Perfect on Paper

by Janet Goss

  “Hello?”

  “Package for Mayo!”

  My phone! I flew down the stairs and thanked the postman more effusively than an actress accepting an Academy Award.

  Once downstairs, I realized I was starving. The last solid food I’d ingested had been last night’s sole meunière. I had a twenty in my jeans pocket, but no coat. But it was only a hundred feet or so to the deli on the corner.…

  There was just one problem. I’d have to pass in front of Vivian’s storefront to get there, and I was most definitely not in the mood to be harangued for slackerism.

  I crept halfway down the stoop and bobbed my head around the corner like a SWAT team member clearing a crack house. Perfect: Vivian had her back to me; she was fussing with a mannequin. I dashed to the corner, got a sandwich, and repeated the process in reverse, feeling even more ridiculous on my second pass by the shop.

  When I returned to the apartment, I ripped open Elinor Ann’s package to discover not just my cell phone, but a framed copy of the photograph I’d asked for during my Thanksgiving visit. How like her to take care of it right away.

  But wait a second. If she’d taken care of it right away, did that mean she’d managed to get to a store, to have the picture scanned, and then perhaps another store, to purchase its frame?

  “I wish,” she said. “But I’m not cured just yet. I had Eddie copy the picture on the scanner we got them last Christmas.”

  I should have known.

  “What about the frame?”

  “I bought it at Renningers last Saturday when you went off to find the bathroom.”

  “Why, you little sneak. But I really appreciate your sending it. And finally getting my phone back.”

  “Are you kidding? I wanted you to have it back almost as badly as you did. And I guess I should thank you, too.”

  “For what?”

  “On my way to work this morning, I got off and on at the Krumsville exit again. It was a little less scary this time.”

  “That’s fanstastic!” I dropped a chunk of tuna from my sandwich into Puny’s bowl, then wandered over to the computer to check my email. “Maybe tomorrow morning you could manage a detour. How about a mile down the road and back?”

  “Hmm. I don’t know about that.… Well, maybe if you were on the phone with me for moral support. Would I be waking you if I called around seven thirty?”

  I didn’t respond. I was transfixed by my in-box, which contained a message from Billy Moody with the words “Preliminary grid” in the subject line.

  “Dana? Are you still there?”

  “Huh?”

  “Oh no. You just got an email from that adolescent, didn’t you?”

  Hey, Dana—Here’s what I’ve come up with so far. Not bad for a first pass.

  I’ve still got some tweaking to do, especially in the northeast, but I couldn’t wait to write to you.

  Can’t wait to see you again, either.

  W.W.W.

  P.S. You are so hot.

  Raging lust was rendering me so discombobulated, it took a couple of attempts before my reflexes allowed me to successfully click open the attachment. Finally the grid appeared on the screen.

  He’d worked his usual alchemy. “[blank]ety [blank]” was cleverly positioned in the center of the puzzle so the other themed entries could end or begin there. I located “guayabera,” as promised, not to mention “Boyz II Men” and “qwerty”—all appropriately challenging for a Thursday puzzle. But what was a “Sandl”? Oh, of course—Savings and Loan…

  I hit Reply.

  What do you mean, “preliminary”? This is flat-out magnificent!

  “So are you,” I said to the screen, hitting Send before I could succumb to the temptation of a postscript.

  I returned to my portrait of Dinner, which was almost completed. I’d saved the faux-sapphire necklace-turned-headdress for last so it would achieve maximum pop on the canvas. Beginning with a dab of ultramarine blue, I mixed in a little viridian green, but before I could lighten the color, I heard the ping of temptation.

  You are not going to read that email until this painting is finished, I told myself, stabbing my palette knife into a can of titanium white.

  You are not going to read that email until the outline of this necklace is sketched in. I checked the clock, which read 4:59.

  You are not going to read that email until five o’clock.

  Dana—I’m as big a sucker for flattery as the next guy, but the grid has a ways to go before it’s magnificent. I’ve got a couple of really annoying fill words in there—namely, VENI and ETUI. There’s absolutely no way to clue the former except “Part of Caesar’s boast,” since anything utilizing “I came” might have a hard time passing the Breakfast Test (the premise there being that the solver is sitting in the kitchen, working on the puzzle over breakfast, and there are certain words or phrases that he or she doesn’t want to see at that hour. Explains why “The _____ mightier than the sword” is our fallback for—well, you know).

  As for ETUI—ptui! There are only so many variations on “Needle case.” That one’s got to go.

  W.W.W.

  P.S. This grid wouldn’t still be preliminary if you weren’t such a distraction.

  Rather than indulge in an extended fantasy about how, specifically, Billy Moody was distracting himself with me, I reopened the grid and scrutinized the troubled northeast. ETUI, I had to admit, was one of those mundane clues that turned up almost weekly—and no wonder, given its array of useful vowels.

  Now, PTUI, on the other hand, would make for a lively substitute, if one could get away with the letter change.…

  I set about composing a response as the sapphire-colored paint swatch hardened on my palette:

  I see you’ve got MEET as your Down and MING the Across in that ETUI area. If you changed the former to KEPT, you’d have KING going across and your ETUI would no longer provoke a “ptui!”; it would be PTUI.

  As for VENI… maybe you could go with “Caesarian section”? Unless you’re morally opposed to puns, of course.

  I sent it off immediately to prevent myself from making an imprudent comment about his closing remark. Then I wisely put the computer to sleep so I could gain enough momentum to complete the portrait.

  A few hours later I stepped back from the canvas to survey the finished product. Dinner was a high priestess in his regal pose—not so much Joan of Arc this time around as Joan Crawford, albeit with less-pronounced cheekbones. The riotously bright Lilly Pulitzer scarf I’d draped in the background flattened out the image, the blues in its pattern competing with the sapphires for dominance. Vivian would be delighted.

  But after all that hard work, I decided Vivian could wait until tomorrow while I treated myself to a quick peek at my in-box:

  Yo! Amanda!

  I actually arrived at the same conclusion regarding ETUI/PTUI shortly after sending the last email. Your having made an identical tweak merely confirms my initial suspicion that this is going to be a legendary collaboration.

  And as for “Caesarian section”?…

  !!!!!!!!!

  Veni.

  W.W.W.

  P.S. You know I’m in love with you, right?

  Of course he was joking, but that didn’t stop a tsunami of exhilaration from washing over me, one that had nothing whatsoever to do with my newly discovered flair for clueing. I flopped on the bed and considered my next move. The way I saw it, I had two options: I could further roil the waters by responding in kind, or I could ignore Billy’s provocative postscript and wax rhapsodic over what was sure to be our first published puzzle.

  Or I could wait. Pretend I hadn’t read the email. Go down to Seventh Street, where Hank was expecting me, to have dinner and earth-shattering sex—preferably in reverse order.

  A ghost answered the door. Hank was covered in a fine coating of white dust. Immediately I regretted wearing my black turtleneck.

  “Aw, heck,” he said. “I wish you’d called to let me know you were o
n your way. I been sanding them fancy strips of plaster up by the dining room ceiling all day. I’d hate to ruin your sweater.”

  “Don’t worry—it’s washable,” I said, even though it wasn’t, and even though I couldn’t help but wonder why a contractor didn’t know those fancy strips of plaster were called crown moldings.

  But at least he was performing the task of a contractor. I peeled my sweater over my head and tossed it in the direction of the banister, then slipped my hands underneath his shirt.

  “Whoa! What’s the rush? Give me a minute to clean myself up.”

  “I don’t feel like waiting.”

  He hugged back but then pulled away to meet my gaze. “Are you sure you’re all right? You seem…” His eyes traveled from my face down to my camisole, which I’d chosen especially for the occasion. It was made of some sort of stretchy white lace material that neither concealed the breasts of its wearer nor provided protection from the winter chill. As a garment, it failed miserably. As incentive, it seemed to be just the ticket.

  He ran his hands down the sides of it. “Mmm… I like this.”

  Finally.

  We passed through the hallway to the bedroom, where we discovered his ungainly house pet splayed across the mattress, snoring contentedly. Hank returned to the kitchen to retrieve an apple, waved it in front of Dinner’s snout until he awakened, then rolled it out the door.

  Alone at last.

  “Missed you last night,” he murmured, unzipping my jeans.

  “Missed you, too,” I replied, which technically wasn’t a lie. I’d missed him terribly on my way home.

  Pig or no pig, the bed was awfully crowded that night. Hank was taller than Ray Devine, but shorter than Billy Moody. Heavier than Billy, but a little thinner than Ray, with a completely different approach to oral stimulation…

  Which begged the question: How would Billy…?

  Focus!!!

  I finally managed to climax, but I couldn’t be entirely sure who was responsible for bringing me to it.

  I would have drifted off, but Dinner was head-butting the bedroom door with single-minded determination. Besides, I couldn’t go to sleep until I rinsed off the plaster dust that had accumulated on various parts of my anatomy.

  “You hungry?” Hank said. “How ’bout I call for some Thai and we jump in the shower real quick?”

  He was shaving when the delivery guy rang the doorbell. I threw on one of his sweatshirts, turning it into a bulky minidress, and ran to pay for the food. After refastening the padlock, I sniffed. There was an overpowering smell of pine in the entrance hall, and obviously it wasn’t coming from the drunken noodles. I slid open one of the pocket doors leading to the parlor and the smell intensified. There, in the middle of the room—on a beautifully refinished parquet floor—stood a massive tree.

  I heard Hank approach from behind. “Shoot,” he said. “Wanted to surprise you. Christmas’ll be here before you know it. I was kinda hoping we could spend it together this year.”

  I immediately recalled one of Vivian’s many adages on the subject of men: “If they want you for Christmas, they want you for life.”

  I had to admit, it was a titillating prospect.

  There was just one problem with the convivial scene I was already picturing in my mind: tradition. I always, always spent the holiday with Tom-Tom. Elinor Ann had a houseful; her two spinster aunts faithfully made the pilgrimage from nearby Shartlesville every December. And Dad’s middle-child, Jeffer, had a standing invitation to visit my parents’ in Florida, wife and teenage boys in tow.

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “I’ve been going to my half brother’s on the Upper East Side for the past twenty years. I’d hate to disappoint him.”

  Hank put his arms around me and nuzzled the back of my neck. “Then bring him,” he said. “It’s high time I met your people.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MISTER EXCITEMENT

  “Oh boy,” Elinor Ann said when I called on my way home from Hank’s the following day. “Christmas with the boyfriend. That’s big.”

  “I guess it is.”

  “So why don’t you sound excited?”

  Hmm. Why didn’t I sound excited?

  Because Hank was happy to see me every time I showed up on his doorstep. And conversation came easy, and our silences were comfortable, and when I wasn’t with him, I missed him. Which wasn’t necessarily exciting, but it felt pretty good—really good.

  “I’m beginning to think excitement is overrated,” I told Elinor Ann.

  “Wow, Dana.”

  “Wow, what?”

  “I never dreamed I’d be saying this, but I think you’re in a serious relationship.”

  “I am, aren’t I?”

  “Well, you would be if you could manage to steer clear of that teenager.”

  But I had steered clear of Billy Moody, aside from the occasional grid-related email, ever since our ill-fated evening out, and I intended to keep it that way. Things were going well with Hank—Christmas well. I was spending almost every night at the brownstone now; in fact, we’d already made plans to get together again after work.

  Plans I realized I had to cancel when I checked my messages later that afternoon—specifically the email from Lark with the words “Holiday Party” in the subject line:

  Sandro’s arranged a limousine for us! I’ll pick you up at 5:00 sharp!

  Swell, I thought, recalling gallery parties from the past: an army of ectomorphic caterers circulating endless flutes of champagne, which our well-heeled clients would sip politely while our artists overindulged, until one of them—a few years back it had been Sandro—had to be escorted to the curb and into a cab.

  But tonight Sandro would be with his wife, and Lark would be the center of attention.

  But what was I going to wear? I’d been so busy planning her outfit, I’d given no thought to my own.

  I opened my closet and grabbed my fallback dressy ensemble: a pair of black, wide-legged trousers and a creamy satin blouse. I was just tying the shirttails in a knot around my waist when I realized I’d worn the exact same thing the last time I’d attended the gallery party. Come to think of it, so had the caterers.

  But what did it matter? No one would be looking at me this evening—unless they wanted their champagne flute topped off. The night belonged to the Girl in the Blue Satin Dress.

  I’d gone outside to wait for her when a comically elongated limo, stretching nearly the length of the block, pulled up to the stoop. Its back door swung open, but before Lark’s feet touched the pavement, Vivian materialized in front of her.

  “Slingbacks? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Well, I—”

  “What size shoe do you wear?”

  “Six and a half. But—”

  Vivian grabbed her arm and marched her into the shop as I followed close behind. “I’m thinking the Valentino peek-toe pumps, but try the silver kitten heels while you’re at it,” she said, pointing to the shoe rack built into the rear wall. Lark dutifully scampered off.

  “You are not charging my friend another dime for that pair of shoes,” I whispered once she was out of earshot.

  Vivian rolled her eyes. “Fine. One more Hannah and we’ll call it even.”

  “Forget it. No more Hannahs.”

  Lark reappeared before Vivian could react. She took a few paces back and forth in the pumps, then went off to try the kitten heels.

  “Everyone at the party tonight is going to ask her where she got that dress,” I said. “She’ll tell them. That’s payment enough, Vivian.”

  “Oh, you think so, do you?”

  I shrugged. “Of course, she could always wear those slingbacks she came in with.…” I turned to watch Lark approaching in the silver kitten heels.

  So did Vivian. “Those are the ones,” she announced, reaching into a desk drawer and scooping up a stack of business cards. “And if you’re willing to hand these out to the women who’ll want to know where you bo
ught your outfit, the shoes are on me.”

  Lark threw her arms around her benefactor. “You’re the sweetest person I’ve ever met!”

  I gave Vivian a nudge after Lark had gone into the bathroom to retouch her makeup. “Admit it. You are sweet.”

  “I’m a lot of things, but we both know sweet isn’t one of them.” Vivian frowned. “What is it about that girl, anyway? You’re giving me two Hannahs for her dress, and here I am throwing in the footwear.”

  “She’s us, before life intervened,” I said.

  Vivian shook her head. “I was never that young. I was older than her on the day I was born. So… who’s the guy she’s getting all dolled up for?”

  “A creep.”

  “Married?”

  “Naturally.”

  Vivian sighed. “I take it back. I was that young once.” She returned to her desk and rummaged through the top drawer until Lark emerged from the bathroom in fresh lipstick.

  “I guess I’m ready.”

  “Not quite.” Vivian held up a glittering bracelet that made Lark gasp.

  “Are those real diamonds?”

  “What do you think?” Vivian replied, fastening it around her wrist. “Just keep one thing in mind: This bracelet is a loan. If you lose it, I’ll track you down and stab you to death with those kitten heels you’ve got on.”

  “How sweet of you,” I murmured, smirking, as Vivian ushered us out the door.

  “Go fuck yourself,” she murmured back.

  Lark was trembling with anticipation by the time we pulled up in front of the gallery. “Oh, Dana, I can’t believe this night is finally here!”

  “I know exactly how you feel.”

  Did I ever. Apparently, so did Vivian. I tried to remember how I used to pass the time between my Thursday afternoon dates: Working. Talking to Elinor Ann. Wishing I’d hear from Ray.