Something brushed against his leg and he almost dropped the basket. The damn cat, of course, looking at him with solemn, reproachful eyes.
“I get it.” Patrick hefted the basket. “Don’t tell her.”
A bloodcurdling scream came from downstairs. What the fuck. He dropped the basket and ran down the stairs and into the basement.
At first he didn’t recognize her and gave a yell of fear at the faceless stranger who stood screaming in the dim light. She wore a pair of Wellington boots with her jeans tucked into them, a long-sleeved sweater with rubber gloves and something over her face that he recognized, with incredulity, as a fencing mask. In one hand she held a pair of barbecue tongs.
“What the hell?” he shouted, in relief that it was only Jo.
“Get it off my foot!”
“What?”
“It moved!”
“Why are you here in the dark?”
“I don’t like to see their eyes.”
He snapped on the light. “Whose eyes?”
She pointed at her feet. The cat strolled forward and sniffed at her toe.
Patrick squatted to take a better look at the small scrap of fur that lay on her foot. “It’s okay. It’s dead.” He now saw the discarded mousetrap on the floor. “Why not just throw the whole thing out?”
“It’s wasteful.” She said it with a reproachful air. Then she screamed at him. “Don’t use your hand! You get could sick!”
He took the tongs and retrieved the mouse. “What day does the city recycling pick up dead rodents?”
“I throw them in the backyard.”
“Okay.” He unlocked the back door and threw the day’s catch out. “Jo, if it freaks you out so much, I could catch mice for you.”
She removed her fencing mask. “You would?”
“Sure. But why doesn’t the cat catch them?”
“Sometimes he does. I don’t think he’s much of a hunter. That’s real nice of you, Patrick, but you can’t use glue traps and they have their own peanut butter—”
“Consider it a term of my rental. Why do you wear a fencing mask?”
“One time a mouse wasn’t dead and when Hugh found it he let it go and it ran up his leg and bit his knee.”
“Inside his pants?”
“No, he wasn’t wearing … I mean, it was summer. Shorts.” She smiled. “I’m very grateful. Really. I have another trap over there. You’ll need the flashlight. It’s dark in that corner. I just hope they enjoy the peanut butter. It’s not organic, but it’s quite good.”
“Of course.” He found another small corpse with an expression of surprise on its face, or what looked like it. Under her cringing supervision he smeared more peanut butter onto the traps and reset them.
All the while he wondered what she was wearing beneath her jeans and sweater.
“Thank you for the flowers,” I said to Willis.
“I’d hoped you might call me.” He snatched two glasses of wine deftly from a circulating waiter and handed one to me. Around us the party was in full swing, held in the large open space in the middle of the radio station. Once the building had been a small parochial school and this had been the assembly room. I’d lost sight of Patrick, who’d been appropriated by Liz Ferrar.
I shrugged. I’d sent a polite email thank-you to Willis. I wasn’t about to make up any excuses. I took a small sip of the wine—not much, I had to be on air in ten minutes.
“So, lunch,” he said as though I’d made some sort of encouraging response.
“I’m flattered and all that, but you’re not really my type.”
He grinned. “You’re very direct. I like that.”
Oh, crap. I couldn’t win with this guy. So much for honesty. “Oh, I think Bill is going to cut his cake. I’d better—”
“Not for a while yet. So how about it? Lunch tomorrow? I’ll pick you up at twelve?”
Before I could come up with a conventional sort of response about checking my schedule, he grabbed my hand. “Look, I know you think I’m a flake because I’ve cut a few trees down in my time. We have different values. You’re a sort of hippie—”
“No, I’m not. My mother is a hippie. Just because I work in radio—”
“Whatever. I make money. I like money. I like spending money on girls.”
“Jesus, Willis, listen to yourself. I’m not a girl.”
“Woman, then. Women.”
“And I don’t like the idea of being some sort of money pit. What’s in it for you anyway?” I almost hoped he’d say fucking but even he wasn’t that crude.
“Jo.” His thumb caressed the back of my hand and to my astonishment it made me feel … well, probably more the way I should have felt during a night of fucking with Jason, the permanently erect. “I’m interested in you. I know you’re going to say I don’t know you, but I’d like to. We have different values. So what? It keeps things interesting. I have money and I guess you don’t. So let’s pool resources.”
“And what do I bring to this interesting relationship?”
“Willis! So glad you could come!” Kimberly bore down on us, deftly reorganizing her wineglass, plate, purse, napkin and various other odds and ends to kiss Willis’s cheek without pouring zinfandel down his pants. “Jo was just talking about y—”
“No, I wasn’t,” I interjected before Kimberly encouraged him any further.
“We’ll talk soon, okay?” And she was off in a cloud of social fairy dust, leaving me fuming and Willis in firm possession of my hand.
“We’d have fun,” he said.
My instinctive retort was to say I wasn’t into fun but I hesitated. Some fun might be good. I had a serious sort of job with strange hours and a very odd sex life—and I could seduce the pants off Willis and tell Mr. D. about it. I took another look at the clock on the wall.
“Time flies?” he said.
“I have to be in the studio. Watching the clock is a major part of my job. Okay, then.”
“Okay to lunch?” His face split into a huge grin.
“Sure. Pick me up here.” There was no way I’d let him know where I lived.
I made my escape to the studio, where our early evening announcer signed off and I pulled a few CDs, annoyed that I might miss the cake. I went online for the latest weather report and local news and closed the studio door but left the light on. This was one of the occasions when Neil or Bill would give guests the grand tour so they could have the pleasure of staring through the window at me.
I lined up a short piece to begin with and glanced at the phone. It was too early for him to call, but. I wasn’t sure he’d approve. And that raised some uncomfortable questions. Did I need his approval? Was I using Willis the way I’d used Jason? (Except that had been entirely spontaneous … hadn’t it?) And we’d parted on good terms with no expectations and … Willis was just so unlike the men I usually dated, but according to Kimberly I made bad choices in that area. I pulled out my cell phone and texted her