Obsession, Deceit and Really Dark Chocolate (5 page)

I gave Leah a questioning look as I turned onto her block. “Again, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Exactly my point. Aha! That’s Liz’s boyfriend’s car! That’s why that little harlot asked if she could watch Jack at her parents’ house, because she knew Bruce would be welcome there! And to think I bought her line about wanting Jack to be able to play with their new puppy! Let me out here. I swear, if either of them so much as has the top two buttons of their shirts undone I’m going to have them arrested for indecent exposure in front of a minor.”

“Mmm, that will go over well in a city that allows men to parade in G-strings during Carnival.”

Leah glared at me right before she shot out the door to scare a couple of overeager teenagers into a life of abstinence. As I drove home I made a halfhearted attempt to make sense of what Leah had said but quickly gave up the effort. Leah was a lot crazier than I was, so it seemed foolhardy to take her psychobabble seriously.

When I got back to my neighborhood I began the arduous task of looking for parking. After fifteen minutes with no luck I finally accepted the fact that I was going to have to give Anatoly’s block a go. Anatoly lived all of three blocks away from me, and over the past two months I had spent an exorbitant amount of time trying to avoid him. I would never make that mistake again. From now on if a man lived so close that it would make honoring a restraining order a challenge I would not get involved with him. I turned onto his block and, as Murphy’s law would have it, there he was at the other end of the block, crouched over, examining the front of his Harley.

It occurred to me that maybe this was why I hadn’t heard from him. It wasn’t that he had moved on, it was that he had been standing on his corner in the hopes that I would eventually drive by and pick him up.

But if that was the case he should have noticed my car by now, and he definitely had not. He was too absorbed with his tire.

I slowed the car from ten miles an hour to two. Something about Anatoly’s crouched position reminded me of certain things he used to do to me.
Just drive by.
If I stopped and talked to him I was bound to do something stupid, or he would do something that would make me feel stupid, and then I would be thrown into a downward spiral of lost pride and low self-esteem.

But of course, there was a parking place just a few feet in front of him.

Beads of sweat dampened my brow. I had two seconds to figure out what was more important to me—my dignity or parking. My God, it was like
Sophie’s Choice.
Of course, if I lost my dignity I could always turn to my friend Smirnoff for some much-needed comfort. But if I gave up the parking spot I might be stuck driving around my neighborhood for days, and there would be no solace since there are laws about drinking before you parked your car.

I took a deep breath and made the only logical choice by pulling into the empty space. Anatoly looked up as I did so and I felt his eyes boring into me.
Here it comes. This is the part where he walks up and tells me that we should put our differences aside and indulge in safe, casual, early-evening sex.

Anatoly nodded in greeting as I pulled up on the emergency break and then returned all of his attention to the bike.

Okay, self-esteem gone.

I got out of my car.
Turn around and walk away.
I walked over to him. “Nice tire. Do you usually come out here to pay homage or is today a special occasion?”

“Someone hit my bike while it was parked here. The front fairing is seriously damaged.”

“I hate it when people try to screw with my fairing.”

“This is going to cost me at least twenty-five hundred dollars.”

“Seriously?” I tapped the part that he was examining. “It’s a flimsy piece of metal. How can that possibly add up to twenty-five hundred?”

“It’s not just a piece of metal, it’s the front fairing.”

Two months. We hadn’t spoken in two months and he wanted to complain to me about his fucking fairing? I felt my hands ball up into fists. “Well, good luck with this.” I turned and started to walk away.

“Doesn’t that hurt your palms?”

I slowly pivoted. “Excuse me?”

He had straightened up and was wearing that little half smile of his. “Whenever you’re angry you make a fist, and I’ve always wondered if your nails dug into your palms. They’re long enough that it seems like they should.”

“This is something you think about?”

“Occasionally I wonder.”

“Huh, what else do you wonder about?”

“Lately, I’ve been wondering how you are.”

“I’m fine.” I waited a beat before adding, “If that’s really been on your mind so much you could have given me a call.”

“I didn’t think you wanted me to call.”

“Why would you think that?” I asked.

