Anyone but You (3 page)

"I can imagine." Charity picked up her purple suede bomber jacket. "No, I will not babysit this mutt for you. He looks like he's going to end it all at any minute, and I don't want to be responsible if he throws himself off the fire sscape." She looked down at Fred with resignation. "Make a list. I'll go get him what he needs. Do they make uppers for dogs?"

"He's not really depressed," Nina told her as she went to find a pad of paper to make the list.

"He's just deep. He has deep thoughts."

"Right. Deep thoughts." Charity shook her head again. "Make that list. And while you're at it, add Amaretto and icecream to it."

Nina stopped her search for paper. Amaretto milk shakes :ould mean only one thing: a My-Life-Is-In-Trauma party. And with Charity, who ran her life as efficiently as she ran the boutique, trauma could mean only one thing. "Not Sean,too?"

Charity nodded. "Sean, too. How do I do it? How can I live in a city full of men and always pick the rats?"

Nina searched for something comforting to say. "Well, they're not always rats."

"Oh, yeah?" Charity folded her arms. "Name the one who wasn't."

"Well..." Nina searched her memory. "Of course, I didn't know you for all of them—"

"Twelve of them," Charity said. "Twelve guys since I was sixteen, twelve significant guys since I was sixteen, twelve guys in twenty-two years, and I can't come up with a winner."

"You're sure it's over?" Nina tried to find a bright side. "Maybe he's just having second thoughts because you're getting so serious. Maybe—"

"I caught him in bed with his secretary," Charity said. "I don't think she was taking dictation. Not with what she had in her hand, anyway."

"Oh." Nina wrote down Amaretto and ice cream on the list. Amaretto milk shakes might not be the healthiest way to get over a life trauma, but it was Charity's way. Come to think of it, she could use one, herself. "Get chocolate syrup, too," she told Charity. "Let's go for the whole enchilada."

While Charity went shopping, Nina and Fred practiced on the fire escape.

"Come on, you can do this," Nina coaxed him, and together they climbed in and out over the low polished wood windowsill.

Fred was not crazy about the metal staircase, so Nina spread out a rag rug so he'd land on something soft.

On the other hand, he loved the leap from the window.

"Try not to overshoot," Nina warned him, but the fire escape was wide, and Fred was not aerodynamic, so after an hour, Nina was content that Fred would not be plummeting to his death from overexuberance.

She was also sure it was time for Fred to see some grass. "It's a shame you're not a cat. I could just get a litter box," she told him as she coaxed him down the two flights of fire escape with a piece of ham.

Fred whined a little as he eased himself down to the second floor.

"Shh." Nina glanced in the closed window of the second-floor apartment. "I don't know this guy yet.

He keeps strange hours. Be very, very quiet here, Fred. We want the neighbors to love you."

Fred shut up and eased himself down another step.

"I love you, Fred," Nina whispered as she backed down the metal stairs. "You're the best."

By the time Charity came back, Fred had done the fire escape twice and was philosophical about it.

"We'll take walks, too," Nina promised him. "But this is going to work."

"He can do it?" Charity walked back into the room after putting the ice cream in the freezer and shook her head, amazed. "I wasn't gone that long."

"Fred is very intelligent," Nina told her. "Watch." She opened the window. "Here you go, Fred. Born free."

Fred scrambled onto the box Nina had put by the window to aid his exit. He turned to look once over his shoulder, and Nina nodded.

Then he hurled himself through the window.

"Oh, my God!" Charity ran to the window, Nina close behind.

Fred sat on his rug on the fire escape, looking smug.

"Part basset, part beagle, part kamikaze," Nina said. "We have to work on his takeoff, but he's pretty good, don't you think?"

Charity stepped back from the window. "I think he's great." She smiled at Nina. "I really do. He smells, but he's great."

"Well, that's what I thought, too." Nina watched Fred sway down the fire escape to the backyard.

"Here's the rest of your stuff." Charity handed over the paper bag she'd been clutching. "Your change is at the bottom."

"Thanks, Char." Nina dumped everything out onto her round oak dining table and pawed through it, delighted, stopping only when she found a small jeweler's box tied with a silver ribbon in the middle of the pile.

