Welcome to Temptation/Bet Me

by Jennifer Crusie

  “If you two get any dumber, I’m going to have to find new friends,” Bonnie scowled at Min. “Cal’s winning you. Just like in the fairy tale. You said his kiss woke you up.”

  “I said his kiss turned me on,” Min said. “Not the same thing.” She leaned forward a little. “I was fine with using the fairy tale as a sort of metaphor, Bon, but this is real life. No prince, no stepmother, no poisoned apple.”

  “And no happy ending if you think like that,” Bonnie said. “True love is beating you over the head to get your attention, and you’re rejecting it because you don’t want to believe. You have the fairy tale right in front of you—”

  “Wait a minute,” Liza said, trying to head off disaster.

  “And you’re worse,” Bonnie said, turning on her. “Min doesn’t believe in love for her, but you don’t believe in it for anybody. You’re a love nihilist.”

  “A love nihilist.” Liza thought about it. “I kind of like that.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Min said. “I believe in love. I think. I just don’t believe in fairy tales.”

  “I have known my whole life that sooner or later my prince would come,” Bonnie said to Min. “How many times have you told me that everybody gets lucky breaks in business but not everybody is ready for them? Well, it’s true about love, too. I’ve been planning my marriage my whole life because I’m smart enough to know that’s the most important decision I’ll ever make, and now Roger’s here, and I’m ready to go. And you two are going to miss it when it comes for you because you don’t want to believe because if it isn’t true, you’ll be disappointed.”

  Liza rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on—”

  “You’re planning on being disappointed, you’d be disappointed if you weren’t disappointed, your whole world view depends on men disappointing you.” Bonnie picked up her plate. “Well, that’s just cowardly. Especially you” she said, scowling at Min. “You’ve got Cal right in front of you, loving you so much he can’t see straight, you’ve got fate sending you so many signals even I can see them, and you’re holding on to that bet like a shield. You haven’t even asked him about the bet, have you?”

  “What’s he going to say?” Min said. “ ‘Yeah, but I’m really your prince and I love you truly, come to bed’?”

  “You’re not usually this slow,” Bonnie said, “so it must be just chicken-hearted fear. What if this is real? What if this is the happily ever after and he truly loves you so much that it’s forever? Then what are you going to do?” She shook her head. “You don’t know. You never prepared for that. You’ve thought about everything in your life, but you never thought about that. You’re hopeless.” She took her plate out to the kitchen and came back to shove her chair under the table. “I’ll see you tomorrow at The Long Shot. I’m going to go see Roger and remember why I believe.”

  “Bon, wait,” Min said, getting up, but Bonnie was already at the door.

  When she slammed it behind her, Min sat down across from Liza.

  “Well, at least we’re sane,” Min said.

  “Yeah,” Liza said. “How’s that working out for you?”

  “Not that well,” Min said. “Did you bring dessert?”

  “Cherry Dove Bars,” Liza said.

  “Give me one,” Min said. “I’ll be sensible tomorrow.”

  On Friday, Cal was settling in to stay home for a change on the theory that if he didn’t leave the apartment, nothing weird would happen to him, when he heard “She” go on next door.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” he said and then stopped because that was what Min always said. “No,” he told himself and went next door to distract himself with Shanna. “You got dumped again?” he said when she opened the door.

  “No,” she said, serious, but not tear-stained. “I’m trying to figure out my life. Come on in.”

  “Figure out your life?” Cal said, following her.

  “I keep thinking if I listen to this song, there’ll be a clue,” Shanna said, getting out her bottle of Glenlivet.

  “If you’re planning your life based on a popular song, you need that Scotch more than I do,” Cal said.

  “It’s not that.” Shanna poured his drink. “I’ve always gone on the theory that one day the right woman would show up and I’d know.”

  “You’ve pretty much disproved that one,” Cal said, taking the glass she handed him.

  “So I thought since Elvis Costello had already made a list of things the perfect woman would have, I’d start there, and sort of figure out what kind of person I’d want to spend the rest of my life with. And then if I met somebody who didn’t fit the list . . .”

