Perfect on Paper

by Janet Goss

  To put it succinctly, I was his bitch. This was a man—I was convinced he was a pudgy, middle-aged mathematician—who knew exactly how to phrase his clues to elicit maximum confusion (“Number?” for NOVOCAINE); who packed his grid with misleading letter patterns (ONTV? Ohhh—“On TV”); who rarely included a theme to ease the plight of the solver. His diabolic constructions usually appeared on Saturdays, and my finished product would invariably be riddled with corrected squares, the pen marks getting darker and thicker each time a letter was changed, then changed again.

  I could hardly wait for the bus to get moving.

  I had read nearly half the Across clues before I was sure enough of an answer to ink in three squares: “Bill supporting science education” was definitely NYE, as in “Bill Nye, the Science Guy.”

  “Catawampus”? “Complects”? “Cassowary”? Crap!

  “Lola locale,” 33-Down, was surely COPA. What a sadist that W. W. W. Moody was. Not only was he causing me to feel like a complete moron, but now Barry Manilow was singing his lungs out inside my cranium.

  “Shop securer”? “Saganaki selections”? “Strep source”? Shit!!

  Eventually the Saganaki selections turned out to be FETAS and the source of the dreaded strep was revealed as a DRSERROR—doctor’s error.…

  Ahhh. “Shop securer” was C CLAMP, and “Catawampus,” AWRY. But what the hell was a “rudra veena,” and what could its successor possibly be?

  SITAR. Satan!!!

  The hiss of bus brakes served as my two-minute warning. We were about to turn off into the parking lot of the Charcoal, a former restaurant that had forsaken its burgers for buses a few years earlier. I glimpsed its faded, freestanding sign out my window before fixing my gaze on the last empty area of the puzzle, a gaping white hole in the upper-right corner of the grid.

  The Acrosses were killing me. The clue for number 8, “Like 19-D,” was useless, since 19-Down was TORAH. The answer could be anything, as long as it started with a B—I was sure BENEFIT was correct for “Capitalize.”

  “Charcoal!” the driver announced.

  The doors to the bus whooshed open, and passengers began to board. I tuned out everything but the grid while I stared intently at the “Down” clues emanating from 8-Across.

  Wait a second. “Capitalize” wasn’t BENEFIT; it was MAKE HAY!

  The bus lurched into motion, causing my pen to slash a jagged diagonal line through the puzzle before I could complete the fill. “Loan request”… Of course! CARRY ME. And “Battle line” was IMHIT—I’m hit! And that pesky “Like 19-D,” meaning the Torah?

  MOSAIC.

  Bastard.

  Finally I laid down my pen, the smell of burned brain cells flooding my nostrils, and checked my watch. Twenty-five, twenty-six minutes—a mortifying time for a Saturday puzzle, but respectable for a W. W. W. Moody.

  “Impressive,” said a voice from the aisle seat opposite mine. I glanced up into a pair of gray-green eyes.

  Or maybe they were more green than gray.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” Scruffy said, with just the tiniest hint of a smirk in his tone.

  I was momentarily struck dumb by the one-two punch of cuteness and coincidence.

  But only momentarily. “This is… wow. Unexpected. Hey—sorry you missed that first bus on Thanksgiving.”

  “So was I.” His eyes darted to my completed crossword, which shared the page that day with the theater listings and assorted ads for Broadway shows. “So, how long did it take you?”

  “Oh god—forever,” I said, before remembering how he’d struggled last Thursday. If it had taken me twenty-five or -six minutes to solve this puzzle, it must have consumed the better part of Scruffy’s morning. Declining to share my solving time, I pointed to the Times poking out of his backpack. “Have you finished it yet?”

  “No. Well, actually”—he pointed toward my newspaper—“I’m him.”

  I focused on the display ad he seemed to have indicated and immediately became confused.

  “You’re… the Cat in the Hat?”

