Something New (21 page)

So just about now, I am feeling good. It’s a beautiful night. My ass is tighter than it’s been in years. I don’t have to cook or do dishes. I made it through a hellish week marginally unscathed. And I am, for the next five hours, free.

And that’s when I see him.

I am just walking past the nut stand when I catch a glimpse of Ben Campbell through the throngs of people who are standing around listening to a street performer waffle on his acoustic guitar. Ben stands among them, his arms folded across his chest, his head bobbing to the rhythm of the song. As if sensing my presence, he turns his head and sees me. Our eyes lock, and suddenly I feel like I have been sucked into a Rogers and Hammerstein musical. A sly grin spreads across his face as he uncrosses his arms and slowly moves toward me.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi back,” I return. I pray he can’t see my pulse throbbing in my neck. The evening light is waning so I’m pretty sure I’m safe.

“We have to stop meeting like this.”

I suppress a juvenile giggle and manage to turn it into a throaty laugh. “You’re right, we do.” I make a show of looking around, even though his wife and kids are conspicuously absent. “Where’s the rest of your clan?”

“The boys are home.…” He makes a face. “We got a sitter for tonight, thought we’d check out Center Street, have dinner,
you know. A real grown-up date. But she, uh, got tied up at the office. Gonna be there late. So, I thought, what the hell? We already had the sitter. Might as well take advantage of it.”

“Oh, yeah, well, you wouldn’t want to alienate a good sitter by canceling at the last minute either. Good sitters are hard to find.”

“Really? I hadn’t thought of that.”

“I can’t find a sitter who doesn’t have
Enjoys animal sacrifice
on her résumé.”

He laughs at that, a hearty resonating sound that tickles me from head to toe. “What about you? What are you doing here?”

“My quarterly honey run,” I answer and receive a puzzled look. “For my mother-in-law. It’s rose-infused.” As if that’s an explanation.

“Does she cook with it?”

“Among other things.”

His brow furrows once more. “I don’t want to know, do I?”

“Definitely not.” I peer past him down the long line of stalls. “Only, I can’t find it. My man, Masood, is not where he should be.”

“That sounds like a problem. What do you say I help you find him?”

“Oh no,” I protest, shaking my head. “Enjoy your evening, do what you were going to do…”

“Hey, I am enjoying my evening. And you know what? It just got a little better.”

His brown eyes are twinkling with mirth, yet at the same time serious, and I fear that if I look into them too long, I will melt into them and float away.

“Unless you’d rather…not…have company.…”

“No, I…” I take a breath then let it out on a chuckle. “Masood’s about five feet tall, and almost as wide, with a beard down to his nipples.”

“So, in other words, hard to miss.” He grins, then holds out his arm, gesturing me forward. We walk side by side down Center Street, in search of a short fat hairy Persian man with the best damn honey on the West Coast.

Five minutes later, Ben spots him at the end of the aisle of stalls, situated in front of Yogurtland, prime real estate by farmer’s market standards. As I step beneath the caramel-colored canopy, the beefy Persian greets me with a magnanimous smile.

“Ah, Miss Ellen! You found me! I knew tonight you would not disappoint me with your absence!”

He clasps both of his enormous hands over mine and gives them an emphatic shake.

“Nice spot,” I tell him, hooking a thumb toward the yogurt shop.

“Ah, yes. Allah smiles on those with pure hearts.” He winks at me. “Well, those with pure
products
at least. I have your precious nectar right here.” He waddles over to one of the display tables and gingerly picks up a glass jar filled with the rose-infused honey. He hands it to me as though it is a priceless relic, then glances at Ben, who is perusing the rest of his merchandise with interest.

“I see you have brought Mr. Ellen with you this fine evening!”

I glance at Ben, feeling myself flush as he grins back at me. But instead of correcting Masood, he steps forward and puts out his hand.

“I’m Ben,” he says simply.

The two men shake hands and then Ben compliments Masood on his offerings, which include an assortment of both regular and infused honey, many different kinds of fruit preserved in spiced syrup, dried dates and figs and other fruits I don’t recognize, and a variety of sweet and savory chutneylike spreads. Masood beams and gives Ben an earful about each item, and Ben graciously listens, nodding and asking questions.

