“I’m so sorry,” Bina said to Michael, flushing bright red. She grabbed for the already damp Bowl-a-Rama cocktail napkin that was lying on the scoreboard top. Michael was holding his shirt away from his body, his elbows extended like a man impersonating a rooster. Kate could see the beer had soaked not only his shirt, but also his pants. When Bina began to dab ineffectually at his chest and crotch, Michael took a step backward.
“No. Let me help,” she begged. “I can get it right out. Club soda on the shirt. Club soda and salt on your pants.”
Kate almost smiled, despite Michael’s discomfort. The Horowitz family were experts at removing every stain from every possible material: wine on linen, ballpoint on silk, tar on leather. The list was endless and often discussed. Kate took Michael’s arm. He looked at her helplessly.
“Hurry up,” Bina insisted, taking his other arm. “We have to do it before the stain sets. Trust me, I know.”
“She does,” Kate said, nodding at him.
“Maybe it’s all right,” Michael volunteered, but then he looked down at himself.
“Go with her,” Kate said.
“Yeah. Let’s get you cleaned up,” Bina told him as she led him away from the lane.
Kate watched him go and felt deeply sorry for having invited him. He disappeared into the crowd like a damaged ship being pulled by a determined little tugboat. Kate sighed.
“Not Mike’s day.”
Kate turned around to face Billy, who was leaning on the side of their banquette, his legs crossed and his eyebrows raised. “Not much of a player.”
“Just because he’s in third place . . . ,” Kate began.
“Last,” Billy corrected her.
“Excuse me?” Kate asked. Billy pointed at the electronic scoreboard. He took a step closer to her. She felt his arm against her shoulder. She also felt heat rise up from her chest to her neck and hoped he wouldn’t notice the blush on her face.
“Last,” he said again, and leaned forward to tap the score. “Since Bina’s strike, he’s in last place.” Kate felt a little light-headed. Billy Nolan was so close to her, she could smell his soap and the heat of his body. For an insane moment she had an impulse to close her eyes and fall into his arms. Instead she took a step away and picked up a bowling ball.
“You’re just jealous,” she said without thinking, not quite sure what she meant.
He turned to face her instead of the score. “You’re right, I am,” he said in a steady voice.
“You are?” Kate asked, but she couldn’t match his steadiness. She was surprised at this admission.
“Yeah,” Billy said. And then he continued, a lot less casually. He lowered his voice, but it rose in intensity. “I thought I was going on this date with you. And you knew that. I can’t believe I fell for the old bait and switch, or that you played me that way.”
Kate dropped the ball back into the ball return. Despite the truth of what he said, she felt indignant. She’d done it for the best of reasons, and who was he to claim a higher moral ground? “You’re on a date with my best friend,” she said defensively.
“Really?” Billy asked, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “Is that what you thought?”
“Yes,” Kate lied. “And then you insult my boyfriend and come on to me. What is wrong with you?”
“Well, for one thing, I like to pick my own women,” Billy said. And he looked her over from head to toe. He paused, took a couple of steps away from her, and sat on the banquette, crossing an ankle over his knee. “For another, I certainly wouldn’t pick Bina,” he said bluntly.
Kate felt a surge of anger on behalf of her friend. She had feared something like this would happen, and now her main concern was that Billy would humiliate Bina. She silently cursed Elliot, Barbie, and the whole bunch of them. Playing with people’s lives was always dangerous, and right now she was the one about to face retribution for their stupidity. “That is just plain rude,” she told him.
“Rude to be angry when I’m tricked? I’m just calling it as I see it,” Billy said.
“I guess that’s why everyone calls you like they see you,” Kate snapped.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Billy said, sitting upright and putting both feet on the ground.
Kate controlled herself, but with difficulty. She didn’t want to see Bina hurt, and she had to try to get out of this somehow. She turned away from him. “It means every woman in Brooklyn, perhaps with the exception of Brooklyn Heights, knows your reputation,” she said, and went to pick up her purse.
