by Phoebe Fox
“Of course it is,” she said, with her own electric smile. Flirting was as instinctive to Sasha as breathing. “Eddie, what are the women who get the most attention from men drinking at your bar?”
He didn’t even hesitate: “Cosmos.”
Sasha turned back to Rae Ann. “Cosmos say feminine but fun—they’re pink, but they’re strong. Men love a cosmo girl.” She turned back to Eddie, who was practically leaning across the bar toward her now; Sasha truly had a gift with men—and I knew she wasn’t even trying. “And what about the girls who drink beer, Eddie? What happens to them?”
“They sit here alone most of the evening, or with their girlfriends, usually trash-talking guys—until now and then one of them goes home at the end of the night with one of the left-behind remnants who couldn’t find anyone to hook up with before closing time.”
I rolled my eyes out of Rae Ann’s sightline. I suspected Eddie was exaggerating a fair amount to play into Sasha’s obvious script, but it didn’t matter—Rae Ann was staring at Sasha with something like idolatry.
“I’ll have a cosmo, please,” Rae Ann murmured, and Sasha patted her leg.
“Good girl. That’s step one. Step two—smile. You have to look approachable before anyone’s going to try to approach you, and a smile says, ‘I’m pleasant. I’m happy. I’m not scary.’”
“You make it sound like men are the ones who are nervous about this kind of thing,” Rae Ann said.
“Oh, honey! They are! Don’t you know that women have all the power at this stage?”
“They do?”
“We do,” Sasha said, winking. “Now let’s show you how to wield yours.”
Rae Ann was rapt, so I just stayed quiet and let Sasha lead the effort. I knew who was the master here. She reviewed the basics—the smile, eye contact, staying aware of the room and not getting too intent on our conversation, etc.
“So I get that you have to be open enough that they’ll come talk to you,” Rae Ann said finally. “But then what? I panic. I have nothing to talk about. I’m boring.”
I frowned. “Why do you think you’re boring, Rae Ann?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t really follow current events. I’m not sparkly. I have a cat.”
“Do not talk about your cat,” Sasha jumped in.
“Yeah, I learned that one the hard way,” Rae Ann said dejectedly.
“Honey, again you’re underestimating your power here,” Sasha said. “It’s not up to you to entertain a man. It’s on him to impress you. This is what they’re hardwired for—to impress, to conquer, to win. All you have to do is give them the opportunity.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
I’d bowed out of their exchange again, but not intentionally: I was just fascinated to see Sasha in action. For all the issues she used to have with relationships, she was always a savant out of the starting gate.
She held up a finger to Rae Ann—“Watch”—then turned her gaze to Eddie, who was at the opposite end of the bar chatting with a customer. As soon as she caught his eye, she smiled and he bustled over.
“Do you need something, gorgeous?”
Sasha winked. “You read my mind. Could you tell me about your white wines?” she asked, pointing to my glass. I felt a flare of alarm, but tamped it down—she was clearly doing something.
“Why don’t you tell me what you like?”
The look she slanted him might have been suggestive or simply inquisitive—it was impossible to pin down. “You know something about wines, then?”
He flashed a dazzling grin. “Well, I know enough to make some suggestions. I’m studying to be a sommelier.”
“No kidding? What drew you to that?”
And they were off, Eddie telling her about everything from his interest in wines sparked from a vacation to Sonoma when he was in his twenties, to his training at a vineyard in Oregon, to his travels through Europe. It was at least another ten minutes in before they even got as far as talking about the house wine list.
“That’s a lot of really great info,” she told Eddie finally. “You know your stuff. Let me think about it for a few minutes.”
“You got it. Let me know when you’re ready. You ladies doing okay?” he asked me and Rae Ann. We nodded and he withdrew back to his other patron at the end of the bar.
“And that is how you have a conversation,” Sasha said, as though there’d been no interruption in her lesson.
Rae Ann looked confused. “But you were just ordering wine.”
