oOo      

 

It was the date from hell.

      Not at first.  At first, it was great.  After work, they played racquet ball.  She won, he won. They dined at the Hyatt.  Over dessert, they laughed about workplace foibles.  All in all, a text book date. 

      After dinner, they took an elevator down to the lobby--except that they never reached the lobby.  Jerry pulled Caroline off at the twenty-seventh floor.

      “Where are we going?” she asked, not liking her suspicions.

      He smiled. “You’ll see.”

      The next thing she knew she was standing in front of room 2748 watching him pull a key-card out of his pocket. 

      “Surprise,” he said.

      That was an understatement. 

      She was pretty cool, under the circumstances.  She said--and did not snarl-- “I’m sorry, but I really didn’t plan on spending the night...in a hotel.”

      “Where’s your spontaneity?  Where’s your sense of romance?”

      “Romance,” she repeated.  “Jerry, I hardly know you.”

      He rubbed his hand up and down her arm.  “What better way for us to get to know each other?”

      He had to be kidding. 

      “You have to be kidding,” she said.

      “Come on, Carrie, I’ve paid for the room.  Relax and enjoy.”

      She hated being called ‘Carrie.’  She must have corrected him a dozen times at dinner.  Now, she didn’t bother. 

      “I’m sorry, Jerry, but I’m not going to bed with you.  Please take me home.”  Good God, it sounded like an apology. 

      When it finally sunk in that she wasn’t overwhelmed by his romantic gesture, his whole personality did a quick-change.  It was like watching Dr. Jekyll become Mr. Hyde, only without the bad special effects. 

      “Don’t tell me you’re one of those women,” he said, “who insists she can’t have sex without love.”

      “OK,” she said, “I won’t,” and walked away.

      He caught up with her in the lobby and offered, without apology, to drive her home.  She accepted, quickly regretting the decision. 

      After a long, moody silence, intensified by an over-friendly fog, he went into a diatribe about women who accept dinner from a man only to ‘stiff him’ at the end of the evening.

      She wanted to throw something.  Something potentially lethal...such as her purse.  Instead she threw a twenty dollar bill to cover her dinner.  After that, they rode in silence. 

      In her driveway, she reached for the door handle; he turned back into Dr. Jekyll.

      “I’m sorry, Caroline.  I don’t know what I was thinking.  You’re...better than what I had planned.”  He looked over at her, his eyes glistening in the light from her front porch.  “Forgive my bad judgment?”

      “Well...” 

      She’d always been a softy.  A doormat, according to her sister.

      He pushed on, looking so contrite, so earnest. “I’ve been a jerk.  How can I make it up to you?  Anything.”

      She was soft, not stupid.  And she’d been here before with other guys.  Same song, different verse. 

      “Look,” she said, “let’s just...forget about dating for a while.  Let’s go back to being friendly professionals.”

      He shook his head.  “That’s a tough one, Carrie.  You have no idea how attractive you are. Look, can’t we start over?  Pretend tonight never happened?  Except for the good parts.  There were good parts, weren’t there, Caroline?”

      Hell.  She was stupid. 

      “Well, I suppose we could...try again.  Start fresh.  Sure.”

      He kissed her, gently--gentleman-like--and, drawing away, he whispered, “Listen, why don’t I come in and we can have a little nightcap in front of your fireplace.”

      “I don’t drink.” 

      He knew that.  He’d made a big deal over it at dinner, which should have been instructive.

      “Maybe that’s part of your problem.  You need to loosen up a little.”

      Her problem.  “Let’s just call it a night, OK?”

      He put both hands on the wheel and made a sound like a teapot preparing to boil.  “How the hell can you look like that and be such a damned iceberg?”

      “What?”

      “Who the hell do you think you are, Caroline Anderson, looking like you do, looking at a guy the way you do, and then not coming through with the promised goods?  You know what that is?  That’s false advertising.  And you, sister, are a hypocrite.  A frigid, friggin’ hypocrite.”

