“Not dangerous?” Her voice nearly broke and she slapped her palms on the table. “For God’s sake, Ally, what have you been smoking? I don’t give a rat’s ass if he’s clean or normal or anything else. At least admit that you took a huge emotional risk by doing this. This is so completely unlike you. What were you thinking?”
Allison scooped condensation from the sides of her iced tea glass in long, even strokes with one fingertip, leaving a striped vertical pattern of droplets.
“I wasn’t thinking anything. I was caught off guard. And it all just seemed so…so surreal or something. I don’t know. It was meant to be just a virtual adventure.”
“You had dinner with this man you’d just met online, and then later that same night you had phone sex with him.”
“No! The way you’re saying it, it sounds terrible. That wasn’t it at all.” Allison sought her mind, looking for any distinctions she could possibly offer Tess that would make the evening sound not at all like Tess was describing. There were not many. “For one thing, I didn’t just meet him online. I’ve known him online for two, three months or so. And he’s never lied online, either. Which is almost unheard of.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“It’s what I do, I know how to tell. Plus, he’s philosophically opposed to lying.”
“He’s…oh please. You fell for a line like that? You’re worse off than I thought.”
“No, really. It makes total sense if you know him. He believes lying is inefficient. And he works just across the quad. I could have seen him from my window at work, any time I bothered to look. He’s not some random person. He’s an economics professor. And besides, it wasn’t phone sex.”
Tess snorted and took a long swig of her iced tea. “Explain to me how this wasn’t phone sex.”
“It wasn’t on the phone, it was on voice chat. And only the end of it was. The rest was just in regular chat. You know, private text chat in the game.” Even as she said it, she realized it sounded like a weak rationalization.
“So let me get this straight. Let me get the revised version of this thing straight, okay?” Tess raised her elegant chin, resting her elbows on the table and tapping her fingertips together like an evil genius with a plan. “You and this—economics, you said?—this economics professor have worked for the same university in adjacent buildings for at least the past two years, have eaten at the same restaurant as each other a few times a week for the same length of time, have overlapping research interests and have actually been playing the same online game for the past several months. But you never met, I’m sure in part because you were both such huge nerds that you hardly ever left your offices, and when you did leave work you were probably nose-deep in some sort of work-related reading material and never looked up to notice the people around you?”
“Again, when you put it that way, it just sounds terrible. But a different kind of terrible, maybe. Terrible-pathetic, instead of terrible-stupid.” Allison nodded her assent. “Okay, go on then.”
“So when the penny finally drops and you and this guy realize you’re practically neighbors, you decide to go and eat cheap Indian, then to culminate this romantic extravaganza you determine that the appropriate next step is to get together that night with eight other dweebs and play an online game? Each of you in your separate, sad and lonely little apartments? Each of you probably drinking alone, to boot?”
“And?” Allison prompted, with gritted teeth.
“And then after the game, when you’re at your saddest and loneliest, and also probably tipsy because you’re such a lightweight, you and this guy start chatting privately and one thing leads to another and the rest is history? Tacky, sordid history that should be censored?”
“Fine. You’ve summed it up.” Allison pushed her salad around with a fork, having lost interest in the food.
“I take back what I said. You and this guy totally deserve each other. You should have a big cyber-wedding and tons of fat, bouncing, virtual babies.” Smiling smugly, Tess took a large bite of her own grilled chicken salad and munched happily as Allison seethed.
“Are you going to give me practical advice here or not?”
“Well,” Tess managed as she devoured her meal, “you’ve established he’s probably not an ax murderer. And he is gainfully employed. He seems to have a sense of humor, from what you’ve said. Those last two definitely put him head and shoulders above your last guy. So does the fact, if you’ll excuse my saying so, that you got off too.”
“Nice.”
“But true. And I do know how you love the truth.”
“Touché,” Allison granted. “But to be fair, I got myself off, which is actually exactly like being with James. Except for the part where I was talking to the guy at the time. That part would be very different from when I was seeing James. Also the part where I was visualizing Seth when I got off. That would be different too.”
“You go, girl. Get outta town!”
“No, really. It was crazy.”
“I guess so. So I guess I’m changing my mind, and suggesting that you see this guy again to find out if it’s that crazy in person. God knows it’s been a while for you.”
Tess never ceased to amaze Allison. Her full-speed-ahead approach to life was something Allison could only envy, never duplicate. She, Allison, worried far too much about the details. She always got bogged down worrying about one tiny factor or another, one possible outcome or another. Tess, on the other hand, seemed to paint her view of the world in broad strokes of vibrant color, moving on to the next swatch before the paint had a chance to dry. Yet for all her impetuousness, she had good instincts, which might have been why she was such a success as a reporter and more recently as a crime novelist. She was a shrewd judge of character and had never failed to give good advice. She had advised Allison to stay away from James, for instance.
“But I don’t do stuff like this,” Allison reminded Tess. “You said so yourself.”
“Maybe you should. Maybe this guy should too. It sounds like he’s a male version of you, sweetie. Maybe the best thing for you both was to get caught off guard.”
