THE BRO-MAGNET (22 page)

Then she goes again, sinking two this time.

And we go on like that, alternating turns and alternating who gets two and who gets three until we’re all the way up to trying for one of the giant bears on the very top row. I mean, these bears are so giant, a person’s arms would barely fit around them; so giant, there’s only one on either side. To go for the top row, it should be my turn since she went last, but she looks like she’s having so much fun, I say, “You take it.”

And she does, sinking all three in rapid succession this time.

“Wanna go again?” the barker offers. “You sink two out of three and you can keep the giant bear
and
take one of those puffball key chains. The puffball’s stuffed…”

What does he think I am, a patsy?

“No, thanks,” I say. “I think we’re pretty good on stuffed things for the time being.”

“Come on,” the barker says. “I’ll bet the little lady would love one of those puffball key chains. I’ll bet any other guy wouldn’t stop now. What are you, a cheapskate?”

“I’m fine with just the bear,” Helen informs the barker tersely.

The barker hands Helen one of the giant bears. It’s purple and fairly hideous. It’s maybe even creepier looking than a clown. Plus, I’m doing the math and I just realized that bear cost me about ninety bucks.

“Cheap chump,” the barker mutters after me as we walk away.

But none of that matters because Helen’s smiling, not a pained or barely tolerant smile like I sometimes get from women, but a genuine honest-to-God I-am-having-fun smile and I realize that I’ve never in my life done something so simple with a female as take her to a carnival and win her the big prize and how good this all feels.

Well, I didn’t really win her the big prize, not completely. She won over fifty percent of that prize herself.

“Hey,” I say, “where’d you learn to shoot a basketball like that?”

She shrugs. “I told you I have five big brothers.”

“Oh, right,” I say, remembering, “the brothers. So, what – they taught you all about sports?”

“Some. Or at least how to shoot a basketball. So that when they played there could be even teams. You know, three against three.”

“That must have been cool,” I say coolly. Inside I’m thinking,
This is great!

“Not really,” she says.

“No?”

“No. I only played because they made me. I don’t really like basketball or any sports.”

“Oh. Right. Me neither.”

* * *

Despite that neither of us likes basketball specifically or sports in general, we spend a good part of the afternoon playing games at the carnival. We throw ping-pong balls into little glass fishbowls, toss softballs through the bull’s-eye on a big board, shoot water pistols at a target. We’re not really trying to upgrade prizes anymore – after the giant purple bear, what would be the point? Instead we’re just sampling all the games, having fun. It’s cool. It’s kind of like doing sports-like stuff without doing actual sports.

“Are you getting hungry?” I ask, hoping the answer is yes. I’m starving.

“I could eat.”

“What’ll it be?” I say, glancing around at the various food booths.

“Maybe a hot dog and fries?” she says.

“Sure thing,” I say.

We walk over to the hot dog/hamburger booth and as she places her order, I scan the menu, seeing if there are any non-meat alternatives.

“Are you looking for a salad?” Helen asks.

“Excuse me?”

“Maybe a tomato-and-lettuce salad with no dressing like you had at Subway?”

 “Oh, that.” I can’t believe she remembers that particularly awkward moment in my life when I’ve been trying so hard to forget. “I actually do eat other things. It’s just that – ”

The guy behind the counter comes over with Helen’s fries, asks me if I’ve decided what I want. 

“Yeah, do you have anything with fish?”

“No,” he says. “That’s why we’re the hot dog/hamburger stand.” Thanks, buddy. But then he gestures with his spatula. “That’s where you want to go, the fish stand. They do fish sticks, fish filets, crab cakes, soft-shell crab sandwiches, fried clams, fried shrimp. They even do a corndog-type thing but with fish in the middle.”

I pay for Helen’s items, we find a table topped with a red-and-white checked oilcloth and I head over to the fish stand as she starts in on her fries. A few seconds later I’m back with assorted fish items, fries and an orange soda.

Helen’s looking at me as I pop a fried clam strip into my mouth. “You like fish,” she observes.

“Actually,” I say, “I’m a pescatarian. I eat fish but not any kind of meat or chicken.”