      Stung, she got out of the car and walked stiffly to her front door.  The mist parted to let her through, then curled protectively in her wake. She heard Jerry call her name; she ignored him. 

      He drove off like a maniac.  She hoped he’d get himself arrested.

      Lying awake in bed, watching the fog press its translucent nose against her window, she realized she couldn’t recall a date that hadn’t ended in acute embarrassment and wounded egos on both sides.  In her twenty-four years she must have dated every jerk in the greater Bay Area.  Quaking fury metamorphosed through embarrassment and self-pity, and wallowed toward depression. 

      “Caroline Anderson,” she told herself, “you are a jerk magnet.”

      oOo

      Caroline navigated the hallway, teetering on three inch heels, balancing a cup of coffee atop a stack of documentation, and cursing the need to play dress-up for Monday meetings.  Especially on close, foggy mornings like this one, when her natural desire was to wear a sweater and jeans.

      She caught her heel in the carpet entering the conference room and went flying.  Coffee sloshed, her foot and shoe parted company. 

      She hobbled to the conference table, cursing all designers of women’s pumps. At least, she consoled herself as she grabbed napkins from the sideboard, there was no one here to see her.

      Intent on clean-up, Caroline was astounded by the sudden realization that there was a hand on her ass. 

      A male voice murmured, “Lost your slipper, Cinderella?”

      Seething, she twisted away to scramble after her shoe. “Excuse me.”

      He was smiling.  “Not very friendly today, are we?  What’s the matter, PMS?”

      Caroline slipped the shoe back onto her foot.  “The matter, Jerry, is you.  Didn’t you get the message?  I don’t want to pursue a relationship with you.”

      He leaned toward her, making her back involuntarily into a chair.  “I don’t think you know what you want.  I’ve never met a woman who did.  But I’m willing to play along.”

      “Am I interrupting something?”

      Jerry turned, smile intact, and nodded at Barbara Worthy, head of the Interface Design Team.  “Actually, yes. I was asking Carrie-”

      “Caroline disrespectfully declines.”  Caroline folded herself into the chair, turning her back on Jerry.

      He sulked through the meeting.  Oh, pardon--brooded.  Men didn’t sulk, a would-be boyfriend had told her once, they brooded.

      Barbara cornered Caroline in her office later, her dark face a study in concern.  “What was all that about?”  She parked her ample posterior on the edge of Caroline’s desk and fixed her with an x-ray gaze.

      “You mean Jerry?”

      “Gosh, no.  I meant those coffee stains on your usability reports.  What’s with you two?  There was enough static tension in that room to power the security grid.”

      Caroline made a face.  “We had an unfortunate accident.  Some people foolishly call them dates.”

      “How unfortunate?”

      “Barbara, it was the date from hell.” 

      She described it then, in detail, and was gratified when Barbara gasped, snorted and snarled in all the right places.

      “So now he’s in hot pursuit?” Barbara guessed.

      “Apparently.”

      Barbara studied her long red nails.  “That’s sexual harassment, you know.  You ought to tell Victor.  He doesn’t appreciate that sort of behavior in his team members.”

      “Oh, Barb, I don’t know.  I’m mad as hell, but I don’t want to get him fired.  I just want him to leave me alone.”

      “Has he been threatening?”

      “No, just threatened.” Caroline slumped back in her chair.  “Barbara, I am so damned sick of this.  I don’t think I’ve ever been on a date that wouldn’t classify as a natural disaster.”

      “You do seem to have a rare talent for sucking debris into your path, Hurricane Caroline.”

      Caroline made a wry face.  “My sister calls it ‘creep appeal.’  She’s similarly blessed.  I wish to God it would go away.  I don’t care if I never date again.  I just wish God would turn off my jerk magnet.”

      The lights flickered just then, and with them, Caroline’s computer screen.  She opened her mouth to wail, but the monitor steadied.

      “Ooooh,” said Barbara.  “I think He heard that.  Be careful what you wish for, et cetera.”  She rose from the edge of Caroline’s desk.  “Pardon me, I’m going to go check our UPS.”

