As she left Sam’s room, she was hyper-aware of how the house seemed to be charged with electricity. She knew the cause, and paused, scolding herself for wanting to sashay into the living room just because a handsome man was there. She had no reason to. An attraction with the strength of a planet-hauling magnet-o-tron was not a reason.
Oh, wait. She did have a perfectly legit reason: his phone was kaput, and the message about his arrival had been sent. She went into the living room, and found Alejo and tough-looking Eve watching football, while tiny, neat Lily read. Alejo had clearly not only introduced himself, it looked as if he had fitted himself into the nightly routine, rather than assuming center stage man-style. Or Bill-style. And that was no easy task, as both Eve and Lily had been badly burned by life, and men in specific—Eve by a cheating cheater, and Lily by her own son.
Wendy went around picking up empty coffee cups and plates, listening as she did. Eve, who in general gave any strange man the hairy eyeball, was talking about passes and downs and yard lines as Alejo nodded and agreed.
Wendy carried the cups into the kitchen, mentally awarding Alejo points for getting Eve to talk at all, and second, from what Wendy saw, he was not mansplaining football the way Bill had so very, very painfully done the only time he and Eve met, as if Eve—an avid football fan—was automatically disqualified from knowing anything about sports because she had ovaries.
When Eve got up during a commercial, Wendy said, “Alejo, I let Godiva know you’ve safely arrived.”
“Thanks,” he said, smiling up at her. She tried not to let it warm her. It really felt like he was smiling specially for her, but of course that was ridiculous. The man was nice, plain and simple. As you’d expect from anyone related to Godiva.
“Did she have a message?” Alejo asked, and she realized she was standing there, staring at him.
She blushed hotly. “I haven’t heard back yet. Shall I check?”
“Please don’t stir on my account. I sent an e-mail. If she has something to say, she’ll use her words, as she used to tell me when I was an ornery kid.” He grinned, his sparkling dark eyes inviting her to share the joke.
“She must have been a wonderful mom,” Wendy said.
“That she was. A fierce mama bear. Even though she’s the size of a chipmunk. It’s the heart that counts,” he said.
Eve came back then, and the commercial ended. The game resumed. Wendy backed up, deciding it was just as well. She recollected Godiva having said she’d lost Alejo when he was a teen. Keeping in contact having been much harder in those days. Wendy didn’t want to bring up what might be painful memories.
“Okay,” Eve said, drawing Alejo’s attention back. “Now, you watch. Rodriguez’ll do this little hop-skip before he throws a long pass, every time...”
It was late. Wendy had a full day tomorrow. And she had promised herself, in addition to no longer changing herself for a man, she was not changing her plans just because a man had entered the house. On a normal evening, she would have already relaxed into a hot bath with some acanthus drops in it, and poured herself into bed. Therefore she would treat this as a normal evening, and have that bath.
As she entered her room, her eyes fell on the neon orange and fire-engine red of Flossie.
Well, almost normal.
When she woke the next morning, she was aware of the inner fizzy sensation that she’d thought gone out of her life. It was the “today is my birthday” fizz—a fizz that had thoroughly went flat after marriage, and each year Bill never seemed to remember.
Then she thought of Alejo. She took a deep breath, and reminded herself of her promise. Just because the man was handsomer than he had any right to be, with excellent manners, didn’t mean she would take a detour from routine. She consciously chose an old outfit to put on. No makeup! And after all this inner dithering, she arrived in the kitchen to find herself alone. Was he still asleep? Somehow she’d expected him to be an early riser.
Sam wandered in presently, his shirt as usual buttoned awry. She fixed it without comment—knowing he had trouble seeing buttons out of the bottom of his glasses—and made a mental note to do laundry early, if he had already run through all his polo shirts.
They whirled into the usual day, Sam dropped off at school and Wendy to the bakery, then home in time for Sam’s arrival. All day, as her hands kept busy, she fought against the stubborn image of Alejo sitting across from her at the kitchen table the night before. She tried not to look forward to seeing him again, then finally gave up. She would regard it as a recreational attraction. Other women had them! She could, too!
She fixed half-meat, half-meatless lasagna, and while that was baking, she pulled out her screenplay, and scowled at the page, trying three different ways to redo the scene that read so flat. Artificial. Back before her marriage, the quick give and take of sharing projects and giving notes had been habit with her film industry friends. None had been famous, but they were all smart, and their talk had been full of current references, quotes, jokes. Was that sophisticated? Did sophisticated people actually talk about being sophisticated? Did you wake up one day and realize that you were now sophisticated? She frowned at the screen, aware that her years of dedicating herself to Bill’s interests and concerns, and then motherhood (swiftly followed by single motherhood) had gotten her out of the habit of those fast conversations—sophisticated or not.
“But I’m a writer,” she muttered, scowling at the blinking cursor. “I can do this!”
The scene was half over. All she needed to do was have Rhonda, her receptionist, catch the eye of the one female boss, Liz. How? There were always references to be made. Books! Literary books, of course. She’d even stopped at the library to read the latest issue of theNew York Review of Books, to see if the library had any of the books discussed within. There had been one, by a European author in translation, and Wendy had read half of it there in the library.
She wiped down the keyboard for the third time, remembering that book, which she had no desire to finish. It was filled with characters being mean to one another, especially the two teenage girls at the center.
RHONDA
Well, Liz, I’ve been reading a very sophisticated
Oh, that was horrible.
Her next two tries were worse. The characters sounded like robots.
She had deleted and rewritten that scene three more times when the timer dinged in the kitchen, which ended her writing time for the day. She stashed her laptop, then returned to the kitchen. It was now Mom time. She pulled out the lasagna, went outside to call Sam in from playing in the garden, and wondered if she would be seeing Alejo.
The thought had scarcely crossed her mind when a flicker in the treetops made her blink. It was as if a shadow had briefly darkened the foliage, but when she glanced up, the sky was the usual Southern California blue.
