“Daddy, don’t be a fool. Of course she’s your new girlfriend. I think she’ll make a wonderful mom.”
As a responsible parent, my job was to disagree. “She’s only five years older than you are.”
“If the shoe fits, don’t ask how old it is.”
“Who told you that?”
“You did, the night you went off with Jimmy Otake’s grandmother.”
Why don’t children ever forget? Shannon had been seven when I went off with Jimmy Otake’s grandmother.
“But Gilia’s a blonde,” I said. “I don’t care much for blondes.”
Shannon’s laugh was effervescent. “Daddy, you want any woman who wants you. This time you lucked out and found a good one, so don’t blow it. Here, she left me her phone number. It’s a personal line into her room, so you don’t have to deal with the family.”
I looked at the slip of paper in my hand. Gilia was a high-quality woman, which was the last thing I needed coming off the hard rebound from Wanda. Gilia was young, good-looking, and energetic—all that potential and long legs too—and she would break my heart. No, now was not the time to mingle with lovable women.
“I’m not going to call her,” I said.
“Give me one semi-rational reason why not.”
“To start with, Gilia might be my sister.”
“Gilia told me her father is left-handed. You’re right-handed, therefore her father isn’t your father.”
“Gilia’s right-handed.”
“Perfect. He’s not her father either.”
Gus stood in the parlor with her arms crossed over her chest. Orange slop hung from the piano, the chairs, the table, the William and Mary desk and bookcase, a Matisse print, and a Schenk original. I tried to remember the difference between stalagmites and stalactites.
“It’s drying hard,” Gus said.
“I don’t suppose you’d—”
“In a pig’s eye. I’d quit and go work for Jesse Helms before I’d clean this room.”
I’d suspected as much. Spontaneous messiness always brings backlash.
“Call Manpower and have them send over a team of winos. Tell them I’ll pay double.”
“You’ll pay triple.”
Gilia answered on the seventh ring. “What took you so long?” she said. “I thought you’d never call.”
“I planned to never call, but I thought I should explain why I can’t call you.”
“Are you going to Tex and Shirley’s for breakfast? Skip’s detective says that’s what you usually do about now.”
“Two days in a row. I hate it when you do something two days in a row and people start calling it a rut. That detective is damn presumptuous.”
“He’s only been on the job a day and a half.”
“I refuse to be predictable.”
“I only asked because I’m thinking I might join you there.”
“At Tex and Shirley’s?”
“We could talk.”
“What about?”
“Sam, didn’t you ever meet someone for breakfast? You sit and drink coffee and shoot the shit.”
“I’m real bad at shooting shit.”
“I’ll teach you, Sam. Hanging out is one of my talents.”
Blues music came from Gilia’s end of the line. She must have been listening to it when I called, but if so, why take seven rings to answer?
“Won’t the detective tell Skip, who’ll tell Cameron, and Ryan will box your ears?”
“I’m twenty-four years old, they can’t control me with threats.”
“They can me.”
Gilia’s laugh was clear water bubbling down the side of a mountain.
So, Gilia and I started meeting each morning at Tex and Shirley’s Pancake House. It’d been so long since I’d talked to anybody about anything, that, at first, I felt exposed. I kept expecting her to get bored, like the two mental therapists I’d been dragged to over the years did. Lydia seduced the first one, and the second one, in college, told me to grow up.
“The prom’s over,” he said. “Stop your whining.”
But Gilia never acted bored or impatient. She listened while I rambled on about life with an airhead mother, and metaphors in baseball, and the transcendence of Young Adult sports fiction. The trick to seducing women is to shut up and listen to them—no one’s probably done that before and they’ll generally sleep with you out of gratitude—but with Gilia, I didn’t want to seduce her so much as get to know her real well. And that meant allowing her to know me.
This is revolutionary stuff here.
She mostly talked about prep school and college and the strange men and women who live in Washington, D.C. I’d been raised rich, at least until Caspar cut us off there for a few years, but I’d missed the prepster-debutante-networking thing. I guess Lydia wanted me to grow up normal.
Gilia was very passionate about art history. She had real opinions on movements and periods and all that stuff that most people only fake having opinions about. Her favorite American painter was an Impressionist named Lilla Cabot Perry. Once Gilia got started on Lilla Cabot Perry, she would go all morning if I didn’t jump in when my turn came to talk.
Gilia won Judy over that first Monday.
“His wife treated him poorly,” Judy said as she poured my coffee.
“She must have had bad tastes,” Gilia said.
“It was because his kitty passed on and he was vulnerable.”
Both women looked at me with obvious sympathy. I ate it up.
“When did your kitty die?” Gilia asked.
“Two years ago, the last weekend of March.”
“You must have really loved her.”
“My cat’s name is Judy,” Judy said. “We’re very close.” Gilia didn’t ask why a waitress named Judy had a cat named Judy. Instead, she went into what kind, how old, what do you feed her, don’t you just love it when she lies on your neck and purrs.
“You must have a cat yourself,” Judy said to Gilia.
“I have a Siamese named Beaux, but he thinks he has me.”
In no time flat Judy was bringing extra strawberries for the strawberry pancakes and not charging for coffee. “This one won’t get jealous of a passed-on cat and leave you,” Judy said.
“She’ll find another excuse,” I said, and they laughed as if I were kidding.
When it came time to go, Gilia waved to a man who sat a couple tables over, reading a Sporting News.
“Mike, there’s someone I’d like you to meet,” Gilia said. Mike was a little guy with muscles and a narrow mustache.
“Mike Newberry, meet Sam Callahan. Mike’s the detective who’s been researching your life.”
He held out his hand, but I hesitated a moment, unsure if it’s proper form to shake with the man who’s tailing you. Were we supposed to be adversaries or just two people trying to get by? In the end, I decided it didn’t matter and shook his hand anyway.
He pretended not to notice my hesitation. “I’ve heard so much about you, I feel like we’ve already met,” Mike said.
“How is Wanda?”
His mustache crinkled into a frown. “Angry.”
“Is she taking care of her health?”
“She was drinking like a fish, but I couldn’t see as it bothered her health.”
“What is she doing?”
Mike folded the paper under his arm. “Mostly she bad-mouths you. She thinks you did something terrible to her.”
I looked at Gilia. “I was monogamous, I swear.”
“You’ve got me convinced,” Gilia said.
“I never did her any disservice.”
Mike cleared his throat—a male habit that has always irked me. “She thinks you were holier-than-thou.”
You can’t win with a righteous woman. You either mess up and give them cause for hatred, or you don’t mess up and they call you a goody-two-shoed wimp.