THE BRO-MAGNET (12 page)

I pick up the phone, start to punch in the number from the slip of paper, stop.

“Are you just going to stand there?” I say.

“What’s the big deal?”

“I just feel funny talking on the phone with you standing there like that. It’s like when a guy’s trying to take a pee and some guy comes in and starts using the urinal right next to him. It feels awkward.”

“You’re being ridiculous about this.”

I just keep staring at her, waiting.

“Fine,” Sam huffs, heading for the door. “Let me know how it goes. I’m sure the conversation will be scintillating.” She imitates a masculine voice, “‘I’m calling about the paint job?’” Then she does a hyper-feminine one, “‘Oh, yes, I need some painting done.’” She’s still carrying out her imaginary conversation as the door closes behind her.

Fucking Sam.

Now she’s made me lose my nerve.

I put the phone down, go to the sink, have a glass of water, wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans.

Phone Call, Take Two.

This time I make it through all of the numbers.

“Hello?” I hear the voice I’ve been replaying in my mind ever since the Yankees game.

“Hello,” I say, “this is Jo – ”

And then I stop. I was about to say “Johnny Smith.” I’ve said my own name, how many times in my life? Thousands? Millions? It’s not exactly a hard name to say, Johnny Smith, but today it sticks like a flytrap. I guess it’s because of what Sam said and then Big John reinforced at the poker game about the whole E-sound thing and how grown women aren’t interested in men who still have boys’ names.

“Ja?” the voice on the phone says. “Ja who?”

“Not Ja.” I clear my throat, force the unfamiliar name out, “It’s John Smith.” Then, in case she doesn’t know who I am or why I’m calling, I add tentatively, “The painter?”

“Oh!” she says. “Steve said you’d be calling. But I thought he said your name was Johnny.”

“That Steve.” I laugh awkwardly. “He’s such a kidder.” More awkward laughter on my part. I make my voice go serious, even more masculine than usual, so there’ll be no mistaking I’m a man and not some overgrown boy. “No, it’s John. Really, it’s John. So, about that paint job…”

* * *

The following Saturday sees Sam and me going through our usual workday routine.

“But you hate working Saturdays,” Sam said when I told her about the job.

“I know,” I said.

“You like to stay home on Saturdays and watch the game on TV,” Sam said.

“I know,” I said. “But Helen says she has to work during the week. Helen says she’d like to be there the first time I come. Helen says it’s not that she doesn’t trust workers in general or me per se – ”

“Geez, would you stop with the ‘Helen says’ and the ‘per se’? You’re starting to sound like Barry.”

“Billy.”

“Whatever.”

“So.” I shuffled my feet. “You going to come with me?”

“On a Saturday? Hell, no. I wanna watch the game on TV.”

“Oh, come on, Sam. It’s just one Saturday, just one game. So we don’t see it? We can still listen to it on The Wave.”

“Christ, Johnny, you’re like a little kid too nervous to be with the girl he likes so he has to enlist some kind of chaperone. I keep telling you: it’s just a paint job. It’s not a date.”

I shuffled my feet some more, put on a hangdog expression. When none of that worked, I offered to pay her double time.

“Fine,” she said.

“Oh, and when we’re there? My name’s John now, not Johnny.”

“John,” she said. “Christ, now I’ve heard everything. You’re even worse than a girl.”

* * *

We make the usual stops: the paint store – on the phone, Helen said she wanted us to do the dining room in maroon, a color I highly approve of – and Leo’s.

Leo’s is hopping. I count six customers, although one of those is Mrs. Leo, who sits at a corner table reading a fashion magazine while fingering a thick strand of pearls. I always think of her as Mrs. Leo because I’ve never known Leo’s last name and never heard him use her first name; Leo always refers to her as The Little Lady. She doesn’t work in the coffee shop, but she comes in a lot and when she does, Leo always stops whatever he’s doing and crooks his elbow, escorts her to a table.

“Hey, Leo,” I say while he’s putting together my order, “how long have you and The Little Lady been together?”

“Oh.” He thinks about it a bit. “Seventy-six years since we first met. Seventy-three since I talked her into marrying me.”

Wow. Some people don’t live as long as these two’ve been married.

“Did you always know she was the one?” I ask.

