Unzipped?

by Karen Kendall

  Shannon said something very rude to him.

  “I’m just being logical,” he said, the picture of calm.

  “Stuff your logic! It doesn’t make sense!”

  “It’s inherent in logic to make sense.”

  She wanted to hit him.

  “Look, if you want to have an identity crisis, then you go ahead and have one,” Hal said, in long-suffering, indulgent tones. “I’m just telling you that there’s no basis for it. You’re being a drama queen.”

  Her mouth dropped open. Drama queen? How could he say such a thing to her, given the circumstances? Shannon itched to beat on him, strangle him, Bobbit him. She struggled mightily with her urge for violence. At last she shrieked, “I hate men!” She whacked him in the chest with her bag and flew for the door.

  “This is why I don’t like to tell guys anything,” she yelled, wrenching it open.

  “What?” Hal stood mystified. “I solved your problem!”

  “You did not solve it. You negated it. And then you insulted me, too! I am not a drama queen. And if I want my identity crisis, then I’ll goddamned well have it!”

  “I told you to go ahead!”

  “I don’t need your permission,” she screamed.

  “I give up,” said Hal, as she slammed the door.

  “IT’S PENIS LOGIC,” was Jane’s evaluation. Shannon had spilled her annoyance to her friends over cosmopolitans later. They sat in the bar at Bricco, a cozy little restaurant in nearby West Hartford. Outside there were patches of a late spring snow on the ground, and lots of people heading home after work.

  Lilia almost spit out her drink at the word penis, but recovered with her characteristic grace. Nobody passing by the big plate-glass window behind them would have noticed a thing.

  “Yes, penis logic!” Shannon agreed. “What is up with that? Uh, no pun intended.”

  Lil choked again, but Jane laughed. “You shared a problem with him. He’s a man. He felt that he had to solve it for you.”

  “But I didn’t ask him to solve it! All I wanted to do was talk about it. He pressured me to talk about it. Then he tells me there’s no problem, because my issue isn’t logical!”

  “Are you sleeping with Hal Underwood?”

  Ugh. Okay, she’d dug around and found some leftover recklessness for Hal. Now she needed to find the dregs of some brazenness for Jane. She drew on her years of acting classes and produced a casually dismissive expression. “He’s a client, Jane. I’ve only known him a week.”

  “I didn’t ask you how long you’d known him.” Jane pulled the slice of lime off her cosmo glass and squeezed more of its tart juice into the drink. “What I’m asking you is whether or not that was his butt-print on our reception desk.”

  Lilia’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates.

  “I disinfected the entire thing,” Shannon announced. “The butt-print is gone.”

  “You didn’t?” asked Lil.

  “She did,” said Jane.

  “Eeeeeuuuuuwww. That’s a little skanky, don’t you think?” Lilia pursed her lips.

  “I am not skanky. Jane and Dominic have boinked in the office. You don’t look at them like that! Besides, Lil, you should try it sometime.”

  Poor Lilia had blushed to the roots of her hair. She was the same color as her cosmopolitan. “How do you know I haven’t…had relations…on a desk?” she asked, raising her little chin.

  Shannon exchanged a glance with Jane and they both died laughing. Jane finally caught her breath and said, “Because I’m sure it’s a social faux pas, and your granny panties would catch on the antique hardware.”

  Lil couldn’t help but laugh, too, even though she looked perturbed. “Just because I won’t wear thongs does not mean I wear grannies!”

  “I’ll bet they’re down to your knees,” teased Jane.

  “No! You know about the panty hose thing.”

  That’s right, Shannon remembered, she wore the control tops instead of panties for a smooth line under her clothes. “Lil, nobody wears panty hose anymore. Except for you.”

  “That’s not true. And I am not continuing this discussion, not even with my two best friends. It’s not proper.”

  “Can we discuss sex, politics and religion, then? All at once? Just to make you crazy?” Shannon winked at her.

  “No.”

  “Wanna wear a pair of my leather pants?”

  “Definitely not. Would you like me to hem them eight inches in order to wear them?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “We agree, then,” Lil told her, with a serene smile.

