Anybody Out There?
Page 82

“Who’s he?” Mitch asked.
“Upstairs neighbor.”
“First question!” Sparkly Suit said. “Who said, ‘Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver’?”
“Do you know?” I asked Mitch.
“No. Do you?”
“No.”
We sat, looking helplessly at each other, while all around us, groups of four consulted energetically.
“Göring,” I muttered to Mitch. “Hermann Göring.”
“How…how do you know?”
“Heard them say it.” I flicked my eyes at the group next to us.
“Awesome. Write it down.”
“Next question! Who directed Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”
“Do you know?” I asked Mitch.
“No. Do you?”
“No.” Annoyed, I said, “These questions are very hard.”
“The girl on the gate was right,” Mitch said sadly. “You do have a better chance if there’s four of you.”
We sat in silence, the only people in the park not talking. But there was nothing to say. If I didn’t know it and Mitch didn’t know it, what could we discuss? Shamelessly we eavesdropped on the groups around us. “Blake Edwards,” Mitch said quietly. “Who knew?”
A girl from the next team turned around and gave us a sharp look. She’d heard Mitch. She said something to her teammates and they all checked us out, then drew into a tighter huddle, audibly dropping their voices. Mitch and I looked abashed.
“That’s a little unsporting of them,” he said.
“I know. I mean, it’s for charity.”
Being unable to hear the other teams’ answers was a serious handicap, but occasionally we knew the answer.
“What is a patella?”
“A kitchen thing?” Mitch asked. “For scraping out cake mix?”
“You’re thinking of a spatula. A patella is a kneecap,” I said with glee. “When you’ve dislocated one, it’s easy to remember what it’s called.”
“What’s the capital of Bhutan?”
Everyone else was muttering disgruntledly; they didn’t even know where Bhutan was, let alone its capital, but Mitch was thrilled. “Thimphu.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know that?”
“Trish and I went there on our honeymoon.”
Neither of us knew the answer to the following six questions, then Sparkly Suit asked, “Babe Ruth was sold by the owner of the Boston Red Sox to finance a Broadway musical. What was the name of that musical?”
Mitch lifted and dropped his shoulders helplessly. “I’m a Yankees fan.”
“It’s okay,” I whispered, in excitement. “I know. It’s No, No, Nanette.”
“How?”
“Aidan’s a Red Sox fan.”
No. I’d said something wrong there. Aidan was a Red Sox fan. The shock lifted me out of my body. I felt almost as if I was looking down on myself, sitting in the park, like I’d parachuted into the wrong life. What was I doing there? Who was the man I was with?
While the scores were added up, the raffle was held. All the prizes had been donated by local businesses. I won a bag of nails (assorted sizes) and a twenty-foot length of rope donated by Hector’s Hardware. Mitch won a free piercing (body part of his choice) from Tattoos and Screws, the body-art salon on Eleventh and Third.
Then the quiz scores were read out. Team Eighteen (Mitch and me) did quite badly; we were about fifth from bottom, but we didn’t care. It had disposed of most of Sunday afternoon, that was all that really mattered.
“Okay.” Mitch got to his feet, slinging his ever-present kit bag over his shoulder. “Thanks for that. I’ll hit the gym. See you next week.”
“Yes, see you then.” I was glad to say good-bye. I wanted him out of the park before Ornesto appeared.
And not a second too soon. Ornesto came springing over, full of the joys and with good reason: his team had come in fourth and in the raffle he had won free dry cleaning for a year.
“Aw, he’s gone! Hey, Anna, who was that maaaaan you were with? Who was that hunka burnin’ lurve?”
“He’s nobody.”
“Oh, he ain’t nobody, he’s definitely somebody.”
“He’s not. He’s a widower. He’s like Eugene.”
“Oh, baby cakes, he is nothing like Eugene. I saw those shoulders. He works out?”
Reluctantly I shrugged, yes. “Please, Ornesto.” I really didn’t want Rachel or Jacqui or anyone hearing about Mitch; they might think it was some sort of romance, which was so far from the truth. “He lost his wife. We’re just—”
“—comforting each other. I know.” The way he said it sounded so sleazy.
The only comfort I got from Mitch was that he understood how I felt. Fury surged up my throat, almost burning my tongue. I shrieked at Ornesto, but in a kind of whisper because we were in public, “How dare you!”
My face was on fire and my eyes were bulging. He took a big, alarmed step back.
“I love Aidan,” I whisper-shrieked. “I’m devastated without him. I couldn’t even think of being with another man. Ever.”
61
Candy Grrrl’s new range of cleansers was called Clean and Serene and I had an inspired idea for a press release—I’d do it in the form of the 12 steps. But I only knew the first one:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol; that our lives had become unmanageable.
I changed it to:
1. We admitted we were powerless over our oily T-zone; that our skin had become unmanageable.
I was pretty pleased, but to get any further, I needed all 12 steps. I tried Rachel and couldn’t get her, so reluctantly I asked Koo/Aroon at EarthSource. She opened her desk drawer and handed over a little booklet. “They’re right here on the front page!”
“I only need them for a press release,” I said hastily.
“Sure,” she said. But the minute I’d gone, she went over to one of her colleagues and their excited whispers and hopeful glances alarmed me. Shite. That had been a stupid thing to do. Really stupid. I’d opened up that whole can of worms again where they thought I was going to admit I was an alcoholic.
Then Rachel rang back, and when I told her why I’d called, she said, “You’re way out of line to use the 12 steps to publicize makeup.”