Leo laughs. “If I ever thought it was anyone else, I’ve forgotten.” He grows serious. “Why this sudden interest in my marriage? You’ve never asked these sorts of questions before.”

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “I guess I’ve been thinking a lot lately about love. How people get it. How they make it last.”

“Making it last? That’s easy.”

I’m thinking all the divorced people in the world would disagree but I keep that thought to myself.

“How’s that?” I say.

“You learn what makes the other person happy and then you just keep doing it.”

Wow. He makes it sound so easy, and yet somehow it sounds so hard, all at the same time.

I realize I better get going, don’t want to be late, but when I’m halfway to the door I think of one last thing to ask Leo. I could ask Sam, who’s waiting in the truck, but I know she’d only laugh at me.

“Hey, Leo.” I feel my face color. “Does my hair look OK today?”

Leo smiles. “Never better.”

* * *

“Come in!” Helen calls when we ring the bell. 

I think the house a person chooses says a lot about a person. It can say, “This is my castle.” It can say, “I am a slob.” Helen Troy’s house says, “I make a decent living but I don’t have a lot of free time to worry about decorating.”

Helen’s place, from what I can see of it as we stand in the entryway, is barely furnished. Oh, it’s not as bad as Billy and Alice’s place, with their lawn furniture. It’s more like the pieces are all generic and the walls are mostly bare.

But who cares about her lack of distinctive furnishings because…

I thought I’d remembered exactly what she looked like but the memory’s nowhere near as vivid as the reality when she walks into the room. It’s like – whoosh! – there should be some kind of advertisement warning about this: “Helen Troy, now available on Blu-Ray.”

Gee, she’s pretty. Unlike at the Yankees game, she doesn’t have a business suit on. She’s got on basic jeans that on anyone else would look just that, basic, but on her they look amazing. Her thin sweater is a cornflower blue and she’s got a multicolored scarf hanging casually around her neck. Funny, I’ve seen that puzzling fashion accessory on various women for the last year or so – scarves tied in all sorts of different ways, of which Mika on
Morning Joe
is a strong proponent – and I’ve always thought it looked pretty ridiculous. A scarf provides warmth when needed; it’s not a fashion statement. Me, I only wear a scarf if my neck is cold. But on her it doesn’t look ridiculous at all. On her it looks –

“Do you think you might introduce us,” Sam cuts into my thoughts before hitting hard with, “
John
?”

Geez, I hope Helen doesn’t notice the way Sam said that, in that sarcastic tone, like I’m using an assumed name or something.

But if Helen does notice, she doesn’t say anything. The introductions go as well as introductions can go, Helen leads us to the room she wants painted maroon – or Spiced Pinot Noir, as we like to say in the trade. I show her the color tile, feeling completely thrown by her physical proximity – I think the side of her breast may have touched the side of my arm, plus she smells so good – as I verify this is exactly what she had in mind and then she excuses herself to do some work in her office, saying to let her know if we need anything.

I don’t know what I was expecting. But man, that was over too quick.

* * *

Half the day goes by before I see Helen again.

I’m listening to The Wave pre-game show when I feel a tap on my shoulder. I take my earbuds out and turn, expecting to see Sam but instead find Helen.

“What are you listening to?” she asks.

“The W – ” I stop myself from finishing saying Wave, remember how she hates the Yankees, how she undoubtedly hates all sports. I cannot let her know I’m listening to the Mets pre-game show; for once I realize ahead of time that the biggest mistake I could make in my life would be to
just be myself
here. Thinking fast, thinking as fast as I can of what a sophisticated woman like her might like, I finish with, “Opera.”

“The wopera?” Her pretty brow furrows. “What’s the wopera?”

I think to crack a joke, say it’s the Italian opera, which would be a perfectly politically correct thing for me to say since I’m half Italian, but if I made that joke, she might think I’m prejudiced if I didn’t go ahead and explain about it being OK because I’m half Italian, and if I did explain it would take too long and spoil the joke. Damn, talking to a woman like Helen is complicated. So instead I just say:

“The opera. Just the plain opera. I meant to say the opera but I got a tickle in my throat.”

Good one, Johnny. I mean John. Saying you have a tickle makes you sound so manly mature.

She cocks her head and I realize she’s listening to the squawk of The Wave that’s still coming out of my earbuds.

