“He said he'd call me,” Paris volunteered, and Meg looked pleased. Particularly when she answered the phone and it was he the next morning. After saying hello pleasantly to Meg, Jim asked to speak to her mother. And Paris took the phone from her quickly. They chatted for a few minutes, and Meg saw her mother jot a note down, nod her head, and say she'd be delighted to have dinner with him.
“You have a date?” Meg asked with a look of astonishment. “Already? When?” She was grinning from ear to ear as Paris looked nonplussed, and insisted it wasn't romantic. “Tell me that in three weeks when you're sleeping with him,” Meg teased. “And don't forget, this time remember to ask if it's exclusive.” Although they both agreed that with Jim Thompson that wasn't likely to be a problem, at least not for the moment. Sally said he hadn't even looked at another woman since his wife died. And Paris believed it. She wasn't sure he was looking at her either. He just needed someone to listen, while he talked about his late wife. “So when are you seeing him?” Meg asked anxiously. She felt like a little mother. She wanted this romance to work. They all did.
“Tuesday, for dinner.”
“At least he's civilized, and won't take you to the kind of places mine take me. I either get to go to bottom-of-the-barrel sushi places where I get food poisoning, vegetarian, or diners so scary I'm afraid to walk into them. The men I go out with never take me anyplace decent.”
“Maybe you need someone a little older,” Paris suggested simply, although Meg had never liked older boys even when she was growing up. They just didn't appeal to her. She always liked them her own age, and once in a while, a year or two younger. But then she had to put up with all the immature games that went with it.
“Call and tell me how it goes with Mr. Thompson,” Meg reminded her when she left, and Paris spent the rest of the evening doing laundry, which wasn't glamorous, but useful. And on Monday she and Bix got in high gear over the Fourth of July picnics they were doing that weekend. By Tuesday night Paris was up to her ears in details, and almost forgot she had a date with Jim Thompson. She ran home from the office at six, after flying out of a meeting with Bix, and telling him she had to go out for dinner.
“Do you have a date?” He looked startled. She hadn't said a word about meeting someone new, and she'd been emphatic lately about not dating. She was still bitching about the blind date from Santa Fe, and used him as ample reason to remain a born-again virgin.
In answer to his question, Paris looked vague and said, “Not really.”
“What does that mean?”
“I'm acting as a psych tech to the father of a friend of Meg's who lost his wife to breast cancer two years ago.”
“That's tough,” Bix said, looking sympathetic. “What's he look like?”
“Proper, uptight, nice looking. Normal.”
“Excellent. How old?”
“About fifty-nine or sixty.”
“He sounds perfect. We'll take him. Go.”
“Don't get yourself excited. All he does is talk about his late wife. He's obsessed with her.”
“You'll change all that. Steven was just like that when I met him. I thought if I heard one more time about how his lover had died in his arms, I would scream. It takes a while, but eventually, it goes. Give him time. Or maybe Prozac. Or maybe Viagra.”
“Never mind that. I'm just having dinner with him. This is grief counseling, not sex therapy, Mr. Mason.”
“Whatever, have fun. G'night!” he called after her as she hurried down the stairs, and half an hour later she had washed and blow-dried her hair, woven it quickly into a braid while it was still damp, and put on charcoal-gray slacks and a matching sweater, and she had just put on shoes when the doorbell rang. She was still breathless when she opened the door and invited Jim in.
“Am I early?” Jim Thompson asked hesitantly. She had that look of what-are-you-doing-here-so-soon?, but she was just harassed and in a hurry, and tried to relax as she smiled at him and he walked in.
“Not at all. I just got home from work a little while ago. It's a crazy week, it always is. If it isn't Fourth of July, it's Valentine's Day, or Thanksgiving, or an anniversary, or a birthday or a wedding or ‘just a little dinner party’ for forty on a Tuesday night. It's fun, but it keeps us on our toes.”
