Just This Once

by Judith Arnold

  Hell, even if she hadn’t been feeding Becky lines she’d be amazing.

  We’re in trouble, aren’t we, he thought, then turned to see Solly lounging in a leather sling chair, guffawing over something on the TV. “This is hilarious, Josh! You ever see this episode? George is all set to marry this girl, and she—”

  “I know.” Josh had indeed seen the episode, and he managed a smile for Solly. As he recalled the show, George didn’t really want to marry the woman, but he was committed to her, and then she had an allergic reaction to the glue on the envelopes for their wedding invitations, and she died. And George, whose secret wish had come true, felt pleased and guilty all at once.

  Josh didn’t wish Melanie dead. Of course not. They’d known each other for years, shared significant chunks of each other’s lives, understood each other, practically lived together until she’d moved to Florida. Josh wanted only the best for her. He was an honest, upright guy. Nothing like George.

  He peeked through the doorway once more, in time to see Loretta brush a heavy lock of hair back from her face. He glimpsed her jaw line, her throat, the smooth surface of her cheek. And he felt pleased and guilty, all at once.

  Oh, yeah, he was in big trouble.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Wasn’t this cute. She and Josh, facing each other across a tiny round table in an overcrowded bar with syrupy atmospheric music and the eager chatter of prowling singles clogging the air, Josh in possession of a Sam Adams and Loretta a gin and tonic. Their surly waitress couldn’t be bothered bringing them any bar snacks, so Loretta was stuck fiddling with her straw, repeatedly poking the wedge of lime in her glass below the surface of the bubbly liquid and watching it bob back up.

  She’d agreed to have a drink with him once they’d finished taping at Solly’s place. Of course she had—why wouldn’t she? They were friends, weren’t they?

  Never before had the concept of friendship made her so uncomfortable.

  The glass front wall of the bar was streaked and smudged from the drizzle outside. The sidewalk glistened. Her hair felt like a bale of hay on her neck, coarse and scratchy.

  Josh picked at the label on his bottle with his thumbnail. He looked as uncomfortable as she felt. Why had he asked her to join him for a drink if he had nothing to say?

  As it turned out, he did have something to say—only what he had to say she didn’t want to hear. “About last night—”

  “No.” She all but pressed her hands to her ears to block out his voice. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. It’s past, it’s over, it’s old news. It doesn’t matter. Forget it.”

  His eyes widened slightly, but she’d managed to shut him up. Now she was stuck with silence. She struggled for something to say. She ought to be able to share a pleasant conversation with him without having her stomach launch into a gymnastics routine. She and Josh were supposed to be friends, after all.

  “So,” she said, recalling the early stiltedness of their alleged blind date. This was worse—probably because there was nothing blind about it. She’d seen him. She’d seen every square inch of him, naked and aroused and vulnerable. A little blindness would have come in handy right about now, if it could have kept her from remembering how wonderful he’d looked last night.

  “So,” he echoed, obviously feeling as awkward as she did.

  “So I’m figuring we’ll tape Phyllis tomorrow,” she said. “I don’t know if Solly’s going to want to be there. I do know her lawyer is. He doesn’t want her to appear on the show, but since she insisted, he decided he ought to be there. We’re taping in his office.”

  “That won’t be very homey.”

  “It won’t be homey at all. But those were the terms. We’re lucky to get the interview at all.” She sipped some of her drink. The tonic left a bitter aftertaste on her tongue. “Then I want to do some filming at the Senior Center. For context, and also to get some observations by people who know all the involved parties.”

  “That sounds like a good plan,” Josh said woodenly.

  If he was sulking—and he seemed to be—she would be royally pissed. It was all his fault they couldn’t be lovers, after all. He was the one with the goddamned girlfriend. Sure, Loretta had sworn to him that she wasn’t in the market for a romance, but she might have reconsidered that policy after making love with him—if Josh had said anything about reconsidering his relationship with Melanie. But he hadn’t. He apparently wasn’t interested in ending that relationship. So okay, fine, he and Loretta wouldn’t be lovers. They were still friends, though. That had been part of the deal last night, as she’d understood it: that no matter what, they’d still be friends.

