The woman paused at the case of secondhand paperbacks. She pulled out a copy of James Michener’s The Source: literature by the pound, because even in mass-market it had to be three inches thick. “How much for this one?” she asked.
“Three dollars,” Louise answered. “With tax, three thirty-three.”
“I’ll take it,” the woman said. “Looks like it’s got enough inside to keep me going for quite a while.” She pulled a five from her purse. Louise made change for her. The woman sighed. “Eleven percent sales tax is obscene, but what can you do? The state’s as broke as we are.”
Almost all the California politicians who’d raised taxes—again—no longer held office. The voters screamed that you couldn’t squeeze blood out of a turnip. But the voters screamed just as loudly for all the services they’d enjoyed before the supervolcano blew. Sometimes you couldn’t win no matter what you did. After a supervolcano eruption seemed to be one of those times.
Carrying her prize, the woman walked out. A man came in. He bought not one but two of the hideous ceramic ornaments that gathered dust on their glass shelves. Louise took his money in silent amazement. Back when the kids were little, there’d been a Mad Magazine spoof of junk like that. One picture showed Clowns! Another showed Birds! The next hyped Clowns with Birds! And the last one was Clownbirds! The ornaments the man bought were definitely ugly enough to fall into the clownbird range. P.T. Barnum might have had the poor, kitsch-loving fellow in mind when he declared that one was born every minute.
However much she wanted to, Louise couldn’t joke about that with Jared. He was the one who’d ordered the damn things. As far as she could tell, he doted on them. He carefully brushed away the dust they gathered. And when they sold (every so often, they would), he beamed from ear to ear.
He was beaming now. “Louise,” he said, not quite out of the blue.
“Er—yes?” She knew her answer sounded nervous. Was he going to do an I-told-you-so? She’d never made any big fuss about the horrible things—politeness was her middle name. But he wouldn’t have to be a mentalist to know they didn’t float her boat.
That wasn’t what he wanted to talk about, though. He sounded a little nervous himself as he went on, “I have a couple of tickets to the Galaxy’s match next Saturday. I usually go with a friend, but Dave slipped in a puddle and broke his ankle. So would you, um, like to come with me?”
She opened her mouth. Then she closed it again without saying anything. She cared about soccer more than she cared about, oh, hunting tigers from elephantback, but not a whole lot more. On the other hand, the last time she’d been out with a man was the last time she’d gone to dinner with Teo before she found out she was pregnant. She’d thought she was done with that scene, not least because she hadn’t met a man since who seemed interested in her. Once you turned fifty, you turned invisible. Only maybe you didn’t.
When she hesitated, Jared quickly said, “You don’t have to say yes because you work here or anything. I’m not going to fire you for saying no. This is the twenty-first century. I just thought it might be fun.”
Fun. Louise wasn’t at all sure that was a twenty-first-century concept. But she said, “Let me see if I can land a babysitter for my son. His half-brother’s got a girlfriend these days, so I don’t know. But I’ll try.”
Jared nodded. “That sounds like a plan.” He didn’t make any fuss. He might be strange some ways, but he was a grownup. He knew life came with complications, and that other people needed to take care of them.
The electricity returned that evening. Louise called Marshall and told him what she needed. She waited for him to tell her no. She waited for him to enjoy telling her no. Instead, he said, “Well, you got lucky. Janine’s taking the train to Palm Springs Friday after work. Her law firm’s going to some kind of convention there. She won’t be back till Sunday night. So, yeah, I can do that. At the usual rate, I mean.”
“I didn’t ask you to do it for nothing. I’m glad you can do it at all,” Louise said. She was even gladder he hadn’t laughed in her face, but she kept that to herself.
The Galaxy (Louise discovered after a little research) played in Carson, which wasn’t far away. She began planning bus routes. But Jared said grandly, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll pick you up in the car.”
Before the eruption—even for the first couple of years afterwards—she would have taken that for granted. So would he; he wouldn’t have needed to say it. Now… Now her own car had sat in its parking space so long, she doubted it would even start. “Hey, big spender!” she exclaimed.
“That’s from Sweet Charity,” Jared said, and started singing it in his erratic baritone. Soccer and musicals. Musicals and soccer. They made his world go round—but if she said so, he’d break into the number from Cabaret.
To Louise’s relief, Marshall got to her condo fifteen minutes before Jared did. To her bigger relief, he was polite to the man who was taking her out—and who was also her boss.
“You’re the one who writes stories,” Jared said after they shook hands.
“Afraid so,” Marshall admitted.
“Well, good. Keep doing it. We all need things to read, Lord knows.” Jared turned to Louise. “Shall we go?”
“We shall,” she said, and they did. Fastening the seat belt in Jared’s Buick felt funny. No, she hadn’t done it much lately. It was so much easier and more comfortable than a bike or the bus. It was also so much more expensive. She leaned back in her seat. “I could get used to this.”
“So could I—if I lived at Fort Knox,” Jared said with a wry grin. “But this is An Occasion.” He pronounced the capital letters.
“It sure is,” Louise agreed.
Their seats in the StubHub Center were near the midfield stripe. Only it turned out to be called the halfway line—soccer’s jargon was different from American football’s, and mostly imported from England. The Galaxy’s foe was Real Omaha—Real with two syllables. Jared said they’d been Real Salt Lake till the eruption. “It means ‘royal’ in Spanish,” he explained. “Several teams in Spain have royal charters, like Real Madrid. But Real Salt Lake and Real Omaha just sound dumb.” Louise couldn’t very well argue with that.
The game was… men running around in shorts, kicking a ball, and bouncing it off their heads. If you cared, well, you were one up on Louise. The home team (Jared called them a side as often as not, as if they were onion rings) ended up winning, 1–0. One–nil, not one–nothing or one–zero. Jared was pleased. Louise was pleased that Jared was pleased. He drove her back to her condo. Louise saw only a couple of other distant cars. They got back about half past nine. Louise invited him in. Marshall reported, “James Henry crashed maybe fifteen minutes ago, so he may pop out again.” Louise nodded. That sounded like what she’d expected.
Her son by Colin didn’t hold out his hand, but he would have if Jared hadn’t been there watching. Louise paid him. He bobbed his head and took off.
James Henry didn’t make a farewell appearance. Louise asked Jared, “Feel like a drink?”
“One, sure. Bourbon if you’ve got it, whatever if you don’t. Thanks.”
“I’ve got it.” As Louise made the drinks, she wondered if she felt like a wrestling match. A man who thought a first date was a license to screw wasn’t what she was looking for. No man was better than a man like that.