The Ladies' Man (25 page)

Cynthia strides into the room, dish towel in hand, and blocks his view of the television. “I've reached a decision,” she says.

After a minute, Nash says, “I'm listening.”

“What are you watching so intently?”

“I just tuned in, but I think it's
Love Story
.”

“Really?” says Cynthia coldly. “What's that about? You and Olive Boudreaux?”

Nash doesn't startle; doesn't even reduce the volume, but smiles indulgently. “Sweetie—”

“I want you to leave tomorrow,” says Cynthia.

I
f only Nash hadn't cleaned out their joint household account on the way to the airport, Dina wouldn't be traveling north on the 405 to meet with a partner in the firm that coined the word
palimony
. The $1,779 Nash helped himself to was generated entirely by Reflexology Unlimited, earmarked for car payments, which promptly bounced and cost her forty bucks in penalties. As she told the paralegal on the phone, she is not going after Nash to get rich but for the principle, and to punish and annoy him. He has no money that she knows of, except for the checks that dribble in. Yes, it's possible he has assets hidden away but she doubts it. Yes, he has property; his parents left him a house in Boston that has been on the market for three years due to lead paint and radon. Everything sells eventually, doesn't it?

But this wasn't about greed. Someone should make an example of him. For womankind. For his future girlfriends. Thief! He left a balance of one goddamn dollar in their account, and charged his airline ticket to their Visa. It's hard to catch him in lies and even harder to embarrass him, but right now, stuck in traffic in her marred scarlet Miata, feeling nauseated as she inhales exhaust and sees a smog cloud in the distance, she wants his head.

In Government Center, Nash is stationed at the main entrance of the Massachusetts Division of Employment Security. He
is wearing a camel-colored pullover sweater that looks like cashmere; the edge of one starched shirt cuff reveals a discreetly monogrammed NJH II. He doesn't recognize the blond Lois even though she is exactly the person he is waiting for—not until she stands resolutely in front of him and taps his shoulder with her
Boston Globe
.

His bruises have faded, but his tan has not. “Last time I saw you, you were black and blue,” she says in what she hopes is nonchalant fashion. He smells of something luscious and masculine, an expensive West Coast cologne, she guesses.

Nash grins. “That's right: You've never seen the uninjured, healthy, healed Nash Harvey until now.” He fingers one blond tendril at her ear. Gruesome hair color, he thinks. She should sue the salon.

So handsome, she thinks.

“Except you knew me in my youth,” he continues. “Back when we were teenagers dancing to the Everly Brothers.”

“The Righteous Brothers.”

Nash asks if he can buy her a cup of coffee.

“I'm supposed to be in at eight-thirty,” says Lois.

“Then how about your office?”

“For what?”

He lowers his voice and asks, “Couldn't I pass for someone who needs the services of an employment specialist?”

Lois doesn't answer, thinking, No one who looks like you and dresses in cashmere has ever set foot in my office.

Nash crouches a bit to peer into her face diagnostically. He gives her elbow a friendly shake. “You seem a little dazed,” he says. “Is it me or is it other things?”

Lois hopes the coworkers rushing past are noticing her in the company of this unusually handsome and well-dressed man, staring into her eyes and touching the sleeve of her raincoat. “I'm just surprised you remembered where I worked and that you found me,” she says.

“What's so hard? You said ‘Unemployment' and I looked it up in the phone book: ‘Massachusetts, Commonwealth of.' ”

She checks her watch to buy a few seconds and to make herself appear unruffled. Gladly she will entertain him in her office; all
day if he wants to. “Still, I'm impressed,” she says. “And flattered.”

Nash motions: You lead the way, and she does, into the building, across a large open room past lines of people—the unemployed, he guesses. Her office is a cubicle with a dying ivy on top of an army-drab filing cabinet. She puts her coat on a wooden hanger and hooks it over the top of a partition. Nash takes the interview chair. “There's something about you today that reminds me of spring flowers,” he begins.

Lois looks down at her outfit, a suit of pastel blue and a silky blouse of pale yellow. “This? I packed in a hurry. One of these days I'm going to have to go back and get the rest of my things.”

“Or go on a big shopping spree.”

“No time,” says Lois. “I'm not the kind of woman who shops on her lunch hour.”

Nash says, “I believe that. You're probably the kind of woman who goes to New York once a season and does it right.”

“I should,” says Lois. “Kathleen goes every season on buying trips.”

“You could go with her, share a hotel room, and have her take you to some designers' showrooms,” Nash says. “That's what I'd do if I had a sister in the rag trade.”

Lois confides that she hasn't talked to Kathleen in a long time because she, Lois Dobbin, has finally flown the coop. She waits for Nash to ask her to elaborate on her well-reasoned separation from her spoilsport sisters—but he doesn't.

“They're probably mad at me for moving out,” she tries again.

“Or maybe Kathleen's just tied up with the new fellow.”

Lois's right hand moves to her hair, where she coaxes a few offshoots into their intended waves.

“The doorman,” Nash prompts. “Lorenz. Nice guy. He works at Harbor Arms. Everyone's crazy about him.”

This is what she's missed and why Kathleen hasn't called: a romance. “How do you know this?” she asks.