  He laughed and extended his hand, tapping a finger squarely on the puzzle’s byline before he offered it to me. “Billy Moody.”

  Billy. As in William. As in…

  No. Way.

  “You’re lying,” I said, simultaneously shaking my head and his hand and hoping he wouldn’t notice the slight tremor in my grip. “W. W. W. Moody is a frumpy academic with a slide rule and a pocket protector.”

  “That’s not a bad guess. Quite a few constructors are mathematicians. But I’m telling you the truth.” He reached into his back pocket for his wallet and extracted his driver’s license. “See?”

  “This is simply not possible,” I said, blinking at it in disbelief. But there was his face, right next to the words, “Moody, William.”

  And there was his thumb, partially obscuring his date of birth—which was probably for the best.

  He grinned. “Believe me now?”

  “I… guess I have to.” Oh my god, I thought. Elinor Ann is going to die when she hears about this.

  “Good. I’m glad that’s settled.”

  Oh my god, I thought. Elinor Ann.

  “Uh, listen,” I said. “I know we’ve only just met, and I hate to ask, but I have this sort of emergency, and I left my cell phone in Kutztown.…”

  He pulled his from a shirt pocket. “Of course you can borrow mine. But the least you can do is tell me your name first.”

  “Oh! Sorry. Dana Mayo.”

  “Yo! Amanda!”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s your anagrammed name.”

  God, this guy was a nerd. But so cute. So ridiculously, fatally cute.

  “Unless you’re prone to making regular guttural noises,” he added.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Then it could be Moan A Day,” he explained.

  I would ponder the implications of that after I completed my call.

  As soon as I heard her voice, I knew Elinor Ann’s trip had not gone as planned.

  “Where are you?” she said.

  “Where are you?”

  She sighed. “Home. Finally.”

  “How’d you get there?”

  She sighed louder. “I walked.”

  “You walked ?! Why didn’t you ask Cal to come and get you?”

  “I tried to call, but he was out in the garage doing—I don’t know. Man things. And you know how the boys are on weekends. They could sleep through the Rapture.”

  “But—”

  “I was fine at first,” she said. “I turned off Noble Street onto 737, and I was sure I was going to make it. But you know that stretch where the road opens up to two lanes, right before you get onto 222? Well, right then this huge FedEx truck passed me—I swear he almost took the door handle off—and it just—I don’t know. Spooked me. Eventually I got out and walked the four miles home, which was almost as bad as driving would have been.”

  Route 737 was a narrow, twisty death trap with virtually no shoulder and a steady stream of traffic. “You could have been killed!”

  “You don’t know the half of it. When I was almost to the house, the creepy gun dealer from Renningers pulled over and offered me a lift.”

  “Oh god. You know, that would be hilarious if you weren’t, uh—”

  “Crazy. I know.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Beats me.”

  “What’d you tell Cal?”

  “That I had a flat. Which I did, once I let the air out of the tire. He and Angus are down there changing it now.”

  “Damn. You really are crazy.”

  “I know. Oh, Dana, why didn’t you answer your phone?”

  “I couldn’t. It’s still in your guest room.”

  “Ohhhh.”

  I tried to think of something positive to say, but no reassuring words were forthcoming. I was at a loss to suggest what her next move should be. Elinor Ann had always held psychiatry and its practitioners in low reg
ard, and I couldn’t imagine her taking so much as a vitamin, let alone Prozac. And she’d just failed miserably at her attempt to tough it out. “So… what now?”

  “Stay busy until Monday, then hope I can still drive to work, I guess. I’ll have the shipping department send your phone out then.” She paused. “Wait a minute. There’s something I don’t understand. If your phone is upstairs in the guest room, then how are you talking to me?”

  I looked over at Billy Moody, who was doing a lousy job of pretending to read the Business section while he eavesdropped on my conversation. “Uh—are you planning to take the boys back to that… kennel?” I said to Elinor Ann.

  “What kennel?”