“What reputation?” Billy asked. He stood up and followed her. When she didn’t answer him or turn around, he put a hand on her shoulder and turned her to him. “What reputation?” he asked again.
“Oh, come on. Don’t you know everyone calls you ‘Dumping Billy’?” Kate answered, exasperated.
“‘Dumping Billy’? Why?”
Kate looked up at him. He was tall, at least seven or eight inches taller than she was, but she could see his eyes cloud. He seemed to have been completely unaware of his nickname.
“Why the hell would they call me that?” he asked.
“Because you dump every woman you date.” Kate looked toward the bar and the rest rooms beyond. When would Michael and Bina return? She was tired of this conversation and wanted only to salvage the rest of the evening.
“I don’t dump women,” Billy said. For the first time, he seemed defensive. “I mean, I’ve broken up relationships, but I don’t dump people.”
“Oh, come on,” Kate said. “My friends know a dozen women you’ve dumped. I didn’t make up the nickname. Anyway, your behavior is pathological.”
“What?” Billy demanded. He’d clearly gone from defensive to angry.
Kate knew she’d gone too far and spoiled what was left of the evening, but she couldn’t resist taking a deep, annoyed breath. “Path-o-log-i-cal,” she said slowly, as if for a child. “It means—”
“Any abnormal variation from a sound condition,” Billy finished for her.
Kate blinked, taken aback. Billy pushed past her, grabbed his bag, and turned back.
“It also means I’m out of here. The bad news is, I did just dump Bina, but I wish I could’ve dumped you. The good news is that now your friend Michael has a chance of coming in third.”
He was gone in a minute, and Kate stood beside their almost deserted lane, wondering what she could possibly say when Bina and Michael returned.
Chapter Twenty-five
The next morning, Kate sat in her office face-to-face with a young girl. Tina, a high-spirited third grader, was sitting in one of the tiny chairs with a big bandage on her arm. Tina had injured herself over and over, but Kate didn’t think clumsiness or a need for self-mutilation were behind the injuries. She thought Tina probably had a repetition compulsion: For some reason she had to keep acting out the trauma of being challenged and frightened and forced to respond. While many professionals in her field dismissed the idea, Kate had always found the concept valid.
She had been talking with the child for over an hour and she felt some progress had been made. “So you won’t do that again?” she asked Tina.
Tina looked up at her and smiled. “No,” she said, then added, “Not unless Jason dares me.”
“If he dares you to jump off the roof . . .” Kate stopped herself. Where had that come from? It was the kind of line her father might have used. Instead, she smiled, almost closed her eyes, and leaned forward toward Tina, the girl who couldn’t refuse a dare. “I dare you not to,” she said. “I bet that you have to do anything Jason dares you to.”
“Do not,” Tina said.
“Dare you not to,” Kate said.
She wasn’t sure the counterdare would work. Tina really might jump off the roof. Just then the bell rang and interrupted her thoughts. “We’ll talk about your friendship with Jason next time, okay, Tina?” Kate said.
Tina nodded again, slid off the chair, and bounded from the room.
“I told yo
u, it just won’t work.” Kate said each word slowly and distinctly so Elliot might possibly get it through his mathematical head. “Zero, null set, no way. Impossible. Finished. Kaput.”
“But are you sure?” Elliot asked.
She gave him a look. They were going to their gym, Crunch—a place that ran cool ads on television and that had as its motto “No judgements.” But Kate was ready to make a few judgments now. Even for him, Elliot looked awful. They were walking up Eighth Avenue, and he was wearing baggy shorts, a torn T-shirt, and a madras fishing hat that must have come from some thrift shop, while his feet displayed two mismatched socks. “You know,” Kate said, trying to change the subject, “you look like a recently released mental patient.”
“Thank you,” Elliot said. “It was the look I was going for. Brice helped me.”
Against her will, Kate smiled. How a guy as fashion impaired as Elliot could couple up with stylish Brice was inconceivable to her. But they were a solid and happy couple with enough things in common to make their lives congenial and enough respect for their differences to make life interesting. It was hard to imagine Brice letting Elliot out of the house dressed like this, but she knew that he’d probably just shrugged, laughed, and hugged Elliot. Then the image of Michael and his sports jacket the night before came unbidden to her mind. Just because Michael dressed inappropriately was no reason for her to judge him, but somehow she did.
“I want to find out exactly what happened, sentence by sentence, word by word, act by act.” They turned west on 18th Street, and Kate looked at Elliot with hostile amazement.
“If you think I’m going to go through last night one more time, you can think again.” They reached the door to the gym. “And you can warm up by yourself.”
They had both gotten memberships at Crunch so that they could work out together and force each other to go. It usually worked pretty well, but Kate was in no mood to dissect the previous evening. The fact was she was a little bit ashamed, both of her ruse and of her behavior. But that didn’t mean she had to tell Elliot that. At the door to the women’s locker room, she turned to him and said, “Spot yourself. I’m going to find a straight guy to work out with.”
After she had changed into her workout pants and loose top, twisted her hair into a scrunchie and stuck it on top of her head with hairpins, then stowed her stuff in the locker, she came out to find Elliot standing there, just where she’d left him.
“Oh, come on,” he pleaded as if she hadn’t just been gone for ten minutes. “You never tell me anything anymore.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Kate laughed, exasperated. But she couldn’t refuse him. So she went into detail about the whole awful night—how Barbie had dressed Bina up like a Las Vegas showgirl, how Billy had showed up thinking he was her date and not at all happy to find out he was Bina’s, and how they’d finally gotten into an argument at the end of the evening.
By then they had reached the mats, and Kate grabbed a big blue plastic ball to begin their warmup. She leaned backward over it to stretch the front of her body. The stretch felt good, and she took a deep, soothing breath. Stretching was the only part of working out that she actually enjoyed, and she needed it after last night and today. While Brian Conroy had improved and was able to cry over the loss of his mother, a new child, Lisa Allen, had been sent to her because she seemed “withdrawn.” And Tina Foster had been sent to her for the second time because she had taken a ridiculous dare and jumped off the top of the playground wall. Kate sighed.
She and Elliot now clasped hands and bent away from each other in order to stretch out their backs. They had been coming to the gym together for seven months now and had their routine down pat. They continued to pull each other—first arms, then legs—around the big blue ball. “Well, you know,” Elliot said, “I got a partial report from Bev last night, who got it from Bina.”
“Bev called you?”
“Oh, yeah. She and I are bonding. I want to be godfather to the baby.”
“God forbid,” Kate said. She really felt irritated that Elliot was so . . . integrated with her Brooklyn friends and pissed that Bev would stick her two cents in. “Look, I didn’t think Billy Nolan would like Bina. It turns out that he resented the way I manipulated him and—shock, shock—he doesn’t want to go out with Bina despite Barbie’s outfits, Brice’s haircut, and your plan. Not only that, I don’t like him. He isn’t a nice person.”
“You don’t have to like him,” Elliot began. “I don’t have to like him. Even Bina doesn’t have to like him. She only has to date him for an average of two point four months. That’s roughly ten weeks, or seventy days—give or take.”
“But he has to like Bina,” Kate pointed out. “And he doesn’t. Case closed.”
“Technically we don’t know that,” Elliot gurgled with his head tilted backward. He was arching himself in a back bend.
“What do you mean?” Kate asked, standing upright again.
“I mean, from your retelling it sounds like he had the argument with you,” Elliot said.
“Yes. So?”
“So his problem is with you, not Bina.” Elliot looked at her sternly.
“Elliot, trust me. There was no chemistry between them.”
“Kate, from what you told me and what Bev said Bina said, I think last night was an opener. The fact is, you did trick the guy and he was angry at you and he doesn’t like you, but he might, given the chance, like Bina—at least long enough to date her for seventy-three days.”
“Oh, Elliot, don’t be ridiculous,” Kate snapped. She let go of his hands, and he went sprawling, his butt hitting the mat with a splat. “Are you trying to tell me the fiasco was my fault?”
Elliot rose slowly from the mat, his hands rubbing his backside. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. That and the fact that you owe him an apology.”
Kate stared at him in amazement. “That is the most outrageous thing I ever heard,” she told him. “I would never apologize to that insufferable, arrogant . . .” She turned and began to walk away.
“You like him, don’t you?” Elliot asked.
Kate stopped where she was, swung around, and stared at him. “I do not!” she said.
Elliot shrugged. “Just asking,” he told her. “It’s just that I’ve never seen you this excited about Michael.” He threw his towel over his neck and sauntered toward the treadmills.
“Leave Michael out of this,” Kate snapped. She took a deep breath. Elliot, who probably knew her better than anyone, was pressing all her buttons. But she wouldn’t let him. As she watched him set the program on his treadmill, his back turned to her, she made herself slowly and carefully go over the facts and feelings from the previous night. Maybe she had been both a catalyst and a stumbling block. Maybe if she hadn’t been in the way, Billy would be interested in Bina. He seemed to have dated every other woman east of Court Street. However, even if she had gone about it badly, she knew her intentions had been good. She got onto the treadmill beside Elliot and punched in her own stats and program.
As she started walking, she said, “If you believe in this and Bina believes in this, I’ll do what I can to make it work. But I can’t make him date her.” And not for two point four months, she thought. I don’t believe he can rise to the challenge. The image stopped her in her tracks, and she almost flew off the back of the treadmill.
“Have you just thought of something, or are you just being klutzy?” Elliot asked as she regained her position and matched her stride to his.
“Maybe I have,” Kate admitted. “But I hate the idea of apologizing to him. Do I have to?”
“Kate,” Elliot said, ignoring her tone, “I don’t see that you have much of a choice. It doesn’t matter that you don’t believe in the ‘silly’ plan. Bina does, you are her best friend, and you alienated Billy. You have to apologize.”
God, Kate thought. I hate how Elliot is always right.
Chapter Twenty-six
On Tuesday morning, Kate stood in her bed
room before a full-length mirror, holding a hip but dignified blouse up to herself. Deciding against it, she threw it onto the pile of rejected clothes that had already formed on her bed. “What am I going to wear?” she asked her reflection. She turned away and paused for a moment. Why did she even care? Billy meant nothing to her, despite his obvious attractions. She went to her tiny closet and began to look for the green crew-neck top that looked so good on her. As she pulled it off the hanger, she stopped dead. Billy Nolan was taking up more space in her mind than he ought to. And he had seen her before. It wasn’t as if she were going to make a different impression on him this time.
She took a deep breath and looked back steadily at herself. “Hello,” she said as if talking to someone else. “Billy, I wanted to apologize for my behavior the other night. . . .”
She gritted her teeth. This was more difficult than she had imagined. She thought of all the children she had asked to engage in role-play: children who were supposed to talk to the fathers who had left the family, children who were tired of being scolded, children who had to practice asking for what they wanted. Now it was her turn, and the experience was humbling. It was leaving her with a deeper sense of compassion for her little clients.
The phone rang and she was relieved for the distraction, until she saw the phone number. Somehow, she didn’t feel like speaking to Michael right now, and it was odd for him to be calling her on a school morning. Reluctantly, she picked up the phone.
“Hi,” he said cheerfully. “Did I wake you up?” Kate assured him that he hadn’t. “Look, I just thought that we might get together tonight.”
For a moment, Kate was confused. They never got together on Tuesdays. It was always Wednesdays. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Yeah. I miss you,” Michael said.
“I miss you too,” she replied automatically. Then she paused, surprised to realize it wasn’t true. But why not? she wondered. Would she perhaps be missing Michael right now if she weren’t so focused on Billy? She felt a stab of irritation. No, of course not! It was ridiculous. “I’m sorry, but I . . . I have errands I have to run tonight.”
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