The Sexiest Man Alive (22 page)

“The address, sir?”

“Fourteen-oh-five Brady Street, Milwaukee.” Or was it 1405
A
? No—he was pretty sure Magenta’s was 1405A, and Mazie’s was 1405.

After they left the florists’ shop, he and the boys grocery-shopped, then he bought them ice cream at the local drive-in before they headed back to the camp. He’d done the camp every summer since he’d been in college. He would have preferred teaching hockey, but Chicago’s schools didn’t offer hockey as a sport and he’d been assigned to teach football skills. Not his best sport, but he at least knew the basics. The camp was about more than running, passing, and
catching, though—it was supposed to teach the kids how to live healthily, take responsibility, and plan for their futures. Considering the rough lives some of these kids led, one week of camp was just a drop in the ocean, but still, it was better than nothing.

WPAK always gave Ben a few days off to do the camp because it made them look good to say they supported the Big Brothers program. He’d been here since Sunday. He’d meant to tell Mazie that he’d be gone, but things had gotten a little crazy after their encounter in the first-aid room Saturday night, and he hadn’t had the chance. He’d been trying to phone or email her ever since, but each time he got the same “out of service” message. He hadn’t had any luck with email either.

The week went by fast. Ben dropped a couple of pounds from exercising with the kids and got a deep tan. Late on Friday afternoon he saw the kids off on the bus that would return them to the city. Already he kind of missed them. He liked being around kids. They made you stop worrying about your own problems because you were forced to focus on them.

He thought he’d like to have kids of his own. At one time the idea would have horrified him, but somewhere along the line his priorities had shifted. The idea had its attractions. He knew he would like little girls, but Mazie would be great with boys. Looking out over the empty football field, he could almost see her playing touch football with their sons. He hoped the kids would look like her—dark hair, bright blue eyes, and freckles.

Ben had always thought that his type of woman was tall, Nordic, and blonde. Now it appeared that he’d been mistaken all his life, that he was really a hopeless sucker for small, dark-haired, Italian-Irish women. But he was turning his mind inside out trying to figure out what was going on with Mazie. Her dating other men—did that mean she was tired of him or was it her way of saying
Wake up, Clueless! Step up your game if you want to keep me
.

It took two hours to drive back to Milwaukee and it was nearly eight o’clock when he got back to his apartment. He called his station’s personnel department and found out that he was scheduled for the graveyard shift—ten tonight to six in the morning. That didn’t give him much time. He showered and shaved. Maybe he ought to phone, make sure Mazie was home. Then he recalled that her phone wasn’t working. He’d just have to take his chances, show up on her doorstep. She’d be thrilled to see him, right? It was around eight thirty when he rang her bell, his stomach feeling tight and jittery, as though he were meeting a woman for the first time. In a way, he was. Because tonight marked the start of a whole new phase in their relationship. A fresh
start.

Inside, he could hear Muffin barking. “Hey, guy—go tell Mazie I’m here,” Ben called through the door. He rang the bell again, sending the dog into a renewed round of yipping.

She wasn’t home. He tried the door, because Mazie sometimes left it open. No—it was locked. She wasn’t here. Unless … could something have happened? Things happened to Mazie all the time. Bad guys tried to bury her alive, werewolves tried to rip her throat out … she could be lying in there, bleeding to death.

He found her house key in the usual place, duct-taped to the drainpipe, and let himself into her apartment. He was greeted by Muffin, who went into spasms of joy and demanded a round of belly rubbing and ear scratching before Ben was allowed to walk around and check things out. Obviously, she wasn’t here. Probably she was out with Juju, maybe at some dating event even weirder than Phero-mates.
Musical Chairs Matchup. Heartthrobs and Hayrides. Tea Leaves and True Love
.

Mazie’s laptop was open on her desk. She was doing a couple of online graduate courses this summer, working toward her master’s degree in music, hoping it would help her obtain a job—maybe in a college—where a prison record wouldn’t be an issue. But it wasn’t music theories that popped up on the screen; it was small, pointy-eared creatures wreaking havoc on a mushroom patch. Mazie was a closet Gnome Gnash addict!

He found the flowers in her kitchen wastebasket. Must be the ones he’d sent, which told him exactly what she’d thought of his offering.