  If he wanted to remain her friend, he’d better not sulk, that was all. She hated sulkers.

  He took another sip of beer, then said, “I’ve taken on a new case.” He seemed to be exerting himself, shaping each syllable carefully, but at least he was talking, forcing the words past his mood.

  “What’s it about?”

  “The Charnier family is from Haiti. They complained to the landlord about the lack of hot water and he threatened to have them deported.”

  “That sucks.”

  “So I took the case. The landlord is a turd. I’m going to have fun cutting him to bits.”

  “Bits of turd,” Loretta pondered. “Yuck.”

  “That’s what he’ll be saying when I’m through with him. Yuck.” The conversation was flowing more smoothly, now. They were talking the way they always talked. Loretta relaxed in her chair—not easy to do, since the chair’s back was too short and the upholstery was about as thick as the gauze square at the center of a Band-Aid. But listening to Josh describe Henri Charnier and his wife, his two sisters, his mother and his three daughters made up for the uncomfortable seating. “He’s the only man in the house,” Josh said. “Not that I’m a sexist or anything, but he told me the bathroom reeks of perfume and hairspray, and the air is always vibrating with high-pitched voices, all talking at the same time. He said he wanted to buy a male dog, but the landlord would deport him if he did.”

  “So, what? He hangs out with his buddies somewhere else?”

  “As best I could gather—given his accent, he’s sometimes a little hard to understand—he locks himself into the master bedroom every day and turns on ESPN so he can hear men’s voices. He’s not into sports—he asked me what the point of football was, and I had to tell him I it really didn’t have a point. But he loves those announcers.”

  They sipped their drinks. They talked about another case Josh had handled, and about Solly and Dora Lee and how Loretta thought the afternoon’s taping had gone. “Really well, all things considered. Becky can read almost as fast as I can write.”

  “You were great, feeding her all those lines,” Josh said, a genuine smile warming his face.

  “Oh, please. They were such basic questions, I don’t know why she couldn’t have thought of them herself. I mean, come on! ‘What happened?’ ‘Why do you think it happened?’ Pretty basic stuff.”

  “She needs you,” Josh declared. “She couldn’t possibly fire you. She’d fall apart without you.”

  Loretta scowled. “Anyone could have scribbled questions for her today. Of course, Kate’s questions would have all been about the kind of food Dora Lee cooks for Solly. Kate’s obsessed with food. And Bob would have written questions about how far Dora Lee and Solly had gone, stuff like that.”

  “That would have embarrassed Dora Lee.”

  “Bob can be a jerk.” Her straw made a slurping sound as the level of liquid in her glass approached the bottom. “So…speaking of the show, they want you and me to go back on.”

  “Go back on the show? What for?”

  “So viewers can see how we turned out. Apparently, a lot of viewers have been inquiring.”

  Josh eyed her cautiously, his smile gone, his head tilted slightly. “Do you want us to go on?”

  “No. Do yo
u want to go on?”

  He looked relieved. “God, no. I was afraid you were going to talk me into it, though.”

  “I don’t talk you into things,” Loretta protested.

  “Right.” He snorted a laugh. “You talked me into the original blind date, and helping you create a show around Solly and his harem, and pretending to be your boyfriend for your parents.”

  That last item might have been a mistake, but Loretta wouldn’t apologize for the others. “I don’t talk you into things you don’t want to do,” she argued. “Whatever I talked you into, it was just what you deep down really wanted to do, anyway.”

  He opened his mouth and then shut it, rethinking his response. “Maybe,” he admitted quietly.

  “Then we won’t do the show.”

  “What about your job? If we don’t go back on, will they fire you?”

  Who knew? She’d proven her value that afternoon, simply by writing out elementary questions on the fly for Becky. If Becky recommended her for the ax after she’d helped to create this amazing show about Solly and his women, whether or not she and Josh made a follow-up appearance was irrelevant.

