Dating Dead Men

by Harley Jane Kozak

  As the morning wore on, I was in the shop growing annoyed, then worried about the fact that he didn't call and he didn't answer when I called him. By noon, I had all the early warning signs of an obsessive-compulsive disorder, the one where you pick up the phone several times each hour to make sure there's a dial tone. Was this someone who wasn't calling because he was dead, or just a guy I liked too much who said he'd call and then didn't? And if it was the latter, did that make him a car thief as well?

  At one o'clock, I called my apartment. There was a message on the machine.

  “Meet me tonight,” he said. “Corner of Cherokee and Fountain. I'll be there at eight and wait as long as I can, and I'll keep my phone on. I've got good news.”

  chapter fourteen

  It took eight minutes to walk to Cherokee and Fountain. I did it with zigs and zags, and a lot of looks behind me. I wasn't followed. Of course, it was possible that I wasn't recognized. For my date following the rendezvous, I was dressed in faux snakeskin pants and matching high-heeled ankle boots, along with a Tiffanie's Trousseau trademark off-the-shoulder sweater. There was a recurring scent of early orange blossoms along the way, and despite, or maybe in addition to the sense of danger, I was dizzy with romantic possibilities. Not that much could happen in the twelve minutes I had with Doc before I needed to hotfoot it back to meet one Benjamin Woo.

  Fredreeq had tried to delay my date, to no avail. “Benjamin's a personal manager,” she said, “so everything's an Issue. He's taking you to House of Blues to hear this band he represents and he's all uptight about getting there on time.”

  I went ten minutes early to meet Doc, and spent those minutes alternating between excitement and anxiety, a longing to burst into song, something from South Pacific, and a desire to hide in the shrubbery.

  Doc was on time. He appeared across the street, and waited for a break in the traffic. He hadn't spotted me. Dressed as he'd been the day before, in black jeans and T-shirt, there was more animation to him now. He glowed. I was probably glowing myself, my face smiling so hard it hurt, the orchestra in my head reaching fever pitch.

  He caught sight of me and waved as he jogged across Fountain. “Hey,” he said, reaching me. “Where's Margaret?”

  “Back in the apartment,” I said. “And she's fine. If you'd like to see her—”

  “I guess I wasn't clear. I assumed we'd make our trade tonight.” He handed me my car key and gestured over his shoulder. “Car's over there, behind that minivan.”

  “Is the, uh, patient with you?”

  “Waiting across the street. Let's walk back and get Margaret and I can check out the parking situation and see what we can come up with that'll make you feel safe—”

  “We can't,” I said. “There's no time, I have a—an appointment in a few minutes. Can you keep the car and come back around midnight? Or tomorrow,” I said, when he looked at me in surprise. “Anytime.”

  “It'll have to be tomorrow,” he said. “We'll be in bed long before midnight. She's been through a lot.”

  She? I felt blood drain out of my face.

  He looked across the street. “I told her about you, but she's not ready to meet anyone, particularly—” He smiled. “Well, you know how women are.”

  I couldn't speak. I couldn't move.

  “So you don't need your car till tomorrow?” he said.

  This was the moment to look him in the eye and say “She who?” and in a perfect world I would have; in a world where I had supreme self-esteem, I would say, “Who are we talking about here, your mother, your cousin Beth, or your one true love?” Dr. Cookie would do that. Fredreeq would. But I'd been down this road so many times I could find my way in the dark and I couldn't bear to hear the words spoken aloud, each one like a slap, Yes, there's someone else. I thought you knew. To see his brown eyes lose their sparkle, replaced by comprehension, then embarrassment for me. He would be kind. It would be horrible.

  I managed to shake my head.

  “You okay?” he looked at me searchingly. “Nothing bad happened today?”

  I shook my head again, unable to trust my voice.

  He smiled. “She'll be disappointed not to see Margaret—that animal's her baby—but another day won't kill her. You okay walking home from here?”

  I squeezed out a “Yup, fine, thanks.” Then I turned and took off toward Sunset, as fast as my faux snakeskin high-heeled ankle boots allowed.

