A Perfect Pair

Josey’s mother was talking her ear off. As usual. Josey held the phone slightly away from her head, angling the receiver toward the ceiling, but her mom’s voice carried so far she may as well have been sitting in Josey’s living room. It wasn’t that her mother was loud or nagging or annoying. She was just—exuberant. About everything.

“I swear, I put this slipcover on the sofa—this slipcover that I bought for $12.99, Josey—and the sofa looks like an entirely different piece of furniture. I’ll buy you one, too, honey. Just name the color—”

“Mom.” Josey interrupted. “You don’t have to do that for me.”

“Oh, honey, your sofa is so—so…” Josey knew her mother wanted to say “ugly” or “disgusting” but was tactfully choosing her words, not wanting to insult her daughter. “So young-looking. Like you bought it at a garage sale your first year out of college.”

“That is where I bought it.”

“My point exactly, Josey-Posy. So I’ll pick one up for you, and when you come to the reading, I can give it to you then. Is there anything else you need for your place? They had dish towels on sale, too….”

Josey marveled at the way her mother prattled on. To listen to her, any stranger would think she was a crazy old lady, with nothing else to do in her life but take on her daughter’s interior decorating. But she was a young woman, only fifty, with many priorities, including her work at a travel agency.

“Mom,” Josey interrupted again. “How’s the wide world of travel? Any hot destinations I should look into?”

“Aruba’s always hot. Hawaii.”

“I meant hot as in popular, not hot as in ninety-five degrees. Where are the available men flocking to this year?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Josey regretted them.

“Actively looking, are we?” her mother asked, the teasing not quite fully masking the parental interest.

“Mother,” Josey said sternly. “No. Forget I said anything. What’s Dad up to?”

“Oh, you know your father.” Her mom sighed with a resignation Josey knew was completely exaggerated. “It’s a beautiful day outside. Just gorgeous. The Cape tourists are swarming the streets and cafés. And your father is sitting in the study, piddling around on the computer.”

Josey smiled. “Piddling around” meant working on his next book, and her mother was fully aware of this fact. Josey saw her mother in her mind’s eye, rolling her aquamarine eyes and shaking her yellow-blond head at her father, hunched over his desk, amid forty books filled with equations and theorems.

“So I guess he can’t come to the phone.”

“Do you need to talk to him? I’d be happy to make him come out of that cave into the sunshine. Do you know when he’ll emerge? At dinnertime. At sunset.”

“Well, that’s only about a half hour or so from now.”

“That’s it. I’m getting him.”

“No, don’t, Mom. You used to work all day Saturday, too, don’t forget, until you hired a few agents. And that wasn’t all that long ago.”

There was a triple rap at Josey’s door, and as she called, “Yeah!” Nate walked in.

“How many times do I have to remind you to keep your door locked?” he demanded, ignoring the phone in her hand. “Any freak could just walk in here and—”

“Threaten me with a baseball bat?”

Nate grimaced. Josey chuckled, then put her mouth to the receiver again. “Sorry, Mom. Company.”

“Company by the name of Nathan?”

“Yup.”

“Put him on. I haven’t talked to him in ages.”

“We’re going out, Mom. To get some food and a movie.”

“Just for two minutes.”

“Okay, but I’m hungry. Don’t be long.” Josey shrugged and handed Nate the phone. “It’s Mom.”

Nate cradled the phone on his shoulder and focused on her ASPCA wall calendar while he talked. Or, rather, answered questions. “Margaret!… Fine. And you?…Work’s fine…. Oh, not too bad…. Derek’s great…. He started classes at Emerson…. Yeah, he wants to go into TV….”

Josey flopped onto the sofa and relaxed. He’d be on the phone forever. He liked her mother and wouldn’t want to be rude. So she’d talk and talk and he’d let her.

“She’s fine…. She is taking care of herself, working hard with her kids….”

Nate and her mother certainly had one thing in common—concern for Josey’s own welfare.

It was only her mother on the line, but he looked like he was on a business call, nodding and concentrating on the conversation. He didn’t pace around the room, stretching the cord out, the way Josey did. He just leaned against the wall next to her crammed bookcase, and he didn’t fidget. She imagined his manner must be a comfort to the victims and victims’ families he worked with daily. His empathy showed in his face—in his crinkled brow, his tight lips.

But his seriousness made his smile, when it appeared, all the more startling, Josey thought now. Startling, but very contagious—and handsome.

“Neil, how are you doing?” Nate said into the phone, and Josey sat up straight.

“You have Dad now? Mom made him stop working to talk to you?” she said in a stage whisper, and Nate shrugged at her. Unbelievable, Josey thought. They both adored this man.

Not that she blamed them, of course. Nate was…well, Nate. Worried and concerned and intelligent and even funny, when he put his mind to it. He wasn’t like any man—or any person, for that matter—that she had ever met. He willingly took on more responsibility than anyone would want to handle—his job, which probably had its rewarding moments but which Josey imagined an often depressing and sad line of work; his brother’s education and general well-being, which was ironic, since Nate was the younger of the two; and Josey herself, though she fought his protective meddling every step of the way.

Interesting that she and Nate hadn’t killed each other yet, Josey thought, tuning out his conversation with her father. They both often accused each other of being stubborn and strong-willed—she in her noisy, defiant way, he in his quiet, controlling one. But between them there was an unspoken agreement of acceptance—probably because they were so alike under the surface.

And on the surface, Josey had to admit to herself, Nate was looking pretty good. She studied him critically. His jeans and navy-blue sweatshirt looked right on him—as right as his lawyer suits. His running shoes were beat-up—possibly the one thing he owned that wasn’t in mint condition. He wore one piece of jewelry, his class ring. Josey had always thought a man who still wore his school ring was the sort who just couldn’t let go of his carefree college years, but Nate’s was a symbol of accomplishment. He never talked much about it, but she knew enough about him to gather that life had been hard for him and his brother. Their parents were dead, and the brothers had lived on their own for many years, practically broke.

His dark brown hair was still damp from a shower, since it was a two-second trip to her apartment from his. He smelled like soap and his familiar aftershave. Josey didn’t know the brand, but was sure that at any time in the future, no matter where she was, she’d be able to recognize it and connect it to this man.

Why was she getting so mushy all of a sudden? She jumped up off the couch, a sudden movement that earned her a reproachful look from Nate. She pointed to her watch. “Hey you, time’s a-wastin’. Give me the phone.”

Nate hastily formed some kind of closing remarks before Josey snatched the receiver back from him. “Dad?”

“Hi, Josey.” He sounded distracted, but Josey wasn’t insulted. It wasn’t unusual for him to have many thoughts going around in his head at once. The mistake would be to take offense and ask him what he was thinking, so that he’d bombard her with mathematical problems he was trying to solve.

“Dad, you’d better quit for the day and take Mom out to dinner.”

“Why, is she angry at me?”

Josey sighed. If her father wasn’t the classic absentminded professor, she didn’t know who was. She was positive her mother had been pestering him all day to leave his desk, but he was so wrapped up in what he was doing that he didn’t give her imploring much thought. Luckily, her mother loved him so much it would never really matter.

“Believe me. Just go, Dad.”

“I will. And you have fun, too, Josey. We’ll see you for the reading.”

“Can’t wait, Dad. I love you. Tell Mom I love her, too. I would have told her myself but she just had to talk to Nate.”