THE BRO-MAGNET (13 page)

“Where?”

“Steve and I were talking about ice fishing and I was saying how I like the part where you make the hole in the ice to sink your line into.”

“How did Steve get loopholes out of ice holes?”

I shrug like, You got me. Then I make that heavy-drinker gesture again with my jumbo cup.

“So let me get this straight,” she says. “It’s not loopholes you have a thing for, it’s ice holes?”

“Oh, yes,” I say, “from when I was little and my dad used to take me ice fishing. Ever since he got MS and can’t get around as well anymore, I like to remember the times when we used to be together on the ice, sitting around the ice holes.”

Well, at least the part about him having MS is true.

“That’s sweet,” she says.

Hey, I’m on a roll here.

“Not only do I like ice holes,” I say, “but I like sinkholes.”

“Sinkholes?”

“I mean, I’d hate to get my truck stuck in one, but they’re so interesting, the way they just appear all of a sudden. And peepholes, I like those too.”

“Peepholes?”

“It is always good to see who’s on the other side of the door so you know whether you want to let them in or not. Oh, and blowholes – you know, whales. They should be saved.”

“So,” she says slowly, reviewing my case item by item, “you like ice holes, sinkholes, peepholes and blowholes?”

I nod.

“But not loopholes?”

I nod again.

Hole this, hole that – even when I’m determined not to
just be myself
, I’m such an asshole. I just can’t help it.

“That’s somehow charming,” she says. “Also seriously odd.”

Well, one out of two.

“Oh, and one other thing I like,” I say.

She waits for it.

“Opera,” I say, waving one of my earbuds at her in the hopes that she’ll forget all this business about holes and remember what a cultured guy I am. “I really like opera. Do you like opera?”

She looks startled at this. “I guess. Doesn’t everybody?”

Then before I can think of anything further that’s either brilliant or idiotic to say, she excuses herself telling me she has to get back to work.

It’s a while before I realize that she never even made her lunch.

* * *

“Hey, Boss,” Sam says at around three in the afternoon. “Isn’t it quitting time yet? Come on. It’s Saturday.”

“I hate it when you call me Boss,” I say, and it’s true. It makes me feel like a slave driver instead of someone who pays her a fairly generous wage for driving me crazy. “Let’s just finish this up today. That way we don’t have to come back.”

“But I thought you like her.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. But even if I did, she’d never want to – ”

“Of course she would!”

“Ya think?”

“Absolutely! The way she asked you to come get your coffee in the kitchen, I could tell she didn’t want me to come too. And then the way you two talked in there for so long. I could hear what you both were saying. I could tell she liked you.”

“Seriously? But she said I was seriously odd.”

“But she also said you were charming. Really, I can tell about these things, at least when it comes to other people. She totally likes you. You should ask her out.”

Suddenly I’m nervous. “But you said this wasn’t a date, that it’s just a paint job.”

“It’s not a date,
yet
– ”

And Sam proceeds to go on and on about how she can tell about these things, convinces me that Helen has practically said yes to me already. She does such a good job of persuading, that by the time we really are finished painting the dining room, I send her on ahead to start loading up the truck while I remain behind, saying goodbye to Helen.

“So listen,” I say, “I was thinking… Since I like opera and you like opera, maybe sometime we could – ”

“No,” she says.

No??? Already with the
no
? But I didn’t even get the chance to fully ask yet! 

No???

I’m so stunned by the instantaneousness of her negative reply I just walk to the truck. It’s not until I’m inside, the door safely shut, that it occurs to me that I may not have even had the manners to say goodbye. I just walked away.

“So?” Sam says eagerly. “How’d it go?”

“She shot me down.”

“
What
?”

“Before I could even fully finish asking her, she shot me down.”

Now it’s Sam’s turn to be stunned. “How could I possibly be so wrong about something?”

“I know, right?” The only reason I say this is because it’s the thing you say in these situations. But inside? I’m thinking,
What the hell was I thinking of listening to Sam?
She’s even worse than I am with the opposite sex, which for her happens to be the same sex so you’d think she’d at least know something!