  “That’s very organized of you.” Cal sat down on the couch and thought, That’s very Min of her.

  “But the thing is,” Shanna was saying, “Elvis is not saying she’s perfect. So I’m thinking maybe I just need a few key things. Like she should be kind.”

  “Yes,” Cal said, remembering Min with Harry.

  “And smart,” Shanna said. “Somebody I don’t have to explain everything to.”

  “Maybe,” Cal said, thinking about explaining chicken marsala to Min. “It’s no crime not to know everything. I’d make that somebody who was open to new ideas, willing to learn. And who had things to teach you.”

  “See, this is good,” Shanna said, sitting down on her coffee table trunk. “And I thought a sense of humor would be important.”

  “Right,” Cal said. “If you can’t laugh at the screwups, what’s the point?” He thought of Min saying, “Good thing this isn’t a date,” when they’d confused their Elvises, and—

  “And because I’m superficial, I put down physically attractive,” Shanna said.

  “Me, too,” Cal said, trying not to think of Min in all her hot glory. “And great shoes.”

  “What?” Shanna said.

  “Nothing. What else?”

  “That was it,” Shanna said. “I didn’t want to make too long a list. Kind, smart, funny, attractive. How’s that?”

  “Damn good if you can find it,” Cal said.

  “Didn’t you?” Shanna said. “Min? She seemed—”

  “Not dating her,” Cal said. “Barely know her.”

  “Uh huh,” Shanna said. “And why is that? She’s pretty, she’s kind, she’s smart, she makes you smile, and you get all dazed when you kiss her. What is it that she doesn’t have?”

  “Well,” Cal began and stopped. “She bitches at me a lot.”

  “Chicken,” Shanna said. “You could walk away from all the other ones because they weren’t right. This is the real thing, so you’re running.”

  “This from a woman who just made a shopping list for love.” Cal stood up and handed the Scotch back to her. “I’m going now. Best of luck with that list.”

  Shanna clucked at him as he went out the door, and he went home to ignore her. Once there, he realized that he hadn’t had dinner, and he wasn’t going out because if he did, he’d fall over Min.

  “Not a problem,” he told himself and went out to the kitchen. He had bread and peanut butter and not much else, so he plugged in the toaster and put the bread in and then he leaned against the refrigerator and waited for the toast to pop.

  His kitchen was ugly, he realized as he looked around. And through the archway, his living room was worse. Maybe if he fixed the place up a little, he’d want to stay home more. He was getting too damn old to be hanging out in bars anyway. The phone rang and he grabbed it, grateful to have a distraction.

  “Calvin?” he heard his mother say, but even she was better than the silence.

  “Mother,” he said. “How are you?” His toast popped, and he cradled the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he opened the peanut butter.

  “I’m calling about dinner on Sunday,” she said.

  “I will be there, Mother,” Cal said, thinking, I’m there the third Sunday of every month, Mother. Definitely in a rut.

  “I’d like you to pick up our guest.”

  “Gu
est?” Cal said, as he got out a table knife to spread the peanut butter.

  “Minerva Dobbs,” his mother said.

  “What?” Cal said and dropped the knife.

  “I called her because Harrison has been speaking of her often, and it occurred to me that it would be nice for him to have her there.”

  Cal sighed. “What did she say when you called?”

  “She seemed surprised,” his mother said. “But when I explained that Harrison would be so pleased if she came—”

  “She said yes,” Cal said, reaching for his toast. “However, I cannot bring her because I will not be seeing her ever aga—” His fingers brushed the metal top of the toaster and he burned himself and dropped the phone. “Damn it,” he said and put his scorched fingertips in his mouth.

  “Calvin?” his mother said from the phone.

  He picked up the receiver. “I burned myself on the toaster. Sorry.” Cal turned on the cold water and stuck his fingers underneath the stream. “Anyway, I will not be seeing Minerva Dobbs again.” He stepped away from the sink onto something hard and his foot slipped out from under him and smacked into the cabinets. “Ouch.”

