Chapter 52

In his last phone call Evan said he had tickets all the way through to Bloomington so she wouldn't have to take time away from class to drive up to Chicago. She'd insisted, he'd insisted, she'd insisted, he'd insisted, and then he'd reminded her that he already had the tickets. He'd be there a little after 4 p.m. on Thursday.

She hung up feeling good and bad at the same time. It had been their first argument, and she'd lost. She knew gals who said a girl should never lose an argument with a boy, no matter what; it made guys think they could dominate the relationship. But this had been such a trivial thing, and, as much as she hated to admit it, he'd been right. She finally dismissed it and concentrated on getting ready.

She had too much time on Thursday. She'd already had her hair done for the trial, but she went back to the salon and lucked out. Marie was there, and quickly agreed to her request.

"You look too dowdy." She held up a strand of hair. "There's so much I could do with this."

"Really, Marie, it probably just needs a little of this and a little of that."

"I'll be the judge of what those 'this' and 'that' are." Marie smiled, laughter dancing in her eyes. "After all, it's what I'm good at."

"If you insist."

"I do," she laughed. After all, I'm the trained professional here. A little trim along the sides, a little work with the bangs, and I think it'll flatter your looks."

Reluctantly Devlin agreed. By the time Marie finished--she brought half the staff over to watch what she was doing and why making Devlin squirm at being the center of so much attention--her hair did look a lot better than it had for the trial. Somewhere in the whole process of wash, rinse, cut and style she lost the Plain Jane look she'd worn when facing the jury.

"I think you were right," she said, examining her hair in the mirror. "I look more like I think I should look."

Marie gave her a hug. "I'm glad. Now go have fun! How often does a gal have her sweetie come calling in this day and age?"

Back in her room she changed clothes twice. The hands of the clock seemed to stop; it was only when Sarah asked her if she was going down for early dinner that she finally began to settle herself.

"You act like you've never been on a date before," she said as Devlin kept standing, sitting, pacing, and staring at the phone, trying to decide if she should call the airline to check arrivals for the fifth time that afternoon.

"I have."

"Uh huh. I know you're nervous, but c'mon, Devlin, this is a guy. Girls go out on dates with guys. It happens all of the time."

"This is a very important guy in my life, Sarah." She took another turn around the room, caught sight of herself in the mirror and debated whether to wear a different dress. This one was black with a thin yellow chord for a belt and looked so formal. "I suppose you've never been nervous about meeting somebody you haven't seen in a while."

"When I left for college. Bob couldn't go, of course, and I--"

"He couldn't go? Why not? What happened?"

"His folks don't have the money, and his grades weren't good enough to qualify for a scholarship."

"What did he do? What's he doing now?"

"He got accepted as an apprentice electrician. He has classes to take, but it's better than some of the other things he could be doing. He wants to be a master electrician. Now take a deep breath, sit down, and relax. You're getting me all worn out with your pacing."

Devlin did as Sarah bid, but popped to her feet a minute later when she looked at her shoes. She had her 3" heels on. Would that make her too tall? Should she wear smaller heels? She asked Sarah.

"How tall is he?"

"6'1"."

"And you are... ?"

"Just over 5'6"."

"Heels will add 3", which should be just the right height so you can rest your head on his shoulder when you dance, so I would keep them."

Devlin nodded and resumed pacing.

"For goodness sake," Sarah finally said, "why don't you get yourself off to the airport? His plane doesn't arrive for at least two hours, maybe a little longer. But at least you won't be wearing a hole in the carpet."

"Thanks," Devlin said, grabbing her sweater. She stopped and looked at herself in the mirror again. "Do you think this dress... ?"

"Your dress is fine. You're fine." Sarah waved at the door. "Go!"

Devlin ran out the door. She was halfway to the parking lot when a woman who looked vaguely familiar stepped in front of her.

"Devlin McCabe?"

"Yes," Devlin said. The woman looked like she was 20 or 21 and wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. She was probably a student, and that meant she was probably wanted a bra, or wanted to attend a bra fitting.

"I'm Eileen Mahoney. I just thought I'd tell you that you won't be seeing me around any more."

"Eileen... ? Look, what's this about?"

"Jack Roget hired me to follow you. But that's fallen through, so I'm off the case."

"You were hired to follow me?" She thought of the trial. That was over! It had to be!

"Jack couldn't do it, but his client was insistent. Well, with both him and the client going to jail, that's pretty much a moot point."

"Why did he want you to do it?"

"Because I could go places he couldn't, and because he had a restraining order against him. I didn't see the point, but his client was kind of loopy, but her money was good. Anyway, I thought I'd tell you that that's over with."

The woman started to turn away, but now Devlin stopped her. "I'm curious. I heard what he said in court. What did he want you to find?"

