Saturday September 16 2006
Escondido
I feel like a kid on Prom Night, Daniel thought. He was sitting at a table for four at Shannon's, the poshest restaurant in town that would accept a reservation for Saturday night. Only after he'd given his name to the reservationist and hung up did he realize he couldn't possibly scrape up the cash for the night; until he started drawing paychecks from IO, he was living on his savings, and the budget wouldn't stretch to finance a night at Shannon's.
Before calling back to cancel, he'd hit his dad up for a loan. He hadn't had much hope; Dad was a thrifty man who had never fronted his kids money for frivolities or entertainment. He was shocked when his father had reached into his wallet and given him three times what he'd asked for. "Not a loan, a gift. I can't think of a better way to celebrate your divorce than by throwing you a party."
He'd arrived thirty minutes early, to make sure the reservation hadn't been screwed up, and had been offered a choice of tables by the maitre d'. He'd thought Kat might prefer extra room, so he'd chosen a large one far from the door. He'd checked his watch seven times in twenty minutes, afraid she'd have trouble finding the place, or change her mind. She'd insisted on meeting him, rather than letting him pick her up. It wasn't him in particular, he was sure; but she wouldn't let him find out where she and her family lived, any more than Annie would tell his father. He couldn't fault her for it, but the wait was excruciating. He restrained himself from calling.
"Sir. Your guest." The maitre d' had brought her to the table himself.
He stood, took a shallow breath, and said, "Yow."
She smiled. "Is that good?"
"'Good.' Not the word that comes to mind. I'm going to have to look up 'ravishing' in the dictionary, though; I don't really know what it means." He swallowed. "You look different. Great, but different. It's your makeup." Dope. Guys aren't supposed to notice a girl's makeup; we're supposed to pretend they just look like that all the time.
But she beamed at him. "Face courtesy of my baby sister. She insisted." She gestured with a strapless purse hardly big enough for a paperback. "My regular style's pretty basic. All the makeup I own fits in here."
He appraised the work. Little sister is an artist. Somehow the application made her more mature without aging her, and drew his attention to her face and away from the rest of her; something else he'd been worrying about.
She was wearing a Little Black Dress with a flared hem that ended a hand's width above the knee. It was snug on her hips and torso but not skintight, and the top part gathered at her neck, leaving only her shoulders bare. The coverage was modest, the style conservative, and the effect was sexy as hell. Her hair and eyes shone as if they were lit from within. Without any thought of flattering her, he said, "You belong on a runway."
She colored a little at that, and the maitre d' offered to seat her. In fact, the man seemed reluctant to leave. As he pushed her chair in, he smiled across the table and mouthed, "Wow," before he left. Prom Night, definitely. And against all odds, I scored a date with the homecoming queen, class valedictorian, and captain of the cheerleading squad.
Seated, he noticed, she was only fractionally taller than he was; most of her extra height was in her legs. He tried not to think about all that bare womanflesh under the table. "Any trouble finding the place?" He'd just checked his watch; she was early too.
She shook her head, sending the faintest trace of perfume his way. "No. My car's got one of those map thingies. You tell it where you want to go, and if you make a wrong turn, it growls at you." She glanced around at the décor and the other guests. "I've never been in a restaurant like this. It looks like the sort of place you'd have to wait weeks to get into."
"In L.A maybe; not in Escondido. They get a lot of cancellations here."
A server arrived to take drink orders. Neither of them ordered alcohol: raspberry iced tea for her, regular for him. "I don't suppose I need to ask, but how's the food?"
"I don't know. Never been here either." He grinned. "I just hope I haven't brought you to one of those nouvelle cuisine places. If they bring you out a plate with a piece of meat you could hide under a coffee cup, and six beans arranged so artistically on the plate, and a tablespoon of sauce … they might have to arrest me."
She put two fingers to her mouth, smiling. "I'll break you out."
That made him think of last night, and the story she'd told. Not gonna bring that up, not tonight. "So, if you can lift refrigerators like egg cartons already, how come you bother to work out? Not that it doesn't look great on you," he added quickly.
