Summer Blowout

by Claire Cook

  He smiled up at me. He was wearing dark jeans and a navy-and-white-striped shirt with the sleeves rolled up. It was a good thing he answered, because I’d forgotten the question. “Why not?” he said. “She can be our chaperone.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him we wouldn’t be needing one.

  “I know,” he said. “We won’t be needing one.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Exactly,” he said. “So, she can be our assistant.” He ran up the steps two at a time and grabbed the boxes out of my hands.

  He was already halfway down the stairs before I thought of it. “I can get those,” I yelled in the direction of his back. I bent down and picked up Precious. “Guess he has them,” I said.

  I unlocked my door again, then ran back in and grabbed some dog food and a few of Precious’s favorite toys. By the time Precious and I caught up to Sean Ryan, he was already putting the boxes in the trunk of his dark green Prius. “Um,” I said.

  He shut the trunk and turned to face me. “Um?” he said.

  I didn’t remember him being quite so good-looking. “Maybe I should take my car? You know, just in case you have plans? No, that’s not it. I mean, I have plans. Oh, forget it.” Precious and I walked around to the passenger side.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as we were buckling our seat belts.

  “Fine,” I said. “So, how many miles do you really get to the gallon in this thing?” It seemed to me that the interior could have been bigger. When I’d reached for my seat belt, our knuckles had almost brushed.

  “Who knows. But it sure makes me feel superior.” Precious jumped over onto his lap. I certainly wasn’t planning on reaching for her, that was for sure, so she was going to have to find her own way back.

  “What?” I said.

  “I was kidding,” he said. “You didn’t smile.” He handed Precious back to me and this time our hands did touch for an instant.

  I pulled my hand away. “I guess it wasn’t that funny,” I said.

  He started the car. “Consider the bar raised,” he said. He backed out of the parking lot and took a right toward the highway. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Couldn’t be better,” I said. I smoothed out my pants and adjusted the summer-weight Chico’s jacket I was wearing so it wouldn’t get mangled by the seat belt. “So how much do I owe you for the right half of the display table today?”

  “You can buy dinner,” he said.

  I clapped my hands together. It made a bigger noise than I would have imagined, and Precious jumped between the seats and into the back. “Listen,” I said. “Just in case you’ve forgotten, this is strictly business.”

  “Okay,” he said. “We can split the tab. But I’m only paying for the things I order, so if you order an appetizer and I don’t, I don’t want to hear any whining when we tally up.”

  “Don’t be so irrelevant,” I said.

  “Katharine Hepburn to Cary Grant, Bringing Up Baby, 1938.”

  I turned to look at him. “What?”

  “It’s a line in the movie. Or pretty close to it. And I think right after that Cary Grant says something about being strangely drawn to her in moments of quiet.”

  “Are you telling me to shut up?”

  He laughed. He had a nice full laugh, nothing held back, right out there for the whole world to hear. I would have probably liked it a lot better if it hadn’t been directed at me.

  He took the same back roads out to the highway I would have taken. Maybe we’d been passing each other on this route for years. I was an intelligent woman, but my brain seemed temporarily to have shut down. We’d made it out to the highway already, and Sean Ryan put on his blinker and got ready to merge onto the highway. He accelerated, and we blended seamlessly into the traffic. “So, what’s your all-time favorite old movie?” he asked.

  “Hmm,” I said. “Lately I guess it’s been Thelma and Louise.” I didn’t think it was necessary to tell him I’d watched it three times just this past week and that one of those times I got a little bit carried away and kept rewinding and replaying the shooting scene, just so I could pretend the guy was Craig. “I mean, they got a life, they kicked butt. Okay, so they died in the end, but doesn’t everybody?”

  Sean Ryan nodded. “God, I remember my wife dragging me kicking and screaming to that one. It was a great road movie though. She wasn’t often right like that.”

  I turned to see if he was smiling. He looked at me at the same time. “My husband wasn’t often right either,” I said.