The woman smiled slightly. "You're a difficult person to trail," she said. "You got me completely fooled with those trips out of town. You're not as clever as you think, though. I know you were sleeping with Daniel Mitchell. I saw you two in a hotel room." She shrugged. "It's no skin off my nose what you do. I debated telling Dan Mitchell's wife, but she's pregnant, and I didn't want to upset her."

"She knows."

The woman nodded. "I kind of figured she did. Don't ask me why, it's just a hunch I had. Anyway..."

"Where did you see us?"

The woman shook her head. "See? You just confirmed my statement. You shouldn't do that." She sighed. "And where I saw you... you were in Houston. It didn't take many smarts to figure out where you were, or what room he was in. You should really have closed those curtains."

"Are you... you're not going to do anything with what you know, are you?"

"Nope. There's no reason to. The only one who could possibly be interested is Mrs. Mitchell, and if what you say is right, she wouldn't care.

"Now if you'll excuse me, I really must be going." She turned and walked briskly to the parking lot, where she got in a car that was more Bondo than paint.

"Well," Devlin said to herself. She'd have to tell Danny. And she'd have to learn to be a little more careful. She'd have to tell Denise, too. She dismissed the idea for now. She had something more important to do.

She'd expected the airport to be empty, but apparently some plane had come in and there were people everywhere. She pushed her way through them, and after passing the gate with the plane, the concourse emptied out. There was a bored looking woman at a booth selling cigarettes, candy and magazines, an older man pushing a broom, and a police officer ambling down the concourse, obviously in no particular hurry.

Devlin settled in a seat and watched CNN on one of the overhead televisions. She was still waiting, but at least at the airport she felt like she was doing something.

An hour passed, she finished three crosswords in the book she bought, and read a couple of chapters in the romance novel she'd shoved in her purse. She glanced at the time. Evan's plane should be arriving in a few minutes.

She went to the Ladies Room to make one last check of her hair and clothes, not that she could do anything about her dress at this late date. But her hair was perfect, and her nails glistened in the late afternoon sun. She would have to say something nice to Marie the next time she saw her.

The plane, she thought it was a DC-9, not that it was important, nosed up to the concourse and a jetway was connected to the door. After what seemed like an hour, but was probably only a couple of minutes, people began to emerge through the door. She began shifting from one foot to the other. Her heart was pounding, her palms were all sweaty, and she could feel a faint tremor in her legs.

Finally Evan emerged, a jacket over one shoulder, an overnight bag in his left hand. His lean body was silhouetted by the setting sun. He looked around. She thought her heart about stopped. She knew she was moving forward, but she couldn't see the other people around her, she could only see him directly in front of her.

He saw her, then. His bag and jacket seemed to disappear, and they were suddenly together, touch, kiss, taste, her senses were overwhelmed as they were there for each other.

She finally remembered to breathe, and she slowly lowered the leg that seemed to have come up. Her lips were tingling, and she could feel the heat of his body through their clothes. She took another breath, a heady mixture of his scent, and then slowly edged back, still touching him, not wanting to let him go, as if she needed this touch to prove that he was here.

"I have missed you so much," she whispered air.

"Not half as much as I have missed you," he said, hugging her tightly.

She kissed him again, surrendering herself into his embrace. He surrounded her, he engulfed her. He wasn't a distant voice on the phone, he wasn't a letter she read three times at the mailbox before going back to her room to read it twice more. He was here, now, and she kissed and touched him, reaffirming what every sense was saying. She wanted to sink into his eyes and lose herself forever. But they couldn't, not now, not here. Instead they stood there for a few seconds, drinking each other in.

"I suppose we should get your things and be on our way," she said at last. The crowd of people had diminished to the normal flow.

"Probably," he said. He gave her another kiss, and then, arm in arm they headed down the concourse toward the baggage carousels.

"Are you hungry?" she asked when he finally got his bags. There were two of them, the second of which was clearly filled with athletic equipment. That one he carried. She pulled the handle out and dragged the first one behind her toward the parking lot.

"Some," he said. "They fed us, but..." He shrugged. "It was airline food."

"I had more than my share of it this last summer," she said, laughing. "Let's get you settled, first."

"Fair enough. What did you have in mind?"

"Well," she said as he picked his stuff off the carousel, "you're staying at the Ramada Inn, right?" He nodded. "That's only a few minutes away, and if we don't like what they have in their restaurant there are all sorts of other places around. Most are inexpensive--this is a college town after all--but a lot of them are pretty good."

"Do you know how pretty you look?" he asked as they headed towards the door to the parking log. "You are the loveliest woman I've seen."

"Oh, you must say that to all the girls," she said, secretly flattered. He'd noticed!

"I see a lot of women," he said as they stepped outside. "And you beat all of them, hands down."