“No.” She indicated the glass of Perrier in front of her. “Notice I have no wine. But I spent a good fifteen minutes getting to know Eddie.”
Rae Ann kept shredding the napkin she’d been savaging since we got there. “Well, obviously you’re good at talking to people. But I’m not,” she protested. “You can’t just create the gift of gab in someone if they don’t have it.”
“Au contraire. I barely spoke at all. All I did was ask a few questions here and there.”
Rae Ann shook her head. “No, you…” She trailed off, her forehead pleating, and I could tell she was replaying the exchange in her mind. “Oh,” she said finally. “You’re right.”
Sasha gave a very Gallic “but of course” shrug. It was easy to get infected by the spirit of Chez Claude. “Talking to a man is like catching a fish. All you have to do is drop the right bait, and then hold on while he plays the line.” It tickled me to see her using a metaphor clearly gleaned from my brother’s passion for fishing. “Men just want to feel fascinating—we all do. Find out what interests them, and then…just ask about it. They’ll take it from there.”
Rae Ann was looking at Sasha as if she were Moses on the mount. “That’s amazing.”
Sasha put a hand on Rae Ann’s to stop her relentless shredding. “And stop doing that. Even if you are sexually frustrated, there’s no need to advertise it.”
We wound up leaving Rae Ann at the bar. When Eddie came back Sasha told him she’d changed her mind about ordering wine—but that didn’t stop him from leaning across the bar and striking the conversational flint again. To our surprise this time Rae Ann leaped in, asking Eddie about Italy, one of her dream vacations. By the time Sasha and I said it was time for us to head home, Rae Ann blithely waved us on. I suspected Eddie’s heart (or his hormones) was following Sasha out the door, but he and Rae Ann were in a tête-à-tête about Tuscany when we left.
Sasha barely spoke the whole way to her apartment except to grunt agreement at my praise for her conversational coaching, and the sleeping serpent of dread in my belly, curled up and quiescent all night long, began to lift its head. When I pulled into a visitor’s spot, I stopped the car and turned to face her. “Okay. What is it?”
“It’s nothing,” she said, waving me off as she reached for her purse with one hand and the door handle with the other. Quick as a bunny I hit the automatic lock, and Sasha sagged back in the passenger seat and gusted out a sigh. “Seriously, Brook—aren’t you bored with my drama by this point? I’m kind of fed up with myself.”
“I’m never bored with you. Or your drama. That’s what friends are for.”
“Okay, Dionne Warwick. Thanks.”
“I’m not kidding. Look,” I went on, “what you’re facing right now isn’t a broken fingernail, or even a bad breakup. This is huge life stuff—the biggest. If you’re struggling with it, that’s normal. You’ve got to go a little easier on yourself, Sash.”
In the reflection from the streetlight overhead I saw her eyes glistening. “Why are you being so nice about this? This ‘struggle’ you’re being so understanding about? Everything about it has the potential to really hurt your brother. To hurt you. And your family—” Her voice broke on the last word and hung in the dim silence.
“Sasha,” I said quietly. “You are my fa
mily.”
Tears spilled over her eyes and streaked illumination down her cheeks. I said nothing else, just rested a hand over hers on the console, and waited at her side while fear and sorrow had their way with her. My every instinct was screaming for me to say something, help her, fix this—but some things, I was coming to learn, I had to let run their course on their own.
Finally she moved her hand from under mine and reached into her purse for a tissue, wiping her face and dabbing at her eyes.
“Being a parent?” she said in a wobbly voice after a few moments. “It’s like someone else’s life—a grown-up’s life.” She blew her nose daintily into the tissue. “I don’t know how to do that. This—tonight—is what I’m good at. I talk to people for my interviews at work. I flirt. I make party chitchat. But it’s all I’m good at. How can I be somebody’s mommy? I have no idea how to deal with children. I know how to talk to adults, not babies.”