* * *

And yet, a strange thing happens. As we’re pulling up the drive to the condo, with Sam still puzzling about how she could be so wrong and me still puzzling about why I ever listen to Sam in the first place, my cell phone rings.

Well, that’s not the strange part, my cell phone ringing, because it does have a tendency to do that from time to time. No, the strange part is, that when I look at the displayed number, underneath it says
H Troy
.

I start to answer the phone but then Sam starts to scream, “Don’t answer it until the vehicle is fully stopped!”

“Why do you always have to be such a spaz?” I say. “Look. It’s stopped. I just stopped.”

Geez. Sam may be my best friend, but she’s so bizarre sometimes. Like she’s got this cell-phone fetish. She read that cops are cracking down on people talking on them while driving, which I must admit is a wise thing, so she worries I’ll get arrested, but she carries things too far.

Still, I don’t have time to dwell on Sam’s weird little idiosyncrasies right now because…

“Answer your damn phone!” Sam screams at me. “It drives me crazy how you always let it ring and ring before answering.”

“Hello?” I answer the phone.

The only problem is, as I’m answering it, half my mind’s obsessing: How did she get my number? I called her about the paint job after Steve gave me her number and told me to call. But I never gave her my number, which means she would have had to call information to get it, but there’s more than one John Smith in Danbury, Connecticut, she may not even know I’m in Danbury, Connecticut, and anyway, this is my cell. It’s like the Nixon era all over again: When did Helen Troy get my cell phone number, and how did she get it?

See? This is the problem with starting to like a woman. Your mind starts pretzeling itself around all kinds of minor details, wondering what this or that little thing means, wasting valuable brain space on stuff a person shouldn’t spend so much time on. Make that any.

“John?” I hear Helen’s voice. “I called Steve and got your cell phone number. I hope that’s OK.”

Phew. At least now I’ve got that burning question answered.

“Sure,” I say, forcing a casual tone into my voice, “that’s fine.” 

Inside, I’m not casual at all, a forced attitude that’s tough to maintain anyway with Sam staring at me like I’m a specimen on a slide. Inside, I’m an inferno of curiosity: Why’s she calling? Did she change her mind? Has she decided to go out with me after all? Or did I just leave a paintbrush at her house?

“Listen, I was wondering…” she says. As she leaves that awkward pause, I’m reminded of something. I
know
that awkward pause. It’s exactly how I sounded when I was trying to ask her to the opera.

“Yes?” I prompt.

“The thing is…I was thinking…”

“Yes?” I prompt, more eagerly still. I can’t believe this. Sam was right all along. She is
so
going to ask me out.

And then she asks me what she wants to ask, to which I respond with a simple, “Yeah, sure, we could do that,” before clicking shut the phone.

“That was Helen, wasn’t it?” Sam says, getting excited. “I was right, wasn’t I? She just called to ask you out?”

“Not exactly,” I say.

“How do you not-exactly ask someone out?”

“She wants me to come back next Saturday, paint another room for her.”

Sam’s totally dejected. “That’s not only not-exactly asking you out. That’s not asking you out at all.” She starts to brighten. “But maybe – ”

But she doesn’t get to finish because there’s a sound of rapping knuckles on the driver’s-side window.

I look out and see a statie standing there. And not just any statie. It’s the guy who lives across the quad from me. He’s always zooming into the lot in his state trooper’s car, going way too fast. I worry he’s going to hit some little kid some day. Then there’s the way he walks, all barrel-chested, like every time you see him he’s just come from the gym. Not to mention the way he talks to people. One time I heard him tell some guy who was just walking by his unit with his daughter, “Keep your kid out of my flowers.” Who says that about a three-year-old? The kid wasn’t even hurting his stupid flowers. I hate that guy, and I don’t even know his name. Come to think of it, I don’t know anyone’s name up here, except for Sam’s. The way I am with the condo is kind of like how I am about getting supplies for my business. Even though I’ve been at both for years, I never really invest myself, like I could be moving on or doing something different any day now.

I roll down my window. “Can I help you, Officer?” I can’t believe I have to call a neighbor ‘Officer.’

“I saw you with your cell phone,” he says, all official. “Did you initiate that call before or after you came to a complete stop?”