She turned him with a touch. "I don't think I've ever seen a man as handsome as you, Evan," she whispered.

He kissed her, then, a long, deep, lingering kiss that left her gasping with weak knees in the cool evening air.

She finally had to force herself to think... one of them had to. They couldn't stand here forever... though she wanted to. They had to get him settled. They had to get dinner.

Staring at the ground, she slipped her arm in his and started slowly, reluctantly, toward her car.

"What are you going to do when I'm in class?" Devlin asked.

"Work out." Evan grimaced slightly. "I've got an off-season regimen I need to get started on, and I'm going to play some Winter Ball in Puerto Rico, so I want to keep my conditioning."

"Oh? Where in Puerto Rico?"

"This town a little south of San Juan. I'm only going to pitch part of the season for them. I'll be back home at the end of December, and report to Spring Training in mid-February."

"I thought you had some job in the Keys."

"I do. Office manager for a fishing charter. When I get home I'll be doing that. They're busiest time of the year is in January, which works out."

"I thought it would be later. You know, during the summer tourist season."

"They're busy then, but in January you get the corporate trips. The kids and families are dropped off somewhere, and the corporate bigwigs go out for a day of fishing, drinking, and deal making. It's sunny and warm, they're away from the hordes on the cruise ships and other snowbirds, and they throw money around like you wouldn't believe. Tom Manley, my boss, makes enough money in January to pay for the rest of the year."

"And you don't enjoy that?" she asked, teasing.

"The only part I don't care for is if some corporate honcho gets it in his head to do something other than fish. Last year one of them heard I was a pitcher, and wanted to 'hit a few' off of me. I had to ask myself: should I blow it past him, or should I do the 'customer-service' thing and let him actually hit it."

"And did you?"

"I lobbed him a few while I warmed up my arm. When he finally realized I was soft-tossing he demanded I throw him some heat. By them my arm was ready--a lot of these people don't realize you can't throw 95 miles per hour with a cold arm--and I gave him my heater."

He grinned. "I even told him it was coming. "Here it is, Old Number 1. Hit it and I'll introduce you to my manager." And then I gave him a two-seamer at the knees." He shook his head. "He swung 6" over it."

"I heard an announcer say something about that," Devlin said. "Two-seamer, four-seamer, cut-fastball, split-finger... what's the difference?"

He laughed softly and dug into his bag for a baseball. "It's all on how you grip the ball. Do you grip it across the seams, along the seams"--he shifted his grip to show her--"or some other combination. You can split your fingers apart, or dig them in, or even snap your wrist when you throw it. These all impart different spins on the ball, and when the ball spins the laces bite the air and make the ball turn."

"So a curve ball really curves?"

"From the perspective of the batter. It also drops sharply, so it's changing trajectory in two planes. A batter gets used to a ball behaving a certain way, and when you can make the ball do something else, that's a plus. Remember, they're hitting the ball with a round bat, so you don't have to miss by more than a couple of inches to turn a base hit into a foul ball, or a miss."

Devlin gripped the baseball, trying the different grips. "So the differences..."

"Generally speaking, a two-seamer drops more than a straight fastball. A four-seamer doesn't drop as much as a straight fastball--a lot of batters say it actually appears to rise, which means they were really expecting it to drop more than it did. Split-fingers drop even more, and cut fastballs actually curve slightly. So when I threw him my two-seamer at the knees, it was basically unhittable. He was right-handed, so I threw it in on him, what would have been the inside of the plate. For a right-handed batter that can be an impossible pitch."

"So why don't you throw that all of the time."

He chuckled. "The difference between a Corporate VP swinging a bat and, say, Pudge Rodriguez, is that the VP will see the ball and take his hack, and that's the end of it; he missed. Pudge will look at what I threw and make an adjustment. Last spring in a B game I threw Pudge my two-seamer just twice. The first time he swung and missed. I came back with it, and he hit it 450 feet into the right field bleachers."

"This Pudge is a major-league ballplayer?"

Evan nodded as he got in the car. "His name's Ivan Rodriguez, and he's a catcher for Texas. He's also one of the best hitters in the game." He chuckled and shook his head. "A few days later I faced a guy who makes Pudge look like a hacker: Edgar Martinez. He needed at-bats, so he was batting third in every inning for both teams. Gar had 10 at-bats in the first five innings of the game and he had six hits off of me. He has no holes in his swing, and..."

His voice trailed off as he looked at her. "Here I am, rambling about baseball. How've you been? How's school been going?"

"I thought you knew? We only talk a couple of times a week."

He just smiled.

"All right, my GPA is up, I'm at a 3.32 right now, but I think it'll go up after this term. My new roommate is relatively sane, at least compared to Connie, who got married to some guy I think she met at an orgy of some kind, and..."