Her words sparked a sudden memory, and an idea began to hatch in my head—crazy maybe, but maybe exactly what my friend needed. Despite the deflated tone of her voice, I began to grin.
“So I know we said we were going to give Operation Bring It On a rest,” I said, “but I might have an idea for something that could help. What are you and Stu doing tomorrow night?”
She frowned. “I don’t know. It’s Friday, so normally we’d be going out, but we’ll probably stay home and go to bed at nine, if your brother has his way. I’m made of eggshells now, remember,” she said bleakly. “And you know the worst thing?”
“What?”
“He’s right—I’m too exhausted to keep my eyes open most of the time lately. This remora inside me is literally sucking away all my energy.” But as she said it she cupped a hand protectively over her belly, and that insistent spark of hope flamed to life again.
“Don’t worry about Stu,” I told her. “I’ve got that in hand, and he’s going to chill out.”
“What did you—”
“Not important. I’ll pick you up at bedtime tomorrow evening—I mean nine.” Sasha glared, but I just grinned at her, releasing the door lock. When she hesitated, frowning at me, I gave her a gentle shove on the shoulder. “Just trust me. And be ready for a late night.”
fifteen
Michael was already sitting in one of the chairs along the opposite wall after my last client the next afternoon—on Fridays I wrapped up by four so I could make it to my radio show on time, but today I’d taken my last client at two so we could meet for an hour to discuss how things were going with Michael’s plan for my business.
Paige was still at her desk when I stepped out of my office, though I’d told her at lunch she could leave early.
“Oh,” I said, stopping abruptly. “I see you two have met.”
“Before, actually,” Michael said with a wink to Paige, whose expression remained stony. Stonier than usual. “Paige here is a mean plant wrangler.”
The peace lily still sat on the floor in front of the window, mute testimony to the door I’d reopened with Michael.
“I can stay for a while longer, if you need me to.” She was eyeballing Michael as she said it.
I wanted to smile, but bit it back. Paige had clearly picked up on the history between the two of us and was being protective. Fondness for her flooded me. For all her literalness and serious demeanor, Intern Paige had great instincts and plenty of compassion.
“Thanks, Paige—I really appreciate it,” I said sincerely. “But I can handle…whatever’s left to do today. I know you probably have homework to tackle.”
She frowned. “Well, no, it’s not homework. At this stage of my education it’s research for my disserta—”
I held up a hand. “Figure of speech. My bad. Thanks, Paige—have a good night.”
She gathered her things and left, casting a baleful glance at Michael as she did that made me wonder whether Sasha had been planting a bug in her ear about him. There were few women Michael couldn’t manage to win over, and that seemed a likely explanation.
But so did the more likely fact that Intern Paige was utterly oblivious to frivolous charm.
“Come on back,” I said to Michael, gesturing toward my office.
He stopped just inside the doorway, taking in the room: My desk, bought secondhand at a business-consignment shop downtown, with its vintage wooden roller chair that I loved (it made me feel like Sigmund Freud). The forest-green chaise along the near wall where my clients sat, a butterscotch-colored armchair catty-corner from it. The IKEA shelves lining the far wall adjacent to my desk, so clients would have something of interest to look at over my shoulder when rising emotions made it difficult to maintain eye contact, and where I’d gleefully unpacked the boxes of books—psychology and otherwise—that had sat in my parents’ attic for years. My old Goosebumps books sat beside psych texts from college, Grimm’s fairy tales alongside lit classics, several rows of popular fiction above shelves of how-to and self-help titles.
“Wow,” Michael said. “You finally got your dream office.”
He remembered. All my life I’d wanted a comfortable, homey, book-lined workspace for my practice, and this room was one of the first things I’d tackled when I started renovating my house.
“You want the chaise, or is that too therapy-ish?” I asked, gesturing toward it. “You can have the armchair if you’re more comfortable.”
But he remained standing. “Can I see the rest?”
“The rest?”
“Your house. I’d love to see it.”