Tess had been flippant before, but now she was clearly serious. The fact that her words made a strange sort of sense worried Allison to no end. She reminded herself she wasn’t ready for a relationship again, not this soon.
“I’ll think about it.”
“No, don’t. That’s where you’ll screw yourself.”
“Would you stop, like, knowing me so damn well? Please?” She looked around for the waiter and waved him over. “Can we have a piece of key lime pie and two forks, please? Thanks.”
“We’re at pie already? Man, you are in bad shape. What’s this guy’s number? Maybe I should check him out.”
Allison thought for a moment. “Um. Yeah. I don’t know his number, actually.”
“Ally, honestly.”
“Well, we met online, and then in the game we were just using voice chat, so…”
“Does he have your number?”
“No. Hey, no! He doesn’t have my number!” She was thrilled. It might explain why he hadn’t called. Of course, he could have looked her up on the university’s website and found her office number that way. But if his brother had kept him busy and he hadn’t been near a computer since, then he wouldn’t have been able to do that. And he would have had no reason to think she was in her office on a weekend.
“How do your people ever reproduce?”
“We’re from the same people, remember?”
“I often find that impossible to believe. You’re some kind of pod person. I love you and all, but seriously, you’re not quite human.”
“Love you too, babe. So how’s your own love life, then?” Allison asked sarcastically.
“Wow, the bitchiness was very human. Maybe I’m wrong after all. My love life is dead, as you well know. But I’m going home next weekend to catch Mikey’s football game. Maybe I’ll find somebody to hook up with, you never know.”
Allison gave her cousin a speculative look. Tess looked so similar to her, the same long dark hair, the same dark gray eyes, the same tilt at the corners of the mouth. How could she and her cousin be so different in personality? “Just somebody, huh? Anybody I know?”
“I doubt it.”
“So it’s not Jake?”
Tess rolled her eyes. “Why does everybody insist on pairing the two of us up? You’re the one who dated him, why don’t you go home and snag him yourself if he’s such a prize? I just never saw the appeal, personally.”
She rubbed at her nose, blinking a few times. Allison noted all this with a researcher’s eye. “Me either, that’s why I stopped going out with him.”
“So did you two ever, you know?”
“No!” Allison replied firmly. “How many times have I told you that? He wanted to, I said no. You know what I was like in high school. I still thought I was saving myself for marriage or something like that. That wasn’t why we broke up though. Really, there just wasn’t any chemistry. We were friends, we still are, but we just weren’t that into each other.”
“Yeah. I know how that can be.”
Allison changed the subject to her young cousin Mikey, and Tess seemed only too glad to follow along. Talking about Mikey and then about nothing in particular, they took moody bites of pie until the plate between them was clean.
* * * * *
Seth played it very smoothly, Allison thought. He sensed that she felt pressured and he was trying to take things more slowly, or so it seemed.
When she got the first email on Monday, friendly and nonthreatening, she was uneasy at first but responded politely. Later that day, a casual reply from Seth, nothing important, just another contact being made.
Seth emailed her every day after that, but only once a day. With questions about her day, questions about her emotional state, hidden among the talk about psychology, cleverly worked in between comments about the game. She replied, even though she knew it was encouraging him. He called her office once, on Wednesday, asking if she wanted to eat lunch. As it happened, she really couldn’t—she had a department meeting. She didn’t want him to feel rejected, so she shared her cell and home numbers and made it a point to express regret over having to turn him down. He didn’t press about the weekend after she mentioned she was going out of town. She almost hoped he would, because she wanted an excuse not to go home to catch the football game Tess had been talking about.
The temperature was dropping every day, down to what was normal for September. The dog days were past. Any day now, Allison knew, would come the heady scent of wood smoke on the air, the sound and feel of leaves underfoot. She didn’t know why, but this year she couldn’t stand to see the summer go, the strange late summer with the oppressive heat they had all complained about.
Going home, sitting on the ridged metal bleacher seat. Watching her cousin Mikey run up and down the field where she had played clarinet in the marching band every fall weekend of her own high-school career. Psyching up for the team rivalry against some other small town, chanting the same cheers she had chanted in high school, and remembering how Pete Nielsson from the drum line had once tried to feel her up under her uniform jacket while they were sitting in the stands during a game. She had elbowed him hard, and the band director had scolded them both. Doing all those things, remembering all those things, would make the autumn real.
The real passage of time, currently suspended by some magic of weather and mood, would resume.
* * * * *
Tess drove, as ever, quickly and borderline recklessly. She handled her little garnet-red roadster like a motorcycle, weaving in and out of the Friday afternoon traffic effortlessly as she carried on a rant about the necessity for the trip in the first place.
“You know, we drive all this way and it’s supposed to be for Mikey, but I’d bet cash money he’s not even going to stay around after the game. You know he’ll be gone once he’s changed out of his uniform, then we’ll all be standing around like dorks, trying to figure out what to do. Then we’ll end up at Benny’s again and drink too much and then dance to those same dozen songs on the jukebox and it will just be sad, sad, sad.” She flicked a glance back over her right shoulder and slid over a lane, bypassing a black Suburban and speeding up to take advantage of the gap she had reached by doing so.
