Valentine's Day Is Killing Me (2 page)

“I’m holding up fine.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“So don’t start.”

“Who’s starting?”

“I love my life.”

“I love your life, too.”

“Okay, then.”

“Okay.”

Julie Kay sipped coffee and studied her sister with narrowed eyes. Four years younger, Kara Jay was her psychic and physical opposite: short, plump, blond, radiant with sunshine and fulfillment. She had two under two at home, and another baby due in April. She had the open, friendly face of a foundation model, light blue eyes, and a small nose—a classic Swedish face, coupled with a classic Midwestern temperament. Her husband made a great living in construction, and looked like he modeled for Speedo calendars in his spare time. They went to Disney World for a week every year, and cut down their own Christmas trees. They had been happily married for five years, and made their own baby food.

It’s like she’s an alien come to observe me
, Julie Kay marveled, counting the freckles on her sister’s nose,
right in my own family
!

“So what are you doing tomorrow?” Kara Jay asked. “And stop counting my freckles.”

“Basking in the joy of my single lifestyle.”

“No, really.”

“No. Really.”

“If you just—”

“No.”

“—he’s a very nice guy—”

“No.”

“—has his own roofing company—”

“No.”

“—showed him your picture—”

“No-no-no-no-no-no-no.”

“He thought you were cute,” her sister peeped, then took a hurried gulp of her double-tall, caffeine-free skinny latte.

“No blind dates. And that…” she added, pointing, “…is not a coffee.”

“Now who’s starting?”

“Kara Jay, I’m just saying. I know you don’t believe me, but let’s go through it one more time. I like being single. I like being able to stay up as late as I want—like a real grownup!—and never once have to read, or think about reading,
Everybody Poops.
”

“It was just that one month,” her sister grumbled. “To get Willie over the hump.”

“I like being able to eat cold pizza from any room in my house at any time. I like having the bed to myself. I like having the place to myself. I like having my
life
to myself.”

“Except tomorrow,” Kara Jay pointed out triumphantly. Literally pointed out, and Julie Kay noticed her sister was in sore need of a manicure.

“Well. Tomorrow.”

“Valentine’s Day.
The
holiday. You can’t be alone that day, you just can’t. It breaks my heart to think about it. It’s practically a law.”

“Would that be federal or state?”

“And look where you work! You’ll be surrounded by plush things all day. You’ll be deluged in pink and red! Everywhere you look: hearts and chocolate. If you don’t have a date to look forward to after work, how will you get through it?”

“I had planned,” she admitted, “to bring my friend Captain Morgan to work.”

“No, don’t get drunk again—Don will only overlook so much.”

“I have to spread my creative wings,” Julie Kay declared. “And since I’m the best graphic designer he’s got, Don will overlook a lot.”

“Well, your wings aren’t helped by getting sloppo at work and then picking fights with the I.T. guys. Ugh, remember the Christmas party? It was so mean—you were bigger than all of them.”

“Weenies.”

“Considerably bigger,” her sister added, which was a good one, given that she wasn’t exactly a lightweight herself. “And before you say it,
I’m
creating life. What’s your excuse?”

“You’re also creating my ulcer. And there’s nothing wrong with an extra ten pounds here and there.”

“And everywhere!” Kara Jay added brightly. “It’s a good thing you’re tall.”

“Kara Jay…”

“That’s all I’m saying. You can hide almost anything on that long frame of yours, you lucky cow.”

“Kara Jay.”

“It’s just, you’re so pretty without half trying! That’s what makes me nuts!” Her sister ruffled her own streaked hair in frustration. “Think how great you’d look if you’d actually—you know—make an effort.” She nearly spilled her latte in her excitement. “You know, get a haircut, some bangs, stop wearing it in that tacky long braid all the time. You look like Xena—”

“I think Lucy Lawless has bangs,” she said mildly.

“—started wearing some color instead of black all the time, start wearing pretty shoes instead of those clunky—er—whatever they are…”

“Clogs. And they’re comfortable.”

“You sit down all day! What do you need comfortable shoes for? You could stand to wear a pair of nice pumps every other day.”

“You forgot to tell me that colored contacts will rid me of my boring brown eyes,” she prompted, “and the glasses.”

“Your eyes are beautiful—don’t you dare touch them! But you should get contacts, definitely get rid of the glasses, so everyone can see how pretty they are.”

“And…?”

“Well, the usual.”

“Get married and have babies.”

“Yes.”

“Death first,” she said grimly, and finished her coffee in a scalding gulp.

She didn’t even have to look at the Caller I.D. on her phone to see who it was. She debated letting her sister yammer into voice mail, but there would be no forgiveness if there wasn’t an immediate call back.

“Johnny’s Mortuary,” she said, cradling the receiver between her neck and ear. “You stab ’em, we slab ’em.”

“That is so old,” her sister said. “That was old when we were in training bras.”

“I still am. What is it now? I’m busy.” Julie Kay stared at the galley—a galley! for a get-well card!—before her.

Thought this might cheer you up
And make you feel frisky as a pup.

Ugh! “Is it dog week around here and nobody told me?” she asked.
The last thing I want to feel like is a frisky pup
.

“Not that I know of,” Kara Jay replied impatiently. “Listen, we didn’t really get a chance to finish talking about your date at lunch.”

“No blind dates!” She picked up a pen and angrily slashed through the insipid text.

“Julie Kay…be reasonable. Just once, to see what it feels like.”

“Just
once
? How can your memory be so shitty?”

“No, I meant try a blind date for once, not be reasonable for once. Besides, Sean really thinks you two will hit it off.”

Thoughts of your imminent demise
Make me wish we had come to a compromise

“No, no, no.”

“What? Julie Kay?”

“Never mind. I mean, do mind! No blind dates—jeez, do I have to tattoo it on my shoulder?”

“That reminds me, do you have any tattoos? Sean asked me to find out so he can tell this guy. I remember you were threatening to get one of a run-over Road Runner on your ass, but you never showed it to me, so I honestly don’t—”

“Kara Jay! Why aren’t you listening to me? You can hear a toddler drop a Cheerio from half a block away, but ‘no blind dates’ doesn’t hit your radar?”

“It’s a totally different thing,” her sister insisted.

“The next time your kids come over,” she warned, slashing through the new, equally awful text, “I’m stuffing them with ice cream and chocolate.”

“You do that every time.”

“Need I remind you?”

“What? I already know; I’m the one who has to talk them down from the ceiling at 10:30 P.M.”

“No, I mean, need I remind you of my track record with blind dates?”

“A few bad experiences shouldn’t—”

“What? Are you on drugs?”

“That’s none of your business,” her sister said primly.

“Remember that guy, the Iowan who took us out with your then-boyfriend? We went to the state gymnastics trials? On the way there, he talked and talked about ‘the Republican way of life,’ got
out of the car
to try to shoot the deer that had crossed the road—who brings a shotgun on a date, by the way?—then sulked through the sets because he missed the poor thing.”

“He was just trying too hard.”

“
Trying
too hard? I’d hate to see him slacking off. Then—remember? I make the casual comment that I think gymnasts are really gifted, and he gets all huffy, like, ‘You saying I can’t do that?’ and stomps down to the floor and tries, actually
tries
one of the routines, and breaks an ankle! Then got pissed when I wouldn’t ride in the ambulance with him!”

“That just put you off Republicans,” her sister said reasonably. “Not blind dates.”

“Okay, fine. You want to play rough? How about the model you set me up with during college?”

“The watch model, or the dress-sock model?”

“The entire date he kept checking himself out in the mirror behind me. I mean, he was good-looking, but nobody’s that much of an Adonis. The whole time I had the creepy feeling someone was sneaking up on me. I had to constantly fight the urge to turn around and check. Then I find out his nickname…Trojan? It wasn’t because he was a Greek major, like he told me. It was from the condom brand! Yerrrgggh!”

“Anything sounds bad,” Kara Jay said, “when you put it like that.”

“And you! You have no perspective when it comes to this stuff! What was it Sean told you on your first date? ‘Make yourself at home—my apartment is your apartment, my penis is your penis.’”

“He grew on me.”

“Like a foot fungus!”

“What about Bradley? Bradley was okay.”

“Ha! He spent the entire date talking about all his super-secret Army exploits, which of course he couldn’t tell me about because they were soooo secret (shyeah!). Then he started babbling about his Klingon costume for the convention, and how he was going to dress up as Data for the
Star Trek
convention…and then…then! Two days later, a Princess Leia costume shows up in the mail for me. After one date! Exit, stage right.”

“But you have to admit, he was nice. You—”

“I’ve had dates tell me I could order anything I want. Thanks, jackass, I
know
that. I’ve had
first
dates present me with written proof they have a clean bill of health…like that was going to be a huge issue. I mean, can I at least finish my risotto before I have to read about a guy’s white count?”

“Okay, so you’ve had some bad experiences. We all have.”

“You’re blissfully married to your high-school sweetheart, you jerk.”

“Well, I meant ‘we’ in the…uh…universal sense. Right! I—”

Her computer binked at her again and she swung around in her chair to see the latest horror.

“Oh dear God,” she breathed, hypnotized by the screen.

“What? What?” Kara Jay squawked in her ear. “Is it the I.T. guys again? Have they mobilized? Did they feed your computer another virus?”

“No, it’s…a guy I work with, the new guy down in Marketing, asked me out for tomorrow night.”

“Well, there you go!”

“He says he’s sure I’ve got plans for tomorrow so maybe we could get together another time.”

“It’s nice that he’s not assuming you’re a mean, lonely freak,” Kara Jay observed.

“I’m not lonely,” she said defensively.

“But you’ll let the other two slide? You are a freak. A freak who doesn’t have a date for tomorrow. And you work with him! So that’s not a blind date at all. It doesn’t break your dumb dating rule.”

“It is. I’ve never laid eyes on him. Eight thousand people work here, you know, and most of us aren’t here in the main building. He could walk right up to me and slap me in the face and I wouldn’t know him.”

“Wait,” her sister said, and chuckled.

Julie Kay spotted the crowd outside Tables of Content and hesitated. Typical V-Day mob, all right. All googly-eyed couples and starchy waiters. She definitely should have followed her instincts and stayed home.
There was nothing wrong with being single, dammit!
Why didn’t married people get it? Why had she weakened? Why was her bra itching? Why had she swapped her comfortable gray clogs for black flats?

Well, there was nothing for it. Time to bite the bullet, take the bull by the horns, pick your annoying cliché. It was only one night, anyway. How bad could it possibly be? It couldn’t be worse than the Republican who brought a shotgun along. Or the model. Right? Because the chances of topping her worst date records were so slim as to be—

The dying wail of a siren cut the air and an ambulance screeched up to the curb. She heard someone yell out, “You’re too late—the poor guy’s dead!” and someone else yell out, “No, no, hurry! He’ll be okay!” and knew. In that moment, Julie Kay About had her first and last psychic flash: her date had a date with the paramedics.

She shoved past the crowd—there were only two officers there so far for crowd control—and burst into the small restaurant. Even in this moment of stress, she couldn’t repress a shudder at the
de rigueur
white tablecloths with a single red rosebud in a tall glass vase in the center of each one. Most of the tables were empty; everyone, it seemed, was grouped around her date.

She knelt beside Scott Wythe, the artist formerly known as blind date, now known as dead date…because he was dead, all right. You didn’t have to be a health-care pro to know
that
. It was the peculiar gray color, the way his eyes looked like poached eggs. Oh, and the way the shrimp fork was sticking out of the middle of his chest. The blood stain was shaped like a fish on a bicycle. Were murder-scene bloodstains some sort of Rorschach test? Would a married couple see a pair of gold wedding bands? And why was she thinking of that now?

She tried not to be selfish, but couldn’t quash the thought: worst blind date ever! Poor Scott! Poor her! Why did this have to happen? To either of them?

“Let us through,” one of the paramedics ordered, and she obediently moved aside. Should she ride to the hospital in the ambulance with her date? Her dead date? Because that was creepy, even if it was also the right thing to do. Drive along behind in her own car? And then do what? She couldn’t even identify him for the doctors. All she could do was give out his e-mail address and tell them he had terrible grammar in life.

“Julie?”

And he was so young! Ridiculously, amazingly young. She knew he would have to be, but if the dead guy had seen his twenty-fifth birthday, she’d…well, she didn’t know what she’d do. He still had traces of acne on his perfectly unlined face, poor fellow.

“Julie Kay?”

“That’s enough,” someone else said, and she looked up in time to see an utterly gorgeous man being clapped into cuffs. He looked at her and even from across the restaurant…

(their eyes met across a crowded crime scene…)

(focus, Julie Kay)

…she could see how blue his eyes were—the color of an Easter sky. He was hunched over slightly as the cuffs were put on, and was looking up at her with a friendly expression on his face.

“Yes?” she asked. Wow, they’d caught the killer already! Unless the cuffs were recreational. But no, the fellow in the bad suit had a badge clipped to his belt, and the gal beside him—much better dressed—was reading him his rights.

“I guess I’m going to be a little late,” Blue Eyes explained.

“…the right to have an attorney present now and during any future questioning…”

“What?” she asked. She was a little nervous to be talking to the killer.

“…one will be appointed to you free of charge if you wish…”

“You know. For our date,” Blue Eyes added helpfully. She noticed he was dressed in excellent first-date fashion: khakis, a dark blue work shirt, loafers, dark socks. His shoulders looked impossibly broad in the shirt—swimmer’s shoulders. He was ridiculously tall, too…he towered over the detectives. His dark brown hair hung in his eyes, and he jerked his head back so he could look right at her some more.

“What?” she said again, catching on but not wanting to, figuring it out but not wanting a bit of this mess, not one piece—no, thank you.

“I bought you some flowers,” he said, jerking his head at a table to her left. “But I can’t get them for you right now.”

“You didn’t,” she said faintly.

“Buy flowers?”

“Kill this guy.”

“Oh, hell no!”

Well, that was something. Still, Julie Kay had no idea how to feel about recent events. Was it better that her date was the dead guy, or the murder suspect?

“I thought I had a psychic flash,” she said faintly. “My very first one.”

“Oh. Well, no offense, but I don’t believe in that stuff.”

“Me neither.”

“That’s enough, sir. You’re coming with us now,” the lady detective said, kindly enough.

“Oh, okay. Well, it was nice to meet you in person.”

“Thanks,” she said through numb lips.

“Sorry about all this,” he added, gesturing with his shoulders to the crime scene.

“Me, too.” She sat down before she fell down.