Chapter 4

I spent most of my waking hours during the week after the party replaying it in my mind. I didn't spend too long second guessing myself about Billy or the other kids, but I couldn't get past how I'd interacted with the women. Tamara had introduced me to how many women? Four? Five? I couldn't remember the number, much less their names. Angie was the only one that stood out and that conversation hadn't gone well.

Of course I talked to my therapist about it. She got under my skin. Every time I described how a woman had turned away from me at the party, she'd interrupt me. Had the woman really turned away from me, or had I turned away from her? Had they made an effort to have a conversation with me or not? Angie had tried, I realized. She had tried to have a conversation with ugly freakish me and I'd been too crappy a conversationalist to let it happen.

A notion that Tamara challenged the next time I was over for dinner.

"Did you ask her any questions?" she wanted to know as we sat talking in the living room, Billy banging away with the dishes in the other room.

"Well, yes. I asked her about her costume. Oh, and whether she had a kid at the party."

"That's good," Tamara reassured me.

"Then we got cut off by the commotion in the backyard," I said.

"So you had good reason to not finish the conversation."

"Well, I could have talked to her again on the porch."

"True. Why didn't you?"

My gut wrenched. This was feeling way too much like another therapy session. I didn't want to be having a therapy session with Tamara. I wanted to be...

"I dunno," I said, cutting off that train of thought. I started flailing, because I realized I couldn't really answer her question. Tamara's face was expressionless. I must have looked more pathetic than I thought.

"John," she began, "I was talking with her. You could have joined us but you wandered off."

"I know, I know. I could have. It's just..." I hung my head. I almost snorted at the irony. Sometimes I couldn't stop the words from coming out. Now I couldn't get them out at all.

Tamara put her arm around me. Somehow she knew not to ask anything more. She started stroking my upper arm--a gentle caress that reminded me of our time in Nevada.

I let out a deep breath.

"Sometimes it's easier not to try," I finally said. "That way I can't get rejected for my looks." She held me tighter. "I wish you could understand what that's like, to be rejected for your looks."

"What do you think happens in a line-up?" she asked sharply, pulling away from me.

I looked at her in confusion.

"A customer comes into the brothel and asks for a line-up," she continued. "He's probably going to decide in a few minutes whether to party with me or another girl. He hasn't talked to us. He hasn't interacted with us in the parlor. What does he have to go on other than looks?

"There are a lot of line-ups where I don't get picked, John. And if I don't get picked, I don't earn my tuition money."

I met her eyes. They burned in back, like coals freshly stoked.

"The reviews can be worse though," she said. "Sure, I get a lot of good reviews on the Nevada brothels boards, but the bad ones ... one guy wrote that I was pudgy."

My mouth dropped open. The guy must have been looking for Kate Moss to think that Tamara was fat.

"Another guy wrote that I had a bad attitude, when what really happened was that I refused to blow him without a condom.

"And then there's Billy. Do you think I don't feel everything he goes through? Every cut, every insult, every rejection?"

Tamara seemed more angry with the memories. She turned her head away. I put my arm around her. She gently pushed it off. She took a deep breath, which seemed to calm her. Then she met my eyes again.

"I understand rejection for looks, John. What I don't understand is self-pity." With that she stood up.

"I'm going to go check on Billy," she said. Then I was alone in the living room.

What the fuck? I'd reached out to Tamara for support and sympathy and she'd all but slapped me in the face! Hey, I'd tried to talk to those women!

Yeah, right. Hadn't I just admitted that I hadn't really tried?

I ground my fingers into my thigh, and began balling my hands into fists and then noticing it and releasing them. I was still stewing when Billy ran into the room.

"John! John! Let's go play!"

His smile was wide and I didn't want to make it go away, so I let myself be pulled back to his bedroom where a MechWarrior fort was already under construction out of notebooks and other school supplies. At first, I just hid my simmering emotions, but as we played, they seemed to dissipate. How could I stay angry when a ten year old was making shooting noises as he marched robotic men across the floor? I started smiling when the hisses of rockets and resulting kabooms began. We played for a long, long time.

"Time for bed, Billy," Tamara said from the doorway.

I checked my watch. It had gotten later than I'd thought. Billy protested and whined, more for form than anything else. When it became clear that I was indeed leaving, he dutifully began putting his toys away. I said goodnight to him and headed into the hall, Tamara a step behind.

When we got to the door, she stopped me.

"I'm sorry I was harsh, John," she said. "It's just that you're not the only one who gets rejected for your appearance."

I sighed and nodded.

"You're more than your looks, John. You're a better guy than you think." With that, she rose up and kissed me.

On the lips.

It was nothing more than a quick soft peck, like she'd done to my cheek for some time now. I was too surprised to kiss her back.

"Go home, John," she said. "Get some sleep. And next time you're at a party, don't stop trying to have conversations."

With that she opened the door. I mumbled something and headed out. For a few moments, I didn't think of anything at all.

Of course, my mind was racing for most of the following week. Racing in circles.

Which the following Thursday did not sort out. It was starting to get dark just about dinner time, so Billy and I went out and shot his bow until Tamara called us in. Afterwards, while Billy did the dishes, I was too scared to ask about the kiss, so we just had a regular conversation. At least regular for September. Somehow I'd lost the confidence gained in October. Tamara's goodbye was also back to routine—a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

I continued to mull it over for most of the following week. The wise thing to do would be to let it go and just let things happen however they did. I didn't want to do the wise thing.

