Switch Me On. Jule Mcbride
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Robby and Alice’s glasses, buying a round for which they thanked him. The polished wood of the bar reflected his gesture. Like the glitter ball and jukebox, the bar had either been here forever, or was reclaimed from elsewhere, not that Bruno was going to worry himself over which.
He just wanted to unwind after the long meeting day in which his employer, the federal government, had brought in a motivational speaker who’d kept assuring everybody there was no i in team. Everybody already knew Bruno didn’t do team. He’d mind the monkey suit a lot less, too, if the hygienist-cum-DJ assisted him in the suit removal segment of his evening. Well, morning.
She was doing slutty with a touch of class, Bruno’s favorite thing, and he was miles from D.C. It felt like forever since he’d slept with somebody outside his social network, someone totally new. Strawberry-red hair whipped around the woman’s face like escaped electrical wires, and in back, the wild upswept hairdo was held together with something sharp and pointy, knitting needles or chopsticks or something. The dim light was hiding everybody’s flaws, and he couldn’t see unless she was under the glitter ball that hung above the dance floor like a prehistoric artifact. It reminded him of last night, when he’d been channel surfing in the Marriott. He’d seen a spaceship that looked just like the glitter ball on the History Channel, in one of their programs about aliens. That was the downside of globalism. Living out of hotels. He liked the minibars, though.
And meeting women on the road, which was the biggest perk. This one was a revelation. She’d been the first thing he’d noticed when he’d arrived in Blackwater Inlet a week ago, if only because he was a woman watcher. Immediately, she’d come to exemplify every boring thing Bruno was escaping, the whole reason he’d started buying himself toys this year. The helicopter, Road Rover and getaway cabin. He’d learned the hard way that you only go around once, and it had made him commit to a more hedonistic lifestyle.
He’d ascertained the woman was a dental hygienist who worked on the second floor of the mall, the only architectural structure in town that even had an elevator. It was right down the road from one of two trailers he’d been told to call offices while he was in Podunk-ville. For a week, he’d watched her arrive at the mall like clockwork, driving a gray Honda car that was at least a decade old and still showroom. She always parked in the same spot exactly five minutes after his own arrival on the lot. Every morning, she stopped in the coffee shop, as he had done five minutes before her, and he imagined she was buying a corn muffin, no butter, and lukewarm decaf tea without chai spices.
Day in, day out, she’d worn her strawberry hair blown out like all the ambitious, work-a-day females he knew in D.C., board-straight in that tired Jennifer Aniston haircut. Just the kind of woman who could make a man feel like one more working stiff in a sea of gray flannel suits. Every day, she wore a tweed skirt and neutral-toned sweater-set under a bleach-white lab coat. The same diamond stud earrings. At lunch, she was always with her boss, the dentist, officiously carrying his books or clipboards. He was equally bland.
Bruno had silently named the woman “Mrs. Secretary,” since it was hard to think of her as something so contemporary as a “Ms.” or “assistant” or “admin.” And anyway, she was a hygienist. She’d probably rinse with peroxide if a guy kissed her. Worse, she always flirted with the dentist, at least that’s what Bruno thought she was trying to do. She’d chuckle as if the dentist was some incredible wit in a late-night romance movie. Bruno had watched way too many of those movies in the Marriotts while munching minibar chips. What kind of couple bonded while holding surgical tools and leaning over John Q. Public’s open mouth? But now...
What a 180. She’d been a living reminder he was at work on time. He was having breakfast in the same coffee shop. His car was in the same parking spot, even if it was a Road Rover. Now she was like boring circuitry that had been rewired to do something extraordinary. Maybe the black nail polish was over the top, but he could get past that, especially this late at night. When it came to the sexpot voice, big jangly earrings and boobs all over the place, Bruno was all in. She’d gone from representing everything he was escaping to everything he wanted to try. From where he was standing, her earrings looked really interesting. Of knotted gold and silver, they seemed of Celtic design. Totally different from the diamond studs she wore by day.
He hadn’t been this intrigued since a mysterious near power outage almost took out Chicago, back in 2012. Should he sleep with her now? Plan to hook up later? Women never said no. Even if they didn’t know about his big career and child prodigy awards and all that crap, it usually only took ten minutes to solicit the “yes.” But with someone as duplicitous as her, he could not imagine TMA: The Morning After. That was as interesting as sex. She wouldn’t stick. He knew that. Girls like her weren’t meant to stick. That was the whole point of them. He used to lie and say he wanted more, but since the tragedy of his past year—the loss that Alice Shoemaker, the shrink, had prodded about—he was done with lies. You only lived once.
What was her game? Finishing his drink, he placed the glass on the bar, said his goodbyes to the Shoemakers, and went to find out.
* * *
“Ari, that snowbird’s watching you like a hawk,” Paulie, the owner of Boondocks, yelled over the music.
“He’s on his way over,” Paulie’s wife, Sally, added. “Don’t run this one off. He’s really cute.”
Aribella Madden playfully swatted Sally, then made her way onto the dance floor, bumping into Larry Carson. With the employees from his jewelry shop, Larry was singing “Deck the Halls with Loads of Money.” Ari flashed on seventh grade when selling diamonds had been a twinkle in Larry’s eye and he’d given her a ring from a bubble gum machine as a promise. Her heart warmed, as it always did at fond memories of men she’d dated, or just hung out with, which meant almost every guy in the bar. It was always easier to remember what she’d liked about her exes in hindsight. Larry’s Unwelcome Incident had occurred when he’d married Sally’s sister, Katie. Quickly, the two of them had made three wee ones, but Larry still called when he received inventory he knew Ari would love, like the earrings she was wearing.
Ari had noticed the stranger, of course, but she was sworn off men again, and he’d been in the darkest part of the bar, over by Paulie’s pride and joy, the vintage jukebox. He’d been talking to Robby and Alice, too. Bad sign. Maybe he knew Robby from Raleigh, since Robby had gone to Duke. That might be interesting, since Ari, herself, was moving to Raleigh the week after the Unwelcome Incident to end all Unwelcome Incidents. The Final Incident, which was twenty-one days away. Just this morning she’d signed a lease on an apartment, and tomorrow, she’d start advertising for a tenant to rent her cottage, providing herself with a new income stream. The inlet had awesome coastal properties, but due to the economy, locals often went to work in nearby cities, then the population doubled on holidays when they boomeranged.
If the guy was visiting Robby and Alice, it really was a bad sign, though. Robby was Ari’s STRE—shortest-term romance ever—and the only one whose marriage had not been an Unwelcome Incident. During their few dates the year before he’d found Alice, Robby had tried to psychoanalyze her, so his was one couch Ari was happy to forget.
What did the man approaching her do? Play basketball? He had to be six-four or something, but he wasn’t stooping down to everybody’s level. Exuding raw confidence, he used his hips and shoulders to part the party, not his hands—she always noticed a guy’s hands—and then he stopped in front of her. The music stopped, and her voice sounded a little slurred to her own ears. “Friend of Robby and Alice’s?”
“Just met. Shrinks,” he warned, with a quick shake of his head. “Beware.” He was so tall that he’d had to adapt, evolving an interesting way of bending more with his knees than waist, then he tilted his head sideways and dipped it, so he could peer into people’s eyes. Her eyes. Once he’d arrested her with his vision and convinced himself she was focused solely on him, he lowered another fraction and made the sign of the cross with his fingers.
Her feeling exactly. “On the upside, if you’re a serial killer, or have some truly disgusting fetish, the Siggie Freuds would have figured it out by now and warned me.”
“So much for patient-doctor confidentiality.”