“I don’t believe you,” I said.
“Or maybe a little convertible. That might be fun.”
“You tell me we can’t afford a second car, but you want a ragtop.”
“Fine, forget I just said that. Leave your checkbook at home. Come back with a feature and nothing else.”
I opened the door of the Camry for her. “Let me ask you something,” I said. Sarah looked at me and waited. “If you were gay, would you still find me attractive?”
She paused. Sarah’s been with me long enough now to know that it’s simpler to just answer the question than figure out what’s behind it.
“Well, let’s see, if I were gay, that would make me a lesbian, so I would have to say, no, you would not be my type.”
“No no, if you were a male gay person, would you find me attractive? Would I be your type?”
“So, if I find you attractive as a straight female, would I find you attractive as a gay male?”
“Something like that.”
She pretended to give it some thought. “No,” she said.
I must have looked hurt. “Okay, yes,” she said. “Hot, very hot. I’d throw you over the hood of this car in an instant.” She thought a moment. “Facedown, I guess.”
“No, hang on,” I said. “Let’s go with your first instinct. You said no.”
“Well, the thing is, I think gay men put a greater emphasis on, I don’t know, sartorial matters.”
“It’s how I dress.”
“You are a bit rumpled, and you know, if you ever decide to update your wardrobe, I’d be happy to assist you. But for now, as a rabidly heterosexual female, I have decided to regard your lack of fashion sense as endearing. I’d love to talk about this more, but I have to get going. I’ve got a bunch of stuff to do at the office before I leave on this stupid retreat. Give me a kiss, you disheveled beast.”
I did as I was told. And she got in the car, backed down the narrow driveway, and disappeared down Crandall.
7
SOMETIMES, I blame my father.
He worried about everything, and I imagine he still does. We don’t talk all that much since my mother died more than a decade ago, and he lives up in the mountains now, renting out a few lakeside cabins to fishermen, and presumably he moved up there because there would be less to worry about.
His obsessive nitpicking and general sense of impending doom were his gift to me, and from all accounts they are what led my mother to leave the family home for nearly six months when I was in my early teens.
We were the only family I knew of that had fire extinguishers on every floor, an escape route in case of fire taped to the back of bedroom doors. Dad had to be the one, every night, to make sure the doors were locked. You always ran cold water in the shower first, then added hot, to ensure against scalding. You put away as much money as you could every week because for sure you’d be fired the next.
We never had a fire. We never got burned in the shower. Dad was never laid off. He’d be the first to tell you his strategy has paid off.
And now I am the worrier. There is no stuff too small to sweat. My obsession with personal safety issues and protecting the members of my family has been a problem for a while, and has even backfired rather spectacularly. You might have heard about that.
It was the memories of my father that persuaded me to listen to Sarah and pay a visit to Harley, my smartass doctor, in a bid to get a handle on this aspect of my personality. But the thing was, the more I tried not to worry about things, the more things there were, landing on my doorstep, to worry about.
Only hours before, I had been in a car that was being pursued by men with guns. I’d looked down the barrel of a gun before, but I’d never been shot at, nor had I ever been in a car that was being shot at. If that guy hanging out the window of the Annihilator had had a little better aim, Lawrence and I might have been sharing space down at the funeral home with Miles Diamond.
Standing in the kitchen, I found myself almost short of breath, and took a seat at the table. I pushed The Metropolitan, with its story about the deranged, gun-toting teen, out of sight, and wrapped both hands around my coffee mug to keep them from shaking.
It wasn’t just my night with Lawrence that had me on edge. There was this whole thing with Angie and Trevor Wylie. All I could picture was Keanu Reeves, decked out in shades and long black coat, a machine gun in each hand, spraying bullets every which way. All while doing that leaning-back doing-the-limbo thing he did.