But I didn't get a chance to be stupid either. When I showed up the following Thursday, Billy did not come bounding down the hall like previous weeks.

"Billy's having trouble with his math homework," Tamara said. "You're an engineer. Can you help him?"

"Sure," I replied, and then headed to his room.

Fractions. What was it about fractions that made them tough? Billy and I struggled through the chapter. My struggle was in simplifying things so he could understand. Billy wasn't dumb, but Down's kids were rarely above average intelligence. I would explain a concept three different times, in slightly different ways, and he still wouldn't get it or be able to do the next problem.

We were still working on it when Tamara called us for dinner. Afterwards she told Billy that she'd do the dishes so we could continue to work on his homework, if that was okay with me. What could I say?

Billy didn't want to do more homework, of course. He picked up a MechWarrior sitting on his desk when we got back instead of his pencil. That gave me an idea.

"Billy! How about if we do fractions using Warriors?"

He looked at me confused.

"We have one MechWarrior here. What if we take him apart? We have pieces, or fractions," I began.

Billy nodded, so I began dissembling the Warrior in my hand. I set the legs and arms in a pile with the torso.

"Now, how many pieces are in this pile?" I asked.

"Five," he answered.

"So if I take one of them, I have one out of five, right?"

He nodded.

"What fraction of a MechWarrior is that?"

"One fifth," Bill answered. Of course, it was an easy fraction. I wrote his answer on the paper. He looked at the page and nodded.

"Now let's see if we can do your homework." I glanced at the first problem in his actual homework and began putting together a pile of the parts. Billy quickly got the right answer.

He was a visual and tactile learner, I realized. We worked through each problem using stacks of MechWarrior pieces and Billy started to quickly catch on. After one pass through the assignment, I made him create the piles himself. It took a little longer for him to figure out what the numerals on the page translated to, but he managed it. He even started to catch on to how to reduce the fractions before creating the piles. We made a third pass through his assignment, with him just telling me what piles to create based on reading the problems. Then I'd ask him what the answer was and we'd write it down. It wasn't too late when we finished the entire assignment. Billy grinned happily and we had fun re-assembling all the Warriors before Tamara insisted it was bedtime. Once again, she walked me to the door.

"John," she said, "next week is Thanksgiving. Would you be willing to join us?"

"Ummm. Sure. What time? I normally have Thanksgiving dinner with my folks around noon."

"We can make it after that. Say four?"

I nodded affirmatively.

"Thanks," she replied. With that, Tamara gave me a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek. I once again headed out into the night.

The following week, Tamara smiled when she opened the door and gave me the traditional hug.

"Thanks for coming, John," she said, stepping back.

"No problem," I reassured her. "Billy in his bedroom?"

"Billy's out back with his grandmother. We'll be eating in a little bit."

Before I could ask a question, a woman walked up behind Tamara, who slid aside. I realized it was Summer, from the brothel. She was dressed casually in a tight t-shirt and jeans but my pulse was already quickening with the memories.

"Hi John!" she called out.

"Hi Summer," I replied. "This is a surprise." She grinned as the three of us headed to the living room.

"I decided to take a break from Nevada and come visit Lynn," Summer said when we'd gotten settled.

I was mildly surprised that she used Tamara's real name.

"You live there?" I asked.

"Oh yeah. I work close to full time. At least for now."

I raised my eyebrows in inquiry but she didn't continue.

"So when I decided I needed a break, Lynn was kind enough to offer to let me stay with her."

"How long are you here?"

"A week. We're going skiing tomorrow."

I nodded my head.

"Mom's going to take Billy for the weekend," Tamara/Lynn chimed in.

"Sounds fun," I replied.

"Lynn's been telling me about everything you've been doing for Billy," Summer interjected. "She told me about the Halloween party and the homework. We want you to come skiing tomorrow as a way of saying thanks."

I felt a little embarrassed. "Oh, that's okay. It wasn't much."

"It was," Summer stated. "And even if it wasn't, we want you along. It'll be more fun." She shot Tamara/Lynn a mischievous grin with that last comment.

I started to feel uncomfortable. "How?" I asked.

"Oh, it just will be." Summer grinned like the proverbial canary filled cat, and I sensed that further questions would get me little.

"Okay... ," I replied.

"Look John," Tamara said, "we've rented a condo for the night. We go up tomorrow early, ski all day, grab some dinner, maybe hit the bar, call it a night, and drive down Saturday. It's a two bedroom condo, so you can have your own room.

"Oh." I thought about it for a minute. It sounded fine except for...

"Why did you rent a two bedroom condo?" I asked.

Tamara sighed. "Summer's friend," she began.

"Ex-friend." Summer interjected.

"Summer's ex-friend," Tamara repeated, glaring at Summer for the interruption, "cancelled on us after we'd made the reservation. So if you want to go, the condo's paid for. All you have to pay for is your lift ticket."

And ski rental, and food, I thought. But there was no point in raising those details, since I knew I was going to accept.

Which was great, because the skiing was good. I didn't have much experience, so I stuck mostly to the bunny slopes with Summer. Tamara did about half her runs with us and half on black runs. We got in a full day—all we'd done when we'd gotten to the condo was throw our bags on the appropriate bed, with Tamara and Summer sharing one bedroom and me getting the other. When it started to get too dark to continue, we did a quick clothes change and headed out in quest of a good restaurant. The one we found had a band playing in the bar next to the dining room. The music was dim but discernable as we ate. Afterwards, Summer wanted to go next door and listen to it for a while. Tamara thought that would be fun and so we ambled into the din.