  “I really do think they’re ready for a dog. And that one we saw yesterday was so cute.… What was his name again?”

  “Whose name?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Scruffy! How could I forget?”

  “What Scruffy? What are you talking about? Are you—”

  Finally my implication sank in, and she fell silent.

  But only momentarily. “You have got to be kidding me. He’s on the bus?”

  “I’ll say!”

  “He lent you his phone, didn’t he? You have got to call me the instant you get home.”

  “Fair enough. We’ll discuss it then.”

  “Don’t even take off your coat. Dana?”

  “Yes?”

  “I guess I should thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For helping me take my mind off my problem. And Dana?”

  “Mmm?”

  “If you give Scruffy your phone number, you are going straight to hell.”

  “Okay, then! Talk to you soon!”

  Billy Moody was regarding me with a bemused look that seemed to convey, “I know you were just referring to me as a dog named Scruffy” when I snapped the phone closed and handed it back to him. I had an awful suspicion that my face was turning the shade of a stop sign.

  “Are you hot?” he said.

  Of course not, I silently responded. I’m always this color. My blood pressure is three thousand over eight hundred and forty.

  “A little,” I said instead. “So tell me—were you the kind of kid who peed in your baby sister’s cereal, or did you wait until adulthood to become the devil incarnate?”

  “Hey—you finished the puzzle.”

  “Barely. How do you come up with this stuff?”

  “I usually start with words containing unusual letter patterns and build from there. Which is a little different from most constructors, who come up with a clue set first.”

  “A clue set?” God, this kid was adorable, even if he did happen to be a sadist who spewed unintelligible jargon.

  “You know—those long clues that appear in most puzzles and have some sort of common bond. Remember the one we both did in the bus station last Thursday?”

  Ahh. The turkeys. “I get it.”

  “I stink at coming up with themes. I’m strictly a grid guy. In fact, that’s my email address. Gridmeister… at rocketmail, in case you were wondering.”

  This was the moment I was supposed to turn a hose on our burgeoning flirtation with a pointed comment along the lines of, My boyfriend uses rocketmail, too! Instead, I said, “Is that some kind of a hint?”

  He smiled. “Maybe you could send me a clue set sometime.”

  Hmm. Maybe I could.

  I counted the letters in an endless array of phrases—none of which could exceed the fifteen-letter width of a daily puzzle—all the way back to Ninth Street. I had just made the serendipitous discovery that both the opening lines “Call me Ishmael” and “Who is John Galt” contained thirteen letters (according to Billy Moody, symmetry was crucial) when the cab pulled up in front of my building.

  Vivian yanked open the car door the instant it came to a stop. “What took you so long? Your cat’s fine, by the way. I fed him this morning.”

  “Thanks.” Then again, maybe Atlas Shrugged isn’t sufficiently well-known to merit inclusion.…

  “Dana, are you listening to me?”

  “Uh-huh.” Dickens will never work—just think how long it takes Pip to introduce himself in Great Expectations.…

  “Then what did I just tell you?”

  Wait a minute! A Christmas Carol! Marley was dead! One, two…

  “Dana!”

  Thirteen!!!

  “Dana!!!”

  “Oh. Sorry. What were you saying?”

  “I said your damn cat is fine—and you’re welcome. Oh—and I dropped off a few pieces of costume jewelry when I went up there earlier—mostly Trifari, early sixties.”

  Not for the first time, I questioned the prudence of giving a spare key to my employer, even if she was the most convenient choice for pet care.

  “I was thinking you could work them into a few new Hannahs,” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “By Tuesday.”

  “That’s only three days from now!”

  “Fine, fine—a week from Tuesday.” She cocked her head to get a better look at the dog portrait poking out from the top of my open duffel bag. “That’s not one of yours, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Thank god.”