“Because you told me not to.”

“Oh…and you listened to me?”

“Didn’t you want me to?”

Of course I hadn’t wanted him to. I had wanted him to fight for me, to ask me to come back to him and to tell me that he was hopelessly in love with me and couldn’t live without me. “Yes, I wanted you to listen…I’m just surprised that you did.”

Anatoly nodded, then looked down at the bike again. “My insurance won’t cover this.”

And we were back to the fairing. “I’m sure one of your clients will give you an advance if you ask them to.”

“Business has been slow lately.” Anatoly stuffed his hands into his leather jacket and smiled wryly. “I don’t suppose you know anyone who needs a private detective.”

Shit.
This was the moment of truth. Was I a good person or a selfish bitch who would rather avoid a potentially uncomfortable social situation than give a man in need the opportunity to make a living? “I don’t know anyone who needs a P.I.” Selfish bitch it was.

“Not a single person?” By the tone of Anatoly’s voice I could tell he wasn’t really asking a question but underscoring the desperate state of his finances.

“Not a soul. All of my friends’ significant others have been annoyingly faithful lately.”

“Ah, well.” Anatoly shrugged and then looked me over carefully. “You look good.”

“Thanks.”

“Really good.”

And here comes that self-esteem again.

“There’s one more thing I’ve been wondering about.”

“Oh?”

“Last time we talked you said you wanted more of a commitment.”

“I did say that.”

“That was two months ago and we’ve both had some time to think.”

I felt my heart pick up in speed. He had reconsidered. He wanted to be in a relationship with me. Suddenly I saw my future and it was filled with emotional growth!

“I’ve missed you, Sophie,” he said, taking a step forward. “If you were willing to let go of this idea of improving on what was already a good thing, we could go back to the way things were.”

And we were back to feeling like shit. I stepped forward and ran my finger across his pecks. “Anatoly?”

He smiled his sexy half smile and leaned in closer. “Yes?”

“Take your front fairing and stick it up your ass.”

4

I don’t mind asking the tough questions. I just don’t want to hear the answers.

—C’est La Mort

“SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT,” DENA SAID SLOWLY. “MELANIE WANTS
a private dick and Anatoly wants more clients, but you’re not going to get them in touch with each other.”

“That’s right,” I said. We were sitting in the back room of Dena’s store, Guilty Pleasures, and I had just finished telling her about everything that had gone down with both Melanie and Eugene and my little run-in with Anatoly and his front fairing. Beyond being my favorite supplier of sensuous flavored body oils, Dena was also my best friend in the world and had been since high school. Normally she’d be the first person I’d call after an awkward exchange with an ex or if, say…the husband of my old mentor was shot right after I made a pass at him, but she had been off attending a bondage-wear trade show in Amsterdam.

“Sophie, this is insane. It was one thing to play detective when your own life was at risk or when your sister was falsely accused of killing that asshole husband of hers, but to do it just so you don’t have to answer a few casual questions for Anatoly…”

“Nothing’s ever casual when it comes to Anatoly. Every exchange I have with the man is emotionally volatile and nerve-racking. Except for the sex, and according to Anatoly the sex we’ve had has been nothing but casual.”

“So this is about avoidance?” Dena crossed her toned lambskin-clad legs and ran her fingers through her short dark hair. “Are you sure the real reason you’re not telling Anatoly about this gig is because you’re pissed at him and you don’t want to help his business?”

“Of course not,” I shot back, but Dena’s brown Sicilian eyes were skeptical and I knew I couldn’t carry off the lie. “Okay, fine. Maybe I’m a little pissed. Why should I refer clients to him or help him in any way after what he did?”

“You know, I’m still not really clear on what exactly he did that was so wrong.”

“Are you kidding me? We had been dating for almost a year, Dena. A year! And it wasn’t like I was looking for a ring. You know I don’t want to get married again. I don’t even want to live with someone. I like my space too much, and besides if I moved a guy into my place how would that make Mr. Katz feel? He might think I was trying to replace him.”

“Please tell me your relationship with your cat is vastly different from your relationships with the men you date.”