She glanced down. "Well, like I said, most of this came with the other change. I used to be almost Anna's size. But I have good reasons to work out. One, it's relaxing, almost Zen sometimes. Also, it helps me train my power. I have to consciously restrain it when I'm lifting weights, and keeping my physical strength up gives me some overlap."
"Overlap?" Their drinks arrived, along with the menus. She was silent until the server left.
"Like with the horseshoes. It kicks in all by itself when I need it. If I can curl sixty pounds with muscle power, I'm less likely to heft a heavy bag of groceries out of the cart and send it halfway across the lot by accident. I won't have the strength to lift a car until I need to lift a car."
Lift a car? "O-kay. I suppose you spend a lot of time thinking about how to stay under the radar."
She lifted her tea. "You never know who's watching you."
"Speaking of which. I'm getting on a plane to Denver tomorrow afternoon. I'd love you to be at the airport to send me off, but I don't think it's a good idea." He decided against a boyish smile, and kept a straight face. "If you're so inclined, you'll have to kiss me goodbye tonight." He hid his pleasure at the touch of color that appeared high on her cheeks. Never had a girlfriend who blushed so easily.
Then her gaze shifted from his face, focusing on something just over his shoulder. Before he could turn, a woman's voice said, "Danny. I didn't know you came here."
He didn't turn. Neutrally, he said, "Hello, Adrienne. We've never been here before." And if I'd known you came here, I would never have made the reservation.
"I come here quite often. I know the owner."
You know a lot of guys, Adrienne. One too many. That's why we're divorcing.
She came around to stand between them, wineglass in hand, unconsciously posing - or maybe not unconsciously. Exactly his height dressed up in her usual four-inch heels, she looked down on them with a polite smile. Trim figure, except for the implants; she was a treadmill tart. Expensive clothes and jewelry; she'd always made more money than him, between the modeling fees and the cash the slobbering creeps shoved down her thong at the clubs where she danced. Tawny shoulder-length hair with lighter frosting, perfectly done up; hazel eyes. An altogether stunning package, and if she'd been sitting alone, most of the solitary men in the place would have been sizing her up and sending her drinks.
But his soon-to-be-ex came off a clear second standing next to his date. Only six years separated them, but they'd been hard years. Caitlin was a dewy, beautiful bud just opening; Adrienne was a hothouse rose with darkening petals. Or so it seemed to him; he knew what lay under the skins of both women.
Adrienne glanced at Kat, then at him; after five years of marriage and a couple hundred fights, he knew what she was thinking, as clear as if she was speaking the words aloud. For all the contempt you show me now, your taste in women hasn't changed any. "Danny, aren't you going to introduce me?"
He sighed. "Caitlin, this is my ex, Adrienne."
"Not for a week or so, Danny. Don't jump the gun."
Kat gave each of them a quick glance. "Pleased to meet you, Adrienne. Call me Kat, almost everybody does."
"Where's Alan tonight?" Cheating on him already?
"On his way. He's running late – press of business and all that. Sometimes I wonder how the place runs without him."
A server approached with a tray bearing a full wineglass just like the one in Adrienne's hand. "Compliments of the gentleman at the bar."
Adrienne's mouth thinned, but it was him she was looking at, waiting for a comment. He gave the tiniest shrug. None of my business anymore.
"Adrienne," Kat said, "sit with us until Alan gets here." They had water glasses as well as their drinks; she set hers in front of the chair opposite where Adrienne was standing. "If we look like a foursome, it might keep some of the sharks from circling."
His ex blinked at the unexpected kindness. She glanced at him; he shrugged with his eyebrows. I'd rather be caught in a crossfire in Sadr City.
As she sat, Kat said to her, "I see where Drew gets his good looks. Not that Daniel's not handsome," she amended, smiling at him, "but Drew's a different kind of good-looking; he's going to be girl-pretty."
Adrienne lifted an eyebrow at him. So, this one's sharing our house already?
"She saw him at Dad's house," he explained. "Her stepmom and Dad are old friends."