      Caroline bent to her work then, reprinting the coffee-stained documentation, poring over usability reports.  She was absorbed until she sensed a presence in her office doorway. 

      She lifted her eyes slowly, every muscle in her body tightening in expectation of Jerry. 

      Cowboy boots.  Alligator cowboy boots.  Not Jerry.  She let her eyes bob to his face.  On their way they passed over shiny jeans and a chambray shirt. 

      Good Lord, she thought, it’s Gary Cooper’s ghost.

      “Howdy,” he said.  “You go down just now?”

      Cooper-esk economy of words too.

      “Uh, no.  I’m fine.”

      He smiled.  “I noticed.”

      When she raised her eyebrows, he actually blushed.

      “Sorry,” he said, and she mentally added ‘ma’am.’  “I’m still trying to get the hang of not saying everything that pops into my head.  Tough sometimes.” 

      He sauntered up to her desk and held out his hand.  “We weren’t formally introduced.  I’m Torrey Pine.”

      She took his hand, mouth dropping open.  “Uh, T-torrey Pine?”

      He took his hand back and tucked the thumb beneath his big, silver belt buckle.  “Even good parents,” he said solemnly, “can be cruel.”

      “You were in the meeting this morning,” she said.  She’d barely noticed him in her distracted state.

      He nodded.  “Yeah.  New man on Victor’s team.  Hardware, my specialty.”

      “I thought I heard Jerry call you—“

      “Billy?”  He grimaced.  “As in ‘the Kid.’ It’s Torrey.  Although, if you wanted to call me Billy, I wouldn’t object.”

      Glib sonofabitch.  She was already thinking of other things she could call him.

      “Anyway,” he went on, “I was just checking to make sure nothing glitched during the spike.  Even a UPS can’t protect you from everything.”

      If it could only protect me from jerks...

      The cowboy looked uncomfortable suddenly, like a door-to-door salesman who’s just noticed your Rotweiler.  He wriggled toward the door.  “Well, I got more territory to cover.  Guess I’ll see you around.”

      “I guess.”

      He tipped an imaginary hat and disappeared into the hall.

      “Head ‘em up and move ‘em out,” murmured Caroline and spent the rest of the day with the theme from Rawhide running through her head.

      oOo

      Jerry was avoiding her.  He didn’t call; he didn’t conspire to sit next to her at staff meetings or bump into her in the hall; in fact, he wouldn’t even pass her in the hall, preferring to do a clumsy about-face or duck out of her way.

      She discovered a thesaurus-full of synonyms for ‘relief,’ then she relaxed and allowed herself the luxury of noticing yet another new addition to Victor’s programming group. 

      Steve Ketridge and Torrey Pine were a study in opposites.  Where the Cowboy was lanky and awkward and tended to look as though he’d just been wakened from Rumpelstiltkinian slumber by a rattlesnake, Steve was lithe and cat-like, with an intelligent, expressive face and a speaking voice that would melt silicon chips. 

      Caroline decided she’d like nothing better than to see that face express some intelligent interest in her. There had been a moment on Wednesday at the coffee pot when their cups and eyes had collided and she’d felt a definite Yow! They’d talked--a lively conversation about user interfaces and hobbies and passions and absolutely everything. Steve had murmured something about dinner. 

      Then...nothing.  When they were assigned a project together, he barely spoke to her.  When they did speak, he wouldn’t meet her eyes.  It was weird.  And it wasn’t just Steve.  Two other men who’d shown some interest in her (jackasses, both of them), seemed suddenly to find her repulsive. 

      Barbara noticed.  “What’s with you and Steve?” she asked one afternoon when he’d bolted from their presence on the pretext of having left his favorite pen in his office.

      Caroline, looking up from a design spec, feigned ignorance.  “What do you mean?”

      “He looked at you like you stomped his gonads. What happened‑‑Date from Hell: the Sequel?”