“I told you! My accountant has a condo there and an extra bedroom.”

“I see,” says Lois.

He pinches one cuff militarily, then another. “Must be true what they say about a man in uniform.”

“I didn't know he was a literal doorman. I thought he helped manage the building.”

“He does! Nothing gets by Lorenz.”

“He's a security guard, then?”

Nash smiles. “You don't look thrilled with this information.”

“Why wouldn't I be? If he's a nice guy.” She turns to her In box and takes an interoffice envelope, unwinding its string with too much concentration.

Nash looks around the office. “You're what? The chief headhunter here?”

“Not exactly.”

“You find jobs for people, though, right?”

“Not me personally. We pay unemployment benefits and adjudicate certain disputes, and we try to match people up with openings.”

“I have to be my own headhunter. Until I'm known on this coast, I'm doing the jingle writer's equivalent of pounding the pavement. Some days, ‘doorman' sounds appealing.” He salutes with a crisp chop to an imaginary brim. “Yes, ma'am. Good day, ma'am. I have a package for you, sir. Let me get that for you, sir.” He grins. “I could do that, don't you think? Bow and scrape and hail taxis?”

Lois takes a pen from a WGBH mug. “Are you looking for employment, Nash?”

“I'm looking for clients, same as ever.”

“Are you not getting enough work?”

“There's never enough work,” he says. “That's the music business.”

“I meant, are you not getting enough work here to cover your expenses?”

Nash scratches his cheek thoughtfully and tests the spot on his cheekbone that has only recently healed. “I think I'd characterize it as a geography problem—I'm on the East Coast while my un-cashed checks are piling up on the West.”

“Didn't you plan for that before you left? For someone to deposit the checks for you, or at least to forward them?”

“I was stupid,” he says. “I didn't know how long I'd be away.”

“What's your best guess?” she says. “Another few days? A week? A month?”

“I'd say … open-ended. But look, I'm not passing the hat. Some days my check's on the wrong coast, and some days there's no money in the mailbox at all. That's the jingle business.”

Lois clears her throat into her fist in ladylike fashion before asking, “May I ask what you're living on?”

“Savings. Interest on my investments. Early pension from the union.”

“And your housing is covered, right? You're staying with your accountant?”

“That was temporary.” He reaches for her newspaper. “May I? I need to find another place.”

Lois puts her hand on the
Globe
. “Let me ask you something. I assume you have a return ticket to Los Angeles. If you have no money on hand, yet you have the means to get home, and presumably a buck to get to the airport by subway, why stay here and suffer?”

Nash wonders, Which looks worse—poverty or infidelity? “I don't know if I mentioned this, but the driving force behind my trip was my situation at home. I needed to put space between me and someone who wanted more from me than I could give. It certainly wasn't for professional reasons.” He forces a hollow laugh. “I'm finding that out: the
very
last reason.”

“How old?” Lois asks.

“Me?”

“Her. The woman you were involved with?”

Nash leans back against the chair and smiles. “Not ‘What's her name?' ‘Occupation?' ‘Height and weight?' ”

Nash's smile is teasing, possibly even flirtatious, giving Lois hope about why he came. She places her pen across a yellow legal pad as if everything uttered from now on is off the record. “You'll have to excuse me,” she says. “I hear a lot of sob stories from that chair. It's always the other guy's fault. I'm the bad cop most of the time.”

“No, no. It's a fine question. She's around your age.”

“Can I ask what happened?”

“It ended before I gave up on it,” he says. “I don't know if you've been through that same experience: You keep trying and you keep beating the same dead horse, unwilling to pull the plug until someone finally looks you squarely in the eye and says, ‘Face it. It's not working. And it probably never will.' ”

“What's her name?”

“Dina.”

“Was Dina devastated?”

Nash sits up straighter, as if he's been tossed a thoughtful and interesting question. “Devastated? I hope not. Angry? Of course.”

“How long ago was this?” asks Lois.

“Christmas.”

“That's a hard time of year,” says Lois. “I know because I left my husband right after Thanksgiving and next thing I knew it was Christmas and I was back at home with my old stocking hanging from the mantel between Adele's and Kathleen's. A very sad symbol, I thought.”

“Back in the bosom of the family, dangling limply between two unhappy sisters?”

“Precisely. Plus this was the end of a marriage, not just a romance. Then I had the trauma of a potentially humiliating divorce.”

“He was weird, right? A transvestite? So you had no choice. I'd look at it this way: You wouldn't be such a strong and independent woman now—dyeing your hair blond on the spur of the moment—if you hadn't had to declare your independence once before.”

“Moving out,” Lois reminds him. “Welcoming the privacy.”

“Did you get your own place?”

Lois smiles. “Lois's hideaway. Not far from here. A bed-and-breakfast on Grove Street.”

“May I ask what you pay for a night's lodgings?”

Lois waits a beat, then says in as pragmatic a fashion as she can, “Seventy-five dollars with a continental breakfast: best bargain around.”

“Any vacancies?” he asks.

Lois can't believe what he is suggesting; can barely disguise how her heart and lungs are squeezed by the possibility that she and Nash might live under the same roof. “I think so,” she manages to say. “It's kind of a well-kept secret.”