Kat said cautiously, "I think they each invited a chaperone, and it turned into a blind date, sort of."
Adrienne smiled indulgently. "You must have made a good impression on each other; here you are again. What do you do for a living, Kat?"
"Nothing yet. I'm still in school."
"Ah. Modeling academy?"
Kat sipped her drink. "I'll take that as a compliment. No. I'm postgrad at the Institute. Computer Science major. The course load is crushing; I'd never have time for a full-time job."
His ex gave him another glance. She's twenty-one, twenty-three maybe? A little young, don't you think? "If money for school is getting tight, I'll bet I could get you a part-time job where I work, Kat," she purred. "You'd have to be willing to give up your weekends, but I'm sure you could bring home five hundred a week with maybe twenty hours' easy work. I'd be glad to give you all the training you need."
Now, Dan thought, would be a good time to slide under the table and disappear.
"Oh, I've already got a part-time job on my career track. Got recruited at the end of my sophomore year. I can't say too much about it, though. Topkick Security has ties to some agency in the Department of Homeland Security." She sipped her tea. "But it's a good gig. They pay me forty thousand a year, for work that hardly amounts to an extra homework assignment. Plus a company car." She looked at him. "You've seen it."
The one with the stealth-fighter paint job. Now it makes sense. He was glad of the excuse to smile; the look on Adrienne's face was priceless. "Very nice. Doesn't really seem like a girl car, but I bet it cost beaucoup bucks."
"They've got the money. The Director says I can come to work full-time tomorrow, if I want, at three times what he's paying me now – which means I could demand five times if I play hard-to-get; the demand is unbelievable. But I don't want to spend the next ten years hacker-proofing DOD software." She put three fingers to her lips. "Oops. Probably shouldn't have said that, guys. Don't tell anyone."
"So," Adrienne said slowly, "If two hundred kay a year doesn't interest you … what are you planning to do with your education?"
"Something big," she replied, with another sip of her tea. "Just lately, I've gotten interested in artificial intelligence, robotics. The field's already a greyhound race, and the tech turns over almost every year. But I think I see some breakthroughs on the horizon that will constitute a quantum leap in the applications end, real human-grade AI."
"I'm very sorry I asked," Adrienne said. "Kat, could you say that in English?"
"Ha. Sure. Sometime in the next few years, computers are suddenly going to get a lot smarter … and start thinking like people." Her glass was empty; she pushed it away. "It's software, mostly. We already build computers to human-level specs, at least all the ones we know about. For a while, the theory was that all you'd have to do was make 'em big enough, and they'd think for themselves automatically. Wrong. Turns out human thought processes are pretty complex for the hardware they utilize. The biggest challenge is figuring out how people think, so you can develop an analogue to duplicate it. But people don't understand themselves very well at all, so a machine intelligence would have to be capable of teaching itself about people, because to imitate us, it would have to know us better than we know ourselves." She stopped and looked at her two listeners and shook her head. "Now you know why I never get a second date, Daniel. Don't get me talking shop. Adrienne, what kind of part-time work nets twenty-five dollars an hour with only on-the-job training?"
More subdued than he'd ever seen her, Adrienne said, "Dancing."
"Dance instruction pays that well?"
"No. I'm a dancer. At clubs mostly, but I sometimes do private parties."
"Ah," his date said, nodding at his ex. "I should've guessed."
"Oh?" Adrienne lowered her eyelids, ready for a catfight after all.
"You've got a dancer's poise, just like my sister. You both just glide from place to place. I saw it when you came up behind Daniel. When I get on the dance floor, the ground shakes."
"Oh," she said, friendly again. He shifted in his seat. When she first showed up, I was afraid they'd fistfight in the dining room. Now I'm even more afraid they're going to be girlfriends. "I model too, but club dancing is my bread and butter."
"Modeling what? I'm sure I've never seen your picture."
"Ah, nothing much. In men's magazines, mostly."
His date's eyes widened. "I'm sure I'd never have the courage." Kat glanced around the room; it seemed as if a man was stealing glances at their group from every third table. "How often does someone ask you for an autograph?"