  After all, what would they say if they did reappear on the show? “Our blind date was a success. We wound up sleeping together.” Or: “Our blind date was a disaster. We wound up sleeping together.” Or: “We wound up sleeping together and we’re never going to do it again, because Josh is a cheating son of a bitch and I’m his accomplice, and isn’t that the basis for a solid friendship?”

  The world did not need to see her and Josh on TV again. The sooner everyone forgot she and Josh had ever been linked, the better.

  The sooner she and Josh forgot, the sooner they could get back to being the friends they used to be.

  Maybe.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Josh entered his apartment, swung open his refrigerator and realized he didn’t want a beer, after all. He’d just had a beer with Loretta, and it had satisfied him about as much as a glass of unfiltered New York Harbor water might have. He was listless and tired—understandable, given how little sleep he’d gotten the night before. His head hurt. So did his heart.

  He yanked off his tropical fish necktie and stalked to his bedroom. He turned his computer on, pried off his shoes and unbuttoned his shirt.

  Three emails awaited him. One was from an old college buddy, just catching up. One was an invitation to view horny housewives in real time. And one was from Melanie.

  He dropped onto his chair and opened her note. Hi, Josh. Not much happening here. One of the Iglesiases is performing in Miami tonight and I’m going with some friends. I wish I could remember which Iglesias it is, but the heat is so bad here I’m convinced my brain has melted to the consistency of Vaseline. Is Iglesiases the plural of Iglesias, or do you think it might be Iglesii?

  No accusations. Nothing personal. Melanie was simply heading off to a concert by yet another musician she’d never listened to before she’d moved to Florida.

  Did she miss Josh? Did she care? Was she as torn up about her flourishing social life as he was about his? Did her social life include anything resembling the night he’d spent with Loretta?

  He was going to have to do something. He couldn’t just keep things as they were. Simply going out for a casual drink with Loretta had been excruciating. But she’d made it quite clear that they couldn’t return to where they’d been last night. And as far as he was concerned, not seeing each other at all wasn’t an option.

  With a groan, he dove onto his bed, pried off his shoes and listened to the hum of the air conditioner. After a minute, he picked up his phone. He needed to talk to a friend, one who’d been where he was now.

  His call was answered on the second ring. “Hello?” said Solly.

  “We’ve got to play chess,” Josh announced.

  “Josh! Chess, yes. That would be great. Today, with the filming, all that show-biz mishegas, right in my apartment, no less… Maybe we could play tomorrow? Or Wednesday? I could meet you at the center.”

  “What about Dora Lee? Can she be left alone?”

  “Either that, or I’ll bring her with me. It doesn’t matter. What matters is, you and I need some chess.”

  “Tomorrow,” Josh said, not bothering to check his schedule. If he had appointments, he’d cancel them. Chess was more important, especially if Solly mixed a little wisdom in with his moves. “Let’s do it tomorrow.”

  ***

  “Cut it all off,” Loretta said.

  Donna’s scowl bounced off the mirror and into Loretta’s eyes. Loretta was seated in one of the chairs at Salon Louis, wrapped in a voluminous smock of silver plastic that made her feel like a ham swaddled in aluminum foil, ready for roasting. Donna stood behind her, fluffing her hair and frowning, as if Loretta looked even worse to her than she did to herself. “You’re joking, right?” Donna asked.

  “I’m sick of it. Just do something.”

  “You walk in here on a Saturday morning, no appointment, and you tell me to cut off all your hair? What, you’ve got PMS? I never change a client’s hairstyle when she’s got PMS.”

  “I don’t have PMS.”

  “What have you got?”

  Loretta sighed. “All right. Don’t cut it all off. Just trim it or something. Fix it so that when you’re all done I’ll feel better about my life.”