"That's a baby present," Charity told her. "I'll give you a shower later."

Nina opened the box and took out an oval sterling-silver name tag engraved with Nina's address under a lovely script "Fred Askew."

"Oh, Charity, it's beautiful," Nina said.

"Just in case he gets lost." Charity watched as Fred's top half appeared in the window, wobbling back and forth as his toenails scrabbled on the brick outside. "Or stolen."

"I think I'd better put a box outside, too." Nina put the tag down and went to haul him in. "He seems to have a rear-end-suspension problem."

"Among other things," Charity said. "Listen, I've got to go."

Nina put Fred on the floor and straightened. "What about the Amaretto?"

Charity bit her lip. "Can we do it tomorrow night? We both have to work tomorrow morning, and I'm going to need you a lot more tomorrow night since it's a Friday and... you know.''

Nina nodded. "I know. Fridays are the worst. Sure. That'll be better. You can spend the night."

Charity looked down. "That all right with you, Fred?"

Fred sighed and waddled off.

"He's delighted," Nina said.

"Yeah, I could tell he perked right up," Charity said. "See you tomorrow."

* * *

The phone was ringing when Alex let himself into his stuffy second-floor apartment. He answered it, cradling the receiver between his shoulder and his ear as he struggled to put the window up and let a little air into the place.

"Alex?"

Great. Debbie. "Yep, it's me." Alex stuck his head out the window, trying for some fresh night air.

The hell with it. He climbed out the window and sat on the fire escape, taking off his shoes and socks and throwing them back in through the window as he talked. "What's up?"

Debbie's voice was relentlessly cheery. "I thought we might do something tomorrow since it's your birthday. And my sister's kids want to go to the movies, so I thought we could-"

"Sorry," Alex lied.

"Alex, if you'd just try — "

"No, really, I'm booked the whole day with my family. One after another the whole damn day."

"Why?" Debbie sounded frustrated. "Why can't they see you all at once?"

"Because they're all trying to talk me into specializing in their areas." Alex flexed his toes in the breeze and felt better. Maybe if he gave up wearing shoes—

"Well, I think they're right," Debbie said. "If you specialized in something else, you'd make more money."

"I have all the money I need." Alex stripped off his white T-shirt while she was talking, so he missed what she said next. "Give me that again?"

"I said, you have loans to pay off. Being in debt isn't bad for a bachelor, but what about when you want to get married and have kids?"

Alex sighed and threw his shirt through the window. "Debbie, we've had this discussion. I don't want kids."

"Well, not right now, but someday you'll want a family and then—"

"I have a family," Alex said. "They drive me nuts. Why would I want another one?"

"A family of your own," Debbie said.

"Debbie, you're not paying attention. I don't want kids. Ever."

There was a long silence on the end of the phone, and Mex realized that she'd heard him for the first time.

"I do," she said.

"I know," Alex said. "That's why I've been trying to warn you. I like you a lot. I have a good time with you. But I don't want kids. I don't even want to get married. I've had family up to here. I don't want any more."

"Well." Debbie cleared her throat. "Well, all right. I guess there's not much point in us seeing each other anymore then, is there?"

"Not unless you just want to kick back and have a good time." Alex knew he was supposed to be panicking at her ultimatum, but all he could dredge up was a mild willingness to try again. "We could see some movies. Talk. Just be us together for a while. Get to know each other.''

"Alex." Debbie's voice was tight with controlled anger. "We've been dating for six weeks. We know each other. We have seen enough dumb movies and done enough talking. I want a future. I want it all."

"Well, I hope you get it," Alex said cheerfully. "Good luck."

Debbie hung up on him.

Alex put the phone on the windowsill and leaned back against the fire escape again, trying to decide if he was depressed that Debbie was gone. He wasn't. In fact, the only depressing part was that he wasn't depressed. He should be depressed. Debbie was a very nice woman, but he didn't care at all that she was out of his life.

He was a slime. Worse, he was turning into Max.