  “Calvin?” his mother said.

  “I stepped on a knife.” Cal bent to pick up the peanut butter knife and smacked his head into the counter. “Hell.”

  “Did you cut yourself?” his mother asked.

  “No. I . . .” He put the knife in the sink. “I’ll call you tomorrow, Mother.”

  “Calvin?” his mother said, and he hung up on her and considered the situation.

  He was sabotaging himself, that had to be it. He was distracted, he was tired, he was hungry, he was careless. He picked up the phone again and called Tony’s cell.

  “Hello?” Tony yelled over the noise of the bar.

  “Is Min there with you?” Cal said.

  “Wait a minute,” Tony said, and came back on a minute later without the background noise. “Sorry. What?”

  “Is Min with you? I’m trying to make sure that wherever I go next, she won’t be.” He frowned. “She’s driving me to incoherence.”

  “She’s stalking you?” Tony said, sounding skeptical.

  “No, she doesn’t want it, either,” Cal said. “It’s like we’re stuck inside a box. We try to go our separate ways and then we end up with each other anyway. You’re not going to Emilio’s, are you?”

  “Chaos theory,” Tony said. “Min’s a strange attractor.”

  “This is true,” Cal said. “Are you going to Emilio’s tonight, or can I go eat in the kitchen there?”

  “You can go,” Tony said. “Seriously, the box you’re talking about is the field of your attraction. You and Min try to get away and you hit the sides of the box at random because you’re unstable, never repeating, but making a pattern.”

  “Good for us,” Cal said. “Just keep Min away from Emilio’s, will you? I’m starving.”

  “I think she and Liza are going someplace,” Tony said. “They’ve been talking all night about some job Min wants Liza to take, and I think Min’s going to drag her there to show it to her. Unless Emilio’s been advertising for help, it’s not there.”

  “He hasn’t,” Cal said. “He’s full up on nephews. Thanks, Tony. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He hung up, changed out of his work clothes, and started for Emilio’s, trying not to think about Min. That didn’t work, so he switched over to chaos theory, of which he had only vague memories. The Butterfly Effect, he remembered that, the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in Hong Kong could cause a hurricane ten years later in Florida or prevent a tornado ten years later in Texas, take your pick because it was unpredictable. That was Min; she’d looked harmless that first night, and then she flapped her wings two weeks ago and now he was a mess. She was a goddamn stealth butterfly.

  He looked down the block at the front of the Gryphon Theater, half expecting to see Min standing there since it was the first night of the Elvis revival week. Nope. Which made sense, since events did not repeat in chaos theory. Somehow, the idea that it was science made the whole thing a lot less worrisome. He wasn’t insane, fate wasn’t stalking him, he was just standing on the edge of chaos. Much better.

  He turned down the street to Emilio’s, trying to remember what “the edge of chaos” meant. It was something about flipping a coin, something about the edge being the moment when the coin was in the air. The point at which the system was pure potential, about to choose a path. Or something about a pile of sand, adding sand a grain at a time, and the edge of chaos being the point at which the critical grain landed and the pile either shifted or turned into an avalanche . . . Cal slowed as he remembered a grad assistant in a baggy blue sweater, his hair standing on end from his complete earnestness about the subject, saying that the edge of chaos was a time of turbulence, mental chaos if the system was a human being, but also the time of greatest potential, possibly the place where life starts. “The place,” the grad student had said, “where the system cascades into a new order and moves from being to becoming.”

  Cal shook the grad student out of his head, and pulled open the door to Emilio’s. When he got inside, he heard Roger say, “Cal!” and he stopped, frozen, knowing before he turned that Min would be there, strange attractor, effective butterfly, locus of fate. He turned and saw her, sitting at a table with everybody else, looking like a startled cherub, her beautiful lips open in surprise, her dark eyes wide, and he felt his breath go again, felt his blood heat, his entire system rushing about insanely, bouncing off the inside of his skin, his future impossible to predict, everything riding on his next lurch through chaos.