  “Let’s start with a shampoo.” Donna slapped her on the shoulder, a little harder than necessary, and headed for the shampoo sinks at the rear of the salon. Loretta climbed out of the throne-like chair and followed her. The abundance of silver—wallpaper, fixtures, chrome trim and other clients, all as foil-swaddled as she was, made her dizzy. The air even smelled silvery, laced with a combination of lilac, ammonia, cinnamon, coffee and cigarette smoke. Smoking wasn’t allowed in the salon, but the aroma clung to Donna. “Sit,” she ordered, shoving Loretta into a chair in front of a sink.

  “Why are you mad at me?”

  Donna nudged her head backward and blasted it with a spray of hot water. “Who says I’m mad at you?”

  “If you’re not mad at me, why are you parboiling my scalp?”

  Donna begrudgingly adjusted the spray to a milder temperature. “I’m mad at you because you never listen to me.”

  “I do listen to you. You said I should cut my hair, and here I am, asking you to cut my hair.”

  “You’re almost thirty years old,” Donna reminded her. “And I bet you haven’t done a damned thing with that cute Jewish lawyer.”

  I have so done a damned thing with him, Loretta responded silently. “We’re friends.”

  “Friends! I gave you that teddy for a reason, Loretta.” She plowed her fingers through Loretta’s hair, massaging citrus-scented foam into it. Tiny bubbles of shampoo popped in Loretta’s ears, sounding like crinkling paper. “You wanna be single all your life? You’ve got a live one on the line and you just want to throw him back in? What’s wrong with you?”

  “You want to know? Nothing’s wrong with me. He’s the one who has something wrong with him.”

  “From where I sit, he hasn’t got a single damned thing wrong with him.”

  “He’s got a girlfriend,” Loretta retorted. It felt good to dump some of her frustration on Donna. More bubbles popped in her ears, a sharp, crunching sound. “Keep the shampoo out of my ears, would you?”

  “He’s got a girlfriend?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Two-timing shit. Why did he agree to go on a blind date with you if he’s got a girlfriend?”

  “She lives far away. I guess he was lonely.” Loretta didn’t add that she’d twisted his arm, that she’d wanted him to do it because he had a girlfriend. Donna seemed annoyed enough at her as it was.

  “Two-timing shit,” Donna repeated, rinsing the shampoo out of Loretta’s hair with a spray that was actually a comfortable temperature. “Okay, so you like him? You gotta go after him.”

  “Why?”

 
“Why should his girlfriend have him? You’ve got just as good a claim.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “Why not? He’s not married, is he?”

  “No.”

  “So you’re not a home wrecker. If he wanted to be with her, he’d marry her. He didn’t marry her because he’s not sure. Go after him.”

  “What if I don’t want him?”

  Donna leaned over so she was staring straight down into Loretta’s face. “You don’t want that guy? With those eyes? And that body?”

  “Donna—”

  “And I’ll tell you another thing.” Donna leaned back and squirted something with a different citrus scent into Loretta’s hair, grapefruit instead of orange. By the time Donna was done with her, she’d be smelling like fruit cocktail. “I’ve heard Jewish guys make the best lovers. Don’t tell Lou I said that.”

  Loretta’s personal experience with one Jewish guy supported Donna’s assertion, but she didn’t mention that. “Why do they make the best lovers?”

  “I’d say it was because they’re trimmed, you know? ” Loretta felt her cheeks warming at Donna’s crude description. “But lotsa guys are trimmed, so that can’t be the reason. What I think it is, is Jewish boys are raised to take care of women. It’s like part of their culture.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Look where I work.” She waved her sudsy hands around. “What do you think I do all day?”

  “Style people’s hair?”

  “Listen to women bitch to me about their husbands. And I’m telling you, the Jewish women, they get taken care of. Their husbands take care of them, they take care of their mothers, they take care of their aunts, and they won’t let any boys near their daughters unless they’re absolutely positive that those boys will take good care of their precious little girls. Think about it. Did your father ever corner Gary and say, ‘You gonna take care of my precious little girl?’”

  “I would have killed him if he did.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He wouldn’t have done it. He looks at you and says, ‘First single male willing to have her, I’ll pay for the wedding.’ Am I right?”