Perfect on Paper

by Janet Goss

  My hip joints were stiff from the hour or so I’d sat on the stoop with Billy, alternately kissing and bantering. No wonder I’d slept so late. It was high time I started putting together the supplies I’d need for painting the balusters that day—what was left of it. At the rate I was going, I wouldn’t get to Hank’s until midafternoon.

  My gaze alighted on the newspaper. The second Arts section, still open to the article about Hannah, rested on top of the pile.

  What the hell, I thought. I guess there’s time for the puzzle.

  I located the page with the crossword and glanced at the grid’s upper-right corner. “Puzzle by W. W. W. Moody,” the byline read. So that was what Billy had meant when he’d told me I had a surprise in store.

  As usual, he was merciless. “So much for ‘You get me,’ ” I muttered as I scanned his evil clues, desperate for even a three-letter word to enter into the squares. I finally managed to crack the southwest quadrant, then slowly filled in the rest, counterclockwise, until I circled back to 1-Across: DIETER’S DIRECTIVE. Hmmm. Blank-blank-L-D-T-blank-blank-M…

  Of course.

  HOLD THE MAYO.

  Very funny, Mr. Moody.

  By the time I’d solved the puzzle, it was nearly one o’clock. I picked up the phone to let Hank know I was on my way.

  “Boy, am I glad you finally called,” he said.

  “What’s wrong? I told you I’d be coming over, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, but after what I told you at that art show, I thought maybe I seen the last of you. Dana, I don’t want that to happen.”

  “Neither do I,” I replied, and I meant it. Despite my recent behavior to the contrary, the boyfriend position was still his to lose. In the long run, Hank was Day In, Day Out. Billy Moody was a debauched Spring Break Week in Daytona. And if Hank could manage to explain the discrepancies in his autobiography to my satisfaction, then I felt sure I could manage to stay away from the undertow.

  “I’ll be over in half an hour,” I said.

  “That sounds good. We’ll talk then.”

  Would we ever. I’d be the one asking all the questions.

  “Tell me about Las Vegas.” I was sitting on the stairs, brushing pale lilac-colored acrylic into the recesses of a fluted support column. “Did you really grow up there?”

  “All through high school,” Hank responded from the top step of a ladder, where he was stripping decades’ worth of paint from the crown moldings—or “fancy strips of plaster,” as he was given to calling them. “Like I told you, my daddy trained horses for casino acts. Least he did until my grandma took ill and called us back to Tennessee.”

  “I’m surprised you retained such a strong—uh, rural way of speaking.”

  He grinned. “I ain’t never gonna lose my accent. It’s good business, plain and simple. Like my daddy always said, ‘Folks is likely to remember a country bumpkin from Sin City.’ ”

  “I imagine they would be. So, tell me—does the country bumpkin really work for a celebrated Spanish chef?”

  “He sure does. This guy’s the best client I ever had. He don’t come around, he don’t run no tabs, and we’re living for free.” He looked down at me and smiled. “And he’s gonna love that staircase.”

  “Thanks. Let’s hope so.”

  “So… Hannah, huh?”

  I should have known I wouldn’t be asking all the questions. I felt my face flush.

  “You don’t need to explain,” Hank said. “That story’s a real moneymaker. Look, Dana, it’s like I told you last night—you can be anybody you say you are.”

  “I guess we both can.”

  “Now, is there anything else you been wanting to ask me?”

  “No… Oh. Just one more question: Were you and Dinner really in Mullica Hill, New Jersey, on New Year’s Eve?”

  He shifted his gaze from my eyes to his knees. “Well, not exactly. I was there.”

  “But Dinner was here, pneumonia-free?”

  He nodded.

  “Would this have anything to do with the tuxedo you were carrying when you got home the next day?”

  He nodded again, looking decidedly sheepish. “I was at a wedding.”

  My pulse kicked into high gear. “Wearing a tuxedo? Were you the one who was getting married?”

  “What? Hell no! I was the guy who was giving away the bride.”