    “I didn’t initiate anything,” I say. “She called me.”

He sighs wearily like I’m an idiot. “Did you answer your phone before or after you came to a complete stop?”

“After.”

“I hope you’re telling the truth,” he says eyeing me suspiciously.

I’m wondering: What can he do? If he suspected me of drunk driving, he could do a Breathalyzer. But he’s got nothing on me. How can he prove the relationship between when I stopped my car and answered the phone unless he saw me the whole time? And anyway, I think indignantly, I’m telling the truth – the car was stopped!

“It was stopped,” I say coolly, “completely.”

“OK, I’ll let you go this time, but watch it. You do know it’s against the law in the state of Connecticut to be talking on a hand-held device while operating a motor vehicle, don’t you?”

“We had read something about that,” Sam provides cheerily.

“Don’t give me a reason to arrest you,” he warns.

I hold my hands up. “I wouldn’t think of it.”

He struts away.

“What a creep,” I say.

“And that walk,” Sam says. Then she punches me on the shoulder. “Hey, you’ve got another chance with Helen!”

* * *

When I get to Helen’s house the following Saturday I see there have been some changes since the last time I was here. She’s fully decorated the living room that we painted and it looks more homey now, lived in.

This time, we’re supposed to work on the dining room, painting it the burnt gold color she requested when she called me again in the middle of the week.

“Burnt gold is a very classy selection for a dining room,” I told her at the time. Immediately, I felt like a dork for saying it. Who talks like that? Oh, right. A painter. To make matters worse, I told her that in the trade we refer to burnt gold as Egyptian Sunset.

When Sam and me got there, I noticed for the first time that the dining room looked as decoratively barren as the living room previously had, but I shrugged, figuring it didn’t mean anything, and simply got down to work.

Now I’ve got my earbuds in again, painting away while listening to The Wave. I’m wishing Sexy Caller would call in again – it would be so excellent if she became a regular – when I feel a tap on my shoulder. There’s Helen, looking good again, another pair of jeans, another thin spring sweater, another scarf.

“Listening to anything good?” she asks.

“Oh, you know, the opera again.”

“Which opera?”

“Hmm?” I stall, totally thrown by this.

“I said, which opera?”

“Oh, you know, Beethoven.”

“I thought Beethoven wrote symphonies.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s a symphony. You know the opera station. They like to mix it up every now and then. They’re wild and crazy like that.”

“Can I get you and Sam some coffee?”

Once again, Sam declines. And once again, I find myself alone in the kitchen with Helen. Only this time, there’s no talk about loopholes, so I acquit myself pretty decently and the conversation goes relatively smoothly.

I compliment her on what she’s done with the living room and she starts talking about how difficult it was to make decisions about individual pieces. As she’s talking, I start wondering what it is I like about her so much. Sure, she’s really pretty. But a lot of women are pretty. She’s smart, but I know there are even smarter women, like Supreme Court justices. She’s funny, but Sam’s funnier and Sam’s easier to be with too, although I am starting to relax around Helen. So what is it? And then it hits me. There’s no formula for why we like who we like. It’s just something that happens. It just
is
.

“So what do think?” she asks.

“Hmm?” I obviously missed something here.

“About the choices I made for the living room? You don’t think it’s off in any way?”

“Off?” I think about it, the sofa and chairs with their big fluffy pillows and floral patterns. It’s a little feminine for my tastes but… “No, I don’t think there’s anything off about it. You know, it’s, like, pretty. It reminds me of a woman.”

“Good.” She smiles, looks relieved. “That’s very good.”

* * *

Another Saturday, another room in Helen’s house.

This time, she wants her bathroom done.

“Geez, Johnny, you must really like this woman,” Sam said when I told her Helen called again. “You’re giving up all your Saturdays for her. It’s like the Mets never existed.”

“I still listen to the games on The Wave,” I said, feeling huffy about it. “So, you coming Saturday or not?”

“Not. One of us has to watch some of the games live and I’m pretty sure you can do a bathroom by yourself. Besides, if you’re on your own, maybe you’ll get up the nerve to try asking her out again.”