Chapter 17

Friday, September 14 evening {Bob}

It was very quiet in the car while I steered it through light traffic towards her house. I wanted to tell her how I felt, but every time I opened my mouth I thought I might throw up. I was pretty sure that a woman who has just had her evening ruined wouldn't be much interested in the guy who ruined it confessing his undying love for her.

Still, the farther we went, the more the pressure built up inside me. All I could think of was that I had blown it, and now I'd be lonely forever more. I knew she wasn't really pissed at me. She seemed more disappointed than anything else, but that's poison to a relationship. Not that we had a relationship. Well, we had one, but it wasn't what I wanted it to be. And those kisses had suggested it could be the way I wanted it to be ... except not if she was disappointed in me.

I think I understand people who commit suicide a little better. Things go wrong for them, and it piles up and there just comes a time when you think, "What the fuck. This isn't any fun and it's not going to get any more fun, and at least if I croaked I wouldn't be thinking about all this any more."

Not that I was suicidal. I mean it wasn't that bad. But the final and irrevocable death of the relationship would be kind of like that. It would be over, and I could go back to looking for the owner of the grocery list, as pathetic as I knew that was.

Which was why, when I pulled up in front of her house, I decided to commit romantic suicide.

"Thanks," she said tiredly. She reached for the door handle.

"Wait!" My voice cracked.

She leaned back and looked at me expectantly.

"I need to tell you something."

She sat there, waiting.

I am not an orator. I don't write speeches, and I sure as hell never practiced delivering one. If there's a speech fairy out there somewhere, she's a mean and spiteful bitch. She has this spear and when she jabs you, you just start talking. I admit I didn't have a plan, other than to get it all out, so Chris could go "Ewwwwww" and run screaming from the car, yelling that she never wanted to see me again. But I couldn't even break up rationally. Here is what I said.

"I've been looking for this woman, because I feel in my gut she's my soul mate, except that I didn't know who she was, and then I bumped into you by accident and you're not her, but you helped me with the dog door, and you're so beautiful and I really tried to just be a pretend boyfriend, except that when you kissed me like that I thought I'd lose my mind and after that all I could think of was those kisses, and how it feels when you hug me, and I was going crazy because I pretended to have asthma even though I don't because all it is is that I can't breathe when I hear your voice, and I know it's making me crazy because my penis talks to me about you and I got jealous, which is really goofy because I've never had anybody to be jealous over, and yesterday it hit me that I fell in love with you, which I'm really sorry about because I know I'm not your toad, like you're not my grocery list except that I can't help it and being in love with you hurts because I know nothing can ever come from it and I want you to know I won't bother you any more and you can go on with your life and I won't fuck up any more of your dates or anything like that."

I'd have kept talking except I got light headed and tunnel vision and finally had to drag in three or four breaths just to keep from passing out. I did manage to get out one more apology.

"I'm really sorry," I panted.

I gasped enough that my vision stabilized, and I looked at her. She was just staring at me. She just sat there. My imagination supplied all manner of things she might be thinking, but I assumed she was looking for the perfect way to say "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on," but with a lot more class than that.

She didn't say anything for so long that I started worrying that I'd given her a stroke or something. How was I going to explain to Dave that I made his daughter catatonic by confessing my love for her?

Then she moved and I sighed.

"Be right back," she said. "Don't move."

Friday, September 14 evening [Chris]

101 Ways to Catch a Man and 25 Ways to Keep Him Hooked for Life doesn't cover what to do when a non-boyfriend spills his guts and declares his love for you and in the process sounds like he's breaking up with you; and you don't want to break up with him. At least I was pretty sure they left that part out. I couldn't find the damn book.

And I needed the damn book because I had no idea what to do now. No man had ever poured out his heart to me like that, especially a man I liked so much. It called for some kind of response, but the only thing I could think of right then was something along the lines of what kind of terrible things I was going to do with him if he actually broke up with me.

And that was another thing. It was impossible for me to think of him as my pretend boyfriend any more. He was my boyfriend and I had no idea when that happened. All I knew was that, when I announced him as my boyfriend at Le'Shey ... I meant it!

When I stepped through the door, Lady met me. Her tail wagging, she pranced around me and I could hear her puzzled, "I thought you left with John."

