"Well, of all the nerve." Sharon banged the telephone down on the cash register counter. "Well, shit!" she added.
"What was that all about?" the shop assistant, Maggie, said, looking up from the other end of the counter, where she was polishing glass vases with a tea towel.
"That was Roger Bailey."
"Why does that ring a bell?" Maggie said. "Oh, isn't that the guy you've said you've run into a couple of times. A real cute guy."
"Yes, that's him. He just had the nerve to ask me out."
"When?"
"Tonight."
"And . . . the problem with that is . . .?" Maggie left that hanging. Just that morning Sharon had asked her if she knew a guy named Roger Bailey and had proceeded to say he was real cute.
"He had the nerve to tell me he'd just gotten into town and an old friend of mine I'd gone to Atlantic City beach with had told him he should look me up when he got here."
"And I still don't see what the problem with that is."
"He said he didn't remember her name. He was just fishing and taking a chance I'd gone to the beach at Atlantic City. The nerve of him. I know what he wants."
"You're not making any sense, girl," Maggie said. "But I know you're rattled or I guess you have a right to be addled." She gave a little snort of appreciation for her clever turn of the phrase and went back to polishing the glassware. "But I still don't see what your problem is," she spoke to a glass vase, "Just this morning you were practically scheming about how you could meet the guy. You did go to Atlantic City, didn't you?"
"Yeah, and I remember who I saw there. This guy can't remember who told him to look me up."
"Can I go back to noting that you're not making a lick of sense?" Maggie said.
"You wouldn't understand. And I don't have time for this. Tom Stafford is going to cut out my liver if I don't find the supplies we need in the next three days. This is a hell of a time in the year to be brought up short in product."
She wanted to change the subject and she sure as hell didn't want to do any more explaining about Roger Bailey. Yes, this morning she wanted him. But that was before he called. She knew why he'd called her out of the blue like that. And she knew he'd gotten her name and number from Phil—who had probably lied to him, bragged all about a nonevent. Well, if Roger Bailey was that sort of guy, she didn't want to have anything to do with him.
"You're blushing, girl," Maggie called out, breaking into Sharon's private snit. "You're thinking you blew it by not saying you'd go out with that guy, aren't you? And you're thinking of him and what the two of you can do together."
"Am not. And pay attention to what you're doing. If you break that glassware, we'll really be in for it."
"If you don't make those calls and get your crisis settled, we won't be needing this glassware," Maggie retorted.
The words from both were a little testy, but they weren't showing angry faces and were used to bantering about this.
I probably should just tell her, Sharon thought. But I don't need another person laughing at me. Maggie probably would be bringing it back up to needle me about for months.
Her mind went to the first time she'd seen Roger Bailey—the previous Friday when she'd gone down to the Toms River boardwalk for a hot dog at noon. She kept her blush as she remembered the catsup and mustard that had squirted out of the end of that damn thing and how she had marched right off to the public restrooms. She was standing over a sink, having taken her sweater off to scrub at the stain and standing there just in her bra, and only then had realized that she'd walked into the men's room rather than the ladies.
It had been the clearing of a throat in a very deep register off to the side that had made her turn her head and realize that there was a young guy bellying into a line of urinals. He was grinning at her.
He was still grinning at her when she'd fled the men's room, sweater in hand, and he'd followed her to the door, his hand on the zipper of his open fly.
And that's the first time she'd seen Roger Bailey, approaching the men's room, his jaw dropped.
The worst thing is that he was probably the best looking man she'd seen in months—certainly better looking than the guys she'd been dating.
"Miss, I'd like to place an order for Valentine's Day."
The voice of the old man standing in front of her at the counter, brought Sharon out of her painful reverie.
"Um, sure. Just tell me what you'd like."
"This number A18 in the catalogue here, I think. You can have it ready that morning?"
"Um, yes, sure, just fill this form out and that will be $36.87. Cash or credit?"
All the time she was writing the order up she was praying that they could get the supplies in that were necessary to fill this order. And there would be many more orders like this over the next three days. If they failed to fill the orders, there likely would be nobody shopping here or next Valentine's Day, which was the shop's Christmas, Easter, and the whole family's birthdays rolled into one in terms of annual sales.
"Did this Robert guy leave a number so that you can call him back and claim to have had a brain fart when you told him no?"
Maggie was at her elbow. Obviously all the glassware had now been polished up.
"His name was Roger. Isn't it time for your lunch break?" Sharon hissed.
"Any time you say I can go to lunch is time for my lunch break, girl," Maggie said, with a big grin as she turned and headed for the shop door. "See you in thirty. Hope you have the crisis solved by the time I come back—the one about this Ralph guy, I mean." She was laughing was she disappeared in the direction of the boardwalk.
