Molly made a face that showed she doubted Tracie’s motives. “What do I get out of it?”
“You get your nicest guy in the Northwest back.”
“I’ll think on it,” Molly said, but Tracie could see by her expression she was sold.
“Thank you, Molly.”
“Mind you, I’m not sure I can do it. And don’t take ’im back all the way to where ’e was. I liked what you did when you just made ’im look better—let’s face it, ’e needed a visit from the fashion police.” It was the first time Tracie could remember Molly approving of anything she’d done. “But don’t you see that changing ’ow ’e acts is altogether different from changing ’ow ’e looks?”
“I guess it is.”
“You’ve betrayed women everywhere,” Molly hissed. “ ’e used to be gifted, now ’e thinks ’e’s God’s gift. There’s a big difference.” She gestured with her chin over her shoulder. “Take a look.”
Tracie turned. Jon was entering the coffee shop. He had a new swagger, a new persona. “I really did wrong,” Tracie agreed. Then Molly nodded her head and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Here I am! Your star pupil,” Jon said as he slid into the booth, taking Molly’s place. Tracie looked him over. She could see he not only looked good but felt good, too. She wondered how good Beth felt right now. “Hey, what’s with your hair?” Jon asked.
“What about it?” Tracie asked, forcibly restraining her own hands from covering it. She couldn’t believe that Jon was being critical of her.
“I don’t know,” he said, and shrugged. “Who did it? You probably shouldn’t try anyone new. I just went back to Stefan.”
“Well, good for you,” Tracie said. “It was Stefan who gave me this cut.”
“Oh, well. It’s nice.” He almost closed his eyes in a kind of wince. “Yeah,” he said. “It suits you.”
“And how does your life suit you?” Tracie asked coldly. “Is it time for a few more lessons?” She was about to tell him he needed lessons in courtesy and thoughtfulness and remembering old friends. But before she had a chance to begin, he agreed with her.
“Absolutely,” he said. “But I guess it’s the advanced class now.”
She couldn’t get over him, and he obviously couldn’t get over himself. “Oh, really?” she asked, trying not to show her pique. “And what would that consist of? Orgies? Menages à trois?”
He laughed, as if all of this was a big joke. She wondered for a moment if Molly was right about everything. She didn’t think so, but it looked as if she was right about Jon.
Then Jon’s face got serious. Maybe there was a chance he, too, wanted to change back. “Well, to tell you the truth, I really do need help.” He looked at her with his old expression, a kind of tell-me-how-please look. “Uh, Tracie, I don’t quite know if I should ask this, but . . . how do I get rid of them?”
“Rid of whom?”
“Well, say”—he paused, as if trying to pull up an example—“Beth. She calls at least four times a day. I finally saw her just to get rid of her, but you can’t get rid of her. No matter what you say, she doesn’t give up. I mean, I know she’s your friend, and I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I think she needs to work on her self-esteem. Meanwhile, I don’t know what to do.”
Tracie took a deep breath. This was the Jon she knew. Maybe he wasn’t an insensitive prick bastard. Maybe he was merely inexperienced, a little stupid. And, apparently, very, very good in bed. She blushed.
“Oh, don’t be mad,” he said, mistaking her reddening face for anger. “She’s nice and all, but she’s . . .”
Tracie told herself she had never expected Jon and Beth to be a permanent thing. She’d expected Beth to be cruel or bored by Jon. She had miscalculated, and that was an error of judgment on her part, not his moral wrong. And she supposed that it was no worse for Beth to be obsessed with a disinterested Jonny than a disinterested Marcus. In fact, maybe it was better because Jon couldn’t fire her. Tracie took a deep breath. “Look, if you have to blow someone off, always use the INYIM line.”
“What’s that?”
Tracie spelled the initials on the damp tabletop between them. “INYIM. ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ You know . . .”
“I’ve heard that from women!” Jon exclaimed.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “We use it all the time, too. But it’s sexier, somehow, from men. You know, ‘I can’t settle down. I’m a rambling man.’ ” She paused. “When I was teenager, every time I heard that song ‘The Wanderer,’ I’d get furious.”