After Masood finishes his discourse, I pay him and receive a bear hug in return. Ben and I wander back out to the middle of Center Street and stop. He shoves his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and I glance around, unlike Masood, at a sudden loss for words.

“Hey, any good sushi restaurants around here?” Ben asks out of the blue. “I’m having a craving. Linda won’t eat it, so now seems like a good time.”

“Is it the vegan thing?”

“No, the brain worm thing.”

I laugh. “Yeah, I read about that once. I try not to think about it.”

“It’s good to live on the edge.”

“Says the man who belongs to the three-mile-high club.”

He cocks his head at me and smiles with such boyish sincerity that I feel warmth spread through my chest. I clear my throat and glance down the street, not wanting him to see the effect he is having on me. (But if he’s even a halfway decent detective, it’s a good bet he already knows.)

“There’s, uh, Sushi Yummy,” I say, pointing to a building in the middle of the next block that houses my favorite procurer of raw fish.

“Sushi
Yummy
?” he repeats doubtfully. “I don’t know about the name.”

“It’s ridiculous, I know. But, trust me, the fish is the freshest
in Garden Hills and their special rolls are orgas—” I stop myself and bite my bottom lip in embarrassment.

He raises his eyebrows and suppresses an amused grin. “You were saying? Their rolls are…?”

“Very…yummy,” I finish.

He shakes his head. “That’s not what you were going to say. You know, I am a trained officer of the law. I could get it out of you. So, what was it?”

I remain mute.

“Chicken,” he teases and I can’t help but laugh. I also can’t help but wonder what kind of interrogation techniques he had in mind. A few are zipping merrily through my brain right about now. Like handcuffs and wax and feathers and…oh shit.
Stop, Ellen!

“So, you heading home to the family?”

Lie, Ellen
, I tell myself.
Say “Yes, I am going home to my husband and children.”

“Actually, Jonah’s taking the kids to see the Blue Man Group tonight, so I’m on my own.”

“Those guys with the shaved heads and the blue body makeup, who make a huge mess on stage and call it theater?”

“The very same.”

He shudders. “So why aren’t you going?”

“Not enough tickets.”

“I can see you’re really broken up about it. Not that I blame you. I can’t stand those guys.”

“I thought all men loved the Blue Man Group.”

“I think you have them confused with the Three Stooges.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s right.”

We both chuckle, and then the sound dies away, and there we stand, in the middle of the carless street, people passing between us and by us, neither of us moving.

“Why don’t you—”

“Well, it was—”

We both start to speak at the same time, then go silent in unison. We laugh again. I look at him expectantly, allowing him to go first.

“Why don’t you come grab some raw fish with me.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. My brain is on high speed, like a 33-rpm record being played at 78.
Don’t, Ellen, no you can’t, but it’s totally innocent, it’s never totally innocent, remember
When Harry Met Sally,
men and women cannot be friends, but I want to and it’s just dinner, and what if one of your friends sees you or one of Jonah’s buddies, it’s just sushi for God’s sake not a suite at the Ritz, don’t even think about it, you slut, nothing is going to happen, you floozy, just say no and go buy a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and masturbate.

“That sounds great,” I finally manage to say.

As soon as the words are out of my mouth, an image of Jonah skirts through my mind. I am still upset with him, but, as is usual in married life, my anger has lost its intensity and become tangential. I have been carrying it with me for the past few days, but it has remained on the periphery of our normal routine. I tell myself that accepting Ben’s invitation has nothing to do with Jonah and our squabble, but I wonder if I would have given the same answer if Jonah and I were on good terms.

“Great.” Ben smiles. He doesn’t reach to take my hand, although I have the strangest sensation that he wants to, wants to reach out and touch me in some way. But he doesn’t. This isn’t a date. We are not two giddy teenagers caught up in some adolescent fantasy. We are two married adults who can certainly spend time together without it becoming something untoward or deceitful. This is no big deal. It’s perfectly innocent.
Whether there is an attraction between us or not, we are adults. We are mature enough to behave like the rational
married
people we are. We are just going to have some sushi, and that will be the end of it.

Of course, that was before the sake bombs.