  “Back to my original question,” Jane said, without subtlety. “Are you seeing Underwood’s wood?”

  “Would that I were.” Shannon grinned and tried to avoid the topic yet again. But Jane was like a rottweiler.

  “How much wood would an Underwood sport, if an Underwood could sport wood?” she quipped.

  “He can. And a lot. Can we leave it at that?”

  “If you insist. It’s not much fun, though.”

  “Pardon me if I don’t want my love life to be a source of entertainment for you, Jane.”

  “Well, I enjoy it, too,” admitted Lil. She turned pink again when Shannon glared at her. “Don’t shoot me! Your love life is a soap opera. I like to live vicariously.”

  “Was a soap opera. And not really—I always ditch the guy before things get truly soapy. It might surprise you to know that I’ve been celibate for a year until recently.”

  “Wait a minute…” Lil’s brow wrinkled. “Isn’t Hal Underwood that guy who looks like a serial killer? The hairy one? I met him.”

  Jane smirked.

  “Again, past tense. He was hairy. He is now clean-shaven and bears a striking resemblance to Viggo Mortensen. His eyes are spectacular.” Shannon looked longingly at a pack of Marlboro Lights lying on the bar and felt the old familiar craving for nicotine, even though it had been six years since she’d quit.

  She picked up her drink instead. There was something about a cosmopolitan that suited her: the color made it all-girl, but the martini glass added sophistication while the vodka gave it bite. The lime was an accessory, like a great necklace or the perfect pair of stilettos.

  Jane’s personality was more red wine or beer, but she didn’t look completely out of place with liquor.

  Lilia just wasn’t a hard-alcohol girl. She looked most comfortable with a cup of hot tea, of course. But if Shan had to assign her a drink it would have to be sherry, in a tiny cut-crystal glass. On a wild night, perhaps white wine. Two cosmopolitans rendered Lil completely unable to drive, which was why she’d been nursing hers for a good hour.

  “Back to penis logic,” Jane said. “I think it’s sweet that he wanted to help you solve your problem, even if he went about it in a very male way. He can’t really help being a man.”

  “True,” Shannon admitted.

  “So are you going to track down your birth parents?” Lil asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m afraid to hurt my…my adoptive parents by doing that, even though I’m angry with them. I’m also afraid of what I’ll find out. And my biological parents may not want to hear from me. It’s possible that they just closed that chapter of their lives and moved on.”

  Jane put her hand on Shannon’s arm. “But they might be thrilled to hear from you. They may have wondered all of their lives what happened to you and how you turned out. What you’re like as a person.”

  Lil nodded. “There could be a letter in your file right now from one of them, just waiting to be discovered by you.”

  Shan took a large swallow of her drink and a deep breath. “Yes.” She pressed her fingertips together, hard, to try to release some of the tension in her body. “I’m not ready to contact anyone,” she said slowly. “But I am going to see if there’s any communication from one or both of them in my file.”

  “That’s a good, concrete step,” Jane told her, and Lil nodded. “It will help you to make the next one, too.
”

  The bartender cast a glance in their direction, to see if they needed another round. Shannon hesitated, torn by the desire to just let a fog of alcohol close her mind down. She shook her head and signaled for the tab. Neither Jane nor Lil would have another drink, and she herself didn’t need one.

  Much better to go to the gym early in the morning and work out her frustrations on a stair-climber or in the pool. Then she’d clear the air with Hal and put him through his paces. She planned to sweat the stupid male logic right out of him.

  She also shouldn’t be sleeping with the guy. Not only was he a client, but also she was too screwed up to be sleeping with anyone right now. Wasn’t she?

  17

  SHANNON PACED her apartment later that night, her stomach growling. She hadn’t wanted food earlier, when they were at Bricco, but now that she was hungry she had nothing to eat. She checked the refrigerator just to make sure, but it yielded nothing more than a half-full bottle of white wine, some ancient, dried-out rice and a withered lemon.

  She pitched the container of rice and checked the cabinets. Hmm. Unless she wanted to eat stale fortune cookies smeared with mint jelly, she was out of luck.

