There was a long beep, and then she heard him singing: “Sheh-heh-heh-eh-eh-eh-ree-ee, bay-ay-bee, Sheri, baby, Sheh-heh-ree, won’t you come out tonight?”
She snatched up the receiver. “I don’t care if he is your uncle,” she said tightly. “I don’t want you calling me, I don’t want you talking to my friends, I don’t want you following me around. I told you, I don’t date where I work, and I damn well don’t date creeps like you. So just leave me alone, okay? Just leave — me — alone!”
She paused, breathing deeply, enraged. At the other end of the line, she heard a faint click, and then a dial tone.
“How about that booth over there by the window?” He touched her elbow and tried to turn her, but she jerked her arm free and walked ahead of him to the bar. There were four vacant stools in a row at the far end, but she chose a single between a truck driver drinking Bud from a longneck and two secretaries gossiping over strawberry daquiris.
Darrin stood too close behind her, unbuttoning his London Fog and loosening his tie. When the bartender came over, he ordered a Manhattan. She had never heard anyone order a Manhattan before. She wasn’t sure she knew what it was. “Scotch,” she said. “Single malt. In a glass.”
The barman raised an eyebrow. “That was good.” He nodded. “Can you do the thing with your upper lip?”
The truck driver set down his empty bottle, stifled a belch, and went away, and Darrin settled onto his stool. “What thing is that?” he asked.
She exchanged glances with the bartender. “Nobody watches the black-and-white ones anymore,” he mourned, and set glasses in front of them.
“Black-and-white?” Darrin said. “What’s that all—?”
“Never mind. Just drink your drink.” She looked at her watch impatiently. She had to be crazy, coming out with him like this. “One drink, right? And then you’ll leave me alone?”
His chocolate-brown eyes glittered. “Promise,” he said, his hand on his heart. “I mean, if you have a good time, if you decide you want to go out with me again, well, great — but all I wanted from the beginning was one shot.”
“One shot,” she said, raising her glass and draining it. The smooth burn almost melted the knot in her stomach. Not quite, though.
“Thank you for the drink, Darrin,” she said. “It’s been real. Good night.”
There were roses in a cut-glass vase on her desk when she got to work in the morning, ten of them, nicely arranged with ferns and a spray of baby’s breath. Her name was spelled correctly on the small envelope tucked in among the flowers.
They don’t have to be from him, she told herself. But when she saw the SWAK on the back of the envelope, she pitched the whole shebang in the trash — roses, vase, unopened envelope and all. She knew what it would say on the card.
At lunch on Tuesday, Lynn told her it was all over the building she’d slept with him. She debated confronting him again, but what was the use? The man was out of his mind. Not only couldn’t he take a hint, he couldn’t read a billboard. Lynn suggested the police, but Sheri’d read that the state’s new stalker law was a joke.
When she got home that evening, there were ten white envelopes taped to her front door, all of them sealed with kisses. She was so outraged that she opened them. Every single one of them held a cream notecard, and each notecard said, “Won’t you come out tonight?” in a different color ink.
Something awoke her after midnight. She sat up in bed, her head throbbing. She’d finished off almost half a bottle of vodka that evening, watching Darrin’s notecards burn in her fireplace.
There it was again. There was someone at her door.
She grabbed a thick terrycloth robe and shrugged it on, stole down the hall to the foyer, put an eye to the peephole.
Nothing.
She left the chain in place and opened the door a crack. On the porch was a cut-glass vase holding ten red roses. She couldn’t see a card. She released the chain and swung the door wide.
There were ten white envelopes taped to the door.
She bought the pistol the next day at lunch.
There was nothing in the Yellow Pages under “Firearms,” but under “Guns & Gunsmiths” she found four columns of listings and a half-dozen display ads. Metropolitan Arms and Armor was only four blocks from the office. She left her car in the lot and walked. The salesman, a squat homunculus with a salt-and-pepper spade beard and the unidentifiable edge of an old tattoo peeking out from beneath the rolled-up sleeve of his red flannel shirt, recommended the Beretta .380 ACP, a 9mm. short with a magazine holding 13 cartridges, and offered to throw in a box of 20 Federal Hydra-Shoc hollow points to sweeten the deal, but $350 was much more than she wanted to spend, so she settled on a Taurus Model 65 six-shot revolver, a .38 Special. All the caliber numbers and model numbers and firepower statistics were meaningless to her — the salesman assured her the Taurus was easy to use and well suited for self-defense, the price was only $180, and her birthday was at the end of April, so Taurus was her sign.
“Can I... I don’t know how to say it — try it out, first?” she asked.
He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Lady, I don’t have a range in here,” he explained, excessively patient, “and even if I did, I let you fire it and you decide not to buy it, it’s all of a sudden a used gun and I have to knock fifty bucks off the price.”
She nodded, understanding, and he showed her at least how to load it and fire it. When she asked him where the safety was, he sighed and explained that a revolver has no safety, but would, in fact, be safer for her to carry and use than the Beretta, as long as she made sure to leave it uncocked.
The five-day waiting period wasn’t due to take effect for another four months, so all she had to do was show her driver’s license and fill out Federal Firearms Transaction Form 4473. No, she was not a convicted felon, she was not currently under indictment, she was not addicted to drugs or alcohol, she had not been judged mentally incompetent, she was not an alien residing illegally in the United States.
She marveled at the inanity of the form, wondering if even those who had been judged mentally incompetent would be foolish enough to check “yes” in response to any of these questions.
Including $12.95 for a box of Winchester Silvertips, their aluminum-jacketed soft-lead bodies unexpectedly heavy yet comforting in her palm, and state sales tax, the total came to a little over $200. She didn’t have that much cash on her, so she put the purchase on her VISA.
She named the gun Bull, after Taurus, and then thought of the tall bald bailiff on Night Court and smiled.
She decided not to carry Bull around with her: At the office, in town, she felt perfectly safe. It was only at home that she felt vulnerable, so she kept Bull on an end table beside the sofa during the evening, as she watched television or read, and moved him to the nightstand beside her bed when she went to sleep. From time to time, she reached out a hand and touched him, and the cool solidity of him reassured her.
For the next two days, Darrin left her alone, almost as if he knew she had brought Bull into her home.
Did he know? Could he have followed her to the gun shop and seen her make the purchase? It was just as well if he had, if that’s what was keeping him away from her.