At First Sight

Chapter 39

I STOOD IN THE KITCHEN WAITING FOR HER TO RETURN from the can. I felt my tool tingling-filling with blood, threatening to rise. On the other hand, it was more than a little off-putting that Paige kept wanting to load up the car and head down the mountain, as if I hadn't gone to a helluva lot of trouble to plan this romantic weekend. If I wasn't so in love with her I might have actually been a little pissed off about the way she was behaving.

To get my mind off my irritation with Paige, I started to rate my presale performance. I gave myself a 7 for account research, an 8 for account prep, and a blistering 9.5 for account management. I was now at the really important moment. The Client Close.

I'd made only one little mistake so far. The rant about JFK had definitely put a bone in her nose. It seemed to really tick her off. It obviously wasn't smart running down Chandler like that, trying to make myself look better by making him look small. Like one of those African birds that stands in a crocodile's mouth picking food from its teeth, I'd been taking a huge chance with that. If I wasn't careful, Paige would lose patience with me and all that would be left of my plan would be blood and feathers.

That aside, I was still trying to feel good. The red wine warmed me, and the old tube steak was threatening to become a full-fledged changeling for the first time in months. As I waited for her to reappear from her overnight camping trip to the can, a few things started to tug at my memory and make me wonder if, instead of being on the verge of victory, this whole thing might actually be going bad instead.

What the fuck was that look she gave me when I mentioned the Darvocet? Sometimes Paige could act damned weird. Now that I was closer to her, spending more time in her orbit, I could see there were things about her personality that I definitely had to work on. Things I needed to change if we were going to have a long-term relationship.

I poured the last of the French Bordeaux into my glass, held it up to the light, and swirled it. I'd taken a class at Wolfgang Puck's in Hollywood on how to evaluate great wines. Actually, if you want to know the truth, all this shit tastes like Ripple to me. I've never been good at sorting out the complex tastes and textures I'm supposed to experience. Some of these wine reviews can be pretty obscure, like saying a wine tastes like wood ash with a trace of pencil lead, for God's sake. Who the hell knows what pencil lead tastes like? There is also a complex protocol that goes with drinking this stuff. The entire cork-sniffing, glass-swirling, lip-smacking extravaganza. You learn the right words and always try to act faintly above it all, pretend to be constantly evaluating, add a skeptical frown, and you've got it.

I buy and drink this stuff mostly because it impresses the hell out of women. The idea that they're consuming something worth thousands of dollars, which overnight their body is going to process into bright yellow piss, really gets them off. It's such a totally unacceptable depreciation of value, they start fantasizing about all kinds of obscene bedroom calisthenics. Overpowering excess makes women want to fuck. Something I discovered in the eighth grade when I gave that fifty-dollar ring I couldn't afford to the thirteen-year-old girl I couldn't get a feel from and got laid.

These ruminations were interrupted as the bathroom door opened and Paige emerged, clutching her purse.

"Everything come out alright?" I grinned, trying not to project the irritation I was beginning to feel toward her. "How's your back?" "It takes a minute for these pills to work," she said.

"I think all that lifting may have thrown my neck out as well," I told her as I proceeded to go through an elaborate neck flex, back and forth, right and left, hoping I could get her back into massage mode again.

"Chick, I need to get home. We need to pack the car and leave now."

"Nonsense," I smiled. "Look, all that stuff I said about JFK Jr. and Chandler, I could see that bothered you, okay? I didn't mean that Chandler was anything like JFK Jr. Maybe you misunderstood me there. All I was saying is, I didn't quite understand him."

"It's okay. Shall we get this stuff out to the car?"

"I'm not gonna risk that road at night:" I said. "It's iced over-dangerous as hell:'

"It wasn't iced over an hour ago:' she countered defiantly.

Okay, let me say right here and now, that female defiance ranks right up there on the irritation scale with female credit-card excess, female menopause, and females who interrupt me when I'm telling a cool story. Maybe I'm overly sensitive because I spent sixteen loathsome years living with Evelyn and Melissa, but I've sort of had it with defiant women.

"You don't know how dangerous icy roads can be:" I told her, struggling to contain my anger.

"I live in North Carolina, Chick. I drive icy roads all winter. Let's get this stuff into the car. I want to leave."

She picked up a box and I had to block her from walking out the door with it.

"Leave it:' I said. "You're not going."

"An order?" Her eyes turned instantly hard. She stepped back, still holding the box, but turned sideways and spread her feet like she was settling into some kind of corny Bruce Lee fighting stance.

After more years of Evelyn's bullshit than I care to remember, you'd think I would have developed a few calluses for this kind of horseshit-an attitude shield. But I obviously hadn't, because right then all I wanted to do was smack her in the mouth.

Here's the deal. I invite a girl up to the mountains. I treat her to a beautiful Christmas card setting. I light a fire, turn on music, make every damn effort to be charming. I even pour three fucking bottles of expensive wine, which, believe me, shouldn't get uncorked unless I do. And what do I get? I get a lot of nutty shit about wanting to go home. She was standing in my kitchen, her mouth pulled down, looking way-the-hell-too-much like Evelyn.

Suddenly, blind, white anger flashed through me. But it passed quickly. I looked at her carefully over the rim of the wineglass, calmed myself down, and smiled.

"Let me lay out a few ground rules, just so we'll both know what's going on."

"Before you do that, Chick, here."

Paige handed me the box she'd been holding, then without warning, turned and sprinted into the living room, heading toward the telephone.

I dropped the box and took off after her, but she was quick, and by the time I got into the main room she already had the handset to her ear and was trying to get a dial tone. There wasn't one. I already knew that. It didn't matter if the phone company had fixed the lines because the first thing I did when we got here, while she sat in the car refusing to get out, was disconnect the phone at the junction box.

"What's going on, Chick? Am I a hostage?"

"Bad choice of words. You're a houseguest who I will not permit to make a dangerous trip down the mountain on icy roads at night. I have your safety to protect."

"The phone is dead."

"Lines are down again because of the storm."

"Then how did you call the lodge? Were you faking that call?"

"I don't take well to being quizzed, Paige. I'm not some country club pussy like Chandler. I'm a man who is used to being in charge-used to controlling his space:'

Of course, the minute I said that, I knew it was wrong but this wasn't turning out the way I envisioned it.

Her teeth were bared, her feet spread. In that moment, she looked like she was getting ready to kick my ass.

I had another rush of anger. I was beginning to hate her guts.