  Finally, she turned to the freezer, where she found ice-burned veggies, a bottle of vodka and a lonely, mangled fish stick. She pulled it out and dangled it between thumb and forefinger. It had obviously fallen out of the box she’d once had in there, and onto hard times.

  She felt a lot like it looked. She was walking with it to the trash when the phone rang.

  “’Lo,” she said, sandwiching the receiver between her ear and shoulder in order to wash her hands.

  “Hi, Shannon, it’s Hal.”

  “My pal Hal! What’s up?”

  “I obviously upset you earlier and though I’m still not sure why, I wanted to apologize. Can we talk? I could come there, if you’d like.”

  She hesitated. Her apartment was a mess, and she had nothing to offer him besides vodka, straight up. But they did need to talk. “Okay. And I shouldn’t have yelled at you, when you were trying to be nice. I’m sorry. Have you eaten?”

  “Why, are you cooking?”

  She laughed. “Hell, no. Unless you want a lone frozen fish stick on a bed of used coffee grounds and a fortune cookie for dessert.”

  “I think I’ll pass, thanks. Would you like to go out?”

  She’d been thinking more along the lines of take-out, but she said, “Sure.” She gave him her address and made a reservation at Pazzo’s, an Italian place nearby.

  Hal knocked on the door minutes later. He looked incredible: casually mussed hair, five-o’clock shadow, expensive shirt paired with dark slacks and Italian shoes. He even smelled wonderful.

  “Look at you,” she said in admiring tones. “And what is that cologne? I don’t remember buying you any.”

  “It’s from my sister, Peg,” he said sheepishly. “So the chicks will dig me, she said.”

  Ugh. For some reason, Shan didn’t want to think about other chicks digging Hal. He was so sweet. Clueless maybe, but sweet—when you avoided the topic of logic with him. “Well,” she said. “Don’t put it on your privates, because it’ll burn.”

  He grinned. “Does that little piece of advice come from experience, Shannon?”

  “No, I read it in Emily Post. Sit down—” she gestured toward the sofa “—while I grab my bag and a jacket. I’ll be right out.”

  Hal sat carefully on her wild, modern sofa. It was red, shaped like a giant pair of lips. He placed his hands on his knees and looked around, taking in his surroundings. People who came to her apartment for the first time were generally taken aback. In the entryway was a big clock modeled after one of Dali’s “Wet Watches,” so that it looked as if it were melting.

  On the wall behind the lip-shaped red sofa gleamed a giant mirror shaped like a stiletto. And over her mantel, next to a leopard-upholstered chair, hung a series of Warhol “Marilyn” prints. On the floor a white fuzzy rug—a fake bearskin—united the seating area, which surrounded a wide-screen, flat TV.

  Hal blinked at her decor and honed in on the plasma television. He emitted a primate-like grunt of delight.

  Shannon rolled her eyes when she heard it. And as her eyes rolled, they caught sight of a flash of white. Two flashes, in fact. And they had nothing to do with her rug.

  She sucked in her breath with horror. “Hal!” she said sharply.

  He jumped. “What!?”

  She pointed with a shaking finger. “Get those white socks off your feet right now.”

  “What’s wrong with my socks?”

  “Everything!” She flew toward him and grabbed an ankle. “Never, never, ever wear white socks with anything but gym shoes. Especially not with dark pants and black shoes.”

  He shook her off. “Hey! You can’t have those. My feet will get cold. There’s snow on the ground out there.”

  “I don’t care. The socks come off now or I’ll have to resort to violence, do you hear?”

  Hal stood up. “Bare ankles will look even stranger.”

  “You’re under arrest by the Fashion Police.”

  “Oh, yeah? You gonna slam me up against the wall and frisk me, Officer Shane? See if I’ve got any other illegals on me, like a pocket protector or taped glasses?”

  “Put your hands up and step out of the socks, Hal.”

  “No. I’ve had enough of being bossed around by you. Now do you want to go to dinner or not?”