“The guy that went from town to town?” Jon asked.
“Yeah. You know, the kind of guy who could never settle down. When you’re that kind of guy—”
“You’re like James Dean!” Jon said.
“Yeah. The type of guy who says, ‘You’re the kind of girl I could love but . . .’ ”
“I got it, I got it,” Jon said, excited and enthusiastic again. Then he leaned forward, so close that she could count the tiny wires of beard on his cheek and chin. “Hey, listen to this: I bagged Samantha.”
Tracie recoiled as if she’d been bitten. “Why don’t you shut up?” She asked him, and rose. Without thinking, she swung her arm as if to hit him. Jon put both of his hands in the air to ward her off.
“Wow! What’s that about?” he asked. “I thought you’d be pleased with my progress.”
“Progress? You don’t call me back. You date Carole and Ruth and don’t call Beth, except to break up with her! Then, out of boredom, or weakness, you see her instead—and you sleep with her to keep her hooked?” She had to stop to catch her breath. “You tell me that you ‘bagged’ Sam. Bagged? You really liked Sam. That’s the way you tell me you had sex with her?”
“Hey, don’t be mad. It was safe sex,” he protested.
This was too much. Tracie got out of the booth, grabbed her jacket, and started to walk to the door.
Jon caught up with her and grabbed her hand. “Isn’t this what you trained me for?” he asked. “I figured you’d be impressed with all I’ve done. I swear, Beth and Sam and Ruth all liked it.”
“Ruth! You slept with Ruth, too?”
“Ruth and I didn’t do much sleeping.” Jon grinned. Tracie couldn’t get angry again—she couldn’t get over it. Had he always been a weasel in sheep’s clothing? He was looking at her dazed face. “Hey, we had fun,” he told her. “It means you’ve taught me well, Yoda. Wasn’t that the point? Do you realize I even got it on with Enid from my building? Enid, the personal trainer.”
“Enid?” she asked, her voice raised. Most of the people in the restaurant looked up. “Enid? She . . . she . . .” Tracie knew she was sputtering, but there were times you got beyond words. “She’s ten years older than you, and a drunk. And a slut!”
“I’m not going to marry her, Trace,” Jon said, his voice lowered. “It was a casual thing.”
“I can’t believe you slept with her. She’s nuts, and you should be ashamed.”
Molly came over to them. “We don’t do takeaway,” she said, and led them back to the table. Putting both her hands on their shoulders, she sat them down, pulled out a pad, and looked ready to take their orders. “You ’ave some talking to do. Meanwhile, the usual?”
“No,” Jon said matter-of-factly. “New man. New menu. Waffles.”
“You want ’am with that?” Molly asked.
Tracie couldn’t believe it. As if she would eat with him, as if all of this was okay. “No,” she said. “He doesn’t eat pigs—he fucks them.”
Molly smirked. That only made Tracie more furious. “You are disgusting,” she said to Jon. “I don’t want to eat with you, I don’t want to sit with you, I don’t even want to talk with you.”
Tracie looked at Molly. “Forget brunch,” she told the waitress. “He’s too busy for brunch with me.” She got up and stomped away.
Chapter 30
Tracie was a woman with a mission, a female on a quest. Unfortunately, as s
he passed people, they said, “Hi,” usually followed by “Some haircut!” Or “Ears lowered, huh?” or just “Tracie?” This was not the look she’d choose for walking into the enemy camp, but she imagined herself as Saint Joan. Her voices were telling her, Jon must be taken down. The fact that she’d have to use another enemy of women to achieve her goal didn’t bother her.
She paused at Allison’s cubicle. There was no denying the girl was gorgeous. She was looking over some work and her hair fell straight as a plumb line from the crown of her head across her pale cheek to the surface of the desk. She was so involved in what she was looking at that she didn’t notice Tracie, so, without invitation, Tracie moved toward her desk.
“Hey, Allison. I wonder if you could do me a favor?” Tracie asked.
Allison looked up with a not very favor-oriented expression. Her perfect cerulean blue eyes blinded. Tracie automatically touched her tiny twigs of hair. “I know. My hair’s too short,” she said, precluding a first strike by Allison.
“Oh. Have you changed your hair?” Allison asked, and Tracie felt more insulted even than when Tim told her it was a bad Sinéad O’Connor impersonation. But as she stood there and looked at Allison, she realized that Allison was the kind of girl who probably didn’t notice anything different about another woman.
“Anyway, I got free tickets, including a backstage pass, to the Radiohead concert and I told a friend of mine he could go, but my boyfriend is really freaking. So I wondered if . . . well, would you mind going with my friend?”
It was the first time Tracie had ever seen Allison look anything but bored. “You’re kidding, right?” she asked, and her eyes—if possible—got even bigger. “I tried to get press passes for two weeks. I mean, I did everything.” Tracie thought of the way Allison played up to Marcus and wondered whether “everything” included sexual favors. But somehow, Tracie thought that Allison was the type of woman who liked to tempt but not deliver. With her, men lived on the promise of sex, not the reality. “I’m dying to go,” Allison added.
“Great! So you’ll go out with my friend Jonny.”
Suddenly, Allison’s flawless eyes narrowed into Siamese-cat slits. “Hey, wait a minute! I mean, this isn’t some dorky cousin you’re fixing me up with or something?” she asked.
Tracie had a feeling that Allison liked only men who were the possession of other women. “Ha.” Tracie laughed. “No. No blood relation. If he was, our dates would be incest. Actually, this is the guy Beth dropped Marcus for.”
“Really?” Allison asked. “I didn’t know that Beth had dated Marcus. Anyway, I thought he dropped her,” Allison said, exposing herself as both a liar and an idiot at the same time.
Tracie shrugged. “I don’t really know the details,” she said as casually as she could manage, although the impulse to pull out a Remington and shave Allison’s perfect locks suddenly became incredibly strong. “All I know is that he briefly dated Beth and that all the girls in the newsroom want him. But I’ve started going out with him, although my boyfriend doesn’t know. So just go to the concert, keep my seat warm, and he’ll take you out to dinner first, if you want to.”
She watched as a light as small as a struck match began to glow behind the turquoise pools of Allison’s pupils. Actually, her whole face began to glow with the perfect light of a smooth glass lantern. If her forehead were transparent, Tracie was sure she could have seen little wheels and gears grinding away as Allison compared the thought of stealing a man from Tracie with the risk of being found out by Marcus. “Okay. Sure.”
As if her own thought had conjured him up, Tracie heard a gurgling noise behind her. She turned and found Marcus standing in the doorway of the cubicle. How long has he been there? Tracie wondered. Maybe it was she and not Allison who was risking her job. “So, speaking of the man that half the girls in the newsroom want,” Tracie said in a bantering tone. Marcus didn’t smile. Tracie felt a flutter in her stomach, and both women looked at him silently.
“Tracie, can I talk to you a moment?” Marcus asked, then turned on his heel after he gestured for her to follow him. She walked behind him down the hall. Had he heard everything she’d said? Even the fiction about Beth dumping him? Tracie decided that if he fired her, she would sue. She didn’t know for what, but the guy was a hound.
The walk across the newsroom seemed endless, and when she got to his office, she was almost shaking. A lot of heads followed her perambulation, but nobody said anything.
“I heard a rumor,” he said as he sat down in his chair and threw his feet up on the desk. Tracie wasn’t sure if she should sit down or not, but she decided to. God, was he going to talk to her about how she’d fixed up Beth with Jon? Or was he going to yell at her for her idea to use Allison as a tonic? Or had he overheard her complaining about losing the Memorial Day follow-up piece and her theory on how Allison had gotten it? She held one hand with the other in her lap and had to use all of her self-control not to let one of them rise and pull at the pathetic stubble of her hair. “I hear you’re thinking of freelancing,” he said.
“Freelancing?” she repeated like an idiot, but his comment had come out of left field, or someplace further away, if there was someplace further away than that. How could he know? Had someone from Seattle Magazine snitched on her? Did they all run in the same pack at Seattle’s toniest parties?
“As a full-time employee here, you are strictly forbidden to offer work that has not been presented for publication here to other outlets.”
Tracie couldn’t believe it. He was bothering her about the piece he’d turned down? For the first time, instead of being frightened of Marcus, she noticed something—nervousness, or fear?—behind Marcus’s bravado. But what could he be afraid of? And how did he know about her query letters?
“I’m not sure that I’m going to freelance anything,” Tracie said as truthfully and calmly as she could. “But if I do freelance an article, I would always hope that it would be published here.” She paused and tried a smile, although what she really felt like doing was taking a bite right through the end of his shoe and into his big toe. “Anyway, Marcus, the only thing I’ve been working on—aside from your assignments, of course—is the makeover piece you rejected.”
“What makeover?” he asked, and stood up. He began to pace back and forth along the windowed wall behind his desk. She could see that in profile he was still quite handsome, although the beginnings of a double chin weakened his otherwise-strong face. He crossed his arms, then turned and caught her looking at him appraisingly. It was his turn to smile and, probably to make her more uncomfortable, he passed the desk and began pacing behind her.
“Oh,” he said. “Are you talking about that technotransformation, ‘Mild One into Wild One’ by the inversion of a single letter?” Tracie craned her neck, but each time he came into view, he turned and walked in the other direction. She decided to ignore his pacing and stared out the window instead. She kept quiet. “Maybe I was a little bit premature,” he said. “I’d like to take another look at it.”
Tracie knew that she should say no, that what she needed was an article to run somewhere else and without his butchering, but she wasn’t sure if she could stand up to him. “It’s just in draft form,” she informed him, listening to his restless footsteps.
“I don’t mind,” he said and, from behind her, he put his hands lightly on her shoulders. She jumped in her seat and he took them away.
“Okay,” she said, sounding to herself like the old Mary Tyler Moore character when she was startled by Mr. Grant. “I’ll give you a draft right away.” Then she was up and out of his office in a heartbeat.
“Tracie, can I talk to you a moment?” Marcus asked her again late that afternoon. Do I have a choice? she wondered. He stepped into her cubicle. “I read the draft of the dweeb makeover. I’m deeply surprised. It’s actually pretty good. You’re wasted on these stupid holiday pieces. There are some other assignments I’d like to see you working on.”
Is he serious? What’s going on? she thought.
“Come on with me,” he said. She thought that he’d leered, but with Marcus, almost every expression was that unpleasant.
“Really?” she asked, and then wanted to bite her tongue. She had to learn not to react to either his praise or his criticism. What am I? His puppy? She followed him down the long hall that ran in the back of the building. Her thoughts kept her from noticing that Marcus had stopped, and she almost bumped into his back. He turned to face her. The hall was momentarily deserted, and he leaned against the wall, crossing his arms in that gesture of self-sufficiency she had come to know and dislike.
“Do we have a release from this guy?” Marcus asked.
“Uh. Sort of.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means not yet, but I can get one. He’s a friend.”
“Not after this piece comes out.” He laughed, then looked around. Tracie couldn’t help it—she, too, turned her head, as if the enemy were listening. That was why she was so surprised when she turned back and saw he was leaning in, inches from her. He pushed Tracie against the wall and stretched both arms to either side so that she was backed against the wall, penned in by his arms and only inches from his smirking face. She could feel his breath on her forehead. “How about we edit it tonight . . . together?”
She couldn’t believe it. He was actually putting a move on her. She thought of bringing her knee up between his legs, but she needed the job. “Marcus . . .” she began. He leaned closer, his mouth almost on hers. She squirmed down the wall. “I don’t think so.”
“Come on. Don’t play shy with me. I know how you look at me in those editorial meetings.” He was about to try to kiss her, when Tracie gave him a really big push, big enough to throw him off balance. He stumbled, and she couldn’t help it—she pushed him again. Then she saw Tim and Beth standing just behind him. How much had they witnessed? Marcus fell to the floor. Beth stopped and stared at him. Tim, reluctantly it seemed, bent to give him a hand up. Embarrassed, Marcus slapped it away and stood.
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