“That’s funny,” she says. “It sounds like they’re just talking, not singing.”

“Yeah,” I say, hurrying to turn the sound off, “it’s this crazy opera station. The announcers like to talk, like, forever, before they get down to the really good stuff – you know, the opera.”

“Right.”

I’m not sure if that ‘right’ is some form of agreement or if it’s like, ‘This nonsense you’re spouting makes you sound like a high-strung maniac so I’m just going to say
right
, a nice neutral word, and hope you shut up and go away without shooting anybody.’

But I’m thinking it must be a somewhere-in-between ‘right,’ because when I don’t say anything immediately in response, she says, “Can I get you and Sam some lunch? I was about to make something for myself.”

“Oh no, that’s OK,” I say in a hurry, not wanting her to bother on our account, “we already had lunch. We bring our own.”

Instantly, I feel like a little kid, like the boy who’s still brown-bagging it while all the more mature kids buy their food in the cafeteria.

“Something to drink then?” she offers. “A cup of coffee?”

Even though I’ve had more than my share of coffee today, I’m practically flying on the stuff, I don’t want to look like such a little kid that I brown-bag it
and
am not old enough to drink coffee.

“Sure,” I say, “coffee’s always good.”

“Sam?” Helen calls across the room. “Coffee?” she offers when Sam looks over.

“Nah,” Sam says, “I’m good.”

“Come on,” Helen says and it takes a full minute for me to realize she’s inviting me to follow her into the kitchen.

I only hope she doesn’t hear it when Sam whispers, “Only you…
John
.”

* * *

“How do you like it?” Helen asks.

She’s got one hip pressed against the counter in her kitchen. It’s a big kitchen, one of those massive kitchens that you see these days with everything in it, but for some reason I get the impression she doesn’t do a lot of cooking there. And that hip. I like that hip that’s pressed against the counter just fine.

“Hmm?” I say dumbly.

“Your coffee – how do you like it?”

“Oh, sorry.” Why do I always feel like such an idiot around this woman? Maybe that’s because I am one. “Black’s fine.”

She pours me a cup. It’s one of those jumbo ones that look like you could fit the whole pot in it. Then she pours one for herself.

I take a sip. “Good coffee,” I say. Brilliant,
John
. 

“You sure I can’t make you something to eat?”

“No.” I take another quick sip of my coffee as if to prove my point. “I’m good with this.”

She just stands there.

“Well, don’t let me stop you,” I say. “You were about to make your own lunch, right?”

I think I’d like to watch her make her lunch. At the Yankees game, all I really got to see her do was sit in her seat. But now I’m at her house, I’ve got Helen Troy in Blu-Ray, and if she makes her lunch, it’ll be like seeing a character come to life – it’ll be like Action Helen Troy!

But she doesn’t make her lunch. Instead, she takes a sip of her own coffee, swallows and says, just as I’m taking another sip from mine, “So, you’re the guy that gave Steve the loophole for how to get his favorite burglar off.”

I nearly spit out the coffee in my mouth.

“What?” I say. “No. What are you talking about? God, no.”

“But Steve said – ”

“Oh. Steve said.” I wave my hand dismissively. “We all know about Steve.”

“What do we all know about Steve?”

I raise my jumbo cup of coffee towards my mouth, make a drinking gesture but don’t actually drink any.

“Steve likes coffee?” she asks.

“No. Well, yes. Probably. But what I meant was” – and here I lower my voice to a whisper – “he drinks a lot of alcohol.”

I can’t believe the person I’m turning into. First I tell Steve that Sam’s a cokehead. Now I tell Helen that Steve’s an alcoholic. Is there no one I won’t sell down the river for my own personal amusement or gain?

“What does that have to do with anything?” she says.

“It’s just that he gets confused about things sometimes. I mean, he’s a good attorney and everything, don’t get me wrong.” Geez, I’ve got to be careful about what I say. It was Steve who got me this job, Steve who’s paying for me to do it. “He just gets a little muddled on the details sometimes.”

“What does he get muddled on, for instance?”

“Why don’t you tell me what he said, for instance, and then maybe I can help you?”

“He said you have this thing, that you love finding the loopholes in difficult cases, so I naturally figured – ”

“Oh. That.” Another dismissive wave of my hand, combined with an awkward laugh. “See, there’s your muddle right there.”