  Her stomach growled like a Harley. “Yes, but not with a man in dark shoes and white socks. It’s…it’s…beyond dorky, Hal!”

  His mouth twisted. “I see. And a former prom princess like you just couldn’t be seen with a dork. You might lose face in front of your friends, after all.”

  “Look, we are not in high school anymore. And it might surprise you to know that a prom princess doesn’t have it easy, either. I got picked on as the dumb blonde every single day by the algebra teacher, okay? I got humiliated in front of the entire class just for his personal enjoyment.”

  Hal seemed surprised. “But algebra’s so easy,” he said.

  She counted to ten so she wouldn’t smack him. “Not for everybody, it isn’t. Now, I’m starving. Are we going to go or not?”

  “How about a compromise? I take off one sock, but not the other. That way, we’re both a little happy.”

  “You are a lunatic. That would look weirder than—” She threw up her hands. “You know what? I just don’t care. Do what you want, Hal. But you’re ruining your new image and all my hard work.”

  He got up and opened the door for her. “How ’bout I take them off for you later?” He waggled his eyebrows and looked to the fuzzy white rug in front of the fireplace.

  She swept past him. “That’s another thing we need to talk about, Hal. We’ve got to put the brakes on anything physical between us.”

  HAL SCOWLED at Shannon over their shared platters of four-cheese manicotti and shrimp scampi with angel-hair pasta. She’d twisted her mass of blond, curly hair tightly back from her face, and tonight the style accentuated dark shadows that had appeared under her eyes. She wasn’t sleeping well—that was obvious. And he knew a way to help her with that….

  “What do you mean, put the brakes on anything physical? Does that mean you’re done test-driving me? You’re moving on to someone more hip? Someone who won’t embarrass you in public by wearing white socks?”

  “Hal.” She reached across the table and put her hand on his. Her green eyes held regret. “No, you’re taking this all wrong. I’m not moving on to anybody, okay? The fact is that we need to work together. Our more intimate relationship isn’t helping our professional situation.”

  He pulled his hand from under hers.

  She took a gulp of Chianti from her glass and seemed to brace herself before making her next comment. “And you need some practice dating other women. We need to get you out there in the swim of things. Have you go on a few trial runs. I’ll set you up with a wire in case yo
u run into any snags, and I’ll be right there to guide you.”

  She sounded like a mom about to put her kid on the school bus for the first time. It pissed him off. “A wire? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “No, I’m not. It will allow me to prompt you out of any awkwardness. And we’ll also have a recording of your date to go over the next day, so I can give you pointers.”

  “Why do you have this kind of equipment, Shannon? Let me guess. You’re another Sydney Bristow, with the CIA?” His tone was mocking.

  “Funny. No—it’s part of my coaching process. The equipment is pretty standard and easy to come by. It’s not something I stole from the set of a Bond movie.”

  Hal was hurt and didn’t bother to disguise it. “So you want me to go out with other women.”

  “Hal, I like you very much. But it would be healthy for you to see other women.”

  The big kiss-off. Well, he’d known it was coming, hadn’t he? Women like her didn’t date guys like him. She’d been slumming. “Oh, I’m all about health.”

  “Hal, please don’t make this harder for me than it is, okay? Do you think I enjoy it?”

  Oh, you do revel in your goddess power. You’ve used and abused the poor, malleable mortal. Now you’re finished with him. Time to move on.

  “And quite frankly, I’m so mixed up right now that I can’t handle seeing anyone.”

  The old, “it’s not you, it’s me” speech. How original. Why did I ever think there was anything more to you? “So you’re back to the identity crisis, huh?”

  “What do you mean, ‘back to it?’ I never left it. You asked me, Hal, why I got so angry with you? Well, it’s because you can’t just tell a woman that what she feels isn’t logical.”

  “Shannon, I was only trying to help.” And God knows why. You’re not worth the effort.

  “I know that. And it’s why I’m sitting here with you. Men just have different ways of problem-solving, I guess. You process and compartmentalize the information and break it down into parts. Women sit on the whole issue, like an egg, until they have a breakthrough.”