The Gentlemen's Hour

16

Petra sits and sips her tea.

Very unlike her, to sit and do nothing, but she’s sort of enjoying it, sitting and musing about Boone.

An odd man, she thinks. Simplistic on the surface, but extraordinarily complicated below. A maelstrom of contradictions beneath a placid-seeming sea. A Tarzan-like surfer boy who reads Russian novels at night. A devoted glutton of junk food without an ounce of body fat who can grill fish to a turn over an open fire. A philistine who, when jollied into it, can talk quite intelligently about art. A disillusioned cynic with barely concealed idealism. A man who will desperately sprint away from anything that resembles emotion, but a deeply sensitive soul who might simply be the kindest and gentlest man you’ve ever met.

And attractive, damn it, she thinks. And frustrating. They’ve been sort of dating for some three months now and he’s attempted nothing more than a quick, virtually chaste brush on the lips.

No, he’s been terribly well behaved, a real gentleman. Just two nights ago she had dragged him to a charity event at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art and he showed up wearing a smart summer khaki suit, with a blue Perry Ellis shirt he certainly couldn’t afford, and had actually had his hair cut. He’d been wonderfully tolerant of all the chitchat, and even wandered around the gallery with her and made some sharp observations about some of the pieces, though none of them was a depiction of breaking waves or a wood-sided station wagon from the 1950s. And, in truth, he’d been absolutely charming to the other guests and the hosts, displaying a surprisingly detailed knowledge of the charity in question, and Petra had quite bristled at a colleague’s ladies’ room remark that her “boy toy cleaned up nicely.”

But he stood at her doorway later that night as if his feet were planted in the concrete, gave her a polite hug and a perfunctory kiss, and that was it.

Do I want more? she asks herself. Certainly in this day and age, and as a modern, liberated woman, if I wanted more I could go after it. I’m perfectly capable of making the first move.

So why don’t you? she asks.

Are you feeling the same ambivalence that he is? Because clearly he’s attracted to you, else why would he ask you out repeatedly, but he seems hesitant to take it to the next level. As are you, to be honest. Why is that? Is it because we know that we’re so different and it would therefore never work? Or is it because we both know in our heart of hearts that he’s not yet over Sunny?

Is that a “yet,” she wonders, or an “ever”?

And do I want him or not?

This attitude about Corey Blasingame certainly argues against it. How an intelligent person could take such a knee-jerk, “law and order,” vengeful, Dirty Harry, unenlightened stance . . .