“Obviously it’s different—I
trust
my cat. But we’re getting off the subject. The point is that all I really wanted out of Anatoly was for him to fess up to being my boyfriend and to agree to be monogamous, but he couldn’t even do
that
.”

“But he wasn’t actually sleeping with other people while you guys were together, right? He just didn’t want the option taken away from him.”

“Well, yeah, but who the hell wants to give her boyfriend that kind of option?”

“Me for starters,” Dena said. “If he has the option that means I’ve got it, too, and that can only be a good thing. You see, men are like See’s candy lollipops.”

“Excuse me?”

“See’s candy lollipops, Sophie. I like the chocolate pops the best, and nine times out of ten that’s what I’m going to buy when I want something sweet. But every once in a while I have a craving for butterscotch or vanilla, and if that’s what I’m craving that’s what I’m going to have. Why should I limit myself to only sucking on chocolate when I can suck on so much more?”

“But the only guy I wanted to suck on was Anatoly! Wait—can I change that to lick? I don’t really like…you know…sucking on anyone.”

“Lick him, suck him, saddle him up and ride him like a bronco if that’s what you want to do, he certainly doesn’t seem to be stopping you. He just doesn’t want to emotionally commit. So stop obsessing on words like
boyfriend, girlfriend
and
monogamy
and use him as a GBC.”

“GBC?”

“Glorified Booty Call. A guy you sleep with who also occasionally takes you out to a nice dinner.”

“I don’t think I could use Anatoly as a GBC at this point. There are too many emotions involved.”

“Emotions? Sophie, when you say
emotions
do you mean you care about him or…you don’t love him, do you?”

“No,” I said quickly, “but for a second there I thought maybe I was sort of
falling
in love with him. I mean, I hadn’t hit bottom yet but I could have gotten there pretty quick.”

“But he drives you nuts!”

I shrugged. Everything had been so perfect for a while. After the first six months of dating I had kind of figured that Anatoly
was
my boyfriend. I just assumed that the reason Anatoly wasn’t dating other women was because the nature of our relationship would have made doing so inappropriate, not because he hadn’t been able to fit infidelity into his schedule. Despite what Dena seemed to think, it wasn’t always what someone did or didn’t do that was important; it was
why
they did or didn’t do it. Clearly he hadn’t felt as strongly about me as I had felt about him. I suppose one could argue that I didn’t have the right to be angry with him just because he didn’t feel what I wanted him to feel, but I couldn’t help it. He had no right
not
to love me, particularly when there had been so many times in which he’d treated me as if he had.

Dena wiggled a pen between her fingers and sighed. “Sophie, men are good for a lot of things, and they’re also a nice accessory to wear to the opera. Kind of like an expensive bracelet or wrap. But when it comes to emotional stuff they do nothing but disappoint. That’s why we all need girl-friends. If you’re having a crisis and need a shoulder to cry on, call me. If you want to get off…well you can call me for that, too, since I am the one who sells vibrators, but if you’re craving a penis that
isn’t
battery-operated, then that’s the time to call a man. Live by those rules and you’ll never get your heart broken.”

“So you’re not a big believer in the whole ‘better to have loved and lost’ thing.”

“You were in love with your first husband and you lost…well maybe you didn’t lose him so much as you threw him out, but the point is you gave your heart away once and it didn’t work out. Why give it away again to a man who’s stupid enough not to want it?”

I laughed softly. Dena was the only person I knew who could be callous and supportive at the same time. I glanced at my watch and winced. “I’ve gotta go. Rick Wilkes managed to get me an interview with Flynn Fitzgerald this afternoon and I’m supposed to meet him at his Pleasant Hill campaign headquarters in about forty-five minutes.”

“Rick’s that guy Mary Ann met at the funeral, right?”

“That’s the one.”

“I can’t believe my uptight little cousin allowed some man to put the moves on her at a funeral,” Dena said. “I wish I could have seen that.”

“It’s probably best that you weren’t there.”

“How come?”

“Well, it was in a church and it would have really sucked if you had stepped inside and burst into f lames.”