your curly auburn hair and big hazel-green eyes, and some people, me included, would call you gorgeous.”
I tried, with varying levels of success, to change the subject as the evening came to an end. These were all women who loved me just as I was; of course, they believed I was beautiful. The truth was I just didn’t especially like dwelling on my looks. So, I didn’t.
As I lay on Elizabeth’s couch that night, I was surprised by the nature of my thoughts. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I played the mostly one-sided elevator conversation over and over in my head trying to discern if he had actually been flirting. Not that it mattered, as I would likely never see him again.
I felt almost normal as I obsessed about something as mundane as whether a guy I liked, albeit based on physical attractiveness alone, thought I was attractive enough to flirt with me. However, before I let myself believe I was behaving completely rationally, I reminded myself that I just ended a long-term relationship with someone I thought I was going to marry, and lost my job in the same day.
A normal person would have been obsessing about one or both of those life-altering events.
My last thought before I succumbed to sleep was to check the definition of to Kinnear on Wikipedia.
Chapter Three
It was announced to me Friday morning, one-and-a-half weeks after the worst day ever, that Friday night was going to be outrageous. And by outrageous, Elizabeth meant that she’d secured VIP passes to a much sought after “club experience” as she put it, which I think was the trendy way of saying “we’re going to a new bar.”
I was very motivated to find a new job and new apartment, although Elizabeth hadn’t made any complaints against my presence. In fact, she’d gone so far as to mention that her lease was almost up, and she suggested we find something larger and continue to room together.
The idea appealed to me. Living with Elizabeth would be excellent prophylaxis against my natural reclusive, agoraphobic tendencies.
Even in my relationship with Jon we’d both recognized that I required a generous amount of space and alone time in order to behave with appropriate affection when we were together.
Maybe that was why he felt the need to cheat.
The idea struck me as one with merit. I tucked it away as a data point.
Over the last several days, I’d done a fair amount of practiced focusing on my present state of “lessness”—homelessness, joblessness, and relationshiplessness. Less was not more. Less was an unstable, uncomfortable place to be.
Jon was my first boyfriend. I went on dates with guys in high school and college, but they were all first dates. Jon was the first guy who didn’t seem put off by my rampant randomness; he seemed to bask in it. I wondered if he would be the only one.
The thought didn’t trouble me as much as it should have. In fact, it bothered me far less than the thought of never experiencing something like the smoldering warmth of awareness I experienced during my seven to twelve minutes with the blue-eyed security guard.
I’d spoken only briefly to Jon since the breakup, and I still needed to evaluate what I actually felt during our conversation. He was mad at me; in fact, he was outraged, and he’d yelled at me for the first few minutes of our conversation. He said he’d found out about my job loss from his dad, and he wanted to know why I hadn’t asked him for help.
I couldn’t
believe my ears; it took me a few seconds to respond. “Jon, is that an actual question? And how did Mr. Holesome—I mean, how did your dad know?”
“Yes. It is an actual question. You need me, you are my girlfriend—”
“No—” I shook my head as if convincing myself.
“Nothing is decided. I want to take care of you. I still love you. We belong together.” He sounded resolute and a little sullen.
“You cheated on me. We are not together.” I was starting to become aggravated, which was the closest I came to anger.
I heard him sigh on the other end, and then his tone softened. “Janie, don’t you know that changed nothing for me? It was one time. It meant nothing. I was drunk.”
“You were sober enough to put the condom wrapper in your pocket.”
He half growled, half laughed. “I still want to take care of you—let me take care of you.”
“That’s not your role—”
“Can we be friends?” He cut me off, his voice somewhat gentler.
“Yes.” I meant it. I didn’t want to lose him as a friend. “Yes. We should be friends.”
“Will you let me take care of you?” His voice was pleading. “Will you let me help you?”
I thought about what he was asking; I knew he meant financial support. “You can help me by being a good friend.”
“What if I can’t be just friends?” I could sense his renewed annoyance with me as he spoke. “I can’t think about anything but you.”
It was my turn to sigh; I couldn’t think of anything to say. Well, more accurately, I couldn’t think of anything to say related to our topic of conversation, but I could think of plenty of things to say about the climate of New Guinea or the prehistoric ancestors of the African secretary bird.
After a moment of silence, he cleared his throat. When he spoke again, his voice sounded firm. “Nothing is decided,” he said again. “When can I see you?”
We arranged a time to meet on Saturday morning at a neutral spot, then we said our goodbyes, during which he told me again that he loved me. I didn’t respond.