      “I never touched his gonads.  Honestly, Barbara, I’m mystified.  One day he’s smiling at me over coffee and talking dinner plans, the next he’s desperate not to occupy the same space and exerting his charm on Suzy Cheng.”

      Barbara gave Steve’s wake a thoughtful look.  “Could Jerry be the culprit?”

      “Jerry?”

      Barbara shrugged.  “It’s a venerable method of getting even with them as scorns you.”

      Caroline felt suspicion duck under her breast bone.  “You think he’s telling tales?”

      “Happens.”

      “How am I supposed to find out?  It’s not like I can just ask him.”

      “Is there anybody you can ask?  You and Don Beagles seemed fairly tight there for a while.”

      “Mm--hm.”  Caroline nodded.  “Until I found out he had a fiancé in Anaheim. But I suppose a simple question couldn’t hurt.”

      She caught Don in the gossip den/copier room, but she was reluctant to engage his attention.  Since a brief run-in three months earlier, she’d learned that even business-like notice from her could trigger an onslaught of shameless sexual innuendo.  However, in the interest of getting to the truth... 

      She swallowed her reservations and dove into the room.

      “Don?”

      He looked up, smiling.  His eyes nicked her face and glanced off. 

      “Hello, Caroline.  Been awhile.”

      What was this--a communicable disease?  “I need to ask you something.  I—”

      “Look, I--um--I’m late for a meeting.”

      Caroline glanced at the copier.  It had done eight of fifteen copies. 

      “It won’t take any longer than your print job.”

      He glanced at his watch.  “Jeez!  Five minutes late already.  Can’t wait for this stuff.  Have to come back for it.  Sorry.” 

      He bailed.

      Caroline wandered back to the development room.  Torrey was there--alligator boots and all.  He smiled at her when she came in. 

      “Hey,” he said. 

      Original. 

      “Hey, yourself.”  She sat at one of the PCs and toyed distractedly with the mouse.

      “You OK?” he asked finally.

      “You’re talking to me?”

      “Shouldn’t I be?”

      She pushed the mouse off its pad.  “You tell me, Cowboy.  What’s Jerry been saying about me?”

      “Saying about you?” 

      His uneasy frown told her she was getting somewhere. “Yeah.  You’re the only guy around here who can stand to be alone in a room with me.  What’s he been saying?”

      “Not much.  I mean, a guy doesn’t like to advertise failure.”

      She found the mouse pad fascinating. “He talked about that?” 

      “Well, um...  Somebody asked how the date went and when he turned bright purple, everybody sort of pounced on him. He said...stuff.  You know how it is.”

      “No, Tex, I don’t know how it is. What did he say?”

      He looked truly uncomfortable. “Nothing you’d want to hear.”

      She gave him a look calculated to send the gators in his boots scurrying for the bayou.

      “He said you were frigid.”

      Surprise, surprise. “And that’s got every man in the department spooked?” 

      Torrey shook his head, not looking at her. “Heck, Caro, that’d just get ‘em all hot to take a shot at you...beg pardon.”

      Heck, Caro?  She’d let him get away with it for the time being. 

      “You know something,” she accused him.  “Something I have every right to know.  C’mon, Tex, ‘fess up.  This is important.”

      He grimaced.  “It’s not something I know exactly.  Just intuition.  I think you got ‘em all scared spitless.”

      “Scared?  Why?”

      “Well, aside from the fact that you could probably nail Jerry for sexual harassment...”  He obviously enjoyed that prospect.  “...you see right through ‘em, and they know it.  Gives a guy the creeps when he thinks a woman’s got him pegged.”

      “Why doesn’t it give you the creeps?”

      He shrugged. “You don’t have me pegged. Not that you’ve half tried. Look, Caroline, I know you think I’m a backwoods dufus--and I am. But I like you. I’d like to get to know you...even go out with you.”

