Talk to the Paw Read online

  David didn’t answer, just took a swallow of the sour IPA Brian, owner of the Blue Palm, had recommended. David was usually a Corona guy, but you didn’t order Corona at the Blue Palm.

  “You don’t have to answer,” Adam continued. “I know you did. I could see it. I could see the exact second it happened. You walked over to the bar, got a spot next to her and her friend, made some humorous and probably self-deprecating comment. She smiled. It looked good. The friend left for the bathroom, probably to give you two some privacy. She put her hand on your arm. She put her hand on your arm. And I’m thinking, this was so much easier than he expected it to be. Then the arm touch turned into an arm pat. A sympathetic arm pat. And I knew, I knew, you’d brought up the dead wife.”

  David felt his shoulders stiffen, but he forced himself to smile and lift his glass to his friend. “You nailed it.”

  “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that.” Adam popped a pretzel ball into his mouth. “But you can’t bring up Clarissa in the first five minutes you meet someone,” he said while he chewed. “Not if you want something to happen.”

  “I don’t even know if I want anything to happen. I told you that.” His voice had come out with more of an edge than he’d intended, but he’d told Adam—repeatedly—that he wasn’t sure he really wanted to “get back out there.” Even though it had been three years.

  “Well, I’m your friend. I’ve known you since before you had pubes, so at least five years. And I say that even if you’re not sure you want anything to happen, you really do want it to happen.”

  Adam tried to take another pretzel ball, and David knocked his hand away. “Mine,” David said.

  His friend went in from another angle, grabbed the pretzel ball, and kept on talking. “Because if you don’t do it now, it’s just going to get weirder and harder, and then you’re not going to be able to make it happen even if you’re a hundred percent positive you want it to, and you’ll end up a sad, lonely old man.”

  “I’ll end up a sad, lonely old man? You sound like you’re writing dialogue for your next episode,” David told him.

  “I’m serious,” Adam said. “It’s been long enough. Lucy thinks you should go on counterpart.com.”

  “This is what you and Lucy talk about when the kids are finally asleep? No wonder you never get sex,” David answered.

  “Online dating makes sense. You can take it slow. Get to know each other before you meet. And you can think about what kind of impression you want to make. I’m not telling you you can never mention Clarissa. Just not in the first five. You want more of these?” Adam pointed to the empty appetizer plate.

  “More?” David protested. “Don’t you mean any?

  “We’ll get more.” Adam signaled to their waitress, pointed to the plate, and gave her a pleading look, complete with hands clasped to his chest. She laughed and nodded. “We’ll also get more drinks. And before we leave here, we’re getting you up on Counterpart. I’m a writer. I’m sure I can find a way to make even you sound appealing.” He studied David. “People are always saying you look like Ben Affleck, but that’s not the vibe we want, what with the cheating and the gambling. And, actually, since you’re supposedly writing this, it would probably sound egotistical to describe yourself like a celebrity anyway. So, we’ll just go with the basics: thirty-three, brown hair, hazel eyes, six-foot-one, what, about one-eighty?”

  David nodded. His friend was on a roll. There was no stopping him now.

  “We have to put in that you’re a baker. Women will love that. They get you and your hot fudge sundae cupcakes. Maybe your profile pic should have you kneading dough or something. It would be like that scene in Ghost, but dough instead of clay,” Adam went on.

  “I’m not asking why you’ve seen Ghost.” Actually, David had seen it himself. Clarissa had watched it for the first time when she was about twelve and it had made an indelible impression. Whenever it came on TV, it was like she’d become hypnotized and had to watch to the end.

  The waitress appeared with another plate of appetizers and took their new beer order. “Okay, what else? What else?” Adam muttered. “Get out your cell and set up the account while I think.”

  David got out his phone, because Adam was Adam and he was relentless. But he just looked at the site without signing up.

  “We’ll put in that you have a dog. Shows you can at least keep a living thing alive.” Adam was scribbling on a napkin now.

  “How desperate are we thinking these women are?” David asked.