  TUESDAY DAWNED AS bright and blue-skied as an orange juice commercial, compounding my depression. I was dragging myself to the bank to make the morning deposit when Fredreeq caught up with me, carrying her own deposit envelope, from Neat Nails Plus. “How was Sorry About Your Sister?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “The band you saw last night, with Benjamin Woo.”

  I pressed my fingers to my temple. “‘Metallica without the sentiment,' according to Rolling Stone.”

  “And how about Benjamin?” she asked. “Was he a hottie, or what?”

  “Very hot. Very nice. Loved my look—says snakeskin is this year's black. But he won't be calling for a second date since he can't get involved with anyone making under eighty thousand a year without doing long-term damage to his standard of living.”

  “Okay, screw him,” Fredreeq said. “We have a Drive-by scheduled today with the Frog, and then tonight you're seeing—”

  “Fredreeq, quit it. The nicknaming. I know it's your way of keeping them straight, but then I'm halfway through dinner and I try to think of their name and all I come up with is Elvis or Boris Yeltsin. It's disconcerting.”

  “Fine. His name is Jean-Luc Something and he sounds very ooh-la-la on the phone, and what's wrong, sister? You're about as chirpy as a box of hair.”

  “I'm just a little glum.” I sped up my pace, zooming past Sacred Heart Church. “By the way, where did Benjamin get the idea I made anywhere close to eighty grand?”

  “Who knows? Oh, I suppose there's an outside chance that something Joey or I said could've been construed by the casual listener as—”

  “Hey.” I stopped. “We are doing things by the book, aren't we? These are all guys who respond to my ad, right, and get checked against the List to—”

  “Will you lighten up, please?” Fredreeq grabbed my arm and forced me across the street despite a blinking Don't Walk sign. “You just stick to your part of the job, missy, and let Joey and me do ours. Straight men do not grow on trees in L.A., not in multiples of ten, but somehow we keep dredging them up, so you just keep your eye on the prize and your body squeezed into those clothes.”

  She had a point. The one man I'd found lacked something so basic it wasn't even on the List: availability. So who was I to complain? What mattered, aside from my contribution to science, was the five grand the Dating Project paid. Money to buy my shop. Wollie's Willkommen! Greetings would mean financial independence for me, security for P.B. Once I had that, I'd join the nunhood, some nice order that still wore habits and didn't require dating.

  BROWSERS FILLED THE shop. Spies, I thought darkly, or just garden-variety cheapskates, unwilling to spring for more than a pack of gum. They seemed to be working in shifts, exiting and entering as if choreographed, so that just as I picked up the phone, they'd ask a question, or ask for change, or ask to use the bathroom. I had my sketchbook out, experimenting with vampire fangs for Halloween cards, so it wasn't a total waste of time, but what I really wanted was to research Ron “the Weasel” Ronzare. The man in Doc's newspaper article. Whatever Doc knew I now had to discover for myself, since I didn't intend to spend another minute in his company, picking his uncooperative brain.

  I figured the Weasel could be found somewhere on the Internet, but all I knew how to do on my computer was inventory, accounting, and graphics. For everything else I depended on Fredreeq, who was always threatening to send me to a twelve-step program for unwired people. But I couldn't ask Fredreeq to research this.

  Finally I was alone in the shop.

  In the blue pages that p
receded the white pages and the yellow pages was, as Cliff had suggested, a number for the U.S. District Court. This was answered by a bilingual computer offering a menu of options so exhaustive it could only have been devised by a government agency. The possibility of talking to a human being was not on the menu.

  I'd spent four full minutes communing with the computer voice via touch-tone when Fredreeq came in, a strange man in tow. This, I realized, was today's Drive-by.

  “Wollie,” Fredreeq said, “meet Jean-Luc.”

  Jean-Luc was lanky and pale in that French, vitamin-deficient way that spoke of baguettes and Gauloises. Fredreeq had presumably asked the cigarette question already (number ten, No Smoking) but I'd noticed that Europeans often don't consider it smoking if it's under a pack a day.

  I was about to hang up the phone when Jean-Luc grasped my hands so that the phone stayed wedged between my ear and shoulder. My head to one side, I saw him take in my plaid kilt and Peter Pan–collared shirt with loving approval. “Thanks you, thanks you,” he said, almost making sense, in an accent as thick as Camembert.