“Oh…” I hesitated. It felt odd and slightly dangerous to bring Michael into my private spaces, but I couldn’t think of a reasonable way to turn down such an innocuous request. “Sure. Come on.”
I led him back out of the office. “You already saw the waiting room, of course. And the office lavatory?” I indicated the bathroom with an arm.
Michael shook his head. “I haven’t seen that yet. That’s really nice,” he said, peering in at the tile and stonework around the vanity and tub, the shiny glass accent tiles and oil-rubbed-bronze fixtures.
“Thanks,” I said, feeling a rush of pride. “That was the first project my dad and I worked on. Out of necessity,” I said with a chuckle, remembering. “This wall was eaten up with mold.” I pointed behind the tub. “Once we had to tear it all down pretty much to the studs, it seemed a shame not to fix it up as nicely as we could.”
“Your dad’s always been a magician with stuff like this.”
I stopped, turning to face him. At one time Michael and my father had seemed close, and I was reminded that Michael had suffered other losses when the two of us fell apart. “Yeah. He is.”
I took him into the living room next, where he admired the Venetian plaster-textured walls and the stained-concrete floor. He grinned. “Your dad again?”
A sliver of pain sliced into my heart as I remembered Ben with his industrial diamond sander, smoothing the floor into a glasslike finish before we artfully applied the stain; Ben patiently showing me the nuances of the faux-plaster technique, helping me over and over again until the texture actually looked intentional, instead of like a bucket of stucco had exploded on the wall.
“No,” I said quietly. “Someone else helped me in here.”
Michael turned to look directly at me, his gaze intent. “Someone…you dated?” he asked, and I wasn’t surprised that he’d read me so easily. I nodded, and his face crumpled like a sinkhole.
“You dated?” he repeated, as if the words made no sense to him.
“It’s been two years, Michael. Of course I dated.”
He shook his head. “No, but…someone who did all this…it was serious. Wasn’t it?”
I looked away, at the cinnamon-colored wall that lit up orange in the setting sun. “It was. For a while.”
He made no reply. After
a few silent moments he turned away from me, pointing toward the other doorway in the living room. “That’s to the rest of the house?”
I was so grateful for the change of subject I trotted right over and led him into my kitchen and den area. “I haven’t really done much back here yet,” I explained as he took in the ancient pressed-wood cabinetry and Formica countertops, the cracked Saltillo tiles in the adjacent den.
We walked out onto the lanai, furnished with my Big Lots sale outdoor set, and into my overgrown backyard before going back inside. I hesitated at the door to my master bedroom. Jake was in there—for some reason he’d devolved into full-on play mode during my last session, doing the bouncing bunny in front of my last client, diving into a hopeful downward dog, tail wagging, and barking in the man’s face. I’d finally had to excuse myself long enough to escort him into solitary confinement in my bedroom so we could finish the session in peace.
“Brace yourself,” I warned as I opened the door, and Jake wormed through the opening the moment it was wide enough for his body, nearly knocking Michael over with his gregarious hello.
“You remember Jake,” I said dryly.
Michael looked up from where he was stroking the dog’s neck. “Jake? I thought your dog’s name was Spike?”
My face heated with a blush I was sure he could see. “Um…right. I just sort of said that, actually. He’s Jake. And he’s not mine. I’m keeping him for a…a friend.”
I turned away to avoid Michael’s searching look, gesturing into the bedroom. “I haven’t done anything in here yet at all, really. Well, except pull up the carpet, as you can see,” I said, indicating the gray concrete floor scattered with cheap rag rugs. “It was about thirty years old, and I couldn’t fathom putting my bare feet on it,” I explained. “And there used to be curtains and a nicer bedspread, but…” I dwindled off, remembering the first night I’d ever had Ben’s crazy dog, when a traumatized, confused Jake had eaten pretty much every textile in the room when I’d left him here alone for a few hours. I blinked away the memory, turning a determined smile to Michael.