He knew he should have bought the dead bolt. The discarded flowers depressed him more than he’d thought possible. He’d put a lot of thought into that arrangement. Well, not a whole lot, now that he considered it—he’d just pointed to a photo in a book. But flowers were supposed to convey a meaning, weren’t they? Maybe the florist had accidentally sent a bouquet that signified:
You have body odor like a camel
. Suddenly coming here tonight, expecting to be greeted with open arms, seemed dumb. In fact, it might be considered kind of stalkerazzi, him letting himself in, prowling through her stuff, using the flimsy excuse that there might be something wrong. He ought to leave, Ben thought, and moved toward the door.

Outside, footsteps on the sidewalk, voices. Mazie’s voice and a man’s voice.

Damn!

She unlocked the door, and now he could hear what they were saying.

“Stop it!” Mazie suddenly yelled, causing every cell in Ben’s body to go on red alert.

The man mumbled something; all Ben could make out was “hook up tonight.”

Her voice, loud and angry. “You thought we were going to
—hook up
?”

Mumble, mumble, “… gotta deal with the reality, babe.”

Then a sharp, surprised-sounding yelp from the man.

Muffin was already dashing toward the front door as Ben strode forward, taking in the situation at a glance: Mazie threatening a stunned-looking guy in dirty dreadlocks with the point of an umbrella. Ben spun Dreadlocks around, wrenched his arm up behind his back at a tendon-twisting angle, and frog-marched him down the sidewalk. “The lady said
stop
,” Ben growled. “Want me to explain what that means?”

Exerting more self-control than he’d thought possible, Ben restrained himself from beating the guy to death on the spot and settled for shoving him down the sidewalk. The guy took off running and Ben turned to inspect Mazie. She looked incredible, her face flushed, eyes flashing, lots of leg showing in what he thought might be a new skirt. He wanted to sweep her up into his arms, but she was still holding an umbrella with a very sharp point and looked like she wouldn’t mind puncturing him with it. “Are you all right?” Ben asked.

“Of course I’m all right,” Mazie snapped. “I was doing fine on my own. How’d you get in here, anyway?”

“Key.” He set the key in her palm. He had another of her keys back in his apartment, although she didn’t know it. “I tried to call you, but your phone—”

“Is kaput. So whatever was so urgent, you had to break into my apartment to tell me? You no longer have key rights to this place.”

“
Key
rights?” What the hell did she mean by key rights, and how had he lost them?

She marched into the kitchen, went to the sink, and filled Muffin’s water bowl. Ben followed, wondering how saving Mazie from sexual assault had somehow turned out to be the wrong thing to do. She whipped around to face him, scowling. “Saturday night, you—you came on to me, seduced me, made me think … I thought you … and then you just—just pulled one of your disappearing acts!”

“I was at Y sports camp—”

“Oh, so that makes it okay? Just drop out of my life whenever you feel like it, and when you drop back in, beat up my dates. You don’t want me, but you can’t stand the thought of
another man having me, is that it? Well, for your information, I don’t need you jumping in, playing the big macho superhero!”

“I’m supposed to just stand by while some troglodyte mauls you—”

“
You’re
the troglodyte, Ben! You want to yank me by the hair into a cave and use me whenever you please, then go off and catch fish or whack a stupid ball around or chase skirts—oh wait—I forgot! Now that you’re the Sexiest Man Alive, women chase you.”

“That is so completely—wrongheaded, crazy, illogical—” Mazie’s attack left him reeling and confused. There was so much he wanted to say to her, but it was as though they belonged to two warring nations and couldn’t speak each other’s language.

“You need to leave. I have to work on my course.” Mazie turned her back to him and flipped open the laptop on her counter, then whirled around and fixed Ben with an accusing stare. “I left this open. You’re always going around closing things that don’t need closing. You snooped in my stuff!”

“If you don’t want people seeing what’s on your screen, you shouldn’t leave it open.”

“Oh, right. Blame the victim.”

Everything Ben had rehearsed saying on the drive back from Illinois, the tenderness he’d been feeling toward Mazie, the idea of a heart-to-heart talk and a new start to their relationship—it all vanished, replaced by anger. She’d stung him and he wanted to sting back. “Typical Mazie Maguire. You don’t close your laptop, you never put lids back on jars, you don’t keep your phone charged—and you sure as hell don’t check the guys you go out with to find out whether they’re psychopathic rapists.”