  “I bet not being often right is the one thing all exes have in common.”

  I nodded. Neither of us said anything for a while. Precious found her way back to my lap again, and I looked out the window while I stroked her wiry fur.

  “So how much longer do you get to keep the dog?” Sean Ryan asked.

  I whipped my head around to face him. “What do you mean by that?”

  “What do I mean by what? You have to give it back, right?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think if they wanted her, they would have come to get her by now, don’t you?”

  “Wow,” he said. “You’ve got a real talent for denial, don’t you?”

  15

  AS SOON AS SEAN RYAN ASKED ME ABOUT GIVING Precious back, it hit me like a ton of bricks that she’d found her way into my heart, and I couldn’t imagine my life without her. Why is it that even when you’re trying your hardest not to get attached, something still sneaks up on you? I’d make a lousy Buddhist. I’d probably spend all day trying to build a perfect sandcastle, and then when the tide turned and it was time to let the waves crash it to smithereens to remind me of life’s impermanence, I’d dig it up fast and find a way to carry it home.

  But, I mean, stupid as it sounded, I’d lost Sophia. I’d lost Craig. I couldn’t even think about losing this sweet little dog, too. We’d just pulled into the North Garage at the Rhode Island Convention Center, and I was trying really hard not to cry. I never cried, but at this moment it felt like Precious was all I really had.

  Sean Ryan found a space near an entrance and put the car into park. “Hey,” he said. “I’m really sorry I said that. It came out a lot harsher than I meant it to. I mean, maybe they’ll just let you keep the dog.”

  I took a quick wipe at one of my eyes with the back of my hand. “Well, it sounds pretty silly when you say it that way. I don’t know. I keep thinking maybe they’ve forgotten about her. Newlyweds have a lot going on, you know?”

  “How long has it been? About a week, right?”

  “No,” I said. “I think it’s been much longer than that.” I closed my eyes and made myself do the math in my head. “Ohmigod. You’re right. A week. Today. You don’t remember how long honeymoons last, do you?”

  “Never long enough,” Sean Ryan said.

  I picked up Precious and rested her against my shoulder while I patted her back. “It’s just that the bride who owned her didn’t even like her.” I covered one of Precious’s ears with my hand and pressed her other ear into my neck. “I distinctly remember her saying next time she was getting a Peekapoo,” I whispered.

  “Did you just cover its ears when you said that?”

  “What? She doesn’t miss a trick.”

  Sean Ryan looked at his watch. “Listen,” he said. “It’s getting close to noon. We’d better get inside. But don’t worry, there’s got to be a way to keep it. Let’s both think on it, and we’ll come up with a plan over dinner.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “But she’s not an it. She’s a she.”

  Sean Ryan reached over and gave Precious a pat. “Sorry, girl,” he said. He rested his hand on my shoulder, and for a moment, I thought he might hug me. I could almost feel his crisp, striped shirt against my skin.

  He opened his car door, and I watched his shirt disappear. I got out, too, and we went around to the back of the Prius and started unloading our boxes.

  I kept Precious safely in my bag while we showed our driver’s li
censes at a table in the lobby. A frazzled woman handed us our badges, and we headed for the escalator.

  Our table turned out to be in the Rotunda Room, which was nice and sunny, and Sean Ryan let me have the right side without a fight. Tweedy people were shuffling around everywhere, getting things set up. I didn’t see any makeup people, but there were massage tables set up at the other end of the room. I wondered if the safe sumo wrestling ring was around here somewhere, too.

  Sean Ryan covered our table with a white tablecloth, then unloaded his college kits. He nodded at my boxes. “Okay,” he said. “Show me what you’ve got.”

  I put my shoulder bag on the floor, and Precious poked her head out and looked around. She seemed fine, so I opened up one of my boxes and started pulling out my kits.

  “Hey,” Sean Ryan said. “Those are great. Where did you find them?”

  “I made them. Or at least I decorated them.”

  I couldn’t imagine how people managed to survive in parts of the country where they don’t have Christmas Tree Shops. The Christmas part is the least of it. They have just so many bargains, so many things you have no idea you need until you see them and you suddenly can’t live without them. And it’s all dirt cheap.

  Earlier in the week I’d gone to the one in Marshbury and found clear plastic toiletry travel cases with little pockets in the front. I’d filled the pockets with tiny cutout foam shapes—flowers, faces, yin-yang symbols, and Bs for Bella—and then sealed them shut with my hot glue gun. When you shook the bag, the shapes moved around. It was kind of like a beauty snow globe.

  Then I tied a strip of raffia through the zipper pull and tied a tag onto that. I’d made the tags by cutting pieces of mulberry paper with grasslike strands in it and punching holes in them. Then I hand painted them in my signature calligraphylike lettering, the same kind I used anytime one of the salons needed a sign. Every once in a while having gone to art school actually came in handy.

  I’d struggled with a name for the kits. Bella’s Beauty Bag? Beauty Bag by Bella? Bella’s Bag? Beauty by Bella? Finally, I’d settled on Bella’s Bag of Beauty Basics. Now I wasn’t so sure.

  Sean Ryan turned one over in his hand. “Wow,” he said. “You have a great eye for packaging. It’s so simple, but really effective. What did these case things cost?”

  I wondered if I should tell the truth. Maybe it was a trick question. “Three for five dollars?” I said. “Plus a dollar sixty-nine a package for each of the cutouts, but I still have some left.”

  “That’s amazing.” He shook his head. “How many did you buy? And can you get more?”

  “I bought ninety-three, which was all they had. I figured I could always return them. And, sure, I can get more. I’d just have to drive around to all the other Christmas Tree Shops.”

  He nodded at the college kits. “I don’t even want to tell you how much I paid to have these boxes done. But what happens if you run out of Christmas Tree Shops?”

  “I guess I’d just discontinue this case and find something else.”

  “Makes sense to me.” He looked at his watch. “Okay, the doors are about to open. You handle your kit the way you want to, of course, but what I’m doing is simple. I count the number of kits I give away. I take notes about the comments I receive. I get everybody’s e-mail addresses so I can get feedback from them after they use it, since most of them will never send in the comment card. I’m essentially trying to build a case so I can help my friend sell the kit to one of the college testing companies, or even the right publisher.”

  He actually sounded like he knew what he was talking about, but I still had one big question. “So, do you get a flat rate for doing this, or do you take a percentage?”

  College students and their parents suddenly started stampeding into the Rotunda Room. The noise was deafening. “Just helping out a friend,” Sean Ryan had to practically yell, even though he was right next to me.

  Precious jumped up on my lap. “I hope that guidance counselor appreciates you,” I yelled back.

  MAKEUP IS PRACTICALLY IRRESISTIBLE to almost everyone. That’s because it’s optimism in a bottle. The college kids and their mothers stood spellbound while I filled out their diagrams to show them how and where to apply their makeup.

  “Gee,” the kids said, “I had no idea you were supposed to powder your eyes before you apply the shadow.”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “It helps it to stick.”

  “Why do you put the blush up that high?” their mothers asked.

  “Because,” I said, “if it drops below the apple of your cheek, it’ll make your face look saggy.”

  Then I made notes with product suggestions in the margins. And after that I’d start mixing up their customized foundation. “Wow,” the kids said. “Nicole had this done. I think I read about it in some magazine.”

  “I bet she paid more than twenty-nine ninety-five,” their mothers said.

  “Probably more like ten thousand,” I said, then I looked up to watch their jaws drop. I’d actually read about celebrities paying this much for custom makeup in Paris. Talk about money to burn, even if you factored in the poor exchange rate with the euro. I mean, what could the ingredients in that foundation possibly be? Bovine collagen from firstborn free-range yak virgins?

  I finished mixing their foundation with my little white disposable spatula, then I handed them a mirror and pointed. “Always test the foundation at your jawline. Right there. If the foundation is the right shade, it’ll disappear into your skin and you won’t see a line at all.”

  Then I took a triangular foam sponge from the pack and did a quick makeup application. The kids and their mothers followed along on the diagram, like they were studying for a test.

  The mothers were the first to snap out of it. “College,” they said. “We’re here to find a college.”

  “Have you started your applications?” I asked sweetly.

  The daughters looked away. The mothers got a look of grim determination in their eyes.

  Then I reached over and grabbed one of the college application kits from Sean Ryan’s rapidly diminishing pile. “Here you go,” I said. “I’ll even save you from having to go over and stand in that long line over there. Just write down your e-mail address and zip code for the nice man over there. You’ll breeze right through your college applications with this.”

  “Did your kids use it?” one of the mothers asked.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “All five of them loved it.”

  When she walked away, I thought about Lizzie. I wondered if I should call her to say I was waiting for her father to call. I wondered if Craig would actually call. I wondered if there was a way to get out of talking to Craig that would still let me get Lizzie back into my life.

  It was a long, grueling couple of hours, but Sean Ryan and I managed to survive the entire fair, which felt like a cross between a circus and a root canal without the drugs. I got up and stretched, then started counting my used makeup sponges.

  “So, once again, we missed the sumo wrestling,” Sean Ryan said. “I can’t tell you how disappointed I am.” He walked around to the front of my end of the table and pointed at a guy in white diapers coming out of the men’s room.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Why did he need the men’s room if he’s wearing a diaper? It’s redundant.” I put the sponges back on the table again. “Damn, now you made me forget what number I was on.” I started picking up sponges again as I counted.

  “Why are you counting used sponges?”

  I threw the sponges back on the table. “If you must know, I’m trying to see how much I suffered, and you’re certainly not making it any easier.”

  I looked up so I could glare at him. He smiled. “Did anybody ever tell you what a sunny disposition you have?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “All the time.”

  “Great,” he said. “Maybe it’ll turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Precious jumped up on the table, and Sean Ryan picked her up. “Lis
ten, just in case it’s helpful, you might want to compare the ratio of the number of makeup applications you did to the number of kits you sold.”

  “Oh, please,” I said. “As if I was going to do their makeup if they didn’t buy a kit.”

  16

  WE DIDN’T KNOW OF ANY DOG-FRIENDLY RESTAURANTS in Rhode Island, so we decided to get the drive out of the way and then pick up fish and chips in Marshbury to eat at the beach. I counted my cash while Sean Ryan drove the Prius north on 95. I had well over a thousand dollars in my hot little hands.

  “You can order whatever you want,” I said. I arranged all the bills from smallest to largest, and made sure all the dead presidents’ heads were facing the same way. I always did this with my tips, too. There’s nothing more soothing than a well-organized pile of cash.

  Sean Ryan smiled. “Be careful,” he said. “I’m liable to order the french fries and the onion rings.”

  “They’re your arteries.”

  “Good strategy. Maybe I’ll just watch you eat.”

  I folded over the wad of bills, wrapped a hair elastic around it, and buried it in the bottom of my shoulder bag. “So,” I said, “you’re not really test marketing the guidance counselor’s kit for free, are you? I mean, don’t you have to make a living? Even with the gas mileage you get on your Prius?”

  Sean Ryan looked over briefly, then put his eyes right back on the road. He was a good driver, steady and confident without being show-offy. “Don’t worry, I have some other things going on. I have lots of irons in the fire, different projects at various stages.”

  “So, what, you’re an entrepreneur?”

  “Yeah, essentially. I think the dictionary definition is a risk-taking businessman who sets up and finances new commercial enterprises to make a profit.” He put on his blinker and moved into the passing lane. “I like to start things, and then I like to get rid of them before they get boring.”

  “How many times did you say you’ve been married again?”