Still, he'd stuck it out with Debbie for six weeks. That was pretty good. Maybe next time, he'd find a woman who was happy just to be with him, cruising through life and the video store, without a need to produce more family obligations that would make him crazier than he already was.

There was Tricia, for example, the little blonde in the business office. She'd asked him to dinner once, but he'd turned her down gently because of Debbie. She seemed nice. Maybe Tricia would be more interested in food and Casablanca than in planning car pools and country-club memberships. Maybe he'd call her if he lived through his birthday tomorrow without being sent to prison for strangling a family member.

The fire escape was cutting into the muscles in his back so he sat up and stretched and crawled through the window. The couch was close enough to catch a little of the breeze. All he needed was sleep. With any luck, he'd sleep through his birthday and not have to see any of his nearest and dearest before he went back to work on Saturday.

* * *

Later that night, Nina relaxed on her overstuffed couch with Fred heavy and warm beside her, now redolent of both the dog shampoo she'd washed him with and the Duende perfume she'd spritzed him down with on a whim. He'd been annoyed, but she'd bribed him with gourmet dog biscuits, and he was happy now, sighing in his sleep while she watched Mel Gibson blow up something on TV.

She had the sound off so she could watch Mel without laving to listen to him, and the traffic rumbled faintly outside in the May night, punctuated now and then by the sirens of the ambulances heading for Riverbend General two blocks away, reminding her that humanity was close at land. Best of all, Fred was warm beside her, and for the first time that day, she felt secure enough to turn her full ittention to her problems. With Fred around, they didn't seem so bad.

One problem was her job. She'd started as a secretary to Jessica Howard of Howard Press, a woman whose beige-suited exterior hid a warm heart and an appreciative spirit, and within six months Jessica had promoted her to editor, "That was good. Unfortunately, she was editing memoirs of upper-class stiffs who'd never had an original thought, and collections of essays by academics on topics so obscure that even if they were original nobody cared. "Did you ever think about branching out?" she'd asked Jessica. "Into fiction? Something popular like romance novels? I hear they do very well."

Jessica had looked at her as though she'd suggested prostitution. "Popular fiction? Not in my lifetime.

I'll pass Howard Press on to the next generation as honorably as it was passed to me."

Nina had repressed the impulse to point out that the press might not survive Jessica's lifetime. In fact, if the figures she'd seen while she'd been Jessica's secretary were accurate, Howard Press might not survive lunch. And it was such a shame. Jessica was a good person who loved books; she should have a successful press. Unfortunately, Jessica wouldn't have known a bestseller if it bit her.

Nina cuddled Fred closer. "Want to write a book, Fred? That dog in the White House made a mint, and she didn't have near your class."

Fred snored and twitched.

Nina kissed the top of his sweet-smelling head. "I'll take that as a no."

Her other problem was the loneliness. It had been bad this last week, being in a new place and being so lonely. She'd been lonely before in the big house, but she was used to being lonely there. Her marriage had been a series of important parties and important charities and important career moves for her husband, but after the first couple of years, not much warmth and not much fun. She and Guy had laughed together at first, but then his future had gotten in their way, and the fun had stopped. That's the way it was with professional men: they thought they were their careers and they forgot how to have fun while they built empires. And she'd been Mrs. Empire, feeling emptier and emptier until she'd finally gotten up the courage to leave Guy, to file for divorce and go looking for a life of her own, hoping for warmth and good times.

He'd been stunned when she'd told him she was leaving. "Why?" he'd said. "I never cheated on you."

And Nina, annoyed that he'd missed how empty their lives had become, had said, "Good, I never cheated on you, either." And Guy had said, "Of course not. You're not the type. And now you're going to live the rest of your life alone? You're almost forty, Nina. You're not going to find anyone else at your age. Why don't you go get a facial? That always makes you feel better."

She'd thought he was wrong, thought it would be better once she had a place of her own, but she'd only been in the apartment a week when she'd realized what Guy had been talking about: lonely was lonely, no matter where you lived. He just hadn't realized that it had been lonelier living with him than without him. She gathered Fred to her and put her cheek on his furry little head, grateful to have him with her.