“I know what a pescatarian is. So why are you one?”

“It’s a philosophical thing,” I say. I always hate explaining this to other people. I don’t want them to think I’m being all judgy about whatever they do. It’s just a decision I made for myself. “I read this book once about how various animals, you know, become dinner. As soon as I read that, I just knew I’d never eat any of that stuff again.”

“But I’ve seen you. At that baseball game, you were eating hot dogs.”

“Oh, that. That’s different. I have a special ballgame rule. Not that I go to many games – you know, only when someone asks me, because I don’t really like sports. But at the ballpark it just seems like the thing to do, like a place with special rules. Also if I’m invited to someone’s house and the main course is something I don’t eat? I eat it anyway. No sense in hurting someone else’s feelings over something that’s already on the plate.”

“So ballparks and houses of people who don’t know any better is OK?”

“Pretty much.”

“But other than that, no meat or chicken ever because you think it’s wrong?”

“Not for other people. I’m not saying it’s wrong for other people, just for me. You know, because of the book. I guess that all sounds really weird, huh?”

“No. Actually it sounds incredibly sweet.”

And then Helen pushes the remainder of her hot dog away and reaches for one of my fried clam strips.

Did she just convert for me?

* * *

Every game played; food eaten.

“You want to go on a ride?” I suggest.

“Sure,” Helen says.

We’re standing right in front of the Ferris wheel, so…

Our carriage is halfway up the loop, going backwards, the giant purple bear between us, and Helen’s peering over the side.

“I probably should have mentioned before this,” Helen says, “but I’m not crazy about heights.”

“How not crazy is not crazy? Is it like ‘this is mildly uncomfortable,’ like on a scale of 1 to 10, it’d be a 3?”

“More like a 7.”

Christ, we’ve barely even gotten started.

“I’m not saying you necessarily should have said something earlier,” I say, “but how come you didn’t say something earlier? Like when we were still on the ground?”

“Because I didn’t want to embarrass myself. It sounds so stupid. A grown woman scared of heights.”

“Just close your eyes then and think of something pleasant like, I don’t know, England.”

“That’s good, if a little strange. I think I’ll do that.”

Helen closes her eyes tight and keeps them closed as we go round and round.

“What’s the number now?” I ask.

“Not bad,” she says, sounding relieved. “It’s back down to a 3, maybe even a 2.”

“So it’s only maybe about as bad as clowns.”

“Clowns?”

“Yeah, earlier, when I said I was scared of clowns, you said you were too.”

“Oh, that. I was lying.”

“Lying?”

“I didn’t want to make you feel bad, like you were alone in your fear. Actually clowns don’t bother me at all.”

“Just heights?”

“Just heights.”

Which shouldn’t be a problem, I’m thinking, now that she’s got her eyes tight shut and her fear level is down to a 3, maybe a 2.

Only it becomes a problem when the Ferris wheel slows to a stop with our carriage swinging right up at the apex and Helen, sensing the stop and thinking the ride’s over, opens up her eyes, sees where we are and…

“10! 10! I’m at 10!”

“Helen! Helen!” I shout over her shouts. “Look at me! Think nice thoughts!”

“I can’t. England’s not working anymore!”

“Then think of other nice things.”

“Like what? There’s nothing nice right now.”

“Think of how much fun it was to win that bear earlier. Making all those baskets – you were excellent.”

“That makes barely a dent,” she says. “Maybe 9.5 now.”

Why is the Ferris wheel taking so long to start moving again? Christ, I hope she doesn’t jump just to get closer to the ground. What else can I tell her to think about that she’d think is nice? Cute puppies? But I don’t even know if she likes cute puppies. Doesn’t everyone like cute puppies, though? But what if she was bitten when she was little? Or what if she’s a cat person? What if –

Then I remember something Leo told me.

“Significant dates!” I say in a louder voice than I intend.

“Significant dates?”