  Adam ignored him. “We’ll leave out your silent-movie obsession for now, because that will limit your dating pool. You like long walks on the beach, right?” Adam asked.

  David tried to remember the last time he’d gone to the beach. Not since Clarissa. Less than an hour away, a lot less if the traffic was good, and he’d been acting like he lived halfway across the state. “You can’t say I like long walks on the beach. That’s the biggest cliché ever. I wouldn’t want a woman who would want a man who said he liked long walks on the beach.”

  Adam grinned. “Just wanted to make sure you were paying attention. You’re getting into this. Admit it.”

  Was he? Maybe he was. A little. Maybe Adam was right. Maybe even if he didn’t feel like meeting anyone, he needed to try. Try more than that lame attempt he’d made with the woman at the bar, which had been all Adam’s idea. “Maybe say I volunteer with Habitat for Humanity,” he suggested.

  “I like. Makes you seem like a guy with a heart, and also like a guy who might be able to fix things around the house.” Adam scribbled away. “We should also say something about what kind of woman you want, what you’re looking for.”

  What he was looking for. Someone who was always up for trying something new. Someone who believed there was always something great out there to discover. Someone who—

  He realized what he was looking for was Clarissa.

  It felt like one of the salty pretzel balls had formed in David’s throat. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He struggled to fight down the grief that had had shocked him with its strength. Suddenly it felt like Clarissa’s death had taken place yesterday.

  “Look, I know you’re right. It makes sense for me to try to meet someone new. But I’m not ready,” he told Adam. David thought he’d managed to keep his tone casual, but Adam must have seen something of what David was feeling on his face. His friend crumpled up the napkin and jammed it in his pocket.

  “I’m not saying forever.” David shoved his hands through his hair. “Just not now. I don’t know, maybe next year.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Okay, Day Two of the Year of Me, Jamie thought. She wasn’t counting the day she moved in. That wasn’t a whole day, so how could it count? Besides if she counted it and this was Day Three, then she should have already come up with some kind of plan. But if it was Day Two, it was okay to still be working on one.

  She grabbed her bag. It looked like something an old-timey grandma would carry, but in a good way, with flowers embroidered all over it and a wicker handle. It was nice and roomy, too, big enough for the notebook, where Jamie was writing—planning to write—her plan. She had nothing against her laptop, but for lists and plans, she was a pen-and-paper gal.

  “I’m heading out, Mac. Don’t tell Marie, but I’m going to Coffee Bean.” She ticked the tabby under his chin. “I left you surprises.” Jamie usually hid a couple treats for Mac when she went out so he’d have something to hunt.

  She managed to slither out the door without Mac making a break for it. Then she managed to make it around the corner and out of sight without Marie appearing and asking where she was going. Good start, she thought. She decided to walk through the complex and out the other side. She was eager to get a look at the other houses.

  The first one along the walkway looked like the house of a Disney witch, with a high-peaked roof that made the cottage look like it was wearing a witch’s hat itself. The windows echoed the shape, and the doorknocker was a blac
k iron spider with large eyes of faceted red glass. As Jamie studied the place, a woman came out and hooked a large candy cane over one of the legs of the spider doorknocker. She wore a short green dress that could almost have passed as an elf costume. Her black hair looked elfish, too. It was cut short, with bangs that almost touched her eyebrows. When she spotted Jamie, she waved and called, “I love Christmas, don’t you?”

  “Um, yes, I do,” Jamie answered, though it was kind of a random question for September.

  “I’m just getting out my decorations.” The woman hooked another large candy cane on the small potted lemon tree on the porch. Jamie tried to guess her age. It was hard to tell. “I’ve also started baking,” the woman added. “Want to come in and have a gingerbread man?”

  Jamie tried to remember if she’d fallen into a rabbit hole or been taken up by a tornado recently. She felt like she’d entered another world. “Don’t be scared,” the woman said, with a smile, clearly sensing Jamie’s hesitation. “I know it’s September. I just think Christmas is too wonderful to be contained to a month or two. Oh, and I’m Ruby Shaffer. I forgot to say that. Gingerbread? It’s good.”