      He glanced at the knees of his jeans. “Snowball’s chance in hell of that happening, I know, but I’ll tell you something: I’d never pull a stupid stunt like Jerry did.  For one thing, that’s assuming a lot about a person.  For another, when a woman says ‘no,’ I believe her.”

      Some people filtered into the room just then and he turned back to his machine. Caroline watched him for a moment, then rose to return to her own work. 

      “Oh, by the way,” he said, “I’m not from Texas. I’m from Missouri. There’s a difference.”

      oOo

      Caroline’s “man jinx” was ubiquitous. It struck at the health club, in her drama group--even in the Interface Design classes she gave at SFU, where she could usually count on her male students to vie for the position of ‘teacher’s pet.’

      “I feel like a plague carrier,” she complained to Barbara one morning.

      Barbara snorted delicately and shuffled papers on her desk.  “Listen to you! Not that long ago you were begging God to turn off your charm. You got your wish. Why are you complaining?”

      Caroline got up from the corner of Barbara’s desk to pace.  “Because it’s not just the creeps, Barb. It’s everybody. Every guy I know is avoiding me. Creep or no.”

      Barbara stopped shuffling and stared at her. “Like you’d know the difference? Pardon me, hon, but your ability to tell a jackass from a jewel is not legend.”

      “Well, what about Steve Kitredge? He was a nice guy.”

      “Who passed you over for Suzy Cheng...then dumped her in the middle of their second date for an old flame they bumped into at the theater. Fickle,” she added.

       “Great. So every man I meet from now till my dying day is going to cringe away in terror?”

      Barbara shrugged. “Well, everybody but your Cowboy. Are you going to stand there all day making that ob-nok-shuss noise?”

      Caroline realized her fingernails were reprising “A Chorus Line” on the side of her coffee mug. She jerked herself out of her dazed silence and wandered back to her office.

      OK, so she couldn’t tell a jackass from a jewel. Given.  And she had to admit a certain amount of prejudice; if a man was well-dressed and well-spoken, outgoing and quick-minded, she was evidently blind to his faults. 

      Could she be equally blind to his qualities?

      She wandered into the development room and sat down next to Torrey Pine. 

      “Good morning, Torrey,” she said experimentally, and he, obviously surprised to hear his given name come out of her mouth, blushed and cleared his throat.

      “Good morning.” He looked at her square on. “You look nice.  Teal’s a great color for you.”

      “Thanks. Look, Torrey, a while back you said you’d like to get to know me.” A pathetic line, if there ever was one.

      He nodded.

      “You still feel that way?” Good Lord, what am I doing? 

      “Yeah.”

      She smiled. “Good, because I... Look, I know I’ve been rude and--and...”

      “Prejudiced?” he supplied.

      She started to argue that, then chuckled. “Yeah. And dense.”

      “How about dinner tonight?” he asked. “I know a great Indian restaurant.”

      She blinked, imagining pemmican served in a wigwam. Of course, he meant East Indian. 

      “I love Indian,” she said.

      “Right after work? Early evening. Straight home after. No detours.” He grinned at her.

      She relaxed. “No detours. Well...maybe Ben & Jerry's. Gotta have sherbet after Indian.”

      He snapped his fingers. “Lime.”

      Her favorite flavor. “Absolutely.”

      “You like Copeland? I just got a new CD--Appalachian Spring.” He was still grinning.

      She grinned back, liking how easy this was. She loved Copeland. “Billy the Kid’s my favorite.”

      “Mine too. Rarely admit it, though... Looks like we have more in common than some people might think.”

      He was back into his coding then, eyes glued to the screen, chambray shoulders hunched. 

      Caroline strolled back toward her office, feeling satisfied. And hopeful. 

      If wishes were horses, she thought, they might carry Cowboys. 

      “Hey, Caro,” he said from behind her.

      She turned. The grin was still on his face, which was still buried in the PC monitor. 

      “How do you catch a unique cowboy?”

      “I don’t know. How do you catch a unique cowboy?”

      “You ‘neak up on him.”

      “Argh,” she said.

END

Copyright © 2008 Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff