Lies You Wanted to Hear by James Whitfield Thomson Page B

a nub of skin from my thumb with my teeth. “You heard from Griffin, I guess.”
    “No. Why? I can still be neurotic without him.” I smiled. “He hasn’t called in weeks.”
    “Good. I hope he’s gone for-evah.”
    “Me too.” I tasted a drop of blood. “I’m going to fall in love with Officer Krupke.”
    “Maybe you will , Miss Smart-Ass.”
    “Jesus, wouldn’t that be a trip?”
    Which is precisely what I was thinking a few hours later as I took another hit on a joint and snipped the price tags off the new outfit I’d bought for my date. Matt was coming to pick me up at six-thirty. I showered and got dressed and went downstairs and sat on the porch to wait for him. We were going to see the new Woody Allen movie, Annie Hall , then out to dinner.
    The heat had finally broken, a soft breeze stirring the air as Matt came walking up the sidewalk with a bunch of flowers in a green paper cone. He had broad shoulders and a long, determined stride. He waved when he saw me, then stopped at the bottom of the steps and spread his arms wide.
    “This better than the uniform?” he said.
    “Yeah, you look great.” Still, it was a uniform in all but name: blue oxford shirt with button-down collar, khaki pants, polished weejuns, and a matching belt. “But, officer?” I said in my best Blanche DuBois. “How will you protect me? There are wicked men roaming the streets.”
    He growled and raised the paper cone like a club. “Flower power.”
    I fluttered my hand next to my cheek. “Oh my, how disarming.”
    His laugh was a sharp cackle— ack-ack, ack-ack —like a volley from a machine gun. “You’re great at puns,” he said.
    “A legacy from my father. We’d try to one-up each other at the dinner table while my mother and brother sat there and groaned.”
    He handed me the flowers: calla lilies, white and rusty orange. I asked him to come up to my apartment while I put them in water. Halfway up the stairs I remembered the joint I’d smoked. I had a stupid grin on my face as I unlocked the door, the apartment still reeking, and imagined myself getting arrested by my date. Matt must have smelled the marijuana but acted like he didn’t. I looked around for something to hold the flowers. I’d had a French crystal vase, an heirloom from my grandmother, which would have been perfect, but that objet met its end a split second after it sailed past Griffin’s head. I think that was the time I found out he was screwing my friend Vanessa from work. The fight ended as usual with fevered sex, injury added to insult when I stepped barefoot on a shard of glass.
    I found a ceramic pitcher I used for sangria, filled it with water, and put the calla lilies on top of a stereo speaker.
    Matt was looking at Cody’s Tarot woodcuts, the photos of Griffin and me craftily hidden away earlier in the day. I felt shallow but couldn’t help thinking that Matt was rather plain, his face too round, nose too broad, deep-set brown eyes a little too close together. His best feature was his curly brown hair—and a big, easy smile.
    When we went back downstairs, my first-floor neighbor, Mrs. Stansbury, was standing on a chair in the hall, straining to change a light bulb in the fixture overhead.
    “Here,” Matt said, “let me do that for you.”
    He took her hand to help her down, then hopped up and changed the bulb. Mrs. Stansbury thanked him with a look in her eyes like he’d just carried her out of a burning building. She was an attractive woman in her forties (no husband in evidence), who blew hot and cold with me.
    My cat Rory was sitting on the porch washing her face with her paw.
    “There you are, little girl,” I said. “I’ve been wondering where you were.” Mrs. Stansbury or the Lindells, who lived on the second floor, let the cat in and out of the front door as they came and went.
    “She’s beautiful,” Matt said. “What’s her name?”
    “Rory. Short for Rorschach.”
    He squatted down and held out the back of his