  “Sure,” Jamie joined Ruby on the porch and introduced herself. “I just moved in. My place is right around the corner.”

  “The one next to Al and Marie,” Ruby said, and Jamie nodded. Now that Jamie was closer, she could see threads of gray in Ruby’s black hair and decided she was probably fifty-something. “Aren’t they a hoot? I love them,” Ruby continued. “Marie tries to pretend she’s a tough old bird, but she takes care of everyone in her orbit.” She opened the door and ushered Jamie inside. She was greeted by an explosion of red and green, silver and gold.

  “Like I said, I’ve started getting out the Christmas decorations,” Ruby said as she led the way down a narrow path between piles of lights, ornaments, wreaths, and few dozen stuffed animals in holiday attire.

  “Started?” Jamie murmured.

  “I’m not a hoarder or anything like that. I keep them in a storage unit from January fifteenth through September fifteenth,” Ruby told her. “Have a seat.” She gestured to one of the chairs at the kitchen table. The only sign of Christmas in the room was the plate of gingerbread men clad in red and green icing. Ruby took the platter off the counter and set it down in front of Jamie.

  “I always kind of hate to eat gingerbread men,” Jamie admitted. “It makes me feel like a cannibal.”

  “Eat the head first, then it won’t be staring at you,” Ruby advised, then picked up a cookie and decapitated it with one bite. Jamie laughed and bit off the head of her own cookie. She was starting to like this strange woman. It wasn’t as if Jamie didn’t have a streak of strange herself, she just kept it slightly better hidden, especially when she’d been at the front of a classroom.

  “Are you ready for the question?” Ruby asked. “I have this question I ask all new people I meet. It’s a shortcut for getting to know them.”

  “O-kay,” Jamie said. Because, really, what else could she say?

  “What would be the name of the movie of your life?”

  “It’s hard to say, since I don’t know the ending yet,” Jamie answered. “I don’t know if my movie is inspirational or terrifying or funny.”

  “Good point,” Ruby said. “I’ve actually never gotten that answer before.”

  “My right-now movie title would be The Year of Me,” Jamie blurted out. There was something about Ruby. She made Jamie feel like she could say pretty much anything with no judgments.

  “How come?” Ruby bit one of the feet off her gingerbread men.

  “I’ve just had this stretch of time, a long stretch, when my decisions were made based on who I was with. Guys, mostly. Then my mom was sick, and I wanted to make decisions based on her, but now . . .” Jamie pulled in a shaky breath.

  “Now The Year of Me,” Ruby filled in for her. “Nice. My movie would be called My Amazing Untrue Adventures. Because I work as a set dresser creating fake worlds. And my imagination is my best friend. I can always find a way to amuse myself. I have lots of mental adventures, some real ones, too.”

  “So, would you say your job is your passion?” Jamie asked.

  “One of them, absolutely,” Ruby said without hesitation. “I love the challenge of, say, deciding what a certain character would have in the top drawer of their nightstand. And I love being part of a team, well, mostly. When we’re all working together, the director, actors, costumer, everybody, to create something, it’s amazing.”

  That’s what I want, Jamie thought. I want to talk about my job like that.

  “What about you? How do you make your shekels?” Ruby ate the other foot of her gingerbread man. “Is there a word for taking off a foot? Dedepitation?” She shook her head. “Never mind. I want to hear about you.”

  “I was a history teacher. High school. Loved the history. Loved some of the kids. Hated the discipline and having to teach pretty much only what the kids needed to pass a standardized test. Also, the parents? Most of them were impossible to deal with. Give a kid an A and a parent will be in your office demanding to know why it wasn’t an A-plus. And give a kid a C? Forget about it. Parents have gone insane,” Jamie answered. “Uh, do you have kids?” she belatedly added.

  “Nope. Forgot to ask my now-ex-husband if he wanted them before we got married. I just assumed he did. Stupid. By the time I found out he didn’t and we untangled ourselves, it was too late for me. Not him. He now has a toddler and a six-year-old. Men have enough advantages. Do they have to have an unlimited supply of fresh sperm, too?” Ruby had managed to say all that in one breath, and now she sucked in a big one.