  “He has a daughter?!!” Elinor Ann said, once I’d finally managed to return home on the pretense of feeding the cat and picking up additional art supplies. I needed a few hours on my own to assimilate Hank’s latest revelation.

  “I should have realized it was a possibility. And I definitely should have known there’d be an ex-wife kicking around somewhere. He’s never once left the toilet seat up.”

  “Where exactly is the former Mrs. Wheeler?” she wanted to know.

  “Still in Tennessee. Apparently they were just a couple of crazy kids who never had no business gettin’ hitched. It all sounded pretty amicable—the divorce, the custody arrangement.… He claims he wants me to meet this girl.”

  “Then why didn’t he invite you to the wedding?”

  I’d been wondering the same thing—especially since Hank had been so insistent about spending New Year’s together. “He didn’t find out about it until the last minute. Apparently the happy couple was all set to elope before the groom’s parents got wind of it. They pulled the ceremony together in a matter of days.”

  “I still don’t see why you couldn’t have gone with him.”

  Nor did I. But we’d been on hiatus the preceding week as a result of his half-truths and sins of omission, and a daughter was the biggest omission of all.

  “He said something about not wanting to spring too much on me at once,” I told Elinor Ann. “I can only assume he thought I’d find it odd when everyone at the ceremony addressed him as J.D. Calhoun.”

  “That would have been odd, all right. How old is this daughter, anyway?”

  I’d been afraid she was going to ask me that. “Twenty-five.”

  “Really?!”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Too bad she just got married.”

  “Don’t, Elinor Ann.”

  “She’s the perfect age for Billy Moody!”

  “I thought I asked you not to say that.”

  I was just about to reread the review of the art fair when the phone rang again.

  “Hello?”

  “Glory be! You’re finally home!”

  “Hi, Mom.” I could hear ferocious banging noises in the background. “Is everything okay down there?”

  “Everything’s just peachy!”

  “Then why does it sound as if Noah is building his ark in your living room?”

  “Oh, that. Just some… temporary unpleasantness. I’m having the wall-to-wall carpeting replaced. You’re father’s up in arms about it, but I told him I’d die of mortification if the sixty people coming to his birthday party saw the sorry conditions we’ve been living in.”

  “Typical Dad, huh?”

  “You know the Commodore.”

  When I was a kid, my father would resole the same pair of shoes six times, but he never failed to trade in his car for the latest model every September. He hated to spend money on necessities—although one could hardly categorize new wall-to-wall as a necessity when ninety percent of it would be obscured by my mother’s extensive collection of Oriental area rugs. “How’s Dad feeling?”

  “Fit as a fiddle! He’s downstairs at the chickee hut playing gin rummy with some of the neighbors.”

  “Is he… still talking about God?”

  “Mercifully, that seems to have passed. The other day he invoked his name to damn the Internal Revenue Service to hell, but that’s certainly nothing unusual.”

  “Not at all.” I covered the receiver to mask a sigh of relief. “So everything’s back to normal?”

  “It will be once this dreadful carpet is out of my living room. Now, I wanted to ask if you’ve booked your flights ye
t.”

  “I’ve been meaning to get on that. This weekend, I promise.”

  “And I’ve been thinking. You certainly seem to be spending a great deal of time with this young man of yours. Do you think it would be appropriate for us to extend a birthday invitation to him?”

  Not if he neglected to extend one to me for his daughter’s wedding. “I don’t know about that. That’s an awful lot of… pressure for a first meeting with the parents.”

  “Then I’ll leave the decision up to you.”

  “Great—another decision,” I muttered after I got off the phone and sat down to check my email. Lately I seemed to be incapable of making them. In fact, when my mother had referred to “this young man of yours,” my initial reaction had been to wonder how she knew about Billy Moody.

  And now here he was, lying in wait in my in-box:

  Been thinking about last night all day. Any chance I can come over there and 1-Across this evening?

  W.W.W.

  I was about to respond with a simple no when I realized I could respond in kind. He’d provided me with the perfect riposte in this morning’s crossword. I went into the kitchen to retrieve the puzzle, located the phrase I had in mind, hit Reply, and typed “16-Down” into the body of the email.

  I expected he’d know immediately what the fill read:

  WHEN PIGS FLY.

  Within minutes, my phone rang.

  “Touché,” Billy said.

  “You left yourself wide open.”

  “I guess I did. And speaking of wide open, that’s an accurate description of my schedule. Let me take you to dinner.”

  “Uh—no.”

  “But you had a good time with me last night, didn’t you?”

  “I’m changing the subject now. Your puzzle this morning was brutal.”

  “Glad you enjoyed it. Of course, you were my inspiration.”

  “I suppose having one’s name appear in a constructor’s crossword fill is the word-nerd equivalent of flowers and candy.”

  “I’ll give you those, too, if you let me take you to dinner.”

  “Stop.”

  Our conversation had rendered me so discombobulated, I found myself wandering from room to room in a fugue state after it ended.

  God, Billy was sexy.

  But Hank was sexy, too, and so much more appropriate.

  But Billy hadn’t concealed his true identity for the past three months.

  But Hank wouldn’t be in his forties when I was eligible for Social Security.

  But Billy didn’t have a kid.

  But Hank wasn’t one.

  But Billy didn’t use double modifiers.

  But Hank—

  “Enough!” I shouted, loudly enough to send Puny scurrying under the bed. I could equivocate indefinitely. What I really needed was a third party to decide my future. Some kind of judge, whose decision would be final and binding.

  Elinor Ann? No. She’d already made it clear how she felt about Billy. And about Hank, for that matter, and his never-ending cavalcade of new revelations.

  I went into the kitchen and came face-to-face with the portrait of Dinner in his leopard skin pillbox hat.

  Of course. Ray Devine could be my Solomon.

  I’d lay out my dilemma when we got together for drinks. He’d loved me once; I was sure of it. He’d still want what was best for me, wouldn’t he?

  All of a sudden, Friday couldn’t come soon enough.

  Apparently Ray had lost his sense of urgency when the day finally arrived. I’d been sitting with a book of Saturday crosswords at the bar, nursing a scotch and water down to nothing but ice cubes and consulting my watch incessantly for the past forty-two minutes and fourteen seconds, when I reached for my cell.

  I let his phone ring twelve times before giving up and calling Elinor Ann.

  “Maybe there’s a problem with the subway,” she said. “Didn’t you tell me he’s way out in Brooklyn?”

  “Nineteen stops on the R train.” A hirsute patron with homemade—or prisonmade—tattoos spelling out an expletive on the fingers of his left hand arose from his stool near the end of the bar and took a seat by my side. “Buy you another?” he slurred.

  You just had to pick a dive bar for the big reunion, I thought to myself.

  “I’m set, thanks.”

  The hirsute man ignored my response and signaled the bartender to bring another round. “Set for what?” Elinor Ann asked.

  “Imminent peril.”

  Another drink materialized before me. I managed a pallid smile and clinked glasses with my benefactor, then returned to my phone call. “You know, Ray was never late when we used to get together. Maybe he changed his mind.”

  “Somehow I doubt that.”

  “So… what are you up to?”

  “Cleaning up after supper. Oh! Guess what we had?”

  Hirsute Man’s arm was sliding dangerously close to my strike zone. “Uh—why don’t you just tell me what you had?”

  “Salmon. With fresh dill I picked up after work at the farmers’ market!”

  “You went all by yourself? That’s fantastic!”

  “Hooray!” Hirsute Man raised his beer in solidarity.

  “How did you manage to do it?” I asked my friend.

  “Well, I noticed something. Whenever I thought about having to go out alone, the anxiety gave me so much nervous energy that I’d just sit there and—well, vibrate, I guess you could say. So I thought if I could do something to get all that tension out of my system, maybe I’d be too tired to panic.”