  In my left ear, the computer voice explained that with a written request, a case number, a twenty-dollar processing fee, a fifty-cents-per-page photocopy charge, and seven dollars per document—

  Fredreeq said, “Jean-Luc, Wollie's an entrepreneur. Entrepreneuse. And an artiste. Check out these”—she grabbed my sketchbook—“teeth.”

  “Fangs,” I said, and wrested my right hand from him to shut the sketchbook.

  “For Halloween,” Fredreeq explained to him. “Greeting card artists are five seasons ahead of the public, just like fashion designers.”

  “And farmers,” I said. I hung up the phone.

  This was enough small talk for Fredreeq. “Wollie, Jean-Luc is a fan of poetry, so I invited him to Uncle Theo's Poetry Reading.”

  Jean-Luc smiled. It was hard to tell if he was smiling about poetry or smiling in that way people do when they don't understand something.

  “Come along, Jean-Luc,” Fredreeq said, and led him away, holding the door open for an enormous roll of wallpaper, propelled by my Uncle Theo.

  “What is it, what's going on?” I asked, hurrying over to help him. My uncle never showed up on Tuesdays. He rarely left Glendale, since he didn't own a car, coming in for the Wednesday Night Poetry Readings with his friend Gordon. “Is it about P.B., have you heard something?”

  “No, no, dear, I had this leftover chinoiserie pattern that I thought would go nicely with the existing—” The rest of his words were lost behind the wallpaper. I was glad to see him, what was visible of him, anyway—hair, sticking out in thick white tufts, and feet, shod in old Earth Shoe clogs held together by electrician's tape.

  I gave him a kiss on the cheek and took the wallpaper from him, leading him to the back room. “Well, it's a nice surprise, Uncle Theo. Could you watch the floor for a minute? I need to change into my date clothes.”

  In the bathroom, I tore the plastic from a pink angora sweater and pastel blue jeans with just a touch of spandex, Tiffanie's idea of what to wear to the movies. My date this evening was a special effects artist named Sterling, who was taking me to his current film, High School of Blood. I looked forward to sitting in the dark for two hours, eating popcorn. Subject matter was irrelevant. So was the company. As long as I didn't have to smile or talk or learn any more about guns, I'd be happy.

  The minute I returned to the shop floor I knew I'd left Uncle Theo alone too long. He was a socialist, and tended to cut prices, if not give things away outright. Who knew what merchandise had been traded for the four dollars and sixty-two cents piled neatly near the register? My uncle was also compulsively chatty, currently in deep conversation with four men in soccer outfits. Plainclothespeople?

  A quarter of spies would be too pricey for Mr. Bundt, I hoped. I prayed. Because Uncle Theo, as an employee, was not up to Welcome! standards. His crocheted vest had once been an afghan and his drawstring pants, made of hemp, were sold in bulk at the co-op where he bought his grains and lentils. I could smell his patchouli across the room.

  “Oh, Wollie,” he said and strolled over, “a nice young man just phoned, by the name of Dylan, regarding some sort of interview.”

  “Yes, Dylan Ellison, I think his name is. A Drive-by—part of this Dating Project I've told you about. Fredreeq will take care of it.”

  “Well, that's the thing,” Uncle Theo said. “The young man is running late, detained on the 405 freeway. But not to worry, I invited him to the poetry reading.”

  “You what?” I gasped. “Oh, Uncle Theo, you can't just invite—I mean, there's a system here we're supposed to be following and—oh, heck.” I took a deep breath.

  “I simply thought,” Uncle Theo explained, “that as long as he's driving all the way from Tarzana to meet you, he may as well be rewarded with poetry.”

  “Well, he'll hardly want to stay overnight for it,” I pointed out.

  “Oh, the reading's not tomorrow,” Uncle Theo said. “It's tonight. At eight.”

  “What do you mean?” I said, growing cold. “Today's Tuesday.”

  My uncle patted my angora shoulder. “Dear, didn't I mention? There's a strong possibility that Thom Gunn, who's flying in tonight from Paris on his way back to San Francisco, will stop by, so instead of Wednesday—no, perhaps it was P.B. with whom I had this conversation.”

  “Well, that's too darn bad,” I said. “Because we can't—Thom Gunn?”

