Miss Match

by Leslie Carroll

  Walker gazed into Kathryn’s eyes. “Because you looked like you needed it.”

  “I like the way you think,” she murmured. “You know, maybe we shouldn’t be too hard on that lady. Did you ever play the game where you see a total stranger and then you make up what they do and you give them an entire existence? You said she needed to get a life. Let’s invent one for her.”

  “Okay,” Walker said. “You go first.”

  “Well . . .” Kathryn began. “Maybe we should really feel sorry for her. After all, she’s here all by herself, shopping in the middle of the night. Maybe she’s lonely and she can’t sleep, and she wanted to be around people, so she went out grocery shopping. It must be so sad to grow old alone. I know I would hate it.”

  Walker began to get into the game. “Maybe she was married for something like fifty years and now she’s a widow and she can’t fall asleep in a bed without her husband. Every night, she looks over and sees that empty space, the sheets still cool to the touch, deprived of the warmth of his body. So she prowls the produce aisles at night because sleeping alone is too depressing.”

  “Yeah,” Kathryn added, building on Walker’s supposition. “And maybe she interrupted our kiss because she goes to the supermarket—a clean, well-lighted place—to forget her pain and her loss of the great love of her life, and we just inadvertently reminded her of what she once had.”

  “I shouldn’t have been so hard on her,” Walker said ruefully.

  They wheeled their cart to the only checkout line open at that late hour. The elderly lady had carefully placed each of her purchases on the conveyor belt and was watching the price scanner with some trepidation. When she saw Kathryn and Walker approach the counter, she turned back to glare at them.

  “That’s $5.66,” the aqua-smocked cashier told the woman. The old lady reached for her purse and methodically began to count out the change.

  Walker took out his wallet. “It’s okay . . . ‘LaShawna,’ he said, reading the cashier’s nameplate. It’s on me.” He looked at the old woman. “I’m sorry I was rude to you. I’m sure you’ve had a rich and rewarding life. Please accept this as part of my apology.”

  The elderly shopper turned her face up to look at her benefactor. Her eyes misted over. “A sheynem dank,” she whispered softly. “Thank you.”

  “Nishtoh far vos,” Walker replied. “It’s nothing. Zay gezunt. Have a good night.”

  “You speak Yiddish?” Kathryn asked, amazed.

  “ ‘Just one continuous string of surprises,’ ” Walker replied, smiling down at her. “With a mother who’s a professional Yenta, how could I not know a phrase or two?”

  “Damn!” LaShawna said, wiping a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. She sniffled a little. “That is the nicest thing I ever seen anyone do since I been working here. You’re a good person.” She tossed a Milky Way bar into their shopping bag. “Y’all have a good night, now. What was that you said to her? ‘Gesundheit’?”

  “Zay gezunt,” Walker said. “It literally means ‘go in good health.’ ”

  “Yeah, well, back at you,” LaShawna said, retrieving a crumpled Kleenex from the pocket of her smock.

  “That was . . . you are a really special person, Mr. Hart,” Kathryn said, slipping her arm through his as they walked back to their high-rise. The night was quiet and still, and from somewhere—perhaps the sparse greenery that dotted Abingdon Square—came the scent of night-blooming jasmine. With a pang as bittersweet as the hot fudge in her grocery bag, Kathryn realized that she was not looking forward to her date with Glen Pinsky with nearly as much vengeful anticipation as she had been just a couple of hours earlier.

  Chapter 16

  “So what do you do, Valerie?” Lou asked Walker’s date. “These getting to know one another things are always kind of awkward. I apologize. Josh and Bear have known each other for dog’s years, so I know what it’s like to be the new kid on the block.” Lou bit into a dim sum. “Does anybody know what’s in this one?” she asked the table. Walker shook his head. Lou fed the other half of the Chinese dumpling to her fiancé, as though he were a trained seal, popping it in his mouth.

  “Shmmphhff,” Josh said definitively, trying to chew the hot dumpling with a modicum of decorum.

  “Oh, well then I’ll have another one. I like shrimp.” Lou snagged another dumpling with her chopsticks. “I just like to know what I’m eating.”

  “Lou’s the same way with swimming. She’s one of those people who won’t go in the water unless she knows what the bottom’s like,” Josh said. “So she’s more than happy to let Bear and me do the camping thing, and Lou and I hit the spas and resorts, where she can see the bottom of the pool. Of course, Bear will wade in mountain streams only if I promise him there are no sharks. He has a horror of them. Hey, did you hear the one about the lawyer and the sharks . . . ‘professional courtesy’?”

  Valerie Adams chose to ignore Josh’s lawyer joke and delicately wiped the corner of her mouth with one of Tsé Wot’s large white linen napkins. “I handle trusts and estates, matrimonials, mostly. Every once in a while I do some business law. With a sprinkling of intellectual property.”

  “So how did you and Bear meet?” Lou asked, hunting for the soy sauce bottle.

  “I’m his mother’s lawyer. She’s coming back to the States and needs some things handled for her, and she gave me Walker’s number to call so he could review some papers that pertain to him.”

  “So Rushie is planting her tushie stateside again, Bear. Hmmmmm.” Josh ate the last of the shrimp dim sum. “Does she want her business back, bro?”

  “Later,” Walker replied quietly.

  Valerie barreled ahead. “She’s looking into the possibility of setting up a Web site, and there are some legal ramifications to be explored; at the moment there’s no legislation regarding professional matchmaking via the Internet, but there are obvious legal minefields . . .”

  “I’m afraid I’m still not very computer literate,” Lou said without apology.

  “Yeah. She still thinks a MAC platform is one of Ru-Paul’s shoes,” Josh deadpanned.

  “Well, maybe we could use a matrimonial attorney,” Lou mentioned, nudging Josh. “We’re getting married in April.”

  “April is the cruelest month,” Walker said, sotto voce.

  “Matrimonials means divorces, not weddings,” Valerie said condescendingly.

  “I knew that,” Lou responded, smiling like the Mona Lisa.

  Walker wondered if she was putting Valerie on and bit his tongue. “Lou is a sculptor,” he said, changing the subject.

  “Sculptress,” Lou corrected. “I do collages and murals, too. That’s how Josh and I met. You’ve heard of the Leo Galleries? That’s my honey’s family. Of course, you realize I’m only marrying him for his name. I want to be Lou Leo. Such a great name for an artiste,” she said dryly.

  “Lou creates erotica out of household items. Found objects. That sort of thing. She’s really quite remarkable,” Josh said, patting Lou’s cheek.

  “Does it bother you when he patronizes you like that?” Valerie asked.

  “Why do you think that’s patronizing?” Lou asked, smiling enigmatically again. “When this man touches me, an erotic, electric current ripples through every capillary of my body.”

  “Peking duck, anyone?” Josh interrupted.

  “I take it then, you’re not a feminist.”

  “What’s a feminist, Val-pal? I’ve been making a good living since I was fourteen years old, and made Glamour magazine’s Ten Most Promising College Grads list the year I left art school, got a full scholarship to the Sorbonne for graduate studies, and have never needed to ask anyone, man or woman, for a handout or a leg up.” Lou also never needed to raise her voice to someone’s challenges.

  Like any barracuda lawyer, Valerie refused to accept defeat. “So are you planning to have children?”

  “Possibly. I don’t think that’s something we need to decide right now. I haven’t e
ven finished my sweet-and-sour soup.”

  “Well, are you going to continue to build erotic sculpture with children around the house?”

  Lou smiled. “It’s not really that erotic. But Josh seems to think so. I guess adults might find it ‘suggestive.’ It’s very tactile.” The sculptress turned to Walker and deftly changed the subject. “You’re very quiet this evening.”

  “I’m listening,” Walker said laconically. “And thinking.”

  “I’ve been this man’s best friend for decades. Bear gets really noisy on two occasions,” Josh interjected, raising an eyebrow provocatively.

  Valerie drew in a quick breath.

  “When the Jets are behind . . . and when the Jets are ahead.”

  All four of them took a sip of water.

  “I got a scholarship, too, that I used for law school,” Valerie said proudly. “I won a beauty pageant in Louisiana.”

  Lou looked across the table at the elegant attorney, aware that Walker loved legs that went all the way up. “So you found a way to use your looks to get ahead.”

  “Ten, fifteen years ago, it was harder for women to get into law schools,” Valerie replied, a bit defensively.

  The men looked at each other—watching two strong women square off, size each other up. Walker was listening to the stunning brunette on his left and thinking about the dynamic, eccentric, romantic little redhead he’d last seen heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to meet Glen Plinsky, dreamboat English Literature teacher. Valerie Adams was the kind of woman Bear had dated for years. Intelligent, no-nonsense, tall, basically gorgeous in that Julie Newmar way.

  Valerie looked at Josh and Lou. “I think it’s sweet that you want to get married,” she said. “It’s such a throwback.”

  “To what?” Josh asked.

  “Well, I don’t see as many prenups nowadays, but especially since you aren’t sure if or when you want children, it just seems so old-fashioned, and well, unnecessary to get married.”

  “Maybe he just wants a little woman to come home to,” Walker said sardonically.

  “Well, he can do that without their having to be married.”

  “And then there will never be a divorce,” Walker muttered.

  Josh finished chewing. “Call me a hopeless romantic, but I don’t think anybody gets married to get divorced. Actually, it was Bear who convinced me not to let Lou go. I can’t see not spending the rest of my life with her.” Josh stroked Lou’s cheek. “You know, Valerie’s perfect for you, bro. She’s as down on marriage as you are.”

  “Really?” Valerie angled her body so that she was leaning closer to Walker.

  Walker shifted his weight away from her ever so slightly. “It’s true, I’ve never seen a happy marriage.”

  The lawyer flashed him a dazzling smile. “Isn’t it easier just to have great sex and then leave, owing each other nothing? And you can see each other whenever you want, with no recriminations, no hard feelings, no acrimony.”

  “No matrimony,” Walker added.

  “I just got an idea for my next sculpture,” Lou said. “Two boobs peering through a pair of rose-colored glasses.” She exchanged a sly look with her fiancé, then turned to the couple seated opposite them. “Frankly, I think you’re both delusional. I mean just look at you, Bear. You claim to be Mr. Permanent Bachelor. In fact you’re sending out mixed messages like crazy—to the point of doing stuff that’s bad for business—like falling in love with a certain specific client whom you’re getting paid to match up with other people—people who do want to get married. In other words, people who, according to your antimarriage litany, aren’t you!”

  Valerie and Walker responded almost simultaneously.

  “He’s what?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, forgive me. I hear things.” Lou sipped her green tea daintily. “You’ve done well for yourself though, Bear. Even though this is a first date, you two seem like a perfect match.”

  Valerie used her chopsticks to push the shredded chicken with cashews around her plate. “Well, it certainly sounds like Walker and I want the same things in the long run. Why should we need to sign a piece of paper? What would it prove? That we might be more in love than people who haven’t signed a paper?”

  “No. It just proves that you’re less gutsy. Life is about taking risks,” Lou said quietly, the gauntlet down. “Life is going along for the journey, no matter where it’s headed. It’s not refusing to get in the car because at some point, you might reach a ‘dangerous curve ahead’ sign.”

  “Actually, Bear,” Josh cut in. “To me, there’s something inherently a bit selfish about people who are so adamantly unwilling to try something—whether it’s marriage or sushi.”

  “Why do you say ‘selfish’?” asked the attorney.

  “Well, it’s a sort of ‘my way or the highway’ approach to life,” Josh responded.

  “Well, lawyers never run from a good argument,” Valerie laughed. “And it’s all in good fun, right? Truce?” She offered her hand across the table to Lou, who gave it a firm handshake.

  The check came and both men took their credit cards from their wallets and gave them to the waiter to split the bill in half.

  “Not so much a feminist,” Lou teased Valerie. “If you really practiced what you so vocally preach, you would pay for your own meal.”

  “Not on a first date, honey,” Valerie said triumphantly. “I’m from the South.”

  Valerie slipped her arm in Walker’s as they left the restaurant. In her three-inch heels, she was at least six feet tall, the length of her legs accentuated by the shortness of her mustard-colored Tahari coatdress.

  “I’ve never been to a penthouse,” Valerie purred, as she headed toward the corner with Walker, their arms still linked.

  “Unfortunately, you’re not going to see one tonight either,” Walker replied.

  Valerie looked very disappointed. “I thought you and I were on the same wavelength.”

  “We may very well be, but the roof has been leaking and the ceiling needs repairs. And first I had to wait for the cessation of the near-biblical rains we’ve been having; then I had to call for estimates . . . being a homeowner is like marriage. You’ve got to fix everything yourself. When you rent, you can just walk away.”

  Valerie sighed. “So I guess I have to wait until the second date to find out what else besides the New York Jets gets you excited.”

  Walker nodded. “If you’d like to come over for a brief nightcap, I’m crashing at a friend’s house until my place is repaired.”

  “Well, at least that prolongs the evening somewhat,” Valerie said, squeezing his arm. “You are a lot like me.”

  “How else?”

  “I get the feeling that you and I . . . we don’t like to owe anyone anything. To be honest, I would hate to have to come home to a man who expected me to put a hot dinner on the table for him every night, even when I’m exhausted. I like a little foot massage, a little pampering myself sometimes.”

  “Funny you should mention massage. I worked my way through school as a licensed masseur.” No sooner had the words escaped his lips than he realized it was a mistake. He hadn’t thought his response to be anything more than polite conversation, but Valerie’s body language changed immediately.

  “My, my.” She rolled her head around slowly, a hint to her date to help release the tension in her neck.

  Walker hesitated. Watching Valerie in action all evening made him unintentionally focus on everything the leggy brunette was not, rather than what she was. Frankly, she was not Kathryn. Still . . . maybe Ms. Adams was better one-on-one. Maybe she was the type whose nerves got the better of her in a group. He’d spend a few minutes alone with her before Kathryn got home from her date with Glen—just a quick drink—then he’d put Valerie in a taxi. “So, are you up for that nightcap? What do you say?” He stroked his jaw, wondering if he were doing the right thing.

  “I think . . .” Valerie said, biting her lowe
r lip, and looking up at Walker the way only a truly practiced Southern belle—lawyer or no lawyer—can, “I think the lady’s answer is a most gracious—and grateful—‘yes.’ ”

  “Evening, Carlos,” Walker said, as he walked into the lobby of his apartment building with the statuesque Valerie on his arm.

  “Buenos noches, Señor Hart.” The doorman eyed the woman from stiletto heel to perfectly coiffed hair, clearly impressed, but he shot Walker an unforgiving look. After the couple stepped into the elevator, Carlos shook his head and pursed his lips. “Miss Lamb. Pobrecita.”

  Chapter 17

  The string quintet’s musical strains could be heard from the moment Kathryn stepped into the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum. There was something so civilized about it. Beautiful music, magnificent art. She scanned the room, looking for the man who might be Glen Pinsky. There were a couple of men who seemed to be waiting for their respective dates, but none of them seemed to fit the profile of the self-effacing English teacher. Kathryn realized that she was expecting a stereotype, from the way Mr. Pinsky had described himself over the phone.

  Finally, she spotted someone peering cautiously from behind a large potted plant in the foyer. He was actually wearing a red carnation in his lapel. She’d been kidding when she mentioned it on the phone. Oooh, boy, Kathryn thought to herself. Glen waved tentatively at her, and then called to her in the same high, reedy voice she recognized from their telephone call.

  “Kathryn? Kathryn Lamb?”

  She waved across to him, and they met in the center of the Great Hall. He was taller than she had assumed, and much better looking, with very light blond hair, and pale, almost translucent skin, lending him the air of a sickly Edwardian poet. True to her expectations, Glen was wearing the requisite tweedy jacket with the fawn-colored suede elbow patches; but underneath it, the blue-and-white-striped shirt, and the paisley tie in shades of red and brown made Kathryn want to phone in a 911 to the haberdashery fashion police.

  “Glen?” Kathryn shook his hand. He returned it with a surprisingly strong grip, then lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it tenderly. His narrow blond mustache tickled her skin.