  “And it worked?”

  “Just before I left the plant, I went into my office and did twenty squat thrusts. Then I did fifty jumping jacks. I was drenched with sweat when I walked out of there—our foreman told me I looked like I was coming down with the flu—but I stayed calm enough to make it all the way to the market.”

  “Jumping jacks,” I said. There was no way I was going to use the words “squat” or “thrust” in the presence of my new admirer. “What a solution. Who would have thought?”

  My comment inspired Hirsute Man to break into a rousing rendition of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.”

  “Oh my god,” Elinor Ann said. “That wasn’t Ray, was it?”

  “God, no. Listen—I am so proud of you.” Hirsute Man was wrapping up the chorus. I had to shut him down before the inevitable air guitar solo. “Oh—and I have good news, too! The doctor gave me a new prescription today. This time she’s one hundred percent sure it will finally get rid of my yeast infection!”

  Hirsute Man excused himself and went over to peruse the titles on the jukebox.

  “Dana, what in the world are you talking about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you okay?”

  I sighed. “Not exactly.”

  Where the hell was Ray Devine?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I GUESS I’M LOSING MY MIND

  I completed two more crosswords and drained the drink Hirsute Man had provided before scrounging around in my purse for something to write on. All I could find was the stub from my guest pass to last week’s Outsider Art Fair, but at least the back of it was blank.

  Ray, I wrote, Hope nothing serious has happened (even though something serious better have happened for you to stand me up). Call when/if you get this—D.

  I caught the eye of the bartender. “What do I owe you?”

  “Four and a quarter.”

  I handed him a ten, along with the note. “If a good-looking older man comes in tonight, would you make sure he gets this?”

  “I’ll keep it in the register. If he shows up, he’ll get it.”

  “But—don’t you need more of a description?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll know him.”

  “But—”

  “Take a look around, lady—you see any good-lookin’ men in this dump?”

  A bitter wind hampered my progress home, buffeting the portrait of Dinner I’d carefully wrapped for Ray. End-of-week reveler
s crowded the sidewalks, darkening my mood even further. How dare they enjoy themselves in the face of my humiliation?

  I unlocked my apartment door and raced to the nightstand. The red light was blinking on the answering machine. I had one new message.

  From my dentist’s office, reminding me of my Tuesday cleaning at ten forty-five.

  I had one sleeve of my coat off when the phone rang. “Thank god,” I said, lunging for it.

  “What happened ?”

  Click.

  “I’m sure Ray didn’t intend to stand you up,” Elinor Ann said. “Maybe that was him on his cell, but he’s stuck in the subway and the call couldn’t get through.”

  “Then his hang-up wouldn’t have gotten through, either.”

  “Oh. Good point.”

  I’d logged on to the MTA’s Web site just after she answered her phone. “Hang on a second,” I said, accessing the link for current service status. Every subway line was running smoothly, with the exception of the R. “Oh my god! The Transit Authority’s reporting major delays on his train line!”

  “Yay!”

  “I know! Yay!”

  “I mean, that’s a shame, of course, but—”

  “I know exactly what you mean.”

  “Yay!” we chorused.

  “You realize we’re not being very nice,” Elinor Ann said.

  “Are you kidding? We’re assholes. Yay, anyway.”

  “See? I told you there’d be a perfectly logical explanation. I wonder what happened to the train.”

  “I’m way ahead of you,” I replied, typing in the address for News Four Online. “ ‘One Dead in Canal Street Shooting—R Service Suspended—Passengers Stranded Underground,’ ” I read aloud from the headline.

  “Oh, jeez. I hope Ray’s not the one who got shot. Then we really would be a-holes.”

  “Don’t worry. They’re saying it’s gang related. He’s probably stuck between stations.” And would be for hours. Meaning I was on my own tonight.

  “Well, the important thing is that he’s okay. I’m sure he’ll get in touch with you as soon as he can.”

  “He’d better.”

  “You could see him tomorrow.”