“Yes,” I say in a calmer voice, even though I’m still feeling desperate to soothe her. “Significant dates.” I start doing the math in my head. “It’s the thirty-seven-day anniversary since I first met you at that Yankees game. It’s the thirty-five-day anniversary since I first started painting rooms in your house.” It’s funny. I began reciting the dates to calm her down, but as I name each one, I realize these dates are all significant to me too. “It’s the one-week anniversary from when we went to the Barn Opera. It’s the four-hour anniversary since I picked you up late this morning and it’s the – ”

“Forty-minute anniversary since I first stole one of your fried clam strips,” she cuts in.

“Actually, I was thinking of something else, but that one works too.”

“I can’t believe you keep track of all that,” she says softly. “What did you call them?”

“Significant dates.” I’m beginning to feel like a moron. Maybe I’m the one who should jump out of this carriage.

“I can’t believe you keep track of all that,” she says again, “and that you think those dates are significant.”

And then before I know what she’s doing, she switches seats with the giant purple bear.

“Zero,” she says, looking at me instead of over the edge at the big drop. “Right now my fear level is at zero.”

And then we’re falling toward each other until there’s no space between our lips, and my arms are going around her with nothing awkward about it at all, and this is nothing at all like kissing Sam,
nothing
, nothing like kissing any other female I’ve ever kissed before. It’s soft and urgent, it’s comfortable and terrifying, it’s natural and supernatural all at once. It’s…

Wow.

“This is getting serious.”

That last comment? That was said by just about everybody.

We’re all crammed into my place to celebrate Big John’s fifty-fifth birthday. “We’re all” equals me, Sam, Big John and Aunt Alfresca, Billy and Alice, and Drew and Stacy. Also present are Steve and Katie Miller. Katie looks like she doesn’t know what she’s doing there, at her painter’s condo for a party for his father, but Big John wanted me to invite Steve. After Steve joined us for that first poker game, Big John decided Steve was “our kind of people,” even if Steve is a lawyer and Big John worries he’ll put pie-in-the-sky don’t-be-a-painter-anymore ideas in my head. There are also a bunch of other people here – friends of the family etcetera – but they don’t seem to matter so much.

At least the food is good. Aunt Alfresca doesn’t do much well in the kitchen, but what she does well, she does really well, like her meatless lasagna. So the food, like I say, is good.

The conversation, on the other hand? Not so much.

I had briefly considered but then quickly rejected the idea of inviting Helen to the party for Big John. Meeting my friends one at a time? Even that seemed like a lot to ask of her, never mind the risk to me that one of them might say something to tip my fragile apple cart. But all of them at once? Forget about it.

“This is getting serious,” Big John says.

“I believe someone may have mentioned that already,” I say, refilling both of our red plastic cups from the keg in the kitchen.

“Yeah,” Big John says, “but I mean
really
serious. You like this woman enough
not
to expose her to all of us?”

I never should have mentioned considering to invite Helen and then chickening out.

“Are you ashamed of us?” Aunt Alfresca says. “What are we, chopped liver?”

“No, I’m not ashamed. No, you’re not chopped liver. You’re – ” I stop myself. Just what exactly is Aunt Alfresca? It’s a puzzle.

“You know,” Steve says, “you’re not the only one who’s getting serious.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, maybe
serious
isn’t the right word. Maybe what I should have said is
happy
.”

“Excuse me for asking,” I say, “but just what the hell are you talking about?”

“Helen. Ever since you started painting her house and then taking her places, she’s a lot easier to work across the aisle from.”

I’m not sure I understand. “What, she’s not working as hard to get convictions?”

“Are you kidding me? She still tries to kick my ass every time we meet in court. But at least now, she smiles sometimes when she does it.”

This is news. I can’t help but notice the changes that meeting Helen has caused in my life – the new wardrobe, trying to put my best foot forward, and all the other etcetera – but I never stopped to think before that I might be having some kind of affect on her too. I also never thought before that Steve, being the only person in my circle who knows both Helen and me, might know something, might be useful for insider information.

But I do now.

“What do you know about Helen?” I ask, trying to sound casual. I figure no one likes to feel used for insider information.

“Know about Helen?” Steve seems surprised at the question. “Nothing. We’re just friendly adversaries. If you’re looking for insider information, like what her favorite color is, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“Green,” I say. “It was blue but then she changed it to green.”