Life had different ideas.
Trip came home before I’d managed to write much more than Monday’s date, “Dear Gina,” and a couple of paragraphs that read like the dullest diary entry in history.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s check the progress across the street.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“Dude, we haven’t checked in more than a week.”
“I check it every day. It looks fine.”
“Yeah, from the outside. But let’s see how the inside is coming. I wanna do it while that asshole foreman isn’t around.”
I sighed. “Yeah, okay. But let’s hurry. I need to finish this.”
He glanced at the page. “You know,” he mused, “Wren would probably thank me for distracting you.”
“Do you have a horse in this race? That I don’t know about?”
“Sort of,” he admitted.
“Tell me,” I said as we walked to Sayuri’s house to fetch the spare set of keys.
“Well, Christy’s really cute. And naïve-sexy, like she doesn’t even realize it.”
“And…?” I rolled my eyes at my conversational skills lately.
“Well, Wren’s been telling me stories about when they were together.
Pretty hot stuff. Christy plays a good game, but she isn’t as innocent as she wants us to think. She and Wren were pretty serious, too.” He shook his head in wonder.
“What?”
“Man, if you’d told me a year ago that my girlfriend was in love with another woman, I’d’ve freaked or something. Maybe gone off the deep end.
Like you, when you found out about Wren and me.”
“Don’t remind me,” I said darkly.
“But you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do.”
We rang Sayuri’s doorbell and asked for the keys. Then we walked across the street.
“So, what’re you gonna do?” I asked.
He looked at me sideways. “Um… I think I have to help. With Wren’s plan. The matchmaking. I mean, everything starts with you.”
“You’re kidding,” I said in semi-disgust. “You’re going over to the dark side?”
“Wren isn’t Darth Vader, dude. Besides, he turned out to be good in the end.”
“Maybe. But he did a lot of evil shit before that. He blew up a planet! A whole freakin’ planet!”
“You really think Wren’s evil?”
“No, but…”
“But nothing. She cares about you, she’s in love with Christy, and she wants you both to be happy.”
“With you and her in the middle.”
“Well, yeah,” he said with a goofy grin.
“Hey,” I laughed, “at least you’re honest about it.”
“Of course. That’s what friends are for.”
“Let’s see… You want to help your girlfriend set me up with another girl so I can have sex with her while you have sex with mine. Oh, and they have sex with each other while you and I watch. Have I got that right? Wait… and we all live happily ever after. The end.”
“Well, when you put it like that…”
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave…”
“Exactly!”
“You don’t know the rest of that line, do you?”
“No. What is it?”
“When first we practice to deceive.”
“Ha! Okay. But… how do you know all this stuff? I mean the books and quotes and art and architecture and everything?”
“I read. All the time. That’s what I do half the time when I’m up in my studio. And I just remember stuff.”
“No kidding. You’re a regular Renaissance man. Whereas I can barely tell the difference between Renaissance and Romanesque.”
“Oh, come on. Those are easy. They’re so completely different.”
“I know. I was just kidding.” He grinned and unlocked the front door of the house. “At least I know this stuff. C’mon, let’s have a look.”
The house looked fine. Better than fine. The work was as good as the planning, which made our job easier. We reported back to Sayuri, and I fiddled with a Japanese puzzle box while she and Trip went over the latest invoices and estimates from the contractor. We said goodbye and promised to look at the house more frequently as the work neared the end.
The girls were home when we returned. It was Christy’s turn to cook dinner, but she was in the process of wheedling and cajoling Wren.
“Okay, okay! I’ll do it,” Wren said at last. “You know I can’t resist when you look at me like that.”
“Thank you, thank you. I’ll make it up to you, I swear.” Christy impulsively kissed her cheek, and Wren actually blushed.
I had to stifle a snort. Annoying Wren before dinner was always a bad idea.
Christy bounced up and down when she saw Trip and me.
“Bunny’s excited,” I said to him as an aside.
“I refuse to let you bring me down, Mr. Sourpuss.”
“Not me. I know better. Uh-uh. You’re more than I can handle when you’re like this.”
“And don’t you forget it, mister!” She changed direction mid-thought.
“Oh, let me tell you! I showed my sketches to Siobhan today. She says the pose is exactly right. And your expression is perfect. Speaking of which, I fixed that today.”
“When? You haven’t seen me.”
“I did it from memory.”
“Oh. Okay. So what’d you do?”
“Well, do you remember when you showed me your sketches for the
building? I said I wouldn’t sleep with you?”
“How could I forget?” I said evenly.
“I drew that face. You were so angry. But you never said a mean word, though I probably deserved it if you had. But, gosh! You were hurt and confused and really upset.”
“I’m glad my pain is your art.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said quickly. “I just meant that I understood. You were so emotional, so… frustrated. It was like you were helpless. I just thought…” She looked at her hands. “I don’t know what I thought. I guess… I just wanted you to know.”
Wren’s eyes pleaded with me not to blow up.
I reminded myself to breathe. “I… get it,” I said to Christy at last. “And I’m glad you found the right look.”
“You’re upset. I’m sorry. I didn’t—” She hung her head. “I should probably go now.”
“No,” I said. “It’s okay.”
Wren watched with tears in her eyes.
I forced a smile. “There’s beauty in everything, right?”
I was headed to my workout the next day when I ran into Andy from Daphne and Sara’s graduation party. I greeted him warmly. I didn’t even think about it. I just did it, which seemed to startle him. He asked where I was living when he recovered, so I told him about Wren’s father and the house.
“So you moved in together?”
“Yes, but not like you think. She and my best friend are together. Trip.
Her best friend lives with us too. Christy. So it’s the four of us.”
“Sounds like a cozy arrangement,” he said with a grin.
“It’s more trouble than it’s worth sometimes.”
“This is normally the point where I’d say, ‘Women, huh?’ Gotta keep up the act. But you know better.”
“No kidding. So how’re you? How’s life?”
“The same. Still searching for truth and happiness.”
“Who isn’t?”
“In other news, I applied to the PhD program. Philosophy. I wanna be
overeducated and underemployed the rest of my life.”
“At least you can be philosophical about it.”
He looked at me askance and laughed when he realized I wasn’t mocking him.
We chatted for a few more minutes, until I was almost late.
“Hey,” I said before we parted, “let me have your phone number. I’ll call you sometime.”
“For real?”
“Yeah, sure. We can hang out.”
“I’d… like that.” He wrote in a small notepad and tore off the page.
I took it and gave him my number.
“Thanks,” he said. “Take care.”