Adrienne laughed. "All the time," she said, "and you wouldn't believe some of the things they want me to write on."
For fifteen minutes, he sat between the two most beautiful women he'd ever known, feeling like a fifth wheel on his own date, while they chatted about the ins and outs of life as a showgirl and a softcore model, oblivious to his mounting unease. Finally, Kat rested her chin in her hand and said, "I'd love to see you dance. It'd make a great girls' night out. Roxy and Anna would take notes. Sarah … well, you never know with Sarah, but I bet she'd have a good time. What's your schedule look like for this week?"
"You really mean that?" Adrienne's voice was pitched low, the way she might talk to a guy alone. Why not? Kat's been flattering her as if she was her date.
"The women in my family are eccentric, Adrienne. If they meet you before you start work, they'll have a ball watching you make strange men drool on themselves. And," she added in a different tone of voice, "I know someone who used to dance. It makes me wonder what the life is like."
"Girlfriend?"
"Plural. Classmates."
He couldn't stand it any longer. "Adrienne, are you sure Alan's got the right restaurant?"
Caitlin's eyes widened, looking at him. "Good grief, we've been going on like you're not even here." She laid a hand over his. "I'm going to have to find a way to make it up to you."
The touch of her hand seemed to steal his senses, and for a moment he forgot Adrienne was sharing the table. "Shouldn't be hard," he said dizzily.
"Kat," Adrienne said, "would you think I'm being rude if I asked you to give me a few minutes alone with my husband?"
"No problem." Kat pushed back her chair.
He said, "Kat, stop." He turned to his ex. "Adrienne, Caitlin's my guest, not you. You don't order her away from the table. Kat, if you get up, I'm leaving too."
"Um, Daniel, actually, I was about to excuse myself. I've been chugging liquids like a Saint Bernard all afternoon, and this is the longest I've gone all day without a visit to the little girls' room."
"Well … what if the waiter comes to take our order? You haven't looked at the menu."
She held his eyes. "Order for both of us. Anything you've got a taste for will be fine with me."
They both watched her leave until she was out of earshot. Adrienne cocked an eye at him. "Those legs do go all the way up, don't they? Do I discern a double entendre?"
"You do not. We're parting company before midnight, and I'm not sure I'll even get a kiss. What's on your mind?"
"I called Drew's daycare yesterday. They wouldn't even tell me if he was there. Your doing?"
"Adrienne, I'm not going to be a prick about visitation. But I'm not going to let you pick him up from school and disappear hours before I know he's gone. That's just the way it is."
"I wouldn't have done that."
"I don't think you would, either. Now I know you won't." He added, "This couldn't have been taken care of with a phone call?"
"You're just as bad at keeping your cellphone turned on as ever. And you haven't been answering the phone at home."
"I've been at my dad's a lot," he admitted.
"And I'm not going to call your father's house looking for you."
"He'd be polite."
"I wouldn't be. Your lawyer was his recommendation, wasn't she?"
"We told it straight in court. I got Drew without trashing your ability to parent. I know he loves you, and I'm not going to sabotage that. Hell, he even likes Alan."
"You didn't have to cast aspersions on my motherhood skills. All you had to do was get the case in front of a bluenose judge and show him my centerfold spreads."
Their voices had begun to climb; he deliberately lowered his. "I didn't Photoshop those pictures, Adrienne. They're real. They're on fan sites all over the Web. And you're still churning out new ones for your subscription service. Even if I managed to block it all off the computer, someday he's going to be in his buddy's garage, and they'll happen across a stack of his dad's Playboys."
Her voice dropped as well. "You hypocrite. Don't tell me you never pointed out those pictures to one of your … gun-buddies and said, 'I'm doing that.'"
He flushed. "This isn't about me. Kids are cruel. You never used your married name in your career, thank God, but if you were waiting at the door when he came home from school with his friends, or going to the PTA meetings, it wouldn't take long for someone to recognize you, and word to spread."