  She plays fair, Jamie thought. She doesn’t just ask, she tells, too.

  “So, if you’re not a history teacher, what are you doing?” Ruby asked.

  “My Year of Me is financed by an inheritance,” Jamie said. “I’m using it to figure out what I should be doing.” She pulled the notebook out of her bag. “I was on my way out to have a brainstorming session.”

  Ruby stood up. “Then, go! I don’t want to get in the way of you and inspiration. We’ll talk more, unless you’ve decided I’m the Storybook Court crazy lady.”

  “I don’t. I’d like that,” Jamie answered, shoving the notebook back inside her bag.

  “Fabulous purse,” Ruby commented.

  Yeah, Jamie was definitely liking her strange new neighbor. She promised herself she’d explore her new little neighborhood more thoroughly later, but now she wanted to get to work. She briskly walked through the complex, then made her way to Sunset. She paused to take a picture of the Gower Gulch strip mall.

  It wasn’t much to look at. Other than an old-style medicine wagon at one end of the parking lot, it could be a strip mall pretty much anywhere, on the shabby side with a Denny’s and a Rite-Aid as the highlights. But she’d been reading up on the local history, and she’d found out that back in the day, cowboys looking for work in the motion pictures would gather over there. Just because she didn’t want to teach history, didn’t mean she didn’t still love history, and her new city had some great stories. She’d actually taken a real tour yesterday. She’d decided she needed one day of R&R before she settled down to figuring out the rest of her life.

  She walked a few more blocks, then stopped in front of a palm tree with purple morning glories twining around the trunk. She had to get a pic. She hardly ever did this. Some of her friends took pictures of every piece of food they ate, and of course, a bazillion baby pictures, but Jamie usually didn’t bother. Maybe it was because back home she saw the same things every day. Here, everything was new.

  Just as she photographed the palm, she noticed something moving up there where the fronds were clack-clacking together. A rat. Ick.

  But not a bad picture. Beautiful flowers, glam palm, gleaming-eyed rat. Nice contrast. She took a couple, checked to make sure she had a keeper, then headed into the Coffee Bean. She ordered herself a large blended Black Forest, because figurin
g out the rest of her life required sugar—more than just a gingerbread man’s worth—and lots of caffeine. She grabbed a table, took out her notebook and opened it to a fresh page, took out two purple Varsity fountain pens, her faves, then . . . sat there.

  Sugar and caffeine, she reminded herself. She took a couple big swallows from her Black Forest. Too big and too fast. She now had—ow, ow, ow, ow—brain freeze. She rubbed her temples, waiting for it to pass. When it did, she returned her attention to her notebook, to that blank page in her notebook.

  She wrote the words “Year of Me” at the top of the page, then scribbled over them. They sounded good in her head, and even as a move title, but they looked silly written down. She thought for a second, then wrote “Things I Like.” That’s how you were supposed to figure out your passion. Passion equaled what you liked, hopefully something you could make money at.

  She underlined the words. Then she sat some more. Stared some more. Then she started writing things down as fast as she could:

  Playing with Mac with the laser.

  Watching old movies.

  Things made out of other things.

  Sugar and caffeine.

  Smell of rain on hot pavement.

  The way sheets feel against my legs right after I’ve shaved them.

  Garage sales.

  Old postcards with messages on them.

  Old dolls—of varieties both creepy and not creepy.

  History—but not teaching it.

  Biographies.

  Wonder Woman.

  Wonder Woman? Where did that come from? Jamie guessed she liked Wonder Woman. She certainly had nothing against Wonder Woman. But she didn’t expect Wonder Woman to show up that high on her List of Likes.

  Maybe because on her tour yesterday she’d seen someone dressed up as Wonder Woman in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater? She knew it wasn’t called Grauman’s anymore, but she couldn’t help thinking of it as Grauman’s. Footprints of celebs equaled Grauman’s.