  “Yes, isn't it amazing?” Uncle Theo radiated happiness. “The flyers have been circulating, the sign is up, we're expecting a full house.”

  “The sign?” I heard myself squawk. “Who put up the sign?” I ran outside, my uncle at my heels, and saw it, the POETRY TONIGHT! sandwich board, facing Sunset. “Who did this? And when?” I asked, hoisting the big easel and collapsing it.

  “Fredreeq. This afternoon,” Uncle Theo said. “Is there a problem? I called yesterday, and she answered and said she'd take care of it. You seem grumpy, dear.”

  “I'm darn grumpy.” I struggled with the sandwich board, nearly pinning my uncle against the side of the building with it. “If Mr. Bundt's spies have seen this sign, they could show up tonight and—”

  “Spies?” His white eyebrows shot up.

  “Industrial investigators. Secret shoppers.” I stopped to let a Plucky Chicken customer get around us. “The point is, having fifty people in the shop after hours is completely unauthorized, it always has been. I was going to cancel it this week, I tried to call you, but—”

  “Cancel poetry?!” Uncle Theo laughed merrily, falling in with me. “Oh, my dear, what an extraordinary idea. Like canceling oxygen.”

  “Just until the upgrade decision is made.” I maneuvered the sandwich board through the doorway, banging it and chipping off a bit of paint in the process.

  “Careful, that's my prized possession,” Uncle Theo said, holding the door open for me. “My favorite Girl Scout painted it for her uncle, three decades ago.”

  “She'll paint you a new one,” I snapped, walking backward toward the utility closet. I shoved the sandwich board inside, causing an avalanche of cleaning supplies. Customers glanced our way. I gave a general smile and squatted to the floor.

  “Wollstonecraft,” said my uncle, squatting too and gathering up broom and mop. “I want you to consider whether anything that makes you talk of canceling poetry and discarding art is worthy of you.”

  “Uncle Theo,” I said through gritted teeth, glancing at a soccer player on Aisle 1, “this is my job. This week is critical. What happens if I don't get the franchise, if I have to keep working at minimum wage? Who's gonna take care of P.B. if—” I stopped. Better not to go down that road. “Sorry. I just can't have a bunch of poets whooping it up in the shop if I'm not here to supervise, and I can't be here, because I have to be at a horror movie.” I took a bottle of Liquid-Plumr from him.

  Uncle Theo said nothing, just sat with slumped shoulders, biting his lip. I noticed he was wearing
his special Middle Eastern cap, the one he'd worn the Wednesday night in 1995 when Allen Ginsberg had dropped in and had us all write haiku.

  I reached over and tucked a tuft of white hair behind his ear. “On the other hand, there's only one Thom Gunn, isn't there?”

  He looked up, smitten with hope.

  “All right,” I said. “But Dylan Ellison, the guy on the 405 that you invited? You've gotta head him off at the pass. I'll cancel my movie, but I don't think I can cancel my date, so I'll have to bring Sterling to the poetry reading, and believe me, one man is all I can handle tonight.”

  How I underestimated myself.

  chapter fifteen

  “What do you mean he approved Dylan Ellison?” Fredreeq yelled over her cell phone. I'd found her in her car, heading home for the day. “When did Uncle Theo join the support team? Does he even know about the List?”

  “He has his own list,” I said. “Here's his list: no serial killers.”

  “But to invite the guy to the poetry reading? Jean-Luc's coming to the reading.”

  “Not tonight!” I said.

  “What do you mean, not tonight? You were there, you said, ‘Great, yes, come!'”

  “But I was talking about tomorrow.”

  “Well,” Fredeeq said, “we were talking tonight. The sign's outside for tonight.”

  “But I have a date,” I said. “Sterling, the special effects guy Joey scheduled—”

  “—without writing it down? That girl has feathers for brains. Okay, don't panic.” Fredreeq switched to mothering mode. “I'm turning the car around. Meanwhile, you're at the register? In front of you is the Dating Project file with phone numbers. Start calling and see which guys can reschedule.”

  BY 7:35 THE shop was ready for the reading, with card racks 5 and 6 moved against the back wall, and folding chairs set up in their place. Uncle Theo stood next to me at the register, napkin tucked into shirt, eating his ritual Plucky Chicken.