“What a busy life you must lead, keeping track of other people’s faults.”

“At least I don’t waste my time smashing dwarfs—or is that Beethoven with the red cap and blue beard?”

“They’re not dwarfs, they’re gnomes. I’m gnashing gnomes and I’m damn good at it.”

“No, you’re not. You’re only at level fifteen. My four-year-old nephew is already at twenty-nine.”

“Lucky for him he didn’t get his brains from his uncle.”

This was going nowhere. Ben turned and stalked away. As he reached the door, something whizzed past his head, barely missed his ear, banged against the wall, and dropped to the floor. It was the ergonomic, cordless mouse he’d bought Mazie for her birthday.

Pretending he hadn’t noticed, he walked out, slamming the door.

Level twenty-nine. Hah! It was impossible to get past level fifteen, anyone could tell you that. Still steaming, Mazie went to pick up the mouse, already regretting the impulse that had led her to fling it at Labeck. The mouse’s delicate mechanisms might have been damaged by his hard skull. She picked the mouse up and examined it. It seemed to be okay. Just to be sure, she ought to get in one game of Gnome Gnash.

She played for a while, gnashing gnomes while keeping one eye on
Milwaukee Tonite!
, the program that had started the whole, horrible downward spiral her life had recently taken. If only it were possible to zap real-life problems as easily as zapping gnomes, Mazie thought. Why couldn’t you dial back real life to
beginner
level and start over again? She would scroll back three weeks, back to when her life had been normal, back to the day before that evil woman on Milwaukee’s most popular local show had proclaimed Bonaparte Labeck the Sexiest Man Alive.

There was a knock on the door. Muffin rushed over to investigate, barking. Probably Labeck, Mazie thought, returning to inform her that she also sucked at checkers and tic-tac-toe. Or maybe it was that idiot Chad, trying to weasel his way back in. Snatching a can of furniture spray off her hall table—the chemicals in aerosol sprays burned like Mace; she knew because one of her cell mates had once disarmed a guard with Pledge—she flung open the door and yelled at the top of her lungs, “Go away!”

A girl stood there, wide-eyed. She gave a yip of panic and darted away. Muffin dashed out after her, barking.

Mazie blinked, realization belatedly hitting her. Shayla Connelly!

“Shayla!” Mazie cried. “Wait!”

The girl halted at the foot of the driveway dividing Mazie’s building from Mrs. Schirmer’s house next door, nervously eying Mazie, poised to run again.

“I’m really sorry.” Mazie walked toward Shayla slowly, as though she were a wild animal who might be spooked by any sudden movement. “I thought you were someone else.”

“The guy who just bugged out, boiling mad? Or the rock star who got his ass kicked?”

“You’ve been—”

“I was hiding in those bushes. I saw you come back here with the dreadlocks guy.”

Shayla stood perfectly still, looking terrified, as Muffin circled her, yapping in the tones he adopted with female humans, demanding to be fussed over.

“It’s okay,” Mazie said. “He won’t bite. He likes girls.”

Timidly, Shayla stooped and petted Muffin.

“You shouldn’t be standing out here,” Mazie said. “Come in.”

Hesitantly Shayla limped into Mazie’s flat. Mazie closed and locked the door as Shayla paused at the edge of her living room, a jittery bird about to take flight. “Is anyone else here?” she whispered.

“No. It’s just us.”

Shayla’s eyes were huge in her thin face. “You said—that night in the Hog—that you were willing to help me.”

Mazie nodded. “Of course, I’ll help you, Shayla. I’ll do whatever I can.”

Shayla must have been living rough, Mazie thought. Her eyes were shadowed with fatigue, her hair was tangled, her face was smudged, and her lips were chapped. She had no purse, just a plastic shopping bag slung over her shoulder and a motorcycle helmet. Despite the warm weather, she wore a man’s leather jacket, an oversize flannel shirt, jeans that were too big even for the pants-on-the-ground generation, and what appeared to be size 12 biker boots.

“I think my foot is infected,” Shayla said. “It hurts like crazy.”

“Let’s take a look.”

Shayla kicked off the boots, hoisted her pant leg, and held up her right foot. Peeling Band-Aids were slapped over a nasty gash on the bottom of her foot. The wound was seeping blood and pus, and the skin around the cut was pink and swollen.