“So there I am, crouched down with my pants down around my ankles, trying to…uh…you know,
make
, and all of the sudden I look up and there’s like twenty-five Indian Princesses staring down at me, tomahawks at the ready.”

Ben is in the middle of a story about a camping trip he and his college buddies took and I am laughing so hard I am afraid Sapporo is going to shoot out my nose.

“Talk about shrinkage!” he cries. “For Christ’s sake, I told my buddy Paul I wasn’t ever going camping again unless the place had outhouses.”

“Those poor girls!” I exclaim. “They must have had the shock of their lives.”

“Poor girls? What are you talking about? They were armed! I was
literally
scared shitless!”

I groan at him and shake my head, then laugh with him some more. I watch as he half fills my empty beer glass with a fresh bottle of Sapporo, then grabs the pitcher of sake and pours some into the white porcelain cup in front of me. He repeats the procedure with his own, lifts the sake cup and holds it over his beer mug and treats me to one of his trademark grins.

“Bombs away!” he cries, then drops the porcelain cup into his beer glass and raises the glass to his lips. I notice his throat working as he rhythmically swallows the beer/sake concoction, and for some absurd reason this turns me on.
He finishes and places the empty down on the sushi bar, and the porcelain cup drops to the bottom of the beer glass with an alarming clank.

“Your turn,” he challenges.

“I haven’t done sake bombs since college.”

“It’s just like riding a bike,” he encourages.

I mimic his every step, wincing as the combination of hot sake and cold beer hits my mouth, but I manage to drink it down with only one brief pause. I pull the sake cup out of the glass with two fingers and set them side by side next to my soy sauce dish. The warmth of the double dose of alcohol spreads through me, and for the first time in a few days, I feel myself relax, feel the tension draining from my shoulders.

“Wow.”

“See? No problem,” Ben says with a smile.

“This is great. I really needed this tonight.”

“Long week?” he asks.

“An endless series of family dramas,” I explain.

“Ah, yes.” He gives me a knowing look. “Those suck.”

The sushi chef, a slight Asian man with the incongruous name
Pierre
stitched into his uniform, sets a plate in front of Ben on which sits a gorgeous, delectable-looking roll with eel and uni and some kind of sauce on top that has been flash-broiled to bubbly. At my place, Pierre places a tray of salmon sashimi drizzled with ponzu and garnished with bonita flakes. Using his chopsticks, Ben expertly picks up a section of his roll and pops it into his mouth. His eyes immediately roll back in his head and he moans loudly, and rather unself-consciously, to the amusement of the couple seated on the other side of him.

“Oh my God. Oh my God! That is
so
good. Oh God.” He scrunches up his face. “I feel like Meg Ryan in
When Harry
Met Sally
. Oh GOD. YES!!” Suddenly, he turns to me and deadpans. “That sounded gay, didn’t it?”

“I was just thinking about that movie,” I tell him. “And, yes, it did sound a little bit gay.”

He straightens up and puffs out his chest satirically, his voice deep and overflowing with bravado. “I
did
see that movie on a date with a
chick
who promised to
put out
afterward.”

“Will you stop?” I plead as I erupt in more laughter. “I cannot eat and laugh at the same time, and this sashimi is really good and I really want to eat it.”

“No no no no no.” He slashes at my chopsticks before they can grab some salmon. “You
have
to try this.” He jabs at his roll. “Seriously. You have to. You will go out of your mind. You’ll have one of those things you can’t say out loud!”

“No, that’s yours. I am not going to take it away from you.”

He shakes his head and grabs one of the sections of his roll with his chopsticks and lifts it toward me. I see it in slow motion, heading for my mouth. I look past the sushi and meet his eyes and for a split second, all the humor has drained away, replaced by a hunger that has nothing to do with raw fish.

He wants me
, I think, and intuitively, I know it’s true. My heart thumps crazily in my chest as the world around us completely clouds over. Because I know he must see the same hunger reflected back at him from my eyes.

But before I can confirm my suspicion, his eyes snap back to the piece of Yummy roll suspended in the air mere inches from my lips.

“Open wide!” he commands, the irreverent twinkle once again in his gaze. “And don’t make me hold your nose, young lady.”