She seemed about to say something else, but changed her mind. "It's done now. The papers will be ready this week. You keep your word about letting me have him, Danny. Do that, and I won't make any trouble for you. Chase all the redheaded naïfs you can find." She stood up.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to say goodbye to Caitlin. Then I'm going to call Alan and tell him to forget it if he's not on his way."
"Adrienne-"
"Don't worry," she flung at him as she reached down for her purse. "I'll let her make up her own mind about you. Innocent or not, I think she's smart enough to catch on to you before you can do her any harm."
...
Caitlin stood at one of the sinks in the ladies' room, washing her hands and waiting for Adrienne to show up. The woman had so obviously wanted to talk to her alone, Caitlin had expected her to be stepping on her heels as she entered the bathroom. Must be some talk they're having at the table. She would have liked to splash some water on her face, but she knew any damage she did to Roxy's makeup job would be beyond her skill to repair. I wonder how long it would take her to teach me how to do this. She was just reaching for her purse when Adrienne came through the door.
Daniel's ex walked straight to the sinks and reached for a paper towel. She wiped quickly at her eyes as if something were in them. "Got a mascara?"
"Sort of." She fished it out and handed it over. "It doesn't do much."
Adrienne glanced at her face, and applied the brush. "Jesus. What is this? They're getting thinner."
"Sorry. It's just color, really. My lashes are already plenty thick. But if I don't darken them, they're almost transparent." She saw Adrienne looking at her in the mirror.
"Kat, I'm not a jealous woman looking for dirt. I never thought that copper hair came out of a bottle. Although," she added with a smile, "I did have some professional interest in the name of your surgeon."
"Dr. Puberty." She got out a brush and ran it quickly through her hair.
"Well. High school must have been a roller coaster ride."
"Not as rough as it could have been; I was a late bloomer." She put the brush back in her purse. "My looks aren't a handicap at my job. I telecommute, mostly, and most of my face time is with my boss, who respects me for my work – and he's very married. If I go into management, I may need to have a reduction, at least if I want to break six figures."
Adrienne smiled. "And wear mud-brown contacts."
She smiled back. "And maybe some gray tint in my hair."
After the chuckles subsided, she said, "Adrienne … what happened?"
The other woman's brows knitted. "What?"
"You love a guy enough to marry him, probably picked him out of a herd of suitors; you want his child. Looks like you're set for life. Five years later, you're sleeping with someone else. How does that happen? I like Daniel, but I'm sure I don't know him. I know I shouldn't be asking, but I'm way out of my depth here." Softly, she said, "Help me. Please." Just hope she's objective enough to avoid a diatribe.
The woman was silent for several seconds. Then she said, "There's a club I work on weekends. Arena's, in San Diego. Tomorrow after eight is Amateur Night. I won't be on stage, but I'll be there, mingling with the customers. If you're serious, come see me and we'll talk." She gave Caitlin a peck on the cheek as she walked out.
Caitlin returned to the table. Daniel was sitting alone, and the waiter was just picking up Adrienne's wineglasses. "Where's Adrienne? Did Alan show up?"
He studied her face, but not in the way she was getting used to. "She left. Didn't you talk to her?"
"Yes, but she didn't say anything about leaving." She sat, and noticed the menus were gone as well. "You ordered?"
"Sort of." He grinned. "I told him 'one of everything.'"
"You didn't."
"Wait and see." His face smoothed out. "So what did you talk about?"
"Work, mostly. She seems fascinated by the idea of a well-paying job where good looks are a potential handicap."
He relaxed a little. "I suppose it would be a foreign concept. Have to say, you two seemed to get along."
She shook her head. "As soon as I saw her coming, I thought she wanted to make trouble." But I changed my mind after five minutes' conversation. Or maybe she did. "I thought schmoozing her might pull her fangs." She took a sip from her refilled glass.
"So you're not going to watch her dance?" Something in his voice…
"No," she said firmly. "And she never did give me her schedule for next week, you'll notice." I haven't even kissed him yet, and I'm lying to him already. Unless I can get some tips on dealing with him from the woman who's divorcing him, this relationship is doomed. "What movie are we going to see?"
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