"An orgy?"

"Don't you know?" she teased. "College is a non-stop orgy with wild sex-parties and binge drinking every night. Every coed has a lesbian lover, spreads her legs for every football player with a bulge in his pants, wears designer clothes, and can have sex with the entire basketball team without batting an eye."

He started laughing halfway through her speech. "I didn't realize college was like that. Maybe I should have gone to school instead of accepting that first contract."

"Seriously, Connie hooked up with some group that had sex parties somewhere off campus. She met somebody, she didn't say whether it was at one of the parties or not, and got married over the summer. No surprise, she'd mainly come to college to find a husband."

"Do a lot of women do that?"

"More than will admit it openly, but not as many as people think." She started the car and backed out.

"Did you?"

"No. And you'll note, I didn't meet you at a college function."

"True. What else is going on?"

She saw an opening in the traffic and accelerated into it. She had an impish thought. If he could go on about how to hold and throw a baseball, why couldn't she do the same?

"I had this one gal at a bra fitting, she was more of a challenge than most of the gals I sell to. Most breasts are round, though you get a few that are more pointed than round, especially in girls who are late bloomers. And her right boob was that way, though her left wasn't. What was worse, the center of gravity of her left boob was well away from the rib cage, so she had one that really drooped. So I had to fit her with completely different cups."

"She was lop-sided?"

Devlin laughed. "That's one way to look at it, though she didn't think of it that way. She really had a self-image problem, and to make them come out even I knew I'd have to add padding or something. In this case it was a 'or something'. I found her some gel inserts that added bulk without losing support and made her look rounded on both sides. I did the same for her other breast, and the added bulk meant she needed an underwire, which really made her brighten up." She paused, waiting for the inevitable question, and he asked it.

"All right, I know what underwires are, I've seen 'em in the catalogue, but why were they important in her case?"

"It meant her boobs were big enough that they needed the extra support. Most women think that, but they don't realize that a breast's center of gravity can also dictate whether you need an underwire. You don't with an A cup, of course, but with anything larger you might. The center of gravity on most breasts is right next to the rib cage--you can tell because the breast might be big, but it's spread out more across the chest--and so you don't need an underwire until you get up to a large C cup. But for those gals with a center of gravity that is out farther--you can tell because they have more of a droop--you have to get them an underwire despite their size.

"Now in her case, she knew she was... lop-sided... I'd never use that in her hearing, and so when I evened her out she was delirious. Of course that changed her proportions, but she didn't care that she'd have to go up a size on her sweaters and blouses to get them to fit right. Getting your clothes tailored because of that costs a fortune, but it's better than wearing ill-fitting clothes. Girls my size are always in dread of the blouse that gapes open. And this girl's going to have to buy a whole new wardrobe. But she thought that was a small price to pay."

He waited until they had pulled into the Ramada Inn's parking lot. "So she's happy?"

"Ecstatic is probably the best word for it."

"I think the difference between you talking about the challenges of fitting lingerie, and me talking about baseball," he said as he got out of the car, "is that I'm a guy and I'm interested in women's breasts."

"I should introduce you to Doug. He's a guy, he's not gay, at least I don't think he's gay, though he's not so sure, and he's not that interested in a girl's anatomy."

"If he isn't gay, and he isn't straight, what is he?"

She opened the trunk and pulled out his bags. "Confused. He also likes wearing dresses. He has this one black number that's similar to one I have, and I hate to say he looks better in it than I do, but I think he does."

"I find that hard to believe."

She smiled at the compliment. "Well, he does. The only way you can tell he isn't a she is the way he walks. He's an Associate Professor at the University, by the way, and, no, I don't have him for any of my classes."

"Doesn't walk like a woman?"

"It's in the pelvis and hips." She started toward the lobby, emphasizing the 'model walk' technique she'd learned the first summer she'd been in Chicago. "No guy could ever walk this way."

"I'm sure we could."

"But unconsciously? A girl walks this way normally." That was only a slight exaggeration, as the fashion consultant had pointed out. Guys walked a little more open-legged than gals. Devlin smiled, remembering the class. There had been titters all through the room as the woman had raised her eyebrow and added '... because there's something in the way'.

Evan threw up his hands. "I won't argue."

She kept walking 'that way', carefully placing her feet just inside of each other so she got the most sway from her hips. She smiled slightly. She felt warm, knowing exactly where his eyes were focusing.

After Evan got unpacked he reminded her about dinner. "What's the schedule for the rest of the week?" he asked as they crossed the lobby.

"Well," she said, "tomorrow night Krissi and Steve have invited us over. Steve--I think I've mentioned this--is her boyfriend, and Krissi is making some long-term plans around him, and I think he knows it. He hasn't actually asked her, but they're getting close."