"You don't understand," Sharon called after her, talking to herself more than Maggie, as she knew Maggie was out of hearing distance.
It wasn't just the sweater incident. That wasn't the last time she'd encountered the Roger dreamboat. Just the next night, Saturday night, she'd gone to Phil's house to watch the Knicks and Celtics NBA game and for beer and pizza. She'd had a rough week—and Saturday—trying to line up their supplies for Valentine's Day before the shop owner, Tom, came back and found out the crisis they were in by not having gotten their orders in sooner.
Half way through the game, she gone up the stairs to Phil's room, fallen on his bed, and was out like a light.
When she woke up it was morning, and Phil, tousled hair on all—but probably not any more tousled than hers was—was staked out in his armchair, in his underwear, with a blanket haphazardly half covering him.
He woke as, startled awake, she sat up on the edge of the bed. The movement had been too rapid, though, and she'd had too many beers the night before, so she let out a moan and had to sit there, waiting for the room to come into focus.
"I didn't. You didn't. We didn't . . ." she mumbled at him. It's not that she never had. She just never had with Phil and had no intention of doing it with Phil. He was a nice guy and all—and had a bod that most women gladly would open their legs to—but they weren't anywhere close . . . although he'd made clear he wanted to and had been wining and dining her to build up to it. She had no idea whether she would go with that buildup. And she certainly had no plans last night to . . .
"Didn't lay a hand on you. I like my women to have some memory of what we did. You were half asleep when you came over. You obviously needed the sleep."
"Crisis at work," she muttered. "Sorry. Thanks for the use of the bed, though."
That was all fine and dandy—except when she exited his room, her clothes rumpled and her head looking like a tossed salad and not helped a bit by Phil standing in his doorway in his underwear and casually leaning against the doorframe, there was the jaw-dropped dreamboat she'd almost run into outside the boardwalk men's room. He was walking up the stairs—just in sleeping shorts. And it didn't help that he made Phil look like a toad.
His jaw dropped. It remained dropped, when, as he turned to the side to let Sharon rush by down the stairs, Phil, completely unembarrassed and, of course, providing no satisfactory explanation, introduced the dreamboat with, "Hi, Roger. Sharon, this is Roger Bailey, the new roomy in the house."
If that hadn't been bad enough, before Sharon had reached the front door, he called out, "Nice score last night, wasn't it?"
She had no doubt that Phil wouldn't have bothered to tell Roger that he was talking about the point spread in favor of either the Knicks or the Celtics on TV the previous evening. How the hell would she have known? She left the game half way through.
"But, all shit down the toilet," she muttered. She'd call Phil to beg him to straighten that misunderstanding up, but he'd probably screw that, Roger wouldn't believe him—and she wasn't speaking to Phil anyway. She reached for her vendor list.
Later that evening, as she was preparing for a double date with Phil, she finally got around to checking her voice mail.
"Hi, Sharon. This is me, Kate Staley. Remember the Atlantic City trips? Well, I met a real cute guy here who is moving to Toms River, he said. Said he didn't know anyone there. Thought I'd give you firsties on him. He's really worth the effort. A real sweet guy. So, I gave him your name and telephone number. I hope that's OK?"
"Shit," Sharon said, as she clicked off. She was way past wanting to hear any more voice mails like that for a while. "Shit, shit, shit," as she heard Phil's car horn sound down on the street and reached for her jacket.
* * * *
Sharon didn't think she'd ever been so both angry and frustrated as she sat there, her eyes boring livid holes into the back of Roger Bailey's head.
It hadn't been Phil's car horn that sounded down in the street. It had been Roger Bailey's car horn. Phil had neglected to tell her who they were double dating with. It was with the new roomie in Phil's group house, Roger. And the dyed-blonde bimbo floozy who serviced any of the guys in the group house who wanted it, Cindy Sue Turner, had been dragged along as Roger's date. The word "dragged" fit, because Cindy Sue seemed three sheets to the wind before Sharon had been the last of the four-some to be picked up.
Dinner at a pizzeria, where the two guys talked NFL football and Cindy Sue made eyes at a guy tossing cylinders of pizza dough to please her and Sharon kept pulling at the hem of the too-short minidress she unwisely had decided to wear. And then it was the movies—an action adventure, of course, that had no plot as far as Sharon could see, but had enough bare-chested muscle to give her a little buzz—and, as a result, Phil took more leeway in the placement of his hands in the darkened theater than he'd managed ever before.