“Benny’s has a karaoke machine now,” Allison volunteered, trying not to flinch as they swung past the larger vehicle. It seemed as though they missed it only by inches, but she knew her anxiety was probably making objects appear closer than they really were.
“Karaoke. Great. So now instead of just dancing to the same dozen dumbass songs, we’ll be singing the same dozen dumbass songs.”
“Yeah, well. Our dads will be happy we’re home though. Is Lindy driving down by herself then?”
“No. She’s actually not coming. First regular season home game, and Mikey is starting quarterback this year. I have no idea how she’s justifying missing it. But she apparently had some business thing she couldn’t get out of. Because there are so many blazing business emergencies in the high-paced world of knitting.”
Allison eyed Tess warily, sensing her cousin was in a mood over more than just an obligatory trip home. She had wondered several times recently if Lindy, Tess’ shy, younger sister who normally formed the other part of their usual threesome, was actually seeing somebody. But Allison wouldn’t dream of suggesting that Lindy’s “business thing” might have a strong personal element. Not to Tess, particularly not when she was on a tear like the one she was on today.
Allison wished, as she had nearly every day since she was sixteen, that she still had a mother to discuss these things with. Sometimes a friend, even a cousin as close as a sister, just wasn’t enough. And she knew that Tess and Lindy, who had lost their mother when they were even younger—about thirteen and ten, respectively—must feel the same way.
“When you’re just starting out with a business like hers,” she finally said neutrally, “you probably have to do a lot of stuff on other people’s schedules.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
The maple trees, always the first to show the season, were starting to turn. Flame-red leaves among the green, scattering over the road and swirling up in joyful abandon in the car’s wake. The girls turned off the highway and onto the road that led to home and a tiny whirlwind of leaves marked their passage, like a handful of fall-themed confetti.
“Pretty,” Allison commented.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Smells like somebody’s barbecuing.”
“Probably your dad. When is he ever not barbecuing?”
Tess was just being contrary. They were still half a mile out of town, and several more blocks than that away from Allison’s childhood home where her father was, no doubt, firing up the barbecue. Still well out of smelling range.
“Tess, what is the matter? You’re being so…”
Tess raised an eyebrow and spared a look at Allison. It wasn’t a friendly look.
“So bitchy? I told you, I didn’t really want to make this trip. I have to do the dumb high-school football autumn color piece because my editor knew I was heading here, and it’s a crap assignment and I hate it. I hated high-school football when I was in high school, I’m not a sports writer and I don’t see why I should have to write about it now. God, I can’t wait for my next book to come out. I’m hoping the royalties will let me quit the paper and just write full time.”
Allison didn’t ask why Tess was making the trip in the first place. She knew Tess’ reasons were the same as her own. Both of them felt responsible for their fathers, bound to check up on them frequently, using any ceremonial occasion as an excuse. Both felt that way for the same reason—because they had become the lady of the house at far too early an age.
“Tess, how could you have hated football in high school? You were a cheerleader.”
“I hated that too,” Tess said with a smirk.
“Mu
st be nice.” Allison knew girls in high school who would have killed to be cheerleaders, to be down on the sidelines at every football game. To be Tess.
“You do what you have to do.”
“Somebody in particular you wanted to keep tabs on at all those games?” She couldn’t resist the dig, since Tess was obviously going to be in a bad mood no matter what Allison said.
“Yes. Danny Fields. If I hadn’t kept an eye on him all weekend long he would have screwed his way through the entire cheer squad and half the drill team. He got pretty damn far down that roster even when I did try to watch him like a hawk.”
It was true. Tess had dated Danny throughout her junior and senior years, but she had never been under any illusions about his long-term viability or his short-term fidelity. She saw him as convenient, as the type of person she should be dating. And she was the type he should date. He was a tight end, and he went on to some small amount of college fame as a player until a back injury knocked him out of the game for good. Now he was living in Indianapolis and selling insurance. He had married another girl he knew from high school, and Allison had been invited to the wedding. She skipped it. She knew, because she had been unfortunate enough to drive past and see them, that Danny had screwed one of the bridesmaids in the parking lot behind Duke’s Steakhouse during the rehearsal dinner. She doubted it was Danny’s last bachelor fling. Going to the wedding would have felt dishonest.
But the incident, though depressing, did serve to confirm Tess’ fundamental ability to size people up. It also confirmed that Tess had issues of her own, because she had voluntarily aligned herself with Danny for her own cold-hearted ends for the two most important years of her high-school career. Thereby avoiding, not coincidentally, other more potentially meaningful entanglements. She had never been one to make close friends easily, despite her vast number of good acquaintances. She tended to collect people and hold them in orbit around her, keeping them at a distance of her choosing. She tended to date men she sort of disliked, men with whom she had little in common.
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