"I did. I said as I switched on the lamp and then switched it off again as I realized I could see from the light I'd left on in the kitchen. "Bob came to the restaurant," I continued as moved down the hall toward my room. "You should have seen him. He came bounding in like a knight in shining armor to rescue me from the kidnappers."

She yelped.

"Not real kidnappers," I assured her, as I looked through the drawers of my night stand. "Just Ed and some of the guys from AA. They showed up to snatch me from the clutches of the evil alcohol."

She looked at me the way she does when she's truly concerned about the status of my sanity.

"No, I'm not crazy -- no more than I normally am anyways. I'll have to tell you about it later. Bob is waiting for me out in the car. But I need to find my book first. Have you seen it?"

She woofed and looked totally innocent.

"Lady!"

She stuck out her tongue and ran from the room.

I started to go after her, but the phone rang and I saw it was Grandma's number and I knew better than not to answer.

"What in thunder is going on?" she demanded before I could even greet her.

"I'm trying to find my copy of 101 Ways to Catch a Man and 25 Ways to Keep Him Hooked for Life, " I told her, moving out into the hall toward the guest bedroom to start searching in the places Lady likes to hide things. "Lady hid it and won't tell me where it is."

"Good for her!"

"Grandma!"

"What do you need that fool book for anyways? You have Bob."

"It's complicated."

"What's complicated about it?" she demanded. "When you have a good man, you treat him like he's a king, even if he's really only a peasant. Now are you going to tell me what the heck happened or not?"

"Happened?"

"At Le'Shey. I just got off the phone with Margarete Downing who told me she saw you get arrested."

So, while I went through every room in the house looking for a book that so far had only gotten me nothing but lots of dateless nights, I told her about the disaster. I couldn't help but giggle as her laughter filled my ear.

"Are you still looking for that book?" she finally asked.

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Sweetie," she said, "don't make the same mistake I did when I let Dabney get away. Things worked out for me, but it was only by the grace of God. The only answer you need is inside your heart."

"You think so, Grandma?" I asked wistfully.

"I know so, baby," she said softly.

Friday, September 14 evening {Bob}

When she got out and hurried inside her house I had no idea what to do. Lights went on in several rooms. Some stayed on and some went off. I didn't know what was happening. Then my fertile brain suggested that she might have decided to deliver her "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on" with a ten gauge shotgun, and was just having trouble finding it.

But I stayed there. I deserved it, after all. Then it occurred to me that she'd go to prison for killing me, even though I deserved it, and I imagined her being led into cell block H, and the catcalls of all the other prisoners, calling her "Baby" and "Sweet thing" and "Luscious" and telling her all the horrible things they were going to do to her. And, in my vision, she threw her guards off of her and got their guns and went on a rampage, cursing my name and killing people the state probably should have killed years ago, which led to a vision of riots as people outside the prison demonstrated that she was a saint, even if she was a murderess, and that she should be let go. And the next thing my mind was filled with bombs bursting in air and the rockets' red glare. And since I didn't want her to have to go through all that, I started thinking of leaving. I realized the car was still running and put my foot on the brake to put it in gear, when the door opened and she came out.

She'd changed into a blouse and jeans. My mind kind of leaned to one side, off balance and about to fall over, maybe, wondering what that meant, and then I thought, "Stupid, who wants to get blood all over a nice dress like she was wearing?"

Except that she wasn't carrying a shotgun. She was carrying a sports bag. She stopped to wave at the house, and I heard a "woof" in response. Then she came toward the car.

It occurred to me that any woman who would take time to wave good-bye to her dog, couldn't possibly kill anyone -- including her non-boyfriend who destroyed her evening out with her dream prince. Then my heart hammered in my chest as I remembered they don't let you take your dog to jail when you murder somebody.

While I was remembering assassins transported guns inside bags much like the one Chris was carrying, she opened the back door and tossed it onto the seat.

I was imagining a deadly gas seeping from the confines of the bag, when Chris got back in the front and said, "Take us to your house, Bob."

For two blocks I didn't know what to think. Obviously she wasn't going to kill me. Maybe she was so depressed she didn't want to be alone. I knew how that felt.