  I went upstairs and let myself into the apartment, where I was nearly blinded by a glittering mountain of garishness heaped nearly half a foot high on my kitchen table. Puny, intently batting around a faux-pearl earring only slightly smaller than a manhole cover, barely acknowledged my return. After concluding he couldn’t possibly fit the thing inside his mouth, let alone swallow it, I dropped my luggage and went to have a closer look at Vivian’s haul.

  I held up a lucite brooch in the shape of a cicada. Imbedded inside it were actual cicadas. I shuddered and backed away from the table. The jewelry could wait until I unpacked, found space on my bedroom wall for the dog portrait, and googled the phrase “agoraphobia cure.”

  No sooner had I hung the picture—underneath a painting of a cocker spaniel that appeared to have three legs and next to a mastiff that bore an uncanny resemblance to Ernest Borgnine—when inspiration struck. I removed the German shepherd from the wall, returned to the kitchen, and found the mate to Puny’s earring, as well as a gold-and-pearl contraption that could have served as full-frontal body armor but was more likely a necklace. Propping the portrait against the mound of jewelry on the kitchen table, I positioned both pieces on the appropriate areas of the dog.

  Perfect.

  And I had just the model to pull off the look, right down on Seventh Street.

  “I’ll call it ‘Pearls Before Swine,’ ” I murmured, reaching for the telephone.

  But it rang before I could pick up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  Click.

  Swell, I thought. It’s not bad enough I’ve just flirted the entire width of New Jersey, but now Ray Devine checks in the instant I decide to call my boyfriend. What did he get out of these calls? And did I really want to spend another second of my life wondering?

  Maybe it was time to put an end to them and move on.

  By the time I’d returned the German shepherd to its position on my bedroom wall, righteous indignation had kicked in. Of course it was time to move on. I’d scrupulously avoided all contact with Ray for two decades, but clearly a more decisive approach was called for. I had a relationship to nurture. Portraits of pigs to paint. A best friend to counsel. Crosswords to construct.

  I sat on the bed and punched in Ray’s number. I was about to give up after the sixth ring, when his voice came on the line.

  “Hello?”

  “Why do you keep calling me?” I said. “Don’t you think this has gone on long enough?”

  “Who is this?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  A WAKE-UP CALL

  “Just kidding,” Ray said, effectively saving my life, not to mention my pride and self-esteem. Who would have thought “just kidding” could do all that? “How the hell are you, Dana?”

 
; “I’m all right. And you don’t have to tell me how you’re doing—I already know you’re healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

  He chuckled. God, it was good to hear his voice. “I’m still breathing—guess one out of three ain’t bad. A photographer buddy of mine hooked me up with that ad. God, it’s good to hear your voice.”

  Without even realizing it, I found myself splayed on the bed, eyes half-closed like a nodding junkie, twenty-one and stupid again, squandering my time on someone else’s husband.

  Only he wasn’t Rhea’s husband anymore. Renée Devine had told me so at the open house in Bay Ridge.

  Then again, she’d also told me Ray was dead. “So, how’s your… wife?” I’d never quite gotten the hang of saying her name out loud to him.

  “Happily married. Not to me, though.”

  “I’m sorry. When did you split up?”

  “Oh, about an hour after the last time I saw you.”

  I snapped out of my stupor and sat rigid on the bed while he explained what had happened: how Rhea had been convinced of our affair; how she’d followed him to the bar the afternoon I’d broken up with him; how she’d refused to believe it was over, opting instead to decamp to her parents’ house in Canarsie, Renée in tow, never to return.

  “But—why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You told me not to call you, remember?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Look, Dana. Of course I wanted to tell you. I can’t count the number of times I almost picked up the phone over the past twenty years.”

  “What are you talking about? By my calculation, you’ve picked up the phone somewhere between four and five hundred times over the past twenty years.”

  “Now I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “All those hang-up calls!”

  “What hang-up calls?”

  I felt a whooshing noise inside my head, which I attributed to the collapse of the castles in the air I’d started building half a lifetime ago. “Are you serious? You really never called me?”