  Min bit her lip and smiled at him ruefully, and without another thought, he walked across the room to her, feeling almost relieved as the avalanche began.

  Chapter Nine

  Cal pulled a chair from another table, and Min scooted over to let him in. She was wearing another soft shirt, this one in panels of different colored sheer prints, and she looked pretty and warm and more desirable than he could have imagined.

  Beyond her, Tony shrugged and looked apologetic.

  “Tony said you’d told him you were going to work late tonight,” Min said as he sat down.

  “I lied.”

  Min shifted a little more to give him room, and he caught the faint scent of lavender and felt dizzy again. “Well, at least you’re honest about your dishonesty.”

  “ ‘I was raised to be charming, not sincere,’” Cal said, and relaxed as she smiled at him.

  “You know Into the Woods?” Min said, “That’s my favorite Sondheim.”

  “Mine, too,” Cal said, watching her face. “Tony likes Sweeney Todd, and Roger’s is Sunday in the Park with George, but—”

  “You’re kidding me,” Min said, blinking those dark eyes at him. “You’re all Sondheim fans?”

  “We roomed with a drama minor in college.” God, you look good.

  “There was a fourth roommate?” Min said, and then she closed her eyes. “Of course there was. Emilio. It was his restaurant you worked in when you were in college.”

  “No,” Cal said. “It was his grandpa’s restaurant. He went out on his own about two years ago.”

  “And he’s not setting the world on fire.” Min nodded. “That’s why I brought Liza here. It took me all night to talk her into it, but I think she likes the place.”

  “Good,” Cal said, not following and not caring. It felt too damn good to be sitting next to her again to insist on clarity, too.

  “Liza’s a fixer,” Min said. “She finds businesses that need help and then she . . . helps them.”

  “So, she advertises that she can fix things,” Cal said, not caring.

  “No,” Min said. “She chooses. There are a lot of places that need a kick in the butt to get going, and Liza gets a job and provides the kick. She’s not good for the long term, once things are good she leaves, but for the year she stays, magic happens.” She grinned at him. “Sort of like you and women.�
��

  “Hey,” Cal said, but then he caught sight of Emilio, gesturing to him from the kitchen door. “Be right back.”

  Emilio dragged him through the door when he got there. “There’s a woman out there,” Emilio said. “The redhead with Tony. She just told me she’s thinking about working here. Is she delusional?”

  “Not even a little bit,” Cal said. “Tony knows her better than I do, but if you’re asking, I vote you hire her. It can’t hurt, and Min says she’s a genius at what she does.”

  “What does she do?” Emilio said.

  “I’m not sure,” Cal said, looking through the round window on the door to see Min. “I’m just going on what Min says.”

  “Min.” Emilio nodded. “Min I trust.”

  “Me, too,” Cal said and followed Emilio back to the table in time to hear Min say, “So here’s something I just found out. These guys are Sondheim freaks.”

  “What?” Liza said, turning to Tony in amazement.

  “What?” Tony said back. “I can’t have facets?”

  “Because of Emilio,” Min said. “Which I bring up because I want to hear his voice.”

  “Uh,” Emilio said.

  “Don’t fight it,” Cal said, sitting down next to Min again. “She gets what she wants, too.”

  “I like the ‘Moments’ song,” Min said, grinning at Emilio. “Or ‘Into the Woods.’ That’s peppy.”

  “Nah,” Tony said. “ ‘Sweeney Todd.’ ” He sang the first line of “Sweeney Todd” in a surprisingly true bass, and Roger joined in on the next line, and they sang until Emilio gave up and helped them finish on “the demon barber of Fleet . . . Street,” while Cal watched Min smile and thought, Kiss me.

  “Probably not the best thing to sing in a restaurant,” Cal said when Min was done clapping, and Emilio winced.

  “You don’t sing?” Min said to Cal.

  “Only in the shower,” Cal said, and imagined Min in the shower.

  “Wuss,” Tony said, breaking the moment. “He can sing, he’s just a coward.”

  “But you are not,” Liza said, turning back to Tony. “You are multi-talented. Who would have guessed it?”